Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  The weeks went, and berries hung where flowers had been. Johnny and Bessy made their yearly harvest of blackberries, some for puddings and jam at home, some to sell at such kitchen doors as might receive them. Until an afternoon in early October: when, with an order from a lady at Theydon, they betook themselves in search of sloes.

  Warm colours touched the woods to a new harmony, and seen from high ground, they lay like flower-beds in green and red, yellow and brown. The honeysuckle bloomed its second time, and toadstools stood in crimson companies in the shade of the trees. Sloes were rare this year near home, so the children searched their way through the Wake Valley to Honey Lane Quarters, and there they found their sloes, though few.

  It was a long and scratchy task; and, when it was finished, they were well up in St. Thomas’s Quarters, and the sun was setting. They made the best of their way back as far as the road near the Dun Cow, and there parted. For Bessy was tired and hungry, and though Johnny was little better, he resolved to carry his sloes fresh to Theydon and get the money, since he was already a little on the way. So Bessy turned up the lane that led to the cottage, and Johnny took to the woods again for Theydon, by way to right of Wormleyton Pits.

  Dusk was growing to dark, but the boy stepped fearlessly, well knowing his path. The last throstle sang his last evensong for the year, and was still. The shadowy trees, so living and so silent about him: the wrestling trunks of beeches, the reaching arms of oak and hornbeam, all struck at gaze as though pausing in their everlasting struggle to watch and whisper as he passed: and the black depths between them: might well have oppressed the imagination of such a boy from other parts; but Johnny tramped along among them little heeding, thinking of the great ship-haunted London he longed for, and forecasting nothing of the blow that should fall but in that hour and send him the journey sorrowing.

  Presently he was aware of a light ahead. It moved a foot or two from the ground, and Johnny knew its swing. Then it stopped, resting by a tree root. “You, gran’dad?” called Johnny, and “Hullo!” came the old man’s voice in answer.

  The old man had cut a leaf, with a caterpillar on it, from a shrub, and was packing it in a pill-box. “Out for a few night-feeders,” he explained, as the boy stopped beside him. “But you ain’t been home to tea,” he added. “Takin’ home the sloes? Might ha’ left ‘em till the morning, John, easy, — now you’ve got ‘em.”

  “Oh, I come up from over there” — Johnny made a vague toss of the arm— “an’ I thought I might as well cut across to Theydon first. Bess went up the lane. I’ll be home ‘fore ye now, gran’dad, ‘nless you ‘re goin’ back straight.”

  “I won’t be long behind ye; I’m just goin’ to the Pits. I can’t make nothin’ o’ them I took last night, under the brambles an’ heather, — never saw the like before quite; so I’m goin’ to see if there’s more, an’ get all I can.”

  They walked together a few yards, till the trees thinned. “You’ll go ‘cross the Slade,” said the old man. “Step it, or you’ll be beat!”

  “I’ll step it,” the boy answered. “I want my tea.”

  He was trotting home by the lane from Theydon, with his empty basket on his arm, and his hands (and the sixpence) in his trousers pockets, when he checked at a sound, as of a cry from the wood. But he heard no more, and trotted on. Probably the deer were fighting somewhere; rare fighters were the bucks in October.

  CHAPTER IV.

  JOHNNY had finished his tea, and was lying at his ease in the old easy-chair, whistling, rattling his heels on the hearth, and studying a crack in the ceiling that suggested an angry face. Mrs. May had put the sixpence the sloes had brought into the cracked teacup that still awaited the return of Uncle Isaac’s half-crown, had washed the tea-things, and was now mending the worn collar of gran’dad’s great-coat, in readiness for the winter. Bessy had fallen asleep over her book, had been wakened, had fallen asleep again, and in the end had drowsily climbed the stairs to early bed: but still the old man did not return.

  “I wonder gran’dad ain’t back yet,” Johnny’s mother said for the third time. “He said he’d be quick, so’s to finish that case to-night.” This was a glass-topped mahogany box, in course of setting with specimens of all the Sphinges: a special private order.

  “‘Spect he can’t find them caterpillars he went for,” Johnny conjectured; “that’s what it is. He’s forgot all about racin’ me home.”

  Mrs. May finished the collar, lifted the coat by the loop, and turned it about in search of rents. Finding none, she put it down and stood at the door, listening. “Think you’re too tired to go an’ look for him, Johnny?” she asked presently.

  Johnny thought he was. “It’s them caterpillars, safe enough,” he said. “He never saw any before, an’ it was just a chance last night. To-night he can’t find ‘em, and he’s keepin’ on searchin’ all over the Pits and the Slade; that’s about it.”

  There was another pause, till Mrs. May remembered something. “The bit o’ candle he had in the lantern wouldn’t last an hour,” she said. “He’d ha’ had to come back for more. Johnny, I’m gettin’ nervous.”

  “Why, what for?” asked Johnny, though the circumstance of the short candle startled his confidence. “He might get a light from somewhere else, ‘stead o’ comin’ all the way back.”

  “But where?” asked Mrs. May. “There’s only the Dun Cow, an’ he might almost as well come home — besides, he wouldn’t ask ‘em.”

  Johnny left the chair, and joined his mother at the door. As they listened a more regular sound made itself plain, amid the low hum of the trees; footsteps. “Here he comes,” said Johnny.

  But the sound neared and the steps were long and the tread was heavy. In a few moments Bob Smallpiece’s voice came from the gloom, wishing them good-night.

  Mrs. May called to him. “Have you seen gran’dad anywhere, Mr. Smallpiece?”

  The keeper checked his strides, and came to the garden gate, piebald with the light from the cottage door. “No,” he said, “I ain’t run across him, nor seen his light anywheres. Know which way he went?”

  “He was just going to Wormleyton Pits an’ back, that’s all.”

  “Well, I’ve just come straight across the Pits, an’ as straight here as ever I could go, past the Dun Cow; an’ ain’t seen ne’er a sign of him. Want him particular?”

  “I’m gettin’ nervous about him, Mr. Smallpiecesomehow I’m frightened to-night. He went out about six, an’ now it don’t want much to nine, an’ he only had a bit o’ candle that wouldn’t bum an hour. And he never meant stopping long, I know, ‘cause of a case he’s got to set. I thought p’raps you might ha’ seen—”

  “No, I see nothin’ of him. But I’ll go back to the Pits now, if you like, an’ welcome.”

  “I’d be sorry to bother you, but I would like someone to go. Here, Johnny, go along, there’s a good boy.”

  “All right, all right,” the keeper exclaimed cheerfully. “We’ll go together. I expect he’s invented some new speeches o’ moth, an’ he’s forgot all about his light, thinkin’ out the improvements. It ain’t the first time he’s been out o’ night about here, anyhow. Not likely to lose himself, is Mr. May.”

  Johnny had his cap and was at the gate; and in a moment the keeper and he were mounting the slope.

  “Mother’s worryin’ herself over nothing to-night,” Johnny grumbled. “Gran’dad’s been later ‘n this many’s a time, an’ she never said a word. Why, when he gets after caterpillars an’ things he forgets everything.”

  They walked on among the trees. Presently, “How long is it since your father died?” Bob Smallpiece asked abruptly.

  “Nine years, now, and more.”

  “Mother might ha’ married agen, I s’pose?”

  “I dunno. Very likely. Never heard her say nothing.”

  Bob Smallpiece walked on with no more reply than a grunt. Soon a light from the Dun Cow twinkled through the bordering coppice, and in a few paces they were up at the wood�
��s edge.

  “No light along the road,” the keeper said, glancing to left and right, and making across the hard gravel.

  “There’s somebody,” Johnny exclaimed, pointing up the pale road.

  “Drunk,” objected the other. And truly the indistinct figure staggered and floundered. “An’ goin’ the wrong way. Chap just out o’ the Dun Cow. Come on.”

  But Johnny’s gaze did not shift. “It’s gran’dad!” he cried suddenly, and started running.

  Bob Smallpiece sprang after him, and in twenty paces they were running abreast. As they neared the old man they could hear him talking rapidly, in a monotonous, high-pitched voice; he was hatless, and though they called he took no heed, but stumbled on as one seeing and hearing nothing; till, as the keeper reached to seize his arm, he trod in a gulley and fell forward.

  The shock interrupted his talk, and he breathed heavily, staring still before him, as he regained his uncertain foothold, and reeled a step farther. Then Bob Smallpiece grasped him above the elbow, and shouted his name.

  “What’s the matter, gran’dad?” Johnny demanded. “Ill?”

  The old man glared fixedly, and made as though to resume his course.

  “Why, what’s this?” said Bob Smallpiece, retaining the arm, and lifting a hand gently to the old man’s hair. It was blood, dotted and trickling. “Lord! he’s had a bad wipe over the head,” said Bob, and with that lifted old May in his arms, as a nurse lifts a child. “They-don’s nearest; run, Johnny boy — run like blazes an’ fetch the doctor tantivy!”

  “Take him into the Dun Cow?”

  “No — home’s best, an’ save shiftin’ him twice. Run it!”

  “Purple Emperors an’ Small Coppers,” began the old man again in his shrill chatter. “Small Coppers an’ Marsh Ringlets everywhere, and my bag full o’ letters at the beginning of the round, but I finished my round and now they’re all gone; all gone because o’ London comin’, an’ I give in my empty bag—” and so he tailed off into indistinguishable gabble, while Bob Small-piece carried him into the wood.

  To Johnny, scudding madly toward Theydon, it imparted a grotesque horror, as of some absurd nightmare, this baby-babble of his white-haired grandfather, carried baby-fashion. He blinked as he ran, and felt his head for his cap, half believing that he ran in a dream in very truth.

  CHAPTER V.

  MRS. MAY still stood at the cottage door, and the keeper, warned by the light, called from a little distance. “Here we are, Mrs. May,” he said, as cheerfully as might be. “He’s all right — just had a little accident, that’s all. So I’m carryin’ him. Don’t be frightened; get a little water — I think he’s got a bit of a cut on the head. But it’s nothing to fluster about.”...And so assuring and protesting, Bob brought the old man in.

  The woman saw the staring grey face and the blood. “O-o-o — my God!” she quavered, stricken sick and pale. “He’s — he’s—”

  “No, no. No, no! Keep steady and help. Shift the table, an’ I’ll put him down on the rug.”

  She mastered herself, and said no more. The old man, whose babble had sunk to an indistinct mutter, was no sooner laid on the floor than he made a vague effort to rise, as though to continue on his way. But he was feebler than before, and Bob Smallpiece pressed him gently back upon the new-mended coat, doubled to make a pillow.

  Nan May, tense and white, curbed her agitation, ministering and suffering in silence. Years before a man had been carried home to her thus, but then all was over, and after the first numbness grief could take its vent. Once she asked Bob Smallpiece, in a whisper, how it had happened. He told how little he knew, and save for passing the words to Bessy, wakened by unwonted sounds, Mrs. May said nothing. Bessy, in her nightgown, sat on the stairs, hugging her crutch, and sobbing with what quietness she could compel of herself.

  There was a little brandy in a quartern bottle, and the keeper thought it well to force the spirit between the old man’s teeth, while Mrs. May bathed the head and washed away the clotted blood. As they did so the wheels of the doctor’s dog-cart were heard in the lane, and soon the doctor came in at the door, pulling off his gloves.

  Johnny stood, pale, helpless, and still almost breathless, behind the group, while the doctor knelt at his grandfather’s side. There was a contused wound at the top of the head, the doctor could see, a little back, not serious. But blood still dripped from the ears, and the doctor shook his head. “Fracture of the base,” he said, as to himself.

  Reviving a little because of the brandy and the bathing, the old man once more made a motion as if to rise, his eyes grew brighter, though fixed still, and his voice rose distinctly as ever.

  “ — took the bag in, yes. London’s comin’ fast, London’s comin’ an’ a-frightenin’ out the butterflies. London’s a-drivin’ the butterflies out o’ my round, out o’ my round, an’ butterflies can’t live near it. London’s out o’ my round an’ I’ve done my round an’ now I’ll give in the empty bag. Take the bag: an’ look for the pension. That’s the ‘vantage o’ the Pos’-Office, John. Some gets pensions but some don’, but the butterflies’ll last my time I hope: an’ Haskins he kep’ bees, but I’m hopin’ to finish my roun’—” and so on and so on till the voice fell again and the muttering was fainter than before.

  Bob Smallpiece stood awkwardly by, unwilling to remain a useless intruder, but just as reluctant to desert friends in trouble. Presently he bethought himself that work was still to do in inquiry how the old man’s hurt had befallen, whether by accident or attack; perhaps, indeed, to inform the police, and that in good time. So he asked, turning his hat about in his hands, if there was anything else he could do.

  “Nothing more, Smallpiece, thanks,” the doctor said, with an unmistakable lift of the brows and a glance at the door.

  “God bless you for helpin’ us, Mr. Smallpiece,” Mrs. May said as she let him out. “I’ll let you know how he is in the mornin’ if you can’t call.” And when the door was shut, “Go to bed, Johnny, my boy, and take a rest.” But Johnny went no farther than the stairs, and sat there with his sister.

  The old man’s muttering ceased wholly, and he breathed heavily, stertorously. The doctor rose to his feet and turned to Mrs. May.

  “Won’t you tell me, sir,” she said. “Is it — is it—”

  “It is very serious,” the doctor said gravely; and added with impressive slowness, “very serious indeed.”

  The woman took a grip of the table, and caught three quick breaths.

  “You must keep yourself calm, and you must bear up. You must prepare yourself — in case of something very bad indeed.”

  Twice she tried to speak, but was mute; and then, “No hope?” she said, more to sight than to hearing.

  He put his hand kindly on her shoulder. “It would be wrong of me to encourage it,” he said. “As for what I can do, it is all over...But you must bear up,” he went on firmly, as, guided to a chair, she bent forward and covered her face. “Drink this—” He took a small bottle from his bag, poured something into a cup and added water. “Drink it — drink it up; all of it...I must go...You’ve your children to think of, remember. Come to your mother, my boy...”

  He was gone, and the children stood with their arms about their mother. The old man’s breathing, which had grown heavier and louder still, presently eased again, and his eyes closed drowsily. At this the woman looked up with an impossible hope in her heart. Truly, the breath was soft and natural, and the drawn lines had gone from the face: he must be sleeping. Why had she not thought to ask Bob Smallpiece to carry him up to bed? And why had the doctor not ordered it? Softly she turned the wet cloth that lay over the wound.

  The breath grew lighter and still lighter, and more peaceful the face, till one might almost trace a smile. Quieter and quieter, and still more peaceful: till all was peace indeed.

  CHAPTER VI.

  BOB SMALLPIECE and a police-inspector busied themselves that night at Wormleyton Pits. The pits were none of them deep — six fe
et 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.