Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
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.
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
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.