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.'"