CHAPTER IX

THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME

[Illustration: 070.jpg Illustrated Capital]

I can assure you, and tell no lie (as John Fry always used to say, when

telling his very largest), that I scrambled back to the mouth of that

pit as if the evil one had been after me. And sorely I repented now of

all my boyish folly, or madness it might well be termed, in venturing,

with none to help, and nothing to compel me, into that accursed valley.

Once let me get out, thinks I, and if ever I get in again, without being

cast in by neck and by crop, I will give our new-born donkey leave to

set up for my schoolmaster.

How I kept that resolution we shall see hereafter. It is enough for me

now to tell how I escaped from the den that night. First I sat down

in the little opening which Lorna had pointed out to me, and wondered

whether she had meant, as bitterly occurred to me, that I should run

down into the pit, and be drowned, and give no more trouble. But in less

than half a minute I was ashamed of that idea, and remembered how she

was vexed to think that even a loach should lose his life. And then

I said to myself, “Now surely she would value me more than a thousand

loaches; and what she said must be quite true about the way out of this

horrible place.”

Therefore I began to search with the utmost care and diligence, although

my teeth were chattering, and all my bones beginning to ache with the

chilliness and the wetness. Before very long the moon appeared, over the

edge of the mountain, and among the trees at the top of it; and then I

espied rough steps, and rocky, made as if with a sledge-hammer, narrow,

steep, and far asunder, scooped here and there in the side of the

entrance, and then round a bulge of the cliff, like the marks upon a

great brown loaf, where a hungry child has picked at it. And higher

up, where the light of the moon shone broader upon the precipice, there

seemed to be a rude broken track, like the shadow of a crooked stick

thrown upon a house-wall.

Herein was small encouragement; and at first I was minded to lie down

and die; but it seemed to come amiss to me. God has His time for all

of us; but He seems to advertise us when He does not mean to do it.

Moreover, I saw a movement of lights at the head of the valley, as if

lanthorns were coming after me, and the nimbleness given thereon to my

heels was in front of all meditation.

Straightway I set foot in the lowest stirrup (as I might almost call

it), and clung to the rock with my nails, and worked to make a jump into

the second stirrup. And I compassed that too, with the aid of my stick;

although, to tell you the truth, I was not at that time of life so agile

as boys of smaller frame are, for my size was growing beyond my years,

and the muscles not keeping time with it, and the joints of my bones not

closely hinged, with staring at one another. But the third step-hole was

the hardest of all, and the rock swelled out on me over my breast, and

there seemed to be no attempting it, until I espied a good stout rope

hanging in a groove of shadow, and just managed to reach the end of it.

How I clomb up, and across the clearing, and found my way home through

the Bagworthy forest, is more than I can remember now, for I took all

the rest of it then as a dream, by reason of perfect weariness. And

indeed it was quite beyond my hopes to tell so much as I have told, for

at first beginning to set it down, it was all like a mist before me.

Nevertheless, some parts grew clearer, as one by one I remembered them,

having taken a little soft cordial, because the memory frightens me.

For the toil of the water, and danger of labouring up the long cascade

or rapids, and then the surprise of the fair young maid, and terror of

the murderers, and desperation of getting away--all these are much to

me even now, when I am a stout churchwarden, and sit by the side of my

fire, after going through many far worse adventures, which I will tell,

God willing. Only the labour of writing is such (especially so as to

construe, and challenge a reader on parts of speech, and hope to be even

with him); that by this pipe which I hold in my hand I ever expect to be

beaten, as in the days when old Doctor Twiggs, if I made a bad stroke

in my exercise, shouted aloud with a sour joy, “John Ridd, sirrah, down

with your small-clothes!”

Let that be as it may, I deserved a good beating that night, after

making such a fool of myself, and grinding good fustian to pieces. But

when I got home, all the supper was in, and the men sitting at the white

table, and mother and Annie and Lizzie near by, all eager, and offering

to begin (except, indeed, my mother, who was looking out at the

doorway), and by the fire was Betty Muxworthy, scolding, and cooking,

and tasting her work, all in a breath, as a man would say. I looked

through the door from the dark by the wood-stack, and was half of a mind

to stay out like a dog, for fear of the rating and reckoning; but the

way my dear mother was looking about and the browning of the sausages

got the better of me.

[Illustration: 072.jpg John Ridd at Supper]

But nobody could get out of me where I had been all the day and evening;

although they worried me never so much, and longed to shake me to

pieces, especially Betty Muxworthy, who never could learn to let well

alone. Not that they made me tell any lies, although it would have

served them right almost for intruding on other people's business; but

that I just held my tongue, and ate my supper rarely, and let them try

their taunts and jibes, and drove them almost wild after supper, by

smiling exceeding knowingly. And indeed I could have told them things,

as I hinted once or twice; and then poor Betty and our little Lizzie

were so mad with eagerness, that between them I went into the fire,

being thoroughly overcome with laughter and my own importance.

Now what the working of my mind was (if, indeed it worked at all, and

did not rather follow suit of body) it is not in my power to say; only

that the result of my adventure in the Doone Glen was to make me dream

a good deal of nights, which I had never done much before, and to drive

me, with tenfold zeal and purpose, to the practice of bullet-shooting.

Not that I ever expected to shoot the Doone family, one by one, or even

desired to do so, for my nature is not revengeful; but that it seemed

to be somehow my business to understand the gun, as a thing I must be at

home with.

I could hit the barn-door now capitally well with the Spanish

match-lock, and even with John Fry's blunderbuss, at ten good land-yards

distance, without any rest for my fusil. And what was very wrong of me,

though I did not see it then, I kept John Fry there, to praise my shots,

from dinner-time often until the grey dusk, while he all the time should

have been at work spring-ploughing upon the farm. And for that matter so

should I have been, or at any rate driving the horses; but John was

by no means loath to be there, instead of holding the plough-tail. And

indeed, one of our old sayings is,--

“For pleasure's sake I would liefer wet,

Than ha' ten lumps of gold for each one of my sweat.”

And again, which is not a bad proverb, though unthrifty and unlike a

Scotsman's,--

“God makes the wheat grow greener,

While farmer be at his dinner.”

And no Devonshire man, or Somerset either (and I belong to both of

them), ever thinks of working harder than God likes to see him.

Nevertheless, I worked hard at the gun, and by the time that I had

sent all the church-roof gutters, so far as I honestly could cut them,

through the red pine-door, I began to long for a better tool that would

make less noise and throw straighter. But the sheep-shearing came and

the hay-season next, and then the harvest of small corn, and the digging

of the root called “batata” (a new but good thing in our neighbourhood,

which our folk have made into “taties”), and then the sweating of the

apples, and the turning of the cider-press, and the stacking of the

firewood, and netting of the woodcocks, and the springles to be

minded in the garden and by the hedgerows, where blackbirds hop to the

molehills in the white October mornings, and grey birds come to look for

snails at the time when the sun is rising.

It is wonderful how time runs away, when all these things and a great

many others come in to load him down the hill and prevent him from

stopping to look about. And I for my part can never conceive how people

who live in towns and cities, where neither lambs nor birds are (except

in some shop windows), nor growing corn, nor meadow-grass, nor even so

much as a stick to cut or a stile to climb and sit down upon--how these

poor folk get through their lives without being utterly weary of them,

and dying from pure indolence, is a thing God only knows, if His mercy

allows Him to think of it.

How the year went by I know not, only that I was abroad all day,

shooting, or fishing, or minding the farm, or riding after some stray

beast, or away by the seaside below Glenthorne, wondering at the great

waters, and resolving to go for a sailor. For in those days I had a firm

belief, as many other strong boys have, of being born for a seaman. And

indeed I had been in a boat nearly twice; but the second time mother

found it out, and came and drew me back again; and after that she cried

so badly, that I was forced to give my word to her to go no more without

telling her.

But Betty Muxworthy spoke her mind quite in a different way about it,

the while she was wringing my hosen, and clattering to the drying-horse.

“Zailor, ees fai! ay and zarve un raight. Her can't kape out o' the

watter here, whur a' must goo vor to vaind un, zame as a gurt to-ad

squalloping, and mux up till I be wore out, I be, wi' the very saight of

's braiches. How wil un ever baide aboard zhip, wi' the watter zinging

out under un, and comin' up splash when the wind blow. Latt un goo,

missus, latt un goo, zay I for wan, and old Davy wash his clouts for

un.”

And this discourse of Betty's tended more than my mother's prayers,

I fear, to keep me from going. For I hated Betty in those days, as

children always hate a cross servant, and often get fond of a false

one. But Betty, like many active women, was false by her crossness only;

thinking it just for the moment perhaps, and rushing away with a bucket;

ready to stick to it, like a clenched nail, if beaten the wrong way with

argument; but melting over it, if you left her, as stinging soap, left

along in a basin, spreads all abroad without bubbling.

But all this is beyond the children, and beyond me too for that matter,

even now in ripe experience; for I never did know what women mean, and

never shall except when they tell me, if that be in their power. Now let

that question pass. For although I am now in a place of some authority,

I have observed that no one ever listens to me, when I attempt to lay

down the law; but all are waiting with open ears until I do enforce it.

And so methinks he who reads a history cares not much for the wisdom or

folly of the writer (knowing well that the former is far less than his

own, and the latter vastly greater), but hurries to know what the people

did, and how they got on about it. And this I can tell, if any one can,

having been myself in the thick of it.

The fright I had taken that night in Glen Doone satisfied me for a long

time thereafter; and I took good care not to venture even in the fields

and woods of the outer farm, without John Fry for company. John was

greatly surprised and pleased at the value I now set upon him; until,

what betwixt the desire to vaunt and the longing to talk things over,

I gradually laid bare to him nearly all that had befallen me; except,

indeed, about Lorna, whom a sort of shame kept me from mentioning. Not

that I did not think of her, and wish very often to see her again; but

of course I was only a boy as yet, and therefore inclined to despise

young girls, as being unable to do anything, and only meant to listen to

orders. And when I got along with the other boys, that was how we always

spoke of them, if we deigned to speak at all, as beings of a lower

order, only good enough to run errands for us, and to nurse boy-babies.

And yet my sister Annie was in truth a great deal more to me than all

the boys of the parish, and of Brendon, and Countisbury, put together;

although at the time I never dreamed it, and would have laughed if told

so. Annie was of a pleasing face, and very gentle manner, almost like

a lady some people said; but without any airs whatever, only trying to

give satisfaction. And if she failed, she would go and weep, without

letting any one know it, believing the fault to be all her own, when

mostly it was of others. But if she succeeded in pleasing you, it was

beautiful to see her smile, and stroke her soft chin in a way of her

own, which she always used when taking note how to do the right thing

again for you. And then her cheeks had a bright clear pink, and her eyes

were as blue as the sky in spring, and she stood as upright as a young

apple-tree, and no one could help but smile at her, and pat her brown

curls approvingly; whereupon she always curtseyed. For she never tried

to look away when honest people gazed at her; and even in the court-yard

she would come and help to take your saddle, and tell (without your

asking her) what there was for dinner.

And afterwards she grew up to be a very comely maiden, tall, and with a

well-built neck, and very fair white shoulders, under a bright cloud

of curling hair. Alas! poor Annie, like most of the gentle maidens--but

tush, I am not come to that yet; and for the present she seemed to me

little to look at, after the beauty of Lorna Doone.