Cunning Murrell by Arthur Morrison Read Free Book Online Page B

the wooden socket that clipped his thigh, and clapped it to his
ear; finishing by looking at the face and announcing the time. “Quarter pas’
nine, more or less,” he said, “an’ glory be ‘tis fair day, or some o’ your
wives ‘ood a-bin arter ye.”
    Banham was made a little less retiring by the celebrations proper to the
day. He seized the watch suddenly, and shook it before the company. “Ah,” he
said, “there’s a watch! there’s a watch! That watch is a werge, that is! ‘Tis
said Master Dove’s father gave fi’ pound for that watch! An’ it’s a
werge.”
    “Ah!” Roboshobery remarked, complacently filling a long pipe, “that is.
An’ my father gave fi’ pun for it at Foulness. Give us hold.”
    “Master Dove be a Foulness man,” Banham went on, as one proclaiming an
undeniable quality in his hero; “a Foulness man, as be well knowed.”
    “Ay, sarten to say,” assented Prentice,
    There was a silence, and the obscure man began again—“When the
bahloon fell at Barl’n’ in eighteen-twe—” But here Jobson, of Wickford,
whose head had been slowly inclining toward his knees for some time, so that
he seemed like to pitch forward out of his chair, suddenly sat up and
demanded: “An’ what’s the wuss of a man if he be a Foulness chap? Eh? That
arn’t no sense of a argyment. What’s the wuss if he be?”
    “Ah, sarten to say,” murmured two or three, soothingly.
    “Arn’t a Foulness man good as a Hadleigh man, or a Bemflit man or a
Rochford man, or—or what not?”
    “Course he be,” Prentice grunted pacifically.
    Jobson of Wickford looked at his friend for several seconds. Then he said,
“Arl right, then, arl right!” let his pipe fall, and began to nod again.
    “There ha’ bin many fine men o’ Foulness,” said Lingood. “There were the
seven Allens, an’ Jack Bennewith, that fought the London prizefighter.”
    “Ah,” Banham struck in, “an’ ‘twere a Roboshobery Dove o’ Foulness as fit
King Charles an’ got his head chopped off.”
    “No,” objected Lingood, “‘twere King Charles that lost his head, I do
read.”
    “An’ Roboshobery Dove,” Prentice corrected, “he fit for King
Charles, bein’ a parson, an’ were hulled out o’ chu’ch therefor. Aren’t that
so, Bosh?”
    “Ay, ‘tare,” Roboshobery confirmed, basking in the general homage. “An’ I
were christened such arter him by special recommendation o’ Master Ellwood
the parson. ”Tis arl a possibility,’ he says to my father, ‘that yow be
descendants, an’ anyhow,’ he says, ”tis a fine handsome name.’”
    “That it be,” assented Banham. “I hoad a pound there aren’t anoather man
with hafe sich a name, not in arl Essex!”
    “An’ so he christened me,” Dove concluded. “Ah, he were a parson o’ th’
oad sort, were Master Ellwood. Wore silver buckles to his breeches, an’ slep’
in his wig; an’ his walkin’ stick were five foot long.”
    Some such conversation as this was usual in the Castle parlour when,
Roboshobery Dove being present, it was desired to exhibit him for the
admiration of strangers. Commonly it led to long and amazing yarns of his
adventures, from the time of the French war down to yesterday; and nearly
always to one or more of his forecastle songs, of which he had a curious and
diverse store, not always composed to please the squeamish. But to-night
Roboshobery turned the talk to the war, and, by the aid of the crumpled
newspaper from his pocket, was presently expounding the state of affairs,
from Archangel to Varna, to the instruction and mystification of everybody.
Being brought to a stand by nothing but a paragraph which set down the damage
done in Brahestad dockyard at 350,000 silver roubles, and then not so much by
the doubt as to whether the figures should read thirty-five thousand or three
hundred and fifty millions, as by the blank impossibility of guessing how
much a silver rouble might