XXVIII
Shutting his mouth doggedly, Bettesworth went back to his cottage, to live alone there with his cat. There had been some talk of his going into lodgings; but after all, this was still his home. Should he once give it up, he reasoned, and dispose of his furniture, it would be impossible ever again to form a home of his own, however much he might desire to do so. To live with neighbours might be very well; yet how if he and they should disagree? He would have burnt his boats; he would be unable to resume his independence. Better were it, then, to keep while he still had it a place where he was his own master, and take the risk of being lonely.
For some seven weeks after the wife's funeral there is next to nothing to be told of him. I find that I am unable to remember anything about him for that period, unless it was then—and it could not have been much later—that he renewed some of his household goods, and amongst them his mattress, being visited apparently by a wish to regain the character for cleanliness which had been lost in his wife's time. It must have been then also that he first talked of buying muslin for blinds to his windows. It is further certain that he chatted a great deal about his next-door neighbours—the Norrises, mother and son, upon whose society he was now chiefly dependent; but of all this not a syllable remains, nor is there any dimmest picture in my memory of what the old man did, or even how he looked, in those seven weeks.
November 22, 1904.—At the end of them, on a raw morning in November, amid our struggles to heave out of the ground a huge shrub we were transplanting, it was remarkable how strong Bettesworth seemed, because of the cunning use he made of every ounce of force in his experienced old muscles. How to lift, and how to support a weight, were things he knew as excellently as some know how to drive a golf-ball. Nor was my theory quite so good as his experience, for showing where our skids and levers should be placed. It was Bettesworth who got them into the serviceable positions.
Something about those skids set us talking of other skidding work, and especially of the extremely tricky business of loading timber on a trolly. "I see a carter once," said Bettesworth, "get three big elm-trees up on to a timber-carriage, with only hisself and the hosses. He put the runnin' chains on and all hisself."
"And that takes some doing," I said.
"Yes, a man got to understand the way 'tis done.... I never had much hand in timber-cartin' myself; but this man.... 'Twas over there on the Hog's Back, not far from Tongham Station. We all went out for to see 'n do it—'cause 'twas in the dinner-time he come, and we never believed he'd do it single-handed. The farmer says to 'n, 'You'll never get they up by yourself.' 'I dessay I shall,' he says; and so he did, too. Three great elm-trees upon that one carriage.... Well, he had a four-hoss team, so that'll tell ye what 'twas. They was some hosses, too. Ordinary farm hosses wouldn't ha' done it. But he only jest had to speak, and you'd see they watchin' him.... When he went forward, after he'd got the trees up, to see what sort of a road he'd got for gettin' out, they stood there with their heads stretched out and their ears for'ard. 'Come on,' he says, and away they went, tearin' away. Left great ruts in the road where the wheels went in—that'll show ye they got something to pull."
We got our shrub a little further, Bettesworth grunting to a heavy lift; then, in answer to a question:
"No, none o' we helped 'n. We was only gone out to see 'n do it. He never wanted no help. He didn't say much; only 'Git back,' or 'Git up,' to the hosses. When it come to gettin' the last tree up, on top o' t'other two, I never thought he could ha' done it. But he got 'n up. And he was a oldish man, too: sixty, I dessay he was. But he jest spoke to the hosses. Never used no whip, 'xcept jest to guide 'em. Didn't the old farmer go on at his own men, too! 'You dam fellers call yerselves carters,' he says; 'a man like that's worth a dozen o' you.' Well, they couldn't ha' done it. A dozen of 'em 'd ha' scrambled about, an' then not done it! Besides, their hosses wouldn't. But this feller—the old farmer says to 'n, 'I never believed you'd ha' done it.' 'I thought mos' likely I should,' he says. But he never had much to say."
Sleet showers were falling, and a north wind was roaring through the fir wood on top of the next hill while we worked. Dropping into the vernacular, "I don't want to see no snow," said I. "No," responded Bettesworth, "it's too white for me." "January," I went on, "is plenty soon enough for snow to think about comin'." "April," he urged. "Ah well, April," I laughed; and he, "Let it wait till there's a warm sun to get rid of it 's fast as it comes."
Then he continued, "That rain las' night come as a reg'lar su'prise to me. I was sittin' indoors by my fire smokin'—I 'ave got rid o' some baccer lately—and old Kid went up the garden. He see my light, and hollered out, 'It don't half rain!' 'Let it rain,' I says. I was in there as comfortable...."
In the next night but one a little snow fell, enough to justify our forecast and no more; and then we had frost, and garden work could hardly go on. I was meaning to lay turf over a plot of ground where the shrubs had stood; but the work had to wait: the frozen turfs could not be unrolled.
Bettesworth did not like the weather. I have told of those steps connecting his cottage with the road. They were slippery now, and the handrail to them was icy when he clutched it, coming down in the dark of the mornings. At the bottom of the steps, before the road is reached, there is a steep path, commonly known as "Granny Fry's." Boys were sliding there after breakfast, and they called out to Bettesworth, "Be you roughed, Master Bettesworth?" According to his tale, he spoke angrily: "''Tis you ought to be roughed,' I says; 'you ought to be roughed over the bank. You be old enough to know better.' And so they be, too. They be biggish boys; and anybody goin' there might easy fall down and break their back—'specially after dark."
When he came back from his dinner, he said, "Somebody 've bin an' qualified old Granny Fry's." How? "Oh, somebody 've chucked some dirt over where they boys had made it so slippery."
He was obliged to admit, though, that in his own boyhood he had been as careless as any of these. And a few minutes later he was confessing to another boyish fault. In a cottage hard by, little Timothy Porter—a chubby little chap about five years old—was on very friendly terms with old Bettesworth. He had but lately started his schooling, and almost immediately was taken unwell and had to stay at home a week or two. I happened now to ask Bettesworth how little Tim was getting on.
"Oh, he's gettin' all right: goin' to school again Monday. He've kicked up a rare shine, 'cause they wouldn't let 'n go. I likes 'n for that. I likes to hear of a boy eager for learnin'—not to see 'm make a shine and their mothers have to take 'em three parts o' the way. Not but what I wanted makin' when I was a nipper. Many's a time I've clucked up to a tree jest this side o' Cowley Bridge, and that old 'oman" (I don't know what old woman) "come out an' drive me. There wa'n't no school then nearer 'n Lyons's—where Smith the wheelwright lives now. He used to travel with tea, and I dessay half a dozen of us 'd come to his school from Cowley Bridge. We'd start off an' say we wouldn't go to school; but we 'ad to."
The frost, had it continued, would very soon have been calamitous to the working people. As it was, I saw bricklayers—good men known to me, and neighbours, too—standing idle in the town, at the street corners. And Bettesworth said,
"Some o' the shop-keepers down in the town begun to cry out about it. They missed the Poor Man. And I heared the landlord down 'ere at the Swan say he was several pounds out o' pocket by it."
December 2, 1904.—Fortunately it was not to last. The men got to work again; our gardening tasks could go forward. My notebook has this entry for the 2nd of December:
"Laying turf this afternoon, in wonderful mild dry weather."