Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
could easily keep in front, as far as you may hear a laugh.
John had been rather bitter with me, which methought was a mark of ill
taste at coming home for the holidays; and yet I made allowance for
John, because he had never been at school, and never would have chance
to eat fry upon condition of spelling it; therefore I rode on, thinking
that he was hard-set, like a saw, for his dinner, and would soften after
tooth-work. And yet at his most hungry times, when his mind was far gone
upon bacon, certes he seemed to check himself and look at me as if he
were sorry for little things coming over great.
But now, at Dulverton, we dined upon the rarest and choicest victuals
that ever I did taste. Even now, at my time of life, to think of it
gives me appetite, as once and awhile to think of my first love makes
me love all goodness. Hot mutton pasty was a thing I had often heard
of from very wealthy boys and men, who made a dessert of dinner; and to
hear them talk of it made my lips smack, and my ribs come inwards.
And now John Fry strode into the hostel, with the air and grace of a
short-legged man, and shouted as loud as if he was calling sheep upon
Exmoor,--
“Hot mooton pasty for twoo trarv'lers, at number vaive, in vaive
minnits! Dish un up in the tin with the grahvy, zame as I hardered last
Tuesday.”
Of course it did not come in five minutes, nor yet in ten or twenty; but
that made it all the better when it came to the real presence; and the
smell of it was enough to make an empty man thank God for the room there
was inside him. Fifty years have passed me quicker than the taste of
that gravy.
It is the manner of all good boys to be careless of apparel, and take no
pride in adornment. Good lack, if I see a boy make to do about the fit
of his crumpler, and the creasing of his breeches, and desire to be shod
for comeliness rather than for use, I cannot 'scape the mark that God
took thought to make a girl of him. Not so when they grow older, and
court the regard of the maidens; then may the bravery pass from the
inside to the outside of them; and no bigger fools are they, even then,
than their fathers were before them. But God forbid any man to be a fool
to love, and be loved, as I have been. Else would he have prevented it.
When the mutton pasty was done, and Peggy and Smiler had dined well
also, out I went to wash at the pump, being a lover of soap and water,
at all risk, except of my dinner. And John Fry, who cared very little
to wash, save Sabbath days in his own soap, and who had kept me from the
pump by threatening loss of the dish, out he came in a satisfied manner,
with a piece of quill in his hand, to lean against a door-post, and
listen to the horses feeding, and have his teeth ready for supper.
Then a lady's-maid came out, and the sun was on her face, and she turned
round to go back again; but put a better face upon it, and gave a
trip and hitched her dress, and looked at the sun full body, lest the
hostlers should laugh that she was losing her complexion. With a long
Italian glass in her fingers very daintily, she came up to the pump in
the middle of the yard, where I was running the water off all my head
and shoulders, and arms, and some of my breast even, and though I had
glimpsed her through the sprinkle, it gave me quite a turn to see
her, child as I was, in my open aspect. But she looked at me, no whit
abashed, making a baby of me, no doubt, as a woman of thirty will do,
even with a very big boy when they catch him on a hayrick, and she said
to me in a brazen manner, as if I had been nobody, while I was shrinking
behind the pump, and craving to get my shirt on, “Good leetle boy, come
hither to me. Fine heaven! how blue your eyes are, and your skin like
snow; but some naughty man has beaten it black. Oh, leetle boy, let me
feel it. Ah, how then it must have hurt you! There now, and you shall
love me.”
All this time she was touching my breast, here and there, very lightly,
with her delicate brown fingers, and I understood from her voice and
manner that she was not of this country, but a foreigner by extraction.
And then I was not so shy of her, because I could talk better English
than she; and yet I longed for my jerkin, but liked not to be rude to
her.
“If you please, madam, I must go. John Fry is waiting by the tapster's
door, and Peggy neighing to me. If you please, we must get home
to-night; and father will be waiting for me this side of the
telling-house.”
“There, there, you shall go, leetle dear, and perhaps I will go after
you. I have taken much love of you. But the baroness is hard to me. How
far you call it now to the bank of the sea at Wash--Wash--”
“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.
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 being 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?”
“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,