Jobson of Wickford, floundering sleepily in the rear, sprawled over a mixen and fell asleep again. But the rest persevered, and even the last and worst-directed got a glimpse of the distant light ere it burned out. A party of six or eight, with Roboshobery Dove among them, kept together and made their best pace along the cliff edge toward Leigh, Dove maintaining the pace and keeping his wooden leg clear of traps and holes with a surprising address. He judged the light to have burned somewhere on the cliff over the Mill Gut, and he was puzzled to account for any smuggler who knew the coast selecting for a landing a spot so vastly less advantageous than a dozen others thereabout.
They kept their way till Leigh village lay below them, black and silent. Here they were stopped by the rectory garden wall. The Nore light, out at sea, and the light on Garrison Point at Sheerness stood constant in the vast dark, and nearer moved the lights of two small ships, beating up to the Thames. Not the lap of an oar nor the fall of a foot could be heard, and curiosity began to slacken. It was remembered that three more miles lay between Leigh and the Mill Gut, and the flare might even have been burned farther along still. It was very late, and after all there might be nothing to see. So it was resolved to turn backs to the shore and strike across a waste and two bean-fields for the road. If there had been a run, and the tubs had got through, they would probably be brought that way.
“Though,” said Prentice, “a run arn’t likely on Midsummer night.”
“That doan’t argufy,” Dove answered. “’Tis dark enough, an’ there’ll be anoather sort o’ coastguard here in autumn, when the Baltic fleet come in.”
They were crossing the waste, and picking their way between many gorse bushes. Presently in the midst of the group a patient voice began: “When the bahloon fell at Barl’n’ in eighteen-twenny-eight I were in a tunnip fi’l’ with—”
“G’lor!” exclaimed Prentice. “Who’s that?”
“Where?”
“I see summun or summat,” said another of the party. “Arl black. Stud up out o’ the fuzz bush, den’t it?”
“Ay — under my nose a’mos’; an’ he be gone. ‘Twere a man or a ghost, sarten to say!”
“Den’t yow see him, Steve Lingood?”
“Ay, I thote I did. A man, I’d say; a little ‘un.”
All stood and stared into the empty air about them. Then said Lingood: “Not hap to be Cunnin’ Murr’ll out on his night walks, eh?...Else he’d ha’ spoke. Hey! Master Murr’ll! Master Murr’ll! Be that you?”
The echo came back clear and sharp from the rectory wall, but not another sound.
“Get along, neighbours,” urged Dove. “Man or devil, we want none of his deviltry. Get along.”
Across the two bean-fields they trudged, and along the road from Lapwater Hall into Hadleigh; but saw no more visions, of man, devil, nor blue light, nor heard aught save their own voices.
VI. — A HOUSE APART
THE Fair was over and gone, but Hadleigh was left simmering. Not Hadleigh alone, in fact, but Leigh also bubbled with gossip and conjecture in the matter of the mysterious blue light on the Southend cliffs; for a mystery it was found to be, after all. The coastguard at Leigh had seen the signal, and had hastened that way from their several patrols, till they had met the Shoeburyness men coming in the opposite direction. These, it seemed, were also hurrying in response to the flare, which they had supposed to be the work of the nearest Leigh patrol. After certain groping and stumbling, and a great deal of explanation and swearing, it grew apparent that no coastguardsman had burned a blue light at all, and that there was nothing whatever to call for their presence in force at Southchurch. On the other hand, if the whole thing were not a practical joke, it was extremely probable that some strategist had intentionally brought them together at this spot in order to throw the rest of the coast defenceless. And, this probability realised, it became expedient for every man to scramble back to his post at the best pace the darkness would allow, keeping eyes and ears open the while. All for nothing, however. Not a man was able to report a light, a footstep, or an oar-splash that could be called suspicious; though for not far short of three hours of dark night the way had been open anywhere along seven or eight miles of coast, save only at the most unlikely places just about Southchurch and Southend.
For many days the men of Leigh grinned one at another and winked; though, indeed, they were as much in the dark as the coastguard, who for a week afterward were dragging and “creeping” with hooks and grapnels all over the Thames estuary, in the hope of laying hold of a sunk “crop” of tubs. Old Sim Cloyse, in particular, was very curious to understand the business, and the fuller of questions and conjectures because, as he explained, he himself had been in bed and asleep when the adventure came to pass. But at any rate for any cause or none, the coastguard were made to look foolish, and were given a deal of fruitless work, and so the men of Leigh and Hadleigh made merriment at their expense. Fishermen dropped overboard elaborate booby-traps, old baskets, dunnage, and junk, to be hauled up, slowly, painfully, and hopefully, on the drags and hooks that were cast for a more valuable catch. And the searchers were greeted, at their landing, with pleasant and deferential inquiries after their good fortune.
“Good evenin’, sir,” a leather-faced ruffian would say, with a low comedy duck and a pull at his forelock. “Any sport, sir? Hot weather for draggin’, sir. Ketched any moer oad barr’ls, sir?”
But when Roboshobery Dove next saw Prentice at his garden gate, he jerked his thumb Leighward, and both old stagers winked. “Oad Sim Cloyse, eh?” said Roboshobery.
“Ay, he be a deep’un,” said Prentice.
Still, by a long comparison of notes among the likely men of Leigh, it grew apparent that not one of them had been “out” that night; and at last, since nobody else had lit the blue flare, it was plain that it must have been the devil. This opinion, indeed, prevailed in Hadleigh ere long, perhaps because of a revived interest in works of darkness consequent on the notable detection of Mrs Martin’s witchcraft.
She had been put to bed by her niece on the return from Banham’s bakehouse, still a little sick and dazed. In the morning, however, she had risen with an apparent forgetfulness of the events of the night, and set about her usual preparations for breakfast, while Dorrily, busying herself likewise with household matters, watched her furtively, dreading to make any allusion to what was chiefly in her mind.
Presently her aunt said: “Dorrily, the bread be very low. Den’t us bake yesterday?”
“No, aunt,” the girl answered, anxiously. “The — the oven’s broke, you know. Some bricks fell.”
The old woman looked fixedly at her for a moment, and then, as with sudden recollection, said: “Ay, so’em did. It do fare awkward. You mus’ go an’ see Dan Fisk, Dorrily, an’ ask him what he’ll charge.”
The lapse of memory amazed Dorrily. She wondered at first if her aunt merely affected to forget the affair of last night by way of ignoring a painful subject. But soon it grew plain that this could not be the case.
“Pity I den’t think of it,” Mrs Martin said, passing her hand across her forehead and down the cheek where last night’s scar was. “Some one else might ha’ let me use their oven. You better get your bonnet, Dorrily, an’ ketch the meller at the fower-wont way.”
The woman was pale and drawn, and her odd lapse of memory alarmed the girl. So Dorrily set out with a troubled face, and it was so that Roboshobery Dove met her on her way to catch the miller, who passed the four-wont way with bread at eight in the morning, or sooner. She saw how her appearance had broken up the train of singing children and driven them across the road, and she was not slow to understand. Plainly the Banham family had been up betimes, and the tale was abroad.
She bought a loaf, and took her way back behind the village, away from the busy road. Her nature was, and her life had schooled her, to meet trouble with resolution, but now she was conscious of an added loneliness and an added fear. Both were vague and of an ill-defined presence, but bo
th were there. When one has few friends the cutting-off of one leaves a great gap. The loss of her father and her uncle was no more than a childish memory, but her parting with her cousin Jack a few months ago had left her and her aunt very lonely; and now, though why she could not guess, the events of last night and the old woman’s state this morning affected her as would the realization of another parting.
Jack was away, in daily peril of shot and shell, and, after her aunt, there was nobody, scarce an acquaintance. Roboshobery Dove was friendly enough, it was true; but so he was to everybody else, except perhaps Cunning Murrell, whom he held in a distant awe that had a trace of aversion in it. Steve Lingood was very kind, too, last night especially; though he was curiously shy and indifferent, and, it would seem, disliked to meet her, for she had seen him avoid it. And there was one other very persistent, but very unpleasant, acquaintance, young Sim Cloyse, of Leigh, who now, however, seemed to be consoling himself with Mag Banham for the rebuffs he had suffered at Dorrily’s hands ever since Jack had gone to sea. But these counted very little in Dorrily’s eyes; Jack was away, and now —
As breakfast finished, and as other things fell to be dealt with, a certain abstraction grew upon Mrs Martin, as of one striving to call to mind some name or some circumstance that persistently eluded the memory; and she spoke scarce at all. Presently, however, as she busied herself with things out of door, her face cleared somewhat. Merry noises came down-wind from the village, and children were singing. It was not often that any inhabitant of Hadleigh could look over his garden fence without seeing a little Banham somewhere, and now from the garden of the black cottage there were half a dozen in sight at least. A row of four climbed on a fence thirty yards off, and one or two, smaller but more daring, skirmished closer. Dorrily saw her aunt stoop to a gooseberry bush and gather a handful of the fruit. Little Jimmy Banham, losing sight of her when she stooped, came up close by the gate at the moment when she opened it, gooseberries in hand. She smiled and nodded at the child, and offered the fruit; whereat little Jimmy, with a yelp of terror, turned and ran; and the climbers on the fence got down on the far side.
The old woman stood, astonished; and as she stood there came the cry from the fence— “Yah! oad witch! Oad witch!”
Mrs Martin turned with a dawning agony in her face; and as she did so, a lad across the lane took up the cry with a grin— “Oad witch! oad witch!” and shook a pitchfork at her.
Dorrily ran to meet her aunt as she tottered up the garden path, the gooseberries dropping between her nerveless fingers as she came. A pitiful revulsion was in her face, and it needed not a word to tell that remembrance had sprung to life at the blow. She fell into Dorrily’s arms and burst into a flood of tears.
“O, they say I be a witch! Master Murr’ll an’ Mrs Banham! Dorr’ly, I be’n’t! ’Tis cruel! I be’n’t! God help a poor soul that’s sent the son from her body to fight abroad!”
The girl led her in, with such words of comfort as she could think of. But Sarah Martin seemed to hear none of them; to hear nothing, indeed, but the parting shout of “Oad witch!” from the field beyond the fence, where the Banham skirmishers were retiring in guard of the rescued Jimmy.
“O, ’tis cruel, wicked cruel!” she sobbed, rocking herself in the chair to which Dorrily led her. “An’ they did talk o’ swimmin’ me in t’ hoss-pond. ’Tis cruel! They won’t swim me naked, will they, Dorry, gal?” And in the passion of the outburst the small cut on the cheek bled afresh.
“Don’t take on so, aunt dearie don’t,” Dorrily entreated; terrified by the violence of the woman’s grief “’Tis no call to take on so ’Tis only silly talk! Nobody shall hurt ye, aunt.” She wiped the mingled blood and tears from her aunt’s cheek, and strove by all means to quiet her. “I’ll take care of you, aunt, and there’s Jack — remember Jack. ’Tis only a few months he’ll be back to us!”
Her son’s name seemed to quiet her a little, and perceiving this, Dorrily brought two letters from a shelf “Look at his letters,” she said, “so fond as he be of you. Read them — and remember he’ll be home to us soon!”
There was a harsh voice from the lane without, and Dorrily heard, with fresh fears, Mrs Banham’s voice raised in shrill abuse. She left her aunt and shut the door on her.
“Not had punishment enough, han’t ye?” Mrs Banham bawled from the lane. “Not enough to putt the evil tongue on my gal Em, yow mus’ make count to catch my innocent-born young child, too!”
“Mrs Banham, ’tis all a mistake, I tell ‘ee!” Dorrily pleaded, from the fence. “My poor aunt wishes no ill to a soul.”
“Then why do she tempt a poor little child to take things from her hand, to bewitch him body and soul? No harm, sez she!”
“She did but offer him gooseberries from the bush,” Dorrily answered, “seein’ him by the gate playin’. She’s ill an’ broke down with your unkind beliefs.”
“Ay, an’ good reason! ’Tis for the torment o’ such that Master Murr’ll do work, an’ I joy to know it, after what she did to my children!”
“If only you saw her now, you’d see how cruel you be,” Dorrily went on. “’Tis no bodily torment, but ’tis bitter grief to be said ill of. Will you come in, Mrs Banham, an’ see her?”
There was a flash of fierce cunning across Mrs Banham’s face. “So yow try your tricks still, do ye, witches both?” she retorted. “Putt my body over her threshold, an’ putt it in her power, eh? Oh, ’tis well I’m not new to such deviltry! Witches both! Yow shall dolour proper for arl, if Master Murr’ll can do’t! Witches both!”
The flush of anger was on the girl’s pale face, and her black eyebrows seemed joined by a knot. “I’ll talk no more with such a brawlin’ mawther,” she said, with sudden wrath in her voice. “Go your way, Martha Banham, an’ your ill words fall upon yourself!”
Mrs Banham was as much in fear as in ire, and something in the angry face looking down on her lent force to the words. Mrs Banham said no more, but backed across the lane and turned, nervous fury in her face, and her hands clasped tightly together, with thumbs concealed under the fingers; as is proper to avert the malice of a witch whose blood you have not drawn.
As Dorrily went back to her aunt, a louder burst of the unwonted noise of the fair up at the village prompted a thought that turned her anger to dread. It was fair day, and Hadleigh was full of Leigh men, boisterous, brutish, and soon to be full of drink. There was no fair day in recollection on which the Leigh men had let the afternoon go peacefully. Of late years a fight between the two villages had been the common outcome, but she remembered the tale of a fair years ago, when they had swum an old man and his wife for witches, with much sport and delight. It was the sort of diversion that they might turn to again with the relish of novelty; and all the village was calling Sarah Martin a witch. Dorrily had been terrified at the fair-day fights before, but now she prayed for one fervently. And as we have seen, she had her wish, and her aunt was unmolested. But she feared greatly, and she resolved to take her aunt away from the cottage till nightfall, to some place where any party leaving the village might be seen betimes, and where hiding might be found.
Mrs Martin was still weeping when she rejoined her, though less violently. “I heared her,” she said, “an’ she carled us witches both. What shall us do, Dorry gal?”
“’Tis no matter what a silly mawther says,” Dorrily answered, forcing a cheerfulness into her voice. “We be true women, and God’ll help us. So we’ll say our prayers together, an’ make holiday for to-day, away from the fair an’ the noise, an’ we’ll take Jack’s letters to read on Castle Hill, an’ look at the ships.”
VII. — A STRANGE CLIENT
THE Effervescense of fair day had subsided, though plenty was left to talk about in the calmer moods of many months. The probability of the devil manifesting himself in the shape of a blue light, for the befoolment of the coastguard, was discussed, and generally agreed upon; when, in the early dark of an evening, a client came to Cunning Murrell.
/> He was a big, powerful fellow, and he appeared from the dark of the lane where it sank over the hill. The night was no colder than summer nights had been that season, but the man was muffled heavily, his coat collar up, his cap down over his eyes, and a figured shawl wound about his face till it almost met the cap. As he came to the row of cottages he stood and looked about him sharply. There was nobody else near, and it was past the common bed-time by an hour. There were signs, however, of dim light both upstairs and down in Murrell’s cottage, and the stranger made for the door and rattled the latch gently.
There was a little delay, and then a woman opened the door and looked out. It was Ann Pett, a widowed daughter of Murrell’s, who kept house for him; a worn, draggled wisp of a woman of forty.
She peered vaguely into the dark and asked: “Who is’t?”
“Master Murr’ll I want,” came a gruff voice, made gruffer by the shawl. “Tell him.”
The woman hesitated. “I’ll see,” she said; and repeated: “Who is’t?”
“Customer, patient — whatever yow call’t,” the man answered impatiently. “Tell him ’tis business.”
“Well!” the woman said, doubtfully, and paused. And then she shut the door.
The stranger was in doubt, and after a moment’s hesitation raised his hand to knock. But the door opened again and the woman invited him in.
In spite of the muffler, the smell of herbs was strong and dry in the stranger’s nostrils. Murrell came from the back of the room, sharp of eye and voice. “Get you upstaers, Ann,” he commanded, jerking his thumb backward. “Or stay — get yow out o’ door; never mind your bawn’t, ’tis a warm enough night.” And Ann went submissively as might be.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 114