Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
them, even if she were not half-starved, as well as partly frozen;
and as for Gwenny's door, as we called it (that is to say, the little
entrance from the wooded hollow), it was snowed up long ago to the level
of the hills around. Therefore I was at my wit's end how to get them
out; the passage by the Doone-gate being long, and dark, and difficult,
and leading to such a weary circuit among the snowy moors and hills.
But now, being homeward-bound by the shortest possible track, I slipped
along between the bonfire and the boundary cliffs, where I found a caved
way of snow behind a sort of avalanche: so that if the Doones had been
keeping watch (which they were not doing, but revelling), they could
scarcely have discovered me. And when I came to my old ascent, where I
had often scaled the cliff and made across the mountains, it struck me
that I would just have a look at my first and painful entrance, to wit,
the water-slide. I never for a moment imagined that this could help me
now; for I never had dared to descend it, even in the finest weather;
still I had a curiosity to know what my old friend was like, with so
much snow upon him. But, to my very great surprise, there was scarcely
any snow there at all, though plenty curling high overhead from the
cliff, like bolsters over it. Probably the sweeping of the north-east
wind up the narrow chasm had kept the showers from blocking it,
although the water had no power under the bitter grip of frost. All my
water-slide was now less a slide than path of ice; furrowed where the
waters ran over fluted ridges; seamed where wind had tossed and combed
them, even while congealing; and crossed with little steps wherever the
freezing torrent lingered. And here and there the ice was fibred with
the trail of sludge-weed, slanting from the side, and matted, so as to
make resting-place.
Lo it was easy track and channel, as if for the very purpose made, down
which I could guide my sledge with Lorna sitting in it. There were only
two things to be feared; one lest the rolls of snow above should fall in
and bury us; the other lest we should rush too fast, and so be carried
headlong into the black whirlpool at the bottom, the middle of which was
still unfrozen, and looking more horrible by the contrast. Against this
danger I made provision, by fixing a stout bar across; but of the other
we must take our chance, and trust ourselves to Providence.
I hastened home at my utmost speed, and told my mother for God's sake
to keep the house up till my return, and to have plenty of fire blazing,
and plenty of water boiling, and food enough hot for a dozen people, and
the best bed aired with the warming-pan. Dear mother smiled softly at my
excitement, though her own was not much less, I am sure, and enhanced by
sore anxiety. Then I gave very strict directions to Annie, and praised
her a little, and kissed her; and I even endeavoured to flatter Eliza,
lest she should be disagreeable.
After this I took some brandy, both within and about me; the former,
because I had sharp work to do; and the latter in fear of whatever might
happen, in such great cold, to my comrades. Also I carried some other
provisions, grieving much at their coldness: and then I went to the
upper linhay, and took our new light pony-sledd, which had been made
almost as much for pleasure as for business; though God only knows how
our girls could have found any pleasure in bumping along so. On the
snow, however, it ran as sweetly as if it had been made for it; yet I
durst not take the pony with it; in the first place, because his hoofs
would break through the ever-shifting surface of the light and piling
snow; and secondly, because these ponies, coming from the forest, have a
dreadful trick of neighing, and most of all in frosty weather.
Therefore I girded my own body with a dozen turns of hay-rope, twisting
both the ends in under at the bottom of my breast, and winding the hay
on the skew a little, that the hempen thong might not slip between, and
so cut me in the drawing. I put a good piece of spare rope in the sledd,
and the cross-seat with the back to it, which was stuffed with our
own wool, as well as two or three fur coats; and then, just as I was
starting, out came Annie, in spite of the cold, panting for fear of
missing me, and with nothing on her head, but a lanthorn in one hand.
“Oh, John, here is the most wonderful thing! Mother has never shown it
before; and I can't think how she could make up her mind. She had
gotten it in a great well of a cupboard, with camphor, and spirits, and
lavender. Lizzie says it is a most magnificent sealskin cloak, worth
fifty pounds, or a farthing.”
“At any rate it is soft and warm,” said I, very calmly flinging it into
the bottom of the sledd. “Tell mother I will put it over Lorna's feet.”
“Lorna's feet! Oh, you great fool,” cried Annie, for the first time
reviling me; “over her shoulders; and be proud, you very stupid John.”
“It is not good enough for her feet,” I answered, with strong emphasis;
“but don't tell mother I said so, Annie. Only thank her very kindly.”
With that I drew my traces hard, and set my ashen staff into the snow,
and struck out with my best foot foremost (the best one at snow-shoes, I
mean), and the sledd came after me as lightly as a dog might follow; and
Annie, with the lanthorn, seemed to be left behind and waiting like a
pretty lamp-post.
The full moon rose as bright behind me as a paten of pure silver,
casting on the snow long shadows of the few things left above, burdened
rock, and shaggy foreland, and the labouring trees. In the great white
desolation, distance was a mocking vision; hills looked nigh, and
valleys far; when hills were far and valleys nigh. And the misty breath
of frost, piercing through the ribs of rock, striking to the pith of
trees, creeping to the heart of man, lay along the hollow places, like a
serpent sloughing. Even as my own gaunt shadow (travestied as if I were
the moonlight's daddy-longlegs), went before me down the slope; even
I, the shadow's master, who had tried in vain to cough, when coughing
brought good liquorice, felt a pressure on my bosom, and a husking in my
throat.
However, I went on quietly, and at a very tidy speed; being only too
thankful that the snow had ceased, and no wind as yet arisen. And from
the ring of low white vapour girding all the verge of sky, and from the
rosy blue above, and the shafts of starlight set upon a quivering bow,
as well as from the moon itself and the light behind it, having learned
the signs of frost from its bitter twinges, I knew that we should have
a night as keen as ever England felt. Nevertheless, I had work enough to
keep me warm if I managed it. The question was, could I contrive to save
my darling from it?
Daring not to risk my sledd by any fall from the valley-cliffs, I
dragged it very carefully up the steep incline of ice, through the
narrow chasm, and so to the very brink and verge where first I had seen
my Lorna, in the fishing days of boyhood. As I then had a trident fork,
for sticking of the loaches, so I now had a strong ash stake, to lay
across from rock to rock, and break the speed of descending. With this I
moored the sledd quite safe, at the very lip of the chasm, where all was
now substantial ice, green and black in the moonlight; and then I set
off up the valley, skirting along one side of it.
The stack-fire still was burning strongly, but with more of heat than
blaze; and many of the younger Doones were playing on the verge of it,
the children making rings of fire, and their mothers watching them. All
the grave and reverend warriors having heard of rheumatism, were inside
of log and stone, in the two lowest houses, with enough of candles
burning to make our list of sheep come short.
All these I passed, without the smallest risk or difficulty, walking up
the channel of drift which I spoke of once before. And then I crossed,
with more of care, and to the door of Lorna's house, and made the sign,
and listened, after taking my snow-shoes off.
But no one came, as I expected, neither could I espy a light. And I
seemed to hear a faint low sound, like the moaning of the snow-wind.
Then I knocked again more loudly, with a knocking at my heart: and
receiving no answer, set all my power at once against the door. In a
moment it flew inwards, and I glided along the passage with my feet
still slippery. There in Lorna's room I saw, by the moonlight flowing
in, a sight which drove me beyond sense.
Lorna was behind a chair, crouching in the corner, with her hands up,
and a crucifix, or something that looked like it. In the middle of the
room lay Gwenny Carfax, stupid, yet with one hand clutching the ankle of
a struggling man. Another man stood above my Lorna, trying to draw the
chair away. In a moment I had him round the waist, and he went out of
the window with a mighty crash of glass; luckily for him that window had
no bars like some of them. Then I took the other man by the neck; and he
could not plead for mercy. I bore him out of the house as lightly as I
would bear a baby, yet squeezing his throat a little more than I fain
would do to an infant. By the bright moonlight I saw that I carried
Marwood de Whichehalse. For his father's sake I spared him, and because
he had been my schoolfellow; but with every muscle of my body strung
with indignation, I cast him, like a skittle, from me into a snowdrift,
which closed over him. Then I looked for the other fellow, tossed
through Lorna's window, and found him lying stunned and bleeding,
neither able to groan yet. Charleworth Doone, if his gushing blood did
not much mislead me.
It was no time to linger now; I fastened my shoes in a moment, and
caught up my own darling with her head upon my shoulder, where she
whispered faintly; and telling Gwenny to follow me, or else I would come
back for her, if she could not walk the snow, I ran the whole distance
to my sledd, caring not who might follow me. Then by the time I had set
up Lorna, beautiful and smiling, with the seal-skin cloak all over her,
sturdy Gwenny came along, having trudged in the track of my snow-shoes,
although with two bags on her back. I set her in beside her mistress,
to support her, and keep warm; and then with one look back at the glen,
which had been so long my home of heart, I hung behind the sledd, and
launched it down the steep and dangerous way.
Though the cliffs were black above us, and the road unseen in front, and
a great white grave of snow might at a single word come down, Lorna was
as calm and happy as an infant in its bed. She knew that I was with her;
and when I told her not to speak, she touched my hand in silence. Gwenny
was in a much greater fright, having never seen such a thing before,
neither knowing what it is to yield to pure love's confidence. I could
hardly keep her quiet, without making a noise myself. With my staff from
rock to rock, and my weight thrown backward, I broke the sledd's too
rapid way, and brought my grown love safely out, by the selfsame road
which first had led me to her girlish fancy, and my boyish slavery.
Unpursued, yet looking back as if some one must be after us, we skirted
round the black whirling pool, and gained the meadows beyond it. Here
there was hard collar work, the track being all uphill and rough; and
Gwenny wanted to jump out, to lighten the sledd and to push behind. But
I would not hear of it; because it was now so deadly cold, and I feared
that Lorna might get frozen, without having Gwenny to keep her warm. And
after all, it was the sweetest labour I had ever known in all my
life, to be sure that I was pulling Lorna, and pulling her to our own
farmhouse.