BOB SMALLPIECE and a police-inspector busied themselves that night at
Wormleyton Pits. The pits were none of them deep--six feet at most. At
the bottom of the deepest they found old May's lantern, with the glass
broken and the candle overrun and extinguished; and the gravel was
spotted with marks which, in the clearer light of the morning, were seen
to be marks of blood. It was useless to look for foot-prints. The
ground was dry, and, except in the pits themselves, it was covered with
heather, whereon no such traces were possible. And this was all the
police had to say at the inquest, whereat the jury gave a verdict of
Accidental Death. For the old man had died, as was medically certified
after post-mortem examination, of brain-laceration produced by fracture
of the base of the skull; and the fracture was caused by percussion from
a blow on the upper part of the head--a blow probably suffered by falling
backward into the pit and striking the head against a large stone
embedded at the bottom. Everything suggested such an explanation. Above
the steepest wall of the pit, over which the fall must have chanced, a
narrow ledge of ground ran between the brink and a close clump of bramble
and bush; and this ledge was grown thick with tough heather, as apt,
almost, as a tangle of wire, to catch the foot and cause a stumble. It
was plain that, stooping to his occupation on this ledge, and perhaps
forgetting his situation in the interest of his search, he had fallen
backward into the pit with the lantern. He had probably lain there
insensible for some while, and then, developing a crazed
half-consciousness, he had crawled out by the easy slope at the farther
end, and staggered off whithersoever his disjointed faculties might carry
him. Nobody had seen him but his grandson and the keeper; so that the
verdict was a matter of course, and the dismal inquiry was soon done
with. And indeed the jury knew all there was to know, unless it were a
trivial matter, of some professional interest to Bob Smallpiece, about
which the police preferred to have nothing said; since it could not help
the jury, though it might chance, later, to be of some use to themselves.
It was simply the fact that several very fresh peg-holes were observed
about the pits, hinting a tearing away of rabbit-snares with no care to
hide the marks.
* * * * *
The days were bad dreams to Johnny. He found himself continually
repeating in his mind that gran'dad was dead, gran'dad was dead; as
though he were forcing himself to learn a lesson that persistently
slipped his memory. Well enough he knew it, and it puzzled him that he
should find it so hard to believe, and, mostly, so easy a grief. As he
woke in the morning the thought struck down his spirits, and then, with
an instant revulsion, he doubted it was but the aftertaste of a dream.
But there lay the empty half of the bed they were wont to share, and the
lesson began again. He went about the house. Here was a sheet of
gran'dad's list of trades, pinned to the wall, there the unfinished case
of moths for which the customer was waiting. These, and the shelves, and
the breeding-boxes--all were as parts of the old man, impossible to
consider apart from his active, white-headed figure. In some odd,
hopeless way they seemed to suggest that it was all right, and that
gran'dad was simply in the garden, or upstairs, or in the backhouse, and
presently would come in as usual and put them all to their daily uses.
And it was only by dint of stern concentration of thought that Johnny
forced on himself the assurance that the old man would come among his
cases no more, nor ever again discuss with him the list of London trades.
Then the full conviction struck him sorely, like a blow behind the neck:
the heavy stroke of bereavement and the sick fear of the world for his
mother and sister, together. But there--he was merely torturing himself.
He took refuge in a curious callousness, that he could call back very
easily when he would. So the days went, but with each new day the
intermissions of full realisation grew longer: till plain grief persisted
in a leaden ache, rarely broken by a spell of apathy.
His mother and his sister went about household duties silently, not often
apart. They were comforted in companionship, it seemed, but solitude
brought tears and heartbreak. Nan May's London upbringing caused her
some thought of what her acquaintances there would have called a "proper"
funeral. But here the machinery of such funerals must be brought from a
distance, thus becoming doubly expensive; and this being the case,
cottagers made very little emulation at such times, and a walking
funeral--perhaps at best a cab from the rank at Loughton
station--satisfied most. Moreover, the old man himself had many a time
preached strong disapproval of money wasted on funerals; had, indeed,
prophesied that if any costliness were wasted on him, he would rise from
his coffin and kick a mute. So now that the time had come, a Theydon
carpenter made the coffin, and a cab from Loughton was the whole show.
The old man's relations were not, and of Nan May's most still alive were
forgotten; for in the forest cottage the little family had been secluded
from such connections, as by sundering seas. At first they had seemed
too near for correspondence, and then they had been found too far for
visiting. Uncle Isaac came to the funeral, however; and though in the
beginning he seemed prepared for solemn declamation, something in the
sober grief at the cottage made him unwontedly quiet.
It was a short coffin, accommodated under the cabman's seat with no great
protrusion at the ends; what there was being covered decently with a
black cloth. And the cab held the mourners easily: Johnny and Bessy in
their Sunday clothes, their mother in hers (they had always been black
since she was first a widow) and Uncle Isaac in a creasy suit of lustrous
black, oddly bunched and wrinkled at the seams: the conventional Sunday
suit of his generation of artisans, folded carefully and long preserved,
and designed to be available alike for church and for such funerals as
might come to pass.
A brisk wind stirred the trees, and flung showers of fallen leaves after
the shabby old four-wheeler as it climbed the lanes that led up to the
little churchyard; where the sexton and his odd man waited with planks
and ropes by the new-dug grave. It was a bright afternoon, but a fresh
chill in the wind hinted the coming of winter. A belated Red Admiral
seemed to chase the cab, fluttering this way or that, now by one window,
now by the other, and again away over the hedge-top. Nothing was said.
Now and again Johnny took his eyes from the open window to look at his
companions. His mother, opposite, sat, pale and worn, with her hands in
her lap, and gazed blankly over his head at the front window of the cab.
She was commonly a woman of healthy skin and colour, but now the skin
seemed coarser, and there was no colour but the pink about her red
eyelids. Uncle Isaac, next her, sat forward, and rubbed his chin over
and round the knob of his walking stick, a bamboo topped with a "Turk's
head" of tarred cord. As for Bessy, sitting at the far end of his own
seat, Johnny saw nothing of her face for her handkerchief and the
crutch-handle. But she was very quiet, and he scarcely thought she was
crying. For himself, he was sad enough, in a heavy way, but in no danger
of tears; and he turned again, and looked out of the window.
At last the cab stopped at the lych gate. Here Bob Smallpiece
unexpectedly appeared, to lend a hand with the coffin. So that with the
sexton, and the carpenter who was the undertaker, Uncle Isaac, and the
keeper, the cabman's help was not wanted. The cabman lingered a moment,
to shift cloths and aprons, and to throw a glance or two after the little
company as it followed the clergyman, and then he hastened to climb to
his seat and drive after a young couple that he spied walking in the main
road; for they were strangers, and looked a likely fare back to the
station.
Johnny found church much as it was on Sunday, except that to-day they sat
near the front, and that he was conscious of a faint sense of family
importance by reason of the special service, and the coffin so
conspicuously displayed. A few neighbours--women mostly--were there,
too; and when the coffin was carried out to the grave, they grouped
themselves a little way off in the background, with Bob Smallpiece
farther back still.
From the grave's edge one looked down over the country-side, green and
hilly, and marked out in meadows by rows of elms, with hedges at foot.
The wind came up briskly and set the dead leaves going again and again,
chasing them among the tombs and casting them into the new red grave.
Bessy was quiet no longer, but sobbed aloud, and Nan May took no more
care to dry her eyes. Johnny made an effort that brought him near to
choking, and then another; and then he fixed his attention on the cows in
a meadow below, counted them with brimming eyes, and named them (for he
knew them well) as accurately as the distance would let him. He would
scarce trust himself to take a last look, with the others, at the coffin
below and its bright tin plate, but fell straightway to watching a man
mending thatch on a barn, and wondering that he wore neither coat nor
waistcoat in such a fresh wind. And so, except for a stray tear or two,
which nobody saw overflow from the brimming eyes, he faced it out, and
walked away with the others under the curious gaze of the neighbours, who
lined up by the path. And Smallpiece went off in the opposite direction
with the carpenter, who carried back the pall folded over his arm, like a
cloak.
The four mourners walked back by the lanes, in silence. Uncle Isaac bore
the restraint with difficulty, and glanced uneasily at Nan May's face
from time to time, as though he were watching an opportunity to expound
his sentiments at length. But Johnny saw nothing of this, for affliction
was upon him. Now that gran'dad was passed away indeed--was buried, and
the clods were rising quickly over him--now that even the coffin was gone
from the cottage, and would never be seen again--it seemed that he had
never understood before, and he awoke to the full bitterness of things.
More, his effort at restraint was spent, and in the revulsion he found he
could hold in no longer. He peeped into the thickets by the lane-side as
he went, questing for an excuse to drop behind. Seeing no other, he
stooped and feigned to tie his bootlace; calling, in a voice that
quavered absurdly in trying to seem indifferent, "Go on, mother, I'm
comin' presently!"
He dashed among the bushes, flung himself on the grass, and burst into a
blind fury of tears, writhing as though under a shower of stinging blows.
He had meant to cry quietly, but all was past control, and any might hear
that chanced by. He scarce knew whether the fit had endured for seconds,
minutes, or hours, when he was aware of his mother, sitting beside him
and pressing his bursting head to her breast. Bessy was there too, and
his mother's arms were round both alike.
With that he grew quieter and quieter still. "We mustn't break down,
Johnny boy--there's hard struggles before us," his mother said, smoothing
back his hair. "An' you must be very good to me, Johnny, you're the man
now!"
He kissed her, and brushed the last of his tears away. "Yes, mother, I
will," he said. He rose, calmer, awake to new responsibilities, and felt
a man indeed. Nothing remained of his outbreak but a chance-coming
shudder in the breath, and, as he helped Bessy to her feet, he saw, five
yards off, among the bushes, Uncle Isaac, under his very tall hat, gazing
blankly at the group, and gently rubbing the Turk's head on his stick
among the loose grey whiskers that bordered his large face.