Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
bold; and in the northern heaven, flags and ribbons of a jostling
pattern; such as we often have in autumn, but in July very rarely. Of
these Master Dryden has spoken somewhere, in his courtly manner; but of
him I think so little--because by fashion preferred to Shakespeare--that
I cannot remember the passage; neither is it a credit to him.
Therefore I was guided mainly by the sound of guns and trumpets, in
riding out of the narrow ways, and into the open marshes. And thus I
might have found my road, in spite of all the spread of water, and the
glaze of moonshine; but that, as I followed sound (far from hedge or
causeway), fog (like a chestnut-tree in blossom, touched with moonlight)
met me. Now fog is a thing that I understand, and can do with well
enough, where I know the country; but here I had never been before. It
was nothing to our Exmoor fogs; not to be compared with them; and all
the time one could see the moon; which we cannot do in our fogs; nor
even the sun, for a week together. Yet the gleam of water always makes
the fog more difficult: like a curtain on a mirror; none can tell the
boundaries.
And here we had broad-water patches, in and out, inlaid on land, like
mother-of-pearl in brown Shittim wood. To a wild duck, born and bred
there, it would almost be a puzzle to find her own nest amongst us; what
chance then had I and Kickums, both unused to marsh and mere? Each time
when we thought that we must be right, now at last, by track or passage,
and approaching the conflict, with the sounds of it waxing nearer,
suddenly a break of water would be laid before us, with the moon looking
mildly over it, and the northern lights behind us, dancing down the
lines of fog.
It was an awful thing, I say (and to this day I remember it), to hear
the sounds of raging fight, and the yells of raving slayers, and the
howls of poor men stricken hard, and shattered from wrath to wailing;
then suddenly the dead low hush, as of a soul departing, and spirits
kneeling over it. Through the vapour of the earth, and white breath of
the water, and beneath the pale round moon (bowing as the drift went
by), all this rush and pause of fear passed or lingered on my path.
At last, when I almost despaired of escaping from this tangle of spongy
banks, and of hazy creeks, and reed-fringe, my horse heard the neigh
of a fellow-horse, and was only too glad to answer it; upon which the
other, having lost its rider, came up and pricked his ears at us, and
gazed through the fog very steadfastly. Therefore I encouraged him with
a soft and genial whistle, and Kickums did his best to tempt him with a
snort of inquiry. However, nothing would suit that nag, except to enjoy
his new freedom; and he capered away with his tail set on high, and the
stirrup-irons clashing under him. Therefore, as he might know the way,
and appeared to have been in the battle, we followed him very carefully;
and he led us to a little hamlet, called (as I found afterwards) West
Zuyland, or Zealand, so named perhaps from its situation amid this
inland sea.
Here the King's troops had been quite lately, and their fires were still
burning; but the men themselves had been summoned away by the night
attack of the rebels. Hence I procured for my guide a young man who knew
the district thoroughly, and who led me by many intricate ways to the
rear of the rebel army. We came upon a broad open moor striped with
sullen water courses, shagged with sedge, and yellow iris, and in the
drier part with bilberries. For by this time it was four o'clock, and
the summer sun, rising wanly, showed us all the ghastly scene.
Would that I had never been there! Often in the lonely hours, even now
it haunts me: would, far more, that the piteous thing had never been
done in England! Flying men, flung back from dreams of victory and
honour, only glad to have the luck of life and limbs to fly with,
mud-bedraggled, foul with slime, reeking both with sweat and blood,
which they could not stop to wipe, cursing, with their pumped-out lungs,
every stick that hindered them, or gory puddle that slipped the step,
scarcely able to leap over the corses that had dragged to die. And to
see how the corses lay; some, as fair as death in sleep; with the smile
of placid valour, and of noble manhood, hovering yet on the silent lips.
These had bloodless hands put upwards, white as wax, and firm as death,
clasped (as on a monument) in prayer for dear ones left behind, or in
high thanksgiving. And of these men there was nothing in their broad
blue eyes to fear. But others were of different sort; simple fellows
unused to pain, accustomed to the bill-hook, perhaps, or rasp of the
knuckles in a quick-set hedge, or making some to-do at breakfast, over a
thumb cut in sharpening a scythe, and expecting their wives to make more
to-do. Yet here lay these poor chaps, dead; dead, after a deal of pain,
with little mind to bear it, and a soul they had never thought of; gone,
their God alone knows whither; but to mercy we may trust. Upon these
things I cannot dwell; and none I trow would ask me: only if a plain man
saw what I saw that morning, he (if God had blessed him with the heart
that is in most of us) must have sickened of all desire to be great
among mankind.
Seeing me riding to the front (where the work of death went on among
the men of true English pluck; which, when moved, no farther moves), the
fugitives called out to me, in half a dozen dialects, to make no utter
fool of myself; for the great guns were come, and the fight was over;
all the rest was slaughter.
“Arl oop wi Moonmo,” shouted one big fellow, a miner of the Mendip
hills, whose weapon was a pickaxe: “na oose to vaight na moor. Wend thee
hame, yoong mon agin.”
Upon this I stopped my horse, desiring not to be shot for nothing; and
eager to aid some poor sick people, who tried to lift their arms to
me. And this I did to the best of my power, though void of skill in
the business; and more inclined to weep with them than to check their
weeping. While I was giving a drop of cordial from my flask to one poor
fellow, who sat up, while his life was ebbing, and with slow insistence
urged me, when his broken voice would come, to tell his wife (whose name
I knew not) something about an apple-tree, and a golden guinea stored in
it, to divide among six children--in the midst of this I felt warm lips
laid against my cheek quite softly, and then a little push; and behold
it was a horse leaning over me! I arose in haste, and there stood
Winnie, looking at me with beseeching eyes, enough to melt a heart of
stone. Then seeing my attention fixed she turned her head, and glanced
back sadly toward the place of battle, and gave a little wistful neigh:
and then looked me full in the face again, as much as to say, “Do you
understand?” while she scraped with one hoof impatiently. If ever a
horse tried hard to speak, it was Winnie at that moment. I went to her
side and patted her; but that was not what she wanted. Then I offered to
leap into the empty saddle; but neither did that seem good to her: for
she ran away toward the part of the field at which she had been glancing
back, and then turned round, and shook her mane, entreating me to follow
her.
Upon this I learned from the dying man where to find his apple-tree, and
promised to add another guinea to the one in store for his children; and
so, commending him to God, I mounted my own horse again, and to Winnie's
great delight, professed myself at her service. With her ringing silvery
neigh, such as no other horse of all I ever knew could equal, she at
once proclaimed her triumph, and told her master (or meant to tell, if
death should not have closed his ears) that she was coming to his aid,
and bringing one who might be trusted, of the higher race that kill.
A cannon-bullet (fired low, and ploughing the marsh slowly) met poor
Winnie front to front; and she, being as quick as thought, lowered her
nose to sniff at it. It might be a message from her master; for it made
a mournful noise. But luckily for Winnie's life, a rise of wet ground
took the ball, even under her very nose; and there it cut a splashy
groove, missing her off hindfoot by an inch, and scattering black mud
over her. It frightened me much more than Winnie; of that I am quite
certain: because though I am firm enough, when it comes to a real
tussle, and the heart of a fellow warms up and tells him that he must go
through with it; yet I never did approve of making a cold pie of death.
Therefore, with those reckless cannons, brazen-mouthed, and bellowing,
two furlongs off, or it might be more (and the more the merrier), I
would have given that year's hay-crop for a bit of a hill, or a thicket
of oaks, or almost even a badger's earth. People will call me a coward
for this (especially when I had made up my mind, that life was not worth
having without any sign of Lorna); nevertheless, I cannot help it: those
were my feelings; and I set them down, because they made a mark on me.
At Glen Doone I had fought, even against cannon, with some spirit and
fury: but now I saw nothing to fight about; but rather in every poor
doubled corpse, a good reason for not fighting. So, in cold blood riding
on, and yet ashamed that a man should shrink where a horse went bravely,
I cast a bitter blame upon the reckless ways of Winnie.
Nearly all were scattered now. Of the noble countrymen (armed with
scythe or pickaxe, blacksmith's hammer, or fold-pitcher), who had stood
their ground for hours against blazing musketry (from men whom they
could not get at, by reason of the water-dyke), and then against the
deadly cannon, dragged by the Bishop's horses to slaughter his own
sheep; of these sturdy Englishmen, noble in their want of sense, scarce
one out of four remained for the cowards to shoot down. “Cross the
rhaine,” they shouted out, “cross the rhaine, and coom within rache:”
but the other mongrel Britons, with a mongrel at their head, found it
pleasanter to shoot men who could not shoot in answer, than to meet the
chance of mischief from strong arms, and stronger hearts.
The last scene of this piteous play was acting, just as I rode up. Broad
daylight, and upstanding sun, winnowing fog from the eastern hills,
and spreading the moors with freshness; all along the dykes they shone,
glistened on the willow-trunks, and touched the banks with a hoary gray.
But alas! those banks were touched more deeply with a gory red, and
strewn with fallen trunks, more woeful than the wreck of trees; while
howling, cursing, yelling, and the loathsome reek of carnage, drowned
the scent of the new-mown hay, and the carol of the lark.
Then the cavalry of the King, with their horses at full speed, dashed
from either side upon the helpless mob of countrymen. A few pikes
feebly levelled met them; but they shot the pikemen, drew swords, and
helter-skelter leaped into the shattered and scattering mass. Right and
left they hacked and hewed; I could hear the snapping of scythes beneath
them, and see the flash of their sweeping swords. How it must end was
plain enough, even to one like myself, who had never beheld such a
battle before. But Winnie led me away to the left; and as I could
not help the people, neither stop the slaughter, but found the
cannon-bullets coming very rudely nigh me, I was only too glad to follow
her.
CHAPTER LXV
FALLING AMONG LAMBS
That faithful creature, whom I began to admire as if she were my own
(which is no little thing for a man to say of another man's horse),
stopped in front of a low black shed, such as we call a “linhay.” And
here she uttered a little greeting, in a subdued and softened voice,
hoping to obtain an answer, such as her master was wont to give in a