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CHAPTER LI
A VISIT FROM THE COUNSELLOR
Now while I was riding home that evening, with a
tender conscience about Ruth, although not a wounded
one, I guessed but little that all my thoughts were
needed much for my own affairs. So however it proved
to be; for as I came in, soon after dark, my sister
Eliza met me at the corner of the cheese-room, and she
said, 'Don't go in there, John,' pointing to mother's
room; 'until I have had a talk with you.'
'In the name of Moses,' I inquired, having picked up
that phrase at Dulverton; 'what are you at about me
now? There is no peace for a quiet fellow.'
'It is nothing we are at,' she answered; 'neither may
you make light of it. It is something very important
about Mistress Lorna Doone.'
'Let us have it at once,' I cried; 'I can bear anything
about Lorna, except that she does not care for me.'
'It has nothing to do with that, John. And I am quite
sure that you never need fear anything of that sort.
She perfectly wearies me sometimes, although her voice
is so soft and sweet, about your endless perfections.'
'Bless her little heart!' I said; 'the subject is
inexhaustible.'
'No doubt ' replied Lizzie, in the driest manner;
'especially to your sisters. However this is no time to
joke. I fear you will get the worst of it, John. Do
you know a man of about Gwenny's shape, nearly as broad
as he is long, but about six times the size of Gwenny,
and with a length of snow-white hair, and a thickness
also; as the copses were last winter. He never can
comb it, that is quite certain, with any comb yet
invented.'
'Then you go and offer your services. There are few
things you cannot scarify. I know the man from your
description, although I have never seen him. Now where
is my Lorna? '
'Your Lorna is with Annie, having a good cry, I
believe; and Annie too glad to second her. She knows
that this great man is here, and knows that he wants to
see her. But she begged to defer the interview, until
dear John's return.'
'What a nasty way you have of telling the very
commonest piece of news!' I said, on purpose to pay her
out. 'What man will ever fancy you, you unlucky little
snapper? Now, no more nursery talk for me. I will go
and settle this business. You had better go and dress
your dolls; if you can give them clothes unpoisoned.'
Hereupon Lizzie burst into a perfect roar of tears;
feeling that she had the worst of it. And I took her
up, and begged her pardon; although she scarcely
deserved it; for she knew that I was out of luck, and
she might have spared her satire.
I was almost sure that the man who was come must be the
Counsellor himself; of whom I felt much keener fear
than of his son Carver. And knowing that his visit
boded ill to me and Lorna, I went and sought my dear;
and led her with a heavy heart, from the maiden's room
to mother's, to meet our dreadful visitor.
Mother was standing by the door, making curtseys now
and then, and listening to a long harangue upon the
rights of state and land, which the Counsellor (having
found that she was the owner of her property, and knew
nothing of her title to it) was encouraged to deliver
it. My dear mother stood gazing at him, spell-bound by
his eloquence, and only hoping that he would stop. He
was shaking his hair upon his shoulders, in the power
of his words, and his wrath at some little thing, which
he declared to be quite illegal.
Then I ventured to show myself, in the flesh, before
him; although he feigned not to see me; but he advanced
with zeal to Lorna; holding out both hands at once.
'My darling child, my dearest niece; how wonderfully
well you look! Mistress Ridd, I give you credit. This
is the country of good things. I never would have
believed our Queen could have looked so royal. Surely
of all virtues, hospitality is the finest, and the most
romantic. Dearest Lorna, kiss your uncle; it is quite
a privilege.'
'Perhaps it is to you, sir,' said Lorna, who could
never quite check her sense of oddity; 'but I fear that
you have smoked tobacco, which spoils reciprocity.'
'You are right, my child. How keen your scent is! It
is always so with us. Your grandfather was noted for
his olfactory powers. Ah, a great loss, dear Mrs.
Ridd, a terrible loss to this neighbourhood! As one of
our great writers says--I think it must be Milton--"We
ne'er shall look upon his like again." '
'With your good leave sir,' I broke in, 'Master Milton
could never have written so sweet and simple a line as
that. It is one of the great Shakespeare.'
'Woe is me for my neglect!' said the Counsellor, bowing
airily; 'this must be your son, Mistress Ridd, the
great John, the wrestler. And one who meddles with the
Muses! Ah, since I was young, how everything is
changed, madam! Except indeed the beauty of women,
which seems to me to increase every year.' Here the old
villain bowed to my mother; and she blushed, and made
another curtsey, and really did look very nice.
'Now though I have quoted the poets amiss, as your son
informs me (for which I tender my best thanks, and must
amend my reading), I can hardly be wrong in assuming
that this young armiger must be the too attractive
cynosure to our poor little maiden. And for my part,
she is welcome to him. I have never been one of those
who dwell upon distinctions of rank, and birth, and
such like; as if they were in the heart of nature, and
must be eternal. In early youth, I may have thought
so, and been full of that little pride. But now I
have long accounted it one of the first axioms of
political economy--you are following me, Mistress
Ridd?'
'Well, sir, I am doing my best; but I cannot quite keep
up with you.'
'Never mind, madam; I will be slower. But your son's
intelligence is so quick--'
'I see, sir; you thought that mine must be. But no; it
all comes from his father, sir. His father was that
quick and clever--'
'Ah, I can well suppose it, madam. And a credit he is
to both of you. Now, to return to our muttons--a
figure which you will appreciate--I may now be
regarded, I think, as this young lady's legal guardian;
although I have not had the honour of being formally
appointed such. Her father was the eldest son of Sir
Ensor Doone; and I happened to be the second son; and
as young maidens cannot be baronets, I suppose I am
"Sir Counsellor." Is it so, Mistress Ridd, according to
your theory of genealogy?'
'I am sure I don't know, sir,' my mother answered
carefully; 'I know not anything of that name, sir,
except in the Gospel of Matthew: but I see not why it
should be otherwise.'
'Good, madam! I may look upon that as your sanction and
approval: and the College of Heralds shall hear of it.
And in return, as Lorna's guardian, I give my full and
ready consent to her marriage with your son, madam.'
'Oh, how good of you, sir, how kind! Well, I always did
say, that the learnedest people were, almost always,
the best and kindest, and the most simple-hearted.'
'Madam, that is a great sentiment. What a goodly
couple they will be! and if we can add him to our
strength--'
'Oh no, sir, oh no!' cried mother: 'you really must not
think of it. He has always been brought up so
honest--'
'Hem! that makes a difference. A decided
disqualification for domestic life among the Doones.
But, surely, he might get over those prejudices,
madam?'
'Oh no, sir! he never can: he never can indeed. When
he was only that high, sir, he could not steal even an
apple, when some wicked boys tried to mislead him.'
'Ah,' replied the Counsellor, shaking his white head
gravely; 'then I greatly fear that his case is quite
incurable. I have known such cases; violent prejudice,
bred entirely of education, and anti-economical to the
last degree. And when it is so, it is desperate: no
man, after imbibing ideas of that sort, can in any way
be useful.'
'Oh yes, sir, John is very useful. He can do as much
work as three other men; and you should see him load a
sledd, sir.'
'I was speaking, madam, of higher usefulness,--power of
the brain and heart. The main thing for us upon earth
is to take a large view of things. But while we talk
of the heart, what is my niece Lorna doing, that she
does not come and thank me, for my perhaps too prompt
concession to her youthful fancies? Ah, if I had
wanted thanks, I should have been more stubborn.'
Lorna, being challenged thus, came up and looked at her
uncle, with her noble eyes fixed full upon his, which
beneath his white eyebrows glistened, like dormer
windows piled with snow.
'For what am I to thank you, uncle?'
'My dear niece, I have told you. For removing the
heaviest obstacle, which to a mind so well regulated
could possibly have existed, between your dutiful self
and the object of your affections.'
'Well, uncle, I should be very grateful, if I thought
that you did so from love of me; or if I did not know
that you have something yet concealed from me.'
'And my consent,' said the Counsellor, 'is the more
meritorious, the more liberal, frank, and candid, in
the face of an existing fact, and a very clearly
established one; which might have appeared to weaker
minds in the light of an impediment; but to my loftier
view of matrimony seems quite a recommendation.'
'What fact do you mean, sir? Is it one that I ought to
know?'
'In my opinion it is, good niece. It forms, to my
mind, so fine a basis for the invariable harmony of the
matrimonial state. To be brief--as I always endeavour
to be, without becoming obscure--you two young people
(ah, what a gift is youth! one can never be too
thankful for it) you will have the rare advantage of
commencing married life, with a subject of common
interest to discuss, whenever you weary of--well, say
of one another; if you can now, by any means, conceive
such a possibility. And perfect justice meted out:
mutual goodwill resulting, from the sense of
reciprocity.'
'I do not understand you, sir. Why can you not say
what you mean, at once?'
'My dear child, I prolong your suspense. Curiosity is
the most powerful of all feminine instincts; and
therefore the most delightful, when not prematurely
satisfied. However, if you must have my strong
realities, here they are. Your father slew dear John's
father, and dear John's father slew yours.'
Having said thus much, the Counsellor leaned back upon
his chair, and shaded his calm white-bearded eyes from
the rays of our tallow candles. He was a man who liked
to look, rather than to be looked at. But Lorna came
to me for aid; and I went up to Lorna and mother looked
at both of us.
Then feeling that I must speak first (as no one would
begin it), I took my darling round the waist, and led
her up to the Counsellor; while she tried to bear it
bravely; yet must lean on me, or did.
'Now, Sir Counsellor Doone,' I said, with Lorna
squeezing both my hands, I never yet knew how
(considering that she was walking all the time, or
something like it); 'you know right well, Sir
Counsellor, that Sir Ensor Doone gave approval.' I
cannot tell what made me think of this: but so it came
upon me.
'Approval to what, good rustic John? To the slaughter
so reciprocal?'
'No, sir, not to that; even if it ever happened; which
I do not believe. But to the love betwixt me and
Lorna; which your story shall not break, without more
evidence than your word. And even so, shall never
break; if Lorna thinks as I do.'
The maiden gave me a little touch, as much as to say,
'You are right, darling: give it to him, again, like
that.' However, I held my peace, well knowing that too
many words do mischief.
Then mother looked at me with wonder, being herself too
amazed to speak; and the Counsellor looked, with great
wrath in his eyes, which he tried to keep from burning.
'How say you then, John Ridd, ' he cried, stretching
out one hand, like Elijah; 'is this a thing of the sort
you love? Is this what you are used to?'
'So please your worship, ' I answered; 'no kind of
violence can surprise us, since first came Doones upon
Exmoor. Up to that time none heard of harm; except of
taking a purse, maybe, or cutting a strange sheep's
throat. And the poor folk who did this were hanged,
with some benefit of clergy. But ever since the Doones
came first, we are used to anything.'
'Thou varlet,' cried the Counsellor, with the colour of
his eyes quite changed with the sparkles of his fury;
'is this the way we are to deal with such a low-bred
clod as thou? To question the doings of our people,
and to talk of clergy! What, dream you not that we
could have clergy, and of the right sort, too, if only
we cared to have them? Tush! Am I to spend my time
arguing with a plough-tail Bob?'
'If your worship will hearken to me,' I answered very
modestly, not wishing to speak harshly, with Lorna
looking up at me; 'there are many things that might be
said without any kind of argument, which I would never
wish to try with one of your worship's learning. And
in the first place it seems to me that if our fathers
hated one another bitterly, yet neither won the
victory, only mutual discomfiture; surely that is but a
reason why we should be wiser than they, and make it up
in this generation by goodwill and loving'--
'Oh, John, you wiser than your father!' mother broke
upon me here; 'not but what you might be as wise, when
you come to be old enough.'
'Young people of the present age,' said the Counsellor
severely, 'have no right feeling of any sort, upon the
simplest matter. Lorna Doone, stand forth from
contact with that heir of parricide; and state in your
own mellifluous voice, whether you regard this
slaughter as a pleasant trifle.'
'You know, without any words of mine,' she answered
very softly, yet not withdrawing from my hand, 'that
although I have been seasoned well to every kind of
outrage, among my gentle relatives, I have not yet so
purely lost all sense of right and wrong as to receive
what you have said, as lightly as you declared it. You
think it a happy basis for our future concord. I do
not quite think that, my uncle; neither do I quite
believe that a word of it is true. In our happy
valley, nine-tenths of what is said is false; and you
were always wont to argue that true and false are but a
blind turned upon a pivot. Without any failure of
respect for your character, good uncle, I decline
politely to believe a word of what you have told me.
And even if it were proved to me, all I can say is
this, if my John will have me, I am his for ever.'
This long speech was too much for her; she had
overrated her strength about it, and the sustenance of
irony. So at last she fell into my arms, which had
long been waiting for her; and there she lay with no
other sound, except a gurgling in her throat.
'You old villain,' cried my mother, shaking her fist at
the Counsellor, while I could do nothing else but hold,
and bend across, my darling, and whisper to deaf ears;
'What is the good of the quality; if this is all that
comes of it? Out of the way! You know the words that
make the deadly mischief; but not the ways that heal
them. Give me that bottle, if hands you have; what is
the use of Counsellors?'
I saw that dear mother was carried away; and indeed I
myself was something like it; with the pale face upon
my bosom, and the heaving of the heart, and the heat
and cold all through me, as my darling breathed or lay.
Meanwhile the Counsellor stood back, and seemed a
little sorry; although of course it was not in his
power to be at all ashamed of himself.
'My sweet love, my darling child,' our mother went on
to Lorna, in a way that I shall never forget, though I
live to be a hundred; 'pretty pet, not a word of it is
true, upon that old liar's oath; and if every word were
true, poor chick, you should have our John all the more
for it. You and John were made by God and meant for
one another, whatever falls between you. Little lamb,
look up and speak: here is your own John and I; and the
devil take the Counsellor.'
I was amazed at mother's words, being so unlike her;
while I loved her all the more because she forgot
herself so. In another moment in ran Annie, ay and
Lizzie also, knowing by some mystic sense (which I have
often noticed, but never could explain) that something
was astir, belonging to the world of women, yet foreign
to the eyes of men. And now the Counsellor, being
well-born, although such a heartless miscreant,
beckoned to me to come away; which I, being smothered
with women, was only too glad to do, as soon as my own
love would let go of me.
'That is the worst of them,' said the old man; when I
had led him into our kitchen, with an apology at every
step, and given him hot schnapps and water, and a
cigarro of brave Tom Faggus: 'you never can say much,
sir, in the way of reasoning (however gently meant and
put) but what these women will fly out. It is wiser to
put a wild bird in a cage, and expect him to sit and
look at you, and chirp without a feather rumpled, than
it is to expect a woman to answer reason reasonably.'
Saying this, he looked at his puff of smoke as if it
contained more reason.
'I am sure I do not know, sir,' I answered according to
a phrase which has always been my favourite, on account
of its general truth: moreover, he was now our guest,
and had right to be treated accordingly: 'I am, as you
see, not acquainted with the ways of women, except my
mother and sisters.'
'Except not even them, my son, said the Counsellor, now
having finished his glass, without much consultation
about it; 'if you once understand your mother and
sisters--why you understand the lot of them.'
He made a twist in his cloud of smoke, and dashed his
finger through it, so that I could not follow his
meaning, and in manners liked not to press him.
'Now of this business, John,' he said, after getting to
the bottom of the second glass, and having a trifle or
so to eat, and praising our chimney-corner; 'taking you
on the whole, you know, you are wonderfully good
people; and instead of giving me up to the soldiers, as
you might have done, you are doing your best to make me
drunk.'
'Not at all, sir,' I answered; 'not at all, your
worship. Let me mix you another glass. We rarely have
a great gentleman by the side of our embers and oven.
I only beg your pardon, sir, that my sister Annie (who
knows where to find all the good pans and the lard)
could not wait upon you this evening; and I fear they
have done it with dripping instead, and in a pan with
the bottom burned. But old Betty quite loses her head
sometimes, by dint of over-scolding.'
'My son,' replied the Counsellor, standing across the
front of the fire, to prove his strict sobriety: 'I
meant to come down upon you to-night; but you have
turned the tables upon me. Not through any skill on
your part, nor through any paltry weakness as to love
(and all that stuff, which boys and girls spin tops at,
or knock dolls' noses together), but through your
simple way of taking me, as a man to be believed;
combined with the comfort of this place, and the choice
tobacco and cordials. I have not enjoyed an evening so
much, God bless me if I know when!'
'Your worship,' said I, 'makes me more proud than I
well know what to do with. Of all the things that
please and lead us into happy sleep at night, the first
and chiefest is to think that we have pleased a
visitor.'
'Then, John, thou hast deserved good sleep; for I am
not pleased easily. But although our family is not so
high now as it hath been, I have enough of the
gentleman left to be pleased when good people try me.
My father, Sir Ensor, was better than I in this great
element of birth, and my son Carver is far worse.
Aetas parentum, what is it, my boy? I hear that you
have been at a grammar-school.'
'So I have, your worship, and at a very good one; but I
only got far enough to make more tail than head of
Latin.'
'Let that pass,' said the Counsellor; 'John, thou art
all the wiser.' And the old man shook his hoary locks,
as if Latin had been his ruin. I looked at him sadly,
and wondered whether it might have so ruined me, but
for God's mercy in stopping it.
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