His air of command went ill with his thin voice and small stature, and the
big man said gruffly, “I’ll keep as I am for the present, meanin’ no
offence;” and sat in the chair. Murrell took the rushlight from the
mantelpiece and set it on the table, full before the stranger’s face; and the
stranger instantly reached for the candlestick and put it behind him, at the
table-end.
Murrell’s keen eyes never left the man’s face, muffled as it was, and now
in deep shade. But he let the candle stay, and took a seat opposite his
client. “Well,” he said, “is’t med’sun, or what? Be you muffled agin the
coad?”
“‘Taren’t med’sun,” the other replied. “‘Taren’t med’sun, an’ ‘taren’t a
coad chill. ‘Tis adwice, an’—an’—mayhap summat more. ‘Tis well
knowed yow do—summat more.”
“Well?” Murrell’s eyes never winked nor shifted from the shadowy patch
that marked the region of the stranger’s face. “Well,” the stranger went on
awkwardly, “‘tis for to say, sich as things lost and stole, buried property,
fortunes by the stars, an’ that.”
Murrell said nothing, and presently the stranger filled the gap by adding
“An’ matters o’ business, pardners an’ that.”
“Very well,” Murrell said thereupon. “What’s the property wuth?”
“Property wuth?” the stranger repeated, as one taken by surprise and a
shade disconcerted. “Property—wuth. Well, that depends.”
“Ah,” said Murrell, easily, “depends on where you sell it, p’r’aps. Cost
fifty pound to buy?”
“Double that,” said the other, rubbing his nose where the muffler tickled
it. “Double that, an’ a bit more, one way an’ another. But wuth more—a
lot more, to sell.”
“Three or fower hundred pound, mayhap?”
“Ay, all that, an’ over. But why d’ye ask?”
“‘Tis likely I may need it to go in a geomantic formula,” said Murrell,
who knew the words were Greek to his client. “An’ now what about your
pardner?”
“Pardner?” exclaimed the other, with astonishment. “Why, I hevn’t said I
had a pardner, hev I?”
“‘Tis my business to know many things people don’t tell me,” Murrell
answered placidly, “What about your pardner?”
“If yow know,” said the visitor doggedly, and with a shade of suspicion,
“there’s no need o’ me to tell ye.”
“I ask for what I don’t know—yet,” the cunning man replied, placidly
as before. “If you den’t want to tell me ye woo’n’t ha’ come; an’ if your
mind’s changed you can go now.”
There was a few moments’ pause, and then the stranger said, with something
of sulky fierceness: “I want to know if my pardner be a true man to me.”
“Very well.” Murrell took a scrap of paper, already written close on one
side, from his pocket, reached ink and pen from the mantelpiece, and wrote in
a tiny, crabbed hand:
If pardner be faithfull.
“An’ if not,” the client went on, “adwice accordin’.”
Murrell wrote a line below the other:
If not, what to doe.
Then he
asked: “An’ where be the property?”
The visitor shuffled uneasily. “O, that’s safe enough—put away.”
“Hid?”
The man grunted. “Well, yes, ‘tis,” he admitted.
Murrell added another line:
Propperty hid
. “An’ wuth fower hundred
pound?” he asked.
“Ay, or more.”
Murrell wrote:
Worth above £400
. He pushed the pen and ink along
the table, with another scrap of paper. “There be fower pints,” he said, “an’
by this curis art we take no more than fower pints at a time. Take you the
pen, good friend, an’ make you fower lines o’ strokes, without counting; a
line below a line, an’ stop when you please.”
The man took the pen in a great brown, unaccustomed fist, and squared his
elbows. “Begin here?” he asked.
“Ay, begin a-top. Now a row o’ strokes, an’ no counting.”
With slow labour the stranger traced a row of straggling strokes, and then
three more rows below, Murrell watching his face still; though now the keen
look had a tinge of something else—perhaps of contempt.
The task ended, Murrell drew the paper toward him, and, rapidly scanning
the rows of strokes, placed opposite each a symmetrical group of cyphers.
This done, he made more cyphers on the paper he had first used, and dotted
about them with his pen, like a boy with a sum.
“Right witness; left witness; judge…There is much curis information to
be read in this figure of geomancy,” he said, poring over the paper, but with
a sly upward glance. “First, I make it you come from—let’s
see—yes, Sheppy, but not a native there.”
The man started. But after a moment’s pause he replied: “No, I be an Essex
man.”
“Just that,” Murrell went on. “An Essex man lately living in Sheppy. A
Leigh man, I do read. An’ your pardner’s name be”—here he paused, and,
with head still bent, shot a glance at the big man as sly as the other, and
with an added touch of triumph—“your pardner’s name be—Cloyse.
Why, that must be Master Sim Cloyse, sarten to say?”
The strange client half rose, but dropped heavily back in the chair, his
eyes wide in amaze. “Yow give me that paper,” he demanded, extending his arm.
“It tell too much!”
“Pooh!” the cunning man answered, keeping the paper under his hand, “‘tis
read now, arl of it. An’ ‘tis not my business to tell secrets. Yow be a Leigh
man gone to Sheppy, an’ your pardner be Sim Cloyse of Leigh. Speakin’ o’
Leigh,” he went on, discursively, “there were a Sam Gill o’ Leigh that went
to Sheppy two or three months back. You know nothin’ o’ him, do ye?”
“Yes”—the man was still a little uneasy, but he answered this
question readily enough—“yes, he went on to Portsmouth they do say, an’
shipped aboard a summat bound for the West Indies.”
“Ah, I wondered. Well, to the matter in hand.” Murrell lifted the paper.
“Your pardner be Sim Cloyse, as I said, an’ you do well to distrust him. You
be a Leigh man, lately living in Sheppy, an’
your
name”—he
paused, and the man started forward in his chair—”
your
name be
Golden Adams!”
“G’lor!” the stranger ejaculated, and flung his cap on the table. He
pulled the shawl down from his face, puffed his cheeks and wiped his
forehead, revealing the hard, bronzed face of a man of forty. “Damme, Golden
Adams
is
my name, an’ what hev ye to say to that?”
“Nothen,” Murrell answered quietly. “Nothen; I do seem to ha’ heard the
name at one time, no more.”
“Well, an’ what more do ye find in that bewitched paper, devil as ye
be”
“Devil?” squeaked Murrell, for his pride was touched. “I’ll hev ye know
I’m the devil’s master For your hid property I’ve more to say. ‘Haps you’ll
find a new pardner. We’ll speak of that in the lane. Come!”
He brought his frail and umbrella from a corner, and called permission
through the back door for his daughter to return. Golden Adams pushed up his
muffler again, put on his cap, and opened the door. But before following him
Murrell found another scrap of paper whereon to write the note:
Saml. Gill
of Leigh gone from Sheppy now and left Portsmouth by shipp for West
Indes.
He put the note carefully into a shapeless homemade pocket-book, seized
his frail and umbrella and his glazed hat, and followed Golden Adams into the
outer dark.
DORRILY THORN found little comfort in her aunt’s case. Sarah
Martin had relapsed into the brooding state of mind that had afflicted her
twelve years back or more, after the loss of her husband and her brother.
Perhaps her habit now was somewhat less passive than it had been then, for
she was beset by a constant fear of her neighbours, exaggerated beyond
reason; and the charge she lay under was not a sorrow wrought to its end, but
a present and abiding affliction, of a depth only to be felt by a woman
brought up to believe witchcraft a very real and hideous crime, in a place
where everybody about her shared the conviction. She had aged, too, more than
mere time would suggest, since her double bereavement. Indeed, this was the
way on and about the marshes, where an inevitable rheumatism weighted the
years of those past middle life; and now there was nothing for her mind but
her troubles. So that she wept and brooded, and indulged real and imaginary
terrors; being relieved only by intervals of blank forgetfulness. And at
night she was restless and wakeful.
The afternoon on Castle Hill in some degree soothed her for the time it
lasted, though Dorrily was hard put to it to keep a cheerful face while her
eyes and ears were strained toward the village, and her wits were busy
devising ways of retreat in case of the approach of folk from the fair.
Jack’s letters were read and re-read—short, frank, and ill-spelled,
on thin paper, two letters in each envelope, one for his mother and one for
Dorrily; and his mother found a childish interest in speculating on each sail
as it rose on the distant sea-line, with the counterfeit hope that it might
bring his ship on some unforeseen errand home. All the long sunny afternoon
they sat undisturbed on the grass of the hilltop, looking out across the
great width of green marsh and blue water, and no human creature came in
sight nearer than a man, far down on Casey Marsh, who seemed to crawl like an
insect, and hopped now and again at a ditch. There was an unfamiliar hum from
over the ridge behind—the noise of the fair; and as the afternoon went
the noise grew louder and more varied, though still it was a dull noise
enough. Dorrily was a little startled about this time by a fancy of her
aunt’s that somebody was in the copse just below the castle, watching them.
There was no sound, and nobody was to be seen; and as Mrs Martin admitted
that she neither heard nor saw anybody, though she “felt quite sure” that
somebody or something was there, Dorrily concluded that it was a mere
baseless fancy, and turned eyes and ears again toward Hadleigh.
And so the afternoon grew into evening. The sun went down in blue and
gold, and the Nore light burst out in the midst of the darkening sea. The
sounds of the fight’s last skirmish had come clearly from the nearer meadow
whereinto it had straggled, and now the village was comparatively quiet. With
the coming of dusk Mrs Martin grew uneasy, and even Dorrily had no wish to
stay longer on Castle Hill; and as they went down toward the lane, Mrs
Martin’s apprehensions of something in the copse—something leaving it
now, she insisted, and following them—rose tenfold, and hastened their
steps, while Dorrily’s strained nerves took alarm from each of the tiny night
sounds that the stillness brought to her ear. But they reached the cottage
with no greater disquiet, and took their rest.
But the days that succeeded, though easier for Dorrily, since she felt no
fear of actual violence once the disorder of the fair was over, saw little
change in her aunt. She grew sensitive to the manners and aspect of her
neighbours. Mrs Banham remained sullen, hostile, half-defiant; but the rest
displayed a curiously timid deference, an ostentatious anxiety to give no
offence, a wish even to propitiate, that might have been gratifying in other
circumstances; though as it plainly disguised mere aversion and disgust, and
was accompanied by an unmistakable desire to keep at the safest possible
distance, its effect was to cause a suppressed torment and irritation which
increased with time. And Mrs Martin’s angry looks and frowns askance were
popularly taken for plain proofs of witchcraft in themselves.
But her angry looks were for the outer world alone, to which she lifted
her bravest face. At home she was pensive and abstracted, and now Dorrily
felt indeed that loneliness that she had vaguely apprehended—a
loneliness that made her head of the little household, and was loneliness
only in the sense that unaided and uncounselled she must bear the burdens of
both.
Almost every morning she went up to the village to meet the postman from
Rochford, in hope that there might be a letter from Jack. The journey was
fruitless nine times out of ten and more, for, apart from the normal
irregularity of mails from a cruising ship, each letter cost threepence in
postage, and that for a quarter of an ounce. By a Queen’s ship, indeed, half
an ounce was brought at the same price, but nothing came and nothing could go
at less than threepence. For this reason, too, Dorrily’s letters to Jack were
few, and for this reason Jack’s own letters were short. For a quarter of an
ounce is not much, even of thin paper, and when that was divided into two
letters, and each was written in Jack’s large and laborious hand, the space
available was soon covered.
There was a letter a week after the fair. That morning the old postman was
brisker than common, or perhaps he carried a lighter load, so that he had
reached the post-office, opposite the Castle Inn, ere Dorrily was at the lane
corner, and was coming away as she emerged into Hadleigh street. “One for
you,” he said with a grim nod, jerking his thumb backward.
The postmistress was sorting the little bunch of letters, nine or ten for
Cunning Murrell, three or four for the rest of the village; for Murrell alone
had thrice as much correspondence as the remainder of Hadleigh, and this
indeed was something below his average delivery. Sickness—of men and
cows: bewitchment—of people and churns: and losses—of clothes,
watches, crops, and lovers: these afflictions brought him demands and
inquiries by letter from all Essex, much of Kent, and even from London, where
Essex maidservants had carried his name.
The postmistress hastily put down a folded letter with a vast smear of
sealing wax behind it, the gaping end of which had been applied to her eye:
for Murrell’s letters were the most interesting that came. “Good morning,
Miss Thorn,” she said sweetly; “there’s a letter for you. Here it is.
Beautiful weather, isn’t it?
Good
morning!” And Dorrily hated her for
her civility, for it was the civility of the villagers who feared to anger
her aunt. The last letter she had called for, that bony woman had flung at
her with no sounds but a growl and a sniff.