We spoke again of various neighbours, and thus drifting on (I am omitting vast quantities) Bettesworth presently told of a recent attempt at starting a village football club, or rather, of the subsequent discussion of the affair at the public-house. An enthusiast there wished to get "as many members as ever they could." "But how be ye goin' to pick 'em for play?" asked another. "Oh, pick the best." Bettesworth tells me this, adding, "I don't call that fair do's at all. I can't see no justice in that, that one should pay to be a member of a club, purpose for somebody else to have all the play. That's the way they breaks up a club. Break up any club, that would."
September 24.—Word was brought this afternoon (Saturday) that Bettesworth was at the kitchen door, wishing to see me. Of course he has not been to work to-day. I found him standing outside, patient and quiet, until, being asked how things were going, he began to cry, and shook his head, so that I feared something had miscarried and asked, "Why, haven't you got your wife away?"
"Yes, we got her away, but she was purty near dead when we got her there. The matron shook her head, and said, 'You'll never see her home again alive.'"
There were repetitions and variations of this; but I, reiterating my assurances that "she had got a lot of strength," and that in fine the old wife would yet live to come home again, quite forgot to observe exactly what Bettesworth said. His distress was too afflicting.
It would take long, too, to tell of his morning in his own words, beginning with the early walk to Moorways for the relieving officer's order, and telling how old chums starting off to work were astonished to see him thus unwontedly on the road, and what they said as he passed them by as if with a renewal of vigour, and how one was "puffed, tryin' to keep up." The long waiting at the office door (the officer had been out in his garden getting up potatoes), and Bettesworth's meditations, "I wish he'd come," and the instructions furnished him as to how to go on—they were all narrated simply, because they happened; but the touch of grey morning mist which somehow pervaded the talk while I was hearing it could not be reproduced with its words. The old man was back here soon after eight o'clock, on his way to the town to order the fly which should take his wife to the infirmary. He had had no breakfast. I gave him tea and bread and butter; but he left the bread and butter—couldn't swallow it, he said. He had had a glass of beer at the Moorways Inn.
He went into the town, and I met him on the road, returning. The fly proprietor had recognized him and behaved kindly. "Got a bit o' trouble then, old gentleman?" Yes, the fly should be there to the minute.
At noon, to the minute, it arrived, the driver of it being a son of an old neighbour of Bettesworth's. Meanwhile, Bettesworth's niece, "Liz," and a neighbour's wife—a Mrs. Eggar—whom he spoke of as "Kate," were there trying to dress the old woman—and failing. They got her stockings on, but no boots; a petticoat or so, but no bodice with sleeves; and for that much they had to struggle, even calling on Bettesworth to come upstairs and help them. Then the fly came, "and all she kep' sayin' was, 'Leave me to die at home. I wants to die at home'" and she fought and would not be moved.
To get her downstairs the help of two men besides the driver was enlisted, Kate's husband being one of them. By a kindly policy, Bettesworth himself was sent to hold the horse ("'cause he wanted to start off"), in order that the sight of her husband might not increase the poor old woman's reluctance; and so they carried her downstairs, "bodily," he said, meaning, I suppose, that she did not support herself at all.
The doctor had advised, and the neighbours too, that Bettesworth himself should not accompany his wife. But now the niece Liz, being unwell, was afraid to be alone with what looked a dying woman, and at the last moment Bettesworth jumped into the cab. As it started, the old woman's head fell back, her mouth dropped open. A pause was made at the public-house, to get brandy for her, which, however, she could not, or would not, take. Gin was tried, and she just touched it. Liz took the brandy; Bettesworth and the driver shared a pint of beer; then they drove off again. Once, on the way, Liz said, "Uncle, she's gone! Hadn't ye better stop the fly?" But he put his head down against her cheek, and found that she was still living; and so they came to the outer entrance of the infirmary. Further than that Bettesworth was dissuaded from going: it was not well that his wife should be agitated by the sight of him at the very gates; and accordingly he came away.
So he is alone in his cottage, and may rest if he can. He is to have meals at his niece's, but will sleep at home. The kindness is touching to him, not alone of the nephew and niece, but of his neighbours generally. "Kate said she'd ha' went down in the fly, if I'd ha' let her know in time. An' she'd wash for me—if I'd take anything I wanted along to her Monday or Tuesday, she'd wash it. I says to her, 'You be the first friend I got, Kate.' Well, Liz had told me she couldn't undertake it. She was forced to get somebody to do her own, and the doctor come to see her one day expectin' to find her in bed, and she was gettin' the dinner. There's Jack" (her husband) "and four boys.... So Kate's goin' to do the washin' for me, and she and her daughter's goin' one day to give the place a scrub out. More'n that she can't do—with eight little 'uns, and then look at the washin'!" For Mrs. Eggar takes in washing, to eke out her husband's fifteen or sixteen shillings a week.