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."