THIS visit was but the first of many from Mr. Butson: until after a very
few months he came as regularly as Uncle Isaac himself. He recovered his
old appearance a little at a time, one new article of clothing coming
after another; but he seemed to have no luck in his quest for a job--or
very little. What small success he found was ever brought to naught by
the captiousness--even the rudeness--of those in direction, or their
unreasonable exactions in the way of work. To simple Nan May he seemed
the most shamefully ill-used of exemplars.
Johnny and Bessy were less enthusiastic. Bessy said nothing, but avoided
Mr. Butson as much as possible, sitting in the shop when he was in the
back parlour. Johnny went for walks in the evening, and grumbled,
wondering why his mother encouraged this stranger--"cadging suppers," as
he uncivilly put it. Nan May was hurt at the expression, and feared that
the workshop was spoiling Johnny's manners.
News came from Bob Smallpiece that his poor old mother was dead at last,
and buried in the high churchyard where Johnny's grandfather lay. Also
that Bob would come to London now, for a visit, at the first opportunity.
Now it was a fact that Bob Smallpiece, for a year or two, had been
inclined to marry; though it was a thing he might never have thought of
if he had seen less of Mrs. May. But he was a man of practical
temperament, making up in his commonsense for a great lack of agility of
mind. There were certain obstacles, he saw--obstacles that must remove
of themselves or not at all. First, his old mother. It would not seem
fair to bring a wife to nurse a bedridden old woman--at anyrate it was
scarce an attraction. More, the old woman herself had a dread of it.
She feared the chance of being thought a burden by a newcomer, and would
often beg Bob not to marry till she were gone; sometimes with the
assurance that she would not be long now. Then--to say nothing of old
Mr. May--there had been the children, who, familiar as he was with them,
afflicted him, in this particular matter alone, with an odd shyness.
Again, when the old man died, the May family must needs come to London,
if only that Johnny might go to his trade; while Bob Smallpiece must stay
at the forest. But he was ever patient and philosophical.
Now that some difficulties were gone, another arose. Nan May, all
unaware of his slow designs, was settled in London, with ties of
business. But perhaps, after all, the business was not
flourishing--might be a burden better laid down. And as to Johnny--he
was earning wages of some sort now, and at most his apprenticeship would
be out when he was twenty-one.
Bob Smallpiece had reserved one piece of news till he could deliver it in
person. This was that at last he had let the cottage, at
three-and-sixpence a week, to a decent woodman and his wife. And so,
wearing a new neckcloth, and with three weeks' rent in his pocket, Bob
Smallpiece appeared in Harbour Lane one spring morning, a vast
astonishment of leather and velveteen, such as had never before brought a
Blackwall housewife to attention in the midst of her dusting and
sweeping. No name was painted over the shop, but no stranger could pass
its red and blue and green without stopping to look; least of all Bob
Smallpiece, in quest of the place itself. Nan May saw him, and ran to
the door; and Bessy, with her crutch and her book, met him half-way to
the back-parlour, gay and laughing.
Bob regarded the well-filled shop, the neat room, with some mixture of
feelings. Prosperity was excellent in its own way, but it made the new
obstacle more formidable. Further, Mrs. May, though she was pleased to
hear that the cottage was let, and grateful enough for his trouble in
letting it, was not so overjoyed as she might have been if the weekly
three-and-sixpence had come at a time of pinching; more, she handled the
half-sovereign almost as disrespectfully as the sixpence, and dropped it
into a part of her purse where it fell among other gold. Poor Bob saw
the obstacle not only bigger, but double. Not merely was Nan May tied to
London by her trade and by Johnny's apprenticeship, but she was a
well-to-do tradeswoman, with whom a poor forest-keeper could expect no
more than respectful acquaintance. He half feared she might even offer
to pay him for his trouble with the cottage, and grew red and hot with
the apprehension. But this affliction was spared him though Nan did
venture to ask if his care of her property had involved out-of-pocket
expenses; a suggestion which Bob repudiated desperately.
Neither Bessy nor her mother could understand why their visitor's manner
was so constrained and awkward, nor why he announced that he "must be
going" after sitting for twenty minutes. But that, of course, was not to
be allowed. Johnny would be home in half an hour, and there would be
some dinner. So Bob Smallpiece, who wanted to get away somewhere by
himself and think things over, remained, and made his part of the
conversation as well as he could.
Johnny came, smudgy and hungry, surprised to find that his old friend,
big man as he was, seemed to be scarcely so big as when he saw him last,
eighteen months ago. For Johnny himself was grown surprisingly, and
seemed like to stand as high as Bob Smallpiece's shoulder by his
seventeenth birthday. Bob found more to talk of now that Johnny had
come, and he ate even better than Johnny himself, for nothing spoiled the
keeper's appetite. When could they all come to the forest again for a
day? Nan May shook her head. She had no days free but Sundays--she
might come some day, perhaps; some Sunday in the vague future. But
Johnny might get a day off at a slack time, and he and Bessy would come.
Bessy brimmed over with delight at the prospect. Every day, since she
had left it, the forest had seemed a more wonderful and a more distant
dream; every day some forgotten circumstance, some moment of delight,
some long-dead bunch of wildflowers, trifles all, and daily commonplaces
once, had come back to lend one more touch to the fairy picture her
memory made ever more radiant as the simple facts fell farther into the
past. And Johnny, little burdened with pictures of fancy (for he put his
imagination away from him now, as a childishness unworthy an engineer),
nevertheless thought that as soon as a certain large job was completed at
Maidment and Hurst's the gaffer would doubtless let him lose a day. So
it was settled. And when Johnny hurried off to his work, Bob Smallpiece
took the opportunity to leave too; for he must go and see his sister, he
said.
He went, and saw his sister, and took tea with her; and his sister found
him even duller than Nan May had done. For in truth Bob Smallpiece was
in a mire of doubt and hesitation. In a frame of mind so foreign to his
simple habit he grew fretful, and left things to chance and impulse.
With no definite design in the world, he wandered back to Harbour Lane
after tea, and there met, for the first time, Uncle Isaac and Mr. Butson.
This company proved uncongenial; and indeed the distinguished Butson was
indisposed to be cordial with an Essex bumpkin in a velveteen uniform.
So, though Nan May was all kindness, Bob Smallpiece soon took himself off
to the train, where his savage moodiness might not be seen. The whole
thing was past hope now; though he might have found it hard to tell
precisely what had occurred since midday to worsen the look of affairs.