At the close of the war Bettesworth came home "among the reductions," yet not for several months, during which he was employed on "fatigue parties" in collecting old metal—guns, ammunition cases, and so forth—for ballast to the ships in Balaclava Harbour. He described the Harbour: it was "like comin' in at that door; an' then, when you gets inside, it all spreads out...." Storm in the Black Sea overtook the troop-ship, where were "seventeen hunderd of us. Three hunderd was ship's company.... And some down on their knees prayin', some cursin', some laughin' an' drinkin', some dancin'.... And the troop-ship we come home in—might 's well ha' come in a hog-tub. She'd bin all through the war, and he" (the captain) "reckoned 'twas great honour to bring her home, and he wouldn't have no tugs. Forty-nine days we was, comin' home. And she leaked, an' then 'twas 'all hands to the pumps....' Great pumps...."
Yes, of course he remembered the pumps. It was Bettesworth all over, to take a vivid and intelligent practical interest in anything of the kind that there was to be seen. He had had no observation lessons at school, and had never heard of "object studies"; he simply observed for the pleasure of observing, instinctively as a cat examines a new piece of furniture, and if not with any cultivated sense of proportion, still with a great evenness of judgment. On one other occasion, and one only in my hearing, he reverted to his Crimean experiences; and as will be seen in its proper place, the narrative again showed him observing with the same balanced mind, never enthusiastic, but also never satiated, never bored.
But what of the "trouble" into which he was alleged to have fallen? I may as well tell all I know, and have done with it. From Bettesworth himself no breath of trouble ever reached me. But his avoidance of this period as a topic of conversation often struck me as a suspicious circumstance; so that I was not quite unprepared for a statement old Dicky Martin volunteered when Bettesworth had been some three weeks dead. He had been "rackety," and had been punished: that was the substance of the tale. "He got into trouble for goin' into the French lines after some rum—him an' two or three more. They never stopped, he told me, to ask 'n no questions, but strapped 'n up and give 'n two or three dozen for 't."
XVII
I suppose that Bettesworth's Crimean reminiscences occupied in narration to me something less than fifteen minutes of his life, so that obviously the space they take up in this volume is out of all proportion to their importance. For my theme is not this or that recollection of his, but the way in which the old man lived out these last of his years, while the memories passed across his mind. It is of small consequence what he remembered. Had he recalled the Indian Mutiny instead of the Crimea, it would have been all one, by that wet afternoon of May, 1902. He would have sat on his block dandling the chopper just the same, and the raindrops from trees outside would have come slanting into the shed doorway and splashed on my hand as I listened to him.
And as they are disproportionately long, these day-dreams of Bettesworth, so also they become too solid on the printed page, side by side with the reality which encompassed them then, and is my subject now. They provoke us to forget the old man, alive and talking. They take us back fifty years too far. From the hardships of the Crimean War it is a wrench to return to the reality—the shed in this valley, the patter of the rain, the old gossipping voice. But all this, so impossible to restore now that it too has become only a reminiscence, being then the commonplace of my life as well as of Bettesworth's, was allowed to pass by almost unnoticed. I let slip what I really liked, took for granted the strong life that alone made me care for the conversation, and saved only some dead litter of observation which was let fall by the living man and seemed to me odd.
Need I explain how of this too I was gradually saving less and less? The oddness was wearing off; only the more exceptional things seemed now worth taking care of. Unless there was something as surprising to hear as this talk of the Crimean War—and such exceptions of course appeared with increasing rareness—I hardly took the trouble, at this period, to set down in writing any of Bettesworth's daily gossip. The naturalist, having noted in his diary the first two swallows that do not after all make a summer, has no record save in his brain of the subsequent curvings and interlacings in the summer sky; and I, similarly, find myself with little besides a vague memory of Bettesworth's doings in this summer of 1902. In fact, it is not even a memory that I have. There is only an inference that day by day he must have done his work in the warm weather, and I must have talked to him. But I am unable to restore this for a reader's benefit. "Imagine him going on as usual," shall I say? Why, it is more than I can do myself. A row of asterisks would serve the purpose equally well.
So there is a void for two months—nay, with one exception, for more than three, from the middle of May to the end of August; in which one surmises that the summer flies buzzed in the garden, and Bettesworth did his hoeing and grass-cutting, and was companionable. The one exception, fortunately, has the very life in it which I am regretting. It is but a short sentence of six words, yet they are as if spoken within the hour, and are the clearer for the void around them.
On the afternoon of July 15, the grape vine on the wall near my window was being attended to by the pruner. He stood on a ladder, which was held steady by Bettesworth at the foot; and presently through the open window the old man's voice reached me, complaining of the recent blighty weather: "There en't nothin' 'ardly looks kind."
"No; not to say kind," the pruner assented.