He confessed to being occasionally light-headed. "I sees all the people I knows, in this room here. After I got back into bed to-day, there was three fellers leanin' over the foot o' the bed, lookin' at me; and one of 'em said, 'I reckon I shall get six months if I don't quit the neighbourhood.' I sprung forward—'I'll break your head if you don't clear out of here!' and I was goin' to hit 'n, an' then he was gone."
In telling this the old man suited his action to the tale, and again sat upright, his thin grey hair tumbled, his jaw fallen, his eyes hopeless for very weakness. It was then that he looked so much like old Hall.
He was wishing to be shaved, but could get nobody to do it for him. A labourer across the valley had been sent to: "He'd ha' come an' done it right enough, only he has rheumatics so bad he can't hold the razor."
There was not much talk of the old kind; and for the first time in my acquaintance with Bettesworth I had to search for topics of conversation. One subject was raised by my mention of a neighbouring farmer who proposed to begin cutting his late hay next week. "Ah, with a machine," said Bettesworth; "he can't git the men. 'R else he used to say he'd never have a machine so long as he could git men to mow for him. Billy Norris and his brother" (elder brother to Kid Norris) "mowed for 'n eighteen years" in succession.... "They'd live in a fashion nobody else couldn't. Never no trouble to they about their food. They'd just gather a few old sticks an' bits o' rubbish, and make a fire—nothin' but a little smoke an' flare—an' stick a bloater or a rasher on a pointed stick and hold it up again' the flare an' smoke jest to warm it, and down he'd go, and they'd be up and on mowin' again. Then there was a barrel o' beer tumbled down into the medder—they used to roll 'n into one o' they water-gripes and put a little o' the damp grass over 'n, and the beer 'd keep as cool.... And when he was empty then he'd be took away and another brought in.... But 'twas tea—that's what they drunk for breakfast. Jest have a drink o' beer when they started mowin'; then go on for an hour or two. Then one of 'em 'd go back to where their kit was, an' make the tea in the drum, an' get a little flare an' smoke; an' they'd jest hold their bloater on a pinted stick again' the smoke—I've laughed at 'em many's a time. Dick Harding over here used to say 't'd starve he to work 'long with 'em; he could do the mowin' but he couldn't put up with the food. That was their way, though. If they was out with the ballast-train or the railway-cuttin', they'd sit down on the bank—all they wanted was a little smoky fire." Bettesworth laughed a little, amused at these sturdy men, and at his own description of their cooking.
I asked: "You never did much mowing yourself, did you?"
He hesitated, yet scarcely two seconds, and then replied: "Not much. I helped mow Holt Park once. My father-in-law—Foreman, we used to call 'n—was at it—what lived where Mrs. Warner is, and I lived where Porter do. And the Foreman sent for me to go and help. I didn't want to go—'tis hard work; anybody might have mowin' for me; but at last I agreed to go. But law! the second mornin' I was like that I didn't hardly know how to crawl down there" the three miles. "It got better after an hour or two.... But if a feller goes mowin' for eight or nine weeks on end, it do give 'n a doin'."
Thus for a little while Bettesworth chatted, in the vein that had first attracted me to him. Shall I ever hear him again, I wonder? We tried other subjects: the washed-out state of our lane and the best way to remedy it, the garden, the celery, the position of this or that crop. It entertained him for a few minutes; then he failed to seize some quite simple idea, and knew that he had failed, and said despondently, "I can't keep things in my mind like I used to."
July 2 (Sunday).—Perhaps Bettesworth would have been more like himself on Friday, if I had called at the usual afternoon hour, instead of in the morning. As it was, he seemed fretful and impatient, and his face was flushed. I did not perceive that he was noticeably weaker, but rather that he was irritable. He had pain in his chest and side; and he said that at night, when he lies with his hands clasped over his waist, his chest is full of "such funny noises, enough to frighten ye to hear 'em." His temper was embittered and angry, especially angry, when some reference was made to his being in the infirmary in the spring. For he affirmed, "If I hadn't ha' went there, I should ha' bin a man, up and at work now. I told the doctor there, 'If I was to bide here, you'd starve me to death.'" Embittered he was against his acquaintances, so that he almost wept. "It hurts me so, to think how good I bin to 'em; and now when I be bad myself there en't none of 'em comes near me." He instanced his sister and her two sons at Middlesham; and his brother-in-law too: "Look what I done for him!" If only he could get about! Get so that he could sit and feel the air! But his bedroom is upstairs, and he is too weak to leave it. The previous night, trying to get out of bed, he "almost broke his neck," falling backwards with his head against the bedstead. "I thought I'd split 'n open," he said, "but I never called nobody. Jack said, 'Why hadn't ye called me?'" ... The old man's talk was too incoherent, too rambling, to be followed well at the time or remembered now.
We discussed a local beanfeast excursion to Ramsgate, which was to take place the following day; and he brightened up to recall how he had joined a similar trip to Weymouth some years ago. It was his last holiday, in fact. Even now it made him laugh, to remember how old Bill Brixton had gone on that day; and he laughed a little scornfully at the trouble they had taken to enjoy themselves, and the fatigues they endured. Then there came just a touch of his old manner: "I had a little bottle with me and filled it up with a quarte'n o' whisky; and when we was comin' home it seemed to brighten ye up. I says to old Bill, 'Put that to your lips,' I says. So he tried. 'Why, it's whisky!' he says. But that little wouldn't hurt 'n. 'Tis a lot o' whisky you gets for fo'pence! 'Twouldn't have hurt 'n, if he'd took it bottle and all."
These monster excursions had never really appealed to Bettesworth's old-fashioned taste. Rather than be cooped up in a train, I remember he used to say, give him a quiet journey on the open road, afoot or by waggon, so that a man may "see the course o' the country," and if he comes to anything interesting, stop and look at it. And now, on his bed, the ill-humour he was displaying that morning vented itself again, in reference to a project he had heard of for another excursion. The Oddfellows' annual fête was at hand; and, he said, with a sneering intonation, "The secretary and some of they" (respectable new-fangled people, he meant) "wanted 'em to go to Portsmouth. So they called a full meetin', an' the meetin'"—ah, I have forgotten the turn of speech. It suggested that these officious persons, interfering to dictate how the working man should take his pleasure, had met with a well-deserved snub, since the excursion was voted down and the customary dinner was to be held. To myself, as to Bettesworth, this seemed the preferable course: "It's really better," I said. Then he, "So 'tis, sir. It's the old, natural way. We always reckoned to have one day in the year, when we all had holiday. And then everybody could join in—the women with their little childern, and all. 'Tis nice...."