And yet, for me, rather than the far-reaching daylight or the vibrating afternoon air, another of the great characteristics of English summer clings to this and the following few fragments about Bettesworth. I might look away to Hindhead and rejoice in the sense of vast warm distance; I might admire the landscape, and practise my æsthetics; but he was becking in amongst the potatoes, and it is his point of view, not mine, that has survived and given its tinge to these talks.
Forgetful, both of us, that the same subject in almost the same place had occupied us a year ago, we spoke of his work; and first he admired the potatoes, and then he praised his beck. "Nice tool," he said. I took hold of it: "Hand-made, of course?" "Yes; belonged to my old gal's gran'mother. There's no tellin' how old he is."
He went on to explain that it was a "polling beck," pointing out peculiarities hardly to be described here. They interested me; yet not so much as other things about the tool, which it was good to handle. From the old beck a feeling came to me of summer as the country labourers feel it. This thing was probably a hundred years old. Through a hundred seasons men's faces had bent over it and felt the heat of the sun reflecting up from off the potatoes, as the tines of the beck brightened in the hot soil. And what sweat and sunburn, yet what delight in the crops, had gone to the polishing of the handle! A stout ash shaft, cut in some coppice years ago, and but rudely trimmed, it shone now with the wear of men's hands; and to balance it as I did, warm and moist from Bettesworth's grasp, was to get the thrill of a new meaning from the afternoon. For those who use such tools do not stop to admire the summer, but they co-operate with it.
The old man took his beck again, and I saw the sunlight beating down upon his back and brown arms as he once more bent his face to the work. Then our talk changed. Soon I fetched a tool for myself, so as to be working near him and hear his chatter.
He touched on scythes for a moment, and then glanced off to name a distant village (a place which lies on a valley side, facing the midday heat), and to tell of a family of blacksmiths who once lived there. "They used to make purty well all sorts o' edge-tools. And they earned a name for 't, too, didn't they? I've see as many as four of 'em over there at a axe. Three with sledge-'ammers, and one with a little 'ammer, tinkin' on the anvil." "And he is the master man of them all," I laughed. 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." What could that have been? We agreed that it had to do with some secret process of hardening the steel.