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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer, by
-George Sturt (AKA George Bourne)
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer
-       A Record of the Last Years of Frederick Bettesworth
-
-Author: George Sturt (AKA George Bourne)
-
-Release Date: February 13, 2013 [EBook #42092]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS OF A SURREY LABOURER ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's Note:
-
-  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
-  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
-
-  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal
-  signs=.
-
-
-
-
-MEMOIRS OF A SURREY LABOURER
-
-
-
-
-     MEMOIRS OF A SURREY
-     LABOURER
-
-     A RECORD OF THE LAST YEARS OF
-     FREDERICK BETTESWORTH
-
-     BY
-     GEORGE BOURNE
-     AUTHOR OF "THE BETTESWORTH BOOK"
-
-
-     LONDON: DUCKWORTH & CO.
-     HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
-     1907
-
-
-
-
-
-_All rights reserved._
-
-
-
-
-TO MY FRIEND
-
-CHARLES YOUNG
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION
-
-
-Bettesworth, the old labouring man, who in the decline of his strength
-found employment in my garden and entertained me with his talk, never
-knew that he had been made the subject of a book. To know it would
-have pleased him vastly, and there is something tragical in the
-reflection that he had to wear through his last weary months without
-the consolation of the little fame he had justly earned; and yet it
-would have been a mistake to tell him of it. His up-bringing had not
-fitted him for publicity. On the contrary, there was so much danger
-that self-consciousness would send him boastfully drinking about the
-parish, and make him intolerable to his familiars and useless to any
-employer, that, instead of confessing to him what I had done, I took
-every precaution to keep him in ignorance of it, and sought by leaving
-him in obscurity to preserve him from ruin.
-
-Obscure and unsuspicious he continued his work, and his pleasant
-garrulity went on in its accustomed way. Queer anecdotes came from him
-as plentifully as ever, and shrewd observations. Now it would be of
-his harvesting in Sussex that he told; now, of an adventure with a
-troublesome horse, or an experience on the scaffolding of a building;
-and again he would gossip of his garden, or of his neighbours, or of
-the old village life, or would discuss some scrap of news picked up at
-the public-house. And as this went on month after month, although I
-had no intention of adding to the first book or writing a second on
-the same lines, still it happened frequently that some fragment or
-other of Bettesworth's conversation took my fancy and was jotted down
-in my note-book. But almost until the end no definite purpose informed
-me what to preserve and what to leave. The notes were made, for the
-most part, under the influence of whim only.
-
-Towards the end, however, a sort of progression seemed to reveal
-itself in these haphazard jottings. His age was telling heavily upon
-Bettesworth, and symptoms of the inevitable change appeared to have
-been creeping unawares into my careless memoranda of his talk. I do
-not know when I first noticed this: it probably dawned upon me very
-slowly; but that it did dawn is certain, and in that perception I had
-the first crude vision of the present volume. I might not aim to make
-another book after the pattern of the first, grouping the materials as
-it pleased me for an artistic end; but by reproducing the notes in
-their proper order, and leaving them to tell their own tale, it should
-be possible to engage as it were the co-operation of Nature herself,
-my own part being merely that of a scribe, recording at the dictation
-of events the process of Bettesworth's decay.
-
-To this idea, formed a year or so before Bettesworth's death, I have
-now tried to give shape. Unfortunately, the scribe's work was not well
-done. Things that should have been written down prove to have been
-overlooked; and although in the first few chapters I have gone back to
-a much earlier period than was originally intended, and have preserved
-the chronological order all through, the hoped-for sense of
-progression is too often wanting. It existed in my mind, in the
-memories which the notes called up for me, rather than in
-Bettesworth's recorded conversations. Much explanatory comment,
-therefore, which I should have preferred to omit, has been introduced
-in order to give continuity to the narrative.
-
-Bettesworth is spoken of throughout the book as an old man; and that
-is what he appeared to be. But in fact he was aged more by wear and
-tear than by years. When he died, a nephew who arranged the funeral
-caused the age of seventy-three to be marked on his coffin, but I
-think this was an exaggeration. The nephew's mother assured me at the
-time that Bettesworth could have been no more than sixty-six. She was
-his sister-in-law, having married his elder brother, and so had some
-right to an opinion; and yet probably he was a little older than she
-supposed. It is true that sixty-six is also the age one gets for him,
-computing it from evidence given in one chapter of this book; but then
-there is another chapter which, if it is correct, would make him
-sixty-seven. Against these estimates a definite statement is to be
-placed. On the second of October, 1901, Bettesworth told me that it
-was his birthday, and that he was sixty-four; according to which, at
-his death, nearly four years later, he must have been close upon
-sixty-eight. And this, I am inclined to think, was his true age; at
-any rate I cannot believe that he was younger.
-
-At the same time, it must be allowed that his own evidence was not
-quite to be trusted. A man in his position, with the workhouse waiting
-for him, will not make the most of his years to an employer, and I
-sometimes fancied that Bettesworth wished me to think him younger than
-he was. But it is quite possible that he was not himself certain of
-his own age. I have it from his sister-in-law that both his parents
-died while he was still a child, and that he, with his brothers and
-sisters, was taken, destitute, to the workhouse. Thence, I suppose, he
-was rescued by that uncle, who kept a travelling van; and the man who
-carried the boy to fairs and racecourses, and thrashed him so savagely
-that at last he ran away to become Farmer Barnes's plough-boy, was not
-a person likely to instruct him very carefully about his age.
-
-The point, however, is of no real importance. A labourer who has at
-least the look of being old: thin, grey-eyed, quiet, with bent
-shoulders and patient though determined expression of face--such is
-the Bettesworth whose last years are recorded in these chapters; and
-it does not much matter that we should know exactly how many years it
-took to reduce him to this state.
-
-
-
-
-MEMOIRS OF A SURREY LABOURER
-
-
-
-
-I
-
-
-_December 7, 1892._--The ground in the upper part of the garden being
-too hard frozen for Bettesworth to continue this morning the work he
-was doing there yesterday, I found him some digging to do in a more
-sheltered corner, where the fork would enter the soil. With snow
-threatening to come and stop all outdoor work, it was not well that he
-should stand idle too soon.
-
-"Oh dear!" he said one day, "we don't want no snow! We had enough o'
-that two winters ago. That was a fair scorcher, that was.--There! I
-couldn't tell anybody how we _did_ git through. Still, we _got_
-through, somehow. But there was some about here as was purty near
-starved. That poor woman as died over here t'other day...."
-
-Here he broke off, to tell of a labourer's wife who had died in giving
-birth to twins, one of whom was also dead. Including the other twin,
-there were seven children living. Bettesworth talked of the husband,
-too; but presently working round again to the bad winter of 1889-1890,
-he proceeded:
-
-"I _knows_ they" (this woman and her family) "was purty near starvin'.
-_I_ give her two or three half-bushels o' taters. I can't bear to see
-'em like that, 'specially if there's little childern about. I give
-away bushels o' taters that winter, 'cause them as _had_ got any had
-got 'em buried away--couldn't git at 'em (in the frozen ground). Mine
-was stowed away where I could git 'em."
-
-Accordingly, anticipating hard times, I set Bettesworth to work in the
-sheltered spot where digging was still possible, and left him. The day
-proved sunny on the whole, with a soft winter sunshine, dimmed now and
-then by grey fog close down to the earth, and now and then by large
-drifts of foggy cloud passing over from the north. By mid-day the
-roads were sticky, where the sunshine had thawed the surface, but in
-shady places the ground was still hard. Here and there was ice, and
-odd corners remained white with the sprinkling of snow which had
-fallen two nights previously.
-
-Towards sunset I went to see what Bettesworth had done. He had done
-very little, and, moreover, he had disappeared. The air glowed with
-the yellow sunset; the soft dim blue of the upper sky was changing to
-hazy grey in the south-east; in the west, veiling the sunset, lay a
-bank of clouds, crimson shaded to lilac. I turned to enjoy this as I
-climbed the garden to find Bettesworth, where he was busy at his
-yesterday's task.
-
-"Well, Bettesworth, how are you getting on?"
-
-"Oh, _cold_, sir."
-
-Overhead, one or two wisps of smoky-looking cloud were floating
-southwards. In the sunlight they showed amber against the soft blue,
-but from their movement and their indistinct and changing form it was
-plain that they belonged to the system of those larger clouds which
-had all day been crossing ominously out of the north. I glanced up at
-them, and remarked that I feared the snow was not far off now.
-
-Bettesworth straightened up from his work.
-
-"Ah, that's what everybody bin sayin'."
-
-"Well, it looks uncommonly like coming."
-
-"Ah, it do. Didn't it look black there, along about nine or ten
-o'clock this mornin'? I thought then we was goin' to have some snow,
-an' no mistake." He chuckled grimly and continued, "I dunno how we
-shall git on if it comes to that. But there, we've had it before an'
-got through somehow, and I dessay we shall git through again."
-
-"It's to be hoped so. Anyhow, there seems to be no way of altering
-it."
-
-"No, sir; there don't. I 'xpect we shall have to put up with it. Bear
-it an' grumble--that's what we shall have to do. We've had to do that
-before now."
-
-It was a blessing, I laughed, that we had the right to grumble; but we
-hardly learnt to like the winter the better for being used to it.
-
-"No; that don't make it none the sweeter, do it? Still, we can't help
-that. As my old neighbour, Jack Tower, used to say, 'Puverty en't no
-_crime_, but 'tis a great ill-convenience.'" The touch of epigram in
-Tower's saying seemed to please Bettesworth, and his speech flowed out
-with a smooth undulating balance as he repeated slowly, tasting the
-syllables: "No, cert'nly, puverty en't no crime; but it is a very
-ill-convenient thing, an' no mistake."
-
-
-To the same period as the foregoing piece belongs an undated fragment,
-which tells how news came to Bettesworth of a certain boy's being
-bitten by a dog. "Have he bit'n _much_?" was the first eager
-exclamation, followed by, "These here messin' dawgs! There's too many
-of 'em, snappin' and yappin' about. I don't _like_ 'em!"
-
-Then he went on, "I don't see what anybody wants to keep dogs for,
-interferin' with anybody. Why, there's Kesty's dog up there--look at
-that dog of he's! Why, that dog of he's, he've bit three or four of
-'em. He bit the postman two or three times, till they sent to 'n from
-the Post Office to tell 'n 'less he mind to keep his dog tied up he'd
-have to send an' fetch his letters hisself.... Nasty sly sort o' dog
-he is, no mistake. He goes slinkin' an' prowlin' about up there; he's
-never tied up. And he don't make no sound, ye know. No, you'll never
-hear 'n make no noise; but he'll have ye. And he en't partic'lar,
-neither, about lettin' of ye go by, even if it's on the highroad,
-onless he've a mind to. He'll come slinkin' round, an goo for ye, 's
-likely as not."
-
-"Odd," I suggested, "that a man should care to keep a dog like that."
-
-Bettesworth shook his head.
-
-"There's too _many_ of 'em about, by half. And I en't partic'lar fond
-o' dogs, nowhen." He looked up, and a knowing look came into his grey
-eyes as he continued, "I was workin' one time for Malcolms up here,
-and they had a dog, and one day he stole a shoulder o' mutton,
-indoors. Sort of collie, _he_ was. And he took this 'ere shoulder o'
-mutton and run upstairs into one o' the rooms, and he wouldn't come
-out for nobody. I was at work out in the garden, and the servant she
-come runnin' out to me, to ast me if I'd come an' get 'n out. 'I dunno
-s'much about that,' I says; ''ten't a job as I cares about.' I can
-tell ye, I wa'n't partic'lar about _doin'_ of it. 'Oh,' she says, 'do
-come an' get 'n out. We be all afraid. And you can have a stick,' she
-says. 'No,' I says, 'I won't have no stick'--'cause, what good's a
-stick, ye know? He'd ha' come for me all the one for that. So I
-_catches_ up a 'and-saw...."
-
-"A _hand-saw_?"
-
-"I did. I took this 'ere 'and-saw, and I went upstairs to 'n, and he
-come for me sure enough. But I give 'n two or three 'cross the nose
-with this saw, and he didn't like that. He went off downstairs quick
-sticks."
-
-"H'm! I shouldn't have relished the job."
-
-"No, sir; I didn't _like_ it. I was afraid of 'n. I drove 'n out, but
-I was afraid of 'n all the one for that."
-
-
-_January 7, 1896._--A task reserved for this winter's leisure was the
-making of an arched way of larch-poles and wire to cover a short
-flight of steps in the garden. Two briars at the top of the steps, one
-on each side, had overgrown them, and these were now to be trained to
-the new framework, which was to slant down at the same slope as the
-steps.
-
-Until we began the work, it seemed simple enough; but almost
-immediately we plunged into bewilderment, owing to the various slopes
-and slants to be considered. The steps go askew between two parts of a
-zigzag path, and our archway, therefore, needed to be several feet
-longer on one side than on the other. The consequence was that the
-horizontal ties at the top not only clashed with all the gradients of
-the garden, but converged towards one another, so that, seen from
-above, they were horrid to behold. And then the slanting side-rails!
-They agreed with nothing else in all the landscape save the steps
-below them. Of course, when the briars covered these discrepancies,
-all would be well; but just while Bettesworth and myself were at work
-upon this thing, the farther we progressed with it the more distracted
-it looked, as though we had gathered into one spot all the conflicting
-angles of this most uneven of gardens, and were tying them up into one
-hideous knot. The work became a nightmare, and for an hour or two we
-lost our good spirits, and found it all we could do to keep our
-temper.
-
-However, we got the framework together somehow, after which the
-straining of wires over it, being, as we fondly imagined, an easier
-task, released our thoughts a little. Bettesworth paid out and held
-the wire while I fastened it.
-
-"Is that tight enough?" said he.
-
-"That'll do," said I.
-
-"Because," said he, "I can easy tighten it more yet."
-
-"No," said I, "that'll do."
-
-"Well, of course, if that'll _do_," he conceded; and then, not
-finishing his sentence, he chattered on. "Only, I don't want to be
-like ol' Sam Cook. He was 'long o' we chaps at work for Putticks when
-they was a-buildin' Coswell Church. I was there scaffoldin', an' this
-here Cook was s'posed to be helpin' of us. But we see as he never
-pulled, an' so one day we got two ropes and fastened the ends of 'em
-with jest black cotton. We made it look all like a knot, and he never
-see what we was up to. An' when it come to pullin', there was he
-makin' out to be pullin', leanin' back with his arms stretched out
-a-gruntin' 'Ugh!... Ugh!' and all the time never pullin' a pound. Why,
-if he'd on'y pulled half a dozen pounds, he'd ha' broke that cotton;
-but it never broke. Mr. John Puttick hisself was there, and he says,
-'Well, I never see the like o' that in all my time! Why,' he says,
-'you wouldn't pull enough to pull a sausage asunder,' he says. Ye
-see, he (Cook) always went by the name o' _Sausage_, 'cause his wife
-used to make sausages, so Mr. Puttick says to 'n, 'Why, you wouldn't
-pull a sausage asunder!' he says."
-
-Too soon, unlooked-for difficulties presented themselves in our
-wire-straining. We began to agree that we hardly felt as if we had
-been apprenticed to the work, and Bettesworth muttered,
-
-"I dunno as I should care much about goin' out to take a job puttin'
-up wire."
-
-To get the first wire tightly fixed between two posts was easy enough,
-but, to our dismay, the tightening of a second wire invariably
-slackened the first. Bettesworth was jubilating over his second wire.
-
-"There, he's tight, an' _no_ mistake!"
-
-"Ah, but look at the first one!"
-
-"What! He _en't_ got loose, is he, sir? Oh dear, oh dear! That _do_
-look bad! Never can let 'n go like that, can us, sir?" Gradually his
-memory began harking back to earlier instances of our difficulty.
-"'Tis like when I helped Mr. Franks puttin' wires up for he's
-ras'berries. We had just such a bother as this. Fast 's we got one
-tight we loosened another. We did git in a pucker over 'm, an' no
-mistake. I remember I told Bill Harris down 'ere what a bother we'd
-bin 'avin', and he says, 'Ah, I knows you must 've had a job.' He'd
-had just such a bother hisself, on'y he had all the proper tools an'
-everything. He borried Mr. Mills's wire-strainers, and when he got the
-fust wire up--oh, he thought he was gettin' on capital. He seemed like
-makin' a reg'lar good job of it. But when he come to put up t'other
-wire--oh dear, oh dear!--he got in such a hobble. 'There,' he says, 'I
-was ashamed for anybody to see it, and I come away an' left it.'"
-
-I was in the humour to be glad of other people's perplexities, and I
-laughed.
-
-"Oh, he came away and left it, did he?"
-
-"Yes. Don't ye see, 'twas a reg'lar fence, 'tween his garden an' the
-next. An' he thought for to have it all jest right an' proper. But
-everybody as come by could see, and he was that put out about it that
-he come away an' left it."
-
-"Bother the stuff! I hope we shan't have to go and leave this."
-
-"I dunno how we be to do it. There, _'tis_ to be done, we knows that,
-'cause I've seen it.... No, I en't never see 'em a puttin' of it up;
-but I've seen the fences after it bin put up, an' very nice they looks
-wi' the wire all as straight.... But how they doos it, I'm sure I
-don't know."
-
-We finished at last, after a fashion, and Bettesworth went on to train
-and tie the briars. If work had not been scarce, it would have been
-cruel to let him undertake such a job. To make up for his defective
-sight, it was his way to grope out blindly for a thing just before
-him, and find it by touch; and in dealing so with this briar, with
-its terrible thorns, his hands got into a pitiable state. He showed me
-them on resuming his work the next morning, saying,
-
-"I shan't be sorry when I done wi' this customer. His nails is too
-sharp for my likin'. When I went 'ome yesterday and washed my hands,
-goo! didn't they smart wherever the cold water touched one o' they
-scratches! My ol' gal says to me, 'What be ye hushin' about?' 'So 'd
-you _hush_,' I says, 'if you'd bin handlin' they roses all the
-aft'noon, same as me.' I tried with gloves, but they wa'n't no good.
-You can't git to tie, with gloves on."
-
-
-_March 26, 1896, 10.30 a.m._--There are deep cloud-shadows, and rapid
-sun-glints lighting up the shadows like daffodils shining against
-grass. And there is the roar of a big wind in the air, and majestic
-clouds are sailing across, and beyond these the sky is a dazzling
-blue.
-
-All growing things seem busy. Everywhere on the land men are at work;
-the swift sunshine glistens on the white of their shirts, and shows
-them up against the darkness of the new plough-furrows or the freshly
-dug garden-ground.
-
-Bettesworth was sowing peas. Blustered by the wind, I went to him and
-complained of the coldness of it. "A good touch of north in it," was a
-phrase I used.
-
-"Yes, sir; she (the wind) have shifted there since the mornin'. She
-was due west when I got up--when that little rain come. She've gone
-round since then, but she'll git back again to the south, you'll see.
-I've noticed it many's a time. Right south she was at twelve o'clock
-when the sun crossed the line o' Saturday (March 21), and that's where
-she'll keep tackin' back to all through the quarter--till midsummer,
-that is."
-
-"Well, I don't know that she could do much better."
-
-"No, sir. Strikes me we be goin' to have a very nice, kind spring. I
-don't say she'll bide there all the time; but if she gits away, that's
-where she'll come back to."
-
-Again I expressed my dislike of this strong north wind. It would soon
-make me sleepy, I said.
-
-"_Would_ it, sir? Oh, I do like to hear the wind! To lay and listen to
-it when I be in bed--it makes me feel so comfortable. No matter what
-'tis like outside, I feels that _I_ be in the warm aw-right."
-
-
-_March 31, 1897._--At six minutes to five this morning Bettesworth was
-lacing up his boots. The day is the last of March, which, for
-gardeners in this village, is the middle of the busiest time of the
-year. The early seeds have been in the ground long ago; the beans are
-up two inches; the first sowing of peas shows well in the rows; others
-were put in last week. Shallots are sending up their green spikes;
-there are a few potatoes already planted; and now every effort must be
-made, and advantage be taken of every opportunity, to get the
-remainder of the ground ready and the main crops planted at the
-earliest possible time; for in this soil, as Bettesworth says, "you
-can't be much too for'ard."
-
-Late last night he and his old wife planted their potatoes in a few
-rods of ground he has at the end of my garden. It was seven o'clock,
-and dark, by the time they had finished; then they went home and had
-supper--or, at least, the wife had, whose work had not been arduous
-until the evening. She scolded her husband.
-
-"There you goes slavin' about, and gets so tired you can't eat."
-
-"It's true," Bettesworth confesses. "The more I works the less I
-eats.... No, nor I don't sleep, neither. If I got anythink on my mind,
-I can't sleep. I seems to want to be up and at it."
-
-Supper over, he lit his pipe, had one smoke, then kicked off his boots
-and said,
-
-"Well, I be off to bed. 'Ten't no good settin' here, lookin' at the
-fireplace."
-
-The wife grumbled again in the morning, urging him to rest.
-
-"But what's the use?" he said. "It got to be done, and I can't rest
-ontil _'tis_ done."
-
-So he got up at the time already mentioned, and came to rake over the
-potato-ground.
-
-It slopes down to the lane, this ground. Presently the man from the
-cottage just across the lane came out for his day's work.
-
-"Why, you be for'arder than ever this year, ben't ye, Fred?"
-
-"No, I dunno as I be. I wants to git it done, though, anyhow."
-
-Then the Vicar's gardener passed. He laughed. "Be you determined on
-gettin' all your ground planted in March, then, Fred?"
-
-Bettesworth laughed back. "I don't care whether 'tis March or April.
-When I be ready it got to go in."
-
-Others, going by, chaffed him. "You bin there all night, then?"
-
-About a quarter past six he went back home, and met his neighbour
-Noah.
-
-"Hullo!" says Noah. "What? You bin at work?"
-
-"Ah, and so you ought to ha' bin."
-
-But Noah, who has lived in London, "sits up till eleven or twelve at
-night readin' the paper. He can't git into the habit of gettin' up
-early."
-
-Gardening talk is now the staple conversation in the village, and the
-public-house is the club-room where the discussions take place, the
-times being Saturday night and Sunday.
-
-"You don't find many there any other time," says Bettesworth.
-"Cert'nly, after a man bin to work all day, when he gits home he's
-tired, and wants to go to bed. But Saturday night and Sunday--well,
-you can't bide indoors solitary, lookin' at the fire. If you do, you
-never learns nothin'. But to go and have a glass and a pipe where
-there's others--that sims to enlighten your mind."
-
-The men compare notes, and give and take sage advice. "Where I had
-that crop o' dwarf peas last year I be goin' to have carrots this,"
-says one. Another answers, "Well, then, if I was you, I should dig
-that ground up now--rake off the stones" (carrots being "a very tender
-herbage"). "Then, if it comes rain, that'll settle it a bit. After
-that, let it bide an' settle for about another fortnight, and then as
-soon as you gets a shower shove 'em in as fast as you mind."
-
-"Or else," Bettesworth explains in telling me this, "if you don't let
-it settle the drill sows 'em too deep; it sinks in. Carrots is a thing
-you wants to sow as shallow as ever you can."
-
-Somebody informs the company that he had "quarter of a acre o' carrots
-last year, and he made five pound of 'em." Or was it that he had five
-tons, and sold them for thirty shillings a ton? This was it, as
-Bettesworth at last remembers.
-
-"I 'spose you'll soon be puttin' in some taters, Fred?"
-
-"I got most o' mine in a'ready."
-
-"_Have_ ye? I en't sowed none yet, but...."
-
-So says Tom Durrant, the landlord.
-
-"But cert'nly," as Bettesworth observes, "down there where he is it do
-take the frost so--right over there in Moorway's Bottom. Up here,
-though, we no call to wait. I likes to git taters in. You see, where
-they lays about they spears so, and then the spears gits knocked
-off--you _can't_ help it; or, if not, still, where you sees a tater
-speared so, that must weaken that tater? About two foot two one way
-and fifteen inches t'other--that's the distance I gen'ly plants
-taters. Ten't no good leavin' 'em wider 'tween the rows. But old Steve
-Blackman, up there by the Forest, I knowed he once plant some three
-foot both ways. And law, what a crop he did git! 'Twas a piece o'
-ground his landlord let 'n have for the breakin' of it up. And he
-trenched in a lot o' fuzz--old fuzz-bushes as high as you be--and so
-on. Everything went in. And such a crop o' taters as he had--no, no
-dressin'. Only this old fuzz-stuff. _Regents_, they was. Oh, that was
-a splendid tater, too! But you never hears of 'em now. They sims to be
-reg'lar gone out. I got some o' these here _Dunbars_, down here. I
-should like to see half a bushel o' they in this bit o' ground o'
-yourn. Splendid croppin' tater they be. I ast Tom Durrant if he could
-spare you half a bushel. He said he didn't hardly know. There's so
-many bin after 'em--purty near half the parish. They be a splendid
-croppin' tater, no mistake. He got 'em of some gentleman's gardener to
-begin with, I reckon. Reg'lar one he is, you know, for gettin' taters
-an' things, and markin' 'em and keepin' the sorts separate. He had
-four to start with, an' they produced a peck. Then he got three bushel
-out o' that peck. And last year he sowed 'em again--three bushel--and
-he got thirty-nine bushel."
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-_May 13, 1896._--The Tom Durrant just mentioned was frequently spoken
-of by Bettesworth, and always in a tone of warm approval. "A wonderful
-quiet sort o' man," steadily "putting together the pieces," but not
-assuming any airs, he managed his public-house well, and with especial
-attention to the comfort of his older neighbours. "If any of the young
-uns come in hollerin' about, 'twas very soon 'Outside!' with Tom.
-'There is the door!' he'd say. 'I don't keep my 'ouse open for such as
-you.'"
-
-So Bettesworth has told me, more than once--perhaps not exactly in
-those words.
-
-But sometimes Bettesworth's talk was too thick with detail to be
-remembered and written down as he said it in the time at my disposal;
-whence it happens that I am able only to summarize an anecdote about
-Durrant, which Bettesworth told with considerable relish. The publican
-was the owner of two cottages which were supplied with water from a
-good well--a precious thing in this village. These cottages had lately
-been overhauled and enlarged--Bettesworth detailed to me all the
-improvements, praising the new sculleries and sheds that had been
-added--and then the tenants, as if stricken with madness, found fault
-with the water-supply, and lodged a complaint with the sanitary
-inspector. The inspector insisted that the well should be cleaned out.
-Durrant thereupon examined the water, found it "clear as crystal,"
-cleaned out the well as he was ordered to do, and--gave the tenants
-notice to pay sixpence a week more for their cottages, or to quit. "So
-they didn't get much by _that_," said Bettesworth approvingly.
-
-After all, this was but a kind of parenthesis in a talk which, not
-hurried, but quietly oozing out as we worked side by side in the
-garden, fairly overwhelmed my memory with variety of subject and
-vividness of expression. At one time it dealt with a certain road
-which was to be widened--"all they beautiful trees to be cut down,
-right from so-and-so to so-and-so"; at another, it discussed three
-parcels of building land for sale in the vicinity, estimated their
-acreage, and related the offers which had been already made for them.
-From that, working all the while, Bettesworth would wander off to the
-drought, and I would hear how long this or that neighbour had been
-without water; how a third (whose new horse, by the way, "was turnin'
-out well--but there, so do all they that comes from" a certain source,
-where, however, "they works 'em too hard")--how a third neighbour was
-obliged to keep his old horse almost constantly at work fetching
-water, since he had twenty-two little pigs, besides other live
-animals whose numbers goodness knows, and so did Bettesworth. At the
-new schools, again, the water was failing; and how, and why, and what
-the caretaker thought, and all about it, Bettesworth was able to
-explain.
-
-The receptivity of the man's brain was what struck me. One pictured it
-pinked and patterned over with thousands of unsorted facts--legions of
-them jostling one another without apparent arrangement. Yet all were
-available to him; at will he could summon any one of them into his
-consciousness. A modern man would have had to stop and sift and
-compare them, and build theories and systems out of all that wealth of
-material. Not being modern, Bettesworth did not theorize; his thoughts
-were like the dust-atoms seen in a sunbeam. But though he did not
-"think," still a vast common-sense somehow or other flourished in him,
-and these manifold facts were its food.
-
-
-_September 26, 1896._--Nor was it only of current topics that he could
-talk with such fullness of detail. Getting shortly afterwards into the
-reminiscent vein, he succeeded in paralyzing my memory with the tale
-of things he had observed many years before in just the same
-unsystematic yet thorough fashion. My hasty jottings, made afterwards,
-preserve only a few points, and do not tell how any of them were
-suggested. The talk was at one time of Basingstoke Fair, "where they
-goes to hire theirselves for the year." Of "shepherds with a bit o'
-wool in their hats, carters with a bit o' whipcord, and servant gals,"
-and so on. "I went once," said Bettesworth, "when I was a nipper--went
-away from Penstead; but I never got hired.... There's the place for
-games, though! They carters, when they've jest took their year's
-money, and be changin' 'racks,' as they calls it. 'You bin an' changed
-your rack, Bill?' 'What rack be you got on to?' 'You got on for old
-Farmer So-and-so?'... There they be, hollerin' about. And then they
-all got their shillin', what bin hired...."
-
-I did not stop then to consider whether this hiring shilling, and the
-token in the hat, might have any relationship, in the world of old
-customs, to the "King's shilling" and the bunch of ribbons of the
-recruit for the army. Bettesworth was talking; and presently it was
-about a certain Jack Worthington, of a neighbouring village, who was
-known as "Cunnin' Jack," and played the concertina at fairs, clubs,
-and so on: "Newbury Fair, Reading Fair, Basingstoke Fair"--Bettesworth
-essayed to catalogue them. Cunnin' Jack "learnt it all by hisself, but
-I've heared a good many--travellin' folk and the like--say as they
-never heared anybody play the concertina like him. He's the on'y one
-'s ever I heared play the church bells--chimes, an' fire 'em, and
-all--wonderful! _Blue Bells of Scotland_, too--to hear him play that,
-an' the chimes, jest exact! No trouble to make out what 'tis. Oh, he's
-a reg'lar musician! He've trained all his sons to same thing. One of
-'em plays the fiddle; another of 'em got a thing what he scratches
-along wi' wires, sounds purty near like a fiddle.... 'Ten't no good
-for 'n in a town, 'less 'tis a fair or summat o' that; but in any
-out-o'-the-way place. 'Relse, if he gets to a fair, there'll be three
-or four landlords about tryin' to get hold of 'n; and they'll give 'n
-five shillin's and supper, and his drink an' a bed, an' what he can
-pick up besides. Very often he'll make as much as five-an'-twenty
-shillin's in a night(?). And when he comes 'ome, he bring p'r'aps a
-gallon o' ha'pence along with 'n. Never no silver, o' course. Often,
-when his wife thought he hadn't got nothing but a pound or so, he'd
-chuck her five or six pound. Then in the winter he'd go
-gravel-diggin', onless there come a fair, or anything o' the likes o'
-that. At these pubs where they dances, too, he'd put round the hat
-after every dance, an' if there was a good many stood up, p'r'aps he'd
-pull in half-a-crown or so."
-
-Cunnin' Jack had a contrivance of musical dancing-dolls, about which I
-did not clearly understand. And I have quite forgotten how Bettesworth
-spoke of the man's brother, a deaf-mute, who refused to work, and
-"lived about at Aldershot, along o' the soldiers."
-
-Afterwards another "dummy" was mentioned: "terrible big strong
-feller.... Spiteful.... Goes gravel-cartin' with his father." At a
-difficult place in the gravel-pit the father reached out and struck
-his son's horse. The "dummy" springs on him, throws him on his back,
-making a noise "'bu-bu,' like a calf.... Sure way to upset 'n--if you
-was in the gravel pit, touch his hoss...."
-
-Bettesworth had once seen "a dummy, talkin' with a friend of his," in
-the finger alphabet. "Can't you understand it?" said the friend to
-Bettesworth. "'No,' I says; 'how should I?' But, law! to see him! And
-then write, too! Purty near as fast as you can talk. And all the time
-his eye 'd be on ye, watchin' ye. But to see him write on his
-slate--wonderful fast! and then" (here Bettesworth breaks into
-dramatic action, licking his hand and smudging out slate-writing)--"and
-then, when he'd rubbed it out, to see him write _again_! Spiteful,
-though, _he_ was. So they all be, I s'pose." There was another dumb
-man, for instance, who had been apprenticed to a shoemaker....
-
-Unfortunately, I cannot reconstruct this instance. I only remember
-that the man had become "a wonderful good shoemaker, but didn't sim to
-care about follerin' it," and had "took to gardenin' now," instead.
-
-
-_May 5, 1898._--On a morning early in May it was raining, quietly,
-luxuriously, with a continuous soothing shattering-down of warm drops.
-In the doorway of the little tool-shed I stood listening--listening to
-the gentle murmur on the roof, on the long fresh grass of a small
-orchard plot, and on the young leaves of the plum and the blossoming
-apple which made the daylight greener by half veiling the sky.
-
-Beside and beyond these trees were lilacs, purpling for bloom, small
-hazels, young elms in a hedgerow--all fair with new greenness; and
-farther on, glimpses of cottage roof against the newly dug
-garden-ground of the steep hillside. Above the half-diaphanous green
-tracery of the trees, cool delicious cloud, "dropping fatness,"
-darkened where it sagged nearer to the earth. The light was nowhere
-strong, but all tempered moistly, tenderly, to the tenderness of the
-young greenery.
-
-I ought to have been busy, yet I stood and listened; for the earth
-seemed busy too, but in a softened way, managing its many businesses
-beautifully. The air seemed melting into numberless liquid sounds.
-Quite near--not three trees off--there was a nightingale nonchalantly
-babbling; from the neighbourhood of the cottage came, penetrating, the
-bleating of a newly-born goat; while in the orchard just before me
-Bettesworth stooped over a zinc pail, which, as he scrubbed it, gave
-out a low metallic note. Then there were three undertones or
-backgrounds of sound, that of the soft-falling rain being one of them.
-Another, which diapered the rain-noise just as the young leaves showed
-their diaper-work against the clouds, was the all but unnoticed
-singing of larks, high up in the wet. Lastly, to give the final note
-of mellowness, of flavoured richness to the morning, I could hear
-through the distance which globed and softened it a frequent "Cuckoo,
-cuckoo." The sound came and died away, as if the rain had dissolved
-it, and came again, and again was lost.
-
-Framed by all this, Bettesworth stooped over his pail, careless of
-getting wet. His old earth-brown clothes seemed to belong to the
-moistened nook of orchard where he was working; so, too, did his
-occasional quiet chatter harmonize well with the pattering of the warm
-rain. And for a time the drift of what he said was so much a part of
-our quiet country life that I took it as a matter of course, and let
-it pass by unnoticed.
-
-But presently he raised his head.
-
-"Have ye heared 'bout young Crosby over here? He's gone clean off his
-head. They took 'n off to the asylum at Brookwood this mornin'. Got
-this 'ere religion. I s'pose by all accounts he went right into 't;
-and that's what 've come of it."
-
-I suggested that religious mania was often curable.
-
-"Yes. I've knowed a many have it; and then they gets over it after a
-time. Get 'em away--that's what it wants. If they can get 'em where
-they can dummer somethin' else into 'em, then they be all right. Wants
-to give 'em a change, so 's to get a little more enlightenment into
-their minds."
-
-He came to join me in the shed doorway, for shelter from a temporary
-thickening of the rain, and standing there he continued,
-
-"I was up to my sister's at Middlesham o' Sunday. She'd bin to
-Brookwood to see her sister-in-law. If they hadn't let her" (the
-sister-in-law) "'ome too soon that first time, she'd ha' bin all
-right. Wherefore now she's there again, and jest like a post. If they
-puts her anywhere, there she bides, and don't try for to do nothing.
-'Relse, when she was there afore, they told my sister she'd work as
-well as e'er a woman in the place. She see several there what she
-knowed. Fred Baker's wife, what used to be signalman, for one. But
-what most amused her was a old woman, when they was goin' out two by
-two for their walk in the grounds, flingin' her arms about and liftin'
-up her skirts an' dancin'.... She was havin' her reels and her capers
-in highly deglee." The old man pondered a few moments, then concluded
-pensively, as he stepped out to his work again, "What a shockin'
-thing, this mind!" His accent on the last word sounded almost
-resentful.
-
-
-_May 6, 1898._--The next day he reported that the man Crosby was said
-to have got "religious ammonium, is it? Some such name as that."
-
-The talk of religion reminded him of a former employer, of the Baptist
-persuasion, who, when annoyed with him, was wont to say impatiently,
-"Bother your picture!" So, of a dead pigeon, from whose crop
-seventy-two peas were taken, "Bother he's picture!" said the Baptist.
-Another imprecation of this man's was, "Drabbit it!" at which,
-however, Bettesworth used to expostulate, telling his master, "Look
-'ere, you Baptists may lie, but you mawn't swear! And so he could lie,
-too," he added--"no mistake. And once he said anything, he'd stick to
-it."
-
-A month or more passed, and I forgot all about poor Crosby, until one
-delicious morning, when Bettesworth thought fit to tell me that he was
-no better. A neighbour had cycled to Brookwood on Sunday to see him
-and report about his family, Crosby's wife being in child-bed. But the
-information quickened no interest.
-
-"All he kep' on about was the devil. The devil kep' comin' and
-botherin' of 'n. 'Tis a bad job. I s'pose he went right into
-it--studyin' about these here places nobody ever bin to an' come back
-again to tell we. Nobody don't know nothin' about it. 'Ten't as if
-they come back to tell ye. There's my father, what bin dead this forty
-year. What a crool man he must be not to 've come back in all that
-time, if he was able, an' tell me about it. That's what I said to
-Colonel Sadler. 'Oh,' he says, 'you better talk to the Vicar.'
-'Vicar?' I says. 'He won't talk to me.' Besides, what do he know about
-it more 'n anybody else?"
-
-
-Early in the summer of 1896 Bettesworth had been immensely proud of
-his peas, which were ready for picking quite a week before other
-people had any. The fame of these peas had got abroad in the parish;
-it had reached a youth--a new curate fresh from a theological
-college--and had appealed to his fancy so strongly that he sent a
-servant to buy threepennyworth of the precious crop. And Bettesworth
-had chuckled.
-
-"I bin a-laughin' to myself all the mornin'.... _Three penn-'oth o'
-peas!_ I never heared talk o' such a thing! I told the gal to go back
-and tell 'n to save his money till they was cheaper."
-
-
-_June 13, 1899._--But three years later Bettesworth seems to have
-changed his policy. On June 13 once more he had peas to boast of, and
-already for some days his wife was itching to be at them.
-
-"Look, there's a nice pea, and there," she would say, handling the
-dangling pods.
-
-But Bettesworth would answer, "Yes, they be; and you let 'em bide."
-
-"For the sake of a shillin' now," he explained to me, "I en't a-goin'
-to have that haulm spoilt, and lose two or three shillin's later on."
-
-His brother-in-law agreed that he was right. It was all reported to me
-in Bettesworth's own words.
-
-"'I thinks you be right, Fred,' he says. 'You better get along without
-that shillin' now, and have two or three later on.'"
-
-Old Mrs. Skinner, too, commended him. She told of a neighbour who had
-picked a few peas very early, and ruined his crop; for in the hot
-weather the juicy haulm was sure to wither soon if bruised by
-handling.
-
-The weather was glorious just then, yet ill for our sandy gardens.
-
-"As blue as a whetstone," said Bettesworth, in forecast of what the
-cabbage crop would be, should rain not soon come. "And en't the grass
-slippery and dry! _'Twas_ a hot day yest'day, no mistake! I was up in
-my garden when Mrs. Skinner come up lookin' at my peas. She reg'lar
-laughed at me. 'Well, Fred, you _be_ a purty picture!' There was the
-sweat all trinklin' down my arms, an' the dust caked on.... But she
-did admire they peas. Still, she reckoned I was right leavin' 'em. So
-I says to my old gal, 'You let 'em bide.' So she'll have to, too. 'Tis
-for me to give the word."
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-_October 7, 1899._--I have mentioned Bettesworth's neighbour Noah, the
-young man who used to sit up too late at night reading the paper.
-Notwithstanding this bad habit, he and Bettesworth had been on
-excellent terms of friendship. It was to Noah that Bettesworth had
-turned, for example, when I lent him those copies of the _Daily
-Chronicle_ in which the first particulars of Nansen's voyage in the
-_Fram_ were published. Unable to read himself ("I can't see well
-enough," he said, "or else I be scholard enough"), he invited Noah and
-Noah's wife to come on the Sunday and read to him the explorer's
-narrative.
-
-"We started," said he, "about two o'clock, and there they was, turn
-and turn about, as hard as ever they could read up to half-past five."
-The evening was spent in raising the envy of other neighbours. "They
-wanted to borry the papers, but I says, 'No, they ben't mine to
-lend.'"
-
-The readers themselves seem to have conceived an intense admiration
-for Nansen, whose bed of stones especially excited Bettesworth's
-imagination.
-
-"_I_'ve had some hard lay-downs in my time," he exclaimed, "but
-_that!_ Gawd! what they poor fellers must ha' suffered!"
-
-Not long afterwards, Noah was called in again to help enjoy a
-seedsman's catalogue. It was read through from cover to cover.
-
-Yet Noah proved to be a treacherous friend, after all. I have no
-record of the occurrence, but I think it must have been in the summer
-of 1897 that he began to covet Bettesworth's pleasant cottage, and by
-offering the owner a higher rent succeeded in getting possession of
-it. Bettesworth was obliged to quit. He took a cottage in a little row
-at three-and-sixpence a week, where he was comfortable enough for
-about a couple of years. At the end of that period, however, certain
-difficulties over the water-supply became acute--a laundress next door
-was pumping the well dry--and other discomforts arising, he began in
-the autumn of 1899 to look out for another home.
-
-It is a singular place, this parish. The narrow valley it occupies is
-that of a small water-course commonly known as "The Lake," which in
-summer is a dry bed of sand, but in winter becomes a respectable brook
-of yellow waters which grow quite turbulent at times of flood. In
-their turbulence through long ages they have cut deep into the
-northern side of the valley, and now for some two miles that northern
-side, all warm and sunny, slopes down towards the stream, and there
-breaks off in precipitous sand-banks which in most places overhang
-the stream and make it inaccessible. But not in all places. There are
-various gaps in the sand-banks, where the rains and storms of
-centuries have scooped out the upper slope into tiny gorges and warm
-secluded hollows, down which footpaths wind steeply, or narrow bumpy
-lanes, to some plank bridge or other thrown across the stream. In
-these hollows the cottages cluster thickest; there they form little
-hamlets whose inhabitants sometimes hardly know the other villagers.
-Such, indeed, is my own case: hundreds of my fellow-parishioners half
-a mile away are practically strangers to me. Hundreds, for it is a
-large parish. The bluffs which separate the hollows are not unpeopled;
-they have their cottages and gardens dotted over them without order at
-the caprice of former peasant owners. All sorts of footpaths and
-tracks connect these habitations, but there are few roads, and those
-are deep in sand. For the labouring people do not interchange visits
-and pay calls; they just go to work and come home again, each to his
-own place. At home, they look out upon their own particular hollow,
-and upon little besides; or, living high up on a bluff, they get
-outlook upon the other side of the main valley, which is lower, tamer,
-smoother than this. It begins--that other side--in narrow meadow or
-plough land at the bottom, and so rises gently to a ridge fringed with
-cottages. In addition to these dwellings, there are a few hovels down
-by the stream itself, with their backs stuck into the sand-cliffs,
-and with gardens between cliff and stream so narrow that a man might
-almost jump across them. A second jump would take him over the stream
-into the meadow-land just mentioned.
-
-With a rapidly increasing population empty cottages are scarce, as
-Bettesworth now found. Moreover, his choice was restricted. There were
-reasons against his going to the upper end of the valley. It was more
-newly peopled by labourers from the town, who had never known, or else
-had lost, the older peasant traditions which Bettesworth could still
-cherish--in memory, at least--here in the more ancient part of the
-village. Of course, that was not how he explained his distaste; he
-only expressed a dislike for the society of the upper valley. "They be
-a roughish lot up there," he would say. The fact was, he did not know
-many of them intimately, from which it may be seen how curiously our
-parish society is disintegrated.
-
-Besides, he wanted a cottage not a mile away, but near to his work, so
-that he might go home to dinner and see how his wife was getting on.
-If he was growing old, she was older; and what was worse, she was
-subject to epileptic fits. There were days when he worried about her
-all the time while he was at work, and went home uneasily, dreading to
-find her fallen down in a fit. It was necessary, therefore, that if he
-moved it should be not far away. His last move had been in the wrong
-direction--from the adjoining bluff to a hollow further down
-stream--and now he desired to get back.
-
-One of the steep and narrow lanes mentioned above is that which runs
-down beside this garden, where Bettesworth's work lay. It is
-picturesque enough, beneath its deep banks and hedgerows and overhung
-by my garden trees; but that is of no moment here. Within
-Bettesworth's memory it afforded access even for a waggon right down
-to "the Lake," and so over into the meadow opposite; but the last
-hundred yards of it, from Mrs. Skinner's cottage downwards, have long
-been washed out into a mere foot-track, deeply sunk between its banks,
-swooping down precipitously to the stream-level, and scarce two feet
-wide. So you emerge from the sand cliffs, and the valley is before
-you. Then the footpath winds along to the left (eastwards), having the
-cliff on one hand and the stream on the other, to a wider stretch,
-until with this for its best approach you come to a little hovel of
-three rooms and a lean-to shed, standing with its back walls close in
-against the sandy cliff.
-
-At the period we are dealing with, this cottage had a poverty-stricken
-appearance, upon which Bettesworth himself had been wont to comment
-severely, though the place was in reality no worse than others beyond
-it and elsewhere in the parish. But it had suffered from utter neglect
-under the previous tenant, a thriftless Irishman, while, after the
-Irishman left, it stood empty for a time, and looked like falling
-quite derelict. Then, however, the landlord had a few repairs done,
-and at the end of September, to my amazement, I heard from Bettesworth
-that he had taken it. He would save eighteen-pence a week by the
-change: the new rent was only two shillings.
-
-Ought I to have expostulated? Perhaps I should have done so, but for
-the queer expression in the old man's face when telling me his
-intention. There was some shame, but more of dogged defiance. "You
-think what you like," so I interpreted it--"that's the place I'm going
-to." He was armed, too, with testimony in favour of the cottage.
-
-"Skinner" (the bricklayer) "says he don't see why it shouldn't make a
-very nice little place for two. He done up the roof there t'other
-week, and he ought to know." Later, the old man repeated Skinner's
-opinion, and added, "I think _I_ can make it comfortable. Ye see,
-there en't bin nobody to try before."
-
-This was true enough. The Irishman's tenancy had not in any sense
-improved the cottage. The place could not be worse used, and it might
-conceivably be fairly habitable in more careful hands.
-
-During the first week in October Bettesworth effected his removal. It
-was an inauspicious time. He had been counting upon the stream-bed for
-a roadway along which to cart his things, so as to avoid scrambling up
-and down the devious pathways and tracks that led to the cottage, but,
-unfortunately, the stream this week was in flood. A cart might,
-indeed, have struggled along it, and one was, in fact, bespoken--Jack
-Crawte's, to wit; but at the appointed time the cart failed to arrive,
-and upon Bettesworth's going to inquire for it, he discovered that the
-Crawtes were all gone into the town to the fair.
-
-Next day they promised to come "by-and-by." Bettesworth accepted the
-promise, but he also chartered two donkey-carts, which were really
-more suitable for getting out from the first cottage into one lane,
-and then round and about, up and down, to the head of the gully by
-Mrs. Skinner's. Farther than that even donkey-carts were useless. For
-the last and worst hundred yards nothing but a wheelbarrow or a strong
-back could be of any use.
-
-Fortunately (in these circumstances), poor old Bettesworth's household
-goods were not many, nor yet magnificent; yet still they were enough
-for him to manage. The main of them were shifted on the Thursday, and
-I should not like to say how many times that day the old man slaved
-down the gorge with loaded wheelbarrow and up with it empty; but Mrs.
-Skinner witnessed his doings, and complimented him.
-
-"Why, Freddy," she said--"why, Freddy, you'd kill half the young uns
-_now_, old as you be."
-
-There should have been a helper--one Moses Cook, familiarly known as
-"Little Moser"; but little Moser was not a success. On the Wednesday,
-promising to lend a hand "in five minutes," he delayed coming until he
-had found time to get drunk and then arrived with the proposal that
-Bettesworth should give him a pint to start with. "_Git_ out o' my
-way!" was Bettesworth's reply. The next day the little man was
-willing, but useless.
-
-"Couldn't even git up there by ol' Dame Skinner's with a empty barrer!
-I says to 'n, 'Git in an' let me wheel ye up!' I says. Made me that
-wild! Why, I'd lifted a chest into the barrer all by myself--and _he_
-must ha' weighed a hundred and a quarter, with what there was in 'n,
-ye know--and wheeled 'n down. And then to see this little feller. 'You
-be in my way,' I says. 'You better go 'ome and sit down, and then
-p'raps we shall be able to git something done!' I _was_ wild. I told
-'n, 'They says Gawd made man in His own image--you must be a bloomin'
-counterfeit!'"
-
-At one time there was a threat of rain, and Bettesworth "whacked all
-the beddin' he could on to the barrer, and down and in with it."
-Fortunately, the rain held off.
-
-Towards night the cart came into action. It brought a load or two of
-firewood--not along the stream itself, but beside it, through the
-flooded meadow. The wood was tipped out on to the raised bank across
-the stream, just opposite Bettesworth's new home, there to remain for
-the night. But the old man could not rest with it there.
-
-"I got all that across," he said, "and into the dry. Crawte couldn't
-hardly believe it when I told 'n this mornin'. But I _did_. Fetched it
-across in the dark." It was an almost incredible feat, for the night
-was of the blackest, and the stream four or five feet wide. "And then,
-when I got in, I had to put up the bedstead, with only the ol' gal to
-help me. An' if you told her one thing, it only seemed to make her
-forget to do something else. Talk about _tired_! I never had nothin'
-all that time--not even half a pint o' beer. Ye see, there wa'n't
-nobody I could send, an' I couldn't spare time to go myself, 'relse I
-_should_ ha' liked a glass o' beer. But I never had nothin' not afore
-I'd done. Then I had some tea, but I was too tired to eat. P'r'aps, if
-I'd ha' been able to have half a pint earlier, I might ha' bin able to
-eat; but, as 'twas, I couldn't eat. And now this mornin' my back and
-shoulders aches--with wheelin' down that gully, ye know."
-
-As it is not mentioned elsewhere, I may as well say here that
-Bettesworth's endeavours to make this little place habitable and
-respectable were for a time fairly successful. As it should have been
-explained, after emerging from the gully the public footpath runs
-close in front of the doorway of the place, leaving some eight feet of
-garden between itself and the stream. Of old, in the Irishman's time,
-this garden was an entanglement of weeds and stunted cabbages, while
-the footpath was unswept, disgusting, and often blocked with a pail of
-ashes or other household refuse. But now a spirit of order had
-appeared on the scene. The cabbage-plot became comely; in due season
-old-fashioned cottage flowers--pinks and nasturtiums--appeared in two
-tiny borders under the windows on either side of the door, and the
-mean doorway itself was beautified by a rough but sufficient arbour of
-larch-posts before it, up which "canary-creeper" found its way.
-Accordingly, I heard from time to time, but neglected to set down, how
-this and that wayfarer had praised the old man's improvements. Did not
-the Vicar himself say (I seem to remember Bettesworth's telling me so
-with much gratification) that he would never have believed the place
-could be made to look so well? Of the inside, perhaps, not so much
-could be said; but even this was passable at first, before the old
-wife's breakdown spoilt all. For several years, in fact, Bettesworth
-was, I believe, very happy in this cottage. At any rate, it gave him
-scope for labour, and he always liked that. He had hardly been in
-possession a week before he was talking of an improvement much to his
-mind.
-
-"There's a rare lot o' capital soil in the lake under they withies
-just against my garden," he said; and he proposed taking it out to
-enrich his garden.
-
-"It'll be good for the lake, too," I suggested.
-
-"Yes," he replied, "it wants clearin' out. Why, in some places there
-en't no lake, and half the water that comes down got to overflow and
-make floods."
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-And now, Bettesworth being settled in this hovel, his story begins at
-last to move forwards. For a while, indeed, little, if any, change in
-the man himself will be discernible. We shall be aware only of the
-quiet lapse of time as the seasons steal over him, and leave him
-older, or as the progress of public events is dimly reflected in
-occasional scraps of his conversation. And even of public events not
-much will be heard. Such things, which had never greatly concerned
-Bettesworth, were less likely than ever to attract his attention now.
-For five days in the week he rarely got farther from home than the
-lower half of the lane, where it degenerates into the gully between my
-garden and his cottage. On Saturday afternoons he journeyed into the
-town to get a shave and do his shopping; on Sunday evenings he
-generally went to the public-house; and as this was all he saw of the
-world, it is no matter for surprise if his interests remained
-extremely parochial.
-
-And yet his ignorance of what was happening did sometimes surprise me.
-Of course, I know that what was wanting was the opportunity of
-enlightenment, and that he was not naturally deficient in the
-instincts that make for it. His appreciation of Nansen's adventures
-may be cited as a proof that he was ready and even eager to be
-informed. But for all that, it is true that the affairs which excited
-the rest of the world usually left him undisturbed, and the public
-noise needed to be a great one to reach his ears. Mr. Chamberlain's
-protectionist propaganda was not loud enough, incredible though that
-may seem. As a peasant, Bettesworth had a theory which I have often
-heard him affirm, that, for farmers to prosper, "bread never ought to
-be no less than a shillin' a gallon," so that I expected to hear him
-at least talk of "fiscal reform." But he never did. The proposal was
-months old when I at last broached the subject to him, and all he said
-was, "Oh dear! we don't want no taxes on food!" as if he had never
-heard that such a thing was projected. And it is my firm belief that
-to the day of his death he knew only what little I told him about it,
-and would hardly have been able to say where he had heard the name of
-Chamberlain. His home was down there by the stream bed; his work was
-half-way up the lane. Walking to it, he might hear Mrs. Skinner
-talking to her pigs; walking back, he could see Crawte's cows turned
-out in the meadow at the bottom of the valley. He never read a
-newspaper, and how should he have learnt anything about the political
-ferment which was spreading through the towns of all England, and
-engaging the attention of the whole world?
-
-At the end of 1899, however, he had not long been in his new dwelling
-before his attention was effectually arrested by the war in South
-Africa; and my next note is a remark of his on this subject, which
-shows him taking not quite a parochial view of the situation. He did
-not approve of war. Several years previously, at the outbreak of the
-Spanish-American affair, he had spoken uneasily of the consequent rise
-in the price of bread, and his concern now may therefore be imagined.
-Still, there was one bright spot.
-
-"There's one thing I be glad of," he said: "all they reserves called
-out. There never no business to be none o' they in the country."
-
-His reason was that in time of peace the reserves, with their
-retaining pay, had been wont to undersell the civilian workman in the
-labour market, and that such competition was unfair.
-
-This, of course, was soon forgotten in the interest of the war itself.
-Our parish, so near to Aldershot, sent out perhaps a disproportionate
-number of its young men to the front, men whom Bettesworth knew, whose
-fathers and mothers were his good friends, and at whose deaths, now
-and then announced, he would grimly shut his lips. Morning after
-morning he asked, "Any news of the war, sir?" and listened gravely to
-what could be told. But he did not so much think as feel about it all.
-He knew nothing, cared nothing, about the policy which had led up to
-hostilities; he was too ill-informed to be infected by the raw
-imperialism of the day; his attitude was simply "national." "Our
-country"--that was his expression--was in difficulties, and he longed
-to see the difficulties overcome. Such was his simple instinctive
-position, and it excused in him some feelings which would have been
-less pardonable in a more enlightened man. At the close he would have
-liked to shoot without pity President Kruger and the Boer Generals, as
-the enemies of "our country."
-
-But how ignorant of the facts he was at the beginning of the war! Of
-our many talks on the subject I seem to have preserved only one, but
-that is so strange that now I can hardly believe in its accuracy.
-
-
-_December 16, 1899._--Dated the 16th of December, 1899, it states that
-Bettesworth had heard the week's disastrous news from the seat of war,
-and was letting off his dismay in exclamatory fashion. "Six hundred
-missin'! Look at that. What do that _missin'_ mean?" His tone implied
-that he knew only too well.
-
-I said, "Most likely it means that they are prisoners."
-
-And then he said, "Ah, prisoners--or else burnt."
-
-It was my turn to exclaim. "Burnt? No, no! They are prisoners."
-
-"But they burns 'em, some says."
-
-Heaven only knows where he could have picked up such an idea. As the
-war proceeded, he kept himself fairly up to date with its main events
-by listening to other men's talk. He used, as we know, to go to the
-public-house on Sunday evenings "to get enlightenment to the mind;"
-and there is mention in the next fragment of another source of
-information which he valued. To reach that, however, we have to enter
-another year--the year 1900.
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-_February 13, 1900._--The winter was passing by, with the war, indeed,
-to make it memorable to us, but uneventfully at home. January, like
-December, had been mild--too mild, some people said, of whom, however,
-Bettesworth was not one. February set in with more severity of
-weather. On the third we had snow, and in the succeeding days frost
-followed, and the roads grew slippery.
-
-These things no doubt provided Bettesworth with topics for many little
-chats I must have enjoyed with him, although I saved no reminder of
-any of them. But about the middle of the month a circumstance came to
-my knowledge which made his good-tempered gossip seem rather
-remarkable. I could not but admire that a man so situated should be
-able to talk with such urbanity.
-
-He had been at the barber's the previous evening, where another man
-was discoursing at large about the war. And said Bettesworth:
-
-"I _do_ like to hear anything like that. Or if they'll read a
-newspaper. There I could 'bide listenin' all night. And if anybody
-else was to open their mouths, I should be like enough to tell 'em to
-shut up. Because, if you goes to hear anything, _hear_ it. Same as at
-church or chapel or a entertainment: _you_ goes to listen, an' then
-p'r'aps four or five behind ye gets to talkin'. I always says, if you
-goes anywhere, go and be quiet. You en't obliged to go, but when you
-do go, behave yourself."
-
-The talkers, I might have reminded Bettesworth, are not always "behind
-ye"; there are those who take front seats who might profit by his
-little homily on good manners. But he only meant that the discourtesy
-is the more disturbing, because it is the more audible, when it comes
-from behind.
-
-He passed easily on to a discussion of the weather, and again his
-superlative good sense was to the fore. On Sunday, he said, he had
-tried to persuade his neighbours--working-men, like himself, only
-younger--to bring their shovels and scatter sand on the path down the
-gully, which was coated with ice. Already he had done a longish piece
-of it himself, but much remained to do. Several men had "went up
-reg'lar busters," and "children and young gals" on their way to church
-had fallen down. It would be a public service to besprinkle the path
-with sand. So Bettesworth made his suggestion to his neighbours--"four
-or five of 'em. They was hangin' about: hadn't got nothin' to do." But
-no. They shrugged their shoulders and walked away. It was no business
-of theirs. They even laughed at the old man for the trouble he had
-already taken, for which no one would pay him. And now, in telling me
-about it, it was his neighbours' want of public spirit that annoyed
-him. They had not come up to his standard of the behaviour meet for a
-labouring man.
-
-Who would have imagined that, while he was telling me this, and for
-days previously, he was in a state of severe mental distress,
-aggravated by bodily fatigue? I had no suspicion of it, and was
-surprised enough when told by a third person. But it was true--too
-true. He admitted it readily when I asked him. His wife was ill again,
-worse than she had been for three years, since the time when she fell
-down in an epileptic fit and broke her wrist. She had had many minor
-attacks during the interval, but this was serious now.
-
-As I have already told the poor old woman's story, or at least this
-part of it, in another place, I may not repeat it here; but for the
-sake of continuity the episode must be summarized. Three years earlier
-Bettesworth had obtained an order for his wife's admission to the
-workhouse infirmary. Hateful though the merest suspicion of benefiting
-by parish aid was to him, there had been no other course open at that
-time; for what could he do for an old woman with a broken limb, and a
-malady that made her for the time half-witted? And yet, owing to
-overcrowding at the infirmary, amazed and indignant he had brought her
-home again on the fourth day, because she had been lodged and treated
-as a common pauper. Consequently I knew that he must be at extremities
-now, when it came out that he was deciding again to send the old lady
-to the infirmary. But he was at his wits' end what to do for her. He
-could not afford to stay at home from work; yet while he was away she
-was alone, since her condition and temper made neighbours reluctant to
-help. Sometimes the fear haunted him that she would meet a violent
-death, falling in a fit on to the fire, perhaps; sometimes he dreaded
-that he would have to put her finally away into an asylum. What he
-endured in the long agonizing nights when her fits were upon her, in
-the silent winter evenings when he sat for hours watching her pain and
-wondering what to do, no one will ever know. As best he could, he used
-at such times to wash her and dress her himself--he with his fumbling
-fingers and dim eyes; and wanting sleep, wanting the food that neither
-of them could prepare, alone and unknown, he struggled to keep in
-order his miserable cottage. Almost a week must have passed like this
-before I heard of the trouble, and asked him about it. Then he laid
-his difficulties before me, and asked for my advice.
-
-To men in Bettesworth's position it is always an embarrassment to
-comply with the formalities of official business. They do not see the
-reason, and they feel keenly the wearisomeness, of the steps which must
-be taken to gain their end. Bettesworth now seemed paralyzed; he had
-forgotten how to go on; moreover, he could not be satisfied--although
-there was a new infirmary--that his wife would be more decently
-treated there than in the old one. If only he could be sure of that!
-But of course he was not important enough to approach, himself, anyone
-so important as a guardian; and, accordingly, I undertook to make
-inquiries for him.
-
-It is indeed a tedious business--I experienced it afterwards too--that
-of getting a sick person from this village into the local infirmary.
-It seemed that Bettesworth must lose at least a day's work in
-arranging for the removal of his wife. She could not be admitted to
-the house without a certificate from the parish doctor, who lived in
-the town, a mile and a half away. But the doctor might only attend
-upon Bettesworth's presenting an order to be obtained from the
-relieving officer, two miles away in the exactly opposite direction.
-The medical man would then come as soon as he found convenient, and
-Bettesworth would be provided with a certificate for his wife's
-removal to the infirmary. But he might not act upon that alone. With
-that in his possession, he would have to wait again upon the relieving
-officer, to get an order upon the workhouse master to admit the
-patient, and to arrange for a conveyance to take her away.
-
-We talked it over, he and I, that afternoon, not cheered by the wild
-weather that was hourly worsening. If all went well on the morrow,
-Bettesworth would have some twelve miles of walking to do; but it was
-most likely that, between relieving officer and doctor, two or even
-three days would elapse before the desired relief would be
-accomplished. However, the immediate thing to do was clear enough: he
-must make his first visit to the relieving officer as soon as
-possible.
-
-I forget on what grounds, but we agreed that it was useless to attempt
-anything that night; and since the officer would be off at eight in
-the morning for his day's duty in other places, Bettesworth proposed
-to be up betimes, and catch him at his office before he started. It
-would be just possible then, by hurrying, to get back over the three
-or four miles to the town, and find the doctor before he too should
-leave for the day. Otherwise there would be a sickening delay.
-
-The whole thing was sickening already, in its inevitable mechanical
-clumsiness. Still, there was no help for it. The weather meanwhile was
-threatening hindrance. A small driving snow had set in in the
-afternoon, and was inclined to freeze as it fell; and for some time
-before dark the opposite side of the valley had become all but
-invisible, blotted out by the dreary whiteness of the storm. At
-nightfall, the weather seemed to turn wicked. Hours afterwards, as I
-sat listening to the howling gusts of wind, which puffed the smoke
-from out of my fire, and brought the snow with a crisp bristling sound
-against my window, I could not get out of my head the thought of
-Bettesworth, alone with his crazy wife down there in that cottage, or
-the fear that deep snow might prevent his morning's journey. And then
-it was that recollection of his recent quiet conversations came over
-me. So to have talked, keeping all this trouble to himself, while he
-listened to the war news, and did his best to make the footways
-passable--there was surely a touch of greatness in it.
-
-And it makes no difference to my estimate of him that, after all, he
-did not go to the relieving officer the next morning. On the further
-progress of Mrs. Bettesworth's illness at this time my notebook is
-silent; but, as I recall now, she took a turn for the better that
-night, and by the morning was so improved that thought of the
-infirmary was given up.
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-For eight months after this the account of Bettesworth's sayings and
-doings is all but a blank. There was one summer--and perhaps it was
-this one of the year 1900--when he joined an excursion for his annual
-day's holiday, and made a long trip to Weymouth. Need it be said that
-he enjoyed the outing immensely? He came back to work the next day
-overflowing with the humour and interest of what he had seen and done.
-Had not old Bill Brixton lost his hat out of the train? And some other
-old chap sat down on a seat on Weymouth front, and stayed there all
-day and seen nothing? Bettesworth, too, had sat down, and had a most
-enjoyable conversation with a native of the place; but he had also
-taken steamer to Portland, and there got a drive to the prison and
-seen the convicts, and had a joke and a laugh with the driver of the
-brake, and a drink with a party of excursionists from Birmingham, who
-appreciated his society, and called him "uncle," and whose unfamiliar
-speech he imitated well enough to make me laugh. And then he had
-persuaded a seaman to take him out to the fleet and show him over a
-man-of-war; and finally had enlivened the homeward journey by chaffing
-old Bill, and sharing with him "a quarten o' whisky," which he
-carried in a medicine bottle.
-
-This, I am inclined to believe, was an event of 1900, but I cannot
-verify it, and in any case it accounts for but one day. The dimness of
-the remainder of those eight months is but faintly illuminated--and
-that, it may be, for me only--by two memoranda mentioning Bettesworth
-as present at certain affairs, and by one all too short scrap of his
-own talk. He was speaking of Irishmen, no doubt in reference to some
-gallant deed or other in South Africa, and this is what he said:
-
-"Ye see, they makes as brave soldiers as any.... All I got to say
-about Irishmen is, when you be at work with 'em, you got to think
-yourself as good as they, or a little better. 'Relse if they thinks
-you be givin' way they'll trample on ye. 'Xcept for that, I'd as lief
-work with Irishmen as Englishmen.... I remember once when I was at
-work on a buildin' for Knight, a Irishman come for me with his shovel
-like this." Bettesworth turned his shovel edgeways, raising it high.
-"He'd ha' split me if he'd ha' hit me; and as soon as he'd missed me I
-downed 'n. Little Georgie Knight come down off the scaffold to stop
-us; I'd got the feller down, an' was payin' of 'n. '_I'll_ give 'n
-'Ome Rule!' I says; and so I did, too. He'd ha' killed me if he'd hit
-me. I s'pose I'd said somethin' he didn't like."
-
-A March note, this last. As there is nothing else, I take it that the
-daily conversation was of the usual kind, about being forward in
-sowing seeds, and allowing enough room for potatoes, and so on.
-
-
-_June 10._--A note of June names Bettesworth among other interested
-spectators of an event no less singular than the death of a donkey. To
-me, the name of him on the page of my journal, coupled with one of his
-dry remarks, brings back vividly the whole scene: the glowing Sunday
-afternoon, the blue loveliness of the distant hills, the look of the
-grass, and all the tingling sense of the far-spread summer life
-surrounding the dying animal. But the narrative has little to do with
-Bettesworth, and would be out of place here. It just serves as a
-reminder that one more summer was passing over him; that, among the
-strong men who felt the heat in this valley that season, he was still
-one.
-
-Carry that impression on, through the harvest time, and yet on and on
-until the end of September, and you may see him (or I, at least, may)
-one dark night, entering, all dazzled by the naked lamp, a little room
-where the Liberals have summoned an "important meeting of Liberal
-workers." He has come, like the present writer, in the expectation of
-hearing some "spouting," as he said afterwards. But though he is
-disappointed, and finds himself,--he, the least fanatic of men--the
-witness only of excited efforts to arrange for canvassing the district
-in readiness for the approaching election, still, conforming to his
-own rule of "behaving," he sits respectfully silent, though looking
-disconsolate and "sold," and his grey head, the home of such steady
-thoughts, has a pathetic dignity in its dark corner, and surrounded by
-the noisy politicians.
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-So cramped-in as it was between sandbank and stream, Bettesworth's
-garden had no place for a pigsty; and as his wife could not be happy
-without "something to feed," he had bought her a few fowls to amuse
-her. With stakes and wire netting he made a diminutive "run" for them,
-which really seemed to adorn the end of the cottage, being stuck into
-the corner made by the whitewashed wall and the yellow sand-cliff. The
-fowls, it is true, had not room to thrive; but if Bettesworth made but
-little profit of them, they afforded him much contentment; and the
-afternoon sunshine used to fall very pleasantly on the little
-fowl-pen.
-
-Needless to say, he was not exempt from the common troubles of the
-poultry-keeper. I remember smiling to myself once at his gravity in
-mentioning that one of the hens had begun to crow. He did not, indeed,
-own to thinking it a sign of bad luck, but his looks seemed to suggest
-that he was uneasy. As everyone knows, a crowing hen, if it does not
-portend death, is neither fit for gods nor men; so Bettesworth
-realized that he must kill the ill-omened bird, "as soon as he could
-find out which of 'em 'twas." Another time there were some little
-chicks, and his cat became troublesome; and, worse still, there came a
-rat, which had to be ferreted out.
-
-And were there marauders besides these? I have stated that beyond
-Bettesworth's own cottage there were others of the same class, one of
-which was inhabited for a little while by a family whose honesty was
-not above suspicion. Would these people interfere with his fowls? It
-was a point to be considered.
-
-He considered it--it was on a day in October, 1900--and so strayed off
-into a rambling talk of many things. The ill-conditioned neighbours
-(he comforted himself by thinking) would leave his fowls alone,
-because depredations of that kind were an unheard-of thing in our
-parish.
-
-"There, I will say that," he observed, "you never no fear o' _losin'_
-anything here. If a man leaves his tool--a spud or anything--in the
-ground, there 'tis. Nobody don't touch it. Up there at (he named a
-near village) they say 'tis different. But here, I should think there
-never was a better place for that!"
-
-For a certain reason I took up this point, and hinted that Flamborough
-in Yorkshire must be an equally honest place. The Flamborough people,
-I had been told, never lock their doors at night, for fear of locking
-out the spirits of relatives drowned at sea.
-
-Would Bettesworth take the bait, and tell me anything he might know
-about ghosts? Not he. The interruption changed the course, but not
-the character, of his talk. He looked rather shocked at these
-benighted Yorkshiremen, and commented severely, "Weak-minded, _I_
-calls it." Then, after a momentary silence, he was off on a new track,
-with reminiscences of Selsey fishermen whom he used to see when he
-went harvesting into Sussex; who go about, "any time o' night,
-accordin' to the tides," and whose thick boots can be heard "clumpin'
-along the street" in the dark. All men at Selsey, he said, were
-fishermen. The only regular hands employed by the neighbouring farmers
-were shepherds and carters.
-
-He had got quite away from the point in my mind. But as I had long
-wondered whether Bettesworth had any ghost stories, I harked back now
-to the Flamborough people, egging him on to be communicative. It was
-all in vain, however. He shook his head. The subject seemed foreign to
-him.
-
-"As I often says, I bin about all times o' the night, an' I never met
-nothin' worse than myself. Only time as ever I was froughtened was
-when I was carter chap at Penstead. Our farm was down away from
-t'other, 'cause Mr. Barnes had two farms--'t least, he had three--and
-ourn was away from t'other, and I was sent late at night to git out
-the waggon--no, the pole-carriage. I set up on the front on the
-shafts, with a truss o' hay behind me; and all of a sudden she" (the
-mare, I suppose he meant) "snarked an' begun to turn round in the
-road. The chap 'long with me--no, he wa'n't 'long with me, 'cause
-he'd gone on to open the gate, and so there was I alone. And all
-'twas, was a old donkey rollin' in the road. She'd smelt 'n, ye know;
-an' the nearer we got, the more froughtened she was, till she turned
-right round there in the road. 'Twas a nasty thing for me; they hosses
-with their legs over the traces, and all that, and me down atween
-'em."
-
-He was fairly off now. A tale followed of stumbling over a drunken
-man, who lay all across the road one dark night.
-
-"Wonder's 't hadn't broke his ribs, me kickin' up again' him like
-that. I went all asprawl; barked me hands too. But when he hollered
-out, I knowed who 'twas then. 'Twas old...."
-
-Well, it doesn't matter who it was. There were no ghost stories to be
-had, so I related a schoolday adventure, of a glow-worm picked up, and
-worn in a cap for a little way, and then missed; of a glimmer seen in
-the ditch, which might be the glow-worm; of a groping towards the
-glimmer, and a terrified leap back, upon hearing from behind it a
-gruff "Hullo, mate!"
-
-Bettesworth did not find this silly, like my Flamborough story. It
-opened another vista of reminiscence, down which he could at least
-look. Unhesitatingly he took the chance, commenting,
-
-"Ah! porchers, very likely, lurkin' about there for a meetin, p'r'aps.
-They do like that, sometimes. I remember once, when Mellish was keeper
-at Culverley, there was some chaps in there at The Horse one night
-with their dogs, talkin' about what they was goin' to do. Mellish, he
-slips out, to send the word round, 'cause all the men at Culverley was
-s'posed to go out at such a job, if need be. So he sends round the
-message to 'em--Bromley, an' Dick Harris, an' Knight, an' several
-more, to meet 'n at a certain place, where he'd heard these chaps say
-they was goin' to work. And so they (the poachers) set in there
-talkin' about what they was goin' to do; and at last, when they come
-away, they went right off into the town. While they'd bin keepin' the
-keeper there a-watchin' 'em, another gang had bin' an' purty well
-cleared the place out. _Bags_-full, they must ha' had. Mellish told me
-so hisself. While he was expectin' to have they, they was havin' him.
-He never was so sold, he said. But a clever trick, I calls it."
-
-
-
-
-VIII
-
-
-_October 17, 1900._-Two words of Bettesworth's, noted down for their
-strangeness at the time, restore for me the October daylight, the
-October air. He was discussing the scarlet-runner beans (I can picture
-now their warm tints of decay), and he estimated our chances of
-getting another picking from them. The chances were good, he thought,
-because in the sheltered corner where the beans stood, uplifted as it
-was above the mists that chilled the bottom of the valley, "these
-little snibblin' frostis that we gets o' mornin's" would not be felt.
-"Snibblin'" was a new word to me, and now I find it associated in my
-mind with the earliest approaches of our English winter.
-
-Near the beans there were brussels sprouts, their large leaves soaked
-with colour out of the clouded day. Little grey swarms of "white fly"
-flitted out as I walked between them; and, again, Bettesworth's name
-for that form of blight--"they little minners"--brings back the scene:
-the quiet vegetable garden, the sad rich autumn tints, the overcast
-sky, the moist motionless air.
-
-To this undertone of peace--the peace you can best absorb at labours
-like his--he was able to discourse dispassionately of things not
-peaceful. In a cottage higher up the valley there was trouble this
-October. I may not give details of it; but, in rough summary, an old
-woman had died, her last days rendered unhappy by the misbehaviour of
-her son--a young labourer. Talk of his "carrying on," his late hours,
-his frantic drinking, and subsequent delirium, crept stealthily up and
-down the lanes. He was "a low blackguard," "a scamp," and so forth.
-The comments were excited, generally breathless, once or twice shrill.
-But Bettesworth kept his head. An indignant matron said spitefully,
-
-"'Ten't every young feller gets such a good home as that left to 'n."
-
-"Well, and who got a better right to 't?" was Bettesworth's calm
-rejoinder.
-
-
-_November 10._--A month later a ripple of excitement from the outside
-world found its way down the lane. Saturday, November 10, was the day
-when General Buller, recalled from the war, arrived at Aldershot, and
-for miles around the occasion was made the excuse for a holiday by the
-working people. It was a point of honour with them not to desert their
-favourite under a cloud. They left off work early, and flocked to
-Aldershot station by hundreds, if not thousands, to make sure that he
-had a welcome. On the following Monday Bettesworth, full of
-enthusiasm, gave me an account of the affair as he had had it from
-numerous eyewitnesses. For, in truth, it had been "all the talk
-yesterday"--on the Sunday, namely. Young Bill Skinner, in particular,
-had been voluble, with such exclamations, such staring of excited
-eyes, that Bettesworth was reminded not without concern of the
-sunstroke which had threatened Skinner's reason two summers
-previously. Nevertheless, the tale was worth Bettesworth's hearing and
-repeating; "there never was a man in England so much respected" as
-Buller, Skinner supposed. On alighting from the train, the General's
-first act had been to shake hands with his old coachman--a deed that
-touched the hearts of all these working folk.
-
-"And there was never a sign o' soldiers; 'twas all
-townspeople--civilians, that is; and the cheerin'--there! Skinner said
-he hollered till he was hoarse. He ast me" (Bettesworth) "how 'twas I
-didn't go over; but I said, 'Naw....' Not but what I _likes_ the old
-feller!"
-
-Bettesworth made no answer but that expressive "No" of disinclination,
-but I can amplify it. He was not now a young man, to go tearing off
-enthusiastically for an eight-mile walk, which was sure to end in a
-good deal of drinking and excitement. His days for that were gone by
-for ever. Prudence warned him that he was best off pottering about in
-his regular way, here at home.
-
-There was another reason, too, to restrain him. It brings us swiftly
-back for a moment from war incidents and the public excitement to the
-very interior of that hovel down by the "Lake," to learn that poor old
-Lucy Bettesworth was once more ill at this time. Her brother calling,
-and exhibiting an unwonted kindliness, had thrown her into sudden
-hysteria ending in epileptic fits. Even had Bettesworth felt inclined,
-he could not have left her. He told me the circumstances, and much,
-too, of her life history--the most of which has been already
-published, and may be omitted here. The illness, however, was not so
-severe as to engage all Bettesworth's thoughts. It allowed him to take
-interest in Buller's return, and on the same day to discourse of other
-outside matters too, in which all our valley was interested through
-these months.
-
-Word had reached him somehow of the proposals just then announced for
-the higher training of our soldiers; and he foresaw increased
-difficulties in recruiting on these terms. There was too much work to
-be had, and it was too well paid, to make young men eager to join the
-army; and the service certainly did not need to be rendered less
-attractive than it was. Bettesworth, it seemed, had already been
-discussing this very point with his neighbours. As to the disturbance
-of the labour market consequent upon the war, he viewed it with no
-favour. The inflated prices of labour seemed to him unwholesome; they
-were having an injurious effect upon young men, giving them an
-exaggerated opinion of their true worth as labourers. And this was
-particularly true, since the building of the new camp at Bordon had
-begun. "Old Tom Rawson," he reported, had "never seen the likes of the
-young fellers that was callin' theirselves carpenters an' bricklayers
-now. Any young chap only got to take a trowel over to Woolmer (by
-Bordon), and he'd be put on as a bricklayer, at sixpence a hour. And
-you mawn't stop to show 'em nothing. If the clurk o' the works or the
-inspector come round, 't 'd be, 'What's that man doin', showin' the
-others?' Tom said he wa'n't _goin'_ to show 'em, neither. Why, at one
-time nobody ever thought of employin' a man, onless he could show his
-indentures. But now--'tis anybody." "The foreman" had lately come to
-Tom Rawson "askin' him jest to give an eye to some young chaps," and
-promising him another halfpenny an hour. And Bettesworth commented,
-"But dessay he (the foreman) was gettin' his bite out o' the
-youngsters."
-
-Not Bettesworth, not even that hardened old Tom Rawson, would have
-countenanced such things had they been appealed to; but tales of this
-kind only filtered down into Bettesworth's obscure nook, to provide
-him with a subject for five minutes' thought, and then leave him again
-to his homely occupations. What had he to do with the War Office and
-inefficiency in high places? From this very talk, it is recorded, he
-turned appreciatively to watch the cat purring round my legs, and by
-her fond softness was reminded of his rabbits--six young ones--which
-the mother had not allowed him to see until yesterday. And he spoke
-wonderingly of her mother-instinct. The old rabbit was "purty near
-naked," having "almost stripped herself" to make a bed for these young
-ones, so that the bed was "all white fluff before they come," and now
-she "kep' 'em covered up." "Everything," said Bettesworth, "has their
-_nature_, ye see."
-
-In this fashion, with these trivial interests, the year drew on to its
-close in our valley. December gives glimpses of trouble in another
-household--that of the Skinners, Bettesworth being cognizant of all,
-but saying little. It did not disturb the peacefulness of his own
-existence. Events might come or delay, he was content; he was hardly
-in the world of events, but in a world where things did not so much
-"happen" as go placidly on. He worked, and rested, and I do not
-believe that he was often dull.
-
-
-
-
-IX
-
-
-_January, 1901._--The winter, which so far had been mild and open,
-began to assume its natural character with the new year; and on the
-first Monday of January--it was the 7th--we had snow, followed by hard
-frost. The snow was not unexpected. Saturday--a day of white haze
-suffused with sunlight--had provided a warning of it in the shape of
-frozen rime, clinging like serried rows of penknife blades to the
-eastern edges of all things, and noticeably to the telegraph-wires,
-which with that additional weight kept up all day a shiver of
-vibration dazzling to look at against the misty blue of the sky. Then
-the snow came, and the frost on top of that, and by Tuesday it was bad
-travelling on all roads.
-
-Bettesworth grumbled, of course; but I believe that really he rather
-liked the touch of winter. At any rate, it was with a sort of gloating
-satisfaction that he remarked:
-
-"I hunted out my old gaiters this morning. They en't much, but they
-keeps your legs dry. And I do think that is so nice, to feel the
-bottoms of your trousers dry."
-
-I suppose it is, when one thinks of it, though it had never struck me
-before. But then, I had never had the experience which had shown
-Bettesworth the true inwardness of this philosophy of his.
-
-"I've knowed what it is," he said, "to have my trousers soppin' wet
-all round the bottoms, and then it have come on an' freezed 'em as
-stiff as boards all round."
-
-That was years ago, during a short spell of piecework in a gravel-pit.
-Now, secure in his gaiters and in his easier employment, he could look
-back with amusement to the hardships he had lived through. One of a
-similar kind was hinted at presently. For the roughness of the roads,
-under this frozen snow, naturally suggested such topics.
-
-"What d'ye think of our neighbour Mardon?" he exclaimed. "Bin an'
-chucked up his job, and 's goin' back to Aldershot blacksmithin'
-again. He must be in want of a walk!"
-
-"Regular as clockwork," Mardon, be it explained, had walked daily to
-his work at Aldershot, and then back at night, for upwards of twenty
-years. The day's walk was about ten miles. Then suddenly he left, and
-now for six months had been working as bricklayer's labourer, at a job
-about an equal distance away in another direction, to which he walked
-as before every day, wet or fine. This was the job he had "chucked,"
-to return to his old trade in the old place. He might well give it up!
-Said Bettesworth,
-
-"How many miles d'ye think he walked last week, to put in forty-five
-hours at work? Fifty-four! Four and a half miles there, and four and a
-half back. Fifty-four miles for forty-five hours. There's walkin' for
-ye! And through that enclosure, too!"
-
-The "enclosure" is a division of Alice Holt Forest--perhaps two miles
-of it--on Mardon's way to his now abandoned job. And Bettesworth
-recalled the discomforts of this walk.
-
-"I knows what it is, all through them woods in the dark, 'cause I used
-to go that way myself when I was workin' for Whittingham. 'Specially
-if the fox-hounds bin that way. Then 'tis mud enough to smother ye.
-There was a fancy sort o' bloke--a carpenter--used to go 'long with
-us, with his shirt-cuffs, and his trousers turned up, and his shoes
-cleaned. We did use to have some games with 'n, no mistake. He'd go
-tip-toein' an' skippin' to get over the mud; an' then, jest as we was
-passin' a puddle, we'd plump one of our feet down into 't, an' send
-the mud _all over_ 'n. An' with his tip-toein' an' skippin' he got it
-wuss than we did, without that. An' when we come to the Royal Oak,
-'cause we gen'ly used to turn in there on our way home, he'd be
-lookin' at hisself up an' down and grumblin'--'Tha bluhmin' mud!'
-(this in fair imitation of Cockney speech)--'tha bluhmin' mud! Who can
-_stick_ it!' Same in the mornin' when he got there. He'd be brushin'
-his coat, an' scrapin' of it off his trousers with his knife, an'
-gettin' a bundle o' shavin's to wipe his boots.
-
-"But a very good carpenter! Whittingham used to say he couldn't wish
-for a better man. But he'd bin used to bench-work all his life, an'
-didn't know what to make of it. An' we used to have some games with
-'n. If there was any job wanted doin' out o' doors, they'd send for he
-sooner 'n one o' t'others, jest to see how he'd go on. And handlin'
-the dirty timber, an' lookin' where to put his saw--oh, we did give 'n
-a doin'. But 'twas winter, ye know, and I fancy he didn't know hardly
-where to go. We had some pantomimes with 'n, though, no mistake.
-
-"There used to be another ol' feller--a plumber--when I was at work
-for Grange in Church Street; Ben Crawte went 'long with 'n as
-plumber's labourer. Ben had some pantomimes with he too. He'd git the
-handles of his tools all over dirt, for he to take hold of when he
-come to use 'em. Oldish man he was--old as I be, I dessay. And he'd
-pay anybody to give 'n a lift any time, sooner 'n he'd walk through
-the mud. We never knowed the goin' of 'n, at last...."
-
-I, for my part, do not remember "the goin'" of these queer
-reminiscences. They are like the snows of the past--like the snow
-which actually lay white in our valley while Bettesworth talked.
-
-As to his heartless treatment of this unhappy carpenter, those who
-would condemn it may yet consider how that gang of men could have
-endured their miserable journeys, if they had admitted that anyone
-had the least right to be distressed. Among labourers there is such
-peril in effeminacy that to yield to it is a kind of treason.
-Bettesworth had nothing but contempt for it. I more than once heard
-his scorn of "tip-toeing," and shall be able to give another instance
-by-and-by.
-
-
-
-
-X
-
-
-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.
-
-Were there any circumstances to give offence? Yes: "There's that
-Gunner, what used to live up the lane, struttin' about there, like
-Lord Muck, in his fine slippers. He's a wardsman. And Bill Lucas,
-too." (This latter is a man who lost good work and a pension by giving
-way to drink.) "_He_ books ye in an' books ye out. 'I s'pose this is
-your _estate_?' I says to 'n." In fact, Bettesworth would seem to have
-been publicly sarcastic at this man's expense; and other visitors, I
-gathered, laughed at hearing him. "'You be better able to work than
-what I be,' I says; 'and yet we got to keep ye. It never ought to be
-allowed.'"
-
-To those in the infirmary "You may take anything you mind to, except
-spirits or beer. Tea, or anything like that, they may have brought."
-And so Bettesworth, having gone unprepared, gave Loveland a shilling,
-"to get anything he fancied."
-
-
-
-
-XIII
-
-
-As yet Bettesworth's cottage by the stream still suited him fairly
-well, but he had not lived there for two years without finding out
-that it had disadvantages. Of these perhaps the worst was that the
-owner was himself only a cottager--an old impoverished man who never
-came near the place, and was unable to spend any money on repairing
-it. Difficulties were therefore arising, as I learnt one Monday
-morning. The reader will observe the day of the week.
-
-
-_December 9, 1901._--"Didn't it rain about four o'clock this mornin'!"
-Bettesworth began, with an emphasis which provoked me to question
-whether the rainfall had amounted to a great deal, after all. But he
-insisted: "There must ha' bin a smartish lot somewhere. The lake's
-full o' water, down as far as Mrs. Skinner's. When the gal come after
-the rent yesterday...."
-
-This day being Monday, I exclaimed at his "yesterday." Did he mean it?
-
-"Yes, they always comes Sundays. She says, 'Gran'father told me I was
-to look to see whether you'd cleaned out the lake in front of the
-cottage.'"
-
-In fact, a fortnight previously a message from the owner had reached
-Bettesworth requesting him to do this. The answer given then was
-repeated now: "You tell your gran'father he may come an' do it
-hisself. I shan't."
-
-"'Oh,' she says" (I continue in Bettesworth's words), "'Mr. Mardon'"
-(the tenant of the next cottage) "'said he'd do some.'"
-
-"'He may come and do this if he mind to,' I says. ''Twon't flood
-_me_.'" Mardon's cottage was certainly in danger of flooding, should
-there come prolonged rain.
-
-"Then I said to her, 'How about our well, then? We en't had no water
-ever since I spoke to you 'bout it before.'
-
-"'Oh,' she says, 'they come an' looked at the well Saturday. But
-gran'father says 't 'll cost too much. 'T 'll want a lot o' bricks an'
-things. If he has it done, he says he'll have to put up your
-rent--yours and Mr. Mardon's--'cause you be the only two as pays
-anything. En't it a shame?' she says. 'There's that old Mileham--he
-earns good money every week, and never pays a ha'penny.'"
-
-At this point I foolishly interrupted, and being told how Mileham
-"won't pay, and poor old Mrs. Connor, she en't _got_ it to pay," I
-interrupted again, not understanding.
-
-"Hasn't _got_ it to pay? How do you mean?"
-
-"Why, what _have_ she got, sir? All the time her husband was alive,
-drawin' his pension, the rent was paid up every pension day. But now
-she en't got nothin' comin' in, and that lout of a boy of hers don't
-do nothin'. So there's only me and Mardon pays any rent."
-
-I laughed. "It's a fine encouragement to you to be asked to pay more."
-
-"Yes. I says to her, 'Then we two got to pay for four? You tell your
-gran'father he may put it up, but I shan't pay no more for this old
-hutch. And I shan't pay what I do, as soon as I can find another place
-to go to. If he mind to let we get the well done, and we take it out
-o' the rent,' I says, 'I'll agree to that. Not pay no more rent till
-we've took it all out.' But she wouldn't say nothin' to that. Or else
-generally she got plenty o' gab."
-
-"Who is she?" I asked.
-
-"He's grand-daughter.... That young Mackenzie was her father. She've
-got plenty o' gab. 'You 'alf-bred Scotch people,' I says to her
-sometimes, 'talks too much.' I tells her of it sometimes. She don't
-like me."
-
-It seemed unlikely that Bettesworth would long continue to be a tenant
-under such a landlord. The change, however, was not to come yet.
-
-As yet, indeed, difficulties like these were but trivial incidents of
-the life in which Bettesworth continued to take an interest as virile
-as ever. He had dealt with landlords before, and had no qualms now. It
-might be that the great strength of his prime was gone, but his health
-seemed unimpaired, and I believe he still felt master of his fate as
-he went quietly about his daily work.
-
-It is true that my very next note of him contains evidence of a
-digestive weakness which, having not much troubled him hitherto,
-though he had always been subject to it, was growing upon him, and
-beginning to undermine his forces. But it was for another
-reason--because of a curious word he used--that I then recorded what
-he told me.
-
-
-The entry in my journal, bearing still the date December 9, is to the
-effect that "on Friday afternoon" a horrid pain took him right through
-the midriff, from front to back. "I begun to think I was goin' to
-croak," he said afterwards, when telling me about it. "And I reached,
-and the sheer-water run out o' my eyes an' mouth. I didn't know where
-to go for an hour or more, I was in that pain. I 'xpect 'twas stoopin'
-down over my work brought it on. I'd had a hot dinner, ye see--bit o'
-pickled pork an' pa'snips. And then stoopin' down.... But that
-sheer-water--you knows what I means--run out o' my mouth." I did not
-know what he meant, until the next day, when I asked how he felt. He
-was "all right," but, repeating the story, said, "and the water run
-out o' my mouth, jest like boilin' water."
-
-During the last year or two of his life I think he seldom went a week
-without a recurrence of this pain of indigestion, the disorder being
-doubtless aggravated by the breakdown of his domestic arrangements.
-But this is looking too far ahead. At the period which now concerns
-us, he was far from thinking of himself as an invalid. He could joke
-about his passing indispositions as he could defy his landlord. This
-particular attack, unless I am much mistaken, was the subject of a
-flippancy I remember his repeating to me. A neighbour looking in upon
-him and seeing his serious condition said genially, "You ben't goin'
-to die, be ye, Freddy?" And he answered, "I dunno. Shouldn't care if I
-do. 'Tis a poor feller as can't make up his mind to die once. If we
-had to die two or three times, then there might be something to fret
-about." In relating this to me, he added more seriously, "But nobody
-dunno _when_, that's the best of it."
-
-Knowing now how his attitude changed towards death when it was really
-near, I can see in this sturdy defiance the evidence of the physical
-vigour he was still enjoying. There was no real cause for fretting
-about himself, any more than about his affairs; and so he went through
-this winter, garrulous and good-tempered, even happy in his way.
-
-Accordingly, taking my notes in their due order, they bring before my
-mind, as I read them again now, pleasant pictures of the old man. I
-can see him at work, or taking his wages, or starting for the town;
-often the very weather and daylight around him come back to me; and
-the chief loss is in his voice-tones, which I cannot by any effort of
-memory recover.
-
-
-_December 10, 1901._--One such mind-picture dates from December 10.
-The short winter afternoon was already closing in, with a mist--the
-forerunner of rain--enveloping the garden between the bare-limbed
-trees. Over our heads sounded the roar of wind in a little fir-wood;
-but down under the oak-trees by the well, where Bettesworth was
-digging, there was shelter and stillness, or only the slight trembling
-of a few leaves not yet fallen. It was "nice and warm," he assured me,
-and then paused--himself a dusky-looking old figure in the oncoming
-dusk--to ask, whom did I think he had seen go down the lane just now?
-It was no other than his former neighbour, "old Jack Morris's widow."
-
-And once again his talk shows how far he was, that afternoon, from
-thinking of himself as an infirm person, or an object of pity. I am
-struck by the contrast between his later view of things and this which
-he professed, when still in good health. For, speaking appreciatively
-of Widow Morris as "the _cleanest_ old soul as ever lived," he went on
-to say that, though he did not know what she was doing at that time,
-she had been in the workhouse. It puzzled him how she lived, and
-others like her. And when I said, "She ought to be in the workhouse,"
-he echoed the opinion emphatically. "_Better_ off there than what they
-be at home, sir." So with Mrs. Connor. "It's a mystery how she lives.
-And there's that son of hers, mungs about with a short pipe stuck in
-his mouth," and by sheer idleness had lost several jobs, at which he
-might have been earning eleven shillings a week. "And that poor gal,
-he's sister, got to starve herself to keep her mother and that lout.
-Cert'nly, she ought to keep her mother," but, for the lout,
-Bettesworth's politer vocabulary was insufficient.
-
-So we talked in the gathering winter dusk, able, both of us, in the
-assurance of the comfortable evening before us, to consider the
-workhouse as a refuge with which neither of us would ever make
-personal acquaintance. If I was unimaginative and therefore callous,
-so was Bettesworth. It was he who said, "I reckons that's what they
-places be for--old people past work, and little helpless childern."
-But as to the able-bodied, "That stoneyard's the place for they, _I_'d
-put it on to 'em, so's it 'd give 'em sore hearts, if it didn't sore
-hands."
-
-And then he told of a tramp--a carpenter--who had earned his tenpence
-an hour, and now was using workhouses to lodge in at night, while all
-day he was "munging about" (or "doing a mung"), cadging a few
-halfpence for beer.
-
-"And that 'ere bloke down near we, he's another of 'em. Earns
-eightpence-halfpenny, and his son sixpence. But they gets it all down
-'em." They had not paid Mrs. Skinner for the pork obtained from her
-the previous week; indeed, they paid nobody. "Never got nothing, and
-yet there's only they two and the old woman."
-
-What a contrast were these wasters--that was the idea of Bettesworth's
-talk--with those two poor old widow women, whom he could afford to
-pity in his strength and comfort!
-
-
-_December 24._--The next note brings us to Christmas Eve. The weather
-on the preceding day had changed from rimy frost to tempestuous rain,
-which at nightfall began to be mingled with snow. By his own account
-Bettesworth went to bed soon after seven, although even his wife urged
-that it was too early, and that he would never lie till morning. He
-had heard the tempest, and the touch of the snow against his bedroom
-window, and so had his wife. It excited her. "Ben't ye goin' to look
-out at it?" she said. And he, "That won't do me no good, to look at
-it. We got a good fire in here."
-
-Such was his own chuckling account of his attitude towards the storm
-when I stood by him the next morning high up in the garden, and
-watched him sweeping the path. He discussed the prospects for the day,
-rejoiced that the snow had not lain, and, looking keenly to the south,
-where a dun-coloured watery cloud was travelling eastwards, its edges
-melting into luminous mist and just hiding the sun, he thought we
-might expect storms. The old man's spirits were elated; and then it
-was, when the western end of the valley suddenly lit up as with a
-laugh of spring sunlight, and the radiance came sweeping on and broke
-all round us--then it was that Bettesworth, as I have elsewhere[1]
-related, stood up to give the sunshine his glad welcome.
-
-A narrative followed which helps to explain his good spirits, or at
-least discovers the powers of endurance on which they rested. I said,
-"We have passed the shortest day--that's a comfort." He stopped
-sweeping again, to answer happily, "Yes. And now in about four or five
-weeks we shall begin to see the difference. And that's when we gets
-the bad weather, lately."
-
-He stood up, the watery sunshine upon him, and leaning on his broom,
-he continued, "I remember one winter, after I was married, we did have
-some weather. Eighteen inches and two foot o' snow there was--three
-foot, in some places. I'd bin out o' work--there was plenty o' work to
-do, but we was froze out. For five weeks I 'adn't earnt tuppence. When
-Christmas Day come, we _had_ somethin' for dinner, but 'twa'n't much;
-and we had a smartish few bottles o' home-made wine.
-
-"Christmas mornin' some o' the chaps I'd bin at work with come round.
-'What about that wine?' they says. So we had two or three cupfuls o'
-wine; and then they says, 'Ben't ye comin' 'long o' we?' 'No,' I says,
-'not 's mornin'.'" Here he shut his mouth, in remembered resignation,
-as if still regarding these tempters. "'What's up then?' they says.
-'_Come_ on!' 'No,' I says, 'not to-day.' 'Why not?' 'Cause I en't got
-no money,' I says. 'Gawd's truth!' they says, 'if that's it...' and I
-raked in six shillin's from amongst 'em. I give four to the old gal,
-and I kep' two myself, and then I was right for the day."
-
-He made as if to resume sweeping, but desisted to explain, "Ye see,
-they was my mates on the same job as me; and they knowed I'd ha' done
-the same for e'er a one o' they, more 'n once.
-
-"My old mother-in-law was alive then, over here" (he looked across the
-hollow to the old house), "and they wanted we to go and 'ave the day
-with they. But my temper wouldn't have that. I says to the old gal,
-'None o' their 'elp. We'll bide away, or else p'r'aps by-'n-by they'll
-twit us.' I'd sooner ha' gone without vittles, than for they to help
-and then twit us with it afterwards, talkin' about what they'd done
-for us at Christmas."
-
-FOOTNOTE:
-
-[1] Author's note. "The Bettesworth Book" (second impression).
-
-
-
-
-XIV
-
-
-One of Bettesworth's swift short tales about his neighbours interested
-me considerably at this time, as illustrating the half-sordid,
-half-barbarous state of the people amongst whom he had to hold his own
-when not at work. I did not suspect that the same tale would put me on
-the track of a curious discovery relative to his own past history.
-
-
-_January 23, 1902._--It was a quiet, windless morning, and the sound
-of the knell reached us through the still air. Bettesworth said, "I
-s'pose old Jerry's gone at last, then."
-
-"Old Jerry?" I asked.
-
-"Ah, old Jerry Penfold. We always called 'n Old Jerry. He bin dead
-several times--or, 't least, they thought so. Rare ructions there bin
-over there, no mistake. They got to sharin' out his kit. One come an'
-took away his clock, and another his chest o' drawers, and some of his
-sons even come an' took away his tools. But the oldest son got the
-lawyer an' made 'em bring it all back."
-
-"Rare ructions"--yes: but Bettesworth used the word "rare" as we
-should use "great," and did not mean that the affair was very
-unusual. He was not scandalized so much as amused by it. For my part,
-knowing nothing of the family, who dwelt in another quarter of the
-parish, I sought only to identify Old Jerry. Some years previously an
-old man who walked along the road with me one night had interested me
-with a tale of his shepherding and other labours on a certain farm. I
-had never learnt his name, nor had seen the man since; but now it
-occurred to me that perhaps he was old Penfold. I asked Bettesworth.
-
-Bettesworth decided in the negative. Old Penfold had never been a
-shepherd, or worked for the farmer I named.
-
-Yet another old man then came into my mind: a diminutive man, upwards
-of eighty, who was still creeping honourably about at work. Frequently
-I met him; but he seemed so shut up in himself that I had never cared
-to intrude upon him with more than a "Good-day" when we met. But now I
-named him to Bettesworth: old Dicky Martin. Could the missing shepherd
-have been he?
-
-Bettesworth shook his head emphatically. It turned out that he and old
-Dicky were chums in their way: they knew all about one another, and
-with mutual respect. "Couldn't ha' bin old Dicky," said Bettesworth.
-"He never worked anywhere else about here 'xcept in builders' yards.
-Forty-four year ago he started for Coopers, and bin on there ever
-since. He was a sailor before that. He come out o' the navy when he
-come here."
-
-Out of the navy! And to think I had been ignorant of such a thing as
-that! I had not found my shepherd; but to have discovered a sailor was
-something. Scenting romance, in the foolish superficial way of
-outsiders, I resolved to improve my acquaintance with old Dicky,
-little dreaming that the sailor was going to show me a soldier too;
-little supposing that Bettesworth's information about this old man
-would be capped by information from him, quite as surprising, about
-Bettesworth.
-
-How I fell in with old Martin, early in February, is of no moment
-here. He talked very much in Bettesworth's manner, and especially
-about cruising in the Mediterranean sixty years ago. But when I said
-at last, believing it true, "I don't suppose there is another man in
-our parish has travelled so far as you," his reply startled me.
-
-"No, I dessay not--without 'tis your man, Fred Bettesworth."
-
-"He? He never was out of England."
-
-"Yes he was. He bin as fur as Russia and the Black Sea, at any rate."
-
-"You must be wrong. I should have heard of it if he had."
-
-"I dunno about that. P'raps he don't care to talk about it, but 'tis
-right enough. I fancy he did get into some trouble. He was a soldier
-though, in the Crimea."
-
-Old Dicky was so convinced that I held my peace, though far from
-convinced myself. A vague sensation crept over me of having heard some
-faint rumour of the same tale, years ago; but what might have been
-credible then seemed hardly credible now. I thought that now I knew
-all there was to know about Bettesworth's life; and I could not see
-where, among so many episodes, this of soldiering was to find room.
-Besides, how was it possible that, in ten years or so, during which
-Bettesworth had prattled carelessly of anything that came uppermost in
-his mind, no hint of this had escaped him? It would have slipped out
-unawares, one would have supposed; by some inadvertence or other I
-should have learnt it. But, save for that forgotten rumour, nothing
-had come until now. Now, however, the man who spoke of it spoke as
-from his own personal knowledge. It was very strange.
-
-One thing was clear. If there were truth in this tale after all,
-Bettesworth's silence on the subject must have been intentional. Was
-there something about it of which he was ashamed? What was that
-"trouble" to which old Dicky so darkly alluded? Eager as I was to
-question Bettesworth, I was most reluctant to hear anything to his
-discredit. And the reluctance prevailed over my curiosity. Feeling
-that I had no right to force a confidence from him, I tried to dismiss
-the subject from my mind; and for a time I succeeded.
-
-
-
-
-XV
-
-
-_April 17, 1902._--We pass on to April, when bird-notes were sounding
-through all the gardens.
-
-"Hark at those starlings!" I said to Bettesworth. And he, "Yes--I
-dunno who 'twas I was talkin' to this mornin', sayin' how he liked to
-hear 'em. 'So do our guv'nor,' I says. I likes 'em best when there's
-two of 'em gibberin' to one another--jest like 's if they was talkin'.
-An' they lifts up their feet, an' flaps up their wings, an' they
-nods." The old man's words ran rhythmically to suit the action he was
-describing; and then, dropping the rhythm, "I likes to hear 'em very
-well. And I don't think they be mischieful birds neither, like these
-'ere sparrers and caffeys" (chaffinches). "They beggars, I shouldn't
-care so much if when they picked out the peas from the ground they'd
-eat 'em. But they jest nips the little green top off and leaves it.
-Sims as if they does it reg'lar for mischief."
-
-
-_April 28._--This sunny, objective side of Bettesworth's temperament
-may be remembered in connexion with some other remarks of his on a
-very different subject. There was at that time a man living near us
-whose mere presence tried his patience. The man belonged to one of
-the stricter Nonconformist sects, and had the reputation of being
-miserly. "Looks as miserable, he do" (so Bettesworth chanced to
-describe him), "as miserable as--as sin. I never see such a feller."
-
-At this I laughed, admitting that our neighbour certainly did not look
-as if he knew how to enjoy himself.
-
-"He _don't_. Don't sim to have no pleasure, nor 'sociate with anybody.
-There! I'd as lief not have a life at all, as have one like his. I'd
-do without, if I couldn't do no better'n that."
-
-Bettesworth's judgment was possibly in error; for there is no telling
-what mystical joys, what dreams of another world, may have illuminated
-this man's inner life, and made him suspicious of people like
-Bettesworth and me. But if there were such compensation, Bettesworth's
-temperament was incapable of recognizing it, and the point is
-instructive. His own indomitable cheerfulness was of the objective
-pagan order. The field of his emotions and fancies had never been
-cultivated. His thoughts did not stray beyond this world. From such
-deep sources of physical sanity his optimism welled up, that he really
-needed, or at any rate craved for, no spiritual consolation. Like his
-remote ancestors who first invaded this island, he had the habit of
-taking things as they came, and of enjoying them greatly on the whole.
-He half enjoyed, even while he was irritated by it, the odd figure
-presented by this Nonconformist.
-
-
-_May 7._--A week afterwards he exhibited the same sort of aloof
-interest, annoyed and yet amused, in a jibbing horse. A horse had
-brought a ton of coal a part of the way down the lane, and then
-refused to budge farther; and Bettesworth could not forget the
-incident. It tickles me still to recall with what a queer look on his
-face he spoke of the noble animal. The expression was the result of
-his trying to say his word for _horse_ (not _'oss_, but _'awss_),
-while a facetious smile was twitching at the corners of his mouth.
-This was several days after the event. At the time of its occurrence,
-someone had remarked that the horse had no pluck, and Bettesworth had
-rejoined indignantly, "_I'd_ see about his pluck, if I had the drivin'
-of 'n!" But after a day or two his indignation turned to quiet gaiety.
-"Won't back," he said, "and he won't draw."
-
-I suggested, "Not bad at standing still."
-
-Then came the queer expression on Bettesworth's face, with "'Good
-'awss to _eat_,' the man said." Truly it was odd to see how
-Bettesworth's lips, grim enough as a rule, arched out sarcastically
-over the word _'awss_.
-
-And it was in a temper not very dissimilar that he commonly regarded
-our Nonconformist neighbour. The man amused him.
-
-A pagan of the antique English kind, ready to poke fun at a bad horse,
-or sneer at a fanatic, or be happy in listening to the April talk of
-the starlings, Bettesworth had quite his share too of the pugnacity
-of his race. Years ago he had said that a fight used to be "just his
-clip," as a young man; not many years ago he had promptly knocked down
-in the road a baker who had got down out of his cart to make
-Bettesworth move his wheelbarrow out of the way (I remember that when
-the old man told me of this I advised him not to get into trouble, and
-he pleaded that it "seemed to do him good"); and now during this
-spring--I cannot say exactly when--the fighting spirit suddenly woke
-up in him once more.
-
-The circumstance takes us out again from the peace of the garden to
-the crude struggle for life in the village. Looking back to that time,
-I can see our valley as it were sombrely streaked with the progress of
-two or three miserable family embroilments, squalid, weltering,
-poisoning the atmosphere, incapable of solution. And though
-Bettesworth was no more implicated in these than myself, but like me
-was a mere onlooker, he was not, like me, an outsider. He was down on
-the very edge of these troubles, and it was the momentary overflow of
-one of them in his direction one night that suddenly started him
-fighting, in spite of his years.
-
-I may not go into details of the affair. It is enough that during this
-April and May our end of the parish was looking on, scandalized, at
-the blackguard behaviour of a certain labourer towards his family and
-especially his own mother. Of powerful build, the man had been long
-known for a bully; and if report went true, he had received several
-thrashings in his time. But just now he was surpassing his own record.
-He was also presuming upon the forbearance of better men than himself,
-and could not keep his tongue from flouts and gibes at them. Speaking
-of him to me, Bettesworth expressed his disapproval and no more.
-Others, however, were less reticent; and there came a day when I heard
-of a quarrel this man had tried to fix upon Bettesworth at the
-public-house one evening. He was summarily ejected, my informant said;
-and something--I have forgotten what--caused me to suspect that the
-"chucker out" was old Bettesworth. That was not explicitly stated,
-however. Nor did Bettesworth himself tell me at the time any more than
-that there had been a disturbance in the taproom, the man being turned
-out, after insulting him.
-
-
-_May 15._--But, alluding to the affair some time afterwards, he
-placidly continued the story. "I cut 'n heels over head, an' when he
-got up, and made for the doorway and the open road, I went for 'n
-again. They got round me, or I should ha' knocked 'n heels over head
-again. I broke my way through four or five of 'em. 'If I was twenty
-years younger,' I says to 'n, 'I'd jump the in'ards out of ye.' Some
-of 'em says, if he dares touch the old man they'd go for 'n theirself.
-'All right!' I says, 'you no call to worry about me. I can manage he.'
-And they told 'n, 'You got hold o' the wrong one this time, Sammy.'"
-
-
-
-
-XVI
-
-
-During these months, the story of Bettesworth's having been a soldier
-in the Crimea remained unverified. I was watching for hints of it from
-him, and he gave not the slightest; for opportunities of asking him
-about it without offence, and not one occurred. And slowly the tale
-receded from my mind, and my belief in it dwindled away.
-
-By what chance, or in what circumstances, the mystery suddenly
-recurred to me is more than I can tell now. But one rainy May
-afternoon--I remember that much--the old man was in the wood-shed,
-sitting astraddle on one block of wood, and chopping firewood on
-another block between his knees. He looked careless enough,
-comfortable enough, sitting there in the dry, with the sound of rain
-entering through the open shed door. What was it he said, or I, to
-give me an opening? I shall never know; but presently I found myself
-challenging him to confess the truth of what was reported of him.
-
-And I remember well how at once his careless expression changed, as if
-he had been taxed with a fault, and how for some seconds he sat
-looking fixedly before him in a shamefaced, embarrassed way, like a
-schoolboy who has been "found out." For some seconds the silence
-lasted; then he said reluctantly, "It's true. So I was." And the
-circumstantial talk that followed left me without any further doubt on
-the point.
-
-It was at the Rose and Crown--a well-known tavern in the neighbouring
-town--that he 'listed. His "chum" (I don't know who his chum was) had
-already enlisted at Alton, and "everybody thought," as Bettesworth
-said, that he too had done so at the same time, for he had the
-soldier's belt on, there in the Alton inn. But he had not taken the
-shilling there. He returned home to his brother Jim, "what was up
-there at Middlesham, same job as old Stubby got now--seventeen year he
-had 'long with the charcoal-burners up there"--and Jim urged him to
-"go to work." Bettesworth, however, was obstinate. "No," he said, "I
-shall go to Camden Fair." "Better by half go to work." "No, I shall
-git about." "And I come down to the town" (so his tale continued),
-"and there I see my chum what had 'listed at Alton day before. 'Come
-on,' he says; 'make up your mind to go with we.' ''Greed,' I says. And
-I went up 'long with 'n to the Rose and Crown...."
-
-"How old were you then? It must have been before you were married?"
-
-"Yes; I was sixteen. I served a year and eight months."
-
-"Ah." I looked out at the May foliage and the kindly rain, and thought
-of the Crimean winter.
-
-"You saw some cold weather, then?"
-
-"No mistake. Two winters and one summer." He was, in fact, before
-Sebastopol, and now that the secret was out, he hurried on to tell
-familiarly of Kertch, the Black Sea, the Dardanelles, so glibly that
-my memory was unable to take it all in. What was most strange was to
-hear these places, whose names to stay-at-home people like myself have
-come to have an epic sound, spoken of as the scene of merely trivial
-incidents. As it was only of what he observed himself that Bettesworth
-told, this could hardly have been otherwise; yet it is odd to think
-that Tolstoi, writing his marvellous descriptions of the siege, may
-have set eyes on him. To this harum-scarum English plough-boy,
-ignorant, rollicking, reckless, it was not the great events, on a
-large scale, that were prominent, but the queer things, the little
-haphazard details upon which he happened to stumble. Through the
-narrative his own personality was to the fore; just the same dogged
-personality that I was to know afterwards, but not yet chastened and
-made wise by experience.
-
-It was here in the Crimea that, carrying that letter to post to his
-brother, as already told in "The Bettesworth Book," he met his "mate,"
-and, opening the letter, took out the "dollar" it contained, and spent
-it on a bottle of rum, tossing the letter away. "In those days," said
-he, "I could drink as much rum as I can beer now. We had rum twice a
-day: rum and limejuice. That was to keep off the scurvy. Never had no
-cups nor nothing. We had knives, same as that old clasp-knife I got
-now, and used to knock off the necks o' the bottles with they."
-
-He remembered well the hard times, and the privations our troops
-endured. "Sixteen of us in one o' they little tents. We had a blanket
-and a waterproof sheet--not the fust winter, though; and boots that
-come up to your thigh, big enough to get into with your shoes on.
-There was one little chap named Tickle, he got into his boots with his
-shoes on, and couldn't git 'em off again. He was put under stoppages
-for 'em. Fifty shillin's for a pair o' they boots. You got into
-'em--they was never made to fit no man--and bid in 'em for a month
-together--freezed on to ye."
-
-Again, "It was starvation done for so many of our chaps out there.
-Cold an' starvation. I've bin out on duty forty-eight hours at a
-stretch; then march back three mile to camp; and then some of us 'd
-have to march another seven mile to fetch biscuit from the sea. And
-_then_ you only got your share, same as the rest.... Sometimes the
-biscuit was dry; and then again you'd on'y git some as had bin trod to
-death by mules or camels.... That was the way to git a appetite....
-But there was plenty o' rum; good rum too; better 'n what you gits
-about here." The system of pay, or rather the want of system, appears
-to have made this abundance of rum a more than usually doubtful
-blessing. The men went sometimes "weeks together without gettin' any
-pay; and then when we got it, it was very soon all gone." Sixpence a
-day--four and twopence a week--(Bettesworth figured it out)--a very
-handy sum was this week's pay, I gathered, for buying rum by the
-bottle. The price of a bottle of stout was half a crown.
-
-Reverting to the terrible weather, Bettesworth told how he had seen
-"strong men, smoking their pipe," and four hours afterwards beheld
-them carried by on a stretcher, to be buried. Ill-fed, I inferred,
-they succumbed thus suddenly to the fearful cold. Green coffee was
-provided, and the men had to hunt about for roots to make a fire for
-cooking it. And then, just as they had got their coffee into their
-mess-tins, they would be called out, perhaps, to stand on duty for
-eight hours together.
-
-The dead were buried "in their kit," with their clothes on. Sometimes,
-Bettesworth hinted, money would be found on them and appropriated from
-their pockets, but "we wan't allowed no plunder," he added. As for the
-graves, "I've see 'em chucked into graves eighteen inches or two foot
-deep, perhaps--just a little earth put over 'em; and when you go by a
-fortnight or so after, you might see their toes stickin' out o' the
-ground. You never see no coffin." The only coffin that Bettesworth saw
-was Lord Raglan's. "That was a funeral! Seven miles long...."
-
-At the close of the war Bettesworth came home "among the reductions,"
-yet not for several months, during which he was employed on "fatigue
-parties" in collecting old metal--guns, ammunition cases, and so
-forth--for ballast to the ships in Balaclava Harbour. He described the
-Harbour: it was "like comin' in at that door; an' then, when you gets
-inside, it all spreads out...." Storm in the Black Sea overtook the
-troop-ship, where were "seventeen hunderd of us. Three hunderd was
-ship's company.... And some down on their knees prayin', some cursin',
-some laughin' an' drinkin', some dancin'.... And the troop-ship we
-come home in--might 's well ha' come in a hog-tub. She'd bin all
-through the war, and he" (the captain) "reckoned 'twas great honour to
-bring her home, and he wouldn't have no tugs. Forty-nine days we was,
-comin' home. And she leaked, an' then 'twas 'all hands to the
-pumps....' Great pumps...."
-
-Yes, of course he remembered the pumps. It was Bettesworth all over,
-to take a vivid and intelligent practical interest in anything of the
-kind that there was to be seen. He had had no observation lessons at
-school, and had never heard of "object studies"; he simply observed
-for the pleasure of observing, instinctively as a cat examines a new
-piece of furniture, and if not with any cultivated sense of
-proportion, still with a great evenness of judgment. On one other
-occasion, and one only in my hearing, he reverted to his Crimean
-experiences; and as will be seen in its proper place, the narrative
-again showed him observing with the same balanced mind, never
-enthusiastic, but also never satiated, never bored.
-
-But what of the "trouble" into which he was alleged to have fallen? I
-may as well tell all I know, and have done with it. From Bettesworth
-himself no breath of trouble ever reached me. But his avoidance of
-this period as a topic of conversation often struck me as a suspicious
-circumstance; so that I was not quite unprepared for a statement old
-Dicky Martin volunteered when Bettesworth had been some three weeks
-dead. He had been "rackety," and had been punished: that was the
-substance of the tale. "He got into trouble for goin' into the French
-lines after some rum--him an' two or three more. They never stopped,
-he told me, to ask 'n no questions, but strapped 'n up and give 'n two
-or three dozen for 't."
-
-
-
-
-XVII
-
-
-I suppose that Bettesworth's Crimean reminiscences occupied in
-narration to me something less than fifteen minutes of his life, so
-that obviously the space they take up in this volume is out of all
-proportion to their importance. For my theme is not this or that
-recollection of his, but the way in which the old man lived out these
-last of his years, while the memories passed across his mind. It is of
-small consequence what he remembered. Had he recalled the Indian
-Mutiny instead of the Crimea, it would have been all one, by that wet
-afternoon of May, 1902. He would have sat on his block dandling the
-chopper just the same, and the raindrops from trees outside would have
-come slanting into the shed doorway and splashed on my hand as I
-listened to him.
-
-And as they are disproportionately long, these day-dreams of
-Bettesworth, so also they become too solid on the printed page, side
-by side with the reality which encompassed them then, and is my
-subject now. They provoke us to forget the old man, alive and talking.
-They take us back fifty years too far. From the hardships of the
-Crimean War it is a wrench to return to the reality--the shed in this
-valley, the patter of the rain, the old gossipping voice. But all
-this, so impossible to restore now that it too has become only a
-reminiscence, being then the commonplace of my life as well as of
-Bettesworth's, was allowed to pass by almost unnoticed. I let slip
-what I really liked, took for granted the strong life that alone made
-me care for the conversation, and saved only some dead litter of
-observation which was let fall by the living man and seemed to me odd.
-
-Need I explain how of this too I was gradually saving less and less?
-The oddness was wearing off; only the more exceptional things seemed
-now worth taking care of. Unless there was something as surprising to
-hear as this talk of the Crimean War--and such exceptions of course
-appeared with increasing rareness--I hardly took the trouble, at this
-period, to set down in writing any of Bettesworth's daily gossip. The
-naturalist, having noted in his diary the first two swallows that do
-not after all make a summer, has no record save in his brain of the
-subsequent curvings and interlacings in the summer sky; and I,
-similarly, find myself with little besides a vague memory of
-Bettesworth's doings in this summer of 1902. In fact, it is not even a
-memory that I have. There is only an inference that day by day he must
-have done his work in the warm weather, and I must have talked to him.
-But I am unable to restore this for a reader's benefit. "Imagine him
-going on as usual," shall I say? Why, it is more than I can do myself.
-A row of asterisks would serve the purpose equally well.
-
-So there is a void for two months--nay, with one exception, for more
-than three, from the middle of May to the end of August; in which one
-surmises that the summer flies buzzed in the garden, and Bettesworth
-did his hoeing and grass-cutting, and was companionable. The one
-exception, fortunately, has the very life in it which I am regretting.
-It is but a short sentence of six words, yet they are as if spoken
-within the hour, and are the clearer for the void around them.
-
-On the afternoon of July 15, the grape vine on the wall near my window
-was being attended to by the pruner. He stood on a ladder, which was
-held steady by Bettesworth at the foot; and presently through the open
-window the old man's voice reached me, complaining of the recent
-blighty weather: "There en't nothin' 'ardly looks _kind_."
-
-"No; not to say _kind_," the pruner assented.
-
-That is all. But precisely because there is nothing in it, because it
-is a piece of normal instead of exceptional talk, it has the accent of
-the season. Bettesworth's voice reaches me; the light falls warm
-through the vine-leaves; the lost summer seems to come back with all
-the accompanying scene, almost as distinctly as if I had but just
-written the words down.
-
-
-_August 28, 1902._--The harvest, of course, could not go by without
-remark from him. From the garden we could see, beyond the meadow in
-the bottom of the valley, a little two-acre cornfield, which had stood
-for several days half reaped--the upper side uncut, the lower side
-prosperous-looking with its rows of sheaves. Then there came a morning
-when it was all in sheaves, and Bettesworth said,
-
-"Old Ben" (meaning Ben Turner) "done it for 'n" (the owner) "last
-night. Made a dark job of it."
-
-I realized that in his cottage down by the lake, Bettesworth, going to
-bed, had been able to hear the reaping in the dark, across the meadow.
-
-He proceeded, "Ben took his hoss and cart down into Sussex a week or
-two ago, to see if he could get a job harvestin'. Was only gone three
-days, though: him an' four or five more. But I reckon they only went
-off for a booze--I don't believe they made e'er a try to get a
-job...."
-
-"Our Will" (his brother-in-law) "says down there at Cowhatch they had
-a wonderful crop of oats. But he reckons they've wasted enough with
-the machine to ha' paid for reapin' it by hand. Stands to
-reason--where them great things comes whoppin' into it over and over,
-it shatters out a lot. Will says where they've took up the sheaves you
-can see the ground half covered with what they've wasted."
-
-Not knowing what to say, I hesitated, and at last muttered
-simultaneously with Bettesworth, "'T seems a pity."
-
-"It's what I calls 'pound wise,'" added he, misquoting a proverb which
-possibly was not invented by his class, and was foreign to him.
-
-
-_September 20, 1902._--I turn over the page in my note-book, but come
-to a new date three weeks later. Quiet autumn sunshine, the entry
-says, had marked the last few days, breaking through with a limpid
-splash in the mornings, after the mist had gone. Amidst this, under
-the softened tree-shadows, Bettesworth was cutting grass with his
-fag-hook.
-
-And "Ah," he said, "it's purty near all up with charcoal-burnin' now."
-
-This was in allusion to the indifferent crop of hops just being picked
-and the consequently small demand for charcoal; but it was a
-digression too. We had begun talking of a wasp sting. From that to
-gnats, and from gnats to a certain tank where they bred, was an
-obvious transition.
-
-And now the tank suggested charcoal. For, according to Bettesworth, a
-little knob of charcoal put into a tank is better than an equal
-quantity of lime, for keeping the water sweet. Further, "If you got a
-bit o' meat that's goin' anyways wrong, you put a little bit o'
-charcoal on to that, and you won't taste anything bad. I've heared
-ever so many charcoal-burners say that. And meat is a thing as won't
-keep--not butcher's meat; partic'lar in the summer when you sims to
-want it most--something with a little taste to 't." So, charcoal is
-useful; but "Ah! it's purty near all up with charcoal-burnin' now."
-
-A good deal that followed, about the technicalities of
-charcoal-burning, has been printed in another place, and is omitted
-here. One point, however, may now be taken up. It is the curious fact
-that all the charcoal-burners of the neighbourhood are congregated in
-one district, and the numerous families of them rejoice in one
-name--that of Parratt.
-
-"I never knowed anybody but Parratts do it about here," Bettesworth
-said; and the name reminded him of a story, as follows:
-
-"My old brother-in-law Snip was down at Devizes one time--him what
-used to travel with a van--_Snip_ they always called 'n. And there was
-a feller come into the fair with one of these vans all hung round with
-bird-cages, ye know--poll-parrots and all kinds o' birds. So old Snip
-says to 'n, 'Parrots?' he says, 'what's the use o' you talkin' about
-parrots? Why, where I come from,' he says, 'we got Parratts as 'll
-burn charcoal, let alone talk. Talk better 'n any o' yourn,' he says.
-'You give 'em some beer and _they'll_ talk--or dig hop-ground, or
-anything.' Lor'! how that feller did go on at 'n, old Snip said!"
-
-Bettesworth knew something of charcoal-burning by experience, but he
-owned himself ignorant of its inner technical niceties. Moreover, he
-felt it right to respect a trade "mystery," explaining, "'Tis no use
-to be a trade, if everybody can do it. 'Relse we should have poor
-livin' then."
-
-
-_October_ 31, 1902.--A memorandum of October 31 gives just a foretaste
-of the approaching winter, and just a momentary searching back into
-the experience gained when Bettesworth worked at a farm. For there
-must have been hoar-frost lingering on the lawn that last morning in
-October, to evoke the old man's opinion, "the less you goes about on
-grass while there's a frost on it the better" for the grass. "If
-anybody goes over a bit o' clover-lay with the white frost on it you
-can tell for a month after what course they took."
-
-
-_November 11._--Amid some personalities which it would be difficult to
-disguise and which had better be omitted, I find in November another
-reference to the harsh social life of the village, and it is in
-connexion with that same bully whom Bettesworth had previously
-chastised. As before, details must be suppressed; I only suggest that
-in these dark November nights the labourers in want of company of
-course sought it at the public-house. There, I surmise, the bully was
-boasting, until Bettesworth shut him up with a retort brutally direct.
-Even as it was repeated to me his expression is not printable.
-Bettesworth was no angel. He seemed rather, at times, a hard-grained
-old sinner; but he always took the manly side, whether with fists or
-coarse tongue. In this instance his fitting rebuke won a laugh of
-approval from the company, and even "a pint" for himself from one who
-was a relative, but no friend, of the offender.
-
-
-_December 16._--One dry, cloudy day in December Bettesworth used his
-tongue forcibly again, but in how much pleasanter a connexion! A
-little tree in the garden had to be transplanted to a new position, on
-the edge of a bed occupied by old sprouting stumps of kale. One of
-these stumps was exactly in the place destined for the tree, and
-Bettesworth ruthlessly pulled it up, talking to it:
-
-"You come out of it. There's plenty more like you. If you complains,
-we'll chuck ye in the bottom o' the hole for the tree to feed on!"
-
-
-
-
-XVIII
-
-
-The Old Year, so far as my notes show it, had run to its close without
-event for Bettesworth, just as the New Year was to do, excepting for
-one big trouble. Yet he was not quite the man at the opening of 1903
-that he had been at the opening of 1902. The twelve uneventful months
-had, in fact, been leaving their marks upon him--marks almost
-imperceptible as each occurred, yet progressive, cumulative in their
-effect. On this day or on that, none could have pointed to a change in
-the old man, or alleged that he was not so the day before; but as the
-seasons swung round it was impossible not to perceive how he was
-aging. It is well, therefore, to pause and see what he had become by
-this time before we enter upon another year of his life.
-
-There was one silent witness to the increasing decay of his powers
-that could not be overlooked. The garden gave him away. People coming
-to visit me and it were embarrassed to know what to say, or they even
-hinted that it would be an economy to allow Bettesworth a small
-pension and hire a younger man, who would do as much work, and do it
-better, in half the time. As if I needed to be told that! But then
-they were not witnesses, with me, of the pluck--better worth
-preserving than any garden--with which Bettesworth sought to make
-amends for his vanished youth. His tenacity deepened my regard for
-him, even while its poor results almost wore out my patience. He who
-had once moved with such vigour was getting slow; and the time was
-coming, if it had not come, when I had to wait and dawdle while he
-dragged along behind me from one part of the garden to another. A more
-serious matter was that with greater effort on his part the garden
-ground was less well worked. I don't believe he knew that. He used a
-favourite old spade, worn down like himself, and never realized that
-"two spits deep" with this tool were little better than one spit with
-a proper one; and he could not make out why the carrots forked, and
-the peas failed early.
-
-But the worst trial of all was due to another and more pitiful cause.
-I could reconcile myself to indifferent crops--after all, I had
-enough--but exasperation was daily renewed by the little daily
-failures in routine work, owing to his defective sight, which grew
-worse and worse. There were the garden paths. With what care the old
-man drew his broom along them, working by faith and not sight, blindly
-feeling for the rubbish he could not see, and getting it all save from
-some corner or other of which his theories had forgotten to take
-account! Little nests of disorder collected in this way, to-day here,
-to-morrow somewhere else, surprising, offensive to the eye. Again, at
-the lawn-mowing, never man worked harder than Bettesworth, or more
-conscientiously; but he could not see the track of his machine, and
-seams of uncut grass often disfigured the smoothness of the turf even
-after he had gone twice over it to make sure of perfection. It was
-alarming to see him go near a flower border. He would avoid treading
-on any plant of whose existence he knew, by an act of memory; but he
-could not know all, and I had to limit his labours strictly to that
-part of the garden he planted or tended himself.
-
-What made the situation so difficult to deal with was that his
-intentions were so good. He was himself hardly aware that he failed,
-and I rather sought to keep him in ignorance of the fact than
-otherwise. I felt instinctively that, once it was admitted, all would
-be over for Bettesworth; because he was incapable of mending, and open
-complaints from me must in the end have led to his dismissal. For that
-I was not prepared. He would never get another employment; to cut him
-off from this would be like saying that the world had no more use for
-him and he might as well die out of the way. But I had no courage to
-condemn him to death because my lawn was ill cut. With one exception,
-when I sent him to an oculist to see if spectacles would help him (the
-oculist reported to me that there was "practically no sight left"), we
-kept up the fiction that he could see to do his work. And his
-patient, silent struggles to do well were not without an element of
-greatness.
-
-But though the drawbacks to employing the old man were many, and such
-as to set me oftentimes wondering how long I should be able to endure
-them, it must not be thought that he was altogether useless. If he was
-slow, he was still strong; if he was half blind, he was wholly
-efficient at heavy straightforward work. During this winter, in making
-some radical changes which involved a good deal of excavating work,
-Bettesworth was like a first-rate navvy, and eagerly put all his
-experience at my disposal. There was a trench to be opened for laying
-a water-pipe. With a young man to help him, he dug it out and filled
-it in again, in about half the time that the job would have taken if
-it had been entrusted to a contractor. In one place a little pocket of
-bright red gravel was found. This, of his own initiative, he put aside
-for use on the paths which he was too blind to sweep clean. But, in
-truth, a sort of sympathy with my desires and a keen eye to my
-interests frequently inspired him to do the right thing in this kind
-of way. He had identified himself with the place; was proud of it;
-boasted to his friends of "our" successes; and like a miser over his
-hoard, never spared himself where the good of the garden was
-concerned, but with aching limbs--his ankle where he had once broken
-it pained him cruelly at times--went slaving on for his own
-satisfaction, when I would have suggested to him to take things
-easily.
-
-I have said that there were those who considered him too expensive a
-protege for me. There were others, I am sure, to whom he appeared no
-better than a tedious old man, opinionated, gossiping, not over clean.
-Pretty often--especially in bad weather, when there was not much he
-could be doing--he went on errands for me to the town, to fetch home
-groceries and take vegetables to my friends, and all that sort of
-thing. At my friends' he liked calling; they owed to him rather than
-to me not a few cookings of cabbage and sticks of celery, for which
-they would reward him with praise, and perhaps a glass of beer or the
-price of it. Afterwards I would hear lamentings from them how long he
-had stayed talking. Once or twice--hardly oftener in all these
-years--I had to speak to him in sharp reprimand for being such a
-prodigious long time gone; for the glass of beer and the gossip where
-he delivered his cabbages did not always satisfy his cravings for
-society and comfort: he would turn into a public-house--"Dan
-Vickery's" for choice--and come back too late and too talkative. It
-was a fault, if you like; but the wonder to me is, not that he
-sometimes drank two glasses where one was enough, but that, with his
-wit and delight in good company, he did not oftener fall from grace.
-Those two or three occasions when he earned my sharp reproofs, and for
-half a day afterwards lost his sense of comfort in me as a friend,
-were probably times when his home had grown too dreary, his outlook
-too hopeless, even for his fortitude. Some readers, no doubt, will be
-offended by his taste for beer. I hope there will be some to give him
-credit for the months and years in which, with these few exceptions,
-he controlled the appetite. Remember, he had no religious convictions,
-nor did the peasant traditions by which he lived afford him much
-guidance. Alone, of his own inborn instinct for being a decent man, he
-strove through all his life, not to be rich, but to live upright and
-unashamed. Fumbling, tiresome, garrulous, unprofitable, lean and grim
-and dirty in outward appearance, the grey old life was full of fight
-for its idea of being a man; full of fight and patience and stubborn
-resolve not to give in to anything which it had learnt to regard as
-weakness. I remember looking down, after I had upbraided a failure, at
-the old limbs bending over the soil in such humility, and I could
-hardly bear the thought that very likely they were tired and aching.
-This enfeebled body--dead now and mouldering in the churchyard--was
-alive in those days, and felt pain. Do but think of that, and then
-think of the patient, resolute spirit in it, which almost never
-indulged its weaknesses, but had its self-respect, its half-savage
-instincts toward righteousness, its smothered tastes, its untold
-affections and its tenderness. That was the old man, gaunt-limbed, but
-good-tempered, partially blind and fumbling, but experienced, whom we
-have to imagine now indomitably facing yet another year of his life,
-and a prospect in which there is little for him to hope for. Nay,
-there was much for him to dread, had he known. A separate chapter,
-however, must be given to the severe trouble which, as already hinted,
-overtook him in the early weeks of 1903.
-
-
-
-
-XIX
-
-
-While the advance of time was affecting Bettesworth himself, another
-influence had begun to play havoc with his environment. A glance in
-retrospect at this nook of our parish during this same winter of
-1902-3 shows the advent of new circumstances, of a kind full of menace
-to men like him. Things and persons of the twentieth century had begun
-to invade our valley, where men and women so far had lived as if the
-nineteenth were not half through.
-
-The coming of the new influence was perhaps too subtle for Bettesworth
-to be conscious of it. Perhaps he marked only the normal crumbling
-away of the old-fashioned life, by death or departure of his former
-associates, and failed to notice that these were no longer being
-replaced, as they would have been in former times, by others like
-them. Of our old friends close around us four or five were by this
-time dead, and others had moved farther afield. We missed especially
-old Mrs. Skinner. Since her husband's death in 1901 her domestic
-arrangements had not been happy, and in the autumn just past she had
-disposed of her little property, and was gone to live across the
-valley. But note the circumstances. Only some ten years previously her
-husband had bought this property--the cottage and nearly an acre of
-ground--for about L70. He may have subsequently added L50 to its
-value. Now, however, his widow was able to sell it for something like
-L220. The increase shows what a significant change was overtaking us.
-
-I shall revert to this presently. For the moment I stop to gather up
-some stray sentences of Bettesworth's which, perhaps, indicate how
-unlikely he was to accommodate himself to new circumstances.
-
-The purchaser of Mrs. Skinner's cottage was a man named Kelway--a
-curious, nondescript person, as to whose "derivings" we speculated in
-vain. What had he been before he came here? No one ever discovered
-that, but his behaviour was that of an artisan from near London--a
-plasterer or a builder's carpenter--who had come into a little money.
-I remember his telling me jauntily on one occasion that he should not
-feel settled until he had brought home his American organ (I was
-heartily glad that it never came!), and on another that he had made
-"hundreds of wheelbarrows" in his time, which I thought unlikely; and
-I cannot forget--for there are signs of it to this day--how ruthlessly
-he destroyed the natural contours of his garden with ill-devised
-"improvements." He pulled out the interior partitions of the cottage,
-too, wearing while at the work the correct garb of a plasterer; and
-it was in this costume that he annoyed Bettesworth by his patronizing
-familiarity. "He says to me" (thus Bettesworth), "'I suppose you don't
-know who I am in my dirty dishabille?' 'No,' I says, 'and if I tells
-the truth, I don't care nuther.' _He's dirty dishabille!_... He got
-too much old buck for me!" Shortly afterwards he asked Bettesworth to
-direct him to a good plumber. "'I can do everything else,' he says,
-'but plumbing is a thing I never had any knowledge of.' So I says, 'If
-I was you I should sleep with a plumber two or three nights.'"
-
-
-_January 27, 1903._--Again, in the end of January, Bettesworth
-reported: "That man down here ast me about peas--what sort we gets,
-an' so on." (Remember that he had nearly an acre of ground.) "So I
-told 'n, and he says, 'What do they run to for price?' 'Oh, about a
-shillin' a quart,' I says; and that's what they _do_ run to. 'I must
-have half a pint,' he says. I bust out laughin' at 'n. An' he says he
-must have a load o' manure, too! He must mind he don't overdo it! I
-was _obliged_ to laugh at 'n."
-
-Of course, such a neighbour would in no circumstances have pleased
-Bettesworth. I believe the man had many estimable qualities, but they
-were dwarfed beside his own appreciation of them; and his subsequent
-disappointments, which ultimately led to his withdrawal from the
-neighbourhood, were not of the kind to engage Bettesworth's sympathy.
-Indeed, he had no chance of approval in that quarter, coming in the
-place of old Mrs. Skinner, with her peasant lore and her pigs.
-
-But if this egregious man was personally offensive to Bettesworth, he
-was not intrinsically more strange to the old man than those who
-followed him or than others who were settling in the parish. There
-were to be no more Mrs. Skinners. Wherever one of the old country sort
-of people dropped out from our midst, people of urban habits took
-their place. These were of two classes: either wealthy people of
-leisure, seeking residences, and bringing their own gardeners who
-wanted homes, or else mechanics from the neighbouring town, ready to
-pay high rents for the cottages whose value was so swiftly rising. The
-stealthiness of the process blinded us, however, to what was
-happening. When Bettesworth began, as he did now, to feel the pressure
-of civilization pushing him out, neither he nor I understood the
-situation.
-
-Right and left, property was changing hands. A big house in the next
-hollow, but with its grounds overpeering this, had been bought by a
-wealthy resident, and was under repair, already let to some friends of
-his. There went with it in the same estate the hill-side opposite this
-garden, with two or three cottages visible from here; and everybody
-rejoiced when the disreputable tenants of one of these cottages had
-notice to quit. It was hoped that the new owner was sensible of the
-duties as well as the rights attaching to property.
-
-Meanwhile, Bettesworth's hovel, too, was in the market, the landlord
-of it being lately dead; and in the market it remained, while
-Bettesworth clamoured in vain for repairs. At last he gave up hope. By
-the beginning of 1903 he had resolved to quit his old cottage as soon
-as he could find another to go into.
-
-He waited still some weeks, however--property was valuable, cottages
-were eagerly sought after--and then what seemed a golden opportunity
-arose. The cottage with the disreputable tenants has been mentioned,
-adjoining the grounds of the big house. It must have been early in
-February when the whisper that it was to be vacant reached
-Bettesworth, who forthwith announced to me his intention of applying
-for it. Too big, perhaps too good, for him and his wife I may have
-thought the place; but there was no other in the neighbourhood to be
-heard of, and it was not only for its pleasantness that the old man
-coveted it. With his wife there he would be able to keep watch over
-her while he was at work here, and there would be almost an end to
-those anxieties about her fits, which often made him half afraid to go
-home. I remember the secrecy of his talk. He wanted no one to
-forestall him. The thing was urgent; and I had no hesitation in
-writing a recommendation of him as a desirable tenant, which he
-forthwith took to the owner. Why, indeed, should I have hesitated?
-Between Bettesworth's punctiliousness on such matters and my own
-intention of helping him if need be, there was no fear as to the
-payment of the rent. And the improvements he had made to that place
-down by the stream argued well for the care he would take of this
-better cottage.
-
-My recommendation did its work. Bettesworth was duly accepted as
-tenant; he gave notice to leave the other place, and began
-preparations for moving; and then, too late, it dawned upon me that
-perhaps I had made a mistake. I had forgotten old Mrs. Bettesworth. I
-had not set eyes on her for months; for much longer I had not been
-inside her dwelling, to see the state it was in. I only knew that
-outside the walls were whitewashed, the garden and paths orderly.
-
-The first doubts visited me when I saw that repairs to the new abode
-were being done on a scale too extravagant to fit the Bettesworths.
-The next resulted from an inspection I made of the cottage at
-Bettesworth's desire. He was beyond measure proud to have a place into
-which he could invite me without shame; and he took me all over it,
-and described to me his plans for improving the garden, without
-suspicion of anything amiss. Probably his eyes were too dim to see
-what I saw. Some of his furniture, already heaped on the floor in one
-of the clean new-papered rooms, had a sooty, cobwebby look that filled
-me with forebodings of trouble. However, it was too late to withdraw.
-There was no going back to that abandoned place down in the valley.
-There was nothing to do but hope for the best.
-
-Hope seemed justified for a week or two, while Bettesworth's new
-garden, heretofore a wilderness, assumed a new order. He had sowed
-early peas--probably other things too--having actually paid a
-neighbour to help him get the ground dug; and he was extremely happy,
-until a day came when he said, cautiously and bitterly, "I thinks I
-got a enemy." He went on to explain that some one, he suspected,
-wanted his cottage, and was trying to get him out of it. I have
-forgotten what raised his suspicions. He did not even then realize
-that himself, or rather his wife, was the only enemy he had to fear.
-
-That was the miserable truth, however. Down in that other place,
-secluded from the neighbours, the old woman had grown utterly squalid,
-though Bettesworth had not seen it. And now the owner of the new
-cottage, perhaps from the grounds of the large residence destined for
-his friends, had caught sight of old Lucy Bettesworth, and had been,
-as anyone else would have been, horrified at her filthy appearance.
-But he did not act on that single impression: it was not until kindly
-means had been taken to ascertain the truth of it that he first
-expostulated, and then told Bettesworth that he could not be permitted
-to stay. Nay, I was allowed to try first if persuasion of mine could
-remedy the evil.
-
-Unfortunately, remedies were not in Bettesworth's power, or he would
-by now have employed them, being alarmed as well as indignant. He
-listened to my hints that his wife was intolerably dirty, but (I write
-from memory) "What can I do, sir?" he said. "I knows she en't like
-other women, with her bad hand and all." (She had broken her wrist
-some years before, and never regained its strength.) "But I can't
-afford to dress her like a lady. I told 'n so to his head: 'I can't
-keep a dressed-up doll,' I says." Neither could he, being so nearly
-blind, see that his wife was going about unwashed, grimy, like a
-dreadful apparition of poverty from the Middle Ages. To her it would
-have been useless to speak. Her epilepsy had impaired her intellect,
-and any suggestion of reform, even from her own husband, seemed to her
-a piece of persecution to be obstinately resented.
-
-So there was nothing to be done. The prospective tenants of the big
-house near by could not be expected to endure such a neighbour; the
-cottage itself, which had cost L20 for repairs, the owner told me, was
-no place for such a tenant. The Bettesworths therefore must go. They
-received formal notice to quit; then, as nothing appeared to be
-happening, a more peremptory notice was sent limiting their time to
-three weeks, yet promising a sovereign as compensation for the work
-done and the crops planted in the garden. In the meantime they had
-probably done more than a sovereign's worth of damage to the cottage
-interior, with its new paper and paint.
-
-But though nothing appeared to be happening, the two old people were
-secretly in a state near to distraction. The reader will remember the
-peculiar topography of this parish, with the tenements dotted about
-for a mile or more on the northern slope of the valley. All up and
-down this district, and then on the other side, where he was less at
-home, Bettesworth hunted in vain for an available cottage within
-possible reach of his work: there was not one to be found. And now he
-realized his physical feebleness. Years ago, miles would not have
-mattered; he could have shifted to another village and defied the
-demands of our new-come town civilization; but now a walk of a mile
-would be a consideration. His legs were too old and stiff for a long
-walk as well as a day's work.
-
-For several days--and days are money, especially to a working-man--he
-searched up and down, his despair increasing, his dismay deepening, at
-every fresh disappointment. I began to fear he would break down. He
-could not sleep, nor yet could his wife. She had been crying half the
-night--so he told me after the misery had endured the best part of the
-week. "She kep' on, 'Whatever will become of us, Fred? Wherever
-_shall_ we go?'" and he, trying to reassure her that they would "find
-somewhere to creep into," seemed to be face to face with the
-workhouse as his only prospect. So they spent their night, and rose to
-a hopeless morning.
-
-It was time, evidently, for me to take the matter up. Besides, the old
-people's trouble was getting on my nerves. Across the valley there was
-an empty cottage--one of a pair--which the owner had refused to let on
-the strange plea that the tenants who had just left had been so
-troublesome and destructive that he was resolved against taking any
-others. Such a dry, whimsical old man was this landlord that the story
-was not incredible. A retired bricklayer, and a widower, he lived by
-himself on next to nothing, not from miserliness but from choice, and
-his chief object in life seemed to be to avoid trouble. He had,
-however, worked with Bettesworth in years gone by, and was, in fact, a
-sort of chum of his, so that it seemed worth while to try what
-persuasion would do to shake his resolution of keeping an empty
-cottage. And where Bettesworth had failed, I might succeed.
-
-So, one fine morning--it was near the middle of March by now--I hunted
-up this old man--a man as genial and kindly as I wish to see--and made
-him a proposal. He showed some reluctance to entertain it. Why? The
-truth came out at last: he did not want the Bettesworths for tenants;
-he knew the indescribable state of the old woman; it was to her that
-he objected; and it was to spare his old chum's feelings that he had
-invented that story about being unwilling to let the cottage at all.
-
-But the case was desperate. How I pleaded it I no longer remember, nor
-is it of any importance. I think there were two interviews. In the end
-the cottage was let, not direct to Bettesworth, but to me with
-permission to sublet it to him; and two, or at most three days
-afterwards, Bettesworth was in possession, and the other cottage once
-more stood empty.
-
-So the squalid episode was over. After such a narrow escape from the
-workhouse, it was as it were with a gasp of relief that the old couple
-settled down in their new abode, safe at last. The place, though, was
-not one which Bettesworth would have chosen, had there been a choice.
-Down there by the meadow where he had come from, though the cottage
-might be crazy, the outlook had been fair. He had been peacefully
-alone there; in summer evenings he had heard the men mowing; on winter
-nights there was the wind in the withies and the sound of the stream.
-But from this time onwards we have to think of him as living in one of
-a mean group of tenements which exhibit their stuccoed ugliness
-nakedly on a bleak slope above the meadow. As to the neighbours--some
-of them resented his coming, for of course the scandal of his wife's
-condition was public property by now. With a certain defiant shame,
-therefore, he crept in amongst them. Fortunately, the people in the
-next-door cottage--an unmarried labourer and his mother--knew
-Bettesworth's record, and regarded him as a veteran to be cared for;
-and not many weeks passed before the old man felt himself established
-in their good-will, and was trying to persuade himself that all was
-for the best.
-
-Of course, he was only partially successful in that endeavour.
-Occasional bitter remarks showed that he still harboured a resentment
-against the owner of the cottage from which he had been turned out,
-and, in fact, there were circumstances which would have made it
-difficult for him quite to forget the affair. Perched on one of the
-steepest of the bluffs, high above the stream, the cottage in which he
-was not good enough to live stood beside the path he now had to travel
-to and from his work every day. Often, as his legs grew weary and his
-breath short with ascending the footpath, he must have felt tempted to
-curse the place. Often it must have seemed to taunt him with his
-unfitness. Even when he was at work, there it was full in sight. In
-bad weather, and as he grew feebler, it stood there on its uplifted
-brow, not sheltering the wife to whom he wanted to go at dinner-time,
-but like an obstacle in his way. Instead of being his home, it cut him
-off from his home; and he took to bringing his dinner with him,
-wrapped in a handkerchief; poor cold food which he frequently left
-untasted, preferring a pipe.
-
-Yet it was not his nature to be embittered. When the peas he had sown
-came up, though for another man's benefit, he looked across at them
-from this garden and admired them. They were a fine crop and
-remarkably early. If, however, they made him a little envious, he was
-generous enough to be pleased too. Perhaps the sight comforted him,
-proving that he would have done well there, at least with the garden,
-if they had let him stay. And certainly he was flattered when the new
-tenant, wholly grateful, asked him what sort of peas these were.
-"Earliest of All," he replied, giving the name by which he had really
-bought them. And by-and-by a joke arose out of the answer, because the
-other man would not believe that the peas were really so called, but
-thought Bettesworth was "kiddin' of 'n" with a name invented by
-himself. The old man had many a chuckle over this piece of
-incredulity. "I tells 'n right enough," he laughed; "but he won't have
-it."
-
-
-
-
-XX
-
-
-As may be imagined, the troubles through which Bettesworth had thus
-come did nothing to rejuvenate him. On the contrary, they openly
-convicted him of old age, and made it patent that he was no longer
-very well able to take care of himself. In fact, the man's instinctive
-pride in himself had been shaken, and though I do not think he
-consciously slackened his efforts to do well, his unconscious,
-spontaneous activity was certainly impaired. It was as though the
-inner stimulus to his muscles was gone. He forgot to move as fast as
-he was able. Sometimes he would, as it were, wake up, and spur himself
-back into something like good labouring form; but after a little time
-he would relapse, and go dreamily humming about his work like a very
-old man. In these days, my own interest in him reached its lowest ebb.
-I found myself burdened with a dependent I could not in honour shake
-off; but there was little pleasure to be had in thinking of
-Bettesworth. Only now and again, when he dropped into reminiscence,
-did he seem worth attention; only now and again, in my note-books of
-the period, does he re-emerge, telling chiefly of things the present
-generations have forgotten.
-
-To the earliest notice of him for the year an irony attaches, since it
-begins by recording with extreme satisfaction the first of those
-summer rains which were to make 1903 so memorable and disastrous. How
-little did we guess, on that June 10, what was in store for us! My
-note describes, almost gloatingly, "one of those gloomy summer
-evenings that we get with thundery rain. There is scarcely any wind;
-grey cloud, well-nigh motionless, hangs over all the sky; the distant
-hills are a stronger grey; the garden is all wet greenness--deep
-beyond deep of sombre green, turning black under the denser branches
-of the trees. Now and again rain shatters down into the rich
-leafage--a solemn noise; and thrushes are vocal; but these sounds do
-not disturb the impressive quietness."
-
-So the entry proceeds, noting how stiff and strong the grass was
-already looking after a threat of drought; how the hedgerows were
-odorous with the pungent scent of nettles; how the lustrous opaque
-white of horse-daisies starred certain grassy banks; and at last, how
-all my neighbours who have gardens were as well pleased as myself with
-the weather.
-
-And so the note comes round to Bettesworth. He too, with his head full
-of recollections of past summer rains, and of hopes of rich crops to
-result from this present one, was glorying in the gloom of the day.
-As the old wise toads crept out from hole and wall-cranny and waddled
-solemn and moist-skinned across the lawn about their affairs, so
-Bettesworth about his, not much regarding a wet coat. He had theories
-as to hilling potatoes, or rather as to not hilling them until the
-ground could be drawn round the haulm wet. And here was his chance. In
-the afternoon he took it, joyfully, and the earth turned up rich and
-dark under his beck.[2]
-
-The tool set him talking. For hilling potatoes he reckoned, a beck is
-much better than a hoe: "leaves such a nice crumb on the ground." He
-was resolved to have his "five-grained spud" or garden fork turned
-into a beck--the next time he went to the town, perhaps, "'cause it
-wouldn't take 'em long, jest to turn the neck, and then draw the
-rivets an' take the tree out an' put in a handle. 'T'd make a good
-tool then--so sharp!
-
-"This old beck I'm usin'," he went on happily, "I warrant he's a
-hunderd year old. He belonged to my wife's gran'father afore I had 'n;
-and _I_'ve had 'n this thirty year or more.... He's a reg'lar
-hand-made one--and a good tool still. That's who he belonged to--my
-old gal's gran'father.
-
-"He" (the grandfather) "had this place over here o' Warner's--'twas
-him as built that, you know." The property mentioned is a large
-cottage and garden, adjoining that from which Bettesworth and his
-wife had so lately been turned out. "And he was the one as fust
-planted Brook's Field. He had Nott's, down here, and Mavin's, and
-Brook's Field--and a _purty_ bit that was, too! He was the fust one as
-planted it. Dessay he had a hunderd acres. Used to keep a little team,
-and a waggon shed--up the lane here, an' come down this lane an' right
-in there...."
-
-But we need not follow Bettesworth into these topographical details.
-Returning, in a moment, to the prosperity of his wife's grandfather,
-he hinted at the basis of it. The man was a peasant-farmer, producing
-for his own needs first, and enjoying certain valuable rights of
-common.
-
-"He used to keep two or three cows," said Bettesworth. "Well, moost
-people used to keep a cow then, what _was_ anybody at all. Ye see, the
-commons was all open, and the boys what looked after the cows used to
-git so much for every one; so the more (cows) they could git the
-better their week's wages was for lookin' after 'em.
-
-"They _was_ some boys too, some of 'em--when there got two or three of
-'em up there in the Forest together, 'long o' the cows!" The old man
-chuckled grimly. "I rec'lect one time me an' Sonny Mander and his
-brother went after one o' the forest ponies. There was hunderds o'
-ponies then. Deer, too. And as soon as we caught 'n, I was up on his
-back. I didn't care after I got _upon_ 'n. I clung on to his
-mane--his mane was down to the ground--and off he went with me, all
-down towards Rocknest and"--well, and more topography. "He tore
-through everything, an' scratched my face, and I was afraid to get off
-for fear he should gallop over me.... And they hollerin' after 'n only
-made 'n worse. He run till he was beat, afore I got off.
-
-"_Purty_ tannin' I got, when I got 'ome! 'Cause me clothes was tore,
-and me cap was gone.... Oh, _I_ had beltinker! They had the news afore
-I got 'ome, 'cause so many cowboys see me."
-
-Smiling, Bettesworth resumed work with his ancient beck, by dexterous
-twist now right and now left turning the dark wet earth in to the
-potato haulm.
-
-
-It was about this time that, our talk working round somehow to the
-subject of donkeys, Bettesworth remarked, as if it were a part of the
-natural history of those interesting animals, and indeed one of their
-specific habits, "Moost donkeys goes after dirty clothes o' Monday
-mornin's." I suppose that is true of the donkeys kept by the numerous
-cottage laundresses in this parish.
-
-From this he launched off into a long rambling narrative, which I did
-not understand in all its details, of his "old mother-in-law's
-donkey," named Jane, whom he once drove down into Sussex for the
-harvesting. "She drinked seven pints o' beer 'tween this an'
-Chichester. Some policemen give her one pint when we drove down into
-Singleton. There was three or four policemen outside the public
-there," Goodwood races being on at the time; and these policemen
-treated Jane, while Bettesworth went within to refresh himself. "That
-an' some bread was all she wanted. I'd took a peck o' corn for her,
-but she didn't sim to care about it; and I give a feller thruppence
-what 'd got some clover-grass on a cart, but she only had about a
-mouthful o' that." In short, Jane preferred bread and beer. "Jest
-break a loaf o' bread in half an' put it in a bowl an' pour about a
-pint o' beer over 't.... But she'd put her lips into a glass or a cup
-and soop it out. Reg'lar coster's donkey, she was, and they'd learnt
-her. Not much bigger 'n a good-sized dog--but _trot_!"
-
-How she trotted, and won a wager, against another donkey on the same
-road, was told so confusedly that I could not follow the tale.
-
-In Sussex, Jane was the delight of the farmer's children. "'May I have
-a ride on your donkey?' they'd say, twenty times a day. 'Yes,' I'd
-say, 'if you can catch her.' And she'd let 'em go up to her, but as
-soon as ever they got on her back they was off again. 'You give her a
-bit o' bread,' I'd say; 'p'raps she'll let ye ride then.' And they
-used to give her bread," but she would never suffer them to ride her.
-
-People on the road admired the donkey--nay, the whole equipage.
-"Comin' home, down Fernhurst Hill, I got up--'cause I rode down
-'ills--I walked all the rest--and says, 'Now, Jane, there's a pint o'
-beer for ye at the bottom of the hill.' So we come down" to the inn
-there, named by Bettesworth but forgotten by me, "and three or four
-farmers there says, 'Here comes the man wi' the little donkey!' And I
-called out for a pint, and she thought she was goin' to have it; but I
-says, 'No, this is for me. You wait till you got your wind back.'"
-
-We spoke afterwards of other donkeys, and particularly of one--a
-lady's of the neighbourhood--which, as Bettesworth had been told, was
-"groomed and put into the stable with a cloth over him, jest like the
-other horses.... Law! if donkeys was looked after, they'd _kill_ all
-the ponies (by outworking them), but they don't get no chance."
-
-
-The harvesting expeditions into Sussex, and the keeping of cows on the
-common, were parts of an antique peasant economy now quite obsolete.
-In August of this year a further glimpse of it was obtained, in a
-conversation which, I grieve to say, I neglected to set down in
-Bettesworth's own words.
-
-
-_August 21, 1903._--There was a time shortly after his marriage, and,
-as I guess, between forty and fifty years ago, when he rented a
-cottage and garden quite close to this house. The price of wheat being
-then two shillings the gallon, he used to grow wheat in his garden;
-and his average crop was at the rate of fourteen or fifteen sacks to
-the acre, or nearly twice as much as local farmers now succeed in
-growing.
-
-In making this use of his garden he was by no means singular. Many of
-his neighbours at that date grew their own corn; and it was Mrs.
-Bettesworth's brother (a man still living, and now working a threshing
-engine) who dibbed it for them. The dibber ("dessay he got it now")
-was described by Bettesworth--a double implement, made for dibbing two
-rows at a time. It had two "trees," like spade handles, set side by
-side, each of which was socketed into an iron bent forwards like a
-letter L. On the under-side of each iron, four excrescences made four
-shallow holes in the ground, "about like a egg"; and a rod connecting
-the two irons kept the double tool rigid. Walking backwards, the man
-using this implement could press into the ground two rows of
-egg-shaped holes at a time, as fast as the women could follow with the
-seed. For it seems that two women followed the dibber, carrying their
-seed-corn in basins and dropping one or two grains into each hole. The
-ground was afterwards rolled with a home-made wooden roller; and as
-soon as the corn came up the hoe was kept going, the rows being about
-eight inches asunder, until the crop was knee high.
-
-Is it wrong to give so much space to these haphazard recollections?
-They interrupt the narrative of Bettesworth's slow and weary
-decline--that must be admitted. Yet, following as they do so close
-upon his wretched experiences in contact with more modern life, they
-help to explain why he and modernity were so much at odds. He had been
-a labourer, a soldier, all sorts of things; but he had been first and
-last by taste a peasant, with ideas and interests proper to another
-England than that in which we are living now.
-
-In course of time, but not yet, a good deal more was to be gleaned
-from him about this former kind of country existence. I shall take it
-as it comes, and, while Bettesworth is losing grip of life, let the
-contrast between him dying and the modern world eagerly living make
-its own effect. As now this detail, and now that, is added to the
-mass, perhaps a little of the atmosphere may be restored in which his
-mind still had its being, and through which he saw our time, yet not
-as we see it.
-
-
-Meanwhile, there is one reminiscence which stands by itself and throws
-light on little or nothing, but is too queer to be omitted. Having no
-place of its own, it is given here because it comes next in my
-note-book.
-
-
-_October 24, 1903._--It was the weather that started our talk.
-Bettesworth could not remember anything like this year 1903 for rain.
-But there! he supposed we should get some fine weather again
-"somewhen?"
-
-Now, I had just been reading some history, and was able to answer
-with some confidence, "Oh yes. There have been wet years before this."
-And I mentioned the year after the Battle of Waterloo.
-
-Then Bettesworth, "Let's see. Battle of Waterloo? That was in '47,
-wa'n't it?"
-
-I chanced to be able to give him the correct date, which he accepted
-easily, as if he had known all the time. "Oh ah," he said. "But there
-was something in eighteen hunderd and forty-seven--some great affair
-or other?... I dunno what 'twas, though, now.... Forty-seven? H'm!"
-
-What could it have been? No, not the Mutiny. "That come after the
-Crimea. 'Twa'n't that. But there was something, I know."
-
-I could not imagine what it could have been; but Bettesworth still
-pondered, and at last an idea struck him. "June, '47.... H'm!... Oh, I
-knows. Old Waterloo Day, that's what 'twas! There used to be a lot of
-'em" (he was hurrying on, and I could only surmise that he meant
-Waterloo veterans) "at Chatham. I see one of 'em there myself, what
-had cut one of his hamstrings out o' cowardice, so's he shouldn't have
-to go into the battle. So then they cut the other, too, an' kep' 'n
-there" (at Chatham) "for a peep-show. He wa'n't never to be buried,
-but put in a glass case when he died.
-
-"He laid up there in his bed, and anybody as mind could go up an' see
-'n. They used to flog 'n every Waterloo Day--in the last years 'twas
-a bunch o' black ribbons he was flogged with. He had a wooden ball
-tied to a bit o' string; and you go up, and ast 'n about the 71st (?),
-and see what you'd git! 'Cause one of the soldiers o' the 71st went up
-there once, an' called 'n all manner o' things. O' course, when he'd
-throwed this ball he could always draw 'n back again, 'cause o' the
-string.... And every mornin' he was ast what he'd have to drink. They
-said he was worth a lot, and 't'd all go to a sergeant-major's
-daughter when he died, what looked after 'n.
-
-"He was worth a lot o' money. Lots used to go up to see 'n--I did, and
-so did a many more, 'cause he was kep' there for show, and everybody
-as went up he'd ast 'm for something. He'd git half a crown, or ten
-shillin's, or a sovereign sometimes. But lots o' soldiers used to go
-an' let 'n have it.
-
-"Ye see, he couldn't git up. He cut his own hamstring for cowardice,
-so's he shouldn't go into battle, and then they cut the other. 'Twas
-the Dook o' Wellington, they says, ordered it to be done, for a
-punishment. And, o' course, he never was able to walk again. That done
-him. There he laid on the bed, with waddin' wrapped all round to
-prevent sores. And in one part o' the room was the glass case ready
-for when he died, for 'n to be embarmed an' kep'--'cause he was never
-to be buried. Fifty year he laid there! I shouldn't much like his bit,
-should you?"
-
-FOOTNOTE:
-
-[2] A tool of which the iron part resembles that of a garden fork, the
-handle, however, being socketed into it at right angles, as in a rake.
-
-
-
-
-XXI
-
-
-_November 4, 1903._--One morning--it was the 4th of
-November--Bettesworth said, "I got a invitation out to a grand dinner
-to-night, down in the town. Veterans of the Crimea. But I shan't go.
-I'd sooner be at home and have a bit o' supper an' get to bed
-early.... No; it don't cost ye nothin'--an' plenty _of_ everything;
-spirits, good food, a very good _dinner_. Still, you can't go to these
-sort o' things without spendin' a shillin'. And then be about half the
-night. I don't care about it. If I was to go, 't'd upset me
-to-morrer."
-
-All this bewildered me. For one thing, it was plain that the fact of
-Bettesworth's having been a soldier was no secret after all. As he now
-went on to tell me, he had actually attended two previous dinners. Who
-were they, then, who knew his record, and got him his invitation? Who,
-indeed, was giving the dinner? Rumours of some such annual
-celebration, it is true, had reached me; but it was no public
-function. Even by name the promoters were unknown to me; and yet
-somehow they had known for several years before I did that my man had
-been a soldier in the Crimea.
-
-At the moment, however, it was Bettesworth's refusal of the invitation
-that most surprised me, although his alleged reasons were very good.
-He so loved good cheer, and he had so few opportunities of enjoying
-it--the Oddfellows' dinner was the only other chance he ever had in
-any year--that I immediately suspected him of having been swayed in
-this instance by something else besides prudence. He sounded
-over-virtuous. And presently it struck me that there might have been
-something offensive to him in the way the invitation was given.
-
-It had been received on the previous evening. He had just got round to
-the public-house, "'long of old White," when "a feller come in,"
-inquiring for him. Bettesworth did not know the man; it was "somebody
-in a grey suit." "Stood me a glass of hot whisky-and-water, he did,
-and old White too." And, referring to Bettesworth's military service,
-"'What was ye?' he says. 'A man,' I says. He laughed and says, 'What
-are ye drinkin'?' 'Only a glass o' cold fo'penny,' I says." And
-Bettesworth seems to have said it in a very meek voice, subtly
-insinuating that "the feller" might stand something better.
-
-I inferred, further, that Bettesworth's conscience was now pricking
-him for some incivility he had shown in declining the invitation. At
-any rate, he made a lame attempt, not otherwise called for, to prove
-that a self-respecting man would not humble himself to anyone upon
-whom he was not dependent. He had evidently been the reverse of
-humble; and possibly the invitation was patronizing, and raised his
-ire.
-
-"Or else," he concluded, "I be purty near the only veteran left about
-here. There used to be Tom Willett and"--another whose name I have
-forgotten--"in the town, but they be gone, and I dunno who else there
-is. And I knows there's ne'er another in this parish. Dessay they'll
-get a few kiddies from Aldershot. 'Cause there's any amount o'
-drink...."
-
-Well, Bettesworth did not go to the dinner, and I never quite
-understood why. Possibly he really felt too old for dissipation, even
-of a decorous kind: still more likely, he dreaded being at once
-under-valued and patronized, among the "kiddies" from Aldershot. He
-certainly did well to avoid their company. Long afterwards, when for
-other reasons I was making inquiries about this dinner, I learnt that
-the behaviour of some of the guests had been scandalous. Some had been
-carried away, drunk. Others had taken with them, hidden in their
-pockets, the means of getting drunk at home. So I was told; but not by
-the promoters, who had shortly afterwards left the neighbourhood.
-
-
-On this same date (4th November, 1903) Bettesworth informed me of
-another circumstance which affected him seriously. It was that he had
-lately been superannuated from his club, which he had joined in July,
-1866. At that distant time, when he was still a young man, and a
-strong one, how should he look forward to the year 1903? By what then
-seemed a profitable arrangement, he paid his subscription on a lower
-scale, on the understanding that he would receive no financial help in
-time of sickness after he was sixty-five years old. He had now passed
-that age. Henceforth, for a payment of threepence a month, he was to
-have medical attendance free, and on his death the club would pay for
-his funeral.
-
-He was mighty philosophical over this. For my part, it was impossible
-to look forward without apprehension to the position he would be in
-during the approaching winter. A year previously he had shown symptoms
-of bronchitis. But what was to become of him now, if he should be ill,
-and have no "sick-pay" upon which to fall back?
-
-
-
-
-XXII
-
-
-I think it must have been during the winter we have reached that the
-village policeman stopped me in the road one night to talk about old
-Mrs. Bettesworth. He told me, what I vaguely knew, that she was
-increasingly ill. Once, if not oftener (I write from memory), he had
-helped get her home out of the road, where she had fallen in a fit;
-and a fear was upon him that she would come to some tragical end. Then
-there would be an inquest; Bettesworth might be blamed for omitting
-necessary precautions; at any rate, trouble and scandal must ensue.
-The policeman proposed that it would be well if a doctor could see the
-old woman occasionally, and suggested that through my influence with
-Bettesworth it might be arranged.
-
-Although I promised to see what could be done to carry out so
-thoughtful a suggestion, and meant to keep my promise, as a matter of
-fact no steps towards its performance were ever taken; and the thing
-is mentioned here only as a piece of evidence as to the conditions in
-which Bettesworth passed the winter. In the background of his mind,
-there stood always the circumstances which had inspired apprehension
-in the policeman. I never noted down his dread, because it was too
-constant a thing; and for a like reason, he seldom spoke of it; but
-there it always was, immovable. The policeman's talk merely shows that
-the reasons for it were gathering in force.
-
-Save for one or two other equally vague memories, that winter is lost,
-so far as Bettesworth is concerned. We had some cold though not really
-severe weather--nothing so terrible as an odd calculation of his would
-have made it out to be. "For," said he, "we _be_ gettin' it! The
-Vicar's gardener says there was six degrees o' frost this mornin'....
-And five yesterday; an' seven the mornin' before. That makes eighteen
-degrees!" So he added up the thermometer readings; and, associated
-with his words, there comes back to me a winter afternoon in which the
-air had grown tense and still. Under an apple-tree, where the ground,
-covered with thin snow, was too hard frozen for a tool to penetrate,
-the emptyings of an ash-bin from the kitchen lay in a little heap; and
-a dozen or so of starlings were quarrelling over this refuse, flying
-up to spar at one another, and uttering sharp querulous cries. A white
-fog hung in the trees. It was real winter, and I laughed to myself, to
-think what a record Bettesworth might make of it by the following
-morning.
-
-Seeing that every winter now he was troubled with a cough, I may as
-well give here some undated sentences I have preserved, in which he
-described how he caught cold on one occasion. "If I'd ha' put on my
-wrop as soon 's I left off work," he said, "I should ha' bin aw-right.
-'Stead o' that, I went scrawneckin' off 'ome jest's I was, an' that's
-how I copt it." The word scrawnecking, whatever he meant by it,
-conjures up a picture of him boring blindly ahead with skinny throat
-uncovered. He took little care of himself; and considering how ill-fed
-he went now that his wife was so helpless, it was small wonder that he
-suffered from colds. They did not improve his appetite. They spoilt
-many a night's rest for him, too. At such times, the account he used
-to give of his coughing was imitative. "Cough cough cough, all night
-long." A strong accent on the first and fourth syllables, and a "dying
-fall" for the others, gives the cadence.
-
-Beyond these memories nothing else is left of Bettesworth's
-experiences during those three months--December, 1903, and January and
-February, 1904. Coming to March, I might repeat some interesting
-remarks of his upon an affair then agitating the village; but after
-all they do not much concern his history, and there are strong reasons
-for withholding them. And suppressing these, I find no further account
-of him until the middle of May.
-
-The interval, however, between the 3rd of March and the 16th of May,
-was sadly eventful for Bettesworth. I cannot say much about it. As
-once before when his circumstances grew too tragical, so on this
-occasion a vague sense of decency forbade me to sit down and record in
-cold blood his sufferings, perhaps for future publication.
-
-What happened was briefly this: that some time in March one of the
-colds which had distressed him all the winter settled upon his chest
-and rapidly turned to bronchitis. If his wife's condition is taken
-into account, the seriousness of the situation will be appreciated. At
-his time of life bronchitis would have been bad enough, even with good
-nursing; but poor old Lucy Bettesworth was far past devoting to her
-husband any attention of that sort. Even in her best state she was
-past it, and she was by no means at her best just now. She needed care
-herself; had a heavy cold; was at times beyond question slightly
-crazy; and, to aggravate the trouble, she was insulting even to the
-two or three neighbours who might have conquered their reluctance to
-enter the filthy cottage and help the old man. For perhaps a week,
-therefore, he lay uncared for, and none realized how ill he was. Only
-the next-door neighbour spoke of hearing him coughing all night long.
-
-The old woman received me downstairs when I went to make inquiries.
-She sat with her hand at her chest, dishevelled and unspeakably dirty.
-And she coughed; tried to attract my sympathy to herself; assured me
-"I be as bad as he is"; looked indeed ill, and half-witted. "You can
-go up and see 'n," she said. I stumbled up the stairs and found
-Bettesworth in bed, with burning cheeks and eyes feverishly bright.
-The bedding was disgusting; so were the remains of a bloater left on
-the table beside him, so much as to give me a feeling of nausea. As
-for nursing, he had had none. He had got out of bed the previous night
-and found a packet of mustard, of which he had shaken some into his
-hand, and rubbed that into his chest, dry; and that was the only
-remedy that had been used for his bronchitis, unless--yes, I think
-there was a bottle of medicine on the mantelpiece; for he was still
-entitled to the services of the club doctor, who had been sent for.
-But in such a case, what could a doctor do?
-
-The next day the old man was worse, at times wandering in his mind.
-And, as there was no one else to take the initiative, and as he looked
-like dying and involving us all in disgrace, I interviewed the doctor
-and--but the story grows wearisome.
-
-To finish, then: the workhouse infirmary was decided upon, as the only
-place where Bettesworth could get the nursing without which he would
-probably die. Fortunately, he received the proposal reasonably; he was
-ready to go anywhere to get well, as he felt that he never would at
-home. He merely stipulated that his wife must not be left. A walk to
-find the relieving officer and get the necessary orders from him was
-to me the only pleasant part of the episode. It took me, on a
-brilliant spring evening, some three miles farther into the country,
-where I saw the first primroses I had seen outside my garden that
-year. It also enabled me to see how parish relief looks from the side
-of the poor who have to ask for it, but that was not so pleasant.
-However, the officer was civil enough; he gave me the necessary
-orders; we made all the arrangements, and on the following day the two
-old Bettesworths were driven off miserably in a cab to the workhouse.
-
-How fervently everybody hoped, then, that Bettesworth would leave his
-wife behind, if he ever came out of the institution himself alive! And
-yet, though it's true he was dependent on me for the wherewithal to
-keep his home together, how much nobler was his own behaviour than
-that we would have commended! Once in the infirmary, he recovered
-quickly; and in ten days, to my amazement (and annoyance at the time),
-word came that the old couple were out again. They had toddled feebly
-home--a two-mile journey; they two together, not to be separated; each
-of them the sole person in the world left to the other. The old woman,
-people told me, was amazingly clean. Her hair, which had been cut,
-proved white beyond expectation; her face was almost comely now that
-it was washed. Had I not seen her? What a pity it was, wasn't it, the
-old man wouldn't leave her up there to be took care of, and after all
-the trouble it had been, too, to get 'em there!
-
-I believe it was on the day before Good Friday (1904) that they
-returned home. When Bettesworth got to work again is more than my
-memory tells me. I suppose, though, that I must have paid him a visit
-first--probably during the following week; for I remember hoping to
-see the old woman's white hair and clean face, and being disappointed
-to find her as grimy as ever--her visage almost as black as her hands,
-and her hair an ashy grey.
-
-
-
-
-XXIII
-
-
-_May 16, 1904._--"It is long," says a note of the 16th of May, "since
-I wrote down any of Bettesworth's talk; but it flows on
-constantly--less vivacious than of old, perhaps, for he is visibly
-breaking since his illness in the spring, and is a stiff, shiftless,
-rather weary, rather sad old man; but his garrulity has not lost its
-flavour of the country-side; and many of his sayings sound to me like
-the traditional quips and phrases of earlier generations."
-
-This was apropos of a remark he had let fall about a certain Mr.
-Sparrow in an adjacent village, for whom Bettesworth's next-door
-neighbour Kiddy Norris had been labouring, until Kiddy could no longer
-endure the man's grasping ways. Stooping over his wooden grass-rake,
-Bettesworth murmured, as if to the grass, "Old Jones used to say
-Sparrows pecks." Then he told how Sparrow, deprived of the services
-not only of Kiddy, but of Kiddy's mate Alf, was at a loss for men to
-replace them; and, "Ah," Bettesworth commented, "he can't have 'em on
-a peg, to take down jest when he mind to." The saying had a suggestive
-old-world sound: I could imagine it handed about, on the Surrey
-hill-sides, and in cottage gardens, and at public-houses, over and
-over again through many years.
-
-Presently Bettesworth said casually, "I hear they're goin' to open
-that new church over here in Moorway's Bottom to-morrer. Some of 'em
-was terrifyin' little Alf Cook about it last night" (Sunday night;
-probably at the public-house), "tellin' him he was goin' to be made
-clerk, and he wouldn't be tall enough to reach to ring the bell."
-
-"Little Alf," I asked, "who used to work for So-and-so?"
-
-"Worked for 'n for years. The boys do terrify 'n. Tells 'n he won't be
-able to reach to ring the bell. They keeps on. Why, he en't tall
-enough to pick strawberries, they says."
-
-"He's got a family, hasn't he?"
-
-"Yes--but they be all doin' for theirselves. Two or three of 'em be
-married. _He_ might ha' bin doin' very well. His old father left 'n
-the house he lives in, and a smart bit o' ground: but I dunno--some of
-'em reckons 'tis purty near all gone."
-
-"Down his neck?"
-
-"Ah. They was talkin' about 'n last night, and they seemed to reckon
-there wa'n't much left. But he's a handy little feller. Bin over there
-at Cashford this six weeks, so he told me, pointin' hop-poles for they
-Fowlers. He said he'd had purty near enough of it. But he poled, I
-thinks he said, nine acres o' hop-ground for 'em last year. He bin
-pointin' this year. He says he might do better if 'twas nearer
-home--he can't git rid o' the chips over there; people won't have 'em.
-If he'd got 'em here, they'd be worth sixpence a sack--that always was
-the price. He gits so much a hunderd for pointin'; and he told me it
-was as much as he could do to earn two-and-nine or three shillin's" (a
-day). "Then o' course there's the chips, only he can't sell 'em.
-Cert'nly they'd serve he for firin'; but that en't what he wants."
-
-
-_May 20._--"There's a dandy. You lay there." Bettesworth chose out and
-put on one side a dandelion from the grass he was chopping off a green
-path. "I'll take he home for my rabbits," he said.
-
-A sow-thistle in the near bank caught my eye. "Your rabbits will eat
-sow-thistles too, won't they?" I asked.
-
-"Yes, they likes 'em very well. They'll eat 'em--an' then presently I
-shall eat they."
-
-I pulled up the thistle, and another dandelion, while Bettesworth
-discoursed of the economics of rabbit-keeping. "'Ten't no good keepin'
-'em for the pleasure.... But give me a wild rabbit to eat afore a tame
-one, any day. My neighbour Kid kills one purty near every week. He had
-one last Sunday must ha' wanted some boilin', or bakin', or
-somethin'."
-
-"What, an old one?"
-
-"Old buck. I ast 'n, 'What, have ye had yer teeth ground, then?' I
-says. He's purty much of a one for rabbits."
-
-I was not so wonderfully fond of them, I said.
-
-"No? I en't had e'er a one--I dunno _when_. Well--a rabbit, you come
-to put one down afore a hungry man, what is it? He's mother have gone
-an' bought one for 'n at a shop, when he en't happened to have one
-hisself--give as much as a shillin' or fifteenpence. 'Ten't worth it.
-Or else I've many a time bought 'em for sixpence--sixpence, or
-sixpence-ha'penny, or sevenpence. And they en't worth no more."
-
-During all this he was sweeping up his grass cuttings. The children
-came out of school for afternoon recess, and their shoutings sounded
-across the valley. "There's the rebels let loose again," said
-Bettesworth. From where we stood, high on one of the upper terraces of
-the garden, we could see far. The sky was grey and melancholy. A wind
-blew up gustily out of the south-east, and I foreboded rain. "We don't
-want it from that quarter," Bettesworth replied. "That's such a _cold_
-rain. And I've knowed it keep on forty-eight hours, out o' the
-east.... I felt a lot better" (of the recent bronchitis) "when she"
-(the wind) "shifted out o' there before."
-
-Meanwhile I had pulled up one or two more dandelions, to add to
-Bettesworth's heap; and now I espied a small seedling of bryony, which
-also I was careful to pull out. The root, already as big as a man's
-thumb, came up easily, and I passed it to Bettesworth, asking, "Isn't
-that what they give to horses sometimes?"
-
-He handled it. "I never _heared_ of anybody," he answered, perhaps not
-recognizing it at this small stage of growth. "Now, ground _ivy_!
-That's a rare thing. If you bakes the roots o' that in the oven, an'
-then grinds it up to a powder, you no need to _call_ yer horses to ye,
-after you've give 'em that. They'll foller ye for it. Dandelion roots
-the same. Make 'em as fat! And their coats come up mottled, jest as if
-you'd knocked 'em all over with a 'ammer. They'll foller ye about
-anywhere for that. _I_'ve give it to 'em, many's a time; bin out,
-after my day's work, all round the hedges, purpose to get things for
-my 'osses. There's lots o' things in the hedgerow as is good for 'em.
-So there is for we too, if we only knowed which they was. We shouldn't
-want much _doctor_ if we knowed about herbs.
-
-"Old Waterson, he used to eat dandelion leaves same as you would a
-lettuce, and he said it done 'n good, too. Old Steve Blackman was
-another. He used to know all about the herbs. If you went into his
-kitchen, you'd see it hung all round with little bundles of 'em, to
-dry. _He_ was the only one as could cure old Rokey Wells o' the yeller
-janders. Gunner had tried 'n--all the doctors had tried 'n, and give
-'n up. He'd bin up there at the infirmary eighteen months or more,
-till old Steve see 'n one day and took to 'n. And he made a hale
-hearty man of 'n again.
-
-"That 'ere Holt--Tom Holt, _you_ know, what used to be keeper at
-Culverley--_he_ got the yeller janders now. He's pensioned off--twelve
-shillin's a week, and his cot and firin'. Lives in Cashford Bridge
-house--you knows that old farmhouse as you goes over Cashford Bridge.
-He lives there now. If old Steve's son got his father's book now,
-he'll be able to cure 'n. He used to keep a book where he put all the
-receipts, so 't is to be hoped his son have kep' it. They says Holt
-'ve got the yeller janders wonderful strong, but if...."
-
-
-_May 24._--In Bettesworth's opinion, an important part of the training
-of a labourer relates to getting about and finding work. The old man
-was at the Whit Monday fete with a man named Vickery, of whom he
-talked, imitating Vickery's gruff voice with appreciation.
-Vickery--sixty or seventy years old--came (I learn) from a village out
-Guildford way--"that was his native," says Bettesworth--but was
-adopted by an aunt in this parish, who left him her two cottages at
-her death. All this, if not interesting to us, was deeply so to
-Bettesworth. And Vickery, it appears, has worked all his life in one
-situation, at Culverley Park. He began as a boy minding sheep. As a
-man, he managed the gas-house belonging to the mansion; and when the
-electric light was installed, he took over the management of that,
-making up his time with chopping fire-wood, and so forth. And, says
-Bettesworth, "They'd ha' to set fire to Culverley to get rid of 'n. He
-never worked nowhere else. That's how they be down there. Old Smith's
-another of 'em. He bin there forty year. He turned seventy, here a
-week ago. Never had but two places, and bin at Culverley forty year.
-Why, if they was turned out they wouldn't know how to go about. Same
-when Mr. John Payne died: there was a lot o' young fellers turned off.
-They hadn't looked out for theirselves; their fathers had always got
-the work for 'em, and law! they didn' know where to go no more than a
-cuckoo! But I reckon that's a very silly thing."
-
-
-
-
-XXIV[3]
-
-
-_June 1, 1904._--A cool thundery rain this first of June drove
-Bettesworth to shelter. As usual at such times, he busied himself at
-sawing and splitting wood for kindling fires.
-
-At the moment of my joining him he was breaking up an old wooden
-bucket which had lately been condemned as useless. "Th' old bucket's
-done for," he said contemplatively. "I dessay he seen a good deal o'
-brewin'; but there en't much of it done now. A good many men used to
-make purty near a livin' goin' round brewin' for people. Brown's in
-Church Street used to be a rare place for 'em. Dessay you knows
-there's a big yard there; an' then they had some good tackle, and
-plenty o' room for firin'. Pearsons, Coopers"--he named several who
-were wont to make use of Brown's yard and tackle. I asked, "Did the
-cottage people brew?" But Bettesworth shook his head. "I never knowed
-none much--only this sugar beer."
-
-"But they grew hops?" I asked.
-
-"Oh yes," Bettesworth assented, "every garden had a few hills o'
-hops. But 't wa'n't very often they brewed any malted beer. Now 'n
-again one 'd get a peck o' malt, but gen'ly 'twas this here sugar
-beer. Or else I've brewed over here at my old mother-in-law's, 'cause
-they had the tackle, ye see; and so I have gone over there when I've
-killed a pig, to salt 'n."
-
-A suggestion that he would hardly know how to brew now caused him to
-smile. "No, I don't s'pose I should," he admitted.
-
-I urged next that nearly all people, I supposed, used at one time to
-brew their own beer. To which Bettesworth:
-
-"And so they did bake their own bread. They'd buy some flour...."
-
-I interrupted, remembering how he had himself grown corn, to ask if
-that was not rather the custom.
-
-"Sometimes. Yes, I _have_ growed corn as high as my own head, up there
-at the back of this cot.... But my old gal and me, when hoppin' was
-over, we'd buy some flour, enough to last us through the winter, and
-then with some taters, and a pig salted down, I'd say, 'There, we no
-call to _starve_, let the winter be _what_ it will.' Well, taters, ye
-see, didn't cost nothin'; and then we always had a pig. You couldn't
-pass a cottage at that time that hadn't a pigsty.... And there was
-milk, and butter, and bread...."
-
-"But not many comforts?" I queried.
-
-"No; 'twas rough. But I dunno--they used to look as strong an' jolly
-as they do now. But 'twas poor money. The first farm-house I went to I
-never had but thirty shillin's and my grub."
-
-"Thirty shillings in how long?"
-
-"Twal'month. And I had to pay my washin' an' buy my own clothes out o'
-that."
-
-The point was interesting. Did he buy his clothes at a shop, ready
-made?
-
-"Yes. That was always same as 'tis now. Well, there was these round
-frocks--you'd get _they_"--home-made, he meant. And he told how his
-sister-in-law, Mrs. Loveland, and her mother "used to earn half a
-living" at making these "round" or smock frocks to order, for
-neighbours. The stuff was bought: the price for making it up was
-eighteen-pence, "or if you had much work on 'em, two shillin's."
-
-Much fancy-work, did he mean?
-
-"The gaugin', you know, about here." Bettesworth spread his hands over
-his chest, and continued, "Most men got 'em made; their wives 'd make
-'em. Some women, o' course, if they wasn't handy wi' the needle, 'd
-git somebody else to do 'em. They was warmer 'n anybody 'd think. And
-if you bought brown stuff, 'tis surprisin' what a lot o' rain they'd
-keep out. One o' them, and a woollen jacket under it, and them yello'
-leather gaiters right up your thighs--you could go out in the rain....
-But 'twas a white round frock for Sundays."
-
-At this point I let the talk wander; and presently Bettesworth was
-relating perhaps the least creditable story he ever told me about
-himself. In judging him, however, if anyone desires to judge him after
-so many years, the circumstances should be borne in mind. The farm-lad
-on thirty shillings a year, the young soldier from the Crimea where he
-had been rationed on rum, marrying at last and settling down in this
-village where the rough eighteenth-century habits still lingered,
-might almost be expected to shock his twentieth-century critics. Be it
-admitted that his behaviour on the death of his father-in-law was
-disgraceful; but let it be allowed also that that father-in-law, the
-old road-foreman, was a drunken tyrant--at times a dangerous
-madman--at whose death it was natural to rejoice. However, I will let
-Bettesworth get on with his story.
-
-The "white round frock on Sundays" reminded him of his father-in-law's
-costume-frock as described, tall hat, and knee-breeches; and this
-recalled (here on this rainy June day where we talked in the shed) how
-tall a man he was; and how, lying on the floor in the stupor of death,
-just across the lane there, he looked "like a great balk o' timber."
-Confusedly the narrative hurried on after this. A cottage was
-mentioned, which used to stand where now that resident lives who could
-not endure the Bettesworths for his tenants. This was the maiden home
-of Bettesworth's mother-in-law; and to this the mother-in-law would
-flee for refuge, in terror of being murdered by her husband in his
-drunken frenzies. Then would the husband follow, and "break in all
-the windows"; for which he was "kept out" of the owner's will, and
-lost much property that would have been his. Particulars of his
-suicide followed: the man cut his throat and lay speechless for eight
-days before he died. But at the first news Bettesworth, being one
-son-in-law, was dispatched to a village some five miles distant, to
-fetch home another. He borrowed a pony and cart; found his
-brother-in-law, "and," he said, "we both got as boozy as billyo on the
-way home.... ''Arry,' I says, 'the old foreman bin an' done for
-hisself.'" At every public-house they came to they had beer, treating
-the pony also; and finally they came racing through the town at full
-speed. "We should ha' bin locked up for it now. No mistake we _come_,
-when we did get away. And when we got 'ome, 'Arry stooped over to
-speak to 'n, an' fell over on his face. I didn't wait for _my_
-lecture: I had to get the pony home. It was runnin' off 'n, when I got
-'n down to his stable, with the pace we'd made, an' the beer he'd had.
-We should ha' got into trouble for it if 't had been now. The old
-woman come out, an' begun goin' on about it; but the old man says,
-'You might be sure they'd travel, for such a job. And he won't be none
-the worse for it.' We put 'n in the stable, an' give 'n another pint
-o' beer, and rubbed 'n down an' throwed two or three hop-sacks over
-'n; an' next mornin' he was as right as ever."
-
-"How long ago?" I asked.
-
-"I 'most forgets how long ago 'twas. A smartish many years. His
-wife--she bin dead this--let's see--three-an'-twenty year; and she
-lived a good many years after he."
-
-She had property--her husband's, no doubt--which her son Will
-(Bettesworth's wife's brother, remember) inherited, yet only by the
-skin of his teeth. For if some infant or other had breathed after
-birth, that infant's relatives would have been the heirs. On this sort
-of subject people like Bettesworth are always most tedious and
-obscure. As to the household stuff, it was to be divided; "and when it
-come to our turn to choose," Bettesworth said, "my old gal and me said
-Will could have ourn. We'd got old clutter enough layin' about, and
-Will hadn't got none, ye see, always livin' with his mother. So he had
-the stuff an' the cot. They" (the rival party) "had two or three tries
-for it; but 'twas proved that the child never breathed. My wife's
-sister Jane thought _she_ was goin' to get it. But I says, 'No, Jane;
-you wears the wrong clothes. That belongs to William.'"
-
-Bettesworth ceased. In the ten or fifteen minutes while he had been
-talking we had got far from the subject of peasant industries; and yet
-somehow the thought of them was still present to both of us, and when
-he grew silent I nodded my head contemplatively, murmuring something
-about "queer old times." "Yes," he returned, "a good many wouldn't be
-able to tell ye how they _did_ bring up a family o' childern, if you
-was to ast 'em." And so, with the rain pattering down upon the shed
-roof, I left the old man to his wood-chopping.
-
-
-_June 11, 1904._--The twentieth century is driving out the
-old-fashioned people and their savagery from the village, but here and
-there it lets in savagery of its own. Into that hovel down by the
-stream, which Bettesworth had vacated, there had come fresh tenants,
-as I knew; but that was all I knew until one morning Bettesworth told
-me something, which I lost no time in hurrying down on to paper, while
-his sentences were hot in my mind, as follows:
-
-"Ha' ye heared about our neighbours down 'ere runnin' away?"
-
-"No! Where?"
-
-"Down here where I used to live. Gone off an' left their little
-childern to the wide world."
-
-"Well, but ... who...?"
-
-"Worcester they _calls_ 'n. But I dunno what his name is."
-
-"Where did he come from? I don't seem to know him."
-
-"No, nor me. I dunno nothin' about 'n. He bin a sojer an' got a
-pension. He bin at work down at this Bordon. But his wife bin carryin'
-on purty much. Had another bloke about there this fortnight. An' then
-went off, an' give one of her little childern a black eye for a
-partin' gift. He come 'ome o' Sunday, and didn't find nobody about
-there; and took all there was and his pension papers and was off. And
-there's them two poor little dears left there alone wi' nobody to look
-after 'em or get 'em a bit o' vittles."
-
-Of course I exclaimed, while Bettesworth went on,
-
-"Ah ... I reckon they ought to be hung up by the heels, leavin' their
-childern like that. I always _was_ fond o' childern, but if 't 'd bin
-older ones able to look after theirselves I shouldn't ha' took so much
-notice. But these be two little 'ns ben't 'ardly able to dress
-theirselves: two little gals about five or six. Poor little dears,
-there was one of 'em went cryin' 'cause her mother was goin' away, and
-her mother up with her hand and give her one. Law! somebody ought to
-ha' bin there with a stick and hit her across the head and killed her
-dead!
-
-"There they was all day and all night. Mrs. Mardon went to the
-policeman about it. He said she better take care of 'em. 'But I can't
-afford to keep 'em,' she says. 'No,' he says, 'cert'nly not. 'Ten't to
-be expected you should. But you look after 'em for a week, an' we'll
-see if their parents comes back. And if they don't, we'll see the
-relievin' officer, an' pay you for your trouble; and the children 'll
-be took to the workhouse, and then we shall very soon _have_ 'em'"
-(the parents). "And so they will, too. They says he's gone to
-Salisbury. But they'll have 'n. Old soldier, and a pensioner, and all:
-they'll find 'n."
-
-"What's his name, do you say?"
-
-"They _calls_ 'n Worcester: we dunno whether 'tis his right name, or
-only a nickname. He ought to _ha'_ Worcester! He's like 'nough to cop
-it, too!"
-
-FOOTNOTE:
-
-[3] The earlier portions of this chapter have already appeared in
-_Country Life_.
-
-
-
-
-XXV
-
-
-_June 20._--On the afternoon of June 20th, once more Bettesworth was
-at work among the potatoes, yet not in the circumstances of last year,
-when we were rejoicing in the rain. According to my book, this was "a
-real summer afternoon--Hindhead showing the desired dazzling blue;
-soft high clouds floating from the westwards; a soft wind occasionally
-stirring the trees." Blackbirds, it seems, were flitting about the
-garden to watch their young, warning them, too, with an incessant
-"twit-twit, twit-twit"; and no doubt, besides this June sound, there
-was that of garden tools struck into the soil.
-
-And yet, for me, rather than the far-reaching daylight or the
-vibrating afternoon air, another of the great characteristics of
-English summer clings to this and the following few fragments about
-Bettesworth. I might look away to Hindhead and rejoice in the sense of
-vast warm distance; I might admire the landscape, and practise my
-aesthetics; but he was becking in amongst the potatoes, and it is his
-point of view, not mine, that has survived and given its tinge to
-these talks.
-
-Forgetful, both of us, that the same subject in almost the same place
-had occupied us a year ago, we spoke of his work; and first he admired
-the potatoes, and then he praised his beck. "Nice tool," he said. I
-took hold of it: "Hand-made, of course?" "Yes; belonged to my old
-gal's gran'mother. There's no tellin' how old he is."
-
-He went on to explain that it was a "polling beck," pointing out
-peculiarities hardly to be described here. They interested me; yet not
-so much as other things about the tool, which it was good to handle.
-From the old beck a feeling came to me of summer as the country
-labourers feel it. This thing was probably a hundred years old.
-Through a hundred seasons men's faces had bent over it and felt the
-heat of the sun reflecting up from off the potatoes, as the tines of
-the beck brightened in the hot soil. And what sweat and sunburn, yet
-what delight in the crops, had gone to the polishing of the handle! A
-stout ash shaft, cut in some coppice years ago, and but rudely
-trimmed, it shone now with the wear of men's hands; and to balance it
-as I did, warm and moist from Bettesworth's grasp, was to get the
-thrill of a new meaning from the afternoon. For those who use such
-tools do not stop to admire the summer, but they co-operate with it.
-
-The old man took his beck again, and I saw the sunlight beating down
-upon his back and brown arms as he once more bent his face to the
-work. Then our talk changed. Soon I fetched a tool for myself, so as
-to be working near him and hear his chatter.
-
-He touched on scythes for a moment, and then glanced off to name a
-distant village (a place which lies on a valley side, facing the
-midday heat), and to tell of a family of blacksmiths who once lived
-there. "They used to make purty well all sorts o' edge-tools. And they
-earned a name for 't, too, didn't they? I've see as many as four of
-'em over there at a axe. Three with sledge-'ammers, and one with a
-little 'ammer, tinkin' on the anvil." "And he is the master man of
-them all," I laughed. Bettesworth laughed too--we were so happy there
-in the broiling sunshine--"Yes, but I've often noticed it, the others
-does all the work." To which I rejoined, "But he keeps time to the
-sledges; and it's he who knows to a blow when they have done enough."
-"There was one part of making a axe," said Bettesworth, "as they'd
-never let anybody see 'em at." What could that have been? We agreed
-that it had to do with some secret process of hardening the steel.
-
-Another shifting of the talk brought us round to his
-brother-in-law--that accomplished farm-labourer, who was then,
-however, driving a traction engine, with one truck which carried three
-thousand bricks. "That must do away with a lot of hoss hire," said
-Bettesworth. "And yet," I urged, "there seem more horses about than
-ever." "And they be dear to buy, so Will Crawte says," added
-Bettesworth.
-
-"How many load," I asked ignorantly, "do you reckon three thousand
-bricks? More than a four-horse load, isn't it?"
-
-Bettesworth made no effort to reckon, but said easily, "Yes. They
-reckons three hunderd an' fifty is a load, of these here wire-cut
-bricks; four hunderd, of the old red bricks; and stock bricks is five
-hunderd. And slates, 'Countess' slates--they be twenty inches by
-ten--six hunderd o' they goes to a load."
-
-Wondering at his knowledge, I commented on the endless variety of
-technical details never dreamt of by people like myself; and
-Bettesworth assented, without interest, however, in me or other people
-or anything but his subject. "That's one o' the things you wants to
-learn, if you be goin' with hosses--when you got a load. Law! half o'
-these carters on the road dunno whether they got a load or whether
-they en't. I've almost forgot now; but I learnt it once."
-
-"How do you mean 'learnt' it? Picked it up?"
-
-"No. 'Tis in a book. You can learn to reckon things.... If you be
-goin' for a tree, or a block o' stone, or bricks, you wants to know
-what's a load for a hoss, or a two or a three hoss load. A mason told
-me once, when I was goin' for a block o' stone. He put his tape round
-it, an' told me near the matter what it weighed. He said you always
-ought to carry a two-foot rule in your pocket; and then put it across
-the stone--or p'r'aps 'tis two or three bits you got to take...."
-
-As there is nothing in the talk itself to give the impression, it must
-have been my working in the sunshine when I heard of these details,
-that now makes them--the glaring stone-mason's yard, the village
-smithy, the engine hauling bricks along the high road--seem all
-sun-baked and dusty, in the heat which men like Bettesworth have to
-face, while I am admiring the summer landscape.
-
-
-Twice in the early days of July the old man's homely rustic living is
-touched upon. By now, in the cottage gardens, the broad-beans are at
-their best; and he desires, it is said in one place, no better food
-than beans, served for choice with a bit of bacon. But there are peas
-too; and one day he tells me simply that he "had peas three times
-yesterday. There's always some left from dinner, and then I has 'em in
-a saucer for my supper."
-
-
-_July 29._--As July ran to its close, the weather, though still warm,
-turned gloomy, and showers came streaking down in front of the grey
-dismal distance. "They gives a _poor_ account of the harvest," says
-Bettesworth. "What? have they started?" I ask; and he, "Yes, I've
-heared of a smartish few."
-
-I supposed he meant in Sussex; but it appeared not. "No," he said, "I
-dunno as they've begun in Sussex, but about here. Lent corn, oats,
-an' barley, an' so on. There's So-and-so"--he named three or four
-farmers reported to have begun cutting, and went on, "But 'tis all
-machine work, so there won't be much" (extra work). "But the straw
-en't no higher 'n your knees in some parts, so they says.... 'Twas the
-cold spring--an' then the dryth. But it don't much matter about the
-barley. I've heared old people say they've knowed barley sowed and up
-and harvested without a drop o' rain on it fust to last. Where you
-gets straw" (with other crops, I suppose, is the meaning) "there en't
-no fear about the barley: 'tis a thing as 'll stand dryth as well as
-purty near anything."
-
-He had "heard old people say"--things like these that he was now
-saying. And Bettesworth's phrase will bear thinking of, for its
-indication of the topics which the progress of the summer months had
-always been wont to renew in his brain year by year.
-
-Unhappily, about this period something less pleasing was beginning to
-force itself upon his attention.
-
-
-
-
-XXVI
-
-
-Into the peacefulness of Bettesworth's last working summer a
-disquieting circumstance had been slowly intruding; and now, with
-August, it developed into a subject of grave fears. I do not know when
-I first noticed a small sore on the old man's lower lip, but I think
-it must have been in May or early June. On being asked, he said it had
-been there since his illness in the spring, and "didn't seem to get no
-worse." Certainly he was not troubling about it.
-
-Weeks passed, perhaps six weeks, in which, though the ugly, angry look
-of the thing sometimes took my attention, I forbore to speak of it
-again, being unwilling to arouse alarm. Then it occurred to me that if
-I was too fanciful, Bettesworth was not fanciful enough. In his robust
-out-door life he had never learnt to be nervous and anticipate
-horrors; and he might not be sufficiently alive to the dreadful
-possibilities which were presenting themselves to my own imagination.
-I urged him accordingly to see his club doctor.
-
-He did so, not immediately, though after how long an interval I am
-unable to say, since none of this affair got into my note-book. The
-doctor no sooner saw the sore than he said it must be cut out. "Do
-you smoke?" was one of his first questions; and "Where is your pipe?"
-was the next. Bettesworth produced his pipe--an old blackened
-briar--and was comforted to learn that it was considered harmless. But
-he must have the sore removed, and his two or three remaining teeth
-near it would have to come out. When could he have it done? the doctor
-asked. Bettesworth said that he must consult me on that point, and
-came away promising to do so.
-
-Considering how sure he must have been that I should put no obstacle
-in his way, I incline to think that by now he must himself have begun
-to feel alarm. He waited, however, about a week, and then one morning
-off he went again to see the doctor, half expecting, I believe, to
-have the operation done then and there, before he came home.
-
-An hour afterwards I met him returning, looking worried. The doctor
-was just setting off for his holiday, and could not now undertake the
-operation, but advised him to go to Guildford Hospital. Perhaps
-Bettesworth would have liked me to pooh-pooh the suggestion--he little
-relished the idea of leaving his wife and his work, and taking a
-railway journey to so dismal an end; but even as he talked, I was
-watching on his lip that which might mean death. So I sent him off
-straightway to the Vicarage, where he could obtain a necessary letter
-of introduction to the hospital.
-
-Of what immediately followed my memory is quite blank. I only recall
-that the old chap started at last all alone on his journey to
-Guildford, not knowing how long he would be away, or what was likely
-to happen to him. A niece of his had provided him with a stamped
-addressed envelope and a clean sheet of note-paper, in case he should
-need to get anyone at the hospital to send a message home.
-
-
-_August 6, 1904._--So he disappeared for a time. Three or four days,
-we supposed, would be the extent of his absence; but the days went by
-and no word came from him. For all we knew he might never have reached
-the hospital; and it began to be a serious question what would become
-of his wife, and whether she would not have to be sent to the
-workhouse for want of a protector. At last, I wrote for information to
-the matron of the hospital. Her answer, which lies before me now, and
-is the only piece of evidence I have preserved of the whole business,
-is dated August 6th. On that day, it stated, Bettesworth was to be
-operated upon, and, if all went well, he would most likely be able to
-leave the hospital in ten days or a fortnight.
-
-Unless I mistake, the ten days or a fortnight dragged out to nearly
-three weeks, in which I had the old wife on my mind. A visit to her
-one Sunday morning reassured me. Poor old Lucy Bettesworth! I did not
-anticipate, then, that I should never again see her alive. Dirty and
-dishevelled as ever, alone in the squalid cottage, she received me
-with a meek simplicity that in my eyes made amends for many faults.
-She was more sane than I had dared to hope I should find her, eager
-for "Fred" to come home, but contented, it seemed, to wait, if it was
-doing him good. She did not want for anything; she ate no meat, and it
-cost her nothing to live. Would I like a vegetable marrow? There was a
-nice one in the garden that "wanted cuttin'."
-
-Perceiving that she desired me to have the vegetable marrow, I allowed
-her to take me out into the garden to get it. "Could I cut it?" Of
-course I could, and did. Then a qualm struck her: perhaps I shouldn't
-like carrying it! But she might be able to wrap it up in a piece of
-newspaper....
-
-To that, however, I demurred. There was no harm in being seen with a
-vegetable marrow on Sunday morning; and I took it, undraped by paper,
-aware that the despised old woman had done me the greatest courtesy in
-her power. And that was, as it proved, the last time I ever saw her.
-
-Bettesworth, meanwhile, in the hospital, was not quite forgotten. His
-niece has been mentioned who gave him the stamped envelope which he
-had not used. We shall hear a good deal of her, later on--a helpful
-but delicate woman, who was Bettesworth's niece only by marriage with
-a nephew of his, of whom also we shall hear. These two on that Sunday
-morning--it being a quiet, half-hazy, half-sunny August day--walked
-over to Guildford, and brought back news that the old man was doing as
-well as could be hoped. They proposed to repeat the visit the
-following week. It made a pleasant Sunday outing.
-
-But before that week was ended Bettesworth was suddenly home again,
-unannounced. An odd look about him puzzled me, until I realized that
-he had grown a beard--a white, scrubby, short-trimmed beard, which
-gave him a foxy expression that I did not like. His lip was in
-strapping, a little blood-stained, but he reported that all was going
-on well. The surgeons had carved down into his jaw, and believed the
-operation to have been quite successful. Satisfied as to this, I could
-endure his changed appearance.
-
-Something about his manner was less satisfactory. Looking back, I
-think I know what was the matter; but at the time a sort of levity in
-him struck a false note. Besides, he seemed not to realize that his
-wife might have suffered by his absence, or that others had put
-themselves about on his behalf. He struck me as selfish and
-self-satisfied. I forgot what a lonely expedition his had been, and
-how he had had to start off and face this miserable experience without
-a friend at hand to care whether he came through it alive or not.
-
-Left to himself (it is obvious enough now) and determined to go
-through the business in manly fashion, he had rather overdone it--had
-over-played his part. In refusing to admit fear, he had erred a
-little on the other side, and he still erred so in telling his
-experiences, perhaps because he was still not quite free of fear. By
-his account, his stay in the hospital had been an interesting holiday.
-Everything about it was a little too good to be believed. He had
-jested with the doctors and the nurses. They called him "Dad," and "a
-joking old man," and he felt flattered: they had had a "fire-drill,"
-and from his bed, or his seat under the veranda among the
-convalescents, he had entered into the spirit of the thing. Grimmer
-details, too, did not escape him: the arrival of new patients in the
-night--"accident cases" brought in for immediate treatment; the
-sufferings he witnessed; the hopeless condition of a railway porter,
-and so forth. All this was told in his own manner, with swift
-realistic touch, convincingly true; with a genuine sense of the humour
-of the thing, he mentioned the operating-room by the patients' name
-for it--"the slaughter-house"; but none the less his narrative had an
-offensive emptiness, an unreality, a flippancy, unworthy, I thought,
-of Bettesworth.
-
-A little more sense would have shown me the clue to it, in his
-behaviour just before the operation. He was dressed in "a sort of a
-white night-gown," waiting for his turn; and, he said, "I made 'em
-laugh. I got up and danced about on the floor. 'Now I be Father
-Peter,' I says." Then the nurse came to conduct him to "the
-slaughter-house." "'Old Freddy's goin' to 'ave something now,' they"
-(the nearer patients) "says. I took hold o' the nurse's arm. 'Now I be
-goin' out for a walk with my young lady,' I says. 'We be goin' out
-courtin'.'" And in such fashion, over-excited, he maintained his
-fortitude, with a travesty of the courage he was all but losing. He
-never confessed to having felt fear. The nearest approach to it was
-when he was actually lying on the operating-table. Left quite alone
-there (for half an hour, he alleged and believed), "I looked all
-round," he said, "and up at the skylight, and I says to myself, 'So
-this is where it is, is it?'"
-
-With these tales he came home, repeating them until I was weary. By
-and by, however, he settled down to work, although one or two visits
-had to be paid to the hospital, for dressing the lip; and as he
-settled down, his normal manner returned. For some weeks--nay, for
-longer--his friends were not free of anxiety about him. There were
-pains in his jaw, and in his lip too, enough to draw dire forebodings
-from those of pessimistic humour. But Bettesworth owned to no fears.
-So it went on for a month or so, when that occurred which effectually
-banished from his mind all remembrance of this trouble.
-
-
-
-
-XXVII
-
-
-_September 19, 1904._--Because they can so little afford to be ill, it
-is habitual among the very poor to neglect an illness long after other
-people would be seriously alarmed at it; and the habit had been
-confirmed in Bettesworth with regard to his wife's maladies, by her
-having so many times recovered from them without help. It was almost a
-matter of course to him, when about the middle of September, and less
-than a month after his return from the hospital, she became once more
-exceedingly unwell. So she had often done: it was not worth
-mentioning, and was not mentioned, to me. I knew of no trouble. If I
-had been asked about his welfare at that time, I should have said that
-the old man was rather unusually happy. I should have said so
-especially one Monday morning (it was the 19th of September); because
-on that day we were picking apples, and his conversation was so
-delightfully in harmony with the sunshine glinting among the
-apple-boughs. He told of cider and cider-making; and then of shepherds
-he had known on the Sussex Downs, and of their dogs, and their
-solitary pastimes upon the hills. Hearing him, no one, I am sure,
-could have supposed that at home his wife had been dangerously ill for
-nearly a week, and that consequently his own comfort there had for the
-time ceased to exist.
-
-Later on that Monday his wife's condition (not his own) was somehow
-made known to me. I suppose Bettesworth consulted me on the step he
-was contemplating, of going to the relieving officer to-morrow to get
-an order for medical attendance for old Lucy. At any rate, by Monday
-night that is what he had resolved to do, and I knew it and approved,
-remembering what the policeman had said to me. It seemed a wise
-precaution to take, but evidently it could not be urgent. Bettesworth
-was choosing Tuesday, because on Tuesday mornings the relieving
-officer is in attendance in the parish, and the order could therefore
-be got without a five-mile walk for it.
-
-From various circumstances it may be inferred that the early part of
-Tuesday was an unhappy time for Bettesworth: a time of fretful
-watching for the dawn, perhaps after a wakeful night; of impatience to
-come and begin his day's work, and then of impatience for eleven
-o'clock to arrive, and of brooding obstinate thoughts, until at eleven
-he might go and get the miserable interview over. For it made him
-miserable to have to sue in the form of a pauper, and he was prepared,
-as poor folk generally are, to find in the relieving officer a bully
-if not a brute. I may say at once that he was agreeably deceived, and
-said as much afterwards--he was treated humanely and with
-appreciation; but the relieving officer's account of the interview
-sufficiently proves that the old man went to it in but a surly temper.
-I imagine him standing up as straight as his crooked old limbs would
-let him, rolling his head back defiantly, with tightened lips and
-suspicious eyes, and answering as uncivilly as he dared. A compliment
-was offered him, on his haste to get away from the infirmary in the
-spring. "_I_ en't no workhouse man!" he answered brusquely. And he did
-his best to persuade the relieving officer that he would never want
-relief for himself, asserting that he belonged to a club, and
-concealing the fact that he was a superannuated member of it, no
-longer entitled to benefit from the club funds.
-
-And then, the interview over, and the order obtained, his cheerfulness
-for the rest of the day is suggestive of an ordeal successfully
-passed. True, I have lost record of how he pottered through the
-afternoon--it was, of course, useless to go to the parish doctor at
-that time of day--but he seemed to have suddenly lost the weakness
-still lingering from the operation in the hospital; and being short of
-money, he proposed an extra job for the evening. He wanted to clear
-out a cesspit in my garden. I urged that he had better rest, and take
-care of himself as well as of his wife. "_I_ be gettin' bonny!" he
-said happily.
-
-He carried his point, too. As if he had no wife ill at home, at about
-eight o'clock, which was usually his bed-time, he came back and began
-his self-imposed task, with a young labourer to help. And he must have
-been in merry spirits, for he kept his mate amused, so that from the
-house I could hear the man laughing, in frequent bleating outbursts of
-hilarity, at some facetious saying or other. One of these sayings I
-heard, on going out to see how the work was progressing. "He must be a
-greedy feller as wants more 'n one or two whiffs o' this," Bettesworth
-remarked; and his companion let out another good-tempered laugh. From
-the old man's manner I argued that his wife must be doing well; but
-probably it indicated only a reaction from the moody temper of the
-morning. The job was finished at about half-past nine, and conscious
-of a good day's work done, Bettesworth once more crept over the hill
-and across the valley, home.
-
-But not to go to bed, or to sleep. While he was at work in the
-moonlight and making his friend laugh, I did not know, but he did,
-what was in store for him. Having no spare bed, he began his night
-downstairs and dozed for a while in an easy-chair; then roused and
-went out into the moonlight to smoke a pipe; and so he got through the
-night. Tobacco was his solace. He smoked, he told me, a full ounce in
-the ensuing twenty-four hours. At seven in the morning--his usual
-hour--he was here beginning work: at nine he left off, to go into the
-town and present his order at the doctor's.
-
-That journey on the Wednesday morning proved the beginning of a period
-of intenser wretchedness for the old man. He set out in apparent
-equanimity; but the fatigue of the night was upon him, the glow of
-yesterday's contentment had died out, and his nerves must have been
-all on edge to take as he did a remark of the doctor's--"What do you
-want of an order? You're in constant work, aren't you?" It seemed to
-him that he was being insulted for coming as a pauper, and it was all
-he could do to refrain from a rejoinder that would have resulted in
-his being summarily ejected from the doctor's presence. And was he as
-submissive as he fancied? It is more likely that the ungraciousness of
-his manner was to blame for what he regarded as pure heartlessness in
-the other. That he must be at home to meet the doctor was
-self-evident; but it was important to him not to lose a whole day from
-his work, and he desired to know whether the visit would be made
-before his dinner-time or after it? I hazard a guess that he stated
-the case in tones of defiant bargaining; at any rate, he could get no
-answer but that the doctor would call during the day. With that he
-returned here--a quivering mass of resentment; and in that temper, to
-which nothing is so repugnant as waiting, by my persuasion rather than
-by his goodwill he left his work and went home to wait.
-
-With what increasing bitterness he wore through the day, with what
-fretfulness and final despair as of a man despised and forgotten, must
-be left to conjecture. For the doctor did not come, after all.
-Conjecture, too, must picture if it can the night that followed--the
-attempts to sleep in the chair, the restless wanderings into the
-garden to smoke, the repetition, in fact, of the preceding night's
-misery, but with a great addition of weariness and distress.
-Bettesworth, when he came round the next morning to tell me how he was
-situated, did not so much as mention all this; he only let fall one
-pitiful detail. Some time in the night he had given his wife a little
-brandy; and about daybreak he went out to draw fresh water into the
-kettle "so's not to have it no-ways stale," for making her a cup of
-tea. But, partaking of a cup himself at the same time, he "hadn't had
-it above five minutes afore he was out in the garden" to let the tea
-come back again. After that, he appears to have abandoned the attempt
-to get sustenance elsewhere than from tobacco. It was a dismal story
-to hear: but there was nothing to be done; and having heard it, I sent
-him home again to go on waiting. This was Thursday, two days after he
-obtained the relieving officer's order for medical assistance, and by
-now the state of his wife was causing him grave fears.
-
-But why had the doctor not been near? To Bettesworth's wounded
-feelings the explanation needed no seeking: he was being made to wait
-for richer people, because he was poor and unimportant. Meanwhile,
-happening to meet with the relieving officer, I laid the case before
-him, and heard that a call to a distance had obliged the doctor to
-leave his work for a day or two in the hands of a _locum tenens_, who
-must have blundered. And this proved to be the fact. On Thursday
-afternoon a doctor who was a stranger at last found his way to
-Bettesworth's cottage, and the unhappy old man's long suspense was so
-far over. At once all his bitterness died out. The doctor "was as nice
-a gentleman as ever I talked to," he affirmed. "He said she was very
-bad. She wasn't to have nothing but only milk an' beef-tea an' brandy,
-an' she wasn't to be left alone." Bettesworth therefore did not leave
-home again that day. He got his niece, whose young family prevented
-her from giving much help, to go to the town and bring home the
-medicine, and so he settled down for another night like those that had
-gone before.
-
-It was on the next morning (Friday) that he told me these few
-particulars, and how his wife seemed a trifle--only a trifle--better;
-how, too, he had "washed her as well as he could," and, being asked,
-how he had not been to bed himself. And now he was on his way to the
-town to buy a few necessaries. Who was with his wife meanwhile? That
-was a question I dared not ask, because I knew that the distressful
-old woman was a by-word for sluttishness among the neighbours, so much
-that they would hardly go near her; and I knew that Bettesworth,
-though silent on the subject, was sore about it. Without doubt the old
-woman was quite alone, whenever circumstances compelled him to leave
-her.
-
-The "necessaries" he was going to buy included beef-tea "and some
-cakes," he said. At the mention of cakes I exclaimed, but he protested
-reproachfully, "Well, but she en't had _nothin'_ to eat!" Clearly he
-did not regard milk as food, or indeed anything else that was not
-solid. In the matter of beef-tea, "I can't make it myself," he said,
-"but you can buy it, can't ye, in jars?" He was perhaps thinking of
-Bovril, or something of the kind. Fortunately there were those at hand
-who knew how to make beef-tea, and undertook at once to relieve the
-old man of this burden.
-
-Taking him apart then, I asked if he needed a shilling or two. He
-almost groaned in deprecation, "I owes you such a lot now, and keeps
-on gettin' into debt. I'd sooner rub along with jest as little as ever
-I possibly can." It was of his rent he was thinking, which of course
-was payable for those weeks of his own illnesses, as well as for his
-absence from work now, when he was not earning any wages from which
-the rent could be deducted. Perhaps he was unaware that I had no
-account of the debt; in any case, it seemed to be preying upon his
-mind. I did not press the point, therefore, and he started off for the
-town without aid from me.
-
-In another way, too, the old man's reluctance to be a burden
-manifested itself. What he had told me so far was told because I
-wished to hear it, and he wished me to understand. He made no long
-tale: he was brief, unaffected, and as for seeking compassion, it was
-far from his intention. Of one thing only did he complain: a near
-relative's indifference. "He was over by our place twice o' Sunday,"
-Bettesworth said scornfully, "and couldn't look in to see how the poor
-old gal was. He was ready enough to send to me when he had his mishap"
-(falling from a rick, and finding himself in agony at night), "and I
-run off an' went all down to the town for 'n, late at night. But now
-_I_ wants help--no: he won't come anear. That's the sort o' feller
-_he_ is." So Bettesworth, uttering his sole complaint. But he did not
-demand from others the sympathy he looked for from a relation, or seek
-to inflict them with the tale of troubles which, after all, he would
-have to bear by himself.
-
-
-At this point, if the actual course of this over-crowded Friday were
-to be followed strictly, the narrative would suffer a strange
-interruption. For, having business of my own in the town, I set off at
-the same time with Bettesworth, expecting little cheerfulness from him
-on the way. But I had failed to appreciate the man's stoicism, or the
-strong grip he had over his feelings. For several nights he had not
-rested on a bed; he had taken during the same period next to no food;
-he had been harassed by suspense, worn by indignation, baffled
-constantly by the obstacles which his poverty set in his way; and it
-would have been pardonable if he had proved himself but a gloomy
-companion for a walk. Yet from the moment of our setting out he put
-aside all his difficulties, and not only did he not distress me, but
-for the half-hour before we separated he kept me interested in his
-sensible conversation on local topics, or charmed by the pleasant
-rustic flavour of some of his reminiscences. Here, therefore, would be
-the natural place for inserting some fragments of this talk, which I
-wrote down in the evening. It happened, however, that in writing I
-gave precedence to an important change which by then had come over the
-situation at Bettesworth's home; and as I propose to take the account
-of this development and the issue of it straight from my note-book,
-the bits of gossip too had better come in just as they stand there.
-
-It appears, then, to have been at about six o'clock in the afternoon
-that I was writing, as follows:
-
-Bettesworth has just been over (from his home) to consult me, and
-perhaps to have a chat and relieve his overburdened soul. When he got
-back from the town this morning, he found the doctor paying another
-visit, who was "wonderful nice," and offered to give him a certificate
-for admitting the old woman to the infirmary, if he would care to have
-it and would call for it at the surgery. Bettesworth only wanted my
-encouragement. He is going down this evening for the certificate, and
-hopes to get his wife removed to-morrow.
-
-It will be none too soon. The watching is wearing him out. Last night
-he had left her and gone downstairs, and sat dozing in the chair, when
-she tried to get out of bed, and fell heavily on the floor. He ran
-up--and forgot to take the candle back with him, thereby adding to his
-difficulties--and somehow managed to get her back into bed again and
-covered up, without aid. But now, says he, "I said to Dave Harding as
-I come up the road, 'What I should like to do 'd be to crawl up into
-the fir-woods where nobody couldn't see me, and lay down an' get three
-or four hours' sleep.' 'You couldn't do it,' he says; ''t'd be on your
-mind all the time. You might get off for ten minutes, p'raps, an' then
-you'd be up an' off again.' But that's what I sims as if I should
-like, more 'n anything: jest to crawl away somewhere, where nobody
-wouldn't come, for a good sleep. Then wake up and 'ave a floush--'t'd
-freshen me up."
-
-Certainly he is overdone. Upon my renewing offers of a little help, he
-became tearful, almost sobbing: "You be the only friend I got.... I
-bin all over the country," and have faced all sorts of things, "but I
-_be_ hammer-hacked about, now, no mistake." His grief consists in
-being able to do so little for his wife. He has given her since his
-dinner-time her medicine, then a sip of brandy "to take the taste out
-of her mouth.... And then I said, 'Now here's a cake I bought for ye
-in the town; have a bit o' that.' So she nibbled a bit, and I says,
-'Eat 'n up.' No, she didn't want no more. 'But you got to _'ave_ it,'
-I says. I a'most forced it down her throat. I do's the best I can for
-her; but I en't got nobody to tell me what to do."
-
-And he is galled by turns, by turns amused, at her behaviour towards
-himself. "I can't do nothink right for her. She's more stubborn to me
-than to anybody else: keeps on findin' fault. Last night, in the
-night, she roused up an' accused me o' goin' away. 'You bin away
-somewheres,' she says. 'Oh yes, you 'ave; I heared ye come creepin'
-back up the road.' And I'd bin sittin' there all the time."
-
-This and much more he told. I tried to get away (we were in the
-garden), for I was busy; but he followed me, to talk still, and
-wandered off into recollections of his experiences at Guildford
-Hospital.
-
-
-_7.30 p.m._ Bettesworth has called once more, coming from the town, to
-show me the doctor's certificate (gastritis, it says), and to let me
-know that to-morrow morning he will not be here at his usual time. He
-proposes going to the relieving officer to obtain his order for a
-conveyance to move the old woman. "I shall be over there by seven
-o'clock," he says. The cumbersomeness of all these formalities is
-sickening. Having got the order, he will probably need to go right
-back to the town to arrange about the conveyance.
-
-He was very tired, and rather wet, the night having set in with
-showers coming up on the east wind. So I got him a chair in the
-scullery, for the wet was making his old corduroys smell badly, and
-gave him a small glass of brandy-and-water. He refused a biscuit; "I
-couldn't swaller it," he said. "I can't eat, for thinkin' o' she."
-
-He is not without a kind of pitiful consolation. "Seven or eight," he
-says, have professed their willingness to receive him into their
-homes, if need should be. One, even now, on the road from the town,
-has said, "Don't you trouble about _yerself_, Freddy; you can have a
-home with me, if you should want one." But the idea associated with
-this, of parting from his wife, breaks him down. The doctor who
-granted the certificate--the right doctor, this time--was sympathetic.
-"He come out to me because he see I was touched, and says, 'You no
-call to be _oneasy_, old gentleman; she'll be looked _after_ up there.
-Everything 'll be done for her as can be done.'"
-
-But these nights, in which he does not go to bed! His ankles and
-calves get the cramp, for he seems not to have thought, so little
-practice has he had in making himself comfortable, of resting his feet
-on another chair, while he is lying back in the easy-chair
-downstairs.... He has gone home now, to make up a fire and get what
-rest he may. "But then," he says, "she'll holler out, an' I got to
-run." He told me again how she "fell out o' bed flump" last night, and
-he stormed upstairs and found her on the floor, for "she didn't know
-how to get in again, not no more'n a cuckoo."
-
-The group of cottages where he lives stands high above the road, which
-is reached by steps roughly cut into the steep bank. On one of these
-recent nights, having gone down the steps meaning to buy his wife
-sixpennyworth of brandy, Bettesworth felt in his trousers pocket for
-the shilling he had put there, and--it was gone. "Oh, I was in a way!
-I went back, an' crawled all up they steps, feelin' for it," the hour
-being eight o'clock, and moonlight. "As I went past old Kiddy's, I
-called out to 'n, 'Kid!', 'cause I wanted to tell 'n what trouble I
-was in, and I knowed he'd ha' come and helped me to find 'n, if he'd
-bin about. But he was gone to bed, 'cause he starts off so early in
-the mornin'." Thus the old man got back home, disconsolate, without
-the necessary brandy for his wife; and, calling upstairs to her, "Lou,
-I've lost that shillin'," he began to prepare for his night in the
-easy-chair. But, first feeling in his pocket once more, he discovered
-there (fruits of his wife's incapacity) "a hole," he said, "I could
-put my finger through."
-
-He pulled up his trouser legs to the knee, "because I always ties my
-garters up above the knee," and, with his foot on "the little stool I
-always puts 'n on to lace up my boots--I've had 'n ever since my boy
-was born--I thought I felt somethin' in the heel o' my shoe, and as
-soon as I pulled 'n off it rattled on the floor. _Wa'n't_ that a
-miracle? My hair stood bolt upright! I gropsed an' picked 'n up, and
-hollered up the stairs, 'I've found 'n!' 'Oh, have ye?' she says. 'I
-thought you'd bin an' spent 'n.'" Quickly he was off again to the
-public-house--Tom Durrant's--and "I says, 'I lost that shillin' once.
-I'll take good care I don't lose 'n again!' And I chucked 'n up on the
-counter. Durrant says, 'Oh, did ye lose 'n?' So then I come back 'ome
-with my sixpenn'oth o' brandy. But wa'n't it a miracle? My hair stood
-reg'lar bolt upright, and I was that _contented_!"
-
-There was much, very much, that I am missing; but I must not quite
-pass over the old man's talk on the way to the town this morning. He
-did not once mention his trouble. All the way it was his ordinary
-chatter--the chatter of a most vigorous mind, which had never learnt
-to think of things in groups, but was intensely interested in details.
-
-It began at once, with reference to a cottage--a sort of "week-end"
-cottage--we were passing, into which, Bettesworth said, new tenants
-were coming. "How they keep changing!" said I; and he, "Well enough
-they may, at the price." "What is it, then?" "Four pound a month.
-Furnished, o' course; but there en't much there. And," he added, "I
-can't see payin' a pound a week for a place to lay down in."
-
-Next--but what came next had better be omitted now. It related to the
-family affairs of a certain coal-carter, and so led up to discourse of
-other carter men who lived in the village. From them, the transition
-to the employer of two of them was easy. He "got the two best carters
-in the neighbourhood now," said Bettesworth; but as for horses, "he
-en't got a hoss fit to put in a cart, 'cause he en't never had anybody
-before as understood anything about 'em. Somebody ought to put the
-cruelty inspector on to him, to go to his place and see. He _did_ go,
-once; but he" (the horse-owner) "got wind of it and," as far as could
-be gathered from Bettesworth's talk, is suspected of having "squared"
-the inspector. But "there's a lot talkin' about the condition of the
-hosses down there," and, indeed, things "down there" seem to be
-generally mismanaged. The premises are "a reg'lar destructive old
-place": the carts, "he won't never have 'em only botched up, an' they
-be all to pieces;" and the harness is treated no better. "The saddles,
-they says, the flock 's all in lumps: _sure_ a hoss's back an'
-shoulders 'd get sore. That's where they do's all the work, poor
-things. When I had hosses to look after, as soon as I got 'em in I
-always looked to their back an' shoulders first. I'd get a sponge, or
-a cloth...."
-
-One of the two good carters above mentioned "can trace up a hoss's
-tail, you know, with straw. There en't one in ten knows how to do
-that. I've earnt many a shillin' at it." But Bettesworth had known one
-man who used to earn as much as thirty shillings in a day at this
-work, at horse-fairs. Him Bettesworth has occasionally helped, I
-understand; and also, "Old Bill Baldwin--I've sometimes bin down an'
-done it for him."
-
-Now, I had thought Bill Baldwin knew all that was worth knowing about
-horses and horse management; so I asked, surprisedly, "What, can't he
-do it?"
-
-"He can do the tracin', in a straight run; but he can't tie up. I
-could do it all: the tails, and the manes too--you've see it. I'd get
-a bit o' live" (lithe?) "straw ... 't was when I was a boy-chap, a
-little bigger 'n that 'n" (whom at the moment we were meeting) "down
-at Penstead at Farmer Barnes's. I used to be such a one for the
-hosses; and I could do it, because my fingers was so lissom." (Poor
-old stubbed, stiff, bent fingers! to think of it!) "And then, I took
-such a delight in it. And Mrs. Barnes--she was a Burton--she was as
-proud o' them hosses! Used to get up at four o'clock in the mornin',
-purpose to see 'em start off. And the harness was all as clean--the
-brass used to shine as bright as ever any gold is, and she _was_
-proud. Twenty thousand pound, was the last legacy she had. She was
-just such another woman to look at as old Miss Keen, what used to
-live down in the town; and a better woman never was.
-
-"That's where I got all my scholarship.... Well, I could read--a
-little--but not to understand it. But she--she give me shirts, an'
-trousers--'cause we wore smock-frocks then--but she give me shirts an'
-trousers to go to night-school in. Course, I couldn't have had proper
-clothes without. 'Cause 'twas only thirty shillin's a year besides
-grub an' lodgin'.... And 't wan't no use to talk about runnin' away. I
-hadn't got no home. Besides, we was hired from Michaelmas to
-Michaelmas."
-
-We spoke again of various neighbours, and thus drifting on (I am
-omitting vast quantities) Bettesworth presently told of a recent
-attempt at starting a village football club, or rather, of the
-subsequent discussion of the affair at the public-house. An enthusiast
-there wished to get "as many members as ever they could." "But how be
-ye goin' to pick 'em for play?" asked another. "Oh, pick the best."
-Bettesworth tells me this, adding, "I don't call that fair do's at
-all. I can't see no justice in that, that one should pay to be a
-member of a club, purpose for somebody else to have all the play.
-That's the way they breaks up a club. Break up any club, that would."
-
-
-_September 24._--Word was brought this afternoon (Saturday) that
-Bettesworth was at the kitchen door, wishing to see me. Of course he
-has not been to work to-day. I found him standing outside, patient
-and quiet, until, being asked how things were going, he began to cry,
-and shook his head, so that I feared something had miscarried and
-asked, "Why, haven't you got your wife away?"
-
-"Yes, we got her away, but she was purty near dead when we got her
-there. The matron shook her head, and said, 'You'll never see her home
-again alive.'"
-
-There were repetitions and variations of this; but I, reiterating my
-assurances that "she had got a lot of strength," and that in fine the
-old wife would yet live to come home again, quite forgot to observe
-exactly what Bettesworth said. His distress was too afflicting.
-
-It would take long, too, to tell of his morning in his own words,
-beginning with the early walk to Moorways for the relieving officer's
-order, and telling how old chums starting off to work were astonished
-to see him thus unwontedly on the road, and what they said as he
-passed them by as if with a renewal of vigour, and how one was
-"puffed, tryin' to keep up." The long waiting at the office door (the
-officer had been out in his garden getting up potatoes), and
-Bettesworth's meditations, "I wish he'd come," and the instructions
-furnished him as to how to go on--they were all narrated simply,
-because they happened; but the touch of grey morning mist which
-somehow pervaded the talk while I was hearing it could not be
-reproduced with its words. The old man was back here soon after eight
-o'clock, on his way to the town to order the fly which should take his
-wife to the infirmary. He had had no breakfast. I gave him tea and
-bread and butter; but he left the bread and butter--couldn't swallow
-it, he said. He had had a glass of beer at the Moorways Inn.
-
-He went into the town, and I met him on the road, returning. The fly
-proprietor had recognized him and behaved kindly. "Got a bit o'
-trouble then, old gentleman?" Yes, the fly should be there to the
-minute.
-
-At noon, to the minute, it arrived, the driver of it being a son of an
-old neighbour of Bettesworth's. Meanwhile, Bettesworth's niece, "Liz,"
-and a neighbour's wife--a Mrs. Eggar--whom he spoke of as "Kate," were
-there trying to dress the old woman--and failing. They got her
-stockings on, but no boots; a petticoat or so, but no bodice with
-sleeves; and for that much they had to struggle, even calling on
-Bettesworth to come upstairs and help them. Then the fly came, "and
-all she kep' sayin' was, 'Leave me to die at home. I wants to die at
-home'" and she fought and would not be moved.
-
-To get her downstairs the help of two men besides the driver was
-enlisted, Kate's husband being one of them. By a kindly policy,
-Bettesworth himself was sent to hold the horse ("'cause he wanted to
-start off"), in order that the sight of her husband might not
-increase the poor old woman's reluctance; and so they carried her
-downstairs, "bodily," he said, meaning, I suppose, that she did not
-support herself at all.
-
-The doctor had advised, and the neighbours too, that Bettesworth
-himself should not accompany his wife. But now the niece Liz, being
-unwell, was afraid to be alone with what looked a dying woman, and at
-the last moment Bettesworth jumped into the cab. As it started, the
-old woman's head fell back, her mouth dropped open. A pause was made
-at the public-house, to get brandy for her, which, however, she could
-not, or would not, take. Gin was tried, and she just touched it. Liz
-took the brandy; Bettesworth and the driver shared a pint of beer;
-then they drove off again. Once, on the way, Liz said, "Uncle, she's
-gone! Hadn't ye better stop the fly?" But he put his head down against
-her cheek, and found that she was still living; and so they came to
-the outer entrance of the infirmary. Further than that Bettesworth was
-dissuaded from going: it was not well that his wife should be agitated
-by the sight of him at the very gates; and accordingly he came away.
-
-So he is alone in his cottage, and may rest if he can. He is to have
-meals at his niece's, but will sleep at home. The kindness is touching
-to him, not alone of the nephew and niece, but of his neighbours
-generally. "Kate said she'd ha' went down in the fly, if I'd ha' let
-her know in time. An' she'd wash for me--if I'd take anything I
-wanted along to her Monday or Tuesday, she'd wash it. I says to her,
-'You be the first friend I got, Kate.' Well, Liz had told me she
-_couldn't_ undertake it. She was forced to get somebody to do her own,
-and the doctor come to see her one day expectin' to find her in bed,
-and she was gettin' the dinner. There's Jack" (her husband) "and four
-boys.... So Kate's goin' to do the washin' for me, and she and her
-daughter's goin' one day to give the place a scrub out. More'n that
-she _can't_ do--with eight little 'uns, and then look at the washin'!"
-For Mrs. Eggar takes in washing, to eke out her husband's fifteen or
-sixteen shillings a week.
-
-Besides these friends, there are those who are willing to find the old
-man a home, "if anything should happen to the old gal." "'Tis a sort
-o' comfortin'," he says, "to think what good neighbours I got;" but he
-hopes not to break up his home yet. In an unconscious symbolism of his
-affection for all the home things he bought this afternoon a
-pennyworth of milk for the cat, who came running to meet him on his
-return to the lonely cottage, and then ran upstairs "to see if the old
-gal was there."
-
-He will keep his home together if he may, with warm feelings towards
-his neighbours. "But as for these up here," and he points
-contemptuously in the direction of the old woman's relatives, "I dunno
-if they knows she's gone, and I shan't trouble to tell 'em."
-
-[So I wrote on the Saturday evening. Four clear days pass, without any
-note about Bettesworth; then on the following Thursday the narrative
-is reopened. It is given here, unaltered.]
-
-
-_September 29._--Bettesworth's wife died at the workhouse infirmary,
-about midnight of the 27th.
-
-She had been unconscious since her admission, and spoke only twice.
-Once she said, "Bring my little box upstairs off the dresser, Fred;"
-the other time it was, "Fred, have ye wound up the clock?" These
-things were reported to him by the nurse, when he reached the
-infirmary on Tuesday afternoon--the usual afternoon for the admission
-of visitors.
-
-He had gone down then, with his niece Liz, to see the old lady. And of
-course I heard the details of the expedition when he came back.
-Stopping at a greengrocer's in the town, he bought two ripe pears, at
-three halfpence each. "Did ye ever hear tell o' such a price for a
-pear? What 'd that be for a bushel? Why, 't'd come to a pound! But I
-said, 'I'll ha' the best.' Then I bought her some sponge-cakes at the
-confectioner's;" and with these delicacies he went to her.
-
-She could not touch them. She lay with her eyes open, but unconscious
-even of the flies, which he, sitting beside, kept fanning from her
-face. There was no recognition of him; so he asked which was "her
-locker," proposing to leave the pears and sponge-cakes there for her,
-on the chance of her being able to enjoy them later. "Poor old lady,
-she'll never want 'em," the nurse said; and he replied, "Now I've
-brought 'em here I shan't take 'em back. Give 'em to some other poor
-soul that can fancy 'em."
-
-They gave him permission to stay as long as he liked; but, said he, "I
-bid there an hour an' a quarter, an' then I couldn't bide no longer.
-What was the use, sir? She didn't know me." So at last he came away,
-provided with a free pass, "to go in at any hour o' the day or night
-he mind to."
-
-Yesterday (Wednesday) morning he was about his work here when a letter
-was brought to him. It contained only a formal notice that "Lucy
-Bettesworth was lying dangerously ill, and desired to see him."
-Probably the notice was mercifully designed to prepare him for the
-worse news it might have told, but of course he did not know it, even
-if that was the case. He left here at once, to go and see his wife.
-
-Between two and three hours afterwards he was back again. "How is it?"
-I asked, guessing how it was. "She's gone, sir"--and then he broke
-down, sobbing, but only for a minute. He had already ordered the
-coffin--"a nice box," he called it. The remainder of the day was spent
-in getting the death certificate and observing other formalities. He
-had the knell rung, too. Nothing would he neglect that would testify
-to his respect for the partner he had lost; and I think in all this
-he was partly animated by a savage resentment towards her relatives,
-who had ignored her, and by a resolved opposition to those who had
-contemned his wife while she lived. "Everybody always bin very good,
-to _me_," he has said, with significant emphasis on the last word.
-
-In the evening he had the corpse brought away to his nephew Jack's. He
-also slept at Jack's, and in numerous ways Jack is behaving well to
-him. To spare the old man's weariness he spent the evening in going to
-see about the insurance money; and to-day it is Jack who is getting
-six other men to carry the coffin at the funeral on Saturday.
-
-This morning Bettesworth went to the Vicar to arrange about the
-funeral. "He spoke very nice to me," he said. Thence he was sent to
-the sexton, near at hand; and soon he came to me to borrow a two-foot
-rule, because the sexton wanted to know the exact measurements of the
-coffin before digging the grave; "and _don't_ let's have any
-mistakes!" he had said, for there had been a mistake not so long ago,
-a grave having been dug too small for the coffin.
-
-Knowing Bettesworth's fumbling blindness, and seeing him nervous, "Can
-you manage it?" I asked, "or would you like me to go over and measure
-it for you?" There was no hesitation: "It _would_ be a kindness, if
-you don't mind, sir...." I have but just now returned.
-
-I think I will not record particulars of that visit. If I had not
-previously known it, I should have known then that Bettesworth is--but
-there are no fit epithets. Nothing sensational happened, nothing
-extravagantly emotional. But all that he did and said, so simple and
-unaffected and necessary, was done as if it were an act of worship. No
-woman could have been tenderer or more delicate than he, when he drew
-the sheet back from the dead face, to show me.... The coffin itself
-(because he is so poor and so lonely)--a decent elm coffin--is a kind
-of symbol, and so a comfort to him, enabling him to testify to his
-unspoken feelings towards his dead wife.
-
-
-_October 1._--I went to the funeral of Bettesworth's wife this
-Saturday afternoon. In his decent black clothes and with his grey hair
-the old man looked very dignified, showing a quiet, unaffected
-patience.
-
-There were but few people present: four or five relatives besides the
-bearers and the undertaker and sexton; while a young woman (Mrs.
-Porter) with her little boy Tim stood in the background, she carrying
-a wreath she had made. She is a near neighbour to us, and a very
-impoverished one, to whom the old man has shown what kindness has been
-in his power; while she on many mornings has called him into her
-cottage at breakfast time, to give him a cup of hot tea.
-
-
-
-
-XXVIII
-
-
-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."
-
-
-
-
-XXIX
-
-
-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.
-
-
-
-
-XXX
-
-
-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 pass 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 Saturday.) "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-fashioned 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 glasses 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 passed, 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 assist, when it came to planting a young tree in the
-vacant space. 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 nobody 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 swishin' 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 shillin', 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 makeshift, 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.
-
-
-
-
-XXXI
-
-
-_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
-partition wall, asking his deaf mother "How old Freddy was?" Old Nanny
-herself had an extremely bad cold.
-
-
-_February 8._--A few more days pass; 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_ nobody, 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 shivering 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 washing 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
-circumstances 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."
-
-And on the following morning, as we had arranged, their daughter went
-that weary journey to the relieving officer, and brought back to me by
-ten o'clock his order for the medical officer's attendance. It seemed
-that the old pitiful routine we had been through several times before
-was to be entered upon once more; but to expedite matters I enclosed
-the order for attendance in a note of my own to the doctor; and the
-girl started off with it to the town, to add another three miles to
-the five or six she had already walked that morning.
-
-That, one would have supposed, should have almost ended the trouble;
-but though a man be dying it is not easy, under the existing Poor Law,
-to get him that help which the ratepayers provide, for the machinery
-is cumbersome, and the people who should profit by it do not
-appreciate its intricacies, or know how to make it work smoothly. In
-the present instance much trouble would have been saved, if
-Bettesworth's neighbours had known enough to correct an oversight of
-the doctor's. There was no delay on his side; but unfortunately it
-was the _locum tenens_ again who called; and he contented himself with
-giving his verbal assent to Bettesworth's going to the infirmary.
-That, of course, was useless; but the women attending Bettesworth did
-not know it. On the contrary, they supposed that the formal
-certificate could be dispensed with, and that a note from myself would
-satisfy the relieving officer. A message from them reached me, begging
-me to write such a note, which, they said, Bettesworth's nephew would
-take over to Moorway's in the evening.
-
-Of course the suggestion was utterly futile. The relieving officer
-could not recognize a request from me as an order, and an attempt to
-make him do so, if it effected nothing worse, would certainly delay
-Bettesworth's removal for yet another day, although, as it was, the
-unhappy old man must be left a second night in the care of his
-ignorant if well-meaning neighbours. But worse might easily follow the
-sending of Bettesworth's nephew for a long walk on such a fool's
-errand. Strong passionate man that he was, it was more than likely
-that he would quarrel with the officer; and to applicants for relief a
-relieving officer is an autocrat with whom it is not well to quarrel.
-These considerations, duly weighed, persuaded me not to do what I was
-asked; but I sent the messenger back with the request that
-Bettesworth's nephew should call upon me.
-
-He came in the evening: a black-haired powerful builder's-labourer,
-tired with his day's work, but prepared to be sent on a five-mile
-walk. As we discussed Bettesworth's condition, and the desirability of
-getting him to the infirmary, the man's tone jarred a little. He said,
-"It's the best place for him. But it strikes me he'll never come home
-again." A feeling passed over me that a wish was father to this
-thought: that Jack Bettesworth was not eager for the responsibility
-which would rest upon him, if his uncle should come home. After events
-seem to prove that I wronged the man: on this occasion I was chiefly
-eager to secure his help. Almost apologetically I said, "It makes a
-lot of running about." "Well, can't 'elp it," was the laconic answer.
-We did help it to some extent, however, by sending him, not to the
-relieving officer, which would have cost another five miles, but to
-the doctor, at the expense of no more than three. The nephew was to
-get the doctor's certificate, and post it in the town to the relieving
-officer; and for this purpose he was furnished with a stamped and
-addressed envelope, in which was enclosed a letter to the relieving
-officer, begging him to attend to the case on his way through the
-village in the morning. It was the best we could do. Should all go
-well, not more than ten or twelve miles of walking (I omit the
-carrying of messages to and from me) and not more than two days of
-waiting would have sufficed for getting Bettesworth the help of which
-he was officially certified to be in need.
-
-
-_February 9, 1905._--And all did go well. On Thursday morning, the 9th
-of February, I went to Bettesworth's cottage, and found preparations
-in progress for his going away. There was more than preparation. With
-all their kindliness, it must be said of the labouring people that
-they want tact. Bettesworth's poor home had become a sort of show, in
-its small squalid fashion. The door stood wide open; there were half a
-dozen people in the living-room, where the old man had of late shut
-himself in with his loneliness and his independence; and upstairs in
-his bed he must have been aware of the nakedness of the place now
-displayed. The unswept hearth and the extinct fire were pitiful to
-see; yet there stood women and children, seeing them. Mrs. Eggar
-("Kate") had a good right to be there. She had sat up a second night,
-and, albeit sleepy-eyed and untidy, there was helpfulness in her large
-buxom presence. Perhaps there were reasons too for her daughter's
-being there with the baby. Another woman, tall, grave, and sympathetic
-of aspect, had brought two more children; and she told me that
-upstairs Jack Bettesworth's wife Liz was washing the old man. Liz, by
-the way, was prepared to go with him on his journey.
-
-I went up into the little square-windowed dirty bedroom and saw him.
-He was inclined to cry at the prospect of shutting up his home; but a
-little talk about my garden--perhaps dearer to him now than even his
-home was--brightened him up. It pleased him to learn that some early
-peas had been sown. In what part? he wanted to know. And being told,
-"Ah," he said, "and there's another place where peas 'd do well: up
-there under George Bryant's hedge." When I left, it was with a promise
-to go and see him in the infirmary on the next visiting day. Going out
-I saw old Nanny Norris at her door, observant of all that went on, but
-unserviceably deaf. She was wearing her bonnet and black shawl, looked
-ill, and complained of cough and of pains across her shoulders. I
-think there were two or three other women standing near. They were
-probably waiting to see Bettesworth removed, as he duly was, at
-mid-day.
-
-
-
-
-XXXII
-
-
-_February 10._--The day after his departure a rather annoying
-circumstance came to light. The monthly contribution to the club was
-found to be a whole year in arrear. As the sum was but threepence a
-month, so that even now only three shillings were due, it seemed a
-little too bad of Bettesworth to have neglected the payments which at
-least secured him a doctor's attendance and at his death would produce
-four pounds for funeral expenses. Perhaps, however, he was not so much
-to blame as appeared; at any rate, the manner by which we learnt of
-his carelessness offers to the imagination the material for an
-affecting picture of the old man on his sick-bed. It was Mrs. Eggar
-who, in some trouble for him, brought his club-membership card to me,
-and told how he had asked her to find it. On the eve of his departure
-he had taken her into his confidence, spoken of the possibility that
-he might be going away only to die, and desired, in that event, to be
-brought home from the infirmary and buried decently, "same as his
-wife," with this sum which the club would pay. Of course the money for
-the arrears had to be found, and Mrs. Eggar undertook to pay it to
-the club secretary on the next day, when she went to the town to do
-her Saturday's shopping. Bettesworth had further asked her, she said,
-to find his discharge papers from the army, and see what reason for
-his discharge was stated, since he had forgotten. I have never
-understood why he should have been curious on that point, at such a
-time. Defective sight seems to have been the unexciting reason
-alleged.
-
-And now, its occupant gone and Mrs. Eggar's rummagings done, the
-squalid tenement next door to the Norris's stood shut up, with the
-door locked on the few poor belongings it contained. To the neighbours
-there seemed to be all the circumstances of a death, except the death
-itself. People began to remember, what I had failed to observe yet
-could well believe, how greatly Bettesworth had changed of late;
-others recalled complaints he had uttered of being unbearably lonely.
-It was the general opinion that, even if he lived, he would never work
-again, and never again come back to the place he had left. Three or
-four men approached me in the hope of getting work in my garden; while
-as for the cottage, had I cared to give it up, there were already (the
-owner told me) four or five applicants eager to take it. What I should
-do, and what Bettesworth, formed the subject of a good deal of
-speculation. Old Nanny, meeting me in the road, plunged excitedly into
-the middle of the discussion. In her harsh snapping voice she assured
-me that the cottage was "as dirty as _ever_!" and that, as regarded
-Bettesworth, the infirmary was "the best place _for_ him!" "Have ye
-give up the cot?" she asked. "No." "Oh! ... Beagley" (the owner) "told
-young Cook as you had?" "I haven't." "Well, he _said_ you had." For
-some reason that was never divulged, Nanny had conceived a violent
-animosity towards Bettesworth, which I then supposed to be peculiar to
-herself; but in other respects her unmannerly questionings only
-betrayed the attitude of almost all the other neighbours. Bettesworth
-was done for: he had better stay at the infirmary and let others have
-his work and his cottage. Such was the prevailing opinion. The people
-were not intentionally unkind; but in the merciless working-class
-struggle for life one may admire how long Bettesworth had held his
-own.
-
-On the other hand, the opposite side, Bettesworth's side, was
-championed probably by not a few labouring men, who had learnt to
-appreciate his quality. Among these was George Bryant. Bryant had been
-doing a few necessary jobs for me during Bettesworth's illness, and it
-was to his interest, if anybody's, that the old man should not come
-home again. When I repeated to him, however, what people had been
-saying--namely, that Bettesworth ought now to stay in the infirmary,
-he said "H'm!" and clearly did not agree. Finally, "Well, of course,
-we knows 'tis a place where old people _ought_ to be looked after,
-but--well, Bettesworth likes his liberty. And so should I, if I was
-in his place!"
-
-With a cordial feeling which warmed me at the time and may give a
-little colour now to the grey narrative, he spoke of the change he had
-lately observed in Bettesworth, who had confessed to him that life had
-grown so lonely "he didn't know how ever to put up with it." On the
-very last Sunday evening Bryant had been over at the old man's
-cottage, "and 'tis a _lot_ cleaner 'n what it used to be in the old
-lady's time." But the difficulty was that Bettesworth could not see. I
-assented, mentioning his last labours at planting shallots. Bryant
-smiled; from his adjoining garden he had noticed the same thing a year
-ago, with some peas. But, in general, he admired Bettesworth. "He's a
-man that don't talk much till he's started, and then.... He was
-tellin' me Sunday about the things he see in the war. I reckon that
-got a lot to do with the way he is now: the cold winds, when the tents
-blowed over, and he'd have to lay out all in the mud. He might think
-'t didn't hurt 'n," but in all likelihood Bettesworth was now feeling
-the effects of these sufferings of so long ago. The Crimean wind, as
-described by Bettesworth, seemed to have impressed Bryant. "He did
-tell me what regiment it belonged to, but I forgets which 'twas; but
-one o' the regiments had the big drum lifted right up into the air an'
-carried out to sea by the wind."
-
-
-
-
-XXXIII
-
-
-The remainder of Bettesworth's story may for the most part be told in
-the notes made at the time, without much comment. I was unable to go
-to the infirmary on the first visiting day after his admission, as I
-had promised that I would; but I managed to get to him a week later,
-namely on Tuesday, the 21st of February, when he had been there twelve
-days; and on the next day the following account of the visit was
-jotted down.
-
-
-_February 22, 1905._--At the infirmary yesterday I found Bettesworth
-still in bed, in a large ward on the ground floor. Out of doors,
-though it was a day of fair sunshine generally, the north-east wind
-was bitter, and a storm of sleet and sparse hail which I had been
-watching as it drove across the eastern sky, and which had reached me
-as I neared the gate, made it agreeable to get inside the fine
-well-warmed building. From Bettesworth's bedside I could see, through
-the tall windows of the ward, distant fields and the grey storm
-drifting slowly over them. Trees on the horizon stood out sombre
-against the sombre sky.
-
-Within, was plentiful light--plentiful air and warmth too, and cleanly
-order. The place looked almost cheerful, although some twenty men lay
-there, suffering or unhappy. One only was sitting up, who coughed
-exhaustedly, not violently; he seemed able to do no more than sit up,
-shaking with debility. In the beds the patients mostly lay quite
-still. The man next beyond Bettesworth drew the counterpane up over
-his ears, and I saw a glowing feverish eye watching me. There were but
-few other visitors--only four, I think, besides myself. Somewhere an
-electric bell sounded. A little nursing attendant with sleeves
-stripped up came stumping cheerily all down the ward. She had been
-washing dishes or something in a kind of scullery just outside when I
-came in. As she passed through she said, as though to interest the
-sick men, "This is how I do my work--see? Walkin' about like this!"
-
-My first impression of the place was favourable; all looked so
-well-appointed, so sumptuous even. And there lay Bettesworth under his
-white counterpane, himself wonderfully clean and trim, and wearing a
-floppy white nightcap. I had hoped to find him sitting up; but
-still....
-
-"How are you?" I shook his hand--unrecognizably thin and clean and
-soft--and he flushed and sat up, pleased enough. But, "I'm as well as
-ever I shall be," he murmured; or was it (I don't quite remember) "I
-shan't never be no better." Shocked, and not sure of having heard
-aright, I asked again, and the answer came, "I shan't never be no
-better, so long as I bides here."
-
-What was the matter, then? Everything. The interview turned forthwith
-into one protracted, unreasoning grumble from the old man. He had not
-food enough. Bread and butter--just a little piece at one time, and a
-little piece more at some other time. And beef-tea--"they calls it
-beef-tea, but 'tis only that stuff out o' the bottle--_I_ forgets the
-name of it. Bovril? Ah, that's it. One cup we has at home 'd make
-twenty o' these."
-
-I tried to reason with him, but it was useless. Evidently he was very
-weak. He coughed at times, but said he had no pain now. What he wanted
-was to get up, and be about, where he could obtain for himself such
-things as he might fancy. If a man, he argued, feeling as he did, was
-allowed to get up and put on his clothes for an hour or two, and have
-a sluice down, wouldn't it brighten that man up? But last night--he
-didn't know what time it was, and he got out of bed. One of the nurses
-came in just then. "'What are you doin' out there?' she said; 'you
-ought to be in bed.' 'And so did you ought to be,' I says." To judge
-from his tone in narrating, he said it in no amiable voice. He added
-petulantly, "There! give me Guildford Hospital before this, twenty
-times over!"
-
-Thus he grumbled continuously. "There's old Hall in that bed over
-there. _He's_ wantin' to go 'ome, too." Bettesworth spoke with a
-sneer, not at our poor old neighbour Hall, but at Hall's pitiful
-prospect of getting release from this imprisonment. He told me of the
-other's bad cough, and of his age, and so forth, and for a minute or
-two forgot his own grievances, but only for a minute or two. I asked
-some question about the doctor. The doctor? They never set eyes on
-him, for two or three days at a time. And he didn't give him any
-medicine much, either. That bottle he" (Bettesworth) "had from the
-club doctor before leaving home--he only had two doses out of it, but
-that was a _lot_ nicer than this stuff. And the bed was hard--"nothin'
-soft to lay on," and his back was getting sore. "Let's see--'twas a
-fortnight last Thursday I come here, wasn't it?" "No, a week." "Oh,
-only a week? I thought 'twas a fortnight. The time seems so _long_."
-
-A woman and a girl were at old Hall's bedside, farther down the ward.
-I could see him sitting up, panting, white, the picture of despair.
-Then the woman turned and came towards us; it was Bettesworth's niece
-Liz. She was smiling a little bewilderedly. "He wants me to send for
-the nurse," she said, alluding to Hall; "he wants to go home."
-
-She joined me in talking to Bettesworth. One or two things I told him
-about the garden awakened but a faint interest in him; and meanwhile I
-could see Hall sitting up, his under-lip drooping, his eyes abnormally
-bright. Yet I think he could not see much. Usually he wears
-spectacles, being eighty years old. And still we talked to
-Bettesworth. His niece was as unsuccessful as myself in trying to
-reason with him. To some remark of hers, suggesting that if he were at
-home he would be without anyone to nurse him, he replied fiercely (and
-I have no notion of his meaning), "No! and there won't _be_ none,
-neither, once I gets home and got my key. I shall lock my door!..."
-Liz argued then that this place was so comfortable and so clean. "'Tis
-the patients has to do that," said Bettesworth.
-
-At last a nurse came to old Hall, and we listened while he proffered
-his request to go home. "To-morrow," he said. "Oh, you can't go till
-you've seen the doctor!" The nurse spoke pleasantly, though of course
-with decision, and bustled away. But Bettesworth, with his sneer,
-commented, "Ah! I _thought_ she'd snap his head off!"
-
-Weary of him, I went over to speak to Hall, who was now looking
-utterly baffled. Until I was quite close he did not recognize me, but
-then he shook hands joyfully. To him, as to Bettesworth, I counselled
-patience. Ah, but he felt he shouldn't get on, so long as he bid
-there. He couldn't get on with the food. The bread in the broth did
-not get soft, and as for the dry bread--"I've no teeth at all in the
-top row," he said, and therefore he could not masticate it. Another
-reason for his wishing to leave was that his wife was ill with
-bronchitis at home, and he longed to return to her.
-
-Well, I had no comfort for him, any more than for Bettesworth. And
-when I left, they were still dissatisfied, and I was equally sure that
-their grievances were unreal. What, then, was the matter with them?
-The root of it all, I think, was in this: that they were homesick. The
-good order, the cleanliness, the sense of air and space, the routine
-of the institution, had overwhelmed them. They were no longer their
-own masters in their own homes. They were pining for their little poky
-rooms, nice and stuffy, with the windows shut and the curtains half
-drawn; they missed their own furniture, pictures, and worthless
-rubbish endeared to them by old associations. They did not care, at
-their age, to begin practising hygiene and learn how to live to grow
-old. They were old already, and wanted to be at home.
-
-
-_February 28._--I have no record of my second visit to the infirmary a
-week later; but, as I remember, Bettesworth was then sitting up in a
-day-room, so that he was evidently better, although still extremely
-feeble.
-
-
-
-
-XXXIV
-
-
-_March 7, 1905._--Bettesworth left the infirmary on Saturday morning,
-March the 4th. I met him half a mile away from it, in the town, and he
-was trembling with weakness where he stood. But he protested that he
-should get home well enough; he had just had a nice rest, a friend of
-mine having taken him into his house to sit down by the fire. My
-friend told me afterwards how the old man, invited in because of his
-pitiable condition, had seemed to crawl in a state of collapse to the
-chair set for him.
-
-His tale to my friend was curiously different from the account he gave
-me of his leaving the infirmary. To the former he explained that on
-the Thursday he had desired to be allowed to go home. The wish was
-communicated on the next day to the doctor, who asked, "Do you want to
-go then?" and was answered ungraciously, "I shan't get no better
-here." On Saturday, therefore, his clothes were brought to him, and
-out he came.
-
-But this was not quite the same story that he told me. Perhaps I
-should premise that I felt annoyed with him for coming out, since it
-was plain who would have to provide for him; and he may have seen
-that I was displeased when I said, "You have no business out! You're
-not fit for work, and you ought to have stayed another week or two."
-Somehow so I greeted him, none too kindly. He replied that there were
-seven or eight "turned out" that morning, their room being wanted for
-others. Nor did he forget to complain. His clothes, he said, having
-been tied in a bundle with a ticket on them, and tossed into a shed,
-had been returned to him so damp that he felt "shivery" getting into
-them; and there was no fire by which to dress.
-
-What did he propose to do? was my next question. He was going home, to
-make up a fire in his bedroom and air his bed. Already he had arranged
-with Liz and Jack to come and help him do that. Such of his things as
-were worth anyone's buying he should sell--Mrs. Eggar, for instance,
-would take the Windsor chairs; and then he was going to live,
-probably, at Jack's. But his first care was to go and air his bed.
-Firing--coal, at least--he possessed; wood could be provided by
-knocking up two old tables which were grown rickety. To my protest
-against such destruction, he replied that already before his illness
-he had touched one of the tables with his little axe.
-
-He trembled, but his mouth shut resolutely, so that I got the
-impression, and that not for the first time of late, of something
-desperate about him, something hard, fierce, suspicious.
-
-The discrepancy between his stories to my friend and to myself
-strengthens the impression, and as I write this a hypothesis shapes
-itself: that he fears to lose his employment with me; fears that I am
-weary of him and anxious to get him permanently settled in the
-workhouse. For this reason, perhaps, he reviles that hated place,
-hurries from it, will not own to weakness though I see him shaking,
-will be independent as to coal and the rest. I asked him how he was
-off for money. He could do with a shilling or so; but he did not want
-to get into debt.
-
-That was three days ago. I was from home to-day when he came to see
-me, announcing himself vastly better. He has gone to live with Jack,
-in whose house he has a room to himself and "a nice soft bed," and is
-well looked after, he says. Liz has even been giving him a cup of tea
-in bed--or desiring to do so.
-
-I understand him to have said that the old cot used to cost him as
-much as six shillings a week to keep going. And that, he added, would
-be nearly enough for him to live upon, in his new quarters.
-
-
-_March 8._--I have promised Bettesworth (we walked down the garden
-this morning to talk it over out of earshot) that when he finds
-himself past work I will make him an allowance, to keep him from the
-workhouse. He is to tell me, when the time comes; at present, he still
-hopes to do a little more.
-
-I was wrong, it seems, in surmising that dread of losing his
-employment made him so anxious to quit the infirmary. "Was it so?" was
-a question put to him this morning, point blank. He denied it. "No,"
-he said; "I was afraid I should die. That's what made me so eager to
-get away. I felt I should die if I bid there another week." So many
-died, he said, while he was there--several in one day, I understood,
-one being the man in the bed next to Bettesworth's. This man "made up
-his mind" and was gone, in twenty minutes--one Freeland, from
-Moorways. There also died there a certain old Taff Skinner, an old
-neighbour whom Bettesworth, in his own convalescence, tried to get
-upstairs to see. A nurse turned him back, he protesting that he
-"didn't know as he was doin' wrong," and she explaining that he might
-only visit another room or ward on visiting day. "Or else," he told
-me, "Old Taff's wife an' daughter was there, and ast me if I wouldn't
-go an' see 'n to cheer 'n up."
-
-Having got home and shifted a few things to Jack's, Bettesworth's
-great joy was in his "nice soft bed." He has been used to feathers,
-and found the mattress hard at the infirmary. He said with gusto,
-"That was a treat to me, to get into that bed and roll myself over.
-And my poor old back seemed almost well the next morning." Across the
-loins and down the back of his thighs he is tender, and his elbows
-were beginning to get sore from hoisting himself up on the mattress.
-To ease the loins Jack has been rubbing in "some o' that strong
-liniment." On the whole Jack seems to be treating the old man very
-well.
-
-That he will continue to do so is devoutly to be hoped. For there are
-not many refuges open to Bettesworth now, nor can the infirmary any
-more be looked to as one of them. According to his last version of it,
-when the doctor asked him if it was really his wish to leave, he
-answered, "Once I gets away I'll never come here no more, not if
-there's a ditch at home I can die in."
-
-
-_March 12._--I find there is a steady set of public opinion--that is
-to say, the opinion of his own class--against Bettesworth, which has
-grown very marked since he came out of the infirmary, although
-probably it is not quite a new thing.
-
-One of the first indications of it, besides old Nanny's animosity
-already mentioned, appeared while he was still away, when Bill Crawte
-spoke to me in the town, alleging that the old man had been
-misbehaving of late in his evenings. I received an impression of
-drinking bouts and disorder, which was conveyed in innuendo rather
-than directly. "He spends too much money at the public-house; and he
-can't take much without its going to his head"--such was Crawte's
-expression, intended, it seemed, to warn me that I was deceived in my
-protege.
-
-A few days ago I met old Mrs. Skinner. I remember that I crossed the
-street to speak to her "because she was such a stranger," and she
-looked flattered, but complained of "such a bad face-ache, sir," and
-grimaced, holding her black shawl over her mouth. Then she hurried
-into the subject of Bettesworth's home-coming, and did not hesitate to
-assure me that he was "a _bad_ old man." Once again I felt that I was
-being warned that the old man was unworthy of my help. I had heard
-Mrs. Skinner before, however--months before--on the same subject. In
-her way she is a good woman whom I like and respect, but she has a
-taste for commenting on other people's faults. Moreover, there was
-never much love lost between her and Bettesworth: his old tongue, I
-suspect, has been too shrewd for her at times.
-
-Yesterday I met old Nanny, with a bundle on her back, and I stopped to
-speak, partly sheltered from a driving rain by the umbrella she held
-behind her. She, too, has not scrupled before to complain of
-Bettesworth's behaviour, and always with the air of saying to me "he's
-not the good old man you take him for." But yesterday her tongue knew
-no reticence; she felt wronged herself, and she lashed Bettesworth's
-character mercilessly, in the hope of hurting him in my esteem. Swift
-and snappish, out came the long screed, while the old woman's eyes
-were fiery and her cheeks flushed. Oh, but she felt righteous, I am
-sure. She was exposing a blackguard, a scamp! And if she could injure
-him, she would.
-
-I do not recall many of her words. His ingratitude to her was
-Bettesworth's chief offence--after all she had done for him! So she
-told what she had done: how she had cooked his supper night after
-night, and got it all ready while he sat down there at the
-public-house waiting to be fetched. She wouldn't have done it, but Kid
-said, "Poor old feller, help 'n all you can. He en't got nobody to do
-anything for him." And she had washed his clothes, and scrubbed out
-his house; and he was such a dirty old man that it almost made her
-sick. And when he was ill, Mrs. Cook watching (downstairs, I gathered)
-was obliged to sit all night with the window open, because the place
-so stank. I heard how many pails of water it took to scrub the floor;
-how the boards upstairs--new boards "as white as drippen snow" when
-the Bettesworths took possession--would in all likelihood never come
-white again; and how the landlord had said that he should demand a
-week's rent (from me, of course) to pay for cleaning, when Bettesworth
-moved. And now Bettesworth was gone away, "taking his money" (his
-wages or his allowance), and "I don't like it, Mr. Bourne!" said old
-Nanny, vehemently. Not, apparently, that the money was an object to
-her, but that all her good offices had gone unthanked, nay, minimized.
-Had not Bettesworth complained that he had no one to do anything for
-him? And all the time Mrs. Norris was slaving for him. Had he not told
-me during his illness that he had taken nothing, when, in fact, Mrs.
-Cook not long before had taken him up a cup of tea and two slices of
-bread and butter, which he had eaten? "I don't _like_ it, Mr. Bourne."
-No, I could see that she did not; I could hear as much in the emphasis
-of the words, rapped out like swift hammer-strokes; and the old woman
-looked almost handsome in the flush of her indignation.
-
-I left her and passed on, wondering what the original offence could
-have been to produce such bitterness. Probably it was some harsh
-speech of Bettesworth's, some antique savagery drawn from him in the
-despair of his lonely situation, with his powers failing, the
-workhouse looming. Suspicious, hard, obstinate, wrapped-up now wholly
-in himself, he may easily ... but it is useless to surmise.
-
-Useless is it, too, to pretend that the repeated insinuations have had
-no effect upon me. As a rule backbiters succeed only in making me see
-their own unreason, while mentally I take sides with their victims;
-but in this case fancies of my own were corroborated by the slanders
-of the neighbours. I have believed, and think it likely, that
-Bettesworth is ready to deceive me to his own advantage, just as I
-have long known that he has not really been worth half his wages. He
-is in desperate plight, dependent on my caprice, and he cannot afford
-to be over scrupulous on a point of honour. As for old Nanny and the
-others, I suppose their sense of justice is outraged by Bettesworth's
-good fortune in having my protection. They are jealous; they resent
-the imposition which they suppose is being put upon me, and imagine me
-a blind fool who ought to be enlightened.
-
-To-day I fell in with old Mrs. Hall, whose husband is still at the
-infirmary. She had nothing hopeful to tell me about that old man's
-condition. He had been more contented, however, since his master had
-written to him, though he did talk, bedridden as he is, of digging a
-hole somewhere under the infirmary wall, so that he might escape to
-the cab that would bring him back home. But Mrs. Hall didn't think--if
-she said what she really thought--that he would ever come home again.
-At his great age (why, he is eighty to-morrow!) how could she hope
-that he would recover? Poor little dumpy old woman, with the plump
-face, and dainty chin, and round eyes--her lips trembled, talking of
-her husband and of her own difficulties. "For while he lays up there,"
-she said, "I got nothin' to live on," except a little help from the
-Vicar. Her daughter, married and away in Devonshire, will pay the
-quarter's rent, but....
-
-"And Mr. Bettesworth's out, it seems," the old woman continued. "It
-seems to me he's an ungrateful old man. For 'tis all nice and
-comfortable up there. It do seem ungrateful."
-
-Such was Mrs. Hall's unasked for, unexpected comment, on Bettesworth's
-behaviour. Poor old woman, to me too it seemed unjust that she should
-be so unaided, and he, perhaps, so over-aided. He is no old woman,
-though; allowance must be made for that. He could not away with the
-sort of comfort so praised by Mrs. Hall.
-
-
-Is, then, the last word about Bettesworth to be that he is dirty,
-dishonest, degraded? He may be all three (he certainly is the first)
-and yet have a claim to be helped now and remembered with honour.
-
-For, as another recent incident has served to remind me, our point of
-view is in danger of growing too narrow. One of the kindest of
-cultured women, going about her work of visiting the sick, asked me
-how Bettesworth was doing. Then, in her amiable way, she talked of him
-and of his wife, and soon was speaking of the extreme dirtiness in
-which they had lived. As a district visitor she had once or twice come
-upon them at meal-times, when their food on the table caused her a
-physical loathing--just as once I had been nauseated myself by the
-sight of a kippered herring by the old man's bedside. The district
-visitor--being invited and finding no courteous excuse for
-refusal--had sat down in Bettesworth's easy-chair, not without dread
-of what she might bring away. Most cottages she could visit without
-such terrors; most people, she supposed, "managed to get a tub once a
-week"; but the Bettesworths.... The lady spoke laughingly. In her
-comely life, an experience like this is afterwards an adventure.
-
-I smiled, and said, "They are survivals."
-
-"Of the fittest?"
-
-We both laughed; but when I added, "Yes, for some qualities," we knew
-(or I at least knew) that indeed that squalor of an earlier century is
-associated with a hardness of fibre most intimately connected with the
-survival of the English people.
-
-Suppose that now in stress of circumstances, the toughness warps,
-turns to ill-living, suspicion, selfishness and dishonesty, in the
-grim determination not to "go under": is it then no longer venerable,
-because it has ceased to be amiable? The onlooker should give an eye
-to his own point of view.
-
-
-
-
-XXXV
-
-
-_March 13, 1905._--This (Monday) morning Bettesworth came, slowly
-hobbling with his stick. Last week he had promised himself to be at
-work again to-day; but no--he is less well, and fancies he has taken
-fresh cold.
-
-He looked white, weak, pathetically docile and kind, as he led the way
-from the kitchen door to the wood-shed, evidently desirous of a
-private talk.
-
-He said he was "purty near beat, comin' over Saddler's Hill"; he had
-never before had such a job, having been forced to stop to get breath.
-It "felt like a lot o' mud in his chest; it was all slushin' and
-sloppin' about inside him, jest like a lot o' thick mud." But he had
-been worrying so: he wanted to pay me his rent. And then about his
-club pay--that worried him, too. He need not have worried? Ah, but he
-had done so, none the less; and Liz had said to him, "You better go up
-an' see about it, and you'll feel better when you got it off your
-mind"; or else he was hardly fit to be out in this cold wind. He had
-stayed indoors from Saturday afternoon until this morning. At
-tea-time, "about four o'clock yesterday," Liz had brought him a cup
-of tea with an egg beaten up in it, which had seemed to do him good.
-And she had got him half a quarte'n of whisky to hearten him up as he
-came away this morning. But he could not eat. "Law! they boys o'
-Jack's 'll eat three times what I do. I likes to see 'em. Jack says,
-'What d'ye think o' that for a table?'" and indicates to Bettesworth
-the plentiful supply.
-
-A hint brought the wandering talk back readily to the subject which
-the old man had on his mind. "_I_ never owed that money to the club,
-what you says Mrs. Eggar drawed from you.... She've done me out o'
-that, ye see." Just as he had supposed, so it proved, he affirmed: he
-had paid up to last August; and the inference was that Mrs. Eggar had
-drawn the money from me for her own uses, and now Bettesworth must
-repay it.
-
-He produced two membership cards in support of his statements. The
-first was the same which Mrs. Eggar had brought me, at that time
-bearing no receipt later than February, 1904, but now certifying a
-further payment of 1s. 6d. up to August. The other was a new card,
-giving receipt in full to February of this year. To judge by the ink,
-these two receipts had been given at the same time; in other words,
-they had been obtained by Mrs. Eggar in return for the money duly paid
-in by her. But it took me long to satisfy Bettesworth (if he was
-satisfied) that she had not "done" me out of three shillings on his
-behalf.
-
-And then there was his rent, which had been running on all the time
-that he was at the infirmary. He had brought the money for that now,
-to get out of my debt.
-
-Of course it was refused. In consideration of this rent, I said, I had
-not helped otherwise during his sickness, and I did not wish him to
-repay it. What he said to that I regret that I do not exactly
-remember, but it went somehow in this way:-- "You done a _lot_ for me,
-sir; more 'n you any call to. And I thinks of you...." He was unable
-to go on and express his meaning, but his tone rang very sincere. I
-did not find any ingratitude in him; nor was there any dishonesty in
-the purpose for which he had come to me.
-
-He, however, found dishonesty in the neighbours, who have bought his
-household goods and now hang back with the purchase money. So cheap,
-too, he had sold his things! "That landlord at the Swan said 'twas
-givin' of 'em away.... But what could I do?" Bettesworth urged. His
-brother-in-law had advised him "not to stand out for sixpence; 't
-wa'n't as if they was new things," and had warned him against giving
-trust. But what could he do? Even as it was, the trouble of attending
-to the business had been too much for him in his weak state. So, one
-had had a table, and another two saucepans, and so on; and now he
-could not get the money. Instead of twenty-two shillings which should
-have been received on Saturday, he found himself with no more than
-five; and this morning only another five shillings had come in.
-
-Yes, the people had "had" him; he was sure of that. There was "that
-Tom Beagley's wife.... She come to me Saturday sayin' Tom was on the
-booze and hadn't given her no money, so she couldn't pay me....
-'That's a lie,' our Tom says; 'he en't bin on the booze. He bin at
-work all the week, over here at Moorways.' So I told her I should have
-the things back, if she didn't pay me this mornin'." Other instances
-were generalized; Bettesworth thought himself cheated all round.
-
-By this time we had left the shed, and were standing in its shadow,
-where the wind blew up cold and draughty. "Let's get into the
-sunshine," I proposed.
-
-As we moved, "Wasn't it a day yesterday?" I remarked; and Bettesworth
-assented, "No mistake!" It had in fact been a Sunday of March gales,
-of furious rain and hail-storms, and then gay bursts of sunshine
-hurrying down the valley. With none to sweep it, the path where we
-stood was still bestrewn with a litter of dead twigs, which the east
-winds had left, but this fierce westerly wind had finally torn out
-from the lilac bushes. "It's a sort of pruning," I said, and was
-answered, "Yes, that must do a lot o' good. Done it better 'n you
-could ha' done, too." We found a sunny place, although still a
-draughty wind searched us out, and fast-changing clouds sometimes drew
-across the sunshine and left us shivering. "More showers," we
-predicted, "before the day is out."
-
-There, in the sunshine, Bettesworth coughed--a little painful cough
-without variety. It seemed as if it need not have begun, yet, having
-begun, need never cease. "You must get rid of that cough," said I.
-
-"I en't got strength to cough," he replied. Then he put his hands
-against the pit of his stomach. "That's where it hurts me. Sims to
-tear me all to pieces." I advised care in feeding, and avoidance of
-solids. "Bread an' butter's the only solid food I takes," he said.
-"Liz wanted me to have a kipper. 'Naw,' I says, 'I en't much of a fish
-man.' But I don't want it. I en't got no appetite." It was suggested
-that the warm weather presently would restore him; but he returned,
-very quietly; "I dunno. I sims to think I shan't last much longer. I
-got that idear. I can feel it, somehow."
-
-"How long have you felt like that?"
-
-"This six weeks I've had that sort o' feelin'." He went on to repeat
-what he had said to Jack in consequence. When he had got his bed and
-other things into Jack's house, "'It's all yours now,' I says. 'You
-take everything there is. All you got to do is to see me put away.'"
-
-His weakness was distressing to see, and he had to get back home
-somehow. Would a little more whisky help him? We adjourned to the
-kitchen, sat down there near the fire, and while the old man had his
-stimulant he talked of many things.
-
-At first, handing me the key of his cottage, he told of his cat, how
-plump she looked, and how she had welcomed him home in such fashion as
-to make Liz say with a laugh, "No call to ask whose cat she is!"
-Sometimes he thought of "gettin' old Kid to put a charge o' shot into
-her"; sometimes, of "puttin' her in a sack an' drownin' her." Either
-was more than he had the heart to do; yet he could not bear to think
-of his cat without a home. Would not Mrs. Norris take care of her,
-then?" Oh yes, she'd _feed_ her, but.... But Mrs. Norris can't _hear_,
-poor old soul. She bin a good ol' soul to me, though; and so've Kid."
-Of course I did not tell Bettesworth how old Nanny had lately talked
-of him.
-
-What to do about his cabbages puzzled him. He had paid old Carver Cook
-two shillings for digging the ground and planting them; and now that
-he had given up the cottage, there was this value like to be lost! He
-must get "whoever took the cot" to take to the cabbages too; they
-ought to. He didn't like to cut 'em down--never liked to do anybody
-else a bad turn, but.... Ultimately I promised to get the price
-allowed, in settling with his landlord.
-
-Through devious courses the conversation slid back to his nephew's
-family and household ways. Liz "don't sit down to dinner 'long o' the
-others." There are six boys besides her husband for her to wait upon,
-so that, were she to begin, "before she'd got a mouthful the others 'd
-be wantin' their second helpin'." The custom sounds barbarous--or
-shall I say archaic?--until one remembers that the husband and one or
-two of the boys must get home from work to dinner and back again
-within an hour. On Sunday afternoon "Jack was off to the town to this
-P.S.A. or whatever it is. He brought home another prize too.... A
-beautiful book--a foot by nine inches, and three or four inches thick!
-Jack _can_ read, no mistake!" Unfortunately he reads in a very loud
-voice, so that Bettesworth grows weary of it, in spite of his passion
-for being read to. On Saturday night Jack was reading the paper, and
-said, "'Like any more?' 'Not to-night, Jack; I be tired.' All about
-this war" (in Manchuria). "Sunday he said, 'Shall I read ye the paper,
-uncle? 'Tis nothin' but the war.' 'Then we won't have it to-day.'"
-
-Bettesworth's opinions on the war were tedious to me; he had so
-greatly misunderstood. He thought that, after Mukden, the Russians
-were retreating "right back into St. Petersburg," which would have
-been a retreat indeed!" But it ought to be stopped now"; the other
-Powers should interfere and say, "You've had your go in, and now you
-must get back into your own bounds." For the Japanese, of course,
-Bettesworth was full of admiration: "fighting without food!"... He
-exclaimed at their pluck and their prowess.
-
-Gradually his own memories of war were awaking, and at last, "The
-purtiest little soldiers I ever see was the Sardinians." He described
-their smartness; their pretty tight-fitting uniform. "They camped
-'longside o' we." Of their language "you could get to pick out a good
-many words" (I think he meant English words they used), "but it
-pestered 'em when they couldn't make ye understand.... But there, we
-was as bad.... Every nation has their own slang." The funniest
-Bettesworth ever heard was that of the Turks, "like a lot o' geese....
-I remember once a lot of 'em come up over the hill by our camp, with
-about four hundred prisoners. They didn't let us have 'em, but was
-takin' 'em on to their own camp; but they was so proud for us to see,
-an' they was caperin' and cuttin' and dancin' about, jest like a lot
-o' geese."
-
-Something reminded him of George Bryant and his present job; something
-else, of his own coal supply, now removed to Jack's; and that brought
-up the coal merchant's receipt, which he had found in his waistcoat
-pocket. He had given it to Liz, with his wife's little box full of
-receipts for coal, groceries, tea, and so on, and had recommended Liz
-to "put 'em on the fire." "You _be_ a careless old feller!" Liz
-retorted, and he repeated, laughing.
-
-He had been here nearly an hour, and at last I stood up. Bettesworth
-took the hint. He was looking the better for his whisky as he went
-off. But all the time, while he sat dreamily talking, he had had a
-very mild, placid, old man's expression, and all my harsher thoughts
-of him had quite slipped away.
-
-
-
-
-XXXVI
-
-
-_March 21, 1905._--There being no definite news of Bettesworth since
-he crept away that day, this afternoon I knocked at the door of Jack
-Bettesworth's cottage, where he is staying. Presently the old man
-himself opened to me. His cheeks were flushed and feverish. He led the
-way indoors, saying that he was all alone; and as we settled down (he
-still wearing his cap) I remarked that he did not seem to be "up to
-much," and he replied that I was right; "I got this here pleurisy, and
-armonium or something 'long with it." He had got up from bed, quite
-recently, to rest for an hour or two.
-
-He had seen the club doctor--Jack had fetched him on Sunday--"and you
-couldn't wish for a pleasanter gentleman. He sounded me all over," and
-sent out a plaster which "I'm wearin' now," Bettesworth said, "like
-one o' they poor-man's plasters." This reminded him of a similar one
-he had once had, of which he said that he "wore 'n for six months";
-and truly the old-fashioned "poor-man's plaster" was always alleged to
-be unremovable. Once properly plastered, the patient had to earn his
-name and wait until the thing should wear or "rot off," as
-Bettesworth phrased it. How this six-months' plaster--right round his
-waist, and "wide as a leather belt"--had been "gored" by his "old
-mother-in-law, or else 't'd ha' tore flesh and all off," I will not
-spend time in relating.
-
-Bettesworth had caught this new cold, he supposed, waiting for "they
-old women" to come and pay him for his furniture; who did not come to
-the old cottage at the time appointed, and kept him standing about.
-Nor have they yet paid all.
-
-Not unhappily, but comfortably, he looked up to the mantelpiece and
-said, "There's my old clock." I recognized the dingy old gabled
-mahogany case; and the tick sounded familiar, reminding me of the
-other rooms where I had heard it, and of the old wife who had been
-alive then. "Mrs. Smith had my other," said Bettesworth, "and she en't
-paid for 't yet. I shall have 'n back, if she don't. Jack persuaded me
-to go an' get 'n back last week. 'That's all right,' I says, 'only I
-can't get there.' He wanted to go instead of me, but I wouldn't have
-that. He might get sayin' more 'n what he ought. But I shall have the
-clock back if she don't pay."
-
-There also was his old mirror--he spoke of it--looking homely over the
-mantelpiece; and I heard of a few pictures saved, which Jack had taken
-out of their frames, to clean the glass, and had put back again. It
-seemed to be comforting to the old man to have these relics of his
-married life still about him; and in the midst of them he himself
-looked very comfortable; for, as his back was to the light (he sat in
-a Windsor chair with arms), I could not see the flush on his face. So
-pleasant was it to find him at last beside a clean hearth, warm and
-tidy and well cared-for, that I could not refrain from congratulating
-him. Yes, he acknowledged his good fortune; he was swift to praise his
-niece. "She looks after me," he said warmly, "as well as if I was a
-child. I en't bin so comfortable since I dunno when." Perhaps never
-before in his life. "Before I was bad myself, there was the poor old
-gal. I went through something with she. When I was away at work, I was
-always wonderin' about her."
-
-I had two shillings to hand over to him--the price obtained from his
-landlord for the cabbages left in the cottage garden; and in answer to
-inquiries as to his finances, he said that he had enough money to keep
-him going for a fortnight or so. But he was paying Jack for his board
-and lodging, and seemed fully alive to the desirability of continuing
-to do so.
-
-On Sunday morning there had come to see him his sister-in-law from
-Middlesham, to whom he complained of a brother-in-law's indifference.
-The complaints were reiterated to me. "Dick en't never bin near so
-much as to ask how I was gettin' on. I _told_ her he never come even
-to his poor old sister, till the night afore the funeral. And after
-all I've done for 'n, whenever he was in any trouble or wanted help
-hisself, I was always the fust one he sent for, if there was anything
-the matter with he, same as that time when he fell off the hayrick.
-Sent for me in the middle o' the night to go to the doctor's for 'n,
-when he'd got one of his own gals at home. It hurts me now, when I
-thinks of it sittin' here.... If he'd only jest come and say How do!
-But no...." We supposed that Dick feared lest he should be asked to
-give help in some way.
-
-Pleurisy and pneumonia or not--it was hard to believe that he had
-suffered from either, yet he had got hold of the words somehow--
-Bettesworth was at no loss that afternoon for interesting subjects of
-conversation. An inquiry how his sister-in-law was faring led to a
-talk about her two sons, of whom one is out of work. The other, a
-basket-maker (blind or crippled, I do not know which) lives at home,
-and has just got a lot of work come in. "Mostly stock work,"
-Bettesworth believed, "for some London firm he knows of." But besides
-this, he has a hundred stone jars from the brewery, to re-case with
-basket-work. The handles and bottoms are of cane, the rest "only
-skeleton work, as they calls it." Bettesworth always loved to know of
-technical things like this.
-
-Odd it is, I suggested, how every trade has its own terms of speech.
-"Yes, and its own tools too," added Bettesworth; and with deep
-interest he spoke of the tools this basket-maker uses for splitting
-his canes, dividing them "as fine!" And the tools are "sharp as
-lancets; and every tool with a special name for it."
-
-This reminded me to repeat to Bettesworth a similar account which a
-friend of mine had lately given me, and will publish, it may be hoped,
-of the Norfolk art of making rush collars. "Very nice smooth collars,"
-Bettesworth murmured appreciatively. But when I proceeded to tell how
-the art is likely to die, because the few men who understand it keep
-their methods secret, this stirred him. "Same," he said, "as them
-Jeffreys over there t'other side o' Moorways, what used to make these
-little wooden bottles you remembers seein'. They'd never let nobody
-see how 'twas done. But I never heared tell of anybody else ever
-makin' 'em anywhere."
-
-Yes, I remembered seeing these "bottles," like tiny barrels, slung at
-labouring men's backs when they trudged homewards, or lying with their
-clothes and baskets in the harvest-field or hop-garden. It was to the
-small bung-hole in the side that the thirsty labourer used to put his
-mouth, leaning back with the bottle above him. Whether the beer
-carried well and kept cool in these diminutive barrels I do not know;
-but certainly to the eye they had a rustic charm. So I could agree
-with Bettesworth's praises: "_Purty_ little bottles they got to be at
-last--even with glass ends to 'em, and white hoops. They used to boil
-'em in a copper--whether that was so's to bend the wood I dunno.
-Little ones from a pint up to three pints.... I had a three-pint one
-about somewheres, but I couldn't put my hand on 'n when I turned out
-t'other day. Eighteenpence was the price of a quart one--but they had
-iron hoops.... But they wouldn't let nobody see how they made 'em....
-There was them blacksmiths over there, again--_they_ wouldn't allow
-nobody to see how they finished a axe-head.
-
-"These Jeffreys never done nothing else but make these bottles, and go
-mole-catchin'. Rare mole-catchers they was: earnt some good money at
-it, too. But they had to walk miles for it. You can understand, when
-the medders was bein' laid up for grass they had to cover some ground,
-to get all round in time. I've seen 'em come into a medder loaded up
-with a great bundle o' traps: an' then they'd begin putting' in the
-rods--'cause they was allowed to cut what rods they wanted for it,
-where-ever they was workin', and they knowed purty near where a mole
-'d put his head up. 'Twas so much a field they got, from the farmer. I
-never knowed nobody else catch moles like they did, but they wouldn't
-show ye how they done it, or how they made their traps.
-
-"There was a man name o' Murrell--Sonny Murrell we always used to call
-'n--lived at Cashford. _He_ was a very good mole-catcher. One time the
-moles started in down Culverley medders, right away from Old Mill to
-Culverley Mill--it looked as if they'd bin tippin' cart-loads o'
-rubbish all over the medders. I never see such a slaughter as that
-was, done by moles, in all my creepin's." (I think "creepin's" was the
-word Bettesworth used, but his voice had sunk very low just here, and
-I could as easily hear the clock as him.) "But they sent for Sonny. He
-was a _clever_ old cock, in moles; they had to be purty 'cute to get
-round 'n--some did, though; you'll see how they'll push round a
-trap--but after he'd bin there a fortnight you couldn't tell as
-there'd bin any moles at all."
-
-One other topic which we briefly touched upon must not be omitted.
-Before my arrival Bettesworth had crept out to the gate by the road,
-he was saying, tempted by the loveliness of the sunshine; and hearing
-of it, I warned him to have a care of getting out in this easterly
-wind. Ah, he said, we might expect east winds for the next three
-months now, for this was the 21st of March, and "where the wind is at
-twelve o'clock on the 21st of March, there she'll bide for three
-months afterwards." So he had once firmly held; and he mentioned the
-theory now, though apparently with little faith in it. For when I
-laughed, he said, "I've noticed it a good many times, and sometimes it
-have come right and sometimes it haven't. But that old Dick Furlonger
-was the one. He said he'd noticed it hunderds o' times. We used to
-terrify 'n about that, afterwards--'cause he was a man not more 'n
-fifty; and we used to tease 'n, so's he'd get up an' walk out o' the
-room."
-
-
-
-
-XXXVII
-
-
-During April I was away from home a good deal, and neither saw much of
-Bettesworth nor heard about him anything of importance. He seems to
-have recovered a little strength, to enable him to creep about the
-village when the weather was at all fit, but the drizzling rains and
-the raw chill winds of that spring-time were not favourable to the old
-man, who had almost certainly had a slight touch of pleurisy, if
-nothing worse, earlier in the year.
-
-May, however, was not a week old before the weather brightened and
-grew splendid. The very sky seemed to lift in the serene warmth; and
-now, if ever he was to do so, Bettesworth should show some
-improvement.
-
-At first it almost looked as if he might rally. I remember passing
-through the village, in the dusk of a Sunday evening (the 7th of May),
-and there was Bettesworth, slowly toiling up the ascent to Jack's
-cottage, even at that late hour. It was too dark to distinguish his
-features, but by the lift of his chin and a suggestion of lateral
-curvature in his figure, I recognized him. He had been to the Swan,
-and was just going home, contented with his evening. The week that
-followed saw him here twice; and again on the 15th he came, and,
-finding me in the garden, was glad enough to be invited to a seat
-where he might rest.
-
-And then as we sat there together it became clear to me that he would
-never again be any better than he was now. The sunshine was soft and
-pleasant, where it alighted on his end of the seat, and the shade of
-the garden trees at my end was refreshing, but to him no summer day
-was to bring its gifts of renewed life any more. When he arrived, I
-had expected that presently, after a rest, it would be his wish to go
-farther into the garden and see how the crops promised; but he made no
-offer to move. To get so far had been all that he could do. His
-thighs, as could be seen by the clinging of the trousers to them, were
-lamentably shrunken. His body was wasting: only his aged mind retained
-any of his former vigour.
-
-A curious thing he told me, in connexion with the shrinking of his
-muscles. He had bared his thighs one evening, to show his
-"mates"--Bryant, George Stevens, and others--how thin they were; and
-by his own account the men had solemnly looked on at the queer piteous
-exhibition, acknowledging themselves shocked, and wondering how he
-could creep about at all. Bryant, by the way, had already told me of
-the incident, speaking compassionately. He added that Bettesworth
-offered to show his arms also, but that he had said, "No, Fred, you
-no call to trouble. I can take your word for it without seein'."
-
-Sitting there weary in the sunshine, Bettesworth was in a melancholy
-humour. "A gentleman on the road," he said, had met him the previous
-day, and remarked "to his wife what was with him, 'That old gentleman
-looks as if he bin ill.' 'So he have,' old George Stevens says, cause
-he was 'long with me. He" (the gentleman) "looked at my hands and
-says, 'Why, your hands looks jest as if they was dyin' off.' I dunno
-what he meant; but he called his wife and said, 'Don't his hands look
-jest as if they was dyin' off?' And she said so they did.... I dunno
-who he was: he was a stranger to me. But what should you think he
-meant by that?"
-
-Mournfully the old man held out his knotted hand for my opinion. He
-was plainly worried by the odd phrase, and fancied, I believe, that
-the "gentleman" had seen some secret token of death in his hands.
-
-The instinctive will to live was still strong in him, sustained by the
-conservatism of habit, and in opposition to his reason. According to
-Bryant, he said a day or two before this, "I prays for 'em to carry me
-up Gravel Hill"; and that is the way from his lodging to the
-churchyard.
-
-
-_May 17._--Once more, on the 17th of May, he found his way here. Not
-obviously worse, he complained of having coughed all night, and he was
-going to try the remedy suggested by a neighbour: a drink made by
-shredding a lemon, pouring boiling water over it, adding sugar.... He
-was more cheerful, however. He sat in the sunshine, and chatted in his
-kindliest manner, chiefly about his neighbours.
-
-There was Carver Cook, for instance. He was seventy-seven years old,
-and fretting because he was out of work. "I en't earnt a crown, not in
-these last three weeks," he had told Bettesworth. On the previous
-afternoon, just as it was beginning to rain, the two old men had met
-near the public-house, and gone in together out of the wet; and
-"Carver" standing a glass of ale, there they stayed until the rain
-slackened, and had a very happy, comfortable two hours. I asked what
-Bettesworth's old friend had to live upon.
-
-"Well," Bettesworth said, "he've got that cot; and he've saved money.
-Oh yes, he've got money put by. But he says if it don't last out he
-shall sell the cot. He shan't study nobody. None of his sons an'
-daughters don't offer to help 'n, and never gives 'n nothin'. His
-garden he does all hisself; and when he wants any firin' or wood, he
-gets a hoss an' gets it home hisself. But old Car'line, he says, is
-jest as contented now as ever she was in her life. 'Why don't ye look
-in and see her?' he says. But I says, 'Well, Carver, I never was much
-of a one for pokin' into other people's houses.'" He paused, allowing
-me to suggest that perhaps he preferred other people to come and see
-him. But to that he demurred. "No.... I likes to meet 'em _out_; an'
-then you can go in somewhere and have a glass with 'em, if you mind
-to."
-
-Thoroughly to Bettesworth's taste, again, as it is to the groom's
-taste to talk of horses, or to the architect's to discuss new
-buildings, was a little narrative he had of another neighbour's work
-in the fields. "Porter's brother," he said, "started down there at
-Priestley's Friday mornin', and got the sack dinner-time." How? Well,
-it was a job at hoeing young "plants" in the field, at which the man
-got on very well at first; but presently he came to "four rows o'
-cabbage and then four rows o' turnips," and there the ground was so
-full with weeds that to hoe it properly was impossible. The hoe would
-strike into a tangle of "lily," or bindweed, with tendrils trailing
-"as fur as from here to that tree" (say four or five yards); and when
-pulled at, the lily proved to have turned three or four times round a
-plant, which came away with it. "So when the foreman come and saw, he
-says, 'I dunno, Porter--I almost thinks you better leave off.' 'Well,
-I'd jest as soon,' Porter says, 'for I can't seem to satisfy
-_myself_.'" So he left off, and the foreman supposed they would have
-to plough the crop in and plant again.
-
-It was pleasant enough to me to sit in the afternoon sunshine and
-hear this talk of village folk and outdoor doings, but after a little
-while I was called away, and did not see Bettesworth's departure. I
-should have watched it, if I had known the truth; for, once he had got
-outside the gate, he had set foot for the last time in this garden.
-
-
-
-
-XXXVIII
-
-
-_June 9, 1905._--Some three weeks later, not having in the interval
-seen anything of Bettesworth, I was on the point of starting to look
-him up, when his niece came to the door. She had called expressly to
-beg that I would go and visit him, because he seemed anxious to see
-me. He was considerably worse, in her opinion; indeed, for the greater
-part of the week--in which there had been cold winds with rain--he had
-kept his bed and lain there dozing. Whenever he woke up, he had the
-impression either that it was early morning or else late evening; and
-once or twice he had asked, quite early in the day, whether Jack was
-come home yet.
-
-On reaching the cottage I found him in his bed upstairs. Certainly he
-had lost strength since I saw him. At first his voice was husky, and
-he was inclined to cry at his own feebleness; soon, however, he
-recovered his habitual quick, quiet speech, though a touch of
-weariness and debility remained in it. Stripping back the sleeve of
-his bed-gown he exhibited his arm: the muscle had disappeared, and the
-arm was no bigger than a young boy's. He shed tears at the sight,
-himself. Nor was he without pain. As he lay there that morning his
-legs, he said, had felt "as if somebody was puttin' skewers into 'em,
-right up the shins"; but he had rubbed vaseline over them, and after
-about half an hour the pain diminished. The doctor, visiting, had said
-"Poor old gentleman"; and, to him, not much more. "Old age--worn out,"
-was the simple diagnosis he had furnished downstairs, to Liz.
-
-Another visitor had called--who but the owner of that cottage from
-which the Bettesworths had been compelled to turn out two years ago? I
-do not think Mr. ---- recognized Bettesworth. He had merely heard of
-an old man in bad plight--an old Crimean soldier, too--and he wished
-to be helpful. "And a very good friend to me he was!" Bettesworth said
-heartily, in a sort of emotional burst, losing control of his voice
-and crying again. Mr. ---- had "come tearin' up the stairs--none o'
-they downstairs didn't know who he was," and had spoken
-compassionately. "'What you wants,' he says, 'is feedin' up--port
-wine!--and you shall have it.'" He was told that the doctor had
-recommended whisky. "'Very well. When I gets home I'll send ye over a
-bottle, the best that money can buy.'" Having left, "he come hollerin'
-back again: 'Here! here's five shillin's for him!'" But, said
-Bettesworth to me, "I never spent it on jellies an' things; I thought
-it might be put to better use than that."
-
-Besides this unexpected friend, Bettesworth told me that a Colonel
-resident in the parish was moving on his behalf, endeavouring to get
-him a pension for his services in the Crimea. "But that en't no use,"
-the old man said; "I en't got my papers," or at any rate he had not
-the essential ones. He tried to account for their disappearance: "Ye
-see, I've had several moves, an' this last one there was lots o'
-things missin' that I never knowed what become of 'em."
-
-He chatted long, and rationally enough, in his customary vein, but
-saying nothing very striking or particularly characteristic. There
-were some pleasant remarks on one "Peachey" Phillips, a coal-cart man.
-Peachey "looks after his old mother at Lingfield," and is "a good chap
-to work" (a "chap" of fifty years old, I should judge), but has been
-hampered by want of education. According to Bettesworth, "he might
-have had some _good_ places if he'd had any schoolin'," and he had
-regretfully confessed it to Bettesworth. "Cert'nly he's better 'n he
-was. His little 'ns what goes to school--he've made they learn him a
-little; but still.... Well, you can't get on without it. Nobody ever
-ought to be against schoolin'.... Yes, a good many is, but nobody
-never ought to be against it. I don't hold with all this drillin' and
-soldierin'; but readin', and summin', and writin', and to know how to
-right yourself...."
-
-As Bettesworth lay in bed there upstairs, and unable to see much but
-his bedroom walls and their cheap pictures, for the window was rather
-high up and narrow, his mind was still out of doors. He inquired about
-several details in the garden; and particularly he wanted to know if a
-young hedge was yet clipped, in which he had taken much interest. It
-chanced that a man was working on it that afternoon; and Bettesworth's
-thought of it therefore struck me as somewhat remarkable. Evidently he
-was longing to see the garden; and though we did not know then that
-the desire would never be gratified, still that was the probability,
-and perhaps he realized it. He was a little tearful, as the time came
-for me to leave him.
-
-After this I tried to make a point of seeing him once a week. Friday
-afternoons were the times most convenient, and the following Sunday
-commonly afforded the leisure for recording the visits. I give the
-accounts of them pretty much as they stand in my book.
-
-
-_June 18, 1905 (Sunday Morning)._--I saw Bettesworth on Friday
-afternoon. His voice was husky, and feebler than I have before heard
-it; but then in every way he was weaker, and seemed to have given up
-hope; in fact, he said that he wished it was over, though not quite in
-those words. He complained of pain in his chest and about the
-diaphragm, and in his legs. I did not acknowledge to him that he
-seemed worse to me; but visitors of his own sort practise no such
-reticence. He told me that Mrs. Blackman, Mrs. Eggar and others had
-seen him, and they all said, "Oh dear, Fred, how bad you looks!"
-Carver Cook's observation was yet more pointed: "Every time I sees ye,
-you looks worse 'n you did the time afore." Bettesworth related all
-this almost as if talking of some third person.
-
-The Vicar, lest the higher purpose of his visits should be overlooked
-if he went to Bettesworth as alms-giver too, had entrusted me with a
-few shillings for the old man, who received them gladly, but seemed
-equally pleased to have been remembered. When I handed the money over,
-and named the giver, "Oh ah!" he said, "he come to see me. I was
-layin' with my face to the wall, and Liz come up and says, 'Here's the
-Vicar come to see ye.' 'The Vicar!' I says, 'what do _he_ want to see
-me for?' I reckon he must have heard me say it. He set an' talked...."
-But Bettesworth did not vouchsafe any information as to the interview.
-When well and strong, he had been suspicious of the clergy; now, I
-believe, he was a little uncomfortable with a feeling that he had made
-a hole in his manners.
-
-Feeble though he was, on the previous day he had crept downstairs, he
-said, and even out and to the corner of the road forty yards away. I
-think it must have been on some similar expedition that those women
-saw him, and uttered their discouraging exclamations upon his look of
-ill-health; but the desire to be up and out was incurable in him.
-Yesterday, however, he fell, and had to be helped home, where he
-literally crawled upstairs on hands and knees, exhausted and
-breathless. So now, since the breathlessness troubled him, and since
-he knew me to have had bronchitis, did I know, he asked, "anything as
-'d ease it"? Eagerly he asked it, with a most pitiful reliance upon
-me; but I had to confess that I knew no cure; and the poor old man
-seemed as if a support he had clutched at had disappeared. Drearily he
-spoke of his condition. He couldn't eat: a pint of milk was all he had
-been able to take yesterday; the same that morning. Liz had said, "'We
-got a nice little bit o' hock--couldn't ye eat a bit o' that?'" and
-had brought him a piece, but he "couldn't face it." "But what's goin'
-to become of ye?" she exclaimed, "if you don't eat nothing?" But he
-couldn't. His mouth was so dry; he was unable to swallow anything
-solid. Was there anything I could get him, that he would fancy? He
-hesitated; then, "Well, ... I _should_ like a bit o' rhubarb. They had
-some here t'other day--little bits o' sticks no bigger 'n your finger.
-And they boys set down to it.... 'En't ye goin' to spare me _none_?' I
-says." ... The story wilted away, leaving me with a belief that none
-had been spared for him. So I promised him some rhubarb, and the next
-day a small tart was made and sent over to him. The bearer returned
-saying that Liz, seeing it, had laughed: "We got plenty, and he's had
-several lots." If this is true, as it probably is, Bettesworth's
-delusion on the point is the first instance of senility attacking his
-intellect.
-
-For although on this Friday his usual garrulity about other topics
-than his illness was noticeably diminished, still in his handling of
-the subjects he did touch upon his strong mental grip was no wise
-impaired. From Alf Stevens, who helped him home, he went on to Alf's
-father, old George, who "en't so wonderful grand" in health, and to
-Alf's brother, who "boozes a bit," being out of work and unsettled,
-"or may wander off no tellin' where" in search of a job. Being now
-quartered at home, "he don't offer to pay his old father nothin'.
-P'r'aps of a Sat'day he'll bring home a joint o' meat.... But a very
-good bricklayer." Bettesworth has the whole situation in all its
-details under review before him. Moreover, this bricklayer out of work
-led him to speak of a serious matter, not previously known to me
-getting about the world, but to him lying in bed very well known--the
-alarming scarcity of work this summer. He named a number of men
-unemployed in the parish. I added another name to the list--that of a
-carpenter. "Ne'er a better tradesman in the district; but en't done
-nothin' for months," Bettesworth murmured unhesitatingly in his
-enfeebled voice. "And So-and-so" (he mentioned a local contractor) "is
-goin' to sack a dozen of his carters to-morrow, I'm told...."
-
-The old man lay there, aware of these things; and as I write the
-thought crosses my mind that a valuable organizing force has been left
-undeveloped and lost in Bettesworth.
-
-It looks more and more doubtful if he will linger on until the autumn.
-
-
-_June 25, 1905 (Sunday)._--It did not occur to me at the time, but
-after I got away from seeing Bettesworth on Friday a resemblance
-struck me between his look of almost abject helplessness and that of
-poor old Hall, whom I saw at the infirmary and who is since dead.
-
-In the morning, with extreme difficulty, and his niece helping him,
-Bettesworth had got into the front bedroom while his own bed was being
-made and his room cleaned. To that extent has he lost strength in the
-last few weeks. Sometimes his niece chides him (kindly, I feel sure)
-for being so cast-down, but he says, "I can't help it, and 'ten't no
-use for anybody to tell me not. It hurts me to think that a little
-while ago I was strong and ready to do anything for anybody else, and
-now I got to beg 'em to come an' do anything for me."
-
-I suspect that he gives some trouble. Fancies and the unreason
-characteristic of old age appear--for instance, about his food. He
-cannot take solids: they go dry in his mouth and he is unable to
-swallow them; yet he begged for some one to buy him a slice or two of
-ham the other day. He "seemed to have had a fancy for it this
-fortnight." All he takes, on his own evidence, is a little milk.
-
-He confessed to being occasionally light-headed. "I sees all the
-people I knows, in this room here. After I got back into bed to-day,
-there was three fellers leanin' over the foot o' the bed, lookin' at
-me; and one of 'em said, 'I reckon I shall get six months if I don't
-quit the neighbourhood.' I sprung forward--'I'll break your head if
-you don't clear out of _here_!' and I was goin' to hit 'n, an' then he
-was gone."
-
-In telling this the old man suited his action to the tale, and again
-sat upright, his thin grey hair tumbled, his jaw fallen, his eyes
-hopeless for very weakness. It was then that he looked so much like
-old Hall.
-
-He was wishing to be shaved, but could get nobody to do it for him. A
-labourer across the valley had been sent to: "He'd ha' come an' done
-it right enough, only he has rheumatics so bad he can't hold the
-razor."
-
-There was not much talk of the old kind; and for the first time in my
-acquaintance with Bettesworth I had to search for topics of
-conversation. One subject was raised by my mention of a neighbouring
-farmer who proposed to begin cutting his late hay next week. "Ah, with
-a machine," said Bettesworth; "he can't git the men. 'R else he used
-to say he'd never have a machine so long as he could git men to mow
-for him. Billy Norris and his brother" (elder brother to Kid Norris)
-"mowed for 'n eighteen years" in succession.... "They'd _live_ in a
-fashion nobody else couldn't. Never no trouble to they about their
-food. They'd just gather a few old sticks an' bits o' rubbish, and
-make a fire--nothin' but a little smoke an' flare--an' stick a bloater
-or a rasher on a pointed stick and hold it up again' the flare an'
-smoke jest to warm it, and down he'd go, and they'd be up and on
-mowin' again. Then there was a barrel o' beer tumbled down into the
-medder--they used to roll 'n into one o' they water-gripes and put a
-little o' the damp grass over 'n, and the beer 'd keep as _cool_....
-And when he was empty then he'd be took away and another brought
-in.... But 'twas tea--that's what they drunk for breakfast. Jest have
-a drink o' beer when they started mowin'; then go on for an hour or
-two. Then one of 'em 'd go back to where their kit was, an' make the
-tea in the drum, an' get a little flare an' smoke; an' they'd jest
-hold their bloater on a pinted stick again' the smoke--I've laughed at
-'em many's a time. Dick Harding over here used to say 't'd starve he
-to work 'long with 'em; he could do the mowin' but he couldn't put up
-with the food. That was their way, though. If they was out with the
-ballast-train or the railway-cuttin', they'd sit down on the bank--all
-they wanted was a little smoky fire." Bettesworth laughed a little,
-amused at these sturdy men, and at his own description of their
-cooking.
-
-I asked: "You never did much mowing yourself, did you?"
-
-He hesitated, yet scarcely two seconds, and then replied: "Not much. I
-helped mow Holt Park once. My father-in-law--_Foreman_, we used to
-call 'n--was at it--what lived where Mrs. Warner is, and I lived where
-Porter do. And the Foreman sent for me to go and help. I didn't want
-to go--'tis hard work; anybody might have mowin' for me; but at last I
-agreed to go. But law! the second mornin' I was like that I didn't
-hardly know how to crawl down there" the three miles. "It got better
-after an hour or two.... But if a feller goes mowin' for eight or nine
-weeks on end, it do give 'n a doin'."
-
-Thus for a little while Bettesworth chatted, in the vein that had
-first attracted me to him. Shall I ever hear him again, I wonder? We
-tried other subjects: the washed-out state of our lane and the best
-way to remedy it, the garden, the celery, the position of this or that
-crop. It entertained him for a few minutes; then he failed to seize
-some quite simple idea, and knew that he had failed, and said
-despondently, "I can't keep things in my mind like I used to."
-
-
-_July 2 (Sunday)._--Perhaps Bettesworth would have been more like
-himself on Friday, if I had called at the usual afternoon hour,
-instead of in the morning. As it was, he seemed fretful and
-impatient, and his face was flushed. I did not perceive that he was
-noticeably weaker, but rather that he was irritable. He had pain in
-his chest and side; and he said that at night, when he lies with his
-hands clasped over his waist, his chest is full of "such funny noises,
-enough to frighten ye to hear 'em." His temper was embittered and
-angry, especially angry, when some reference was made to his being in
-the infirmary in the spring. For he affirmed, "If I hadn't ha' went
-there, I should ha' bin a man, up and at work _now_. I told the doctor
-there, 'If I was to bide here, you'd _starve_ me to death.'"
-Embittered he was against his acquaintances, so that he almost wept.
-"It hurts me so, to think how good I bin to 'em; and now when I be bad
-myself there en't none of 'em comes near me." He instanced his sister
-and her two sons at Middlesham; and his brother-in-law too: "Look what
-I done for him!" If only he could get about! Get so that he could sit
-and feel the air! But his bedroom is upstairs, and he is too weak to
-leave it. The previous night, trying to get out of bed, he "almost
-broke his neck," falling backwards with his head against the bedstead.
-"I thought I'd split 'n open," he said, "but I never called nobody.
-Jack said, 'Why hadn't ye called me?'" ... The old man's talk was too
-incoherent, too rambling, to be followed well at the time or
-remembered now.
-
-We discussed a local beanfeast excursion to Ramsgate, which was to
-take place the following day; and he brightened up to recall how he
-had joined a similar trip to Weymouth some years ago. It was his last
-holiday, in fact. Even now it made him laugh, to remember how old Bill
-Brixton had gone on that day; and he laughed a little scornfully at
-the trouble they had taken to enjoy themselves, and the fatigues they
-endured. Then there came just a touch of his old manner: "I had a
-little bottle with me and filled it up with a quarte'n o' whisky; and
-when we was comin' home it seemed to brighten ye up. I says to old
-Bill, 'Put that to your lips,' I says. So he tried. 'Why, it's
-whisky!' he says. But that little wouldn't hurt 'n. 'Tis a _lot_ o'
-whisky you gets for fo'pence! 'Twouldn't have hurt 'n, if he'd took it
-bottle and all."
-
-These monster excursions had never really appealed to Bettesworth's
-old-fashioned taste. Rather than be cooped up in a train, I remember
-he used to say, give him a quiet journey on the open road, afoot or by
-waggon, so that a man may "see the course o' the country," and if he
-comes to anything interesting, stop and look at it. And now, on his
-bed, the ill-humour he was displaying that morning vented itself
-again, in reference to a project he had heard of for another
-excursion. The Oddfellows' annual fete was at hand; and, he said, with
-a sneering intonation, "The secretary and some of they" (respectable
-new-fangled people, he meant) "wanted 'em to go to Portsmouth. So they
-called a full meetin', an' the meetin'"--ah, I have forgotten the
-turn of speech. It suggested that these officious persons, interfering
-to dictate how the working man should take his pleasure, had met with
-a well-deserved snub, since the excursion was voted down and the
-customary dinner was to be held. To myself, as to Bettesworth, this
-seemed the preferable course: "It's really better," I said. Then he,
-"So _'tis_, sir. It's the old, natural _way_. We _al_ways reckoned to
-have _one day_ in the year, when we all had holiday. And then
-everybody could join in--the women with their little childern, and
-all. 'Tis _nice_...."
-
-Mentioning the endeavours of the Colonel and Mr. ---- to get a pension
-for him, I said, "They're very interested in it." "More so than what I
-be," he answered. Still, I urged, it was worth trying for; and as for
-the lost papers, duplicates of them might be obtained, if we knew the
-regiment. I was saying this, when with a sort of pride, though still
-irritably, the old man broke in, "I can tell ye _all_ that: regiment,
-an' regimental number, and officers, and all." At that I asked what
-was his regiment?
-
-He stiffened his head and neck (was it just one last flicker of the so
-long forgotten soldier's smartness?) and said, "Forty-eighth, and my
-number was three nought nought seven.... I could name twenty people
-that knowed about my service. There's old Crum Callingham. He used to
-work for Sanders then, the coal merchant. The day I came back, didn't
-we have a booze, too! He was at work in Sanders's hop-garden, and I
-found 'n out, and two more, and I kep' sendin' for half-gallons....
-Yes, that was the same day as I got 'ome--from Portsmouth."
-
-
-That afternoon I happened to meet old Beagley--the retired bricklayer,
-and recently Bettesworth's landlord. He spoke of Bettesworth with more
-than usual appreciation, saying that he had been a strong man, as if
-he meant unusually strong. His sight must have been bad "thirty or
-forty years," Beagley estimated. He (Beagley) remembered first
-noticing it when he dropped his trowel from a scaffold, and sent
-Bettesworth down the ladder for it. He observed that Bettesworth could
-not see the trowel, but groped for it, as one gropes in the dark,
-until his hand touched it. But, added Beagley, "he'd mix mortar as
-well as any man I ever knew. I've had him workin' for me, and noticed.
-I'd as soon have had him as anybody. He couldn't have _seen_ the lumps
-of lime, but I suppose 'twas something in the _feel_ of it on the
-shovel. At any rate, he always _done_ it; and I've often thought about
-it."
-
-
-_July 14 (Friday)._--I saw Bettesworth this afternoon, and it looks as
-if I shall not see him many times more.
-
-Since my last visit to him a fortnight ago, the change in him is very
-marked. His niece, downstairs, prepared me for it. He was very ill,
-she said, and so weak that now they have to hold him up to feed him.
-Of course he can take no solids; not even a mouthful of sponge-cake
-for which he had had a fancy. His feet and the lower parts of his body
-are swelling: the doctor says it is dropsy setting in, and reports
-further that his heart is "wasting away." Hearing all this--yes, and
-how Mrs. Cook thought he should be watched at night, for he could not
-last much longer--hearing this, I fancied when I got upstairs that
-there was a look as of death on the shrunken cheeks: they had a
-corpse-like colour. Possibly it was only my fancy, but it was not
-fancy that his flesh had fallen away more than ever.
-
-It has been an afternoon of magnificent summer weather, not sultry,
-but sumptuous; with vast blue sky, a few slow-sailing clouds, a
-luxuriant west wind tempering the splendid heat. The thermometer in my
-room stands at 80 deg. while I am writing. So Bettesworth lay just covered
-as to his body and legs with a counterpane, showing his bare neck,
-while his sleeves falling back to the elbow displayed his arms. From
-between the tendons the flesh has gone; and the skin lies fluted all
-up the forearm, all up the neck. But at the foot of the bed his feet
-emerging could be seen swollen and tight-skinned. His ears look
-withered and dry, like thin biscuit.
-
-He did not complain much of pain. Sometimes, "if anything touches the
-bottom o' my feet, it runs all up my legs as if 'twas tied up in
-knots." Again, "what puzzles the doctor is my belly bein' like
-'tis--puffed up and hard as a puddin' dish." The doctor has not
-mentioned dropsy, to him. Enough, perhaps, that he has told him that
-his heart was "wasting away." "That's a bad sign," commented
-Bettesworth, to me. He said he had asked the doctor, "'Is there any
-chance o' my gettin' better?' 'Not but a very little,' he said. 'If
-you do, it'll be a miracle.'" At that, Bettesworth replied, "Then I
-wish you'd give me something to help me away from here." "Why, where
-d'ye want to go to?" the doctor asked; and was answered, "Up top o'
-Gravel Hill" to the churchyard. "I told him that, straight to his
-head," said the old man.
-
-He lay there, thinking of his death. Door and window were wide open,
-and a cooling air played through the room. Through the window, from my
-place by the bed, I could see all the sunny side of the valley in the
-sweltering afternoon heat; could see and feel the splendour of the
-summer; could watch, right down in the hollow, a man hoeing in a tiny
-mangold-field, and the sunshine glistening on his light-coloured
-shirt. Bettesworth no doubt knew that man; had worked like that
-himself on many July afternoons; and now he lay thinking of his
-approaching death. But I thought, too, of his life, and spoke of it:
-how from the hill-top there across the valley you could not look round
-upon the country in any part of the landscape but you would everywhere
-see places where he had worked. "Yes: for a hundred miles round," he
-assented.
-
-It came up naturally enough, I remember, in the course of desultory
-talk, with many pauses. He had had "gentry" to see him, he was saying,
-and he named the Colonel, and Mr. ----. "Who'd have thought ever
-_he_'d ha' bin like that to me?" he exclaimed gratefully. And each of
-these visitors had spoken of his "good character"; had "liked all they
-ever heared" about him, and so on; and it was then that I remarked
-about the places where he had worked, as proof that his good character
-had been well earned. But as we talked of his life, all the time the
-thought of his death was present. I fancied once that he wished to
-thank me for standing by him, and could not bring it off, for he began
-telling how the Colonel had said, "'You've got a very good friend to
-be thankful for.'" But it was easy to turn this. The Colonel too is a
-friend. He had left an order for a bottle of whisky to be bought when
-the last one sent by Mr. ---- is empty; and he has not given up yet
-the endeavour to get Bettesworth's Crimean service recognized with a
-pension.
-
-I cannot recall all that passed; indeed, it was incoherent and
-mumbling, and I did not catch all. He revived that imaginary grievance
-against his neighbour, for drawing money from me to pay his club when
-he went to the infirmary. It appeared that Jack had been going into
-the matter, and had satisfied Bettesworth that the payments had never
-been really owing; so they hoped that, now I knew, I should take
-steps to be righted. Bettesworth seemed to find much relief in the
-feeling that his own character was cleared from blame. "Some masters
-might have give me the sack for it," he said, "when I got back to
-work." To this he kept reverting, as if in the hope of urging me to
-have justice; and then he would say, "There, I'm as glad it's all
-right as if anybody had give me five shillin's." To humour him I
-professed to be equally glad; it was not worth while to trouble him
-with what I knew very well to be the truth--that Mrs. Eggar was in the
-right, and had really done him a service.
-
-What more? He said once, "I thinks I shall go off all in a moment.
-Widder Cook was here ... she was talkin' about her husband Cha'les.
-They'd bin tater-hoein', an' when they left off she said, 'a drop o'
-beer wouldn't hurt us.' 'No,' he said, 'a drop o' beer and a bit o'
-bread an' cheese, an' then git off to bed.' So they sent for the beer.
-And they hadn't bin in bed half an hour afore she woke, and he'd
-moved; an' she put her arm across 'n an' there he was, dead." So the
-widow had told Bettesworth; and now he repeated it to me--the last
-tale I shall ever hear from him, I fancy, and told all mumblingly with
-his poor old dried-up mouth. He added, almost crying, "I prays God to
-let me go like that." We agreed that it was a merciful way to be
-taken.
-
-It still interested him to hear of the garden, and he asked how the
-potatoes were coming up, and listened to my account of the peas and
-carrots, but said he was "never much of a one" for carrots. At home I
-had left George Bryant lawn-mowing. Well, Bettesworth too had mown my
-lawn in hot weather, and smiled happily at the reminiscence. He smiled
-again when, recalling how I had known him now for fourteen years, I
-reminded him of the great piece of trenching which had been his first
-job for me.
-
-So presently I came away, out on to the sunny road, thinking, "I shall
-not see him many more times." From just there I caught a glimpse of
-Leith Hill, blue with twenty intervening miles of afternoon sunlight:
-twenty miles of the England Bettesworth has served.
-
-Half-way down the hill the old road-mender, straightening up from his
-work as I passed, asked, "Can ye keep yerself warm, sir?" And I
-laughed, "Pretty nearly. How about you?" "It _boils_ out," he said.
-The perspiration stood on his face while he spoke of motor-cars, and
-the dust they raised; but to me dust and swift-travelling cars and all
-seemed to tell of summer afternoon. And though the reason is obscure,
-somehow it seems fit that possibly my last talk with Bettesworth
-should be associated with the blue distant English country, and the
-summer dust, and that sunburnt old folk jest which consists in asking,
-when it is so particularly and exhilaratingly warm as to-day, "Can you
-keep yourself warm?"
-
-
-_July 21._--The weather was as brilliantly hot this afternoon as a
-week ago; and Bettesworth's bedroom looked just as before; but the old
-man was changed. He lay with eyes looking glazed between the half-shut
-lids, and he was breathing hard. His niece accompanied me upstairs;
-but he took no notice of our entry until she mentioned my name, upon
-which he turned a little and put up a feeble hand for me to take. He
-was in a sort of stupor, though he seemed to rouse a little, and to
-understand one or two remarks I ventured. But when he spoke it was as
-if utterly exhausted, and we could not always make out his meaning. In
-the hope of helping him to realize that I was with him, I told of the
-garden, and how Bryant was mowing again, though in this hot weather
-the lawn was "getting pretty brown, _you_ know." "Yes," he said
-feebly, "and if you don't keep it cut middlin' short, it soon goes
-wrong." Next I reported on the potatoes--how well they were coming:
-"the same sort as you planted for me last year." "Ah--the _Victoria_,
-wa'n't they?" The question was a mere murmur. "No, _Duke of York_. And
-don't you remember what a crop we had, when you planted 'em?" There
-came the faintest of smiles, and "None of what I planted failed much,
-did they?" Indeed, no. The shallots he had planted during his last
-day's work had just been harvested; the beans which he sowed the same
-day had but now yielded their last picking. I told him they were
-over. "You can't expect no other," he said, meaning at this time of
-year and in such dry weather. I mentioned the celery, reminding him,
-"You _have_ sweated over watering celery, haven't you?" Again he just
-smiled, and I fancy this smile was the last sign of rational interest
-and pride in his labour.
-
-For after this he became incoherent and wandering. Dimly we made out
-that he "wanted to put them four poles against the veranda,"
-apparently meaning my veranda. "What for?" his niece asked. "To keep
-the wall up." Then I, "We won't trouble about that to-day," as if he
-had been consulting me about the work, and he seemed satisfied to have
-my decision. But I had stayed too long; so, grasping his hand, I said
-"Good-bye." He asked, "Are ye goin' to the club?" (He was thinking of
-the Oddfellows' fete arranged for to-morrow week, and had been
-wondering all day, his niece said, not to hear the band.) "It isn't
-till to-morrow week," we said. "How they do keep humbuggin' about," he
-muttered crossly. "Yes, but they've settled it now," we assured him.
-
-I have promised to go again to see him--to-morrow or on Sunday,
-because, according to his niece, he had been counting on my visit, and
-asking for several days "if this was Friday."
-
-The thought came to me on my way home, that he is dying without any
-suspicion that anyone could think of him with admiration and
-reverence.
-
-
-_July 25 (Tuesday)._--Bettesworth died this evening at six o'clock.
-
-
-_July 28 (Friday)._--This afternoon I went to the funeral.
-
-
-A week earlier (almost to the hour) when I parted from him, he seemed
-too ill to take his money--too unconscious, I mean. I offered it to
-his niece, standing at the foot of the bed; but she said, glancing
-meaningly towards him, "I think he'd like to take it, sir." So I
-turned to him and put the shillings into his hand, which he held up
-limply. "Your wages," I said.
-
-For a moment he grasped the silver, then it dropped out on to his bare
-chest and slid under the bed-gown, whence I rescued it, and, finding
-his purse under the pillow, put his last wages away safely there.
-
-On the Saturday I saw him, but I think he did not know me: and that
-was the last time. The thought of him keeps coming, wherever I go in
-the garden; but I put it aside for fear of spoiling truer because more
-spontaneous memories of him in time to come.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer, by
-George Sturt (AKA George Bourne)
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