February 28.—I have no record of my second visit to the infirmary a week later; but, as I remember, Bettesworth was then sitting up in a day-room, so that he was evidently better, although still extremely feeble.
XXXIV
March 7, 1905.—Bettesworth left the infirmary on Saturday morning, March the 4th. I met him half a mile away from it, in the town, and he was trembling with weakness where he stood. But he protested that he should get home well enough; he had just had a nice rest, a friend of mine having taken him into his house to sit down by the fire. My friend told me afterwards how the old man, invited in because of his pitiable condition, had seemed to crawl in a state of collapse to the chair set for him.
His tale to my friend was curiously different from the account he gave me of his leaving the infirmary. To the former he explained that on the Thursday he had desired to be allowed to go home. The wish was communicated on the next day to the doctor, who asked, "Do you want to go then?" and was answered ungraciously, "I shan't get no better here." On Saturday, therefore, his clothes were brought to him, and out he came.
But this was not quite the same story that he told me. Perhaps I should premise that I felt annoyed with him for coming out, since it was plain who would have to provide for him; and he may have seen that I was displeased when I said, "You have no business out! You're not fit for work, and you ought to have stayed another week or two." Somehow so I greeted him, none too kindly. He replied that there were seven or eight "turned out" that morning, their room being wanted for others. Nor did he forget to complain. His clothes, he said, having been tied in a bundle with a ticket on them, and tossed into a shed, had been returned to him so damp that he felt "shivery" getting into them; and there was no fire by which to dress.
What did he propose to do? was my next question. He was going home, to make up a fire in his bedroom and air his bed. Already he had arranged with Liz and Jack to come and help him do that. Such of his things as were worth anyone's buying he should sell—Mrs. Eggar, for instance, would take the Windsor chairs; and then he was going to live, probably, at Jack's. But his first care was to go and air his bed. Firing—coal, at least—he possessed; wood could be provided by knocking up two old tables which were grown rickety. To my protest against such destruction, he replied that already before his illness he had touched one of the tables with his little axe.
He trembled, but his mouth shut resolutely, so that I got the impression, and that not for the first time of late, of something desperate about him, something hard, fierce, suspicious.
The discrepancy between his stories to my friend and to myself strengthens the impression, and as I write this a hypothesis shapes itself: that he fears to lose his employment with me; fears that I am weary of him and anxious to get him permanently settled in the workhouse. For this reason, perhaps, he reviles that hated place, hurries from it, will not own to weakness though I see him shaking, will be independent as to coal and the rest. I asked him how he was off for money. He could do with a shilling or so; but he did not want to get into debt.
That was three days ago. I was from home to-day when he came to see me, announcing himself vastly better. He has gone to live with Jack, in whose house he has a room to himself and "a nice soft bed," and is well looked after, he says. Liz has even been giving him a cup of tea in bed—or desiring to do so.
I understand him to have said that the old cot used to cost him as much as six shillings a week to keep going. And that, he added, would be nearly enough for him to live upon, in his new quarters.