The Torch and Other Tales

by Eden Phillpotts

He had his history pat, of course, though how much truth there was to it we shall never know in this world. He was an old soldier, and had been shot in the right foot in India along with Lord Roberts in the Chitral campaign. Then he'd left the service and messed up his pension—so he said. I don't know how. Anyway he didn't get none. He showed a medal, however, which had been won by him, or somebody else; but it hadn't got no name on it. He was a great talker and his manners were far ahead of anything Mary had met with. He'd think nothing of putting a chair for her, or anything like that; and while he was storm-bound, he earned his keep and more, for he was very handy over a lot of little things, and clever with hosses and so on, and not only would he keep 'em amused of a night with his songs and adventures; but he'd do the accounts, or anything with figures, and he showed my sister how, in a good few ways she was spending money to poor purpose. He turned out to be a very clean man and very well behaved. He didn't make trouble, but was all the other way, and when the snow thawed, he was as busy as a bee helping the men round about the farm. He made his head save his heels, too, and was full of devices and inventions.

So when I got over after the worst was past, to see how they'd come through it, there was Bob Battle working with the others; and when I looked him up and down and said; "Who be you then?" he explained, and told me how Mary had took him in out of the storm and let him lie in the linhay; and how Noah had given him a suit of old clothes, and how much he was beholden to them all. And they all had a good word for the man, and Mary fairly simpered, so I thought, when she talked about him. There was no immediate mention of his going, and when I asked my sister about it, she said:

"Plenty of time. No doubt he'll get about his business in a day or two."

But, of course, he hadn't no business to get about, and though he talked in a vague sort of way concerning his home in Exeter and a brother up to Salisbury, it was all rubbish as he afterwards admitted. He was a tramp, and nothing more, and the life at Little Sherberton and the good food and the warm lying at nights, evidently took his fancy. So he stuck to it, and such was his natural cleverness and his power of being in the right place at the right moment that from the first nobody wished him away. He was always talking of going, and it was always next Monday morning that he meant to start: but the time went by and Bob Battle didn't. A very cunning man and must have been in farming some time of his life, for he knew a lot, and all worth knowing, and I'm not going to deny that he was useful to me as well as to my sister.

She was as good as a play with Bob, and me and my wife, and another married party here and there, often died of laughing to hear her talk about him. Because the way that an unmarried female regards the male is fearful and wonderful to the knowing mind.

Mary spoke of him as if she'd invented him, and knew his works, like a clockmaker knows a clock. He interested her something tremendous, and got to be her only subject presently.

"Mr. Battle was the very man for a farmer like me," she said once, "and I'm sure I thank God's goodness for sending him along. He's a proper bailiff about the place, and that clever with the men that nobody quarrels with him. Of course he does nothing without consulting me; but he's never mistaken, and apart from the worldly side of Mr. Battle, there's the religious side."

I hadn't heard about that and didn't expect to, for Mary, though a good straight woman, as wouldn't have robbed a lamb of its milk, or done a crooked act for untold money, wasn't religious in the church-going or Bible-reading sense, same as me and my wife were. In fact she never went to church, save for a wedding or a funeral; but it appeared that Mr. Battle set a good bit of store by it, and when she asked him, if he thought so much of it, why he didn't go, he said it was only his unfortunate state of poverty and his clothes and boots that kept him away.

"Not that the Lord minds," said Bob, "but the churchgoers do, and a pair of pants like mine ain't welcomed, except by the Salvationists; and I don't hold with that body."

So he got a suit of flame new clothes out of her and a new hat into the bargain; and then I said that he'd soon be a goner. But I was wrong, for he stopped and went down to Huccaby Chapel for holy service twice a Sunday; and what's more he kept it up. And then, if you please, my sister went with him one day; and coming to it with all the charm of novelty, she took to it very kindly and got to be a right down church-goer, much to my satisfaction I'm sure. And her up home five-and-sixty years old at the time!