MY brother Gideon was born in the year when the war with the French
began. That was why Father would have him called Gideon, it being a
warlike name. Jancis used to say it was a very good name for him,
because it was one you couldn’t shorten. You can make most names into
little love-names, like you can cut down a cloak or a gown for
children’s wearing. But Gideon you could do nought with. And the name
was like the man. I was more set on my brother than most are, but I
couldna help seeing that about him. If nobody calls you out of your
name, your name’s like to be soon out of mind. And most people never
even called him by his Christian name at all. They called him Sarn. In
Father’s life it was old Sarn and young Sarn. But after Father died,
Gideon seemed to take the place to himself. I remember how he went out
that summer night, and seemed to eat and drink the place, devouring it
with his eyes. Yet it was not for love of it, but for what he could get
out of it. He was very like Father then, and more like every year, both
to look at and in his mind. Saving that he was less tempersome and more
set in his ways, he was Father’s very marrow. Father’s temper got up
despert quick, and when it was up he was a ravening lion. Maybe that was
what gave Mother that married-all-o’er look. But Gideon I only saw
angered, to call angered, three times. Mostly a look was enough. He’d
give you a look like murder, and you’d let him take the way he wanted.
I’ve seen a dog cringing and whimpering because he’d given it one of
those looks. Sarns mostly have grey eyes—cold grey like the mere in
winter—and the Sarn men are mainly dark and sullen. “Sullen as a Sarn,”
they say about these parts. And they say there’s been something queer in
the family ever since Timothy Sarn was struck by forkit lightning in the
times of the religious wars. There were Sarns about here then, and
always have been, ever since there was anybody. Well, Timothy went
against his folk and the counsels of a man of God, and took up with the
wrong side, whichever that was, but it’s no matter now. So he was struck
by lightning and lay for dead. Being after awhile recovered, he was
counselled by the man of God to espouse the safe side and avoid the
lightning. But Sarns were ever obstinate men. He kept his side, and as
he was coming home under the oakwood he was struck again. And seemingly
the lightning got into his blood. He could tell when tempest brewed,
long afore it came, and it is said that when a storm broke, the wildfire
played about him so none could come near him. Sarns have the lightning
in their blood since his day. I wonder sometimes whether it be a true
tale, or whether it’s too old to be true. It used to seem to me
sometimes as if Sarn was too old to be true. The woods and the farm and
the church at the other end of the mere were all so old, as if they were
in somebody’s dream. There was frittening about the place, too, and what
with folk being afraid to come there after dusk, and the quiet noise of
the fish jumping far out in the water, and Gideon’s boat knocking on the
steps with little knocks like somebody tapping at the door, and the
causeway that ran down into the mere as far as you could see, from just
outside our garden gate, being lost in the water, it was a very lonesome
old place. Many a time, on Sunday evenings, there came over the water a
thin sound of bells. We thought they were the bells of the village down
under, but I believe now they were nought but echo bells from our own
church. They say that in some places a sound will knock against a wall
of trees and come back like a ball.
It was on one of those Sunday evenings, when the thin chimes were
sounding along with our own four bells, that we played truant from
church for the second time. It being such a beautiful evening, and
Father and Mother being busy with the bees swarming, we made it up
between us to take dog’s leave, and to wait by the lych-gate for Jancis
and get her to come with us. For old Beguildy never werrited much about
her church-going, not being the best of friends with the parson himself.
He sent her off when the dial made it five o’clock every fourth
Sunday—for we had service only once a month, the parson having a church
at Bramton, where he lived, and another as well, which made it the more
wicked of us to play truant—but whether she got there early or late, or
got there at all, he’d never ask, let alone catechize her about the
sermon. Our Father would catechize us last thing in the evening when our
night-rails were on. Father would sit down in the settle with the
birch-rod to his hand, and the settle, that had looked such a great
piece of furniture all the week, suddenly looked little, like a settle
made for a mommet. Whatever Father sat in, he made it look little. We
stood barefoot in front of him on the cold quarries, in our unbleached
homespun gowns that mother had spun and the journeyman weaver had woven
up in the attic at the loom among the apples. Then he’d question us, and
when we answered wrong he made a mark on the settle, and every mark was
a stroke with the birch at the end of the catechizing. Though Father
couldn’t read, he never forgot anything. It seemed as if he turned
things over in his head all the while he was working. I think he was a
very clever man with not enow of things to employ his mind. If he’d had
one of the new-fangled weaving machines I hear tell of to look after, it
would have kept him content, but there was no talk of such things then.
_We_ were all the machines he had, and we wished very heartily every
fourth Sunday, and Christmas and Easter, that we were the children of
Beguildy, though he was thought so ill of by our parson, and often
preached against, even by name.
I mind once, when Father leathered us very bad, after the long preaching
on Easter Sunday, Gideon being seven and me five, how Gideon stood up in
the middle of the kitchen and said, “I do will and wish to be Maister
Beguildy’s son, and the devil shall have my soul. Amen.”
Father got his temper up that night, no danger! He shouted at Mother
terrible, saying she’d done very poorly with her children, for the girl
had the devil’s mark on her, and now it seemed as if the boy came from
the same smithy. This I know, because Mother told it to me. All I mind
is that she went to look very small, and being only little to begin
with, she seemed like one of the fairy folk. And she said—“Could I help
it if the hare crossed my path? Could I help it?” It seemed so strange
to hear her saying that over and over. I can see the room now if I shut
my eyes, and most especially if there’s a bunch of cowslips by me. For
Easter fell late, or in a spell of warm weather that year, and the
cowslips were very forrard in sheltered places, so we’d pulled some. The
room was all dim like a cave, and the red fire burning still and
watchful seemed like the eye of the Lord. There was a little red eye in
every bit of ware on the dresser too, where it caught the gleam. Often
and often in after years I looked at those red lights, which were echoes
of the fire, just as the ghostly bells were reflections of the chime,
and I’ve thought they were like a deal of the outer show of this world.
Rows and rows of red, gledy fires, but all shadows of fires. Many a
chime of merry bells ringing, and yet only the shadows of bells; only a
sigh of sound coming back from a wall of leaves or from the glassy
water. Father’s eyes caught the gleam too, and Gideon’s; but Mother’s
didna, for she was standing with her back to the fire by the table where
the cowslips were, gathering the mugs and plates together from supper.
And if it seem strange that so young a child should remember the past so
clearly, you must call to mind that Time engraves his pictures on our
memory like a boy cutting letters with his knife, and the fewer the
letters the deeper he cuts. So few things ever happened to us at Sarn
that we could never forget them. Mother’s voice clings to my heart like
trails of bedstraw that catch you in the lanes. She’d got a very
plaintive voice, and soft. Everything she said seemed to mean a deal
more than the words, and times it was like a person fumbling in the
dark, or going a long way down black passages with a hand held out on
this side, and a hand held out on that side, and no light. That was how
she said, “Could I help it if the hare crossed my path—could I help
it?”
Everything she said, though it might not have anything merry in it, she
smiled a bit, in the way you smile to take the edge off somebody’s
anger, or if you hurt yourself and won’t show it. A very grievous smile
it was, and always there. So when Father gave Gideon another hiding for
wishing he was Beguildy’s boy, Mother stood by the table saying, “Oh,
dunna, Sarn! Hold thy hand, Sarn!” and smiling all the while, seeming to
catch at Father’s hands with her soft voice. Poor Mother! Oh, my poor
Mother! Shall we meet you in the other world, dear soul, and atone to
you for our heedlessness?
* * * * *
I’d never forgotten that Easter, but Gideon had, seemingly, for when I
remembered him of it, saying we surely durstn’t take dog’s leave, he
said, “It’s nought. We’ll make Sexton’s Tivvy listen to the sermon for
us, so as we can answer well. And I dunna care much if I _am_ leathered,
so long as I can find some good conkers and beat Jancis, for last time
she beat me.”
Conkers, maybe you know, are snail shells, and children put the empty
ones on strings, and play like you play with chestnut cobs. Our woods
were a grand place for snails, and Gideon had conker matches with lads
from as far away as five miles the other side of Plash. He was famous
all about, because he played so fiercely, and not like a game at all.
All the bells were sounding when we started that Sunday in June—the
four metal bells in the church and the four ghost bells from nowhere.
Mother was helping Father with the bees, getting a new skep ready, down
where the big chestnut tree was, to put the play of bees in. They’d
swarmed in a dead gooseberry bush, and Mother said, with her peculiar
smile, “It be a sign of death.”