Certainly he is overdone. Upon my renewing offers of a little help, he became tearful, almost sobbing: "You be the only friend I got.... I bin all over the country," and have faced all sorts of things, "but Ibehammer-hacked about, now, no mistake." His grief consists in being able to do so little for his wife. He has given her since his dinner-time her medicine, then a sip of brandy"to take the taste out of her mouth.... And then I said, 'Now here's a cake I bought for ye in the town; have a bit o' that.' So she nibbled a bit, and I says, 'Eat 'n up.' No, she didn't want no more. 'But you got to'aveit,' I says. I a'most forced it down her throat. I do's the best I can for her; but I en't got nobody to tell me what to do."
And he is galled by turns, by turns amused, at her behaviour towards himself. "I can't do nothink right for her. She's more stubborn to me than to anybody else: keeps on findin' fault. Last night, in the night, she roused up an' accused me o' goin' away. 'You bin away somewheres,' she says. 'Oh yes, you 'ave; I heared ye come creepin' back up the road.' And I'd bin sittin' there all the time."
This and much more he told. I tried to get away (we were in the garden), for I was busy; but he followed me, to talk still, and wandered off into recollections of his experiences at Guildford Hospital.
7.30 p.m.Bettesworth has called once more, coming from the town, to show me the doctor's certificate (gastritis, it says), and to let me know that to-morrow morning he will not be here at his usual time. He proposes going to the relieving officer to obtain his order for a conveyance to move the old woman. "I shall be over there byseven o'clock," he says. The cumbersomeness of all these formalities is sickening. Having got the order, he will probably need to go right back to the town to arrange about the conveyance.
He was very tired, and rather wet, the night having set in with showers coming up on the east wind. So I got him a chair in the scullery, for the wet was making his old corduroys smell badly, and gave him a small glass of brandy-and-water. He refused a biscuit; "I couldn't swaller it," he said. "I can't eat, for thinkin' o' she."
He is not without a kind of pitiful consolation. "Seven or eight," he says, have professed their willingness to receive him into their homes, if need should be. One, even now, on the road from the town, has said, "Don't you trouble aboutyerself, Freddy; you can have a home with me, if you should want one." But the idea associated with this, of parting from his wife, breaks him down. The doctor who granted the certificate—the right doctor, this time—was sympathetic. "He come out to me because he see I was touched, and says, 'You no call to beoneasy, old gentleman; she'll be lookedafterup there. Everything 'll be done for her as can be done.'"
But these nights, in which he does not go to bed! His ankles and calves get the cramp, for he seems not to have thought, so little practice has he had in making himself comfortable, of resting his feet on another chair, while he is lying back in the easy-chairdownstairs.... He has gone home now, to make up a fire and get what rest he may. "But then," he says, "she'll holler out, an' I got to run." He told me again how she "fell out o' bed flump" last night, and he stormed upstairs and found her on the floor, for "she didn't know how to get in again, not no more'n a cuckoo."
The group of cottages where he lives stands high above the road, which is reached by steps roughly cut into the steep bank. On one of these recent nights, having gone down the steps meaning to buy his wife sixpennyworth of brandy, Bettesworth felt in his trousers pocket for the shilling he had put there, and—it was gone. "Oh, I was in a way! I went back, an' crawled all up they steps, feelin' for it," the hour being eight o'clock, and moonlight. "As I went past old Kiddy's, I called out to 'n, 'Kid!', 'cause I wanted to tell 'n what trouble I was in, and I knowed he'd ha' come and helped me to find 'n, if he'd bin about. But he was gone to bed, 'cause he starts off so early in the mornin'." Thus the old man got back home, disconsolate, without the necessary brandy for his wife; and, calling upstairs to her, "Lou, I've lost that shillin'," he began to prepare for his night in the easy-chair. But, first feeling in his pocket once more, he discovered there (fruits of his wife's incapacity) "a hole," he said, "I could put my finger through."
He pulled up his trouser legs to the knee, "becauseI always ties my garters up above the knee," and, with his foot on "the little stool I always puts 'n on to lace up my boots—I've had 'n ever since my boy was born—I thought I felt somethin' in the heel o' my shoe, and as soon as I pulled 'n off it rattled on the floor.Wa'n'tthat a miracle? My hair stood bolt upright! I gropsed an' picked 'n up, and hollered up the stairs, 'I've found 'n!' 'Oh, have ye?' she says. 'I thought you'd bin an' spent 'n.'" Quickly he was off again to the public-house—Tom Durrant's—and "I says, 'I lost that shillin' once. I'll take good care I don't lose 'n again!' And I chucked 'n up on the counter. Durrant says, 'Oh, did ye lose 'n?' So then I come back 'ome with my sixpenn'oth o' brandy. But wa'n't it a miracle? My hair stood reg'lar bolt upright, and I was thatcontented!"
There was much, very much, that I am missing; but I must not quite pass over the old man's talk on the way to the town this morning. He did not once mention his trouble. All the way it was his ordinary chatter—the chatter of a most vigorous mind, which had never learnt to think of things in groups, but was intensely interested in details.
It began at once, with reference to a cottage—a sort of "week-end" cottage—we were passing, into which, Bettesworth said, new tenants were coming. "How they keep changing!" said I; and he, "Well enough they may, at the price." "What is it, then?" "Four pound a month. Furnished, o'course; but there en't much there. And," he added, "I can't see payin' a pound a week for a place to lay down in."
Next—but what came next had better be omitted now. It related to the family affairs of a certain coal-carter, and so led up to discourse of other carter men who lived in the village. From them, the transition to the employer of two of them was easy. He "got the two best carters in the neighbourhood now," said Bettesworth; but as for horses, "he en't got a hoss fit to put in a cart, 'cause he en't never had anybody before as understood anything about 'em. Somebody ought to put the cruelty inspector on to him, to go to his place and see. Hedidgo, once; but he" (the horse-owner) "got wind of it and," as far as could be gathered from Bettesworth's talk, is suspected of having "squared" the inspector. But "there's a lot talkin' about the condition of the hosses down there," and, indeed, things "down there" seem to be generally mismanaged. The premises are "a reg'lar destructive old place": the carts, "he won't never have 'em only botched up, an' they be all to pieces;" and the harness is treated no better. "The saddles, they says, the flock 's all in lumps:surea hoss's back an' shoulders 'd get sore. That's where they do's all the work, poor things. When I had hosses to look after, as soon as I got 'em in I always looked to their back an' shoulders first. I'd get a sponge, or a cloth...."
One of the two good carters above mentioned "can trace up a hoss's tail, you know, with straw. There en't one in ten knows how to do that. I've earnt many a shillin' at it." But Bettesworth had known one man who used to earn as much as thirty shillings in a day at this work, at horse-fairs. Him Bettesworth has occasionally helped, I understand; and also, "Old Bill Baldwin—I've sometimes bin down an' done it for him."
Now, I had thought Bill Baldwin knew all that was worth knowing about horses and horse management; so I asked, surprisedly, "What, can't he do it?"
"He can do the tracin', in a straight run; but he can't tie up. I could do it all: the tails, and the manes too—you've see it. I'd get a bit o' live" (lithe?) "straw ... 't was when I was a boy-chap, a little bigger 'n that 'n" (whom at the moment we were meeting) "down at Penstead at Farmer Barnes's. I used to be such a one for the hosses; and I could do it, because my fingers was so lissom." (Poor old stubbed, stiff, bent fingers! to think of it!) "And then, I took such a delight in it. And Mrs. Barnes—she was a Burton—she was as proud o' them hosses! Used to get up at four o'clock in the mornin', purpose to see 'em start off. And the harness was all as clean—the brass used to shine as bright as ever any gold is, and shewasproud. Twenty thousand pound, was the last legacy she had. She was just such another womanto look at as old Miss Keen, what used to live down in the town; and a better woman never was.
"That's where I got all my scholarship.... Well, I could read—a little—but not to understand it. But she—she give me shirts, an' trousers—'cause we wore smock-frocks then—but she give me shirts an' trousers to go to night-school in. Course, I couldn't have had proper clothes without. 'Cause 'twas only thirty shillin's a year besides grub an' lodgin'.... And 't wan't no use to talk about runnin' away. I hadn't got no home. Besides, we was hired from Michaelmas to Michaelmas."
We spoke again of various neighbours, and thus drifting on (I am omitting vast quantities) Bettesworth presently told of a recent attempt at starting a village football club, or rather, of the subsequent discussion of the affair at the public-house. An enthusiast there wished to get "as many members as ever they could." "But how be ye goin' to pick 'em for play?" asked another. "Oh, pick the best." Bettesworth tells me this, adding, "I don't call that fair do's at all. I can't see no justice in that, that one should pay to be a member of a club, purpose for somebody else to have all the play. That's the way they breaks up a club. Break up any club, that would."
September 24.—Word was brought this afternoon (Saturday) that Bettesworth was at the kitchen door, wishing to see me. Of course he has not beento work to-day. I found him standing outside, patient and quiet, until, being asked how things were going, he began to cry, and shook his head, so that I feared something had miscarried and asked, "Why, haven't you got your wife away?"
"Yes, we got her away, but she was purty near dead when we got her there. The matron shook her head, and said, 'You'll never see her home again alive.'"
There were repetitions and variations of this; but I, reiterating my assurances that "she had got a lot of strength," and that in fine the old wife would yet live to come home again, quite forgot to observe exactly what Bettesworth said. His distress was too afflicting.
It would take long, too, to tell of his morning in his own words, beginning with the early walk to Moorways for the relieving officer's order, and telling how old chums starting off to work were astonished to see him thus unwontedly on the road, and what they said as he passed them by as if with a renewal of vigour, and how one was "puffed, tryin' to keep up." The long waiting at the office door (the officer had been out in his garden getting up potatoes), and Bettesworth's meditations, "I wish he'd come," and the instructions furnished him as to how to go on—they were all narrated simply, because they happened; but the touch of grey morning mist which somehow pervaded the talk while I was hearing it could not be reproduced with its words.The old man was back here soon after eight o'clock, on his way to the town to order the fly which should take his wife to the infirmary. He had had no breakfast. I gave him tea and bread and butter; but he left the bread and butter—couldn't swallow it, he said. He had had a glass of beer at the Moorways Inn.
He went into the town, and I met him on the road, returning. The fly proprietor had recognized him and behaved kindly. "Got a bit o' trouble then, old gentleman?" Yes, the fly should be there to the minute.
At noon, to the minute, it arrived, the driver of it being a son of an old neighbour of Bettesworth's. Meanwhile, Bettesworth's niece, "Liz," and a neighbour's wife—a Mrs. Eggar—whom he spoke of as "Kate," were there trying to dress the old woman—and failing. They got her stockings on, but no boots; a petticoat or so, but no bodice with sleeves; and for that much they had to struggle, even calling on Bettesworth to come upstairs and help them. Then the fly came, "and all she kep' sayin' was, 'Leave me to die at home. I wants to die at home'" and she fought and would not be moved.
To get her downstairs the help of two men besides the driver was enlisted, Kate's husband being one of them. By a kindly policy, Bettesworth himself was sent to hold the horse ("'cause he wanted to start off"), in order that the sight of her husbandmight not increase the poor old woman's reluctance; and so they carried her downstairs, "bodily," he said, meaning, I suppose, that she did not support herself at all.
The doctor had advised, and the neighbours too, that Bettesworth himself should not accompany his wife. But now the niece Liz, being unwell, was afraid to be alone with what looked a dying woman, and at the last moment Bettesworth jumped into the cab. As it started, the old woman's head fell back, her mouth dropped open. A pause was made at the public-house, to get brandy for her, which, however, she could not, or would not, take. Gin was tried, and she just touched it. Liz took the brandy; Bettesworth and the driver shared a pint of beer; then they drove off again. Once, on the way, Liz said, "Uncle, she's gone! Hadn't ye better stop the fly?" But he put his head down against her cheek, and found that she was still living; and so they came to the outer entrance of the infirmary. Further than that Bettesworth was dissuaded from going: it was not well that his wife should be agitated by the sight of him at the very gates; and accordingly he came away.
So he is alone in his cottage, and may rest if he can. He is to have meals at his niece's, but will sleep at home. The kindness is touching to him, not alone of the nephew and niece, but of his neighbours generally. "Kate said she'd ha' went down in the fly, if I'd ha' let her know in time. An' she'dwash for me—if I'd take anything I wanted along to her Monday or Tuesday, she'd wash it. I says to her, 'You be the first friend I got, Kate.' Well, Liz had told me shecouldn'tundertake it. She was forced to get somebody to do her own, and the doctor come to see her one day expectin' to find her in bed, and she was gettin' the dinner. There's Jack" (her husband) "and four boys.... So Kate's goin' to do the washin' for me, and she and her daughter's goin' one day to give the place a scrub out. More'n that shecan'tdo—with eight little 'uns, and then look at the washin'!" For Mrs. Eggar takes in washing, to eke out her husband's fifteen or sixteen shillings a week.
Besides these friends, there are those who are willing to find the old man a home, "if anything should happen to the old gal." "'Tis a sort o' comfortin'," he says, "to think what good neighbours I got;" but he hopes not to break up his home yet. In an unconscious symbolism of his affection for all the home things he bought this afternoon a pennyworth of milk for the cat, who came running to meet him on his return to the lonely cottage, and then ran upstairs "to see if the old gal was there."
He will keep his home together if he may, with warm feelings towards his neighbours. "But as for these up here," and he points contemptuously in the direction of the old woman's relatives, "I dunno if they knows she's gone, and I shan't trouble to tell 'em."
[So I wrote on the Saturday evening. Four clear days pass, without any note about Bettesworth; then on the following Thursday the narrative is reopened. It is given here, unaltered.]
September 29.—Bettesworth's wife died at the workhouse infirmary, about midnight of the 27th.
She had been unconscious since her admission, and spoke only twice. Once she said, "Bring my little box upstairs off the dresser, Fred;" the other time it was, "Fred, have ye wound up the clock?" These things were reported to him by the nurse, when he reached the infirmary on Tuesday afternoon—the usual afternoon for the admission of visitors.
He had gone down then, with his niece Liz, to see the old lady. And of course I heard the details of the expedition when he came back. Stopping at a greengrocer's in the town, he bought two ripe pears, at three halfpence each. "Did ye ever hear tell o' such a price for a pear? What 'd that be for a bushel? Why, 't'd come to a pound! But I said, 'I'll ha' the best.' Then I bought her some sponge-cakes at the confectioner's;" and with these delicacies he went to her.
She could not touch them. She lay with her eyes open, but unconscious even of the flies, which he, sitting beside, kept fanning from her face. There was no recognition of him; so he asked which was "her locker," proposing to leave the pears andsponge-cakes there for her, on the chance of her being able to enjoy them later. "Poor old lady, she'll never want 'em," the nurse said; and he replied, "Now I've brought 'em here I shan't take 'em back. Give 'em to some other poor soul that can fancy 'em."
They gave him permission to stay as long as he liked; but, said he, "I bid there an hour an' a quarter, an' then I couldn't bide no longer. What was the use, sir? She didn't know me." So at last he came away, provided with a free pass, "to go in at any hour o' the day or night he mind to."
Yesterday (Wednesday) morning he was about his work here when a letter was brought to him. It contained only a formal notice that "Lucy Bettesworth was lying dangerously ill, and desired to see him." Probably the notice was mercifully designed to prepare him for the worse news it might have told, but of course he did not know it, even if that was the case. He left here at once, to go and see his wife.
Between two and three hours afterwards he was back again. "How is it?" I asked, guessing how it was. "She's gone, sir"—and then he broke down, sobbing, but only for a minute. He had already ordered the coffin—"a nice box," he called it. The remainder of the day was spent in getting the death certificate and observing other formalities. He had the knell rung, too. Nothing would he neglect that would testify to his respectfor the partner he had lost; and I think in all this he was partly animated by a savage resentment towards her relatives, who had ignored her, and by a resolved opposition to those who had contemned his wife while she lived. "Everybody always bin very good, tome," he has said, with significant emphasis on the last word.
In the evening he had the corpse brought away to his nephew Jack's. He also slept at Jack's, and in numerous ways Jack is behaving well to him. To spare the old man's weariness he spent the evening in going to see about the insurance money; and to-day it is Jack who is getting six other men to carry the coffin at the funeral on Saturday.
This morning Bettesworth went to the Vicar to arrange about the funeral. "He spoke very nice to me," he said. Thence he was sent to the sexton, near at hand; and soon he came to me to borrow a two-foot rule, because the sexton wanted to know the exact measurements of the coffin before digging the grave; "anddon'tlet's have any mistakes!" he had said, for there had been a mistake not so long ago, a grave having been dug too small for the coffin.
Knowing Bettesworth's fumbling blindness, and seeing him nervous, "Can you manage it?" I asked, "or would you like me to go over and measure it for you?" There was no hesitation: "Itwouldbe a kindness, if you don't mind, sir...." I have but just now returned.
I think I will not record particulars of that visit. If I had not previously known it, I should have known then that Bettesworth is—but there are no fit epithets. Nothing sensational happened, nothing extravagantly emotional. But all that he did and said, so simple and unaffected and necessary, was done as if it were an act of worship. No woman could have been tenderer or more delicate than he, when he drew the sheet back from the dead face, to show me.... The coffin itself (because he is so poor and so lonely)—a decent elm coffin—is a kind of symbol, and so a comfort to him, enabling him to testify to his unspoken feelings towards his dead wife.
October 1.—I went to the funeral of Bettesworth's wife this Saturday afternoon. In his decent black clothes and with his grey hair the old man looked very dignified, showing a quiet, unaffected patience.
There were but few people present: four or five relatives besides the bearers and the undertaker and sexton; while a young woman (Mrs. Porter) with her little boy Tim stood in the background, she carrying a wreath she had made. She is a near neighbour to us, and a very impoverished one, to whom the old man has shown what kindness has been in his power; while she on many mornings has called him into her cottage at breakfast time, to give him a cup of hot tea.
Shutting his mouth doggedly, Bettesworth went back to his cottage, to live alone there with his cat. There had been some talk of his going into lodgings; but after all, this was still his home. Should he once give it up, he reasoned, and dispose of his furniture, it would be impossible ever again to form a home of his own, however much he might desire to do so. To live with neighbours might be very well; yet how if he and they should disagree? He would have burnt his boats; he would be unable to resume his independence. Better were it, then, to keep while he still had it a place where he was his own master, and take the risk of being lonely.
For some seven weeks after the wife's funeral there is next to nothing to be told of him. I find that I am unable to remember anything about him for that period, unless it was then—and it could not have been much later—that he renewed some of his household goods, and amongst them his mattress, being visited apparently by a wish to regain the character for cleanliness which had been lost in his wife's time. It must have been then also that he first talked of buying muslin for blinds to hiswindows. It is further certain that he chatted a great deal about his next-door neighbours—the Norrises, mother and son, upon whose society he was now chiefly dependent; but of all this not a syllable remains, nor is there any dimmest picture in my memory of what the old man did, or even how he looked, in those seven weeks.
November 22, 1904.—At the end of them, on a raw morning in November, amid our struggles to heave out of the ground a huge shrub we were transplanting, it was remarkable how strong Bettesworth seemed, because of the cunning use he made of every ounce of force in his experienced old muscles. How to lift, and how to support a weight, were things he knew as excellently as some know how to drive a golf-ball. Nor was my theory quite so good as his experience, for showing where our skids and levers should be placed. It was Bettesworth who got them into the serviceable positions.
Something about those skids set us talking of other skidding work, and especially of the extremely tricky business of loading timber on a trolly. "I see a carter once," said Bettesworth, "get three big elm-trees up on to a timber-carriage, with only hisself and the hosses. He put the runnin' chains on and all hisself."
"Andthattakes some doing," I said.
"Yes, a man got to understand the way 'tis done.... I never had much hand in timber-cartin'myself; but this man.... 'Twas over there on the Hog's Back, not far from Tongham Station. We all went out for to see 'n do it—'cause 'twas in the dinner-time he come, and we never believed he'd do it single-handed. The farmer says to 'n, 'You'll never get they up by yourself.' 'I dessay I shall,' he says; and so he did, too. Three great elm-trees upon that one carriage.... Well, he had a four-hoss team, so that'll tell ye what 'twas. Theywassome hosses, too. Ordinary farm hosses wouldn't ha' done it. But he only jest had to speak, and you'd see they watchin' him.... When he went forward, after he'd got the trees up, to see what sort of a road he'd got for gettin' out, they stood there with their heads stretched out and their ears for'ard. 'Come on,' he says, andawaythey went,tearin'away. Left great ruts in the road where the wheels went in—that'll show ye they got something to pull."
We got our shrub a little further, Bettesworth grunting to a heavy lift; then, in answer to a question:
"No, none o' we helped 'n. We was only gone out to see 'n do it. He never wanted no help. He didn't say much; only 'Git back,' or 'Git up,' to the hosses. When it come to gettin' the last tree up, on top o' t'other two, I never thought he could ha' done it. But he got 'n up. And he was a oldish man, too: sixty, I dessay he was. But he jest spoke to the hosses. Never used no whip,'xcept jest to guide 'em. Didn't the old farmer go on at his own men, too! 'You dam fellers call yerselves carters,' he says; 'a man like that's worth a dozen o' you.' Well, they couldn't ha' done it. A dozen of 'em 'd ha' scrambled about, an'thennot done it! Besides, theirhosseswouldn't. But this feller—the old farmer says to 'n, 'I never believed you'd ha' done it.' 'I thought mos' likely I should,' he says. But he never had much to say."
Sleet showers were falling, and a north wind was roaring through the fir wood on top of the next hill while we worked. Dropping into the vernacular, "I don't want to see no snow," said I. "No," responded Bettesworth, "it's too white for me." "January," I went on, "is plenty soon enough for snow to think about comin'." "April," he urged. "Ah well, April," I laughed; and he, "Let it wait till there's a warm sun to get rid of it 's fast as it comes."
Then he continued, "That rain las' night come as a reg'lar su'prise to me. I was sittin' indoors by my fire smokin'—I 'ave got rid o' some baccer lately—and old Kid went up the garden. He see my light, and hollered out, 'It don't half rain!' 'Letit rain,' I says. I was in there as comfortable...."
In the next night but one a little snow fell, enough to justify our forecast and no more; and then we had frost, and garden work could hardly go on. I was meaning to lay turf over a plot of ground where the shrubs had stood; but the work had to wait: the frozen turfs could not be unrolled.
Bettesworth did not like the weather. I have told of those steps connecting his cottage with the road. They were slippery now, and the handrail to them was icy when he clutched it, coming down in the dark of the mornings. At the bottom of the steps, before the road is reached, there is a steep path, commonly known as "Granny Fry's." Boys were sliding there after breakfast, and they called out to Bettesworth, "Be you roughed, Master Bettesworth?" According to his tale, he spoke angrily: "''Tisyouought to be roughed,' I says; 'you ought to be roughed over the bank. You be old enough to know better.' And so they be, too. They be biggish boys; and anybody goin' there might easy fall down and break their back—'specially after dark."
When he came back from his dinner, he said, "Somebody 've bin an' qualified old Granny Fry's." How? "Oh, somebody 've chucked some dirt over where they boys had made it so slippery."
He was obliged to admit, though, that in his own boyhood he had been as careless as any of these. And a few minutes later he was confessing to another boyish fault. In a cottage hard by, little Timothy Porter—a chubby little chap about five years old—was on very friendly terms with old Bettesworth. He had but lately started his schooling, and almost immediately was taken unwell and had to stay at home a week or two. I happened now to ask Bettesworth how little Tim was getting on.
"Oh, he's gettin' all right: goin' to school againMonday. He've kicked up a rare shine, 'cause they wouldn't let 'n go. I likes 'n for that. I likes to hear of a boy eager for learnin'—not to see 'm make a shine and their mothers have to take 'em three parts o' the way. Not but what I wanted makin' when I was a nipper. Many's a time I've clucked up to a tree jest this side o' Cowley Bridge, and that old 'oman" (I don't know what old woman) "come out an' drive me. There wa'n't no school then nearer 'n Lyons's—where Smith the wheelwright lives now. He used to travel with tea, and I dessay half a dozen of us 'd come to his school from Cowley Bridge. We'd start off an' say we wouldn't go to school; but we'adto."
The frost, had it continued, would very soon have been calamitous to the working people. As it was, I saw bricklayers—good men known to me, and neighbours, too—standing idle in the town, at the street corners. And Bettesworth said,
"Some o' the shop-keepers down in the town begun to cry out about it. They missed the Poor Man. And I heared the landlord down 'ere at the Swan say he was several pounds out o' pocket by it."
December 2, 1904.—Fortunately it was not to last. The men got to work again; our gardening tasks could go forward. My notebook has this entry for the 2nd of December:
"Laying turf this afternoon, in wonderful mild dry weather."
The thought came to me one of those afternoons, Was it I, or was it Bettesworth, who was growing dull? It might well have been myself; for at the unaccustomed labour of turf-laying, in weather that had turned mild and relaxing, mind no less than body was aware of fatigue, and perhaps on that account the old man's talk seemed less vivid than usual, less deserving of remembrance. At the same time I could not help speculating whether the livelier interests of his conversation might not be almost over. Had he much more to tell? Or had I heard it practically all?
At this turf-laying the parts were reversed now. Time had been when, at similar employments, I was the helper or onlooker; but now Bettesworth's sight was so bad that I could no longer leave him to unroll two turfs side by side and make their edges fit. I had to be down on the ground with him, or instead of him.
And yet he would not accept criticism. Did I say, "Shove that end up a little tighter," he would rejoin, "That's jest what I was a-goin' to do." Or, to my comment, "That isn't a first-rate fit justthere," "No, sir," he would admit, "I was only jest layin' it so ontil," etc., etc. "You'll see that'll go down all right. That'll go down all right.... Yes, that'll go down all right." And he would fumble unserviceably, while the sentence trailed away into inaudible reiterations. Still, it was a rich, creamy, very quiet and pleasing old voice that spoke.
The habit of repeating his own words was growing upon the old man fast since his wife's death; and it irritated me at times, filling up the gaps and interrupting my share of the conversation. Instead of listening to me, he mumbled on, dreamily. Now and again, however, he appeared to become aware of the habit. More than once, after relating something he had said at home, he added in explanation, "I was talkin' tomyself, you know. I en't got nobody else to talkto." This was almost the only indication he allowed me to see of that loneliness which others assured me he was feeling. Did he, I wonder, fear that if I knew of it I should be urging him to give up his cottage? For whatever reason, he made no confidant of me on that point. Once, indeed, there was mention of sitting indoors one evening by his fire, "till he couldn't sit no longer," but got up and walked up and down his garden, driven by crowding thoughts. Another time, "All sorts o' things keeps comin' into my mind now," he said. And these were the utmost complainings to which he condescended, in my hearing.
It was very fortunate that he had excellent neighbours in old Mrs. Norris (old Nanny, he called her) and her son, known as Kid, Kiddy, or Kidder. While stooping over our turfs I heard many tiny details of Bettesworth's kindly relations with these good people; and, as pleasantly as oddly, between them and myself a sort of friendship grew up, through the old man's mediation. We seldom met; we knew little of one another save what he told us; but he must have gone home and talked to them of me, just as he came here and told me about them; and thus, while I was learning to like them cordially, I think they were learning to like me, and it seemed to stamp with the seal of genuineness my intercourse with Bettesworth himself. But it was truly queer. Old Nanny Norris—the skinny old woman with the strange Mongolian or Tartar face and eyes—took to stopping for a chat, if we met on the road. In the town once, where I stood talking with some one else, she, coming up from behind me, could not pass on without looking round, nodding joyfully and grimacing her countenance—the countenance of an eastern image—into a jolly smile. She wore a Paisley shawl, and a little bonnet gay with russet and pink.
Bettesworth was distressed only by Nanny's deafness. "En'tthat a denial to anybody!" he exclaimed feelingly. "There, I can't talk to her. I always did hate talkin' to anybody deaf. Everybody can hear what you got to say, and if 't en'tnothing, still you don't want everybody to hear it.... Old Kidbreaksout at her sometimes: 'Gaw' dangy! I'llmakeye hear!' Every now an' then I laughs to myself to hear 'n, sittin' in there by myself."
He handed me another turf, and continued: "'Tis a good thing for she that old Kidder en't never got married. But she slaves about for 'n; nobodycouldn't do no more for 'n than she do. When I got home to dinner she come runnin' round. She'd jest bin to pay all his clubs for 'n. He belongs to three clubs: two slate clubs an' the Foresters."
"He doesn't mean to be in any trouble if he's ill," I grumbled up from the turf.
"Not he. Thirty-two shillin's a week he'll get, if he's laid up. There's Alf" (one of his half-brothers) "and him—rare schemin' fellers they be, no mistake." Particulars followed about this family of strong brothers; but, in fine, "Kidder 've always bin the darlin'. He's the youngest."
Fearless, black-bearded strong man that he is, though very quiet, even silky and soft in his ordinary demeanour, it was laughable to think of Kid Norris as a "darling." Along with Alf he was at work all through the summer on the new railway near Bordon Camp, they two being experts and earning a halfpenny an hour more than the common navvy. Their way was to leave home at four in the morning and walk the eight miles to their work. In the evening the 7 p.m. up-train brought them within a mile and a half of this village. Once or twice theyovertook me, making their way homewards, long-striding; and sometimes they would work an hour or two after that in their gardens, in the summer twilight.
When the weather worsened and the days shortened, Kid threw up his railway-work, and took a job at digging sea-kale for a large grower. The fields were scattered about the district; some of them within two miles, and the remotest not more than three, from his home. He was the leading man of a gang of labourers; and at my paltry turf-laying I heard of his work, which, it appears, was new to him. "They had to save," he said (and the fact was interesting to old Bettesworth), "jest the parts he should ha' throwed away.... It did take some heavin': they stamms was gone down like tree-roots," especially down there in such-and-such a field. "Up here above Barlow's Mill 'twan't half the trouble." The master said to Kid, "You no call to slack. I got plenty o' trenchin' you can go on at, when the kale's up." Then said Kid to his gang, "Some o' you chaps 'll have to move about a bit quicker, if you're goin' trenchin' 'long o' me." He sent one of them packing—a neighbour from this village, too. "Not a bad chap to work, so far as that goes, but too stiff, somehow," Bettesworth said, evidently knowing the man's style.
Towards the end of one afternoon, "It looks comin' up rainy," Bettesworth observed, "but oldKid wants it frosty. Where he is now—trenchin' up there at Waterman's—he says this rain makes it so heavy; it comes up on they spuds jest as much as ever a man can lift."
"And that's not a little," said I; "Kid's a strong man."
"Well—he's jest the age; jest on forty. I says to 'n, 'Some of 'em 'd go for you, if they knowed you was wantin' frost.' He laughed. 'We all speaks for ourselves, don't we?' he says."
Then Bettesworth added, "There, I never could have a better neighbour 'n he is. Always jest the same. He looks out for me, too."
I grieve that I have forgotten the particular instance of looking out: it was a case of Kid's mother telling him that she was short of some commodity or other—hot water, perhaps, for tea; upon which Kid said, "Well, see there's some left for old Freddy." On another occasion, "I had," Bettesworth remarked, "my favourite dish for supper last night—pig's chiddlins," and he owed the treat to his neighbours. "They'd killed their pig, and old Nanny brought me in a nice hot plateful. Ididenjoy 'em: they was so soft an' nice. There's nothin' I be more fond of, if I knows who cleaned 'em. But I en't tasted any since I give up keepin' pigs myself."
I could not spare many hours a day for it, so that our turfing work dragged out wearisomely; butthroughout it Bettesworth's conversation maintained the same homely inconspicuous character. Once it was about the celery in the garden: "'Tis the nicest celery I ever had—so crisp, an' so well-bleached. I've had two sticks." (He had been told to help himself.) "Last night I put some in a saucepan an' boiled it up; an' then a little pepper an' salt and a nice bit o' butter." He has no teeth now for eating it uncooked; "or else at one time I could," he assured me.
One after another his simple domestic arrangements were talked over. He made no fire at home in the morning; Nanny gave him a cup of tea; and so he saved coal, which he had been buying from one of the village shops, half a hundredweight at a time. But the price was exorbitant, and Bettesworth had found a way of buying for fourpence the hundredweight cheaper. And "fo'pence—that's a lot. Well, there's the price of a loafsoonsaved." "And a loaf," I put in, "lasts you...?" "Lasts me a long time, andthenI gives the crusts and odd bits to Kid for his pig.... One way and another I makes it all up to 'em."
Of a well-to-do neighbour, "He don't shake off that lumbago in his back yet, so he says.... Ah, he have bin a strong man. So he ought to be, the way he eats. His sister was sayin' only t'other day how every mornin' he'll eat as big a plateful o' fat bacon as she puts before 'n."
A difficulty with a turf which was cut too thick atone corner made a queer diversion. The old man was wearing new boots, and already I knew how he had bargained for them at Wilby's shop, getting a pair of cork socks, besides laces and dubbin, thrown in for his money. And now, this little corner of grass obstinately sticking up, "Let's see what Mr. Wilby 'll do for 'n," said Bettesworth, and he stamped his new boot down hard and the thickened sod yielded. "Do they hurt you at all?" I asked then. "No," he said, "not no more'n you may expect. New boots always draws your feet a bit. That one wrung my foot a little yest'day. When I got home, 'fore ever I lit my candle, I'd unlaced 'n and fetched 'n off. I flung 'n down. But I be very well pleased with 'em. 'Tis jest across here by the seam where they hurts.... No, I en'tlaced'em tight. I don't hold with that, for new boots. Of course they en't leather; can't be for the money. When you've paid for the makin' what is there left for leather, out of five-and-sixpence? No, theycan'tbe leather....
"Little Tim" (Bettesworth's five-year-old chum) "jest got some new uns, with nails in 'em. Nex' pair he has, he says, he's goin' to have 'em big, with big nails, jest like his father's. 'You ben't man enough yet, Tim,' I says. But he got some little gaiters too. 'Now I be ready,' he says, 'if it snows or anything.'"
As a rule we endured in silence the minor discomforts incidental to work like ours, in a rawwinter air. But there were exceptions, as when we agreed in hating to handle the tools with our hands so caked over with the black earth. To me, indeed, the spade felt as if covered with sandpaper, so that sometimes it was less painful to use fingers, although of course they did but get the more thickly encrusted with soil by that device. This state of our hands was the cause of another small distress: one could not touch a pocket-handkerchief. And of this also we spoke, once, when I all but laughed aloud at what Bettesworth said.
It began with his testily remarking, "My nose is more plag' than enough!" There was, indeed, and had been for a long time, a glistening drop at the end of it.
My own was in like case, no pocket-handkerchief being available. So I said, "Mine would be all right in a second, if I could only get to wipe it."
Then said Bettesworth, innocently (for he had no suspicion how funny his reply was), "Ah, but that's what you can't do, without makin' your face all dirty."
With our noses distilling dew-drops, and our hands gloved-over with mud and aching with cold, we may be pardoned, I hope, for complaining sometimes of the weather. I believe that really we liked it; for down there so close to the grass and the soil we were entering into intimacies like theirs, with the cool winter air; but our enjoyment was subconscious, whereas consciously we criticized andwere not too well pleased. After one interval of grumbling, I tried to cheer up, with the suggestion, "We must be thankful it isn't so cold as yesterday." Bettesworth, however, was not to be so easily appeased, but replied, "We don't feel it down here, where 'tis so sheltered, but depend upon it, 'tis purty cold down the road, when you gets into the wind. I met old Steve when I was comin' back from dinner. 'How d'ye get on up there?' I says." (Up thereis on the ridge of the hill, where Steve works in a garden.) "''Tis purty peaky up there,' he says. I'll lay it is, too. I shouldn't think there's anybody got a much colder job than he have. 'Pend upon it, hedofeel it."
"I was afraid on Sunday we were in for more snow."
"Ah, so was I. I found my old hard broom. Stacked in he was, behind a lot o' peasticks an' clutter. I'd missed 'n for a long time—ever since our young Dave" (his nephew's son) "come to clear up the garden for me. He'd pulled up the peasticks an' put 'em in the old shed—well, I'd told 'n to. And Ifanciedthat's where the broom must be. So Sunday I fetched 'em all out of it and got 'n out and took 'n indoors with the shovel, in case any snowshouldcome.
"Little Dave's gone on 'long o' George Bryant, up at Powell's. Handy little chap, he is...."
In this way, so long as the turf-laying lasted,Bettesworth's talk went drivelling on. Was he really getting dull? I had begun by fancying so; and yet as I listened to him, perhaps myself benumbed a little by the cold open air, something rather new to me—a quality in the old man's conversation more intrinsically pleasing than I had previously known—began to make its subtle appeal. Half unawares it came home to me, like the contact of the garden mould, and the smell of the earth, and the silent saturation of the cold air. You could hardly call it thought—the quality in this simple prattling. Our hands touching the turfs had no thought either; but they were alive for all that; and of such a nature was the life in Bettesworth's brain, in its simple touch upon the circumstances of his existence. The fretful echoes men call opinions did not sound in it; clamour of the daily press did not disturb its quiet; it was no bubble puffed out by learning, nor indeed had it any of the gracefulness which some mental life takes from poetry and art; but it was still a genuine and strong elemental life of the human brain that during those days was my companion. It seemed as if something very real, as if the true sound of the life of the village, had at last reached my dull senses.
The themes might be trivial, yet the talk was not ignoble. The rippling comments upon their affairs, which swing in perpetual ebb and flow amidst the labouring people, lead them perhaps no farther; and yet, should they not be said? Could they bedispensed with? Are they not an integral part of life? Let me quote another fragment:
"After that rain yesterday, old Kid says, up in that clay at Waterman's when you takes your spud out o' the ground you can't see whether 'tis a spud or a board. And it's enough to break your shoulders all to pieces. Hewastired last night, he says."
Well—to me the observation justifies itself, and I like it for its own sake. It touched me with an elusive vitality of its own, for which after our turf-laying I began generally to listen in Bettesworth's talk, and which nowadays I hear in that of his neighbours, as when old Nanny Norris meets me on the road and stops for a gossip.
Christmas was approaching near—was "buckin' up," as Bettesworth quaintly phrased it; and that it contributed to the melancholy of his existence will easily be understood. It is nowhere mentioned in my book, but a remorse was beginning to haunt him, for having let his wife be taken away to the infirmary, to die there. "I done it for the best, poor old dear," I remember his saying several times; "but it hurts me to think I let her go." In the long evenings before Christmas, alone in his cottage and unable to pass time by reading, he had too much time for brooding over his loss.
The nights as well as the evenings were probably too long for him, and I make no question that his happiest hours were those he spent at work, when he could forget himself and still talk cheerfully. Thus there is quite a gleam of cheerfulness in the following instructive fragment, of the 17th of December.
December 17, 1904.—"When the wind blowed up in the night I thought 'twas rain. I got out an' went to the winder—law!'twasdark! But the winder an' all seemed as dry!"
"What time was that?"
"Idunno, sir."
"The moon must have been down?"
"Yes, the moon was down."
"Then it must have been getting on for morning."
"I dunno.... But I'd smoked two pipes o' baccer before Kid called me. Ihavesmoked some baccer since I bin livin' there alone. The last half-pound I had is purty well all gone; and 'tent the day for another lot afore Monday." (This was Saturday.) "But I shall ha' to get me some more to-night. Why, that's quarter of a pound a week!
"Old Kid says, 'Don't it make yedry?' this smoking. 'No,' I says, 'that" (namely, to drink) "en't no good.' Kid don't smoke. Reg'lar old-fashioned card, he is. 'Ten't manyyoungmen you'll see like 'n. But he's as reg'lar in his habits as a old married man. Ay, and he's as good, too. 'T least, he's as good to me. So they both be."
"Isn't he to his mother?"
"Ah! an' she to him. No woman couldn't look after a baby better. Every night as soon as he's home and ready to sit down, there's his supper on the table. 'Supper's ready, Kid,' she says. 'So's yourn too, Freddy,' she says to me. 'Ah,' I says, 'Wait a bit, Nanny, till my kettle's boilin'.' Because I always has tea along o' my supper. Kid, he don't have his till after; but I likes mine with my supper. So I tells her to put it in the oven till I'm ready. Cert'nly, my little kettle don't take long to boil.But I shall ha' to get me quarter of a ton o' coal, soon as Chris'mas is over."
A faint memory, for which I have had to grope, restores a mention by Bettesworth of three glasses of grog to which he treated Kid Norris and himself and old Nanny. Perhaps this was at Christmas time; at any rate I am not aware that the season was brightened for him by any other celebration. It passed, and the New Year came in, and still he was living the same broken life, yet telling rather of the few pleasures it contained than of its desolation. I am sure he did not mean to let me know that he was being constantly reminded of his wife, yet the next conversation gives reason to suppose that such was the case.
January 10, 1905.—He had spent two vigorous days in cutting down and sawing into logs an old plum-tree, and grubbing out its roots. That was a job which he might still be left to do without supervision; but I had to assist, when it came to planting a young tree in the vacant space. A pear-tree, this new one was; and he asked, "Was it a 'William' pear?" It was aDoyenne du Comice, I said. His shrug showed that he did not get hold of the name at all, and I fancied him a little contemptuous of such outlandishness; so I added that I had seen some of the pears in a fruiterer's window, and wished to grow the like for myself.
"Ah"—the suggestion was enough. He wondered if that was the sort he had bought for his "poor old gal"; and then he told again how he had given three halfpence apiece for pears to take to her at the infirmary, and would have given sixpence rather than go without them. "Andthenthe poor old gal never tasted 'em.... She wa'n't up there long.... That Blackman what drove the fly that took her ast me about her t'other day. He didn't know" (that she was dead), "or hesaidhe didn't. 'She was only up there three days,' I said. Since then, he've took old Mrs. Cook—Jerry's mother.... Jerry kep' her as long as he could, but 't last she'adto go. Yes, he stuck to 'er as long as he could, Jerry did. None o' the others didn't, ye see.... But he had money: there was two hunderd pound, so they said, when his wife's mother died, and nobody couldn't make out what become of it exactly. But Jerry had some, an' purty soon got rid of it. Purty near killed 'n. 'Fore he'd done with it he couldn't stoop to tie up his shoelaces, he was got that bloaty.... I reckon he bides down there by hisself, now."
In that he resembled Bettesworth, then. I asked if Jerry had no wife.
"She died about two year ago. Poor thing—she'd bin througheverything; bin to hospitals and all." It was one hop-picking, about nine years ago, and just after she was married, that "they was larkin' about—jest havin' a bit o' fun, ye know;there wasn't no spite in it—and one of 'em swished her right across the eye with a hop-bine.... I s'pose 'twas something frightful, afore she died; 't had eat right into her head."
The old man pondered over the horror, then continued, "There must be something poisonous about hop-bine. Same as with a ear o' corn. How many you sees have lost an eye by an ear o' corn swishin' into it! En't you ever heard of it?I've knowed it, many's a time. There was" (I forget whom he named)—"it jest flicked 'n across the sight, and he went purty near mad wi' the pain of it. Oats is the worst. Well, as you knows, oats is so thin, 't'll stick to the eyeball purty near like paper.... But I'd sooner cut oats than any other; it cuts so sweet. That was always my favourite corn to cut. Cert'nly I en't never had no accident with it. Barley cuts sweet, but 't en't like oats."
The next day's chatter gives one more touch to the picture of Bettesworth's pleasant intercourse with his neighbours at this period. Apropos of nothing at all the old man began his story.
January 11, 1905.—"When I went home last night I see my door was open; but I never went in, because you knows I had to go on further to take that note for you. But after I'd done that I come back same way, and then I see a light in the winder. 'Hullo!' I says to myself. 'What's up now, then?'So I pushed on; and when I got indoors there was old Nanny—she'd made up my fire an' biled my kettle, an' was gettin' my dinner ready. Ah, an' she'd bin upstairs, too: she'd scrubbed it out—all the rooms; and she says, 'I've made yer bed too, Fred....' But I give her a shillin', so she can't go about sayin' she done all this for me for nothin'.Sheen't got nothin' to complain of. Besides, 't wants a scrub out now an' again. Not as 'twas anywaysdirty, 'causet'en't. She said so herself. 'If it's a fine day to-morrer, Fred, I'll come an' scrub your floors out for ye: 't'll do 'em good. Not as they bedirty,' she says; 'I see 'em myself, so I knows....' Well, so she did. She come in last week, and hung my new curtains.... I've had new curtains" (little muslin blinds) "to the winders, upstairs an' down—I bought 'em week afore last—and ol' Nan 've made 'em an' put 'em up for me. No mistake she is a one to work! Works as hard as any young gal—and she between seventy an' eighty."
I said, "Yes, she's one of the right sort, is Nanny."
"One o' the right sort for me. 'Tis to be hoped nothin' 'll ever happen toshe!"
Such were the makeshift, yet not altogether unhappy domestic, conditions by which Bettesworth was enabled for a little while to maintain his independence, and carry on the obstinate and now hopeless struggle to earn a living for himself. Hewas a man with work to do, and with the will to do it, as yet. On this same eleventh of January we may picture him forming one of a curious group of the working men of the parish, who gathered in a rainy dawn on a high piece of the road, and looked apprehensively at the weather. "I thought," Bettesworth told me afterwards, "we was in for a reg'lar wild day; and so did a good many more. The men didn't like startin'.... I come out to the cross-roads 'long of old Kid, and he said he didn't hardly know what to think about it. And while we stood there, Ben Fowler come along. 'I don't hardly know what to make of it,' he says. And then some more come. There was a reg'lar gang of 'em; didn't like to go away. Well, a man don'tliketo set off for a day's work an' get wet through afore he begins."
January 17.—Not many more days of work, however, were to be added to the tale of Bettesworth's laborious years. On the 17th of January it appears that he was still going on, for old Nanny seen at an unaccustomed hour on the road, spoke of him as getting about with difficulty. This is what she said, in her gruff, quick, scolding voice: "I couldn't git to the town fust thing, 'twas so slippery. Bettesworth said he couldn't git down our steps this mornin', so I bin chuckin' sand over 'em. Don't want ol' Freddy to break his leg.... All up there by Granny Fry's the childern getsslidin,' an' makes it ten times wuss than what 'twas afore, an' the more you says to 'm the wuss they be."
With this last glimpse of him fumbling painfully on the slippery pathway, we finish our acquaintance with Bettesworth's working life.
January 22, 1905.—The 22nd of January was the date, as nearly as I can make out now, of Bettesworth's being seized by another of his bronchial colds, from which he had hitherto been tolerably free this winter. An influenza attacking myself about the same time prevented me from going out to see how he fared, and for about ten days I know only that he did not come to work. Then, on the 3rd of February, leaning heavily on his stick and looking white and feeble, he managed to get this far to report himself. It would take over long to tell how he sat by the kitchen fire that day and discussed sundry affairs of the village. For himself, he was rapidly getting well, and hoped to be back at work in a few days. I surmise that he had been lonely. Kid Norris had not come near him, but had been audible through the partition wall, asking his deaf mother "How old Freddy was?" Old Nanny herself had an extremely bad cold.
February 8.—A few more days pass; and then on February the 8th there is the following brief entry in my note-book:
"Bettesworth started work again yesterday. He planted some shallots, and even while I watched him smoothing the earth over them, he raked out two which, failing to see, he trod upon and left on the ground."
And that was Bettesworth's last day's work. He never again after that day put hand to tool, and probably some suspicion that the end had at length come to the usefulness of his life prompted me the next morning to make that entry in my book.
On that day he had professed to be fairly well, and so he seemed. He mentioned, however, when I asked if Kid Norris had yet been to see him, that the kindness of the Norrises had "fell away very much. Very much, it have. I en'ttoldnobody, but...." He talked of giving up his cottage and accepting an offer to lodge with George Bryant. This young labourer, who has been spoken of before, was now and to the end a stanch friend and admirer of Bettesworth. With him Bettesworth fancied he would be comfortable, and I thought so too, and encouraged him in the project, for the old man's illness had shown that it was not right for him to live alone.
But the proposal came too late. On the following morning (the 8th: a Tuesday) no Bettesworth appeared; but about nine o'clock a messenger, who was on the way to fetch a doctor, called to say that Bettesworth was very ill; and then I remembered that on the previous afternoon he had spoken ofhaving been shivering all through his dinner-hour.
It was a wet day: the influenza had barely left me, and I dared not go out to visit Bettesworth. Towards evening, as there had been no news of him, a member of my family started out across the valley to make inquiries, and had not long been gone, when one of his neighbours arrived here. It was Mrs. Eggar—"Kate," as he called her: the same good helpful woman who had volunteered to do his washing when his wife was ill, and had despatched the messenger for a doctor this morning. On this evening she had stepped into the gap again. Her errand was to urge that Bettesworth should be sent off at once to the infirmary, and to persuade me to write to the relieving officer asking him to take the necessary action. Her daughter, she said, would carry my letter to him in the morning, and would bring back any message or instructions he might send.
From her account of him it was evident that Bettesworth was in a critical state. He ought not to be left alone for the approaching night; but the question was, who would sit up with him? As it was out of my own power to do that, and as the old man's life might depend on its being done, my duty was clear enough: I could make it worth somebody's while to undertake the watching; and accordingly I made the offer. The woman hesitated, thinking of her family and her laundry work,and of her husband's toilsome days too; and then, seeing that with all their toil they were very poor (she told me much about her circumstances afterwards), she finally decided that she and her husband would see Bettesworth through the night. Her husband had work three or four miles away, and was leaving home at four in the morning: she herself had a young baby at the time; but, says my note-book, "they did it."
And on the following morning, as we had arranged, their daughter went that weary journey to the relieving officer, and brought back to me by ten o'clock his order for the medical officer's attendance. It seemed that the old pitiful routine we had been through several times before was to be entered upon once more; but to expedite matters I enclosed the order for attendance in a note of my own to the doctor; and the girl started off with it to the town, to add another three miles to the five or six she had already walked that morning.
That, one would have supposed, should have almost ended the trouble; but though a man be dying it is not easy, under the existing Poor Law, to get him that help which the ratepayers provide, for the machinery is cumbersome, and the people who should profit by it do not appreciate its intricacies, or know how to make it work smoothly. In the present instance much trouble would have been saved, if Bettesworth's neighbours had known enough to correct an oversight of the doctor's.There was no delay on his side; but unfortunately it was thelocum tenensagain who called; and he contented himself with giving his verbal assent to Bettesworth's going to the infirmary. That, of course, was useless; but the women attending Bettesworth did not know it. On the contrary, they supposed that the formal certificate could be dispensed with, and that a note from myself would satisfy the relieving officer. A message from them reached me, begging me to write such a note, which, they said, Bettesworth's nephew would take over to Moorway's in the evening.
Of course the suggestion was utterly futile. The relieving officer could not recognize a request from me as an order, and an attempt to make him do so, if it effected nothing worse, would certainly delay Bettesworth's removal for yet another day, although, as it was, the unhappy old man must be left a second night in the care of his ignorant if well-meaning neighbours. But worse might easily follow the sending of Bettesworth's nephew for a long walk on such a fool's errand. Strong passionate man that he was, it was more than likely that he would quarrel with the officer; and to applicants for relief a relieving officer is an autocrat with whom it is not well to quarrel. These considerations, duly weighed, persuaded me not to do what I was asked; but I sent the messenger back with the request that Bettesworth's nephew should call upon me.
He came in the evening: a black-haired powerful builder's-labourer, tired with his day's work, but prepared to be sent on a five-mile walk. As we discussed Bettesworth's condition, and the desirability of getting him to the infirmary, the man's tone jarred a little. He said, "It's the best place for him. But it strikes me he'll never come home again." A feeling passed over me that a wish was father to this thought: that Jack Bettesworth was not eager for the responsibility which would rest upon him, if his uncle should come home. After events seem to prove that I wronged the man: on this occasion I was chiefly eager to secure his help. Almost apologetically I said, "It makes a lot of running about." "Well, can't 'elp it," was the laconic answer. We did help it to some extent, however, by sending him, not to the relieving officer, which would have cost another five miles, but to the doctor, at the expense of no more than three. The nephew was to get the doctor's certificate, and post it in the town to the relieving officer; and for this purpose he was furnished with a stamped and addressed envelope, in which was enclosed a letter to the relieving officer, begging him to attend to the case on his way through the village in the morning. It was the best we could do. Should all go well, not more than ten or twelve miles of walking (I omit the carrying of messages to and from me) and not more than two days of waiting would have sufficed for getting Bettesworth thehelp of which he was officially certified to be in need.
February 9, 1905.—And all did go well. On Thursday morning, the 9th of February, I went to Bettesworth's cottage, and found preparations in progress for his going away. There was more than preparation. With all their kindliness, it must be said of the labouring people that they want tact. Bettesworth's poor home had become a sort of show, in its small squalid fashion. The door stood wide open; there were half a dozen people in the living-room, where the old man had of late shut himself in with his loneliness and his independence; and upstairs in his bed he must have been aware of the nakedness of the place now displayed. The unswept hearth and the extinct fire were pitiful to see; yet there stood women and children, seeing them. Mrs. Eggar ("Kate") had a good right to be there. She had sat up a second night, and, albeit sleepy-eyed and untidy, there was helpfulness in her large buxom presence. Perhaps there were reasons too for her daughter's being there with the baby. Another woman, tall, grave, and sympathetic of aspect, had brought two more children; and she told me that upstairs Jack Bettesworth's wife Liz was washing the old man. Liz, by the way, was prepared to go with him on his journey.
I went up into the little square-windowed dirty bedroom and saw him. He was inclined to cry atthe prospect of shutting up his home; but a little talk about my garden—perhaps dearer to him now than even his home was—brightened him up. It pleased him to learn that some early peas had been sown. In what part? he wanted to know. And being told, "Ah," he said, "and there's another place where peas 'd do well: up there under George Bryant's hedge." When I left, it was with a promise to go and see him in the infirmary on the next visiting day. Going out I saw old Nanny Norris at her door, observant of all that went on, but unserviceably deaf. She was wearing her bonnet and black shawl, looked ill, and complained of cough and of pains across her shoulders. I think there were two or three other women standing near. They were probably waiting to see Bettesworth removed, as he duly was, at mid-day.