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Richard Doddridge Blackmore set his celebrated 1869 novel Lorna Doone in late 17th-century England, during the Duke of Monmouth’s attempt to claim the British crown. The hero, John Ridd, falls into the hands of the savage and powerful Doone family. Lorna Doone, a young child when the story begins, helps John escape. It turns out that Lorna is actually the kidnapped daughter of a Scottish nobleman. After many adventures, played out against the backdrop of a civil war, John and Lorna marry and live happily ever after.
By Richard Doddridge Blackmore
When I came to myself again, my hands were full of young grass and mould; and a little girl kneeling at my side was rubbing my forehead tenderly, with a dockleaf [broadleaf weed] and a handkerchief.
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‘Oh, I am so glad,’ she whispered softly, as I opened my eyes and looked at her; ‘now you will try to be better, won’t you?’
I had never heard so sweet a sound as came from between her bright red lips, while there she knelt and gazed at me; neither had I ever seen anything so beautiful as the large dark eyes intent upon me, full of pity and wonder. And then, my nature being slow, and perhaps, for that matter, heavy, I wandered with my hazy eyes down the black shower of her hair, as to my jaded gaze it seemed; and where it fell on the turf, among it (like an early star) was the first primrose of the season. And since that day, I think of her, through all the rough storms of my life, when I see an early primrose.
‘What is your name?’ she said, as if she had every right to ask me; ‘and how did you come here, and what are these wet things in this great bag?’
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‘You had better let them alone,’ I said; ‘they are loaches for my mother. But I will give you some, if you like.’
‘Dear me, how much you think of them! Why they are only fish. But how your feet are bleeding! oh, I must tie them up for you. And no shoes nor stockings! Is your mother very poor, poor boy?’
‘No,’ I said, being vexed at this; ‘we are rich enough to buy all this great meadow, if we chose; and here my shoes and stockings be.’
‘Why they are quite as wet as your feet; and I cannot bear to see your feet. Oh, please to let me manage them; I will do it very softly.’
‘Oh, I don’t think much of that,’ I replied; ‘I shall put some goose-grease to them. But how you are looking at me! I never saw anyone like you before. My name is John Ridd. What is your name?’
‘Lorna Doone,’ she answered, in a low voice, as if afraid of it, and hanging her head, so that I could see only her forehead and eyelashes; ‘if you please, my name is Lorna Doone; and I thought you must have known it.’
Then I stood up, and touched her hand, and tried to make her look at me; but she only turned away the more. Young and harmless as she was, her name alone made guilt of her. Nevertheless I could not help looking at her tenderly, and the more when her blushes turned into tears, and her tears to long, low sobs.
‘Don’t cry,’ I said, ‘whatever you do. I am sure you have never done any harm. I will give you all my fish, Lorna, and catch some more for mother; only don’t be angry with me.’
‘Do you know what they would do to us, if they found you here with me?’
‘Beat us, I dare say, very hard, or me at least. They could never beat you.’
‘No. They would kill us both outright, and bury us here by the water; and the water often tells me that I must come to that.’
‘But what should they kill me for?’
‘Because you have found the way up here, and they never could believe it. Now, please to go; oh please to go. They will kill us both in a moment. Yes, I like you very much’—for I was teasing her to say it—’very much indeed, and I will call you John Ridd, if you like; only please to go, John. And when your feet are well, you know you can come and tell me how they are.’
‘But I tell you, Lorna, I like you very much indeed, nearly as much as Annie, and a great deal more than Lizzie. And I never saw anyone like you; and I must come back again tomorrow, and so must you, to see me; and I will bring you such a maun of things—there are apples still, and a thrush I caught with only one leg broken, and our dog has just had puppies—’
‘Oh dear, they won’t let me have a dog. There is not a dog in the valley. They say they are such noisy things—’
‘Only put your hand in mine,—what little things they are, Lorna!—and I will bring you the loveliest dog; I will show you just how long he is.’
‘Hush!’ A shout came down the valley; and all my heart was trembling, like water after sunset, and Lorna’s face was altered from pleasant play to terror. She shrank to me, and looked up at me, with such a power of weakness, that I at once made up my mind, to save her, or to die with her. The little girl took courage from me, and put her cheek quite close to mine.
‘I will tell you what to do. They are only looking for me. You see that hole, that hole there?’
She pointed to a little niche in the rock, which verged the meadow, about fifty yards away from us. In the fading of the twilight I could just descry it.
‘Yes, I see it; but they will see me crossing the grass to get there.’
‘Look! look!’ She could hardly speak. ‘There is a way out from the top of it; they would kill me if I told it. Oh, here they come; I can see them.’
The little maid turned as white as the snow which hung on the other side of the water, not bearing any fire-arms, but then at me, and she cried, ‘Oh dear! oh dear!’ And then she began to sob aloud, being so young and unready. But I drew her behind the withy-bushes, and close down to the water, where it was quiet, and shelving deep, ere it came to the lip of the chasm. Here they could not see either of us from the upper valley, and might have sought a long time for us, even when they came quite near, if the trees had been clad with their summer clothes. Luckily I had picked up my fish, and taken my three-pronged fork away.
Crouching in that hollow nest, as children get together in ever so little compass, I saw a dozen fierce men come down, on the other side of the water, not bearing any fire-arms, but looking lax and jovial, as if they were come from riding and a dinner taken hungrily. ‘Queen, queen!’ they were shouting, here and there, and now and then: ‘where the pest is our little queen gone?’
‘They always call me “queen”, and I am to be queen by and by,’ Lorna whispered to me, with her soft cheek on my rough one, and her little heart beating against me: ‘oh, they are crossing by the timber there, and then they are sure to see us.’
‘Stop,’ said I; ‘now I see what to do. I must get into the water, and you must go to sleep.’
‘To be sure, yes, away in the meadow there. But how bitter cold it will be for you!’
She saw in a moment the way to do it, sooner than I could tell her; and there was no time to lose.
‘Now mind you never come again,’ she whispered over her shoulder, as she crept away with a childish twist, hiding her white front from me; ‘only I shall come sometimes—oh, here they are, Madonna!’
Daring scarce to peep, I crept into the water, and lay down bodily in it, with my head between two blocks of stone, and some flood-drift combing over me. For all this time, they were shouting, and swearing, and keeping such a hallabaloo, that the rocks all round the valley rang; and my heart quaked, so (what with this and the cold) that the water began to gurgle round me, and lap upon the pebbles.
Neither in truth did I try to, stop it, being now so desperate, between the fear and the wretchedness; till I caught a glimpse of the little maid, whose beauty and whose kindliness had made me yearn to be with her. And then I knew that for her sake I was bound to be brave, and hide myself. She was lying beneath a rock, thirty or forty yards from me, feigning to be fast asleep, with her dress spread beautifully, and her hair drawn over her.
Presently one of the great rough men came round a corner upon her; and there he stopped, and gazed awhile at her fairness and her innocence. Then he caught her up in his arms, and kissed her so that I heard him; and if I had only brought my gun, I would have tried to shoot him.
‘Here our queen is! Here’s the queen, here’s the captain’s daughter!’ he shouted to his comrades; ‘fast asleep, by God, and hearty! Now I have first claim to her; and no one else shall touch the child. Back to the bottle, all of you!’
He set her dainty little form upon his great square shoulder, and her narrow feet in one broad hand; and so in triumph marched away, with the purple velvet of her skirt ruffling in his long black beard, and the silken length of her hair fetched out, like a cloud by the wind, behind her.
Going up that darkened glen, little Lorna, riding still the largest and most fierce of them, turned and put up a hand to me; and I put up a hand to her, in the thick of the mist and the willows.
Source: Blackmore, Richard Doddridge. Lorna Doone. Penguin Books.
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Blackmore, Richard Doddridge
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