George Sturt

“ 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. ”

“ Through the window, from my place by the bed, I could see all the sunny side of the valley in the sweltering afternoon heat; could see and feel the splendour of the summer; could watch, right down in the hollow, a man hoeing in a tiny mangold-field, and the sunshine glistening on his light-coloured shirt. Bettesworth no doubt knew that man ”

“ Eggar's rummagings done, the squalid tenement next door to the Norris's stood shut up, with the door locked on the few poor belongings it contained. To the neighbours there seemed to be all the circumstances of a death, except the death itself. People began to remember, what I had failed to observe yet could well believe, how greatly Bettesworth had changed of late; others recalled complaints he had uttered of being unbearably lonely. It was the general opinion that, even if he lived, he would never work again, and never again come back to the place he had left. ”

“ 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." ”

“ A modern man would have had to stop and sift and compare them, and build theories and systems out of all that wealth of material. Not being modern, Bettesworth did not theorize; his thoughts were like the dust-atoms seen in a sunbeam. ”

“ If he was slow, he was still strong; if he was half blind, he was wholly efficient at heavy straightforward work. During this winter, in making some radical changes which involved a good deal of excavating work, Bettesworth was like a first-rate navvy, and eagerly put all his experience at my disposal. There was a trench to be opened for laying a water-pipe. With a young man to help him, he dug it out and filled it in again, in about half the time that the job would have taken if it had been entrusted to a contractor. ”

“ And as they are disproportionately long, these day-dreams of Bettesworth, so also they become too solid on the printed page, side by side with the reality which encompassed them then, and is my subject now. They provoke us to forget the old man, alive and talking. They take us back fifty years too far. From the hardships of the Crimean War it is a 116 wrench to return to the reality—the shed in this valley, the patter of the rain, the old gossipping voice. ”

“ All growing things seem busy. Everywhere on the land men are at work; the swift sunshine glistens on the white of their shirts, and shows them up against the darkness of the new plough-furrows or the freshly dug garden-ground.
Bettesworth was sowing peas. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 unswept hearth and the extinct fire were pitiful to see; yet there stood women and children, seeing them. Mrs. Eggar ("Kate") had a good right to be there. She had sat up a second night, and, albeit sleepy-eyed and untidy, there was helpfulness in her large buxom presence. Perhaps there were reasons too for her daughter's being there with the baby. Another woman, tall, grave, and sympathetic of aspect, had brought two more children; and she told me that upstairs Jack Bettesworth's wife Liz was washing the old man. Liz, by the way, was prepared to go with him on his journey. ”

“ Again, at the lawn-mowing, never man worked harder than Bettesworth, or more conscientiously; but he could not see the track of his machine, and seams of uncut grass often disfigured the smoothness of the turf even after he had gone twice over it to make sure of perfection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Poor old Lucy Bettesworth! I did not anticipate, then, that I should never again 190 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'." ”

“ On Thursday morning, the 9th of February, I went to Bettesworth's cottage, and found preparations in progress for his going away. There was more than preparation. With all their kindliness, it must be said of the labouring people that they want tact. Bettesworth's poor home had become a sort of show, in its small squalid fashion. The door stood wide open; there were half a dozen people in the living-room, where the old man had of late shut himself in with his loneliness and his independence ”

“ So Bettesworth lay just covered as to his body and legs with a counterpane, showing his bare neck, while his sleeves falling back to the elbow displayed his arms. From between the tendons the flesh has gone; and the skin lies fluted all up the forearm, all up the neck. But at the foot of the bed his feet emerging could be seen swollen and tight-skinned. His ears look withered and dry, like thin biscuit.
He did not complain much of pain. Sometimes, "if anything touches the bottom o' my feet, it runs all up my legs as if 'twas tied up in knots." ”

“ That afternoon I happened to meet old Beagley—the retired bricklayer, and recently Bettesworth's landlord. He spoke of Bettesworth with more than usual appreciation, saying that he had been a strong man, as if he meant unusually strong. His sight must have been bad "thirty or forty years," Beagley estimated. He (Beagley) remembered first noticing it when he dropped his trowel from a scaffold, and sent Bettesworth down the ladder for it. He observed that Bettesworth could not see the trowel, but groped for it, as one gropes in the dark, until his hand touched it. ”

“ To Bettesworth's wounded feelings the explanation needed no seeking: he was being made to wait for 200 richer people, because he was poor and unimportant. Meanwhile, happening to meet with the relieving officer, I laid the case before him, and heard that a call to a distance had obliged the doctor to leave his work for a day or two in the hands of a locum tenens, who must have blundered. And this proved to be the fact. On Thursday afternoon a doctor who was a stranger at last found his way to Bettesworth's cottage, and the unhappy old man's long suspense was so far over. ”

“ With what increasing bitterness he wore through the day, with what fretfulness and final despair as of a man despised and forgotten, must be left to conjecture. For the doctor did not come, after all. Conjecture, too, must picture if it can the night that followed—the attempts to sleep in the chair, the restless wanderings into the garden to smoke, the repetition, in fact, of the preceding night's misery, but with a great addition of weariness and distress. Bettesworth, when he came round the next morning to tell me how he was situated, did not so much as mention all this ”

“ No mistake she is a one to work! Works as hard as any young gal—and she between seventy an' eighty."
I said, "Yes, she's one of the right sort, is Nanny."
"One o' the right sort for me. 'Tis to be hoped nothin' 'll ever happen to she!"
Such were the makeshift, yet not altogether unhappy domestic, conditions by which Bettesworth was enabled for a little while to maintain his independence, and carry on the obstinate and now hopeless struggle to earn a living for himself. ”

“ There are various gaps in the sand-banks, where the rains and storms of centuries have scooped out the upper slope into tiny gorges and warm secluded hollows, down which footpaths wind steeply, or narrow bumpy lanes, to some plank bridge or other thrown across the stream. In these hollows the cottages cluster thickest; there they form little hamlets whose inhabitants sometimes hardly know the other villagers. ”

“ With what care the old man drew his broom along them, working by faith and not sight, blindly feeling for the rubbish he could not see, and getting it all save from some corner or other of which his theories had forgotten to take account! ”

“ 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 circumstance 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. ”

“ For, in truth, it had been "all the talk yesterday"—on the Sunday, namely. Young Bill Skinner, in particular, had been voluble, with such exclamations, such staring of excited eyes, that Bettesworth was reminded not without concern of the sunstroke which had threatened Skinner's reason two summers previously. Nevertheless, the tale was worth Bettesworth's hearing and repeating; "there never was a man in England so much respected" as Buller, Skinner supposed. ”

“ Shutting his mouth doggedly, Bettesworth went back to his cottage, to live alone there with his cat. There had been some talk of his going into lodgings; but after all, this was still his home. Should he once give it up, he reasoned, and dispose of his furniture, it would be impossible ever again to form a home of his own, however much he might desire to do so. To live with neighbours might be very well ”

“ To men in Bettesworth's position it is always an embarrassment 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 47 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 ”

“ In another way, too, the old man's reluctance to be a burden manifested itself. What he had told me so far was told because I wished to hear it, and he wished me to understand. He made no long tale: he was brief, unaffected, and as for seeking compassion, it was far from his intention. Of one thing only did he complain: a near relative's indifference. "He was over by our place twice o' Sunday," Bettesworth said scornfully, "and couldn't look in to see how the poor old gal was. ”

“ One only was sitting up, who coughed exhaustedly, not violently; he seemed able to do no more than sit up, shaking with debility. In the beds the patients mostly lay quite still. The man next beyond Bettesworth drew the counterpane up over his ears, and I saw a glowing feverish eye watching me. There were but few other visitors—only four, I think, besides myself. Somewhere an electric bell sounded. A little nursing attendant with sleeves stripped up came stumping cheerily all down the ward. She had been washing dishes or something in a kind of scullery just outside when I came in. ”