XXVII

_September 19, 1904._--Because they can so little afford to be ill, it

is habitual among the very poor to neglect an illness long after other

people would be seriously alarmed at it; and the habit had been

confirmed in Bettesworth with regard to his wife's maladies, by her

having so many times recovered from them without help. It was almost a

matter of course to him, when about the middle of September, and less

than a month after his return from the hospital, she became once more

exceedingly unwell. So she had often done: it was not worth

mentioning, and was not mentioned, to me. I knew of no trouble. If I

had been asked about his welfare at that time, I should have said that

the old man was rather unusually happy. I should have said so

especially one Monday morning (it was the 19th of September); because

on that day we were picking apples, and his conversation was so

delightfully in harmony with the sunshine glinting among the

apple-boughs. He told of cider and cider-making; and then of shepherds

he had known on the Sussex Downs, and of their dogs, and their

solitary pastimes upon the hills. Hearing him, no one, I am sure,

could have supposed that at home his wife had been dangerously ill for

nearly a week, and that consequently his own comfort there had for the

time ceased to exist.

Later on that Monday his wife's condition (not his own) was somehow

made known to me. I suppose Bettesworth consulted me on the step he

was contemplating, of going to the relieving officer to-morrow to get

an order for medical attendance for old Lucy. At any rate, by Monday

night that is what he had resolved to do, and I knew it and approved,

remembering what the policeman had said to me. It seemed a wise

precaution to take, but evidently it could not be urgent. Bettesworth

was choosing Tuesday, because on Tuesday mornings the relieving

officer is in attendance in the parish, and the order could therefore

be got without a five-mile walk for it.

From various circumstances it may be inferred that the early part of

Tuesday was an unhappy time for Bettesworth: a time of fretful

watching for the dawn, perhaps after a wakeful night; of impatience to

come and begin his day's work, and then of impatience for eleven

o'clock to arrive, and of brooding obstinate thoughts, until at eleven

he might go and get the miserable interview over. For it made him

miserable to have to sue in the form of a pauper, and he was prepared,

as poor folk generally are, to find in the relieving officer a bully

if not a brute. I may say at once that he was agreeably deceived, and

said as much afterwards--he was treated humanely and with

appreciation; but the relieving officer's account of the interview

sufficiently proves that the old man went to it in but a surly temper.

I imagine him standing up as straight as his crooked old limbs would

let him, rolling his head back defiantly, with tightened lips and

suspicious eyes, and answering as uncivilly as he dared. A compliment

was offered him, on his haste to get away from the infirmary in the

spring. "_I_ en't no workhouse man!" he answered brusquely. And he did

his best to persuade the relieving officer that he would never want

relief for himself, asserting that he belonged to a club, and

concealing the fact that he was a superannuated member of it, no

longer entitled to benefit from the club funds.

And then, the interview over, and the order obtained, his cheerfulness

for the rest of the day is suggestive of an ordeal successfully

passed. True, I have lost record of how he pottered through the

afternoon--it was, of course, useless to go to the parish doctor at

that time of day--but he seemed to have suddenly lost the weakness

still lingering from the operation in the hospital; and being short of

money, he proposed an extra job for the evening. He wanted to clear

out a cesspit in my garden. I urged that he had better rest, and take

care of himself as well as of his wife. "_I_ be gettin' bonny!" he

said happily.

He carried his point, too. As if he had no wife ill at home, at about

eight o'clock, which was usually his bed-time, he came back and began

his self-imposed task, with a young labourer to help. And he must have

been in merry spirits, for he kept his mate amused, so that from the

house I could hear the man laughing, in frequent bleating outbursts of

hilarity, at some facetious saying or other. One of these sayings I

heard, on going out to see how the work was progressing. "He must be a

greedy feller as wants more 'n one or two whiffs o' this," Bettesworth

remarked; and his companion let out another good-tempered laugh. From

the old man's manner I argued that his wife must be doing well; but

probably it indicated only a reaction from the moody temper of the

morning. The job was finished at about half-past nine, and conscious

of a good day's work done, Bettesworth once more crept over the hill

and across the valley, home.

But not to go to bed, or to sleep. While he was at work in the

moonlight and making his friend laugh, I did not know, but he did,

what was in store for him. Having no spare bed, he began his night

downstairs and dozed for a while in an easy-chair; then roused and

went out into the moonlight to smoke a pipe; and so he got through the

night. Tobacco was his solace. He smoked, he told me, a full ounce in

the ensuing twenty-four hours. At seven in the morning--his usual

hour--he was here beginning work: at nine he left off, to go into the

town and present his order at the doctor's.

That journey on the Wednesday morning proved the beginning of a period

of intenser wretchedness for the old man. He set out in apparent

equanimity; but the fatigue of the night was upon him, the glow of

yesterday's contentment had died out, and his nerves must have been

all on edge to take as he did a remark of the doctor's--"What do you

want of an order? You're in constant work, aren't you?" It seemed to

him that he was being insulted for coming as a pauper, and it was all

he could do to refrain from a rejoinder that would have resulted in

his being summarily ejected from the doctor's presence. And was he as

submissive as he fancied? It is more likely that the ungraciousness of

his manner was to blame for what he regarded as pure heartlessness in

the other. That he must be at home to meet the doctor was

self-evident; but it was important to him not to lose a whole day from

his work, and he desired to know whether the visit would be made

before his dinner-time or after it? I hazard a guess that he stated

the case in tones of defiant bargaining; at any rate, he could get no

answer but that the doctor would call during the day. With that he

returned here--a quivering mass of resentment; and in that temper, to

which nothing is so repugnant as waiting, by my persuasion rather than

by his goodwill he left his work and went home to wait.

With what increasing bitterness he wore through the day, with what

fretfulness and final despair as of a man despised and forgotten, must

be left to conjecture. For the doctor did not come, after all.

Conjecture, too, must picture if it can the night that followed--the

attempts to sleep in the chair, the restless wanderings into the

garden to smoke, the repetition, in fact, of the preceding night's

misery, but with a great addition of weariness and distress.

Bettesworth, when he came round the next morning to tell me how he was

situated, did not so much as mention all this; he only let fall one

pitiful detail. Some time in the night he had given his wife a little

brandy; and about daybreak he went out to draw fresh water into the

kettle "so's not to have it no-ways stale," for making her a cup of

tea. But, partaking of a cup himself at the same time, he "hadn't had

it above five minutes afore he was out in the garden" to let the tea

come back again. After that, he appears to have abandoned the attempt

to get sustenance elsewhere than from tobacco. It was a dismal story

to hear: but there was nothing to be done; and having heard it, I sent

him home again to go on waiting. This was Thursday, two days after he

obtained the relieving officer's order for medical assistance, and by

now the state of his wife was causing him grave fears.

But why had the doctor not been near? To Bettesworth's wounded

feelings the explanation needed no seeking: he was being made to wait

for richer people, because he was poor and unimportant. Meanwhile,

happening to meet with the relieving officer, I laid the case before

him, and heard that a call to a distance had obliged the doctor to

leave his work for a day or two in the hands of a _locum tenens_, who

must have blundered. And this proved to be the fact. On Thursday

afternoon a doctor who was a stranger at last found his way to

Bettesworth's cottage, and the unhappy old man's long suspense was so

far over. At once all his bitterness died out. The doctor "was as nice

a gentleman as ever I talked to," he affirmed. "He said she was very

bad. She wasn't to have nothing but only milk an' beef-tea an' brandy,

an' she wasn't to be left alone." Bettesworth therefore did not leave

home again that day. He got his niece, whose young family prevented

her from giving much help, to go to the town and bring home the

medicine, and so he settled down for another night like those that had

gone before.

It was on the next morning (Friday) that he told me these few

particulars, and how his wife seemed a trifle--only a trifle--better;

how, too, he had "washed her as well as he could," and, being asked,

how he had not been to bed himself. And now he was on his way to the

town to buy a few necessaries. Who was with his wife meanwhile? That

was a question I dared not ask, because I knew that the distressful

old woman was a by-word for sluttishness among the neighbours, so much

that they would hardly go near her; and I knew that Bettesworth,

though silent on the subject, was sore about it. Without doubt the old

woman was quite alone, whenever circumstances compelled him to leave

her.

The "necessaries" he was going to buy included beef-tea "and some

cakes," he said. At the mention of cakes I exclaimed, but he protested

reproachfully, "Well, but she en't had _nothin'_ to eat!" Clearly he

did not regard milk as food, or indeed anything else that was not

solid. In the matter of beef-tea, "I can't make it myself," he said,

"but you can buy it, can't ye, in jars?" He was perhaps thinking of

Bovril, or something of the kind. Fortunately there were those at hand

who knew how to make beef-tea, and undertook at once to relieve the

old man of this burden.

Taking him apart then, I asked if he needed a shilling or two. He

almost groaned in deprecation, "I owes you such a lot now, and keeps

on gettin' into debt. I'd sooner rub along with jest as little as ever

I possibly can." It was of his rent he was thinking, which of course

was payable for those weeks of his own illnesses, as well as for his

absence from work now, when he was not earning any wages from which

the rent could be deducted. Perhaps he was unaware that I had no

account of the debt; in any case, it seemed to be preying upon his

mind. I did not press the point, therefore, and he started off for the

town without aid from me.

In another way, too, the old man's reluctance to be a burden

manifested itself. What he had told me so far was told because I

wished to hear it, and he wished me to understand. He made no long

tale: he was brief, unaffected, and as for seeking compassion, it was

far from his intention. Of one thing only did he complain: a near

relative's indifference. "He was over by our place twice o' Sunday,"

Bettesworth said scornfully, "and couldn't look in to see how the poor

old gal was. He was ready enough to send to me when he had his mishap"

(falling from a rick, and finding himself in agony at night), "and I

run off an' went all down to the town for 'n, late at night. But now

_I_ wants help--no: he won't come anear. That's the sort o' feller

_he_ is." So Bettesworth, uttering his sole complaint. But he did not

demand from others the sympathy he looked for from a relation, or seek

to inflict them with the tale of troubles which, after all, he would

have to bear by himself.

At this point, if the actual course of this over-crowded Friday were

to be followed strictly, the narrative would suffer a strange

interruption. For, having business of my own in the town, I set off at

the same time with Bettesworth, expecting little cheerfulness from him

on the way. But I had failed to appreciate the man's stoicism, or the

strong grip he had over his feelings. For several nights he had not

rested on a bed; he had taken during the same period next to no food;

he had been harassed by suspense, worn by indignation, baffled

constantly by the obstacles which his poverty set in his way; and it

would have been pardonable if he had proved himself but a gloomy

companion for a walk. Yet from the moment of our setting out he put

aside all his difficulties, and not only did he not distress me, but

for the half-hour before we separated he kept me interested in his

sensible conversation on local topics, or charmed by the pleasant

rustic flavour of some of his reminiscences. Here, therefore, would be

the natural place for inserting some fragments of this talk, which I

wrote down in the evening. It happened, however, that in writing I

gave precedence to an important change which by then had come over the

situation at Bettesworth's home; and as I propose to take the account

of this development and the issue of it straight from my note-book,

the bits of gossip too had better come in just as they stand there.

It appears, then, to have been at about six o'clock in the afternoon

that I was writing, as follows:

Bettesworth has just been over (from his home) to consult me, and

perhaps to have a chat and relieve his overburdened soul. When he got

back from the town this morning, he found the doctor paying another

visit, who was "wonderful nice," and offered to give him a certificate

for admitting the old woman to the infirmary, if he would care to have

it and would call for it at the surgery. Bettesworth only wanted my

encouragement. He is going down this evening for the certificate, and

hopes to get his wife removed to-morrow.

It will be none too soon. The watching is wearing him out. Last night

he had left her and gone downstairs, and sat dozing in the chair, when

she tried to get out of bed, and fell heavily on the floor. He ran

up--and forgot to take the candle back with him, thereby adding to his

difficulties--and somehow managed to get her back into bed again and

covered up, without aid. But now, says he, "I said to Dave Harding as

I come up the road, 'What I should like to do 'd be to crawl up into

the fir-woods where nobody couldn't see me, and lay down an' get three

or four hours' sleep.' 'You couldn't do it,' he says; ''t'd be on your

mind all the time. You might get off for ten minutes, p'raps, an' then

you'd be up an' off again.' But that's what I sims as if I should

like, more 'n anything: jest to crawl away somewhere, where nobody

wouldn't come, for a good sleep. Then wake up and 'ave a floush--'t'd

freshen me up."

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 I

_be_ hammer-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 _'ave_ it,'

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 by seven

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 about _yerself_, 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 be _oneasy_, old gentleman; she'll be looked _after_ up 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-chair

downstairs.... 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, "because I 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't_ that 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 that _contented_!"

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. He _did_ go,

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: _sure_ a 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 she _was_

proud. Twenty thousand pound, was the last legacy she had. She was

just such another woman to 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 been to 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 husband might 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'd wash 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 she

_couldn't_ undertake 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

she _can't_ do--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 and sponge-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 respect for 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,

to _me_," 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; "and _don't_ let'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: "It _would_ be 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.