Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer Part 24
What more? He said once, "I thinks I shall go off all in a moment.
Widder Cook was here ... she was talkin' about her husband Cha'les.
They'd bin tater-hoein', an' when they left off she said, 'a drop o'
beer wouldn't hurt us.' 'No,' he said, 'a drop o' beer and a bit o'
bread an' cheese, an' then git off to bed.' So they sent for the beer.
And they hadn't bin in bed half an hour afore she woke, and he'd moved; an' she put her arm across 'n an' there he was, dead." So the widow had told Bettesworth; and now he repeated it to me--the last tale I shall ever hear from him, I fancy, and told all mumblingly with his poor old dried-up mouth. He added, almost crying, "I prays G.o.d to let me go like that." We agreed that it was a merciful way to be taken.
It still interested him to hear of the garden, and he asked how the potatoes were coming up, and listened to my account of the peas and carrots, but said he was "never much of a one" for carrots. At home I had left George Bryant lawn-mowing. Well, Bettesworth too had mown my lawn in hot weather, and smiled happily at the reminiscence. He smiled again when, recalling how I had known him now for fourteen years, I reminded him of the great piece of trenching which had been his first job for me.
So presently I came away, out on to the sunny road, thinking, "I shall not see him many more times." From just there I caught a glimpse of Leith Hill, blue with twenty intervening miles of afternoon sunlight: twenty miles of the England Bettesworth has served.
Half-way down the hill the old road-mender, straightening up from his work as I pa.s.sed, asked, "Can ye keep yerself warm, sir?" And I laughed, "Pretty nearly. How about you?" "It _boils_ out," he said.
The perspiration stood on his face while he spoke of motor-cars, and the dust they raised; but to me dust and swift-travelling cars and all seemed to tell of summer afternoon. And though the reason is obscure, somehow it seems fit that possibly my last talk with Bettesworth should be a.s.sociated with the blue distant English country, and the summer dust, and that sunburnt old folk jest which consists in asking, when it is so particularly and exhilaratingly warm as to-day, "Can you keep yourself warm?"
_July 21._--The weather was as brilliantly hot this afternoon as a week ago; and Bettesworth's bedroom looked just as before; but the old man was changed. He lay with eyes looking glazed between the half-shut lids, and he was breathing hard. His niece accompanied me upstairs; but he took no notice of our entry until she mentioned my name, upon which he turned a little and put up a feeble hand for me to take. He was in a sort of stupor, though he seemed to rouse a little, and to understand one or two remarks I ventured. But when he spoke it was as if utterly exhausted, and we could not always make out his meaning. In the hope of helping him to realize that I was with him, I told of the garden, and how Bryant was mowing again, though in this hot weather the lawn was "getting pretty brown, _you_ know." "Yes," he said feebly, "and if you don't keep it cut middlin' short, it soon goes wrong." Next I reported on the potatoes--how well they were coming: "the same sort as you planted for me last year." "Ah--the _Victoria_, wa'n't they?" The question was a mere murmur. "No, _Duke of York_. And don't you remember what a crop we had, when you planted 'em?" There came the faintest of smiles, and "None of what I planted failed much, did they?" Indeed, no. The shallots he had planted during his last day's work had just been harvested; the beans which he sowed the same day had but now yielded their last picking. I told him they were over. "You can't expect no other," he said, meaning at this time of year and in such dry weather. I mentioned the celery, reminding him, "You _have_ sweated over watering celery, haven't you?" Again he just smiled, and I fancy this smile was the last sign of rational interest and pride in his labour.
For after this he became incoherent and wandering. Dimly we made out that he "wanted to put them four poles against the veranda,"
apparently meaning my veranda. "What for?" his niece asked. "To keep the wall up." Then I, "We won't trouble about that to-day," as if he had been consulting me about the work, and he seemed satisfied to have my decision. But I had stayed too long; so, grasping his hand, I said "Good-bye." He asked, "Are ye goin' to the club?" (He was thinking of the Oddfellows' fete arranged for to-morrow week, and had been wondering all day, his niece said, not to hear the band.) "It isn't till to-morrow week," we said. "How they do keep humbuggin' about," he muttered crossly. "Yes, but they've settled it now," we a.s.sured him.
I have promised to go again to see him--to-morrow or on Sunday, because, according to his niece, he had been counting on my visit, and asking for several days "if this was Friday."
The thought came to me on my way home, that he is dying without any suspicion that anyone could think of him with admiration and reverence.
_July 25 (Tuesday)._--Bettesworth died this evening at six o'clock.
_July 28 (Friday)._--This afternoon I went to the funeral.
A week earlier (almost to the hour) when I parted from him, he seemed too ill to take his money--too unconscious, I mean. I offered it to his niece, standing at the foot of the bed; but she said, glancing meaningly towards him, "I think he'd like to take it, sir." So I turned to him and put the shillings into his hand, which he held up limply. "Your wages," I said.
For a moment he grasped the silver, then it dropped out on to his bare chest and slid under the bed-gown, whence I rescued it, and, finding his purse under the pillow, put his last wages away safely there.
On the Sat.u.r.day I saw him, but I think he did not know me: and that was the last time. The thought of him keeps coming, wherever I go in the garden; but I put it aside for fear of spoiling truer because more spontaneous memories of him in time to come.