"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.