_November 4, 1903._--One morning--it was the 4th of
November--Bettesworth said, "I got a invitation out to a grand dinner
to-night, down in the town. Veterans of the Crimea. But I shan't go.
I'd sooner be at home and have a bit o' supper an' get to bed
early.... No; it don't cost ye nothin'--an' plenty _of_ everything;
spirits, good food, a very good _dinner_. Still, you can't go to these
sort o' things without spendin' a shillin'. And then be about half the
night. I don't care about it. If I was to go, 't'd upset me
to-morrer."
All this bewildered me. For one thing, it was plain that the fact of
Bettesworth's having been a soldier was no secret after all. As he now
went on to tell me, he had actually attended two previous dinners. Who
were they, then, who knew his record, and got him his invitation? Who,
indeed, was giving the dinner? Rumours of some such annual
celebration, it is true, had reached me; but it was no public
function. Even by name the promoters were unknown to me; and yet
somehow they had known for several years before I did that my man had
been a soldier in the Crimea.
At the moment, however, it was Bettesworth's refusal of the invitation
that most surprised me, although his alleged reasons were very good.
He so loved good cheer, and he had so few opportunities of enjoying
it--the Oddfellows' dinner was the only other chance he ever had in
any year--that I immediately suspected him of having been swayed in
this instance by something else besides prudence. He sounded
over-virtuous. And presently it struck me that there might have been
something offensive to him in the way the invitation was given.
It had been received on the previous evening. He had just got round to
the public-house, "'long of old White," when "a feller come in,"
inquiring for him. Bettesworth did not know the man; it was "somebody
in a grey suit." "Stood me a glass of hot whisky-and-water, he did,
and old White too." And, referring to Bettesworth's military service,
"'What was ye?' he says. 'A man,' I says. He laughed and says, 'What
are ye drinkin'?' 'Only a glass o' cold fo'penny,' I says." And
Bettesworth seems to have said it in a very meek voice, subtly
insinuating that "the feller" might stand something better.
I inferred, further, that Bettesworth's conscience was now pricking
him for some incivility he had shown in declining the invitation. At
any rate, he made a lame attempt, not otherwise called for, to prove
that a self-respecting man would not humble himself to anyone upon
whom he was not dependent. He had evidently been the reverse of
humble; and possibly the invitation was patronizing, and raised his
ire.
"Or else," he concluded, "I be purty near the only veteran left about
here. There used to be Tom Willett and"--another whose name I have
forgotten--"in the town, but they be gone, and I dunno who else there
is. And I knows there's ne'er another in this parish. Dessay they'll
get a few kiddies from Aldershot. 'Cause there's any amount o'
drink...."
Well, Bettesworth did not go to the dinner, and I never quite
understood why. Possibly he really felt too old for dissipation, even
of a decorous kind: still more likely, he dreaded being at once
under-valued and patronized, among the "kiddies" from Aldershot. He
certainly did well to avoid their company. Long afterwards, when for
other reasons I was making inquiries about this dinner, I learnt that
the behaviour of some of the guests had been scandalous. Some had been
carried away, drunk. Others had taken with them, hidden in their
pockets, the means of getting drunk at home. So I was told; but not by
the promoters, who had shortly afterwards left the neighbourhood.
On this same date (4th November, 1903) Bettesworth informed me of
another circumstance which affected him seriously. It was that he had
lately been superannuated from his club, which he had joined in July,
1866. At that distant time, when he was still a young man, and a
strong one, how should he look forward to the year 1903? By what then
seemed a profitable arrangement, he paid his subscription on a lower
scale, on the understanding that he would receive no financial help in
time of sickness after he was sixty-five years old. He had now passed
that age. Henceforth, for a payment of threepence a month, he was to
have medical attendance free, and on his death the club would pay for
his funeral.
He was mighty philosophical over this. For my part, it was impossible
to look forward without apprehension to the position he would be in
during the approaching winter. A year previously he had shown symptoms
of bronchitis. But what was to become of him now, if he should be ill,
and have no "sick-pay" upon which to fall back?