<h2><SPAN name="page54"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>VI.</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Bob Smallpiece</span> 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, <SPAN name="page55"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>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.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>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 <SPAN name="page56"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>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 <SPAN name="page57"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
57</span>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.</p>
<p>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, <SPAN name="page58"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>however; and
though in the beginning he seemed prepared for solemn
declamation, something in the sober grief at the cottage made him
unwontedly quiet.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <SPAN name="page59"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Johnny found church much as it was on Sunday, except that
to-day they sat near the front, and that he <SPAN name="page60"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>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.</p>
<p>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 <SPAN name="page61"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>the opposite
direction with the carpenter, who carried back the pall folded
over his arm, like a cloak.</p>
<p>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!”</p>
<p>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 <SPAN name="page62"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
62</span>his bursting head to her breast. Bessy was there
too, and his mother’s arms were round both alike.</p>
<p>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!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
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