“I do not understand you, sir. Why can you not say what you mean, at once?”
“My dear child, I prolong your suspense. Curiosity is the most powerful of all feminine instincts; and therefore the most delightful, when not prematurely satisfied. However, if you must have my strong realities, here they are. Your father slew dear John’s father, and dear John’s father slew yours.”
Having said thus much, the Counsellor leaned back upon his chair, and shaded his calm white-bearded eyes from the rays of our tallow candles. He was a man who liked to look, rather than to be looked at. But Lorna came to me for aid; and I went up to Lorna and mother looked at both of us.
Then feeling that I must speak first (as no one would begin it), I took my darling round the waist, and led her up to the Counsellor; while she tried to bear it bravely; yet must lean on me, or did.
“Now, Sir Counsellor Doone,” I said, with Lorna squeezing both my hands, I never yet knew how (considering that she was walking all the time, or something like it); “you know right well, Sir Counsellor, that Sir Ensor Doone gave approval.” I cannot tell what made me think of this: but so it came upon me.
“Approval to what, good rustic John? To the slaughter so reciprocal?”
“No, sir, not to that; even if it ever happened; which I do not believe. But to the love betwixt me and Lorna; which your story shall not break, without more evidence than your word. And even so, shall never break; if Lorna thinks as I do.”
The maiden gave me a little touch, as much as to say, “You are right, darling: give it to him, again, like that.” However, I held my peace, well knowing that too many words do mischief.
Then mother looked at me with wonder, being herself too amazed to speak; and the Counsellor looked, with great wrath in his eyes, which he tried to keep from burning.
“How say you then, John Ridd,” he cried, stretching out one hand, like Elijah; “is this a thing of the sort you love? Is this what you are used to?”
“So please your worship,” I answered; “no kind of violence can surprise us, since first came Doones upon Exmoor. Up to that time none heard of harm; except of taking a purse, maybe, or cutting a strange sheep’s throat. And the poor folk who did this were hanged, with some benefit of clergy. But ever since the Doones came first, we are used to anything.”
“Thou varlet,” cried the Counsellor, with the colour of his eyes quite changed with the sparkles of his fury; “is this the way we are to deal with such a lowbred clod as thou? To question the doings of our people, and to talk of clergy! What, dream you not that we could have clergy, and of the right sort, too, if only we cared to have them? Tush! Am I to spend my time arguing with a plough-tail Bob?”
“If your worship will hearken to me,” I answered very modestly, not wishing to speak harshly, with Lorna looking up at me; “there are many things that might be said without any kind of argument, which I would never wish to try with one of your worship’s learning. And in the first place it seems to me that if our fathers hated one another bitterly, yet neither won the victory, only mutual discomfiture; surely that is but a reason why we should be wiser than they, and make it up in this generation by goodwill and loving”—
“Oh, John, you wiser than your father!” mother broke upon me here; “not but what you might be as wise, when you come to be old enough.”
“Young people of the present age,” said the Counsellor severely, “have no right feeling of any sort, upon the simplest matter. Lorna Doone, stand forth from contact with that heir of parricide; and state in your own mellifluous voice, whether you regard this slaughter as a pleasant trifle.”
“You know, without any words of mine,” she answered very softly, yet not withdrawing from my hand, “that although I have been seasoned well to every kind of outrage, among my gentle relatives, I have not yet so purely lost all sense of right and wrong as to receive what you have said, as lightly as you declared it. You think it a happy basis for our future concord. I do not quite think that, my uncle; neither do I quite believe that a word of it is true. In our happy valley, nine-tenths of what is said is false; and you were always wont to argue that true and false are but a blind turned upon a pivot. Without any failure of respect for your character, good uncle, I decline politely to believe a word of what you have told me. And even if it were proved to me, all I can say is this, if my John will have me, I am his forever.”
This long speech was too much for her; she had overrated her strength about it, and the sustenance of irony. So at last she fell into my arms, which had long been waiting for her; and there she lay with no other sound, except a gurgling in her throat.
“You old villain,” cried my mother, shaking her fist at the Counsellor, while I could do nothing else but hold, and bend across, my darling, and whisper to deaf ears; “What is the good of the quality; if this is all that comes of it? Out of the
