Cunning Murrell (7 page)

For many days the men of Leigh grinned one at another and winked; though,
indeed, they were as much in the dark as the coastguard, who for a week
afterward were dragging and “creeping” with hooks and grapnels all over the
Thames estuary, in the hope of laying hold of a sunk “crop” of tubs. Old Sim
Cloyse, in particular, was very curious to understand the business, and the
fuller of questions and conjectures because, as he explained, he himself had
been in bed and asleep when the adventure came to pass. But at any rate for
any cause or none, the coastguard were made to look foolish, and were given a
deal of fruitless work, and so the men of Leigh and Hadleigh made merriment
at their expense. Fishermen dropped overboard elaborate booby-traps, old
baskets, dunnage, and junk, to be hauled up, slowly, painfully, and
hopefully, on the drags and hooks that were cast for a more valuable catch.
And the searchers were greeted, at their landing, with pleasant and
deferential inquiries after their good fortune.

“Good evenin’, sir,” a leather-faced ruffian would say, with a low comedy
duck and a pull at his forelock. “Any sport, sir? Hot weather for draggin’,
sir. Ketched any moer oad barr’ls, sir?”

But when Roboshobery Dove next saw Prentice at his garden gate, he jerked
his thumb Leighward, and both old stagers winked. “Oad Sim Cloyse, eh?” said
Roboshobery.

“Ay, he be a deep’un,” said Prentice.

Still, by a long comparison of notes among the likely men of Leigh, it
grew apparent that not one of them had been “out” that night; and at last,
since nobody else had lit the blue flare, it was plain that it must have been
the devil. This opinion, indeed, prevailed in Hadleigh ere long, perhaps
because of a revived interest in works of darkness consequent on the notable
detection of Mrs Martin’s witchcraft.

She had been put to bed by her niece on the return from Banham’s
bakehouse, still a little sick and dazed. In the morning, however, she had
risen with an apparent forgetfulness of the events of the night, and set
about her usual preparations for breakfast, while Dorrily, busying herself
likewise with household matters, watched her furtively, dreading to make any
allusion to what was chiefly in her mind.

Presently her aunt said: “Dorrily, the bread be very low. Den’t us bake
yesterday?”

“No, aunt,” the girl answered, anxiously. “The—the oven’s broke, you
know. Some bricks fell.”

The old woman looked fixedly at her for a moment, and then, as with sudden
recollection, said: “Ay, so’em did. It do fare awkward. You mus’ go an’ see
Dan Fisk, Dorrily, an’ ask him what he’ll charge.”

The lapse of memory amazed Dorrily. She wondered at first if her aunt
merely affected to forget the affair of last night by way of ignoring a
painful subject. But soon it grew plain that this could not be the case.

“Pity I den’t think of it,” Mrs Martin said, passing her hand across her
forehead and down the cheek where last night’s scar was. “Some one else might
ha’ let me use their oven. You better get your bonnet, Dorrily, an’ ketch the
meller at the fower-wont way.”

The woman was pale and drawn, and her odd lapse of memory alarmed the
girl. So Dorrily set out with a troubled face, and it was so that Roboshobery
Dove met her on her way to catch the miller, who passed the four-wont way
with bread at eight in the morning, or sooner. She saw how her appearance had
broken up the train of singing children and driven them across the road, and
she was not slow to understand. Plainly the Banham family had been up
betimes, and the tale was abroad.

She bought a loaf, and took her way back behind the village, away from the
busy road. Her nature was, and her life had schooled her, to meet trouble
with resolution, but now she was conscious of an added loneliness and an
added fear. Both were vague and of an ill-defined presence, but both were
there. When one has few friends the cutting-off of one leaves a great gap.
The loss of her father and her uncle was no more than a childish memory, but
her parting with her cousin Jack a few months ago had left her and her aunt
very lonely; and now, though why she could not guess, the events of last
night and the old woman’s state this morning affected her as would the
realization of another parting.

Jack was away, in daily peril of shot and shell, and, after her aunt,
there was nobody, scarce an acquaintance. Roboshobery Dove was friendly
enough, it was true; but so he was to everybody else, except perhaps Cunning
Murrell, whom he held in a distant awe that had a trace of aversion in it.
Steve Lingood was very kind, too, last night especially; though he was
curiously shy and indifferent, and, it would seem, disliked to meet her, for
she had seen him avoid it. And there was one other very persistent, but very
unpleasant, acquaintance, young Sim Cloyse, of Leigh, who now, however,
seemed to be consoling himself with Mag Banham for the rebuffs he had
suffered at Dorrily’s hands ever since Jack had gone to sea. But these
counted very little in Dorrily’s eyes; Jack was away, and now—

As breakfast finished, and as other things fell to be dealt with, a
certain abstraction grew upon Mrs Martin, as of one striving to call to mind
some name or some circumstance that persistently eluded the memory; and she
spoke scarce at all. Presently, however, as she busied herself with things
out of door, her face cleared somewhat. Merry noises came down-wind from the
village, and children were singing. It was not often that any inhabitant of
Hadleigh could look over his garden fence without seeing a little Banham
somewhere, and now from the garden of the black cottage there were half a
dozen in sight at least. A row of four climbed on a fence thirty yards off,
and one or two, smaller but more daring, skirmished closer. Dorrily saw her
aunt stoop to a gooseberry bush and gather a handful of the fruit. Little
Jimmy Banham, losing sight of her when she stooped, came up close by the gate
at the moment when she opened it, gooseberries in hand. She smiled and nodded
at the child, and offered the fruit; whereat little Jimmy, with a yelp of
terror, turned and ran; and the climbers on the fence got down on the far
side.

The old woman stood, astonished; and as she stood there came the cry from
the fence—“Yah! oad witch! Oad witch!”

Mrs Martin turned with a dawning agony in her face; and as she did so, a
lad across the lane took up the cry with a grin—“Oad witch! oad witch!”
and shook a pitchfork at her.

Dorrily ran to meet her aunt as she tottered up the garden path, the
gooseberries dropping between her nerveless fingers as she came. A pitiful
revulsion was in her face, and it needed not a word to tell that remembrance
had sprung to life at the blow. She fell into Dorrily’s arms and burst into a
flood of tears.

“O, they say I be a witch! Master Murr’ll an’ Mrs Banham! Dorr’ly, I
be’n’t! ‘Tis cruel! I be’n’t! God help a poor soul that’s sent the son from
her body to fight abroad!”

The girl led her in, with such words of comfort as she could think of. But
Sarah Martin seemed to hear none of them; to hear nothing, indeed, but the
parting shout of “Oad witch!” from the field beyond the fence, where the
Banham skirmishers were retiring in guard of the rescued Jimmy.

“O, ‘tis cruel, wicked cruel!” she sobbed, rocking herself in the chair to
which Dorrily led her. “An’ they did talk o’ swimmin’ me in t’ hoss-pond.
‘Tis cruel! They won’t swim me naked, will they, Dorry, gal?” And in the
passion of the outburst the small cut on the cheek bled afresh.

“Don’t take on so, aunt dearie don’t,” Dorrily entreated; terrified by the
violence of the woman’s grief “‘Tis no call to take on so ‘Tis only silly
talk! Nobody shall hurt ye, aunt.” She wiped the mingled blood and tears from
her aunt’s cheek, and strove by all means to quiet her. “I’ll take care of
you, aunt, and there’s Jack—remember Jack. ‘Tis only a few months he’ll
be back to us!”

Her son’s name seemed to quiet her a little, and perceiving this, Dorrily
brought two letters from a shelf “Look at his letters,” she said, “so fond as
he be of you. Read them—and remember he’ll be home to us soon!”

There was a harsh voice from the lane without, and Dorrily heard, with
fresh fears, Mrs Banham’s voice raised in shrill abuse. She left her aunt and
shut the door on her.

“Not had punishment enough, han’t ye?” Mrs Banham bawled from the lane.
“Not enough to putt the evil tongue on my gal Em, yow mus’ make count to
catch my innocent-born young child, too!”

“Mrs Banham, ‘tis all a mistake, I tell ‘ee!” Dorrily pleaded, from the
fence. “My poor aunt wishes no ill to a soul.”

“Then why do she tempt a poor little child to take things from her hand,
to bewitch him body and soul? No harm, sez she!”

“She did but offer him gooseberries from the bush,” Dorrily answered,
“seein’ him by the gate playin’. She’s ill an’ broke down with your unkind
beliefs.”

“Ay, an’ good reason! ‘Tis for the torment o’ such that Master Murr’ll do
work, an’ I joy to know it, after what she did to my children!”

“If only you saw her now, you’d see how cruel you be,” Dorrily went on.
“‘Tis no bodily torment, but ‘tis bitter grief to be said ill of. Will you
come in, Mrs Banham, an’ see her?”

There was a flash of fierce cunning across Mrs Banham’s face. “So yow try
your tricks still, do ye, witches both?” she retorted. “Putt my body over her
threshold, an’ putt it in her power, eh? Oh, ‘tis well I’m not new to such
deviltry! Witches both! Yow shall dolour proper for arl, if Master Murr’ll
can do’t! Witches both!”

The flush of anger was on the girl’s pale face, and her black eyebrows
seemed joined by a knot. “I’ll talk no more with such a brawlin’ mawther,”
she said, with sudden wrath in her voice. “Go your way, Martha Banham, an’
your ill words fall upon yourself!”

Mrs Banham was as much in fear as in ire, and something in the angry face
looking down on her lent force to the words. Mrs Banham said no more, but
backed across the lane and turned, nervous fury in her face, and her hands
clasped tightly together, with thumbs concealed under the fingers; as is
proper to avert the malice of a witch whose blood you have not drawn.

As Dorrily went back to her aunt, a louder burst of the unwonted noise of
the fair up at the village prompted a thought that turned her anger to dread.
It was fair day, and Hadleigh was full of Leigh men, boisterous, brutish, and
soon to be full of drink. There was no fair day in recollection on which the
Leigh men had let the afternoon go peacefully. Of late years a fight between
the two villages had been the common outcome, but she remembered the tale of
a fair years ago, when they had swum an old man and his wife for witches,
with much sport and delight. It was the sort of diversion that they might
turn to again with the relish of novelty; and all the village was calling
Sarah Martin a witch. Dorrily had been terrified at the fair-day fights
before, but now she prayed for one fervently. And as we have seen, she had
her wish, and her aunt was unmolested. But she feared greatly, and she
resolved to take her aunt away from the cottage till nightfall, to some place
where any party leaving the village might be seen betimes, and where hiding
might be found.

Mrs Martin was still weeping when she rejoined her, though less violently.
“I heared her,” she said, “an’ she carled us witches both. What shall us do,
Dorry gal?”

“‘Tis no matter what a silly mawther says,” Dorrily answered, forcing a
cheerfulness into her voice. “We be true women, and God’ll help us. So we’ll
say our prayers together, an’ make holiday for to-day, away from the fair an’
the noise, an’ we’ll take Jack’s letters to read on Castle Hill, an’ look at
the ships.”

THE Effervescense of fair day had subsided, though plenty
was left to talk about in the calmer moods of many months. The probability of
the devil manifesting himself in the shape of a blue light, for the
befoolment of the coastguard, was discussed, and generally agreed upon; when,
in the early dark of an evening, a client came to Cunning Murrell.

He was a big, powerful fellow, and he appeared from the dark of the lane
where it sank over the hill. The night was no colder than summer nights had
been that season, but the man was muffled heavily, his coat collar up, his
cap down over his eyes, and a figured shawl wound about his face till it
almost met the cap. As he came to the row of cottages he stood and looked
about him sharply. There was nobody else near, and it was past the common
bed-time by an hour. There were signs, however, of dim light both upstairs
and down in Murrell’s cottage, and the stranger made for the door and rattled
the latch gently.

There was a little delay, and then a woman opened the door and looked out.
It was Ann Pett, a widowed daughter of Murrell’s, who kept house for him; a
worn, draggled wisp of a woman of forty.

She peered vaguely into the dark and asked: “Who is’t?”

“Master Murr’ll I want,” came a gruff voice, made gruffer by the shawl.
“Tell him.”

The woman hesitated. “I’ll see,” she said; and repeated: “Who is’t?”

“Customer, patient—whatever yow call’t,” the man answered
impatiently. “Tell him ‘tis business.”

“Well!” the woman said, doubtfully, and paused. And then she shut the
door.

The stranger was in doubt, and after a moment’s hesitation raised his hand
to knock. But the door opened again and the woman invited him in.

In spite of the muffler, the smell of herbs was strong and dry in the
stranger’s nostrils. Murrell came from the back of the room, sharp of eye and
voice. “Get you upstaers, Ann,” he commanded, jerking his thumb backward. “Or
stay—get yow out o’ door; never mind your bawn’t, ‘tis a warm enough
night.” And Ann went submissively as might be.

“Now, friend,” said Murrell, “sit yow there, an’ give me your cap.”