Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer Part 8

In fact, a fortnight previously a message from the owner had reached Bettesworth requesting him to do this. The answer given then was repeated now: "You tell your gran'father he may come an' do it hisself. I shan't."

"'Oh,' she says" (I continue in Bettesworth's words), "'Mr. Mardon'"

(the tenant of the next cottage) "'said he'd do some.'"

"'He may come and do this if he mind to,' I says. "Twon't flood _me_.'" Mardon's cottage was certainly in danger of flooding, should there come prolonged rain.

"Then I said to her, 'How about our well, then? We en't had no water ever since I spoke to you 'bout it before.'

"'Oh,' she says, 'they come an' looked at the well Sat.u.r.day. But gran'father says 't 'll cost too much. 'T 'll want a lot o' bricks an'

things. If he has it done, he says he'll have to put up your rent--yours and Mr. Mardon's--'cause you be the only two as pays anything. En't it a shame?' she says. 'There's that old Mileham--he earns good money every week, and never pays a ha'penny.'"

At this point I foolishly interrupted, and being told how Mileham "won't pay, and poor old Mrs. Connor, she en't _got_ it to pay," I interrupted again, not understanding.

"Hasn't _got_ it to pay? How do you mean?"

"Why, what _have_ she got, sir? All the time her husband was alive, drawin' his pension, the rent was paid up every pension day. But now she en't got nothin' comin' in, and that lout of a boy of hers don't do nothin'. So there's only me and Mardon pays any rent."

I laughed. "It's a fine encouragement to you to be asked to pay more."

"Yes. I says to her, 'Then we two got to pay for four? You tell your gran'father he may put it up, but I shan't pay no more for this old hutch. And I shan't pay what I do, as soon as I can find another place to go to. If he mind to let we get the well done, and we take it out o' the rent,' I says, 'I'll agree to that. Not pay no more rent till we've took it all out.' But she wouldn't say nothin' to that. Or else generally she got plenty o' gab."

"Who is she?" I asked.

"He's grand-daughter.... That young Mackenzie was her father. She've got plenty o' gab. 'You 'alf-bred Scotch people,' I says to her sometimes, 'talks too much.' I tells her of it sometimes. She don't like me."

It seemed unlikely that Bettesworth would long continue to be a tenant under such a landlord. The change, however, was not to come yet.

As yet, indeed, difficulties like these were but trivial incidents of the life in which Bettesworth continued to take an interest as virile as ever. He had dealt with landlords before, and had no qualms now. It might be that the great strength of his prime was gone, but his health seemed unimpaired, and I believe he still felt master of his fate as he went quietly about his daily work.

It is true that my very next note of him contains evidence of a digestive weakness which, having not much troubled him hitherto, though he had always been subject to it, was growing upon him, and beginning to undermine his forces. But it was for another reason--because of a curious word he used--that I then recorded what he told me.

The entry in my journal, bearing still the date December 9, is to the effect that "on Friday afternoon" a horrid pain took him right through the midriff, from front to back. "I begun to think I was goin' to croak," he said afterwards, when telling me about it. "And I reached, and the sheer-water run out o' my eyes an' mouth. I didn't know where to go for an hour or more, I was in that pain. I 'xpect 'twas stoopin'

down over my work brought it on. I'd had a hot dinner, ye see--bit o'

pickled pork an' pa'snips. And then stoopin' down.... But that sheer-water--you knows what I means--run out o' my mouth." I did not know what he meant, until the next day, when I asked how he felt. He was "all right," but, repeating the story, said, "and the water run out o' my mouth, jest like boilin' water."

During the last year or two of his life I think he seldom went a week without a recurrence of this pain of indigestion, the disorder being doubtless aggravated by the breakdown of his domestic arrangements.

But this is looking too far ahead. At the period which now concerns us, he was far from thinking of himself as an invalid. He could joke about his pa.s.sing indispositions as he could defy his landlord. This particular attack, unless I am much mistaken, was the subject of a flippancy I remember his repeating to me. A neighbour looking in upon him and seeing his serious condition said genially, "You ben't goin'

to die, be ye, Freddy?" And he answered, "I dunno. Shouldn't care if I do. 'Tis a poor feller as can't make up his mind to die once. If we had to die two or three times, then there might be something to fret about." In relating this to me, he added more seriously, "But n.o.body dunno _when_, that's the best of it."

Knowing now how his att.i.tude changed towards death when it was really near, I can see in this st.u.r.dy defiance the evidence of the physical vigour he was still enjoying. There was no real cause for fretting about himself, any more than about his affairs; and so he went through this winter, garrulous and good-tempered, even happy in his way.

Accordingly, taking my notes in their due order, they bring before my mind, as I read them again now, pleasant pictures of the old man. I can see him at work, or taking his wages, or starting for the town; often the very weather and daylight around him come back to me; and the chief loss is in his voice-tones, which I cannot by any effort of memory recover.

_December 10, 1901._--One such mind-picture dates from December 10.

The short winter afternoon was already closing in, with a mist--the forerunner of rain--enveloping the garden between the bare-limbed trees. Over our heads sounded the roar of wind in a little fir-wood; but down under the oak-trees by the well, where Bettesworth was digging, there was shelter and stillness, or only the slight trembling of a few leaves not yet fallen. It was "nice and warm," he a.s.sured me, and then paused--himself a dusky-looking old figure in the oncoming dusk--to ask, whom did I think he had seen go down the lane just now?

It was no other than his former neighbour, "old Jack Morris's widow."

And once again his talk shows how far he was, that afternoon, from thinking of himself as an infirm person, or an object of pity. I am struck by the contrast between his later view of things and this which he professed, when still in good health. For, speaking appreciatively of Widow Morris as "the _cleanest_ old soul as ever lived," he went on to say that, though he did not know what she was doing at that time, she had been in the workhouse. It puzzled him how she lived, and others like her. And when I said, "She ought to be in the workhouse,"

he echoed the opinion emphatically. "_Better_ off there than what they be at home, sir." So with Mrs. Connor. "It's a mystery how she lives.

And there's that son of hers, mungs about with a short pipe stuck in his mouth," and by sheer idleness had lost several jobs, at which he might have been earning eleven shillings a week. "And that poor gal, he's sister, got to starve herself to keep her mother and that lout.

Cert'nly, she ought to keep her mother," but, for the lout, Bettesworth's politer vocabulary was insufficient.

So we talked in the gathering winter dusk, able, both of us, in the a.s.surance of the comfortable evening before us, to consider the workhouse as a refuge with which neither of us would ever make personal acquaintance. If I was unimaginative and therefore callous, so was Bettesworth. It was he who said, "I reckons that's what they places be for--old people past work, and little helpless childern."

But as to the able-bodied, "That stoneyard's the place for they, _I_'d put it on to 'em, so's it 'd give 'em sore hearts, if it didn't sore hands."

And then he told of a tramp--a carpenter--who had earned his tenpence an hour, and now was using workhouses to lodge in at night, while all day he was "munging about" (or "doing a mung"), cadging a few halfpence for beer.

"And that 'ere bloke down near we, he's another of 'em. Earns eightpence-halfpenny, and his son sixpence. But they gets it all down 'em." They had not paid Mrs. Skinner for the pork obtained from her the previous week; indeed, they paid n.o.body. "Never got nothing, and yet there's only they two and the old woman."

What a contrast were these wasters--that was the idea of Bettesworth's talk--with those two poor old widow women, whom he could afford to pity in his strength and comfort!

_December 24._--The next note brings us to Christmas Eve. The weather on the preceding day had changed from rimy frost to tempestuous rain, which at nightfall began to be mingled with snow. By his own account Bettesworth went to bed soon after seven, although even his wife urged that it was too early, and that he would never lie till morning. He had heard the tempest, and the touch of the snow against his bedroom window, and so had his wife. It excited her. "Ben't ye goin' to look out at it?" she said. And he, "That won't do me no good, to look at it. We got a good fire in here."

Such was his own chuckling account of his att.i.tude towards the storm when I stood by him the next morning high up in the garden, and watched him sweeping the path. He discussed the prospects for the day, rejoiced that the snow had not lain, and, looking keenly to the south, where a dun-coloured watery cloud was travelling eastwards, its edges melting into luminous mist and just hiding the sun, he thought we might expect storms. The old man's spirits were elated; and then it was, when the western end of the valley suddenly lit up as with a laugh of spring sunlight, and the radiance came sweeping on and broke all round us--then it was that Bettesworth, as I have elsewhere[1]

related, stood up to give the sunshine his glad welcome.

A narrative followed which helps to explain his good spirits, or at least discovers the powers of endurance on which they rested. I said, "We have pa.s.sed the shortest day--that's a comfort." He stopped sweeping again, to answer happily, "Yes. And now in about four or five weeks we shall begin to see the difference. And that's when we gets the bad weather, lately."

He stood up, the watery sunshine upon him, and leaning on his broom, he continued, "I remember one winter, after I was married, we did have some weather. Eighteen inches and two foot o' snow there was--three foot, in some places. I'd bin out o' work--there was plenty o' work to do, but we was froze out. For five weeks I 'adn't earnt tuppence. When Christmas Day come, we _had_ somethin' for dinner, but 'twa'n't much; and we had a smartish few bottles o' home-made wine.

"Christmas mornin' some o' the chaps I'd bin at work with come round.

'What about that wine?' they says. So we had two or three cupfuls o'

wine; and then they says, 'Ben't ye comin' 'long o' we?' 'No,' I says, 'not 's mornin'.'" Here he shut his mouth, in remembered resignation, as if still regarding these tempters. "'What's up then?' they says.

'_Come_ on!' 'No,' I says, 'not to-day.' 'Why not?' 'Cause I en't got no money,' I says. 'Gawd's truth!' they says, 'if that's it...' and I raked in six shillin's from amongst 'em. I give four to the old gal, and I kep' two myself, and then I was right for the day."

He made as if to resume sweeping, but desisted to explain, "Ye see, they was my mates on the same job as me; and they knowed I'd ha' done the same for e'er a one o' they, more 'n once.

"My old mother-in-law was alive then, over here" (he looked across the hollow to the old house), "and they wanted we to go and 'ave the day with they. But my temper wouldn't have that. I says to the old gal, 'None o' their 'elp. We'll bide away, or else p'r'aps by-'n-by they'll twit us.' I'd sooner ha' gone without vittles, than for they to help and then twit us with it afterwards, talkin' about what they'd done for us at Christmas."

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Author's note. "The Bettesworth Book" (second impression).

XIV

One of Bettesworth's swift short tales about his neighbours interested me considerably at this time, as ill.u.s.trating the half-sordid, half-barbarous state of the people amongst whom he had to hold his own when not at work. I did not suspect that the same tale would put me on the track of a curious discovery relative to his own past history.

_January 23, 1902._--It was a quiet, windless morning, and the sound of the knell reached us through the still air. Bettesworth said, "I s'pose old Jerry's gone at last, then."

"Old Jerry?" I asked.