July 2 (Sunday).—Perhaps Bettesworth would have been more like himself on Friday, if I had called at the usual afternoon hour, instead of in the morning. As it was, he seemed fretful and impatient,and his face was flushed. I did not perceive that he was noticeably weaker, but rather that he was irritable. He had pain in his chest and side; and he said that at night, when he lies with his hands clasped over his waist, his chest is full of "such funny noises, enough to frighten ye to hear 'em." His temper was embittered and angry, especially angry, when some reference was made to his being in the infirmary in the spring. For he affirmed, "If I hadn't ha' went there, I should ha' bin a man, up and at worknow. I told the doctor there, 'If I was to bide here, you'dstarveme to death.'" Embittered he was against his acquaintances, so that he almost wept. "It hurts me so, to think how good I bin to 'em; and now when I be bad myself there en't none of 'em comes near me." He instanced his sister and her two sons at Middlesham; and his brother-in-law too: "Look what I done for him!" If only he could get about! Get so that he could sit and feel the air! But his bedroom is upstairs, and he is too weak to leave it. The previous night, trying to get out of bed, he "almost broke his neck," falling backwards with his head against the bedstead. "I thought I'd split 'n open," he said, "but I never called nobody. Jack said, 'Why hadn't ye called me?'" ... The old man's talk was too incoherent, too rambling, to be followed well at the time or remembered now.
We discussed a local beanfeast excursion to Ramsgate, which was to take place the followingday; and he brightened up to recall how he had joined a similar trip to Weymouth some years ago. It was his last holiday, in fact. Even now it made him laugh, to remember how old Bill Brixton had gone on that day; and he laughed a little scornfully at the trouble they had taken to enjoy themselves, and the fatigues they endured. Then there came just a touch of his old manner: "I had a little bottle with me and filled it up with a quarte'n o' whisky; and when we was comin' home it seemed to brighten ye up. I says to old Bill, 'Put that to your lips,' I says. So he tried. 'Why, it's whisky!' he says. But that little wouldn't hurt 'n. 'Tis aloto' whisky you gets for fo'pence! 'Twouldn't have hurt 'n, if he'd took it bottle and all."
These monster excursions had never really appealed to Bettesworth's old-fashioned taste. Rather than be cooped up in a train, I remember he used to say, give him a quiet journey on the open road, afoot or by waggon, so that a man may "see the course o' the country," and if he comes to anything interesting, stop and look at it. And now, on his bed, the ill-humour he was displaying that morning vented itself again, in reference to a project he had heard of for another excursion. The Oddfellows' annual fête was at hand; and, he said, with a sneering intonation, "The secretary and some of they" (respectable new-fangled people, he meant) "wanted 'em to go to Portsmouth. So they called a full meetin', an' the meetin'"—ah, I have forgotten theturn of speech. It suggested that these officious persons, interfering to dictate how the working man should take his pleasure, had met with a well-deserved snub, since the excursion was voted down and the customary dinner was to be held. To myself, as to Bettesworth, this seemed the preferable course: "It's really better," I said. Then he, "So'tis, sir. It's the old, naturalway. Wealways reckoned to haveone dayin the year, when we all had holiday. And then everybody could join in—the women with their little childern, and all. 'Tisnice...."
Mentioning the endeavours of the Colonel and Mr. —— to get a pension for him, I said, "They're very interested in it." "More so than what I be," he answered. Still, I urged, it was worth trying for; and as for the lost papers, duplicates of them might be obtained, if we knew the regiment. I was saying this, when with a sort of pride, though still irritably, the old man broke in, "I can tell yeallthat: regiment, an' regimental number, and officers, and all." At that I asked what was his regiment?
He stiffened his head and neck (was it just one last flicker of the so long forgotten soldier's smartness?) and said, "Forty-eighth, and my number was three nought nought seven.... I could name twenty people that knowed about my service. There's old Crum Callingham. He used to work for Sanders then, the coal merchant. The day I came back, didn't we have a booze, too! He was at work inSanders's hop-garden, and I found 'n out, and two more, and I kep' sendin' for half-gallons.... Yes, that was the same day as I got 'ome—from Portsmouth."
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. But, added Beagley, "he'd mix mortar as well as any man I ever knew. I've had him workin' for me, and noticed. I'd as soon have had him as anybody. He couldn't haveseenthe lumps of lime, but I suppose 'twas something in thefeelof it on the shovel. At any rate, he alwaysdoneit; and I've often thought about it."
July 14 (Friday).—I saw Bettesworth this afternoon, and it looks as if I shall not see him many times more.
Since my last visit to him a fortnight ago, the change in him is very marked. His niece, downstairs, prepared me for it. He was very ill, she said, and so weak that now they have to hold him up tofeed him. Of course he can take no solids; not even a mouthful of sponge-cake for which he had had a fancy. His feet and the lower parts of his body are swelling: the doctor says it is dropsy setting in, and reports further that his heart is "wasting away." Hearing all this—yes, and how Mrs. Cook thought he should be watched at night, for he could not last much longer—hearing this, I fancied when I got upstairs that there was a look as of death on the shrunken cheeks: they had a corpse-like colour. Possibly it was only my fancy, but it was not fancy that his flesh had fallen away more than ever.
It has been an afternoon of magnificent summer weather, not sultry, but sumptuous; with vast blue sky, a few slow-sailing clouds, a luxuriant west wind tempering the splendid heat. The thermometer in my room stands at 80° while I am writing. 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." Again, "what puzzles the doctor is my belly bein'like 'tis—puffed up and hard as a puddin' dish." The doctor has not mentioned dropsy, to him. Enough, perhaps, that he has told him that his heart was "wasting away." "That's a bad sign," commented Bettesworth, to me. He said he had asked the doctor, "'Is there any chance o' my gettin' better?' 'Not but a very little,' he said. 'If you do, it'll be a miracle.'" At that, Bettesworth replied, "Then I wish you'd give me something to help me away from here." "Why, where d'ye want to go to?" the doctor asked; and was answered, "Up top o' Gravel Hill" to the churchyard. "I told him that, straight to his head," said the old man.
He lay there, thinking of his death. Door and window were wide open, and a cooling air played through the room. 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; had worked like that himself on many July afternoons; and now he lay thinking of his approaching death. But I thought, too, of his life, and spoke of it: how from the hill-top there across the valley you could not look round upon the country in any part of the landscape but you would everywhere see places where he had worked. "Yes: for a hundred miles round," he assented.
It came up naturally enough, I remember, in the course of desultory talk, with many pauses. He had had "gentry" to see him, he was saying, and he named the Colonel, and Mr. ——. "Who'd have thought everhe'd ha' bin like that to me?" he exclaimed gratefully. And each of these visitors had spoken of his "good character"; had "liked all they ever heared" about him, and so on; and it was then that I remarked about the places where he had worked, as proof that his good character had been well earned. But as we talked of his life, all the time the thought of his death was present. I fancied once that he wished to thank me for standing by him, and could not bring it off, for he began telling how the Colonel had said, "'You've got a very good friend to be thankful for.'" But it was easy to turn this. The Colonel too is a friend. He had left an order for a bottle of whisky to be bought when the last one sent by Mr. —— is empty; and he has not given up yet the endeavour to get Bettesworth's Crimean service recognized with a pension.
I cannot recall all that passed; indeed, it was incoherent and mumbling, and I did not catch all. He revived that imaginary grievance against his neighbour, for drawing money from me to pay his club when he went to the infirmary. It appeared that Jack had been going into the matter, and had satisfied Bettesworth that the payments had never been really owing; so they hoped that, now I knew,I should take steps to be righted. Bettesworth seemed to find much relief in the feeling that his own character was cleared from blame. "Some masters might have give me the sack for it," he said, "when I got back to work." To this he kept reverting, as if in the hope of urging me to have justice; and then he would say, "There, I'm as glad it's all right as if anybody had give me five shillin's." To humour him I professed to be equally glad; it was not worth while to trouble him with what I knew very well to be the truth—that Mrs. Eggar was in the right, and had really done him a service.
What more? He said once, "I thinks I shall go off all in a moment. Widder Cook was here ... she was talkin' about her husband Cha'les. They'd bin tater-hoein', an' when they left off she said, 'a drop o' beer wouldn't hurt us.' 'No,' he said, 'a drop o' beer and a bit o' bread an' cheese, an' then git off to bed.' So they sent for the beer. And they hadn't bin in bed half an hour afore she woke, and he'd moved; an' she put her arm across 'n an' there he was, dead." So the widow had told Bettesworth; and now he repeated it to me—the last tale I shall ever hear from him, I fancy, and told all mumblingly with his poor old dried-up mouth. He added, almost crying, "I prays God to let me go like that." We agreed that it was a merciful way to be taken.
It still interested him to hear of the garden, andhe asked how the potatoes were coming up, and listened to my account of the peas and carrots, but said he was "never much of a one" for carrots. At home I had left George Bryant lawn-mowing. Well, Bettesworth too had mown my lawn in hot weather, and smiled happily at the reminiscence. He smiled again when, recalling how I had known him now for fourteen years, I reminded him of the great piece of trenching which had been his first job for me.
So presently I came away, out on to the sunny road, thinking, "I shall not see him many more times." From just there I caught a glimpse of Leith Hill, blue with twenty intervening miles of afternoon sunlight: twenty miles of the England Bettesworth has served.
Half-way down the hill the old road-mender, straightening up from his work as I passed, asked, "Can ye keep yerself warm, sir?" And I laughed, "Pretty nearly. How about you?" "Itboilsout," he said. The perspiration stood on his face while he spoke of motor-cars, and the dust they raised; but to me dust and swift-travelling cars and all seemed to tell of summer afternoon. And though the reason is obscure, somehow it seems fit that possibly my last talk with Bettesworth should be associated with the blue distant English country, and the summer dust, and that sunburnt old folk jest which consists in asking, when it is so particularly and exhilaratingly warm as to-day, "Can you keep yourself warm?"
July 21.—The weather was as brilliantly hot this afternoon as a week ago; and Bettesworth's bedroom looked just as before; but the old man was changed. He lay with eyes looking glazed between the half-shut lids, and he was breathing hard. His niece accompanied me upstairs; but he took no notice of our entry until she mentioned my name, upon which he turned a little and put up a feeble hand for me to take. He was in a sort of stupor, though he seemed to rouse a little, and to understand one or two remarks I ventured. But when he spoke it was as if utterly exhausted, and we could not always make out his meaning. In the hope of helping him to realize that I was with him, I told of the garden, and how Bryant was mowing again, though in this hot weather the lawn was "getting pretty brown,youknow." "Yes," he said feebly, "and if you don't keep it cut middlin' short, it soon goes wrong." Next I reported on the potatoes—how well they were coming: "the same sort as you planted for me last year." "Ah—theVictoria, wa'n't they?" The question was a mere murmur. "No,Duke of York. And don't you remember what a crop we had, when you planted 'em?" There came the faintest of smiles, and "None of what I planted failed much, did they?" Indeed, no. The shallots he had planted during his last day's work had just been harvested; the beans which he sowed the same day had but now yielded their last picking. I told him they were over."You can't expect no other," he said, meaning at this time of year and in such dry weather. I mentioned the celery, reminding him, "Youhavesweated over watering celery, haven't you?" Again he just smiled, and I fancy this smile was the last sign of rational interest and pride in his labour.
For after this he became incoherent and wandering. Dimly we made out that he "wanted to put them four poles against the veranda," apparently meaning my veranda. "What for?" his niece asked. "To keep the wall up." Then I, "We won't trouble about that to-day," as if he had been consulting me about the work, and he seemed satisfied to have my decision. But I had stayed too long; so, grasping his hand, I said "Good-bye." He asked, "Are ye goin' to the club?" (He was thinking of the Oddfellows' fête arranged for to-morrow week, and had been wondering all day, his niece said, not to hear the band.) "It isn't till to-morrow week," we said. "How they do keep humbuggin' about," he muttered crossly. "Yes, but they've settled it now," we assured him.
I have promised to go again to see him—to-morrow or on Sunday, because, according to his niece, he had been counting on my visit, and asking for several days "if this was Friday."
The thought came to me on my way home, that he is dying without any suspicion that anyone could think of him with admiration and reverence.
July 25 (Tuesday).—Bettesworth died this evening at six o'clock.
July 28 (Friday).—This afternoon I went to the funeral.
A week earlier (almost to the hour) when I parted from him, he seemed too ill to take his money—too unconscious, I mean. I offered it to his niece, standing at the foot of the bed; but she said, glancing meaningly towards him, "I think he'd like to take it, sir." So I turned to him and put the shillings into his hand, which he held up limply. "Your wages," I said.
For a moment he grasped the silver, then it dropped out on to his bare chest and slid under the bed-gown, whence I rescued it, and, finding his purse under the pillow, put his last wages away safely there.
On the Saturday I saw him, but I think he did not know me: and that was the last time. The thought of him keeps coming, wherever I go in the garden; but I put it aside for fear of spoiling truer because more spontaneous memories of him in time to come.
[1]Author's note. "The Bettesworth Book" (second impression).[2]A tool of which the iron part resembles that of a garden fork, the handle, however, being socketed into it at right angles, as in a rake.[3]The earlier portions of this chapter have already appeared inCountry Life.
[1]Author's note. "The Bettesworth Book" (second impression).
[2]A tool of which the iron part resembles that of a garden fork, the handle, however, being socketed into it at right angles, as in a rake.
[3]The earlier portions of this chapter have already appeared inCountry Life.