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 £70. He may have subsequently added £50 to its
value. Now, however, his widow was able to sell it for something like
£220. 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 £20 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."