The thought came to me one of those afternoons, Was it I, or was it
Bettesworth, who was growing dull? It might well have been myself; for
at the unaccustomed labour of turf-laying, in weather that had turned
mild and relaxing, mind no less than body was aware of fatigue, and
perhaps on that account the old man's talk seemed less vivid than
usual, less deserving of remembrance. At the same time I could not
help speculating whether the livelier interests of his conversation
might not be almost over. Had he much more to tell? Or had I heard it
practically all?
At this turf-laying the parts were reversed now. Time had been when,
at similar employments, I was the helper or onlooker; but now
Bettesworth's sight was so bad that I could no longer leave him to
unroll two turfs side by side and make their edges fit. I had to be
down on the ground with him, or instead of him.
And yet he would not accept criticism. Did I say, "Shove that end up a
little tighter," he would rejoin, "That's jest what I was a-goin' to
do." Or, to my comment, "That isn't a first-rate fit just there,"
"No, sir," he would admit, "I was only jest layin' it so ontil," etc.,
etc. "You'll see that'll go down all right. That'll go down all
right.... Yes, that'll go down all right." And he would fumble
unserviceably, while the sentence trailed away into inaudible
reiterations. Still, it was a rich, creamy, very quiet and pleasing
old voice that spoke.
The habit of repeating his own words was growing upon the old man fast
since his wife's death; and it irritated me at times, filling up the
gaps and interrupting my share of the conversation. Instead of
listening to me, he mumbled on, dreamily. Now and again, however, he
appeared to become aware of the habit. More than once, after relating
something he had said at home, he added in explanation, "I was talkin'
to _myself_, you know. I en't got nobody else to talk _to_." This was
almost the only indication he allowed me to see of that loneliness
which others assured me he was feeling. Did he, I wonder, fear that if
I knew of it I should be urging him to give up his cottage? For
whatever reason, he made no confidant of me on that point. Once,
indeed, there was mention of sitting indoors one evening by his fire,
"till he couldn't sit no longer," but got up and walked up and down
his garden, driven by crowding thoughts. Another time, "All sorts o'
things keeps comin' into my mind now," he said. And these were the
utmost complainings to which he condescended, in my hearing.
It was very fortunate that he had excellent neighbours in old Mrs.
Norris (old Nanny, he called her) and her son, known as Kid, Kiddy, or
Kidder. While stooping over our turfs I heard many tiny details of
Bettesworth's kindly relations with these good people; and, as
pleasantly as oddly, between them and myself a sort of friendship grew
up, through the old man's mediation. We seldom met; we knew little of
one another save what he told us; but he must have gone home and
talked to them of me, just as he came here and told me about them; and
thus, while I was learning to like them cordially, I think they were
learning to like me, and it seemed to stamp with the seal of
genuineness my intercourse with Bettesworth himself. But it was truly
queer. Old Nanny Norris--the skinny old woman with the strange
Mongolian or Tartar face and eyes--took to stopping for a chat, if we
met on the road. In the town once, where I stood talking with some one
else, she, coming up from behind me, could not pass on without looking
round, nodding joyfully and grimacing her countenance--the countenance
of an eastern image--into a jolly smile. She wore a Paisley shawl, and
a little bonnet gay with russet and pink.
Bettesworth was distressed only by Nanny's deafness. "_En't_ that a
denial to anybody!" he exclaimed feelingly. "There, I can't talk to
her. I always did hate talkin' to anybody deaf. Everybody can hear
what you got to say, and if 't en't nothing, still you don't want
everybody to hear it.... Old Kid _breaks_ out at her sometimes: 'Gaw'
dangy! I'll _make_ ye hear!' Every now an' then I laughs to myself to
hear 'n, sittin' in there by myself."
He handed me another turf, and continued: "'Tis a good thing for she
that old Kidder en't never got married. But she slaves about for 'n;
nobody _could_n't do no more for 'n than she do. When I got home to
dinner she come runnin' round. She'd jest bin to pay all his clubs for
'n. He belongs to three clubs: two slate clubs an' the Foresters."
"He doesn't mean to be in any trouble if he's ill," I grumbled up from
the turf.
"Not he. Thirty-two shillin's a week he'll get, if he's laid up.
There's Alf" (one of his half-brothers) "and him--rare schemin'
fellers they be, no mistake." Particulars followed about this family
of strong brothers; but, in fine, "Kidder 've always bin the darlin'.
He's the youngest."
Fearless, black-bearded strong man that he is, though very quiet, even
silky and soft in his ordinary demeanour, it was laughable to think of
Kid Norris as a "darling." Along with Alf he was at work all through
the summer on the new railway near Bordon Camp, they two being experts
and earning a halfpenny an hour more than the common navvy. Their way
was to leave home at four in the morning and walk the eight miles to
their work. In the evening the 7 p.m. up-train brought them within a
mile and a half of this village. Once or twice they overtook me,
making their way homewards, long-striding; and sometimes they would
work an hour or two after that in their gardens, in the summer
twilight.
When the weather worsened and the days shortened, Kid threw up his
railway-work, and took a job at digging sea-kale for a large grower.
The fields were scattered about the district; some of them within two
miles, and the remotest not more than three, from his home. He was the
leading man of a gang of labourers; and at my paltry turf-laying I
heard of his work, which, it appears, was new to him. "They had to
save," he said (and the fact was interesting to old Bettesworth),
"jest the parts he should ha' throwed away.... It did take some
heavin': they stamms was gone down like tree-roots," especially down
there in such-and-such a field. "Up here above Barlow's Mill 'twan't
half the trouble." The master said to Kid, "You no call to slack. I
got plenty o' trenchin' you can go on at, when the kale's up." Then
said Kid to his gang, "Some o' you chaps 'll have to move about a bit
quicker, if you're goin' trenchin' 'long o' me." He sent one of them
packing--a neighbour from this village, too. "Not a bad chap to work,
so far as that goes, but too stiff, somehow," Bettesworth said,
evidently knowing the man's style.
Towards the end of one afternoon, "It looks comin' up rainy,"
Bettesworth observed, "but old Kid wants it frosty. Where he is
now--trenchin' up there at Waterman's--he says this rain makes it so
heavy; it comes up on they spuds jest as much as ever a man can lift."
"And that's not a little," said I; "Kid's a strong man."
"Well--he's jest the age; jest on forty. I says to 'n, 'Some of 'em 'd
go for you, if they knowed you was wantin' frost.' He laughed. 'We all
speaks for ourselves, don't we?' he says."
Then Bettesworth added, "There, I never could have a better neighbour
'n he is. Always jest the same. He looks out for me, too."
I grieve that I have forgotten the particular instance of looking out:
it was a case of Kid's mother telling him that she was short of some
commodity or other--hot water, perhaps, for tea; upon which Kid said,
"Well, see there's some left for old Freddy." On another occasion, "I
had," Bettesworth remarked, "my favourite dish for supper last
night--pig's chiddlins," and he owed the treat to his neighbours.
"They'd killed their pig, and old Nanny brought me in a nice hot
plateful. I _did_ enjoy 'em: they was so soft an' nice. There's
nothin' I be more fond of, if I knows who cleaned 'em. But I en't
tasted any since I give up keepin' pigs myself."
I could not spare many hours a day for it, so that our turfing work
dragged out wearisomely; but throughout it Bettesworth's conversation
maintained the same homely inconspicuous character. Once it was about
the celery in the garden: "'Tis the nicest celery I ever had--so
crisp, an' so well-bleached. I've had two sticks." (He had been told
to help himself.) "Last night I put some in a saucepan an' boiled it
up; an' then a little pepper an' salt and a nice bit o' butter." He
has no teeth now for eating it uncooked; "or else at one time I
could," he assured me.
One after another his simple domestic arrangements were talked over.
He made no fire at home in the morning; Nanny gave him a cup of tea;
and so he saved coal, which he had been buying from one of the village
shops, half a hundredweight at a time. But the price was exorbitant,
and Bettesworth had found a way of buying for fourpence the
hundredweight cheaper. And "fo'pence--that's a lot. Well, there's the
price of a loaf _soon_ saved." "And a loaf," I put in, "lasts you...?"
"Lasts me a long time, and _then_ I gives the crusts and odd bits to
Kid for his pig.... One way and another I makes it all up to 'em."
Of a well-to-do neighbour, "He don't shake off that lumbago in his
back yet, so he says.... Ah, he have bin a strong man. So he ought to
be, the way he eats. His sister was sayin' only t'other day how every
mornin' he'll eat as big a plateful o' fat bacon as she puts before
'n."
A difficulty with a turf which was cut too thick at one corner made a
queer diversion. The old man was wearing new boots, and already I knew
how he had bargained for them at Wilby's shop, getting a pair of cork
socks, besides laces and dubbin, thrown in for his money. And now,
this little corner of grass obstinately sticking up, "Let's see what
Mr. Wilby 'll do for 'n," said Bettesworth, and he stamped his new
boot down hard and the thickened sod yielded. "Do they hurt you at
all?" I asked then. "No," he said, "not no more'n you may expect. New
boots always draws your feet a bit. That one wrung my foot a little
yest'day. When I got home, 'fore ever I lit my candle, I'd unlaced 'n
and fetched 'n off. I flung 'n down. But I be very well pleased with
'em. 'Tis jest across here by the seam where they hurts.... No, I en't
_laced_ 'em tight. I don't hold with that, for new boots. Of course
they en't leather; can't be for the money. When you've paid for the
makin' what is there left for leather, out of five-and-sixpence? No,
they _can't_ be leather....
"Little Tim" (Bettesworth's five-year-old chum) "jest got some new
uns, with nails in 'em. Nex' pair he has, he says, he's goin' to have
'em big, with big nails, jest like his father's. 'You ben't man enough
yet, Tim,' I says. But he got some little gaiters too. 'Now I be
ready,' he says, 'if it snows or anything.'"
As a rule we endured in silence the minor discomforts incidental to
work like ours, in a raw winter air. But there were exceptions, as
when we agreed in hating to handle the tools with our hands so caked
over with the black earth. To me, indeed, the spade felt as if covered
with sandpaper, so that sometimes it was less painful to use fingers,
although of course they did but get the more thickly encrusted with
soil by that device. This state of our hands was the cause of another
small distress: one could not touch a pocket-handkerchief. And of this
also we spoke, once, when I all but laughed aloud at what Bettesworth
said.
It began with his testily remarking, "My nose is more plag' than
enough!" There was, indeed, and had been for a long time, a glistening
drop at the end of it.
My own was in like case, no pocket-handkerchief being available. So I
said, "Mine would be all right in a second, if I could only get to
wipe it."
Then said Bettesworth, innocently (for he had no suspicion how funny
his reply was), "Ah, but that's what you can't do, without makin' your
face all dirty."
With our noses distilling dew-drops, and our hands gloved-over with
mud and aching with cold, we may be pardoned, I hope, for complaining
sometimes of the weather. I believe that really we liked it; for down
there so close to the grass and the soil we were entering into
intimacies like theirs, with the cool winter air; but our enjoyment
was subconscious, whereas consciously we criticized and were not too
well pleased. After one interval of grumbling, I tried to cheer up,
with the suggestion, "We must be thankful it isn't so cold as
yesterday." Bettesworth, however, was not to be so easily appeased,
but replied, "We don't feel it down here, where 'tis so sheltered, but
depend upon it, 'tis purty cold down the road, when you gets into the
wind. I met old Steve when I was comin' back from dinner. 'How d'ye
get on up there?' I says." (_Up there_ is on the ridge of the hill,
where Steve works in a garden.) "''Tis purty peaky up there,' he says.
I'll lay it is, too. I shouldn't think there's anybody got a much
colder job than he have. 'Pend upon it, he _do_ feel it."
"I was afraid on Sunday we were in for more snow."
"Ah, so was I. I found my old hard broom. Stacked in he was, behind a
lot o' peasticks an' clutter. I'd missed 'n for a long time--ever
since our young Dave" (his nephew's son) "come to clear up the garden
for me. He'd pulled up the peasticks an' put 'em in the old
shed--well, I'd told 'n to. And I _fancied_ that's where the broom
must be. So Sunday I fetched 'em all out of it and got 'n out and took
'n indoors with the shovel, in case any snow _should_ come.
"Little Dave's gone on 'long o' George Bryant, up at Powell's. Handy
little chap, he is...."
In this way, so long as the turf-laying lasted, Bettesworth's talk
went drivelling on. Was he really getting dull? I had begun by
fancying so; and yet as I listened to him, perhaps myself benumbed a
little by the cold open air, something rather new to me--a quality in
the old man's conversation more intrinsically pleasing than I had
previously known--began to make its subtle appeal. Half unawares it
came home to me, like the contact of the garden mould, and the smell
of the earth, and the silent saturation of the cold air. You could
hardly call it thought--the quality in this simple prattling. Our
hands touching the turfs had no thought either; but they were alive
for all that; and of such a nature was the life in Bettesworth's
brain, in its simple touch upon the circumstances of his existence.
The fretful echoes men call opinions did not sound in it; clamour of
the daily press did not disturb its quiet; it was no bubble puffed out
by learning, nor indeed had it any of the gracefulness which some
mental life takes from poetry and art; but it was still a genuine and
strong elemental life of the human brain that during those days was my
companion. It seemed as if something very real, as if the true sound
of the life of the village, had at last reached my dull senses.
The themes might be trivial, yet the talk was not ignoble. The
rippling comments upon their affairs, which swing in perpetual ebb and
flow amidst the labouring people, lead them perhaps no farther; and
yet, should they not be said? Could they be dispensed with? Are they
not an integral part of life? Let me quote another fragment:
"After that rain yesterday, old Kid says, up in that clay at
Waterman's when you takes your spud out o' the ground you can't see
whether 'tis a spud or a board. And it's enough to break your
shoulders all to pieces. He _was_ tired last night, he says."
Well--to me the observation justifies itself, and I like it for its
own sake. It touched me with an elusive vitality of its own, for which
after our turf-laying I began generally to listen in Bettesworth's
talk, and which nowadays I hear in that of his neighbours, as when old
Nanny Norris meets me on the road and stops for a gossip.