Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor by R. D. Blackmore (free ebooks romance novels txt) π
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- Author: R. D. Blackmore
Read book online Β«Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor by R. D. Blackmore (free ebooks romance novels txt) πΒ». Author - R. D. Blackmore
One day at the beginning of July, I came home from mowing about noon, or a little later, to fetch some cider for all of us, and to eat a morsel of bacon. For mowing was no joke that year, the summer being wonderfully wet (even for our wet country), and the swathe falling heavier over the scythe than ever I could remember it. We were drenched with rain almost every day; but the mowing must be done somehow; and we must trust to God for the haymaking.
In the courtyard I saw a little cart, with iron brakes underneath it, such as fastidious people use to deaden the jolting of the road; but few men under a lord or baronet would be so particular. Therefore I wondered who our noble visitor could be. But when I entered the kitchen-place, brushing up my hair for somebody, behold it was no one greater than our Annie, with my godson in her arms, and looking pale and tear-begone. And at first she could not speak to me. But presently having sat down a little, and received much praise for her baby, she smiled and blushed, and found her tongue as if she had never gone from us.
'How natural it all looks again! Oh, I love this old kitchen so! Baby dear, only look at it wid him pitty, pitty eyes, and him tongue out of his mousy! But who put the flour-riddle up there. And look at the pestle and mortar, and rust I declare in the patty pans! And a book, positively a dirty book, where the clean skewers ought to hang! Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie!'
'You may just as well cease lamenting,' I said, 'for you can't alter Lizzie's nature, and you will only make mother uncomfortable, and perhaps have a quarrel with Lizzie, who is proud as Punch of her housekeeping.'
'She,' cried Annie, with all the contempt that could be compressed in a syllable. 'Well, John, no doubt you are right about it. I will try not to notice things. But it is a hard thing, after all my care, to see everything going to ruin. But what can be expected of a girl who knows all the kings of Carthage?'
'There were no kings of Carthage, Annie. They were called, why let me seeβthey were calledβoh, something else.'
'Never mind what they were called,' said Annie; 'will they cook our dinner for us? But now, John, I am in such trouble. All this talk is make-believe.'
'Don't you cry, my dear: don't cry, my darling sister,' I answered, as she dropped into the worn place of the settle, and bent above her infant, rocking as if both their hearts were one: 'don't you know, Annie, I cannot tell, but I know, or at least I mean, I have heard the men of experience say, it is so bad for the baby.'
'Perhaps I know that as well as you do, John,' said Annie, looking up at me with a gleam of her old laughing: 'but how can I help crying; I am in such trouble.'
'Tell me what it is, my dear. Any grief of yours will vex me greatly; but I will try to bear it.'
'Then, John, it is just this. Tom has gone off with the rebels; and you must, oh, you must go after him.'
CHAPTER LXIII JOHN IS WORSTED BY THE WOMEN
Moved as I was by Annie's tears, and gentle style of coaxing, and most of all by my love for her, I yet declared that I could not go, and leave our house and homestead, far less my dear mother and Lizzie, at the mercy of the merciless Doones.
'Is that all your objection, John?' asked Annie, in her quick panting way: 'would you go but for that, John?'
'Now,' I said, 'be in no such hurry'βfor while I was gradually yielding, I liked to pass it through my fingers, as if my fingers shaped it: 'there are many things to be thought about, and many ways of viewing it.'
'Oh, you never can have loved Lorna! No wonder you gave her up so! John, you can love nobody, but your oat-ricks, and your hay-ricks.'
'Sister mine, because I rant not, neither rave of what I feel, can you be so shallow as to dream that I feel nothing? What is your love for Tom Faggus? What is your love for your baby (pretty darling as he is) to compare with such a love as for ever dwells with me? Because I do not prate of it; because it is beyond me, not only to express, but even form to my own heart in thoughts; because I do not shape my face, and would scorn to play to it, as a thing of acting, and lay it out before you, are you fools enough to thinkβ' but here I stopped, having said more than was usual with me.
'I am very sorry, John. Dear John, I am so sorry. What a shallow fool I am!'
'I will go seek your husband,' I said, to change the subject, for even to Annie I would not lay open all my heart about Lorna: 'but only upon condition that you ensure this house and people from the Doones meanwhile. Even for the sake of Tom, I cannot leave all helpless. The oat-ricks and the hay-ricks, which are my only love, they are welcome to make cinders of. But I will not have mother treated so; nor even little Lizzie, although you scorn your sister so.'
'Oh, John, I do think you are the hardest, as well as the softest of all the men I know. Not even a woman's bitter word but what you pay her out for. Will you never understand that we are not like you, John? We say all sorts of spiteful things, without a bit of meaning. John, for God's sake fetch Tom home; and then revile me as you please, and I will kneel and thank you.'
'I will not promise to fetch him home,' I answered, being ashamed of myself for having lost command so: 'but I will promise to do my best, if we can only hit on a plan for leaving mother harmless.'
Annie thought for a little while, trying to gather her smooth clear brow into maternal wrinkles, and then she looked at her child, and said, 'I will risk it, for daddy's sake, darling; you precious soul, for daddy's sake.' I asked her what she was going to risk. She would not tell me; but took upper hand, and saw to my cider-cans and bacon, and went from corner to cupboard, exactly as if she had never been married; only without an apron on. And then she said, 'Now to your mowers, John; and make the most of this fine afternoon; kiss your godson before you go.' And I, being used to obey her, in little things of that sort, kissed the baby, and took my cans, and went back to my scythe again.
By the time I came home it was dark night, and pouring again with a foggy rain, such as we have in
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