Is it wrong to give so much space to these haphazard recollections? They interrupt the narrativeof Bettesworth's slow and weary decline—that must be admitted. Yet, following as they do so close upon his wretched experiences in contact with more modern life, they help to explain why he and modernity were so much at odds. He had been a labourer, a soldier, all sorts of things; but he had been first and last by taste a peasant, with ideas and interests proper to another England than that in which we are living now.
In course of time, but not yet, a good deal more was to be gleaned from him about this former kind of country existence. I shall take it as it comes, and, while Bettesworth is losing grip of life, let the contrast between him dying and the modern world eagerly living make its own effect. As now this detail, and now that, is added to the mass, perhaps a little of the atmosphere may be restored in which his mind still had its being, and through which he saw our time, yet not as we see it.
Meanwhile, there is one reminiscence which stands by itself and throws light on little or nothing, but is too queer to be omitted. Having no place of its own, it is given here because it comes next in my note-book.
October 24, 1903.—It was the weather that started our talk. Bettesworth could not remember anything like this year 1903 for rain. But there! he supposed we should get some fine weather again "somewhen?"
Now, I had just been reading some history, andwas able to answer with some confidence, "Oh yes. There have been wet years before this." And I mentioned the year after the Battle of Waterloo.
Then Bettesworth, "Let's see. Battle of Waterloo? That was in '47, wa'n't it?"
I chanced to be able to give him the correct date, which he accepted easily, as if he had known all the time. "Oh ah," he said. "But there was something in eighteen hunderd and forty-seven—some great affair or other?... I dunno what 'twas, though, now.... Forty-seven? H'm!"
What could it have been? No, not the Mutiny. "That come after the Crimea. 'Twa'n't that. But there was something, I know."
I could not imagine what it could have been; but Bettesworth still pondered, and at last an idea struck him. "June, '47.... H'm!... Oh, I knows. Old Waterloo Day, that's what 'twas! There used to be a lot of 'em" (he was hurrying on, and I could only surmise that he meant Waterloo veterans) "at Chatham. I see one of 'em there myself, what had cut one of his hamstrings out o' cowardice, so's he shouldn't have to go into the battle. So then they cut the other, too, an' kep' 'n there" (at Chatham) "for a peep-show. He wa'n't never to be buried, but put in a glass case when he died.
"He laid up there in his bed, and anybody as mind could go up an' see 'n. They used to flog 'n every Waterloo Day—in the last years 'twas abunch o' black ribbons he was flogged with. He had a wooden ball tied to a bit o' string; and you go up, and ast 'n about the 71st (?), and see what you'd git! 'Cause one of the soldiers o' the 71st went up there once, an' called 'n all manner o' things. O' course, when he'd throwed this ball he could always draw 'n back again, 'cause o' the string.... And every mornin' he was ast what he'd have to drink. They said he was worth a lot, and 't'd all go to a sergeant-major's daughter when he died, what looked after 'n.
"He was worth a lot o' money. Lots used to go up to see 'n—I did, and so did a many more, 'cause he was kep' there for show, and everybody as went up he'd ast 'm for something. He'd git half a crown, or ten shillin's, or a sovereign sometimes. But lots o' soldiers used to go an' let 'n have it.
"Ye see, he couldn't git up. He cut his own hamstring for cowardice, so's he shouldn't go into battle, and then they cut the other. 'Twas the Dook o' Wellington, they says, ordered it to be done, for a punishment. And, o' course, he never was able to walk again. That done him. There he laid on the bed, with waddin' wrapped all round to prevent sores. And in one part o' the room was the glass case ready for when he died, for 'n to be embarmed an' kep'—'cause he was never to be buried. Fifty year he laid there! I shouldn't much like his bit, should you?"
November 4, 1903.—One morning—it was the 4th of November—Bettesworth said, "I got a invitation out to a grand dinner to-night, down in the town. Veterans of the Crimea. But I shan't go. I'd sooner be at home and have a bit o' supper an' get to bed early.... No; it don't cost ye nothin'—an' plentyofeverything; spirits, good food, a very gooddinner. Still, you can't go to these sort o' things without spendin' a shillin'. And then be about half the night. I don't care about it. If I was to go, 't'd upset me to-morrer."
All this bewildered me. For one thing, it was plain that the fact of Bettesworth's having been a soldier was no secret after all. As he now went on to tell me, he had actually attended two previous dinners. Who were they, then, who knew his record, and got him his invitation? Who, indeed, was giving the dinner? Rumours of some such annual celebration, it is true, had reached me; but it was no public function. Even by name the promoters were unknown to me; and yet somehow they had known for several years before I did that my man had been a soldier in the Crimea.
At the moment, however, it was Bettesworth's refusal of the invitation that most surprised me, although his alleged reasons were very good. He so loved good cheer, and he had so few opportunities of enjoying it—the Oddfellows' dinner was the only other chance he ever had in any year—that I immediately suspected him of having been swayed in this instance by something else besides prudence. He sounded over-virtuous. And presently it struck me that there might have been something offensive to him in the way the invitation was given.
It had been received on the previous evening. He had just got round to the public-house, "'long of old White," when "a feller come in," inquiring for him. Bettesworth did not know the man; it was "somebody in a grey suit." "Stood me a glass of hot whisky-and-water, he did, and old White too." And, referring to Bettesworth's military service, "'What was ye?' he says. 'A man,' I says. He laughed and says, 'What are ye drinkin'?' 'Only a glass o' cold fo'penny,' I says." And Bettesworth seems to have said it in a very meek voice, subtly insinuating that "the feller" might stand something better.
I inferred, further, that Bettesworth's conscience was now pricking him for some incivility he had shown in declining the invitation. At any rate, he made a lame attempt, not otherwise called for, to prove that a self-respecting man would not humblehimself to anyone upon whom he was not dependent. He had evidently been the reverse of humble; and possibly the invitation was patronizing, and raised his ire.
"Or else," he concluded, "I be purty near the only veteran left about here. There used to be Tom Willett and"—another whose name I have forgotten—"in the town, but they be gone, and I dunno who else there is. And I knows there's ne'er another in this parish. Dessay they'll get a few kiddies from Aldershot. 'Cause there's any amount o' drink...."
Well, Bettesworth did not go to the dinner, and I never quite understood why. Possibly he really felt too old for dissipation, even of a decorous kind: still more likely, he dreaded being at once under-valued and patronized, among the "kiddies" from Aldershot. He certainly did well to avoid their company. Long afterwards, when for other reasons I was making inquiries about this dinner, I learnt that the behaviour of some of the guests had been scandalous. Some had been carried away, drunk. Others had taken with them, hidden in their pockets, the means of getting drunk at home. So I was told; but not by the promoters, who had shortly afterwards left the neighbourhood.
On this same date (4th November, 1903) Bettesworth informed me of another circumstance which affected him seriously. It was that he had latelybeen superannuated from his club, which he had joined in July, 1866. At that distant time, when he was still a young man, and a strong one, how should he look forward to the year 1903? By what then seemed a profitable arrangement, he paid his subscription on a lower scale, on the understanding that he would receive no financial help in time of sickness after he was sixty-five years old. He had now passed that age. Henceforth, for a payment of threepence a month, he was to have medical attendance free, and on his death the club would pay for his funeral.
He was mighty philosophical over this. For my part, it was impossible to look forward without apprehension to the position he would be in during the approaching winter. A year previously he had shown symptoms of bronchitis. But what was to become of him now, if he should be ill, and have no "sick-pay" upon which to fall back?
I think it must have been during the winter we have reached that the village policeman stopped me in the road one night to talk about old Mrs. Bettesworth. He told me, what I vaguely knew, that she was increasingly ill. Once, if not oftener (I write from memory), he had helped get her home out of the road, where she had fallen in a fit; and a fear was upon him that she would come to some tragical end. Then there would be an inquest; Bettesworth might be blamed for omitting necessary precautions; at any rate, trouble and scandal must ensue. The policeman proposed that it would be well if a doctor could see the old woman occasionally, and suggested that through my influence with Bettesworth it might be arranged.
Although I promised to see what could be done to carry out so thoughtful a suggestion, and meant to keep my promise, as a matter of fact no steps towards its performance were ever taken; and the thing is mentioned here only as a piece of evidence as to the conditions in which Bettesworth passed the winter. In the background of his mind, there stood always the circumstances which had inspiredapprehension in the policeman. I never noted down his dread, because it was too constant a thing; and for a like reason, he seldom spoke of it; but there it always was, immovable. The policeman's talk merely shows that the reasons for it were gathering in force.
Save for one or two other equally vague memories, that winter is lost, so far as Bettesworth is concerned. We had some cold though not really severe weather—nothing so terrible as an odd calculation of his would have made it out to be. "For," said he, "webegettin' it! The Vicar's gardener says there was six degrees o' frost this mornin'.... And five yesterday; an' seven the mornin' before. That makes eighteen degrees!" So he added up the thermometer readings; and, associated with his words, there comes back to me a winter afternoon in which the air had grown tense and still. Under an apple-tree, where the ground, covered with thin snow, was too hard frozen for a tool to penetrate, the emptyings of an ash-bin from the kitchen lay in a little heap; and a dozen or so of starlings were quarrelling over this refuse, flying up to spar at one another, and uttering sharp querulous cries. A white fog hung in the trees. It was real winter, and I laughed to myself, to think what a record Bettesworth might make of it by the following morning.
Seeing that every winter now he was troubled with a cough, I may as well give here some undatedsentences I have preserved, in which he described how he caught cold on one occasion. "If I'd ha' put on my wrop as soon 's I left off work," he said, "I should ha' bin aw-right. 'Stead o' that, I went scrawneckin' off 'ome jest's I was, an' that's how I copt it." The word scrawnecking, whatever he meant by it, conjures up a picture of him boring blindly ahead with skinny throat uncovered. He took little care of himself; and considering how ill-fed he went now that his wife was so helpless, it was small wonder that he suffered from colds. They did not improve his appetite. They spoilt many a night's rest for him, too. At such times, the account he used to give of his coughing was imitative. "Cough cough cough, all night long." A strong accent on the first and fourth syllables, and a "dying fall" for the others, gives the cadence.
Beyond these memories nothing else is left of Bettesworth's experiences during those three months—December, 1903, and January and February, 1904. Coming to March, I might repeat some interesting remarks of his upon an affair then agitating the village; but after all they do not much concern his history, and there are strong reasons for withholding them. And suppressing these, I find no further account of him until the middle of May.
The interval, however, between the 3rd of March and the 16th of May, was sadly eventful for Bettesworth. I cannot say much about it. As once before when his circumstances grew too tragical, so on thisoccasion a vague sense of decency forbade me to sit down and record in cold blood his sufferings, perhaps for future publication.
What happened was briefly this: that some time in March one of the colds which had distressed him all the winter settled upon his chest and rapidly turned to bronchitis. If his wife's condition is taken into account, the seriousness of the situation will be appreciated. At his time of life bronchitis would have been bad enough, even with good nursing; but poor old Lucy Bettesworth was far past devoting to her husband any attention of that sort. Even in her best state she was past it, and she was by no means at her best just now. She needed care herself; had a heavy cold; was at times beyond question slightly crazy; and, to aggravate the trouble, she was insulting even to the two or three neighbours who might have conquered their reluctance to enter the filthy cottage and help the old man. For perhaps a week, therefore, he lay uncared for, and none realized how ill he was. Only the next-door neighbour spoke of hearing him coughing all night long.
The old woman received me downstairs when I went to make inquiries. She sat with her hand at her chest, dishevelled and unspeakably dirty. And she coughed; tried to attract my sympathy to herself; assured me "I be as bad as he is"; looked indeed ill, and half-witted. "You can go up and see 'n," she said. I stumbled up the stairs andfound Bettesworth in bed, with burning cheeks and eyes feverishly bright. The bedding was disgusting; so were the remains of a bloater left on the table beside him, so much as to give me a feeling of nausea. As for nursing, he had had none. He had got out of bed the previous night and found a packet of mustard, of which he had shaken some into his hand, and rubbed that into his chest, dry; and that was the only remedy that had been used for his bronchitis, unless—yes, I think there was a bottle of medicine on the mantelpiece; for he was still entitled to the services of the club doctor, who had been sent for. But in such a case, what could a doctor do?
The next day the old man was worse, at times wandering in his mind. And, as there was no one else to take the initiative, and as he looked like dying and involving us all in disgrace, I interviewed the doctor and—but the story grows wearisome.
To finish, then: the workhouse infirmary was decided upon, as the only place where Bettesworth could get the nursing without which he would probably die. Fortunately, he received the proposal reasonably; he was ready to go anywhere to get well, as he felt that he never would at home. He merely stipulated that his wife must not be left. A walk to find the relieving officer and get the necessary orders from him was to me the only pleasant part of the episode. It took me, on a brilliant spring evening, some three miles farther into thecountry, where I saw the first primroses I had seen outside my garden that year. It also enabled me to see how parish relief looks from the side of the poor who have to ask for it, but that was not so pleasant. However, the officer was civil enough; he gave me the necessary orders; we made all the arrangements, and on the following day the two old Bettesworths were driven off miserably in a cab to the workhouse.
How fervently everybody hoped, then, that Bettesworth would leave his wife behind, if he ever came out of the institution himself alive! And yet, though it's true he was dependent on me for the wherewithal to keep his home together, how much nobler was his own behaviour than that we would have commended! Once in the infirmary, he recovered quickly; and in ten days, to my amazement (and annoyance at the time), word came that the old couple were out again. They had toddled feebly home—a two-mile journey; they two together, not to be separated; each of them the sole person in the world left to the other. The old woman, people told me, was amazingly clean. Her hair, which had been cut, proved white beyond expectation; her face was almost comely now that it was washed. Had I not seen her? What a pity it was, wasn't it, the old man wouldn't leave her up there to be took care of, and after all the trouble it had been, too, to get 'em there!
I believe it was on the day before Good Friday(1904) that they returned home. When Bettesworth got to work again is more than my memory tells me. I suppose, though, that I must have paid him a visit first—probably during the following week; for I remember hoping to see the old woman's white hair and clean face, and being disappointed to find her as grimy as ever—her visage almost as black as her hands, and her hair an ashy grey.
May 16, 1904.—"It is long," says a note of the 16th of May, "since I wrote down any of Bettesworth's talk; but it flows on constantly—less vivacious than of old, perhaps, for he is visibly breaking since his illness in the spring, and is a stiff, shiftless, rather weary, rather sad old man; but his garrulity has not lost its flavour of the country-side; and many of his sayings sound to me like the traditional quips and phrases of earlier generations."
This was apropos of a remark he had let fall about a certain Mr. Sparrow in an adjacent village, for whom Bettesworth's next-door neighbour Kiddy Norris had been labouring, until Kiddy could no longer endure the man's grasping ways. Stooping over his wooden grass-rake, Bettesworth murmured, as if to the grass, "Old Jones used to say Sparrows pecks." Then he told how Sparrow, deprived of the services not only of Kiddy, but of Kiddy's mate Alf, was at a loss for men to replace them; and, "Ah," Bettesworth commented, "he can't have 'em on a peg, to take down jest when he mind to." The saying had a suggestive old-world sound: I could imagine it handed about, on the Surrey hill-sides,and in cottage gardens, and at public-houses, over and over again through many years.
Presently Bettesworth said casually, "I hear they're goin' to open that new church over here in Moorway's Bottom to-morrer. Some of 'em was terrifyin' little Alf Cook about it last night" (Sunday night; probably at the public-house), "tellin' him he was goin' to be made clerk, and he wouldn't be tall enough to reach to ring the bell."
"Little Alf," I asked, "who used to work for So-and-so?"
"Worked for 'n for years. The boys do terrify 'n. Tells 'n he won't be able to reach to ring the bell. They keeps on. Why, he en't tall enough to pick strawberries, they says."
"He's got a family, hasn't he?"
"Yes—but they be all doin' for theirselves. Two or three of 'em be married.Hemight ha' bin doin' very well. His old father left 'n the house he lives in, and a smart bit o' ground: but I dunno—some of 'em reckons 'tis purty near all gone."
"Down his neck?"
"Ah. They was talkin' about 'n last night, and they seemed to reckon there wa'n't much left. But he's a handy little feller. Bin over there at Cashford this six weeks, so he told me, pointin' hop-poles for they Fowlers. He said he'd had purty near enough of it. But he poled, I thinks he said, nine acres o' hop-ground for 'em last year. He bin pointin' this year. He says he might do better if'twas nearer home—he can't git rid o' the chips over there; people won't have 'em. If he'd got 'em here, they'd be worth sixpence a sack—that always was the price. He gits so much a hunderd for pointin'; and he told me it was as much as he could do to earn two-and-nine or three shillin's" (a day). "Then o' course there's the chips, only he can't sell 'em. Cert'nly they'd serve he for firin'; but that en't what he wants."
May 20.—"There's a dandy. You lay there." Bettesworth chose out and put on one side a dandelion from the grass he was chopping off a green path. "I'll take he home for my rabbits," he said.
A sow-thistle in the near bank caught my eye. "Your rabbits will eat sow-thistles too, won't they?" I asked.
"Yes, they likes 'em very well. They'll eat 'em—an' then presently I shall eat they."
I pulled up the thistle, and another dandelion, while Bettesworth discoursed of the economics of rabbit-keeping. "'Ten't no good keepin' 'em for the pleasure.... But give me a wild rabbit to eat afore a tame one, any day. My neighbour Kid kills one purty near every week. He had one last Sunday must ha' wanted some boilin', or bakin', or somethin'."
"What, an old one?"
"Old buck. I ast 'n, 'What, have ye had yerteeth ground, then?' I says. He's purty much of a one for rabbits."
I was not so wonderfully fond of them, I said.
"No? I en't had e'er a one—I dunnowhen. Well—a rabbit, you come to put one down afore a hungry man, what is it? He's mother have gone an' bought one for 'n at a shop, when he en't happened to have one hisself—give as much as a shillin' or fifteenpence. 'Ten't worth it. Or else I've many a time bought 'em for sixpence—sixpence, or sixpence-ha'penny, or sevenpence. And they en't worth no more."
During all this he was sweeping up his grass cuttings. The children came out of school for afternoon recess, and their shoutings sounded across the valley. "There's the rebels let loose again," said Bettesworth. From where we stood, high on one of the upper terraces of the garden, we could see far. The sky was grey and melancholy. A wind blew up gustily out of the south-east, and I foreboded rain. "We don't want it from that quarter," Bettesworth replied. "That's such acoldrain. And I've knowed it keep on forty-eight hours, out o' the east.... I felt a lot better" (of the recent bronchitis) "when she" (the wind) "shifted out o' there before."
Meanwhile I had pulled up one or two more dandelions, to add to Bettesworth's heap; and now I espied a small seedling of bryony, which also I was careful to pull out. The root, already as big as aman's thumb, came up easily, and I passed it to Bettesworth, asking, "Isn't that what they give to horses sometimes?"
He handled it. "I neverhearedof anybody," he answered, perhaps not recognizing it at this small stage of growth. "Now, groundivy! That's a rare thing. If you bakes the roots o' that in the oven, an' then grinds it up to a powder, you no need tocallyer horses to ye, after you've give 'em that. They'll foller ye for it. Dandelion roots the same. Make 'em as fat! And their coats come up mottled, jest as if you'd knocked 'em all over with a 'ammer. They'll foller ye about anywhere for that.I've give it to 'em, many's a time; bin out, after my day's work, all round the hedges, purpose to get things for my 'osses. There's lots o' things in the hedgerow as is good for 'em. So there is for we too, if we only knowed which they was. We shouldn't want muchdoctorif we knowed about herbs.
"Old Waterson, he used to eat dandelion leaves same as you would a lettuce, and he said it done 'n good, too. Old Steve Blackman was another. He used to know all about the herbs. If you went into his kitchen, you'd see it hung all round with little bundles of 'em, to dry.Hewas the only one as could cure old Rokey Wells o' the yeller janders. Gunner had tried 'n—all the doctors had tried 'n, and give 'n up. He'd bin up there at the infirmary eighteen months or more, till old Steve see 'n oneday and took to 'n. And he made a hale hearty man of 'n again.
"That 'ere Holt—Tom Holt,youknow, what used to be keeper at Culverley—hegot the yeller janders now. He's pensioned off—twelve shillin's a week, and his cot and firin'. Lives in Cashford Bridge house—you knows that old farmhouse as you goes over Cashford Bridge. He lives there now. If old Steve's son got his father's book now, he'll be able to cure 'n. He used to keep a book where he put all the receipts, so 't is to be hoped his son have kep' it. They says Holt 've got the yeller janders wonderful strong, but if...."
May 24.—In Bettesworth's opinion, an important part of the training of a labourer relates to getting about and finding work. The old man was at the Whit Monday fête with a man named Vickery, of whom he talked, imitating Vickery's gruff voice with appreciation. Vickery—sixty or seventy years old—came (I learn) from a village out Guildford way—"that was his native," says Bettesworth—but was adopted by an aunt in this parish, who left him her two cottages at her death. All this, if not interesting to us, was deeply so to Bettesworth. And Vickery, it appears, has worked all his life in one situation, at Culverley Park. He began as a boy minding sheep. As a man, he managed the gas-house belonging to the mansion; and when the electric light was installed, he tookover the management of that, making up his time with chopping fire-wood, and so forth. And, says Bettesworth, "They'd ha' to set fire to Culverley to get rid of 'n. He never worked nowhere else. That's how they be down there. Old Smith's another of 'em. He bin there forty year. He turned seventy, here a week ago. Never had but two places, and bin at Culverley forty year. Why, if they was turned out they wouldn't know how to go about. Same when Mr. John Payne died: there was a lot o' young fellers turned off. They hadn't looked out for theirselves; their fathers had always got the work for 'em, and law! they didn' know where to go no more than a cuckoo! But I reckon that's a very silly thing."
June 1, 1904.—A cool thundery rain this first of June drove Bettesworth to shelter. As usual at such times, he busied himself at sawing and splitting wood for kindling fires.
At the moment of my joining him he was breaking up an old wooden bucket which had lately been condemned as useless. "Th' old bucket's done for," he said contemplatively. "I dessay he seen a good deal o' brewin'; but there en't much of it done now. A good many men used to make purty near a livin' goin' round brewin' for people. Brown's in Church Street used to be a rare place for 'em. Dessay you knows there's a big yard there; an' then they had some good tackle, and plenty o' room for firin'. Pearsons, Coopers"—he named several who were wont to make use of Brown's yard and tackle. I asked, "Did the cottage people brew?" But Bettesworth shook his head. "I never knowed none much—only this sugar beer."
"But they grew hops?" I asked.
"Oh yes," Bettesworth assented, "every gardenhad a few hills o' hops. But 't wa'n't very often they brewed any malted beer. Now 'n again one 'd get a peck o' malt, but gen'ly 'twas this here sugar beer. Or else I've brewed over here at my old mother-in-law's, 'cause they had the tackle, ye see; and so I have gone over there when I've killed a pig, to salt 'n."
A suggestion that he would hardly know how to brew now caused him to smile. "No, I don't s'pose I should," he admitted.
I urged next that nearly all people, I supposed, used at one time to brew their own beer. To which Bettesworth:
"And so they did bake their own bread. They'd buy some flour...."
I interrupted, remembering how he had himself grown corn, to ask if that was not rather the custom.
"Sometimes. Yes, Ihavegrowed corn as high as my own head, up there at the back of this cot.... But my old gal and me, when hoppin' was over, we'd buy some flour, enough to last us through the winter, and then with some taters, and a pig salted down, I'd say, 'There, we no call tostarve, let the winter bewhatit will.' Well, taters, ye see, didn't cost nothin'; and then we always had a pig. You couldn't pass a cottage at that time that hadn't a pigsty.... And there was milk, and butter, and bread...."
"But not many comforts?" I queried.
"No; 'twas rough. But I dunno—they used tolook as strong an' jolly as they do now. But 'twas poor money. The first farm-house I went to I never had but thirty shillin's and my grub."
"Thirty shillings in how long?"
"Twal'month. And I had to pay my washin' an' buy my own clothes out o' that."
The point was interesting. Did he buy his clothes at a shop, ready made?
"Yes. That was always same as 'tis now. Well, there was these round frocks—you'd getthey"—home-made, he meant. And he told how his sister-in-law, Mrs. Loveland, and her mother "used to earn half a living" at making these "round" or smock frocks to order, for neighbours. The stuff was bought: the price for making it up was eighteen-pence, "or if you had much work on 'em, two shillin's."
Much fancy-work, did he mean?
"The gaugin', you know, about here." Bettesworth spread his hands over his chest, and continued, "Most men got 'em made; their wives 'd make 'em. Some women, o' course, if they wasn't handy wi' the needle, 'd git somebody else to do 'em. They was warmer 'n anybody 'd think. And if you bought brown stuff, 'tis surprisin' what a lot o' rain they'd keep out. One o' them, and a woollen jacket under it, and them yello' leather gaiters right up your thighs—you could go out in the rain.... But 'twas a white round frock for Sundays."
At this point I let the talk wander; and presentlyBettesworth was relating perhaps the least creditable story he ever told me about himself. In judging him, however, if anyone desires to judge him after so many years, the circumstances should be borne in mind. The farm-lad on thirty shillings a year, the young soldier from the Crimea where he had been rationed on rum, marrying at last and settling down in this village where the rough eighteenth-century habits still lingered, might almost be expected to shock his twentieth-century critics. Be it admitted that his behaviour on the death of his father-in-law was disgraceful; but let it be allowed also that that father-in-law, the old road-foreman, was a drunken tyrant—at times a dangerous madman—at whose death it was natural to rejoice. However, I will let Bettesworth get on with his story.
The "white round frock on Sundays" reminded him of his father-in-law's costume-frock as described, tall hat, and knee-breeches; and this recalled (here on this rainy June day where we talked in the shed) how tall a man he was; and how, lying on the floor in the stupor of death, just across the lane there, he looked "like a great balk o' timber." Confusedly the narrative hurried on after this. A cottage was mentioned, which used to stand where now that resident lives who could not endure the Bettesworths for his tenants. This was the maiden home of Bettesworth's mother-in-law; and to this the mother-in-law would flee for refuge, in terror of being murdered by her husband in his drunkenfrenzies. Then would the husband follow, and "break in all the windows"; for which he was "kept out" of the owner's will, and lost much property that would have been his. Particulars of his suicide followed: the man cut his throat and lay speechless for eight days before he died. But at the first news Bettesworth, being one son-in-law, was dispatched to a village some five miles distant, to fetch home another. He borrowed a pony and cart; found his brother-in-law, "and," he said, "we both got as boozy as billyo on the way home.... ''Arry,' I says, 'the old foreman bin an' done for hisself.'" At every public-house they came to they had beer, treating the pony also; and finally they came racing through the town at full speed. "We should ha' bin locked up for it now. No mistake wecome, when we did get away. And when we got 'ome, 'Arry stooped over to speak to 'n, an' fell over on his face. I didn't wait formylecture: I had to get the pony home. It was runnin' off 'n, when I got 'n down to his stable, with the pace we'd made, an' the beer he'd had. We should ha' got into trouble for it if 't had been now. The old woman come out, an' begun goin' on about it; but the old man says, 'You might be sure they'd travel, for such a job. And he won't be none the worse for it.' We put 'n in the stable, an' give 'n another pint o' beer, and rubbed 'n down an' throwed two or three hop-sacks over 'n; an' next mornin' he was as right as ever."
"How long ago?" I asked.
"I 'most forgets how long ago 'twas. A smartish many years. His wife—she bin dead this—let's see—three-an'-twenty year; and she lived a good many years after he."
She had property—her husband's, no doubt—which her son Will (Bettesworth's wife's brother, remember) inherited, yet only by the skin of his teeth. For if some infant or other had breathed after birth, that infant's relatives would have been the heirs. On this sort of subject people like Bettesworth are always most tedious and obscure. As to the household stuff, it was to be divided; "and when it come to our turn to choose," Bettesworth said, "my old gal and me said Will could have ourn. We'd got old clutter enough layin' about, and Will hadn't got none, ye see, always livin' with his mother. So he had the stuff an' the cot. They" (the rival party) "had two or three tries for it; but 'twas proved that the child never breathed. My wife's sister Jane thoughtshewas goin' to get it. But I says, 'No, Jane; you wears the wrong clothes. That belongs to William.'"
Bettesworth ceased. In the ten or fifteen minutes while he had been talking we had got far from the subject of peasant industries; and yet somehow the thought of them was still present to both of us, and when he grew silent I nodded my head contemplatively, murmuring something about "queer old times." "Yes," he returned, "a good manywouldn't be able to tell ye how theydidbring up a family o' childern, if you was to ast 'em." And so, with the rain pattering down upon the shed roof, I left the old man to his wood-chopping.
June 11, 1904.—The twentieth century is driving out the old-fashioned people and their savagery from the village, but here and there it lets in savagery of its own. Into that hovel down by the stream, which Bettesworth had vacated, there had come fresh tenants, as I knew; but that was all I knew until one morning Bettesworth told me something, which I lost no time in hurrying down on to paper, while his sentences were hot in my mind, as follows:
"Ha' ye heared about our neighbours down 'ere runnin' away?"
"No! Where?"
"Down here where I used to live. Gone off an' left their little childern to the wide world."
"Well, but ... who...?"
"Worcester theycalls'n. But I dunno what his name is."
"Where did he come from? I don't seem to know him."
"No, nor me. I dunno nothin' about 'n. He bin a sojer an' got a pension. He bin at work down at this Bordon. But his wife bin carryin' on purty much. Had another bloke about there this fortnight. An' then went off, an' give one of her littlechildern a black eye for a partin' gift. He come 'ome o' Sunday, and didn't find nobody about there; and took all there was and his pension papers and was off. And there's them two poor little dears left there alone wi' nobody to look after 'em or get 'em a bit o' vittles."
Of course I exclaimed, while Bettesworth went on,
"Ah ... I reckon they ought to be hung up by the heels, leavin' their childern like that. I alwayswasfond o' childern, but if 't 'd bin older ones able to look after theirselves I shouldn't ha' took so much notice. But these be two little 'ns ben't 'ardly able to dress theirselves: two little gals about five or six. Poor little dears, there was one of 'em went cryin' 'cause her mother was goin' away, and her mother up with her hand and give her one. Law! somebody ought to ha' bin there with a stick and hit her across the head and killed her dead!
"There they was all day and all night. Mrs. Mardon went to the policeman about it. He said she better take care of 'em. 'But I can't afford to keep 'em,' she says. 'No,' he says, 'cert'nly not. 'Ten't to be expected you should. But you look after 'em for a week, an' we'll see if their parents comes back. And if they don't, we'll see the relievin' officer, an' pay you for your trouble; and the children 'll be took to the workhouse, and then we shall very soonhave'em'" (the parents). "Andso they will, too. They says he's gone to Salisbury. But they'll have 'n. Old soldier, and a pensioner, and all: they'll find 'n."
"What's his name, do you say?"
"Theycalls'n Worcester: we dunno whether 'tis his right name, or only a nickname. He ought toha'Worcester! He's like 'nough to cop it, too!"
June 20.—On the afternoon of June 20th, once more Bettesworth was at work among the potatoes, yet not in the circumstances of last year, when we were rejoicing in the rain. According to my book, this was "a real summer afternoon—Hindhead showing the desired dazzling blue; soft high clouds floating from the westwards; a soft wind occasionally stirring the trees." Blackbirds, it seems, were flitting about the garden to watch their young, warning them, too, with an incessant "twit-twit, twit-twit"; and no doubt, besides this June sound, there was that of garden tools struck into the soil.
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 inalmost 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 formyself, 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.
Another shifting of the talk brought us round to his brother-in-law—that accomplished farm-labourer, who was then, however, driving a traction engine, with one truck which carried three thousand bricks. "That must do away with a lot of hoss hire," said Bettesworth. "And yet," I urged, "there seem more horses about than ever." "And they be dear to buy, so Will Crawte says," added Bettesworth.
"How many load," I asked ignorantly, "do you reckon three thousand bricks? More than a four-horse load, isn't it?"
Bettesworth made no effort to reckon, but said easily, "Yes. They reckons three hunderd an' fifty is a load, of these here wire-cut bricks; four hunderd, of the old red bricks; and stock bricks is five hunderd. And slates, 'Countess' slates—they be twenty inches by ten—six hunderd o' they goes to a load."
Wondering at his knowledge, I commented on the endless variety of technical details never dreamt of by people like myself; and Bettesworth assented, without interest, however, in me or other people or anything but his subject. "That's one o' the things you wants to learn, if you be goin' with hosses—when you got a load. Law! half o' these carters on the road dunno whether they got a load or whether they en't. I've almost forgot now; but I learnt it once."
"How do you mean 'learnt' it? Picked it up?"
"No. 'Tis in a book. You can learn to reckon things.... If you be goin' for a tree, or a block o' stone, or bricks, you wants to know what's a load for a hoss, or a two or a three hoss load. A mason told me once, when I was goin' for a block o' stone. He put his tape round it, an' told me near the matter what it weighed. He said you always ought to carry a two-foot rule in yourpocket; and then put it across the stone—or p'r'aps 'tis two or three bits you got to take...."
As there is nothing in the talk itself to give the impression, it must have been my working in the sunshine when I heard of these details, that now makes them—the glaring stone-mason's yard, the village smithy, the engine hauling bricks along the high road—seem all sun-baked and dusty, in the heat which men like Bettesworth have to face, while I am admiring the summer landscape.
Twice in the early days of July the old man's homely rustic living is touched upon. By now, in the cottage gardens, the broad-beans are at their best; and he desires, it is said in one place, no better food than beans, served for choice with a bit of bacon. But there are peas too; and one day he tells me simply that he "had peas three times yesterday. There's always some left from dinner, and then I has 'em in a saucer for my supper."
July 29.—As July ran to its close, the weather, though still warm, turned gloomy, and showers came streaking down in front of the grey dismal distance. "They gives apooraccount of the harvest," says Bettesworth. "What? have they started?" I ask; and he, "Yes, I've heared of a smartish few."
I supposed he meant in Sussex; but it appeared not. "No," he said, "I dunno as they've begunin Sussex, but about here. Lent corn, oats, an' barley, an' so on. There's So-and-so"—he named three or four farmers reported to have begun cutting, and went on, "But 'tis all machine work, so there won't be much" (extra work). "But the straw en't no higher 'n your knees in some parts, so they says.... 'Twas the cold spring—an' then the dryth. But it don't much matter about the barley. I've heared old people say they've knowed barley sowed and up and harvested without a drop o' rain on it fust to last. Where you gets straw" (with other crops, I suppose, is the meaning) "there en't no fear about the barley: 'tis a thing as 'll stand dryth as well as purty near anything."
He had "heard old people say"—things like these that he was now saying. And Bettesworth's phrase will bear thinking of, for its indication of the topics which the progress of the summer months had always been wont to renew in his brain year by year.
Unhappily, about this period something less pleasing was beginning to force itself upon his attention.
Into the peacefulness of Bettesworth's last working summer a disquieting circumstance had been slowly intruding; and now, with August, it developed into a subject of grave fears. I do not know when I first noticed a small sore on the old man's lower lip, but I think it must have been in May or early June. On being asked, he said it had been there since his illness in the spring, and "didn't seem to get no worse." Certainly he was not troubling about it.
Weeks passed, perhaps six weeks, in which, though the ugly, angry look of the thing sometimes took my attention, I forbore to speak of it again, being unwilling to arouse alarm. Then it occurred to me that if I was too fanciful, Bettesworth was not fanciful enough. In his robust out-door life he had never learnt to be nervous and anticipate horrors; and he might not be sufficiently alive to the dreadful possibilities which were presenting themselves to my own imagination. I urged him accordingly to see his club doctor.
He did so, not immediately, though after how long an interval I am unable to say, since none of this affair got into my note-book. The doctor nosooner saw the sore than he said it must be cut out. "Do you smoke?" was one of his first questions; and "Where is your pipe?" was the next. Bettesworth produced his pipe—an old blackened briar—and was comforted to learn that it was considered harmless. But he must have the sore removed, and his two or three remaining teeth near it would have to come out. When could he have it done? the doctor asked. Bettesworth said that he must consult me on that point, and came away promising to do so.
Considering how sure he must have been that I should put no obstacle in his way, I incline to think that by now he must himself have begun to feel alarm. He waited, however, about a week, and then one morning off he went again to see the doctor, half expecting, I believe, to have the operation done then and there, before he came home.
An hour afterwards I met him returning, looking worried. The doctor was just setting off for his holiday, and could not now undertake the operation, but advised him to go to Guildford Hospital. Perhaps Bettesworth would have liked me to pooh-pooh the suggestion—he little relished the idea of leaving his wife and his work, and taking a railway journey to so dismal an end; but even as he talked, I was watching on his lip that which might mean death. So I sent him off straightway to the Vicarage, where he could obtain a necessary letter of introduction to the hospital.
Of what immediately followed my memory is quite blank. I only recall that the old chap started at last all alone on his journey to Guildford, not knowing how long he would be away, or what was likely to happen to him. A niece of his had provided him with a stamped addressed envelope and a clean sheet of note-paper, in case he should need to get anyone at the hospital to send a message home.
August 6, 1904.—So he disappeared for a time. Three or four days, we supposed, would be the extent of his absence; but the days went by and no word came from him. For all we knew he might never have reached the hospital; and it began to be a serious question what would become of his wife, and whether she would not have to be sent to the workhouse for want of a protector. At last, I wrote for information to the matron of the hospital. Her answer, which lies before me now, and is the only piece of evidence I have preserved of the whole business, is dated August 6th. On that day, it stated, Bettesworth was to be operated upon, and, if all went well, he would most likely be able to leave the hospital in ten days or a fortnight.
Unless I mistake, the ten days or a fortnight dragged out to nearly three weeks, in which I had the old wife on my mind. A visit to her one Sunday morning reassured me. Poor old Lucy Bettesworth! I did not anticipate, then, that I should never againsee 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'."
Perceiving that she desired me to have the vegetable marrow, I allowed her to take me out into the garden to get it. "Could I cut it?" Of course I could, and did. Then a qualm struck her: perhaps I shouldn't like carrying it! But she might be able to wrap it up in a piece of newspaper....
To that, however, I demurred. There was no harm in being seen with a vegetable marrow on Sunday morning; and I took it, undraped by paper, aware that the despised old woman had done me the greatest courtesy in her power. And that was, as it proved, the last time I ever saw her.
Bettesworth, meanwhile, in the hospital, was not quite forgotten. His niece has been mentioned who gave him the stamped envelope which he had not used. We shall hear a good deal of her, later on—a helpful but delicate woman, who was Bettesworth's niece only by marriage with a nephew of his, of whom also we shall hear. These two on that Sunday morning—it being a quiet, half-hazy,half-sunny August day—walked over to Guildford, and brought back news that the old man was doing as well as could be hoped. They proposed to repeat the visit the following week. It made a pleasant Sunday outing.
But before that week was ended Bettesworth was suddenly home again, unannounced. An odd look about him puzzled me, until I realized that he had grown a beard—a white, scrubby, short-trimmed beard, which gave him a foxy expression that I did not like. His lip was in strapping, a little blood-stained, but he reported that all was going on well. The surgeons had carved down into his jaw, and believed the operation to have been quite successful. Satisfied as to this, I could endure his changed appearance.
Something about his manner was less satisfactory. Looking back, I think I know what was the matter; but at the time a sort of levity in him struck a false note. Besides, he seemed not to realize that his wife might have suffered by his absence, or that others had put themselves about on his behalf. He struck me as selfish and self-satisfied. I forgot what a lonely expedition his had been, and how he had had to start off and face this miserable experience without a friend at hand to care whether he came through it alive or not.
Left to himself (it is obvious enough now) and determined to go through the business in manly fashion, he had rather overdone it—had over-playedhis part. In refusing to admit fear, he had erred a little on the other side, and he still erred so in telling his experiences, perhaps because he was still not quite free of fear. By his account, his stay in the hospital had been an interesting holiday. Everything about it was a little too good to be believed. He had jested with the doctors and the nurses. They called him "Dad," and "a joking old man," and he felt flattered: they had had a "fire-drill," and from his bed, or his seat under the veranda among the convalescents, he had entered into the spirit of the thing. Grimmer details, too, did not escape him: the arrival of new patients in the night—"accident cases" brought in for immediate treatment; the sufferings he witnessed; the hopeless condition of a railway porter, and so forth. All this was told in his own manner, with swift realistic touch, convincingly true; with a genuine sense of the humour of the thing, he mentioned the operating-room by the patients' name for it—"the slaughter-house"; but none the less his narrative had an offensive emptiness, an unreality, a flippancy, unworthy, I thought, of Bettesworth.
A little more sense would have shown me the clue to it, in his behaviour just before the operation. He was dressed in "a sort of a white night-gown," waiting for his turn; and, he said, "I made 'em laugh. I got up and danced about on the floor. 'Now I be Father Peter,' I says." Then the nursecame to conduct him to "the slaughter-house." "'Old Freddy's goin' to 'ave something now,' they" (the nearer patients) "says. I took hold o' the nurse's arm. 'Now I be goin' out for a walk with my young lady,' I says. 'We be goin' out courtin'.'" And in such fashion, over-excited, he maintained his fortitude, with a travesty of the courage he was all but losing. He never confessed to having felt fear. The nearest approach to it was when he was actually lying on the operating-table. Left quite alone there (for half an hour, he alleged and believed), "I looked all round," he said, "and up at the skylight, and I says to myself, 'So this is where it is, is it?'"
With these tales he came home, repeating them until I was weary. By and by, however, he settled down to work, although one or two visits had to be paid to the hospital, for dressing the lip; and as he settled down, his normal manner returned. For some weeks—nay, for longer—his friends were not free of anxiety about him. There were pains in his jaw, and in his lip too, enough to draw dire forebodings from those of pessimistic humour. But Bettesworth owned to no fears. So it went on for a month or so, when that occurred which effectually banished from his mind all remembrance of this trouble.
September 19, 1904.—Because they can so little afford to be ill, it is habitual among the very poor to neglect an illness long after other people would be seriously alarmed at it; and the habit had been confirmed in Bettesworth with regard to his wife's maladies, by her having so many times recovered from them without help. It was almost a matter of course to him, when about the middle of September, and less than a month after his return from the hospital, she became once more exceedingly unwell. So she had often done: it was not worth mentioning, and was not mentioned, to me. I knew of no trouble. If I had been asked about his welfare at that time, I should have said that the old man was rather unusually happy. I should have said so especially one Monday morning (it was the 19th of September); because on that day we were picking apples, and his conversation was so delightfully in harmony with the sunshine glinting among the apple-boughs. He told of cider and cider-making; and then of shepherds he had known on the Sussex Downs, and of their dogs, and their solitary pastimes upon the hills. Hearing him, no one, I amsure, could have supposed that at home his wife had been dangerously ill for nearly a week, and that consequently his own comfort there had for the time ceased to exist.
Later on that Monday his wife's condition (not his own) was somehow made known to me. I suppose Bettesworth consulted me on the step he was contemplating, of going to the relieving officer to-morrow to get an order for medical attendance for old Lucy. At any rate, by Monday night that is what he had resolved to do, and I knew it and approved, remembering what the policeman had said to me. It seemed a wise precaution to take, but evidently it could not be urgent. Bettesworth was choosing Tuesday, because on Tuesday mornings the relieving officer is in attendance in the parish, and the order could therefore be got without a five-mile walk for it.
From various circumstances it may be inferred that the early part of Tuesday was an unhappy time for Bettesworth: a time of fretful watching for the dawn, perhaps after a wakeful night; of impatience to come and begin his day's work, and then of impatience for eleven o'clock to arrive, and of brooding obstinate thoughts, until at eleven he might go and get the miserable interview over. For it made him miserable to have to sue in the form of a pauper, and he was prepared, as poor folk generally are, to find in the relieving officer a bully if not a brute. I may say at once that hewas agreeably deceived, and said as much afterwards—he was treated humanely and with appreciation; but the relieving officer's account of the interview sufficiently proves that the old man went to it in but a surly temper. I imagine him standing up as straight as his crooked old limbs would let him, rolling his head back defiantly, with tightened lips and suspicious eyes, and answering as uncivilly as he dared. A compliment was offered him, on his haste to get away from the infirmary in the spring. "Ien't no workhouse man!" he answered brusquely. And he did his best to persuade the relieving officer that he would never want relief for himself, asserting that he belonged to a club, and concealing the fact that he was a superannuated member of it, no longer entitled to benefit from the club funds.
And then, the interview over, and the order obtained, his cheerfulness for the rest of the day is suggestive of an ordeal successfully passed. True, I have lost record of how he pottered through the afternoon—it was, of course, useless to go to the parish doctor at that time of day—but he seemed to have suddenly lost the weakness still lingering from the operation in the hospital; and being short of money, he proposed an extra job for the evening. He wanted to clear out a cesspit in my garden. I urged that he had better rest, and take care of himself as well as of his wife. "Ibe gettin' bonny!" he said happily.
He carried his point, too. As if he had no wife ill at home, at about eight o'clock, which was usually his bed-time, he came back and began his self-imposed task, with a young labourer to help. And he must have been in merry spirits, for he kept his mate amused, so that from the house I could hear the man laughing, in frequent bleating outbursts of hilarity, at some facetious saying or other. One of these sayings I heard, on going out to see how the work was progressing. "He must be a greedy feller as wants more 'n one or two whiffs o' this," Bettesworth remarked; and his companion let out another good-tempered laugh. From the old man's manner I argued that his wife must be doing well; but probably it indicated only a reaction from the moody temper of the morning. The job was finished at about half-past nine, and conscious of a good day's work done, Bettesworth once more crept over the hill and across the valley, home.
But not to go to bed, or to sleep. While he was at work in the moonlight and making his friend laugh, I did not know, but he did, what was in store for him. Having no spare bed, he began his night downstairs and dozed for a while in an easy-chair; then roused and went out into the moonlight to smoke a pipe; and so he got through the night. Tobacco was his solace. He smoked, he told me, a full ounce in the ensuing twenty-four hours. At seven in the morning—his usual hour—hewas here beginning work: at nine he left off, to go into the town and present his order at the doctor's.
That journey on the Wednesday morning proved the beginning of a period of intenser wretchedness for the old man. He set out in apparent equanimity; but the fatigue of the night was upon him, the glow of yesterday's contentment had died out, and his nerves must have been all on edge to take as he did a remark of the doctor's—"What do you want of an order? You're in constant work, aren't you?" It seemed to him that he was being insulted for coming as a pauper, and it was all he could do to refrain from a rejoinder that would have resulted in his being summarily ejected from the doctor's presence. And was he as submissive as he fancied? It is more likely that the ungraciousness of his manner was to blame for what he regarded as pure heartlessness in the other. That he must be at home to meet the doctor was self-evident; but it was important to him not to lose a whole day from his work, and he desired to know whether the visit would be made before his dinner-time or after it? I hazard a guess that he stated the case in tones of defiant bargaining; at any rate, he could get no answer but that the doctor would call during the day. With that he returned here—a quivering mass of resentment; and in that temper, to which nothing is so repugnant as waiting, by my persuasion rather than by his goodwill he left his work and went home to wait.
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; he only let fall one pitiful detail. Some time in the night he had given his wife a little brandy; and about daybreak he went out to draw fresh water into the kettle "so's not to have it no-ways stale," for making her a cup of tea. But, partaking of a cup himself at the same time, he "hadn't had it above five minutes afore he was out in the garden" to let the tea come back again. After that, he appears to have abandoned the attempt to get sustenance elsewhere than from tobacco. It was a dismal story to hear: but there was nothing to be done; and having heard it, I sent him home again to go on waiting. This was Thursday, two days after he obtained the relieving officer's order for medical assistance, and by now the state of his wife was causing him grave fears.
But why had the doctor not been near? To Bettesworth's wounded feelings the explanation needed no seeking: he was being made to wait forricher 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 alocum 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. At once all his bitterness died out. The doctor "was as nice a gentleman as ever I talked to," he affirmed. "He said she was very bad. She wasn't to have nothing but only milk an' beef-tea an' brandy, an' she wasn't to be left alone." Bettesworth therefore did not leave home again that day. He got his niece, whose young family prevented her from giving much help, to go to the town and bring home the medicine, and so he settled down for another night like those that had gone before.
It was on the next morning (Friday) that he told me these few particulars, and how his wife seemed a trifle—only a trifle—better; how, too, he had "washed her as well as he could," and, being asked, how he had not been to bed himself. And now he was on his way to the town to buy a few necessaries. Who was with his wife meanwhile? That was a question I dared not ask, because I knew that the distressful old woman was a by-word for sluttishness among the neighbours, so much that they wouldhardly go near her; and I knew that Bettesworth, though silent on the subject, was sore about it. Without doubt the old woman was quite alone, whenever circumstances compelled him to leave her.
The "necessaries" he was going to buy included beef-tea "and some cakes," he said. At the mention of cakes I exclaimed, but he protested reproachfully, "Well, but she en't hadnothin'to eat!" Clearly he did not regard milk as food, or indeed anything else that was not solid. In the matter of beef-tea, "I can't make it myself," he said, "but you can buy it, can't ye, in jars?" He was perhaps thinking of Bovril, or something of the kind. Fortunately there were those at hand who knew how to make beef-tea, and undertook at once to relieve the old man of this burden.
Taking him apart then, I asked if he needed a shilling or two. He almost groaned in deprecation, "I owes you such a lot now, and keeps on gettin' into debt. I'd sooner rub along with jest as little as ever I possibly can." It was of his rent he was thinking, which of course was payable for those weeks of his own illnesses, as well as for his absence from work now, when he was not earning any wages from which the rent could be deducted. Perhaps he was unaware that I had no account of the debt; in any case, it seemed to be preying upon his mind. I did not press the point, therefore, and he started off for the town without aid from me.
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. He was ready enough to send to me when he had his mishap" (falling from a rick, and finding himself in agony at night), "and I run off an' went all down to the town for 'n, late at night. But nowIwants help—no: he won't come anear. That's the sort o' fellerheis." So Bettesworth, uttering his sole complaint. But he did not demand from others the sympathy he looked for from a relation, or seek to inflict them with the tale of troubles which, after all, he would have to bear by himself.
At this point, if the actual course of this over-crowded Friday were to be followed strictly, the narrative would suffer a strange interruption. For, having business of my own in the town, I set off at the same time with Bettesworth, expecting little cheerfulness from him on the way. But I had failed to appreciate the man's stoicism, or the strong grip he had over his feelings. For several nights he had not rested on a bed; he had taken duringthe same period next to no food; he had been harassed by suspense, worn by indignation, baffled constantly by the obstacles which his poverty set in his way; and it would have been pardonable if he had proved himself but a gloomy companion for a walk. Yet from the moment of our setting out he put aside all his difficulties, and not only did he not distress me, but for the half-hour before we separated he kept me interested in his sensible conversation on local topics, or charmed by the pleasant rustic flavour of some of his reminiscences. Here, therefore, would be the natural place for inserting some fragments of this talk, which I wrote down in the evening. It happened, however, that in writing I gave precedence to an important change which by then had come over the situation at Bettesworth's home; and as I propose to take the account of this development and the issue of it straight from my note-book, the bits of gossip too had better come in just as they stand there.
It appears, then, to have been at about six o'clock in the afternoon that I was writing, as follows:
Bettesworth has just been over (from his home) to consult me, and perhaps to have a chat and relieve his overburdened soul. When he got back from the town this morning, he found the doctor paying another visit, who was "wonderful nice," and offered to give him a certificate for admitting the old woman to the infirmary, if he would care to have it and would call for it at the surgery. Bettesworthonly wanted my encouragement. He is going down this evening for the certificate, and hopes to get his wife removed to-morrow.
It will be none too soon. The watching is wearing him out. Last night he had left her and gone downstairs, and sat dozing in the chair, when she tried to get out of bed, and fell heavily on the floor. He ran up—and forgot to take the candle back with him, thereby adding to his difficulties—and somehow managed to get her back into bed again and covered up, without aid. But now, says he, "I said to Dave Harding as I come up the road, 'What I should like to do 'd be to crawl up into the fir-woods where nobody couldn't see me, and lay down an' get three or four hours' sleep.' 'You couldn't do it,' he says; ''t'd be on your mind all the time. You might get off for ten minutes, p'raps, an' then you'd be up an' off again.' But that's what I sims as if I should like, more 'n anything: jest to crawl away somewhere, where nobody wouldn't come, for a good sleep. Then wake up and 'ave a floush—'t'd freshen me up."