Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
It is not of the smallest consequence. Oh, dear, no.” Herewith she was
running away.
“Oh, dear, yes,” I replied; “it is of very great consequence; and I
understand the whole of it. You want to give that stupid Annie, who
has lost you a hundred thousand pounds, and who is going to be married
before us, dear--God only can tell why, being my younger sister--you
want to give her a wedding present. And you shall do it, darling;
because it is so good of you. Don't you know your title, love? How
humble you are with us humble folk. You are Lady Lorna something, so far
as I can make out yet: and you ought not even to speak to us. You will
go away and disdain us.”
“If you please, talk not like that, John. I will have nothing to do with
it, if it comes between you and me, John.”
“You cannot help yourself,” said I. And then she vowed that she could
and would. And rank and birth were banished from between our lips in no
time.
“What can I get her good enough? I am sure I do not know,” she asked:
“she has been so kind and good to me, and she is such a darling. How I
shall miss her, to be sure! By the bye, you seem to think, John, that I
shall be rich some day.”
“Of course you will. As rich as the French King who keeps ours. Would
the Lord Chancellor trouble himself about you, if you were poor?”
“Then if I am rich, perhaps you would lend me twenty pounds, dear John.
Ten pounds would be very mean for a wealthy person to give her.”
To this I agreed, upon condition that I should make the purchase myself,
whatever it might be. For nothing could be easier than to cheat Lorna
about the cost, until time should come for her paying me. And this was
better than to cheat her for the benefit of our family. For this end,
and for many others, I set off to Dulverton, bearing more commissions,
more messages, and more questions than a man of thrice my memory might
carry so far as the corner where the sawpit is. And to make things
worse, one girl or other would keep on running up to me, or even after
me (when started) with something or other she had just thought of, which
she could not possibly do without, and which I must be sure to remember,
as the most important of the whole.
To my dear mother, who had partly outlived the exceeding value of
trifles, the most important matter seemed to ensure Uncle Reuben's
countenance and presence at the marriage. And if I succeeded in this,
I might well forget all the maidens' trumpery. This she would have been
wiser to tell me when they were out of hearing; for I left her to fight
her own battle with them; and laughing at her predicament, promised to
do the best I could for all, so far as my wits would go.
Uncle Reuben was not at home, but Ruth, who received me very kindly,
although without any expressions of joy, was sure of his return in the
afternoon, and persuaded me to wait for him. And by the time that I had
finished all I could recollect of my orders, even with paper to help
me, the old gentleman rode into the yard, and was more surprised than
pleased to see me. But if he was surprised, I was more than that--I was
utterly astonished at the change in his appearance since the last time I
had seen him. From a hale, and rather heavy man, gray-haired, but plump,
and ruddy, he was altered to a shrunken, wizened, trembling, and almost
decrepit figure. Instead of curly and comely locks, grizzled indeed, but
plentiful, he had only a few lank white hairs scattered and flattened
upon his forehead. But the greatest change of all was in the expression
of his eyes, which had been so keen, and restless, and bright, and
a little sarcastic. Bright indeed they still were, but with a slow
unhealthy lustre; their keenness was turned to perpetual outlook, their
restlessness to a haggard want. As for the humour which once gleamed
there (which people who fear it call sarcasm) it had been succeeded by
stares of terror, and then mistrust, and shrinking. There was none of
the interest in mankind, which is needful even for satire.
“Now what can this be?” thought I to myself, “has the old man lost all
his property, or taken too much to strong waters?”
“Come inside, John Ridd,” he said; “I will have a talk with you. It is
cold out here; and it is too light. Come inside, John Ridd, boy.”
I followed him into a little dark room, quite different from Ruth
Huckaback's. It was closed from the shop by an old division of boarding,
hung with tanned canvas; and the smell was very close and faint. Here
there was a ledger desk, and a couple of chairs, and a long-legged
stool.
“Take the stool,” said Uncle Reuben, showing me in very quietly, “it is
fitter for your height, John. Wait a moment; there is no hurry.”
Then he slipped out by another door, and closing it quickly after him,
told the foreman and waiting-men that the business of the day was done.
They had better all go home at once; and he would see to the fastenings.
Of course they were only too glad to go; but I wondered at his sending
them, with at least two hours of daylight left.
However, that was no business of mine, and I waited, and pondered
whether fair Ruth ever came into this dirty room, and if so, how she
kept her hands from it. For Annie would have had it upside down in about
two minutes, and scrubbed, and brushed, and dusted, until it looked
quite another place; and yet all this done without scolding and
crossness; which are the curse of clean women, and ten times worse than
the dustiest dust.
Uncle Ben came reeling in, not from any power of liquor, but because he
was stiff from horseback, and weak from work and worry.
“Let me be, John, let me be,” he said, as I went to help him; “this is
an unkind dreary place; but many a hundred of good gold Carolus has been
turned in this place, John.”
“Not a doubt about it, sir,” I answered in my loud and cheerful manner;
“and many another hundred, sir; and may you long enjoy them!”
“My boy, do you wish me to die?” he asked, coming up close to my stool,
and regarding me with a shrewd though blear-eyed gaze; “many do. Do you,
John?”
“Come,” said I, “don't ask such nonsense. You know better than that,
Uncle Ben. Or else, I am sorry for you. I want you to live as long as
possible, for the sake of--” Here I stopped.
“For the sake of what, John? I knew it is not for my own sake. For the
sake of what, my boy?”
“For the sake of Ruth,” I answered; “if you must have all the truth. Who
is to mind her when you are gone?”
“But if you knew that I had gold, or a manner of getting gold, far more
than ever the sailors got out of the Spanish galleons, far more than
ever was heard of; and the secret was to be yours, John; yours after me
and no other soul's--then you would wish me dead, John.” Here he eyed me
as if a speck of dust in my eyes should not escape him.
“You are wrong, Uncle Ben; altogether wrong. For all the gold ever heard
or dreamed of, not a wish would cross my heart to rob you of one day of
life.”
At last he moved his eyes from mine; but without any word, or sign, to
show whether he believed, or disbelieved. Then he went to a chair, and
sat with his chin upon the ledger-desk; as if the effort of probing me
had been too much for his weary brain. “Dreamed of! All the gold ever
dreamed of! As if it were but a dream!” he muttered; and then he closed
his eyes to think.
“Good Uncle Reuben,” I said to him, “you have been a long way to-day,
sir. Let me go and get you a glass of good wine. Cousin Ruth knows where
to find it.”
“How do you know how far I have been?” he asked, with a vicious look
at me. “And Cousin Ruth! You are very pat with my granddaughter's name,
young man!”
“It would be hard upon me, sir, not to know my own cousin's name.”
“Very well. Let that go by. You have behaved very badly to Ruth. She
loves you; and you love her not.”
At this I was so wholly amazed--not at the thing itself, I mean, but at
his knowledge of it--that I could not say a single word; but looked, no
doubt, very foolish.
“You may well be ashamed, young man,” he cried, with some triumph over
me, “you are the biggest of all fools, as well as a conceited coxcomb.
What can you want more than Ruth? She is a little damsel, truly; but
finer men than you, John Ridd, with all your boasted strength and
wrestling, have wedded smaller maidens. And as for quality, and
value--bots! one inch of Ruth is worth all your seven feet put
together.”
Now I am not seven feet high; nor ever was six feet eight inches, in
my very prime of life; and nothing vexes me so much as to make me out a
giant, and above human sympathy, and human scale of weakness. It cost
me hard to hold my tongue; which luckily is not in proportion to my
stature. And only for Ruth's sake I held it. But Uncle Ben (being old
and worn) was vexed by not having any answer, almost as much as a woman
is.
“You want me to go on,” he continued, with a look of spite at me, “about
my poor Ruth's love for you, to feed your cursed vanity. Because a
set of asses call you the finest man in England; there is no maid (I
suppose) who is not in love with you. I believe you are as deep as you
are long, John Ridd. Shall I ever get to the bottom of your character?”
This was a little too much for me. Any insult I could take (with
goodwill) from a white-haired man, and one who was my relative; unless
it touched my love for Lorna, or my conscious modesty. Now both of
these were touched to the quick by the sentences of the old gentleman.
Therefore, without a word, I went; only making a bow to him.
But women who are (beyond all doubt) the mothers of all mischief, also
nurse that babe to sleep, when he is too noisy. And there was Ruth, as I
took my horse (with a trunk of frippery on him), poor little Ruth was
at the bridle, and rusting all the knops of our town-going harness with
tears.
“Good-bye dear,” I said, as she bent her head away from me; “shall I put
you up on the saddle, dear?”
“Cousin Ridd, you may take it lightly,” said Ruth, turning full upon me,
“and very likely you are right, according to your nature”--this was
the only cutting thing the little soul ever said to me--“but oh, Cousin
Ridd, you have no idea of the pain you will leave behind you.”
“How can that be so, Ruth, when I am as good as ordered to be off the
premises?”
“In the first place, Cousin Ridd, grandfather will be angry with
himself, for having so ill-used you. And now he is so weak and poorly,
that he is always repenting. In the next place I shall scold him first,
until he admits his sorrow; and when he has admitted it, I shall scold
myself for scolding him. And then he will come round again, and think
that I was hard on him; and end perhaps by hating you--for he is like a
woman now, John.”
That last little touch of self-knowledge in Ruth, which she delivered
with a gleam of some secret pleasantry, made me stop and look closely
at her: but she pretended not to know it. “There is something in this
child,” I thought, “very different from other girls. What it is I cannot
tell; for one very seldom gets at it.”
At any rate the upshot was that the good horse went back to stable, and
had another feed of corn, while my wrath sank within me. There are two
things, according to my experience (which may not hold with another man)
fitted beyond any others to take hot tempers out of us. The first is
to see our favourite creatures feeding, and licking up their food, and
happily snuffling over it, yet sparing time to be grateful, and showing
taste and perception; the other is to go gardening boldly, in the spring
of the year, without any misgiving about it, and hoping the utmost of
everything. If there be a third anodyne, approaching these two in power,