Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
and a warning, and a memory. For one day the sorcerer gazed from his
window facing the southeast of the compass, and he yawned, having killed
so many men that now he was weary of it.
“Ifackins,” he cried, or some such oath, both profane and uncomely,
“I see a man on the verge of the sky-line, going along laboriously. A
pilgrim, I trow, or some such fool, with the nails of his boots inside
them. Too thin to be worth eating; but I will have him for the fun of
the thing; and most of those saints have got money.”
With these words he stretched forth his legs on a stool, and pointed
the book of heathenish spells back upwards at the pilgrim. Now this good
pilgrim was plodding along, soberly and religiously, with a pound of
flints in either boot, and not an ounce of meat inside him. He felt the
spell of the wicked book, but only as a horse might feel a “gee-wug!”
addressed to him. It was in the power of this good man, either to go
on, or turn aside, and see out the wizard's meaning. And for a moment he
halted and stood, like one in two minds about a thing. Then the wizard
clapped one cover to, in a jocular and insulting manner; and the sound
of it came to the pilgrim's ear, about five miles in the distance, like
a great gun fired at him.
“By our Lady,” he cried, “I must see to this; although my poor feet have
no skin below them. I will teach this heathen miscreant how to scoff at
Glastonbury.”
Thereupon he turned his course, and ploughed along through the moors
and bogs, towards the eight-sided palace. The wizard sat on his chair of
comfort, and with the rankest contempt observed the holy man ploughing
towards him. “He has something good in his wallet, I trow,” said the
black thief to himself; “these fellows get always the pick of the wine,
and the best of a woman's money.” Then he cried, “Come in, come in, good
sir,” as he always did to every one.
“Bad sir, I will not come in,” said the pilgrim; “neither shall you come
out again. Here are the bones of all you have slain; and here shall your
own bones be.”
“Hurry me not,” cried the sorcerer; “that is a thing to think about. How
many miles hast thou travelled this day?”
But the pilgrim was too wide awake, for if he had spoken of any number,
bearing no cross upon it, the necromancer would have had him, like a
ball at bando-play. Therefore he answered, as truly as need be, “By the
grace of our Lady, nine.”
Now nine is the crossest of all cross numbers, and full to the lip of
all crochets. So the wizard staggered back, and thought, and inquired
again with bravery, “Where can you find a man and wife, one going
up-hill and one going down, and not a word spoken between them?”
“In a cucumber plant,” said the modest saint; blushing even to think of
it; and the wizard knew he was done for.
“You have tried me with ungodly questions,” continued the honest
pilgrim, with one hand still over his eyes, as he thought of the
feminine cucumber; “and now I will ask you a pure one. To whom of
mankind have you ever done good, since God saw fit to make you?”
The wizard thought, but could quote no one; and he looked at the saint,
and the saint at him, and both their hearts were trembling. “Can you
mention only one?” asked the saint, pointing a piece of the true cross
at him, hoping he might cling to it; “even a little child will do; try
to think of some one.”
The earth was rocking beneath their feet, and the palace windows
darkened on them, with a tint of blood, for now the saint was come
inside, hoping to save the wizard.
“If I must tell the pure truth,” said the wizard, looking up at the
arches of his windows, “I can tell of only one to whom I ever have done
good.”
“One will do; one is quite enough; be quick before the ground opens. The
name of one--and this cross will save you. Lay your thumb on the end of
it.”
“Nay, that I cannot do, great saint. The devil have mercy upon me.”
All this while the palace was sinking, and blackness coming over them.
“Thou hast all but done for thyself,” said the saint, with a glory
burning round his head; “by that last invocation. Yet give us the name
of the one, my friend, if one there be; it will save thee, with the
cross upon thy breast. All is crashing round us; dear brother, who is
that one?”
“My own self,” cried the wretched wizard.
“Then there is no help for thee.” And with that the honest saint went
upward, and the wizard, and all his palace, and even the crag that bore
it, sank to the bowels of the earth; and over them was nothing left
except a black bog fringed with reed, of the tint of the wizard's
whiskers. The saint, however, was all right, after sleeping off the
excitement; and he founded a chapel, some three miles westward; and
there he lies with his holy relic and thither in after ages came (as
we all come home at last) both my Lorna's Aunt Sabina, and her guardian
Ensor Doone.
While yet I dwelled upon this strange story, wondering if it all were
true, and why such things do not happen now, a man on horseback appeared
as suddenly as if he had risen out of the earth, on the other side of
the great black slough. At first I was a little scared, my mind being
in the tune for wonders; but presently the white hair, whiter from the
blackness of the bog between us, showed me that it was Uncle Reuben come
to look for me, that way. Then I left my chair of rock, and waved my hat
and shouted to him, and the sound of my voice among the crags and lonely
corners frightened me.
Old Master Huckaback made no answer, but (so far as I could guess)
beckoned me to come to him. There was just room between the fringe of
reed and the belt of rock around it, for a man going very carefully to
escape that horrible pit-hole. And so I went round to the other side,
and there found open space enough, with stunted bushes, and starveling
trees, and straggling tufts of rushes.
“You fool, you are frightened,” said Uncle Ben, as he looked at my face
after shaking hands: “I want a young man of steadfast courage, as well
as of strength and silence. And after what I heard of the battle at Glen
Doone, I thought I might trust you for courage.”
“So you may,” said I, “wherever I see mine enemy; but not where witch
and wizard be.”
“Tush, great fool!” cried Master Huckaback; “the only witch or wizard
here is the one that bewitcheth all men. Now fasten up my horse, John
Ridd, and not too near the slough, lad. Ah, we have chosen our entrance
wisely. Two good horsemen, and their horses, coming hither to spy us
out, are gone mining on their own account (and their last account it is)
down this good wizard's bog-hole.”
With these words, Uncle Reuben clutched the mane of his horse and came
down, as a man does when his legs are old; and as I myself begin to do,
at this time of writing. I offered a hand, but he was vexed, and would
have nought to do with it.
“Now follow me, step for step,” he said, when I had tethered his horse
to a tree; “the ground is not death (like the wizard's hole), but many
parts are treacherous, I know it well by this time.”
Without any more ado, he led me in and out the marshy places, to a great
round hole or shaft, bratticed up with timber. I never had seen the like
before, and wondered how they could want a well, with so much water on
every side. Around the mouth were a few little heaps of stuff unused to
the daylight; and I thought at once of the tales I had heard concerning
mines in Cornwall, and the silver cup at Combe-Martin, sent to the Queen
Elizabeth.
“We had a tree across it, John,” said Uncle Reuben, smiling grimly at my
sudden shrink from it: “but some rogue came spying here, just as one of
our men went up. He was frightened half out of his life, I believe, and
never ventured to come again. But we put the blame of that upon you. And
I see that we were wrong, John.” Here he looked at me with keen eyes,
though weak.
“You were altogether wrong,” I answered. “Am I mean enough to spy upon
any one dwelling with us? And more than that, Uncle Reuben, it was mean
of you to suppose it.”
“All ideas are different,” replied the old man to my heat, like a little
worn-out rill running down a smithy; “you with your strength and youth,
and all that, are inclined to be romantic. I take things as I have known
them, going on for seventy years. Now will you come and meet the wizard,
or does your courage fail you?”
“My courage must be none,” said I, “if I would not go where you go,
sir.”
He said no more, but signed to me to lift a heavy wooden corb with an
iron loop across it, and sunk in a little pit of earth, a yard or so
from the mouth of the shaft. I raised it, and by his direction dropped
it into the throat of the shaft, where it hung and shook from a great
cross-beam laid at the level of the earth. A very stout thick rope was
fastened to the handle of the corb, and ran across a pulley hanging from
the centre of the beam, and thence out of sight in the nether places.
“I will first descend,” he said; “your weight is too great for safety.
When the bucket comes up again, follow me, if your heart is good.”
Then he whistled down, with a quick sharp noise, and a whistle from
below replied; and he clomb into the vehicle, and the rope ran through
the pulley, and Uncle Ben went merrily down, and was out of sight,
before I had time to think of him.
Now being left on the bank like that, and in full sight of the goodly
heaven, I wrestled hard with my flesh and blood, about going down
into the pit-hole. And but for the pale shame of the thing, that a
white-headed man should adventure so, and green youth doubt about
it, never could I have made up my mind; for I do love air and heaven.
However, at last up came the bucket; and with a short sad prayer I went
into whatever might happen.
My teeth would chatter, do all I could; but the strength of my arms was
with me; and by them I held on the grimy rope, and so eased the foot
of the corb, which threatened to go away fathoms under me. Of course I
should still have been safe enough, being like an egg in an egg-cup, too
big to care for the bottom; still I wished that all should be done, in
good order, without excitement.
The scoopings of the side grew black, and the patch of sky above more
blue, as with many thoughts of Lorna, a long way underground I sank.
Then I was fetched up at the bottom with a jerk and rattle; and but for
holding by the rope so, must have tumbled over. Two great torches of
bale-resin showed me all the darkness, one being held by Uncle Ben and
the other by a short square man with a face which seemed well-known to
me.
“Hail to the world of gold, John Ridd,” said Master Huckaback, smiling
in the old dry manner; “bigger coward never came down the shaft, now did
he, Carfax?”
“They be all alike,” said the short square man, “fust time as they doos
it.”
“May I go to heaven,” I cried, “which is a thing quite out of
sight”--for I always have a vein of humour, too small to be followed
by any one--“if ever again of my own accord I go so far away from it!”
Uncle Ben grinned less at this than at the way I knocked my shin in
getting out of the bucket; and as for Master Carfax, he would not
even deign to smile. And he seemed to look upon my entrance as an
interloping.
For my part, I had nought to do, after rubbing my bruised leg, except to
look about me, so far as the dullness of light would help. And herein I
seemed, like a mouse in a trap, able no more than to run to and fro,
and knock himself, and stare at things. For here was a little channel
grooved with posts on either side of it, and ending with a heap of
darkness, whence the sight came back again; and there was a scooped
place, like a funnel, but pouring only to darkness. So I waited for