Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
must do, when God puts any strength in them. But now I wanted the powder
so much that I went and kissed mother very shyly, looking round the
corner first, for Betty not to see me.
But mother gave me half a dozen, and only one shilling for all of them;
and I could not find it in my heart to ask her for another, although I
would have taken it. In very quick time I ran away with the shilling
in my pocket, and got Peggy out on the Porlock road without my mother
knowing it. For mother was frightened of that road now, as if all the
trees were murderers, and would never let me go alone so much as a
hundred yards on it. And, to tell the truth, I was touched with fear for
many years about it; and even now, when I ride at dark there, a man by
a peat-rick makes me shiver, until I go and collar him. But this time
I was very bold, having John Fry's blunderbuss, and keeping a sharp
look-out wherever any lurking place was. However, I saw only sheep and
small red cattle, and the common deer of the forest, until I was nigh to
Porlock town, and then rode straight to Mr. Pooke's, at the sign of the
Spit and Gridiron.
Mr. Pooke was asleep, as it happened, not having much to do that day;
and so I fastened Peggy by the handle of a warming-pan, at which she
had no better manners than to snort and blow her breath; and in I walked
with a manful style, bearing John Fry's blunderbuss. Now Timothy Pooke
was a peaceful man, glad to live without any enjoyment of mind at
danger, and I was tall and large already as most lads of a riper age.
Mr. Pooke, as soon as he opened his eyes, dropped suddenly under the
counting-board, and drew a great frying-pan over his head, as if the
Doones were come to rob him, as their custom was, mostly after the
fair-time. It made me feel rather hot and queer to be taken for a
robber; and yet methinks I was proud of it.
“Gadzooks, Master Pooke,” said I, having learned fine words at Tiverton;
“do you suppose that I know not then the way to carry firearms? An it
were the old Spanish match-lock in the lieu of this good flint-engine,
which may be borne ten miles or more and never once go off, scarcely
couldst thou seem more scared. I might point at thee muzzle on--just so
as I do now--even for an hour or more, and like enough it would never
shoot thee, unless I pulled the trigger hard, with a crock upon my
finger; so you see; just so, Master Pooke, only a trifle harder.”
“God sake, John Ridd, God sake, dear boy,” cried Pooke, knowing me by
this time; “don't 'e, for good love now, don't 'e show it to me, boy,
as if I was to suck it. Put 'un down, for good, now; and thee shall have
the very best of all is in the shop.”
“Ho!” I replied with much contempt, and swinging round the gun so that
it fetched his hoop of candles down, all unkindled as they were: “Ho!
as if I had not attained to the handling of a gun yet! My hands are cold
coming over the moors, else would I go bail to point the mouth at you
for an hour, sir, and no cause for uneasiness.”
But in spite of all assurances, he showed himself desirous only to see
the last of my gun and me. I dare say “villainous saltpetre,” as the
great playwright calls it, was never so cheap before nor since. For my
shilling Master Pooke afforded me two great packages over-large to go
into my pockets, as well as a mighty chunk of lead, which I bound upon
Peggy's withers. And as if all this had not been enough, he presented me
with a roll of comfits for my sister Annie, whose gentle face and pretty
manners won the love of everybody.
There was still some daylight here and there as I rose the hill above
Porlock, wondering whether my mother would be in a fright, or would not
know it. The two great packages of powder, slung behind my back, knocked
so hard against one another that I feared they must either spill or blow
up, and hurry me over Peggy's ears from the woollen cloth I rode
upon. For father always liked a horse to have some wool upon his loins
whenever he went far from home, and had to stand about, where one
pleased, hot, and wet, and panting. And father always said that saddles
were meant for men full-grown and heavy, and losing their activity; and
no boy or young man on our farm durst ever get into a saddle, because
they all knew that the master would chuck them out pretty quickly. As
for me, I had tried it once, from a kind of curiosity; and I could not
walk for two or three days, the leather galled my knees so. But now, as
Peggy bore me bravely, snorting every now and then into a cloud of air,
for the night was growing frosty, presently the moon arose over the
shoulder of a hill, and the pony and I were half glad to see her, and
half afraid of the shadows she threw, and the images all around us. I
was ready at any moment to shoot at anybody, having great faith in my
blunderbuss, but hoping not to prove it. And as I passed the narrow
place where the Doones had killed my father, such a fear broke out upon
me that I leaned upon the neck of Peggy, and shut my eyes, and was cold
all over. However, there was not a soul to be seen, until we came home
to the old farmyard, and there was my mother crying sadly, and Betty
Muxworthy scolding.
“Come along, now,” I whispered to Annie, the moment supper was over;
“and if you can hold your tongue, Annie, I will show you something.”
She lifted herself on the bench so quickly, and flushed so rich with
pleasure, that I was obliged to stare hard away, and make Betty look
beyond us. Betty thought I had something hid in the closet beyond the
clock-case, and she was the more convinced of it by reason of my denial.
Not that Betty Muxworthy, or any one else, for that matter, ever found
me in a falsehood, because I never told one, not even to my mother--or,
which is still a stronger thing, not even to my sweetheart (when I grew
up to have one)--but that Betty being wronged in the matter of marriage,
a generation or two agone, by a man who came hedging and ditching, had
now no mercy, except to believe that men from cradle to grave are liars,
and women fools to look at them.
When Betty could find no crime of mine, she knocked me out of the way in
a minute, as if I had been nobody; and then she began to coax “Mistress
Annie,” as she always called her, and draw the soft hair down her hands,
and whisper into the little ears. Meanwhile, dear mother was falling
asleep, having been troubled so much about me; and Watch, my father's
pet dog, was nodding closer and closer up into her lap.
“Now, Annie, will you come?” I said, for I wanted her to hold the ladle
for melting of the lead; “will you come at once, Annie? or must I go for
Lizzie, and let her see the whole of it?”
“Indeed, then, you won't do that,” said Annie; “Lizzie to come before
me, John; and she can't stir a pot of brewis, and scarce knows a tongue
from a ham, John, and says it makes no difference, because both are
good to eat! Oh, Betty, what do you think of that to come of all her
book-learning?”
“Thank God he can't say that of me,” Betty answered shortly, for she
never cared about argument, except on her own side; “thank he, I says,
every marning a'most, never to lead me astray so. Men is desaving and so
is galanies; but the most desaving of all is books, with their heads
and tails, and the speckots in 'em, lik a peg as have taken the maisles.
Some folk purtends to laugh and cry over them. God forgive them for
liars!”
It was part of Betty's obstinacy that she never would believe in reading
or the possibility of it, but stoutly maintained to the very last that
people first learned things by heart, and then pretended to make them
out from patterns done upon paper, for the sake of astonishing honest
folk just as do the conjurers. And even to see the parson and clerk was
not enough to convince her; all she said was, “It made no odds, they
were all the same as the rest of us.” And now that she had been on
the farm nigh upon forty years, and had nursed my father, and made his
clothes, and all that he had to eat, and then put him in his coffin, she
was come to such authority, that it was not worth the wages of the best
man on the place to say a word in answer to Betty, even if he would face
the risk to have ten for one, or twenty.
Annie was her love and joy. For Annie she would do anything, even so far
as to try to smile, when the little maid laughed and danced to her. And
in truth I know not how it was, but every one was taken with Annie at
the very first time of seeing her. She had such pretty ways and manners,
and such a look of kindness, and a sweet soft light in her long blue
eyes full of trustful gladness. Everybody who looked at her seemed to
grow the better for it, because she knew no evil. And then the turn she
had for cooking, you never would have expected it; and how it was her
richest mirth to see that she had pleased you. I have been out on the
world a vast deal as you will own hereafter, and yet have I never seen
Annie's equal for making a weary man comfortable.
CHAPTER VII
HARD IT IS TO CLIMB
So many a winter night went by in a hopeful and pleasant manner, with
the hissing of the bright round bullets, cast into the water, and the
spluttering of the great red apples which Annie was roasting for me. We
always managed our evening's work in the chimney of the back-kitchen,
where there was room to set chairs and table, in spite of the fire
burning. On the right-hand side was a mighty oven, where Betty
threatened to bake us; and on the left, long sides of bacon, made of
favoured pigs, and growing very brown and comely. Annie knew the names
of all, and ran up through the wood-smoke, every now and then, when a
gentle memory moved her, and asked them how they were getting on, and
when they would like to be eaten. Then she came back with foolish tears,
at thinking of that necessity; and I, being soft in a different way,
would make up my mind against bacon.
But, Lord bless you! it was no good. Whenever it came to breakfast-time,
after three hours upon the moors, I regularly forgot the pigs, but paid
good heed to the rashers. For ours is a hungry county, if such there
be in England; a place, I mean, where men must eat, and are quick to
discharge the duty. The air of the moors is so shrewd and wholesome,
stirring a man's recollection of the good things which have betided him,
and whetting his hope of something still better in the future, that by
the time he sits down to a cloth, his heart and stomach are tuned too
well to say “nay” to one another.
Almost everybody knows, in our part of the world at least, how pleasant
and soft the fall of the land is round about Plover's Barrows farm. All
above it is strong dark mountain, spread with heath, and desolate, but
near our house the valleys cove, and open warmth and shelter. Here are
trees, and bright green grass, and orchards full of contentment, and
a man may scarce espy the brook, although he hears it everywhere. And
indeed a stout good piece of it comes through our farm-yard, and swells
sometimes to a rush of waves, when the clouds are on the hill-tops. But
all below, where the valley bends, and the Lynn stream comes along with
it, pretty meadows slope their breast, and the sun spreads on the water.
And nearly all of this is ours, till you come to Nicholas Snowe's land.
But about two miles below our farm, the Bagworthy water runs into
the Lynn, and makes a real river of it. Thence it hurries away, with
strength and a force of wilful waters, under the foot of a barefaced
hill, and so to rocks and woods again, where the stream is covered over,
and dark, heavy pools delay it. There are plenty of fish all down this
way, and the farther you go the larger they get, having deeper grounds