Shutting his mouth doggedly, Bettesworth went back to his cottage, to
live alone there with his cat. There had been some talk of his going
into lodgings; but after all, this was still his home. Should he once
give it up, he reasoned, and dispose of his furniture, it would be
impossible ever again to form a home of his own, however much he might
desire to do so. To live with neighbours might be very well; yet how
if he and they should disagree? He would have burnt his boats; he
would be unable to resume his independence. Better were it, then, to
keep while he still had it a place where he was his own master, and
take the risk of being lonely.
For some seven weeks after the wife's funeral there is next to nothing
to be told of him. I find that I am unable to remember anything about
him for that period, unless it was then--and it could not have been
much later--that he renewed some of his household goods, and amongst
them his mattress, being visited apparently by a wish to regain the
character for cleanliness which had been lost in his wife's time. It
must have been then also that he first talked of buying muslin for
blinds to his windows. It is further certain that he chatted a great
deal about his next-door neighbours--the Norrises, mother and son,
upon whose society he was now chiefly dependent; but of all this not a
syllable remains, nor is there any dimmest picture in my memory of
what the old man did, or even how he looked, in those seven weeks.
_November 22, 1904._--At the end of them, on a raw morning in
November, amid our struggles to heave out of the ground a huge shrub
we were transplanting, it was remarkable how strong Bettesworth
seemed, because of the cunning use he made of every ounce of force in
his experienced old muscles. How to lift, and how to support a weight,
were things he knew as excellently as some know how to drive a
golf-ball. Nor was my theory quite so good as his experience, for
showing where our skids and levers should be placed. It was
Bettesworth who got them into the serviceable positions.
Something about those skids set us talking of other skidding work, and
especially of the extremely tricky business of loading timber on a
trolly. "I see a carter once," said Bettesworth, "get three big
elm-trees up on to a timber-carriage, with only hisself and the
hosses. He put the runnin' chains on and all hisself."
"And _that_ takes some doing," I said.
"Yes, a man got to understand the way 'tis done.... I never had much
hand in timber-cartin' myself; but this man.... 'Twas over there on
the Hog's Back, not far from Tongham Station. We all went out for to
see 'n do it--'cause 'twas in the dinner-time he come, and we never
believed he'd do it single-handed. The farmer says to 'n, 'You'll
never get they up by yourself.' 'I dessay I shall,' he says; and so he
did, too. Three great elm-trees upon that one carriage.... Well, he
had a four-hoss team, so that'll tell ye what 'twas. They _was_ some
hosses, too. Ordinary farm hosses wouldn't ha' done it. But he only
jest had to speak, and you'd see they watchin' him.... When he went
forward, after he'd got the trees up, to see what sort of a road he'd
got for gettin' out, they stood there with their heads stretched out
and their ears for'ard. 'Come on,' he says, and _away_ they went,
_tearin'_ away. Left great ruts in the road where the wheels went
in--that'll show ye they got something to pull."
We got our shrub a little further, Bettesworth grunting to a heavy
lift; then, in answer to a question:
"No, none o' we helped 'n. We was only gone out to see 'n do it. He
never wanted no help. He didn't say much; only 'Git back,' or 'Git
up,' to the hosses. When it come to gettin' the last tree up, on top
o' t'other two, I never thought he could ha' done it. But he got 'n
up. And he was a oldish man, too: sixty, I dessay he was. But he jest
spoke to the hosses. Never used no whip, 'xcept jest to guide 'em.
Didn't the old farmer go on at his own men, too! 'You dam fellers call
yerselves carters,' he says; 'a man like that's worth a dozen o' you.'
Well, they couldn't ha' done it. A dozen of 'em 'd ha' scrambled
about, an' _then_ not done it! Besides, their _hosses_ wouldn't. But
this feller--the old farmer says to 'n, 'I never believed you'd ha'
done it.' 'I thought mos' likely I should,' he says. But he never had
much to say."
Sleet showers were falling, and a north wind was roaring through the
fir wood on top of the next hill while we worked. Dropping into the
vernacular, "I don't want to see no snow," said I. "No," responded
Bettesworth, "it's too white for me." "January," I went on, "is plenty
soon enough for snow to think about comin'." "April," he urged. "Ah
well, April," I laughed; and he, "Let it wait till there's a warm sun
to get rid of it 's fast as it comes."
Then he continued, "That rain las' night come as a reg'lar su'prise to
me. I was sittin' indoors by my fire smokin'--I 'ave got rid o' some
baccer lately--and old Kid went up the garden. He see my light, and
hollered out, 'It don't half rain!' '_Let_ it rain,' I says. I was in
there as comfortable...."
In the next night but one a little snow fell, enough to justify our
forecast and no more; and then we had frost, and garden work could
hardly go on. I was meaning to lay turf over a plot of ground where
the shrubs had stood; but the work had to wait: the frozen turfs could
not be unrolled.
Bettesworth did not like the weather. I have told of those steps
connecting his cottage with the road. They were slippery now, and the
handrail to them was icy when he clutched it, coming down in the dark
of the mornings. At the bottom of the steps, before the road is
reached, there is a steep path, commonly known as "Granny Fry's." Boys
were sliding there after breakfast, and they called out to
Bettesworth, "Be you roughed, Master Bettesworth?" According to his
tale, he spoke angrily: "''Tis _you_ ought to be roughed,' I says;
'you ought to be roughed over the bank. You be old enough to know
better.' And so they be, too. They be biggish boys; and anybody goin'
there might easy fall down and break their back--'specially after
dark."
When he came back from his dinner, he said, "Somebody 've bin an'
qualified old Granny Fry's." How? "Oh, somebody 've chucked some dirt
over where they boys had made it so slippery."
He was obliged to admit, though, that in his own boyhood he had been
as careless as any of these. And a few minutes later he was confessing
to another boyish fault. In a cottage hard by, little Timothy
Porter--a chubby little chap about five years old--was on very
friendly terms with old Bettesworth. He had but lately started his
schooling, and almost immediately was taken unwell and had to stay at
home a week or two. I happened now to ask Bettesworth how little Tim
was getting on.
"Oh, he's gettin' all right: goin' to school again Monday. He've
kicked up a rare shine, 'cause they wouldn't let 'n go. I likes 'n for
that. I likes to hear of a boy eager for learnin'--not to see 'm make
a shine and their mothers have to take 'em three parts o' the way. Not
but what I wanted makin' when I was a nipper. Many's a time I've
clucked up to a tree jest this side o' Cowley Bridge, and that old
'oman" (I don't know what old woman) "come out an' drive me. There
wa'n't no school then nearer 'n Lyons's--where Smith the wheelwright
lives now. He used to travel with tea, and I dessay half a dozen of us
'd come to his school from Cowley Bridge. We'd start off an' say we
wouldn't go to school; but we _'ad_ to."
The frost, had it continued, would very soon have been calamitous to
the working people. As it was, I saw bricklayers--good men known to
me, and neighbours, too--standing idle in the town, at the street
corners. And Bettesworth said,
"Some o' the shop-keepers down in the town begun to cry out about it.
They missed the Poor Man. And I heared the landlord down 'ere at the
Swan say he was several pounds out o' pocket by it."
_December 2, 1904._--Fortunately it was not to last. The men got to
work again; our gardening tasks could go forward. My notebook has this
entry for the 2nd of December:
"Laying turf this afternoon, in wonderful mild dry weather."