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CHAPTER LXIII

JOHN IS WORSTED BY THE WOMEN

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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”—­for 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 think—­” 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.”