Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer Part 4

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 compet.i.tion 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 att.i.tude 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.

I said, "Most likely it means that they are prisoners."

And then he said, "Ah, prisoners--or else burnt."

It was my turn to exclaim. "Burnt? No, no! They are prisoners."

"But they burns 'em, some says."

Heaven only knows where he could have picked up such an idea. As the war proceeded, he kept himself fairly up to date with its main events by listening to other men's talk. He used, as we know, to go to the public-house on Sunday evenings "to get enlightenment to the mind;"

and there is mention in the next fragment of another source of information which he valued. To reach that, however, we have to enter another year--the year 1900.

V

_February 13, 1900._--The winter was pa.s.sing by, with the war, indeed, to make it memorable to us, but uneventfully at home. January, like December, had been mild--too mild, some people said, of whom, however, Bettesworth was not one. February set in with more severity of weather. On the third we had snow, and in the succeeding days frost followed, and the roads grew slippery.

These things no doubt provided Bettesworth with topics for many little chats I must have enjoyed with him, although I saved no reminder of any of them. But about the middle of the month a circ.u.mstance came to my knowledge which made his good-tempered gossip seem rather remarkable. I could not but admire that a man so situated should be able to talk with such urbanity.

He had been at the barber's the previous evening, where another man was discoursing at large about the war. And said Bettesworth:

"I _do_ like to hear anything like that. Or if they'll read a newspaper. There I could 'bide listenin' all night. And if anybody else was to open their mouths, I should be like enough to tell 'em to shut up. Because, if you goes to hear anything, _hear_ it. Same as at church or chapel or a entertainment: _you_ goes to listen, an' then p'r'aps four or five behind ye gets to talkin'. I always says, if you goes anywhere, go and be quiet. You en't obliged to go, but when you do go, behave yourself."

The talkers, I might have reminded Bettesworth, are not always "behind ye"; there are those who take front seats who might profit by his little homily on good manners. But he only meant that the discourtesy is the more disturbing, because it is the more audible, when it comes from behind.

He pa.s.sed easily on to a discussion of the weather, and again his superlative good sense was to the fore. On Sunday, he said, he had tried to persuade his neighbours--working-men, like himself, only younger--to bring their shovels and scatter sand on the path down the gully, which was coated with ice. Already he had done a longish piece of it himself, but much remained to do. Several men had "went up reg'lar busters," and "children and young gals" on their way to church had fallen down. It would be a public service to besprinkle the path with sand. So Bettesworth made his suggestion to his neighbours--"four or five of 'em. They was hangin' about: hadn't got nothin' to do." But no. They shrugged their shoulders and walked away. It was no business of theirs. They even laughed at the old man for the trouble he had already taken, for which no one would pay him. And now, in telling me about it, it was his neighbours' want of public spirit that annoyed him. They had not come up to his standard of the behaviour meet for a labouring man.

Who would have imagined that, while he was telling me this, and for days previously, he was in a state of severe mental distress, aggravated by bodily fatigue? I had no suspicion of it, and was surprised enough when told by a third person. But it was true--too true. He admitted it readily when I asked him. His wife was ill again, worse than she had been for three years, since the time when she fell down in an epileptic fit and broke her wrist. She had had many minor attacks during the interval, but this was serious now.

As I have already told the poor old woman's story, or at least this part of it, in another place, I may not repeat it here; but for the sake of continuity the episode must be summarized. Three years earlier Bettesworth had obtained an order for his wife's admission to the workhouse infirmary. Hateful though the merest suspicion of benefiting by parish aid was to him, there had been no other course open at that time; for what could he do for an old woman with a broken limb, and a malady that made her for the time half-witted? And yet, owing to overcrowding at the infirmary, amazed and indignant he had brought her home again on the fourth day, because she had been lodged and treated as a common pauper. Consequently I knew that he must be at extremities now, when it came out that he was deciding again to send the old lady to the infirmary. But he was at his wits' end what to do for her. He could not afford to stay at home from work; yet while he was away she was alone, since her condition and temper made neighbours reluctant to help. Sometimes the fear haunted him that she would meet a violent death, falling in a fit on to the fire, perhaps; sometimes he dreaded that he would have to put her finally away into an asylum. What he endured in the long agonizing nights when her fits were upon her, in the silent winter evenings when he sat for hours watching her pain and wondering what to do, no one will ever know. As best he could, he used at such times to wash her and dress her himself--he with his fumbling fingers and dim eyes; and wanting sleep, wanting the food that neither of them could prepare, alone and unknown, he struggled to keep in order his miserable cottage. Almost a week must have pa.s.sed like this before I heard of the trouble, and asked him about it. Then he laid his difficulties before me, and asked for my advice.

To men in Bettesworth's position it is always an embarra.s.sment to comply with the formalities of official business. They do not see the reason, and they feel keenly the wearisomeness, of the steps which must be taken to gain their end. Bettesworth now seemed paralyzed; he had forgotten how to go on; moreover, he could not be satisfied--although there was a new infirmary--that his wife would be more decently treated there than in the old one. If only he could be sure of that!

But of course he was not important enough to approach, himself, anyone so important as a guardian; and, accordingly, I undertook to make inquiries for him.

It is indeed a tedious business--I experienced it afterwards too--that of getting a sick person from this village into the local infirmary.

It seemed that Bettesworth must lose at least a day's work in arranging for the removal of his wife. She could not be admitted to the house without a certificate from the parish doctor, who lived in the town, a mile and a half away. But the doctor might only attend upon Bettesworth's presenting an order to be obtained from the relieving officer, two miles away in the exactly opposite direction.

The medical man would then come as soon as he found convenient, and Bettesworth would be provided with a certificate for his wife's removal to the infirmary. But he might not act upon that alone. With that in his possession, he would have to wait again upon the relieving officer, to get an order upon the workhouse master to admit the patient, and to arrange for a conveyance to take her away.

We talked it over, he and I, that afternoon, not cheered by the wild weather that was hourly worsening. If all went well on the morrow, Bettesworth would have some twelve miles of walking to do; but it was most likely that, between relieving officer and doctor, two or even three days would elapse before the desired relief would be accomplished. However, the immediate thing to do was clear enough: he must make his first visit to the relieving officer as soon as possible.

I forget on what grounds, but we agreed that it was useless to attempt anything that night; and since the officer would be off at eight in the morning for his day's duty in other places, Bettesworth proposed to be up betimes, and catch him at his office before he started. It would be just possible then, by hurrying, to get back over the three or four miles to the town, and find the doctor before he too should leave for the day. Otherwise there would be a sickening delay.

The whole thing was sickening already, in its inevitable mechanical clumsiness. Still, there was no help for it. The weather meanwhile was threatening hindrance. A small driving snow had set in in the afternoon, and was inclined to freeze as it fell; and for some time before dark the opposite side of the valley had become all but invisible, blotted out by the dreary whiteness of the storm. At nightfall, the weather seemed to turn wicked. Hours afterwards, as I sat listening to the howling gusts of wind, which puffed the smoke from out of my fire, and brought the snow with a crisp bristling sound against my window, I could not get out of my head the thought of Bettesworth, alone with his crazy wife down there in that cottage, or the fear that deep snow might prevent his morning's journey. And then it was that recollection of his recent quiet conversations came over me. So to have talked, keeping all this trouble to himself, while he listened to the war news, and did his best to make the footways pa.s.sable--there was surely a touch of greatness in it.

And it makes no difference to my estimate of him that, after all, he did not go to the relieving officer the next morning. On the further progress of Mrs. Bettesworth's illness at this time my notebook is silent; but, as I recall now, she took a turn for the better that night, and by the morning was so improved that thought of the infirmary was given up.

VI

For eight months after this the account of Bettesworth's sayings and doings is all but a blank. There was one summer--and perhaps it was this one of the year 1900--when he joined an excursion for his annual day's holiday, and made a long trip to Weymouth. Need it be said that he enjoyed the outing immensely? He came back to work the next day overflowing with the humour and interest of what he had seen and done.

Had not old Bill Brixton lost his hat out of the train? And some other old chap sat down on a seat on Weymouth front, and stayed there all day and seen nothing? Bettesworth, too, had sat down, and had a most enjoyable conversation with a native of the place; but he had also taken steamer to Portland, and there got a drive to the prison and seen the convicts, and had a joke and a laugh with the driver of the brake, and a drink with a party of excursionists from Birmingham, who appreciated his society, and called him "uncle," and whose unfamiliar speech he imitated well enough to make me laugh. And then he had persuaded a seaman to take him out to the fleet and show him over a man-of-war; and finally had enlivened the homeward journey by chaffing old Bill, and sharing with him "a quarten o' whisky," which he carried in a medicine bottle.

This, I am inclined to believe, was an event of 1900, but I cannot verify it, and in any case it accounts for but one day. The dimness of the remainder of those eight months is but faintly illuminated--and that, it may be, for me only--by two memoranda mentioning Bettesworth as present at certain affairs, and by one all too short sc.r.a.p of his own talk. He was speaking of Irishmen, no doubt in reference to some gallant deed or other in South Africa, and this is what he said:

"Ye see, they makes as brave soldiers as any.... All I got to say about Irishmen is, when you be at work with 'em, you got to think yourself as good as they, or a little better. 'Relse if they thinks you be givin' way they'll trample on ye. 'Xcept for that, I'd as lief work with Irishmen as Englishmen.... I remember once when I was at work on a buildin' for Knight, a Irishman come for me with his shovel like this." Bettesworth turned his shovel edgeways, raising it high.

"He'd ha' split me if he'd ha' hit me; and as soon as he'd missed me I downed 'n. Little Georgie Knight come down off the scaffold to stop us; I'd got the feller down, an' was payin' of 'n. '_I'll_ give 'n 'Ome Rule!' I says; and so I did, too. He'd ha' killed me if he'd hit me. I s'pose I'd said somethin' he didn't like."

A March note, this last. As there is nothing else, I take it that the daily conversation was of the usual kind, about being forward in sowing seeds, and allowing enough room for potatoes, and so on.

_June 10._--A note of June names Bettesworth among other interested spectators of an event no less singular than the death of a donkey. To me, the name of him on the page of my journal, coupled with one of his dry remarks, brings back vividly the whole scene: the glowing Sunday afternoon, the blue loveliness of the distant hills, the look of the gra.s.s, and all the tingling sense of the far-spread summer life surrounding the dying animal. But the narrative has little to do with Bettesworth, and would be out of place here. It just serves as a reminder that one more summer was pa.s.sing over him; that, among the strong men who felt the heat in this valley that season, he was still one.

Carry that impression on, through the harvest time, and yet on and on until the end of September, and you may see him (or I, at least, may) one dark night, entering, all dazzled by the naked lamp, a little room where the Liberals have summoned an "important meeting of Liberal workers." He has come, like the present writer, in the expectation of hearing some "spouting," as he said afterwards. But though he is disappointed, and finds himself,--he, the least fanatic of men--the witness only of excited efforts to arrange for canva.s.sing the district in readiness for the approaching election, still, conforming to his own rule of "behaving," he sits respectfully silent, though looking disconsolate and "sold," and his grey head, the home of such steady thoughts, has a pathetic dignity in its dark corner, and surrounded by the noisy politicians.

VII

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 G.o.ds 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 cla.s.s, 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.