_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 without pain. 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 told me 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 some _good_ places 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 their cheap 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 do _he_ want 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, ... I _should_ like 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 me _none_?' 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." If this 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 of _here_!' 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 his brother" (elder brother to Kid Norris)
"mowed for 'n eighteen years" in succession.... "They'd _live_ in 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 as _cool_....
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.