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!