OAK OR ELM ?

By FREDERIC EVANS

AFTER a sudden attack of pneumonia Meurig Dafydd of the ' Lamb and Flag ' Inn at the crossroads had breathed his last. He was barely forty years old. Son of Farmer Dafydd of Ynyslan, he had become, as so often is the wont of the sons of Welsh farmers, host of an inn where farmer folk called on market-days. Meurig had married the late innkeeper's daughter, Shorted, though unkind critics and candid friends said he had done it when " under the in- fluence," for was it not well known to all the farmer folk that it was Ann Trefaldwyn whom he really loved—a girl from the same kind of farming stock as himself?

But it was Shoned who had married him and made the man of the fields and open spaces a bar-loafer in her own inn. When the pneumonia took him, he had no health to resist it, for the inaction and tippling of his life at the inn had changed him from a lean bronzed stripling into a coarsened and somewhat bloated time-server. Ann Tre- faldwyn could never forgive Shoned for this even if she would have forgiven her for marrying Meurig. Shoned hated Ann with that hatred born of the sure knowledge that the man she had captured still longed for his first love and the healthy farming life that she represented.

Whenever Meurig was pensive, Shoned would say bitingly : " Thinkin' of that there old Ann Trefaldwyn you are again, man. . . . Too late now it is, indeed to goodness." Meurig never denied it, but only applied himself more assiduously to the whisky bottle.

Shoned's hatred of Ann grew with the years and with Meurig's increasing dissolutions. " Nothing I would not do to spite that old Ann Trefaldwyn," she would say, " for she still has her eye on my Meurig and Meurig his mind on her." Ann had not married, although she had had many good offers when she drove to market in her smart gig or rode to hounds with the Bwllfa Hunt. Her smartness and good style enraged the now somewhat slatternly Shorted. When Meurig died, there was in Shoned's heart a savage satisfaction that now at last all thoughts of Ann had died in him too.

" He died as my husband—not hers," she said to herself with grim satisfaction.

The arrangements had to be made for the burial. Shoned sent for William Saer, the carpenter, who made the coffins for all the farmer folk and their relations and in between burials their dung-carts, their gamboes or haywains and their barns.

" Make you for me a coffin for Meurig, William," said Shoned.

" Hoak to be sure," said William Saer.

" Cost more will oak than the elm—will it not?" asked Shoned.

" Five pounds more will it be," said the Saer.

" What a waste of good money—only to rot in the churchyard," said Shoned. " Do this favour, William, for me—make the coffin of elm but send the bill in for oak. No one will know no better and I will pay you for the elm and get five pounds from the insurance for myself. Little enough that is for a poor widow."

" Buried in helm no one of the Dafydds of Ynyslan ever was," said William Saer.

" Elm is good enough in these times," said Shoned. " Hoak it must be, if I make it," said the Saer.

" Go I will to the English undertaker at Penybont, if you will not do as I ask," said Shoned.

" No one shall bury one of the Dafydds of Ynyslan but myself as long as I am alive," said William Saer.

" Make the coffin you will then? " said Shoned.

" Make the coffin I will," said William Saer. " And you will make out the bill for cak and charge me for elm?" said Shoned.

" Make out the bill for hook, I will," said the Saer.

" And not charge me for oak?" she persisted.

" And not charge you for the honk," he replied.

But when the coffin came to be delivered, oak it was with the best of brass trimmings and lined in white figured velvet padded with warm cotton wool. Meurig Dafydd's last rest- ing-place was soft like the bed of a child. In it his cold features gained a new dignity.

" Pay you for the oak I will not," said Shoned in a rage, " Elm was what I said—elm."

" No Dafydd of Ynyslan was ever buried in helm," said the Saer.

" Stuff and nonsense!" said Shoned. " I will pay you for elm and only elm."

Then she changed her tone and gave the Saer some of her best brandy.

" Do me the favour, William Saer bach," she said, " and make the real charge to me as small as you can but the bill for the insurance as big as you can."

William Saer's eyes twinkled—rather sardonically, although he was a kindly man as a rule.

" Charge you as little as possible I will," said he.

And thus Meurig Dafydd was buried in the churchyard around the little church upon the hill. The tenor bell tolled as the funeral came into the village, the coffin borne on the shoulders of sturdy farmers. The burial hymn was sung by the assembled company. "There will be a multitude of wondrous things," they sang, and the deep notes of the bass mingled with the high tenors and sopranos as the sound of the hymn seemed to echo to the green hills around.

" Oak coffin and brass furniture of the best it was for Meurig," said one of the farmer folk.

" Ay—never was a Dafydd of Ynyslan buried in elm," said another.

" Shoned—fair play to her—did the right thing by Meurig in the end. Buried him in oak she did, as was right and proper," said a distant cousin.

And, after a few pints at the village inn near the church- yard, one of the many mourners said to another : " Buried in the proper style he was . . . Shoned wanted to show Ann Trefaldwyn that she could bury him right and proper—in oak, not elm."

" Ay, ay, that's a fact," nodded the other head in appro- val. In death, at any rate, it seemed that Shoned had recognised the standing of a Dafydd in local society.

Then William Saer—after the interval of a few discreet days—presented his bill for the coffin to the widow at the ' Lamb and Flag.'

" Brought the bill for the coffin I have," he said in his gentle voice. But his eyes twinkled more brightly than ever.

" Where's my specs? said Shoned. " Mind you, pay you 'I will, only for elm."

She opened the paper—and stared.

" What kind of a bill is this? " said she. " ' To oak coffin for Meurig Dafydd nought pounds.' This is no good for the insurance."

" That is the bill for you," said William Saer.

" Nothing you do charge—nothing? " said she.

" Nothing," he replied, " to you."

" No insurance will I get on a bill like this," she stormed. " That is the bill for you," repeated the carpenter.

Shorted started. A cold fear struck her. " Then who did pay for the coffin? " she asked.

" Ann Trefaldwyn," said William Saer. " ' A Dafydd of Ynyslan,' said she, ' could not be buried in helm."

And he took up his hat and leisurely left the inn.