LORNA BEGINS HER STORY
[Illustration: 160.jpg Illustrated Capital]
“I cannot go through all my thoughts so as to make them clear to you,
nor have I ever dwelt on things, to shape a story of them. I know not
where the beginning was, nor where the middle ought to be, nor even how
at the present time I feel, or think, or ought to think. If I look for
help to those around me, who should tell me right and wrong (being older
and much wiser), I meet sometimes with laughter, and at other times with
anger.
“There are but two in the world who ever listen and try to help me; one
of them is my grandfather, and the other is a man of wisdom, whom we
call the Counsellor. My grandfather, Sir Ensor Doone, is very old and
harsh of manner (except indeed to me); he seems to know what is right
and wrong, but not to want to think of it. The Counsellor, on the other
hand, though full of life and subtleties, treats my questions as of
play, and not gravely worth his while to answer, unless he can make wit
of them.
“And among the women there are none with whom I can hold converse, since
my Aunt Sabina died, who took such pains to teach me. She was a lady of
high repute and lofty ways, and learning, but grieved and harassed more
and more by the coarseness, and the violence, and the ignorance around
her. In vain she strove, from year to year, to make the young men
hearken, to teach them what became their birth, and give them sense of
honour. It was her favourite word, poor thing! and they called her 'Old
Aunt Honour.' Very often she used to say that I was her only comfort,
and I am sure she was my only one; and when she died it was more to me
than if I had lost a mother.
“For I have no remembrance now of father or of mother, although they say
that my father was the eldest son of Sir Ensor Doone, and the bravest
and the best of them. And so they call me heiress to this little realm
of violence; and in sorry sport sometimes, I am their Princess or their
Queen.
“Many people living here, as I am forced to do, would perhaps be
very happy, and perhaps I ought to be so. We have a beauteous valley,
sheltered from the cold of winter and power of the summer sun,
untroubled also by the storms and mists that veil the mountains;
although I must acknowledge that it is apt to rain too often. The grass
moreover is so fresh, and the brook so bright and lively, and flowers
of so many hues come after one another that no one need be dull, if only
left alone with them.
“And so in the early days perhaps, when morning breathes around me, and
the sun is going upward, and light is playing everywhere, I am not so
far beside them all as to live in shadow. But when the evening gathers
down, and the sky is spread with sadness, and the day has spent itself;
then a cloud of lonely trouble falls, like night, upon me. I cannot see
the things I quest for of a world beyond me; I cannot join the peace
and quiet of the depth above me; neither have I any pleasure in the
brightness of the stars.
“What I want to know is something none of them can tell me--what am
I, and why set here, and when shall I be with them? I see that you are
surprised a little at this my curiosity. Perhaps such questions never
spring in any wholesome spirit. But they are in the depths of mine, and
I cannot be quit of them.
“Meantime, all around me is violence and robbery, coarse delight and
savage pain, reckless joke and hopeless death. Is it any wonder that I
cannot sink with these, that I cannot so forget my soul, as to live the
life of brutes, and die the death more horrible because it dreams of
waking? There is none to lead me forward, there is none to teach me
right; young as I am, I live beneath a curse that lasts for ever.”
Here Lorna broke down for awhile, and cried so very piteously, that
doubting of my knowledge, and of any power to comfort, I did my best to
hold my peace, and tried to look very cheerful. Then thinking that might
be bad manners, I went to wipe her eyes for her.
[Illustration: 162.jpg I went to wipe her eyes]
“Master Ridd,” she began again, “I am both ashamed and vexed at my own
childish folly. But you, who have a mother, who thinks (you say) so
much of you, and sisters, and a quiet home; you cannot tell (it is not
likely) what a lonely nature is. How it leaps in mirth sometimes, with
only heaven touching it; and how it falls away desponding, when the
dreary weight creeps on.
“It does not happen many times that I give way like this; more shame
now to do so, when I ought to entertain you. Sometimes I am so full of
anger, that I dare not trust to speech, at things they cannot hide from
me; and perhaps you would be much surprised that reckless men would care
so much to elude a young girl's knowledge. They used to boast to Aunt
Sabina of pillage and of cruelty, on purpose to enrage her; but they
never boast to me. It even makes me smile sometimes to see how
awkwardly they come and offer for temptation to me shining packets,
half concealed, of ornaments and finery, of rings, or chains, or jewels,
lately belonging to other people.
[Illustration: 163.jpg Jewels lately belonging to others]
“But when I try to search the past, to get a sense of what befell me ere
my own perception formed; to feel back for the lines of childhood, as
a trace of gossamer, then I only know that nought lives longer than God
wills it. So may after sin go by, for we are children always, as the
Counsellor has told me; so may we, beyond the clouds, seek this infancy
of life, and never find its memory.
“But I am talking now of things which never come across me when any work
is toward. It might have been a good thing for me to have had a father
to beat these rovings out of me; or a mother to make a home, and teach
me how to manage it. For, being left with none--I think; and nothing
ever comes of it. Nothing, I mean, which I can grasp and have with any
surety; nothing but faint images, and wonderment, and wandering. But
often, when I am neither searching back into remembrance, nor asking of
my parents, but occupied by trifles, something like a sign, or message,
or a token of some meaning, seems to glance upon me. Whether from the
rustling wind, or sound of distant music, or the singing of a bird, like
the sun on snow it strikes me with a pain of pleasure.
“And often when I wake at night, and listen to the silence, or wander
far from people in the grayness of the evening, or stand and look at
quiet water having shadows over it, some vague image seems to hover on
the skirt of vision, ever changing place and outline, ever flitting as I
follow. This so moves and hurries me, in the eagerness and longing, that
straightway all my chance is lost; and memory, scared like a wild bird,
flies. Or am I as a child perhaps, chasing a flown cageling, who among
the branches free plays and peeps at the offered cage (as a home not to
be urged on him), and means to take his time of coming, if he comes at
all?
“Often too I wonder at the odds of fortune, which made me (helpless as
I am, and fond of peace and reading) the heiress of this mad domain, the
sanctuary of unholiness. It is not likely that I shall have much power
of authority; and yet the Counsellor creeps up to be my Lord of the
Treasury; and his son aspires to my hand, as of a Royal alliance. Well,
'honour among thieves,' they say; and mine is the first honour: although
among decent folk perhaps, honesty is better.
“We should not be so quiet here, and safe from interruption but that I
have begged one privilege rather than commanded it. This was that the
lower end, just this narrowing of the valley, where it is most hard to
come at, might be looked upon as mine, except for purposes of guard.
Therefore none beside the sentries ever trespass on me here, unless it
be my grandfather, or the Counsellor or Carver.
“By your face, Master Ridd, I see that you have heard of Carver Doone.
For strength and courage and resource he bears the first repute among
us, as might well be expected from the son of the Counsellor. But he
differs from his father, in being very hot and savage, and quite free
from argument. The Counsellor, who is my uncle, gives his son the best
advice; commending all the virtues, with eloquence and wisdom; yet
himself abstaining from them accurately and impartially.
“You must be tired of this story, and the time I take to think, and
the weakness of my telling; but my life from day to day shows so little
variance. Among the riders there is none whose safe return I watch
for--I mean none more than other--and indeed there seems no risk, all
are now so feared of us. Neither of the old men is there whom I
can revere or love (except alone my grandfather, whom I love with
trembling): neither of the women any whom I like to deal with, unless it
be a little maiden whom I saved from starving.
[Illustration: 165.jpg Gwenny Carfax]
“A little Cornish girl she is, and shaped in western manner, not so very
much less in width than if you take her lengthwise. Her father seems to
have been a miner, a Cornishman (as she declares) of more than average
excellence, and better than any two men to be found in Devonshire, or
any four in Somerset. Very few things can have been beyond his power of
performance, and yet he left his daughter to starve upon a peat-rick.
She does not know how this was done, and looks upon it as a mystery,
the meaning of which will some day be clear, and redound to her father's
honour. His name was Simon Carfax, and he came as the captain of a gang
from one of the Cornish stannaries. Gwenny Carfax, my young maid, well
remembers how her father was brought up from Cornwall. Her mother had
been buried, just a week or so before; and he was sad about it, and had
been off his work, and was ready for another job. Then people came to
him by night, and said that he must want a change, and everybody lost
their wives, and work was the way to mend it. So what with grief,
and over-thought, and the inside of a square bottle, Gwenny says they
brought him off, to become a mighty captain, and choose the country
round. The last she saw of him was this, that he went down a ladder
somewhere on the wilds of Exmoor, leaving her with bread and cheese, and
his travelling-hat to see to. And from that day to this he never came
above the ground again; so far as we can hear of.
“But Gwenny, holding to his hat, and having eaten the bread and cheese
(when he came no more to help her), dwelt three days near the mouth of
the hole; and then it was closed over, the while that she was sleeping.
With weakness and with want of food, she lost herself distressfully, and
went away for miles or more, and lay upon a peat-rick, to die before the
ravens.
“That very day I chanced to return from Aunt Sabina's dying-place; for
she would not die in Glen Doone, she said, lest the angels feared to
come for her; and so she was taken to a cottage in a lonely valley. I
was allowed to visit her, for even we durst not refuse the wishes of the
dying; and if a priest had been desired, we should have made bold with
him. Returning very sorrowful, and caring now for nothing, I found this
little stray thing lying, her arms upon her, and not a sign of life,
except the way that she was biting. Black root-stuff was in her mouth,
and a piece of dirty sheep's wool, and at her feet an old egg-shell of
some bird of the moorland.
“I tried to raise her, but she was too square and heavy for me; and so
I put food in her mouth, and left her to do right with it. And this she
did in a little time; for the victuals were very choice and rare, being
what I had taken over to tempt poor Aunt Sabina. Gwenny ate them without
delay, and then was ready to eat the basket and the ware that contained
them.
“Gwenny took me for an angel--though I am little like one, as you see,
Master Ridd; and she followed me, expecting that I would open wings and
fly when we came to any difficulty. I brought her home with me, so far
as this can be a home, and she made herself my sole attendant, without
so much as asking me. She has beaten two or three other girls, who used
to wait upon me, until they are afraid to come near the house of my
grandfather. She seems to have no kind of fear even of our roughest men;
and yet she looks with reverence and awe upon the Counsellor. As for the
wickedness, and theft, and revelry around her, she says it is no concern
of hers, and they know their own business best. By this way of regarding
men she has won upon our riders, so that she is almost free from all
control of place and season, and is allowed to pass where none even of
the youths may go. Being so wide, and short, and flat, she has none to
pay her compliments; and, were there any, she would scorn them, as not
being Cornishmen. Sometimes she wanders far, by moonlight, on the moors
and up the rivers, to give her father (as she says) another chance of
finding her, and she comes back not a wit defeated, or discouraged, or
depressed, but confident that he is only waiting for the proper time.
“Herein she sets me good example of a patience and contentment hard for
me to imitate. Oftentimes I am vexed by things I cannot meddle with, yet
which cannot be kept from me, that I am at the point of flying from this
dreadful valley, and risking all that can betide me in the unknown outer
world. If it were not for my grandfather, I would have done so long ago;
but I cannot bear that he should die with no gentle hand to comfort him;
and I fear to think of the conflict that must ensue for the government,
if there be a disputed succession.
“Ah me! We are to be pitied greatly, rather than condemned, by people
whose things we have taken from them; for I have read, and seem almost
to understand about it, that there are places on the earth where gentle
peace, and love of home, and knowledge of one's neighbours prevail, and
are, with reason, looked for as the usual state of things. There honest
folk may go to work in the glory of the sunrise, with hope of coming
home again quite safe in the quiet evening, and finding all their
children; and even in the darkness they have no fear of lying down, and
dropping off to slumber, and hearken to the wind of night, not as to an
enemy trying to find entrance, but a friend who comes to tell the value
of their comfort.
“Of all this golden ease I hear, but never saw the like of it; and,
haply, I shall never do so, being born to turbulence. Once, indeed, I
had the offer of escape, and kinsman's aid, and high place in the gay,
bright world; and yet I was not tempted much, or, at least, dared not to
trust it. And it ended very sadly, so dreadfully that I even shrink from
telling you about it; for that one terror changed my life, in a moment,
at a blow, from childhood and from thoughts of play and commune with the
flowers and trees, to a sense of death and darkness, and a heavy weight
of earth. Be content now, Master Ridd ask me nothing more about it, so
your sleep be sounder.”
But I, John Ridd, being young and new, and very fond of hearing things
to make my blood to tingle, had no more of manners than to urge poor
Lorna onwards, hoping, perhaps, in depth of heart, that she might have
to hold by me, when the worst came to the worst of it. Therefore she
went on again.
[Illustration: 168.jpg Tailpiece]