Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  “Yes?”

  “To see yow.”

  “‘Bout this?”

  “About this. I thought to hint yow might clear Golden Adams from Castle Hill and get your property by — well, by makin’ an arrangement with me. But it were brote to me that yow were seen to go out; an’ I came on in the shrimp-cart...Well, yow be ready to make sich an arrangement. Name your offer.”

  Old Sim Cloyse looked hard at Murrell. “Master Murr’ll, sir, get that man out o’ the way, an’ when I’ve got the stuff I’ll pay yow — twenty pound.”

  Cunning Murrell rubbed his chin. “That be very handsome, Master Cloyse, very handsome, sarten to say,” he said, blandly. “The bargain be that I get Golden Adams away from Castle Hill, one night, or arltogither, an’ give yow notice, that yow may move your property. When yow’ve got your property, an’ not before, yow pay me twenty pound. Very good. I make that bargain.”

  “Good indeed then, Master Murr’ll. We unnerstand one anoather.” Old Sim Cloyse grinned and winked, and slapped his knee. “Twill be as well, ‘haps, that yow den’t be seen comin’ to Leigh to see me, nor I here to see yow, till the job’s settled. An’ now, how d’ ye think yow’ll manage it?”

  “That I shall consider. Master Cloyse. Mayhap one way, mayhap anoather — pretty sartenly in a way yow won’t be expectin’. But leave that to me.”

  “Master Murr’ll, sir, I hev showed my respeck for your larnin’ an’ my trust in your wisdom that be so scientific. I will leave it to yow — arl. We unnerstand one anoather, Master Murr’ll, an’ arter what’s passed there be no need for me to bespeak yow to keep it close.”

  “No need at arl. Master Cloyse.” Murrell pushed back his chair. “No need at arl. Secrecy I must keep, both for your sake an’ mine. An’ when I send yow a message, or what not, that yow may find your property at your disposal, ‘twill be in sich terms as we hev spoke this evenin’. Property we carl it, without bein’ more partic’lar.”

  Cloyse rose, but stood and scratched behind his ear, as though some lingering doubt remained. Then he bent toward Murrell and said: “Hev he told anybody else?”

  “Not a soul but me,”

  Cloyse nodded, thought and scratched a little more, and asked: “There be no chance, be there, Master Murr’ll, that he get movin’ it unbeknown to yow?”

  “Master Cloyse, I assure yow there be none. Not a — well, not a piece o’ that property can be moved unbeknown to me. ’Tis arl at my fingers’ ends. The fee yow offer. Master Cloyse, the very handsome fee yow offer, be greater by far, I confess, than any I hev ever taken. If in any way I fail yow, I shall lose it, that’s arl. But I will go so far as to promise yow shall have your property, every — every bit of it.”

  He said it with a confident assurance that was very welcome to old Sim Cloyse; who groped for his hat, found it, and presently was gone, after Murrell had first cautiously peered forth and found nobody near.

  Cunning Murrell shut the door quietly. He turned, looked round the herb-hung walls, and burst into a wide grin — such a grin as nobody, not even Ann Pett, was ever allowed to see on his face. Then he raised his hands over his shoulders, letting the fingers hang near his ears, and slowly danced on tiptoe round the table; and the dance was as silent as the grin.

  Now if Cunning Murrell had had a favourite son whom he was bringing up in the practice of his own trade, he might have seized this opportunity to call him in and impress on him certain maxims which, though never precisely formulated, had always governed himself. As for instance:

  “Be upright in all things. If there be a contention, and one of the parties come to you, knowing you to have been already retained on the other side, whatever error you may induce him to commit, whatever loss of money he may incur, and whatever information you may pump out of him, will be the result of his own fault.”

  “Shame the devil by telling the literal truth. If any man be deceived by the literal truth, he must be a fool, and deserves to suffer.”

  For indeed the long use of spells and conjurations had bred in him a vast regard for words merely, since they were manifestly so potent an influence. Others have reached the same persuasion by a different road. So that to Murrell, as sometimes to greater men, a word, or a phrase, or a sentence, which accorded precisely with his inmost mind, and at the same time was apt in particular circumstances to carry a wholly different meaning to the minds of others, was a valuable instrument of trade.

  He had, in fact, expected just such a visit from Cloyse as he had received, for he had at least as clear and as quick a view of the position and chances of things as Cloyse himself. But finding that the visit did not come instant on the repulse by pistol-fire from Castle Hill, whereof he had learned from Golden Adams, he began to suppose that either Cloyse had been badly wounded, or was about to carry the business in some unknown way; and being, by reason of the poverty of the moment, near as impatient as Adams himself, he resolved to learn what he might at Leigh of Cloyse’s health, and perchance see him and renew, in the light of fresh circumstances, the offers he had carried before. He had reached Leigh Strand in time to see Cloyse’s departure from his house, and to observe the direction he had taken; and then was able to take advantage of the shrimp-cart to reach Hadleigh first.

  But all these matters, with the unformulated maxims, were hidden in the cunning man’s head; for he had never had any favourite child, and of the two remaining alive the son was at that moment fast asleep in the farmhouse where he worked, three miles away, and had never been taught as much as to read; and the daughter, though she was but a few yards off, was as illiterate as her brother, and as dull of mind. So that none profited by Cunning Murrell’s wisdom; and he, his dance danced to its end and his grin relaxed, took hat, umbrella, and frail, and soon was stealing down the castle lane, toward the stile.

  XVI. — A DAY AT BANHAM’S

  THE little stars were gone, and of the great stars but one or two remained to twinkle yet a space in the west. Paleness had spread high in the sky, and away on the very edge of the waters, beyond where the Pan Sand and the Girdler lay invisible, a flush was rising and spreading. The broken towers of Hadleigh Castle were haggard in the grey light, and Golden Adams’s face seemed scarce less haggard, as he rose from the stones whereon he had been sitting and dozing, stood erect, and stretched his arms. The hill and the marshes below, the water, and the far Kent shore, all were ashy grey alike, and over the marshes wisps and rags of white mist changed and turned and ran together like ghosts alarmed by the coming day.

  The flush grew and deepened at the water’s edge, and then, like arrows from the sun in ambush, two long rays shot high above, and another. And with that the first tinge of colour was borne into the greyness, soft and vaporous, pink and blue, faint as pearl. More rays sprang, wider now, and in a moment a blazing segment stood above the sea. Light ran before it, leaving colour in its track, driving the ghosts into hiding behind copses and in the hollows of hills, and carrying the iridescence far to west and south. And at that the nests, restless already with wakening twitters, broke into full song, and began the eager traffic of the day. Hill and marsh were green and glistening, daisies peeped, and the sun lifted quick and great from the sea, and flung out its gold to make the blue water merry.

  The old towers took the warmer tint of day, and Golden Adams’s hard features regained their natural brown, no whit paled by his nights of watching and dozing. He took the fur cap from his head, beat off the dew against his palm, and shook more dew from his coat. Then, with a last look round land and water, he slowly descended to the coppice, there to lie for the day, and to sleep as he might.

  Up in the meadows work was toward, and the sound of the stone sweeping the scythe-blade. The life of Hadleigh and its fields went its even way till seven o’clock. Then the men trooped in to breakfast, and the cows trooped out from the morning milking.

  Dorrily Thorn tended her aunt, worked in the garden, and after breakfast returned from the post-office happy in possession of a lett
er from Jack. Young Sim Cloyse straggled in from Leigh, indefinite of aim, but vaguely hoping that Dorrily Thorn might be in a less curt mood, and not altogether deaf to persuasion in the matter of Prittlewell Fair. Lingood’s forge clanged and glowed; and Cunning Murrell slept till he was called to doctor Banham’s horse.

  At Banham’s things were at sixes and sevens. Not that that was not the normal state of Banham’s; but to-day things went wrong with a more than commonly persistent perversity. It was a suitable place for muddle and trouble, for Banham, like everybody hereabout, no matter what his regular trade, did his small bit of farming with an acre or so, a cow, and a few pigs, leaving it much to the mismanagement of his wife. If Mrs Banham had had no more than her household duties to disorganise she would have done it very thoroughly, and would never have let a day slip without broken crockery, spoiled meals, infantile avalanches on the stairs, tumblings into tubs, torn, scorched, and lost linen, and other such domestic entanglements. But all was chaos since those duties were complicated with attendance on a small farmyard: one set about with tottering sheds, whereof while the roof fell in the doors fell out; so that the Banham poultry and pigs pervaded the village as widely as the Banham offspring, and some of the latter were in perpetual quest and pursuit of some of the former.

  But this day was worse than all. It was one of Banham’s late-starting mornings, and Bobby, Jimmy, and the rest had all fallen downstairs and been patched and mended and smacked, and had spilt their teacups and been smacked again, and Mrs Banham had industriously spread the beginnings of the day’s disorder, ere Banham, going with young Dick, his eldest boy, to harness the horse, found it shivering and “winnicking” and lifting its off hind leg, whereon was a nasty cut, just over the fetlock. Banham, stooping to examine the cut, found both hind legs sore and bruised, and the animal very tender of a touch. Then Dick pointed to a splintered bucket in a far corner, and a little staring made it plain to father and son that everything within hoof-reach had been kicked and broken — a thing not so instantly noticeable as it might have been, by reason of most things in the Banham establishment being broken already. And when the horse was unhaltered there was a sad large swelling just under the right eye, tenderer than all the bruises, and wholly closing the lids.

  Poor Banham gaped and stared in dismay. A small bruise or a cut or two he would have treated well enough himself, but all this — and especially the mysterious swelling at the eye — must be seen to by Cunning Murrell. So Dick was sent for him with all speed.

  Murrell found the whole family about the stable, which was a longish shed, made to accommodate the horse at one end and the cow at the other, with a cart between. Mrs Banham’s firm opinion was that the horse had been bewitched, and Mag Banham inclined to the same belief. Em chuckled and wept and winked that horrid wink that had returned to her of late.

  Cunning Murrell went over the horse with practised fingers, and in response to Mrs Banham’s repeated suggestions of witchcraft was disposed to agree with her. How had the cow been?

  Instantly it was remembered that all sorts of things had been amiss with the cow. She had been cross-grained yesterday, and reluctant to yield her milk; she had kicked over the pail on Tuesday — or was it Saturday? She was hot and feverish and fretful — which, of course, could not be due to the warm weather and nightly confinement in a shed. But more than all, Mag Banham had been at the churn all yesterday afternoon and part of the evening, and failed to make a single speck of butter.

  Murrell nodded gravely, looked at the cow, and shook his head. No doubt it was a “sending”; an imp had tormented the horse, and probably had begun by biting it under the eye, driving it mad with terror, and causing all the trouble.

  At this, young Dick, with a scandalous irrelevance, a youthful presumption and an impudent levity that shocked everybody, ventured to attribute the swelling to a possible wasp or hornet, lying “dummel” in the hay; even pretending that he had heard of such a case somewhere else. But his effrontery met its punishment, and he sidled off abashed and discomfited by the wise man’s condign rebuke. And, indeed, as any one might know, even if the thing were a wasp or a hornet, there was no more common form for any witch’s imp to assume than that, except, perhaps, a spider.

  So for the present Cunning Murrell washed and bound the cut, and made plasters of steeped herbs for the bruises and the eye; promising to call again, and in the meantime not only to send a drench for the cow, but to consider the matter of any amulet or conjuration that might seem needful in case the cures were delayed. But indeed, Murrell’s fame as a cattle-doctor was merited, and Banham’s horse was soon comforted by the plasters.

  But Murrell was no sooner gone than more disasters of the night were revealed; for in another shed the old sow was found routing among the whole remaining store of mangels, which lay scattered about her, each with a large gnaw in its side; for merely to eat a few mangels and have done with the mischief was not in that sow’s nature; she must take a bit out of every one, and so do as much ruin as possible.

  Banham was a mild man in general, but now he snatched a hoe, and so plied the handle that the old sow went at a bolt, and overset a large part of the family on the mixen. And when the damage was seen and lamented it grew plain to Mrs Banham that here was proof, if more were needed, of the unholy source of all the other troubles; for it was remembered that this same sow had twice eaten her own pigs, and once had gobbled up a whole brood of chicks. It was perceived on examination that some time in the night, instigated by the devil, the brute had capsized the trough against the gate of the run; the hinges, cut from the uppers of an aged boot, had fetched away and let the gate — itself a medley of rotten boards and barrel staves — fall flat, so that the whole yard was open to the offender. How she got into the shed where the mangels lay was not so clear, though it was certainly by infernal aid of some sort, since nobody would admit having left the door open.

  Here was a pretty state of things to begin the day with; and as the day went, so things went more awry, Banham had to stay at home, of course; and although it might seem that so unassuming an addition to the family numbers would make little difference, nevertheless his wife protested that he hindered everything, and brought about a most distracting state of muddle: which he himself never ventured to doubt. Mag laboured again at the churn, for nothing; and Mrs Banham took a clamorous turn herself, with as little result. But to tell half the tale of that day’s failures and troubles, and spillings, and breakings, and squabblings, and lamentations, would be too much. Let it suffice to say that in the afternoon the biggest dish fell from the topmost shelf of the dresser on a pile of unwashed crockery beneath, and Jimmy was convicted of ringworm.

  Now for some time it had been observed with alarm that Em was “going comical” again; and when the big dish fell with a great crash, she flung back in her seat and laughed and laughed, and would not stop. And presently the laughs turned to shrieks, and her legs stuck out stiff before her, and she slid off the chair on her back; her arms jerked like a string-jack’s, the shrieks wore away hoarsely, and when Mag and her mother went to lift her she bit at them like a dog.

  If it were possible to suppose a doubt that all their troubles were caused by witchcraft this would have removed it. It was plain, as soon as there was time for consideration, that here must be the work of a confederation of witches; unless, indeed, Cunning Murrell’s burst bottle had been ineffectual against Mrs Martin — which it most manifestly had not been. It was long known that there were, and always would be, three witches in Hadleigh, for Murrell had himself proclaimed it. But of late years their identity had been doubtful, till Mrs Martin had been proved to be one of them. Now, her own power over the Banhams having been weakened by Murrell’s triumphant operation, she had doubtless called in the aid of others, her niece, Dorrily Thorn, being one of them without a doubt. For was she not actually seen with her aunt, conspicuous in the forefront of a satanic orgy at night on Castle Hill, by Jarge Crick, as honest a man as any in these parts? And Mag
was even more positive, for she had spent the night awake and weeping because this same Dorrily Thorn had put a spell on young Sim Cloyse, drawing him away, changing his temper and feelings, and attracting him to herself: a thing that nothing but witchcraft could explain. She had seen the thing with her own eyes, looking down the hill; and it was doubly cruel, too, for had not Dorrily Thorn her cousin. Jack Martin? And at the thought poor Mag grew as bitter as her mother — perhaps bitterer.

  Here was fine matter for the gossips, and great work for Cunning Murrell: nothing less than a combined attack of witches on one innocent family, afflicting it at a swoop with an imp-tortured horse, a fiend-ridden pig, a doubtful cow, and a bedeviled churn, to say nothing of a bushel of broken crockery, and wholly disregarding the ringworm. But chief of all, here was Em Banham “took comical” once more, and worse than ever; biting and snapping at her mother’s hands, and even at her own.

  When at last Mrs Banham and Mag succeeded in finding Cunning Murrell it was in evening dark, and he was coming up Castle Lane with the accustomed umbrella over his shoulder, but with a far bigger frail than common hanging from its handle; a full and bulging frail, too, full of something that seemed heavy. And he was angry when they rushed upon him, and bade them hold their tongues and go; though he promised to come to them presently, and kept his promise.

  XVII. — THE CALL OF TIME

  ROBOSHOBERY DOVE had finished his breakfast, smoked a pipe, and looked round his garden. He had been hoeing before the meal, and now nothing remained to do. Every upturned flower-pot on a stick had been emptied of its entrapped snails and replaced, every dying leaf had been cut away and buried, and not a growing thing was visible that had not a comforting hoeing of moist earth heaped about its root. Nothing, dead or alive, was out of its place, and there was no weed anywhere. Roboshobery Dove stumped along the narrow paths, bright with broken cockle-shell, in a clean green smock and a varnished hat that sent a little patch of reflected light dancing, sometimes on the cottage wall, sometimes among the thick leaves of his best plum tree, and sometimes into the dazzled eyes of a chance passenger beyond the fence. There was nothing left to do in the garden — absolutely nothing, even in Roboshobery’s eyes; the climbing rose that went up beside the cottage door and spread over the lintel to the right and over a window to the left, clung close and went everywhere, with an even space between twigs and branches, like the veins on a butterfly’s wing. Even the blossoms had fallen into an orderly habit, and every bud seemed to spring at a just distance from its neighbour, so that the old seaman could nowhere find a spot where another nail might be driven with advantage, nowhere detect a superfluous twig, and nowhere discover a mildewed leaf. Even the unruly clematis on the side wall rose with rigid system ere it broke at last into its luxuriant valance of dark leaf and purple blossom. For a moment Roboshobery eyed his doorposts and his front gate, but there was no excuse for another coat of paint in any part of their perfect whiteness; so he pushed the gate open and came into the road.