As I went about the country now, working hard to recruit men, to
induce people to subscribe to the war loan, doing all the things in
which I saw a chance to make myself useful, there was now an ever
present thought. When would John go out? He must go soon. I knew
that, so did his mother. We had learned that he would not be sent
without a chance to bid us good-by. There we were better off than
many a father and mother in the early days of the war. Many's the
mother who learned first that her lad had gone to France when they
told her he was dead. And many's the lassie who learned in the same
way that her lover would never come home to be her husband.
But by now Britain was settled down to war. It was as if war were the
natural state of things, and everything was adjusted to war and those
who must fight it. And many things were ordered better and more
mercifully than they had been at first.
It was in April that word came to us. We might see John again, his
mother and I, if we hurried to Bedford. And so we did. For once I
heeded no other call. It was a sad journey, but I was proud and glad
as well as sorry. John must do his share. There was no reason why my
son should take fewer risks than another man's. That was something
all Britain was learning in those days. We were one people. We must
fight as one; one for all--all for one.
John was sober when he met us. Sober, aye! But what a light there was
in his eyes! He was eager to be at the Huns. Tales of their doings
were coming back to us now, faster and faster. They were tales to
shock me. But they were tales, too, to whet the courage and sharpen
the steel of every man who could fight and meant to go.
It was John's turn to go. So it was he felt. And so it was his mother
and I bid him farewell, there at Bedford. We did not know whether we
would ever see him again, the bonnie laddie! We had to bid him good-by,
lest it be our last chance. For in Britain we knew, by then, what were
the chances they took, those boys of ours who went out.
"Good-by, son--good luck!"
"Good-by, Dad. See you when I get leave!"
That was all. We were not allowed to know more than that he was
ordered to France. Whereabouts in the long trench line he would be
sent we were not told. "Somewhere in France." That phrase, that had
been dinned so often into our ears, had a meaning for us now.
And now, indeed, our days and nights were anxious ones. The war was
in our house as it had never been before. I could think of nothing
but my boy. And yet, all the time I had to go on. I had to carry on,
as John was always bidding his men do. I had to appear daily before
my audiences, and laugh and sing, that I might make them laugh, and
so be better able to do their part.
They had made me understand, my friends, by that time, that it was
really right for me to carry on with my own work. I had not thought
so at first. I had felt that it was wrong for me to be singing at
such a time. But they showed me that I was influencing thousands to
do their duty, in one way or another, and that I was helping to keep
up the spirit of Britain, too.
"Never forget the part that plays, Harry," my friends told me.
"That's the thing the Hun can't understand. He thought the British
would be poor fighters because they went into action with a laugh.
But that's the thing that makes them invincible. You've your part to
do in keeping up that spirit."
So I went on but it was with a heavy heart, oftentimes. John's
letters were not what made my heart heavy. There was good cheer in
everyone of them. He told us as much as the censor's rules would let
him of the front, and of conditions as he found them. They were still
bad--cruelly bad. But there was no word of complaint from John.
The Germans still had the best of us in guns in those days, although
we were beginning to catch up with them. And they knew more about
making themselves comfortable in the trenches than did our boys. No
wonder! They spent years of planning and making ready for this war.
And it has not taken us so long, all things considered, to catch up
with them.
John's letters were cheery and they came regularly, too, for a time.
But I suppose it was because they left out so much, because there was
so great a part of my boy's life that was hidden from me, that I
found myself thinking more and more of John as a wee bairn and as a
lad growing up.
He was a real boy. He had the real boy's spirit of fun and mischief.
There was a story I had often told of him that came to my mind now.
We were living in Glasgow. One drizzly day, Mrs. Lauder kept John in
the house, and he spent the time standing at the parlor window
looking down on the street, apparently innocently interested in the
passing traffic.
In Glasgow it is the custom for the coal dealers to go along the
streets with their lorries, crying their wares, much after the manner
of a vegetable peddler in America. If a housewife wants any coal, she
goes to the window when she hears the hail of the coal man, and holds
up a finger, or two fingers, according to the number of sacks of coal
she wants.
To Mrs. Lauder's surprise, and finally to her great vexation, coal
men came tramping up our stairs every few minutes all afternoon, each
one staggering under the weight of a hundredweight sack of coal. She
had ordered no coal and she wanted no coal, but still the coal men
came--a veritable pest of them.
They kept coming, too, until she discovered that little John was the
author of their grimy pilgrimages to our door. He was signalling
every passing lorrie from the window in the Glasgow coal code!
I watched him from that window another day when he was quarreling
with a number of playmates in the street below. The quarrel finally
ended in a fight. John was giving one lad a pretty good pegging, when
the others decided that the battle was too much his way, and jumped
on him.
John promptly executed a strategic retreat. He retreated with
considerable speed, too. I saw him running; I heard the patter of his
feet on our stairs, and a banging at our door. I opened it and
admitted a flushed, disheveled little warrior, and I heard the other
boys shouting up the stairs what they would do to him.
By the time I got the door closed, and got back to our little parlor,
John was standing at the window, giving a marvelous pantomime for the
benefit of his enemies in the street. He was putting his small,
clenched fist now to his nose, and now to his jaw, to indicate to the
youngsters what he was going to do to them later on.
Those, and a hundred other little incidents, were as fresh in my
memory as if they had only occurred yesterday. His mother and I
recalled them over and over again. From the day John was born, it
seems to me the only things that really interested me were the things
in which he was concerned. I used to tuck him in his crib at night.
The affairs of his babyhood were far more important to me than my own
personal affairs.
I watched him grow and develop with enormous pride, and he took great
pride in me. That to me was far sweeter than praise from crowned
heads. Soon he was my constant companion. He was my business
confidant. More--he was my most intimate friend.
There were no secrets between us. I think that John and I talked of
things that few fathers and sons have the courage to discuss. He
never feared to ask my advice on any subject, and I never feared to
give it to him.
I wish you could have known my son as he was to me. I wish all
fathers could know their sons as I knew John. He was the most
brilliant conversationalist I have ever known. He was my ideal
musician.
He took up music only as an accomplishment, however. He did not want
to be a performer, although he had amazing natural talent in that
direction. Music was born in him. He could transpose a melody in any
key. You could whistle an air for him, and he could turn it into a
little opera at once.
However, he was anxious to make for himself in some other line of
endeavor, and while he was often my piano accompanist, he never had
any intention of going on the stage.
When he was fifteen years old, I was commanded to appear before King
Edward, who was a guest at Rufford Abbey, the seat of Lord and Lady
Sayville, situated in a district called the Dukeries, and I took John
as my accompanist.
I gave my usual performance, and while I was making my changes, John
played the piano. At the close, King Edward sent for me, and thanked
me. It was a proud moment for me, but a prouder moment came when the
King spoke of John's playing, and thanked him for his part in the
entertainment.
There were curious contradictions, it often seemed to me, in John.
His uncle, Tom Vallance, was in his day, one of the very greatest
football players in Scotland. But John never greatly liked the game.
He thought it was too rough. He thought any game was a poor game in
which players were likely to be hurt. And yet--he had been eager for
the rough game of war! The roughest game of all!
Ah, but that was not a game to him! He was not one of those who went
to war with a light heart, as they might have entered upon a football
match. All honor to those who went into the war so--they played a
great part and a noble part! But there were more who went to war as
my boy did--taking it upon themselves as a duty and a solemn
obligation. They had no illusions. They did not love war. No! John
hated war, and the black ugly horrors of it. But there were things he
hated more than he hated war. And one was a peace won through
submission to injustice.
Have I told you how my boy looked? He was slender, but he was strong
and wiry. He was about five feet five inches tall; he topped his Dad
by a handspan. And he was the neatest boy you might ever have hoped
to see. Aye--but he did not inherit that from me! Indeed, he used to
reproach me, oftentimes, for being careless about my clothes. My
collar would be loose, perhaps, or my waistcoat would not fit just
so. He'd not like that, and he would tell me so!
When he did that I would tell him of times when he was a wee boy, and
would come in from play with a dirty face; how his mother would order
him to wash, and how he would painstakingly mop off just enough of
his features to leave a dark ring abaft his cheeks, and above his
eyes, and below his chin.
"You wash your face, but never let on to your neck," I would tell him
when he was a wee laddie.
He had a habit then of parting and brushing about an inch of his
hair, leaving the rest all topsy-turvy. My recollection of that
boyhood habit served me as a defense in later years when he would
call my attention to my own disordered hair.
I linger long, and I linger lovingly over these small details,
because they are part of my daily thoughts. Every day some little
incident comes up to remind me of my boy. A battered old hamper, in
which I carry my different character make-ups, stands in my dressing
room. It was John's favorite seat. Every time I look at it I have a
vision of a tiny wide-eyed boy perched on the lid, watching me make
ready for the stage. A lump rises, unbidden, in my throat.
In all his life, I never had to admonish my son once. Not once. He
was the most considerate lad I have ever known. He was always
thinking of others. He was always doing for others.
It was with such thoughts as these that John's mother and I filled in
the time between his letters. They came as if by a schedule. We knew
what post should bring one. And once or twice a letter was a post
late and our hearts were in our throats with fear. And then came a
day when there should have been a letter, and none came. The whole
day passed. I tried to comfort John's mother! I tried to believe
myself that it was no more than a mischance of the post. But it was
not that.
We could do nought but wait. Ah, but the folks at home in Britain
know all too well those sinister breaks in the chains of letters from
the front! Such a break may mean nothing or anything.
For us, news came quickly. But it was not a letter from John that
came to us. It was a telegram from the war office and it told us no
more than that our boy was wounded and in hospital.