There was another reason, too, to restrain him. It brings us swiftly back for a moment from war incidents 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't goin' 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—which the 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 their nature, 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.
IX
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 it had 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."