“Sit where you are, Joseph Pullen, and hold your peace, and be thankful
you have a wife who knows your mind without you for ever speaking of
it.”
Mistress Amy Pullen, her kirtle hitched up at one side to give her
greater freedom in the discharge of her household duties, strode across
her small kitchen, an earthenware bowl of cold fatty broth in her hands
and two small children hanging at her petticoats.
The kitchen, which was very small, served also as a general living room
for the Pullen family, and this evening, four or five days after Captain
Dick had first left the Ship Inn, it was crowded. Joe, debarred from his
favourite seat by his wife, who liked the whole of the fire to cook at,
sat in a corner on a heap of miscellaneous lumber, a net which he was
mending spread around him. In addition to the two little mites who hung
on to their mother as though life itself depended on it, three other
children were in the room, one baby of a year or so was nursed by
another, a pretty fair-haired little girl of eight or nine, who sat on a
roughly made-up bed built into the wall opposite the fireplace. She
amused the child by making quaint shadows on the wall with her hand in
the flickering firelight, and save for the clatter of the cooking, the
baby’s happy gurgles and half-spoken words of delight were the only
sounds in the warm little room. The third child, a boy of ten, even now
remarkably like his father, sat on the lowest rung of a wide wooden
ladder which led to two little rooms above the kitchen, with a skep of
small onions at his side and a knife in his hand. As he peeled the
onions the tears ran down his cheeks and he sniffed at intervals.
Joe looked up over his net at the boy.
“Tant, hold thy peace,” he said.
The child sniffed again.
“I can’t hold it, ’tis these,” he said, wiping his eyes on his jersey
sleeve, and indicating the skep with one dirty little foot. Joe grunted,
and the child went on peeling, his tears falling faster and his sniffs
becoming more and more frequent. At last Joe looked up again.
“Put down the knife, lad, and leave the onions if you can’t peel them
without setting up a snort like a hog every other second.”
The boy, only too glad to be relieved of his task, obeyed with alacrity,
and got up looking lovingly at the unlatched door that led out on to the
road. He had not made a step in that direction, however, before his
mother, who had been listening, turned from the fire. “Tant, sit down
and finish them onions,” she said sharply, and then turning to her
husband who was assiduously attending to his net, she said, “Isn’t it
enough, Joe Pullen, for me to wear myself to skin and bone feeding you,
looking after your children, cleaning your home? Isn’t it enough, I say,
for me to do everything for you, to work like a common drudge, to keep
you idle, without you forbidding my son to help me?”
Her voice grew more and more shrill and her words came faster and faster
until her speech became almost unintelligible.
Joe looked up cautiously from his work.
“O peace with ye, Amy,” he said impatiently, the easily called colour
mounting up to his fair hair and his blue eyes growing darker.
“Ay, that’s it.”
Mistress Pullen was a tall, well-made woman, and her eyes screwed
themselves into slits of fury as she swung round, platter in hand,
upsetting both children at her skirts, who began at once to whimper with
fear.
“Ay, that’s it, I must hold my peace! I, who slave day and night to make
you happy, must hold my peace! Hold my peace forsooth!” she continued,
breaking into a sharp laugh. “Look you, Joe Pullen, where would you and
your children be without me? Tell me that. Oh! you sithering rat, you
ungrateful mass of rum-sodden food, where would you be without me?”
Joe vouchsafed no answer and the good lady, her wrath abating as
suddenly as it had arisen, contented herself with a few muttered
questions as to the possibility of Joe and his family remaining for an
instant on the earth without her, turned again to the fire, shaking off
the yelping little ones who tried to clasp her knees.
Tant continued to sniff over his onion peeling unmolested.
Called by her mother, the little fair-haired girl, who played so happily
with the baby, left her game and, placing her charge carefully on the
bed, set out six earthen bowls on the plain boarded table, which took up
most of the space in the middle of the little room, and summoned the
family to supper. Not until everyone was seated did Mistress Pullen lift
the great iron pot off the hook on the chimney beam and, resting it on
the edge of the table, dole out to each person an allowance, which
varied in quantity according to age. In the same way she distributed
chunks of coarse home-made bread, and then seeing everyone served,
finally she sat down to her own meal.
The Pullens ate without speaking, quickly, noisily, and with evident
relish, dipping the bread in the broth and eating the sodden lumps with
their fingers. Mistress Amy held the baby on her lap, feeding the little
creature with sops from her own bowl.
When all the broth had been disposed of, more bread and an earthen jar
of honey were brought out and the meal continued.
Inside the little kitchen all was warm, one might almost say stuffy,
for, in spite of the big fire and the number of people inside, the door
was shut fast and the one little window which the room possessed was not
made to open. However, the noise that the rain, swiftly driven over the
marshlands by a fierce wind, made on the glass, and the hissing drops
that descended the wide chimney, all helped to make the kitchen as
desirable as it could be.
“Joan Bellamie was a-saying that the Captain of the _Coldlight_ hath
come back to the Ship, Joseph. Have ye heard aught of it?” Mistress
Pullen looked across the table at her husband as she spoke.
Joe dropped his eyes before her gaze.
“Oh, yes,” he said casually.
“Oh, yes, indeed!” Amy’s voice rose again, “and ye did not think to tell
me, did ye? Here I work the live-long day, and you so surly that you
will not tell me the common gossip of the Island! I’d like to meet
another woman who’d rest with ye.” Then she added more quietly. “Did any
of his crew return with him, perchance?”
Joe shifted uneasily in his chair, and reached out for another piece of
bread before he spoke.
“They did not,” he said shortly.
Mistress Pullen took a deep breath.
“And to think I have lived with a liar fit for the burning all these
years!” she exclaimed. “For it was only this very day that I saw Master
Coot (and if ever there was a snivelling sucking-pig ’tis he)--with my
very own eyes and he told me that the brig was that minute moored in the
Pyfleet, and every man of her crew aboard. A’m ashamed of ye, Joseph,
to lie before the children the way you do.”
Joe shrugged his shoulders.
“Ah, well, my girl,” he said significantly, “as far as we’re concerned
they ain’t on the Island, see?” And he rose to his feet and stepped
across to the fireplace.
Mistress Pullen opened her mouth to reply, but at this moment a violent
knocking at the door interrupted her.
Joe looked across at his wife.
“Whoever will it be?” he said.
“If you had any sense at all you’d go and see instead of standing like a
sheep thunderstruck,” said the lady, getting up from her seat, her baby
on her arm. Striding over to the door, she opened it wide and then
stepped back in astonishment, letting a blast of cold wind and rain into
the over-heated room.
“Well, come in, whatever you are,” she said at last to someone outside
as she held the door wide open to let them pass. “If you’re not welcome
ye can always go again.”
A strange bedraggled little figure stepped into the candle-lit room. He
was about nine years old, scantily clothed in a pair of sail-cloth
breeches so large for him that the waist was fastened about his neck
with a coarse string, and the knee-latchets flapped loosely over his
little bare muddy feet, which were torn and scratched with thorns, and
blue with cold. Round his shoulders he hugged what appeared to be the
remains of a woman’s kirtle, the ragged hem hanging down to his knees
and little rivulets of water dripping off the frayed ends on to the
bricks. His face was like his feet, blue and muddy, but two sparkling
blue eyes and a shock of red hair gave a certain charm to an otherwise
insignificant countenance.
Mistress Pullen shut the door behind him before she turned to look at
her visitor. As soon as she had done so, however, she whisked her baby
over to the other side of the room, exclaiming as she did so: “Mother of
Heaven! ’Tis Red Farren, the Witch’s brat. Out of the house with him. He
can’t stay here bewitching the whole of us.”
The little creature looked up at her, his face puckering. “Not a witch’s
brat,” he said, and then putting his grimy little fists to his eyes
began to cry bitterly.
Joe Pullen’s fair-haired daughter made a step toward the pitiful little
figure, but her father’s hand on her arm restrained her.
“You stay still, Alice, unless you want to wake up one day and find
yourself a gray girl or a coney,” he said.
Alice, rather frightened, obeyed, and Tant stood by her, his arm round
her, while the two smaller children hung as usual to their mother’s
skirts. The whole Pullen family entrenched behind the table stood
looking at the weeping little stranger for some seconds before any one
spoke again. At last Joe, his natural kindliness overcoming his
superstitious fears, stepped round the table and took the child by the
hand.
“Why did ye leave Nan’s cabin this time o’ night, lad?” he asked him.
The boy looked fearfully behind him, and Joe, noting the movement,
himself turned round in some apprehension. However, nothing untoward
being there, Red began to speak through his sobs.
“Pet Salt and Nan is fightin’ horrid,” he said.
Mistress Pullen, her curiosity getting the better of her discretion,
came a little nearer.
“Pet Salt?” she said. “How did Pet Salt come to be up there?”
“She comed to beg some meal cake,” the child began. “She said she wanted
it for Ben.”
“Oh!” Mistress Pullen sniffed and looked at her husband significantly.
“And wasn’t it for Ben, manikin?” she said.
The child looked up.
“No,” he said eagerly. “No, that’s why they is fighting, mistress,
because ’twas not for my grandsire. No, Nan saw the old ronyon eating it
herself.”
Joe threw back his head and began to laugh.
“Oh! ho! and did you run away because the two crones were fighting,
lad?” he said.
The child nodded, and his tears began to flow again. “And they’s hurt
Win!” he blurted out.
“Win? Who’s Win?” said Joe curiously.
“Oh, peace with you worrying the brat,” said Amy. “Prithee, child, did
Nan Swayle lay hands on Pet Salt because she had eaten the meal-cake Nan
had made for thy grandsire?” she questioned eagerly.
The child shook his head.
“No mistress, ’twas was not made for Grandsire, ’twas all we had left,
but Nan said that if Ben wanted it he must have it and we go hungry. So
she was vexed at the ronyon’s eating of it herself.”
“Oh! art hungry now?” The question escaped Joe’s lips before he had time
to stop it.
The child looked up eagerly.
“Ay,” he said, his eyes straying to the remains of the food on the
table. “Ay, will ye give me some?”
Joe immediately stretched his hand for the remnant of the loaf of bread
and the child’s face brightened with expectation, but Mistress Pullen
stepped forward.
“Mother of Saints! have I wedded a loon? Would ye have the household
entirely bewitched, Joseph Pullen, that you’d feed a witch-child under
our very roof?” she said, as she snatched the bread from his hand and
replaced it on the table.
Joe looked sheepish and little Red began to cry again. Mistress Pullen
reddened and sniffed fiercely.
“If he hungers he better go to his sister at the Ship,” she said tartly.
“Heaven knows what with her Captain and her other men she ought to glean
enough to look after her brother.”
Joe turned on his wife in honest indignation.
“Amy! how dare ye speak so of Hal Grame’s lass?” he said. “I’m not going
to have my mate’s sweetheart spoke of so.”
Mistress Pullen shrugged her shoulders.
“Maybe you like the lass yourself,” she sneered, and then added
fiercely, “anyway, you ought to be ashamed of yourself letting a witch’s
brat stay in the room with your own children. Out of the house with him,
you loony.”
Joe looked at the forlorn little boy and then at his wife.
“Maybe I better go with the child,” he suggested casually.
Mistress Pullen turned on him, withering contempt in her glance.
“Ay,” she said, “maybe you had. Lord, what an unnatural beast you are,
preferring to go to a rum-shop in the company of a bastard brat than to
rest in peace at your own fireside. Oh, go by all means, and the devil
with you. You fool, do you think Nan Swayle has forgiven the ducking you
gave her at the Restoring of the King?”
And with this parting shaft, Mistress Pullen, baby on arm, strode across
the kitchen and climbed up the wide ladder to the rooms above.
Joe looked about him undecidedly. Then his glance fell on the boy.
“Who’s Win?” he asked, suddenly remembering his question of a minute or
two before.
The little boy began to cry again and opening his kirtle-cloak
disclosed to the fisherman’s astounded eyes a little black kitten nearly
dead with fright and drenched with rain.
“This is Win,” said Red. “Him’s hurt!”
Joe stepped back in horror.
“The witch’s cat,” he ejaculated.
Red looked up.
“No!” he said, “only a little one, look, only a very little one.” He
held it up for Joe’s inspection. It certainly looked a very small, and
young, harmless animal. It was much too frightened to move, and the wet
fur clung closely to its emaciated body.
Joe came a little nearer and then reached for his coat and cap which
hung behind the door.
“Come, lad,” he said gruffly, “we must get on to the Ship.”
The child looked round the warm, bright room longingly, but he followed
Joe out into the rain without a word.
The man carefully latched the door behind him, and they walked on in
silence for a minute or so, fighting their way against the storm.
It was bitterly cold and Joe looked down at his little companion
anxiously; the child was stumbling along, the kitten tightly clasped in
his arms; once or twice he nearly fell.
Joe looked round him cautiously, although had there been any one by they
could not have been seen, then he bent down.
“You’ll not tell Nan if I carry ye a bit, lad?” he asked. The child
promised eagerly, and Joe swung him up in his arms.
“Here,” he said, pressing a soft lump into the child’s hands. “Even if
you’re a witch’s brat ye mustn’t be hungered.”
Red bit into the bread that Joe had slipped into his pocket in his
wife’s absence, and hugged the well-nigh suffocated kitten a little
closer to his breast, while Joe, his head bent before the wind and rain,
pushed on to the Ship.