JOHN IS BEWITCHED
[Illustration: 137.jpg Illustrated Capital]
To forget one's luck of life, to forget the cark of care and withering
of young fingers; not to feel, or not be moved by, all the change of
thought and heart, from large young heat to the sinewy lines and dry
bones of old age--this is what I have to do ere ever I can make you
know (even as a dream is known) how I loved my Lorna. I myself can never
know; never can conceive, or treat it as a thing of reason, never can
behold myself dwelling in the midst of it, and think that this was I;
neither can I wander far from perpetual thought of it. Perhaps I have
two farrows of pigs ready for the chapman; perhaps I have ten stones
of wool waiting for the factor. It is all the same. I look at both, and
what I say to myself is this: “Which would Lorna choose of them?” Of
course, I am a fool for this; any man may call me so, and I will not
quarrel with him, unless he guess my secret. Of course, I fetch my wit,
if it be worth the fetching, back again to business. But there my heart
is and must be; and all who like to try can cheat me, except upon parish
matters.
That week I could do little more than dream and dream and rove about,
seeking by perpetual change to find the way back to myself. I cared
not for the people round me, neither took delight in victuals; but made
believe to eat and drink and blushed at any questions. And being called
the master now, head-farmer, and chief yeoman, it irked me much that any
one should take advantage of me; yet everybody did so as soon as ever it
was known that my wits were gone moon-raking. For that was the way
they looked at it, not being able to comprehend the greatness and the
loftiness. Neither do I blame them much; for the wisest thing is to
laugh at people when we cannot understand them. I, for my part, took no
notice; but in my heart despised them as beings of a lesser nature, who
never had seen Lorna. Yet I was vexed, and rubbed myself, when John Fry
spread all over the farm, and even at the shoeing forge, that a mad dog
had come and bitten me, from the other side of Mallond.
This seems little to me now; and so it might to any one; but, at the
time, it worked me up to a fever of indignity. To make a mad dog of
Lorna, to compare all my imaginings (which were strange, I do assure
you--the faculty not being apt to work), to count the raising of my soul
no more than hydrophobia! All this acted on me so, that I gave John Fry
the soundest threshing that ever a sheaf of good corn deserved, or a
bundle of tares was blessed with. Afterwards he went home, too tired
to tell his wife the meaning of it; but it proved of service to both of
them, and an example for their children.
Now the climate of this country is--so far as I can make of it--to throw
no man into extremes; and if he throw himself so far, to pluck him
back by change of weather and the need of looking after things. Lest we
should be like the Southerns, for whom the sky does everything, and men
sit under a wall and watch both food and fruit come beckoning. Their sky
is a mother to them; but ours a good stepmother to us--fearing to
hurt by indulgence, and knowing that severity and change of mood are
wholesome.
The spring being now too forward, a check to it was needful; and in the
early part of March there came a change of weather. All the young growth
was arrested by a dry wind from the east, which made both face
and fingers burn when a man was doing ditching. The lilacs and the
woodbines, just crowding forth in little tufts, close kernelling their
blossom, were ruffled back, like a sleeve turned up, and nicked with
brown at the corners. In the hedges any man, unless his eyes were very
dull, could see the mischief doing. The russet of the young elm-bloom
was fain to be in its scale again; but having pushed forth, there must
be, and turn to a tawny colour. The hangers of the hazel, too, having
shed their dust to make the nuts, did not spread their little combs and
dry them, as they ought to do; but shrivelled at the base and fell, as
if a knife had cut them. And more than all to notice was (at least about
the hedges) the shuddering of everything and the shivering sound among
them toward the feeble sun; such as we make to a poor fireplace when
several doors are open. Sometimes I put my face to warm against the
soft, rough maple-stem, which feels like the foot of a red deer; but the
pitiless east wind came through all, and took and shook the caved
hedge aback till its knees were knocking together, and nothing could
be shelter. Then would any one having blood, and trying to keep at home
with it, run to a sturdy tree and hope to eat his food behind it, and
look for a little sun to come and warm his feet in the shelter. And if
it did he might strike his breast, and try to think he was warmer.
But when a man came home at night, after long day's labour, knowing
that the days increased, and so his care should multiply; still he found
enough of light to show him what the day had done against him in
his garden. Every ridge of new-turned earth looked like an old man's
muscles, honeycombed, and standing out void of spring, and powdery.
Every plant that had rejoiced in passing such a winter now was cowering,
turned away, unfit to meet the consequence. Flowing sap had stopped its
course; fluted lines showed want of food, and if you pinched the topmost
spray, there was no rebound or firmness.
We think a good deal, in a quiet way, when people ask us about them--of
some fine, upstanding pear-trees, grafted by my grandfather, who had
been very greatly respected. And he got those grafts by sheltering a
poor Italian soldier, in the time of James the First, a man who never
could do enough to show his grateful memories. How he came to our place
is a very difficult story, which I never understood rightly, having
heard it from my mother. At any rate, there the pear-trees were, and
there they are to this very day; and I wish every one could taste their
fruit, old as they are, and rugged.
Now these fine trees had taken advantage of the west winds, and the
moisture, and the promise of the spring time, so as to fill the tips of
the spray-wood and the rowels all up the branches with a crowd of eager
blossom. Not that they were yet in bloom, nor even showing whiteness,
only that some of the cones were opening at the side of the cap which
pinched them; and there you might count perhaps, a dozen nobs, like very
little buttons, but grooved, and lined, and huddling close, to make room
for one another. And among these buds were gray-green blades, scarce
bigger than a hair almost, yet curving so as if their purpose was to
shield the blossom.
Other of the spur-points, standing on the older wood where the sap was
not so eager, had not burst their tunic yet, but were flayed and flaked
with light, casting off the husk of brown in three-cornered patches, as
I have seen a Scotchman's plaid, or as his legs shows through it. These
buds, at a distance, looked as if the sky had been raining cream upon
them.
Now all this fair delight to the eyes, and good promise to the palate,
was marred and baffled by the wind and cutting of the night-frosts. The
opening cones were struck with brown, in between the button buds, and
on the scapes that shielded them; while the foot part of the cover hung
like rags, peeled back, and quivering. And there the little stalk of
each, which might have been a pear, God willing, had a ring around its
base, and sought a chance to drop and die. The others which had not
opened comb, but only prepared to do it, were a little better off, but
still very brown and unkid, and shrivelling in doubt of health, and
neither peart nor lusty.
Now this I have not told because I know the way to do it, for that I do
not, neither yet have seen a man who did know. It is wonderful how
we look at things, and never think to notice them; and I am as bad as
anybody, unless the thing to be observed is a dog, or a horse, or a
maiden. And the last of those three I look at, somehow, without knowing
that I take notice, and greatly afraid to do it, only I knew afterwards
(when the time of life was in me), not indeed, what the maiden was like,
but how she differed from others.
Yet I have spoken about the spring, and the failure of fair promise,
because I took it to my heart as token of what would come to me in the
budding of my years and hope. And even then, being much possessed, and
full of a foolish melancholy, I felt a sad delight at being doomed to
blight and loneliness; not but that I managed still (when mother
was urgent upon me) to eat my share of victuals, and cuff a man for
laziness, and see that a ploughshare made no leaps, and sleep of a night
without dreaming. And my mother half-believing, in her fondness and
affection, that what the parish said was true about a mad dog having
bitten me, and yet arguing that it must be false (because God would have
prevented him), my mother gave me little rest, when I was in the room
with her. Not that she worried me with questions, nor openly regarded
me with any unusual meaning, but that I knew she was watching slyly
whenever I took a spoon up; and every hour or so she managed to place a
pan of water by me, quite as if by accident, and sometimes even to spill
a little upon my shoe or coat-sleeve. But Betty Muxworthy was worst;
for, having no fear about my health, she made a villainous joke of it,
and used to rush into the kitchen, barking like a dog, and panting,
exclaiming that I had bitten her, and justice she would have on me, if
it cost her a twelvemonth's wages. And she always took care to do this
thing just when I had crossed my legs in the corner after supper, and
leaned my head against the oven, to begin to think of Lorna.
However, in all things there is comfort, if we do not look too hard
for it; and now I had much satisfaction, in my uncouth state, from
labouring, by the hour together, at the hedging and the ditching,
meeting the bitter wind face to face, feeling my strength increase, and
hoping that some one would be proud of it. In the rustling rush of
every gust, in the graceful bend of every tree, even in the “lords and
ladies,” clumped in the scoops of the hedgerow, and most of all in the
soft primrose, wrung by the wind, but stealing back, and smiling when
the wrath was passed--in all of these, and many others there was aching
ecstasy, delicious pang of Lorna.
But however cold the weather was, and however hard the wind blew, one
thing (more than all the rest) worried and perplexed me. This was, that
I could not settle, turn and twist as I might, how soon I ought to go
again upon a visit to Glen Doone. For I liked not at all the falseness
of it (albeit against murderers), the creeping out of sight, and hiding,
and feeling as a spy might. And even more than this. I feared how Lorna
might regard it; whether I might seem to her a prone and blunt intruder,
a country youth not skilled in manners, as among the quality, even when
they rob us. For I was not sure myself, but that it might be very bad
manners to go again too early without an invitation; and my hands and
face were chapped so badly by the bitter wind, that Lorna might count
them unsightly things, and wish to see no more of them.
However, I could not bring myself to consult any one upon this point, at
least in our own neighbourhood, nor even to speak of it near home. But
the east wind holding through the month, my hands and face growing worse
and worse, and it having occurred to me by this time that possibly Lorna
might have chaps, if she came abroad at all, and so might like to talk
about them and show her little hands to me, I resolved to take another
opinion, so far as might be upon this matter, without disclosing the
circumstances.
Now the wisest person in all our parts was reckoned to be a certain wise
woman, well known all over Exmoor by the name of Mother Melldrum. Her
real name was Maple Durham, as I learned long afterwards; and she came
of an ancient family, but neither of Devon nor Somerset. Nevertheless
she was quite at home with our proper modes of divination; and knowing
that we liked them best--as each man does his own religion--she would
always practise them for the people of the country. And all the while,
she would let us know that she kept a higher and nobler mode for those
who looked down upon this one, not having been bred and born to it.
[Illustration: 142.jpg Mother Melldrum]
Mother Melldrum had two houses, or rather she had none at all, but two
homes wherein to find her, according to the time of year. In summer she
lived in a pleasant cave, facing the cool side of the hill, far inland
near Hawkridge and close above Tarr-steps, a wonderful crossing of Barle
river, made (as everybody knows) by Satan, for a wager. But throughout
the winter, she found sea-air agreeable, and a place where things could
be had on credit, and more occasion of talking. Not but what she could
have credit (for every one was afraid of her) in the neighbourhood of
Tarr-steps; only there was no one handy owning things worth taking.
Therefore, at the fall of the leaf, when the woods grew damp and
irksome, the wise woman always set her face to the warmer cliffs of the
Channel; where shelter was, and dry fern bedding, and folk to be seen in
the distance, from a bank upon which the sun shone. And there, as I
knew from our John Fry (who had been to her about rheumatism, and sheep
possessed with an evil spirit, and warts on the hand of his son, young
John), any one who chose might find her, towards the close of a winter
day, gathering sticks and brown fern for fuel, and talking to herself
the while, in a hollow stretch behind the cliffs; which foreigners, who
come and go without seeing much of Exmoor, have called the Valley of
Rocks.
[Illustration: 143.jpg Tarr-Steps]
This valley, or goyal, as we term it, being small for a valley, lies to
the west of Linton, about a mile from the town perhaps, and away towards
Ley Manor. Our homefolk always call it the Danes, or the Denes, which is
no more, they tell me, than a hollow place, even as the word “den” is.
However, let that pass, for I know very little about it; but the place
itself is a pretty one, though nothing to frighten anybody, unless he
hath lived in a gallipot. It is a green rough-sided hollow, bending
at the middle, touched with stone at either crest, and dotted here and
there with slabs in and out the brambles. On the right hand is an upward
crag, called by some the Castle, easy enough to scale, and giving great
view of the Channel. Facing this, from the inland side and the elbow of
the valley, a queer old pile of rock arises, bold behind one another,
and quite enough to affright a man, if it only were ten times larger.
This is called the Devil's Cheese-ring, or the Devil's Cheese-knife,
which mean the same thing, as our fathers were used to eat their cheese
from a scoop; and perhaps in old time the upmost rock (which has fallen
away since I knew it) was like to such an implement, if Satan eat cheese
untoasted.
But all the middle of this valley was a place to rest in; to sit and
think that troubles were not, if we would not make them. To know the sea
outside the hills, but never to behold it; only by the sound of waves to
pity sailors labouring. Then to watch the sheltered sun, coming warmly
round the turn, like a guest expected, full of gentle glow and gladness,
casting shadow far away as a thing to hug itself, and awakening life
from dew, and hope from every spreading bud. And then to fall asleep and
dream that the fern was all asparagus.
Alas, I was too young in those days much to care for creature comforts,
or to let pure palate have things that would improve it. Anything went
down with me, as it does with most of us. Too late we know the good from
bad; the knowledge is no pleasure then; being memory's medicine rather
than the wine of hope.
Now Mother Melldrum kept her winter in this vale of rocks, sheltering
from the wind and rain within the Devil's Cheese-ring, which added
greatly to her fame because all else, for miles around, were afraid to
go near it after dark, or even on a gloomy day. Under eaves of lichened
rock she had a winding passage, which none that ever I knew of durst
enter but herself. And to this place I went to seek her, in spite of all
misgivings, upon a Sunday in Lenten season, when the sheep were folded.
Our parson (as if he had known my intent) had preached a beautiful
sermon about the Witch of Endor, and the perils of them that meddle
wantonly with the unseen Powers; and therein he referred especially to
the strange noise in the neighbourhood, and upbraided us for want of
faith, and many other backslidings. We listened to him very earnestly,
for we like to hear from our betters about things that are beyond us,
and to be roused up now and then, like sheep with a good dog after them,
who can pull some wool without biting. Nevertheless we could not see how
our want of faith could have made that noise, especially at night time,
notwithstanding which we believed it, and hoped to do a little better.
And so we all came home from church; and most of the people dined with
us, as they always do on Sundays, because of the distance to go home,
with only words inside them. The parson, who always sat next to mother,
was afraid that he might have vexed us, and would not have the best
piece of meat, according to his custom. But soon we put him at his ease,
and showed him we were proud of him; and then he made no more to do, but
accepted the best of the sirloin.
[Illustration: 145.jpg The Devil's Cheese-wring]