"OVER THE TOP"
The Lindsay boys had been about a month on the battle line when, beside
their weekly letters, there came a splendid big fat envelope to the
home people, containing a letter from each of the three.
There had been many letters from the boys, gay and bright and full of
cheer, but none that contained such comfort as these. And the
assurance they brought put new life into the mother and Christina's
loving eyes noted a new energy in all her movements.
She read Jimmie's letter first. It was headed "Back of the Front," and
was largely taken up with a list of the wonderful things they had had
to eat for their Christmas dinner. It was a bang-up spread, sure
enough, and with the boxes sent from home on top of it all, they ate so
much that they couldn't even have run away if Fritz had come over to
pay them a visit.
But the important part of the letter was the description of a Sunday
afternoon he and Neil and Sandy spent together behind the lines. It
was great having that day with Sandy. Of course he and Neil were
always together, for Jimmie wished to assure them all at home that he
couldn't blow his nose without Neil standing over him to see that he
did it just right. But a day with Sandy was a treat, for besides being
in another quarter he was an officer, and as hard to get at as the
Kaiser. But they arranged a meeting this Sunday, and Jimmie guessed
that Sandy bust all the red tape in the British army doing it.
"Neil and I had just come out of our ground-hog's hole and we had
nearly all France on our uniforms, and Sandy was such a swell, all
dolled up like a field-marshal that Neil said perhaps we oughtn't to be
so familiar as to salute him. But we got a bath and got fumigated too,
and it was real Christmas holidays not to have to scratch for a whole
day. We had to salute Sandy when there was any one else round, but
when we got him alone I paid him up for all the respect and I wiped the
floor with a few yards of his officer's uniform. I tell you,
Christina, he can't put me down now the way he used to. I'm as hard as
nails and I'm as tall as he is. Sandy said I could be court-martialed
and shot for it, but Neil refereed and saw that justice was done. I
started out to tell you and Mother about that Sunday we had together,
but I'll leave it to Neil, he can do it better than I can, but I want
Mother to know that I agree with everything he says, and she needn't be
scared about me out here. I'm all right."
"So don't cry, Dear, I'm all right here.
Oh, it's just like bein' at hame."
Sandy's letter told still more about the meeting; but Neil's letter
went right to the heart of the matter. "I wish you could have seen us
at our Battalion service, Mother, that Sunday morning. It wasn't very
far back, and we could hear the guns booming as we stood in a quiet
spot behind a shattered little village. We sang 'Faint not for fear,
His arms are near,' the last hymn we sang in Orchard Glen church, and
after it was over we met Sandy and we went off together, Sandy and
Jimmie and I, to have one of our old-time Sunday talks, just as we used
to wander off to the fields after Sunday School, we two, with Jimmie
tagging at our heels. It wasn't much like home, though, just a
desolate shell-torn corner behind the ragged remnants of a barn, but,
somehow, the quiet took us back to Orchard Glen and home, and you
seemed there. And we got talking about the contrast between our life
out here and back there and the temptations all around that were so
new. And we each stood up, so to speak, and told our experience, like
a good old Methodist class-meeting, that would have delighted Grandpa
if he could have heard it. And Sandy said that when he saw the
devastation Sin could bring, it had made him want to be a preacher more
than ever before. And then it was Jimmie's turn, and he confessed that
something about military camp life gave him a feeling of physical
nausea at first. For a month he didn't want to go beyond the Y. M. C.
A. tent, and then he began to get used to it all, but he never had the
smallest inclination to mix in it. He's the same bright, clean boy
that left you, Mother, a great deal older and wiser, but no sadder, and
you need not fear for him. We were saying that it was you who had
given us our strength against temptation, because you never set
anything but the highest before us and Sandy remarked that you had
buckled our armour on tight before you sent us out to battle, and then
Jimmie said, 'It's like being in one of the Tanks. You ride right over
everything in the biggest show the Huns can pull off and nothing can
touch you.'"
"I think that was a fine description of what you gave us, don't you,
Mother? You had no money to give us, but you built and riveted a Tank
with your years of hard toil, and you put us all inside and we are safe
there forever. And so you must not worry about us. For even if we are
called upon to pay the price, what does that matter?"
When the letter was read and reread, Christina was surprised to see her
mother put it carefully away in the pocket of her skirt; and putting on
her bonnet and cloak, she slipped out quietly and went away across the
Short Cut towards the village. Christina wondered that she had said
nothing about where she was going and stood at the window watching her
with anxious loving eyes and wondering if she were wearing warm enough
clothing as the wind swayed her bent old figure. She supposed her
mother had gone to see Granny Minns, but Joanna dropped in with some
Red Cross work on her way up to Mrs. Johnnie Dunn's for an afternoon's
sewing, and told Christina that she had seen her mother sitting in the
churchyard beside her father's grave.
Christina's eyes filled with tender tears; she understood. Her mother
had gone with the boys' letters to share with their father the glad
news that had lifted the burden from her heart.
Christina read all Neil's letter to Grandpa that night. It was no
light task, but she could not bear that he miss a word. She had her
reward, for he sang the 103rd psalm at the top of his lungs before he
settled for the night, and the Hindmost Hymn louder and clearer than he
had ever sung it since the day the boys went away.
And the next morning he read again the 91st psalm, and his old shaking
voice rose high and strong as he came to the words that spoke the
triumph over all life's ills, and for the first time in her life
Christina understood them. "Surely He shall deliver thee from the
snare of the fowler and from the noisome pestilence.... Thou shall not
be afraid for the terror by night nor for the arrow that flieth by day
nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness."
The promise was literally true! The white Comrade walked beside her
warrior brothers and they were safe. And Christina learned that
morning that there was only one thing in life that mattered after all.
For even though the boys had had wealth and power and great fame and
social position none of these would have brought any real comfort to
the heart of the mother and grandfather at that moment. The knowledge
that they were safe from sin and its power was everything. And those
things upon which she had set her heart and counted of supreme
importance did not weigh at all in the great crisis of life.
And right on that day of exultation, when the psalm was still repeating
itself triumphantly in their ears, the dreaded word came from the
battlefield. Mr. Holmes received the telegram at the little office
behind the store. He had been very distant with Mr. Sinclair ever
since he joined the Methodists against the Presbyterians, but he forgot
all about their estrangement in the terrible task that faced him of
carrying the news to the Lindsay family. So he went hurriedly to the
Manse with his heavy burden, and Mr. Sinclair did not seem to think it
strange that he should come. The two men left their work and went up
the hill to the Lindsay home walking close together like children who
were afraid and were trying to give each other support.
And there by the bright fireside, sitting in the sunny window, where
her scarlet geraniums bloomed as gay as the poppies in Flanders Field,
they found Christina and told her the news: that Neil and Jimmie had
gone over the top, together, very eager and glad, and that they would
not come back.
Christina was thankful afterwards for the merciful numbness, that was
like an anaesthetic in a painful operation. She had a feeling that she
would awaken soon and realise fully the terrible calamity that had
befallen, but just now, if she kept still it would not hurt so much.
She was filled with wonder at her mother's courage. Even in the first
moments of anguish she showed not a moment of wavering faith. And she
was more filled with wonder at Grandpa. Neil had been Grandpa's
special pride, and she was afraid of the result of the news. She went
to the bright corner of the kitchen where he sat and tried tremblingly
to make him understand, holding back her own grief by main force, that
she might tell it gently. He made no outcry, spoke no word of grief;
but for an hour afterwards he sat quite still in deep thought, and she
heard him saying over and over to himself, as though trying to grasp
the magnitude of his sorrow, "Both o' them! Not the two o' them,
surely?" And then after pondering a while, "Aye, the two o' them!"
But when she put him to bed that night, dumb and sick with anguish
herself, she could not but notice that Grandpa was acting strangely.
He had an air of suppressed excitement, as though he were hiding some
good news. She did not guess what it was until she had left him, and
overheard him saying, "Aye, aye, I'll see them all the sooner. All the
sooner!" in a tone of exultation. She did not hand him the hymn book,
thinking he would not want to sing, but when she peeped in later to see
if it were time to take away the lamp, she was amazed to hear him
singing very softly and low, lest any overhear him, but singing,
nevertheless, in the house of mourning, the Hindmost Hymn,
"On the other side of Jordan, in the sweet fields of Eden,
Where the tree of life is blooming, there is rest for you."
For Grandpa had travelled far on the upward road, and Christina did not
realise that death was a small incident in the life of one who stood
just at the door into the other world.
In the morning when she went in and ran up his window blind to the top
to let in the sunlight, he was lying as she had left him the night
before, with the little orange-covered book held loosely in his cold
hands. For Grandpa had sung the Hindmost Hymn for the last time and
was even now singing the First Hymn in a new Book away in the sweet
fields of Eden, where there is no more death, neither sorrow nor
crying, neither is there any more pain.
Christina had no time for her own grief, so busy she was comforting her
mother, cheering Uncle Neil, sustaining John and writing consoling
letters to the absent ones. Sometimes she was so occupied that she
almost forgot the terrible blow that had fallen, and then it would come
upon her with an unbelievable shock that Neil and Jimmie were
dead,--gone forever out of the world!
It was something her heart would not accept. How could it be, it
argued, that Neil, so strong and steady and full of high purpose, and
Jimmie, so radiant and full of life, could be lying dead in the mud of
a trench? It was unbelievable. And at last she came to understand,
through watching with her mother, whose faith leaped over even this
barrier of death, that the instincts of her heart were right. Jimmie
and Neil were not dead. They were gone, somewhere, beyond her sight,
but they were still living and moving and working as they had done here
on earth. Some fault of vision, some failure of the senses made it
impossible for her to communicate with them. But they were there, and
alive! Her mother was sure of that. And Grandpa was right, he had met
them the sooner for their untimely call to the Life Beyond.
Allister came home as soon as the news about Neil and Jimmie reached
him. He stayed a week with them, comforting his mother and Uncle Neil,
helping John about the barn, and trying to keep Christina from going
too often to Grandpa's empty room. He brought a long letter from
Ellen, offering to come home just as soon as the hospital authorities
would spare her. She was getting on wonderfully well, Allister
reported, and had determined, should the war continue, that she would
offer herself as a Red Cross nurse, but had decided to come home if she
were needed.
Christina was longing for her elder sister's presence and help, but the
remembrance of Neil's sacrifice for Jimmie made her ashamed of the
thought. So she wrote bravely to Ellen bidding her stay until she
finished her course.
On the evening before Allister left, he and Christina sat by the fire
talking, long after the others had gone to bed. Wallace had been there
earlier in the evening, and to Christina's amazement Allister did not
share in the universal admiration for him.
"He's got money, that young chap, Christine," he said. "But money
isn't everything, girl, remember that."
"But you like Wallace, don't you?" asked Christina in surprise.
"Oh, I guess he's all right. But he's got things too easy. And he'll
want to get them easy all his life or he'll kick over the traces."
Christina was not conscious of any feeling of resentment. She did not
even take the trouble to attempt to defend Wallace, and Allister seemed
surprised.
"Yes, I thought money was the whole thing," he went on, "and now the
war has made me a poor man. I've got the farm I had when I went West
first, and I've got something more, I've got a pocketful of debts that
will take me years to pay off. But, I guess I'm about as well off in
some ways as I ever was."
Christina would have been very much dismayed at this some months
earlier, but in the face of the stupendous events of her life the loss
of property or even of the chance of wealth seemed trivial. She said
so to Allister and was glad to find that he agreed with her.
"I found that out since I was home last," he declared. "I thought you
lacked ambition because you always gave up your chance in life to this
one and the other one. But you were the wise one. Money, and gettin'
on in the world and all that don't amount to much after all. And if
money is all this fellow of yours has, mind you, that ain't enough. It
might do for some girls, but let me tell you, it won't satisfy you."
As the dark days of the war dragged on, Christina found her talent for
comforting others sadly needed. For her own family were only the
forerunners of many another stricken home.
Burke was the next to fall, and little Mitty was left alone to struggle
with Granny and poverty and grief, and Christina needed all her
strength to bring her through the trial.
And the next was Trooper. He went over the top in a gallant raid of
the Princess Pats, calling on his comrades to follow, and it seemed to
those who had known him, that somewhere he must still be going on, gay
and bright and fearless, always calling on other high hearts to come
after him.
Joanna bore his going like a soldier's wife. She never walked quite so
erect again, and her jet black hair began to turn grey, but she was
even more faithful in her work at the Red Cross meetings, and she and
The Woman grew firmer friends than ever in their common grief.
Christina went about among the stricken ones, easing her own grief in
comforting others. But she had one ever present trouble for which she
could receive no comfort on any side. Every day the falseness of her
attitude towards Wallace Sutherland weighed more heavily upon her
honest heart. And how she was going to tell him of the change in her
she did not know. How was she going to tell him that, though he had
once been her hero, her ideal True Knight, that he had failed to live
up to her high standard, and that another, a real hero, who had left
her at the call of duty, had, all unwittingly, slipped into his place?
And then an event happened that made it unnecessary for her to tell
him. It was the news that came one early day in Spring, when all the
world was a wild rush of wind and water, and blinding sunshine,--the
word that Gavin had been killed.
By a strange chance it was Wallace, himself, who brought the news to
Christina. When Mr. Holmes heard the dread message ticked off on the
telegraph machine, he went straight to Mr. Sinclair, again, with his
burden of dismay and grief. And, unable to bear the heavy news alone,
the minister went over to see if Dr. McGarry would help him carry the
terrible burden to Craig-Ellachie.
Mr. Holmes kept the dread secret to himself until they had time to
deliver it, fearing that the Grant Girls might hear it from another
source. So the news had not reached the Lindsay farm in the evening
when Wallace came up the hill to see Christina.
He could not but notice a growing change in her manner towards him, but
he had put it down to her grief over the loss of her brothers. One of
Christina's charms in his eyes had been her independence and her
evident indifference as to whether what she did or said should please
him or otherwise, but he thought it was high time she was showing some
warmth of feeling and instead she had been strange and cold and aloof
recently. And Wallace, accustomed to have everything arranged just as
he wanted it, was beginning to feel somewhat ill-used. He felt that,
though Christina were so heartbroken over Jimmie and Neil, she ought to
show more consideration for him. And to-night he had made up his mind
to ask her to share the Ford place with him. He had quite decided that
there could never be any one like Christina for him, and he felt sure
that when they were really engaged she would be more like her old self,
and they would be as happy as they were in the beginning.
Christina was sitting in the warm corner by the sitting-room stove,
knitting a sock for Gavin when he entered. The room was bright and
pleasant, and Wallace felt very happy when he flung himself luxuriously
upon the deep sofa. But Christina was graver than she had ever been.
She was sorry for him and was blaming herself bitterly; she had laid a
snare for her own feet and now she was in desperate straits to get out
of it.
Wallace saw her evident distress and supposed she had heard of Gavin,
and was disturbed for his Aunts.
"Awful thing, this, for the poor old Grant Girls," he remarked,
sympathetically.
Christina stopped in the act of sitting down, and straightened herself
quickly, as though she had been struck a blow.
"What?" She uttered the word in a fearful whisper, but the young man
felt she was showing only the natural agitation she must feel,
remembering Jimmie and Neil.
"Didn't you hear? Gavin's killed," he said concisely.
Christina stood and looked at him stupidly. "What did you say?" she
asked in a dazed fashion.
"Gavin,--Gavin Grant," he repeated wonderingly, "he's been killed.
They just got the telegram to-night, and Mr. Sinclair and Uncle Peter
have gone to tell the poor old Aunts--" he stopped, struck by the look
in her face. She had turned perfectly white, even to her lips, and sat
down, slowly and dazedly. She picked up her knitting, looked at it a
moment, foolishly, and then laid it down with a bewildered air.
Wallace got up suddenly from the sofa. "Christine!" he cried in alarm.
"What's the matter? Don't--don't look like that! I didn't mean to
frighten you. Oh, Christina, was Gavin?--Oh, I didn't know! What does
it mean to you?" he cried in sharp dismay.
She looked at him with honest, stricken eyes. "It means everything to
me, Wallace," she said simply. "Everything in the world," telling the
bald truth, in this supreme moment, without an effort. And when she
had said it, a great billow of darkness came rolling across the room
and surged over her. She heard Wallace calling for her mother, heard
Uncle Neil run in from the kitchen, and then sank away into a great
silence and peace.
They tried to make her stay in bed the next day, but she insisted upon
going to see the Grant Girls with her mother. The fields were too wet
and soft to be crossed, so Christina drove Dolly in the old buck-board.
Craig-Ellachie was all sunshine, and the windows were alight with
blossoms, scarlet geraniums and great waxy begonias, pink and white and
crimson, were in every sunny nook and corner, and purple hyacinths and
pure white Easter lilies filled the old kitchen with fragrance. The
garden, too, showed signs of beauty, for already the first crocus had
pushed its brave little head through the brown earth of the flower beds.
But the Grant Girls had lost the Spring-time bloom of their youth. An
untimely frost had smitten down the one flower of their hearts. They
were not girls any more; three stricken old women sat in the wide
bright kitchen among the flowers in a bewilderment of grief too deep
for tears.
Hughie Reid and his wife were there, and Mr. Sinclair and Joanna, and
several other friends from the village. And out in the summer kitchen
Mrs. Johnnie Dunn had blackened and polished the stove that did not
need polishing, and was now madly scrubbing the floor that did not need
scrubbing in the least, the tears all the while streaming down her
face. Everything that loving hands could do in the house and barn was
done, and the Aunties sat about in unaccustomed idleness, like lost
children who had suddenly found themselves in strange surroundings, and
were even afraid to speak.
And Christina sat beside them, dumb with her grief and theirs, and not
even daring to whisper to them that her heart was lying with theirs,
"Somewhere in France."
It seemed a very little thing, in the face of their stupendous loss,
when the news came that Gavin had died a very glorious death, that he
would have been given the Victoria Cross had he lived, and that they
were sending it to Auntie Elspie. He had held back a rush of the
enemy, alone and single-handed, until his comrades got to a place of
safety. He had stayed on in a desperate position, working his machine
gun, while the world rocked beneath him and the mad heavens raged with
shot and shell above him, had held on though he was wounded again and
again, saying between his teeth, "Stand Fast, Craig-Ellachie!" And
then a shell had come and the gallant stand was over. But he had saved
the Blue Bonnets from destruction, and spared many lives in losing his
own.
The Aunties held up their poor bowed heads, as Mr. Sinclair read them
the splendid story. They knew Gavie would do something great, and it
was just the way he would have wished to go, Auntie Elspie said
tremulously. But the light had gone out of their lives, and it was
small comfort that it had blazed so gloriously in the going.