But these nights, in which he does not go to bed! His ankles and calves get the cramp, for he seems not to have thought, so little practice has he had in making himself comfortable, of resting his feet on another chair, while he is lying back in the easy-chair downstairs.... He has gone home now, to make up a fire and get what rest he may. "But then," he says, "she'll holler out, an' I got to run." He told me again how she "fell out o' bed flump" last night, and he stormed upstairs and found her on the floor, for "she didn't know how to get in again, not no more'n a cuckoo."
The group of cottages where he lives stands high above the road, which is reached by steps roughly cut into the steep bank. On one of these recent nights, having gone down the steps meaning to buy his wife sixpennyworth of brandy, Bettesworth felt in his trousers pocket for the shilling he had put there, and—it was gone. "Oh, I was in a way! I went back, an' crawled all up they steps, feelin' for it," the hour being eight o'clock, and moonlight. "As I went past old Kiddy's, I called out to 'n, 'Kid!', 'cause I wanted to tell 'n what trouble I was in, and I knowed he'd ha' come and helped me to find 'n, if he'd bin about. But he was gone to bed, 'cause he starts off so early in the mornin'." Thus the old man got back home, disconsolate, without the necessary brandy for his wife; and, calling upstairs to her, "Lou, I've lost that shillin'," he began to prepare for his night in the easy-chair. But, first feeling in his pocket once more, he discovered there (fruits of his wife's incapacity) "a hole," he said, "I could put my finger through."
He pulled up his trouser legs to the knee, "because I always ties my garters up above the knee," and, with his foot on "the little stool I always puts 'n on to lace up my boots—I've had 'n ever since my boy was born—I thought I felt somethin' in the heel o' my shoe, and as soon as I pulled 'n off it rattled on the floor. Wa'n't that a miracle? My hair stood bolt upright! I gropsed an' picked 'n up, and hollered up the stairs, 'I've found 'n!' 'Oh, have ye?' she says. 'I thought you'd bin an' spent 'n.'" Quickly he was off again to the public-house—Tom Durrant's—and "I says, 'I lost that shillin' once. I'll take good care I don't lose 'n again!' And I chucked 'n up on the counter. Durrant says, 'Oh, did ye lose 'n?' So then I come back 'ome with my sixpenn'oth o' brandy. But wa'n't it a miracle? My hair stood reg'lar bolt upright, and I was that contented!"
There was much, very much, that I am missing; but I must not quite pass over the old man's talk on the way to the town this morning. He did not once mention his trouble. All the way it was his ordinary chatter—the chatter of a most vigorous mind, which had never learnt to think of things in groups, but was intensely interested in details.
It began at once, with reference to a cottage—a sort of "week-end" cottage—we were passing, into which, Bettesworth said, new tenants were coming. "How they keep changing!" said I; and he, "Well enough they may, at the price." "What is it, then?" "Four pound a month. Furnished, o' course; but there en't much there. And," he added, "I can't see payin' a pound a week for a place to lay down in."
Next—but what came next had better be omitted now. It related to the family affairs of a certain coal-carter, and so led up to discourse of other carter men who lived in the village. From them, the transition to the employer of two of them was easy. He "got the two best carters in the neighbourhood now," said Bettesworth; but as for horses, "he en't got a hoss fit to put in a cart, 'cause he en't never had anybody before as understood anything about 'em. Somebody ought to put the cruelty inspector on to him, to go to his place and see. He did go, once; but he" (the horse-owner) "got wind of it and," as far as could be gathered from Bettesworth's talk, is suspected of having "squared" the inspector. But "there's a lot talkin' about the condition of the hosses down there," and, indeed, things "down there" seem to be generally mismanaged. The premises are "a reg'lar destructive old place": the carts, "he won't never have 'em only botched up, an' they be all to pieces;" and the harness is treated no better. "The saddles, they says, the flock 's all in lumps: sure a hoss's back an' shoulders 'd get sore. That's where they do's all the work, poor things. When I had hosses to look after, as soon as I got 'em in I always looked to their back an' shoulders first. I'd get a sponge, or a cloth...."
One of the two good carters above mentioned "can trace up a hoss's tail, you know, with straw. There en't one in ten knows how to do that. I've earnt many a shillin' at it." But Bettesworth had known one man who used to earn as much as thirty shillings in a day at this work, at horse-fairs. Him Bettesworth has occasionally helped, I understand; and also, "Old Bill Baldwin—I've sometimes bin down an' done it for him."
Now, I had thought Bill Baldwin knew all that was worth knowing about horses and horse management; so I asked, surprisedly, "What, can't he do it?"
"He can do the tracin', in a straight run; but he can't tie up. I could do it all: the tails, and the manes too—you've see it. I'd get a bit o' live" (lithe?) "straw ... 't was when I was a boy-chap, a little bigger 'n that 'n" (whom at the moment we were meeting) "down at Penstead at Farmer Barnes's. I used to be such a one for the hosses; and I could do it, because my fingers was so lissom." (Poor old stubbed, stiff, bent fingers! to think of it!) "And then, I took such a delight in it. And Mrs. Barnes—she was a Burton—she was as proud o' them hosses! Used to get up at four o'clock in the mornin', purpose to see 'em start off. And the harness was all as clean—the brass used to shine as bright as ever any gold is, and she was proud. Twenty thousand pound, was the last legacy she had. She was just such another woman to look at as old Miss Keen, what used to live down in the town; and a better woman never was.
"That's where I got all my scholarship.... Well, I could read—a little—but not to understand it. But she—she give me shirts, an' trousers—'cause we wore smock-frocks then—but she give me shirts an' trousers to go to night-school in. Course, I couldn't have had proper clothes without. 'Cause 'twas only thirty shillin's a year besides grub an' lodgin'.... And 't wan't no use to talk about runnin' away. I hadn't got no home. Besides, we was hired from Michaelmas to Michaelmas."