R. D. Blackmore - Lorna Doone

R >> R. D. Blackmore >> Lorna Doone

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58

"At Watchett, likely you mean, madam. Oh, a very long way, and the roads
as soft as the road to Oare."

"Oh-ah, oh-ah--I shall remember; that is the place where my leetle boy
live, and some day I will come seek for him. Now make the pump to flow,
my dear, and give me the good water. The baroness will not touch unless
a nebule be formed outside the glass."

I did not know what she meant by that; yet I pumped for her very
heartily, and marvelled to see her for fifty times throw the water away
in the trough, as if it was not good enough. At last the water suited
her, with a likeness of fog outside the glass, and the gleam of a
crystal under it, and then she made a curtsey to me, in a sort of
mocking manner, holding the long glass by the foot, not to take the
cloud off; and then she wanted to kiss me; but I was out of breath, and
have always been shy of that work, except when I come to offer it; and
so I ducked under the pump-handle, and she knocked her chin on the knob
of it; and the hostlers came out, and asked whether they would do as
well.

Upon this, she retreated up the yard, with a certain dark dignity, and
a foreign way of walking, which stopped them at once from going farther,
because it was so different from the fashion of their sweethearts. One
with another they hung back, where half a cart-load of hay was, and
they looked to be sure that she would not turn round; and then each one
laughed at the rest of them.

Now, up to the end of Dulverton town, on the northward side of it,
where the two new pig-sties be, the Oare folk and the Watchett folk must
trudge on together, until we come to a broken cross, where a murdered
man lies buried. Peggy and Smiler went up the hill, as if nothing could
be too much for them, after the beans they had eaten, and suddenly
turning a corner of trees, we happened upon a great coach and six horses
labouring very heavily. John Fry rode on with his hat in his hand, as
became him towards the quality; but I was amazed to that degree, that I
left my cap on my head, and drew bridle without knowing it.

[Illustration: 019.jpg Great Coach and Six Horses Labouring]

For in the front seat of the coach, which was half-way open, being of
the city-make, and the day in want of air, sate the foreign lady, who
had met me at the pump and offered to salute me. By her side was a
little girl, dark-haired and very wonderful, with a wealthy softness on
her, as if she must have her own way. I could not look at her for two
glances, and she did not look at me for one, being such a little child,
and busy with the hedges. But in the honourable place sate a handsome
lady, very warmly dressed, and sweetly delicate of colour. And close
to her was a lively child, two or it may be three years old, bearing a
white cockade in his hat, and staring at all and everybody. Now, he saw
Peggy, and took such a liking to her, that the lady his mother--if so
she were--was forced to look at my pony and me. And, to tell the truth,
although I am not of those who adore the high folk, she looked at us
very kindly, and with a sweetness rarely found in the women who milk the
cows for us.

Then I took off my cap to the beautiful lady, without asking wherefore;
and she put up her hand and kissed it to me, thinking, perhaps, that
I looked like a gentle and good little boy; for folk always called me
innocent, though God knows I never was that. But now the foreign lady,
or lady's maid, as it might be, who had been busy with little dark eyes,
turned upon all this going-on, and looked me straight in the face. I was
about to salute her, at a distance, indeed, and not with the nicety she
had offered to me, but, strange to say, she stared at my eyes as if she
had never seen me before, neither wished to see me again. At this I was
so startled, such things beings out of my knowledge, that I startled
Peggy also with the muscle of my legs, and she being fresh from stable,
and the mire scraped off with cask-hoop, broke away so suddenly that I
could do no more than turn round and lower my cap, now five months old,
to the beautiful lady. Soon I overtook John Fry, and asked him all about
them, and how it was that we had missed their starting from the hostel.
But John would never talk much till after a gallon of cider; and all
that I could win out of him was that they were "murdering Papishers,"
and little he cared to do with them, or the devil, as they came
from. And a good thing for me, and a providence, that I was gone down
Dulverton town to buy sweetstuff for Annie, else my stupid head would
have gone astray with their great out-coming.

We saw no more of them after that, but turned into the sideway; and soon
had the fill of our hands and eyes to look to our own going. For the
road got worse and worse, until there was none at all, and perhaps the
purest thing it could do was to be ashamed to show itself. But we pushed
on as best we might, with doubt of reaching home any time, except by
special grace of God.

The fog came down upon the moors as thick as ever I saw it; and there
was no sound of any sort, nor a breath of wind to guide us. The little
stubby trees that stand here and there, like bushes with a wooden leg
to them, were drizzled with a mess of wet, and hung their points with
dropping. Wherever the butt-end of a hedgerow came up from the hollow
ground, like the withers of a horse, holes of splash were pocked and
pimpled in the yellow sand of coneys, or under the dwarf tree's ovens.
But soon it was too dark to see that, or anything else, I may say,
except the creases in the dusk, where prisoned light crept up the
valleys.

After awhile even that was gone, and no other comfort left us except to
see our horses' heads jogging to their footsteps, and the dark ground
pass below us, lighter where the wet was; and then the splash, foot
after foot, more clever than we can do it, and the orderly jerk of the
tail, and the smell of what a horse is.

John Fry was bowing forward with sleep upon his saddle, and now I could
no longer see the frizzle of wet upon his beard--for he had a very brave
one, of a bright red colour, and trimmed into a whale-oil knot, because
he was newly married--although that comb of hair had been a subject of
some wonder to me, whether I, in God's good time, should have the like
of that, handsomely set with shining beads, small above and large below,
from the weeping of the heaven. But still I could see the jog of his
hat--a Sunday hat with a top to it--and some of his shoulder bowed out
in the mist, so that one could say "Hold up, John," when Smiler put
his foot in. "Mercy of God! where be us now?" said John Fry, waking
suddenly; "us ought to have passed hold hash, Jan. Zeen it on the road,
have 'ee?"

[Illustration: 021.jpg Where be us now?]

"No indeed, John; no old ash. Nor nothing else to my knowing; nor heard
nothing, save thee snoring."

"Watt a vule thee must be then, Jan; and me myzell no better. Harken,
lad, harken!"

We drew our horses up and listened, through the thickness of the air,
and with our hands laid to our ears. At first there was nothing to hear,
except the panting of the horses and the trickle of the eaving drops
from our head-covers and clothing, and the soft sounds of the lonely
night, that make us feel, and try not to think. Then there came a mellow
noise, very low and mournsome, not a sound to be afraid of, but to long
to know the meaning, with a soft rise of the hair. Three times it came
and went again, as the shaking of a thread might pass away into the
distance; and then I touched John Fry to know that there was something
near me.

"Doon't 'e be a vule, Jan! Vaine moozick as iver I 'eer. God bless the
man as made un doo it."

"Have they hanged one of the Doones then, John?"

"Hush, lad; niver talk laike o' thiccy. Hang a Doone! God knoweth, the
King would hang pretty quick if her did."

"Then who is it in the chains, John?"

I felt my spirit rise as I asked; for now I had crossed Exmoor so often
as to hope that the people sometimes deserved it, and think that it
might be a lesson to the rogues who unjustly loved the mutton they were
never born to. But, of course, they were born to hanging, when they set
themselves so high.

"It be nawbody," said John, "vor us to make a fush about. Belong to
t'other zide o' the moor, and come staling shape to our zide. Red Jem
Hannaford his name. Thank God for him to be hanged, lad; and good cess
to his soul for craikin' zo."

So the sound of the quiet swinging led us very modestly, as it came and
went on the wind, loud and low pretty regularly, even as far as the foot
of the gibbet where the four cross-ways are.

"Vamous job this here," cried John, looking up to be sure of it, because
there were so many; "here be my own nick on the post. Red Jem, too, and
no doubt of him; he do hang so handsome like, and his ribs up laike a
horse a'most. God bless them as discoovered the way to make a rogue so
useful. Good-naight to thee, Jem, my lad; and not break thy drames with
the craikin'."

John Fry shook his bridle-arm, and smote upon Smiler merrily, as he
jogged into the homeward track from the guiding of the body. But I was
sorry for Red Jem, and wanted to know more about him, and whether
he might not have avoided this miserable end, and what his wife and
children thought of it, if, indeed, he had any.

But John would talk no more about it; and perhaps he was moved with a
lonesome feeling, as the creaking sound came after us.

"Hould thee tongue, lad,' he said sharply; 'us be naigh the Doone-track
now, two maile from Dunkery Beacon hill, the haighest place of Hexmoor.
So happen they be abroad to-naight, us must crawl on our belly-places,
boy."

I knew at once what he meant--those bloody Doones of Bagworthy, the awe
of all Devon and Somerset, outlaws, traitors, murderers. My little legs
began to tremble to and fro upon Peggy's sides, as I heard the dead
robber in chains behind us, and thought of the live ones still in front.

"But, John," I whispered warily, sidling close to his saddle-bow; "dear
John, you don't think they will see us in such a fog as this?"

"Never God made vog as could stop their eyesen," he whispered in answer,
fearfully; "here us be by the hollow ground. Zober, lad, goo zober now,
if thee wish to see thy moother."

For I was inclined, in the manner of boys, to make a run of the danger,
and cross the Doone-track at full speed; to rush for it, and be done
with it. But even then I wondered why he talked of my mother so, and
said not a word of father.

We were come to a long deep "goyal," as they call it on Exmoor, a word
whose fountain and origin I have nothing to do with. Only I know that
when little boys laughed at me at Tiverton, for talking about a "goyal,"
a big boy clouted them on the head, and said that it was in Homer, and
meant the hollow of the hand. And another time a Welshman told me that
it must be something like the thing they call a "pant" in those parts.
Still I know what it means well enough--to wit, a long trough among
wild hills, falling towards the plain country, rounded at the bottom,
perhaps, and stiff, more than steep, at the sides of it. Whether it be
straight or crooked, makes no difference to it.

We rode very carefully down our side, and through the soft grass at
the bottom, and all the while we listened as if the air was a
speaking-trumpet. Then gladly we breasted our nags to the rise, and were
coming to the comb of it, when I heard something, and caught John's
arm, and he bent his hand to the shape of his ear. It was the sound of
horses' feet knocking up through splashy ground, as if the bottom sucked
them. Then a grunting of weary men, and the lifting noise of stirrups,
and sometimes the clank of iron mixed with the wheezy croning of leather
and the blowing of hairy nostrils.

"God's sake, Jack, slip round her belly, and let her go where she wull."

As John Fry whispered, so I did, for he was off Smiler by this time;
but our two pads were too fagged to go far, and began to nose about and
crop, sniffing more than they need have done. I crept to John's side
very softly, with the bridle on my arm.

"Let goo braidle; let goo, lad. Plaise God they take them for
forest-ponies, or they'll zend a bullet through us."

I saw what he meant, and let go the bridle; for now the mist was rolling
off, and we were against the sky-line to the dark cavalcade below us.
John lay on the ground by a barrow of heather, where a little gullet
was, and I crept to him, afraid of the noise I made in dragging my legs
along, and the creak of my cord breeches. John bleated like a sheep to
cover it--a sheep very cold and trembling.

Then just as the foremost horseman passed, scarce twenty yards below us,
a puff of wind came up the glen, and the fog rolled off before it. And
suddenly a strong red light, cast by the cloud-weight downwards, spread
like fingers over the moorland, opened the alleys of darkness, and hung
on the steel of the riders.

"Dunkery Beacon," whispered John, so close into my ear, that I felt his
lips and teeth ashake; "dursn't fire it now except to show the Doones
way home again, since the naight as they went up and throwed the
watchmen atop of it. Why, wutt be 'bout, lad? God's sake--"

For I could keep still no longer, but wriggled away from his arm, and
along the little gullet, still going flat on my breast and thighs, until
I was under a grey patch of stone, with a fringe of dry fern round it;
there I lay, scarce twenty feet above the heads of the riders, and I
feared to draw my breath, though prone to do it with wonder.

For now the beacon was rushing up, in a fiery storm to heaven, and the
form of its flame came and went in the folds, and the heavy sky was
hovering. All around it was hung with red, deep in twisted columns, and
then a giant beard of fire streamed throughout the darkness. The sullen
hills were flanked with light, and the valleys chined with shadow, and
all the sombrous moors between awoke in furrowed anger.

But most of all the flinging fire leaped into the rocky mouth of the
glen below me, where the horsemen passed in silence, scarcely deigning
to look round. Heavy men and large of stature, reckless how they bore
their guns, or how they sate their horses, with leathern jerkins, and
long boots, and iron plates on breast and head, plunder heaped behind
their saddles, and flagons slung in front of them; I counted more than
thirty pass, like clouds upon red sunset. Some had carcasses of sheep
swinging with their skins on, others had deer, and one had a child flung
across his saddle-bow. Whether the child were dead, or alive, was more
than I could tell, only it hung head downwards there, and must take the
chance of it. They had got the child, a very young one, for the sake of
the dress, no doubt, which they could not stop to pull off from it; for
the dress shone bright, where the fire struck it, as if with gold and
jewels. I longed in my heart to know most sadly what they would do with
the little thing, and whether they would eat it.

It touched me so to see that child, a prey among those vultures, that in
my foolish rage and burning I stood up and shouted to them leaping on
a rock, and raving out of all possession. Two of them turned round, and
one set his carbine at me, but the other said it was but a pixie, and
bade him keep his powder. Little they knew, and less thought I, that the
pixie then before them would dance their castle down one day.

[Illustration: 026.jpg Said it was but a Pixie]

John Fry, who in the spring of fright had brought himself down from
Smiler's side, as if he were dipped in oil, now came up to me, all risk
being over, cross, and stiff, and aching sorely from his wet couch of
heather.

"Small thanks to thee, Jan, as my new waife bain't a widder. And who be
you to zupport of her, and her son, if she have one? Zarve thee right if
I was to chuck thee down into the Doone-track. Zim thee'll come to un,
zooner or later, if this be the zample of thee."

And that was all he had to say, instead of thanking God! For if ever
born man was in a fright, and ready to thank God for anything, the name
of that man was John Fry not more than five minutes agone.

However, I answered nothing at all, except to be ashamed of myself; and
soon we found Peggy and Smiler in company, well embarked on the homeward
road, and victualling where the grass was good. Right glad they were
to see us again--not for the pleasure of carrying, but because a horse
(like a woman) lacks, and is better without, self-reliance.

My father never came to meet us, at either side of the telling-house,
neither at the crooked post, nor even at home-linhay although the dogs
kept such a noise that he must have heard us. Home-side of the
linhay, and under the ashen hedge-row, where father taught me to catch
blackbirds, all at once my heart went down, and all my breast was
hollow. There was not even the lanthorn light on the peg against the
cow's house, and nobody said "Hold your noise!" to the dogs, or shouted
"Here our Jack is!"

I looked at the posts of the gate, in the dark, because they were tall,
like father, and then at the door of the harness-room, where he used to
smoke his pipe and sing. Then I thought he had guests perhaps--people
lost upon the moors--whom he could not leave unkindly, even for his
son's sake. And yet about that I was jealous, and ready to be vexed with
him, when he should begin to make much of me. And I felt in my pocket
for the new pipe which I had brought him from Tiverton, and said to
myself, "He shall not have it until to-morrow morning."

Woe is me! I cannot tell. How I knew I know not now--only that I slunk
away, without a tear, or thought of weeping, and hid me in a saw-pit.
There the timber, over-head, came like streaks across me; and all I
wanted was to lack, and none to tell me anything.

By-and-by, a noise came down, as of woman's weeping; and there my mother
and sister were, choking and holding together. Although they were my
dearest loves, I could not bear to look at them, until they seemed to
want my help, and put their hands before their eyes.

CHAPTER IV

A VERY RASH VISIT

[Illustration: 028.jpg Illustrated Capital]

My dear father had been killed by the Doones of Bagworthy, while riding
home from Porlock market, on the Saturday evening. With him were six
brother-farmers, all of them very sober; for father would have no
company with any man who went beyond half a gallon of beer, or a single
gallon of cider. The robbers had no grudge against him; for he had never
flouted them, neither made overmuch of outcry, because they robbed other
people. For he was a man of such strict honesty, and due parish feeling,
that he knew it to be every man's own business to defend himself and
his goods; unless he belonged to our parish, and then we must look after
him.

These seven good farmers were jogging along, helping one another in the
troubles of the road, and singing goodly hymns and songs to keep their
courage moving, when suddenly a horseman stopped in the starlight full
across them.

By dress and arms they knew him well, and by his size and stature, shown
against the glimmer of the evening star; and though he seemed one man to
seven, it was in truth one man to one. Of the six who had been
singing songs and psalms about the power of God, and their own
regeneration--such psalms as went the round, in those days, of the
public-houses--there was not one but pulled out his money, and sang
small beer to a Doone.

But father had been used to think that any man who was comfortable
inside his own coat and waistcoat deserved to have no other set, unless
he would strike a blow for them. And so, while his gossips doffed their
hats, and shook with what was left of them, he set his staff above his
head, and rode at the Doone robber. With a trick of his horse, the wild
man escaped the sudden onset, although it must have amazed him sadly
that any durst resist him. Then when Smiler was carried away with the
dash and the weight of my father (not being brought up to battle, nor
used to turn, save in plough harness), the outlaw whistled upon his
thumb, and plundered the rest of the yeoman. But father, drawing at
Smiler's head, to try to come back and help them, was in the midst of
a dozen men, who seemed to come out of a turf-rick, some on horse, and
some a-foot. Nevertheless, he smote lustily, so far as he could see;
and being of great size and strength, and his blood well up, they had no
easy job with him. With the play of his wrist, he cracked three or four
crowns, being always famous at single-stick; until the rest drew their
horses away, and he thought that he was master, and would tell his wife
about it.

[Illustration: 029.jpg He rode at the Doone robber]

But a man beyond the range of staff was crouching by the peat-stack,
with a long gun set to his shoulder, and he got poor father against the
sky, and I cannot tell the rest of it. Only they knew that Smiler came
home, with blood upon his withers, and father was found in the morning
dead on the moor, with his ivy-twisted cudgel lying broken under him.
Now, whether this were an honest fight, God judge betwixt the Doones and
me.

[Illustration: 030.jpg Father was found dead on the moor]

It was more of woe than wonder, being such days of violence, that mother
knew herself a widow, and her children fatherless. Of children there
were only three, none of us fit to be useful yet, only to comfort
mother, by making her to work for us. I, John Ridd, was the eldest,
and felt it a heavy thing on me; next came sister Annie, with about two
years between us; and then the little Eliza.

Now, before I got home and found my sad loss--and no boy ever loved his
father more than I loved mine--mother had done a most wondrous thing,
which made all the neighbours say that she must be mad, at least. Upon
the Monday morning, while her husband lay unburied, she cast a white
hood over her hair, and gathered a black cloak round her, and, taking
counsel of no one, set off on foot for the Doone-gate.

In the early afternoon she came to the hollow and barren entrance, where
in truth there was no gate, only darkness to go through. If I get on
with this story, I shall have to tell of it by-and-by, as I saw it
afterwards; and will not dwell there now. Enough that no gun was fired
at her, only her eyes were covered over, and somebody led her by the
hand, without any wish to hurt her.

A very rough and headstrong road was all that she remembered, for she
could not think as she wished to do, with the cold iron pushed against
her. At the end of this road they delivered her eyes, and she could
scarce believe them.

For she stood at the head of a deep green valley, carved from out the
mountains in a perfect oval, with a fence of sheer rock standing round
it, eighty feet or a hundred high; from whose brink black wooded hills
swept up to the sky-line. By her side a little river glided out from
underground with a soft dark babble, unawares of daylight; then growing
brighter, lapsed away, and fell into the valley. Then, as it ran down
the meadow, alders stood on either marge, and grass was blading out
upon it, and yellow tufts of rushes gathered, looking at the hurry. But
further down, on either bank, were covered houses built of stone, square
and roughly cornered, set as if the brook were meant to be the street
between them. Only one room high they were, and not placed opposite each
other, but in and out as skittles are; only that the first of all, which
proved to be the captain's, was a sort of double house, or rather two
houses joined together by a plank-bridge, over the river.

Fourteen cots my mother counted, all very much of a pattern, and nothing
to choose between them, unless it were the captain's. Deep in the quiet
valley there, away from noise, and violence, and brawl, save that of
the rivulet, any man would have deemed them homes of simple mind and
innocence. Yet not a single house stood there but was the home of
murder.

Two men led my mother down a steep and gliddery stair-way, like the
ladder of a hay-mow; and thence from the break of the falling water as
far as the house of the captain. And there at the door they left her
trembling, strung as she was, to speak her mind.

Now, after all, what right had she, a common farmer's widow, to take it
amiss that men of birth thought fit to kill her husband. And the Doones
were of very high birth, as all we clods of Exmoor knew; and we had
enough of good teaching now--let any man say the contrary--to feel that
all we had belonged of right to those above us. Therefore my mother was
half-ashamed that she could not help complaining.

But after a little while, as she said, remembrance of her husband came,
and the way he used to stand by her side and put his strong arm round
her, and how he liked his bacon fried, and praised her kindly for
it--and so the tears were in her eyes, and nothing should gainsay them.

A tall old man, Sir Ensor Doone, came out with a bill-hook in his
hand, hedger's gloves going up his arms, as if he were no better than a
labourer at ditch-work. Only in his mouth and eyes, his gait, and most
of all his voice, even a child could know and feel that here was no
ditch-labourer. Good cause he has found since then, perhaps, to wish
that he had been one.