Part 17

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. I _told_ her 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 one he 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!" And the 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: "_Purty_ little 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--_they_ wouldn'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. _He_ was 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 a _clever_ old 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."

XXXVII

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.

XXXVIII

_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.