Of course, he was only partially successful in that endeavour. Occasional bitter remarks showed that he still harboured a resentment against the owner of the cottage from which he had been turned out, and, in fact, there were circumstances which would have made it difficult for him quite to forget the affair. Perched on one of the steepest of the bluffs, high above the stream, the cottage in which he was not good enough to live stood beside the path he now had to travel to and from his work every day. Often, as his legs grew weary and his breath short with ascending the footpath, he must have felt tempted to curse the place. Often it must have seemed to taunt him with his unfitness. Even when he was at work, there it was full in sight. In bad weather, and as he grew feebler, it stood there on its uplifted brow, not sheltering the wife to whom he wanted to go at dinner-time, but like an obstacle in his way. Instead of being his home, it cut him off from his home; and he took to bringing his dinner with him, wrapped in a handkerchief; poor cold food which he frequently left untasted, preferring a pipe.
Yet it was not his nature to be embittered. When the peas he had sown came up, though for another man's benefit, he looked across at them from this garden and admired them. They were a fine crop and remarkably early. If, however, they made him a little envious, he was generous enough to be pleased too. Perhaps the sight comforted him, proving that he would have done well there, at least with the garden, if they had let him stay. And certainly he was flattered when the new tenant, wholly grateful, asked him what sort of peas these were. "Earliest of All," he replied, giving the name by which he had really bought them. And by-and-by a joke arose out of the answer, because the other man would not believe that the peas were really so called, but thought Bettesworth was "kiddin' of 'n" with a name invented by himself. The old man had many a chuckle over this piece of incredulity. "I tells 'n right enough," he laughed; "but he won't have it."
XX
As may be imagined, the troubles through which Bettesworth had thus come did nothing to rejuvenate him. On the contrary, they openly convicted him of old age, and made it patent that he was no longer very well able to take care of himself. In fact, the man's instinctive pride in himself had been shaken, and though I do not think he consciously slackened his efforts to do well, his unconscious, spontaneous activity was certainly impaired. It was as though the inner stimulus to his muscles was gone. He forgot to move as fast as he was able. Sometimes he would, as it were, wake up, and spur himself back into something like good labouring form; but after a little time he would relapse, and go dreamily humming about his work like a very old man. In these days, my own interest in him reached its lowest ebb. I found myself burdened with a dependent I could not in honour shake off; but there was little pleasure to be had in thinking of Bettesworth. Only now and again, when he dropped into reminiscence, did he seem worth attention; only now and again, in my note-books of the period, does he re-emerge, telling chiefly of things the present generations have forgotten.
To the earliest notice of him for the year an irony attaches, since it begins by recording with extreme satisfaction the first of those summer rains which were to make 1903 so memorable and disastrous. How little did we guess, on that June 10, what was in store for us! My note describes, almost gloatingly, "one of those gloomy summer evenings that we get with thundery rain. 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. Now and again rain shatters down into the rich leafage—a solemn noise; and thrushes are vocal; but these sounds do not disturb the impressive quietness."
So the entry proceeds, noting how stiff and strong the grass was already looking after a threat of drought; how the hedgerows were odorous with the pungent scent of nettles; how the lustrous opaque white of horse-daisies starred certain grassy banks; and at last, how all my neighbours who have gardens were as well pleased as myself with the weather.
And so the note comes round to Bettesworth. He too, with his head full of recollections of past summer rains, and of hopes of rich crops to result from this present one, was glorying in the gloom of the day. As the old wise toads crept out from hole and wall-cranny and waddled solemn and moist-skinned across the lawn about their affairs, so Bettesworth about his, not much regarding a wet coat. He had theories as to hilling potatoes, or rather as to not hilling them until the ground could be drawn round the haulm wet. And here was his chance. In the afternoon he took it, joyfully, and the earth turned up rich and dark under his beck.[2]
The tool set him talking. For hilling potatoes he reckoned, a beck is much better than a hoe: "leaves such a nice crumb on the ground." He was resolved to have his "five-grained spud" or garden fork turned into a beck—the next time he went to the town, perhaps, "'cause it wouldn't take 'em long, jest to turn the neck, and then draw the rivets an' take the tree out an' put in a handle. 'T'd make a good tool then—so sharp!
"This old beck I'm usin'," he went on happily, "I warrant he's a hunderd year old. He belonged to my wife's gran'father afore I had 'n; and I've had 'n this thirty year or more.... He's a reg'lar hand-made one—and a good tool still. That's who he belonged to—my old gal's gran'father.
"He" (the grandfather) "had this place over here o' Warner's—'twas him as built that, you know." The property mentioned is a large cottage and garden, adjoining that from which Bettesworth and his wife had so lately been turned out. "And he was the one as fust planted Brook's Field. He had Nott's, down here, and Mavin's, and Brook's Field—and a purty bit that was, too! He was the fust one as planted it. Dessay he had a hunderd acres. Used to keep a little team, and a waggon shed—up the lane here, an' come down this lane an' right in there...."