Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
might not go to Heaven for at least a week or more. However, he was too
good for this world (as we say of all people who leave it); and I verily
believe his heart was not a bad one, after all.
Evil he had done, no doubt, as evil had been done to him; yet how many
have done evil, while receiving only good! Be that as it may; and not
vexing a question (settled for ever without our votes), let us own that
he was, at least, a brave and courteous gentleman.
And his loss aroused great lamentation, not among the Doones alone, and
the women they had carried off, but also of the general public, and many
even of the magistrates, for several miles round Exmoor. And this,
not only from fear lest one more wicked might succeed him (as appeared
indeed too probable), but from true admiration of his strong will, and
sympathy with his misfortunes.
I will not deceive any one, by saying that Sir Ensor Doone gave (in so
many words) his consent to my resolve about Lorna. This he never did,
except by his speech last written down; from which as he mentioned
grandchildren, a lawyer perhaps might have argued it. Not but what he
may have meant to bestow on us his blessing; only that he died next day,
without taking the trouble to do it.
He called indeed for his box of snuff, which was a very high thing to
take; and which he never took without being in very good humour, at
least for him. And though it would not go up his nostrils, through the
failure of his breath, he was pleased to have it there, and not to think
of dying.
“Will your honour have it wiped?” I asked him very softly, for the
brown appearance of it spoiled (to my idea) his white mostacchio; but
he seemed to shake his head; and I thought it kept his spirits up. I had
never before seen any one do, what all of us have to do some day; and it
greatly kept my spirits down, although it did not so very much frighten
me.
For it takes a man but a little while, his instinct being of death
perhaps, at least as much as of life (which accounts for his slaying his
fellow men so, and every other creature), it does not take a man very
long to enter into another man's death, and bring his own mood to suit
it. He knows that his own is sure to come; and nature is fond of the
practice. Hence it came to pass that I, after easing my mother's fears,
and seeing a little to business, returned (as if drawn by a polar
needle) to the death-bed of Sir Ensor.
There was some little confusion, people wanting to get away, and people
trying to come in, from downright curiosity (of all things the most
hateful), and others making great to-do, and talking of their own time
to come, telling their own age, and so on. But every one seemed to
think, or feel, that I had a right to be there; because the women took
that view of it. As for Carver and Counsellor, they were minding their
own affairs, so as to win the succession; and never found it in their
business (at least so long as I was there) to come near the dying man.
He, for his part, never asked for any one to come near him, not even
a priest, nor a monk or friar; but seemed to be going his own way,
peaceful, and well contented. Only the chief of the women said that from
his face she believed and knew that he liked to have me at one side of
his bed, and Lorna upon the other. An hour or two ere the old man died,
when only we two were with him, he looked at us both very dimly and
softly, as if he wished to do something for us, but had left it now too
late. Lorna hoped that he wanted to bless us; but he only frowned at
that, and let his hand drop downward, and crooked one knotted finger.
“He wants something out of the bed, dear,” Lorna whispered to me; “see
what it is, upon your side, there.”
I followed the bent of his poor shrunken hand, and sought among the
pilings; and there I felt something hard and sharp, and drew it forth
and gave it to him. It flashed, like the spray of a fountain upon us, in
the dark winter of the room. He could not take it in his hand, but let
it hang, as daisies do; only making Lorna see that he meant her to have
it.
“Why, it is my glass necklace!” Lorna cried, in great surprise; “my
necklace he always promised me; and from which you have got the ring,
John. But grandfather kept it, because the children wanted to pull it
from my neck. May I have it now, dear grandfather? Not unless you wish,
dear.”
Darling Lorna wept again, because the old man could not tell her (except
by one very feeble nod) that she was doing what he wished. Then she gave
to me the trinket, for the sake of safety; and I stowed it in my breast.
He seemed to me to follow this, and to be well content with it.
Before Sir Ensor Doone was buried, the greatest frost of the century
had set in, with its iron hand, and step of stone, on everything. How
it came is not my business, nor can I explain it; because I never have
watched the skies; as people now begin to do, when the ground is not to
their liking. Though of all this I know nothing, and less than nothing I
may say (because I ought to know something); I can hear what people tell
me; and I can see before my eyes.
The strong men broke three good pickaxes, ere they got through the hard
brown sod, streaked with little maps of gray where old Sir Ensor was to
lie, upon his back, awaiting the darkness of the Judgment-day. It was in
the little chapel-yard; I will not tell the name of it; because we are
now such Protestants, that I might do it an evil turn; only it was the
little place where Lorna's Aunt Sabina lay.
Here was I, remaining long, with a little curiosity; because some people
told me plainly that I must be damned for ever by a Papist funeral; and
here came Lorna, scarcely breathing through the thick of stuff around
her, yet with all her little breath steaming on the air, like frost.
I stood apart from the ceremony, in which of course I was not entitled,
either by birth or religion, to bear any portion; and indeed it would
have been wiser in me to have kept away altogether; for now there was no
one to protect me among those wild and lawless men; and both Carver
and the Counsellor had vowed a fearful vengeance on me, as I heard from
Gwenny. They had not dared to meddle with me while the chief lay dying;
nor was it in their policy, for a short time after that, to endanger
their succession by an open breach with Lorna, whose tender age and
beauty held so many of the youths in thrall.
The ancient outlaw's funeral was a grand and moving sight; more perhaps
from the sense of contrast than from that of fitness. To see those dark
and mighty men, inured to all of sin and crime, reckless both of man and
God, yet now with heads devoutly bent, clasped hands, and downcast eyes,
following the long black coffin of their common ancestor, to the place
where they must join him when their sum of ill was done; and to see the
feeble priest chanting, over the dead form, words the living would
have laughed at, sprinkling with his little broom drops that could not
purify; while the children, robed in white, swung their smoking censers
slowly over the cold and twilight grave; and after seeing all, to ask,
with a shudder unexpressed, “Is this the end that God intended for a man
so proud and strong?”
Not a tear was shed upon him, except from the sweetest of all sweet
eyes; not a sigh pursued him home. Except in hot anger, his life had
been cold, and bitter, and distant; and now a week had exhausted all
the sorrow of those around him, a grief flowing less from affection than
fear. Aged men will show his tombstone; mothers haste with their infants
by it; children shrink from the name upon it, until in time his history
shall lapse and be forgotten by all except the great Judge and God.
After all was over, I strode across the moors very sadly; trying to
keep the cold away by virtue of quick movement. Not a flake of snow had
fallen yet; all the earth was caked and hard, with a dry brown crust
upon it; all the sky was banked with darkness, hard, austere, and
frowning. The fog of the last three weeks was gone, neither did any
rime remain; but all things had a look of sameness, and a kind of furzy
colour. It was freezing hard and sharp, with a piercing wind to back it;
and I had observed that the holy water froze upon Sir Ensor's coffin.
One thing struck me with some surprise, as I made off for our fireside
(with a strong determination to heave an ash-tree up the chimney-place),
and that was how the birds were going, rather than flying as they used
to fly. All the birds were set in one direction, steadily journeying
westward, not with any heat of speed, neither flying far at once; but
all (as if on business bound), partly running, partly flying, partly
fluttering along; silently, and without a voice, neither pricking head
nor tail. This movement of the birds went on, even for a week or more;
every kind of thrushes passed us, every kind of wild fowl, even plovers
went away, and crows, and snipes and wood-cocks. And before half the
frost was over, all we had in the snowy ditches were hares so tame that
we could pat them; partridges that came to hand, with a dry noise in
their crops; heath-poults, making cups of snow; and a few poor hopping
redwings, flipping in and out the hedge, having lost the power to fly.
And all the time their great black eyes, set with gold around them,
seemed to look at any man, for mercy and for comfort.
Annie took a many of them, all that she could find herself, and all the
boys would bring her; and she made a great hutch near the fire, in the
back-kitchen chimney-place. Here, in spite of our old Betty (who sadly
wanted to roast them), Annie kept some fifty birds, with bread and milk,
and raw chopped meat, and all the seed she could think of, and lumps of
rotten apples, placed to tempt them, in the corners. Some got on, and
some died off; and Annie cried for all that died, and buried them under
the woodrick; but, I do assure you, it was a pretty thing to see, when
she went to them in the morning. There was not a bird but knew her well,
after one day of comforting; and some would come to her hand, and sit,
and shut one eye, and look at her. Then she used to stroke their heads,
and feel their breasts, and talk to them; and not a bird of them all was
there but liked to have it done to him. And I do believe they would eat
from her hand things unnatural to them, lest she should be grieved and
hurt by not knowing what to do for them. One of them was a noble bird,
such as I never had seen before, of very fine bright plumage, and larger
than a missel-thrush. He was the hardest of all to please: and yet he
tried to do his best. I have heard since then, from a man who knows all
about birds, and beasts, and fishes, that he must have been a Norwegian
bird, called in this country a Roller, who never comes to England but in
the most tremendous winters.
Another little bird there was, whom I longed to welcome home, and
protect from enemies, a little bird no native to us, but than any
native dearer. But lo, in the very night which followed old Sir Ensor's
funeral, such a storm of snow began as never have I heard nor read of,
neither could have dreamed it. At what time of night it first began is
more than I can say, at least from my own knowledge, for we all went to
bed soon after supper, being cold and not inclined to talk. At that time
the wind was moaning sadly, and the sky as dark as a wood, and the straw
in the yard swirling round and round, and the cows huddling into the
great cowhouse, with their chins upon one another. But we, being blinder
than they, I suppose, and not having had a great snow for years, made
no preparation against the storm, except that the lambing ewes were in
shelter.
It struck me, as I lay in bed, that we were acting foolishly; for an