‘Old Mother Laidinwool had nigh twelve months been dead,
She heard the hops were doing well, and then popped up her head.’
‘There can’t be two people made to holler like that!’ cried old Hobden,
wheeling round.
‘For, says she, “The boys I’ve picked with when I was young and fair,
They’re bound to be at hoppin’, and I’m——”’
A man showed at the doorway.
‘Well, well! They do say hoppin’ll draw the very deadest; and now I
belieft ’em. You, Tom? Tom Shoesmith!’ Hobden lowered his lanthorn.
‘You’re a hem of a time makin’ your mind to it, Ralph!’ The stranger
strode in—three full inches taller than Hobden, a grey-whiskered,
brown-faced giant with clear blue eyes. They shook hands, and the children
could hear the hard palms rasp together.
‘You ain’t lost none o’ your grip,’ said Hobden. ‘Was it thirty or forty
year back you broke my head at Peasmarsh Fair?’
‘Only thirty, an’ no odds ’tween us regardin’ heads, neither. You had it
back at me with a hop-pole. How did we get home that night? Swimmin’?’
‘Same way the pheasant come into Gubbs’s pocket—by a little luck an’ a
deal o’ conjurin’.’ Old Hobden laughed in his deep chest.
‘I see you’ve not forgot your way about the woods. D’ye do any o’ _this_
still?’ The stranger pretended to look along a gun.
Hobden answered with a quick movement of the hand as though he were
pegging down a rabbit-wire.
‘No. _That’s_ all that’s left me now. Age she must as Age she can. An’
what’s your news since all these years?’
‘Oh, I’ve bin to Plymouth, I’ve bin to Dover—
I’ve bin ramblin’, boys, the wide world over,’
the man answered cheerily. ‘I reckon I know as much of Old England as
most.’ He turned towards the children and winked boldly.
‘I lay they told you a sight o’ lies, then. I’ve been into England fur as
Wiltsheer once. I was cheated proper over a pair of hedging-gloves,’ said
Hobden.
‘There’s fancy-talkin’ everywhere. _You’ve_ cleaved to your own parts
pretty middlin’ close, Ralph.’
‘Can’t shift an old tree ’thout it dyin’,’ Hobden chuckled. ‘An’ I be no
more anxious to die than you look to be to help me with my hops to-night.’
The great man leaned against the brickwork of the roundel, and swung his
arms abroad. ‘Hire me!’ was all he said, and they stumped upstairs
laughing.
The children heard their shovels rasp on the cloth where the yellow hops
lie drying above the fires, and all the oast-house filled with the sweet,
sleepy smell as they were turned.
‘Who is it?’ Una whispered to the Bee Boy.
‘Dunno, no more’n you—if _you_ dunno,’ said he, and smiled.
The voices on the drying-floor talked and chuckled together, and the heavy
footsteps went back and forth. Presently a hop-pocket dropped through the
press-hole overhead, and stiffened and fattened as they shovelled it full.
‘Clank!’ went the press, and rammed the loose stuff into tight cake.
‘Gently!’ they heard Hobden cry. ‘You’ll bust her crop if you lay on so.
You be as careless as Gleason’s bull, Tom. Come an’ sit by the fires.
She’ll do now.’
They came down, and as Hobden opened the shutter to see if the potatoes
were done Tom Shoesmith said to the children, ‘Put a plenty salt on ’em.
That’ll show you the sort o’ man _I_ be.’ Again he winked, and again the
Bee Boy laughed and Una stared at Dan.
‘_I_ know what sort o’ man you be,’ old Hobden grunted, groping for the
potatoes round the fire.
‘Do ye?’ Tom went on behind his back. ‘Some of us can’t abide Horseshoes,
or Church Bells, or Running Water; an’, talkin’ o’ runnin’ water’—he
turned to Hobden, who was backing out of the roundel—‘d’you mind the great
floods at Robertsbridge, when the miller’s man was drowned in the street?’
‘Middlin’ well.’ Old Hobden let himself down on the coals by the fire
door. ‘I was courtin’ my woman on the Marsh that year. Carter to Mus’ Plum
I was—gettin’ ten shillin’s week. Mine was a Marsh woman.’
‘Won’erful odd-gates place—Romney Marsh,’ said Tom Shoesmith. ‘I’ve heard
say the world’s divided like into Europe, Ashy, Afriky, Ameriky, Australy,
an’ Romney Marsh.’
‘The Marsh folk think so,’ said Hobden. ‘I had a hem o’ trouble to get my
woman to leave it.’
‘Where did she come out of? I’ve forgot, Ralph.’
‘Dymchurch under the Wall,’ Hobden answered, a potato in his hand.
‘Then she’d be a Pett—or a Whitgift, would she?’
‘Whitgift.’ Hobden broke open the potato and ate it with the curious
neatness of men who make most of their meals in the blowy open. ‘She
growed to be quite reasonable-like after livin’ in the Weald awhile, but
our first twenty year or two she was odd-fashioned, no bounds. And she was
a won’erful hand with bees.’ He cut away a little piece of potato and
threw it out to the door.
‘Ah! I’ve heard say the Whitgifts could see further through a millstone
than most,’ said Shoesmith. ‘Did she, now?’
‘She was honest-innocent, of any nigromancin’,’ said Hobden. ‘Only she’d
read signs and sinnifications out o’ birds flyin’, stars fallin’, bees
hivin’, and such. An’ she’d lie awake—listenin’ for calls, she said.’
‘That don’t prove naught,’ said Tom. ‘All Marsh folk has been smugglers
since time everlastin’. ’Twould be in her blood to listen out o’ nights.’
‘Nature-ally,’ old Hobden replied, smiling. ‘I mind when there was
smugglin’ a sight nearer us than the Marsh be. But that wasn’t my woman’s
trouble. ’Twas a passel o’ no-sense talk,’ he dropped his voice, ‘about
Pharisees.’
‘Yes. I’ve heard Marsh men beleft in ’em.’ Tom looked straight at the
wide-eyed children beside Bess.
‘Pharisees,’ cried Una. ‘Fairies? Oh, I see!’
‘People o’ the Hills,’ said the Bee Boy, throwing half of his potato
towards the door.
‘There you be!’ said Hobden, pointing at him. ‘My boy, he has her eyes and
her out-gate senses. That’s what _she_ called ’em!’
‘And what did you think of it all?’
‘Um—um,’ Hobden rumbled. ‘A man that uses fields an’ shaws after dark as
much as I’ve done, he don’t go out of his road excep’ for keepers.’
‘But settin’ that aside?’ said Tom, coaxingly. ‘I saw ye throw the Good
Piece out-at doors just now. Do ye believe or—_do_ ye?’
‘There was a great black eye to that tater,’ said Hobden, indignantly.
‘My liddle eye didn’t see un, then. It looked as if you meant it for—for
Any One that might need it. But settin’ that aside. D’ye believe or—_do_
ye?’
‘I ain’t sayin’ nothin’, because I’ve heard naught, an’ I’ve seen naught.
But if you was to say there was more things after dark in the shaws than
men, or fur, or feather, or fin, I dunno as I’d go farabout to call you a
liar. Now turn again, Tom. What’s your say?’
‘I’m like you. I say nothin’. But I’ll tell you a tale, an’ you can fit it
_as_ how you please.’
‘Passel o’ no-sense stuff,’ growled Hobden, but he filled his pipe.
‘The Marsh men they call it Dymchurch Flit,’ Tom went on slowly. ‘Hap
you’ve heard it?’
‘My woman she’ve told it me scores o’ times. Dunno as I didn’t end by
belieft in’ it—sometimes.’
Hobden crossed over as he spoke, and sucked with his pipe at the yellow
lanthorn-flame. Tom rested one great elbow on one great knee, where he sat
among the coal.
‘Have you ever bin in the Marsh?’ he said to Dan.
‘Only as far as Rye, once,’ Dan answered.
‘Ah, that’s but the edge. Back behind of her there’s steeples settin’
beside churches, an’ wise women settin’ beside their doors, an’ the sea
settin’ above the land, an’ ducks herdin’ wild in the diks’ (he meant
ditches). ‘The Marsh is justabout riddled with diks an’ sluices, an’
tide-gates an’ water-lets. You can hear em’ bubblin’ an’ grummelin’ when
the tide works in em’, an’ then you hear the sea rangin’ left and
right-handed all up along the Wall. You’ve seen how flat she is—the Marsh?
You’d think nothin’ easier than to walk eend-on acrost her? Ah, but the
diks an’ the water-lets, they twists the roads about as ravelly as
witch-yarn on the spindles. So ye get all turned round in broad daylight.’
‘That’s because they’ve dreened the waters into the diks,’ said Hobden.
‘When I courted my woman the rushes was green—Eh me! the rushes was
green—an’ the Bailiff o’ the Marshes, he rode up and down as free as the
fog.’
‘Who was he?’ said Dan.
‘Why, the Marsh fever an’ ague. He’ve clapped me on the shoulder once or
twice till I shook proper. But now the dreenin’ off of the waters have
done away with the fevers; so they make a joke, like, that the Bailiff o’
the Marshes broke his neck in a dik. A won’erful place for bees an’ ducks
’tis too.’
‘An’ old!’ Tom went on. ‘Flesh an’ Blood have been there since Time
Everlastin’ Beyond. Well, now, speakin’ among themselves, the Marshmen say
that from Time Everlastin’ Beyond the Pharisees favoured the Marsh above
the rest of Old England. I lay the Marshmen ought to know. They’ve been
out after dark, father an’ son, smugglin’ some one thing or t’other, since
ever wool grew to sheep’s backs. They say there was always a middlin’ few
Pharisees to be seen on the Marsh. Impident as rabbits, they was. They’d
dance on the nakid roads in the nakid daytime; they’d flash their liddle
green lights along the diks, comin’ an’ goin’, like honest smugglers. Yes,
an’ times they’d lock the church doors against parson an’ clerk of
Sundays!’
‘That ’ud be smugglers layin’ in the lace or the brandy till they could
run it out o’ the Marsh. I’ve told my woman so,’ said Hobden.
‘I’ll lay she didn’t beleft it, then—not if she was a Whitgift. A
won’erful choice place for Pharisees, the Marsh, by all accounts, till
Queen Bess’s father he come in with his Reformatories.’
‘Would that be a Act o’ Parliament like?’ Hobden asked.
‘Sure-ly! ’Can’t do nothing in Old England without Act, Warrant, an’
Summons. He got his Act allowed him, an’, they say, Queen Bess’s father he
used the parish churches something shameful. Justabout tore the gizzards
out of I dunnamany. Some folk in England they held with ’en; but some they
saw it different, an’ it eended in ’em takin’ sides an’ burnin’ each other
no bounds, accordin’ which side was top, time bein’. That tarrified the
Pharisees: for Goodwill among Flesh an’ Blood is meat an’ drink to ’em,
an’ ill-will is poison.’
‘Same as bees,’ said the Bee Boy. ‘Bees won’t stay by a house where
there’s hating.’
‘True,’ said Tom. ‘This Reformations tarrified the Pharisees same as the
reaper goin’ round a last stand o’ wheat tarrifies rabbits. They packed
into the Marsh from all parts, and they says, “Fair or foul, we must flit
out o’ this, for Merry England’s done with, an’ we’re reckoned among the
Images.”’
‘Did they _all_ see it that way?’ said Hobden.
‘All but one that was called Robin—if you’ve heard of him. What are you
laughing at?’ Tom turned to Dan. ‘The Pharisees’s trouble didn’t tech
Robin, because he’d cleaved middlin’ close to people like. No more he
never meant to go out of Old England—not he; so he was sent messagin’ for
help among Flesh an’ Blood. But Flesh an’ Blood must always think of their
own concerns, an’ Robin couldn’t get _through_ at ’em, ye see. They
thought it was tide-echoes off the Marsh.’
‘What did you—what did the fai—Pharisees want?’ Una asked.
‘A boat to be sure. Their liddle wings could no more cross Channel than so
many tired butterflies. A boat an’ a crew they desired to sail ’em over to
France, where yet awhile folks hadn’t tore down the Images. They couldn’t
abide cruel Canterbury Bells ringin’ to Bulverhithe for more pore men an’
women to be burnded, nor the King’s proud messenger ridin’ through the
land givin’ orders to tear down the Images. They couldn’t abide it no
shape. Nor yet they couldn’t get their boat an’ crew to flit by without
Leave an’ Good-will from Flesh an’ Blood; an’ Flesh an’ Blood came an’
went about its own business the while the Marsh was swarvin’ up, an’
swarvin’ up with Pharisees from all England over, striving all means to
get _through_ at Flesh an’ Blood to tell ’en their sore need.... I don’t
know as you’ve ever heard say Pharisees are like chickens?’
‘My woman used to say that too,’ said Hobden, folding his brown arms.
‘They be. You run too many chickens together, an’ the ground sickens like,
an’ you get a squat, an’ your chickens die. ’Same way, you crowd Pharisees
all in one place—_they_ don’t die, but Flesh an’ Blood walkin’ among ’em
is apt to sick up an’ pine off. _They_ don’t mean it, an’ Flesh an’ Blood
don’t know it, but that’s the truth—as I’ve heard. The Pharisees through
bein’ all stenched up an’ frighted, an’ tryin’ to come _through_ with
their supplications, they nature-ally changed the thin airs and humours in
Flesh an’ Blood. It lay on the Marsh like thunder. Men saw their churches
ablaze with the wildfire in the windows after dark; they saw their cattle
scatterin’ and no man scarin’; their sheep flockin’ and no man drivin’;
their horses latherin’ an’ no man leadin’; they saw the liddle low green
lights more than ever in the dik-sides; they heard the liddle feet
patterin’ more than ever round the houses; an’ night an’ day, day an’
night, ’twas all as though they were bein’ creeped up on, and hinted at by
some One or Other that couldn’t rightly shape their trouble. Oh, I lay
they sweated! Man an’ maid, woman an’ child, their Nature done ’em no
service all the weeks while the Marsh was swarvin’ up with Pharisees. But
they was Flesh an’ Blood, an’ Marsh men before all. They reckoned the
signs sinnified trouble for the Marsh. Or that the sea ’ud rear up against
Dymchurch Wall an’ they’d be drownded like Old Winchelsea; or that the
Plague was comin’. So they looked for the meanin’ in the sea or in the
clouds—far an’ high up. They never thought to look near an’ knee-high,
where they could see naught.
‘Now there was a poor widow at Dymchurch under the Wall, which, lacking
man or property, she had the more time for feeling; and she come to feel
there was a Trouble outside her doorstep bigger an’ heavier than aught
she’d ever carried over it. She had two sons—one born blind, and t’other
struck dumb through fallin’ off the Wall when he was liddle. They was men
grown, but not wage-earnin’, an’ she worked for ’em, keepin’ bees and
answerin’ Questions.’
‘What sort of questions?’ said Dan.
‘Like where lost things might be found, an’ what to put about a crooked
baby’s neck, an’ how to join parted sweethearts. She felt the Trouble on
the Marsh same as eels feel thunder. She was a wise woman.’
‘My woman was won’erful weather-tender, too,’ said Hobden. ‘I’ve seen her
brish sparks like off an anvil out of her hair in thunderstorms. But she
never laid out to answer Questions.’
‘This woman was a Seeker like, an’ Seekers they sometimes find. One night,
while she lay abed, hot an’ aching, there come a Dream an’ tapped at her
window, and “Widow Whitgift,” it said, “Widow Whitgift!”
‘First, by the wings an’ the whistling, she thought it was peewits, but
last she arose an’ dressed herself, an’ opened her door to the Marsh, an’
she felt the Trouble an’ the Groaning all about her, strong as fever an’
ague, an’ she calls: “What is it? Oh, what is it?”
‘Then ’twas all like the frogs in the diks peeping: then ’twas all like
the reeds in the diks clipclapping; an’ then the great Tide-wave rummelled
along the Wall, an’ she couldn’t hear proper.
‘Three times she called, an’ three times the Tide-wave did her down. But
she catched the quiet between, an’ she cries out, “What is the Trouble on
the Marsh that’s been lying down with my heart an’ arising with my body
this month gone?” She felt a liddle hand lay hold on her gown-hem, an’ she
stooped to the pull o’ that liddle hand.’
Tom Shoesmith spread his huge fist before the fire and smiled at it.
‘“Will the sea drown the Marsh?” she says. She was a Marsh-woman first an’
foremost.
‘“No,” says the liddle voice. “Sleep sound for all o’ that.”
‘“Is the Plague comin’ to the Marsh?” she says. Them was all the ills she
knowed.
‘“No. Sleep sound for all o’ that,” says Robin.
‘She turned about, half mindful to go in, but the liddle voices grieved
that shrill an’ sorrowful she turns back, an’ she cries: “If it is not a
Trouble of Flesh an’ Blood, what can I do?”
‘The Pharisees cried out upon her from all round to fetch them a boat to
sail to France, an’ come back no more.
‘“There’s a boat on the Wall,” she says, “but I can’t push it down to the
sea, nor sail it when ’tis there.”
‘“Lend us your sons,” says all the Pharisees. “Give ’em Leave an’
Good-will to sail it for us, Mother—O Mother!”
‘“One’s dumb, an’ t’other’s blind,” she says. “But all the dearer me for
that; and you’ll lose them in the big sea.” The voices justabout pierced
through her. An’ there was children’s voices too. She stood out all she
could, but she couldn’t rightly stand against _that_. So she says: “If you
can draw my sons for your job, I’ll not hinder ’em. You can’t ask no more
of a Mother.”
‘She saw them liddle green lights dance an’ cross till she was dizzy; she
heard them liddle feet patterin’ by the thousand; she heard cruel
Canterbury Bells ringing to Bulverhithe, an’ she heard the great Tide-wave
ranging along the Wall. That was while the Pharisees was workin’ a Dream
to wake her two sons asleep: an’ while she bit on her fingers she saw them
two she’d bore come out an’ pass her with never a word. She followed ’em,
cryin’ pitiful, to the old boat on the Wall, an’ that they took an’ runned
down to the Sea.
‘When they’d stepped mast an’ sail the blind son speaks up: “Mother, we’re
waitin’ your Leave an’ Good-will to take Them over.”’
Tom Shoesmith threw back his head and half shut his eyes.
‘Eh, me!’ he said. ‘She was a fine, valiant woman, the Widow Whitgift. She
stood twistin’ the ends of her long hair over her fingers, an’ she shook
like a poplar, makin’ up her mind. The Pharisees all about they hushed
their children from cryin’ an’ they waited dumb-still. She was all their
dependence. ’Thout her Leave an’ Goodwill they could not pass; for she was
the Mother. So she shook like a asp-tree makin’ up her mind. ’Last she
drives the word past her teeth, an’ “Go!” she says. “Go with my Leave an’
Goodwill.”
‘Then I saw—then, they say, she had to brace back same as if she was
wadin’ in tide-water; for the Pharisees justabout flowed past her—down the
beach to the boat, _I_ dunnamany of ’em—with their wives an’ children an’
valooables, all escapin’ out of cruel Old England. Silver you could hear
clinkin’, an’ liddle bundles hove down dunt on the bottom-boards, an’
passels o’ liddle swords an’ shield’s raklin’, an’ liddle fingers an’ toes
scratchin’ on the boatside to board her when the two sons pushed her off.
That boat she sunk lower an’ lower, but all the Widow could see in it was
her boys movin’ hampered-like to get at the tackle. Up sail they did, an’
away they went, deep as a Rye barge, away into the off-shore mistes, an’
the Widow Whitgift she sat down and eased her grief till mornin’ light.’
‘I never heard she was _all_ alone,’ said Hobden.
‘I remember now. The one called Robin he stayed with her, they tell. She
was all too grievious to listen to his promises.’
‘Ah! She should ha’ made her bargain beforehand. I allus told my woman
so!’ Hobden cried.
‘No. She loaned her sons for a pure love-loan, bein’ as she sensed the
Trouble on the Marshes, an’ was simple good-willing to ease it.’ Tom
laughed softly. ‘She done that. Yes, she done that! From Hithe to
Bulverthithe, fretty man an’ petty maid, ailin’ woman an’ wailin’ child,
they took the advantage of the change in the thin airs just about _as_
soon as the Pharisees flitted. Folks come out fresh an’ shining all over
the Marsh like snails after wet. An’ that while the Widow Whitgift sat
grievin’ on the Wall. She might have beleft us—she might have trusted her
sons would be sent back! She fussed, no bounds, when their boat come in
after three days.’
‘And, of course, the sons were both quite cured?’ said Una.
‘No-o. That would have been out o’ Nature. She got ’em back _as_ she sent
’em. The blind man he hadn’t seen naught of anything, an’ the dumb man
nature-ally, he couldn’t say aught of what he’d seen. I reckon that was
why the Pharisees pitched on ’em for the ferrying job.’
‘But what did you—what did Robin promise the Widow?’ said Dan.
‘What _did_ he promise, now?’ Tom pretended to think. ‘Wasn’t your woman a
Whitgift, Ralph? Didn’t she say?’
‘She told me a passel o’ no-sense stuff when he was born.’ Hobden pointed
at his son. ‘There was always to be one of ’em that could see further into
a millstone than most.’
‘Me! That’s me!’ said the Bee Boy so suddenly that they all laughed.
‘I’ve got it now!’ cried Tom, slapping his knee. ‘So long as Whitgift
blood lasted, Robin promised there would allers be one o’ her stock
that—that no Trouble ’ud lie on, no Maid ’ud sigh on, no Night could
frighten, no Fright could harm, no Harm could make sin, an’ no Woman could
make a fool.’
‘Well, ain’t that just me?’ said the Bee Boy, where he sat in the silver
square of the great September moon that was staring into the oast-house
door.
‘They was the exact words she told me when we first found he wasn’t like
others. But it beats me how you known ’em,’ said Hobden.
‘Aha! There’s more under my hat besides hair!’ Tom laughed and stretched
himself. ‘When I’ve seen these two young folk home, we’ll make a night of
old days, Ralph, with passin’ old tales—eh? An’ where might you live?’ he
said, gravely, to Dan. ‘An’ do you think your Pa ’ud give me a drink for
takin’ you there, Missy?’
They giggled so at this that they had to run out. Tom picked them both up,
set one on each broad shoulder, and tramped across the ferny pasture where
the cows puffed milky puffs at them in the moonlight.
‘Oh, Puck! Puck! I guessed you right from when you talked about the salt.
How could you ever do it?’ Una cried, swinging along delighted.
‘Do what?’ he said, and climbed the stile by the pollard oak.
‘Pretend to be Tom Shoesmith,’ said Dan, and they ducked to avoid the two
little ashes that grow by the bridge over the brook. Tom was almost
running.
‘Yes. That’s my name, Mus’ Dan,’ he said, hurrying over the silent shining
lawn, where a rabbit sat by the big white-thorn near the croquet ground.
‘Here you be.’ He strode into the old kitchen yard, and slid them down as
Ellen came to ask questions.
‘I’m helping in Mus’ Spray’s oast-house,’ he said to her. ‘No, I’m no
foreigner. I knowed this country ’fore your Mother was born; an’—yes it’s
dry work oasting, Miss. Thank you.’
Ellen went to get a jug, and the children went in—magicked once more by
Oak, Ash, and Thorn!