Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
the middle, while all the horses kicked at it. However, they went on
till dark as well as might be expected. But when they came, all thanking
God, to the pitch and slope of the sea-bank, leading on towards Watchett
town, and where my horse had shied so, there the little boy jumped up,
and clapped his hands at the water; and there (as Benita said) they met
their fate, and could not fly it.
“Although it was past the dusk of day, the silver light from the sea
flowed in, and showed the cliffs, and the gray sand-line, and the drifts
of wreck, and wrack-weed. It showed them also a troop of horsemen,
waiting under a rock hard by, and ready to dash upon them. The
postilions lashed towards the sea, and the horses strove in the depth of
sand, and the serving-men cocked their blunder-busses, and cowered away
behind them; but the lady stood up in the carriage bravely, and neither
screamed nor spoke, but hid her son behind her. Meanwhile the drivers
drove into the sea, till the leading horses were swimming.
“But before the waves came into the coach, a score of fierce men were
round it. They cursed the postilions for mad cowards, and cut the
traces, and seized the wheel-horses, all-wild with dismay in the wet and
the dark. Then, while the carriage was heeling over, and well-nigh upset
in the water, the lady exclaimed, 'I know that man! He is our ancient
enemy;' and Benita (foreseeing that all their boxes would be turned
inside out, or carried away), snatched the most valuable of the jewels,
a magnificent necklace of diamonds, and cast it over the little girl's
head, and buried it under her travelling-cloak, hoping to save it. Then
a great wave, crested with foam, rolled in, and the coach was thrown
on its side, and the sea rushed in at the top and the windows, upon
shrieking, and clashing, and fainting away.
“What followed Benita knew not, as one might well suppose, herself being
stunned by a blow on the head, beside being palsied with terror. 'See,
I have the mark now,' she said, 'where the jamb of the door came down on
me!' But when she recovered her senses, she found herself lying upon
the sand, the robbers were out of sight, and one of the serving-men was
bathing her forehead with sea water. For this she rated him well, having
taken already too much of that article; and then she arose and ran to
her mistress, who was sitting upright on a little rock, with her dead
boy's face to her bosom, sometimes gazing upon him, and sometimes
questing round for the other one.
“Although there were torches and links around, and she looked at her
child by the light of them, no one dared to approach the lady, or speak,
or try to help her. Each man whispered his fellow to go, but each hung
back himself, and muttered that it was too awful to meddle with. And
there she would have sat all night, with the fine little fellow stone
dead in her arms, and her tearless eyes dwelling upon him, and her heart
but not her mind thinking, only that the Italian women stole up softly
to her side, and whispered, 'It is the will of God.'
“'So it always seems to be,' were all the words the mother answered;
and then she fell on Benita's neck; and the men were ashamed to be near
her weeping; and a sailor lay down and bellowed. Surely these men are
the best.
“Before the light of the morning came along the tide to Watchett my Lady
had met her husband. They took her into the town that night, but not
to her own castle; and so the power of womanhood (which is itself
maternity) came over swiftly upon her. The lady, whom all people
loved (though at certain times particular), lies in Watchett little
churchyard, with son and heir at her right hand, and a little babe, of
sex unknown, sleeping on her bosom.
“This is a miserable tale,” said Jeremy Stickles brightly; “hand me
over the schnapps, my boy. What fools we are to spoil our eyes for other
people's troubles! Enough of our own to keep them clean, although we
all were chimney-sweeps. There is nothing like good hollands, when a
man becomes too sensitive. Restore the action of the glands; that is
my rule, after weeping. Let me make you another, John. You are quite
low-spirited.”
But although Master Jeremy carried on so (as became his manhood), and
laughed at the sailor's bellowing; bless his heart, I knew as well that
tears were in his brave keen eyes, as if I had dared to look for them,
or to show mine own.
“And what was the lady's name?” I asked; “and what became of the little
girl? And why did the woman stay there?”
“Well!” cried Jeremy Stickles, only too glad to be cheerful again: “talk
of a woman after that! As we used to say at school--Who dragged whom,
how many times, in what manner, round the wall of what?” But to begin,
last first, my John (as becomes a woman): Benita stayed in that blessed
place, because she could not get away from it. The Doones--if Doones
indeed they were, about which you of course know best--took every stiver
out of the carriage: wet or dry they took it. And Benita could never get
her wages: for the whole affair is in Chancery, and they have appointed
a receiver.”
“Whew!” said I, knowing something of London, and sorry for Benita's
chance.
“So the poor thing was compelled to drop all thought of Apulia, and
settle down on the brink of Exmoor, where you get all its evils, without
the good to balance them. She married a man who turned a wheel for
making the blue Watchett ware, partly because he could give her a house,
and partly because he proved himself a good soul towards my Lady. There
they are, and have three children; and there you may go and visit them.”
“I understand all that, Jeremy, though you do tell things too quickly,
and I would rather have John Fry's style; for he leaves one time for
his words to melt. Now for my second question. What became of the little
maid?”
“You great oaf!” cried Jeremy Stickles: “you are rather more likely to
know, I should think, than any one else in all the kingdoms.”
“If I knew, I should not ask you. Jeremy Stickles, do try to be neither
conceited nor thick-headed.”
“I will when you are neither,” answered Master Jeremy; “but you occupy
all the room, John. No one else can get in with you there.”
“Very well then, let me out. Take me down in both ways.”
“If ever you were taken down; you must have your double joints ready
now. And yet in other ways you will be as proud and set up as Lucifer.
As certain sure as I stand here, that little maid is Lorna Doone.”
CHAPTER LIV
MUTUAL DISCOMFITURE
It must not be supposed that I was altogether so thick-headed as Jeremy
would have made me out. But it is part of my character that I like other
people to think me slow, and to labour hard to enlighten me, while all
the time I can say to myself, “This man is shallower than I am; it is
pleasant to see his shoals come up while he is sounding mine so!” Not
that I would so behave, God forbid, with anybody (be it man or woman)
who in simple heart approached me, with no gauge of intellect. But when
the upper hand is taken, upon the faith of one's patience, by a man of
even smaller wits (not that Jeremy was that, neither could he have lived
to be thought so), why, it naturally happens, that we knuckle under,
with an ounce of indignation.
Jeremy's tale would have moved me greatly both with sorrow and anger,
even without my guess at first, and now my firm belief, that the child
of those unlucky parents was indeed my Lorna. And as I thought of the
lady's troubles, and her faith in Providence, and her cruel, childless
death, and then imagined how my darling would be overcome to hear it,
you may well believe that my quick replies to Jeremy Stickles's banter
were but as the flourish of a drum to cover the sounds of pain.
For when he described the heavy coach and the persons in and upon it,
and the breaking down at Dulverton, and the place of their destination,
as well as the time and the weather, and the season of the year, my
heart began to burn within me, and my mind replaced the pictures, first
of the foreign lady's-maid by the pump caressing me, and then of the
coach struggling up the hill, and the beautiful dame, and the fine
little boy, with the white cockade in his hat; but most of all the
little girl, dark-haired and very lovely, and having even in those days
the rich soft look of Lorna.
But when he spoke of the necklace thrown over the head of the little
maiden, and of her disappearance, before my eyes arose at once the
flashing of the beacon-fire, the lonely moors embrowned with the light,
the tramp of the outlaw cavalcade, and the helpless child head-downward,
lying across the robber's saddle-bow.
Then I remembered my own mad shout of boyish indignation, and marvelled
at the strange long way by which the events of life come round. And
while I thought of my own return, and childish attempt to hide myself
from sorrow in the sawpit, and the agony of my mother's tears, it did
not fail to strike me as a thing of omen, that the selfsame day should
be, both to my darling and myself, the blackest and most miserable of
all youthful days.
The King's Commissioner thought it wise, for some good reason of his
own, to conceal from me, for the present, the name of the poor lady
supposed to be Lorna's mother; and knowing that I could easily now
discover it, without him, I let that question abide awhile. Indeed I was
half afraid to hear it, remembering that the nobler and the wealthier
she proved to be, the smaller was my chance of winning such a wife for
plain John Ridd. Not that she would give me up: that I never dreamed of.
But that others would interfere; or indeed I myself might find it only
honest to relinquish her. That last thought was a dreadful blow, and
took my breath away from me.
Jeremy Stickles was quite decided--and of course the discovery being
his, he had a right to be so--that not a word of all these things must
be imparted to Lorna herself, or even to my mother, or any one
whatever. “Keep it tight as wax, my lad,” he cried, with a wink of
great expression; “this belongs to me, mind; and the credit, ay, and the
premium, and the right of discount, are altogether mine. It would have
taken you fifty years to put two and two together so, as I did, like a
clap of thunder. Ah, God has given some men brains; and others have good
farms and money, and a certain skill in the lower beasts. Each must use
his special talent. You work your farm: I work my brains. In the end, my
lad, I shall beat you.”
“Then, Jeremy, what a fool you must be, if you cudgel your brains to
make money of this, to open the barn-door to me, and show me all your
threshing.”
“Not a whit, my son. Quite the opposite. Two men always thresh better
than one. And here I have you bound to use your flail, one two, with
mine, and yet in strictest honour bound not to bushel up, till I tell
you.”
“But,” said I, being much amused by a Londoner's brave, yet uncertain,
use of simplest rural metaphors, for he had wholly forgotten the
winnowing: “surely if I bushel up, even when you tell me, I must take
half-measure.”
“So you shall, my boy,” he answered, “if we can only cheat those
confounded knaves of Equity. You shall take the beauty, my son, and
the elegance, and the love, and all that--and, my boy, I will take the
money.”
This he said in a way so dry, and yet so richly unctuous, that being
gifted somehow by God, with a kind of sense of queerness, I fell back in
my chair, and laughed, though the underside of my laugh was tears.
“Now, Jeremy, how if I refuse to keep this half as tight as wax. You
bound me to no such partnership, before you told the story; and I am not
sure, by any means, of your right to do so afterwards.”