Part 5

During this year 1901, until the last month or two, not much additional matter relating to Bettesworth was recorded; it just suffices to show his life quietly passing on in company with the passing seasons.

_February 1, 1901._--We have already had a glimpse of the winter. And now, although it is only February, there comes, as in February there often will, a day truly springlike, and Bettesworth's talk matches it. The first morning of February was clear and shimmering, the roads being hard with frost, the air crisp, the trees hung with the dazzling drops into which the sunshine had converted the rime of the dawn. Most of these drops appeared blinding white, but now and again there would come from them a sparkle of flame-red or a glisten of emerald, or, best of all, a flash of earnest burning blue, as if the morning sky itself were liquefying on the bare branches. The grass, although under it the ground was frozen, had a brilliancy of colour which certainly was no winter tint. It suggested where, if one looked, one would find the green spear-points of crocuses and daffodils already inch-high out of the soil. The spring, in fact, was in the air, and the earth was stirring with it.

In Bettesworth's mood, too, was a hint of spring. All through the winter many hours which would otherwise have been lonely for him in this garden had been cheered by the companionship of a robin. How often he remarked, "You may do anything you mind to with 'n, but you mawn't handle 'im"! For the bird seemed to know him, and he used to call it his "mate," because it worked with him wherever he was turning up the soil.

And now on this gay morning, as we crossed the lawn together, he said, "Little Bob bin 'long with me again this mornin', hoppin' about just in front o' my shovel, and twiddlin' and talkin' to me.... Look at 'n! There he is now!" on the low bough of a young beech-tree at the edge of the grass. And as we stood to admire, "_There's_ a little chap!" he exclaimed exultantly. Then he took up his shovel to resume work near the tree, and "Little Bob" hopped down, every minute picking up something to swallow. I could not see what tiny morsels the bird was finding, and, confessing as much, felt snubbed by Bettesworth's immediate reply, "Ah, _he_ got sharp eyes." Presently, however, the robin found a large centipede, and suddenly--it was gone alive and wriggling down the small throat. "He must ha' got a good bellyful," said Bettesworth.

At intervals Bob would pause, look straight at us, and "twiddle" a little song in an undertone which, for all one could hear to the contrary, might have come from some distance behind or beside us, and could only be identified as proceeding from the robin by the accompanying movements of his ruddy throat.

"Sweet little birds, I calls 'em," said Bettesworth, using an epithet rare with him. "And it's a funny thing," he continued, "wherever a man's at work there's sure to be a robin find him out. _I_'ve noticed it often. If I bin at work in the woods, a robin 'd come, or in the harvest-field, jest the same.... Hark at 'n twiddlin'! And by-'n-by when his crop's full he'll get up in a tree and _sing_...."

The old man did a stroke or two with his shovel, and then: "I don't hear no starlin's about. 'Relse, don't ye mind last year they had a nest up in the shed?"

I hinted that my two cats might have something to do with the absence of the starlings, and Bettesworth's talk flitted easily to the new subject.

"Ah, that young cat--_she_ wouldn't care" how many starlings she caught. "_She's_ goin' to be my cat" (the cat for his favour). "Every mornin', as soon as the servant opens the door, she" (the cat) "is out, prowlin' all round. And she don't mind the cold; you see, she liked the snow--played with it. Now, our old Tab, as soon as I be out o' my nest she's in it. Very often she'll come up on to our bed, heavin' and tuckin' about, to get into the warm."

What a gift of expression the old man had got! But almost without a pause he went on, "The postman tells me he brought word this mornin' to all the pubs, tellin' 'em they was to close to-morrow" (Saturday, the day of Queen Victoria's funeral), "out of respect to our Queen's memory. 'T least, they're requested to--en't forced to. But so they ought to show her respect. Go where you will, you can't hear anybody with a word to say against her. 'Tis to be hoped the new King 'll be as worthy of respect."

Again, without transition: "How that little tree do grow!" He placed his hand on the stem of a young lime. "Gettin' quite a body. So-and-so tells me he put them in overright Mr. Watson's forty-five years ago, and look what trees they be now! They terrible wanted to cut 'em down when they made that alteration to the road down there, but Watson said he wouldn't have 'em moved for any money.... I likes a lime; 'tis such a bower."

So the pleasant chatter oozed out of him, as he worked with leisurely stroke, enjoying the morning. With his robins and his bowers, he was in the most cheerful spirits. At one time there was talk of the doctor, whom he had seen going down the lane on a bicycle, and had warned against trying to cross the stream, which the coming of the mild weather had flooded; and of the doctor's thanks, since he disliked wading; and of Bettesworth's own suggestion, laughingly assented to, that the doctor's "horse" was not partial to water.

It was all so spontaneous, this chatter, so innocent of endeavour to get the effect it produced, that a quite incongruous subject was powerless to mar its quality. He told me that, two days ago, he had bespoken at the butcher's shop a bullock's head, and that when he went to get it on this same glistening morning the butcher commended him for coming early, because "people was reg'lar runnin' after him for 'em." So early was he that the bullock had not been killed an hour, and he had to wait while they skinned the head and "took the eyes out," Bettesworth no doubt looking on with interest. And he had brought this thing home with him--was going to put it in brine at night, "and then to-morrer into the pot it goes, and that 'll make me some rare nice soup."

_March 1, 1901._--I am reminded, however, that this was not real spring, but only a foretaste of it. As yet the birds were not pairing, and before their day came (according to Bettesworth, St. Valentine's is the day when the birds begin to pair) there was more snow. But observe the advance the spring has made when March comes in. On the first afternoon of March I noticed Bettesworth's "mate" with him again, "twiddlin'," as usual; but I fancied and said that he looked larger than before, and Bettesworth suggested that perhaps he was living better--getting more food. Then I thought that the robin's crest seemed more feathery, and was told at once, "That shows the time o' year. Wonderful how tame he is!" exclaimed the old man. He added, shaking his head, "But he goes away courtin' at times. He loses a lot o' time" (from his work with Bettesworth). "Then he comes back, and sets up on the fence an' _sings_ to me.... But he loses a lot o' time. I tells 'n I shall 'ave to 'ave done with 'n."

_April 19._--Six weeks go by, during which the lawn grass has been growing, and by the middle of April Bettesworth is busy with the lawn-mower. There was a neglected grass plot, never mown before save with the scythe, over which he tried this spring to run the machine. But failing, and explaining why, he used an old word so oddly that I noted it, whereby it happens that I get now this minute reminder of an April occupation.

"She," he said, meaning the machine, would certainly refuse to cut some of the coarser tussocks of this grass. "Why, even down there where I bin cuttin', see how she took they cuds in her mouth and spet 'em out--like a old feller with a chew o' baccer--he'll bite and spet...."

The "cuds" to which he referred were little tufts of grass, which only persistent rolling would reduce to a level meet for a lawn-mower.

_June 22._--Omitting one short reference to somebody else's family history, and one yet shorter observation on horses and their eyesight, we skip right over May, nor stop again till we come to the longest days. Here the record alights for a moment, just long enough to show a wet mid-June, and Bettesworth keenly alive to the duties of husbandmen in it. He glanced down towards the meadow in the bottom of the valley. An unfinished rick of hay stood there, waiting for the remaining grass, which lay about on the ground, and was losing colour. And Bettesworth said,

"Bill Crawte 'll play about wi' that little bit o' hay down there till 'tis all spoilt."

In truth, it should have been taken up the previous day, as I ventured to suggest. Then Bettesworth, contemptuously,

"He told me he heared it rainin' this mornin' at three o'clock, and got up to cover his rick over. _He'd heared_ it _rainin'_. Why, he might ha' bin asleep, an' then that rain would ha' gone down into that rick two foot or more."

That is all. There is no more to tell of the old man's summer, nothing for July and August. But in September we get a glance back to the past harvest, a glance round at the earliest autumn prospects, and a strange suggestion of the first-class importance of these things in the life of country labouring folk. In brief compass, the talk runs rapidly over many points of interest.

_September 6._--For if "the fly" was not on our seedling cabbage, as we were inclined to fear, it had certainly ruined sundry sowings of turnips, both in this garden and down there where Bettesworth lived.

"We can't help it," so he philosophized, "and I don't care if we get enough for ourselves, though I should ha' liked to have more." But "Hammond says _he's_ turnips be all spiled, and Porter's brother what lives over here at this cot" (the brother, that is, of Porter, who lives over here), "he bin down to Sussex harvestin' for the same man I worked for so many years. Seven weeks. But then he bin hoein'.... He was tellin' me his master down there sowed hunderd an' twenty acres o' swedes, and never saved twenty of 'em. Fly took 'em all, and he had to drill again with turnips. Swedes, and same with the mangol'.

"He says they've had it as hot down there as we have here. But, straw! There was some straw, by all accounts. Young Collison what lives over opposite me was 'long with 'n. Seven weeks he" (which?) "was away, but it seems he had a bit of a miff with his wife, and went off unbeknownst to her. She went to the relievin' officer, and he told her _they'd_ find 'n, if she'd go into the union. He was off harvestin'. He told me o' Sunday he thought 't 'd do her good."

"Who was she?"

"Gal from Reading. He was up that way somewhere for 'leven year, in a brick-works. And she thought very likely as he was gone off into some brick-works again; but he was down in Sussex, harvestin'."

_September 21._--Though only two weeks later, there is distinct autumn in the next fragment, and yet perhaps for me only, because of the picture it calls up. I remember a very still Saturday afternoon, a sky curtained by quiet cloud, the air motionless, a grey mist stealing into the lane that leads down into the heart of the valley. Certainly it was an autumn day.

As he always did on Saturdays, Bettesworth had swept up the garden paths with extra care, and on this afternoon had taken the sweepings into the lane, to fill up a rut there. Upon my going out to see him, he chuckled.

"You'd ha' laughed if you'd ha' bin out here wi' me at dinner-time. A lady come up the lane, wantin' to know who you was. 'Who lives here?' she says." He mimicked a high-pitched and affected voice. "'Mister Bourne,' I says. 'Iss he a gentilman?' she says. 'You don't s'pose he's a lady, do ye?' I says. 'What a beastlie road!' she says, and went off, tip-toein' an' twistin' herself about--dunno how to walk nor talk neither."

I asked who the lady was.

"I dunno. Strangers--she and a man with her. 'Iss he a gentilman?' she says. I can't _bear_ for people to be inquisitive. What should she want to know all about you for? Might ha' knowed you wasn't a lady. There, I was _bound_ to give her closure, askin' me such a silly question!"

"What were they doing down here?"

"They was down here hookin' down blackberries with a stick. And then come askin' me a silly question like that! _Silly_ questions! I don't see what people wants to ast 'em for. She went off 'long o' the man, huggin' up close to him, an' twistin' herself about. Dunno how to walk nor yet talk! 'Iss he a gentilman!'"

_November 10, 1901._--Two odd words--one of them perhaps newly coined for the occasion, the other misused--were the reason for my preserving a short note which brings us to November, and shows us Bettesworth proposing to himself a task appropriate to the season. The sap was dying down in the trees; the fruit bushes had lost their leaves, and stood ready for winter, and their arrangement offended Bettesworth's taste. He would have had the garden formal and orderly, if he had been able.

"I thought I'd take up them currant bushes," he said, "and put 'em in again in rotation"--in a straight row, he meant, as he went on to explain. "They'd look better than all jaggled about, same as they be now."

And so the currant-bushes, which until then were "jaggled," or zig-zagged about, were duly moved, and stand to this day in a line. At that time he could still see a currant-bush, and criticize its position.

_November 22._--Towards fallen leaves, it is recorded a little later, he preserved a constant animosity. His patient sweepings and grumblings were one of the notes of early winter for me--"the slovenliest time of all the year," he used to say.

He even doubted that leaves made a good manure, and he quoted authorities in support of his own opinion. Had not a gardener in the town said that he, for his part, always burnt the leaves, as soon as they were dry enough to burn, because "they be reg'lar poison to the ground"? Or, "if you opens a hole and puts in a bushel or two to form mould, they got to bide three years, an' _then_ you got to mix other earth with 'em." As litter for pigs, he admitted, dead leaves were useful; yet should the cleanings of the pigsty be afterwards heaped up and allowed to dry, the first wind would "purl the leaves about all over the place.... And that makes me think there en't much _in_ 'em," or surely they would rot?

But unquestionably leaves make good dry litter. "My old gal" (so the discourse proceeded)--"my old gal used to go out an' get 'em," so that the pig might have a dry bed; in which care the "old gal" contrasted nobly with "Will Crawte down 'ere," who had little pigs at this time "up to their belly in slurry." They could not thrive--Bettesworth was satisfied of that. His wife, in the days of her strength, would "go out on to the common, tearin' up moth or rowatt with her hands--her hands was harder 'n mine--and she'd tear up moth or rowatt or anything," to make a clean bed for the pig.

I suppose that by "moth" he meant moss. "Rowatt" is old grass which has never been cut, but has run to seed and turned yellow. With regard to rowatt, it makes a good litter and a tolerable manure, said Bettesworth; with this drawback, however, that "if you gets it wi' the seed on," however much it may have been trampled in the pigsty, "'tis bound to come up when you spreads the manure on the ground."

XI

A timely reminder occurs here, that with all its rustic attractiveness--its genial labours in this picturesque valley, its sensitive response to the slow changes of the year--Bettesworth's life could not be an idyllic one. For that, he needed a wife who could make him comfortable, and encourage him by the practice of old-fashioned cottage economies; but Fate had denied him that help. From time to time I heard of old Lucy's having fits, but I paid little heed, and cannot tell why I noted the attack by which she was prostrated at the end of this November, unless that again it was borne in upon me how Bettesworth himself must suffer on such occasions.

_November 24, 1901._--On Sunday, November 24, the trouble was taking its ordinary course. There had been the long night, disturbed by successive seizures, in one of which the old woman could not be saved from falling out of bed "flump on the floor"; there was the helpless day in which Bettesworth must cook his own dinner or go without; there were the dreadful suggestions from the neighbours that he ought to put his wife away in an asylum; there was his own tight-lipped resolve to do nothing of the sort, but to remember always how good to him she had been. It was merely the usual thing; and if we remember how it kept recurring and was a part almost of Bettesworth's daily life, that is enough, without further detail.

To get a clear impression of his contemporary circumstances is necessary, lest the narrative be confused by his frequent references to old times. Tending his wife, working unadventurously in my garden, loving the succession of crops, humbly subservient to the weather or gladdening at its glories, as he went about he spilt anecdotes of other years and different scenes, which must be picked up as we go. But the day-to-day existence must be kept in mind meanwhile. He gossipped at haphazard, but the telling of any one of those narratives which so often interrupt the course of this book was only the most trivial and momentary incident in his contemporary history. He spoke for a few minutes, and had finished, and his day's work went on as before.

_November 26._--Thus, around the next glimpse of an exciting moment forty odd years ago, one has to imagine the November forenoon, raw, grey with pale fog, in which Bettesworth was at some pottering job or other, slow enough to make me ask if he were not cold; and so the talk gets started. No, he was not cold; he felt "_nice_ and warm.... But yesterday, crawlin' about among that shrubbery after the dead leaves," his hands were very cold. Yesterday, I remembered then, had been a day of hard rimy frost, so that it had surprised me, I said, to see "one of Pearson's carmen" driving without gloves. Bettesworth looked serious.

"You'd have thought he'd have had gloves for _drivin'_," he said. Then, meditatively, "I don't think old _Wells_ drives for Pearsons much now, do he? You very often sees somebody else out with his horse. He bin with 'em a smart many years. He went there same time as I lef' Brown's. That was in 1860. Pearsons sent across the street for me to go on for they, but I'd agreed with Cooper the builder, you know."

From amidst a confusion of details that followed, about Cooper's business, and where he got his harness, and so on, the fact emerged that the builder had the use of a stable in Brown's premises, which explains how Bettesworth's former master makes his appearance on the scene presently. For Bettesworth had still to work at this stable, though for a new employer.

"Cooper had a little cob when I went on for 'n. His father give it to 'n--or no, 'twas the harness his father give 'n. One o' these little Welsh rigs. Spiteful little card he was. I knocked 'n down wi' the prong seven times one mornin'. When I went in to the stable he kicked up, and the manure an' litter went in here, what he'd kicked up. In here." Bettesworth thrust forward his old stubbly chin, and pointed into the neck-band of his shirt.

I said, "There would have been no talks for me with Bettesworth if he had touched you!"

"No. He'd have killed me. I ketched up the fust thing I could see, an' that was the prong, and 't last I was afraid _I'd_ killed _he_. A bad-tempered little card he was, though. They be _worse_ than an intire 'orse.... They be worse than an intire _'orse_."

He was dropping into meditation, standing limply with drooping arms, and fixing an absent-minded look upon his job. For his memory was straying among the circumstances of forty years ago. Then suddenly he straightened up again and continued,

"While I'd got the prong, Brown heard the scufflin', and come runnin' down. 'What the plague's up now?' he says. 'I dunno,' I says; 'I shall either kill 'n or conquer 'n.' ... But he _was_ a bad-tempered one. He wouldn't let ye go into the stable to do 'n. I had to get 'n out and tie his head to a ring in the wall, high up, an' then I could pay 'n as I mind to. Brown says at last, 'That's enough;' he says, 'I won't have it.' But Cooper says, 'You let 'n do as he likes.' And I says, 'If I don't have my own way with 'n, you'll have to do 'n yourself.' But a _good_ little thing on the road, ye know. Quiet! And wouldn't touch no vittles nor drink away from home, drive 'n where you mind. Never was a better little thing to go. I think Cooper give eighteen or twenty pound for 'n. But a _nasty_ little customer--wouldn't let ye go near 'n in the stable. They jockeys thought _they_ was goin' to have 'n. They all said they thought he'd be a rum 'n, and so he was, too.

"One time Mrs. Cooper come into the yard with a green silk dress on, and he put his head round and grabbed it" (near the waist, to judge by Bettesworth's gesture), "and tore out a great piece--a yard or more. Do what I would, I couldn't help laughin', though she was a testy sort o' woman. And she did fly about, the servant said, when she went indoors.

"But I thought I'd killed 'n that time with the prong. Sweat, he did, and bellered like a bull; and 't last I give 'n one on the head. I made sure I'd killed 'n. _I_ was afraid, then. I thought I'd hit too hard. And I sweat as much as he did then."

XII

_December 2, 1901._--In view of the hatred in which Bettesworth had previously held the workhouse infirmary, and which he was destined to renew later, it is interesting to observe how favourably the place impressed him about this time, when he visited a friend there.

The friend, whom I will rename "Tom Loveland," had been taken to the infirmary in October, suffering with the temporary increase of some obscure chronic disorder which to this day cripples him. Bettesworth had gone to see him on Sunday afternoon, December 1, in company with Harriett Loveland, the man's wife.

The patient still lay there, "on his back," I heard on the Monday.

"On Saturday they took off the poultices. Seven weeks they bin poulticin' of 'n; but Saturday the doctor thought there was 'a slight change.' But, law!" Bettesworth continued, in scorn of the doctor's opinion, "they abscesses 'll keep comin'."

"There was two more died, up there in that same room where he is, o' Saturday." This made six deaths since Loveland's admission. "One of 'em was a man I used to know very well--that 'ere Jack Grey that used to do" so-and-so at where-is-it. "They sent for his wife, an' she got there jest two minutes afore he died. Loveland says, 'I tucked my head down under the blankets when I see 'em bring in the box' (the coffin) 'for 'n.' 'What, did ye think he was for you, Tom?' I says. But he always was a meek-hearted feller: never had no nerve."

But it was in the appointments of the place where Loveland lay that Bettesworth was chiefly interested. He was almost enthusiastic over the whiteness of the sheets, the beeswaxed floor ("like glass to walk on. I says to Harriet, 'You must take care you don't slip up'"), the little cupboards ("lockers, they calls 'em") beside each bed; the nurse, who "seemed to be a pleasant woman;" the daily attendance of the medical men; and other advantages. All these things persuaded Bettesworth that the patients were "better off up there than what they would be at home." And out in the grounds, "You'd meet two old women, perhaps, walkin' along together; and then, a little further on, some old men," which all appeared to be very satisfactory.