XXX

Christmas was approaching near—was "buckin' up," as Bettesworth quaintly phrased it; and that it contributed to the melancholy of his existence will easily be understood. It is nowhere mentioned in my book, but a remorse was beginning to haunt him, for having let his wife be taken away to the infirmary, to die there. "I done it for the best, poor old dear," I remember his saying several times; "but it hurts me to think I let her go." In the long evenings before Christmas, alone in his cottage and unable to pass time by reading, he had too much time for brooding over his loss.

The nights as well as the evenings were probably too long for him, and I make no question that his happiest hours were those he spent at work, when he could forget himself and still talk cheerfully. Thus there is quite a gleam of cheerfulness in the following instructive fragment, of the 17th of December.

December 17, 1904.—"When the wind blowed up in the night I thought 'twas rain. I got out an' went to the winder—law! 'twas dark! But the winder an' all seemed as dry!"

"What time was that?"

"I dunno, sir."

"The moon must have been down?"

"Yes, the moon was down."

"Then it must have been getting on for morning."

"I dunno.... But I'd smoked two pipes o' baccer before Kid called me. I have smoked some baccer since I bin livin' there alone. The last half-pound I had is purty well all gone; and 'tent the day for another lot afore Monday." (This was Saturday.) "But I shall ha' to get me some more to-night. Why, that's quarter of a pound a week!

"Old Kid says, 'Don't it make ye dry?' this smoking. 'No,' I says, 'that" (namely, to drink) "en't no good.' Kid don't smoke. Reg'lar old-fashioned card, he is. 'Ten't many young men you'll see like 'n. But he's as reg'lar in his habits as a old married man. Ay, and he's as good, too. 'T least, he's as good to me. So they both be."

"Isn't he to his mother?"

"Ah! an' she to him. No woman couldn't look after a baby better. Every night as soon as he's home and ready to sit down, there's his supper on the table. 'Supper's ready, Kid,' she says. 'So's yourn too, Freddy,' she says to me. 'Ah,' I says, 'Wait a bit, Nanny, till my kettle's boilin'.' Because I always has tea along o' my supper. Kid, he don't have his till after; but I likes mine with my supper. So I tells her to put it in the oven till I'm ready. Cert'nly, my little kettle don't take long to boil. But I shall ha' to get me quarter of a ton o' coal, soon as Chris'mas is over."

A faint memory, for which I have had to grope, restores a mention by Bettesworth of three glasses of grog to which he treated Kid Norris and himself and old Nanny. Perhaps this was at Christmas time; at any rate I am not aware that the season was brightened for him by any other celebration. It passed, and the New Year came in, and still he was living the same broken life, yet telling rather of the few pleasures it contained than of its desolation. I am sure he did not mean to let me know that he was being constantly reminded of his wife, yet the next conversation gives reason to suppose that such was the case.

January 10, 1905.—He had spent two vigorous days in cutting down and sawing into logs an old plum-tree, and grubbing out its roots. That was a job which he might still be left to do without supervision; but I had to assist, when it came to planting a young tree in the vacant space. A pear-tree, this new one was; and he asked, "Was it a 'William' pear?" It was a Doyenne du Comice, I said. His shrug showed that he did not get hold of the name at all, and I fancied him a little contemptuous of such outlandishness; so I added that I had seen some of the pears in a fruiterer's window, and wished to grow the like for myself.

"Ah"—the suggestion was enough. He wondered if that was the sort he had bought for his "poor old gal"; and then he told again how he had given three halfpence apiece for pears to take to her at the infirmary, and would have given sixpence rather than go without them. "And then the poor old gal never tasted 'em.... She wa'n't up there long.... That Blackman what drove the fly that took her ast me about her t'other day. He didn't know" (that she was dead), "or he said he didn't. 'She was only up there three days,' I said. Since then, he've took old Mrs. Cook—Jerry's mother.... Jerry kep' her as long as he could, but 't last she 'ad to go. Yes, he stuck to 'er as long as he could, Jerry did. None o' the others didn't, ye see.... But he had money: there was two hunderd pound, so they said, when his wife's mother died, and nobody couldn't make out what become of it exactly. But Jerry had some, an' purty soon got rid of it. Purty near killed 'n. 'Fore he'd done with it he couldn't stoop to tie up his shoelaces, he was got that bloaty.... I reckon he bides down there by hisself, now."

In that he resembled Bettesworth, then. I asked if Jerry had no wife.

"She died about two year ago. Poor thing—she'd bin through everything; bin to hospitals and all." It was one hop-picking, about nine years ago, and just after she was married, that "they was larkin' about—jest havin' a bit o' fun, ye know; there wasn't no spite in it—and one of 'em swished her right across the eye with a hop-bine.... I s'pose 'twas something frightful, afore she died; 't had eat right into her head."

The old man pondered over the horror, then continued, "There must be something poisonous about hop-bine. Same as with a ear o' corn. How many you sees have lost an eye by an ear o' corn swishin' into it! En't you ever heard of it? I've knowed it, many's a time. There was" (I forget whom he named)—"it jest flicked 'n across the sight, and he went purty near mad wi' the pain of it. Oats is the worst. Well, as you knows, oats is so thin, 't'll stick to the eyeball purty near like paper.... But I'd sooner cut oats than any other; it cuts so sweet. That was always my favourite corn to cut. Cert'nly I en't never had no accident with it. Barley cuts sweet, but 't en't like oats."

The next day's chatter gives one more touch to the picture of Bettesworth's pleasant intercourse with his neighbours at this period. Apropos of nothing at all the old man began his story.

January 11, 1905.—"When I went home last night I see my door was open; but I never went in, because you knows I had to go on further to take that note for you. But after I'd done that I come back same way, and then I see a light in the winder. 'Hullo!' I says to myself. 'What's up now, then?' So I pushed on; and when I got indoors there was old Nanny—she'd made up my fire an' biled my kettle, an' was gettin' my dinner ready. Ah, an' she'd bin upstairs, too: she'd scrubbed it out—all the rooms; and she says, 'I've made yer bed too, Fred....' But I give her a shillin', so she can't go about sayin' she done all this for me for nothin'. She en't got nothin' to complain of. Besides, 't wants a scrub out now an' again. Not as 'twas anyways dirty, 'cause t'en't. She said so herself. 'If it's a fine day to-morrer, Fred, I'll come an' scrub your floors out for ye: 't'll do 'em good. Not as they be dirty,' she says; 'I see 'em myself, so I knows....' Well, so she did. She come in last week, and hung my new curtains.... I've had new curtains" (little muslin blinds) "to the winders, upstairs an' down—I bought 'em week afore last—and ol' Nan 've made 'em an' put 'em up for me. No mistake she is a one to work! Works as hard as any young gal—and she between seventy an' eighty."

I said, "Yes, she's one of the right sort, is Nanny."

"One o' the right sort for me. 'Tis to be hoped nothin' 'll ever happen to she!"

Such were the makeshift, yet not altogether unhappy domestic, conditions by which Bettesworth was enabled for a little while to maintain his independence, and carry on the obstinate and now hopeless struggle to earn a living for himself. He was a man with work to do, and with the will to do it, as yet. On this same eleventh of January we may picture him forming one of a curious group of the working men of the parish, who gathered in a rainy dawn on a high piece of the road, and looked apprehensively at the weather. "I thought," Bettesworth told me afterwards, "we was in for a reg'lar wild day; and so did a good many more. The men didn't like startin'.... I come out to the cross-roads 'long of old Kid, and he said he didn't hardly know what to think about it. And while we stood there, Ben Fowler come along. 'I don't hardly know what to make of it,' he says. And then some more come. There was a reg'lar gang of 'em; didn't like to go away. Well, a man don't like to set off for a day's work an' get wet through afore he begins."

January 17.—Not many more days of work, however, were to be added to the tale of Bettesworth's laborious years. On the 17th of January it appears that he was still going on, for old Nanny seen at an unaccustomed hour on the road, spoke of him as getting about with difficulty. This is what she said, in her gruff, quick, scolding voice: "I couldn't git to the town fust thing, 'twas so slippery. Bettesworth said he couldn't git down our steps this mornin', so I bin chuckin' sand over 'em. Don't want ol' Freddy to break his leg.... All up there by Granny Fry's the childern gets slidin,' an' makes it ten times wuss than what 'twas afore, an' the more you says to 'm the wuss they be."

With this last glimpse of him fumbling painfully on the slippery pathway, we finish our acquaintance with Bettesworth's working life.