Cunning Murrell (2 page)

So that Roboshobery Dove met nobody in the lane—not even the White
Lady nor the Black Man—till he had topped the rise and was again out of
darkness and in twilight. But here he spied a friend, and hailed again.

“Steve, O! Steve Lingood, ahoy!”

The man stopped and turned; a tall, hard fellow of twenty-eight, in a fur
cap and leather apron; a smith visibly, and nothing but a smith.

“Well,” he asked, “news?”

“Three little ‘uns—nothen but shore-scrapers; come to the
pot-rakin’s, ‘twould seem. Banham ha’n’t brote in a paper, hev he?”

“Banham ha’n’t been out—the gal’s that bad young Dick took the
cart.”

“War, war, bloody war, north, south, east, an’ west—an’ Banham stops
home to nuss a big gal, ‘stead o’ goin’ to Chelmsford reg’lar an’ bringin’ a
paper o’ noos! But to-morrow’s fair day, an’ there’s sure to be some brote
in. What’s so bad with the gal?”

“Dunno. Sort o’ allovers, ‘twould seem. Banham, he’s gone to Cunnin’
Murrell, an’ Murrell’s brote me a little job over it.”

“Iron bottle?”

Lingood nodded.

“Witchcraft an’ deviltry! Well, he’s a wise ‘un, that’s sarten; but I
don’t count to hev nor make with sich truck.”

“That’s as it fare. To me it’s shilluns an’ pence—no more. Though
I’ve ‘arned it this day, double, an’ done nothen. If I was like some I’d say
my fire was as far bewitched as Banham’s gal, or else the iron. Can’t make
nothen of it; won’t shape, won’t be jown up—obs’nit as a lump o’
stone.”

“‘Tis the witch, depend on’t,” said Roboshobery, with a serious bating of
voice. “She do feel the spell a-makin’, an’ puts the trouble on the
iron…Sink me, there’s Master Murr’ll hisself!”

Lingood turned his head. The lane ended beside a row of half a dozen
wooden cottages, all of Hadleigh village that was not ranged along the
Southchurch road. A little old man, in act of opening his door, espied the
two, dropped the latch, and came toward them. Lingood moved to meet him, and
Roboshobery followed indeterminately, going wide as he went.

The little old man presented the not very common figure of a man small
every way proportionately. He was perhaps a trifle less than five feet high,
thin and slight, but the smallness of his head and hands somewhat mitigated,
at first sight, the appearance of shortness. Quick and alert of movement,
keen of eye, and sharp of face. Cunning Murrell made a distinctive figure in
that neighbourhood, even physically, and apart from the atmosphere of power
and mystery that compassed him about. Now he wore a blue frock coat, a trifle
threadbare, though ornamented with brass buttons, and on his head was just
such a hard glazed hat as was on Roboshobery Dove’s. Over his shoulder he
carried a large gingham umbrella, with thick whalebone ribs, each tipped with
a white china knob, and from its handle hung a frail basket. He nodded
sharply to Roboshobery, who backed doubtfully, made a feint of pulling at his
forelock, jerked out “Good evenin’. Master Murrell, sir, good evenin’,” and
took himself off into the dark. For Cunning Murrell was the sole living
creature that Roboshobery Dove feared, and it was Roboshobery’s way not only
to address the wise man (when he must) with the extremest respect, but to do
it from a respectful distance; much as though he suspected him of a very long
tail with a sting at the end of it. And he stayed no longer than he could
help.

Murrell turned to Lingood. “Job done?” he piped, in a thin but decided
voice. “Job done?”

“No,” the smith answered, “tarn’t; an’ not like ‘twill be, seems to me.
You’ll hev t’ unbewitch the iron, or the fire, or summat, ‘fore you can get
to unbewitchin’ Banham’s gal.”

“Why?”

“Iron won’t weld, nohow. Won’t be jown up. Never met nothen like it;
obs’nit as flint.”

“Ah, we mus’ see—we mus’ see. ‘Tis a powerful mighty witch,
doubtless.” Murrell said this with a sharp look upward at Lingood, who was
suspected of less respect than was common in Hadleigh both for Murrell
himself and for his foes, the witches. And the two turned toward the village
street.

Murrell stopped at his door and entered, while Lingood waited without. The
small room into which the door opened seemed the smaller because of the
innumerable bunches of dried and drying herbs which hung everywhere from
walls and ceiling. Murrell put down his frail and umbrella, and then, after a
few moments’ rummaging, blew out the rushlight, and rejoined Lingood.

“Come,” he said, “try the job again.” And the two turned into Hadleigh
street.

The smithy stood a hundred and fifty yards beyond the Castle Inn, and on
the other side of the road. All was black within, save where the fire
declared its dull red. Lingood groped, and found a lantern, and, after a
little trouble, lit the wick of the guttered pile of grease within it; while
Murrell, behind him, passed his hand twice or thrice over the hot cinders of
the fire, though, indeed, there seemed little reason for any man to warm his
fingers on a June evening such as this.

“Do you forge, Stephen Lingood,” he said, with a voice as of one taking
command, “an’ I will blow this stubborn fire.”

He seized the lever and tugged, and with the blast the glow arose and
spread wide among the cinders. The smith lifted from the floor a clumsy piece
of iron, partly worked into the rough semblance of a bottle, and dropped it
on the fire.

“Here stand I, an’ blow the fire,” said Murrell, as one announcing himself
to invisible powers; “an’ let no witch nor ev’l sparrit meddle.”

Lingood said nothing, but turned the iron in the fire. Slowly it reddened,
and then more quickly grew pale and fierce, while Murrell tugged at the
bellows. He muttered vehemently as he tugged, and presently grew more and
more distinct, till the smith could distinguish his words, howsoever few of
them he understood.

“…creepin’ things, an’ man on the Sixth Day…Power over all
creatures…An’ by the name of the Angels servin’ in the Third Host before
Hagiel a Great Angel an’ strong an’ powerful Prince, an’ by the name of his
star which is Venus, and by his seal which is holy;…I conjure upon thee
Angel who art the chief ruler of this day that you labour for me!”

Neither surprised nor impressed by this invocation, Lingood seized a
hammer, carried the radiant iron to the anvil, and hammered quickly. The mass
lapped about the anvil’s horn, met, and joined; and without more words the
job was finished. With another heating an end was closed, and with one more
the mouth was beaten close about a heavy nut. Then the thing fell into the
tank with an explosive hiss and a burst of steam, and the neck was shrunk on
the nut, and the work done.

“Well, it’s a nation curious thing,” Lingood said at length, screwing a
short bolt, by way of stopper, into the nut that made the bottle’s mouth;
“it’s a nation curious thing that iron ‘oodn’t work proper before. Might
a’most ha’ thote it was filin’s or summat chucked on the fire. But nobody ‘ud
do that, an’ there’s no filin’s about.”

Murrell shook his head. “Stephen Lingood,” he squeaked, “them as bewitched
your fire agin my lawful conjurations needed use no mortal hands. Den’t you
feel, Stephen Lingood, as you forged and I blowed, with words o’ power an’
might, den’t you feel the ev’l sparrits o’ darkness about you a-checkin’ an’
a-holdin’ you, hammer an’ arm?”

“No,” answered the smith stolidly, taking his pipe in his mouth and
groping in his pocket for tobacco. “No, I den’t.”

“No,” Murrell pursued, without hesitation, though with a quick glance;
“you did not. Sich was the power an’ might o’ my words, Stephen Lingood.”

The smith lit his pipe at the lantern, and for answer gave a grunt between
two puffs. Then he said: “I’ve a mind to go an’ see how Banham’s gal is
myself. D’ ye go there now, Master Murr’ll?”

It was not Cunning Murrell’s way to cultivate any closer personal
acquaintance than he could help with anybody. Detachment and mystery were
instruments of his trade. “No,” he said, “I go first home for things I
need.”

LINGOOD closed the smithy and came into the street. It was
such a night as June brings, warm and clear and starry. Half Hadleigh was
abed, and from the black stalls and booths that stood about at random in the
street, waiting for to-morrow’s fair, there came neither sound nor streak of
light. The smith walked along the middle of the street among these, and at
last turned into a narrow passage by the side of the Castle Inn. Once clear
of the house-walls, he traversed a path among small gardens distinguished by
a great array of shadowy scarlet runners, and the mingled scents of bean and
wallflower; and so came on a disorderly litter of sheds about a yard, with a
large cottage, or small house, standing chief among them. The place was on
the ridge that looked over the marshes and the Thames mouth; near by the
Castle Lane, and between the village and the cottage, lower on the hill,
where Roboshobery Dove had first delivered his tidings of war. Lights were in
the lower parts of the house. The circumstance would have been remarkable at
this late hour on most other nights of the year, but on the evening before
fair day Hadleigh housewives were wont to be diligent in the making of
Gooseberry Pie long after the common hour of sleep; Gooseberry Pie being the
crown, glory, high symbol, and fetish of Hadleigh Fair, and having been so
from everlasting. But it was no matter of gooseberry pie that kept awake the
household of Banham the carrier. For on the sofa in the living room sat, or
lay, or rolled, young Em Banham, moody or flushing, or sobbing or laughing,
and sore bewitched, by every rule of Murrell’s science. Bed she would not go
near, nor had done for two nights. Food she refused, and cried that all drink
burned and choked her. Other troubles she had, too, and once had had a
terrifying fit. A man of medical science would instantly have perceived it to
be a case of extreme hysteria. But out in this forgotten backwater of
civilisation, where such another case had never been heard of, the Hadleigh
vocabulary could offer no better word for poor little Em’s affliction than
that she was “took comical;” the word “comical” being generally useful to
express anything uncommon, or beyond the speaker’s power of explanation, and
implying nothing at all of comedy; often, indeed, telling of something much
nearer tragedy.

Lingood clicked the latch, and a man opened the door. It was Banham
himself, a shortish, shaven man, with weak eyes and an infirm mouth. The
light fell on Lingood’s face, and Banham turned his head doubtfully and
reported within, “‘Tis Steve Lingood.”

“Arl right; let him in, can’t ye?” answered a female voice, in which
weariness, anxiety, and natural ill-temper had their parts. So Banham pulled
the door wider, and said, with a vague cordiality: “O, come yow in, Steve;
come yow in. ‘Tare rare fanteegs we’re in; but the missis, she—she” and
the sentence tailed away to nothing, as was the way of many of the
unimportant Banham’s sentences.

Lingood stepped straight into the keeping-room and into the presence of
the Banham family, of which the majority, as to number, was ranged up the
staircase at a corner of the room; those of ten or eleven on the lower
stairs, and the rest, in order of juniority, on those above; the smallest and
last of the babies signifying his presence on the upper landing by loud
wails. Mrs Banham, a large, energetic, but slatternly woman, whose
characteristic it always seemed to grow more slatternly and to spread more
general untidiness the more energetic she showed herself, sat in a chair with
her hands in her lap and a blue glass smelling bottle in one of them.
Opposite her stood Mag Banham, the first-born, a stout, fair, blowzy girl of
twenty or so. Both were contemplating the sufferer, a girl of sixteen,
haggard and flushed, who sat on a sofa, rocking her head and shoulders,
looking piteously from one face to another, and now and again twitching one
cheek with the monstrous semblance of a wink.

“O, mother! O, Mag!” she moaned indistinctly, “I do fare that bad! Yow
woan’t let me suffer mother, will ye? Mag, yow love me, doan’t ye? An’
father—”

“Ah, my gal, we’ll see ye better soon,” said the mother, and Mag murmured
sympathetically.

“Yow den’t ote to give way so, deary,” Mrsnham went on. “Master Murr’ll’s
to putt ye aw to rights.”

“Yow doan’t pity me, mother,” the girl pursued, beseeching all present
with her eyes; “yow doan’t pity me!”

“Ees, deary, us do, all on us. Take a drink o’ barley watter, do, to
squench the fever;” and Mrs Banham offered a quart jug. But the patient would
have none of it, thrust it away angrily, indeed, and moaned anew. “An’ when
I’m dead you’ll arl say ye’re sorry, p’r’aps—no, yow woan’t, you’ll be
glad I’m a-gone!”

Mrs Banham looked despairingly up at Lingood.

“She do sit like that,” she said, in a whisper that all could
hear—“she do sit a-dolouring like that arl day an’ night, for bed
she’ll hev none of. And then—fits. Who should putt the ev’l tongue on
the gal thussens? Dedn’ yow see Master Murr’ll? He were comin’, an’ we bin
waitin’ on him.”

Even as she spoke the latch lifted, and Cunning Murrell was at the door,
umbrella and frail basket on shoulder. At this there was trouble on the
stairs. For the long train of little Banhams, in all stages of undress, the
whole proceedings were matter of intense interest and diversion. But while
those behind pushed forward rebelliously against their seniors, these latter,
though holding to the foremost places, were more disposed to push back;
partly in awe of the wise man whom half the country held in fear, but more in
terror of their mother’s vigorous hand, which had already driven back the
reconnaissance twice in course of the evening. So that instant on Murrell’s
appearance a riot arose on the stairs, a scuffle and a tumble, and, amid a
chorus of small yells, little Jimmy, all ends up, came bursting though the
advance guard, and sprawled on the floor with his shirt about his neck.