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CHAPTER XLI
COLD COMFORT
All things being full of flaw, all things being full
of holes, the strength of all things is in shortness.
If Sir Ensor Doone had dwelled for half an hour upon
himself, and an hour perhaps upon Lorna and me, we must
both have wearied of him, and required change of air.
But now I longed to see and know a great deal more
about him, and hoped that he might not go to Heaven for
at least a week or more. However, he was too good for
this world (as we say of all people who leave it); and
I verily believe his heart was not a bad one, after
all.
Evil he had done, no doubt, as evil had been done to
him; yet how many have done evil, while receiving only
good! Be that as it may; and not vexing a question
(settled for ever without our votes), let us own that
he was, at least, a brave and courteous gentleman.
And his loss aroused great lamentation, not among the
Doones alone, and the women they had carried off, but
also of the general public, and many even of the
magistrates, for several miles round Exmoor. And this,
not only from fear lest one more wicked might succeed
him (as appeared indeed too probable), but from true
admiration of his strong will, and sympathy with his
misfortunes.
I will not deceive any one, by saying that Sir Ensor
Doone gave (in so many words) his consent to my resolve
about Lorna. This he never did, except by his speech
last written down; from which as he mentioned
grandchildren, a lawyer perhaps might have argued it.
Not but what he may have meant to bestow on us his
blessing; only that he died next day, without taking
the trouble to do it.
He called indeed for his box of snuff, which was a very
high thing to take; and which he never took without
being in very good humour, at least for him. And
though it would not go up his nostrils, through the
failure of his breath, he was pleased to have it there,
and not to think of dying.
'Will your honour have it wiped?' I asked him very
softly, for the brown appearance of it spoiled (to my
idea) his white mostacchio; but he seemed to shake his
head; and I thought it kept his spirits up. I had
never before seen any one do, what all of us have to do
some day; and it greatly kept my spirits down, although
it did not so very much frighten me.
For it takes a man but a little while, his instinct
being of death perhaps, at least as much as of life
(which accounts for his slaying his fellow men so, and
every other creature), it does not take a man very long
to enter into another man's death, and bring his own
mood to suit it. He knows that his own is sure to
come; and nature is fond of the practice. Hence it
came to pass that I, after easing my mother's fears,
and seeing a little to business, returned (as if drawn
by a polar needle) to the death-bed of Sir Ensor.
There was some little confusion, people wanting to get
away, and people trying to come in, from downright
curiosity (of all things the most hateful), and others
making great to-do, and talking of their own time to
come, telling their own age, and so on. But every one
seemed to think, or feel, that I had a right to be
there; because the women took that view of it. As for
Carver and Counsellor, they were minding their own
affairs, so as to win the succession; and never found
it in their business (at least so long as I was there)
to come near the dying man.
He, for his part, never asked for any one to come near
him, not even a priest, nor a monk or friar; but seemed
to be going his own way, peaceful, and well contented.
Only the chief of the women said that from his face she
believed and knew that he liked to have me at one side
of his bed, and Lorna upon the other. An hour or two
ere the old man died, when only we two were with him,
he looked at us both very dimly and softly, as if he
wished to do something for us, but had left it now too
late. Lorna hoped that he wanted to bless us; but he
only frowned at that, and let his hand drop downward,
and crooked one knotted finger.
'He wants something out of the bed, dear,' Lorna
whispered to me; 'see what it is, upon your side,
there.'
I followed the bent of his poor shrunken hand, and
sought among the pilings; and there I felt something
hard and sharp, and drew it forth and gave it to him.
It flashed, like the spray of a fountain upon us, in
the dark winter of the room. He could not take it in
his hand, but let it hang, as daisies do; only making
Lorna see that he meant her to have it.
'Why, it is my glass necklace!' Lorna cried, in great
surprise; 'my necklace he always promised me; and from
which you have got the ring, John. But grandfather
kept it, because the children wanted to pull it from my
neck. May I have it now, dear grandfather? Not unless
you wish, dear.'
Darling Lorna wept again, because the old man could not
tell her (except by one very feeble nod) that she was
doing what he wished. Then she gave to me the
trinket, for the sake of safety; and I stowed it in my
breast. He seemed to me to follow this, and to be well
content with it.
Before Sir Ensor Doone was buried, the greatest frost
of the century had set in, with its iron hand, and step
of stone, on everything. How it came is not my
business, nor can I explain it; because I never have
watched the skies; as people now begin to do, when the
ground is not to their liking. Though of all this I
know nothing, and less than nothing I may say (because
I ought to know something); I can hear what people tell
me; and I can see before my eyes.
The strong men broke three good pickaxes, ere they got
through the hard brown sod, streaked with little maps
of gray where old Sir Ensor was to lie, upon his back,
awaiting the darkness of the Judgment-day. It was in
the little chapel-yard; I will not tell the name of it;
because we are now such Protestants, that I might do it
an evil turn; only it was the little place where
Lorna's Aunt Sabina lay.
Here was I, remaining long, with a little curiosity;
because some people told me plainly that I must be
damned for ever by a Papist funeral; and here came
Lorna, scarcely breathing through the thick of stuff
around her, yet with all her little breath steaming on
the air, like frost.
I stood apart from the ceremony, in which of course I
was not entitled, either by birth or religion, to bear
any portion; and indeed it would have been wiser in me
to have kept away altogether; for now there was no one
to protect me among those wild and lawless men; and
both Carver and the Counsellor had vowed a fearful
vengeance on me, as I heard from Gwenny. They had not
dared to meddle with me while the chief lay dying; nor
was it in their policy, for a short time after that, to
endanger their succession by an open breach with Lorna,
whose tender age and beauty held so many of the youths
in thrall.
The ancient outlaw's funeral was a grand and moving
sight; more perhaps from the sense of contrast than
from that of fitness. To see those dark and mighty
men, inured to all of sin and crime, reckless both of
man and God, yet now with heads devoutly bent, clasped
hands, and downcast eyes, following the long black
coffin of their common ancestor, to the place where
they must join him when their sum of ill was done; and
to see the feeble priest chanting, over the dead form,
words the living would have laughed at, sprinkling with
his little broom drops that could not purify; while the
children, robed in white, swung their smoking censers
slowly over the cold and twilight grave; and after
seeing all, to ask, with a shudder unexpressed, 'Is
this the end that God intended for a man so proud and
strong?'
Not a tear was shed upon him, except from the sweetest
of all sweet eyes; not a sigh pursued him home. Except
in hot anger, his life had been cold, and bitter, and
distant; and now a week had exhausted all the sorrow of
those around him, a grief flowing less from affection
than fear. Aged men will show his tombstone; mothers
haste with their infants by it; children shrink from
the name upon it, until in time his history shall lapse
and be forgotten by all except the great Judge and God.
After all was over, I strode across the moors very
sadly; trying to keep the cold away by virtue of quick
movement. Not a flake of snow had fallen yet; all the
earth was caked and hard, with a dry brown crust upon
it; all the sky was banked with darkness, hard,
austere, and frowning. The fog of the last three weeks
was gone, neither did any rime remain; but all things
had a look of sameness, and a kind of furzy colour. It
was freezing hard and sharp, with a piercing wind to
back it; and I had observed that the holy water froze
upon Sir Ensor's coffin.
One thing struck me with some surprise, as I made off
for our fireside (with a strong determination to heave
an ash-tree up the chimney-place), and that was how the
birds were going, rather than flying as they used to
fly. All the birds were set in one direction, steadily
journeying westward, not with any heat of speed,
neither flying far at once; but all (as if on business
bound), partly running, partly flying, partly
fluttering along; silently, and without a voice,
neither pricking head nor tail. This movement of the
birds went on, even for a week or more; every kind of
thrushes passed us, every kind of wild fowl, even
plovers went away, and crows, and snipes and
wood-cocks. And before half the frost was over, all we
had in the snowy ditches were hares so tame that we
could pat them; partridges that came to hand, with a
dry noise in their crops; heath-poults, making cups of
snow; and a few poor hopping redwings, flipping in and
out the hedge, having lost the power to fly. And all
the time their great black eyes, set with gold around
them, seemed to look at any man, for mercy and for
comfort.
Annie took a many of them, all that she could find
herself, and all the boys would bring her; and she made
a great hutch near the fire, in the back-kitchen
chimney-place. Here, in spite of our old Betty (who
sadly wanted to roast them), Annie kept some fifty
birds, with bread and milk, and raw chopped meat, and
all the seed she could think of, and lumps of rotten
apples, placed to tempt them, in the corners. Some got
on, and some died off; and Annie cried for all that
died, and buried them under the woodrick; but, I do
assure you, it was a pretty thing to see, when she went
to them in the morning. There was not a bird but knew
her well, after one day of comforting; and some would
come to her hand, and sit, and shut one eye, and look
at her. Then she used to stroke their heads, and feel
their breasts, and talk to them; and not a bird of them
all was there but liked to have it done to him. And I
do believe they would eat from her hand things
unnatural to them, lest she should he grieved and hurt
by not knowing what to do for them. One of them was a
noble bird, such as I never had seen before, of very
fine bright plumage, and larger than a missel-thrush.
He was the hardest of all to please: and yet he tried
to do his best. I have heard since then, from a man
who knows all about birds, and beasts, and fishes, that
he must have been a Norwegian bird, called in this
country a Roller, who never comes to England but in the
most tremendous winters.
Another little bird there was, whom I longed to welcome
home, and protect from enemies, a little bird no native
to us, but than any native dearer. But lo, in the very
night which followed old Sir Ensor's funeral, such a
storm of snow began as never have I heard nor read of,
neither could have dreamed it. At what time of night
it first began is more than I can say, at least from my
own knowledge, for we all went to bed soon after
supper, being cold and not inclined to talk. At that
time the wind was moaning sadly, and the sky as dark as
a wood, and the straw in the yard swirling round and
round, and the cows huddling into the great cowhouse,
with their chins upon one another. But we, being
blinder than they, I suppose, and not having had a
great snow for years, made no preparation against the
storm, except that the lambing ewes were in shelter.
It struck me, as I lay in bed, that we were acting
foolishly; for an ancient shepherd had dropped in and
taken supper with us, and foretold a heavy fall and
great disaster to live stock. He said that he had
known a frost beginning, just as this had done, with a
black east wind, after days of raw cold fog, and then
on the third night of the frost, at this very time of
year (to wit on the 15th of December) such a snow set
in as killed half of the sheep and many even of the red
deer and the forest ponies. It was three-score years
agone,* he said; and cause he had to remember it,
inasmuch as two of his toes had been lost by frost-nip,
while he dug out his sheep on the other side of the
Dunkery. Hereupon mother nodded at him, having heard
from her father about it, and how three men had been
frozen to death, and how badly their stockings came off
from them.
* (The frost of 1625.)
Remembering how the old man looked, and his manner of
listening to the wind and shaking his head very
ominously (when Annie gave him a glass of schnapps), I
grew quite uneasy in my bed, as the room got colder and
colder; and I made up my mind, if it only pleased God
not to send the snow till the morning, that every
sheep, and horse, and cow, ay, and even the poultry,
should be brought in snug, and with plenty to eat, and
fodder enough to roast them.
Alas what use of man's resolves, when they come a day
too late; even if they may avail a little, when they
are most punctual!
In the bitter morning I arose, to follow out my
purpose, knowing the time from the force of habit,
although the room was so dark and gray. An odd white
light was on the rafters, such as I never had seen
before; while all the length of the room was grisly,
like the heart of a mouldy oat-rick. I went to the
window at once, of course; and at first I could not
understand what was doing outside of it. It faced due
east (as I may have said), with the walnut-tree partly
sheltering it; and generally I could see the yard, and
the woodrick, and even the church beyond.
But now, half the lattice was quite blocked up, as if
plastered with gray lime; and little fringes, like
ferns, came through, where the joining of the lead was;
and in the only undarkened part, countless dots came
swarming, clustering, beating with a soft, low sound,
then gliding down in a slippery manner, not as drops of
rain do, but each distinct from his neighbour. Inside
the iron frame (which fitted, not to say too
comfortably, and went along the stonework), at least a
peck of snow had entered, following its own bend and
fancy; light as any cobweb.
With some trouble, and great care, lest the ancient
frame should yield, I spread the lattice open; and saw
at once that not a moment must he lost, to save our
stock. All the earth was flat with snow, all the air
was thick with snow; more than this no man could see,
for all the world was snowing.
I shut the window and dressed in haste; and when I
entered the kitchen, not even Betty, the earliest of
all early birds, was there. I raked the ashes together
a little, just to see a spark of warmth; and then set
forth to find John Fry, Jem Slocombe, and Bill Dadds.
But this was easier thought than done; for when I
opened the courtyard door, I was taken up to my knees
at once, and the power of the drifting cloud prevented
sight of anything. However, I found my way to the
woodrick, and there got hold of a fine ash-stake, cut
by myself not long ago. With this I ploughed along
pretty well, and thundered so hard at John Fry's door,
that he thought it was the Doones at least, and cocked
his blunderbuss out of the window.
John was very loth to come down, when he saw the
meaning of it; for he valued his life more than
anything else; though he tried to make out that his
wife was to blame. But I settled his doubts by telling
him, that I would have him on my shoulder naked, unless
he came in five minutes; not that he could do much
good, but because the other men would be sure to skulk,
if he set them the example. With spades, and shovels,
and pitch-forks, and a round of roping, we four set
forth to dig out the sheep; and the poor things knew
that it was high time.
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