Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  “An’ I fit the French meself, when I was that high, damme!” Roboshobery went on regardless, with the same stare and the same logic, extending his hand a little higher than the table.

  “Well!” Prentice ejaculated, impartially, and finished his glass.

  “That high, damme!” Roboshobery repeated without moving his hand. He kept it in the air for a few seconds, and then let it drop, and gave his mouth the quid again. “Howsomdever,” he went on, “if the women sez it, they’ll stick to it, an’ argufyin’ woan’t change ‘em.” And then, with fresh heat, he repeated: “But it’s a lie!”

  “There be Jobson o’ Wickford,” Prentice said, suddenly rising and looking through the window. “It’s odds he’s got a Chronicle.”

  The two men hastened to the door and hailed Jobson of Wickford, who was pulling up at the Crown. As it happened he had brought a copy of yesterday’s paper with him, for the first Hadleigh friend who might demand it; and soon Roboshobery Dove, with pains and slow spelling, was informed of the war news. And ten minutes later he had Steve Lingood by the arm at the smithy door, and was confusing the news of the burning of the docks at Uleaborg and Brahestad, and of the retreat of the Russians from Silistria, by a mixed process of telling it verbally with five or six diversely-pronounced names for each place, and insisting on the smith reading for himself, while the paper was violently brandished about his face and ears.

  V. — AN INTERRUPTED SONG

  HADLEIGH FAIR waxed and roared. It was not the way of Cunning Murrell, in general, to be seen at daytime; his was a silent, sudden presence of the night, and there were tales of the distances he travelled (and hints of the means whereby) that were told in whispers only, and not to strangers. But on fair day he was sought by the sick and the troubled of many villages, and he dispensed herbs and charms to many that travelled half across the county to fetch them. There were, indeed, those who came farther, for Murrell’s fame as physician and cattle doctor spread across the county, even to the Suffolk border, and he was esteemed far beyond Bedlow of Rawreth, who was a most distinguished character; while in matters of greater abstruseness and difficulty, the baffling of witches, the recovery of lost property, and the bringing to the altar of fickle lovers, he had no rival whatever. But it was not his way to sit at the receipt of custom, taking in turn the many that resorted to him. Rather he must be sought and solicited, and they were the lucky that were able to buy his counsel. So that one might always see throughout the most of fair day, in the narrow lane where his cottage stood and away from the merry crowd in Hadleigh street, certain pensive women and a few anxious girls, their eyes solicitously turned toward the cunning man’s door, their hands all willing to click the latch, though each fearful of rebuff; sometimes, too, an awkward and shame-faced man. So it was in the lane this day. But in the noisy street the round of gaiety spun with a dazzle, and in the afternoon, long ere the Fire-eater had palled or the Fat Lady had ceased to amaze, the customary fight had broken out between the warriors of Hadleigh and those of Leigh. The Leigh men, easily distinguished by their blue guernseys, but well enough known individually, never allowed any day of rejoicing to run many hours without a fight; and Hadleigh was as ready for Leigh as Leigh could wish. Conspicuous, though not large, among the Hadleigh champions was Buck Murrell, disgraceful and degenerate son of the soothsayer; short, thick, and shock-headed, hatless and fierce, he was ever where the fray raged closest, and this day he headed the rush up the stairs of the Castle Inn that drove the few Leigh men in the clubroom (made another taproom for the day), out by the window, and down the post of the inn-sign (reached by a jump from the sill) hand-over-hand to the street. It was because of this irregular escape that, a week after, tenterhooks were driven in the post — the tenterhooks that remain to this day witnesses of the prowess of Hadleigh and of the seaman-like agility of Leigh in the year 1854.

  Soon the fight took half the attention of the fair, and peep-shows were overset. More, one corner of the Living Skeleton’s booth gave way, and brought the canvas about Mag Banham’s ears, and those of young Sim Cloyse, who was taking her a-fairing; and such was her discomposure and affliction that gin and peppermint was necessary to restore her, and she had to be restored more than once. Then, toward five o’clock or so, the scrimmage grew slack; for some bodily refreshment, some measure of threepenny, is needed to maintain the activity of the most valorous champions. And when the noise of battle arose again, it was less in volume than it had been in the afternoon, and the combat itself not so brisk; for the measures of threepenny that spur warriors to conflict are apt at the same time to impair their might, and to pull away the legs from under them. Till at last, when the final skirmish tailed away into a meadow by the fourwont way, somebody was inspired to drive a startled and disconcerted cow into the meadow with the shout: “The bull! look out for the bull!” Whereat the champions of Leigh, already somewhat outnumbered and in no very able state to make zoological distinctions, went for the nearest hedge and cleared it, and the fight was done. For extreme distrust of bulls and a great disinclination to remain in the same field with one, made a singular failing of the fishermen of this coast; though one might have been sadly put to it to find another earthly creature wherewith to daunt them.

  The peep-shows were picked up and packed up, the Living Skeleton took down the remaining three corners of his habitation, and the Fat Lady bethought her of supper. At the Castle Inn and the Crown late rallies were made of revellers yet unwearied, and young Sim Cloyse and Mag Banham wandered together through Dawes Heath Lane, amid gathering shadows and evening odours, somewhat characterised by peppermint.

  At the Castle Inn, taprooms and bars were full of them that still thirsted after threepenny; but the parlour was given over to a privileged group of tradesmen and respectabilities, and no threepenny entered there. There sat Prentice, Steve Lingood, Banham, Dan Fisk the builder, and a dozen others, some from neighbouring parts, immersed in the enjoyment of pipes, beverages, and mutual improvement. There was some disposition to perceive a weakness in the drink, perhaps because it really was the custom to water it on fair day, perhaps merely because it was the infirmity of jealous human nature to suspect it. Dan Fisk, a thick-set humourist with a squint, rotated his pot before him, as though to enrich the liquor with whatever sediment there might be, and shook his head. “Carl that six-ale, ‘em do,” he said, “an’ what’s wuss they charge it...Well, well, ’tis fair day!”

  “’Tis poor stuff, sarten to say,” Prentice remarked.

  “Rotgut an’ belly-wengeance,” Fisk assented.

  “Nothen moer;” and he smelt it contemptuously.

  “It do seem that the way to brew sixpenny for fair day be to take thruppenny an’ double it with watter. That’s bad as what oad Sim Cloyse’s wife used to brew, an’ we arl knowed that!”

  “I den’t know it,” Lingood said. “She’ve been dead nigh twenty year.”

  “Ah, you’re a young ‘un. Oad Sim Cloyse’s missis, she were twice as near as oad Sim were real Dutch. She coon’t bear to see nobody eat nor drink, she coon’t. Why, when oad Sim kep’ fowls (he took ‘em off the widdar Mead for rent) she swore he’d ruined hisself. ‘What’s the good o’ giv’n’ they fowls corn?’ she said. ‘They onny eat it!’”

  Dan Fisk took a pull or two at his pipe, so as not to interfere with the laugh, which was prolonged by Banham, who had heard the story before, but wished to be polite.

  “Well,” Dan resumed, “when Sim Cloyse took the Ploughboy, along there by the Pest’us, afore he made his money, he putt his missis to mind it, an’ there were precious little trade. Fust night— ‘Well,’ says Sim, ‘what ha’ yow took?’ ‘Nut a farden,’ says she; ‘nut one.’ Nex’ night Sim kims in an’ draws hisself a pint o’ six. ‘How’s trade?’ says Sim. ‘Wusser’n yesterday,’ she says, ‘‘cause yow’ve bin an’ drunk a pint o’ six without payin’ for it, an’ if yow’re ruined it’ll sarve ye right!’ An’ Sim never drunk no more o’ her beer. Well, night arter that he kims ag
en, an’ he says, ‘Trade better?’ he says. ‘Wusser’n ever,’ she says, with a snap; ‘look at that there winder!’ An’ there were the biggest winder arl smashed to shivers. ‘Why, how’s that?’ says Sim. ‘Why,’ says she, ‘the fust customer kim in to-day. He had a pint o’ thruppeny. When he’d a-gulped it, he went pale as pudden, an’ his eyes turns up into his head. Then he goes red, an’ his eyes kims down agen, an’ he swore and ranted, an’ hulled the mug through the winder an’ tore off like Bedlam.’ ‘Yow don’t say!’ says Sim. ‘Well, praise be he den’t hev a pint o’ six, or he’d ha’ knocked the house down!’”

  Dan Fisk sucked hard at his pipe again, and squinted joyously. Two great thumps on the steps without checked the general guffaw, and an obscure man in a corner took the opportunity to say: “When the bahloon fell at Barl’n’ in eighteen twenny-eight—”

  But with that the door burst open, and Roboshobery Dove, with a third great thump of his wooden leg, came in in state. For he was a person of consequence in the parlour of the Castle, and his downsittings and uprisings were considered with respect. He was a man of travel — or at least he had sailed in a King’s ship as a boy; he was also a man of some little substance, for he did no work but such as pleased his leisure in his little garden; and there was the wooden leg. It was the practice and tradition to account for his left leg as lost in his country’s service, and indeed it was in a seafight that the knee was smashed. But an ill-wisher, if Roboshobery had had one, might have declared with truth that the fight was a common fisherman-smuggler affray of the usual murderous sort, with a crew of Dutchmen, off the Great Sunk.

  “Good evenin’. Master Dove,” cried Fisk. “We knowed your footstep!”

  “Neighbours ahoy!” Dove answered, with his customary salute, as he stumped across to a vacant seat by Banham. His green smock was gone, and in its place he wore his Sunday coat — blue, with brass buttons.

  Preferring the rum he had ordered in the bar before the divers pots pushed toward him, Roboshobery Dove, his wooden leg extended to the middle of the floor, hauled at a long twist-knotted cord till a massy silver watch emerged from his fob. This he took by the bow, gravely banged it three times, edgewise, on the wooden socket that clipped his thigh, and clapped it to his ear; finishing by looking at the face and announcing the time. “Quarter pas’ nine, more or less,” he said, “an’ glory be ’tis fair day, or some o’ your wives ‘ood a-bin arter ye.”

  Banham was made a little less retiring by the celebrations proper to the day. He seized the watch suddenly, and shook it before the company. “Ah,” he said, “there’s a watch! there’s a watch! That watch is a werge, that is! ’Tis said Master Dove’s father gave fi’ pound for that watch! An’ it’s a werge.”

  “Ah!” Roboshobery remarked, complacently filling a long pipe, “that is. An’ my father gave fi’ pun for it at Foulness. Give us hold.”

  “Master Dove be a Foulness man,” Banham went on, as one proclaiming an undeniable quality in his hero; “a Foulness man, as be well knowed.”

  “Ay, sarten to say,” assented Prentice,

  There was a silence, and the obscure man began again— “When the bahloon fell at Barl’n’ in eighteen-twe—” But here Jobson, of Wickford, whose head had been slowly inclining toward his knees for some time, so that he seemed like to pitch forward out of his chair, suddenly sat up and demanded: “An’ what’s the wuss of a man if he be a Foulness chap? Eh? That arn’t no sense of a argyment. What’s the wuss if he be?”

  “Ah, sarten to say,” murmured two or three, soothingly.

  “Arn’t a Foulness man good as a Hadleigh man, or a Bemflit man or a Rochford man, or — or what not?”

  “Course he be,” Prentice grunted pacifically.

  Jobson of Wickford looked at his friend for several seconds. Then he said, “Arl right, then, arl right!” let his pipe fall, and began to nod again.

  “There ha’ bin many fine men o’ Foulness,” said Lingood. “There were the seven Allens, an’ Jack Bennewith, that fought the London prizefighter.”

  “Ah,” Banham struck in, “an’ ‘twere a Roboshobery Dove o’ Foulness as fit King Charles an’ got his head chopped off.”

  “No,” objected Lingood, “‘twere King Charles that lost his head, I do read.”

  “An’ Roboshobery Dove,” Prentice corrected, “he fit for King Charles, bein’ a parson, an’ were hulled out o’ chu’ch therefor. Aren’t that so, Bosh?”

  “Ay, ‘tare,” Roboshobery confirmed, basking in the general homage. “An’ I were christened such arter him by special recommendation o’ Master Ellwood the parson. ‘’Tis arl a possibility,’ he says to my father, ‘that yow be descendants, an’ anyhow,’ he says, ‘’tis a fine handsome name.’”

  “That it be,” assented Banham. “I hoad a pound there aren’t anoather man with hafe sich a name, not in arl Essex!”

  “An’ so he christened me,” Dove concluded. “Ah, he were a parson o’ th’ oad sort, were Master Ellwood. Wore silver buckles to his breeches, an’ slep’ in his wig; an’ his walkin’ stick were five foot long.”

  Some such conversation as this was usual in the Castle parlour when, Roboshobery Dove being present, it was desired to exhibit him for the admiration of strangers. Commonly it led to long and amazing yarns of his adventures, from the time of the French war down to yesterday; and nearly always to one or more of his forecastle songs, of which he had a curious and diverse store, not always composed to please the squeamish. But to-night Roboshobery turned the talk to the war, and, by the aid of the crumpled newspaper from his pocket, was presently expounding the state of affairs, from Archangel to Varna, to the instruction and mystification of everybody. Being brought to a stand by nothing but a paragraph which set down the damage done in Brahestad dockyard at 350,000 silver roubles, and then not so much by the doubt as to whether the figures should read thirty-five thousand or three hundred and fifty millions, as by the blank impossibility of guessing how much a silver rouble might be.

  Meanwhile, without, the wonted calm of a summer night fell about Hadleigh. The Fire-eater, the Fat Lady, and the Living Skeleton, all were gone, and the street was empty, save now and again for a home-goer carrying an overload of threepenny on unsteady legs. Except at the Castle Inn, most were in bed; in the little row of wooden cottages that included Cunning Murrell’s home, all certainly were, save Murrell himself, who, after a long spell of shadowy activity behind the blind of his keeping-room, at length blew out the rushlight and stepped noiselessly out of door.

  It was one of his customary night journeys, without a doubt. The umbrella was over his shoulder, and the frail basket depended from its handle. The curious of Hadleigh had once or twice seen herbs taken from that frail, herbs gathered, no doubt, at a proper hour of night, and with the right formalities; but what else it might carry was matter of dark wonder and secret surmise. Just as were his night walks, such as this.

  He walked in the lane a little, still without noise. Presently he crossed to a stile, climbed it, and went off across the meadows in the direction of the ridge and the sea; and so vanished unheard into the night.

  Minutes went in the deep stillness that is so full of tiny sounds, of leaf, and grass, and beetle; and in the village a dim light or two went out. There was an effort at song in the taproom of the Castle Inn, which broke down in the second verse, and ended in laughter and debate. The hint was not lost on the parlour company, however, and presently, the windows being open, Roboshobery Dove’s voice was audible from end to end of Hadleigh and beyond —

  A merry man o’ money stood a-boasting on the quay,. “O, I have a ship, and a gallant ship is she;. And of all the ships that sail she’s the best upon the sea,. And she’s sailing in the Lowlands low.”. Lowlands! Lowlands!. She’s sailing in the Lowlands low!

  The chorus came with such a will that a hurried and angry step in the passage by the inn was unheard, and Mrs Banham, come to fetch her husband home, had the parlour door open ere the longest-winded of
the company had quite done with the last syllable.

  Banham was excitable, but ten fair-days, together with all their accompaniments, could not have driven him to defy his wife. Instant on her appearance he rose, with “Arl right, missis, arl right. I were just a-comin’,” and, abandoning his pot, reached the door ere she had time to get out more than a sentence of the shrill reproaches she was charged with. But she spared him none of them, and the parlour company, with serious faces, heard them as the couple passed the window, and heard them still till distance overcame her voice.

  “Come,” said Prentice, “never mind that. Next werse, Bosh!”

  Roboshobery Dove, something discomposed by the interruption, took a drink, and presently went on, gaining spirit and volume as he went —

  “For I had her built of the good oak tree,. And the name I gave unto her was the Golden Vanity,. And I freighted her and manned her, and she bore away to sea,. And she’s sailing in the Lowlands low!”. Lowlands! Lowlands!. She’s sailing in the Lowlands low!

  Then up the steps a sailor-man a-walking on the quay,. “O, I was aboard of your Golden Vanity. When the look-out was aware of a rover of Sallee,. And we sunk her in the Lowlands low”. Lowlands! Low —

  Every mouth was at its widest, when the door was dashed open again and revealed Banham.

  “A run!” he cried. “There be a run o’ tubs! ‘Haps a fight. Coastguard’s burnin’ a blue flare, Sou’chu’ch way!”

  The chorus stopped, but nobody shut his mouth. A night-run of smuggled goods was a thing so wholly dropped out of every man’s experience of late years that for a space nobody stirred nor spoke, but all gaped at the carrier.

  Roboshobery Dove, albeit his song was ruined, was first to start up, not forgetting to empty his tumbler as he did so. And in ten seconds from that the parlour stood empty, and the whole company was running, hobbling, trotting, scuffling, or stumping, according to age and circumstances, into the castle lane and over the meadows, toward whatever point promised to give a good view along the ridge and the shore. For if the coastguard were burning a blue light at Southchurch, it could but be to call help from Shoebury and Leigh, and that could mean but one thing. It was witness to their forgetfulness of ancient habits that all, without hesitation, ran freely to see. In the old times every man not actually engaged on the run would have kept back lest he were seen and suspected.