XXXVI
March 21, 1905.—There being no definite news of Bettesworth since he crept away that day, this afternoon I knocked at the door of Jack Bettesworth's cottage, where he is staying. Presently the old man himself opened to me. His cheeks were flushed and feverish. He led the way indoors, saying that he was all alone; and as we settled down (he still wearing his cap) I remarked that he did not seem to be "up to much," and he replied that I was right; "I got this here pleurisy, and armonium or something 'long with it." He had got up from bed, quite recently, to rest for an hour or two.
He had seen the club doctor—Jack had fetched him on Sunday—"and you couldn't wish for a pleasanter gentleman. He sounded me all over," and sent out a plaster which "I'm wearin' now," Bettesworth said, "like one o' they poor-man's plasters." This reminded him of a similar one he had once had, of which he said that he "wore 'n for six months"; and truly the old-fashioned "poor-man's plaster" was always alleged to be unremovable. Once properly plastered, the patient had to earn his name and wait until the thing should wear or "rot off," as Bettesworth phrased it. How this six-months' plaster—right round his waist, and "wide as a leather belt"—had been "gored" by his "old mother-in-law, or else 't'd ha' tore flesh and all off," I will not spend time in relating.
Bettesworth had caught this new cold, he supposed, waiting for "they old women" to come and pay him for his furniture; who did not come to the old cottage at the time appointed, and kept him standing about. Nor have they yet paid all.
Not unhappily, but comfortably, he looked up to the mantelpiece and said, "There's my old clock." I recognized the dingy old gabled mahogany case; and the tick sounded familiar, reminding me of the other rooms where I had heard it, and of the old wife who had been alive then. "Mrs. Smith had my other," said Bettesworth, "and she en't paid for 't yet. I shall have 'n back, if she don't. Jack persuaded me to go an' get 'n back last week. 'That's all right,' I says, 'only I can't get there.' He wanted to go instead of me, but I wouldn't have that. He might get sayin' more 'n what he ought. But I shall have the clock back if she don't pay."
There also was his old mirror—he spoke of it—looking homely over the mantelpiece; and I heard of a few pictures saved, which Jack had taken out of their frames, to clean the glass, and had put back again. It seemed to be comforting to the old man to have these relics of his married life still about him; and in the midst of them he himself looked very comfortable; for, as his back was to the light (he sat in a Windsor chair with arms), I could not see the flush on his face. So pleasant was it to find him at last beside a clean hearth, warm and tidy and well cared-for, that I could not refrain from congratulating him. Yes, he acknowledged his good fortune; he was swift to praise his niece. "She looks after me," he said warmly, "as well as if I was a child. I en't bin so comfortable since I dunno when." Perhaps never before in his life. "Before I was bad myself, there was the poor old gal. I went through something with she. When I was away at work, I was always wonderin' about her."
I had two shillings to hand over to him—the price obtained from his landlord for the cabbages left in the cottage garden; and in answer to inquiries as to his finances, he said that he had enough money to keep him going for a fortnight or so. But he was paying Jack for his board and lodging, and seemed fully alive to the desirability of continuing to do so.
On Sunday morning there had come to see him his sister-in-law from Middlesham, to whom he complained of a brother-in-law's indifference. The complaints were reiterated to me. "Dick en't never bin near so much as to ask how I was gettin' on. I told her he never come even to his poor old sister, till the night afore the funeral. And after all I've done for 'n, whenever he was in any trouble or wanted help hisself, I was always the fust one he sent for, if there was anything the matter with he, same as that time when he fell off the hayrick. Sent for me in the middle o' the night to go to the doctor's for 'n, when he'd got one of his own gals at home. It hurts me now, when I thinks of it sittin' here.... If he'd only jest come and say How do! But no...." We supposed that Dick feared lest he should be asked to give help in some way.
Pleurisy and pneumonia or not—it was hard to believe that he had suffered from either, yet he had got hold of the words somehow—Bettesworth was at no loss that afternoon for interesting subjects of conversation. An inquiry how his sister-in-law was faring led to a talk about her two sons, of whom one is out of work. The other, a basket-maker (blind or crippled, I do not know which) lives at home, and has just got a lot of work come in. "Mostly stock work," Bettesworth believed, "for some London firm he knows of." But besides this, he has a hundred stone jars from the brewery, to re-case with basket-work. The handles and bottoms are of cane, the rest "only skeleton work, as they calls it." Bettesworth always loved to know of technical things like this.
Odd it is, I suggested, how every trade has its own terms of speech. "Yes, and its own tools too," added Bettesworth; and with deep interest he spoke of the tools this basket-maker uses for splitting his canes, dividing them "as fine!" And the tools are "sharp as lancets; and every tool with a special name for it."
This reminded me to repeat to Bettesworth a similar account which a friend of mine had lately given me, and will publish, it may be hoped, of the Norfolk art of making rush collars. "Very nice smooth collars," Bettesworth murmured appreciatively. But when I proceeded to tell how the art is likely to die, because the few men who understand it keep their methods secret, this stirred him. "Same," he said, "as them Jeffreys over there t'other side o' Moorways, what used to make these little wooden bottles you remembers seein'. They'd never let nobody see how 'twas done. But I never heared tell of anybody else ever makin' 'em anywhere."
Yes, I remembered seeing these "bottles," like tiny barrels, slung at labouring men's backs when they trudged homewards, or lying with their clothes and baskets in the harvest-field or hop-garden. It was to the small bung-hole in the side that the thirsty labourer used to put his mouth, leaning back with the bottle above him. Whether the beer carried well and kept cool in these diminutive barrels I do not know; but certainly to the eye they had a rustic charm. So I could agree with Bettesworth's praises: "Purty little bottles they got to be at last—even with glass ends to 'em, and white hoops. They used to boil 'em in a copper—whether that was so's to bend the wood I dunno. Little ones from a pint up to three pints.... I had a three-pint one about somewheres, but I couldn't put my hand on 'n when I turned out t'other day. Eighteenpence was the price of a quart one—but they had iron hoops.... But they wouldn't let nobody see how they made 'em.... There was them blacksmiths over there, again—they wouldn't allow nobody to see how they finished a axe-head.
"These Jeffreys never done nothing else but make these bottles, and go mole-catchin'. Rare mole-catchers they was: earnt some good money at it, too. But they had to walk miles for it. You can understand, when the medders was bein' laid up for grass they had to cover some ground, to get all round in time. I've seen 'em come into a medder loaded up with a great bundle o' traps: an' then they'd begin putting' in the rods—'cause they was allowed to cut what rods they wanted for it, where-ever they was workin', and they knowed purty near where a mole 'd put his head up. 'Twas so much a field they got, from the farmer. I never knowed nobody else catch moles like they did, but they wouldn't show ye how they done it, or how they made their traps.
"There was a man name o' Murrell—Sonny Murrell we always used to call 'n—lived at Cashford. He was a very good mole-catcher. One time the moles started in down Culverley medders, right away from Old Mill to Culverley Mill—it looked as if they'd bin tippin' cart-loads o' rubbish all over the medders. I never see such a slaughter as that was, done by moles, in all my creepin's." (I think "creepin's" was the word Bettesworth used, but his voice had sunk very low just here, and I could as easily hear the clock as him.) "But they sent for Sonny. He was a clever old cock, in moles; they had to be purty 'cute to get round 'n—some did, though; you'll see how they'll push round a trap—but after he'd bin there a fortnight you couldn't tell as there'd bin any moles at all."
One other topic which we briefly touched upon must not be omitted. Before my arrival Bettesworth had crept out to the gate by the road, he was saying, tempted by the loveliness of the sunshine; and hearing of it, I warned him to have a care of getting out in this easterly wind. Ah, he said, we might expect east winds for the next three months now, for this was the 21st of March, and "where the wind is at twelve o'clock on the 21st of March, there she'll bide for three months afterwards." So he had once firmly held; and he mentioned the theory now, though apparently with little faith in it. For when I laughed, he said, "I've noticed it a good many times, and sometimes it have come right and sometimes it haven't. But that old Dick Furlonger was the one. He said he'd noticed it hunderds o' times. We used to terrify 'n about that, afterwards—'cause he was a man not more 'n fifty; and we used to tease 'n, so's he'd get up an' walk out o' the room."