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.