Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  “Oh, but you know what I said, Johnny! We can’t — you know we can’t!”

  “Nonsense! I shan’t let you go now. I’ve got a disreputable mother now — or so they say. Have you heard of yours — since?”

  “She’s in the infirmary — very bad. Something’s been forming on the liver for years, the doctor says; and when she couldn’t get anything to drink she broke down at once. But what did you say about your mother?”

  Johnny told her the tale. “And now,” he added in the end, “she’s in there, worn out an’ broken down, an’ not a woman in the world to comfort her but my sister. Come in, an’ help.” And they went in together.

  CHAPTER XXXV.

  AT the end of a week Long Hicks stood astounded at his own performances. At the end of a year he was still astonished, and proud inordinately; and till the end of his life he will never forget the smallest particular of that week’s exploits. The policeman who came with a warrant for Butson, the young man from Mr. Dunkin, who came about the stock, the other young man that came the next time — he polished them all off, and half a dozen others, in the most dashing and businesslike manner. He found a new shop — found a score of shops, in fact, so that Nan May was fain to rouse herself and choose, lest some hopeless sepulchre of trade were rented without her knowledge. And this was good, for it gave her work to do and to think of, and once set going, she buckled to her task with all her old energy, and a world of riper experience. The shop was not so fortunately placed as that at Harbour Lane, and trade was never quite so good as it had been there when at its best. More, its place was in a dingy street, out of sight of the river and the ships. But it was a fairly busy thoroughfare, and things could be sold there, which was the main consideration. And it was Hicks’s triumph to stock this shop with the stock from Harbour Lane — conveyed secretly by night, on a truck, with many chucklings, after cunning putting-off of Mr. Dunkin. The tale whereof he would tell ever after with bashful glee, together with the tale of the sad emptiness and disorganisation of Mr. Dunkin’s new branch at its opening on Monday morning. And Uncle Isaac (who found his niece’s new shop ere long) assured the listener by frequent proclamation, that Mr. Hicks was a gentleman of vast business ability, and a genius at enterprise.

  “Yus, a genius, that’s what I say, Mr. Cottam — a genius of uncommon talent.” It was a wet afternoon, when Cottam and Hicks had taken ten minutes’ shelter in the round-house by the quay-side: and presently were joined by Uncle Isaac, on his way across from the docks.

  Mr. Cottam grunted. He had met Uncle Isaac twice before.

  “Lord!” Uncle Isaac went on, gazing at the uneasy Hicks with steadfast admiration, “Lord! If ‘e was on’y ambitious’ ‘e might be anythink! What a ornament ‘e ‘d be to a Diplomatic Corpse! Talk about Enterprise! Why at Enterprise an’ any sort o’ circumventions ‘e ‘s— ‘e ‘s — why there, as I alwis say, ‘e might be Ambashador to ‘er Majesty’s possessions!”

  The shower flagged, and men carne out on the quays. Mr. Cottam rose from the coil he had been sitting on, took his gaze out of space, and fixed it on the wall over Uncle Isaac’s head. “Mr. Mundy!” he trumpeted, in the manner of a man beginning a speech to an expectant multitude; raising his forefinger to his shoulder and lowering it till it rested on Uncle Isaac’s chest; “Mr. Mundy!”

  Then he paused, and Uncle Isaac said, “Yus, Mr. Cottam.”

  The pause endured and grew impressive; till at last the foreman’s face relaxed, his gaze descended till it met Uncle Isaac’s, and he chuckled aloud, stabbing him playfully with the forefinger. “Why — what a windy of kidder you are!” said Mr. Cottam; and stamped off along the quay, croaking and chuckling all over.

  CHAPTER XXXVI.

  SO with the days and the months Nan’s sorrows fell from her, and their harder shapes were lost in her remembrance; and the new days brought a new peace — perhaps even a new dulness. For this was a dull place, this street of flat walls, and grime, and anxious passengers. But what mattered mere dulness of externals when she had hard work to do, and a son to take pride in?

  For Nora’s sorrows, who shall speak? There was a hospital bed that she knew well, a pillow whereon a slaty face wasted and grew blank of meaning. And in the end there was a day of driving wet in a clayey cemetery, a day of loneliness, and wonder, and dull calm.

  But that day went with the others, and that year went. The streets grew sloppy with winter, dusty with summer: and smoky geraniums struggled into bloom on window-sills, and died off. Miles away the Forest gowned itself anew in green, in brown and in white; and in green the exiles saw it, once a year: but all its dresses were spread for Bessy still, in her dreams.

  Two years were gone, and Johnny was within five months of twenty-one, and the end of his apprenticeship, when on a brave August day he walked in the Forest alone. There would be no Forest excursion for him next year, for then, with good fortune, he would be upon the seas. For the firm had promised him the recommendation that would give him a year’s voyaging as fourth engineer.

  Bessy and Nora were sharing the holiday, but they were left to rest at Bob Smallpiece’s cottage. Bob, vast, brown, and leathery, was much as ever. He had seen Johnny and Bessy once each year, but not their mother, since — well since he had gone to London to see his sister. He was not sure whether he should go up to London again soon, or not. Meantime he made tea for his visitors.

  They had climbed the hill to gran’dad’s grave, and they had found it green and neat: they had seen another, fresh-closed, beside it, and wondered who was buried there; they had gathered flowers in Monk Wood, and they had stayed long in Loughton Camp; they had come again to the cottage on the glen-side, and Johnny had had to stoop at the door to save his hat, for indeed he was within two inches as big as Bob Smallpiece himself; and now Johnny, being alone, took the path to Wormleyton Pits. It was six years since he had gone that way last, and he might never go that way again.

  Mainly his way lay as it had lain when he carried the basket of sloes, that night when his grandfather had hunted his last moth. Johnny had left childish fancies years behind him, and now the trees were trees merely, one much as the rest, though green and cheerful in the sunlight. But even as on that night his mind had run on London, the longed-for London that was his home now, and stale with familiarity, so now he turned over once more the mystery of the old man’s cutting off: and with as little foreknowledge of the next chances in life’s hatful.

  Here branched the track by which he had made for Theydon; there was the tree under which he had last seen the old man’s lantern-light; and then the slade opened, glorious with heather. Brambles and bushes about the pits were changed — this grown higher and wider, that withered off; and the pits — the smaller pits, at least, seemed shallow enough holes under the eyes of a man of near six feet. The deepest pit — the pit — was farthest; and Johnny could see a man, whose figure seemed vaguely familiar, sitting on its edge.

  He picked his way across the broken ground and came to the pit on the side opposite to the stranger. There was the hole where the old man had taken his death-blow. Perhaps the bottom had risen an inch or so because of gravel-washings; but the big stone in the middle was still plain to see.

  The man opposite was trimming wooden pegs with a pocket-knife. He wore corduroys, of a cut that Johnny held in remembrance. Johnny watched for a few seconds, and then the man turned up a leathery brown face, and Johnny knew him. It was Amos Honeywell, notable as a poacher, and chief of a family of poachers. Amos put a peg into his pocket and began on another.

  “Well, Amos!” called Johnny across the pit; “you don’t know me!”

  The man looked up, and stared. “No,” he said, “I dun’t.”

  Johnny gave him his name.

  “What?” answered Amos, putting away his peg unfinished. “Johnny May? The boy as used to be along o’ oad May the butterfly man, as died in a axdent in this ‘ere very pit?”

  “Yes — if it was an accident.”

  “Oh, it w
as that all right ‘nough. But, why, ye’re twice as tall: an’ ‘taren’t so long, nayther.” Amos paused, staring mightily at Johnny, and slapped his thigh. “Why,” he said, “it’s the curiousest thing in natur, seein’ you now, an’ here too. Did ye see e’er a funeral las’ Wednesday?”

  “No — where?”

  “Up to chu’ch where yer gran’father’s buried. But no — y’aren’t livin’ hereabout now, o’ coase. Well it is the rarest conglomeration ever I see, me seein’ you ‘ere at this ‘ere very pit, an’ ‘im buried on’y las’ Wednesday, an’ died in a accident too. Fell off a rick, he did.”

  “An’ who was he?”

  “Coopersale chap, he was, name o’ Stiles. Lived here ‘bout six year. But coase you wud’n’ know ‘bout him; ‘twere he as did the accident.”

  “Did the accident? What d’ye mean?”

  Amos Honeywell got up from his seat, and jerked his thumb toward the pit-bottom. “This here one,” he said. “Yer gran’father.”

  “D’ you mean he killed him?”

  “Dun’t much matter what ye call it now the chap’s dead, but I wouldn’t put it killed — not meanin’.” Amos Honeywell came slouching along the pit-edge, talking as he came. “See, he was a Coopersale chap an’ new here, an’ knowed few. Well, he sees this here’s a likely spot for a rabbit or so, an’ he puts up a few pegs an’ a wire or two, just arter dark: you know. In the middle of it he sees a strange oad chap comin’ with a lantern, searchin’ — searchin’ what for? Why for wires, he thinks, o’ coase. He hides in some brambles, but t’oad chap gets nigher an’ nigher an’ presen’ly Stiles he sees he’s about caught. So he ups on a sudden an’ knocks the oad chap over, an’ grabs the wires an’ then he bolts. Oad chap goes over into pit of a lump, an’ he falls awk’ard an’ — an’ well — there y’are!”

  “And how long ha’ you known this?”

  “Knowed it? Knowed it all time, same as others.”

  “An’ never said a word of it, nor told the police?”

  “Why no,” Amos answered, with honest indignation.

  “Wudn’t hey us get the poor chap in trouble, wud ye?”

  And this was the mystery: nothing of wonder at all, nothing but a casual crossing of ways: just a chance from the hatful, like all the rest of it. And Amos — well, he was right, too, by such lights as he could see.

  * * * * *

  LIGHT was low behind the hills, and dusk dimmed the keeper’s honest face as he waved his friends goodbye. Yes, he would come to them in London, one of these days. Soon? Well, then, soon.

  Together the three went down the scented lanes, where the white ghost-moths began to fly, and so into the world of new adventure.

  THE END

  CUNNING MURRELL

  Morrison turned to a different aspect of real life for this story, published in 1900 – a dramatised biography. Cunning Murrell, as Morrison tells the reader in the introduction, was a real person – a “Cunning Man” or witch doctor. Born in 1780, the seventh son of a seventh son, Murrell learnt his craft as a cunning man in his early twenties from a witch called Neboad and was so gifted in his new trade that he quickly gave up his original craft of shoemaking and took up witch doctoring full time with great success. It would seem that Murrell’s life is well documented in that references to him and his family survive in archival sources such as parish registers, and Morrison also had many folk and local tales to draw upon from his native Essex.

  Murrell died in December 1860 in Hadleigh, Essex, but his reputation lived on posthumously, and it is little wonder that at the end of the century Morrison was able to find out so much about the cunning man when he visited Hadleigh. He spoke to local people, saw Murrell’s home (now demolished), studied Murrell’s surviving papers (later destroyed by someone that did not realise their significance) and was so taken with what he discovered that he not only wrote an article about Murrell for The Strand magazine (Vol. 20, pp 433-442, 1900), he also wrote this fictionalised life story. For the magazine article he also took with him an illustrator, ensuring that the pictures in the article are charming and detailed with, one hopes, an element of authenticity.

  This narrative opens with a pleasing description of the Essex countryside and a hint of strange things to come; there are references to bedevilment, witch balls (a receptacle for items used in charms) and ghosts very early on in the tale. The description of Murrell, when he comes first appears in the narrative, may remind the modern reader of a Tolkien-esque character, perhaps even an ancestor of the literary hobbit – Cunning Murrell is small, slight, quick of movement and speech and smartly dressed, although his clothes are now a little shabby. He has an affable demeanour but “detachment and mystery were instruments of his trade”, so he does not encourage intimacy in his acquaintances; he uses a form of esoteric “lingo” to impress his naïve clients and the reader is shown that “magic” does not always have a part in Murrell’s craft, it is more a case of his being crafty and manipulative. Thankfully, however, he is generally kindly and what might be called a “white witch”, although he does secretly enjoy the alarm he causes when he goes out and about in his large goggles.

  As the story progresses, we are treated to a series of anecdotes that illustrate Murrell’s gifts as a cunning man – putting right a bewitched blacksmith’s forge, the dramatic curing of a young girl stricken by black witch magic using a witch’s ball, and giving information to a young unmarried mother looking for her lover. One running theme in the story is the accusation of dark witchcraft made by Murrell against Sarah Martin, the aunt of the stricken girl – this is one of Murrell’s “cures” that does not seem to go smoothly and the cunning man’s reputation is at stake. Can Murrell work out what is going wrong with his spells to bring the situation to a satisfactory conclusion? The context of these events is a rural life portrayed as rather quaint and innocuous - fair days with children singing and dancing, banter in the local inn, prize fights and vivid descriptions of local high streets and countryside. There is also a sub plot involving smuggling, drawing in most of the characters introduced in the book.

  These are charming anecdotes and the style used by Morrison is reminiscent of many of the Victorian books about regional myths and legends, of which there were plenty in print at the time Morrison wrote Cunning Murrell.

  Once again the reader has to navigate the usual Victorian literary attempts at dialect, which fortunately is clearly distinct from Morrison’s depictions of East End accents, so one can be optimistic that he has tried to faithfully convey the Essex way of speaking.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTORY:. THE “CUNNING MAN” OF HADLEIGH

  I. — NEWS AND A BOTTLE

  II. — THE DISCOVERY OF WITCHCRAFT

  III. — PROLOGUE MISPLACED

  IV. — A DAY OF FEASTING

  V. — AN INTERRUPTED SONG

  VI. — A HOUSE APART

  VII. — A STRANGE CLIENT

  VIII. — DOUBTS AND A LETTER

  IX. — AMAZEMENT AND A PAIL

  X. — PROFITLESS DIPLOMACY

  XI. — SOUNDS IN THE WIND

  XII. — SHADOWS ON THE HILL

  XIII. — A TALE OF TUBS

  XIV. — AN INVITATION OVER A FENCE

  XV. — A PRIVATE DANCE

  XVI. — A DAY AT BANHAM’S

  XVII. — THE CALL OF TIME

  XVIII. — HEAVY TIDINGS

  XIX. — THE DEVIL AND HIS MASTER

  XX. — A GALLANT OFFER

  XXI. — MAN AND MASTER

  XXII. — THE BOTTLE AGAIN

  XXIII. — A FAULT PURGED

  XXIV. — IN THE QUEEN’S NAME

  XXV. — A WAKEFUL NIGHT

  XXVI. — AND AFTER

  XVII. — FINIS

  TO JOHN LOUIS WIMBUSH

  My Dear Wimbush, I think you will not yet have forgotten our holidays in old Essex, in the days ere the speculative builder had dreamed of Leigh, and when Hadleigh was still the Hadleigh of anot
her century.

  It is in memory of those times that I offer you my little story, headed with a name familiar to us both; and with the hope that it may please you to find among my puppets images — imperfect enough — of some other old Essex friends. For myself when some tell me, as they will, that such a man as Murrell and such beliefs as he lived on were impossible in the time and place I give them, I shall know that you, at least, are better informed: for indeed you know Murrell’s doings as well as I, and you have handled the amazing (and grimy) heap of documents that he left behind him. You can testify, too, that a man was swum for a witch (and died of it) in this same county ten years after the period of the tale. But there!

  Yours always,

  A.M. Loughton, Essex, June 1900.

  INTRODUCTORY:. THE “CUNNING MAN” OF HADLEIGH

  JAMES MURRELL was born the seventh son of a seventh son in Rochford in 1780. In 1812 Murrell moved to Hadleigh, Essex, and set up business as a shoemaker. Somewhere about this time he met a witch/wizard called Neboad from whom he learnt about the craft. His natural skill in the art led him to give up shoe-making and become a full-time ‘cunning man.’ His fame grew as a cunning-man of unequalled ability and he was sought out by both local people and wealthy aristocrats from further afield. It was said that he would always ask people if their problem was ‘high or low,’ i.e. did they need material or magic help. Material help would involve the use of herbal potions to combat ills. To tackle supernatural forces, Murrell would summon good spirits or angels to fight the bad ones. He was an expert in astrology and was consulted on a wide range of issues including finding lost objects, clairvoyance and his ability to cast and break other witches spells. For instance one legend refers to his using a potion to send a ‘burning sensation’ to a gypsy woman who was believed to have cursed a girl. The potion when heated exploded and the next day the body of the gypsy was found burnt to death and the girl cured....