24

In the eaves of the lunatic asylum the birds still whistled, and the madman, pressed close to the bars of the window near their nests, bayed up at the sun.

Upon the bench some distance from the main path, the girl was beckoning to the birds, while on a square of lawn danced three old women, hand in hand, simpering in the wind, to the music of an Italian organ from the world outside.

Spring is come, said the warders.

THE HORSE’S HA

He saw the plague enter the village on a white horse. It was a cancerous horseman, with a furuncle for a hat, that galloped the beast over grass and cobble and the coloured hill. Plague, plague, cried Tom Twp as the horse on the horizon, scenting the stars, lifted a white head. Out came the grocer with an egg in his hand, and the butcher in a bloody coat. They followed the line of the lifted finger, but the horse had gone, the trees were no speakers, and the birds who flew crisscross on the sky said no word of warning to the parson’s rookery or the chained starlings in the parlour of ApLlewelyn. As white, said Tom Twp, as the egg in your hand. He remembered the raw head of the horseman, and whispered slyly, As red as mother’s rump in your window. The clouds darkened, the sun went in, the suddenly ferocious wind broke down three fences, and the cows, blue-eyed with plague, nibbled at the centres of the marrow beds. The egg fell, and the red yolk struggled between the spaces of the cobbles, the white mixed with the rain that dripped from the scarlet coat. In went the grocer with a stained hand, and the butcher among the hands of veal. Tom Twp, following his finger towards the horizon where the horse of plague had stamped and vanished, reached the dark church as the rain grew sick of the soil and drew back to heaven. He ran between the graves where the worm rubbed in the tradesmen’s hands. Mrs. ApLlewelyn raised a stone breast above the grass. Softly opening the door, he came upon the parson praying for disarmament in the central aisle. Disarm the forces of the army and the navy, he heard the parson murmur to the Christ of the stained glass who smiled like a nannygoat above him, hearing the cries from Cardiff and the smoking West. Disarm the territorial forces, the parson prayed. In anger, God smote him. There is plague, said Tom Twp. ApLlewelyn in the organ loft reached for the bass stops. The white plague drifted through the church to the music of the savage voluntary. Parson and sinner stood beneath the reflections of the Holy Family, marking in each ginger halo the hair of blood. There was to one the voice of an arming God in the echo of each chord, and, to the other, the horse’s ha.