“Now, friend,” said Murrell, “sit yow there, an’ give me your cap.”
His air of command went ill with his thin voice and small stature, and the big man said gruffly, “I’ll keep as I am for the present, meanin’ no offence;” and sat in the chair. Murrell took the rushlight from the mantelpiece and set it on the table, full before the stranger’s face; and the stranger instantly reached for the candlestick and put it behind him, at the table-end.
Murrell’s keen eyes never left the man’s face, muffled as it was, and now in deep shade. But he let the candle stay, and took a seat opposite his client. “Well,” he said, “is’t med’sun, or what? Be you muffled agin the coad?”
“‘Taren’t med’sun,” the other replied. “‘Taren’t med’sun, an’ ‘taren’t a coad chill. ’Tis adwice, an’ — an’ — mayhap summat more. ’Tis well knowed yow do — summat more.”
“Well?” Murrell’s eyes never winked nor shifted from the shadowy patch that marked the region of the stranger’s face. “Well,” the stranger went on awkwardly, “’tis for to say, sich as things lost and stole, buried property, fortunes by the stars, an’ that.”
Murrell said nothing, and presently the stranger filled the gap by adding “An’ matters o’ business, pardners an’ that.”
“Very well,” Murrell said thereupon. “What’s the property wuth?”
“Property wuth?” the stranger repeated, as one taken by surprise and a shade disconcerted. “Property — wuth. Well, that depends.”
“Ah,” said Murrell, easily, “depends on where you sell it, p’r’aps. Cost fifty pound to buy?”
“Double that,” said the other, rubbing his nose where the muffler tickled it. “Double that, an’ a bit more, one way an’ another. But wuth more — a lot more, to sell.”
“Three or fower hundred pound, mayhap?”
“Ay, all that, an’ over. But why d’ye ask?”
“’Tis likely I may need it to go in a geomantic formula,” said Murrell, who knew the words were Greek to his client. “An’ now what about your pardner?”
“Pardner?” exclaimed the other, with astonishment. “Why, I hevn’t said I had a pardner, hev I?”
“’Tis my business to know many things people don’t tell me,” Murrell answered placidly, “What about your pardner?”
“If yow know,” said the visitor doggedly, and with a shade of suspicion, “there’s no need o’ me to tell ye.”
“I ask for what I don’t know — yet,” the cunning man replied, placidly as before. “If you den’t want to tell me ye woo’n’t ha’ come; an’ if your mind’s changed you can go now.”
There was a few moments’ pause, and then the stranger said, with something of sulky fierceness: “I want to know if my pardner be a true man to me.”
“Very well.” Murrell took a scrap of paper, already written close on one side, from his pocket, reached ink and pen from the mantelpiece, and wrote in a tiny, crabbed hand: If pardner be faithfull.
“An’ if not,” the client went on, “adwice accordin’.”
Murrell wrote a line below the other: If not, what to doe. Then he asked: “An’ where be the property?”
The visitor shuffled uneasily. “O, that’s safe enough — put away.”
“Hid?”
The man grunted. “Well, yes, ’tis,” he admitted.
Murrell added another line: Propperty hid. “An’ wuth fower hundred pound?” he asked.
“Ay, or more.”
Murrell wrote: Worth above £400. He pushed the pen and ink along the table, with another scrap of paper. “There be fower pints,” he said, “an’ by this curis art we take no more than fower pints at a time. Take you the pen, good friend, an’ make you fower lines o’ strokes, without counting; a line below a line, an’ stop when you please.”
The man took the pen in a great brown, unaccustomed fist, and squared his elbows. “Begin here?” he asked.
“Ay, begin a-top. Now a row o’ strokes, an’ no counting.”
With slow labour the stranger traced a row of straggling strokes, and then three more rows below, Murrell watching his face still; though now the keen look had a tinge of something else — perhaps of contempt.
The task ended, Murrell drew the paper toward him, and, rapidly scanning the rows of strokes, placed opposite each a symmetrical group of cyphers. This done, he made more cyphers on the paper he had first used, and dotted about them with his pen, like a boy with a sum.
“Right witness; left witness; judge...There is much curis information to be read in this figure of geomancy,” he said, poring over the paper, but with a sly upward glance. “First, I make it you come from — let’s see — yes, Sheppy, but not a native there.”
The man started. But after a moment’s pause he replied: “No, I be an Essex man.”
“Just that,” Murrell went on. “An Essex man lately living in Sheppy. A Leigh man, I do read. An’ your pardner’s name be” — here he paused, and, with head still bent, shot a glance at the big man as sly as the other, and with an added touch of triumph— “your pardner’s name be — Cloyse. Why, that must be Master Sim Cloyse, sarten to say?”
The strange client half rose, but dropped heavily back in the chair, his eyes wide in amaze. “Yow give me that paper,” he demanded, extending his arm. “It tell too much!”
“Pooh!” the cunning man answered, keeping the paper under his hand, “’tis read now, arl of it. An’ ’tis not my business to tell secrets. Yow be a Leigh man gone to Sheppy, an’ your pardner be Sim Cloyse of Leigh. Speakin’ o’ Leigh,” he went on, discursively, “there were a Sam Gill o’ Leigh that went to Sheppy two or three months back. You know nothin’ o’ him, do ye?”
“Yes” — the man was still a little uneasy, but he answered this question readily enough— “yes, he went on to Portsmouth they do say, an’ shipped aboard a summat bound for the West Indies.”
“Ah, I wondered. Well, to the matter in hand.” Murrell lifted the paper. “Your pardner be Sim Cloyse, as I said, an’ you do well to distrust him. You be a Leigh man, lately living in Sheppy, an’ your name” — he paused, and the man started forward in his chair— “your name be Golden Adams!”
“G’lor!” the stranger ejaculated, and flung his cap on the table. He pulled the shawl down from his face, puffed his cheeks and wiped his forehead, revealing the hard, bronzed face of a man of forty. “Damme, Golden Adams is my name, an’ what hev ye to say to that?”
“Nothen,” Murrell answered quietly. “Nothen; I do seem to ha’ heard the name at one time, no more.”
“Well, an’ what more do ye find in that bewitched paper, devil as ye be”
“Devil?” squeaked Murrell, for his pride was touched. “I’ll hev ye know I’m the devil’s master For your hid property I’ve more to say. ‘Haps you’ll find a new pardner. We’ll speak of that in the lane. Come!”
He brought his frail and umbrella from a corner, and called permission through the back door for his daughter to return. Golden Adams pushed up his muffler again, put on his cap, and opened the door. But before following him Murrell found another scrap of paper whereon to write the note: Saml. Gill of Leigh gone from Sheppy now and left Portsmouth by shipp for West Indes.
He put the note carefully into a shapeless homemade pocket-book, seized his frail and umbrella and his glazed hat, and followed Golden Adams into the outer dark.
VIII. — DOUBTS AND A LETTER
DORRILY THORN found little comfort in her aunt’s case. Sarah Martin had relapsed into the brooding state of mind that had afflicted her twelve years back or more, after the loss of her husband and her brother. Perhaps her habit now was somewhat less passive than it had been then, for she was beset by a constant fear of her neighbours, exaggerated beyond reason; and the charge she lay under was not a sorrow wrought to its end, but a present and abiding affliction, of a depth only to be felt by a woman brought up to believe witchcraft a very real and hideous crime, in a place where everybody about her sh
ared the conviction. She had aged, too, more than mere time would suggest, since her double bereavement. Indeed, this was the way on and about the marshes, where an inevitable rheumatism weighted the years of those past middle life; and now there was nothing for her mind but her troubles. So that she wept and brooded, and indulged real and imaginary terrors; being relieved only by intervals of blank forgetfulness. And at night she was restless and wakeful.
The afternoon on Castle Hill in some degree soothed her for the time it lasted, though Dorrily was hard put to it to keep a cheerful face while her eyes and ears were strained toward the village, and her wits were busy devising ways of retreat in case of the approach of folk from the fair.
Jack’s letters were read and re-read — short, frank, and ill-spelled, on thin paper, two letters in each envelope, one for his mother and one for Dorrily; and his mother found a childish interest in speculating on each sail as it rose on the distant sea-line, with the counterfeit hope that it might bring his ship on some unforeseen errand home. All the long sunny afternoon they sat undisturbed on the grass of the hilltop, looking out across the great width of green marsh and blue water, and no human creature came in sight nearer than a man, far down on Casey Marsh, who seemed to crawl like an insect, and hopped now and again at a ditch. There was an unfamiliar hum from over the ridge behind — the noise of the fair; and as the afternoon went the noise grew louder and more varied, though still it was a dull noise enough. Dorrily was a little startled about this time by a fancy of her aunt’s that somebody was in the copse just below the castle, watching them. There was no sound, and nobody was to be seen; and as Mrs Martin admitted that she neither heard nor saw anybody, though she “felt quite sure” that somebody or something was there, Dorrily concluded that it was a mere baseless fancy, and turned eyes and ears again toward Hadleigh.
And so the afternoon grew into evening. The sun went down in blue and gold, and the Nore light burst out in the midst of the darkening sea. The sounds of the fight’s last skirmish had come clearly from the nearer meadow whereinto it had straggled, and now the village was comparatively quiet. With the coming of dusk Mrs Martin grew uneasy, and even Dorrily had no wish to stay longer on Castle Hill; and as they went down toward the lane, Mrs Martin’s apprehensions of something in the copse — something leaving it now, she insisted, and following them — rose tenfold, and hastened their steps, while Dorrily’s strained nerves took alarm from each of the tiny night sounds that the stillness brought to her ear. But they reached the cottage with no greater disquiet, and took their rest.
But the days that succeeded, though easier for Dorrily, since she felt no fear of actual violence once the disorder of the fair was over, saw little change in her aunt. She grew sensitive to the manners and aspect of her neighbours. Mrs Banham remained sullen, hostile, half-defiant; but the rest displayed a curiously timid deference, an ostentatious anxiety to give no offence, a wish even to propitiate, that might have been gratifying in other circumstances; though as it plainly disguised mere aversion and disgust, and was accompanied by an unmistakable desire to keep at the safest possible distance, its effect was to cause a suppressed torment and irritation which increased with time. And Mrs Martin’s angry looks and frowns askance were popularly taken for plain proofs of witchcraft in themselves.
But her angry looks were for the outer world alone, to which she lifted her bravest face. At home she was pensive and abstracted, and now Dorrily felt indeed that loneliness that she had vaguely apprehended — a loneliness that made her head of the little household, and was loneliness only in the sense that unaided and uncounselled she must bear the burdens of both.
Almost every morning she went up to the village to meet the postman from Rochford, in hope that there might be a letter from Jack. The journey was fruitless nine times out of ten and more, for, apart from the normal irregularity of mails from a cruising ship, each letter cost threepence in postage, and that for a quarter of an ounce. By a Queen’s ship, indeed, half an ounce was brought at the same price, but nothing came and nothing could go at less than threepence. For this reason, too, Dorrily’s letters to Jack were few, and for this reason Jack’s own letters were short. For a quarter of an ounce is not much, even of thin paper, and when that was divided into two letters, and each was written in Jack’s large and laborious hand, the space available was soon covered.
There was a letter a week after the fair. That morning the old postman was brisker than common, or perhaps he carried a lighter load, so that he had reached the post-office, opposite the Castle Inn, ere Dorrily was at the lane corner, and was coming away as she emerged into Hadleigh street. “One for you,” he said with a grim nod, jerking his thumb backward.
The postmistress was sorting the little bunch of letters, nine or ten for Cunning Murrell, three or four for the rest of the village; for Murrell alone had thrice as much correspondence as the remainder of Hadleigh, and this indeed was something below his average delivery. Sickness — of men and cows: bewitchment — of people and churns: and losses — of clothes, watches, crops, and lovers: these afflictions brought him demands and inquiries by letter from all Essex, much of Kent, and even from London, where Essex maidservants had carried his name.
The postmistress hastily put down a folded letter with a vast smear of sealing wax behind it, the gaping end of which had been applied to her eye: for Murrell’s letters were the most interesting that came. “Good morning, Miss Thorn,” she said sweetly; “there’s a letter for you. Here it is. Beautiful weather, isn’t it? Good morning!” And Dorrily hated her for her civility, for it was the civility of the villagers who feared to anger her aunt. The last letter she had called for, that bony woman had flung at her with no sounds but a growl and a sniff.
She thought she had seen Steve Lingood at his smithy door; but, if so, he had gone in. Surely he was not afraid of her? But here was the letter, and the pressing business now was to get into the quiet lane and tear it open. For Jack wrote alternately to Dorrily and his mother, though he sent each a letter in the package; and this was addressed to Dorrily herself. She waited till she had passed Murrell’s cottage — for no particular reason, for he was never visible at this time in the morning — and then broke the seal. Her aunt’s letter she thrust into her pocket, and sat on a stile — the stile the villagers had crossed in their pursuit of the blue light — to read her own.
Hadleigh street was a large part of a mile long, so that when she had left the post-office she had not perceived Roboshobery Dove in the distance. He had seen her, however, and his keen sea-eyes had detected the letter in her hand. He scented war news, and hurried. So it was that just as Dorrily had mastered the few sentences that were all Jack could find to say. Dove stood before her, telescope under arm.
“Good noos, my dear?” he asked. “I den’t come up till I see yow’d a-got to the end. ‘Haps there be nothen in it but what aren’t for me to see, eh? Hearts an’ darts, an’ love an’ — why I rhymes with love myself, sink me, though I bin a bacheldor all my life! Aren’t the Phyllis laid aboard o’ nothen? Took no prizes?”
Dorrily took the letter with circumspection, and folded some lines back. “He says he fare well, never better, an’— ‘We been playin’ at bonfires here, at two places nobody can’t spell an’ not many can say; bigger bonfires than ever they had on Hadleigh common, with ten thousan’ barrels o’ tar at one place an’ eighteen thousan’ at the other; not as I counted them, but that’s what the captain says, an’ a midshipman told me. I went ashore with two hundred others at the first place, an’ it was a flare; we burnt eight new craft. The people cut off, though we weren’t let to touch them. Now we are to sail to a place called Sweaborg, where they say the Ruskies have got men of war in the harbour. An’ so now—’” Dorrily stopped suddenly, doubled the letter up, and concluded shyly, “An’ that’s all. Master Dove.”
“O,” Roboshobery grunted, “that’s all, is it? Werry good all the same, though I think I read summat about that bonfirin’ in the Chronicle las’
week; ‘special as I doan’t remember neither o’ the names too, same as he. Well, my dear, den’t I say he was arl right? Den’t I say it? Takin’ his fun like as in a play; and by this time I lay he’ll be a boardin’ o’ they men-o’-war like — like — like a cartload o’ skyrockets!” And Roboshobery Dove made so vigorous a cut and guard with his telescope that it shot out to full length, and gave the movement an undesigned verisimilitude.
Dorrily sighed as she got down from the stile. “Ah,” she said, “’tis a long time to wait for him in danger. An’ we in trouble enough,” she added, half to herself.
The old man looked curiously at her, and then stealthily over his shoulder in the direction of Murrell’s cottage. “D’ye know,” he said, dropping his voice as though he feared the cunning man might hear, “d’ ye know what he says?”
“Ay, we know it well enough, an’ bitter cruel it be for Cunnin’ Murr’ll to say it.”
Roboshobery Dove nodded, winked, whistled softly, and rubbed a hand over his left ear. “An’ yet,” he said, “he be woundly clever, sarten to say.”
They walked a few steps down the lane. “Question are,” Dove went on, musingly, “who they be. We know there must be three — ollis.”
“Three what?”
“Three witches in Hadleigh — for ever.”
Dorrily curled her lip, “An’ who says that?” she asked, though indeed she knew.
“Why,” Dove responded, his surprise bringing him half round on the axis of his wooden leg, “he say so hisself; Cunnin’ Murr’ll; witches in Leigh for a hunder’ year, three in Hadleigh for ever; an’ nine in Canewdon.”
Dorrily knew the saying well enough; but she said, “Then ’tis pity Master Murr’ll can’t find them all out, cunnin’ as they call him, ‘stead o’ puttin’ shame on a good woman.”
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 115