“
Of
course,” Murrell assented, still with the odd grin; “close an’
private, o’ course. That be a very lib’ral offer, Steve Lingood, an’ I doubt
whether you ben’t even more lib’ral than deep. I den’t guess you so rich a
man, neither.”
“Ha! well,” the smith laughed, light of heart at his triumph, “you den’t
guess far wrong, for I’d be put to it to find arl of another five pound at
this minute!”
“That be so, eh? Then so much the more lib’ral, the more amazin’ lib’ral.
Some persons—thoteful persons—might say so much the
more—the more—eh?”
Murrell’s face was thrust forward toward the smith’s, and the grin
persisted, with cattish fixedness.
Lingood felt a vague shock, a sudden rush of blood. So that he must needs
gulp before he said: “The more what?”
“The more—the more”—Murrell scratched his chin with his
forefinger as he spoke, but the grin relaxed not a shade—“the
more—what do the gals an’ boys call it?—the more in love!”
Lingood sat back as though from a blow in the face, and his brown cheeks
were stricken white. He said nothing, but gulped again, and Murrell clapped
hands to knees and laughed indeed, this time with enjoyment. “Come,” he said,
“I doubt summat o’ your deepness after arl, though nothen o’ your lib’ral’ty;
givin’ five pound for love of another man’s promised wife!”
Lingood’s face regained something of its normal hue, and then grew dark
and flushed; he spoke with a dryness of the throat, and a twitch of the
mouth. “I den’t think to let that be known, Master Murr’ll,” he said, “though
‘twould be a lie if I denied it. ‘Tis pain enough, an’ not what a man’s proud
of; an’ but for you I’d ha’ lived an’ died an’ nobody ‘d guessed of it. That
bein’ so I make count with you, as an honest man, to keep my secret, even as
I do keep yours. An’ to make tight the bargain we made”—his hand
trembled now as he took up the canvas bag and groped in it with his
fingers—“the five pound be here, an’—”
“The bargain we made!” Cunning Murrell sprang to his feet, hands clenched,
and eyes aflame. “Boast of no bargain made with me, Stephen Lingood! I make
no bargains with the devil, nor with his messengers! Yow come here with money
in your hand to buy my undyin’ soul! To bribe me to lie an’ blaspheme, that a
wicked witch may work her devilish arts among good Christian people with no
hindrance! Take up your money, Stephen Lingood, that the devil hev given you
to tempt me with, an’ much good may it do ye! For I be the devil’s master,
and no money shall make me his sarvant!”
Lingood was giddy with amaze. What was this? By all his simple lights the
negotiations had gone on admirably, with the most neighbourly agreement and
success, except for Murrell’s divination, by inexplicable means, of its
inmost occasion. And now, with all settled and done, and the agreed payment
in act of passing…!
“Take your money, Stephen Lingood, and do you beware yourself an’ guard
your own soul ‘gainst the witch the devil hev sent to entice you! He do chose
his time well—sendin’ you with your money on a day when I feel need of
it to pay what I owe you!”
Lingood gasped, and somehow got on his feet. “‘Tis—‘tis beyond me,”
he said, with slow wonder, “to see you turn that way, Master Murr’ll!”
“Ay, much be beyond yow, I make no doubt, deep fellow as you be.” The
cunning man’s excitement vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and now he
turned about as though to busy himself among bottles and jars on the shelf
beyond the fireplace. “You hev your answer, Stephen Lingood, and as for what
I owe you, this day I cannot pay; though if you will you may take summat for
it, or for pledge. Yow can take the clock.”
“I den’t come to ask for money,” Lingood answered heavily. “You can pay
when you please, an’ I want no pledge. I came to beg a little mercy for two
lone women, an’ it seems you take it ill…Well, I’m sorry, an’ I’ll go, an’
leave my secret with ye.”
Murrell made no answer, but gave his attention to the bottles and jars;
and the smith went his way moodily into the lane.
When he was gone, Murrell called from the back door to his daughter:
“There be more o’ that bacon left, Ann, ben’t there?”
“Yes, near hafe the hock.”
“Well, get yow a good double plateful ready, with taters an’ bread, as
soon as’t be dark.”
“To take out with ‘ee like las’ night?”
“What for doan’t you mind, Ann Pett, an’ keep your noisy mouth shut about
my consarns!”
Murrell’s temper was fated not to be allowed to soften this day. “Do yow
get what I want, an’ hoad your tongue.” And he shut the door.
The sky was flushing with the sunset, and a shed shut the light from the
little back window, so that in the room it already grew dusk; but there was
light enough for Murrell to add two more to his heap of notes:
Dor.
Brooker left in troubel with babby by Saml. Gill; and: Stephn. Lingood do
long secret for Dy. Thorn.
HER aunt’s sleeplessness added to the concern Dorrily felt
for her at this time. More than once, waking in the night, she had found the
place vacant beside her, and once her search had only ended in the garden,
where she found Jack’s mother walking; so that she quickly grew into a habit
of light sleep, and was alert to feel Mrs Martin’s absence at any hour of the
night.
All unwitting of Lingood’s attempt to corrupt Cunning Murrell’s integrity
on their behalf, they went to bed early as usual that evening. Dorrily may
have slept an hour, or perhaps less, when she awoke with a start at a sharp
report. She sat up, and saw that her aunt was already awake and half dressed,
and was crouching at the little window that looked across the lane to Castle
Hill. Ere she could reach her side there came another loud crack, as of a
gun, and Mrs Martin said, “‘Tis shots. Maybe the coastguard.” And taking up a
shawl she left the room.
Dorrily had learned not to attempt to hinder or dissuade at these times,
so she hastened to provide herself with some necessary clothing, and
followed. Mrs Martin went out of the cottage, down into the lane, and
straight across to Castle Hill; and when Dorrily emerged she saw her already
on the near slope.
There was a south-east wind, a little high for the time of year, and
broken cloud, of every degree of thickness and thinness, came steadily across
the sky under the three-quarter moon, throwing across marsh and hill
sometimes black shadow and sometimes clear white light, with dusky obscurity
between. Dorrily overtook her aunt at the shoulder of the mound, where a heap
of grey old wall stood, and took her arm. “Aunt Sarah,” she said, “I am here.
Come with me.” And, as the woman turned to look at her, “‘Tis I, Dorry,” she
added. “Let us go back.”
“‘Tis no night for a run, this,” Sarah Martin said, looking across the
wide dark water and up at where the moon shone mistily through white cloud.
“I wonder what guard John an’ Reuben be on?”
Her mind was on the two men dead twelve years since, and Dorrily was wise
enough to disturb the poor head as little as possible. “No,” she said, “‘tis
no night for a run with a moon like that, an’ if there be no run all guards
are alike; they’ll take no harm.”
“But I heard shots, I tell ‘ee. Dorry, I hope they ben’t on the
watter!”
“‘Tis the same to them, watter or land,” the girl answered, with an odd
after-thought of the truth in the words. “‘Tis a still night on watter, as
you may see.”
“But I heard shots. Hark!”
Both listened. The wind was steady from over water and marsh, and carried
sound far, even while it confused it. From Sea Reach there came no noise but
the hum of the wind itself; but lower on the hill or by the marsh edge there
was the faintest regular sound, sometimes almost inaudible, but regular
still. The two women turned ear to the wind and Dorrily watched her aunt’s
eyes anxiously.
“Hear!” Mrs Martin said, pointing down hill. “‘Tis horses—bein’
led!”
“Strayed on the marsh, Aunt Sarah, an’ some one bringing them in, that’s
all.”
For a moment they listened, and it seemed that the sound receded. Then a
sudden noise from below the mound made them turn.
A man went running pell mell up the lane, a stable lantern tumbling and
swinging from one hand. He looked neither to right nor to left, but scampered
madly, the lantern banging and clanking from thigh to forearm. It would seem
to be a bolt of sheer terror, though at what it were hard to say, save for
the ghostly reputation of the spot; for nobody pursued him. And there was
barely time to see that he wore a smock frock, and had the appearance of a
farm hand, ere he vanished at the bend.
Again Dorrily urged return, this time with more persuasion. “‘Tis no run,”
she argued, “else the guard would burn lights, an’ we should see an’ hear all
from here. You’re losin’ your rest an’ ‘haps takin’ a chill for nothen.
That’s nothen but a great lout runnin’ from his shadow, an’ ‘tis all quiet
now. Come back, do ‘ee.”
Her aunt sighed, and turned with her down the path. “Ah,” she said, “‘tis
anxious waitin’ for them a-nights.”
They were well over the crest when a dark figure rose out of a clump of
bush and broken masonry twenty yards from where they had stood. It was a man,
a tall man, whose back was so toward what light there was that no witness
could have sworn to him as Golden Adams. He peered over the shoulder of the
mound after the women, and satisfied that they were gone, crept along the
almost obliterated line of the curtain wall toward the south tower.
The cottage door was closed again, quiet and dark. The shattered towers
beyond the mound frowned and paled by turns, as the clouds governed the
moonlight, and Cunning Murrell, nearing the castle stealthily by the meadows
above the lane, heard no more than the rustling of the leaves, nor added to
it the least sound himself.
AS Lingood passed the Castle Inn, on his way from Murrell’s,
he could hear laughter and talk in the parlour, where candles were being
lighted. But he was in no mood to join the company, and so he kept his way to
the smithy.
Prentice was in the parlour, however, and Banham and Dan Fisk. Also Abel
Pennyfather, a small farmer, though a large and wide person; and two or three
more, including the colourless man, burdened with the never-completed story
of the balloon that fell in Barling in eighteen hundred and twenty-eight.
“Tarkin’ o’ Barl’n’,” said Abel Pennyfather, cutting short the balloon man
just before he got to the date, “just look ‘ee here at this stick. See’t? Now
I lay a penny yow don’t know, none on ye, what that stick is, nor where it
kim from?”
Most of them did, having heard the story before, but nobody ventured to
say so except the injured balloon man, who, stung to rebellion against
Pennyfather’s big voice and loud manner, began: “Why, ees, sarten to say,
that onny be—”
“That stick,” roared Pennyfather, banging it on the flat of the
table—“that stick be a thistle. Nothen but a common rank oad thistle.
An’ I ha’ had that stick twelve year. An’ I lay a penny you dunno where it
kim from. Well, when oad Wilker had Burton’s farm, yow never see sich a farm
in arl your born days; never. Darty fiel’s! La! I’d think so. Nobody never
knowed what a darty fiel’ was that hent seen oad Bob Wilker’s. Yow coon’t
tell whether ‘twere beans or carlock he were growin’—‘cept ‘twere nigh
arl carlock. Carlock an’ dog grass
an
‘ thistles! Lud! Why folk kim
miles to see’t, ‘twere such a sight. Well, I looks over into a wheat fiel’
one day, an’ there ‘tarl were; such a foison o’ thistles an’ carlock an’ muck
as yow never see—thistles high as a man, very nigh. So, sez I, I’ll
just take a look over that fiel’, I sez, and find the true champion among
they thistles. So I looks an’ I looks, but dang ‘tarl they be arl so woundly
big I coon’t make ch’ice. But, sez I, I’ll take away one with me for
cur’os’ty. So I cuts it close down, an’ a deadly fine bit o’ timber ‘twere.
Why, sez I, that ‘ud make a good warlkin’ stick! An’ a warlkin’ stick I made
it! Ha! ha!”
“‘Tis a wonnerful stick,” remarked the docile Banham, examining it as
though it were not as familiar in his eyes as Abel Pennyfather himself. “A
wonnerful stick, sarten to say. An’ nothen but a rank oad thistle, sez you!
Well, well.”
“The games I had with that stick!” Abel pursued, with a chuckle. “Drove
poor oad Bob Wilker hafe shanny. ‘Good mornin’, Master Wilker,’ sez I ‘How d’
ye like my warlkin’ stick? Fine bit o’ timber, ben’t it? Much obliged t’ ye
for it. Master Wilker. Got it out o’ a wheat fiel’ o’ yourn, an’ left plenty
more behine. Why doan’t you grow warlkin’ sticks for reg’lar crop?’ Lord!
that mad he were!”
“He were a rum’un, oad Wilker,” Prentice said soberly, refilling his pipe.
“Farmed slovenly an’ farmed mean, an’ thote to make it pay by bein’ meaner.
Remember the fanteeg with the gleaners?”
“Woon’t hev’em, would he?”
“Got a-hossback, with a rope to the saddle, him an’ his hossman, both
a-hossback, one each end o’ the rope. Gallopped over a fiel’, so’s to loop up
arl the gleaners an’ sweep’em away. Gleaners got on a bank an’ broke his ja’
with a brickbat. Rope caught a woman, hulled her over an’ putt out her
shoulder, and she summonsed him an’ made him pay. He went in to tie up his
ja’, an’ the gleaners they went off with fower traves o’ wheat. Cost him
three years’ gleanin’s, that did.”
“Well,” Pennyfather proclaimed, “he den’t know how to farm, he den’t.
Farmin’ mean doan’t do—not in Essex. Now look at
me
. I’ll just
tell ‘ee. When a man comes—”
There was a wrenching, first one way and then the other, at the door
handle, ere the door opened, and a red, vacant face appeared above a dirty
smock frock and below a very bad hat. “Master Pennyfaa’?” said the face
interrogatively: for Abel was behind the door.
“Ees?” Pennyfather turned about in his chair and faced the new-comer.
“What is’t now, Jarge Crick?”