February 13, 1900.—The winter was passing by, with the war, indeed, to make it memorable to us, but uneventfully at home. January, like December, had been mild—too mild, some people said, of whom, however, Bettesworth was not one. February set in with more severity of weather. On the third we had snow, and in the succeeding days frost followed, and the roads grew slippery.
These things no doubt provided Bettesworth with topics for many little chats I must have enjoyed with him, although I saved no reminder of any of them. But about the middle of the month a circumstance came to my knowledge which made his good-tempered gossip seem rather remarkable. I could not but admire that a man so situated should be able to talk with such urbanity.
He had been at the barber's the previous evening, where another man was discoursing at large about the war. And said Bettesworth:
"Idolike to hear anything like that. Or if they'll read a newspaper. There I could 'bide listenin' all night. And if anybody else was to open their mouths, I should be like enough to tell 'em toshut up. Because, if you goes to hear anything,hearit. Same as at church or chapel or a entertainment:yougoes to listen, an' then p'r'aps four or five behind ye gets to talkin'. I always says, if you goes anywhere, go and be quiet. You en't obliged to go, but when you do go, behave yourself."
The talkers, I might have reminded Bettesworth, are not always "behind ye"; there are those who take front seats who might profit by his little homily on good manners. But he only meant that the discourtesy is the more disturbing, because it is the more audible, when it comes from behind.
He passed easily on to a discussion of the weather, and again his superlative good sense was to the fore. On Sunday, he said, he had tried to persuade his neighbours—working-men, like himself, only younger—to bring their shovels and scatter sand on the path down the gully, which was coated with ice. Already he had done a longish piece of it himself, but much remained to do. Several men had "went up reg'lar busters," and "children and young gals" on their way to church had fallen down. It would be a public service to besprinkle the path with sand. So Bettesworth made his suggestion to his neighbours—"four or five of 'em. They was hangin' about: hadn't got nothin' to do." But no. They shrugged their shoulders and walked away. It was no business of theirs. They even laughed at the old man for the trouble he had already taken, for which no one would pay him. And now, in telling meabout it, it was his neighbours' want of public spirit that annoyed him. They had not come up to his standard of the behaviour meet for a labouring man.
Who would have imagined that, while he was telling me this, and for days previously, he was in a state of severe mental distress, aggravated by bodily fatigue? I had no suspicion of it, and was surprised enough when told by a third person. But it was true—too true. He admitted it readily when I asked him. His wife was ill again, worse than she had been for three years, since the time when she fell down in an epileptic fit and broke her wrist. She had had many minor attacks during the interval, but this was serious now.
As I have already told the poor old woman's story, or at least this part of it, in another place, I may not repeat it here; but for the sake of continuity the episode must be summarized. Three years earlier Bettesworth had obtained an order for his wife's admission to the workhouse infirmary. Hateful though the merest suspicion of benefiting by parish aid was to him, there had been no other course open at that time; for what could he do for an old woman with a broken limb, and a malady that made her for the time half-witted? And yet, owing to overcrowding at the infirmary, amazed and indignant he had brought her home again on the fourth day, because she had been lodged and treated as a common pauper. Consequently I knew that he must be at extremities now, when it came out thathe was deciding again to send the old lady to the infirmary. But he was at his wits' end what to do for her. He could not afford to stay at home from work; yet while he was away she was alone, since her condition and temper made neighbours reluctant to help. Sometimes the fear haunted him that she would meet a violent death, falling in a fit on to the fire, perhaps; sometimes he dreaded that he would have to put her finally away into an asylum. What he endured in the long agonizing nights when her fits were upon her, in the silent winter evenings when he sat for hours watching her pain and wondering what to do, no one will ever know. As best he could, he used at such times to wash her and dress her himself—he with his fumbling fingers and dim eyes; and wanting sleep, wanting the food that neither of them could prepare, alone and unknown, he struggled to keep in order his miserable cottage. Almost a week must have passed like this before I heard of the trouble, and asked him about it. Then he laid his difficulties before me, and asked for my advice.
To men in Bettesworth's position it is always an embarrassment to comply with the formalities of official business. They do not see the reason, and they feel keenly the wearisomeness, of the steps which must be taken to gain their end. Bettesworth now seemed paralyzed; he had forgotten how to go on; moreover, he could not be satisfied—although there was a new infirmary—that his wife would bemore decently treated there than in the old one. If only he could be sure of that! But of course he was not important enough to approach, himself, anyone so important as a guardian; and, accordingly, I undertook to make inquiries for him.
It is indeed a tedious business—I experienced it afterwards too—that of getting a sick person from this village into the local infirmary. It seemed that Bettesworth must lose at least a day's work in arranging for the removal of his wife. She could not be admitted to the house without a certificate from the parish doctor, who lived in the town, a mile and a half away. But the doctor might only attend upon Bettesworth's presenting an order to be obtained from the relieving officer, two miles away in the exactly opposite direction. The medical man would then come as soon as he found convenient, and Bettesworth would be provided with a certificate for his wife's removal to the infirmary. But he might not act upon that alone. With that in his possession, he would have to wait again upon the relieving officer, to get an order upon the workhouse master to admit the patient, and to arrange for a conveyance to take her away.
We talked it over, he and I, that afternoon, not cheered by the wild weather that was hourly worsening. If all went well on the morrow, Bettesworth would have some twelve miles of walking to do; but it was most likely that, between relieving officer and doctor, two or even three days would elapsebefore the desired relief would be accomplished. However, the immediate thing to do was clear enough: he must make his first visit to the relieving officer as soon as possible.
I forget on what grounds, but we agreed that it was useless to attempt anything that night; and since the officer would be off at eight in the morning for his day's duty in other places, Bettesworth proposed to be up betimes, and catch him at his office before he started. It would be just possible then, by hurrying, to get back over the three or four miles to the town, and find the doctor before he too should leave for the day. Otherwise there would be a sickening delay.
The whole thing was sickening already, in its inevitable mechanical clumsiness. Still, there was no help for it. The weather meanwhile was threatening hindrance. A small driving snow had set in in the afternoon, and was inclined to freeze as it fell; and for some time before dark the opposite side of the valley had become all but invisible, blotted out by the dreary whiteness of the storm. At nightfall, the weather seemed to turn wicked. Hours afterwards, as I sat listening to the howling gusts of wind, which puffed the smoke from out of my fire, and brought the snow with a crisp bristling sound against my window, I could not get out of my head the thought of Bettesworth, alone with his crazy wife down there in that cottage, or the fear that deep snow might prevent his morning's journey. And then itwas that recollection of his recent quiet conversations came over me. So to have talked, keeping all this trouble to himself, while he listened to the war news, and did his best to make the footways passable—there was surely a touch of greatness in it.
And it makes no difference to my estimate of him that, after all, he did not go to the relieving officer the next morning. On the further progress of Mrs. Bettesworth's illness at this time my notebook is silent; but, as I recall now, she took a turn for the better that night, and by the morning was so improved that thought of the infirmary was given up.
For eight months after this the account of Bettesworth's sayings and doings is all but a blank. There was one summer—and perhaps it was this one of the year 1900—when he joined an excursion for his annual day's holiday, and made a long trip to Weymouth. Need it be said that he enjoyed the outing immensely? He came back to work the next day overflowing with the humour and interest of what he had seen and done. Had not old Bill Brixton lost his hat out of the train? And some other old chap sat down on a seat on Weymouth front, and stayed there all day and seen nothing? Bettesworth, too, had sat down, and had a most enjoyable conversation with a native of the place; but he had also taken steamer to Portland, and there got a drive to the prison and seen the convicts, and had a joke and a laugh with the driver of the brake, and a drink with a party of excursionists from Birmingham, who appreciated his society, and called him "uncle," and whose unfamiliar speech he imitated well enough to make me laugh. And then he had persuaded a seaman to take him out to the fleet and show him over a man-of-war; and finally had enlivened the homeward journey by chaffing old Bill, and sharingwith him "a quarten o' whisky," which he carried in a medicine bottle.
This, I am inclined to believe, was an event of 1900, but I cannot verify it, and in any case it accounts for but one day. The dimness of the remainder of those eight months is but faintly illuminated—and that, it may be, for me only—by two memoranda mentioning Bettesworth as present at certain affairs, and by one all too short scrap of his own talk. He was speaking of Irishmen, no doubt in reference to some gallant deed or other in South Africa, and this is what he said:
"Ye see, they makes as brave soldiers as any.... All I got to say about Irishmen is, when you be at work with 'em, you got to think yourself as good as they, or a little better. 'Relse if they thinks you be givin' way they'll trample on ye. 'Xcept for that, I'd as lief work with Irishmen as Englishmen.... I remember once when I was at work on a buildin' for Knight, a Irishman come for me with his shovel like this." Bettesworth turned his shovel edgeways, raising it high. "He'd ha' split me if he'd ha' hit me; and as soon as he'd missed me I downed 'n. Little Georgie Knight come down off the scaffold to stop us; I'd got the feller down, an' was payin' of 'n. 'I'llgive 'n 'Ome Rule!' I says; and so I did, too. He'd ha' killed me if he'd hit me. I s'pose I'd said somethin' he didn't like."
A March note, this last. As there is nothing else, I take it that the daily conversation was of the usual kind, about being forward in sowing seeds, and allowing enough room for potatoes, and so on.
June 10.—A note of June names Bettesworth among other interested spectators of an event no less singular than the death of a donkey. To me, the name of him on the page of my journal, coupled with one of his dry remarks, brings back vividly the whole scene: the glowing Sunday afternoon, the blue loveliness of the distant hills, the look of the grass, and all the tingling sense of the far-spread summer life surrounding the dying animal. But the narrative has little to do with Bettesworth, and would be out of place here. It just serves as a reminder that one more summer was passing over him; that, among the strong men who felt the heat in this valley that season, he was still one.
Carry that impression on, through the harvest time, and yet on and on until the end of September, and you may see him (or I, at least, may) one dark night, entering, all dazzled by the naked lamp, a little room where the Liberals have summoned an "important meeting of Liberal workers." He has come, like the present writer, in the expectation of hearing some "spouting," as he said afterwards. But though he is disappointed, and finds himself,—he, the least fanatic of men—the witness only of excited efforts to arrange for canvassing the district in readiness for the approaching election, still, conforming to his own rule of "behaving," he sits respectfully silent, though looking disconsolate and "sold," and his grey head, the home of such steady thoughts, has a pathetic dignity in its dark corner, and surrounded by the noisy politicians.
So cramped-in as it was between sandbank and stream, Bettesworth's garden had no place for a pigsty; and as his wife could not be happy without "something to feed," he had bought her a few fowls to amuse her. With stakes and wire netting he made a diminutive "run" for them, which really seemed to adorn the end of the cottage, being stuck into the corner made by the whitewashed wall and the yellow sand-cliff. The fowls, it is true, had not room to thrive; but if Bettesworth made but little profit of them, they afforded him much contentment; and the afternoon sunshine used to fall very pleasantly on the little fowl-pen.
Needless to say, he was not exempt from the common troubles of the poultry-keeper. I remember smiling to myself once at his gravity in mentioning that one of the hens had begun to crow. He did not, indeed, own to thinking it a sign of bad luck, but his looks seemed to suggest that he was uneasy. As everyone knows, a crowing hen, if it does not portend death, is neither fit for gods nor men; so Bettesworth realized that he must kill the ill-omened bird, "as soon as he could find out which of 'em'twas." Another time there were some little chicks, and his cat became troublesome; and, worse still, there came a rat, which had to be ferreted out.
And were there marauders besides these? I have stated that beyond Bettesworth's own cottage there were others of the same class, one of which was inhabited for a little while by a family whose honesty was not above suspicion. Would these people interfere with his fowls? It was a point to be considered.
He considered it—it was on a day in October, 1900—and so strayed off into a rambling talk of many things. The ill-conditioned neighbours (he comforted himself by thinking) would leave his fowls alone, because depredations of that kind were an unheard-of thing in our parish.
"There, I will say that," he observed, "you never no fear o'losin'anything here. If a man leaves his tool—a spud or anything—in the ground, there 'tis. Nobody don't touch it. Up there at (he named a near village) they say 'tis different. But here, I should think there never was a better place for that!"
For a certain reason I took up this point, and hinted that Flamborough in Yorkshire must be an equally honest place. The Flamborough people, I had been told, never lock their doors at night, for fear of locking out the spirits of relatives drowned at sea.
Would Bettesworth take the bait, and tell me anything he might know about ghosts? Not he. The interruption changed the course, but not thecharacter, of his talk. He looked rather shocked at these benighted Yorkshiremen, and commented severely, "Weak-minded,Icalls it." Then, after a momentary silence, he was off on a new track, with reminiscences of Selsey fishermen whom he used to see when he went harvesting into Sussex; who go about, "any time o' night, accordin' to the tides," and whose thick boots can be heard "clumpin' along the street" in the dark. All men at Selsey, he said, were fishermen. The only regular hands employed by the neighbouring farmers were shepherds and carters.
He had got quite away from the point in my mind. But as I had long wondered whether Bettesworth had any ghost stories, I harked back now to the Flamborough people, egging him on to be communicative. It was all in vain, however. He shook his head. The subject seemed foreign to him.
"As I often says, I bin about all times o' the night, an' I never met nothin' worse than myself. Only time as ever I was froughtened was when I was carter chap at Penstead. Our farm was down away from t'other, 'cause Mr. Barnes had two farms—'t least, he had three—and ourn was away from t'other, and I was sent late at night to git out the waggon—no, the pole-carriage. I set up on the front on the shafts, with a truss o' hay behind me; and all of a sudden she" (the mare, I suppose he meant) "snarked an' begun to turn round in the road. The chap 'long with me—no, he wa'n't 'long with me,'cause he'd gone on to open the gate, and so there was I alone. And all 'twas, was a old donkey rollin' in the road. She'd smelt 'n, ye know; an' the nearer we got, the more froughtened she was, till she turned right round there in the road. 'Twas a nasty thing for me; they hosses with their legs over the traces, and all that, and me down atween 'em."
He was fairly off now. A tale followed of stumbling over a drunken man, who lay all across the road one dark night.
"Wonder's 't hadn't broke his ribs, me kickin' up again' him like that. I went all asprawl; barked me hands too. But when he hollered out, I knowed who 'twas then. 'Twas old...."
Well, it doesn't matter who it was. There were no ghost stories to be had, so I related a schoolday adventure, of a glow-worm picked up, and worn in a cap for a little way, and then missed; of a glimmer seen in the ditch, which might be the glow-worm; of a groping towards the glimmer, and a terrified leap back, upon hearing from behind it a gruff "Hullo, mate!"
Bettesworth did not find this silly, like my Flamborough story. It opened another vista of reminiscence, down which he could at least look. Unhesitatingly he took the chance, commenting,
"Ah! porchers, very likely, lurkin' about there for a meetin, p'r'aps. They do like that, sometimes. I remember once, when Mellish was keeper at Culverley, there was some chaps in there at The Horseone night with their dogs, talkin' about what they was goin' to do. Mellish, he slips out, to send the word round, 'cause all the men at Culverley was s'posed to go out at such a job, if need be. So he sends round the message to 'em—Bromley, an' Dick Harris, an' Knight, an' several more, to meet 'n at a certain place, where he'd heard these chaps say they was goin' to work. And so they (the poachers) set in there talkin' about what they was goin' to do; and at last, when they come away, they went right off into the town. While they'd bin keepin' the keeper there a-watchin' 'em, another gang had bin' an' purty well cleared the place out.Bags-full, they must ha' had. Mellish told me so hisself. While he was expectin' to have they, they was havin' him. He never was so sold, he said. But a clever trick, I calls it."
October 17, 1900.-Two words of Bettesworth's, noted down for their strangeness at the time, restore for me the October daylight, the October air. He was discussing the scarlet-runner beans (I can picture now their warm tints of decay), and he estimated our chances of getting another picking from them. The chances were good, he thought, because in the sheltered corner where the beans stood, uplifted as it was above the mists that chilled the bottom of the valley, "these little snibblin' frostis that we gets o' mornin's" would not be felt. "Snibblin'" was a new word to me, and now I find it associated in my mind with the earliest approaches of our English winter.
Near the beans there were brussels sprouts, their large leaves soaked with colour out of the clouded day. Little grey swarms of "white fly" flitted out as I walked between them; and, again, Bettesworth's name for that form of blight—"they little minners"—brings back the scene: the quiet vegetable garden, the sad rich autumn tints, the overcast sky, the moist motionless air.
To this undertone of peace—the peace you canbest absorb at labours like his—he was able to discourse dispassionately of things not peaceful. In a cottage higher up the valley there was trouble this October. I may not give details of it; but, in rough summary, an old woman had died, her last days rendered unhappy by the misbehaviour of her son—a young labourer. Talk of his "carrying on," his late hours, his frantic drinking, and subsequent delirium, crept stealthily up and down the lanes. He was "a low blackguard," "a scamp," and so forth. The comments were excited, generally breathless, once or twice shrill. But Bettesworth kept his head. An indignant matron said spitefully,
"'Ten't every young feller gets such a good home as that left to 'n."
"Well, and who got a better right to 't?" was Bettesworth's calm rejoinder.
November 10.—A month later a ripple of excitement from the outside world found its way down the lane. Saturday, November 10, was the day when General Buller, recalled from the war, arrived at Aldershot, and for miles around the occasion was made the excuse for a holiday by the working people. It was a point of honour with them not to desert their favourite under a cloud. They left off work early, and flocked to Aldershot station by hundreds, if not thousands, to make sure that he had a welcome. On the following Monday Bettesworth, full of enthusiasm, gave me an account of the affair ashe had had it from numerous eyewitnesses. For, in truth, it had been "all the talk yesterday"—on the Sunday, namely. Young Bill Skinner, in particular, had been voluble, with such exclamations, such staring of excited eyes, that Bettesworth was reminded not without concern of the sunstroke which had threatened Skinner's reason two summers previously. Nevertheless, the tale was worth Bettesworth's hearing and repeating; "there never was a man in England so much respected" as Buller, Skinner supposed. On alighting from the train, the General's first act had been to shake hands with his old coachman—a deed that touched the hearts of all these working folk.
"And there was never a sign o' soldiers; 'twas all townspeople—civilians, that is; and the cheerin'—there! Skinner said he hollered till he was hoarse. He ast me" (Bettesworth) "how 'twas I didn't go over; but I said, 'Naw....' Not but what Ilikesthe old feller!"
Bettesworth made no answer but that expressive "No" of disinclination, but I can amplify it. He was not now a young man, to go tearing off enthusiastically for an eight-mile walk, which was sure to end in a good deal of drinking and excitement. His days for that were gone by for ever. Prudence warned him that he was best off pottering about in his regular way, here at home.
There was another reason, too, to restrain him. It brings us swiftly back for a moment from warincidents and the public excitement to the very interior of that hovel down by the "Lake," to learn that poor old Lucy Bettesworth was once more ill at this time. Her brother calling, and exhibiting an unwonted kindliness, had thrown her into sudden hysteria ending in epileptic fits. Even had Bettesworth felt inclined, he could not have left her. He told me the circumstances, and much, too, of her life history—the most of which has been already published, and may be omitted here. The illness, however, was not so severe as to engage all Bettesworth's thoughts. It allowed him to take interest in Buller's return, and on the same day to discourse of other outside matters too, in which all our valley was interested through these months.
Word had reached him somehow of the proposals just then announced for the higher training of our soldiers; and he foresaw increased difficulties in recruiting on these terms. There was too much work to be had, and it was too well paid, to make young men eager to join the army; and the service certainly did not need to be rendered less attractive than it was. Bettesworth, it seemed, had already been discussing this very point with his neighbours. As to the disturbance of the labour market consequent upon the war, he viewed it with no favour. The inflated prices of labour seemed to him unwholesome; they were having an injurious effect upon young men, giving them an exaggerated opinion of their true worth as labourers. And this was particularly true,since the building of the new camp at Bordon had begun. "Old Tom Rawson," he reported, had "never seen the likes of the young fellers that was callin' theirselves carpenters an' bricklayers now. Any young chap only got to take a trowel over to Woolmer (by Bordon), and he'd be put on as a bricklayer, at sixpence a hour. And you mawn't stop to show 'em nothing. If the clurk o' the works or the inspector come round, 't 'd be, 'What's that man doin', showin' the others?' Tom said he wa'n'tgoin'to show 'em, neither. Why, at one time nobody ever thought of employin' a man, onless he could show his indentures. But now—'tis anybody." "The foreman" had lately come to Tom Rawson "askin' him jest to give an eye to some young chaps," and promising him another halfpenny an hour. And Bettesworth commented, "But dessay he (the foreman) was gettin' his bite out o' the youngsters."
Not Bettesworth, not even that hardened old Tom Rawson, would have countenanced such things had they been appealed to; but tales of this kind only filtered down into Bettesworth's obscure nook, to provide him with a subject for five minutes' thought, and then leave him again to his homely occupations. What had he to do with the War Office and inefficiency in high places? From this very talk, it is recorded, he turned appreciatively to watch the cat purring round my legs, and by her fond softness was reminded of his rabbits—six young ones—whichthe mother had not allowed him to see until yesterday. And he spoke wonderingly of her mother-instinct. The old rabbit was "purty near naked," having "almost stripped herself" to make a bed for these young ones, so that the bed was "all white fluff before they come," and now she "kep' 'em covered up." "Everything," said Bettesworth, "has theirnature, ye see."
In this fashion, with these trivial interests, the year drew on to its close in our valley. December gives glimpses of trouble in another household—that of the Skinners, Bettesworth being cognizant of all, but saying little. It did not disturb the peacefulness of his own existence. Events might come or delay, he was content; he was hardly in the world of events, but in a world where things did not so much "happen" as go placidly on. He worked, and rested, and I do not believe that he was often dull.
January, 1901.—The winter, which so far had been mild and open, began to assume its natural character with the new year; and on the first Monday of January—it was the 7th—we had snow, followed by hard frost. The snow was not unexpected. Saturday—a day of white haze suffused with sunlight—had provided a warning of it in the shape of frozen rime, clinging like serried rows of penknife blades to the eastern edges of all things, and noticeably to the telegraph-wires, which with that additional weight kept up all day a shiver of vibration dazzling to look at against the misty blue of the sky. Then the snow came, and the frost on top of that, and by Tuesday it was bad travelling on all roads.
Bettesworth grumbled, of course; but I believe that really he rather liked the touch of winter. At any rate, it was with a sort of gloating satisfaction that he remarked:
"I hunted out my old gaiters this morning. They en't much, but they keeps your legs dry. And I do think that is so nice, to feel the bottoms of your trousers dry."
I suppose it is, when one thinks of it, though ithad never struck me before. But then, I had never had the experience which had shown Bettesworth the true inwardness of this philosophy of his.
"I've knowed what it is," he said, "to have my trousers soppin' wet all round the bottoms, and then it have come on an' freezed 'em as stiff as boards all round."
That was years ago, during a short spell of piecework in a gravel-pit. Now, secure in his gaiters and in his easier employment, he could look back with amusement to the hardships he had lived through. One of a similar kind was hinted at presently. For the roughness of the roads, under this frozen snow, naturally suggested such topics.
"What d'ye think of our neighbour Mardon?" he exclaimed. "Bin an' chucked up his job, and 's goin' back to Aldershot blacksmithin' again. He must be in want of a walk!"
"Regular as clockwork," Mardon, be it explained, had walked daily to his work at Aldershot, and then back at night, for upwards of twenty years. The day's walk was about ten miles. Then suddenly he left, and now for six months had been working as bricklayer's labourer, at a job about an equal distance away in another direction, to which he walked as before every day, wet or fine. This was the job he had "chucked," to return to his old trade in the old place. He might well give it up! Said Bettesworth,
"How many miles d'ye think he walked last week,to put in forty-five hours at work? Fifty-four! Four and a half miles there, and four and a half back. Fifty-four miles for forty-five hours. There's walkin' for ye! And through that enclosure, too!"
The "enclosure" is a division of Alice Holt Forest—perhaps two miles of it—on Mardon's way to his now abandoned job. And Bettesworth recalled the discomforts of this walk.
"I knows what it is, all through them woods in the dark, 'cause I used to go that way myself when I was workin' for Whittingham. 'Specially if the fox-hounds bin that way. Then 'tis mud enough to smother ye. There was a fancy sort o' bloke—a carpenter—used to go 'long with us, with his shirt-cuffs, and his trousers turned up, and his shoes cleaned. We did use to have some games with 'n, no mistake. He'd go tip-toein' an' skippin' to get over the mud; an' then, jest as we was passin' a puddle, we'd plump one of our feet down into 't, an' send the mudall over'n. An' with his tip-toein' an' skippin' he got it wuss than we did, without that. An' when we come to the Royal Oak, 'cause we gen'ly used to turn in there on our way home, he'd be lookin' at hisself up an' down and grumblin'—'Tha bluhmin' mud!' (this in fair imitation of Cockney speech)—'tha bluhmin' mud! Who canstickit!' Same in the mornin' when he got there. He'd be brushin' his coat, an' scrapin' of it off his trousers with his knife, an' gettin' a bundle o' shavin's to wipe his boots.
"But a very good carpenter! Whittingham used to say he couldn't wish for a better man. But he'd bin used to bench-work all his life, an' didn't know what to make of it. An' we used to have some games with 'n. If there was any job wanted doin' out o' doors, they'd send for he sooner 'n one o' t'others, jest to see how he'd go on. And handlin' the dirty timber, an' lookin' where to put his saw—oh, we did give 'n a doin'. But 'twas winter, ye know, and I fancy he didn't know hardly where to go. We had some pantomimes with 'n, though, no mistake.
"There used to be another ol' feller—a plumber—when I was at work for Grange in Church Street; Ben Crawte went 'long with 'n as plumber's labourer. Ben had some pantomimes with he too. He'd git the handles of his tools all over dirt, for he to take hold of when he come to use 'em. Oldish man he was—old as I be, I dessay. And he'd pay anybody to give 'n a lift any time, sooner 'n he'd walk through the mud. We never knowed the goin' of 'n, at last...."
I, for my part, do not remember "the goin'" of these queer reminiscences. They are like the snows of the past—like the snow which actually lay white in our valley while Bettesworth talked.
As to his heartless treatment of this unhappy carpenter, those who would condemn it may yet consider how that gang of men could have endured their miserable journeys, if they had admitted thatanyone had the least right to be distressed. Among labourers there is such peril in effeminacy that to yield to it is a kind of treason. Bettesworth had nothing but contempt for it. I more than once heard his scorn of "tip-toeing," and shall be able to give another instance by-and-by.
During this year 1901, until the last month or two, not much additional matter relating to Bettesworth was recorded; it just suffices to show his life quietly passing on in company with the passing seasons.
February 1, 1901.—We have already had a glimpse of the winter. And now, although it is only February, there comes, as in February there often will, a day truly springlike, and Bettesworth's talk matches it. The first morning of February was clear and shimmering, the roads being hard with frost, the air crisp, the trees hung with the dazzling drops into which the sunshine had converted the rime of the dawn. Most of these drops appeared blinding white, but now and again there would come from them a sparkle of flame-red or a glisten of emerald, or, best of all, a flash of earnest burning blue, as if the morning sky itself were liquefying on the bare branches. The grass, although under it the ground was frozen, had a brilliancy of colour which certainly was no winter tint. It suggested where, if one looked, one would find the green spear-points of crocuses and daffodils already inch-high out of thesoil. The spring, in fact, was in the air, and the earth was stirring with it.
In Bettesworth's mood, too, was a hint of spring. All through the winter many hours which would otherwise have been lonely for him in this garden had been cheered by the companionship of a robin. How often he remarked, "You may do anything you mind to with 'n, but you mawn't handle 'im"! For the bird seemed to know him, and he used to call it his "mate," because it worked with him wherever he was turning up the soil.
And now on this gay morning, as we crossed the lawn together, he said, "Little Bob bin 'long with me again this mornin', hoppin' about just in front o' my shovel, and twiddlin' and talkin' to me.... Look at 'n! There he is now!" on the low bough of a young beech-tree at the edge of the grass. And as we stood to admire, "There'sa little chap!" he exclaimed exultantly. Then he took up his shovel to resume work near the tree, and "Little Bob" hopped down, every minute picking up something to swallow. I could not see what tiny morsels the bird was finding, and, confessing as much, felt snubbed by Bettesworth's immediate reply, "Ah,hegot sharp eyes." Presently, however, the robin found a large centipede, and suddenly—it was gone alive and wriggling down the small throat. "He must ha' got a good bellyful," said Bettesworth.
At intervals Bob would pause, look straight at us, and "twiddle" a little song in an undertone which,for all one could hear to the contrary, might have come from some distance behind or beside us, and could only be identified as proceeding from the robin by the accompanying movements of his ruddy throat.
"Sweet little birds, I calls 'em," said Bettesworth, using an epithet rare with him. "And it's a funny thing," he continued, "wherever a man's at work there's sure to be a robin find him out.I've noticed it often. If I bin at work in the woods, a robin 'd come, or in the harvest-field, jest the same.... Hark at 'n twiddlin'! And by-'n-by when his crop's full he'll get up in a tree andsing...."
The old man did a stroke or two with his shovel, and then: "I don't hear no starlin's about. 'Relse, don't ye mind last year they had a nest up in the shed?"
I hinted that my two cats might have something to do with the absence of the starlings, and Bettesworth's talk flitted easily to the new subject.
"Ah, that young cat—shewouldn't care" how many starlings she caught. "She'sgoin' to be my cat" (the cat for his favour). "Every mornin', as soon as the servant opens the door, she" (the cat) "is out, prowlin' all round. And she don't mind the cold; you see, she liked the snow—played with it. Now, our old Tab, as soon as I be out o' my nest she's in it. Very often she'll come up on to our bed, heavin' and tuckin' about, to get into the warm."
What a gift of expression the old man had got! But almost without a pause he went on, "Thepostman tells me he brought word this mornin' to all the pubs, tellin' 'em they was to close to-morrow" (Saturday, the day of Queen Victoria's funeral), "out of respect to our Queen's memory. 'T least, they're requested to—en't forced to. But so they ought to show her respect. Go where you will, you can't hear anybody with a word to say against her. 'Tis to be hoped the new King 'll be as worthy of respect."
Again, without transition: "How that little tree do grow!" He placed his hand on the stem of a young lime. "Gettin' quite a body. So-and-so tells me he put them in overright Mr. Watson's forty-five years ago, and look what trees they be now! They terrible wanted to cut 'em down when they made that alteration to the road down there, but Watson said he wouldn't have 'em moved for any money.... I likes a lime; 'tis such a bower."
So the pleasant chatter oozed out of him, as he worked with leisurely stroke, enjoying the morning. With his robins and his bowers, he was in the most cheerful spirits. At one time there was talk of the doctor, whom he had seen going down the lane on a bicycle, and had warned against trying to cross the stream, which the coming of the mild weather had flooded; and of the doctor's thanks, since he disliked wading; and of Bettesworth's own suggestion, laughingly assented to, that the doctor's "horse" was not partial to water.
It was all so spontaneous, this chatter, so innocentof endeavour to get the effect it produced, that a quite incongruous subject was powerless to mar its quality. He told me that, two days ago, he had bespoken at the butcher's shop a bullock's head, and that when he went to get it on this same glistening morning the butcher commended him for coming early, because "people was reg'lar runnin' after him for 'em." So early was he that the bullock had not been killed an hour, and he had to wait while they skinned the head and "took the eyes out," Bettesworth no doubt looking on with interest. And he had brought this thing home with him—was going to put it in brine at night, "and then to-morrer into the pot it goes, and that 'll make me some rare nice soup."
March 1, 1901.—I am reminded, however, that this was not real spring, but only a foretaste of it. As yet the birds were not pairing, and before their day came (according to Bettesworth, St. Valentine's is the day when the birds begin to pair) there was more snow. But observe the advance the spring has made when March comes in. On the first afternoon of March I noticed Bettesworth's "mate" with him again, "twiddlin'," as usual; but I fancied and said that he looked larger than before, and Bettesworth suggested that perhaps he was living better—getting more food. Then I thought that the robin's crest seemed more feathery, and was told at once, "That shows the time o' year. Wonderfulhow tame he is!" exclaimed the old man. He added, shaking his head, "But he goes away courtin' at times. He loses a lot o' time" (from his work with Bettesworth). "Then he comes back, and sets up on the fence an'singsto me.... But he loses a lot o' time. I tells 'n I shall 'ave to 'ave done with 'n."
April 19.—Six weeks go by, during which the lawn grass has been growing, and by the middle of April Bettesworth is busy with the lawn-mower. There was a neglected grass plot, never mown before save with the scythe, over which he tried this spring to run the machine. But failing, and explaining why, he used an old word so oddly that I noted it, whereby it happens that I get now this minute reminder of an April occupation.
"She," he said, meaning the machine, would certainly refuse to cut some of the coarser tussocks of this grass. "Why, even down there where I bin cuttin', see how she took they cuds in her mouth and spet 'em out—like a old feller with a chew o' baccer—he'll bite and spet...."
The "cuds" to which he referred were little tufts of grass, which only persistent rolling would reduce to a level meet for a lawn-mower.
June 22.—Omitting one short reference to somebody else's family history, and one yet shorter observation on horses and their eyesight, we skip rightover May, nor stop again till we come to the longest days. Here the record alights for a moment, just long enough to show a wet mid-June, and Bettesworth keenly alive to the duties of husbandmen in it. He glanced down towards the meadow in the bottom of the valley. An unfinished rick of hay stood there, waiting for the remaining grass, which lay about on the ground, and was losing colour. And Bettesworth said,
"Bill Crawte 'll play about wi' that little bit o' hay down there till 'tis all spoilt."
In truth, it should have been taken up the previous day, as I ventured to suggest. Then Bettesworth, contemptuously,
"He told me he heared it rainin' this mornin' at three o'clock, and got up to cover his rick over.He'd heareditrainin'. Why, he might ha' bin asleep, an' then that rain would ha' gone down into that rick two foot or more."
That is all. There is no more to tell of the old man's summer, nothing for July and August. But in September we get a glance back to the past harvest, a glance round at the earliest autumn prospects, and a strange suggestion of the first-class importance of these things in the life of country labouring folk. In brief compass, the talk runs rapidly over many points of interest.
September 6.—For if "the fly" was not on our seedling cabbage, as we were inclined to fear, it hadcertainly ruined sundry sowings of turnips, both in this garden and down there where Bettesworth lived.
"We can't help it," so he philosophized, "and I don't care if we get enough for ourselves, though I should ha' liked to have more." But "Hammond sayshe'sturnips be all spiled, and Porter's brother what lives over here at this cot" (the brother, that is, of Porter, who lives over here), "he bin down to Sussex harvestin' for the same man I worked for so many years. Seven weeks. But then he bin hoein'.... He was tellin' me his master down there sowed hunderd an' twenty acres o' swedes, and never saved twenty of 'em. Fly took 'em all, and he had to drill again with turnips. Swedes, and same with the mangol'.
"He says they've had it as hot down there as we have here. But, straw! There was some straw, by all accounts. Young Collison what lives over opposite me was 'long with 'n. Seven weeks he" (which?) "was away, but it seems he had a bit of a miff with his wife, and went off unbeknownst to her. She went to the relievin' officer, and he told herthey'dfind 'n, if she'd go into the union. He was off harvestin'. He told me o' Sunday he thought 't 'd do her good."
"Who was she?"
"Gal from Reading. He was up that way somewhere for 'leven year, in a brick-works. And she thought very likely as he was gone off into some brick-works again; but he was down in Sussex, harvestin'."
September 21.—Though only two weeks later, there is distinct autumn in the next fragment, and yet perhaps for me only, because of the picture it calls up. I remember a very still Saturday afternoon, a sky curtained by quiet cloud, the air motionless, a grey mist stealing into the lane that leads down into the heart of the valley. Certainly it was an autumn day.
As he always did on Saturdays, Bettesworth had swept up the garden paths with extra care, and on this afternoon had taken the sweepings into the lane, to fill up a rut there. Upon my going out to see him, he chuckled.
"You'd ha' laughed if you'd ha' bin out here wi' me at dinner-time. A lady come up the lane, wantin' to know who you was. 'Who lives here?' she says." He mimicked a high-pitched and affected voice. "'Mister Bourne,' I says. 'Iss he a gentilman?' she says. 'You don't s'pose he's a lady, do ye?' I says. 'What a beastlie road!' she says, and went off, tip-toein' an' twistin' herself about—dunno how to walk nor talk neither."
I asked who the lady was.
"I dunno. Strangers—she and a man with her. 'Iss he a gentilman?' she says. I can'tbearfor people to be inquisitive. What should she want to know all about you for? Might ha' knowed you wasn't a lady. There, I wasboundto give her closure, askin' me such a silly question!"
"What were they doing down here?"
"They was down here hookin' down blackberries with a stick. And then come askin' me a silly question like that!Sillyquestions! I don't see what people wants to ast 'em for. She went off 'long o' the man, huggin' up close to him, an' twistin' herself about. Dunno how to walk nor yet talk! 'Iss he a gentilman!'"
November 10, 1901.—Two odd words—one of them perhaps newly coined for the occasion, the other misused—were the reason for my preserving a short note which brings us to November, and shows us Bettesworth proposing to himself a task appropriate to the season. The sap was dying down in the trees; the fruit bushes had lost their leaves, and stood ready for winter, and their arrangement offended Bettesworth's taste. He would have had the garden formal and orderly, if he had been able.
"I thought I'd take up them currant bushes," he said, "and put 'em in again in rotation"—in a straight row, he meant, as he went on to explain. "They'd look better than all jaggled about, same as they be now."
And so the currant-bushes, which until then were "jaggled," or zig-zagged about, were duly moved, and stand to this day in a line. At that time he could still see a currant-bush, and criticize its position.
November 22.—Towards fallen leaves, it is recorded a little later, he preserved a constant animosity.His patient sweepings and grumblings were one of the notes of early winter for me—"the slovenliest time of all the year," he used to say.
He even doubted that leaves made a good manure, and he quoted authorities in support of his own opinion. Had not a gardener in the town said that he, for his part, always burnt the leaves, as soon as they were dry enough to burn, because "they be reg'lar poison to the ground"? Or, "if you opens a hole and puts in a bushel or two to form mould, they got to bide three years, an'thenyou got to mix other earth with 'em." As litter for pigs, he admitted, dead leaves were useful; yet should the cleanings of the pigsty be afterwards heaped up and allowed to dry, the first wind would "purl the leaves about all over the place.... And that makes me think there en't muchin'em," or surely they would rot?
But unquestionably leaves make good dry litter. "My old gal" (so the discourse proceeded)—"my old gal used to go out an' get 'em," so that the pig might have a dry bed; in which care the "old gal" contrasted nobly with "Will Crawte down 'ere," who had little pigs at this time "up to their belly in slurry." They could not thrive—Bettesworth was satisfied of that. His wife, in the days of her strength, would "go out on to the common, tearin' up moth or rowatt with her hands—her hands was harder 'n mine—and she'd tear up moth or rowatt or anything," to make a clean bed for the pig.
I suppose that by "moth" he meant moss. "Rowatt" is old grass which has never been cut, but has run to seed and turned yellow. With regard to rowatt, it makes a good litter and a tolerable manure, said Bettesworth; with this drawback, however, that "if you gets it wi' the seed on," however much it may have been trampled in the pigsty, "'tis bound to come up when you spreads the manure on the ground."
A timely reminder occurs here, that with all its rustic attractiveness—its genial labours in this picturesque valley, its sensitive response to the slow changes of the year—Bettesworth's life could not be an idyllic one. For that, he needed a wife who could make him comfortable, and encourage him by the practice of old-fashioned cottage economies; but Fate had denied him that help. From time to time I heard of old Lucy's having fits, but I paid little heed, and cannot tell why I noted the attack by which she was prostrated at the end of this November, unless that again it was borne in upon me how Bettesworth himself must suffer on such occasions.
November 24, 1901.—On Sunday, November 24, the trouble was taking its ordinary course. There had been the long night, disturbed by successive seizures, in one of which the old woman could not be saved from falling out of bed "flump on the floor"; there was the helpless day in which Bettesworth must cook his own dinner or go without; there were the dreadful suggestions from the neighbours that he ought to put his wife away in an asylum;there was his own tight-lipped resolve to do nothing of the sort, but to remember always how good to him she had been. It was merely the usual thing; and if we remember how it kept recurring and was a part almost of Bettesworth's daily life, that is enough, without further detail.
To get a clear impression of his contemporary circumstances is necessary, lest the narrative be confused by his frequent references to old times. Tending his wife, working unadventurously in my garden, loving the succession of crops, humbly subservient to the weather or gladdening at its glories, as he went about he spilt anecdotes of other years and different scenes, which must be picked up as we go. But the day-to-day existence must be kept in mind meanwhile. He gossipped at haphazard, but the telling of any one of those narratives which so often interrupt the course of this book was only the most trivial and momentary incident in his contemporary history. He spoke for a few minutes, and had finished, and his day's work went on as before.
November 26.—Thus, around the next glimpse of an exciting moment forty odd years ago, one has to imagine the November forenoon, raw, grey with pale fog, in which Bettesworth was at some pottering job or other, slow enough to make me ask if he were not cold; and so the talk gets started. No, he was not cold; he felt "niceand warm.... But yesterday,crawlin' about among that shrubbery after the dead leaves," his hands were very cold. Yesterday, I remembered then, had been a day of hard rimy frost, so that it had surprised me, I said, to see "one of Pearson's carmen" driving without gloves. Bettesworth looked serious.
"You'd have thought he'd have had gloves fordrivin'," he said. Then, meditatively, "I don't think oldWellsdrives for Pearsons much now, do he? You very often sees somebody else out with his horse. He bin with 'em a smart many years. He went there same time as I lef' Brown's. That was in 1860. Pearsons sent across the street for me to go on for they, but I'd agreed with Cooper the builder, you know."
From amidst a confusion of details that followed, about Cooper's business, and where he got his harness, and so on, the fact emerged that the builder had the use of a stable in Brown's premises, which explains how Bettesworth's former master makes his appearance on the scene presently. For Bettesworth had still to work at this stable, though for a new employer.
"Cooper had a little cob when I went on for 'n. His father give it to 'n—or no, 'twas the harness his father give 'n. One o' these little Welsh rigs. Spiteful little card he was. I knocked 'n down wi' the prong seven times one mornin'. When I went in to the stable he kicked up, and the manure an' litter went in here, what he'd kicked up. In here."Bettesworth thrust forward his old stubbly chin, and pointed into the neck-band of his shirt.
I said, "There would have been no talks for me with Bettesworth if he had touched you!"
"No. He'd have killed me. I ketched up the fust thing I could see, an' that was the prong, and 't last I was afraidI'dkilledhe. A bad-tempered little card he was, though. They beworsethan an intire 'orse.... They be worse than an intire'orse."
He was dropping into meditation, standing limply with drooping arms, and fixing an absent-minded look upon his job. For his memory was straying among the circumstances of forty years ago. Then suddenly he straightened up again and continued,
"While I'd got the prong, Brown heard the scufflin', and come runnin' down. 'What the plague's up now?' he says. 'I dunno,' I says; 'I shall either kill 'n or conquer 'n.' ... But hewasa bad-tempered one. He wouldn't let ye go into the stable to do 'n. I had to get 'n out and tie his head to a ring in the wall, high up, an' then I could pay 'n as I mind to. Brown says at last, 'That's enough;' he says, 'I won't have it.' But Cooper says, 'You let 'n do as he likes.' And I says, 'If I don't have my own way with 'n, you'll have to do 'n yourself.' But agoodlittle thing on the road, ye know. Quiet! And wouldn't touch no vittles nor drink away from home, drive 'n where you mind. Never was a better little thing to go. I think Cooper give eighteen or twenty pound for 'n. But anastylittle customer—wouldn'tlet ye go near 'n in the stable. They jockeys thoughttheywas goin' to have 'n. They all said they thought he'd be a rum 'n, and so he was, too.
"One time Mrs. Cooper come into the yard with a green silk dress on, and he put his head round and grabbed it" (near the waist, to judge by Bettesworth's gesture), "and tore out a great piece—a yard or more. Do what I would, I couldn't help laughin', though she was a testy sort o' woman. And she did fly about, the servant said, when she went indoors.
"But I thought I'd killed 'n that time with the prong. Sweat, he did, and bellered like a bull; and 't last I give 'n one on the head. I made sure I'd killed 'n.Iwas afraid, then. I thought I'd hit too hard. And I sweat as much as he did then."
December 2, 1901.—In view of the hatred in which Bettesworth had previously held the workhouse infirmary, and which he was destined to renew later, it is interesting to observe how favourably the place impressed him about this time, when he visited a friend there.
The friend, whom I will rename "Tom Loveland," had been taken to the infirmary in October, suffering with the temporary increase of some obscure chronic disorder which to this day cripples him. Bettesworth had gone to see him on Sunday afternoon, December 1, in company with Harriett Loveland, the man's wife.
The patient still lay there, "on his back," I heard on the Monday.
"On Saturday they took off the poultices. Seven weeks they bin poulticin' of 'n; but Saturday the doctor thought there was 'a slight change.' But, law!" Bettesworth continued, in scorn of the doctor's opinion, "they abscesses 'll keep comin'."
"There was two more died, up there in that same room where he is, o' Saturday." This made six deaths since Loveland's admission. "One of 'emwas a man I used to know very well—that 'ere Jack Grey that used to do" so-and-so at where-is-it. "They sent for his wife, an' she got there jest two minutes afore he died. Loveland says, 'I tucked my head down under the blankets when I see 'em bring in the box' (the coffin) 'for 'n.' 'What, did ye think he was for you, Tom?' I says. But he always was a meek-hearted feller: never had no nerve."
But it was in the appointments of the place where Loveland lay that Bettesworth was chiefly interested. He was almost enthusiastic over the whiteness of the sheets, the beeswaxed floor ("like glass to walk on. I says to Harriet, 'You must take care you don't slip up'"), the little cupboards ("lockers, they calls 'em") beside each bed; the nurse, who "seemed to be a pleasant woman;" the daily attendance of the medical men; and other advantages. All these things persuaded Bettesworth that the patients were "better off up there than what they would be at home." And out in the grounds, "You'd meet two old women, perhaps, walkin' along together; and then, a little further on, some old men," which all appeared to be very satisfactory.
Were there any circumstances to give offence? Yes: "There's that Gunner, what used to live up the lane, struttin' about there, like Lord Muck, in his fine slippers. He's a wardsman. And Bill Lucas, too." (This latter is a man who lost good work and a pension by giving way to drink.) "Hebooks ye in an' books ye out. 'I s'pose this is yourestate?' I says to 'n." In fact, Bettesworth would seem to have been publicly sarcastic at this man's expense; and other visitors, I gathered, laughed at hearing him. "'You be better able to work than what I be,' I says; 'and yet we got to keep ye. It never ought to be allowed.'"
To those in the infirmary "You may take anything you mind to, except spirits or beer. Tea, or anything like that, they may have brought." And so Bettesworth, having gone unprepared, gave Loveland a shilling, "to get anything he fancied."
As yet Bettesworth's cottage by the stream still suited him fairly well, but he had not lived there for two years without finding out that it had disadvantages. Of these perhaps the worst was that the owner was himself only a cottager—an old impoverished man who never came near the place, and was unable to spend any money on repairing it. Difficulties were therefore arising, as I learnt one Monday morning. The reader will observe the day of the week.
December 9, 1901.—"Didn't it rain about four o'clock this mornin'!" Bettesworth began, with an emphasis which provoked me to question whether the rainfall had amounted to a great deal, after all. But he insisted: "There must ha' bin a smartish lot somewhere. The lake's full o' water, down as far as Mrs. Skinner's. When the gal come after the rent yesterday...."
This day being Monday, I exclaimed at his "yesterday." Did he mean it?
"Yes, they always comes Sundays. She says, 'Gran'father told me I was to look to see whether you'd cleaned out the lake in front of the cottage.'"
In fact, a fortnight previously a message from the owner had reached Bettesworth requesting him to do this. The answer given then was repeated now: "You tell your gran'father he may come an' do it hisself. I shan't."
"'Oh,' she says" (I continue in Bettesworth's words), "'Mr. Mardon'" (the tenant of the next cottage) "'said he'd do some.'"
"'He may come and do this if he mind to,' I says. ''Twon't floodme.'" Mardon's cottage was certainly in danger of flooding, should there come prolonged rain.
"Then I said to her, 'How about our well, then? We en't had no water ever since I spoke to you 'bout it before.'
"'Oh,' she says, 'they come an' looked at the well Saturday. But gran'father says 't 'll cost too much. 'T 'll want a lot o' bricks an' things. If he has it done, he says he'll have to put up your rent—yours and Mr. Mardon's—'cause you be the only two as pays anything. En't it a shame?' she says. 'There's that old Mileham—he earns good money every week, and never pays a ha'penny.'"
At this point I foolishly interrupted, and being told how Mileham "won't pay, and poor old Mrs. Connor, she en'tgotit to pay," I interrupted again, not understanding.
"Hasn'tgotit to pay? How do you mean?"
"Why, whathaveshe got, sir? All the time her husband was alive, drawin' his pension, the rent waspaid up every pension day. But now she en't got nothin' comin' in, and that lout of a boy of hers don't do nothin'. So there's only me and Mardon pays any rent."
I laughed. "It's a fine encouragement to you to be asked to pay more."
"Yes. I says to her, 'Then we two got to pay for four? You tell your gran'father he may put it up, but I shan't pay no more for this old hutch. And I shan't pay what I do, as soon as I can find another place to go to. If he mind to let we get the well done, and we take it out o' the rent,' I says, 'I'll agree to that. Not pay no more rent till we've took it all out.' But she wouldn't say nothin' to that. Or else generally she got plenty o' gab."
"Who is she?" I asked.
"He's grand-daughter.... That young Mackenzie was her father. She've got plenty o' gab. 'You 'alf-bred Scotch people,' I says to her sometimes, 'talks too much.' I tells her of it sometimes. She don't like me."
It seemed unlikely that Bettesworth would long continue to be a tenant under such a landlord. The change, however, was not to come yet.
As yet, indeed, difficulties like these were but trivial incidents of the life in which Bettesworth continued to take an interest as virile as ever. He had dealt with landlords before, and had no qualms now. It might be that the great strength of his prime was gone, but his health seemed unimpaired,and I believe he still felt master of his fate as he went quietly about his daily work.
It is true that my very next note of him contains evidence of a digestive weakness which, having not much troubled him hitherto, though he had always been subject to it, was growing upon him, and beginning to undermine his forces. But it was for another reason—because of a curious word he used—that I then recorded what he told me.
The entry in my journal, bearing still the date December 9, is to the effect that "on Friday afternoon" a horrid pain took him right through the midriff, from front to back. "I begun to think I was goin' to croak," he said afterwards, when telling me about it. "And I reached, and the sheer-water run out o' my eyes an' mouth. I didn't know where to go for an hour or more, I was in that pain. I 'xpect 'twas stoopin' down over my work brought it on. I'd had a hot dinner, ye see—bit o' pickled pork an' pa'snips. And then stoopin' down.... But that sheer-water—you knows what I means—run out o' my mouth." I did not know what he meant, until the next day, when I asked how he felt. He was "all right," but, repeating the story, said, "and the water run out o' my mouth, jest like boilin' water."
During the last year or two of his life I think he seldom went a week without a recurrence of this pain of indigestion, the disorder being doubtless aggravated by the breakdown of his domestic arrangements.But this is looking too far ahead. At the period which now concerns us, he was far from thinking of himself as an invalid. He could joke about his passing indispositions as he could defy his landlord. This particular attack, unless I am much mistaken, was the subject of a flippancy I remember his repeating to me. A neighbour looking in upon him and seeing his serious condition said genially, "You ben't goin' to die, be ye, Freddy?" And he answered, "I dunno. Shouldn't care if I do. 'Tis a poor feller as can't make up his mind to die once. If we had to die two or three times, then there might be something to fret about." In relating this to me, he added more seriously, "But nobody dunnowhen, that's the best of it."
Knowing now how his attitude changed towards death when it was really near, I can see in this sturdy defiance the evidence of the physical vigour he was still enjoying. There was no real cause for fretting about himself, any more than about his affairs; and so he went through this winter, garrulous and good-tempered, even happy in his way.
Accordingly, taking my notes in their due order, they bring before my mind, as I read them again now, pleasant pictures of the old man. I can see him at work, or taking his wages, or starting for the town; often the very weather and daylight around him come back to me; and the chief loss is in his voice-tones, which I cannot by any effort of memory recover.
December 10, 1901.—One such mind-picture dates from December 10. The short winter afternoon was already closing in, with a mist—the forerunner of rain—enveloping the garden between the bare-limbed trees. Over our heads sounded the roar of wind in a little fir-wood; but down under the oak-trees by the well, where Bettesworth was digging, there was shelter and stillness, or only the slight trembling of a few leaves not yet fallen. It was "nice and warm," he assured me, and then paused—himself a dusky-looking old figure in the oncoming dusk—to ask, whom did I think he had seen go down the lane just now? It was no other than his former neighbour, "old Jack Morris's widow."
And once again his talk shows how far he was, that afternoon, from thinking of himself as an infirm person, or an object of pity. I am struck by the contrast between his later view of things and this which he professed, when still in good health. For, speaking appreciatively of Widow Morris as "thecleanestold soul as ever lived," he went on to say that, though he did not know what she was doing at that time, she had been in the workhouse. It puzzled him how she lived, and others like her. And when I said, "She ought to be in the workhouse," he echoed the opinion emphatically. "Betteroff there than what they be at home, sir." So with Mrs. Connor. "It's a mystery how she lives. And there's that son of hers, mungs about with a short pipe stuck in hismouth," and by sheer idleness had lost several jobs, at which he might have been earning eleven shillings a week. "And that poor gal, he's sister, got to starve herself to keep her mother and that lout. Cert'nly, she ought to keep her mother," but, for the lout, Bettesworth's politer vocabulary was insufficient.
So we talked in the gathering winter dusk, able, both of us, in the assurance of the comfortable evening before us, to consider the workhouse as a refuge with which neither of us would ever make personal acquaintance. If I was unimaginative and therefore callous, so was Bettesworth. It was he who said, "I reckons that's what they places be for—old people past work, and little helpless childern." But as to the able-bodied, "That stoneyard's the place for they,I'd put it on to 'em, so's it 'd give 'em sore hearts, if it didn't sore hands."
And then he told of a tramp—a carpenter—who had earned his tenpence an hour, and now was using workhouses to lodge in at night, while all day he was "munging about" (or "doing a mung"), cadging a few halfpence for beer.
"And that 'ere bloke down near we, he's another of 'em. Earns eightpence-halfpenny, and his son sixpence. But they gets it all down 'em." They had not paid Mrs. Skinner for the pork obtained from her the previous week; indeed, they paid nobody. "Never got nothing, and yet there's only they two and the old woman."
What a contrast were these wasters—that was the idea of Bettesworth's talk—with those two poor old widow women, whom he could afford to pity in his strength and comfort!
December 24.—The next note brings us to Christmas Eve. The weather on the preceding day had changed from rimy frost to tempestuous rain, which at nightfall began to be mingled with snow. By his own account Bettesworth went to bed soon after seven, although even his wife urged that it was too early, and that he would never lie till morning. He had heard the tempest, and the touch of the snow against his bedroom window, and so had his wife. It excited her. "Ben't ye goin' to look out at it?" she said. And he, "That won't do me no good, to look at it. We got a good fire in here."
Such was his own chuckling account of his attitude towards the storm when I stood by him the next morning high up in the garden, and watched him sweeping the path. He discussed the prospects for the day, rejoiced that the snow had not lain, and, looking keenly to the south, where a dun-coloured watery cloud was travelling eastwards, its edges melting into luminous mist and just hiding the sun, he thought we might expect storms. The old man's spirits were elated; and then it was, when the western end of the valley suddenly lit up as with a laugh of spring sunlight,and the radiance came sweeping on and broke all round us—then it was that Bettesworth, as I have elsewhere[1]related, stood up to give the sunshine his glad welcome.