Cunning Murrell (6 page)

Dan Fisk sucked hard at his pipe again, and squinted joyously. Two great
thumps on the steps without checked the general guffaw, and an obscure man in
a corner took the opportunity to say: “When the bahloon fell at Barl’n’ in
eighteen twenny-eight—”

But with that the door burst open, and Roboshobery Dove, with a third
great thump of his wooden leg, came in in state. For he was a person of
consequence in the parlour of the Castle, and his downsittings and uprisings
were considered with respect. He was a man of travel—or at least he had
sailed in a King’s ship as a boy; he was also a man of some little substance,
for he did no work but such as pleased his leisure in his little garden; and
there was the wooden leg. It was the practice and tradition to account for
his left leg as lost in his country’s service, and indeed it was in a
seafight that the knee was smashed. But an ill-wisher, if Roboshobery had had
one, might have declared with truth that the fight was a common
fisherman-smuggler affray of the usual murderous sort, with a crew of
Dutchmen, off the Great Sunk.

“Good evenin’. Master Dove,” cried Fisk. “We knowed your footstep!”

“Neighbours ahoy!” Dove answered, with his customary salute, as he stumped
across to a vacant seat by Banham. His green smock was gone, and in its place
he wore his Sunday coat—blue, with brass buttons.

Preferring the rum he had ordered in the bar before the divers pots pushed
toward him, Roboshobery Dove, his wooden leg extended to the middle of the
floor, hauled at a long twist-knotted cord till a massy silver watch emerged
from his fob. This he took by the bow, gravely banged it three times,
edgewise, on the wooden socket that clipped his thigh, and clapped it to his
ear; finishing by looking at the face and announcing the time. “Quarter pas’
nine, more or less,” he said, “an’ glory be ‘tis fair day, or some o’ your
wives ‘ood a-bin arter ye.”

Banham was made a little less retiring by the celebrations proper to the
day. He seized the watch suddenly, and shook it before the company. “Ah,” he
said, “there’s a watch! there’s a watch! That watch is a werge, that is! ‘Tis
said Master Dove’s father gave fi’ pound for that watch! An’ it’s a
werge.”

“Ah!” Roboshobery remarked, complacently filling a long pipe, “that is.
An’ my father gave fi’ pun for it at Foulness. Give us hold.”

“Master Dove be a Foulness man,” Banham went on, as one proclaiming an
undeniable quality in his hero; “a Foulness man, as be well knowed.”

“Ay, sarten to say,” assented Prentice,

There was a silence, and the obscure man began again—“When the
bahloon fell at Barl’n’ in eighteen-twe—” But here Jobson, of Wickford,
whose head had been slowly inclining toward his knees for some time, so that
he seemed like to pitch forward out of his chair, suddenly sat up and
demanded: “An’ what’s the wuss of a man if he be a Foulness chap? Eh? That
arn’t no sense of a argyment. What’s the wuss if he be?”

“Ah, sarten to say,” murmured two or three, soothingly.

“Arn’t a Foulness man good as a Hadleigh man, or a Bemflit man or a
Rochford man, or—or what not?”

“Course he be,” Prentice grunted pacifically.

Jobson of Wickford looked at his friend for several seconds. Then he said,
“Arl right, then, arl right!” let his pipe fall, and began to nod again.

“There ha’ bin many fine men o’ Foulness,” said Lingood. “There were the
seven Allens, an’ Jack Bennewith, that fought the London prizefighter.”

“Ah,” Banham struck in, “an’ ‘twere a Roboshobery Dove o’ Foulness as fit
King Charles an’ got his head chopped off.”

“No,” objected Lingood, “‘twere King Charles that lost his head, I do
read.”

“An’ Roboshobery Dove,” Prentice corrected, “he fit
for
King
Charles, bein’ a parson, an’ were hulled out o’ chu’ch therefor. Aren’t that
so, Bosh?”

“Ay, ‘tare,” Roboshobery confirmed, basking in the general homage. “An’ I
were christened such arter him by special recommendation o’ Master Ellwood
the parson. ”Tis arl a possibility,’ he says to my father, ‘that yow be
descendants, an’ anyhow,’ he says, ”tis a fine handsome name.’”

“That it be,” assented Banham. “I hoad a pound there aren’t anoather man
with hafe sich a name, not in arl Essex!”

“An’ so he christened me,” Dove concluded. “Ah, he were a parson o’ th’
oad sort, were Master Ellwood. Wore silver buckles to his breeches, an’ slep’
in his wig; an’ his walkin’ stick were five foot long.”

Some such conversation as this was usual in the Castle parlour when,
Roboshobery Dove being present, it was desired to exhibit him for the
admiration of strangers. Commonly it led to long and amazing yarns of his
adventures, from the time of the French war down to yesterday; and nearly
always to one or more of his forecastle songs, of which he had a curious and
diverse store, not always composed to please the squeamish. But to-night
Roboshobery turned the talk to the war, and, by the aid of the crumpled
newspaper from his pocket, was presently expounding the state of affairs,
from Archangel to Varna, to the instruction and mystification of everybody.
Being brought to a stand by nothing but a paragraph which set down the damage
done in Brahestad dockyard at 350,000 silver roubles, and then not so much by
the doubt as to whether the figures should read thirty-five thousand or three
hundred and fifty millions, as by the blank impossibility of guessing how
much a silver rouble might be.

Meanwhile, without, the wonted calm of a summer night fell about Hadleigh.
The Fire-eater, the Fat Lady, and the Living Skeleton, all were gone, and the
street was empty, save now and again for a home-goer carrying an overload of
threepenny on unsteady legs. Except at the Castle Inn, most were in bed; in
the little row of wooden cottages that included Cunning Murrell’s home, all
certainly were, save Murrell himself, who, after a long spell of shadowy
activity behind the blind of his keeping-room, at length blew out the
rushlight and stepped noiselessly out of door.

It was one of his customary night journeys, without a doubt. The umbrella
was over his shoulder, and the frail basket depended from its handle. The
curious of Hadleigh had once or twice seen herbs taken from that frail, herbs
gathered, no doubt, at a proper hour of night, and with the right
formalities; but what else it might carry was matter of dark wonder and
secret surmise. Just as were his night walks, such as this.

He walked in the lane a little, still without noise. Presently he crossed
to a stile, climbed it, and went off across the meadows in the direction of
the ridge and the sea; and so vanished unheard into the night.

Minutes went in the deep stillness that is so full of tiny sounds, of
leaf, and grass, and beetle; and in the village a dim light or two went out.
There was an effort at song in the taproom of the Castle Inn, which broke
down in the second verse, and ended in laughter and debate. The hint was not
lost on the parlour company, however, and presently, the windows being open,
Roboshobery Dove’s voice was audible from end to end of Hadleigh and
beyond—

A merry man o’ money stood a-boasting on the quay,
“O, I have a ship, and a gallant ship is she;
And of all the ships that sail she’s the best upon the sea,
And she’s sailing in the Lowlands low.”
Lowlands! Lowlands!
She’s sailing in the Lowlands low!

The chorus came with such a will that a hurried and angry step in the
passage by the inn was unheard, and Mrs Banham, come to fetch her husband
home, had the parlour door open ere the longest-winded of the company had
quite done with the last syllable.

Banham was excitable, but ten fair-days, together with all their
accompaniments, could not have driven him to defy his wife. Instant on her
appearance he rose, with “Arl right, missis, arl right. I were just
a-comin’,” and, abandoning his pot, reached the door ere she had time to get
out more than a sentence of the shrill reproaches she was charged with. But
she spared him none of them, and the parlour company, with serious faces,
heard them as the couple passed the window, and heard them still till
distance overcame her voice.

“Come,” said Prentice, “never mind that. Next werse, Bosh!”

Roboshobery Dove, something discomposed by the interruption, took a drink,
and presently went on, gaining spirit and volume as he went—

“For I had her built of the good oak tree,
And the name I gave unto her was the Golden Vanity,
And I freighted her and manned her, and she bore away to sea,
And she’s sailing in the Lowlands low!”
Lowlands! Lowlands!
She’s sailing in the Lowlands low!
Then up the steps a sailor-man a-walking on the quay,
“O, I was aboard of your Golden Vanity
When the look-out was aware of a rover of Sallee,
And we sunk her in the Lowlands low”
Lowlands! Low—

Every mouth was at its widest, when the door was dashed open again and
revealed Banham.

“A run!” he cried. “There be a run o’ tubs! ‘Haps a fight. Coastguard’s
burnin’ a blue flare, Sou’chu’ch way!”

The chorus stopped, but nobody shut his mouth. A night-run of smuggled
goods was a thing so wholly dropped out of every man’s experience of late
years that for a space nobody stirred nor spoke, but all gaped at the
carrier.

Roboshobery Dove, albeit his song was ruined, was first to start up, not
forgetting to empty his tumbler as he did so. And in ten seconds from that
the parlour stood empty, and the whole company was running, hobbling,
trotting, scuffling, or stumping, according to age and circumstances, into
the castle lane and over the meadows, toward whatever point promised to give
a good view along the ridge and the shore. For if the coastguard were burning
a blue light at Southchurch, it could but be to call help from Shoebury and
Leigh, and that could mean but one thing. It was witness to their
forgetfulness of ancient habits that all, without hesitation, ran freely to
see. In the old times every man not actually engaged on the run would have
kept back lest he were seen and suspected.

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.

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.