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--_I_ forgets 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's_ wantin' 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 a _lot_ nicer 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 so _long_."
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 see much. 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't _be_ none,
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! I _thought_ she'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 with
bronchitis 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.