“Rum! rum! ru-u-m-m!”
Nan Swayle sat in her miserable little cabin with her knees drawn up to
her chin; her cat was perched on a rum keg beside her and there was no
light save for the cold gleam of stars coming in from the open door. She
sat there, a tall, gaunt figure steadily rocking herself to and fro as
though keeping time to some monotonous rhyme. She was talking to herself
in a deep, weary voice, and the words she uttered were always the same,
“Rum--rum--ru-u-m-m!”
Outside on the marshes everything was very quiet, and she rocked on,
undisturbed for a while. Then from the direction of the Stroud she heard
the squeak of a frightened gull as it flew up, disturbed from its rest,
and then another a little nearer, and again nearer still.
The woman did not cease her rocking; she knew someone was coming over
the dykes to see her, but what mattered that?
Suddenly she stopped, however, leaned her head forward to listen, and
then sprang from her chair with surprising agility and hurried to the
door.
“Nan--Nan, where are you?” called a girlish voice out of the darkness.
“Stay where ye are, Anny lass, till I get ye a light.”
Nan’s stentorian tones boomed over the flat bogs. Hurriedly she crossed
to the darkest corner of the little hut where she fumbled for a minute
or two. There was the sound of soft scraping of flint on steel then the
tinder caught fire and Nan lit a tallow dip and carried it to the door,
holding it high above her head.
There was no breath of wind in the cloudless night and the flame burned
steadily.
“Oh! Nan, I’m so glad ye’re here,” came the same voice out of the
darkness, this time a good deal nearer.
“Why, lass, wherever else would I be? What’s ailing ye, my girl?”
Anny scrambled over the last dyke and staggered breathless into the
circle of light thrown by the little flame of the dip.
“Let me come in and talk with ye, Mother,” she said, clutching hold of
the elder woman’s ragged kirtle.
Nan put a strong bony arm round the girl’s shoulders, and when she spoke
her deep voice had a softer quality in it than before.
“Sit down, lass, sit down, and get your breath, and then I’ll listen to
ye as long as my eyes will keep open,” she said kindly.
Anny sat down on the upturned rum keg, after first displacing the cat,
who spat at her viciously.
Nan snatched a leather thong from the wall and lashed at the cat
savagely, whereupon it slunk into a corner and lay down on a heap of
onions, keeping one baleful eye fixed on his mistress’s visitor.
Nan sat down on a three-legged stool, the only other article in the room
save for a huge iron bowl which hung on chains over the now empty grate,
and several bunches of dried herbs hanging from the roof, and looked at
the girl critically.
Anny’s face was very white and drawn, and she looked about her with a
hunted expression in her wild green eyes. She had evidently been crying
as she came along, for there were tear-marks on her white cheeks.
Nan said nothing, but sat looking at her, her strong, rugged face
absolutely expressionless.
“I’ve got to marry Black’erchief Dick, Nan,” Anny said at last. “What
will I do?”
Nan’s eyes flickered.
“Got to? Who says Anny Farran’s got to do aught she don’t want to?”
“Pet Salt said----”
“What!” Nan’s face blazed with fury. “That blue-livered, mange-struck
ronyon! Truth, lass, you’re mad to think on her! The louse-ridden,
thieving, man-stealing, spirit-sodden devil,” she muttered to herself.
Anny shook her head.
“She says I’ll be took to the Castle if I don’t do as she bids,” she
said hurriedly.
Nan lashed the earthen floor with her strip of leather.
“The woman’s a lying fiend,” she said quickly and intensely.
The girl laid her hand on the other woman’s trembling arm.
“I know she is, Mother, I know she is, but what will I do?” she said
softly.
Nan looked up impatiently.
“Do? Why, do naught, the old hell-kite, the sithering----”
“Ay, but listen, Mother! Listen!” The girl’s voice was so insistent that
the older woman allowed her voice to die away to a muttering.
Anny went on.
“If I don’t wed Master Dick, Nan, Pet Salt--” Nan began to mumble again,
but Anny took no notice--“saith that he will carry me off without him
marrying me--and, Mother, I would be wed.”
Nan paused in her muttered imprecations to look at the girl. This was a
new side of the affair, and she realized the importance to the girl’s
mind. She began to consider it carefully, while Anny watched her face
with almost painful eagerness.
But Nan’s hatred for Pet Salt was too great to allow her to think
clearly on any subject connected with her old enemy for more than two
minutes at a time, and she soon broke forth into low, tense reviling.
“Look!” she said, suddenly springing up and standing between Anny and
the open doorway, a tall black figure against a background of stars.
“Look at me, child--do you know how old I am?--forty-three! You’re
surprised? Of course, I look sixty, don’t I?--tell me--tell me.”
Anny looked at the rugged face that had evidently once been so
beautiful; the light from the dip flickered over it and accentuated each
wrinkle and hollow. She nodded.
“Ah!” Nan lifted her clenched fist above her head. “That is her work,
the woman of hell. Once my cabin was the sweetest, cleanest, and neatest
on the Island, my lips were the reddest, my hair the blackest, my smile
the most prized---- Oh, that crawling filcher, would I might feel these
hands about her scabby neck!”
Anny sighed. She knew it was no use to attempt to stop Mistress Swayle
in this mood, so she crouched back in her corner, while the cat, which
had at first objected to her, now came to hide in the folds of her
kirtle. He also knew his mistress’s vagaries.
Nan went on, her voice rising higher and higher, and her words coming
faster and faster until she seemed to be repeating some frenzied chant.
“She took my man--your grandsire--she stole him from me with promises of
rum to rot his soul with--God curse her. I, a sweet milk lass working
all day in my dairy with a flowered kirtle to my back and shoes to my
feet--and she a dirty, mange-eaten quean. Oh! may the red-plague fall
on her and her rat-eaten boat. And he a simple, kind-hearted lad with a
liking for the spirit! Oh! that kite shall go through torments in her
time! But he loved me--not her, devil baste her.”
Anny rose to her feet and the cat ran away squealing.
“Mother Swayle,” she said pleadingly, “what will I say to her?”
Nan seemed to come to herself again, for she patted the girl kindly on
the shoulder.
“You run back to the Ship, lass. I’ll see the ronyon,” she said.
Anny took her hand.
“You’re good to me, Mother,” she said.
Nan pulled her hand away sharply.
“Go off with you, child,” she ordered harshly, and as Anny sped over the
marshes, she heard the deep voice behind her getting fainter and fainter
calling--“Rum--rum--rum!”
Early on the next morning Mistress Swayle set out for Pet Salt’s boat.
The sun, rising red out of the sea, tinged her black gown and flying
elf-locks with a certain rustiness as she bent her head before the salt
morning wind and strode down the ill-made road. She walked along with
sweeping strides, a five-foot bramble stick in her hand. On either side
of her stretched the gray-green, dyke-patterned saltings, while ahead
gleamed fields of ripening wheat and blue vetches.
She was murmuring to herself as she went along and often paused to shake
her stick at some unseen adversary.
Her cat followed her at a respectful distance, always keeping one eye on
the bramble stick.
As it was some way to Pet Salt’s boat, Nan was tired by the time she
reached the Ship and would have gone in and rested there had she not
been beset by a pack of young urchins, Tant Pullen and little Red among
them, who danced round her in a ring calling “Witch!” and “Devil’s
Aunt!” and so forth.
The old woman--for she looked old--laid about her vigorously with her
stick and as she was very strong soon prevented them from barring her
way, but they followed her for a long distance along the wall.
Pet Salt lifted a tousled head above the hatchway, sniffed the cool
clean salt air, and shivered. Then hastily wrapping a piece of old
sail-cloth round her mouth and nose she scrambled on to the dirty deck
and hurried across to a heap of kegs piled up high. Under these she at
last unearthed a partially full one and hugging it to her bosom ran back
to the hatchway, her bare feet sounding oddly on the rotten boards.
It was at this moment that Nan tapped on the side of the boat with her
stick and shouted in tones loud enough to awaken the seven sleepers.
“Ho, there, you dirty ronyon, come out, come out, Pet Salt, Heaven blast
ye!”
At the sound of her voice Pet dropped the keg she was carrying and
tearing the sail-cloth from her face hobbled over to the side and looked
down.
“What! you round here, you hell-cat, sneaking a look at your love, I
suppose, you old----”
A stream of unprintable language broke from her ragged lips.
Nan, leaning heavily on her long stick, gazed upward and when Pet paused
for breath she began to talk in her big booming voice.
“What have ye been doing with my god-daughter, you stealer of loves?”
she shouted.
Pet began to laugh.
“Your god-daughter!” she shrieked. “And who is she, you mother of
witches? You’re not talking of my granddaughter, are you--you tike?”
Nan shook her stick at her fiercely.
“Your granddaughter! You mange-struck man-stealer!” she ejaculated.
“Man-stealer!” Pet shrieked in her fury. “You jade, you miserable,
jealous jade--still whining about your lover as you call him, you old
she-goat. My Ben never loved you--your lover! You’re as old as the
Island. What do you want with lovers?”
Nan stood there, a tall, imposing figure, her black rags gently stirring
in the wind.
“You lie, Pet Salt! In your rotting throat you lie,” she said calmly. “I
am not so old as you say, not so old as Ben--and he loved me well--and
would have wed me had not you stolen him----”
“I stole? Marry, hell-kite, I stole in truth! I stole when he came
begging to my door and beseeching me to save him from you? I stole, you
vile devil!”
“He did not!” Nan spoke hotly.
“Indeed, did he not, ronyon?” Pet was foaming at the mouth in her anger.
“Ay, he did, he crawled to my boat and said on his knees: ‘Oh, save me,
my own Pet o’ the saltings, save me from yon scabby wanton who waits for
me!’”
“May the green grass turn to ashes in your way for that lie, Pet Salt,”
said Nan slowly.
Pet put up her hands.
“Ye’re not to curse me, Nan Swayle,” she shrieked, “ye witch of
darkness, ye’re not to curse me, or by Heaven I’ll call Ben up to ye.”
Nan laughed a hard, crackling laugh in her throat.
“You daren’t, you slut,” she said. “Ben may not have forgotten his old
love!”
Pet grew purple with rage.
“I dare not let him see you!” she screamed. “What! you ronyon--I dare
not let him---- Oh! you’re mad!”
Nan laughed again.
“Still I say you dare not,” she said.
Pet choked with anger; then a crafty look came into her eyes.
“Oh, I see your mind, Mistress Nancy Swayle,” she said with a scornful
laugh. “I did not think you would be so cunning--do you then long so
much for a sight of your old love that you walk five miles in the early
dawning to beg for a look?”
Nan’s rugged features twitched convulsively, but in a moment she was
laughing again.
“Still I say you dare not, slut,” she said.
Without another word Pet turned away from the side and called down the
hatchway.
Nan waited on the beach below, quite still and leaning on her stick, a
proud smile playing round her wide, humorous mouth.
Two or three minutes later Pet reappeared supporting Ben, who in spite
of the early hour was very unsteady on his feet.
He lurched forward and sprawled over the side of the hull looking down
at Nan. She was evidently much surprised at the change in him, for she
started back a little.
Pet laughed derisively.
“Ain’t he a pretty one?” she said.
Nan gulped and came forward.
“Hail to ye, Benny,” she said softly.
Ben looked at her vaguely.
“Hail!” he said, and then after a moment added abruptly, “Whosh you?”
Pet shrieked with laughter, and settled herself down beside him.
“Who are you, old one?” she screamed.
Nan went nearer.
“Do you not remember Nan Swayle, Ben?” she said pleadingly.
“Ah, yesh! I remembers Nan Swayle,” said Ben cheerfully.
“That’s her, ducky,” said Pet, her face red with laughter.
Ben leant farther over the side to look at Nan, then he drew himself up
and turned to Pet.
“Slut, you lie,” he said, as clearly as he could. “That’s”--he pointed
to Nan--“an old hag--but Nan Swayle--no, Nan Swayle was a shweet lash--a
shweet milk lash--an’,” he went on very seriously, “a very pretty lash.”
He leaned over the side and had one more look at Nan, who stood beneath
him, her arms outstretched and her bright eyes brighter than usual.
“No,” he said. “No, no, nosh--that ish not a bit like Nan Swayle. Nan
Swayle is a pretty lash, a shweet, pretty lash.”
Pet rocked herself to and fro in a paroxysm of laughter.
Ben stood looking at Nan.
“Go away, hag,” he said, “find Nan Swayle and send her to me and I’ll go
with her, but yoush not Nan Swayle, or, anywaysh,” he went on, “not Nan
Swayle I knowsh, you ugly old hagsh.”
And he began to laugh. “That’s not Nan Shwayle,” he giggled, poking
Pet’s fat side with his fingers.
Pet rolled over on the gunwale in a fit of laughter.
“No, ducky,” she roared, “that’s not Nan Swayle. That’s a witch telling
us she’s her.”
“Ah! she couldn’t cheat me!” Ben chuckled. “I knowsh Nan Shwayle, a
pretty lash.”
“Pet Salt, the time will come when you shall pay!”
Nan’s voice drowned their laughter for a moment. She stood there on the
shingle, the waves lapping up to her feet and the newly risen sun
lighting her wrinkled face where two tears sparkled on her yellow
cheeks, but her eyes were bright and hard.
Then she turned away and strode off, holding her head high, and as she
went the wind carried after her the sound of their derisive laughter.
And it was not until she reached her cabin that she remembered she had
said no word to Pet of the business on which she had set out, Anny’s
marriage.