John's mother, his sweetheart and I all saw him off at Glasgow. The
fear was in all our hearts, and I think it must have been in all our
eyes, as well--the fear that every father and mother and sweetheart
in Britain shared with us in these days whenever they saw a boy off
for France and the trenches. Was it for the last time? Were we seeing
him now so strong and hale and hearty, only to have to go the rest of
our lives with no more than a memory of him to keep?
Aweel, we could not be telling that! We could only hope and pray! And
we had learned again to pray, long since. I have wondered, often, and
Mrs. Lauder has wondered with me, what the fathers and mothers of
Britain would do in these black days without prayer to guide them and
sustain them. So we could but stand there, keeping back our tears and
our fears, and hoping for the best. One thing was sure; we might not
let the laddie see how close we were to greeting. It was for us to be
so brave as God would let us be. It was hard for him. He was no boy,
you ken, going blindly and gayly to a great adventure; he had need of
the finest courage and devotion a man could muster that day.
For he knew fully now what it was that he was going back to. He knew
the hell the Huns had made of war, which had been bad enough, in all
conscience, before they did their part to make it worse. And he was
high strung. He could live over, and I make no doubt he did, in those
days after he had his orders to go back, every grim and dreadful
thing that was waiting for him out there. He had been through it all,
and he was going back. He had come out of the valley of the shadow,
and now he was to ride down into it again.
And it was with a smile he left us! I shall never forget that. His
thought was all for us whom he was leaving behind. His care was for
us, lest we should worry too greatly and think too much of him.
"I'll be all right," he told us. "You're not to fret about me, any of
you. A man does take his chances out there--but they're the chances
every man must take these days, if he's a man at all. I'd rather be
taking them than be safe at home."
We did our best to match the laddie's spirit and be worthy of him.
But it was cruelly hard. We had lost him and found him again, and now
he was being taken from us for the second time. It was harder, much
harder, to see him go this second time than it had been at first, and
it had been hard enough then, and bad enough. But there was nothing
else for it. So much we knew. It was a thing ordered and inevitable.
And it was not many days before we had slipped back into the way
things had been before John was invalided home. It is a strange thing
about life, the way that one can become used to things. So it was
with us. Strange things, terrible things, outrageous things, that, in
time of peace, we would never have dared so much as to think
possible, came to be the matters of every day for us. It was so with
John. We came to think of it as natural that he should be away from
us, and in peril of his life every minute of every hour. It was not
easier for us. Indeed, it was harder than it had been before, just as
it had been harder for us to say good-by the second time. But we
thought less often of the strangeness of it. We were really growing
used to the war, and it was less the monstrous, strange thing than it
had been in our daily lives. War had become our daily life and
portion in Britain. All who were not slackers were doing their part--
every one. Man and woman and child were in it, making sacrifices.
Those happy days of peace lay far behind us, and we had lost our
touch with them and our memory of them was growing dim. We were all
in it. We had all to suffer alike, we were all in the same boat, we
mothers and fathers and sweethearts of Britain. And so it was easier
for us not to think too much and too often of our own griefs and
cares and anxieties.
John's letters began to come again in a steady stream. He was as
careful as ever about writing. There was scarcely a day that did not
bring its letter to one of the three of us. And what bonnie, brave
letters they were! They were as cheerful and as bright as his first
letters had been. If John had bad hours and bad days out there he
would not let us know it. He told us what news there was, and he was
always cheerful and bright when he wrote. He let no hint of
discouragement creep into anything he wrote to us. He thought of
others first, always and all the time; of his men, and of us at home.
He was quite cured and well, he told us, and going back had done him
good instead of harm. He wrote to us that he felt as if he had come
home. He felt, you ken, that it was there, in France and in the
trenches, that men should feel at home in those days, and not safe in
Britain by their ain firesides.
It was not easy for me to be cheerful and comfortable about him,
though. I had my work to do. I tried to do it as well as I could, for
I knew that that would please him. My band still went up and down the
country, getting recruits, and I was speaking, too, and urging men
myself to go out and join the lads who were fighting and dying for
them in France. They told me I was doing good work; that I was a
great force in the war. And I did, indeed, get many a word and many a
handshake from men who told me I had induced them to enlist.
"I'm glad I heard you, Harry," man after man said to me. "You showed
me what I should be doing and I've been easier in my mind ever since
I put on the khaki!"
I knew they'd never regret it, no matter what came to them. No man
will, that's done his duty. It's the slackers who couldn't or
wouldn't see their duty men should feel sorry for! It's not the lads
who gave everything and made the final sacrifice.
It was hard for me to go on with my work of making folks laugh. It
had been growing harder steadily ever since I had come home from
America and that long voyage of mine to Australia and had seen what
war was and what it was doing to Britain. But I carried on, and did
the best I could.
That winter I was in the big revue at the Shaftesbury Theatre, in
London, that was called "Three Cheers." It was one of the gay shows
that London liked because it gave some relief from the war and made
the Zeppelin raids that the Huns were beginning to make so often now
a little easier to bear. And it was a great place for the men who
were back from France. It was partly because of them that I could go
on as I did. We owed them all we could give them. And when they came
back from the mud and the grime and the dreariness of the trenches,
they needed something to cheer them up--needed the sort of production
we gave them. A man who has two days' leave in London does not want
to see a serious play or a problem drama, as a rule. He wants
something light, with lots of pretty girls and jolly tunes and people
to make him laugh. And we gave him that. The house was full of
officers and men, night after night.
Soon word came from John that he was to have leave, just after
Christmas, that would bring him home for the New Year's holidays. His
mother went home to make things ready, for John was to be married
when he got his leave. I had my plans all made. I meant to build a
wee hoose for the two of them, near our own hoose at Dunoon, so that
we might be all together, even though my laddie was in a home of his
own. And I counted the hours and the days against the time when John
would be home again.
While we were playing at the Shaftesbury I lived at an hotel in
Southampton Row called the Bonnington. But it was lonely for me
there. On New Year's Eve--it fell on a Sunday--Tom Vallance, my
brother-in-law, asked me to tea with him and his family in Clapham,
where he lived. That is a pleasant place, a suburb of London on the
southwest, and I was glad to go. And so I drove out with a friend of
mine, in a taxicab, and was glad to get out of the crowded part of
the city for a time.
I did not feel right that day. Holiday times were bad, hard times for
me then. We had always made so much of Christmas, and here was the
third Christmas that our boy had been away. And so I was depressed.
And then, there had been no word for me from John for a day or two. I
was not worried, for I thought it likely that his mother or his
sweetheart had heard, and had not time yet to let me know. But,
whatever the reason, I was depressed and blue, and I could not enter
into the festive spirit that folk were trying to keep alive despite
the war.
I must have been poor company during that ride to Clapham in the
taxicab. We scarcely exchanged a word, my friend and I. I did not
feel like talking, and he respected my mood, and kept quiet himself.
I felt, at last, that I ought to apologize to him.
"I don't know what's the matter with me," I told him. "I simply don't
want to talk. I feel sad and lonely. I wonder if my boy is all right?"
"Of course he is!" my friend told me. "Cheer up, Harry. This is a time
when no news is good news. If anything were wrong with him they'd let
you know."
Well, I knew that, too. And I tried to cheer up, and feel better, so
that I would not spoil the pleasure of the others at Tom Vallance's
house. I tried to picture John as I thought he must be--well, and
happy, and smiling the old, familiar boyish smile I knew so well. I
had sent him a box of cigars only a few days before, and he would be
handing it around among his fellow officers. I knew that! But it was
no use. I could think of John, but it was only with sorrow and
longing. And I wondered if this same time in a year would see him
still out there, in the trenches. Would this war ever end? And so the
shadows still hung about me when we reached Tom's house.
They made me very welcome, did Tom and all his family. They tried to
cheer me, and Tom did all he could to make me feel better, and to
reassure me. But I was still depressed when we left the house and
began the drive back to London.
"It's the holiday--I'm out of gear with that, I'm thinking," I told
my friend.
He was going to join two other friends, and, with them, to see the
New Year in in an old fashioned way, and he wanted me to join them.
But I did not feel up to it; I was not in the mood for anything of
the sort.
"No, no, I'll go home and turn in," I told him. "I'm too dull tonight
to be good company."
He hoped, as we all did, that this New Year that was coming would
bring victory and peace. Peace could not come without victory; we
were all agreed on that. But we all hoped that the New Year would
bring both--the new year of 1917. And so I left him at the corner of
Southhampton Row, and went back to my hotel alone. It was about
midnight, a little before, I think, when I got in, and one of the
porters had a message for me.
"Sir Thomas Lipton rang you up," he said, "and wants you to speak
with him when you come in."
I rang him up at home directly.
"Happy New Year, when it comes, Harry!" he said. He spoke in the same
bluff, hearty way he always did. He fairly shouted in my ear. "When
did you hear from the boy? Are you and Mrs. Lauder well?"
"Aye, fine," I told him. And I told him my last news of John.
"Splendid!" he said. "Well, it was just to talk to you a minute that
I rang you up, Harry. Good-night--Happy New Year again."
I went to bed then. But I did not go to sleep for a long time. It was
New Year's, and I lay thinking of my boy, and wondering what this
year would bring him. It was early in the morning before I slept. And
it seemed to me that I had scarce been asleep at all when there came
a pounding at the door, loud enough to rouse the heaviest sleeper
there ever was.
My heart almost stopped. There must be something serious indeed for
them to be rousing me so early. I rushed to the door, and there was a
porter, holding out a telegram. I took it and tore it open. And I
knew why I had felt as I had the day before. I shall never forget
what I read:
"Captain John Lauder killed in action, December 28. Official.
War Office."
It had gone to Mrs. Lauder at Dunoon first, and she had sent it on to
me. That was all it said. I knew nothing of how my boy had died, or
where--save that it was for his country.
But later I learned that when Sir Thomas Lipton had rung me up he had
intended to condole with me. He had heard on Saturday of my boy's
death. But when he spoke to me, and understood at once, from the tone
of my voice, that I did not know, he had not been able to go on. His
heart was too tender to make it possible for him to be the one to
give me that blow--the heaviest that ever befell me.