Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor Page 10

  CHAPTER IX

  THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME

  I can assure you, and tell no lie (as John Fry always used to say, whentelling his very largest), that I scrambled back to the mouth of thatpit as if the evil one had been after me. And sorely I repented now ofall my boyish folly, or madness it might well be termed, in venturing,with none to help, and nothing to compel me, into that accursed valley.Once let me get out, thinks I, and if ever I get in again, without beingcast in by neck and by crop, I will give our new-born donkey leave toset up for my schoolmaster.

  How I kept that resolution we shall see hereafter. It is enough for menow to tell how I escaped from the den that night. First I sat downin the little opening which Lorna had pointed out to me, and wonderedwhether she had meant, as bitterly occurred to me, that I should rundown into the pit, and be drowned, and give no more trouble. But in lessthan half a minute I was ashamed of that idea, and remembered how shewas vexed to think that even a loach should lose his life. And thenI said to myself, 'Now surely she would value me more than a thousandloaches; and what she said must be quite true about the way out of thishorrible place.'

  Therefore I began to search with the utmost care and diligence, althoughmy teeth were chattering, and all my bones beginning to ache with thechilliness and the wetness. Before very long the moon appeared, over theedge of the mountain, and among the trees at the top of it; and then Iespied rough steps, and rocky, made as if with a sledge-hammer, narrow,steep, and far asunder, scooped here and there in the side of theentrance, and then round a bulge of the cliff, like the marks upon agreat brown loaf, where a hungry child has picked at it. And higherup, where the light of the moon shone broader upon the precipice, thereseemed to be a rude broken track, like the shadow of a crooked stickthrown upon a house-wall.

  Herein was small encouragement; and at first I was minded to lie downand die; but it seemed to come amiss to me. God has His time for allof us; but He seems to advertise us when He does not mean to do it.Moreover, I saw a movement of lights at the head of the valley, as iflanthorns were coming after me, and the nimbleness given thereon to myheels was in front of all meditation.

  Straightway I set foot in the lowest stirrup (as I might almost callit), and clung to the rock with my nails, and worked to make a jump intothe second stirrup. And I compassed that too, with the aid of my stick;although, to tell you the truth, I was not at that time of life so agileas boys of smaller frame are, for my size was growing beyond my years,and the muscles not keeping time with it, and the joints of my bones notclosely hinged, with staring at one another. But the third step-hole wasthe hardest of all, and the rock swelled out on me over my breast, andthere seemed to be no attempting it, until I espied a good stout ropehanging in a groove of shadow, and just managed to reach the end of it.

  How I clomb up, and across the clearing, and found my way home throughthe Bagworthy forest, is more than I can remember now, for I took allthe rest of it then as a dream, by reason of perfect weariness. Andindeed it was quite beyond my hopes to tell so much as I have told, forat first beginning to set it down, it was all like a mist before me.Nevertheless, some parts grew clearer, as one by one I remembered them,having taken a little soft cordial, because the memory frightens me.

  For the toil of the water, and danger of labouring up the long cascadeor rapids, and then the surprise of the fair young maid, and terror ofthe murderers, and desperation of getting away--all these are much tome even now, when I am a stout churchwarden, and sit by the side of myfire, after going through many far worse adventures, which I will tell,God willing. Only the labour of writing is such (especially so as toconstrue, and challenge a reader on parts of speech, and hope to be evenwith him); that by this pipe which I hold in my hand I ever expect to bebeaten, as in the days when old Doctor Twiggs, if I made a bad strokein my exercise, shouted aloud with a sour joy, 'John Ridd, sirrah, downwith your small-clothes!'

  Let that be as it may, I deserved a good beating that night, aftermaking such a fool of myself, and grinding good fustian to pieces. Butwhen I got home, all the supper was in, and the men sitting at the whitetable, and mother and Annie and Lizzie near by, all eager, and offeringto begin (except, indeed, my mother, who was looking out at thedoorway), and by the fire was Betty Muxworthy, scolding, and cooking,and tasting her work, all in a breath, as a man would say. I lookedthrough the door from the dark by the wood-stack, and was half of a mindto stay out like a dog, for fear of the rating and reckoning; but theway my dear mother was looking about and the browning of the sausagesgot the better of me.

  But nobody could get out of me where I had been all the day and evening;although they worried me never so much, and longed to shake me topieces, especially Betty Muxworthy, who never could learn to let wellalone. Not that they made me tell any lies, although it would haveserved them right almost for intruding on other people's business; butthat I just held my tongue, and ate my supper rarely, and let them trytheir taunts and jibes, and drove them almost wild after supper, bysmiling exceeding knowingly. And indeed I could have told them things,as I hinted once or twice; and then poor Betty and our little Lizziewere so mad with eagerness, that between them I went into the fire,being thoroughly overcome with laughter and my own importance.

  Now what the working of my mind was (if, indeed it worked at all, anddid not rather follow suit of body) it is not in my power to say; onlythat the result of my adventure in the Doone Glen was to make me dreama good deal of nights, which I had never done much before, and to driveme, with tenfold zeal and purpose, to the practice of bullet-shooting.Not that I ever expected to shoot the Doone family, one by one, or evendesired to do so, for my nature is not revengeful; but that it seemedto be somehow my business to understand the gun, as a thing I must be athome with.

  I could hit the barn-door now capitally well with the Spanishmatch-lock, and even with John Fry's blunderbuss, at ten good land-yardsdistance, without any rest for my fusil. And what was very wrong of me,though I did not see it then, I kept John Fry there, to praise my shots,from dinner-time often until the grey dusk, while he all the time shouldhave been at work spring-ploughing upon the farm. And for that matter soshould I have been, or at any rate driving the horses; but John wasby no means loath to be there, instead of holding the plough-tail. Andindeed, one of our old sayings is,--

  For pleasure's sake I would liefer wet, Than ha' ten lumps of gold foreach one of my sweat.

  And again, which is not a bad proverb, though unthrifty and unlike aScotsman's,--

  God makes the wheat grow greener, While farmer be at his dinner.

  And no Devonshire man, or Somerset either (and I belong to both ofthem), ever thinks of working harder than God likes to see him.

  Nevertheless, I worked hard at the gun, and by the time that I hadsent all the church-roof gutters, so far as I honestly could cut them,through the red pine-door, I began to long for a better tool that wouldmake less noise and throw straighter. But the sheep-shearing came andthe hay-season next, and then the harvest of small corn, and the diggingof the root called 'batata' (a new but good thing in our neighbourhood,which our folk have made into 'taties'), and then the sweating of theapples, and the turning of the cider-press, and the stacking of thefirewood, and netting of the woodcocks, and the springles to beminded in the garden and by the hedgerows, where blackbirds hop to themolehills in the white October mornings, and grey birds come to look forsnails at the time when the sun is rising.

  It is wonderful how time runs away, when all these things and a greatmany others come in to load him down the hill and prevent him fromstopping to look about. And I for my part can never conceive how peoplewho live in towns and cities, where neither lambs nor birds are (exceptin some shop windows), nor growing corn, nor meadow-grass, nor even somuch as a stick to cut or a stile to climb and sit down upon--how thesepoor folk get through their lives without being utterly weary of them,and dying from pure indolence, is a thing God only knows, if His mercyallows Him to think of it.

  How the year went b
y I know not, only that I was abroad all day,shooting, or fishing, or minding the farm, or riding after some straybeast, or away by the seaside below Glenthorne, wondering at the greatwaters, and resolving to go for a sailor. For in those days I had a firmbelief, as many other strong boys have, of being born for a seaman. Andindeed I had been in a boat nearly twice; but the second time motherfound it out, and came and drew me back again; and after that she criedso badly, that I was forced to give my word to her to go no more withouttelling her.

  But Betty Muxworthy spoke her mind quite in a different way about it,the while she was wringing my hosen, and clattering to the drying-horse.

  'Zailor, ees fai! ay and zarve un raight. Her can't kape out o' thewatter here, whur a' must goo vor to vaind un, zame as a gurt to-adsqualloping, and mux up till I be wore out, I be, wi' the very saight of's braiches. How wil un ever baide aboard zhip, wi' the watter zingingout under un, and comin' up splash when the wind blow. Latt un goo,missus, latt un goo, zay I for wan, and old Davy wash his clouts forun.'

  And this discourse of Betty's tended more than my mother's prayers,I fear, to keep me from going. For I hated Betty in those days, aschildren always hate a cross servant, and often get fond of a falseone. But Betty, like many active women, was false by her crossness only;thinking it just for the moment perhaps, and rushing away with a bucket;ready to stick to it, like a clenched nail, if beaten the wrong way withargument; but melting over it, if you left her, as stinging soap, leftalong in a basin, spreads all abroad without bubbling.

  But all this is beyond the children, and beyond me too for that matter,even now in ripe experience; for I never did know what women mean, andnever shall except when they tell me, if that be in their power. Now letthat question pass. For although I am now in a place of some authority,I have observed that no one ever listens to me, when I attempt to laydown the law; but all are waiting with open ears until I do enforce it.And so methinks he who reads a history cares not much for the wisdom orfolly of the writer (knowing well that the former is far less than hisown, and the latter vastly greater), but hurries to know what the peopledid, and how they got on about it. And this I can tell, if any one can,having been myself in the thick of it.

  The fright I had taken that night in Glen Doone satisfied me for a longtime thereafter; and I took good care not to venture even in the fieldsand woods of the outer farm, without John Fry for company. John wasgreatly surprised and pleased at the value I now set upon him; until,what betwixt the desire to vaunt and the longing to talk things over,I gradually laid bare to him nearly all that had befallen me; except,indeed, about Lorna, whom a sort of shame kept me from mentioning. Notthat I did not think of her, and wish very often to see her again; butof course I was only a boy as yet, and therefore inclined to despiseyoung girls, as being unable to do anything, and only meant to listen toorders. And when I got along with the other boys, that was how we alwaysspoke of them, if we deigned to speak at all, as beings of a lowerorder, only good enough to run errands for us, and to nurse boy-babies.

  And yet my sister Annie was in truth a great deal more to me than allthe boys of the parish, and of Brendon, and Countisbury, put together;although at the time I never dreamed it, and would have laughed if toldso. Annie was of a pleasing face, and very gentle manner, almost likea lady some people said; but without any airs whatever, only trying togive satisfaction. And if she failed, she would go and weep, withoutletting any one know it, believing the fault to be all her own, whenmostly it was of others. But if she succeeded in pleasing you, it wasbeautiful to see her smile, and stroke her soft chin in a way of herown, which she always used when taking note how to do the right thingagain for you. And then her cheeks had a bright clear pink, and her eyeswere as blue as the sky in spring, and she stood as upright as a youngapple-tree, and no one could help but smile at her, and pat her browncurls approvingly; whereupon she always curtseyed. For she never triedto look away when honest people gazed at her; and even in the court-yardshe would come and help to take your saddle, and tell (without yourasking her) what there was for dinner.

  And afterwards she grew up to be a very comely maiden, tall, and with awell-built neck, and very fair white shoulders, under a bright cloudof curling hair. Alas! poor Annie, like most of the gentle maidens--buttush, I am not come to that yet; and for the present she seemed to melittle to look at, after the beauty of Lorna Doone.