February 10.—The day after his departure a rather annoying circumstance came to light. The monthly contribution to the club was found to be a whole year in arrear. As the sum was but threepence a month, so that even now only three shillings were due, it seemed a little too bad of Bettesworth to have neglected the payments which at least secured him a doctor's attendance and at his death would produce four pounds for funeral expenses. Perhaps, however, he was not so much to blame as appeared; at any rate, the manner by which we learnt of his carelessness offers to the imagination the material for an affecting picture of the old man on his sick-bed. It was Mrs. Eggar who, in some trouble for him, brought his club-membership card to me, and told how he had asked her to find it. On the eve of his departure he had taken her into his confidence, spoken of the possibility that he might be going away only to die, and desired, in that event, to be brought home from the infirmary and buried decently, "same as his wife," with this sum which the club would pay. Of course the money for the arrears had to be found, and Mrs.Eggar undertook to pay it to the club secretary on the next day, when she went to the town to do her Saturday's shopping. Bettesworth had further asked her, she said, to find his discharge papers from the army, and see what reason for his discharge was stated, since he had forgotten. I have never understood why he should have been curious on that point, at such a time. Defective sight seems to have been the unexciting reason alleged.
And now, its occupant gone and Mrs. Eggar's rummagings done, the squalid tenement next door to the Norris's stood shut up, with the door locked on the few poor belongings it contained. To the neighbours there seemed to be all the circumstances of a death, except the death itself. People began to remember, what I had failed to observe yet could well believe, how greatly Bettesworth had changed of late; others recalled complaints he had uttered of being unbearably lonely. It was the general opinion that, even if he lived, he would never work again, and never again come back to the place he had left. Three or four men approached me in the hope of getting work in my garden; while as for the cottage, had I cared to give it up, there were already (the owner told me) four or five applicants eager to take it. What I should do, and what Bettesworth, formed the subject of a good deal of speculation. Old Nanny, meeting me in the road, plunged excitedly into the middle of the discussion. In her harsh snapping voice she assured me that thecottage was "as dirty asever!" and that, as regarded Bettesworth, the infirmary was "the best placeforhim!" "Have ye give up the cot?" she asked. "No." "Oh! ... Beagley" (the owner) "told young Cook as you had?" "I haven't." "Well, hesaidyou had." For some reason that was never divulged, Nanny had conceived a violent animosity towards Bettesworth, which I then supposed to be peculiar to herself; but in other respects her unmannerly questionings only betrayed the attitude of almost all the other neighbours. Bettesworth was done for: he had better stay at the infirmary and let others have his work and his cottage. Such was the prevailing opinion. The people were not intentionally unkind; but in the merciless working-class struggle for life one may admire how long Bettesworth had held his own.
On the other hand, the opposite side, Bettesworth's side, was championed probably by not a few labouring men, who had learnt to appreciate his quality. Among these was George Bryant. Bryant had been doing a few necessary jobs for me during Bettesworth's illness, and it was to his interest, if anybody's, that the old man should not come home again. When I repeated to him, however, what people had been saying—namely, that Bettesworth ought now to stay in the infirmary, he said "H'm!" and clearly did not agree. Finally, "Well, of course, we knows 'tis a place where old peopleoughtto be looked after, but—well, Bettesworth likeshis liberty. And so should I, if I was in his place!"
With a cordial feeling which warmed me at the time and may give a little colour now to the grey narrative, he spoke of the change he had lately observed in Bettesworth, who had confessed to him that life had grown so lonely "he didn't know how ever to put up with it." On the very last Sunday evening Bryant had been over at the old man's cottage, "and 'tis alotcleaner 'n what it used to be in the old lady's time." But the difficulty was that Bettesworth could not see. I assented, mentioning his last labours at planting shallots. Bryant smiled; from his adjoining garden he had noticed the same thing a year ago, with some peas. But, in general, he admired Bettesworth. "He's a man that don't talk much till he's started, and then.... He was tellin' me Sunday about the things he see in the war. I reckon that got a lot to do with the way he is now: the cold winds, when the tents blowed over, and he'd have to lay out all in the mud. He might think 't didn't hurt 'n," but in all likelihood Bettesworth was now feeling the effects of these sufferings of so long ago. The Crimean wind, as described by Bettesworth, seemed to have impressed Bryant. "He did tell me what regiment it belonged to, but I forgets which 'twas; but one o' the regiments had the big drum lifted right up into the air an' carried out to sea by the wind."
The remainder of Bettesworth's story may for the most part be told in the notes made at the time, without much comment. I was unable to go to the infirmary on the first visiting day after his admission, as I had promised that I would; but I managed to get to him a week later, namely on Tuesday, the 21st of February, when he had been there twelve days; and on the next day the following account of the visit was jotted down.
February 22, 1905.—At the infirmary yesterday I found Bettesworth still in bed, in a large ward on the ground floor. Out of doors, though it was a day of fair sunshine generally, the north-east wind was bitter, and a storm of sleet and sparse hail which I had been watching as it drove across the eastern sky, and which had reached me as I neared the gate, made it agreeable to get inside the fine well-warmed building. From Bettesworth's bedside I could see, through the tall windows of the ward, distant fields and the grey storm drifting slowly over them. Trees on the horizon stood out sombre against the sombre sky.
Within, was plentiful light—plentiful air and warmth too, and cleanly order. The place looked almost cheerful, although some twenty men lay there, suffering or unhappy. One only was sitting up, who coughed exhaustedly, not violently; he seemed able to do no more than sit up, shaking with debility. In the beds the patients mostly lay quite still. The man next beyond Bettesworth drew the counterpane up over his ears, and I saw a glowing feverish eye watching me. There were but few other visitors—only four, I think, besides myself. Somewhere an electric bell sounded. A little nursing attendant with sleeves stripped up came stumping cheerily all down the ward. She had been washing dishes or something in a kind of scullery just outside when I came in. As she passed through she said, as though to interest the sick men, "This is how I do my work—see? Walkin' about like this!"
My first impression of the place was favourable; all looked so well-appointed, so sumptuous even. And there lay Bettesworth under his white counterpane, himself wonderfully clean and trim, and wearing a floppy white nightcap. I had hoped to find him sitting up; but still....
"How are you?" I shook his hand—unrecognizably thin and clean and soft—and he flushed and sat up, pleased enough. But, "I'm as well as ever I shall be," he murmured; or was it (I don't quite remember) "I shan't never be no better."Shocked, and not sure of having heard aright, I asked again, and the answer came, "I shan't never be no better, so long as I bides here."
What was the matter, then? Everything. The interview turned forthwith into one protracted, unreasoning grumble from the old man. He had not food enough. Bread and butter—just a little piece at one time, and a little piece more at some other time. And beef-tea—"they calls it beef-tea, but 'tis only that stuff out o' the bottle—Iforgets the name of it. Bovril? Ah, that's it. One cup we has at home 'd make twenty o' these."
I tried to reason with him, but it was useless. Evidently he was very weak. He coughed at times, but said he had no pain now. What he wanted was to get up, and be about, where he could obtain for himself such things as he might fancy. If a man, he argued, feeling as he did, was allowed to get up and put on his clothes for an hour or two, and have a sluice down, wouldn't it brighten that man up? But last night—he didn't know what time it was, and he got out of bed. One of the nurses came in just then. "'What are you doin' out there?' she said; 'you ought to be in bed.' 'And so did you ought to be,' I says." To judge from his tone in narrating, he said it in no amiable voice. He added petulantly, "There! give me Guildford Hospital before this, twenty times over!"
Thus he grumbled continuously. "There's old Hall in that bed over there.He'swantin' to go'ome, too." Bettesworth spoke with a sneer, not at our poor old neighbour Hall, but at Hall's pitiful prospect of getting release from this imprisonment. He told me of the other's bad cough, and of his age, and so forth, and for a minute or two forgot his own grievances, but only for a minute or two. I asked some question about the doctor. The doctor? They never set eyes on him, for two or three days at a time. And he didn't give him any medicine much, either. That bottle he" (Bettesworth) "had from the club doctor before leaving home—he only had two doses out of it, but that was alotnicer than this stuff. And the bed was hard—"nothin' soft to lay on," and his back was getting sore. "Let's see—'twas a fortnight last Thursday I come here, wasn't it?" "No, a week." "Oh, only a week? I thought 'twas a fortnight. The time seems solong."
A woman and a girl were at old Hall's bedside, farther down the ward. I could see him sitting up, panting, white, the picture of despair. Then the woman turned and came towards us; it was Bettesworth's niece Liz. She was smiling a little bewilderedly. "He wants me to send for the nurse," she said, alluding to Hall; "he wants to go home."
She joined me in talking to Bettesworth. One or two things I told him about the garden awakened but a faint interest in him; and meanwhile I could see Hall sitting up, his under-lip drooping, his eyes abnormally bright. Yet I think he could not seemuch. Usually he wears spectacles, being eighty years old. And still we talked to Bettesworth. His niece was as unsuccessful as myself in trying to reason with him. To some remark of hers, suggesting that if he were at home he would be without anyone to nurse him, he replied fiercely (and I have no notion of his meaning), "No! and there won'tbenone, neither, once I gets home and got my key. I shall lock my door!..." Liz argued then that this place was so comfortable and so clean. "'Tis the patients has to do that," said Bettesworth.
At last a nurse came to old Hall, and we listened while he proffered his request to go home. "To-morrow," he said. "Oh, you can't go till you've seen the doctor!" The nurse spoke pleasantly, though of course with decision, and bustled away. But Bettesworth, with his sneer, commented, "Ah! Ithoughtshe'd snap his head off!"
Weary of him, I went over to speak to Hall, who was now looking utterly baffled. Until I was quite close he did not recognize me, but then he shook hands joyfully. To him, as to Bettesworth, I counselled patience. Ah, but he felt he shouldn't get on, so long as he bid there. He couldn't get on with the food. The bread in the broth did not get soft, and as for the dry bread—"I've no teeth at all in the top row," he said, and therefore he could not masticate it. Another reason for his wishing to leave was that his wife was ill withbronchitis at home, and he longed to return to her.
Well, I had no comfort for him, any more than for Bettesworth. And when I left, they were still dissatisfied, and I was equally sure that their grievances were unreal. What, then, was the matter with them? The root of it all, I think, was in this: that they were homesick. The good order, the cleanliness, the sense of air and space, the routine of the institution, had overwhelmed them. They were no longer their own masters in their own homes. They were pining for their little poky rooms, nice and stuffy, with the windows shut and the curtains half drawn; they missed their own furniture, pictures, and worthless rubbish endeared to them by old associations. They did not care, at their age, to begin practising hygiene and learn how to live to grow old. They were old already, and wanted to be at home.
February 28.—I have no record of my second visit to the infirmary a week later; but, as I remember, Bettesworth was then sitting up in a day-room, so that he was evidently better, although still extremely feeble.
March 7, 1905.—Bettesworth left the infirmary on Saturday morning, March the 4th. I met him half a mile away from it, in the town, and he was trembling with weakness where he stood. But he protested that he should get home well enough; he had just had a nice rest, a friend of mine having taken him into his house to sit down by the fire. My friend told me afterwards how the old man, invited in because of his pitiable condition, had seemed to crawl in a state of collapse to the chair set for him.
His tale to my friend was curiously different from the account he gave me of his leaving the infirmary. To the former he explained that on the Thursday he had desired to be allowed to go home. The wish was communicated on the next day to the doctor, who asked, "Do you want to go then?" and was answered ungraciously, "I shan't get no better here." On Saturday, therefore, his clothes were brought to him, and out he came.
But this was not quite the same story that he told me. Perhaps I should premise that I felt annoyed with him for coming out, since it wasplain who would have to provide for him; and he may have seen that I was displeased when I said, "You have no business out! You're not fit for work, and you ought to have stayed another week or two." Somehow so I greeted him, none too kindly. He replied that there were seven or eight "turned out" that morning, their room being wanted for others. Nor did he forget to complain. His clothes, he said, having been tied in a bundle with a ticket on them, and tossed into a shed, had been returned to him so damp that he felt "shivery" getting into them; and there was no fire by which to dress.
What did he propose to do? was my next question. He was going home, to make up a fire in his bedroom and air his bed. Already he had arranged with Liz and Jack to come and help him do that. Such of his things as were worth anyone's buying he should sell—Mrs. Eggar, for instance, would take the Windsor chairs; and then he was going to live, probably, at Jack's. But his first care was to go and air his bed. Firing—coal, at least—he possessed; wood could be provided by knocking up two old tables which were grown rickety. To my protest against such destruction, he replied that already before his illness he had touched one of the tables with his little axe.
He trembled, but his mouth shut resolutely, so that I got the impression, and that not for the first time of late, of something desperate about him, something hard, fierce, suspicious.
The discrepancy between his stories to my friend and to myself strengthens the impression, and as I write this a hypothesis shapes itself: that he fears to lose his employment with me; fears that I am weary of him and anxious to get him permanently settled in the workhouse. For this reason, perhaps, he reviles that hated place, hurries from it, will not own to weakness though I see him shaking, will be independent as to coal and the rest. I asked him how he was off for money. He could do with a shilling or so; but he did not want to get into debt.
That was three days ago. I was from home to-day when he came to see me, announcing himself vastly better. He has gone to live with Jack, in whose house he has a room to himself and "a nice soft bed," and is well looked after, he says. Liz has even been giving him a cup of tea in bed—or desiring to do so.
I understand him to have said that the old cot used to cost him as much as six shillings a week to keep going. And that, he added, would be nearly enough for him to live upon, in his new quarters.
March 8.—I have promised Bettesworth (we walked down the garden this morning to talk it over out of earshot) that when he finds himself past work I will make him an allowance, to keep him from the workhouse. He is to tell me, when the time comes; at present, he still hopes to do a little more.
I was wrong, it seems, in surmising that dread of losing his employment made him so anxious to quit the infirmary. "Was it so?" was a question put to him this morning, point blank. He denied it. "No," he said; "I was afraid I should die. That's what made me so eager to get away. I felt I should die if I bid there another week." So many died, he said, while he was there—several in one day, I understood, one being the man in the bed next to Bettesworth's. This man "made up his mind" and was gone, in twenty minutes—one Freeland, from Moorways. There also died there a certain old Taff Skinner, an old neighbour whom Bettesworth, in his own convalescence, tried to get upstairs to see. A nurse turned him back, he protesting that he "didn't know as he was doin' wrong," and she explaining that he might only visit another room or ward on visiting day. "Or else," he told me, "Old Taff's wife an' daughter was there, and ast me if I wouldn't go an' see 'n to cheer 'n up."
Having got home and shifted a few things to Jack's, Bettesworth's great joy was in his "nice soft bed." He has been used to feathers, and found the mattress hard at the infirmary. He said with gusto, "That was a treat to me, to get into that bed and roll myself over. And my poor old back seemed almost well the next morning." Across the loins and down the back of his thighs he is tender, and his elbows were beginning to get sore from hoisting himself up on the mattress. To ease theloins Jack has been rubbing in "some o' that strong liniment." On the whole Jack seems to be treating the old man very well.
That he will continue to do so is devoutly to be hoped. For there are not many refuges open to Bettesworth now, nor can the infirmary any more be looked to as one of them. According to his last version of it, when the doctor asked him if it was really his wish to leave, he answered, "Once I gets away I'll never come here no more, not if there's a ditch at home I can die in."
March 12.—I find there is a steady set of public opinion—that is to say, the opinion of his own class—against Bettesworth, which has grown very marked since he came out of the infirmary, although probably it is not quite a new thing.
One of the first indications of it, besides old Nanny's animosity already mentioned, appeared while he was still away, when Bill Crawte spoke to me in the town, alleging that the old man had been misbehaving of late in his evenings. I received an impression of drinking bouts and disorder, which was conveyed in innuendo rather than directly. "He spends too much money at the public-house; and he can't take much without its going to his head"—such was Crawte's expression, intended, it seemed, to warn me that I was deceived in my protégé.
A few days ago I met old Mrs. Skinner. I remember that I crossed the street to speak to her"because she was such a stranger," and she looked flattered, but complained of "such a bad face-ache, sir," and grimaced, holding her black shawl over her mouth. Then she hurried into the subject of Bettesworth's home-coming, and did not hesitate to assure me that he was "abadold man." Once again I felt that I was being warned that the old man was unworthy of my help. I had heard Mrs. Skinner before, however—months before—on the same subject. In her way she is a good woman whom I like and respect, but she has a taste for commenting on other people's faults. Moreover, there was never much love lost between her and Bettesworth: his old tongue, I suspect, has been too shrewd for her at times.
Yesterday I met old Nanny, with a bundle on her back, and I stopped to speak, partly sheltered from a driving rain by the umbrella she held behind her. She, too, has not scrupled before to complain of Bettesworth's behaviour, and always with the air of saying to me "he's not the good old man you take him for." But yesterday her tongue knew no reticence; she felt wronged herself, and she lashed Bettesworth's character mercilessly, in the hope of hurting him in my esteem. Swift and snappish, out came the long screed, while the old woman's eyes were fiery and her cheeks flushed. Oh, but she felt righteous, I am sure. She was exposing a blackguard, a scamp! And if she could injure him, she would.
I do not recall many of her words. His ingratitude to her was Bettesworth's chief offence—after all she had done for him! So she told what she had done: how she had cooked his supper night after night, and got it all ready while he sat down there at the public-house waiting to be fetched. She wouldn't have done it, but Kid said, "Poor old feller, help 'n all you can. He en't got nobody to do anything for him." And she had washed his clothes, and scrubbed out his house; and he was such a dirty old man that it almost made her sick. And when he was ill, Mrs. Cook watching (downstairs, I gathered) was obliged to sit all night with the window open, because the place so stank. I heard how many pails of water it took to scrub the floor; how the boards upstairs—new boards "as white as drippen snow" when the Bettesworths took possession—would in all likelihood never come white again; and how the landlord had said that he should demand a week's rent (from me, of course) to pay for cleaning, when Bettesworth moved. And now Bettesworth was gone away, "taking his money" (his wages or his allowance), and "I don't like it, Mr. Bourne!" said old Nanny, vehemently. Not, apparently, that the money was an object to her, but that all her good offices had gone unthanked, nay, minimized. Had not Bettesworth complained that he had no one to do anything for him? And all the time Mrs. Norris was slaving for him. Had he not told me during his illness that he had takennothing, when, in fact, Mrs. Cook not long before had taken him up a cup of tea and two slices of bread and butter, which he had eaten? "I don'tlikeit, Mr. Bourne." No, I could see that she did not; I could hear as much in the emphasis of the words, rapped out like swift hammer-strokes; and the old woman looked almost handsome in the flush of her indignation.
I left her and passed on, wondering what the original offence could have been to produce such bitterness. Probably it was some harsh speech of Bettesworth's, some antique savagery drawn from him in the despair of his lonely situation, with his powers failing, the workhouse looming. Suspicious, hard, obstinate, wrapped-up now wholly in himself, he may easily ... but it is useless to surmise.
Useless is it, too, to pretend that the repeated insinuations have had no effect upon me. As a rule backbiters succeed only in making me see their own unreason, while mentally I take sides with their victims; but in this case fancies of my own were corroborated by the slanders of the neighbours. I have believed, and think it likely, that Bettesworth is ready to deceive me to his own advantage, just as I have long known that he has not really been worth half his wages. He is in desperate plight, dependent on my caprice, and he cannot afford to be over scrupulous on a point of honour. As for old Nanny and the others, I suppose their sense ofjustice is outraged by Bettesworth's good fortune in having my protection. They are jealous; they resent the imposition which they suppose is being put upon me, and imagine me a blind fool who ought to be enlightened.
To-day I fell in with old Mrs. Hall, whose husband is still at the infirmary. She had nothing hopeful to tell me about that old man's condition. He had been more contented, however, since his master had written to him, though he did talk, bedridden as he is, of digging a hole somewhere under the infirmary wall, so that he might escape to the cab that would bring him back home. But Mrs. Hall didn't think—if she said what she really thought—that he would ever come home again. At his great age (why, he is eighty to-morrow!) how could she hope that he would recover? Poor little dumpy old woman, with the plump face, and dainty chin, and round eyes—her lips trembled, talking of her husband and of her own difficulties. "For while he lays up there," she said, "I got nothin' to live on," except a little help from the Vicar. Her daughter, married and away in Devonshire, will pay the quarter's rent, but....
"And Mr. Bettesworth's out, it seems," the old woman continued. "It seems to me he's an ungrateful old man. For 'tis all nice and comfortable up there. It do seem ungrateful."
Such was Mrs. Hall's unasked for, unexpected comment, on Bettesworth's behaviour. Poor oldwoman, to me too it seemed unjust that she should be so unaided, and he, perhaps, so over-aided. He is no old woman, though; allowance must be made for that. He could not away with the sort of comfort so praised by Mrs. Hall.
Is, then, the last word about Bettesworth to be that he is dirty, dishonest, degraded? He may be all three (he certainly is the first) and yet have a claim to be helped now and remembered with honour.
For, as another recent incident has served to remind me, our point of view is in danger of growing too narrow. One of the kindest of cultured women, going about her work of visiting the sick, asked me how Bettesworth was doing. Then, in her amiable way, she talked of him and of his wife, and soon was speaking of the extreme dirtiness in which they had lived. As a district visitor she had once or twice come upon them at meal-times, when their food on the table caused her a physical loathing—just as once I had been nauseated myself by the sight of a kippered herring by the old man's bedside. The district visitor—being invited and finding no courteous excuse for refusal—had sat down in Bettesworth's easy-chair, not without dread of what she might bring away. Most cottages she could visit without such terrors; most people, she supposed, "managed to get a tub once a week"; but the Bettesworths.... The lady spoke laughingly.In her comely life, an experience like this is afterwards an adventure.
I smiled, and said, "They are survivals."
"Of the fittest?"
We both laughed; but when I added, "Yes, for some qualities," we knew (or I at least knew) that indeed that squalor of an earlier century is associated with a hardness of fibre most intimately connected with the survival of the English people.
Suppose that now in stress of circumstances, the toughness warps, turns to ill-living, suspicion, selfishness and dishonesty, in the grim determination not to "go under": is it then no longer venerable, because it has ceased to be amiable? The onlooker should give an eye to his own point of view.
March 13, 1905.—This (Monday) morning Bettesworth came, slowly hobbling with his stick. Last week he had promised himself to be at work again to-day; but no—he is less well, and fancies he has taken fresh cold.
He looked white, weak, pathetically docile and kind, as he led the way from the kitchen door to the wood-shed, evidently desirous of a private talk.
He said he was "purty near beat, comin' over Saddler's Hill"; he had never before had such a job, having been forced to stop to get breath. It "felt like a lot o' mud in his chest; it was all slushin' and sloppin' about inside him, jest like a lot o' thick mud." But he had been worrying so: he wanted to pay me his rent. And then about his club pay—that worried him, too. He need not have worried? Ah, but he had done so, none the less; and Liz had said to him, "You better go up an' see about it, and you'll feel better when you got it off your mind"; or else he was hardly fit to be out in this cold wind. He had stayed indoors from Saturday afternoon until this morning. At tea-time, "about four o'clock yesterday," Liz hadbrought him a cup of tea with an egg beaten up in it, which had seemed to do him good. And she had got him half a quarte'n of whisky to hearten him up as he came away this morning. But he could not eat. "Law! they boys o' Jack's 'll eat three times what I do. I likes to see 'em. Jack says, 'What d'ye think o' that for a table?'" and indicates to Bettesworth the plentiful supply.
A hint brought the wandering talk back readily to the subject which the old man had on his mind. "Inever owed that money to the club, what you says Mrs. Eggar drawed from you.... She've done me out o' that, ye see." Just as he had supposed, so it proved, he affirmed: he had paid up to last August; and the inference was that Mrs. Eggar had drawn the money from me for her own uses, and now Bettesworth must repay it.
He produced two membership cards in support of his statements. The first was the same which Mrs. Eggar had brought me, at that time bearing no receipt later than February, 1904, but now certifying a further payment of 1s. 6d. up to August. The other was a new card, giving receipt in full to February of this year. To judge by the ink, these two receipts had been given at the same time; in other words, they had been obtained by Mrs. Eggar in return for the money duly paid in by her. But it took me long to satisfy Bettesworth (if he was satisfied) that she had not "done" me out of three shillings on his behalf.
And then there was his rent, which had been running on all the time that he was at the infirmary. He had brought the money for that now, to get out of my debt.
Of course it was refused. In consideration of this rent, I said, I had not helped otherwise during his sickness, and I did not wish him to repay it. What he said to that I regret that I do not exactly remember, but it went somehow in this way:— "You done alotfor me, sir; more 'n you any call to. And I thinks of you...." He was unable to go on and express his meaning, but his tone rang very sincere. I did not find any ingratitude in him; nor was there any dishonesty in the purpose for which he had come to me.
He, however, found dishonesty in the neighbours, who have bought his household goods and now hang back with the purchase money. So cheap, too, he had sold his things! "That landlord at the Swan said 'twas givin' of 'em away.... But what could I do?" Bettesworth urged. His brother-in-law had advised him "not to stand out for sixpence; 't wa'n't as if they was new things," and had warned him against giving trust. But what could he do? Even as it was, the trouble of attending to the business had been too much for him in his weak state. So, one had had a table, and another two saucepans, and so on; and now he could not get the money. Instead of twenty-two shillings which should have been received on Saturday, he foundhimself with no more than five; and this morning only another five shillings had come in.
Yes, the people had "had" him; he was sure of that. There was "that Tom Beagley's wife.... She come to me Saturday sayin' Tom was on the booze and hadn't given her no money, so she couldn't pay me.... 'That's a lie,' our Tom says; 'he en't bin on the booze. He bin at work all the week, over here at Moorways.' So I told her I should have the things back, if she didn't pay me this mornin'." Other instances were generalized; Bettesworth thought himself cheated all round.
By this time we had left the shed, and were standing in its shadow, where the wind blew up cold and draughty. "Let's get into the sunshine," I proposed.
As we moved, "Wasn't it a day yesterday?" I remarked; and Bettesworth assented, "No mistake!" It had in fact been a Sunday of March gales, of furious rain and hail-storms, and then gay bursts of sunshine hurrying down the valley. With none to sweep it, the path where we stood was still bestrewn with a litter of dead twigs, which the east winds had left, but this fierce westerly wind had finally torn out from the lilac bushes. "It's a sort of pruning," I said, and was answered, "Yes, that must do a lot o' good. Done it better 'n you could ha' done, too." We found a sunny place, although still a draughty wind searched us out, and fast-changing clouds sometimes drew across the sunshineand left us shivering. "More showers," we predicted, "before the day is out."
There, in the sunshine, Bettesworth coughed—a little painful cough without variety. It seemed as if it need not have begun, yet, having begun, need never cease. "You must get rid of that cough," said I.
"I en't got strength to cough," he replied. Then he put his hands against the pit of his stomach. "That's where it hurts me. Sims to tear me all to pieces." I advised care in feeding, and avoidance of solids. "Bread an' butter's the only solid food I takes," he said. "Liz wanted me to have a kipper. 'Naw,' I says, 'I en't much of a fish man.' But I don't want it. I en't got no appetite." It was suggested that the warm weather presently would restore him; but he returned, very quietly; "I dunno. I sims to think I shan't last much longer. I got that idear. I can feel it, somehow."
"How long have you felt like that?"
"This six weeks I've had that sort o' feelin'." He went on to repeat what he had said to Jack in consequence. When he had got his bed and other things into Jack's house, "'It's all yours now,' I says. 'You take everything there is. All you got to do is to see me put away.'"
His weakness was distressing to see, and he had to get back home somehow. Would a little more whisky help him? We adjourned to the kitchen, sat down there near the fire, and while the old man had his stimulant he talked of many things.
At first, handing me the key of his cottage, he told of his cat, how plump she looked, and how she had welcomed him home in such fashion as to make Liz say with a laugh, "No call to ask whose cat she is!" Sometimes he thought of "gettin' old Kid to put a charge o' shot into her"; sometimes, of "puttin' her in a sack an' drownin' her." Either was more than he had the heart to do; yet he could not bear to think of his cat without a home. Would not Mrs. Norris take care of her, then?" Oh yes, she'dfeedher, but.... But Mrs. Norris can'thear, poor old soul. She bin a good ol' soul to me, though; and so've Kid." Of course I did not tell Bettesworth how old Nanny had lately talked of him.
What to do about his cabbages puzzled him. He had paid old Carver Cook two shillings for digging the ground and planting them; and now that he had given up the cottage, there was this value like to be lost! He must get "whoever took the cot" to take to the cabbages too; they ought to. He didn't like to cut 'em down—never liked to do anybody else a bad turn, but.... Ultimately I promised to get the price allowed, in settling with his landlord.
Through devious courses the conversation slid back to his nephew's family and household ways. Liz "don't sit down to dinner 'long o' the others." There are six boys besides her husband for her to wait upon, so that, were she to begin, "before she'd got a mouthful the others 'd be wantin' their second helpin'." The custom sounds barbarous—orshall I say archaic?—until one remembers that the husband and one or two of the boys must get home from work to dinner and back again within an hour. On Sunday afternoon "Jack was off to the town to this P.S.A. or whatever it is. He brought home another prize too.... A beautiful book—a foot by nine inches, and three or four inches thick! Jackcanread, no mistake!" Unfortunately he reads in a very loud voice, so that Bettesworth grows weary of it, in spite of his passion for being read to. On Saturday night Jack was reading the paper, and said, "'Like any more?' 'Not to-night, Jack; I be tired.' All about this war" (in Manchuria). "Sunday he said, 'Shall I read ye the paper, uncle? 'Tis nothin' but the war.' 'Then we won't have it to-day.'"
Bettesworth's opinions on the war were tedious to me; he had so greatly misunderstood. He thought that, after Mukden, the Russians were retreating "right back into St. Petersburg," which would have been a retreat indeed!" But it ought to be stopped now"; the other Powers should interfere and say, "You've had your go in, and now you must get back into your own bounds." For the Japanese, of course, Bettesworth was full of admiration: "fighting without food!"... He exclaimed at their pluck and their prowess.
Gradually his own memories of war were awaking, and at last, "The purtiest little soldiers I ever see was the Sardinians." He described their smartness;their pretty tight-fitting uniform. "They camped 'longside o' we." Of their language "you could get to pick out a good many words" (I think he meant English words they used), "but it pestered 'em when they couldn't make ye understand.... But there, we was as bad.... Every nation has their own slang." The funniest Bettesworth ever heard was that of the Turks, "like a lot o' geese.... I remember once a lot of 'em come up over the hill by our camp, with about four hundred prisoners. They didn't let us have 'em, but was takin' 'em on to their own camp; but they was so proud for us to see, an' they was caperin' and cuttin' and dancin' about, jest like a lot o' geese."
Something reminded him of George Bryant and his present job; something else, of his own coal supply, now removed to Jack's; and that brought up the coal merchant's receipt, which he had found in his waistcoat pocket. He had given it to Liz, with his wife's little box full of receipts for coal, groceries, tea, and so on, and had recommended Liz to "put 'em on the fire." "Youbea careless old feller!" Liz retorted, and he repeated, laughing.
He had been here nearly an hour, and at last I stood up. Bettesworth took the hint. He was looking the better for his whisky as he went off. But all the time, while he sat dreamily talking, he had had a very mild, placid, old man's expression, and all my harsher thoughts of him had quite slipped away.
March 21, 1905.—There being no definite news of Bettesworth since he crept away that day, this afternoon I knocked at the door of Jack Bettesworth's cottage, where he is staying. Presently the old man himself opened to me. His cheeks were flushed and feverish. He led the way indoors, saying that he was all alone; and as we settled down (he still wearing his cap) I remarked that he did not seem to be "up to much," and he replied that I was right; "I got this here pleurisy, and armonium or something 'long with it." He had got up from bed, quite recently, to rest for an hour or two.
He had seen the club doctor—Jack had fetched him on Sunday—"and you couldn't wish for a pleasanter gentleman. He sounded me all over," and sent out a plaster which "I'm wearin' now," Bettesworth said, "like one o' they poor-man's plasters." This reminded him of a similar one he had once had, of which he said that he "wore 'n for six months"; and truly the old-fashioned "poor-man's plaster" was always alleged to be unremovable. Once properly plastered, the patient had to earn his name and wait until the thing shouldwear or "rot off," as Bettesworth phrased it. How this six-months' plaster—right round his waist, and "wide as a leather belt"—had been "gored" by his "old mother-in-law, or else 't'd ha' tore flesh and all off," I will not spend time in relating.
Bettesworth had caught this new cold, he supposed, waiting for "they old women" to come and pay him for his furniture; who did not come to the old cottage at the time appointed, and kept him standing about. Nor have they yet paid all.
Not unhappily, but comfortably, he looked up to the mantelpiece and said, "There's my old clock." I recognized the dingy old gabled mahogany case; and the tick sounded familiar, reminding me of the other rooms where I had heard it, and of the old wife who had been alive then. "Mrs. Smith had my other," said Bettesworth, "and she en't paid for 't yet. I shall have 'n back, if she don't. Jack persuaded me to go an' get 'n back last week. 'That's all right,' I says, 'only I can't get there.' He wanted to go instead of me, but I wouldn't have that. He might get sayin' more 'n what he ought. But I shall have the clock back if she don't pay."
There also was his old mirror—he spoke of it—looking homely over the mantelpiece; and I heard of a few pictures saved, which Jack had taken out of their frames, to clean the glass, and had put back again. It seemed to be comforting to the old man to have these relics of his married life still about him; and in the midst of them he himself lookedvery comfortable; for, as his back was to the light (he sat in a Windsor chair with arms), I could not see the flush on his face. So pleasant was it to find him at last beside a clean hearth, warm and tidy and well cared-for, that I could not refrain from congratulating him. Yes, he acknowledged his good fortune; he was swift to praise his niece. "She looks after me," he said warmly, "as well as if I was a child. I en't bin so comfortable since I dunno when." Perhaps never before in his life. "Before I was bad myself, there was the poor old gal. I went through something with she. When I was away at work, I was always wonderin' about her."
I had two shillings to hand over to him—the price obtained from his landlord for the cabbages left in the cottage garden; and in answer to inquiries as to his finances, he said that he had enough money to keep him going for a fortnight or so. But he was paying Jack for his board and lodging, and seemed fully alive to the desirability of continuing to do so.
On Sunday morning there had come to see him his sister-in-law from Middlesham, to whom he complained of a brother-in-law's indifference. The complaints were reiterated to me. "Dick en't never bin near so much as to ask how I was gettin' on. Itoldher he never come even to his poor old sister, till the night afore the funeral. And after all I've done for 'n, whenever he was in any trouble or wanted help hisself, I was always the fust onehe sent for, if there was anything the matter with he, same as that time when he fell off the hayrick. Sent for me in the middle o' the night to go to the doctor's for 'n, when he'd got one of his own gals at home. It hurts me now, when I thinks of it sittin' here.... If he'd only jest come and say How do! But no...." We supposed that Dick feared lest he should be asked to give help in some way.
Pleurisy and pneumonia or not—it was hard to believe that he had suffered from either, yet he had got hold of the words somehow—Bettesworth was at no loss that afternoon for interesting subjects of conversation. An inquiry how his sister-in-law was faring led to a talk about her two sons, of whom one is out of work. The other, a basket-maker (blind or crippled, I do not know which) lives at home, and has just got a lot of work come in. "Mostly stock work," Bettesworth believed, "for some London firm he knows of." But besides this, he has a hundred stone jars from the brewery, to re-case with basket-work. The handles and bottoms are of cane, the rest "only skeleton work, as they calls it." Bettesworth always loved to know of technical things like this.
Odd it is, I suggested, how every trade has its own terms of speech. "Yes, and its own tools too," added Bettesworth; and with deep interest he spoke of the tools this basket-maker uses for splitting his canes, dividing them "as fine!" Andthe tools are "sharp as lancets; and every tool with a special name for it."
This reminded me to repeat to Bettesworth a similar account which a friend of mine had lately given me, and will publish, it may be hoped, of the Norfolk art of making rush collars. "Very nice smooth collars," Bettesworth murmured appreciatively. But when I proceeded to tell how the art is likely to die, because the few men who understand it keep their methods secret, this stirred him. "Same," he said, "as them Jeffreys over there t'other side o' Moorways, what used to make these little wooden bottles you remembers seein'. They'd never let nobody see how 'twas done. But I never heared tell of anybody else ever makin' 'em anywhere."
Yes, I remembered seeing these "bottles," like tiny barrels, slung at labouring men's backs when they trudged homewards, or lying with their clothes and baskets in the harvest-field or hop-garden. It was to the small bung-hole in the side that the thirsty labourer used to put his mouth, leaning back with the bottle above him. Whether the beer carried well and kept cool in these diminutive barrels I do not know; but certainly to the eye they had a rustic charm. So I could agree with Bettesworth's praises: "Purtylittle bottles they got to be at last—even with glass ends to 'em, and white hoops. They used to boil 'em in a copper—whether that was so's to bend the wood I dunno.Little ones from a pint up to three pints.... I had a three-pint one about somewheres, but I couldn't put my hand on 'n when I turned out t'other day. Eighteenpence was the price of a quart one—but they had iron hoops.... But they wouldn't let nobody see how they made 'em.... There was them blacksmiths over there, again—theywouldn't allow nobody to see how they finished a axe-head.
"These Jeffreys never done nothing else but make these bottles, and go mole-catchin'. Rare mole-catchers they was: earnt some good money at it, too. But they had to walk miles for it. You can understand, when the medders was bein' laid up for grass they had to cover some ground, to get all round in time. I've seen 'em come into a medder loaded up with a great bundle o' traps: an' then they'd begin putting' in the rods—'cause they was allowed to cut what rods they wanted for it, where-ever they was workin', and they knowed purty near where a mole 'd put his head up. 'Twas so much a field they got, from the farmer. I never knowed nobody else catch moles like they did, but they wouldn't show ye how they done it, or how they made their traps.
"There was a man name o' Murrell—Sonny Murrell we always used to call 'n—lived at Cashford.Hewas a very good mole-catcher. One time the moles started in down Culverley medders, right away from Old Mill to Culverley Mill—it looked as if they'd bin tippin' cart-loads o' rubbish all over the medders.I never see such a slaughter as that was, done by moles, in all my creepin's." (I think "creepin's" was the word Bettesworth used, but his voice had sunk very low just here, and I could as easily hear the clock as him.) "But they sent for Sonny. He was acleverold cock, in moles; they had to be purty 'cute to get round 'n—some did, though; you'll see how they'll push round a trap—but after he'd bin there a fortnight you couldn't tell as there'd bin any moles at all."
One other topic which we briefly touched upon must not be omitted. Before my arrival Bettesworth had crept out to the gate by the road, he was saying, tempted by the loveliness of the sunshine; and hearing of it, I warned him to have a care of getting out in this easterly wind. Ah, he said, we might expect east winds for the next three months now, for this was the 21st of March, and "where the wind is at twelve o'clock on the 21st of March, there she'll bide for three months afterwards." So he had once firmly held; and he mentioned the theory now, though apparently with little faith in it. For when I laughed, he said, "I've noticed it a good many times, and sometimes it have come right and sometimes it haven't. But that old Dick Furlonger was the one. He said he'd noticed it hunderds o' times. We used to terrify 'n about that, afterwards—'cause he was a man not more 'n fifty; and we used to tease 'n, so's he'd get up an' walk out o' the room."
During April I was away from home a good deal, and neither saw much of Bettesworth nor heard about him anything of importance. He seems to have recovered a little strength, to enable him to creep about the village when the weather was at all fit, but the drizzling rains and the raw chill winds of that spring-time were not favourable to the old man, who had almost certainly had a slight touch of pleurisy, if nothing worse, earlier in the year.
May, however, was not a week old before the weather brightened and grew splendid. The very sky seemed to lift in the serene warmth; and now, if ever he was to do so, Bettesworth should show some improvement.
At first it almost looked as if he might rally. I remember passing through the village, in the dusk of a Sunday evening (the 7th of May), and there was Bettesworth, slowly toiling up the ascent to Jack's cottage, even at that late hour. It was too dark to distinguish his features, but by the lift of his chin and a suggestion of lateral curvature in his figure, I recognized him. He had been to the Swan, andwas just going home, contented with his evening. The week that followed saw him here twice; and again on the 15th he came, and, finding me in the garden, was glad enough to be invited to a seat where he might rest.
And then as we sat there together it became clear to me that he would never again be any better than he was now. The sunshine was soft and pleasant, where it alighted on his end of the seat, and the shade of the garden trees at my end was refreshing, but to him no summer day was to bring its gifts of renewed life any more. When he arrived, I had expected that presently, after a rest, it would be his wish to go farther into the garden and see how the crops promised; but he made no offer to move. To get so far had been all that he could do. His thighs, as could be seen by the clinging of the trousers to them, were lamentably shrunken. His body was wasting: only his aged mind retained any of his former vigour.
A curious thing he told me, in connexion with the shrinking of his muscles. He had bared his thighs one evening, to show his "mates"—Bryant, George Stevens, and others—how thin they were; and by his own account the men had solemnly looked on at the queer piteous exhibition, acknowledging themselves shocked, and wondering how he could creep about at all. Bryant, by the way, had already told me of the incident, speaking compassionately. He added that Bettesworth offeredto show his arms also, but that he had said, "No, Fred, you no call to trouble. I can take your word for it without seein'."
Sitting there weary in the sunshine, Bettesworth was in a melancholy humour. "A gentleman on the road," he said, had met him the previous day, and remarked "to his wife what was with him, 'That old gentleman looks as if he bin ill.' 'So he have,' old George Stevens says, cause he was 'long with me. He" (the gentleman) "looked at my hands and says, 'Why, your hands looks jest as if they was dyin' off.' I dunno what he meant; but he called his wife and said, 'Don't his hands look jest as if they was dyin' off?' And she said so they did.... I dunno who he was: he was a stranger to me. But what should you think he meant by that?"
Mournfully the old man held out his knotted hand for my opinion. He was plainly worried by the odd phrase, and fancied, I believe, that the "gentleman" had seen some secret token of death in his hands.
The instinctive will to live was still strong in him, sustained by the conservatism of habit, and in opposition to his reason. According to Bryant, he said a day or two before this, "I prays for 'em to carry me up Gravel Hill"; and that is the way from his lodging to the churchyard.
May 17.—Once more, on the 17th of May, he foundhis way here. Not obviously worse, he complained of having coughed all night, and he was going to try the remedy suggested by a neighbour: a drink made by shredding a lemon, pouring boiling water over it, adding sugar.... He was more cheerful, however. He sat in the sunshine, and chatted in his kindliest manner, chiefly about his neighbours.
There was Carver Cook, for instance. He was seventy-seven years old, and fretting because he was out of work. "I en't earnt a crown, not in these last three weeks," he had told Bettesworth. On the previous afternoon, just as it was beginning to rain, the two old men had met near the public-house, and gone in together out of the wet; and "Carver" standing a glass of ale, there they stayed until the rain slackened, and had a very happy, comfortable two hours. I asked what Bettesworth's old friend had to live upon.
"Well," Bettesworth said, "he've got that cot; and he've saved money. Oh yes, he've got money put by. But he says if it don't last out he shall sell the cot. He shan't study nobody. None of his sons an' daughters don't offer to help 'n, and never gives 'n nothin'. His garden he does all hisself; and when he wants any firin' or wood, he gets a hoss an' gets it home hisself. But old Car'line, he says, is jest as contented now as ever she was in her life. 'Why don't ye look in and see her?' he says. But I says, 'Well, Carver, I never was muchof a one for pokin' into other people's houses.'" He paused, allowing me to suggest that perhaps he preferred other people to come and see him. But to that he demurred. "No.... I likes to meet 'emout; an' then you can go in somewhere and have a glass with 'em, if you mind to."
Thoroughly to Bettesworth's taste, again, as it is to the groom's taste to talk of horses, or to the architect's to discuss new buildings, was a little narrative he had of another neighbour's work in the fields. "Porter's brother," he said, "started down there at Priestley's Friday mornin', and got the sack dinner-time." How? Well, it was a job at hoeing young "plants" in the field, at which the man got on very well at first; but presently he came to "four rows o' cabbage and then four rows o' turnips," and there the ground was so full with weeds that to hoe it properly was impossible. The hoe would strike into a tangle of "lily," or bindweed, with tendrils trailing "as fur as from here to that tree" (say four or five yards); and when pulled at, the lily proved to have turned three or four times round a plant, which came away with it. "So when the foreman come and saw, he says, 'I dunno, Porter—I almost thinks you better leave off.' 'Well, I'd jest as soon,' Porter says, 'for I can't seem to satisfymyself.'" So he left off, and the foreman supposed they would have to plough the crop in and plant again.
It was pleasant enough to me to sit in the afternoonsunshine and hear this talk of village folk and outdoor doings, but after a little while I was called away, and did not see Bettesworth's departure. I should have watched it, if I had known the truth; for, once he had got outside the gate, he had set foot for the last time in this garden.
June 9, 1905.—Some three weeks later, not having in the interval seen anything of Bettesworth, I was on the point of starting to look him up, when his niece came to the door. She had called expressly to beg that I would go and visit him, because he seemed anxious to see me. He was considerably worse, in her opinion; indeed, for the greater part of the week—in which there had been cold winds with rain—he had kept his bed and lain there dozing. Whenever he woke up, he had the impression either that it was early morning or else late evening; and once or twice he had asked, quite early in the day, whether Jack was come home yet.
On reaching the cottage I found him in his bed upstairs. Certainly he had lost strength since I saw him. At first his voice was husky, and he was inclined to cry at his own feebleness; soon, however, he recovered his habitual quick, quiet speech, though a touch of weariness and debility remained in it. Stripping back the sleeve of his bed-gown he exhibited his arm: the muscle had disappeared, and the arm was no bigger than a young boy's. He shed tears at the sight, himself. Nor was he withoutpain. As he lay there that morning his legs, he said, had felt "as if somebody was puttin' skewers into 'em, right up the shins"; but he had rubbed vaseline over them, and after about half an hour the pain diminished. The doctor, visiting, had said "Poor old gentleman"; and, to him, not much more. "Old age—worn out," was the simple diagnosis he had furnished downstairs, to Liz.
Another visitor had called—who but the owner of that cottage from which the Bettesworths had been compelled to turn out two years ago? I do not think Mr. —— recognized Bettesworth. He had merely heard of an old man in bad plight—an old Crimean soldier, too—and he wished to be helpful. "And a very good friend to me he was!" Bettesworth said heartily, in a sort of emotional burst, losing control of his voice and crying again. Mr. —— had "come tearin' up the stairs—none o' they downstairs didn't know who he was," and had spoken compassionately. "'What you wants,' he says, 'is feedin' up—port wine!—and you shall have it.'" He was told that the doctor had recommended whisky. "'Very well. When I gets home I'll send ye over a bottle, the best that money can buy.'" Having left, "he come hollerin' back again: 'Here! here's five shillin's for him!'" But, said Bettesworth to me, "I never spent it on jellies an' things; I thought it might be put to better use than that."
Besides this unexpected friend, Bettesworth toldme that a Colonel resident in the parish was moving on his behalf, endeavouring to get him a pension for his services in the Crimea. "But that en't no use," the old man said; "I en't got my papers," or at any rate he had not the essential ones. He tried to account for their disappearance: "Ye see, I've had several moves, an' this last one there was lots o' things missin' that I never knowed what become of 'em."
He chatted long, and rationally enough, in his customary vein, but saying nothing very striking or particularly characteristic. There were some pleasant remarks on one "Peachey" Phillips, a coal-cart man. Peachey "looks after his old mother at Lingfield," and is "a good chap to work" (a "chap" of fifty years old, I should judge), but has been hampered by want of education. According to Bettesworth, "he might have had somegoodplaces if he'd had any schoolin'," and he had regretfully confessed it to Bettesworth. "Cert'nly he's better 'n he was. His little 'ns what goes to school—he've made they learn him a little; but still.... Well, you can't get on without it. Nobody ever ought to be against schoolin'.... Yes, a good many is, but nobody never ought to be against it. I don't hold with all this drillin' and soldierin'; but readin', and summin', and writin', and to know how to right yourself...."
As Bettesworth lay in bed there upstairs, and unable to see much but his bedroom walls and theircheap pictures, for the window was rather high up and narrow, his mind was still out of doors. He inquired about several details in the garden; and particularly he wanted to know if a young hedge was yet clipped, in which he had taken much interest. It chanced that a man was working on it that afternoon; and Bettesworth's thought of it therefore struck me as somewhat remarkable. Evidently he was longing to see the garden; and though we did not know then that the desire would never be gratified, still that was the probability, and perhaps he realized it. He was a little tearful, as the time came for me to leave him.
After this I tried to make a point of seeing him once a week. Friday afternoons were the times most convenient, and the following Sunday commonly afforded the leisure for recording the visits. I give the accounts of them pretty much as they stand in my book.
June 18, 1905 (Sunday Morning).—I saw Bettesworth on Friday afternoon. His voice was husky, and feebler than I have before heard it; but then in every way he was weaker, and seemed to have given up hope; in fact, he said that he wished it was over, though not quite in those words. He complained of pain in his chest and about the diaphragm, and in his legs. I did not acknowledge to him that he seemed worse to me; but visitors of his own sort practise no such reticence. He told me that Mrs.Blackman, Mrs. Eggar and others had seen him, and they all said, "Oh dear, Fred, how bad you looks!" Carver Cook's observation was yet more pointed: "Every time I sees ye, you looks worse 'n you did the time afore." Bettesworth related all this almost as if talking of some third person.
The Vicar, lest the higher purpose of his visits should be overlooked if he went to Bettesworth as alms-giver too, had entrusted me with a few shillings for the old man, who received them gladly, but seemed equally pleased to have been remembered. When I handed the money over, and named the giver, "Oh ah!" he said, "he come to see me. I was layin' with my face to the wall, and Liz come up and says, 'Here's the Vicar come to see ye.' 'The Vicar!' I says, 'what dohewant to see me for?' I reckon he must have heard me say it. He set an' talked...." But Bettesworth did not vouchsafe any information as to the interview. When well and strong, he had been suspicious of the clergy; now, I believe, he was a little uncomfortable with a feeling that he had made a hole in his manners.
Feeble though he was, on the previous day he had crept downstairs, he said, and even out and to the corner of the road forty yards away. I think it must have been on some similar expedition that those women saw him, and uttered their discouraging exclamations upon his look of ill-health; but the desire to be up and out was incurable in him.Yesterday, however, he fell, and had to be helped home, where he literally crawled upstairs on hands and knees, exhausted and breathless. So now, since the breathlessness troubled him, and since he knew me to have had bronchitis, did I know, he asked, "anything as 'd ease it"? Eagerly he asked it, with a most pitiful reliance upon me; but I had to confess that I knew no cure; and the poor old man seemed as if a support he had clutched at had disappeared. Drearily he spoke of his condition. He couldn't eat: a pint of milk was all he had been able to take yesterday; the same that morning. Liz had said, "'We got a nice little bit o' hock—couldn't ye eat a bit o' that?'" and had brought him a piece, but he "couldn't face it." "But what's goin' to become of ye?" she exclaimed, "if you don't eat nothing?" But he couldn't. His mouth was so dry; he was unable to swallow anything solid. Was there anything I could get him, that he would fancy? He hesitated; then, "Well, ... Ishouldlike a bit o' rhubarb. They had some here t'other day—little bits o' sticks no bigger 'n your finger. And they boys set down to it.... 'En't ye goin' to spare menone?' I says." ... The story wilted away, leaving me with a belief that none had been spared for him. So I promised him some rhubarb, and the next day a small tart was made and sent over to him. The bearer returned saying that Liz, seeing it, had laughed: "We got plenty, and he's had several lots." Ifthis is true, as it probably is, Bettesworth's delusion on the point is the first instance of senility attacking his intellect.
For although on this Friday his usual garrulity about other topics than his illness was noticeably diminished, still in his handling of the subjects he did touch upon his strong mental grip was no wise impaired. From Alf Stevens, who helped him home, he went on to Alf's father, old George, who "en't so wonderful grand" in health, and to Alf's brother, who "boozes a bit," being out of work and unsettled, "or may wander off no tellin' where" in search of a job. Being now quartered at home, "he don't offer to pay his old father nothin'. P'r'aps of a Sat'day he'll bring home a joint o' meat.... But a very good bricklayer." Bettesworth has the whole situation in all its details under review before him. Moreover, this bricklayer out of work led him to speak of a serious matter, not previously known to me getting about the world, but to him lying in bed very well known—the alarming scarcity of work this summer. He named a number of men unemployed in the parish. I added another name to the list—that of a carpenter. "Ne'er a better tradesman in the district; but en't done nothin' for months," Bettesworth murmured unhesitatingly in his enfeebled voice. "And So-and-so" (he mentioned a local contractor) "is goin' to sack a dozen of his carters to-morrow, I'm told...."
The old man lay there, aware of these things; and as I write the thought crosses my mind that a valuable organizing force has been left undeveloped and lost in Bettesworth.
It looks more and more doubtful if he will linger on until the autumn.
June 25, 1905 (Sunday).—It did not occur to me at the time, but after I got away from seeing Bettesworth on Friday a resemblance struck me between his look of almost abject helplessness and that of poor old Hall, whom I saw at the infirmary and who is since dead.
In the morning, with extreme difficulty, and his niece helping him, Bettesworth had got into the front bedroom while his own bed was being made and his room cleaned. To that extent has he lost strength in the last few weeks. Sometimes his niece chides him (kindly, I feel sure) for being so cast-down, but he says, "I can't help it, and 'ten't no use for anybody to tell me not. It hurts me to think that a little while ago I was strong and ready to do anything for anybody else, and now I got to beg 'em to come an' do anything for me."
I suspect that he gives some trouble. Fancies and the unreason characteristic of old age appear— for instance, about his food. He cannot take solids: they go dry in his mouth and he is unable to swallow them; yet he begged for some one to buy him a slice or two of ham the other day. He"seemed to have had a fancy for it this fortnight." All he takes, on his own evidence, is a little milk.
He confessed to being occasionally light-headed. "I sees all the people I knows, in this room here. After I got back into bed to-day, there was three fellers leanin' over the foot o' the bed, lookin' at me; and one of 'em said, 'I reckon I shall get six months if I don't quit the neighbourhood.' I sprung forward—'I'll break your head if you don't clear out ofhere!' and I was goin' to hit 'n, an' then he was gone."
In telling this the old man suited his action to the tale, and again sat upright, his thin grey hair tumbled, his jaw fallen, his eyes hopeless for very weakness. It was then that he looked so much like old Hall.
He was wishing to be shaved, but could get nobody to do it for him. A labourer across the valley had been sent to: "He'd ha' come an' done it right enough, only he has rheumatics so bad he can't hold the razor."
There was not much talk of the old kind; and for the first time in my acquaintance with Bettesworth I had to search for topics of conversation. One subject was raised by my mention of a neighbouring farmer who proposed to begin cutting his late hay next week. "Ah, with a machine," said Bettesworth; "he can't git the men. 'R else he used to say he'd never have a machine so long as he could git men to mow for him. Billy Norris and hisbrother" (elder brother to Kid Norris) "mowed for 'n eighteen years" in succession.... "They'dlivein a fashion nobody else couldn't. Never no trouble to they about their food. They'd just gather a few old sticks an' bits o' rubbish, and make a fire—nothin' but a little smoke an' flare—an' stick a bloater or a rasher on a pointed stick and hold it up again' the flare an' smoke jest to warm it, and down he'd go, and they'd be up and on mowin' again. Then there was a barrel o' beer tumbled down into the medder—they used to roll 'n into one o' they water-gripes and put a little o' the damp grass over 'n, and the beer 'd keep ascool.... And when he was empty then he'd be took away and another brought in.... But 'twas tea—that's what they drunk for breakfast. Jest have a drink o' beer when they started mowin'; then go on for an hour or two. Then one of 'em 'd go back to where their kit was, an' make the tea in the drum, an' get a little flare an' smoke; an' they'd jest hold their bloater on a pinted stick again' the smoke—I've laughed at 'em many's a time. Dick Harding over here used to say 't'd starve he to work 'long with 'em; he could do the mowin' but he couldn't put up with the food. That was their way, though. If they was out with the ballast-train or the railway-cuttin', they'd sit down on the bank—all they wanted was a little smoky fire." Bettesworth laughed a little, amused at these sturdy men, and at his own description of their cooking.
I asked: "You never did much mowing yourself, did you?"
He hesitated, yet scarcely two seconds, and then replied: "Not much. I helped mow Holt Park once. My father-in-law—Foreman, we used to call 'n—was at it—what lived where Mrs. Warner is, and I lived where Porter do. And the Foreman sent for me to go and help. I didn't want to go—'tis hard work; anybody might have mowin' for me; but at last I agreed to go. But law! the second mornin' I was like that I didn't hardly know how to crawl down there" the three miles. "It got better after an hour or two.... But if a feller goes mowin' for eight or nine weeks on end, it do give 'n a doin'."
Thus for a little while Bettesworth chatted, in the vein that had first attracted me to him. Shall I ever hear him again, I wonder? We tried other subjects: the washed-out state of our lane and the best way to remedy it, the garden, the celery, the position of this or that crop. It entertained him for a few minutes; then he failed to seize some quite simple idea, and knew that he had failed, and said despondently, "I can't keep things in my mind like I used to."