My Neighbors Part 11

"Iss-iss," the tailor mumbled.

"Not wanting an old farm do I," Sheremiah cried. "But speak to goodness where the place is. Near you are, calf bach, about affairs."

The tailor answered that Rhydwen is in the hollow of the hill which arises from Capel Sion to the moor.

In the morning Sheremiah rode forth on his colt, and he said to Shan Rhydwen: "Boy of a pigger am I, whatever."

"Dirt-dirt, man," Shan cried; "no fat pigs have I, look you."

"Mournful that is. Mouthings have I heard about grand pigs Tyhen. No odds, wench. Farewell for this minute, female Tyhen."

"Pigger from where you are?" Shan asked.

"From Pencader the horse has carried me. Carry a preacher he did the last Monday."

"Weary you are, stranger. Give hay to your horse, and rest you and take you a little cup of tea."

"Happy am I to do that. Thirsty is the backhead of my neck."

Sheremiah praised the Big Man for tea, bread, b.u.t.ter, and cheese, and while he ate and drank he put artful questions to Shan. In the evening he said to Catrin: "Quite tidy is Rhydwen. Is she not one hundred acres?

And if there is not water in every field, is there not in four?"

He hastened to the owner of Rhydwen and made this utterance: "Farmer very ordinary is your sister Shan. Shamed was I to examine your land."

"I shouldn't be surprised," answered the owner. "Speak hard must I to the trollop."

"Not handy are women," said Sheremiah. "Sell him to me the poor-place.

Three-fourths of the cost I give in yellow money and one-fourth by-and-by in three years."

Having taken over Rhydwen, Sheremiah in due season sold much of his corn and hay, some of his cattle, and many such movable things as were in his house or employed in tillage; and he and Catrin came to abide in Rhydwen; and they arrived with horses in carts, cows, a bull and oxen, and their sons, Aben and Dan. As they pa.s.sed Capel Sion, people who were gathered at the roadside to judge them remarked how that Aben was blind in his left eye and that Dan's shoulders were as high as his ears.

At the finish of a round of time Sheremiah hired out his sons and all that they earned he took away from them; and he and Catrin toiled to recover Rhydwen from its slovenry. After he had paid all that he owed for the place, and after Catrin had died of dropsy, he called his sons home.

Thereon he thrived. He was over all on the floor of Sion, even those in the Big Seat. Men in debt and many widow-women sought him to free them, and in freeing them he made compacts to his advantage. Thus he came to have more cattle than Rhydwen could hold, and he bought Penlan, the farm of eighty acres which goes up from Rhydwen to the edge of the moor, and beyond.

In quiet seasons he and Aben and Dan dug ditches on the land of Rhydwen; "so that," he said, "my creatures shall not perish of thirst."

Of a sudden a sickness struck him, and in the hush which is sometimes before death, he summoned to him his sons. "Off away am I to the Palace," he said.

"Large will be the shout of joy among the angels," Aben told him.

"And much weeping there will be in Sion," said Dan. "Speak you a little verse for a funeral preach."

"Cease you your babblings, now, indeed," Sheremiah demanded. "Born first you were, Aben, and you get Rhydwen. And you, Dan, Penlan."

"Father bach," Aben cried, "not right that you leave more to me than Dan."

"Crow you do like a cuckoo," Dan admonished his brother. "Wise you are, father. Big already is your giving to me."

Aben looked at the window and he beheld a corpse candle moving outward through the way of the gate. "Religious you lived, father Sheremiah, and religious you put on a White Shirt." Then Aben spoke of the sight he had seen.

The old man opened his lips, counseling: "Hish, hish, boys. Break you trenches in Penlan, Dan. Poor bad are farms without water. More than everything is water." He died, and his sons washed him and clothed him in a White Shirt of the dead, and clipped off his long beard, which ceasing to grow, shall not entwine his legs and feet and his arms and hands on the Day of Rising; and they bowed their heads in Sion for the full year.

Dan and Aben lived in harmony. They were not as brothers, but as strangers; neighborly and at peace. They married wives, by whom they had children, and they sat in the Big Seat in Sion. They mowed their hay and reaped their corn at separate periods, so that one could help the other; if one needed the loan of anything he would borrow it from his brother; if one's heifer strayed into the pasture of the other, the other would say: "The Big Man will make the old gra.s.s grow." On the Sabbath they and their children walked as in procession to Sion.

In accordance with his father's word, Dan dug ditches in Penlan; and against the barnyard--which is at the forehead of his house--water sprang up, and he caused it to run over his water-wheel into his pond.

Now there fell upon this part of Cardiganshire a season of exceeding drought. The face of the earth was as the face of a cancerous man. There was no water in any of the ditches of Rhydwen and none in those of Penlan. But the spring which Dan had found continued to yield, and from it Aben's wife took away water in pitchers and buckets; and to the pond Aben brought his animals.

One day Aben spoke to Dan in this wise: "Serious sure, an old bother is this."

"Iss-iss," replied Dan. "Good is the Big Man to allow us water bach."

"How speech you if I said: 'Unfasten your pond and let him flow into my ditches'?"

"The land will suck him before he goes far," Dan answered.

Aben departed; and he considered: "Did not Penlan belong to Sheremiah?

Travel under would the water and hap spout up in my close. Nice that would be. Nasty is the behavior of Dan and there's sly is the job."

To Dan he said: "Open your pond, man, and let the water come into the ditches which father Sheremiah broke."

Dan would not do as Aben desired, wherefore Aben informed against him in Sion, crying: "Little Big Man, know you not what a Turk is the fox? One eye bach I have, but you have two, and can see all his wickedness. Make you him pay the cost." He raised his voice so high that the congregation could not discern the meaning thereof, and it shouted as one person: "Wo, now, boy Sheremiah! What is the matter, say you?"

The anger which Aben nourished against Dan waxed hot. Rain came, and it did not abate, and the man plotted mischief to his brother's damage. In heavy darkness he cut the halters which held Dan's cows and horses to their stalls and drove the animals into the road. He also poisoned pond Penlan, and a sheep died before it could be killed and eaten.

Dan wept very sore. "Take you the old water," he said. "Fat is my sorrow."

"Not religious you are," Aben censured him. "All the water is mine."

"Useful he is to me," Dan replied. "Like would I that he turns my wheel as he goes to you."

"Clap your mouth," answered Aben.

"Not as much as will go through the leg of a smoking pipe shall you have."

In Sion Aben told the Big Man of all the benefits which he had conferred upon Dan.

Men and women encouraged his fury; some said this: "An old paddy is Dan to rob your water. Ach y fi"; and some said this: "A dirty a.s.s is the mule." His fierce wrath was not allayed albeit Dan turned the course of the water away from his pond, and on his knees and at his labor asked G.o.d that peace might come.

"Bury the water," Aben ordered, "and fill in the ditch, Satan."

"That will I do speedily," Dan answered in his timidity. "Do you give me an hour fach, for is not the sowing at hand?" Aben would not hearken unto his brother. He deliberated with a lawyer, and Dan was made to dig a ditch straightway from the spring to the close of Rhydwen, and he put pipes in the bottom of the ditch, and these pipes he covered with gravel and earth.

So as Dan did not sow, he had nothing to reap; and people mocked him in this fashion: "Come we will and gather in your harvest, Dan bach." He held his tongue, because he had nothing to say. His affliction pressed upon him so heavily that he would not be consoled and he hanged himself on a tree; and his body was taken down at the time of the morning stars.

A man ran to Rhydwen and related to Aben the manner of Dan's death. Aben went into a field and sat as one astonished until the light of day paled. Then he arose, shook himself, and set to number the ears of wheat which were in his field.