I shall revert to this presently. For the moment I stop to gather up some stray sentences of Bettesworth's which, perhaps, indicate how unlikely he was to accommodate himself to new circumstances.
The purchaser of Mrs. Skinner's cottage was a man named Kelway—a curious, nondescript person, as to whose "derivings" we speculated in vain. What had he been before he came here? No one ever discovered that, but his behaviour was that of an artisan from near London—a plasterer or a builder's carpenter—who had come into a little money. I remember his telling me jauntily on one occasion that he should not feel settled until he had brought home his American organ (I was heartily glad that it never came!), and on another that he had made "hundreds of wheelbarrows" in his time, which I thought unlikely; and I cannot forget—for there are signs of it to this day—how ruthlessly he destroyed the natural contours of his garden with ill-devised "improvements." He pulled out the interior partitions of the cottage, too, wearing while at the work the correct garb of a plasterer; and it was in this costume that he annoyed Bettesworth by his patronizing familiarity. "He says to me" (thus Bettesworth), "'I suppose you don't know who I am in my dirty dishabille?' 'No,' I says, 'and if I tells the truth, I don't care nuther.' He's dirty dishabille!... He got too much old buck for me!" Shortly afterwards he asked Bettesworth to direct him to a good plumber. "'I can do everything else,' he says, 'but plumbing is a thing I never had any knowledge of.' So I says, 'If I was you I should sleep with a plumber two or three nights.'"
January 27, 1903.—Again, in the end of January, Bettesworth reported: "That man down here ast me about peas—what sort we gets, an' so on." (Remember that he had nearly an acre of ground.) "So I told 'n, and he says, 'What do they run to for price?' 'Oh, about a shillin' a quart,' I says; and that's what they do run to. 'I must have half a pint,' he says. I bust out laughin' at 'n. An' he says he must have a load o' manure, too! He must mind he don't overdo it! I was obliged to laugh at 'n."
Of course, such a neighbour would in no circumstances have pleased Bettesworth. I believe the man had many estimable qualities, but they were dwarfed beside his own appreciation of them; and his subsequent disappointments, which ultimately led to his withdrawal from the neighbourhood, were not of the kind to engage Bettesworth's sympathy. Indeed, he had no chance of approval in that quarter, coming in the place of old Mrs. Skinner, with her peasant lore and her pigs.
But if this egregious man was personally offensive to Bettesworth, he was not intrinsically more strange to the old man than those who followed him or than others who were settling in the parish. There were to be no more Mrs. Skinners. Wherever one of the old country sort of people dropped out from our midst, people of urban habits took their place. These were of two classes: either wealthy people of leisure, seeking residences, and bringing their own gardeners who wanted homes, or else mechanics from the neighbouring town, ready to pay high rents for the cottages whose value was so swiftly rising. The stealthiness of the process blinded us, however, to what was happening. When Bettesworth began, as he did now, to feel the pressure of civilization pushing him out, neither he nor I understood the situation.
Right and left, property was changing hands. A big house in the next hollow, but with its grounds overpeering this, had been bought by a wealthy resident, and was under repair, already let to some friends of his. There went with it in the same estate the hill-side opposite this garden, with two or three cottages visible from here; and everybody rejoiced when the disreputable tenants of one of these cottages had notice to quit. It was hoped that the new owner was sensible of the duties as well as the rights attaching to property.
Meanwhile, Bettesworth's hovel, too, was in the market, the landlord of it being lately dead; and in the market it remained, while Bettesworth clamoured in vain for repairs. At last he gave up hope. By the beginning of 1903 he had resolved to quit his old cottage as soon as he could find another to go into.
He waited still some weeks, however—property was valuable, cottages were eagerly sought after—and then what seemed a golden opportunity arose. The cottage with the disreputable tenants has been mentioned, adjoining the grounds of the big house. It must have been early in February when the whisper that it was to be vacant reached Bettesworth, who forthwith announced to me his intention of applying for it. Too big, perhaps too good, for him and his wife I may have thought the place; but there was no other in the neighbourhood to be heard of, and it was not only for its pleasantness that the old man coveted it. With his wife there he would be able to keep watch over her while he was at work here, and there would be almost an end to those anxieties about her fits, which often made him half afraid to go home. I remember the secrecy of his talk. He wanted no one to forestall him. The thing was urgent; and I had no hesitation in writing a recommendation of him as a desirable tenant, which he forthwith took to the owner. Why, indeed, should I have hesitated? Between Bettesworth's punctiliousness on such matters and my own intention of helping him if need be, there was no fear as to the payment of the rent. And the improvements he had made to that place down by the stream argued well for the care he would take of this better cottage.
My recommendation did its work. Bettesworth was duly accepted as tenant; he gave notice to leave the other place, and began preparations for moving; and then, too late, it dawned upon me that perhaps I had made a mistake. I had forgotten old Mrs. Bettesworth. I had not set eyes on her for months; for much longer I had not been inside her dwelling, to see the state it was in. I only knew that outside the walls were whitewashed, the garden and paths orderly.
The first doubts visited me when I saw that repairs to the new abode were being done on a scale too extravagant to fit the Bettesworths. The next resulted from an inspection I made of the cottage at Bettesworth's desire. He was beyond measure proud to have a place into which he could invite me without shame; and he took me all over it, and described to me his plans for improving the garden, without suspicion of anything amiss. Probably his eyes were too dim to see what I saw. Some of his furniture, already heaped on the floor in one of the clean new-papered rooms, had a sooty, cobwebby look that filled me with forebodings of trouble. However, it was too late to withdraw. There was no going back to that abandoned place down in the valley. There was nothing to do but hope for the best.