There was a timid rap of knuckles on the front door. Mr. Fossett rose reluctantly, for there was no moderation in his triumph, and he wished to draw Murrell still more.
“Ben’t there nothin’ else you’ll tell me, Master Murrell?” he asked. “I fare that monsus bad in love, that ’twould be a mussy to tell me any-thin’.”
“Ay, I make no doubt. But wait — till tonight, at any rate.”
“To-night, Master Murrell? D’ye think she can be drawed to me as soon as that?”
“I make no promise, Master Fossett, but ’tis arl a possibility.”
“Master Murrell, will ‘ee come to me to-night at the Castle parlor? Come to me there, an’ I’ll pay ‘ee handsome.”
“’Tis no habit o’ mine, the Castle parlor,” the old man replied; “but come I will, since you ask. At eight o’clock.”
“Thankee, Master Murrell, thankee. An’ if you can show then, fair and clear, you’ve done all ye say, if you’ll draw her to me, I’ll pay a fi’-pun’ note and glad! I’ll hey it ready!”
Mr. Fossett passed the little girl who had come for ointment, and turned into the quiet Castle Lane to explode. Truly this was a most magnificent go! He could scarcely have imagined anybody so utterly giving himself into the hands of the enemy as this misnamed Cunning Murrell had done. That evening in the Castle parlor there should be fun. Hadleigh should witness the confounding of Murrell by the revelation that there was no Ann Pett in existence, and that consequently the triumphant Fossett could not have fallen in love with her, even if that weakness had been at all in his way, which it wasn’t. Therewith and therefore that Murrell was but a feeble humbug, captive to the bow and spear of that same unconquerable Fossett.
He did his business that day with interruptions of ecstatic chuckling. He spread hints abroad that the total extinction of Murrell was appointed for eight that evening in the parlor of the Castle; and he was there, with an uncommonly full company, long before the hour. To all inquiries he opposed a wink, a grin, and a shake of the head. Not a word would he say to spoil the show; he would merely promise — and that he did a hundred times — that the fun should be well worth the waiting.
The cunning man was punctual. The hour was at its seventh stroke when he appeared, small, sharp, shiny-hatted and calm. “Goodevenin’, neighbors,” he piped in his thin voice. “Good to ye arl. I den’t expect to find so many here.”
“Ah, ’tis business o’ mine, but never mind that,” said the eager Fossett, with a wink at the expectant company. “This most as-tonishin’ scientific neighbor o’ yourn, genelmen, hey done sich as-tonishin’ things to-day, that I’ll hey no secrets from ye arl, so surprisin’ it be. I went to see Master Murrell this mornin’, genelmen, an’ he knowed what I came for afore I told him! He told me, slap out, that I was most desperate in love! In love! Me!”
Mr. Fossett looked about him and grinned, with a second wink.
“He told me I was in love,” he proceeded, “an’ he made count to tell me the gal’s name. He did a little game of naughts and crosses, an’ he counted it out o’ that. He counted out the name, genelmen, and he told me it. It were Ann Pett! Genelmen! you’ll be mighty interested to know I’m most desperate in love with Ann Pett!”
“Ann Pett!” gasped Prentice and Jobson together. And others on every side repeated “Ann Pett!” staring like crabs. Dan Fisk set up a fit of laughter that lasted, with intervals, for the rest of the evening.
“Ah, Ann Pett! Ye well may laugh! An’ here’s a fi’-pun’ note I’m to pay if he draws her an’ draws her so artful an’ cunning to me this very evenin’! This Ann Pett what I love so true, genelmen!”
Prentice and Jobson began laughing now, and Dan Fisk took a corner of the note and pushed it toward Murrell. “Go on,” he cried, in a gasp, “he’ll do it — he’ll do it!”
There was something in the faces about him that Mr. Fossett had not expected. He checked his grin and stared about him. With that Cunning Murrell spoke.
“’Tis true enough, neighbors,” he said, with simple composure. “This very suitable an’ well-to-do young man hey cone to me an’ confessed himself most hopeless in love with Ann Pett. He hey further give me a document, signed all regular, pledgin’ to marry her; the kind of document there’s no answering to in a promise-breach case, such as might occur with other couples, where the young man ain’t smitten so deadly deep as Master Fossett be.”
Fossett, slow of apprehension, but stricken with a vague fear, gasped: “What? That paper? Den’t you burn it?”
“Burn it? Why no, sarten to say. ’Twould be poor respect to such a document as that, an’ foolish, to burn it. Well, neighbors, as I were sayin’, considerin’ arl things, an’ seein’ how desperate this young man implored me to draw Ann Pett to him—”
“Ann Pett!” burst out Fossett. “There ben’t no Ann Pett!”
“That’s an unreasonable remark for a man so fond of her by witness of his own handwritin’,” the old man went on gently. “Well, neighbors, to make short, I hey drawed her to him. Mr. Fossett be a very good match for a darter o’ mine, as things go, especially a widder darter, with few chances at her age. You’ll find I’ve earned your fi’-pun’ note, Mr. Fossett. Ann! Ann Pett!”
Murrell opened the door and called into the outer passage. And at his call came Ann Pett, wizen as her father, thin and sharp and worn, with her wisp of mouse-grey hair straggling from under a shawl. She stood in the doorway and stared, at first all vacant incomprehension, and then with some irritation at the storm of guffaws that raged unaccountably before her.
Mr. Peter Fossett gurgled, gulped, blinked and shrank. He looked wildly about him, but in the only door stood Ann Pett, now beginning to bridle and snarl at the mirth she could not comprehend. Then with a despairing snatch at his wits Mr. Fossett caught Murrell by the arm and gasped in his ear: “Hey she seen that paper?”
Murrell, unruffled, regarded his victim.
“That I don’t answer,” he said. “But what if she hey not?”
“I’m done — I’ll buy it. Come outside.” Next week Cunning Murrell was observed in a new blue coat, with brass buttons.
WICKS’S WATERLOO
I FIND that in the mental perspective of most people, the days of the Kent and Essex smugglers lie very far back, while in my own they stand surprisingly near. It is habit of mind, and nothing more. Those days were gone before mine began; though not only have I seen and talked with grey old smugglers on the Essex coast, but I have even tasted the white brandy of such astonishing strength, which they brought over in the light “tubs” of three or four gallons’ capacity. I tasted it on my twenty-first birthday, forty years and more after it had been smuggled; and it came from an unsuspected secret store of Roboshobery Dove’s, who thus designed to honor my majority. The treat was accompanied with much sage advice on my entry on manhood, as was proper from this old man of ninety and rather more, who had fought the french afloat as a boy; but a lecture twice as long, from one in no such way endeared to me as was he, could not have marred the memory of that amazing drink, so mild and mellow and soft, albeit a dilution of four times as much water was needed to tame its strength. If one is asked for dates by haters of foggy arithmetic, then it is enough to say that the last isolated attempt to run a cargo of brandy on the Essex coast failed in the year 1854; and that the trade was falling out of use a decade earlier.
So it happened that my majority was celebrated from what was probably the very last tub of “run” spirits remaining in Essex — perhaps in all England; and the tale which never failed to season Roboshobery’s moral discourse was on this occasion the tale of the run — one of the last successful ventures — which brought over this very tub and about four score more.
“If I’d ha’ been a man o’ money, sir,” the old man said, “I might ha’ given you a birthday compliment of greater cost; but I count it might ha’ been easier forgotten. An’ if you want still more to remember it by, why, I’ll tell ‘ee this: the bringing over o’ that
very brandy was the cause of the very first teetotal meetin’ in Essex. Nothin’ to be proud of p’r’aps, but a curiosity; ‘an ’tis my belief that if such stuff as this could ha’ come over with no hindrance all along, there’d never ha’ been a teetotal meetin’ in Essex to this very day.”
Here I solemnly apologize for my old friend. His was an earlier age, before many of our modern morals had been invented, and before we had discovered how much more respectable we are than our fathers. At the same time, with the taste and scent of that ineffable white brandy present to my senses, I was mightily disposed to agree with his conjecture.
“It was after the new coastguard was formed as that came over,” the old man went on, “and it was mostly the new coastguard as helped to kill smuggling. It went on pretty well though, hereabout, for some years; we’d got a sleepy oad chief officer, a good deal too fat for his business, and Leigh windows were cleaned with Dutch gin right up to forty years ago. But just about this time there came a mighty smart an’ knowin’ chief-boatman this way, promoted from somewhere right off — Poole, I think they said. His name were Wicks — Archibald Wicks, to be complete — and he were so very mighty smart as to be very near as smart as he thought hisself, and that were saying a deal. He hadn’t done with promotion either, had Master Archie Wicks, chief-boatman as he were. You see it were a time of changes in the sarvice, an’ ’twas thought promotions might be made higher still for some men; they might be chief-officers, ’twas rumored, or anything; an’ if such promotions were to come to pass Master Archie made up his mind to have one o’ the first. If the chief-officer liked to go to sleep an’ wait for his pension, Master Archie Wicks was the last to object; but he kept himself mighty jumpy up an’ down the station, an’ he tried a number of new dodges that sad upset a lot o’ people hereabout, an’ sent a good few tubs of this sort the wrong way. For one thing, he had a most astonishin’ takin’ way with the women. He was smart out an’ in, an’ he’d go any lengths to pump information.
“Now at the time I’m talking of the last freighter about here who did anything large in this way was oad Tom Blyth. You’ve heard tell of ‘Hard-apple’ Blyth, of Paglesham?”
The legends of that famous smuggler, far back at the turn of the century, were familiar tales of my childhood. I had heard enough told of “Hard-apple” Blyth to fill a book.
“Well, oad Tom Blyth were his nephew; so you see he come of pretty tough stock. Oad Tom were the last o’ the big freighters hereabout, and this here brandy came in one of his last freights. There aren’t no more o’ the Blyths left now, except a darter, as were a young gal at the time.
“Now one of Master Wicks’s new dodges was to watch for the carriers, ‘stead o’ the boats. You know what that ‘ud mean, o’ course. He’d let the watch off-shore go easy, an’ he’d keep his eye on one or two o’ the men as was certain to be took on to carry the tubs inland as soon as they were landed. Like as not one of ‘em was an’ informer. The dodge wasn’t of great advantage except it were unexpected, you see. When you got your cargo ashore, fair an’ easy, an’ everything seemed going right, you got a bit less careful. An’ so long as the preventive men kep’ the carriers in sight, wherever they might be, the tubs must come to ‘em, sooner or later. But then information’s a thing as can travel both ways, as you may ha’ noticed. I’ve told you the story o’ the two Drakes, Eli an’ Robin, an’ the Black Badger, and you’ll remember that one o’ them brothers was a preventive man an’ the other a smuggler, an’ the arrangement worked very well for both of ‘em. That was twenty years before the time I’m talkin’ of now, an’ George fourth were King; but there was still a bit o’ the same sort o’ thing goin’; an’ if there wasn’t brothers on the two sides there was one or two o’ the coastguard as were pretty good friends with the smugglers. So, as I was sayin’, information bein’ a thing as can travel both ways, oad Tom Blyth an’ the rest of ‘em wasn’t far behind Master Archie Wicks moves, however he made ‘em.
“Now when this little cargo was comin’ in, Wicks was all on the look-out for the tub-carriers, but oad Tom was up sides with him from the beginnin’. The word was passed for carriers to meet at Pest’us corner after dark, an’ there they did. An’ there, sure enough was Mr. Archie Wicks, an’ one or two of his men, lyin’ low an’ watchin’, ready to follow wherever the carriers might go. Sure enough they did follow, an’ the carriers, marchin’ fair an’ open along the main road, led ‘em all the way to Prittywell, to the Spread Eagle, an’ there they went in, the whole gang of ‘em, an’ into the clubroom. So Master Wicks, feelin’ smarter every minute, sends off a man as hard as he could go to rouse up the chief-officer and bring in the patrols from all along Leigh an’ Bemfleet. An’ there he sat in hidin’ an’ waited, for he guessed the run would be tried near by, an’ the carriers was just lyin’ up in the Spread Eagle, till they was signalled for. An’ while Mr. Wicks waited up by the Spread Eagle, the chief-officer and all the patrols waited down on Sou’church beach, to be handy as soon as the carriers made a move.
“An’ that was all that happened. All that happened. For the carriers they just sat down an’ had a sing-song, an’ called for what they pleased!”
“And then went home?”
“Ay, they scattered all out an’ went home when the house closed at last. You can’t follow forty men goin’ forty different ways home to forty different places! An’ not much good if you could. Golden Adams, that had charge o’ the gang, and was chairman o’ the sing-song, he come out first, an’ called on Mr. Archie Wicks for a song — out in the road, at the top of his voice. So Mr. Wicks, a-lyin’ there hidin’ behind the ledge, tumbled to the swindle and sneaked off quiet enough, to make the best tale he could to the chief-officer. He guessed then, did Mr. Wicks, an’ guessed right, that the carriers hadn’t been wanted that night to carry off tubs at all, but just to carry off him an’ the rest o’ the coastguard to a place where they couldn’t do no harm, while the cargo came ashore safe an’ easy somewhere else. So the fust round of the fight was all agin Mr. Archie Wicks. The carriers, they spent a jolly evening, and Tom Blyth an’ his boat’s crew, they got their cargo in quiet and secret, and everybody was pleased except Mr. Archie Wicks an’ the chief-officer, who hadn’t been kep’ out o’ bed so late for years.
“But Mr. Wicks wasn’t done for yet. Not he. He knowed well enough the cargo had been landed safe, an’ put somewhere. Consekence it were his business to find it. It were plain it couldn’t ha’ gone far, the carriers not havin’ touched it, an’ so he starts out to look for it in the neighborhood.
“I told you oad Tom Blyth had a darter. Nell were her name, an’ a very takin’ sort o’ gal she were to look at at that time. Different young chaps went a-courtin’ to Nell Blyth at different times, but just then ‘twere Joe Furber — a bit of a smuggler hisself, though a boat-builder in the main. Mr. Archie Wicks, so smart and knowin’ among the gals as he were, was allus ready to pass the time o’ day to Nell Blyth; and so, the next mornin’ after the singsong at Prittywell, up goes Mr. Wicks, all so brave and gay in the Queen’s uniform, to oad Tom Blyth’s to fascinate his darter Nell. He’d took care to see oad Tom safe down at the Smack Inn first; and up went he, sure o’ findin’ Nell alone.
“Nell weren’t exactly alone, for Joe Furber were there, talking with Nell over the fence. But Mr. Archie Wicks were that clever an’ free with his chaff he soon had poor young Joe dunted an’ marthered altogether, an’ sneakin’ off alone, sulky an’ beat out. An’ then he turned on his most gallivashious gammick to young Nell, an’ presently they were whisperin’ an’ laughin’ together that thick you’d never guess there were such a party as poor young Joe Furber alive.
“‘Ah, well,’ says Wicks, arter a bit, ‘I’m off duty now an’ when I’m off duty I can shut my eyes as well as another. Eh? You know!’ An’ he winks most engagin’. ‘I can shut my eyes to some things when I ain’t on duty, my dear, though not to a pretty face like yourn. Why, I was up at — well, never mind where, though I ne
ar let it out — I was up at a place the other day where they mixed me as stiff a noggin o’ moonshine — ay, straight out o’ the tub, too — as ever I hope to taste. Prime stuff it were; but bein’ all in the way o’ friendship, d’ye think I den’t shut one eye? Eh? Ay, an’ both on ‘em! But I opened my mouth — an’ mighty glad to open it again for liquor half as good, too! If there was anybody to try me.’
“‘An’ could you take a drop now?’ says Nell, pleased as Punch with her new beau. ‘Could you? S’pose a friend were to offer it, quiet?’
“‘Could I?’ says Archie Wicks, pleased as she was, though for another reason. ‘Could I?’ says he. ‘Just you try me, my dear! Lord bless ye, I know well enough your dear old dad can give a friend a drop o’ the proper stuff, or you for him! An’ if I can’t shut my eyes with such a nice gal as you about — well, I count I know which way to turn ‘em, as a friend!’
“Well, young Nell Blyth, bright an’ gigglin’, she took him into the keepin’ room, an’ she pulls out a big chest from the wall, an’ slides the wainscot behind it. An’ sure enough Mr. Archie Wicks did know which way to turn his eyes, an’ there to see, behind the wainscot, rows an’ rows o’ new tubs — all packed snug as cockles behind the wall an’ under the floor! This was what he’d come for, an’ so mighty delighted was he to see it that it was hard work to stop an’ take his drink. He did stop an’ take it though. Nell Blyth pulled a plug from the nearest tub an’ squibbed out a dram of — well, of that stuff you’ve been tryin’ yourself, but forty year younger. An’ Archie Wicks, when he’d a-watered it, he drinks most galliant to the prettiest gal in Essex, otherwise called Nell Blyth, an’ carried it all off first rate, notwithstandin’ he was longin’ to run an’ make the seizure. He did more than that, too. It struck him he’d like to take prisoners as well as goods, an’ philanderin’ about to know when he were to see Nell next, she let slip that her father was expectin’ some friends after dark that same evenin’ an’ that she would be goin’ out.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 261