Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer Part 19

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Christmas was approaching near--was "buckin' up," as Bettesworth quaintly phrased it; and that it contributed to the melancholy of his existence will easily be understood. It is nowhere mentioned in my book, but a remorse was beginning to haunt him, for having let his wife be taken away to the infirmary, to die there. "I done it for the best, poor old dear," I remember his saying several times; "but it hurts me to think I let her go." In the long evenings before Christmas, alone in his cottage and unable to pa.s.s time by reading, he had too much time for brooding over his loss.

The nights as well as the evenings were probably too long for him, and I make no question that his happiest hours were those he spent at work, when he could forget himself and still talk cheerfully. Thus there is quite a gleam of cheerfulness in the following instructive fragment, of the 17th of December.

_December 17, 1904._--"When the wind blowed up in the night I thought 'twas rain. I got out an' went to the winder--law! _'twas_ dark! But the winder an' all seemed as dry!"

"What time was that?"

"I DUNNO, sir."

"The moon must have been down?"

"Yes, the moon was down."

"Then it must have been getting on for morning."

"I dunno.... But I'd smoked two pipes o' baccer before Kid called me.

I _have_ smoked some baccer since I bin livin' there alone. The last half-pound I had is purty well all gone; and 'tent the day for another lot afore Monday." (This was Sat.u.r.day.) "But I shall ha' to get me some more to-night. Why, that's quarter of a pound a week!

"Old Kid says, 'Don't it make ye _dry_?' this smoking. 'No,' I says, 'that" (namely, to drink) "en't no good.' Kid don't smoke. Reg'lar old-fas.h.i.+oned card, he is. 'Ten't many _young_ men you'll see like 'n.

But he's as reg'lar in his habits as a old married man. Ay, and he's as good, too. 'T least, he's as good to me. So they both be."

"Isn't he to his mother?"

"Ah! an' she to him. No woman couldn't look after a baby better. Every night as soon as he's home and ready to sit down, there's his supper on the table. 'Supper's ready, Kid,' she says. 'So's yourn too, Freddy,' she says to me. 'Ah,' I says, 'Wait a bit, Nanny, till my kettle's boilin'.' Because I always has tea along o' my supper. Kid, he don't have his till after; but I likes mine with my supper. So I tells her to put it in the oven till I'm ready. Cert'nly, my little kettle don't take long to boil. But I shall ha' to get me quarter of a ton o' coal, soon as Chris'mas is over."

A faint memory, for which I have had to grope, restores a mention by Bettesworth of three gla.s.ses of grog to which he treated Kid Norris and himself and old Nanny. Perhaps this was at Christmas time; at any rate I am not aware that the season was brightened for him by any other celebration. It pa.s.sed, and the New Year came in, and still he was living the same broken life, yet telling rather of the few pleasures it contained than of its desolation. I am sure he did not mean to let me know that he was being constantly reminded of his wife, yet the next conversation gives reason to suppose that such was the case.

_January 10, 1905._--He had spent two vigorous days in cutting down and sawing into logs an old plum-tree, and grubbing out its roots.

That was a job which he might still be left to do without supervision; but I had to a.s.sist, when it came to planting a young tree in the vacant s.p.a.ce. A pear-tree, this new one was; and he asked, "Was it a 'William' pear?" It was a _Doyenne du Comice_, I said. His shrug showed that he did not get hold of the name at all, and I fancied him a little contemptuous of such outlandishness; so I added that I had seen some of the pears in a fruiterer's window, and wished to grow the like for myself.

"Ah"--the suggestion was enough. He wondered if that was the sort he had bought for his "poor old gal"; and then he told again how he had given three halfpence apiece for pears to take to her at the infirmary, and would have given sixpence rather than go without them.

"And _then_ the poor old gal never tasted 'em.... She wa'n't up there long.... That Blackman what drove the fly that took her ast me about her t'other day. He didn't know" (that she was dead), "or he _said_ he didn't. 'She was only up there three days,' I said. Since then, he've took old Mrs. Cook--Jerry's mother.... Jerry kep' her as long as he could, but 't last she _'ad_ to go. Yes, he stuck to 'er as long as he could, Jerry did. None o' the others didn't, ye see.... But he had money: there was two hunderd pound, so they said, when his wife's mother died, and n.o.body couldn't make out what become of it exactly.

But Jerry had some, an' purty soon got rid of it. Purty near killed 'n. 'Fore he'd done with it he couldn't stoop to tie up his shoelaces, he was got that bloaty.... I reckon he bides down there by hisself, now."

In that he resembled Bettesworth, then. I asked if Jerry had no wife.

"She died about two year ago. Poor thing--she'd bin through _every_thing; bin to hospitals and all." It was one hop-picking, about nine years ago, and just after she was married, that "they was larkin'

about--jest havin' a bit o' fun, ye know; there wasn't no spite in it--and one of 'em swished her right across the eye with a hop-bine.... I s'pose 'twas something frightful, afore she died; 't had eat right into her head."

The old man pondered over the horror, then continued, "There must be something poisonous about hop-bine. Same as with a ear o' corn. How many you sees have lost an eye by an ear o' corn swis.h.i.+n' into it!

En't you ever heard of it? _I_'ve knowed it, many's a time. There was"

(I forget whom he named)--"it jest flicked 'n across the sight, and he went purty near mad wi' the pain of it. Oats is the worst. Well, as you knows, oats is so thin, 't'll stick to the eyeball purty near like paper.... But I'd sooner cut oats than any other; it cuts so sweet.

That was always my favourite corn to cut. Cert'nly I en't never had no accident with it. Barley cuts sweet, but 't en't like oats."

The next day's chatter gives one more touch to the picture of Bettesworth's pleasant intercourse with his neighbours at this period.

Apropos of nothing at all the old man began his story.

_January 11, 1905._--"When I went home last night I see my door was open; but I never went in, because you knows I had to go on further to take that note for you. But after I'd done that I come back same way, and then I see a light in the winder. 'Hullo!' I says to myself.

'What's up now, then?' So I pushed on; and when I got indoors there was old Nanny--she'd made up my fire an' biled my kettle, an' was gettin' my dinner ready. Ah, an' she'd bin upstairs, too: she'd scrubbed it out--all the rooms; and she says, 'I've made yer bed too, Fred....' But I give her a s.h.i.+llin', so she can't go about sayin' she done all this for me for nothin'. _She_ en't got nothin' to complain of. Besides, 't wants a scrub out now an' again. Not as 'twas anyways _dirty_, 'cause _t'en't_. She said so herself. 'If it's a fine day to-morrer, Fred, I'll come an' scrub your floors out for ye: 't'll do 'em good. Not as they be DIRTY,' she says; 'I see 'em myself, so I knows....' Well, so she did. She come in last week, and hung my new curtains.... I've had new curtains" (little muslin blinds) "to the winders, upstairs an' down--I bought 'em week afore last--and ol' Nan 've made 'em an' put 'em up for me. No mistake she is a one to work!

Works as hard as any young gal--and she between seventy an' eighty."

I said, "Yes, she's one of the right sort, is Nanny."

"One o' the right sort for me. 'Tis to be hoped nothin' 'll ever happen to _she_!"

Such were the makes.h.i.+ft, yet not altogether unhappy domestic, conditions by which Bettesworth was enabled for a little while to maintain his independence, and carry on the obstinate and now hopeless struggle to earn a living for himself. He was a man with work to do, and with the will to do it, as yet. On this same eleventh of January we may picture him forming one of a curious group of the working men of the parish, who gathered in a rainy dawn on a high piece of the road, and looked apprehensively at the weather. "I thought,"

Bettesworth told me afterwards, "we was in for a reg'lar wild day; and so did a good many more. The men didn't like startin'.... I come out to the cross-roads 'long of old Kid, and he said he didn't hardly know what to think about it. And while we stood there, Ben Fowler come along. 'I don't hardly know what to make of it,' he says. And then some more come. There was a reg'lar gang of 'em; didn't like to go away. Well, a man don't _like_ to set off for a day's work an' get wet through afore he begins."

_January 17._--Not many more days of work, however, were to be added to the tale of Bettesworth's laborious years. On the 17th of January it appears that he was still going on, for old Nanny seen at an unaccustomed hour on the road, spoke of him as getting about with difficulty. This is what she said, in her gruff, quick, scolding voice: "I couldn't git to the town fust thing, 'twas so slippery.

Bettesworth said he couldn't git down our steps this mornin', so I bin chuckin' sand over 'em. Don't want ol' Freddy to break his leg.... All up there by Granny Fry's the childern gets slidin,' an' makes it ten times wuss than what 'twas afore, an' the more you says to 'm the wuss they be."

With this last glimpse of him fumbling painfully on the slippery pathway, we finish our acquaintance with Bettesworth's working life.

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_January 22, 1905._--The 22nd of January was the date, as nearly as I can make out now, of Bettesworth's being seized by another of his bronchial colds, from which he had hitherto been tolerably free this winter. An influenza attacking myself about the same time prevented me from going out to see how he fared, and for about ten days I know only that he did not come to work. Then, on the 3rd of February, leaning heavily on his stick and looking white and feeble, he managed to get this far to report himself. It would take over long to tell how he sat by the kitchen fire that day and discussed sundry affairs of the village. For himself, he was rapidly getting well, and hoped to be back at work in a few days. I surmise that he had been lonely. Kid Norris had not come near him, but had been audible through the part.i.tion wall, asking his deaf mother "How old Freddy was?" Old Nanny herself had an extremely bad cold.

_February 8._--A few more days pa.s.s; and then on February the 8th there is the following brief entry in my note-book:

"Bettesworth started work again yesterday. He planted some shallots, and even while I watched him smoothing the earth over them, he raked out two which, failing to see, he trod upon and left on the ground."

And that was Bettesworth's last day's work. He never again after that day put hand to tool, and probably some suspicion that the end had at length come to the usefulness of his life prompted me the next morning to make that entry in my book.

On that day he had professed to be fairly well, and so he seemed. He mentioned, however, when I asked if Kid Norris had yet been to see him, that the kindness of the Norrises had "fell away very much. Very much, it have. I en't _told_ n.o.body, but...." He talked of giving up his cottage and accepting an offer to lodge with George Bryant. This young labourer, who has been spoken of before, was now and to the end a stanch friend and admirer of Bettesworth. With him Bettesworth fancied he would be comfortable, and I thought so too, and encouraged him in the project, for the old man's illness had shown that it was not right for him to live alone.

But the proposal came too late. On the following morning (the 8th: a Tuesday) no Bettesworth appeared; but about nine o'clock a messenger, who was on the way to fetch a doctor, called to say that Bettesworth was very ill; and then I remembered that on the previous afternoon he had spoken of having been s.h.i.+vering all through his dinner-hour.

It was a wet day: the influenza had barely left me, and I dared not go out to visit Bettesworth. Towards evening, as there had been no news of him, a member of my family started out across the valley to make inquiries, and had not long been gone, when one of his neighbours arrived here. It was Mrs. Eggar--"Kate," as he called her: the same good helpful woman who had volunteered to do his was.h.i.+ng when his wife was ill, and had despatched the messenger for a doctor this morning.

On this evening she had stepped into the gap again. Her errand was to urge that Bettesworth should be sent off at once to the infirmary, and to persuade me to write to the relieving officer asking him to take the necessary action. Her daughter, she said, would carry my letter to him in the morning, and would bring back any message or instructions he might send.

From her account of him it was evident that Bettesworth was in a critical state. He ought not to be left alone for the approaching night; but the question was, who would sit up with him? As it was out of my own power to do that, and as the old man's life might depend on its being done, my duty was clear enough: I could make it worth somebody's while to undertake the watching; and accordingly I made the offer. The woman hesitated, thinking of her family and her laundry work, and of her husband's toilsome days too; and then, seeing that with all their toil they were very poor (she told me much about her circ.u.mstances afterwards), she finally decided that she and her husband would see Bettesworth through the night. Her husband had work three or four miles away, and was leaving home at four in the morning: she herself had a young baby at the time; but, says my note-book, "they did it."