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 gods 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 class, 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.
He considered it—it was on a day in October, 1900—and so strayed off into a rambling talk of many things. The ill-conditioned neighbours (he comforted himself by thinking) would leave his fowls alone, because depredations of that kind were an unheard-of thing in our parish.
"There, I will say that," he observed, "you never no fear o' losin' anything here. If a man leaves his tool—a spud or anything—in the ground, there 'tis. Nobody don't touch it. Up there at (he named a near village) they say 'tis different. But here, I should think there never was a better place for that!"
For a certain reason I took up this point, and hinted that Flamborough in Yorkshire must be an equally honest place. The Flamborough people, I had been told, never lock their doors at night, for fear of locking out the spirits of relatives drowned at sea.
Would Bettesworth take the bait, and tell me anything he might know about ghosts? Not he. The interruption changed the course, but not the character, of his talk. He looked rather shocked at these benighted Yorkshiremen, and commented severely, "Weak-minded, I calls it." Then, after a momentary silence, he was off on a new track, with reminiscences of Selsey fishermen whom he used to see when he went harvesting into Sussex; who go about, "any time o' night, accordin' to the tides," and whose thick boots can be heard "clumpin' along the street" in the dark. All men at Selsey, he said, were fishermen. The only regular hands employed by the neighbouring farmers were shepherds and carters.
He had got quite away from the point in my mind. But as I had long wondered whether Bettesworth had any ghost stories, I harked back now to the Flamborough people, egging him on to be communicative. It was all in vain, however. He shook his head. The subject seemed foreign to him.
"As I often says, I bin about all times o' the night, an' I never met nothin' worse than myself. Only time as ever I was froughtened was when I was carter chap at Penstead. Our farm was down away from t'other, 'cause Mr. Barnes had two farms—'t least, he had three—and ourn was away from t'other, and I was sent late at night to git out the waggon—no, the pole-carriage. I set up on the front on the shafts, with a truss o' hay behind me; and all of a sudden she" (the mare, I suppose he meant) "snarked an' begun to turn round in the road. The chap 'long with me—no, he wa'n't 'long with me, 'cause he'd gone on to open the gate, and so there was I alone. And all 'twas, was a old donkey rollin' in the road. She'd smelt 'n, ye know; an' the nearer we got, the more froughtened she was, till she turned right round there in the road. 'Twas a nasty thing for me; they hosses with their legs over the traces, and all that, and me down atween 'em."
He was fairly off now. A tale followed of stumbling over a drunken man, who lay all across the road one dark night.
"Wonder's 't hadn't broke his ribs, me kickin' up again' him like that. I went all asprawl; barked me hands too. But when he hollered out, I knowed who 'twas then. 'Twas old...."
Well, it doesn't matter who it was. There were no ghost stories to be had, so I related a schoolday adventure, of a glow-worm picked up, and worn in a cap for a little way, and then missed; of a glimmer seen in the ditch, which might be the glow-worm; of a groping towards the glimmer, and a terrified leap back, upon hearing from behind it a gruff "Hullo, mate!"
Bettesworth did not find this silly, like my Flamborough story. It opened another vista of reminiscence, down which he could at least look. Unhesitatingly he took the chance, commenting,
"Ah! porchers, very likely, lurkin' about there for a meetin, p'r'aps. They do like that, sometimes. I remember once, when Mellish was keeper at Culverley, there was some chaps in there at The Horse one night with their dogs, talkin' about what they was goin' to do. Mellish, he slips out, to send the word round, 'cause all the men at Culverley was s'posed to go out at such a job, if need be. So he sends round the message to 'em—Bromley, an' Dick Harris, an' Knight, an' several more, to meet 'n at a certain place, where he'd heard these chaps say they was goin' to work. And so they (the poachers) set in there talkin' about what they was goin' to do; and at last, when they come away, they went right off into the town. While they'd bin keepin' the keeper there a-watchin' 'em, another gang had bin' an' purty well cleared the place out. Bags-full, they must ha' had. Mellish told me so hisself. While he was expectin' to have they, they was havin' him. He never was so sold, he said. But a clever trick, I calls it."