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CHAPTER XXXIV
TWO NEGATIVES MAKE AN AFFIRMATIVE
There was, however, no possibility of depressing me at
such a time. To be loved by Lorna, the sweet, the
pure, the playful one, the fairest creature on God's
earth and the most enchanting, the lady of high birth
and mind; that I, a mere clumsy, blundering yeoman,
without wit, or wealth, or lineage, should have won
that loving heart to be my own for ever, was a thought
no fears could lessen, and no chance could steal from
me.
Therefore at her own entreaty taking a very quick
adieu, and by her own invitation an exceeding kind one,
I hurried home with deep exulting, yet some sad
misgivings, for Lorna had made me promise now to tell
my mother everything; as indeed I always meant to do,
when my suit should be gone too far to stop. I knew,
of course, that my dear mother would be greatly moved
and vexed, the heirship of Glen Doone not being a very
desirable dower, but in spite of that, and all
disappointment as to little Ruth Huckaback, feeling my
mother's tenderness and deep affection to me, and
forgiving nature, I doubted not that before very long
she would view the matter as I did. Moreover, I felt
that if once I could get her only to look at Lorna, she
would so love and glory in her, that I should obtain
all praise and thanks, perchance without deserving
them.
Unluckily for my designs, who should be sitting down at
breakfast with my mother and the rest but Squire
Faggus, as everybody now began to entitle him. I
noticed something odd about him, something
uncomfortable in his manner, and a lack of that ease
and humour which had been wont to distinguish him. He
took his breakfast as it came, without a single joke
about it, or preference of this to that; but with sly
soft looks at Annie, who seemed unable to sit quiet, or
to look at any one steadfastly. I feared in my heart
what was coming on, and felt truly sorry for poor
mother. After breakfast it became my duty to see to
the ploughing of a barley-stubble ready for the sowing
of a French grass, and I asked Tom Faggus to come with
me, but he refused, and I knew the reason. Being
resolved to allow him fair field to himself, though
with great displeasure that a man of such illegal
repute should marry into our family, which had always
been counted so honest, I carried my dinner upon my
back, and spent the whole day with the furrows.
When I returned, Squire Faggus was gone; which appeared
to me but a sorry sign, inasmuch as if mother had taken
kindly to him and his intentions, she would surely have
made him remain awhile to celebrate the occasion. And
presently no doubt was left: for Lizzie came running to
meet me, at the bottom of the woodrick, and cried,--
'Oh, John, there is such a business. Mother is in such
a state of mind, and Annie crying her eyes out. What
do you think? You would never guess, though I have
suspected it, ever so long.'
'No need for me to guess,' I replied, as though with
some indifference, because of her self-important air;
'I knew all about it long ago. You have not been
crying much, I see. I should like you better if you
had.'
'Why should I cry? I like Tom Faggus. He is the only
one I ever see with the spirit of a man.'
This was a cut, of course, at me. Mr. Faggus had won
the goodwill of Lizzie by his hatred of the Doones, and
vows that if he could get a dozen men of any courage to
join him, he would pull their stronghold about their
ears without any more ado. This malice of his seemed
strange to me, as he had never suffered at their hands,
so far at least as I knew; was it to be attributed to
his jealousy of outlaws who excelled him in his
business? Not being good at repartee, I made no answer
to Lizzie, having found this course more irksome to her
than the very best invective: and so we entered the
house together; and mother sent at once for me, while I
was trying to console my darling sister Annie.
'Oh, John! speak one good word for me,' she cried with
both hands laid in mine, and her tearful eyes looking
up at me.
'Not one, my pet, but a hundred,' I answered, kindly
embracing her: 'have no fear, little sister: I am going
to make your case so bright, by comparison, I mean,
that mother will send for you in five minutes, and call
you her best, her most dutiful child, and praise Cousin
Tom to the skies, and send a man on horseback after
him; and then you will have a harder task to intercede
for me, my dear.'
'Oh, John, dear John, you won't tell her about
Lorna--oh, not to-day, dear.'
'Yes, to-day, and at once, Annie. I want to have it
over, and be done with it.'
'Oh, but think of her, dear. I am sure she could not
bear it, after this great shock already.'
'She will bear it all the better,' said I; 'the one
will drive the other out. I know exactly what mother
is. She will be desperately savage first with you, and
then with me, and then for a very little while with
both of us together; and then she will put one against
the other (in her mind I mean) and consider which was
most to blame; and in doing that she will be compelled
to find the best in either's case, that it may beat the
other; and so as the pleas come before her mind, they
will gain upon the charges, both of us being her
children, you know: and before very long (particularly
if we both keep out of the way) she will begin to think
that after all she has been a little too hasty, and
then she will remember how good we have always been to
her; and how like our father. Upon that, she will
think of her own love-time, and sigh a good bit, and
cry a little, and then smile, and send for both of us,
and beg our pardon, and call us her two darlings.'
'Now, John, how on earth can you know all that?'
exclaimed my sister, wiping her eyes, and gazing at me
with a soft bright smile. 'Who on earth can have told
you, John? People to call you stupid indeed! Why, I
feel that all you say is quite true, because you
describe so exactly what I should do myself; I mean--I
mean if I had two children, who had behaved as we have
done. But tell me, darling John, how you learned all
this.'
'Never you mind,' I replied, with a nod of some
conceit, I fear: 'I must be a fool if I did not know
what mother is by this time.'
Now inasmuch as the thing befell according to my
prediction, what need for me to dwell upon it, after
saying how it would be? Moreover, I would regret to
write down what mother said about Lorna, in her first
surprise and tribulation; not only because I was
grieved by the gross injustice of it, and frightened
mother with her own words (repeated deeply after her);
but rather because it is not well, when people repent
of hasty speech, to enter it against them.
That is said to be the angels' business; and I doubt if
they can attend to it much, without doing injury to
themselves.
However, by the afternoon, when the sun began to go
down upon us, our mother sat on the garden bench, with
her head on my great otter-skin waistcoat (which was
waterproof), and her right arm round our Annie's waist,
and scarcely knowing which of us she ought to make the
most of, or which deserved most pity. Not that she had
forgiven yet the rivals to her love--Tom Faggus, I
mean, and Lorna--but that she was beginning to think a
tattle better of them now, and a vast deal better of
her own children.
And it helped her much in this regard, that she was not
thinking half so well as usual of herself, or rather of
her own judgment; for in good truth she had no self,
only as it came home to her, by no very distant road,
but by way of her children. A better mother never
lived; and can I, after searching all things, add
another word to that?
And indeed poor Lizzie was not so very bad; but behaved
(on the whole) very well for her. She was much to be
pitied, poor thing, and great allowances made for her,
as belonging to a well-grown family, and a very comely
one; and feeling her own shortcomings. This made her
leap to the other extreme, and reassert herself too
much, endeavouring to exalt the mind at the expense of
the body; because she had the invisible one (so far as
can be decided) in better share than the visible. Not
but what she had her points, and very comely points of
body; lovely eyes to wit, and very beautiful hands and
feet (almost as good as Lorna's), and a neck as white
as snow; but Lizzie was not gifted with our gait and
port, and bounding health.
Now, while we sat on the garden bench, under the great
ash-tree, we left dear mother to take her own way, and
talk at her own pleasure. Children almost always are
more wide-awake than their parents. The fathers and
the mothers laugh; but the young ones have the best of
them. And now both Annie knew, and I, that we had
gotten the best of mother; and therefore we let her lay
down the law, as if we had been two dollies.
'Darling John,' my mother said, 'your case is a very
hard one. A young and very romantic girl--God send
that I be right in my charitable view of her--has met
an equally simple boy, among great dangers and
difficulties, from which my son has saved her, at the
risk of his life at every step. Of course, she became
attached to him, and looked up to him in every way, as
a superior being'--
'Come now, mother,' I said; 'if you only saw Lorna, you
would look upon me as the lowest dirt'--
'No doubt I should,' my mother answered; 'and the king
and queen, and all the royal family. Well, this poor
angel, having made up her mind to take compassion upon
my son, when he had saved her life so many times,
persuades him to marry her out of pure pity, and throw
his poor mother overboard. And the saddest part of it
all is this--'
'That my mother will never, never, never understand the
truth,' said I.
'That is all I wish,' she answered; 'just to get at the
simple truth from my own perception of it. John, you
are very wise in kissing me; but perhaps you would not
be so wise in bringing Lorna for an afternoon, just to
see what she thinks of me. There is a good saddle of
mutton now; and there are some very good sausages left,
on the blue dish with the anchor, Annie, from the last
little sow we killed.'
'As if Lorna would eat sausages!' said I, with
appearance of high contempt, though rejoicing all the
while that mother seemed to have her name so pat; and
she pronounced it in a manner which made my heart leap
to my ears: 'Lorna to eat sausages!'
'I don't see why she shouldn't,' my mother answered
smiling, 'if she means to be a farmer's wife, she must
take to farmer's ways, I think. What do you say,
Annie?'
'She will eat whatever John desires, I should hope,'
said Annie gravely; 'particularly as I made them.'
'Oh that I could only get the chance of trying her!' I
answered, 'if you could once behold her, mother, you
would never let her go again. And she would love you
with all her heart, she is so good and gentle.'
'That is a lucky thing for me'; saying this my mother
wept, as she had been doing off and on, when no one
seemed to look at her; 'otherwise I suppose, John, she
would very soon turn me out of the farm, having you so
completely under her thumb, as she seems to have. I
see now that my time is over. Lizzie and I will seek
our fortunes. It is wiser so.'
'Now, mother,' I cried; 'will you have the kindness not
to talk any nonsense? Everything belongs to you; and
so, I hope, your children do. And you, in turn, belong
to us; as you have proved ever since--oh, ever since we
can remember. Why do you make Annie cry so? You ought
to know better than that.'
Mother upon this went over all the things she had done
before; how many times I know not; neither does it
matter. Only she seemed to enjoy it more, every time
of doing it. And then she said she was an old fool;
and Annie (like a thorough girl) pulled her one grey
hair out.
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