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CHAPTER XLIX
MAIDEN SENTINELS ARE BEST
It was not likely that the outlaws would attack out
premises until some time after the moon was risen;
because it would be too dangerous to cross the flooded
valleys in the darkness of the night. And but for this
consideration, I must have striven harder against the
stealthy approach of slumber. But even so, it was very
foolish to abandon watch, especially in such as I, who
sleep like any dormouse. Moreover, I had chosen the
very worst place in the world for such employment, with
a goodly chance of awakening in a bed of solid fire.
And so it might have been, nay, it must have been, but
for Lorna's vigilance. Her light hand upon my arm
awoke me, not too readily; and leaping up, I seized my
club, and prepared to knock down somebody.
'Who's that?' I cried; 'stand back, I say, and let me
have fair chance at you.'
'Are you going to knock me down, dear John?' replied
the voice I loved so well; 'I am sure I should never
get up again, after one blow from you, John.'
'My darling, is it you?' I cried; 'and breaking all
your orders? Come back into the house at once: and
nothing on your head, dear!'
'How could I sleep, while at any moment you might he
killed beneath my window? And now is the time of real
danger; for men can see to travel.'
I saw at once the truth of this. The moon was high and
clearly lighting all the watered valleys. To sleep any
longer might be death, not only to myself, but all.
'The man on guard at the back of the house is fast
asleep,' she continued; 'Gwenny, who let me out, and
came with me, has heard him snoring for two hours. I
think the women ought to be the watch, because they
have had no travelling. Where do you suppose little
Gwenny is?'
'Surely not gone to Glen Doone?' I was not sure,
however: for I could believe almost anything of the
Cornish maiden's hardihood.
'No,' replied Lorna, 'although she wanted even to do
that. But of course I would not hear of it, on account
of the swollen waters. But she is perched on yonder
tree, which commands the Barrow valley. She says that
they are almost sure to cross the streamlet there; and
now it is so wide and large, that she can trace it in
the moonlight, half a mile beyond her. If they cross,
she is sure to see them, and in good time to let us
know.'
'What a shame,' I cried, 'that the men should sleep,
and the maidens be the soldiers! I will sit in that
tree myself, and send little Gwenny back to you. Go to
bed, my best and dearest; I will take good care not to
sleep again.'
'Please not to send me away, dear John,' she answered
very mournfully; 'you and I have been together through
perils worse than this. I shall only be more timid,
and more miserable, indoors.'
'I cannot let you stay here,' I said; 'it is altogether
impossible. Do you suppose that I can fight, with you
among the bullets, Lorna? If this is the way you mean
to take it, we had better go both to the apple-room,
and lock ourselves in, and hide under the tiles, and
let them burn all the rest of the premises.'
At this idea Lorna laughed, as I could see by the
moonlight; and then she said,--
'You are right, John. I should only do more harm than
good: and of all things I hate fighting most, and
disobedience next to it. Therefore I will go indoors,
although I cannot go to bed. But promise me one thing,
dearest John. You will keep yourself out of the way,
now won't you, as much as you can, for my sake?'
'Of that you may be quite certain, Lorna. I will shoot
them all through the hay-ricks.'
'That is right, dear,' she answered, never doubting but
what I could do it; 'and then they cannot see you, you
know. But don't think of climbing that tree, John; it
is a great deal too dangerous. It is all very well for
Gwenny; she has no bones to break.'
'None worth breaking, you mean, I suppose. Very well;
I will not climb the tree, for I should defeat my own
purpose, I fear; being such a conspicuous object. Now
go indoors, darling, without more words. The more you
linger, the more I shall keep you.'
She laughed her own bright laugh at this, and only
said, 'God keep you, love!' and then away she tripped
across the yard, with the step I loved to watch so.
And thereupon I shouldered arms, and resolved to tramp
till morning. For I was vexed at my own neglect, and
that Lorna should have to right it.
But before I had been long on duty, making the round of
the ricks and stables, and hailing Gwenny now and then
from the bottom of her tree, a short wide figure stole
towards me, in and out the shadows, and I saw that it
was no other than the little maid herself, and that she
bore some tidings.
'Ten on 'em crossed the watter down yonner,' said
Gwenny, putting her hand to her mouth, and seeming to
regard it as good news rather than otherwise: 'be arl
craping up by hedgerow now. I could shutt dree on 'em
from the bar of the gate, if so be I had your goon,
young man.'
'There is no time to lose, Gwenny. Run to the house
and fetch Master Stickles, and all the men; while I
stay here, and watch the rick-yard.'
Perhaps I was wrong in heeding the ricks at such a time
as that; especially as only the clover was of much
importance. But it seemed to me like a sort of triumph
that they should be even able to boast of having fired
our mow-yard. Therefore I stood in a nick of the
clover, whence we had cut some trusses, with my club in
hand, and gun close by.
The robbers rode into our yard as coolly as if they had
been invited, having lifted the gate from the hinges
first on account of its being fastened. Then they
actually opened our stable-doors, and turned our
honest horses out, and put their own rogues in the
place of them. At this my breath was quite taken away;
for we think so much of our horses. By this time I
could see our troopers, waiting in the shadow of the
house, round the corner from where the Doones were, and
expecting the order to fire. But Jeremy Stickles very
wisely kept them in readiness, until the enemy should
advance upon them.
'Two of you lazy fellows go,' it was the deep voice of
Carver Doone, 'and make us a light, to cut their
throats by. Only one thing, once again. If any man
touches Lorna, I will stab him where he stands. She
belongs to me. There are two other young damsels here,
whom you may take away if you please. And the mother,
I hear, is still comely. Now for our rights. We have
borne too long the insolence of these yokels. Kill
every man, and every child, and burn the cursed place
down.'
As he spoke thus blasphemously, I set my gun against
his breast; and by the light buckled from his belt, I
saw the little 'sight' of brass gleaming alike upon
either side, and the sleek round barrel glimmering.
The aim was sure as death itself. If I only drew the
trigger (which went very lighily) Carver Doone would
breathe no more. And yet--will you believe me?--I
could not pull the trigger. Would to God that I had
done so!
For I never had taken human life, neither done bodily
harm to man; beyond the little bruises, and the
trifling aches and pains, which follow a good and
honest bout in the wrestling ring. Therefore I dropped
my carbine, and grasped again my club, which seemed a
more straight-forward implement.
Presently two young men came towards me, bearing brands
of resined hemp, kindled from Carver's lamp. The
foremost of them set his torch to the rick within a
yard of me, and smoke concealing me from him. I struck
him with a back-handed blow on the elbow, as he bent
it; and I heard the bone of his arm break, as clearly
as ever I heard a twig snap. With a roar of pain he
fell on the ground, and his torch dropped there, and
singed him. The other man stood amazed at this, not
having yet gained sight of me; till I caught his
firebrand from his hand, and struck it into his
countenance. With that he leaped at me; but I caught
him, in a manner learned from early wrestling, and
snapped his collar-bone, as I laid him upon the top of
his comrade.
This little success so encouraged me, that I was half
inclined to advance, and challenge Carver Doone to meet
me; but I bore in mind that he would be apt to shoot me
without ceremony; and what is the utmost of human
strength against the power of powder? Moreover, I
remembered my promise to sweet Lorna; and who would be
left to defend her, if the rogues got rid of me?
While I was hesitating thus (for I always continue to
hesitate, except in actual conflict), a blaze of fire
lit up the house, and brown smoke hung around it. Six
of our men had let go at the Doones, by Jeremy
Stickles' order, as the villains came swaggering down
in the moonlight ready for rape or murder. Two of them
fell, and the rest hung back, to think at their leisure
what this was. They were not used to this sort of
thing: it was neither just nor courteous.
Being unable any longer to contain myself, as I thought
of Lorna's excitement at all this noise of firing, I
came across the yard, expecting whether they would
shoot at me. However, no one shot at me; and I went up
to Carver Doone, whom I knew by his size in the
moonlight, and I took him by the beard, and said, 'Do
you call yourself a man?'
For a moment he was so astonished that he could not
answer. None had ever dared, I suppose, to look at him
in that way; and he saw that he had met his equal, or
perhaps his master. And then he tried a pistol at me,
but I was too quick for him.
'Now, Carver Doone, take warning,' I said to him, very
soberly; 'you have shown yourself a fool by your
contempt of me. I may not be your match in craft; but
I am in manhood. You are a despicable villain. Lie
low in your native muck.'
And with that word, I laid him flat upon his back in
our straw-yard, by a trick of the inner heel, which he
could not have resisted (though his strength had been
twice as great as mine), unless he were a wrestler.
Seeing him down the others ran, though one of them made
a shot at me, and some of them got their horses, before
our men came up; and some went away without them. And
among these last was Captain Carver who arose, while I
was feeling myself (for I had a little wound), and
strode away with a train of curses enough to poison the
light of the moon.
We gained six very good horses, by this attempted
rapine, as well as two young prisoners, whom I had
smitten by the clover-rick. And two dead Doones were
left behind, whom (as we buried them in the churchyard,
without any service over them), I for my part was most
thankful that I had not killed. For to have the life
of a fellow-man laid upon one's conscience--deserved he
his death, or deserved it not--is to my sense of right
and wrong the heaviest of all burdens; and the one that
wears most deeply inwards, with the dwelling of the
mind on this view and on that of it.
I was inclined to pursue the enemy and try to capture
more of them; but Jeremy Stickles would not allow it,
for he said that all the advantage would be upon their
side, if we went hurrying after them, with only the
moon to guide us. And who could tell but what there
might be another band of them, ready to fall upon the
house, and burn it, and seize the women, if we left
them unprotected? When he put the case thus, I was
glad enough to abide by his decision. And one thing
was quite certain, that the Doones had never before
received so rude a shock, and so violent a blow to
their supremacy, since first they had built up their
power, and become the Lords of Exmoor. I knew that
Carver Doone would gnash those mighty teeth of his, and
curse the men around him, for the blunder (which was in
truth his own) of over-confidence and carelessness.
And at the same time, all the rest would feel that such
a thing had never happened, while old Sir Ensor was
alive; and that it was caused by nothing short of gross
mismanagement.
I scarcely know who made the greatest fuss about my
little wound, mother, or Annie, or Lorna. I was
heartily ashamed to be so treated like a milksop; but
most unluckily it had been impossible to hide it. For
the ball had cut along my temple, just above the
eyebrow; and being fired so near at hand, the powder
too had scarred me. Therefore it seemed a great deal
worse than it really was; and the sponging, and the
plastering, and the sobbing, and the moaning, made me
quite ashamed to look Master Stickles in the face.
However, at last I persuaded them that I had no
intention of giving up the ghost that night; and then
they all fell to, and thanked God with an emphasis
quite unknown in church. And hereupon Master Stickles
said, in his free and easy manner (for no one courted
his observation), that I was the luckiest of all
mortals in having a mother, and a sister, and a
sweetheart, to make much of me. For his part, he said,
he was just as well off in not having any to care for
him. For now he might go and get shot, or stabbed, or
knocked on the head, at his pleasure, without any one
being offended. I made bold, upon this, to ask him
what was become of his wife; for I had heard him speak
of having one. He said that he neither knew nor
cared; and perhaps I should be like him some day. That
Lorna should hear such sentiments was very grievous to
me. But she looked at me with a smile, which proved
her contempt for all such ideas; and lest anything
still more unfit might be said, I dismissed the
question.
But Master Stickles told me afterwards, when there was
no one with us, to have no faith in any woman, whatever
she might seem to be. For he assured me that now he
possessed very large experience, for so small a matter;
being thoroughly acquainted with women of every class,
from ladies of the highest blood, to Bonarobas, and
peasants' wives: and that they all might be divided
into three heads and no more; that is to say as
follows. First, the very hot and passionate, who were
only contemptible; second, the cold and indifferent,
who were simply odious; and third, the mixture of the
other two, who had the bad qualities of both. As for
reason, none of them had it; it was like a sealed book
to them, which if they ever tried to open, they began
at the back of the cover.
Now I did not like to hear such things; and to me they
appeared to be insolent, as well as narrow-minded. For
if you came to that, why might not men, as well as
women, be divided into the same three classes, and be
pronounced upon by women, as beings even more devoid
than their gentle judges of reason? Moreover, I knew,
both from my own sense, and from the greatest of all
great poets, that there are, and always have been,
plenty of women, good, and gentle, warm-hearted,
loving, and lovable; very keen, moreover, at seeing the
right, be it by reason, or otherwise. And upon the
whole, I prefer them much to the people of my own sex,
as goodness of heart is more important than to show
good reason for having it. And so I said to Jeremy,--
'You have been ill-treated, perhaps, Master Stickles,
by some woman or other?'
'Ah, that have I,' he replied with an oath; 'and the
last on earth who should serve me so, the woman who was
my wife. A woman whom I never struck, never wronged in
any way, never even let her know that I like another
better. And yet when I was at Berwick last, with the
regiment on guard there against those vile
moss-troopers, what does that woman do but fly in the
face of all authority, and of my especial business, by
running away herself with the biggest of all
moss-troopers? Not that I cared a groat about her; and
I wish the fool well rid of her: but the insolence of
the thing was such that everybody laughed at me; and
back I went to London, losing a far better and safer
job than this; and all through her. Come, let's have
another onion.'
Master Stickles's view of the matter was so entirely
unromantic, that I scarcely wondered at Mistress
Stickles for having run away from him to an adventurous
moss-trooper. For nine women out of ten must have some
kind of romance or other, to make their lives
endurable; and when their love has lost this attractive
element, this soft dew-fog (if such it be), the love
itself is apt to languish; unless its bloom be well
replaced by the budding hopes of children. Now Master
Stickles neither had, nor wished to have, any children.
Without waiting for any warrant, only saying something
about 'captus in flagrante delicto,'--if that be the
way to spell it--Stickles sent our prisoners off,
bound and looking miserable, to the jail at Taunton. I
was desirous to let them go free, if they would promise
amendment; but although I had taken them, and surely
therefore had every right to let them go again, Master
Stickles said, 'Not so.' He assured me that it was a
matter of public polity; and of course, not knowing
what he meant, I could not contradict him; but thought
that surely my private rights ought to be respected.
For if I throw a man in wrestling, I expect to get his
stakes; and if I take a man prisoner--why, he ought, in
common justice, to belong to me, and I have a good
right to let him go, if I think proper to do so.
However, Master Stickles said that I was quite
benighted, and knew nothing of the Constitution; which
was the very thing I knew, beyond any man in our
parish!
Nevertheless, it was not for me to contradict a
commissioner; and therefore I let my prisoners go, and
wished them a happy deliverance. Stickles replied,
with a merry grin, that if ever they got it, it would
be a jail deliverance, and the bliss of dancing; and he
laid his hand to his throat in a manner which seemed to
me most uncourteous. However, his foresight proved too
correct; for both those poor fellows were executed,
soon after the next assizes. Lorna had done her very
best to earn another chance for them; even going down
on her knees to that common Jeremy, and pleading with
great tears for them. However, although much moved by
her, he vowed that he durst do nothing else. To set
them free was more than his own life was worth; for all
the country knew, by this time, that two captive Doones
were roped to the cider-press at Plover's Barrows.
Annie bound the broken arm of the one whom I had
knocked down with the club, and I myself supported it;
and then she washed and rubbed with lard the face of
the other poor fellow, which the torch had injured; and
I fetched back his collar-bone to the best of my
ability. For before any surgeon could arrive, they
were off with a well-armed escort. That day we were
reinforced so strongly from the stations along the
coast, even as far as Minehead, that we not only feared
no further attack, but even talked of assaulting Glen
Doone, without waiting for the train-bands. However, I
thought that it would be mean to take advantage of the
enemy in the thick of the floods and confusion; and
several of the others thought so too, and did not like
fighting in water. Therefore it was resolved to wait
and keep a watch upon the valley, and let the floods go
down again.
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