I went up into the little square-windowed dirty bedroom and saw him. He was inclined to cry at the prospect of shutting up his home; but a little talk about my garden—perhaps dearer to him now than even his home was—brightened him up. It pleased him to learn that some early peas had been sown. In what part? he wanted to know. And being told, "Ah," he said, "and there's another place where peas 'd do well: up there under George Bryant's hedge." When I left, it was with a promise to go and see him in the infirmary on the next visiting day. Going out I saw old Nanny Norris at her door, observant of all that went on, but unserviceably deaf. She was wearing her bonnet and black shawl, looked ill, and complained of cough and of pains across her shoulders. I think there were two or three other women standing near. They were probably waiting to see Bettesworth removed, as he duly was, at mid-day.
XXXII
February 10.—The day after his departure a rather annoying circumstance came to light. The monthly contribution to the club was found to be a whole year in arrear. As the sum was but threepence a month, so that even now only three shillings were due, it seemed a little too bad of Bettesworth to have neglected the payments which at least secured him a doctor's attendance and at his death would produce four pounds for funeral expenses. Perhaps, however, he was not so much to blame as appeared; at any rate, the manner by which we learnt of his carelessness offers to the imagination the material for an affecting picture of the old man on his sick-bed. It was Mrs. Eggar who, in some trouble for him, brought his club-membership card to me, and told how he had asked her to find it. On the eve of his departure he had taken her into his confidence, spoken of the possibility that he might be going away only to die, and desired, in that event, to be brought home from the infirmary and buried decently, "same as his wife," with this sum which the club would pay. Of course the money for the arrears had to be found, and Mrs. Eggar undertook to pay it to the club secretary on the next day, when she went to the town to do her Saturday's shopping. Bettesworth had further asked her, she said, to find his discharge papers from the army, and see what reason for his discharge was stated, since he had forgotten. I have never understood why he should have been curious on that point, at such a time. Defective sight seems to have been the unexciting reason alleged.
And now, its occupant gone and Mrs. Eggar's rummagings done, the squalid tenement next door to the Norris's stood shut up, with the door locked on the few poor belongings it contained. To the neighbours there seemed to be all the circumstances of a death, except the death itself. People began to remember, what I had failed to observe yet could well believe, how greatly Bettesworth had changed of late; others recalled complaints he had uttered of being unbearably lonely. It was the general opinion that, even if he lived, he would never work again, and never again come back to the place he had left. Three or four men approached me in the hope of getting work in my garden; while as for the cottage, had I cared to give it up, there were already (the owner told me) four or five applicants eager to take it. What I should do, and what Bettesworth, formed the subject of a good deal of speculation. Old Nanny, meeting me in the road, plunged excitedly into the middle of the discussion. In her harsh snapping voice she assured me that the cottage was "as dirty as ever!" and that, as regarded Bettesworth, the infirmary was "the best place for him!" "Have ye give up the cot?" she asked. "No." "Oh! ... Beagley" (the owner) "told young Cook as you had?" "I haven't." "Well, he said you had." For some reason that was never divulged, Nanny had conceived a violent animosity towards Bettesworth, which I then supposed to be peculiar to herself; but in other respects her unmannerly questionings only betrayed the attitude of almost all the other neighbours. Bettesworth was done for: he had better stay at the infirmary and let others have his work and his cottage. Such was the prevailing opinion. The people were not intentionally unkind; but in the merciless working-class struggle for life one may admire how long Bettesworth had held his own.
On the other hand, the opposite side, Bettesworth's side, was championed probably by not a few labouring men, who had learnt to appreciate his quality. Among these was George Bryant. Bryant had been doing a few necessary jobs for me during Bettesworth's illness, and it was to his interest, if anybody's, that the old man should not come home again. When I repeated to him, however, what people had been saying—namely, that Bettesworth ought now to stay in the infirmary, he said "H'm!" and clearly did not agree. Finally, "Well, of course, we knows 'tis a place where old people ought to be looked after, but—well, Bettesworth likes his liberty. And so should I, if I was in his place!"
With a cordial feeling which warmed me at the time and may give a little colour now to the grey narrative, he spoke of the change he had lately observed in Bettesworth, who had confessed to him that life had grown so lonely "he didn't know how ever to put up with it." On the very last Sunday evening Bryant had been over at the old man's cottage, "and 'tis a lot cleaner 'n what it used to be in the old lady's time." But the difficulty was that Bettesworth could not see. I assented, mentioning his last labours at planting shallots. Bryant smiled; from his adjoining garden he had noticed the same thing a year ago, with some peas. But, in general, he admired Bettesworth. "He's a man that don't talk much till he's started, and then.... He was tellin' me Sunday about the things he see in the war. I reckon that got a lot to do with the way he is now: the cold winds, when the tents blowed over, and he'd have to lay out all in the mud. He might think 't didn't hurt 'n," but in all likelihood Bettesworth was now feeling the effects of these sufferings of so long ago. The Crimean wind, as described by Bettesworth, seemed to have impressed Bryant. "He did tell me what regiment it belonged to, but I forgets which 'twas; but one o' the regiments had the big drum lifted right up into the air an' carried out to sea by the wind."
XXXIII
The remainder of Bettesworth's story may for the most part be told in the notes made at the time, without much comment. I was unable to go to the infirmary on the first visiting day after his admission, as I had promised that I would; but I managed to get to him a week later, namely on Tuesday, the 21st of February, when he had been there twelve days; and on the next day the following account of the visit was jotted down.
February 22, 1905.—At the infirmary yesterday I found Bettesworth still in bed, in a large ward on the ground floor. Out of doors, though it was a day of fair sunshine generally, the north-east wind was bitter, and a storm of sleet and sparse hail which I had been watching as it drove across the eastern sky, and which had reached me as I neared the gate, made it agreeable to get inside the fine well-warmed building. From Bettesworth's bedside I could see, through the tall windows of the ward, distant fields and the grey storm drifting slowly over them. Trees on the horizon stood out sombre against the sombre sky.
Within, was plentiful light—plentiful air and warmth too, and cleanly order. The place looked almost cheerful, although some twenty men lay there, suffering or unhappy. One only was sitting up, who coughed exhaustedly, not violently; he seemed able to do no more than sit up, shaking with debility. In the beds the patients mostly lay quite still. The man next beyond Bettesworth drew the counterpane up over his ears, and I saw a glowing feverish eye watching me. There were but few other visitors—only four, I think, besides myself. Somewhere an electric bell sounded. A little nursing attendant with sleeves stripped up came stumping cheerily all down the ward. She had been washing dishes or something in a kind of scullery just outside when I came in. As she passed through she said, as though to interest the sick men, "This is how I do my work—see? Walkin' about like this!"