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."