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Title: The Garotters
Author: William D. Howells
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Preface
This work is called a
'romance,'
because the incidents,
characters,
time,
and scenery,
are alike romantic.
And in shaping this old tale,
the Writer neither dares,
nor desires,
to claim
for it the dignity or cumber it
with the difficulty of an historic novel.
And yet he thinks that the outlines are filled in more carefully,
and the situations
(however simple)
more warmly coloured and quickened,
than a reader would expect
to find in what is called a
'legend.'
And he knows that any son of Exmoor,
chancing on this volume,
cannot fail
to bring
to mind the nurse-tales of his childhood--the savage deeds of the outlaw Doones in the depth of Bagworthy Forest,
the beauty of the hapless maid brought up in the midst of them,
the plain John Ridd's Herculean power,
and
(memory's too congenial food)
the exploits of Tom Faggus.
March,
1869.
CONTENTS I.
ELEMENTS OF EDUCATION II.
AN IMPORTANT ITEM III.
THE WARPATH OF THE DOONES IV.
A VERY RASH VISIT V.
AN ILLEGAL SETTLEMENT VI.
NECESSARY PRACTICE VII.
HARD IT IS
to CLIMB VIII.
A BOY AND A GIRL IX.
THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME X.
A BRAVE RESCUE AND A ROUGH RIDE XI.
TOM DESERVES HIS SUPPER XII.
A MAN JUSTLY POPULAR XIII.
MASTER HUCKABACK COMES IN XIV.
A MOTION WHICH ENDS IN A MULL XV.
MASTER HUCKABACK FAILS OF WARRANT XVI.
LORNA GROWS FORMIDABLE XVII.
JOHN IS CLEARLY BEWITCHED XVIII.
WITCHERY LEADS
to WITCHCRAFT XIX.
ANOTHER DANGEROUS INTERVIEW XX.
LORNA BEGINS HER STORY XXI.
LORNA ENDS HER STORY XXII.
A LONG SPRING MONTH XXIII.
A ROYAL INVITATION XXIV.
A SAFE PASS
for KING'S MESSENGER XXV.
A GREAT MAN ATTENDS
to BUSINESS XXVI.
JOHN IS DRAINED AND CAST ASIDE XXVII.
HOME AGAIN AT LAST XXVIII.
JOHN HAS HOPE OF LORNA XXIX.
REAPING LEADS
to REVELLING XXX.
ANNIE GETS THE BEST OF IT XXXI.
JOHN FRY'S ERRAND XXXII.
FEEDING OF THE PIGS XXXIII.
AN EARLY MORNING CALLING XXXIV.
TWO NEGATIVES MAKE AN AFFIRMATIVE XXXV.
RUTH IS NOT LIKE LORNA XXXVI.
JOHN RETURNS
to BUSINESS XXXVII.
A VERY DESPERATE VENTURE XXXVIII.
A GOOD TURN
for JEREMY XXXIX.
A TROUBLED STATE AND A FOOLISH JOKE XL.
TWO FOOLS TOGETHER XLI.
COLD COMFORT XLII.
THE GREAT WINTER XLIII.
NOT TOO SOON XLIV.
BROUGHT HOME AT LAST XLV.
A CHANGE LONG NEEDED XLVI.
SQUIRE FAGGUS MAKES SOME LUCKY HITS XLVII.
JEREMY IN DANGER XLVIII.
EVERY MAN MUST DEFEND HIMSELF XLIX.
MAIDEN SENTINELS ARE BEST L.
A MERRY MEETING A SAD ONE LI.
A VISIT FROM THE COUNSELLOR LII.
THE WAY
to MAKE THE CREAM RISE LIII.
JEREMY FINDS OUT SOMETHING LIV.
MUTUAL DISCOMFITURE LV.
GETTING INTO CHANCERY LVI.
JOHN BECOMES TOO POPULAR LVII.
LORNA KNOWS HER NURSE LVIII.
MASTER HUCKABACK'S SECRET LIX.
LORNA GONE AWAY LX.
ANNIE LUCKIER THAN JOHN LXI.
THEREFORE HE SEEKS COMFORT LXII.
THE KING MUST NOT BE PRAYED
for LXIII.
JOHN IS WORSTED BY THE WOMEN LXIV.
SLAUGHTER IN THE MARSHES LXV.
FALLING AMONG LAMBS LXVI.
SUITABLE DEVOTION LXVII.
LORNA STILL IS LORNA LXVIII.
JOHN IS JOHN NO LONGER LXIX.
NOT
to BE PUT UP
with LXX.
COMPELLED
to VOLUNTEER LXXI.
A LONG ACCOUNT SETTLED LXXII.
THE COUNSELLOR AND THE CARVER LXXIII.
HOW
to GET OUT OF CHANCERY LXXIV.
DRIVEN BEYOND ENDURANCE LXXV.
LIFE AND LORNA COME AGAIN CHAPTER I ELEMENTS OF EDUCATION If anybody cares
to read a simple tale told simply,
I,
John Ridd,
of the parish of Oare,
in the county of Somerset,
yeoman and churchwarden,
have seen and had a share in some doings of this neighborhood,
which I will try
to set down in order,
God sparing my life and memory.
And they who light upon this book should bear in mind not only that I write
for the clearing of our parish from ill fame and calumny,
but also a thing which will,
I trow,
appear too often in it,
to wit--that I am nothing more than a plain unlettered man,
not read in foreign languages,
as a gentleman might be,
nor gifted
with long words
(even in mine own tongue),
save what I may have won from the Bible or Master William Shakespeare,
whom,
in the face of common opinion,
I do value highly.
In short,
I am an ignoramus,
but pretty well
for a yeoman.
My father being of good substance,
at least as we reckon in Exmoor,
and seized in his own right,
from many generations,
of one,
and that the best and largest,
of the three farms into which our parish is divided
(or rather the cultured part thereof),
he John Ridd,
the elder,
churchwarden,
and overseer,
being a great admirer of learning,
and well able
to write his name,
sent me his only son
to be schooled at Tiverton,
in the county of Devon.
For the chief boast of that ancient town
(next
to its woollen staple)
is a worthy grammar-school,
the largest in the west of England,
founded and handsomely endowed in the year 1604 by Master Peter Blundell,
of that same place,
clothier.
Here,
by the time I was twelve years old,
I had risen into the upper school,
and could make bold
with Eutropius and Caesar--by aid of an English version--and as much as six lines of Ovid.
Some even said that I might,
before manhood,
rise almost
to the third form,
being of a perservering nature;
albeit,
by full consent of all
(except my mother),
thick-headed.
But that would have been,
as I now perceive,
an ambition beyond a farmer's son;
for there is but one form above it,
and that made of masterful scholars,
entitled rightly
'monitors'.
So it came
to pass,
by the grace of God,
that I was called away from learning,
whilst sitting at the desk of the junior first in the upper school,
and beginning the Greek verb [Greek word].
My eldest grandson makes bold
to say that I never could have learned [Greek word],
ten pages further on,
being all he himself could manage,
with plenty of stripes
to help him.
I know that he hath more head than I--though never will he have such body;
and am thankful
to have stopped betimes,
with a meek and wholesome head-piece.
But if you doubt of my having been there,
because now I know so little,
go and see my name,
'John Ridd,'
graven on that very form.
Forsooth,
from the time I was strong enough
to open a knife and
to spell my name,
I began
to grave it in the oak,
first of the block whereon I sate,
and then of the desk in front of it,
according as I was promoted from one
to other of them:
and there my grandson reads it now,
at this present time of writing,
and hath fought a boy
for scoffing at it--'John Ridd his name'--and done again in
'winkeys,'
a mischievous but cheerful device,
in which we took great pleasure.
This is the manner of a
'winkey,'
which I here set down,
lest child of mine,
or grandchild,
dare
to make one on my premises;
if he does,
I shall know the mark at once,
and score it well upon him.
The scholar obtains,
by prayer or price,
a handful of saltpetre,
and then
with the knife wherewith he should rather be trying
to mend his pens,
what does he do but scoop a hole where the desk is some three inches thick.
This hole should be left
with the middle exalted,
and the circumfere dug more deeply.
Then let him fill it
with saltpetre,
all save a little space in the midst,
where the boss of the wood is.
Upon that boss
(and it will be the better if a splinter of timber rise upward)
he sticks the end of his candle of tallow,
or
'rat's tail,'
as we called it,
kindled and burning smoothly.
Anon,
as he reads by that light his lesson,
lifting his eyes now and then it may be,
the fire of candle lays hold of the petre
with a spluttering noise and a leaping.
Then should the pupil seize his pen,
and,
regardless of the nib,
stir bravely,
and he will see a glow as of burning mountains,
and a rich smoke,
and sparks going merrily;
nor will it cease,
if he stir wisely,
and there be a good store of petre,
until the wood is devoured through,
like the sinking of a well-shaft.
Now well may it go
with the head of a boy intent upon his primer,
who betides
to sit thereunder! But,
above all things,
have good care
to exercise this art before the master strides up
to his desk,
in the early gray of the morning.
Other customs,
no less worthy,
abide in the school of Blundell,
such as the singeing of nightcaps;
but though they have a pleasant savour,
and refreshing
to think of,
I may not stop
to note them,
unless it be that goodly one at the incoming of a flood.
The school-house stands beside a stream,
not very large,
called Lowman,
which flows into the broad river of Exe,
about a mile below.
This Lowman stream,
although it be not fond of brawl and violence
(in the manner of our Lynn),
yet is wont
to flood into a mighty head of waters when the storms of rain provoke it;
and most of all when its little co-mate,
called the Taunton Brook--where I have plucked the very best cresses that ever man put salt on--comes foaming down like a great roan horse,
and rears at the leap of the hedgerows.
Then are the gray stone walls of Blundell on every side encompassed,
the vale is spread over
with looping waters,
and it is a hard thing
for the day-boys
to get home
to their suppers.
And in that time,
old Cop,
the porter
(so called because he hath copper boots
to keep the wet from his stomach,
and a nose of copper also,
in right of other waters),
his place is
to stand at the gate,
attending
to the flood-boards grooved into one another,
and so
to watch the torrents rise,
and not be washed away,
if it please God he may help it.
But long ere the flood hath attained this height,
and while it is only waxing,
certain boys of deputy will watch at the stoop of the drain-holes,
and be apt
to look outside the walls when Cop is taking a cordial.
And in the very front of the gate,
just without the archway,
where the ground is paved most handsomely,
you may see in copy-letters done a great P.B.
of white pebbles.
Now,
it is the custom and the law that when the invading waters,
either fluxing along the wall from below the road-bridge,
or pouring sharply across the meadows from a cut called Owen's Ditch--and I myself have seen it come both ways--upon the very instant when the waxing element lips though it be but a single pebble of the founder's letters,
it is in the license of any boy,
soever small and undoctrined,
to rush into the great school-rooms,
where a score of masters sit heavily,
and scream at the top of his voice,
'P.B.'
Then,
with a yell,
the boys leap up,
or break away from their standing;
they toss their caps
to the black-beamed roof,
and haply the very books after them;
and the great boys vex no more the small ones,
and the small boys stick up
to the great ones.
One
with another,
hard they go,
to see the gain of the waters,
and the tribulation of Cop,
and are prone
to kick the day-boys out,
with words of scanty compliment.
Then the masters look at one another,
having no class
to look to,
and
(boys being no more left
to watch)
in a manner they put their mouths up.
With a spirited bang they close their books,
and make invitation the one
to the other
for pipes and foreign cordials,
recommending the chance of the time,
and the comfort away from cold water.
But,
lo! I am dwelling on little things and the pigeons'
eggs of the infancy,
forgetting the bitter and heavy life gone over me since then.
If I am neither a hard man nor a very close one,
God knows I have had no lack of rubbing and pounding
to make stone of me.
Yet can I not somehow believe that we ought
to hate one another,
to live far asunder,
and block the mouth each of his little den;
as do the wild beasts of the wood,
and the hairy outrangs now brought over,
each
with a chain upon him.
Let that matter be as it will.
It is beyond me
to unfold,
and mayhap of my grandson's grandson.
All I know is that wheat is better than when I began
to sow it.
CHAPTER II AN IMPORTANT ITEM Now the cause of my leaving Tiverton school,
and the way of it,
were as follows.
On the 29th day of November,
in the year of our Lord 1673,
the very day when I was twelve years old,
and had spent all my substance in sweetmeats,
with which I made treat
to the little boys,
till the large boys ran in and took them,
we came out of school at five o'clock,
as the rule is upon Tuesdays.
According
to custom we drove the day-boys in brave rout down the causeway from the school-porch even
to the gate where Cop has his dwelling and duty.
Little it recked us and helped them less,
that they were our founder's citizens,
and haply his own grand-nephews
(for he left no direct descendants),
neither did we much inquire what their lineage was.
For it had long been fixed among us,
who were of the house and chambers,
that these same day-boys were all
'caddes,'
as we had discovered
to call it,
because they paid no groat
for their schooling,
and brought their own commons
with them.
In consumption of these we would help them,
for our fare in hall fed appetite;
and while we ate their victuals,
we allowed them freely
to talk
to us.
Nevertheless,
we could not feel,
when all the victuals were gone,
but that these boys required kicking from the premises of Blundell.
And some of them were shopkeepers'
sons,
young grocers,
fellmongers,
and poulterers,
and these
to their credit seemed
to know how righteous it was
to kick them.
But others were of high family,
as any need be,
in Devon--Carews,
and Bouchiers,
and Bastards,
and some of these would turn sometimes,
and strike the boy that kicked them.
But
to do them justice,
even these knew that they must be kicked
for not paying.
After these
'charity-boys'
were gone,
as in contumely we called them--'If you break my bag on my head,'
said one,
'how will feed thence to-morrow?'
--and after old Cop
with clang of iron had jammed the double gates in under the scruff-stone archway,
whereupon are Latin verses,
done in brass of small quality,
some of us who were not hungry,
and cared not
for the supper-bell,
having sucked much parliament and dumps at my only charges--not that I ever bore much wealth,
but because I had been thrifting it
for this time of my birth--we were leaning quite at dusk against the iron bars of the gate some six,
or it may be seven of us,
small boys all,
and not conspicuous in the closing of the daylight and the fog that came at eventide,
else Cop would have rated us up the green,
for he was churly
to little boys when his wife had taken their money.
There was plenty of room
for all of us,
for the gate will hold nine boys close-packed,
unless they be fed rankly,
whereof is little danger;
and now we were looking out on the road and wishing we could get there;
hoping,
moreover,
to see a good string of pack-horses come by,
with troopers
to protect them.
For the day-boys had brought us word that some intending their way
to the town had lain that morning at Sampford Peveril,
and must be in ere nightfall,
because Mr. Faggus was after them.
Now Mr. Faggus was my first cousin and an honour
to the family,
being a Northmolton man of great renown on the highway from Barum town even
to London.
Therefore of course,
I hoped that he would catch the packmen,
and the boys were asking my opinion as of an oracle,
about it.
A certain boy leaning up against me would not allow my elbow room,
and struck me very sadly in the stomach part,
though his own was full of my parliament.
And this I felt so unkindly,
that I smote him straightway in the face without tarrying
to consider it,
or weighing the question duly.
Upon this he put his head down,
and presented it so vehemently at the middle of my waistcoat,
that
for a minute or more my breath seemed dropped,
as it were,
from my pockets,
and my life seemed
to stop from great want of ease.
Before I came
to myself again,
it had been settled
for us that we should move
to the
'Ironing-box,'
as the triangle of turf is called where the two causeways coming from the school-porch and the hall-porch meet,
and our fights are mainly celebrated;
only we must wait until the convoy of horses had passed,
and then make a ring by candlelight,
and the other boys would like it.
But suddenly there came round the post where the letters of our founder are,
not from the way of Taunton but from the side of Lowman bridge,
a very small string of horses,
only two indeed
(counting
for one the pony),
and a red-faced man on the bigger nag.
'Plaise ye,
worshipful masters,'
he said,
being feared of the gateway,
'carn
'e tull whur our Jan Ridd be?'
'Hyur a be,
ees fai,
Jan Ridd,'
answered a sharp little chap,
making game of John Fry's language.
'Zhow un up,
then,'
says John Fry poking his whip through the bars at us;
'Zhow un up,
and putt un aowt.'
The other little chaps pointed at me,
and some began
to hallo;
but I knew what I was about.
'Oh,
John,
John,'
I cried,
'what's the use of your coming now,
and Peggy over the moors,
too,
and it so cruel cold
for her?
The holidays don't begin till Wednesday fortnight,
John.
To think of your not knowing that!'
John Fry leaned forward in the saddle,
and turned his eyes away from me;
and then there was a noise in his throat like a snail crawling on a window-pane.
'Oh,
us knaws that wull enough,
Maister Jan;
reckon every Oare-man knaw that,
without go
to skoo-ull,
like you doth.
Your moother have kept arl the apples up,
and old Betty toorned the black puddens,
and none dare set trap
for a blagbird.
Arl
for thee,
lad;
every bit of it now
for thee!'
He checked himself suddenly,
and frightened me.
I knew that John Fry's way so well.
'And father,
and father--oh,
how is father?'
I pushed the boys right and left as I said it.
'John,
is father up in town! He always used
to come
for me,
and leave nobody else
to do it.'
'Vayther'll be at the crooked post,
tother zide o'
telling-house.* Her coodn't lave
'ouze by raison of the Chirstmas bakkon comin'
on,
and zome o'
the cider welted.'
* The
'telling-houses'
on the moor are rude cots where the shepherds meet to
'tell'
their sheep at the end of the pasturing season.
He looked at the nag's ears as he said it;
and,
being up
to John Fry's ways,
I knew that it was a lie.
And my heart fell like a lump of lead,
and I leaned back on the stay of the gate,
and longed no more
to fight anybody.
A sort of dull power hung over me,
like the cloud of a brooding tempest,
and I feared
to be told anything.
I did not even care
to stroke the nose of my pony Peggy,
although she pushed it in through the rails,
where a square of broader lattice is,
and sniffed at me,
and began
to crop gently after my fingers.
But whatever lives or dies,
business must be attended to;
and the principal business of good Christians is,
beyond all controversy,
to fight
with one another.
'Come up,
Jack,'
said one of the boys,
lifting me under the chin;
'he hit you,
and you hit him,
you know.'
'Pay your debts before you go,'
said a monitor,
striding up
to me,
after hearing how the honour lay;
'Ridd,
you must go through
with it.'
'Fight,
for the sake of the junior first,'
cried the little fellow in my ear,
the clever one,
the head of our class,
who had mocked John Fry,
and knew all about the aorists,
and tried
to make me know it;
but I never went more than three places up,
and then it was an accident,
and I came down after dinner.
The boys were urgent round me
to fight,
though my stomach was not up
for it;
and being very slow of wit
(which is not chargeable on me),
I looked from one
to other of them,
seeking any cure
for it.
Not that I was afraid of fighting,
for now I had been three years at Blundell's,
and foughten,
all that time,
a fight at least once every week,
till the boys began
to know me;
only that the load on my heart was not sprightly as of the hay-field.
It is a very sad thing
to dwell on;
but even now,
in my time of wisdom,
I doubt it is a fond thing
to imagine,
and a motherly
to insist upon,
that boys can do without fighting.
Unless they be very good boys,
and afraid of one another.
'Nay,'
I said,
with my back against the wrought-iron stay of the gate,
which was socketed into Cop's house-front:
'I will not fight thee now,
Robin Snell,
but wait till I come back again.'
'Take coward's blow,
Jack Ridd,
then,'
cried half a dozen little boys,
shoving Bob Snell forward
to do it;
because they all knew well enough,
having striven
with me ere now,
and proved me
to be their master--they knew,
I say,
that without great change,
I would never accept that contumely.
But I took little heed of them,
looking in dull wonderment at John Fry,
and Smiler,
and the blunderbuss,
and Peggy.
John Fry was scratching his head,
I could see,
and getting blue in the face,
by the light from Cop's parlour-window,
and going
to and fro upon Smiler,
as if he were hard set
with it.
And all the time he was looking briskly from my eyes
to the fist I was clenching,
and methought he tried
to wink at me in a covert manner;
and then Peggy whisked her tail.
'Shall I fight,
John?'
I said at last;
'I would an you had not come,
John.'
'Chraist's will be done;
I zim thee had better faight,
Jan,'
he answered,
in a whisper,
through the gridiron of the gate;
'there be a dale of faighting avore thee.
Best wai
to begin gude taime laike.
Wull the geatman latt me in,
to zee as thee hast vair plai,
lad?'
He looked doubtfully down at the colour of his cowskin boots,
and the mire upon the horses,
for the sloughs were exceedingly mucky.
Peggy,
indeed,
my sorrel pony,
being lighter of weight,
was not crusted much over the shoulders;
but Smiler
(our youngest sledder)
had been well in over his withers,
and none would have deemed him a piebald,
save of red mire and black mire.
The great blunderbuss,
moreover,
was choked
with a dollop of slough-cake;
and John Fry's sad-coloured Sunday hat was indued
with a plume of marish-weed.
All this I saw while he was dismounting,
heavily and wearily,
lifting his leg from the saddle-cloth as if
with a sore crick in his back.
By this time the question of fighting was gone quite out of our discretion;
for sundry of the elder boys,
grave and reverend signors,
who had taken no small pleasure in teaching our hands
to fight,
to ward,
to parry,
to feign and counter,
to lunge in the manner of sword-play,
and the weaker child
to drop on one knee when no cunning of fence might baffle the onset--these great masters of the art,
who would far liefer see us little ones practise it than themselves engage,
six or seven of them came running down the rounded causeway,
having heard that there had arisen
'a snug little mill'
at the gate.
Now whether that word hath origin in a Greek term meaning a conflict,
as the best-read boys asseverated,
or whether it is nothing more than a figure of similitude,
from the beating arms of a mill,
such as I have seen in counties where are no waterbrooks,
but folk make bread
with wind--it is not
for a man devoid of scholarship
to determine.
Enough that they who made the ring intituled the scene a
'mill,'
while we who must be thumped inside it tried
to rejoice in their pleasantry,
till it turned upon the stomach.
Moreover,
I felt upon me now a certain responsibility,
a dutiful need
to maintain,
in the presence of John Fry,
the manliness of the Ridd family,
and the honour of Exmoor.
Hitherto none had worsted me,
although in the three years of my schooling,
I had fought more than threescore battles,
and bedewed
with blood every plant of grass towards the middle of the Ironing-box.
And this success I owed at first
to no skill of my own;
until I came
to know better;
for up
to twenty or thirty fights,
I struck as nature guided me,
no wiser than a father-long-legs in the heat of a lanthorn;
but I had conquered,
partly through my native strength,
and the Exmoor toughness in me,
and still more that I could not see when I had gotten my bellyful.
But now I was like
to have that and more;
for my heart was down,
to begin with;
and then Robert Snell was a bigger boy than I had ever encountered,
and as thick in the skull and hard in the brain as even I could claim
to be.
I had never told my mother a word about these frequent strivings,
because she was soft-hearted;
neither had I told by father,
because he had not seen it.
Therefore,
beholding me still an innocent-looking child,
with fair curls on my forehead,
and no store of bad language,
John Fry thought this was the very first fight that ever had befallen me;
and so when they let him at the gate,
'with a message
to the headmaster,'
as one of the monitors told Cop,
and Peggy and Smiler were tied
to the railings,
till I should be through my business,
John comes up
to me
with the tears in his eyes,
and says,
'Doon't thee goo for
to do it,
Jan;
doon't thee do it,
for gude now.'
But I told him that now it was much too late
to cry off;
so he said,
'The Lord be
with thee,
Jan,
and turn thy thumb-knuckle inwards.'
It was not a very large piece of ground in the angle of the causeways,
but quite big enough
to fight upon,
especially
for Christians,
who loved
to be cheek by jowl at it.
The great boys stood in a circle around,
being gifted
with strong privilege,
and the little boys had leave
to lie flat and look through the legs of the great boys.
But while we were yet preparing,
and the candles hissed in the fog-cloud,
old Phoebe,
of more than fourscore years,
whose room was over the hall-porch,
came hobbling out,
as she always did,
to mar the joy of the conflict.
No one ever heeded her,
neither did she expect it;
but the evil was that two senior boys must always lose the first round of the fight,
by having
to lead her home again.
I marvel how Robin Snell felt.
Very likely he thought nothing of it,
always having been a boy of a hectoring and unruly sort.
But I felt my heart go up and down as the boys came round
to strip me;
and greatly fearing
to be beaten,
I blew hot upon my knuckles.
Then pulled I off my little cut jerkin,
and laid it down on my head cap,
and over that my waistcoat,
and a boy was proud
to take care of them.
Thomas Hooper was his name,
and I remember how he looked at me.
My mother had made that little cut jerkin,
in the quiet winter evenings.
And taken pride
to loop it up in a fashionable way,
and I was loth
to soil it
with blood,
and good filberds were in the pocket.
Then up
to me came Robin Snell
(mayor of Exeter thrice since that),
and he stood very square,
and looking at me,
and I lacked not long
to look at him.
Round his waist he had a kerchief busking up his small-clothes,
and on his feet light pumpkin shoes,
and all his upper raiment off.
And he danced about in a way that made my head swim on my shoulders,
and he stood some inches over me.
But I,
being muddled
with much doubt about John Fry and his errand,
was only stripped of my jerkin and waistcoat,
and not comfortable
to begin.
'Come now,
shake hands,'
cried a big boy,
jumping in joy of the spectacle,
a third-former nearly six feet high;
'shake hands,
you little devils.
Keep your pluck up,
and show good sport,
and Lord love the better man of you.'
Robin took me by the hand,
and gazed at me disdainfully,
and then smote me painfully in the face,
ere I could get my fence up.
'Whutt be
'bout,
lad?'
cried John Fry;
'hutt un again,
Jan,
wull
'e?
Well done then,
our Jan boy.'
For I had replied
to Robin now,
with all the weight and cadence of penthemimeral caesura
(a thing,
the name of which I know,
but could never make head nor tail of it),
and the strife began in a serious style,
and the boys looking on were not cheated.
Although I could not collect their shouts when the blows were ringing upon me,
it was no great loss;
for John Fry told me afterwards that their oaths went up like a furnace fire.
But
to these we paid no heed or hap,
being in the thick of swinging,
and devoid of judgment.
All I know is,
I came
to my corner,
when the round was over,
with very hard pumps in my chest,
and a great desire
to fall away.
'Time is up,'
cried head-monitor,
ere ever I got my breath again;
and when I fain would have lingered awhile on the knee of the boy that held me.
John Fry had come up,
and the boys were laughing because he wanted a stable lanthorn,
and threatened
to tell my mother.
'Time is up,'
cried another boy,
more headlong than head-monitor.
'If we count three before the come of thee,
thwacked thou art,
and must go
to the women.'
I felt it hard upon me.
He began
to count,
one,
too,
three--but before the
'three'
was out of his mouth,
I was facing my foe,
with both hands up,
and my breath going rough and hot,
and resolved
to wait the turn of it.
For I had found seat on the knee of a boy sage and skilled
to tutor me,
who knew how much the end very often differs from the beginning.
A rare ripe scholar he was;
and now he hath routed up the Germans in the matter of criticism.
Sure the clever boys and men have most love towards the stupid ones.
'Finish him off,
Bob,'
cried a big boy,
and that I noticed especially,
because I thought it unkind of him,
after eating of my toffee as he had that afternoon;
'finish him off,
neck and crop;
he deserves it
for sticking up
to a man like you.'
But I was not so
to be finished off,
though feeling in my knuckles now as if it were a blueness and a sense of chilblain.
Nothing held except my legs,
and they were good
to help me.
So this bout,
or round,
if you please,
was foughten warily by me,
with gentle recollection of what my tutor,
the clever boy,
had told me,
and some resolve
to earn his praise before I came back
to his knee again.
And never,
I think,
in all my life,
sounded sweeter words in my ears
(except when my love loved me)
than when my second and backer,
who had made himself part of my doings now,
and would have wept
to see me beaten,
said,--
'Famously done,
Jack,
famously! Only keep your wind up,
Jack,
and you'll go right through him!'
Meanwhile John Fry was prowling about,
asking the boys what they thought of it,
and whether I was like
to be killed,
because of my mother's trouble.
But finding now that I had foughten three-score fights already,
he came up
to me woefully,
in the quickness of my breathing,
while I sat on the knee of my second,
with a piece of spongious coralline
to ease me of my bloodshed,
and he says in my ears,
as if he was clapping spurs into a horse,--
'Never thee knack under,
Jan,
or never coom naigh Hexmoor no more.'
With that it was all up
with me.
A simmering buzzed in my heavy brain,
and a light came through my eyeplaces.
At once I set both fists again,
and my heart stuck
to me like cobbler's wax.
Either Robin Snell should kill me,
or I would conquer Robin Snell.
So I went in again
with my courage up,
and Bob came smiling
for victory,
and I hated him
for smiling.
He let at me
with his left hand,
and I gave him my right between his eyes,
and he blinked,
and was not pleased
with it.
I feared him not,
and spared him not,
neither spared myself.
My breath came again,
and my heart stood cool,
and my eyes struck fire no longer.
Only I knew that I would die sooner than shame my birthplace.
How the rest of it was I know not;
only that I had the end of it,
and helped
to put Robin in bed.
CHAPTER III THE WAR-PATH OF THE DOONES From Tiverton town
to the town of Oare is a very long and painful road,
and in good truth the traveller must make his way,
as the saying is;
for the way is still unmade,
at least,
on this side of Dulverton,
although there is less danger now than in the time of my schooling;
for now a good horse may go there without much cost of leaping,
but when I was a boy the spurs would fail,
when needed most,
by reason of the slough-cake.
It is
to the credit of this age,
and our advance upon fatherly ways,
that now we have laid down rods and fagots,
and even stump-oaks here and there,
so that a man in good daylight need not sink,
if he be quite sober.
There is nothing I have striven at more than doing my duty,
way-warden over Exmoor.
But in those days,
when I came from school
(and good times they were,
too,
full of a warmth and fine hearth-comfort,
which now are dying out),
it was a sad and sorry business
to find where lay the highway.
We are taking now
to mark it off
with a fence on either side,
at least,
when a town is handy;
but
to me his seems of a high pretence,
and a sort of landmark,
and channel
for robbers,
though well enough near London,
where they have earned a race-course.
We left the town of the two fords,
which they say is the meaning of it,
very early in the morning,
after lying one day
to rest,
as was demanded by the nags,
sore of foot and foundered.
For my part,
too,
I was glad
to rest,
having aches all over me,
and very heavy bruises;
and we lodged at the sign of the White Horse Inn,
in the street called Gold Street,
opposite where the souls are of John and Joan Greenway,
set up in gold letters,
because we must take the homeward way at cockcrow of the morning.
Though still John Fry was dry
with me of the reason of his coming,
and only told lies about father,
and could not keep them agreeable,
I hoped
for the best,
as all boys will,
especially after a victory.
And I thought,
perhaps father had sent
for me because he had a good harvest,
and the rats were bad in the corn-chamber.
It was high noon before we were got
to Dulverton that day,
near
to which town the river Exe and its big brother Barle have union.
My mother had an uncle living there,
but we were not
to visit his house this time,
at which I was somewhat astonished,
since we needs must stop
for at least two hours,
to bait our horses thorough well,
before coming
to the black bogway.
The bogs are very good in frost,
except where the hot-springs rise;
but as yet there had been no frost this year,
save just enough
to make the blackbirds look big in the morning.
In a hearty black-frost they look small,
until the snow falls over them.
The road from Bampton
to Dulverton had not been very delicate,
yet nothing
to complain of much--no deeper,
indeed,
than the hocks of a horse,
except in the rotten places.
The day was inclined
to be mild and foggy,
and both nags sweated freely;
but Peggy carrying little weight
(for my wardrobe was upon Smiler,
and John Fry grumbling always),
we could easily keep in front,
as far as you may hear a laugh.
John had been rather bitter
with me,
which methought was a mark of ill taste at coming home
for the holidays;
and yet I made allowance
for John,
because he had never been at school,
and never would have chance
to eat fry upon condition of spelling it;
therefore I rode on,
thinking that he was hard-set,
like a saw,
for his dinner,
and would soften after tooth-work.
And yet at his most hungry times,
when his mind was far gone upon bacon,
certes he seemed
to check himself and look at me as if he were sorry
for little things coming over great.
But now,
at Dulverton,
we dined upon the rarest and choicest victuals that ever I did taste.
Even now,
at my time of life,
to think of it gives me appetite,
as once and awhile
to think of my first love makes me love all goodness.
Hot mutton pasty was a thing I had often heard of from very wealthy boys and men,
who made a dessert of dinner;
and
to hear them talk of it made my lips smack,
and my ribs come inwards.
And now John Fry strode into the hostel,
with the air and grace of a short-legged man,
and shouted as loud as if he was calling sheep upon Exmoor,--
'Hot mooton pasty
for twoo trarv'lers,
at number vaive,
in vaive minnits! Dish un up in the tin
with the grahvy,
zame as I hardered last Tuesday.'
Of course it did not come in five minutes,
nor yet in ten or twenty;
but that made it all the better when it came
to the real presence;
and the smell of it was enough
to make an empty man thank God
for the room there was inside him.
Fifty years have passed me quicker than the taste of that gravy.
It is the manner of all good boys
to be careless of apparel,
and take no pride in adornment.
Good lack,
if I see a boy make
to do about the fit of his crumpler,
and the creasing of his breeches,
and desire
to be shod
for comeliness rather than
for use,
I cannot
'scape the mark that God took thought
to make a girl of him.
Not so when they grow older,
and court the regard of the maidens;
then may the bravery pass from the inside
to the outside of them;
and no bigger fools are they,
even then,
than their fathers were before them.
But God forbid any man
to be a fool
to love,
and be loved,
as I have been.
Else would he have prevented it.
When the mutton pasty was done,
and Peggy and Smiler had dined well also,
out I went
to wash at the pump,
being a lover of soap and water,
at all risk,
except of my dinner.
And John Fry,
who cared very little
to wash,
save Sabbath days in his own soap,
and who had kept me from the pump by threatening loss of the dish,
out he came in a satisfied manner,
with a piece of quill in his hand,
to lean against a door-post,
and listen
to the horses feeding,
and have his teeth ready
for supper.
Then a lady's-maid came out,
and the sun was on her face,
and she turned round
to go back again;
but put a better face upon it,
and gave a trip and hitched her dress,
and looked at the sun full body,
lest the hostlers should laugh that she was losing her complexion.
With a long Italian glass in her fingers very daintily,
she came up
to the pump in the middle of the yard,
where I was running the water off all my head and shoulders,
and arms,
and some of my breast even,
and though I had glimpsed her through the sprinkle,
it gave me quite a turn
to see her,
child as I was,
in my open aspect.
But she looked at me,
no whit abashed,
making a baby of me,
no doubt,
as a woman of thirty will do,
even
with a very big boy when they catch him on a hayrick,
and she said
to me in a brazen manner,
as if I had been nobody,
while I was shrinking behind the pump,
and craving
to get my shirt on,
'Good leetle boy,
come hither
to me.
Fine heaven! how blue your eyes are,
and your skin like snow;
but some naughty man has beaten it black.
Oh,
leetle boy,
let me feel it.
Ah,
how then it must have hurt you! There now,
and you shall love me.'
All this time she was touching my breast,
here and there,
very lightly,
with her delicate brown fingers,
and I understood from her voice and manner that she was not of this country,
but a foreigner by extraction.
And then I was not so shy of her,
because I could talk better English than she;
and yet I longed
for my jerkin,
but liked not
to be rude
to her.
'If you please,
madam,
I must go.
John Fry is waiting by the tapster's door,
and Peggy neighing
to me.
If you please,
we must get home to-night;
and father will be waiting
for me this side of the telling-house.'
'There,
there,
you shall go,
leetle dear,
and perhaps I will go after you.
I have taken much love of you.
But the baroness is hard
to me.
How far you call it now
to the bank of the sea at Wash--Wash--'
'At Watchett,
likely you mean,
madam.
Oh,
a very long way,
and the roads as soft as the road
to Oare.'
'Oh-ah,
oh-ah--I shall remember;
that is the place where my leetle boy live,
and some day I will come seek
for him.
Now make the pump
to flow,
my dear,
and give me the good water.
The baroness will not touch unless a nebule be formed outside the glass.'
I did not know what she meant by that;
yet I pumped
for her very heartily,
and marvelled
to see her
for fifty times throw the water away in the trough,
as if it was not good enough.
At last the water suited her,
with a likeness of fog outside the glass,
and the gleam of a crystal under it,
and then she made a curtsey
to me,
in a sort of mocking manner,
holding the long glass by the foot,
not
to take the cloud off;
and then she wanted
to kiss me;
but I was out of breath,
and have always been shy of that work,
except when I come
to offer it;
and so I ducked under the pump-handle,
and she knocked her chin on the knob of it;
and the hostlers came out,
and asked whether they would do as well.
Upon this,
she retreated up the yard,
with a certain dark dignity,
and a foreign way of walking,
which stopped them at once from going farther,
because it was so different from the fashion of their sweethearts.
One
with another they hung back,
where half a cart-load of hay was,
and they looked
to be sure that she would not turn round;
and then each one laughed at the rest of them.
Now,
up
to the end of Dulverton town,
on the northward side of it,
where the two new pig-sties be,
the Oare folk and the Watchett folk must trudge on together,
until we come
to a broken cross,
where a murdered man lies buried.
Peggy and Smiler went up the hill,
as if nothing could be too much
for them,
after the beans they had eaten,
and suddenly turning a corner of trees,
we happened upon a great coach and six horses labouring very heavily.
John Fry rode on
with his hat in his hand,
as became him towards the quality;
but I was amazed
to that degree,
that I left my cap on my head,
and drew bridle without knowing it.
For in the front seat of the coach,
which was half-way open,
being of the city-make,
and the day in want of air,
sate the foreign lady,
who had met me at the pump and offered
to salute me.
By her side was a little girl,
dark-haired and very wonderful,
with a wealthy softness on her,
as if she must have her own way.
I could not look at her
for two glances,
and she did not look at me
for one,
being such a little child,
and busy
with the hedges.
But in the honourable place sate a handsome lady,
very warmly dressed,
and sweetly delicate of colour.
And close
to her was a lively child,
two or it may be three years old,
bearing a white cockade in his hat,
and staring at all and everybody.
Now,
he saw Peggy,
and took such a liking
to her,
that the lady his mother--if so she were--was forced
to look at my pony and me.
And,
to tell the truth,
although I am not of those who adore the high folk,
she looked at us very kindly,
and
with a sweetness rarely found in the women who milk the cows
for us.
Then I took off my cap
to the beautiful lady,
without asking wherefore;
and she put up her hand and kissed it
to me,
thinking,
perhaps,
that I looked like a gentle and good little boy;
for folk always called me innocent,
though God knows I never was that.
But now the foreign lady,
or lady's maid,
as it might be,
who had been busy
with little dark eyes,
turned upon all this going-on,
and looked me straight in the face.
I was about
to salute her,
at a distance,
indeed,
and not
with the nicety she had offered
to me,
but,
strange
to say,
she stared at my eyes as if she had never seen me before,
neither wished
to see me again.
At this I was so startled,
such things beings out of my knowledge,
that I startled Peggy also
with the muscle of my legs,
and she being fresh from stable,
and the mire scraped off
with cask-hoop,
broke away so suddenly that I could do no more than turn round and lower my cap,
now five months old,
to the beautiful lady.
Soon I overtook John Fry,
and asked him all about them,
and how it was that we had missed their starting from the hostel.
But John would never talk much till after a gallon of cider;
and all that I could win out of him was that they were
'murdering Papishers,'
and little he cared
to do
with them,
or the devil,
as they came from.
And a good thing
for me,
and a providence,
that I was gone down Dulverton town
to buy sweetstuff
for Annie,
else my stupid head would have gone astray
with their great out-coming.
We saw no more of them after that,
but turned into the sideway;
and soon had the fill of our hands and eyes
to look
to our own going.
For the road got worse and worse,
until there was none at all,
and perhaps the purest thing it could do was
to be ashamed
to show itself.
But we pushed on as best we might,
with doubt of reaching home any time,
except by special grace of God.
The fog came down upon the moors as thick as ever I saw it;
and there was no sound of any sort,
nor a breath of wind
to guide us.
The little stubby trees that stand here and there,
like bushes
with a wooden leg
to them,
were drizzled
with a mess of wet,
and hung their points
with dropping.
Wherever the butt-end of a hedgerow came up from the hollow ground,
like the withers of a horse,
holes of splash were pocked and pimpled in the yellow sand of coneys,
or under the dwarf tree's ovens.
But soon it was too dark
to see that,
or anything else,
I may say,
except the creases in the dusk,
where prisoned light crept up the valleys.
After awhile even that was gone,
and no other comfort left us except
to see our horses'
heads jogging
to their footsteps,
and the dark ground pass below us,
lighter where the wet was;
and then the splash,
foot after foot,
more clever than we can do it,
and the orderly jerk of the tail,
and the smell of what a horse is.
John Fry was bowing forward
with sleep upon his saddle,
and now I could no longer see the frizzle of wet upon his beard--for he had a very brave one,
of a bright red colour,
and trimmed into a whale-oil knot,
because he was newly married--although that comb of hair had been a subject of some wonder
to me,
whether I,
in God's good time,
should have the like of that,
handsomely set
with shining beads,
small above and large below,
from the weeping of the heaven.
But still I could see the jog of his hat--a Sunday hat
with a top
to it--and some of his shoulder bowed out in the mist,
so that one could say
'Hold up,
John,'
when Smiler put his foot in.
'Mercy of God! where be us now?'
said John Fry,
waking suddenly;
'us ought
to have passed hold hash,
Jan.
Zeen it on the road,
have
'ee?'
'No indeed,
John;
no old ash.
Nor nothing else
to my knowing;
nor heard nothing,
save thee snoring.'
'Watt a vule thee must be then,
Jan;
and me myzell no better.
Harken,
lad,
harken!'
We drew our horses up and listened,
through the thickness of the air,
and
with our hands laid
to our ears.
At first there was nothing
to hear,
except the panting of the horses and the trickle of the eaving drops from our head-covers and clothing,
and the soft sounds of the lonely night,
that make us feel,
and try not
to think.
Then there came a mellow noise,
very low and mournsome,
not a sound
to be afraid of,
but
to long
to know the meaning,
with a soft rise of the hair.
Three times it came and went again,
as the shaking of a thread might pass away into the distance;
and then I touched John Fry
to know that there was something near me.
'Doon't
'e be a vule,
Jan! Vaine moozick as iver I
'eer.
God bless the man as made un doo it.'
'Have they hanged one of the Doones then,
John?'
'Hush,
lad;
niver talk laike o'
thiccy.
Hang a Doone! God knoweth,
the King would hang pretty quick if her did.'
'Then who is it in the chains,
John?'
I felt my spirit rise as I asked;
for now I had crossed Exmoor so often as
to hope that the people sometimes deserved it,
and think that it might be a lesson
to the rogues who unjustly loved the mutton they were never born to.
But,
of course,
they were born
to hanging,
when they set themselves so high.
'It be nawbody,'
said John,
'vor us
to make a fush about.
Belong
to t'other zide o'
the moor,
and come staling shape
to our zide.
Red Jem Hannaford his name.
Thank God
for him
to be hanged,
lad;
and good cess
to his soul
for craikin'
zo.'
So the sound of the quiet swinging led us very modestly,
as it came and went on the wind,
loud and low pretty regularly,
even as far as the foot of the gibbet where the four cross-ways are.
'Vamous job this here,'
cried John,
looking up
to be sure of it,
because there were so many;
'here be my own nick on the post.
Red Jem,
too,
and no doubt of him;
he do hang so handsome like,
and his ribs up laike a horse a'most.
God bless them as discoovered the way
to make a rogue so useful.
Good-naight
to thee,
Jem,
my lad;
and not break thy drames
with the craikin'.'
John Fry shook his bridle-arm,
and smote upon Smiler merrily,
as he jogged into the homeward track from the guiding of the body.
But I was sorry
for Red Jem,
and wanted
to know more about him,
and whether he might not have avoided this miserable end,
and what his wife and children thought of it,
if,
indeed,
he had any.
But John would talk no more about it;
and perhaps he was moved
with a lonesome feeling,
as the creaking sound came after us.
'Hould thee tongue,
lad,'
he said sharply;
'us be naigh the Doone-track now,
two maile from Dunkery Beacon hill,
the haighest place of Hexmoor.
So happen they be abroad to-naight,
us must crawl on our belly-places,
boy.'
I knew at once what he meant--those bloody Doones of Bagworthy,
the awe of all Devon and Somerset,
outlaws,
traitors,
murderers.
My little legs began
to tremble
to and fro upon Peggy's sides,
as I heard the dead robber in chains behind us,
and thought of the live ones still in front.
'But,
John,'
I whispered warily,
sidling close
to his saddle-bow;
'dear John,
you don't think they will see us in such a fog as this?'
'Never God made vog as could stop their eyesen,'
he whispered in answer,
fearfully;
'here us be by the hollow ground.
Zober,
lad,
goo zober now,
if thee wish
to see thy moother.'
For I was inclined,
in the manner of boys,
to make a run of the danger,
and cross the Doone-track at full speed;
to rush
for it,
and be done
with it.
But even then I wondered why he talked of my mother so,
and said not a word of father.
We were come
to a long deep
'goyal,'
as they call it on Exmoor,
a word whose fountain and origin I have nothing
to do with.
Only I know that when little boys laughed at me at Tiverton,
for talking about a
'goyal,'
a big boy clouted them on the head,
and said that it was in Homer,
and meant the hollow of the hand.
And another time a Welshman told me that it must be something like the thing they call a
'pant'
in those parts.
Still I know what it means well enough--to wit,
a long trough among wild hills,
falling towards the plain country,
rounded at the bottom,
perhaps,
and stiff,
more than steep,
at the sides of it.
Whether it be straight or crooked,
makes no difference
to it.
We rode very carefully down our side,
and through the soft grass at the bottom,
and all the while we listened as if the air was a speaking-trumpet.
Then gladly we breasted our nags
to the rise,
and were coming
to the comb of it,
when I heard something,
and caught John's arm,
and he bent his hand
to the shape of his ear.
It was the sound of horses'
feet knocking up through splashy ground,
as if the bottom sucked them.
Then a grunting of weary men,
and the lifting noise of stirrups,
and sometimes the clank of iron mixed
with the wheezy croning of leather and the blowing of hairy nostrils.
'God's sake,
Jack,
slip round her belly,
and let her go where she wull.'
As John Fry whispered,
so I did,
for he was off Smiler by this time;
but our two pads were too fagged
to go far,
and began
to nose about and crop,
sniffing more than they need have done.
I crept
to John's side very softly,
with the bridle on my arm.
'Let goo braidle;
let goo,
lad.
Plaise God they take them
for forest-ponies,
or they'll zend a bullet through us.'
I saw what he meant,
and let go the bridle;
for now the mist was rolling off,
and we were against the sky-line
to the dark cavalcade below us.
John lay on the ground by a barrow of heather,
where a little gullet was,
and I crept
to him,
afraid of the noise I made in dragging my legs along,
and the creak of my cord breeches.
John bleated like a sheep
to cover it--a sheep very cold and trembling.
Then just as the foremost horseman passed,
scarce twenty yards below us,
a puff of wind came up the glen,
and the fog rolled off before it.
And suddenly a strong red light,
cast by the cloud-weight downwards,
spread like fingers over the moorland,
opened the alleys of darkness,
and hung on the steel of the riders.
'Dunkery Beacon,'
whispered John,
so close into my ear,
that I felt his lips and teeth ashake;
'dursn't fire it now except
to show the Doones way home again,
since the naight as they went up and throwed the watchmen atop of it.
Why,
wutt be
'bout,
lad?
God's sake--'
For I could keep still no longer,
but wriggled away from his arm,
and along the little gullet,
still going flat on my breast and thighs,
until I was under a grey patch of stone,
with a fringe of dry fern round it;
there I lay,
scarce twenty feet above the heads of the riders,
and I feared
to draw my breath,
though prone
to do it
with wonder.
For now the beacon was rushing up,
in a fiery storm
to heaven,
and the form of its flame came and went in the folds,
and the heavy sky was hovering.
All around it was hung
with red,
deep in twisted columns,
and then a giant beard of fire streamed throughout the darkness.
The sullen hills were flanked
with light,
and the valleys chined
with shadow,
and all the sombrous moors between awoke in furrowed anger.
But most of all the flinging fire leaped into the rocky mouth of the glen below me,
where the horsemen passed in silence,
scarcely deigning
to look round.
Heavy men and large of stature,
reckless how they bore their guns,
or how they sate their horses,
with leathern jerkins,
and long boots,
and iron plates on breast and head,
plunder heaped behind their saddles,
and flagons slung in front of them;
I counted more than thirty pass,
like clouds upon red sunset.
Some had carcasses of sheep swinging
with their skins on,
others had deer,
and one had a child flung across his saddle-bow.
Whether the child were dead,
or alive,
was more than I could tell,
only it hung head downwards there,
and must take the chance of it.
They had got the child,
a very young one,
for the sake of the dress,
no doubt,
which they could not stop
to pull off from it;
for the dress shone bright,
where the fire struck it,
as if
with gold and jewels.
I longed in my heart
to know most sadly what they would do
with the little thing,
and whether they would eat it.
It touched me so
to see that child,
a prey among those vultures,
that in my foolish rage and burning I stood up and shouted
to them leaping on a rock,
and raving out of all possession.
Two of them turned round,
and one set his carbine at me,
but the other said it was but a pixie,
and bade him keep his powder.
Little they knew,
and less thought I,
that the pixie then before them would dance their castle down one day.
John Fry,
who in the spring of fright had brought himself down from Smiler's side,
as if he were dipped in oil,
now came up
to me,
all risk being over,
cross,
and stiff,
and aching sorely from his wet couch of heather.
'Small thanks
to thee,
Jan,
as my new waife bain't a widder.
And who be you
to zupport of her,
and her son,
if she have one?
Zarve thee right if I was
to chuck thee down into the Doone-track.
Zim thee'll come
to un,
zooner or later,
if this be the zample of thee.'
And that was all he had
to say,
instead of thanking God!
for if ever born man was in a fright,
and ready
to thank God
for anything,
the name of that man was John Fry not more than five minutes agone.
However,
I answered nothing at all,
except
to be ashamed of myself;
and soon we found Peggy and Smiler in company,
well embarked on the homeward road,
and victualling where the grass was good.
Right glad they were
to see us again--not
for the pleasure of carrying,
but because a horse
(like a woman)
lacks,
and is better without,
self-reliance.
My father never came
to meet us,
at either side of the telling-house,
neither at the crooked post,
nor even at home-linhay although the dogs kept such a noise that he must have heard us.
Home-side of the linhay,
and under the ashen hedge-row,
where father taught me
to catch blackbirds,
all at once my heart went down,
and all my breast was hollow.
There was not even the lanthorn light on the peg against the cow's house,
and nobody said
'Hold your noise!'
to the dogs,
or shouted
'Here our Jack is!'
I looked at the posts of the gate,
in the dark,
because they were tall,
like father,
and then at the door of the harness-room,
where he used
to smoke his pipe and sing.
Then I thought he had guests perhaps--people lost upon the moors--whom he could not leave unkindly,
even
for his son's sake.
And yet about that I was jealous,
and ready
to be vexed
with him,
when he should begin
to make much of me.
And I felt in my pocket
for the new pipe which I had brought him from Tiverton,
and said
to myself,
'He shall not have it until to-morrow morning.'
Woe is me! I cannot tell.
How I knew I know not now--only that I slunk away,
without a tear,
or thought of weeping,
and hid me in a saw-pit.
There the timber,
over-head,
came like streaks across me;
and all I wanted was
to lack,
and none
to tell me anything.
By-and-by,
a noise came down,
as of woman's weeping;
and there my mother and sister were,
choking and holding together.
Although they were my dearest loves,
I could not bear
to look at them,
until they seemed
to want my help,
and put their hands before their eyes.
CHAPTER IV A VERY RASH VISIT My dear father had been killed by the Doones of Bagworthy,
while riding home from Porlock market,
on the Saturday evening.
With him were six brother-farmers,
all of them very sober;
for father would have no company
with any man who went beyond half a gallon of beer,
or a single gallon of cider.
The robbers had no grudge against him;
for he had never flouted them,
neither made overmuch of outcry,
because they robbed other people.
For he was a man of such strict honesty,
and due parish feeling,
that he knew it
to be every man's own business
to defend himself and his goods;
unless he belonged
to our parish,
and then we must look after him.
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 the market at Porlock,
no longer ago than last Saturday night.
Madam,
amend me if I am wrong.'
'No longer,
indeed,
indeed,
sir.
Sometimes it seems a twelvemonth,
and sometimes it seems an hour.'
'Cite his name,'
said the Counsellor,
with his eyes still rolling inwards.
'Master John Ridd,
as I understand.
Counsellor,
we have heard of him often;
a worthy man and a peaceful one,
who meddled not
with our duties.
Now,
if any of our boys have been rough,
they shall answer it dearly.
And yet I can scarce believe it.
For the folk about these parts are apt
to misconceive of our sufferings,
and
to have no feeling
for us.
Counsellor,
you are our record,
and very stern against us;
tell us how this matter was.'
'Oh,
Counsellor!'
my mother cried;
'Sir Counsellor,
you will be fair:
I see it in your countenance.
Only tell me who it was,
and set me face
to face
with him,
and I will bless you,
sir,
and God shall bless you,
and my children.'
The square man
with the long grey beard,
quite unmoved by anything,
drew back
to the door and spoke,
and his voice was like a fall of stones in the bottom of a mine.
'Few words will be enow
for this.
Four or five of our best-behaved and most peaceful gentlemen went
to the little market at Porlock
with a lump of money.
They bought some household stores and comforts at a very high price,
and pricked upon the homeward road,
away from vulgar revellers.
When they drew bridle
to rest their horses,
in the shelter of a peat-rick,
the night being dark and sudden,
a robber of great size and strength rode into the midst of them,
thinking
to kill or terrify.
His arrogance and hardihood at the first amazed them,
but they would not give up without a blow goods which were on trust
with them.
He had smitten three of them senseless,
for the power of his arm was terrible;
whereupon the last man tried
to ward his blow
with a pistol.
Carver,
sir,
it was,
our brave and noble Carver,
who saved the lives of his brethren and his own;
and glad enow they were
to escape.
Notwithstanding,
we hoped it might be only a flesh-wound,
and not
to speed him in his sins.'
As this atrocious tale of lies turned up joint by joint before her,
like a
'devil's coach-horse,'* mother was too much amazed
to do any more than look at him,
as if the earth must open.
But the only thing that opened was the great brown eyes of the Counsellor,
which rested on my mother's face
with a dew of sorrow,
as he spoke of sins.
* The cock-tailed beetle has earned this name in the West of England.
She,
unable
to bear them,
turned suddenly on Sir Ensor,
and caught
(as she fancied)
a smile on his lips,
and a sense of quiet enjoyment.
'All the Doones are gentlemen,'
answered the old man gravely,
and looking as if he had never smiled since he was a baby.
'We are always glad
to explain,
madam,
any mistake which the rustic people may fall upon about us;
and we wish you clearly
to conceive that we do not charge your poor husband
with any set purpose of robbery,
neither will we bring suit
for any attainder of his property.
Is it not so,
Counsellor?'
'Without doubt his land is attainted;
unless is mercy you forbear,
sir.'
'Counsellor,
we will forbear.
Madam,
we will forgive him.
Like enough he knew not right from wrong,
at that time of night.
The waters are strong at Porlock,
and even an honest man may use his staff unjustly in this unchartered age of violence and rapine.'
The Doones
to talk of rapine! Mother's head went round so that she curtseyed
to them both,
scarcely knowing where she was,
but calling
to mind her manners.
All the time she felt a warmth,
as if the right was
with her,
and yet she could not see the way
to spread it out before them.
With that,
she dried her tears in haste and went into the cold air,
for fear of speaking mischief.
But when she was on the homeward road,
and the sentinels had charge of her,
blinding her eyes,
as if she were not blind enough
with weeping,
some one came in haste behind her,
and thrust a heavy leathern bag into the limp weight of her hand.
'Captain sends you this,'
he whispered;
'take it
to the little ones.'
But mother let it fall in a heap,
as if it had been a blind worm;
and then
for the first time crouched before God,
that even the Doones should pity her.
CHAPTER V AN ILLEGAL SETTLEMENT Good folk who dwell in a lawful land,
if any such there be,
may
for want of exploration,
judge our neighbourhood harshly,
unless the whole truth is set before them.
In bar of such prejudice,
many of us ask leave
to explain how and why it was the robbers came
to that head in the midst of us.
We would rather not have had it so,
God knows as well as anybody;
but it grew upon us gently,
in the following manner.
Only let all who read observe that here I enter many things which came
to my knowledge in later years.
In or about the year of our Lord 1640,
when all the troubles of England were swelling
to an outburst,
great estates in the North country were suddenly confiscated,
through some feud of families and strong influence at Court,
and the owners were turned upon the world,
and might think themselves lucky
to save their necks.
These estates were in co-heirship,
joint tenancy I think they called it,
although I know not the meaning,
only so that if either tenant died,
the other living,
all would come
to the live one in spite of any testament.
One of the joint owners was Sir Ensor Doone,
a gentleman of brisk intellect;
and the other owner was his cousin,
the Earl of Lorne and Dykemont.
Lord Lorne was some years the elder of his cousin,
Ensor Doone,
and was making suit
to gain severance of the cumbersome joint tenancy by any fair apportionment,
when suddenly this blow fell on them by wiles and woman's meddling;
and instead of dividing the land,
they were divided from it.
The nobleman was still well-to-do,
though crippled in his expenditure;
but as
for the cousin,
he was left a beggar,
with many
to beg from him.
He thought that the other had wronged him,
and that all the trouble of law befell through his unjust petition.
Many friends advised him
to make interest at Court;
for having done no harm whatever,
and being a good Catholic,
which Lord Lorne was not,
he would be sure
to find hearing there,
and probably some favour.
But he,
like a very hot-brained man,
although he had long been married
to the daughter of his cousin
(whom he liked none the more
for that),
would have nothing
to say
to any attempt at making a patch of it,
but drove away
with his wife and sons,
and the relics of his money,
swearing hard at everybody.
In this he may have been quite wrong;
probably,
perhaps,
he was so;
but I am not convinced at all but what most of us would have done the same.
Some say that,
in the bitterness of that wrong and outrage,
he slew a gentleman of the Court,
whom he supposed
to have borne a hand in the plundering of his fortunes.
Others say that he bearded King Charles the First himself,
in a manner beyond forgiveness.
One thing,
at any rate,
is sure--Sir Ensor was attainted,
and made a felon outlaw,
through some violent deed ensuing upon his dispossession.
He had searched in many quarters
for somebody
to help him,
and
with good warrant
for hoping it,
inasmuch as he,
in lucky days,
had been open-handed and cousinly
to all who begged advice of him.
But now all these provided him
with plenty of good advice indeed,
and great assurance of feeling,
but not a movement of leg,
or lip,
or purse-string in his favour.
All good people of either persuasion,
royalty or commonalty,
knowing his kitchen-range
to be cold,
no longer would play turnspit.
And this,
it may be,
seared his heart more than loss of land and fame.
In great despair at last,
he resolved
to settle in some outlandish part,
where none could be found
to know him;
and so,
in an evil day
for us,
he came
to the West of England.
Not that our part of the world is at all outlandish,
according
to my view of it
(for I never found a better one),
but that it was known
to be rugged,
and large,
and desolate.
And here,
when he had discovered a place which seemed almost
to be made
for him,
so withdrawn,
so self-defended,
and uneasy of access,
some of the country-folk around brought him little offerings--a side of bacon,
a keg of cider,
hung mutton,
or a brisket of venison;
so that
for a little while he was very honest.
But when the newness of his coming began
to wear away,
and our good folk were apt
to think that even a gentleman ought
to work or pay other men
for doing it,
and many farmers were grown weary of manners without discourse
to them,
and all cried out
to one another how unfair it was that owning such a fertile valley young men would not spade or plough by reason of noble lineage--then the young Doones growing up took things they would not ask for.
And here let me,
as a solid man,
owner of five hundred acres
(whether fenced or otherwise,
and that is my own business),
churchwarden also of this parish
(until I go
to the churchyard),
and proud
to be called the parson's friend--for a better man I never knew
with tobacco and strong waters,
nor one who could read the lessons so well and he has been at Blundell's too--once
for all let me declare,
that I am a thorough-going Church-and-State man,
and Royalist,
without any mistake about it.
And this I lay down,
because some people judging a sausage by the skin,
may take in evil part my little glosses of style and glibness,
and the mottled nature of my remarks and cracks now and then on the frying-pan.
I assure them I am good inside,
and not a bit of rue in me;
only queer knots,
as of marjoram,
and a stupid manner of bursting.
There was not more than a dozen of them,
counting a few retainers who still held by Sir Ensor;
but soon they grew and multiplied in a manner surprising
to think of.
Whether it was the venison,
which we call a strengthening victual,
or whether it was the Exmoor mutton,
or the keen soft air of the moorlands,
anyhow the Doones increased much faster than their honesty.
At first they had brought some ladies
with them,
of good repute
with charity;
and then,
as time went on,
they added
to their stock by carrying.
They carried off many good farmers'
daughters,
who were sadly displeased at first;
but took
to them kindly after awhile,
and made a new home in their babies.
For women,
as it seems
to me,
like strong men more than weak ones,
feeling that they need some staunchness,
something
to hold fast by.
And of all the men in our country,
although we are of a thick-set breed,
you scarce could find one in three-score fit
to be placed among the Doones,
without looking no more than a tailor.
Like enough,
we could meet them man
for man
(if we chose all around the crown and the skirts of Exmoor),
and show them what a cross-buttock means,
because we are so stuggy;
but in regard of stature,
comeliness,
and bearing,
no woman would look twice at us.
Not but what I myself,
John Ridd,
and one or two I know of--but it becomes me best not
to talk of that,
although my hair is gray.
Perhaps their den might well have been stormed,
and themselves driven out of the forest,
if honest people had only agreed
to begin
with them at once when first they took
to plundering.
But having respect
for their good birth,
and pity
for their misfortunes,
and perhaps a little admiration at the justice of God,
that robbed men now were robbers,
the squires,
and farmers,
and shepherds,
at first did nothing more than grumble gently,
or even make a laugh of it,
each in the case of others.
After awhile they found the matter gone too far
for laughter,
as violence and deadly outrage stained the hand of robbery,
until every woman clutched her child,
and every man turned pale at the very name of Doone.
For the sons and grandsons of Sir Ensor grew up in foul liberty,
and haughtiness,
and hatred,
to utter scorn of God and man,
and brutality towards dumb animals.
There was only one good thing about them,
if indeed it were good,
to wit,
their faith
to one another,
and truth
to their wild eyry.
But this only made them feared the more,
so certain was the revenge they wreaked upon any who dared
to strike a Doone.
One night,
some ten years ere I was born,
when they were sacking a rich man's house not very far from Minehead,
a shot was fired at them in the dark,
of which they took little notice,
and only one of them knew that any harm was done.
But when they were well on the homeward road,
not having slain either man or woman,
or even burned a house down,
one of their number fell from his saddle,
and died without so much as a groan.
The youth had been struck,
but would not complain,
and perhaps took little heed of the wound,
while he was bleeding inwardly.
His brothers and cousins laid him softly on a bank of whortle-berries,
and just rode back
to the lonely hamlet where he had taken his death-wound.
No man nor woman was left in the morning,
nor house
for any
to dwell in,
only a child
with its reason gone.* *This vile deed was done,
beyond all doubt.
This affair made prudent people find more reason
to let them alone than
to meddle
with them;
and now they had so entrenched themselves,
and waxed so strong in number,
that nothing less than a troop of soldiers could wisely enter their premises;
and even so it might turn out ill,
as perchance we shall see by-and-by.
For not
to mention the strength of the place,
which I shall describe in its proper order when I come
to visit it,
there was not one among them but was a mighty man,
straight and tall,
and wide,
and fit
to lift four hundredweight.
If son or grandson of old Doone,
or one of the northern retainers,
failed at the age of twenty,
while standing on his naked feet
to touch
with his forehead the lintel of Sir Ensor's door,
and
to fill the door frame
with his shoulders from sidepost even
to sidepost,
he was led away
to the narrow pass which made their valley so desperate,
and thrust from the crown
with ignominy,
to get his own living honestly.
Now,
the measure of that doorway is,
or rather was,
I ought
to say,
six feet and one inch lengthwise,
and two feet all but two inches taken crossways in the clear.
Yet I not only have heard but know,
being so closely mixed
with them,
that no descendant of old Sir Ensor,
neither relative of his
(except,
indeed,
the Counsellor,
who was kept by them
for his wisdom),
and no more than two of their following ever failed of that test,
and relapsed
to the difficult ways of honesty.
Not that I think anything great of a standard the like of that:
for if they had set me in that door-frame at the age of twenty,
it is like enough that I should have walked away
with it on my shoulders,
though I was not come
to my full strength then:
only I am speaking now of the average size of our neighbourhood,
and the Doones were far beyond that.
Moreover,
they were taught
to shoot
with a heavy carbine so delicately and wisely,
that even a boy could pass a ball through a rabbit's head at the distance of fourscore yards.
Some people may think nought of this,
being in practice
with longer shots from the tongue than from the shoulder;
nevertheless,
to do as above is,
to my ignorance,
very good work,
if you can be sure
to do it.
Not one word do I believe of Robin Hood splitting peeled wands at seven-score yards,
and such like.
Whoever wrote such stories knew not how slippery a peeled wand is,
even if one could hit it,
and how it gives
to the onset.
Now,
let him stick one in the ground,
and take his bow and arrow at it,
ten yards away,
or even five.
Now,
after all this which I have written,
and all the rest which a reader will see,
being quicker of mind than I am
(who leave more than half behind me,
like a man sowing wheat,
with his dinner laid in the ditch too near his dog),
it is much but what you will understand the Doones far better than I did,
or do even
to this moment;
and therefore none will doubt when I tell them that our good justiciaries feared
to make an ado,
or hold any public inquiry about my dear father's death.
They would all have had
to ride home that night,
and who could say what might betide them.
Least said soonest mended,
because less chance of breaking.
So we buried him quietly--all except my mother,
indeed,
for she could not keep silence--in the sloping little churchyard of Oare,
as meek a place as need be,
with the Lynn brook down below it.
There is not much of company there
for anybody's tombstone,
because the parish spreads so far in woods and moors without dwelling-house.
If we bury one man in three years,
or even a woman or child,
we talk about it
for three months,
and say it must be our turn next,
and scarcely grow accustomed
to it until another goes.
Annie was not allowed
to come,
because she cried so terribly;
but she ran
to the window,
and saw it all,
mooing there like a little calf,
so frightened and so left alone.
As
for Eliza,
she came
with me,
one on each side of mother,
and not a tear was in her eyes,
but sudden starts of wonder,
and a new thing
to be looked at unwillingly,
yet curiously.
Poor little thing! she was very clever,
the only one of our family--thank God
for the same--but none the more
for that guessed she what it is
to lose a father.
CHAPTER VI NECESSARY PRACTICE About the rest of all that winter I remember very little,
being only a young boy then,
and missing my father most out of doors,
as when it came
to the bird-catching,
or the tracking of hares in the snow,
or the training of a sheep-dog.
Oftentimes I looked at his gun,
an ancient piece found in the sea,
a little below Glenthorne,
and of which he was mighty proud,
although it was only a match-lock;
and I thought of the times I had held the fuse,
while he got his aim at a rabbit,
and once even at a red deer rubbing among the hazels.
But nothing came of my looking at it,
so far as I remember,
save foolish tears of my own perhaps,
till John Fry took it down one day from the hooks where father's hand had laid it;
and it hurt me
to see how John handled it,
as if he had no memory.
'Bad job
for he as her had not got thiccy the naight as her coom acrass them Doones.
Rackon Varmer Jan
'ood a-zhown them the wai
to kingdom come,
'stead of gooin'
herzel zo aisy.
And a maight have been gooin'
to market now,
'stead of laying banked up over yanner.
Maister Jan,
thee can zee the grave if thee look alang this here goon-barryel.
Buy now,
whutt be blubberin'
at?
Wish I had never told thee.'
'John Fry,
I am not blubbering;
you make a great mistake,
John.
You are thinking of little Annie.
I cough sometimes in the winter-weather,
and father gives me lickerish--I mean--I mean--he used to.
Now let me have the gun,
John.'
'Thee have the goon,
Jan! Thee isn't fit
to putt un
to thy zhoulder.
What a weight her be,
for sure!'
'Me not hold it,
John! That shows how much you know about it.
Get out of the way,
John;
you are opposite the mouth of it,
and likely it is loaded.'
John Fry jumped in a livelier manner than when he was doing day-work;
and I rested the mouth on a cross rack-piece,
and felt a warm sort of surety that I could hit the door over opposite,
or,
at least,
the cobwall alongside of it,
and do no harm in the orchard.
But John would not give me link or fuse,
and,
on the whole,
I was glad of it,
though carrying on as boys do,
because I had heard my father say that the Spanish gun kicked like a horse,
and because the load in it came from his hand,
and I did not like
to undo it.
But I never found it kick very hard,
and firmly set
to the shoulder,
unless it was badly loaded.
In truth,
the thickness of the metal was enough almost
to astonish one;
and what our people said about it may have been true enough,
although most of them are such liars--at least,
I mean,
they make mistakes,
as all mankind must do.
Perchance it was no mistake at all
to say that this ancient gun had belonged
to a noble Spaniard,
the captain of a fine large ship in the
'Invincible Armada,'
which we of England managed
to conquer,
with God and the weather helping us,
a hundred years ago or more--I can't say
to a month or so.
After a little while,
when John had fired away at a rat the charge I held so sacred,
it came
to me as a natural thing
to practise shooting
with that great gun,
instead of John Fry's blunderbuss,
which looked like a bell
with a stalk
to it.
Perhaps
for a boy there is nothing better than a good windmill
to shoot at,
as I have seen them in flat countries;
but we have no windmills upon the great moorland,
yet here and there a few barn-doors,
where shelter is,
and a way up the hollows.
And up those hollows you can shoot,
with the help of the sides
to lead your aim,
and there is a fair chance of hitting the door,
if you lay your cheek
to the barrel,
and try not
to be afraid of it.
Gradually I won such skill,
that I sent nearly all the lead gutter from the north porch of our little church through our best barn-door,
a thing which has often repented me since,
especially as churchwarden,
and made me pardon many bad boys;
but father was not buried on that side of the church.
But all this time,
while I was roving over the hills or about the farm,
and even listening
to John Fry,
my mother,
being so much older and feeling trouble longer,
went about inside the house,
or among the maids and fowls,
not caring
to talk
to the best of them,
except when she broke out sometimes about the good master they had lost,
all and every one of us.
But the fowls would take no notice of it,
except
to cluck
for barley;
and the maidens,
though they had liked him well,
were thinking of their sweethearts as the spring came on.
Mother thought it wrong of them,
selfish and ungrateful;
and yet sometimes she was proud that none had such call as herself
to grieve
for him.
Only Annie seemed
to go softly in and out,
and cry,
with nobody along of her,
chiefly in the corner where the bees are and the grindstone.
But somehow she would never let anybody behold her;
being set,
as you may say,
to think it over by herself,
and season it
with weeping.
Many times I caught her,
and many times she turned upon me,
and then I could not look at her,
but asked how long
to dinner-time.
Now in the depth of the winter month,
such as we call December,
father being dead and quiet in his grave a fortnight,
it happened me
to be out of powder
for practice against his enemies.
I had never fired a shot without thinking,
'This
for father's murderer';
and John Fry said that I made such faces it was a wonder the gun went off.
But though I could hardly hold the gun,
unless
with my back against a bar,
it did me good
to hear it go off,
and hope
to have hitten his enemies.
'Oh,
mother,
mother,'
I said that day,
directly after dinner,
while she was sitting looking at me,
and almost ready
to say
(as now she did seven times in a week),
'How like your father you are growing! Jack,
come here and kiss me'--'oh,
mother,
if you only knew how much I want a shilling!'
'Jack,
you shall never want a shilling while I am alive
to give thee one.
But what is it for,
dear heart,
dear heart?'
'To buy something over at Porlock,
mother.
Perhaps I will tell you afterwards.
If I tell not it will be
for your good,
and
for the sake of the children.'
'Bless the boy,
one would think he was threescore years of age at least.
Give me a little kiss,
you Jack,
and you shall have the shilling.'
For I hated
to kiss or be kissed in those days:
and so all honest boys must do,
when God puts any strength in them.
But now I wanted the powder so much that I went and kissed mother very shyly,
looking round the corner first,
for Betty not
to see me.
But mother gave me half a dozen,
and only one shilling
for all of them;
and I could not find it in my heart
to ask her
for another,
although I would have taken it.
In very quick time I ran away
with the shilling in my pocket,
and got Peggy out on the Porlock road without my mother knowing it.
For mother was frightened of that road now,
as if all the trees were murderers,
and would never let me go alone so much as a hundred yards on it.
And,
to tell the truth,
I was touched
with fear
for many years about it;
and even now,
when I ride at dark there,
a man by a peat-rick makes me shiver,
until I go and collar him.
But this time I was very bold,
having John Fry's blunderbuss,
and keeping a sharp look-out wherever any lurking place was.
However,
I saw only sheep and small red cattle,
and the common deer of the forest,
until I was nigh
to Porlock town,
and then rode straight
to Mr. Pooke's,
at the sign of the Spit and Gridiron.
Mr. Pooke was asleep,
as it happened,
not having much
to do that day;
and so I fastened Peggy by the handle of a warming-pan,
at which she had no better manners than
to snort and blow her breath;
and in I walked
with a manful style,
bearing John Fry's blunderbuss.
Now Timothy Pooke was a peaceful man,
glad
to live without any enjoyment of mind at danger,
and I was tall and large already as most lads of a riper age.
Mr. Pooke,
as soon as he opened his eyes,
dropped suddenly under the counting-board,
and drew a great frying-pan over his head,
as if the Doones were come
to rob him,
as their custom was,
mostly after the fair-time.
It made me feel rather hot and queer
to be taken
for a robber;
and yet methinks I was proud of it.
'Gadzooks,
Master Pooke,'
said I,
having learned fine words at Tiverton;
'do you suppose that I know not then the way
to carry firearms?
An it were the old Spanish match-lock in the lieu of this good flint-engine,
which may be borne ten miles or more and never once go off,
scarcely couldst thou seem more scared.
I might point at thee muzzle on--just so as I do now--even
for an hour or more,
and like enough it would never shoot thee,
unless I pulled the trigger hard,
with a crock upon my finger;
so you see;
just so,
Master Pooke,
only a trifle harder.'
'God sake,
John Ridd,
God sake,
dear boy,'
cried Pooke,
knowing me by this time;
'don't
'e,
for good love now,
don't
'e show it
to me,
boy,
as if I was
to suck it.
Put
'un down,
for good,
now;
and thee shall have the very best of all is in the shop.'
'Ho!'
I replied
with much contempt,
and swinging round the gun so that it fetched his hoop of candles down,
all unkindled as they were:
'Ho! as if I had not attained
to the handling of a gun yet! My hands are cold coming over the moors,
else would I go bail
to point the mouth at you
for an hour,
sir,
and no cause
for uneasiness.'
But in spite of all assurances,
he showed himself desirous only
to see the last of my gun and me.
I dare say
'villainous saltpetre,'
as the great playwright calls it,
was never so cheap before nor since.
For my shilling Master Pooke afforded me two great packages over-large
to go into my pockets,
as well as a mighty chunk of lead,
which I bound upon Peggy's withers.
And as if all this had not been enough,
he presented me
with a roll of comfits
for my sister Annie,
whose gentle face and pretty manners won the love of everybody.
There was still some daylight here and there as I rose the hill above Porlock,
wondering whether my mother would be in a fright,
or would not know it.
The two great packages of powder,
slung behind my back,
knocked so hard against one another that I feared they must either spill or blow up,
and hurry me over Peggy's ears from the woollen cloth I rode upon.
For father always liked a horse
to have some wool upon his loins whenever he went far from home,
and had
to stand about,
where one pleased,
hot,
and wet,
and panting.
And father always said that saddles were meant
for men full-grown and heavy,
and losing their activity;
and no boy or young man on our farm durst ever get into a saddle,
because they all knew that the master would chuck them out pretty quickly.
As
for me,
I had tried it once,
from a kind of curiosity;
and I could not walk
for two or three days,
the leather galled my knees so.
But now,
as Peggy bore me bravely,
snorting every now and then into a cloud of air,
for the night was growing frosty,
presently the moon arose over the shoulder of a hill,
and the pony and I were half glad
to see her,
and half afraid of the shadows she threw,
and the images all around us.
I was ready at any moment
to shoot at anybody,
having great faith in my blunderbuss,
but hoping not
to prove it.
And as I passed the narrow place where the Doones had killed my father,
such a fear broke out upon me that I leaned upon the neck of Peggy,
and shut my eyes,
and was cold all over.
However,
there was not a soul
to be seen,
until we came home
to the old farmyard,
and there was my mother crying sadly,
and Betty Muxworthy scolding.
'Come along,
now,'
I whispered