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?"