Home › Lorna Doone › Lorna Doone

Lorna Doone

By R. D. BLACKMORE Condensation by KATHARINE R. MARKWARD IN Exmoor, in the county of Somerset, in the year of grace 1661, dwelt the outlawed Doones, who, huge and brutal, defied king and common, committed brazen robberies with impunity, and took refuge after every outrage in the well-nigh impregnable Glen Doone. On the near-by farm of Plover's Barrows dwelt John Ridd, a great-limbed lad who had been summoned home from boarding-school in his teens to learn that his father, a wealthy farmer, had been slain in a night raid by the Doones. John, blunt and honest, was kind to his mother and his two sisters, did his share of the farm-work, and, as he grew to manhood, learned to ride a horse and shoot a blunderbuss with unfailing skill.

One day, while yet a boy, his fishing excursions in Bagworthy Water led him to discover an entrance to Glen Doone, so secret, so remote that the robber band stationed no guard there, never dreaming that living sould would discover it. Following a little cascade, John emerged at last into a dell blooming with primroses, and beheld with amazement a beautiful child of eight with hair like a black shower and eyes full of pity and wonder. Her name (pretty, like herself) was Lorna Doone, and John often had her in his thoughts through the six years which followed. He was twenty then and Lorna fourteen, and already John Ridd knew that he loved her, that fate had decreed it so and that all the world was naught when weighed against this girl.

To be found in Doone Valley spelled death for any man, but the thought of Lorna, "light and white, nimble, smooth, and elegant," filled John with yearning and lured him to the hazard. Again and again he sought the maid in the primrose bower above the cascade, and then one afternoon in the splendor of an April sunset John once more threw down the gauntlet which love ever casts at danger. To Lorna's tremulous, "You are mad to come; they will kill you if they find you here," John smiled and thought her fairer than the primroses amid which she stood. She lived in constant fear, she confessed, for the gigantic and passionate Carver Doone openly paid her homage and glowered with jealous eyes at any man who durst cast a glance at her. "I care naught for him or his jealousy," cried John Ridd. "I have loved you long, as child, as comely girl, and now as full-grown maiden. I love you more than tongue can tell or heart can hold in silence." Lorna raised her glorious eyes and, flinging her arms about his neck, cried, with her heart on his: "Darling, I shall never be my own again. I am yours forever and forever." But before he went she was in tears. "How dare I dream of love? Something in my heart tells me it can never be."