Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer Part 15

"They _calls_ 'n Worcester: we dunno whether 'tis his right name, or only a nickname. He ought to _ha'_ Worcester! He's like 'nough to cop it, too!"

FOOTNOTE:

[3] The earlier portions of this chapter have already appeared in _Country Life_.

XXV

_June 20._--On the afternoon of June 20th, once more Bettesworth was at work among the potatoes, yet not in the circ.u.mstances of last year, when we were rejoicing in the rain. According to my book, this was "a real summer afternoon--Hindhead showing the desired dazzling blue; soft high clouds floating from the westwards; a soft wind occasionally stirring the trees." Blackbirds, it seems, were flitting about the garden to watch their young, warning them, too, with an incessant "twit-twit, twit-twit"; and no doubt, besides this June sound, there was that of garden tools struck into the soil.

And yet, for me, rather than the far-reaching daylight or the vibrating afternoon air, another of the great characteristics of English summer clings to this and the following few fragments about Bettesworth. I might look away to Hindhead and rejoice in the sense of vast warm distance; I might admire the landscape, and practise my aesthetics; but he was becking in amongst the potatoes, and it is his point of view, not mine, that has survived and given its tinge to these talks.

Forgetful, both of us, that the same subject in almost the same place had occupied us a year ago, we spoke of his work; and first he admired the potatoes, and then he praised his beck. "Nice tool," he said. I took hold of it: "Hand-made, of course?" "Yes; belonged to my old gal's gran'mother. There's no tellin' how old he is."

He went on to explain that it was a "polling beck," pointing out peculiarities hardly to be described here. They interested me; yet not so much as other things about the tool, which it was good to handle.

From the old beck a feeling came to me of summer as the country labourers feel it. This thing was probably a hundred years old.

Through a hundred seasons men's faces had bent over it and felt the heat of the sun reflecting up from off the potatoes, as the tines of the beck brightened in the hot soil. And what sweat and sunburn, yet what delight in the crops, had gone to the polishing of the handle! A stout ash shaft, cut in some coppice years ago, and but rudely trimmed, it shone now with the wear of men's hands; and to balance it as I did, warm and moist from Bettesworth's grasp, was to get the thrill of a new meaning from the afternoon. For those who use such tools do not stop to admire the summer, but they co-operate with it.

The old man took his beck again, and I saw the sunlight beating down upon his back and brown arms as he once more bent his face to the work. Then our talk changed. Soon I fetched a tool for myself, so as to be working near him and hear his chatter.

He touched on scythes for a moment, and then glanced off to name a distant village (a place which lies on a valley side, facing the midday heat), and to tell of a family of blacksmiths who once lived there. "They used to make purty well all sorts o' edge-tools. And they earned a name for 't, too, didn't they? I've see as many as four of 'em over there at a axe. Three with sledge-'ammers, and one with a little 'ammer, tinkin' on the anvil." "And he is the master man of them all," I laughed. Bettesworth laughed too--we were so happy there in the broiling sunshine--"Yes, but I've often noticed it, the others does all the work." To which I rejoined, "But he keeps time to the sledges; and it's he who knows to a blow when they have done enough."

"There was one part of making a axe," said Bettesworth, "as they'd never let anybody see 'em at." What could that have been? We agreed that it had to do with some secret process of hardening the steel.

Another shifting of the talk brought us round to his brother-in-law--that accomplished farm-labourer, who was then, however, driving a traction engine, with one truck which carried three thousand bricks. "That must do away with a lot of hoss hire," said Bettesworth. "And yet," I urged, "there seem more horses about than ever." "And they be dear to buy, so Will Crawte says," added Bettesworth.

"How many load," I asked ignorantly, "do you reckon three thousand bricks? More than a four-horse load, isn't it?"

Bettesworth made no effort to reckon, but said easily, "Yes. They reckons three hunderd an' fifty is a load, of these here wire-cut bricks; four hunderd, of the old red bricks; and stock bricks is five hunderd. And slates, 'Countess' slates--they be twenty inches by ten--six hunderd o' they goes to a load."

Wondering at his knowledge, I commented on the endless variety of technical details never dreamt of by people like myself; and Bettesworth a.s.sented, without interest, however, in me or other people or anything but his subject. "That's one o' the things you wants to learn, if you be goin' with hosses--when you got a load. Law! half o'

these carters on the road dunno whether they got a load or whether they en't. I've almost forgot now; but I learnt it once."

"How do you mean 'learnt' it? Picked it up?"

"No. 'Tis in a book. You can learn to reckon things.... If you be goin' for a tree, or a block o' stone, or bricks, you wants to know what's a load for a hoss, or a two or a three hoss load. A mason told me once, when I was goin' for a block o' stone. He put his tape round it, an' told me near the matter what it weighed. He said you always ought to carry a two-foot rule in your pocket; and then put it across the stone--or p'r'aps 'tis two or three bits you got to take...."

As there is nothing in the talk itself to give the impression, it must have been my working in the sunshine when I heard of these details, that now makes them--the glaring stone-mason's yard, the village smithy, the engine hauling bricks along the high road--seem all sun-baked and dusty, in the heat which men like Bettesworth have to face, while I am admiring the summer landscape.

Twice in the early days of July the old man's homely rustic living is touched upon. By now, in the cottage gardens, the broad-beans are at their best; and he desires, it is said in one place, no better food than beans, served for choice with a bit of bacon. But there are peas too; and one day he tells me simply that he "had peas three times yesterday. There's always some left from dinner, and then I has 'em in a saucer for my supper."

_July 29._--As July ran to its close, the weather, though still warm, turned gloomy, and showers came streaking down in front of the grey dismal distance. "They gives a _poor_ account of the harvest," says Bettesworth. "What? have they started?" I ask; and he, "Yes, I've heared of a smartish few."

I supposed he meant in Suss.e.x; but it appeared not. "No," he said, "I dunno as they've begun in Suss.e.x, but about here. Lent corn, oats, an' barley, an' so on. There's So-and-so"--he named three or four farmers reported to have begun cutting, and went on, "But 'tis all machine work, so there won't be much" (extra work). "But the straw en't no higher 'n your knees in some parts, so they says.... 'Twas the cold spring--an' then the dryth. But it don't much matter about the barley. I've heared old people say they've knowed barley sowed and up and harvested without a drop o' rain on it fust to last. Where you gets straw" (with other crops, I suppose, is the meaning) "there en't no fear about the barley: 'tis a thing as 'll stand dryth as well as purty near anything."

He had "heard old people say"--things like these that he was now saying. And Bettesworth's phrase will bear thinking of, for its indication of the topics which the progress of the summer months had always been wont to renew in his brain year by year.

Unhappily, about this period something less pleasing was beginning to force itself upon his attention.

XXVI

Into the peacefulness of Bettesworth's last working summer a disquieting circ.u.mstance had been slowly intruding; and now, with August, it developed into a subject of grave fears. I do not know when I first noticed a small sore on the old man's lower lip, but I think it must have been in May or early June. On being asked, he said it had been there since his illness in the spring, and "didn't seem to get no worse." Certainly he was not troubling about it.

Weeks pa.s.sed, perhaps six weeks, in which, though the ugly, angry look of the thing sometimes took my attention, I forbore to speak of it again, being unwilling to arouse alarm. Then it occurred to me that if I was too fanciful, Bettesworth was not fanciful enough. In his robust out-door life he had never learnt to be nervous and antic.i.p.ate horrors; and he might not be sufficiently alive to the dreadful possibilities which were presenting themselves to my own imagination.

I urged him accordingly to see his club doctor.

He did so, not immediately, though after how long an interval I am unable to say, since none of this affair got into my note-book. The doctor no sooner saw the sore than he said it must be cut out. "Do you smoke?" was one of his first questions; and "Where is your pipe?"

was the next. Bettesworth produced his pipe--an old blackened briar--and was comforted to learn that it was considered harmless. But he must have the sore removed, and his two or three remaining teeth near it would have to come out. When could he have it done? the doctor asked. Bettesworth said that he must consult me on that point, and came away promising to do so.

Considering how sure he must have been that I should put no obstacle in his way, I incline to think that by now he must himself have begun to feel alarm. He waited, however, about a week, and then one morning off he went again to see the doctor, half expecting, I believe, to have the operation done then and there, before he came home.

An hour afterwards I met him returning, looking worried. The doctor was just setting off for his holiday, and could not now undertake the operation, but advised him to go to Guildford Hospital. Perhaps Bettesworth would have liked me to pooh-pooh the suggestion--he little relished the idea of leaving his wife and his work, and taking a railway journey to so dismal an end; but even as he talked, I was watching on his lip that which might mean death. So I sent him off straightway to the Vicarage, where he could obtain a necessary letter of introduction to the hospital.

Of what immediately followed my memory is quite blank. I only recall that the old chap started at last all alone on his journey to Guildford, not knowing how long he would be away, or what was likely to happen to him. A niece of his had provided him with a stamped addressed envelope and a clean sheet of note-paper, in case he should need to get anyone at the hospital to send a message home.

_August 6, 1904._--So he disappeared for a time. Three or four days, we supposed, would be the extent of his absence; but the days went by and no word came from him. For all we knew he might never have reached the hospital; and it began to be a serious question what would become of his wife, and whether she would not have to be sent to the workhouse for want of a protector. At last, I wrote for information to the matron of the hospital. Her answer, which lies before me now, and is the only piece of evidence I have preserved of the whole business, is dated August 6th. On that day, it stated, Bettesworth was to be operated upon, and, if all went well, he would most likely be able to leave the hospital in ten days or a fortnight.

Unless I mistake, the ten days or a fortnight dragged out to nearly three weeks, in which I had the old wife on my mind. A visit to her one Sunday morning rea.s.sured me. Poor old Lucy Bettesworth! I did not antic.i.p.ate, then, that I should never again see her alive. Dirty and dishevelled as ever, alone in the squalid cottage, she received me with a meek simplicity that in my eyes made amends for many faults.

She was more sane than I had dared to hope I should find her, eager for "Fred" to come home, but contented, it seemed, to wait, if it was doing him good. She did not want for anything; she ate no meat, and it cost her nothing to live. Would I like a vegetable marrow? There was a nice one in the garden that "wanted cuttin'."

Perceiving that she desired me to have the vegetable marrow, I allowed her to take me out into the garden to get it. "Could I cut it?" Of course I could, and did. Then a qualm struck her: perhaps I shouldn't like carrying it! But she might be able to wrap it up in a piece of newspaper....

To that, however, I demurred. There was no harm in being seen with a vegetable marrow on Sunday morning; and I took it, undraped by paper, aware that the despised old woman had done me the greatest courtesy in her power. And that was, as it proved, the last time I ever saw her.

Bettesworth, meanwhile, in the hospital, was not quite forgotten. His niece has been mentioned who gave him the stamped envelope which he had not used. We shall hear a good deal of her, later on--a helpful but delicate woman, who was Bettesworth's niece only by marriage with a nephew of his, of whom also we shall hear. These two on that Sunday morning--it being a quiet, half-hazy, half-sunny August day--walked over to Guildford, and brought back news that the old man was doing as well as could be hoped. They proposed to repeat the visit the following week. It made a pleasant Sunday outing.

But before that week was ended Bettesworth was suddenly home again, unannounced. An odd look about him puzzled me, until I realized that he had grown a beard--a white, scrubby, short-trimmed beard, which gave him a foxy expression that I did not like. His lip was in strapping, a little blood-stained, but he reported that all was going on well. The surgeons had carved down into his jaw, and believed the operation to have been quite successful. Satisfied as to this, I could endure his changed appearance.

Something about his manner was less satisfactory. Looking back, I think I know what was the matter; but at the time a sort of levity in him struck a false note. Besides, he seemed not to realize that his wife might have suffered by his absence, or that others had put themselves about on his behalf. He struck me as selfish and self-satisfied. I forgot what a lonely expedition his had been, and how he had had to start off and face this miserable experience without a friend at hand to care whether he came through it alive or not.

Left to himself (it is obvious enough now) and determined to go through the business in manly fashion, he had rather overdone it--had over-played his part. In refusing to admit fear, he had erred a little on the other side, and he still erred so in telling his experiences, perhaps because he was still not quite free of fear. By his account, his stay in the hospital had been an interesting holiday.

Everything about it was a little too good to be believed. He had jested with the doctors and the nurses. They called him "Dad," and "a joking old man," and he felt flattered: they had had a "fire-drill,"

and from his bed, or his seat under the veranda among the convalescents, he had entered into the spirit of the thing. Grimmer details, too, did not escape him: the arrival of new patients in the night--"accident cases" brought in for immediate treatment; the sufferings he witnessed; the hopeless condition of a railway porter, and so forth. All this was told in his own manner, with swift realistic touch, convincingly true; with a genuine sense of the humour of the thing, he mentioned the operating-room by the patients' name for it--"the slaughter-house"; but none the less his narrative had an offensive emptiness, an unreality, a flippancy, unworthy, I thought, of Bettesworth.

A little more sense would have shown me the clue to it, in his behaviour just before the operation. He was dressed in "a sort of a white night-gown," waiting for his turn; and, he said, "I made 'em laugh. I got up and danced about on the floor. 'Now I be Father Peter,' I says." Then the nurse came to conduct him to "the slaughter-house." "'Old Freddy's goin' to 'ave something now,' they"

(the nearer patients) "says. I took hold o' the nurse's arm. 'Now I be goin' out for a walk with my young lady,' I says. 'We be goin' out courtin'.'" And in such fashion, over-excited, he maintained his fort.i.tude, with a travesty of the courage he was all but losing. He never confessed to having felt fear. The nearest approach to it was when he was actually lying on the operating-table. Left quite alone there (for half an hour, he alleged and believed), "I looked all round," he said, "and up at the skylight, and I says to myself, 'So this is where it is, is it?'"

With these tales he came home, repeating them until I was weary. By and by, however, he settled down to work, although one or two visits had to be paid to the hospital, for dressing the lip; and as he settled down, his normal manner returned. For some weeks--nay, for longer--his friends were not free of anxiety about him. There were pains in his jaw, and in his lip too, enough to draw dire forebodings from those of pessimistic humour. But Bettesworth owned to no fears.

So it went on for a month or so, when that occurred which effectually banished from his mind all remembrance of this trouble.