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.
In the morning, with extreme difficulty, and his niece helping him, Bettesworth had got into the front bedroom while his own bed was being made and his room cleaned. To that extent has he lost strength in the last few weeks. Sometimes his niece chides him (kindly, I feel sure) for being so cast-down, but he says, "I can't help it, and 'ten't no use for anybody to tell me not. It hurts me to think that a little while ago I was strong and ready to do anything for anybody else, and now I got to beg 'em to come an' do anything for me."
I suspect that he gives some trouble. Fancies and the unreason characteristic of old age appear— for instance, about his food. He cannot take solids: they go dry in his mouth and he is unable to swallow them; yet he begged for some one to buy him a slice or two of ham the other day. He "seemed to have had a fancy for it this fortnight." All he takes, on his own evidence, is a little milk.