Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer Part 17

"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 repet.i.tions and variations of this; but I, reiterating my a.s.surances 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.ter; but he left the bread and b.u.t.ter--couldn't swallow it, he said. He had had a gla.s.s 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.

Besides these friends, there are those who are willing to find the old man a home, "if anything should happen to the old gal." "'Tis a sort o' comfortin'," he says, "to think what good neighbours I got;" but he hopes not to break up his home yet. In an unconscious symbolism of his affection for all the home things he bought this afternoon a pennyworth of milk for the cat, who came running to meet him on his return to the lonely cottage, and then ran upstairs "to see if the old gal was there."

He will keep his home together if he may, with warm feelings towards his neighbours. "But as for these up here," and he points contemptuously in the direction of the old woman's relatives, "I dunno if they knows she's gone, and I shan't trouble to tell 'em."

[So I wrote on the Sat.u.r.day evening. Four clear days pa.s.s, without any note about Bettesworth; then on the following Thursday the narrative is reopened. It is given here, unaltered.]

_September 29._--Bettesworth's wife died at the workhouse infirmary, about midnight of the 27th.

She had been unconscious since her admission, and spoke only twice.

Once she said, "Bring my little box upstairs off the dresser, Fred;"

the other time it was, "Fred, have ye wound up the clock?" These things were reported to him by the nurse, when he reached the infirmary on Tuesday afternoon--the usual afternoon for the admission of visitors.

He had gone down then, with his niece Liz, to see the old lady. And of course I heard the details of the expedition when he came back.

Stopping at a greengrocer's in the town, he bought two ripe pears, at three halfpence each. "Did ye ever hear tell o' such a price for a pear? What 'd that be for a bushel? Why, 't'd come to a pound! But I said, 'I'll ha' the best.' Then I bought her some sponge-cakes at the confectioner's;" and with these delicacies he went to her.

She could not touch them. She lay with her eyes open, but unconscious even of the flies, which he, sitting beside, kept fanning from her face. There was no recognition of him; so he asked which was "her locker," proposing to leave the pears and sponge-cakes there for her, on the chance of her being able to enjoy them later. "Poor old lady, she'll never want 'em," the nurse said; and he replied, "Now I've brought 'em here I shan't take 'em back. Give 'em to some other poor soul that can fancy 'em."

They gave him permission to stay as long as he liked; but, said he, "I bid there an hour an' a quarter, an' then I couldn't bide no longer.

What was the use, sir? She didn't know me." So at last he came away, provided with a free pa.s.s, "to go in at any hour o' the day or night he mind to."

Yesterday (Wednesday) morning he was about his work here when a letter was brought to him. It contained only a formal notice that "Lucy Bettesworth was lying dangerously ill, and desired to see him."

Probably the notice was mercifully designed to prepare him for the worse news it might have told, but of course he did not know it, even if that was the case. He left here at once, to go and see his wife.

Between two and three hours afterwards he was back again. "How is it?"

I asked, guessing how it was. "She's gone, sir"--and then he broke down, sobbing, but only for a minute. He had already ordered the coffin--"a nice box," he called it. The remainder of the day was spent in getting the death certificate and observing other formalities. He had the knell rung, too. Nothing would he neglect that would testify to his respect for the partner he had lost; and I think in all this he was partly animated by a savage resentment towards her relatives, who had ignored her, and by a resolved opposition to those who had contemned his wife while she lived. "Everybody always bin very good, to _me_," he has said, with significant emphasis on the last word.

In the evening he had the corpse brought away to his nephew Jack's. He also slept at Jack's, and in numerous ways Jack is behaving well to him. To spare the old man's weariness he spent the evening in going to see about the insurance money; and to-day it is Jack who is getting six other men to carry the coffin at the funeral on Sat.u.r.day.

This morning Bettesworth went to the Vicar to arrange about the funeral. "He spoke very nice to me," he said. Thence he was sent to the s.e.xton, near at hand; and soon he came to me to borrow a two-foot rule, because the s.e.xton wanted to know the exact measurements of the coffin before digging the grave; "and _don't_ let's have any mistakes!" he had said, for there had been a mistake not so long ago, a grave having been dug too small for the coffin.

Knowing Bettesworth's fumbling blindness, and seeing him nervous, "Can you manage it?" I asked, "or would you like me to go over and measure it for you?" There was no hesitation: "It _would_ be a kindness, if you don't mind, sir...." I have but just now returned.

I think I will not record particulars of that visit. If I had not previously known it, I should have known then that Bettesworth is--but there are no fit epithets. Nothing sensational happened, nothing extravagantly emotional. But all that he did and said, so simple and unaffected and necessary, was done as if it were an act of worship. No woman could have been tenderer or more delicate than he, when he drew the sheet back from the dead face, to show me.... The coffin itself (because he is so poor and so lonely)--a decent elm coffin--is a kind of symbol, and so a comfort to him, enabling him to testify to his unspoken feelings towards his dead wife.

_October 1._--I went to the funeral of Bettesworth's wife this Sat.u.r.day afternoon. In his decent black clothes and with his grey hair the old man looked very dignified, showing a quiet, unaffected patience.

There were but few people present: four or five relatives besides the bearers and the undertaker and s.e.xton; while a young woman (Mrs.

Porter) with her little boy Tim stood in the background, she carrying a wreath she had made. She is a near neighbour to us, and a very impoverished one, to whom the old man has shown what kindness has been in his power; while she on many mornings has called him into her cottage at breakfast time, to give him a cup of hot tea.

XXVIII

Shutting his mouth doggedly, Bettesworth went back to his cottage, to live alone there with his cat. There had been some talk of his going into lodgings; but after all, this was still his home. Should he once give it up, he reasoned, and dispose of his furniture, it would be impossible ever again to form a home of his own, however much he might desire to do so. To live with neighbours might be very well; yet how if he and they should disagree? He would have burnt his boats; he would be unable to resume his independence. Better were it, then, to keep while he still had it a place where he was his own master, and take the risk of being lonely.

For some seven weeks after the wife's funeral there is next to nothing to be told of him. I find that I am unable to remember anything about him for that period, unless it was then--and it could not have been much later--that he renewed some of his household goods, and amongst them his mattress, being visited apparently by a wish to regain the character for cleanliness which had been lost in his wife's time. It must have been then also that he first talked of buying muslin for blinds to his windows. It is further certain that he chatted a great deal about his next-door neighbours--the Norrises, mother and son, upon whose society he was now chiefly dependent; but of all this not a syllable remains, nor is there any dimmest picture in my memory of what the old man did, or even how he looked, in those seven weeks.

_November 22, 1904._--At the end of them, on a raw morning in November, amid our struggles to heave out of the ground a huge shrub we were transplanting, it was remarkable how strong Bettesworth seemed, because of the cunning use he made of every ounce of force in his experienced old muscles. How to lift, and how to support a weight, were things he knew as excellently as some know how to drive a golf-ball. Nor was my theory quite so good as his experience, for showing where our skids and levers should be placed. It was Bettesworth who got them into the serviceable positions.

Something about those skids set us talking of other skidding work, and especially of the extremely tricky business of loading timber on a trolly. "I see a carter once," said Bettesworth, "get three big elm-trees up on to a timber-carriage, with only hisself and the hosses. He put the runnin' chains on and all hisself."

"And _that_ takes some doing," I said.

"Yes, a man got to understand the way 'tis done.... I never had much hand in timber-cartin' myself; but this man.... 'Twas over there on the Hog's Back, not far from Tongham Station. We all went out for to see 'n do it--'cause 'twas in the dinner-time he come, and we never believed he'd do it single-handed. The farmer says to 'n, 'You'll never get they up by yourself.' 'I dessay I shall,' he says; and so he did, too. Three great elm-trees upon that one carriage.... Well, he had a four-hoss team, so that'll tell ye what 'twas. They _was_ some hosses, too. Ordinary farm hosses wouldn't ha' done it. But he only jest had to speak, and you'd see they watchin' him.... When he went forward, after he'd got the trees up, to see what sort of a road he'd got for gettin' out, they stood there with their heads stretched out and their ears for'ard. 'Come on,' he says, and _away_ they went, _tearin'_ away. Left great ruts in the road where the wheels went in--that'll show ye they got something to pull."

We got our shrub a little further, Bettesworth grunting to a heavy lift; then, in answer to a question:

"No, none o' we helped 'n. We was only gone out to see 'n do it. He never wanted no help. He didn't say much; only 'Git back,' or 'Git up,' to the hosses. When it come to gettin' the last tree up, on top o' t'other two, I never thought he could ha' done it. But he got 'n up. And he was a oldish man, too: sixty, I dessay he was. But he jest spoke to the hosses. Never used no whip, 'xcept jest to guide 'em.

Didn't the old farmer go on at his own men, too! 'You dam fellers call yerselves carters,' he says; 'a man like that's worth a dozen o' you.'

Well, they couldn't ha' done it. A dozen of 'em 'd ha' scrambled about, an' _then_ not done it! Besides, their _hosses_ wouldn't. But this feller--the old farmer says to 'n, 'I never believed you'd ha'

done it.' 'I thought mos' likely I should,' he says. But he never had much to say."

Sleet showers were falling, and a north wind was roaring through the fir wood on top of the next hill while we worked. Dropping into the vernacular, "I don't want to see no snow," said I. "No," responded Bettesworth, "it's too white for me." "January," I went on, "is plenty soon enough for snow to think about comin'." "April," he urged. "Ah well, April," I laughed; and he, "Let it wait till there's a warm sun to get rid of it 's fast as it comes."

Then he continued, "That rain las' night come as a reg'lar su'prise to me. I was sittin' indoors by my fire smokin'--I 'ave got rid o' some baccer lately--and old Kid went up the garden. He see my light, and hollered out, 'It don't half rain!' '_Let_ it rain,' I says. I was in there as comfortable...."

In the next night but one a little snow fell, enough to justify our forecast and no more; and then we had frost, and garden work could hardly go on. I was meaning to lay turf over a plot of ground where the shrubs had stood; but the work had to wait: the frozen turfs could not be unrolled.

Bettesworth did not like the weather. I have told of those steps connecting his cottage with the road. They were slippery now, and the handrail to them was icy when he clutched it, coming down in the dark of the mornings. At the bottom of the steps, before the road is reached, there is a steep path, commonly known as "Granny Fry's." Boys were sliding there after breakfast, and they called out to Bettesworth, "Be you roughed, Master Bettesworth?" According to his tale, he spoke angrily: ""Tis _you_ ought to be roughed,' I says; 'you ought to be roughed over the bank. You be old enough to know better.' And so they be, too. They be biggish boys; and anybody goin'

there might easy fall down and break their back--'specially after dark."

When he came back from his dinner, he said, "Somebody 've bin an'

qualified old Granny Fry's." How? "Oh, somebody 've chucked some dirt over where they boys had made it so slippery."

He was obliged to admit, though, that in his own boyhood he had been as careless as any of these. And a few minutes later he was confessing to another boyish fault. In a cottage hard by, little Timothy Porter--a chubby little chap about five years old--was on very friendly terms with old Bettesworth. He had but lately started his schooling, and almost immediately was taken unwell and had to stay at home a week or two. I happened now to ask Bettesworth how little Tim was getting on.