Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
These seven good farmers were jogging along, helping one another in the
troubles of the road, and singing goodly hymns and songs to keep their
courage moving, when suddenly a horseman stopped in the starlight full
across them.
By dress and arms they knew him well, and by his size and stature, shown
against the glimmer of the evening star; and though he seemed one man to
seven, it was in truth one man to one. Of the six who had been
singing songs and psalms about the power of God, and their own
regeneration--such psalms as went the round, in those days, of the
public-houses--there was not one but pulled out his money, and sang
small beer to a Doone.
But father had been used to think that any man who was comfortable
inside his own coat and waistcoat deserved to have no other set, unless
he would strike a blow for them. And so, while his gossips doffed their
hats, and shook with what was left of them, he set his staff above his
head, and rode at the Doone robber. With a trick of his horse, the wild
man escaped the sudden onset, although it must have amazed him sadly
that any durst resist him. Then when Smiler was carried away with the
dash and the weight of my father (not being brought up to battle, nor
used to turn, save in plough harness), the outlaw whistled upon his
thumb, and plundered the rest of the yeoman. But father, drawing at
Smiler's head, to try to come back and help them, was in the midst of
a dozen men, who seemed to come out of a turf-rick, some on horse, and
some a-foot. Nevertheless, he smote lustily, so far as he could see;
and being of great size and strength, and his blood well up, they had no
easy job with him. With the play of his wrist, he cracked three or four
crowns, being always famous at single-stick; until the rest drew their
horses away, and he thought that he was master, and would tell his wife
about it.
But a man beyond the range of staff was crouching by the peat-stack,
with a long gun set to his shoulder, and he got poor father against the
sky, and I cannot tell the rest of it. Only they knew that Smiler came
home, with blood upon his withers, and father was found in the morning
dead on the moor, with his ivy-twisted cudgel lying broken under him.
Now, whether this were an honest fight, God judge betwixt the Doones and
me.
It was more of woe than wonder, being such days of violence, that mother
knew herself a widow, and her children fatherless. Of children there
were only three, none of us fit to be useful yet, only to comfort
mother, by making her to work for us. I, John Ridd, was the eldest,
and felt it a heavy thing on me; next came sister Annie, with about two
years between us; and then the little Eliza.
Now, before I got home and found my sad loss--and no boy ever loved his
father more than I loved mine--mother had done a most wondrous thing,
which made all the neighbours say that she must be mad, at least. Upon
the Monday morning, while her husband lay unburied, she cast a white
hood over her hair, and gathered a black cloak round her, and, taking
counsel of no one, set off on foot for the Doone-gate.
In the early afternoon she came to the hollow and barren entrance, where
in truth there was no gate, only darkness to go through. If I get on
with this story, I shall have to tell of it by-and-by, as I saw it
afterwards; and will not dwell there now. Enough that no gun was fired
at her, only her eyes were covered over, and somebody led her by the
hand, without any wish to hurt her.
A very rough and headstrong road was all that she remembered, for she
could not think as she wished to do, with the cold iron pushed against
her. At the end of this road they delivered her eyes, and she could
scarce believe them.
For she stood at the head of a deep green valley, carved from out the
mountains in a perfect oval, with a fence of sheer rock standing round
it, eighty feet or a hundred high; from whose brink black wooded hills
swept up to the sky-line. By her side a little river glided out from
underground with a soft dark babble, unawares of daylight; then growing
brighter, lapsed away, and fell into the valley. Then, as it ran down
the meadow, alders stood on either marge, and grass was blading out
upon it, and yellow tufts of rushes gathered, looking at the hurry. But
further down, on either bank, were covered houses built of stone, square
and roughly cornered, set as if the brook were meant to be the street
between them. Only one room high they were, and not placed opposite each
other, but in and out as skittles are; only that the first of all, which
proved to be the captain's, was a sort of double house, or rather two
houses joined together by a plank-bridge, over the river.
Fourteen cots my mother counted, all very much of a pattern, and nothing
to choose between them, unless it were the captain's. Deep in the quiet
valley there, away from noise, and violence, and brawl, save that of
the rivulet, any man would have deemed them homes of simple mind and
innocence. Yet not a single house stood there but was the home of
murder.
Two men led my mother down a steep and gliddery stair-way, like the
ladder of a hay-mow; and thence from the break of the falling water as
far as the house of the captain. And there at the door they left her
trembling, strung as she was, to speak her mind.
Now, after all, what right had she, a common farmer's widow, to take it
amiss that men of birth thought fit to kill her husband. And the Doones
were of very high birth, as all we clods of Exmoor knew; and we had
enough of good teaching now--let any man say the contrary--to feel that
all we had belonged of right to those above us. Therefore my mother was
half-ashamed that she could not help complaining.
But after a little while, as she said, remembrance of her husband came,
and the way he used to stand by her side and put his strong arm round
her, and how he liked his bacon fried, and praised her kindly for
it--and so the tears were in her eyes, and nothing should gainsay them.
A tall old man, Sir Ensor Doone, came out with a bill-hook in his
hand, hedger's gloves going up his arms, as if he were no better than a
labourer at ditch-work. Only in his mouth and eyes, his gait, and most
of all his voice, even a child could know and feel that here was no
ditch-labourer. Good cause he has found since then, perhaps, to wish
that he had been one.
With his white locks moving upon his coat, he stopped and looked down
at my mother, and she could not help herself but curtsey under the fixed
black gazing.
“Good woman, you are none of us. Who has brought you hither? Young men
must be young--but I have had too much of this work.”
And he scowled at my mother, for her comeliness; and yet looked under
his eyelids as if he liked her for it. But as for her, in her depth of
love-grief, it struck scorn upon her womanhood; and in the flash she
spoke.
“What you mean I know not. Traitors! cut-throats! cowards! I am here to
ask for my husband.” She could not say any more, because her heart
was now too much for her, coming hard in her throat and mouth; but she
opened up her eyes at him.
“Madam,” said Sir Ensor Doone--being born a gentleman, although a very
bad one--“I crave pardon of you. My eyes are old, or I might have known.
Now, if we have your husband prisoner, he shall go free without ransoms,
because I have insulted you.”
“Sir,” said my mother, being suddenly taken away with sorrow, because of
his gracious manner, “please to let me cry a bit.”
He stood away, and seemed to know that women want no help for that. And
by the way she cried he knew that they had killed her husband. Then,
having felt of grief himself, he was not angry with her, but left her to
begin again.
“Loth would I be,” said mother, sobbing with her new red handkerchief,
and looking at the pattern of it, “loth indeed, Sir Ensor Doone, to
accuse any one unfairly. But I have lost the very best husband God ever
gave to a woman; and I knew him when he was to your belt, and I not up
to your knee, sir; and never an unkind word he spoke, nor stopped
me short in speaking. All the herbs he left to me, and all the
bacon-curing, and when it was best to kill a pig, and how to treat the
maidens. Not that I would ever wish--oh, John, it seems so strange to
me, and last week you were everything.”
Here mother burst out crying again, not loudly, but turning quietly,
because she knew that no one now would ever care to wipe the tears. And
fifty or a hundred things, of weekly and daily happening, came across my
mother, so that her spirit fell like slackening lime.
“This matter must be seen to; it shall be seen to at once,” the old man
answered, moved a little in spite of all his knowledge. “Madam, if any
wrong has been done, trust the honour of a Doone; I will redress it to
my utmost. Come inside and rest yourself, while I ask about it. What was
your good husband's name, and when and where fell this mishap?”
“Deary me,” said mother, as he set a chair for her very polite, but she
would not sit upon it; “Saturday morning I was a wife, sir; and Saturday
night I was a widow, and my children fatherless. My husband's name was
John Ridd, sir, as everybody knows; and there was not a finer or better
man in Somerset or Devon. He was coming home from Porlock market, and a
new gown for me on the crupper, and a shell to put my hair up--oh, John,
how good you were to me!”
Of that she began to think again, and not to believe her sorrow, except
as a dream from the evil one, because it was too bad upon her, and
perhaps she would awake in a minute, and her husband would have the
laugh of her. And so she wiped her eyes and smiled, and looked for
something.
“Madam, this is a serious thing,” Sir Ensor Doone said graciously, and
showing grave concern: “my boys are a little wild, I know. And yet I
cannot think that they would willingly harm any one. And yet--and yet,
you do look wronged. Send Counsellor to me,” he shouted, from the door
of his house; and down the valley went the call, “Send Counsellor to
Captain.”
Counsellor Doone came in ere yet my mother was herself again; and if any
sight could astonish her when all her sense of right and wrong was gone
astray with the force of things, it was the sight of the Counsellor.
A square-built man of enormous strength, but a foot below the Doone
stature (which I shall describe hereafter), he carried a long grey beard
descending to the leather of his belt. Great eyebrows overhung his face,
like ivy on a pollard oak, and under them two large brown eyes, as of an
owl when muting. And he had a power of hiding his eyes, or showing them
bright, like a blazing fire. He stood there with his beaver off, and
mother tried to look at him, but he seemed not to descry her.
“Counsellor,” said Sir Ensor Doone, standing back in his height from
him, “here is a lady of good repute--”
“Oh, no, sir; only a woman.”
“Allow me, madam, by your good leave. Here is a lady, Counsellor, of
great repute in this part of the country, who charges the Doones with
having unjustly slain her husband--”
“Murdered him! murdered him!” cried my mother, “if ever there was a
murder. Oh, sir! oh, sir! you know it.”
“The perfect rights and truth of the case is all I wish to know,” said
the old man, very loftily: “and justice shall be done, madam.”
“Oh, I pray you--pray you, sirs, make no matter of business of it. God
from Heaven, look on me!”
“Put the case,” said the Counsellor.
“The case is this,” replied Sir Ensor, holding one hand up to mother:
“This lady's worthy husband was slain, it seems, upon his return from