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CHAPTER LVI
JOHN BECOMES TOO POPULAR
No flower that I have ever seen, either in shifting of
light and shade, or in the pearly morning, may vie with
a fair young woman's face when tender thought and quick
emotion vary, enrich, and beautify it. Thus my Lorna
hearkened softly, almost without word or gesture, yet
with sighs and glances telling, and the pressure of my
hand, how each word was moving her.
When at last my tale was done, she turned away, and
wept bitterly for the sad fate of her parents. But to
my surprise she spoke not even a word of wrath or
rancour. She seemed to take it all as fate.
'Lorna, darling,' I said at length, for men are more
impatient in trials of time than women are, 'do you not
even wish to know what your proper name is?'
'How can it matter to me, John?' she answered, with a
depth of grief which made me seem a trifler. 'It can
never matter now, when there are none to share it.'
'Poor little soul!' was all I said in a tone of purest
pity; and to my surprise she turned upon me, caught me
in her arms, and loved me as she had never done before.
'Dearest, I have you,' she cried; 'you, and only you,
love. Having you I want no other. All my life is one
with yours. Oh, John, how can I treat you so?'
Blushing through the wet of weeping, and the gloom of
pondering, yet she would not hide her eyes, but folded
me, and dwelled on me.
'I cannot believe,' in the pride of my joy, I whispered
into one little ear, 'that you could ever so love me,
beauty, as to give up the world for me.'
'Would you give up your farm for me, John?' cried
Lorna, leaping back and looking, with her wondrous
power of light at me; 'would you give up your mother,
your sisters, your home, and all that you have in the
world and every hope of your life, John?'
'Of course I would. Without two thoughts. You know
it; you know it, Lorna.'
'It is true that I do, 'she answered in a tone of
deepest sadness; 'and it is this power of your love
which has made me love you so. No good can come of
it, no good. God's face is set against selfishness.'
As she spoke in that low tone I gazed at the clear
lines of her face (where every curve was perfect) not
with love and wonder only, but with a strange new sense
of awe.
'Darling,' I said, 'come nearer to me. Give me surety
against that. For God's sake never frighten me with
the thought that He would part us.'
'Does it then so frighten you?' she whispered, coming
close to me; 'I know it, dear; I have known it long;
but it never frightens me. It makes me sad, and very
lonely, till I can remember.'
'Till you can remember what?' I asked, with a long,
deep shudder; for we are so superstitious.
'Until I do remember, love, that you will soon come
back to me, and be my own for ever. This is what I
always think of, this is what I hope for.'
Although her eyes were so glorious, and beaming with
eternity, this distant sort of beatitude was not much
to my liking. I wanted to have my love on earth; and
my dear wife in my own home; and children in good time,
if God should please to send us any. And then I would
be to them, exactly what my father was to me. And
beside all this, I doubted much about being fit for
heaven; where no ploughs are, and no cattle, unless
sacrificed bulls went thither.
Therefore I said, 'Now kiss me, Lorna; and don't talk
any nonsense.' And the darling came and did it; being
kindly obedient, as the other world often makes us.
'You sweet love,' I said at this, being slave to her
soft obedience; 'do you suppose I should be content to
leave you until Elysium?'
'How on earth can I tell, dear John, what you will be
content with?'
'You, and only you,' said I; 'the whole of it lies in a
syllable. Now you know my entire want; and want must
be my comfort.'
'But surely if I have money, sir, and birth, and rank,
and all sorts of grandeur, you would never dare to
think of me.'
She drew herself up with an air of pride, as she
gravely pronounced these words, and gave me a scornful
glance, or tried; and turned away as if to enter some
grand coach or palace; while I was so amazed and
grieved in my raw simplicity especially after the way
in which she had first received my news, so loving and
warm-hearted, that I never said a word, but stared and
thought, 'How does she mean it?'
She saw the pain upon my forehead, and the wonder in my
eyes, and leaving coach and palace too, back she flew
to me in a moment, as simple as simplest milkmaid.
'Oh, you fearful stupid, John, you inexpressibly
stupid, John,' she cried with both arms round my neck,
and her lips upon my forehead; 'you have called
yourself thick-headed, John, and I never would believe
it. But now I do with all my heart. Will you never
know what I am, love?'
'No, Lorna, that I never shall. I can understand my
mother well, and one at least of my sisters, and both
the Snowe girls very easily, but you I never
understand; only love you all the more for it.'
'Then never try to understand me, if the result is
that, dear John. And yet I am the very simplest of all
foolish simple creatures. Nay, I am wrong; therein I
yield the palm to you, my dear. To think that I can
act so! No wonder they want me in London, as an
ornament for the stage, John.'
Now in after days, when I heard of Lorna as the
richest, and noblest, and loveliest lady to be found in
London, I often remembered that little scene, and
recalled every word and gesture, wondering what lay
under it. Even now, while it was quite impossible once
to doubt those clear deep eyes, and the bright lips
trembling so; nevertheless I felt how much the world
would have to do with it; and that the best and truest
people cannot shake themselves quite free. However,
for the moment, I was very proud and showed it.
And herein differs fact from fancy, things as they
befall us from things as we would have them, human ends
from human hopes; that the first are moved by a
thousand and the last on two wheels only, which (being
named) are desire and fear. Hope of course is nothing
more than desire with a telescope, magnifying distant
matters, overlooking near ones; opening one eye on the
objects, closing the other to all objections. And if
hope be the future tense of desire, the future of fear
is religion--at least with too many of us.
Whether I am right or wrong in these small moralities,
one thing is sure enough, to wit, that hope is the
fastest traveller, at any rate, in the time of youth.
And so I hoped that Lorna might be proved of blameless
family, and honourable rank and fortune; and yet none
the less for that, love me and belong to me. So I led
her into the house, and she fell into my mother's arms;
and I left them to have a good cry of it, with Annie
ready to help them.
If Master Stickles should not mend enough to gain his
speech a little, and declare to us all he knew, I was
to set out for Watchett, riding upon horseback, and
there to hire a cart with wheels, such as we had not
begun, as yet, to use on Exmoor. For all our work went
on broad wood, with runners and with earthboards; and
many of us still looked upon wheels (though mentioned
in the Bible) as the invention of the evil one, and
Pharoah's especial property.
Now, instead of getting better, Colonel Stickles grew
worse and worse, in spite of all our tendance of him,
with simples and with nourishment, and no poisonous
medicine, such as doctors would have given him. And
the fault of this lay not with us, but purely with
himself and his unquiet constitution. For he roused
himself up to a perfect fever, when through Lizzie's
giddiness he learned the very thing which mother and
Annie were hiding from him, with the utmost care;
namely, that Sergeant Bloxham had taken upon himself to
send direct to London by the Chancery officers, a full
report of what had happened, and of the illness of his
chief, together with an urgent prayer for a full
battalion of King's troops, and a plenary commander.
This Sergeant Bloxham, being senior of the surviving
soldiers, and a very worthy man in his way, but a
trifle over-zealous, had succeeded to the captaincy
upon his master's disablement. Then, with desire to
serve his country and show his education, he sat up
most part of three nights, and wrote this very
wonderful report by the aid of our stable lanthorn. It
was a very fine piece of work, as three men to whom he
read it (but only one at a time) pronounced, being
under seal of secrecy. And all might have gone well
with it, if the author could only have held his tongue,
when near the ears of women. But this was beyond his
sense as it seems, although so good a writer. For
having heard that our Lizzie was a famous judge of
literature (as indeed she told almost every one), he
could not contain himself, but must have her opinion
upon his work.
Lizzie sat on a log of wood, and listened with all her
ears up, having made proviso that no one else should be
there to interrupt her. And she put in a syllable here
and there, and many a time she took out one (for the
Sergeant overloaded his gun, more often than
undercharged it; like a liberal man of letters), and
then she declared the result so good, so chaste, and
the style to be so elegant, and yet so fervent, that
the Sergeant broke his pipe in three, and fell in love
with her on the spot. Now this has led me out of my
way; as things are always doing, partly through their
own perverseness, partly through my kind desire to give
fair turn to all of them, and to all the people who do
them. If any one expects of me a strict and
well-drilled story, standing 'at attention' all the
time, with hands at the side like two wens on my trunk,
and eyes going neither right nor left; I trow that man
has been disappointed many a page ago, and has left me
to my evil ways; and if not, I love his charity.
Therefore let me seek his grace, and get back, and just
begin again.
That great despatch was sent to London by the Chancery
officers, whom we fitted up with clothes, and for three
days fattened them; which in strict justice they needed
much, as well as in point of equity. They were kind
enough to be pleased with us, and accepted my new
shirts generously; and urgent as their business was,
another week (as they both declared) could do no harm
to nobody, and might set them upon their legs again.
And knowing, although they were London men, that fish
do live in water, these two fellows went fishing all
day, but never landed anything. However, their holiday
was cut short; for the Sergeant, having finished now
his narrative of proceedings, was not the man to let it
hang fire, and be quenched perhaps by Stickles.
Therefore, having done their business, and served both
citations, these two good men had a pannier of victuals
put up by dear Annie, and borrowing two of our horses,
rode to Dunster, where they left them, and hired on
towards London. We had not time to like them much, and
so we did not miss them, especially in our great
anxiety about poor Master Stickles.
Jeremy lay between life and death, for at least a
fortnight. If the link of chain had flown upwards (for
half a link of chain it was which took him in the mouth
so), even one inch upwards, the poor man could have
needed no one except Parson Bowden; for the bottom of
his skull, which holds the brain as in the egg-cup,
must have clean gone from him. But striking him
horizontally, and a little upon the skew, the metal
came out at the back of his neck, and (the powder not
being strong, I suppose) it lodged in his leather
collar.
Now the rust of this iron hung in the wound, or at
least we thought so; though since I have talked with a
man of medicine, I am not so sure of it. And our chief
aim was to purge this rust; when rather we should have
stopped the hole, and let the oxide do its worst, with
a plug of new flesh on both sides of it.
At last I prevailed upon him by argument, that he must
get better, to save himself from being ignobly and
unjustly superseded; and hereupon I reviled Sergeant
Bloxham more fiercely than Jeremy's self could have
done, and indeed to such a pitch that Jeremy almost
forgave him, and became much milder. And after that
his fever and the inflammation of his wound, diminished
very rapidly.
However, not knowing what might happen, or even how
soon poor Lorna might be taken from our power, and,
falling into lawyers' hands, have cause to wish herself
most heartily back among the robbers, I set forth one
day for Watchett, taking advantage of the visit of some
troopers from an outpost, who would make our house
quite safe. I rode alone, being fully primed, and
having no misgivings. For it was said that even the
Doones had begun to fear me, since I cast their
culverin through the door, as above related; and they
could not but believe, from my being still untouched
(although so large an object) in the thickest of their
fire, both of gun and cannon, that I must bear a
charmed life, proof against ball and bullet. However,
I knew that Carver Doone was not a likely man to hold
any superstitious opinions; and of him I had an
instinctive dread, although quite ready to face him.
Riding along, I meditated upon Lorna's history; how
many things were now beginning to unfold themselves,
which had been obscure and dark! For instance, Sir
Ensor Doone's consent, or to say the least his
indifference, to her marriage with a yeoman; which in a
man so proud (though dying) had greatly puzzled both of
us. But now, if she not only proved to be no
grandchild of the Doone, but even descended from his
enemy, it was natural enough that he should feel no
great repugnance to her humiliation. And that Lorna's
father had been a foe to the house of Doone I gathered
from her mother's cry when she beheld their leader.
Moreover that fact would supply their motive in
carrying off the unfortunate little creature, and
rearing her among them, and as one of their own family;
yet hiding her true birth from her. She was a 'great
card,' as we say, when playing All-fours at
Christmas-time; and if one of them could marry her,
before she learned of right and wrong, vast property,
enough to buy pardons for a thousand Doones, would be
at their mercy. And since I was come to know Lorna
better, and she to know me thoroughly--many things had
been outspoken, which her early bashfulness had kept
covered from me. Attempts I mean to pledge her love
to this one, or that other; some of which perhaps might
have been successful, if there had not been too many.
And then, as her beauty grew richer and brighter,
Carver Doone was smitten strongly, and would hear of no
one else as a suitor for her; and by the terror of his
claim drove off all the others. Here too may the
explanation of a thing which seemed to be against the
laws of human nature, and upon which I longed, but
dared not to cross-question Lorna. How could such a
lovely girl, although so young, and brave, and distant,
have escaped the vile affections of a lawless company?
But now it was as clear as need be. For any proven
violence would have utterly vitiated all claim upon her
grand estate; at least as those claims must be urged
before a court of equity. And therefore all the elders
(with views upon her real estate) kept strict watch on
the youngers, who confined their views to her
personality.
Now I do not mean to say that all this, or the hundred
other things which came, crowding consideration, were
half as plain to me at the time, as I have set them
down above. Far be it from me to deceive you so. No
doubt my thoughts were then dark and hazy, like an
oil-lamp full of fungus; and I have trimmed them, as
when they burned, with scissors sharpened long
afterwards. All I mean to say is this, that jogging
along to a certain tune of the horse's feet, which we
call 'three-halfpence and twopence,' I saw my way a
little into some things which had puzzled me.
When I knocked at the little door, whose sill was
gritty and grimed with sand, no one came for a very
long time to answer me, or to let me in. Not wishing
to be unmannerly, I waited a long time, and watched the
sea, from which the wind was blowing; and whose many
lips of waves--though the tide was half-way out--spoke
to and refreshed me. After a while I knocked again,
for my horse was becoming hungry; and a good while
after that again, a voice came through the key-hole,--
'Who is that wishes to enter?'
'The boy who was at the pump,' said I, 'when the
carriage broke down at Dulverton. The boy that lives
at oh--ah; and some day you would come seek for him.'
'Oh, yes, I remember certainly. My leetle boy, with
the fair white skin. I have desired to see him, oh
many, yes, many times.'
She was opening the door, while saying this, and then
she started back in affright that the little boy should
have grown so.
'You cannot be that leetle boy. It is quite
impossible. Why do you impose on me?'
'Not only am I that little boy, who made the water to
flow for you, till the nebule came upon the glass; but
also I am come to tell you all about your little girl.'
'Come in, you very great leetle boy,' she answered,
with her dark eyes brightened. And I went in, and
looked at her. She was altered by time, as much as I
was. The slight and graceful shape was gone; not that
I remembered anything of her figure, if you please; for
boys of twelve are not yet prone to note the shapes of
women; but that her lithe straight gait had struck me
as being so unlike our people. Now her time for
walking so was past, and transmitted to her children.
Yet her face was comely still, and full of strong
intelligence. I gazed at her, and she at me; and we
were sure of one another.
'Now what will ye please to eat?' she asked, with a
lively glance at the size of my mouth: 'that is always
the first thing you people ask, in these barbarous
places.'
'I will tell you by-and-by,' I answered, misliking this
satire upon us; 'but I might begin with a quart of ale,
to enable me to speak, madam.'
'Very well. One quevart of be-or;' she called out to a
little maid, who was her eldest child, no doubt. 'It
is to be expected, sir. Be-or, be-or, be-or, all day
long, with you Englishmen!'
'Nay,' I replied, 'not all day long, if madam will
excuse me. Only a pint at breakfast-time, and a pint
and a half at eleven o'clock, and a quart or so at
dinner. And then no more till the afternoon; and half
a gallon at supper-time. No one can object to that.'
'Well, I suppose it is right,' she said, with an air
of resignation; 'God knows. But I do not understand
it. It is "good for business," as you say, to preclude
everything.'
'And it is good for us, madam,' I answered with
indignation, for beer is my favourite beverage; 'and I
am a credit to beer, madam; and so are all who trust to
it.'
'At any rate, you are, young man. If beer has made you
grow so large, I will put my children upon it; it is
too late for me to begin. The smell to me is hateful.'
Now I only set down that to show how perverse those
foreign people are. They will drink their wretched
heartless stuff, such as they call claret, or wine of
Medoc, or Bordeaux, or what not, with no more meaning
than sour rennet, stirred with the pulp from the cider
press, and strained through the cap of our Betty. This
is very well for them; and as good as they deserve, no
doubt, and meant perhaps by the will of God, for those
unhappy natives. But to bring it over to England and
set it against our home-brewed ale (not to speak of
wines from Portugal) and sell it at ten times the
price, as a cure for British bile, and a great
enlightenment; this I say is the vilest feature of the
age we live in.
Madam Benita Odam--for the name of the man who turned
the wheel proved to be John Odam--showed me into a
little room containing two chairs and a fir-wood table,
and sat down on a three-legged seat and studied me very
steadfastly. This she had a right to do; and I, having
all my clothes on now, was not disconcerted. It would
not become me to repeat her judgment upon my
appearance, which she delivered as calmly as if I were
a pig at market, and as proudly as if her own pig. And
she asked me whether I had ever got rid of the black
marks on my breast.
Not wanting to talk about myself (though very fond of
doing so, when time and season favour) I led her back
to that fearful night of the day when first I had seen
her. She was not desirous to speak of it, because of
her own little children; however, I drew her gradually
to recollection of Lorna, and then of the little boy
who died, and the poor mother buried with him. And her
strong hot nature kindled, as she dwelled upon these
things; and my wrath waxed within me; and we forgot
reserve and prudence under the sense of so vile a
wrong. She told me (as nearly as might be) the very
same story which she had told to Master Jeremy
Stickles; only she dwelled upon it more, because of my
knowing the outset. And being a woman, with an inkling
of my situation, she enlarged upon the little maid,
more than to dry Jeremy.
'Would you know her again?' I asked, being stirred by
these accounts of Lorna, when she was five years old:
'would you know her as a full-grown maiden?'
'I think I should,' she answered; 'it is not possible
to say until one sees the person; but from the eyes of
the little girl, I think that I must know her. Oh, the
poor young creature! Is it to be believed that the
cannibals devoured her! What a people you are in this
country! Meat, meat, meat!'
As she raised her hands and eyes in horror at our
carnivorous propensities, to which she clearly
attributed the disappearance of Lorna, I could scarce
help laughing, even after that sad story. For though
it is said at the present day, and will doubtless be
said hereafter, that the Doones had devoured a baby
once, as they came up Porlock hill, after fighting hard
in the market-place, I knew that the tale was utterly
false; for cruel and brutal as they were, their taste
was very correct and choice, and indeed one might say
fastidious. Nevertheless I could not stop to argue
that matter with her.
'The little maid has not been devoured,' I said to
Mistress Odam: 'and now she is a tall young lady, and
as beautiful as can be. If I sleep in your good hostel
to-night after going to Watchett town, will you come
with me to Oare to-morrow, and see your little maiden?'
'I would like--and yet I fear. This country is so
barbarous. And I am good to eat--my God, there is much
picking on my bones!'
She surveyed herself with a glance so mingled of pity
and admiration, and the truth of her words was so
apparent (only that it would have taken a week to get
at the bones, before picking) that I nearly lost good
manners; for she really seemed to suspect even me of
cannibal inclinations. However, at last I made her
promise to come with me on the morrow, presuming that
Master Odam could by any means be persuaded to keep her
company in the cart, as propriety demanded. Having
little doubt that Master Odam was entirely at his
wife's command, I looked upon that matter as settled,
and set off for Watchett, to see the grave of Lorna's
poor mother, and to hire a cart for the morrow.
And here (as so often happens with men) I succeeded
without any trouble or hindrance, where I had looked
for both of them, namely, in finding a suitable cart;
whereas the other matter, in which I could have
expected no difficulty, came very near to defeat me.
For when I heard that Lorna's father was the Earl of
Dugal--as Benita impressed upon me with a strong
enforcement, as much as to say, 'Who are you, young
man, to come even asking about her?'--then I never
thought but that everybody in Watchett town must know
all about the tombstone of the Countess of Dugal.
This, however, proved otherwise. For Lord Dugal had
never lived at Watchett Grange, as their place was
called; neither had his name become familiar as its
owner. Because the Grange had only devolved to him by
will, at the end of a long entail, when the last of the
Fitz-Pains died out; and though he liked the idea of
it, he had gone abroad, without taking seisin. And
upon news of his death, John Jones, a rich gentleman
from Llandaff, had taken possession, as next of right,
and hushed up all the story. And though, even at the
worst of times, a lady of high rank and wealth could
not be robbed, and as bad as murdered, and then buried
in a little place, without moving some excitement, yet
it had been given out, on purpose and with diligence,
that this was only a foreign lady travelling for her
health and pleasure, along the seacoast of England.
And as the poor thing never spoke, and several of her
servants and her baggage looked so foreign, and she
herself died in a collar of lace unlike any made in
England, all Watchett, without hesitation, pronounced
her to be a foreigner. And the English serving man
and maid, who might have cleared up everything, either
were bribed by Master Jones, or else decamped of their
own accord with the relics of the baggage. So the poor
Countess of Dugal, almost in sight of her own grand
house, was buried in an unknown grave, with her pair of
infants, without a plate, without a tombstone (worse
than all) without a tear, except from the hired Italian
woman.
Surely my poor Lorna came of an ill-starred family.
Now in spite of all this, if I had only taken Benita
with me, or even told her what I wished, and craved her
directions, there could have been no trouble. But I do
assure you that among the stupid people at Watchett
(compared with whom our folk of Oare, exceeding dense
though being, are as Hamlet against Dogberry) what with
one of them and another, and the firm conviction of all
the town that I could be come only to wrestle, I do
assure you (as I said before) that my wits almost went
out of me. And what vexed me yet more about it was,
that I saw my own mistake, in coming myself to seek out
the matter, instead of sending some unknown person.
For my face and form were known at that time (and still
are so) to nine people out of every ten living in forty
miles of me. Not through any excellence, or anything
of good desert, in either the one or the other, but
simply because folks will be fools on the rivalry of
wrestling. The art is a fine one in itself, and
demands a little wit of brain, as well as strength of
body; it binds the man who studies it to temperance,
and chastity, to self-respect, and most of all to an
even and sweet temper; for I have thrown stronger men
than myself (when I was a mere sapling, and before my
strength grew hard on me) through their loss of temper.
But though the art is an honest one, surely they who
excel therein have a right (like all the rest of
man-kind) to their own private life.
Be that either way--and I will not speak too strongly,
for fear of indulging my own annoyance--anyhow, all
Watchett town cared ten times as much to see John Ridd,
as to show him what he wanted. I was led to every
public-house, instead of to the churchyard; and twenty
tables were ready for me, in lieu of a single
gravestone. 'Zummerzett thou bee'st, Jan Ridd, and
Zummerzett thou shalt be. Thee carl theezell a
Davonsheer man! Whoy, thee lives in Zummerzett; and in
Zummerzett thee wast barn, lad.' And so it went on,
till I was weary; though very much obliged to them.
Dull and solid as I am, and with a wild duck waiting
for me at good Mistress Odam's, I saw that there was
nothing for it but to yield to these good people, and
prove me a man of Somerset, by eating a dinner at their
expense. As for the churchyard, none would hear of it;
and I grieved for broaching the matter.
But how was I to meet Lorna again, without having done
the thing of all things which I had promised to see to?
It would never do to tell her that so great was my
popularity, and so strong the desire to feed me, that I
could not attend to her mother. Least of all could I
say that every one in Watchett knew John Ridd; while
none had heard of the Countess of Dugal. And yet that
was about the truth, as I hinted very delicately to
Mistress Odam that evening. But she (being vexed about
her wild duck, and not having English ideas on the
matter of sport, and so on) made a poor unwitting face
at me. Nevertheless Master Odam restored me to my
self-respect; for he stared at me till I went to bed;
and he broke his hose with excitement. For being in
the leg-line myself, I wanted to know what the muscles
were of a man who turned a wheel all day. I had never
seen a treadmill (though they have one now at Exeter),
and it touched me much to learn whether it were good
exercise. And herein, from what I saw of Odam, I
incline to think that it does great harm; as moving the
muscles too much in a line, and without variety.
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