SO with the days and the months Nan's sorrows fell from her, and their
harder shapes were lost in her remembrance; and the new days brought a
new peace--perhaps even a new dullness. For this was a dull place, this
street of flat walls, and grime, and anxious passengers. But what
mattered mere dullness of externals when she had hard work to do, and a
son to take pride in?
For Nora's sorrows, who shall speak? There was a hospital bed that she
knew well, a pillow whereon a slaty face wasted and grew blank of
meaning. And in the end there was a day of driving wet in a clayey
cemetery, a day of loneliness, and wonder, and dull calm.
But that day went with the others, and that year went. The streets grew
sloppy with winter, dusty with summer: and smoky geraniums struggled into
bloom on window-sills, and died off. Miles away the Forest gowned itself
anew in green, in brown and in white; and in green the exiles saw it,
once a year: but all its dresses were spread for Bessy still, in her
dreams.
Two years were gone, and Johnny was within five months of twenty-one, and
the end of his apprenticeship, when on a brave August day he walked in
the Forest alone. There would be no Forest excursion for him next year,
for then, with good fortune, he would be upon the seas. For the firm had
promised him the recommendation that would give him a year's voyaging as
fourth engineer.
Bessy and Nora were sharing the holiday, but they were left to rest at
Bob Smallpiece's cottage. Bob, vast, brown, and leathery, was much as
ever. He had seen Johnny and Bessy once each year, but not their mother,
since--well since he had gone to London to see his sister. He was not
sure whether he should go up to London again soon, or not. Meantime he
made tea for his visitors.
They had climbed the hill to gran'dad's grave, and they had found it
green and neat: they had seen another, fresh-closed, beside it, and
wondered who was buried there; they had gathered flowers in Monk Wood,
and they had stayed long in Loughton Camp; they had come again to the
cottage on the glen-side, and Johnny had had to stoop at the door to save
his hat, for indeed he was within two inches as big as Bob Smallpiece
himself; and now Johnny, being alone, took the path to Wormleyton Pits.
It was six years since he had gone that way last, and he might never go
that way again.
Mainly his way lay as it had lain when he carried the basket of sloes,
that night when his grandfather had hunted his last moth. Johnny had
left childish fancies years behind him, and now the trees were trees
merely, one much as the rest, though green and cheerful in the sunlight.
But even as on that night his mind had run on London, the longed-for
London that was his home now, and stale with familiarity, so now he
turned over once more the mystery of the old man's cutting off: and with
as little foreknowledge of the next chances in life's hatful.
Here branched the track by which he had made for Theydon; there was the
tree under which he had last seen the old man's lantern-light; and then
the slade opened, glorious with heather. Brambles and bushes about the
pits were changed--this grown higher and wider, that withered off; and
the pits--the smaller pits, at least, seemed shallow enough holes under
the eyes of a man of near six feet. The deepest pit--_the_ pit--was
farthest; and Johnny could see a man, whose figure seemed vaguely
familiar, sitting on its edge.
He picked his way across the broken ground and came to the pit on the
side opposite to the stranger. There was the hole where the old man had
taken his death-blow. Perhaps the bottom had risen an inch or so because
of gravel-washings; but the big stone in the middle was still plain to
see.
The man opposite was trimming wooden pegs with a pocket-knife. He wore
corduroys, of a cut that Johnny held in remembrance. Johnny watched for
a few seconds, and then the man turned up a leathery brown face, and
Johnny knew him. It was Amos Honeywell, notable as a poacher, and chief
of a family of poachers. Amos put a peg into his pocket and began on
another.
"Well, Amos!" called Johnny across the pit; "you don't know me!"