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,
and was 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
offered to 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 found his 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 much
of 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 'em _out_; 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 satisfy
_myself_.'" 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 afternoon sunshine 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.