The longed-for holiday came with a fine Monday morning, and Bessy, in a muslin frock that her mother had helped to make for the occasion, was impatient, an hour too soon, because Johnny lingered in bed; enjoying the luxury of “losing a quarter” without paying the penalty.
But Johnny was ready for breakfast before eight, and, seeing the shop-door open, ran to take down the shutters, a thing his mother commonly did herself, because of his absence at work. “I always put ’em up, and for once I’ll take ’em down,” he said, prancing in with the first. “Look out, mother, or I’ll bowl you over!”
“O no, Johnny,” she said, “leave ’em. I’ll only have to—” and at that she stopped.
“Only have to what?” Johnny asked, going for another. “Only have to serve the customers, eh, ’cause the shop’s open? Of course you will—it ain’t your holiday, you know—it’s ours! Look out again! Shoo!”
Bessy rattled at the old barometer still, though for half an hour it had refused to move its hand a shade; p. 168and she asked Johnny for the fiftieth time if he were perfectly sure that the proper train wasn’t earlier than they were supposing. And when at last Johnny admitted that it was time to start, Nan May kissed them and bade them good-bye with so wistful an earnestness that Johnny was moved to pleasantry. “All right, mother,” he said, “we’re coming back some day you know!”
They were scarce half-way to the railway-station when Bessy said: “Johnny, I don’t think mother’s been very well lately. There’ll be another train soon; shall we go back an’—an’ just see if she’s all right, first?”
Johnny laughed. “That’s a good idea!” he said. “An’ then I s’pose we’d better miss the next, an’ go back to see how she’s getting on then, an’ the one after that, eh? Mother’s all right. She’s been thinking a bit about—you know, gran’dad an’ all that; and because we’re goin’ to the forest it reminds her of it. Come on—don’t begin the day with dumps!”
There was interest for both of them in the railway journey. They changed trains at Stepney, and after a station or two more came in distant sight of a part of the road they had traversed, on Bank’s cart, when they came to London, two winters back. There was the great, low, desolate wilderness, treeless and void of any green thing, seen now from nearer the midst, with the road p. 169bounding it in the distance; and here was the chemical manure-factory, close at hand this time, with its stink at short-hitting range, so that every window in the train went up with a bang, and everybody in the long third-class carriage coughed, or grimaced, or spat, or swore, according to sex and habit.
Then, out beyond Stratford, through Leyton and Leytonstone, they saw that the town had grown much in twenty months, and was still growing. Close, regular streets of little houses, all of one pattern, stared in raw brick, or rose, with a forlorn air of crumbling sponginess, amid sparse sticks of scaffolding. Bessy wondered how the butterflies were faring in the forest, and how much farther they had been driven since she left it. Then the wide country began to spin past, and pleasant single houses, and patches of wood. The hills about Chigwell stood bright and green across the Roding valley, as the low ground ran away between, and the high forest land came up at the other side of the line. Till the train stood in Loughton Station.
Through the village Bessy, flushed and eager, stumped and swung at a pace that kept Johnny walking his best. Staple Hill was the nearest corner of the forest, and for Staple Hill they made direct. Once past the street-end it rose before them, round and gay, deep and green in the wood that clothed it. Boys were p. 170fishing in the pond at its foot, and the stream ran merrily under the dusty road.
“Come, Johnny!” Bessy cried. “Straight over the hill!” Nor did she check her pace till the wide boughs shaded them, and her crutch went softly on the mossy earth among old leaves. Then she stood and laughed aloud, and was near crying. “Smell it, Johnny!” she cried, “smell it! Isn’t it heavenly?”
They went up the slope, across tiny glades, and between thick clumps of undergrowth gay with dog-roses, Bessy’s eyes and ears alert for everything, tree, bird, or flower; now spying out some noisy jay that upbraided their intrusion, now standing to hark for a distant woodpecker. Johnny enjoyed the walk too, but with a soberer delight; as became an engineer taking a day’s relaxation amid the scenes of childish play now half forgotten.
Down the other side of the hill they went, and over the winding stream at the bottom. Truly it seemed a tiny stream now, and Johnny wondered that he should ever have been proud of jumping it. He found a bend where the water rushed through a narrow channel by the side of a bed of clean-washed gravel, and got Bess across, though she scrambled down and up with little help, such was her enthusiasm.
Then the trees grew sparser, and over the deep-grown flat of Debden Slade Bessy stopped again and p. 171again to recognise some well-remembered wild-flower; and little brown butterflies skimmed over the rushes and tall grass, the sun mounted higher, and everything was brisk and bright and sweet-smelling. Brother and sister climbed the hill before them slowly, often staying to look back over the great prospect of rolling woodland, ever widening as they rose. Till at last they stood at the point of the ridge, in the gap through the earthwork made by ancient Britons.
This beyond all others was the spot that Bessy had loved best. This ragged ring of crumbling rampart and ditch, grown thick with fantastic hornbeams, pollarded out of all common shape; its inner space a crowded wonder of tall bracken, with rare patches of heather; its outer angles watching over the silent woods below, and dominating the hills that ranked beyond; this was the place where best an old book from the shelf would fill a sunny afternoon. For the camp was a romance in itself, a romance of closer presence than anything printed on paper. Here, two thousand years ago, the long-haired savages had stood, in real fact, with spears and axes, brandishing defiance to foes on the hillside. Here they had entrenched themselves against the Roman legions—they and their chief, fierce Cassivellaunus: more, to her, than a name in an o............