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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.
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