Part 5 (1/2)

For me the days and nights dragged by as if they would never pa.s.s.

There was more news in John's letters now. We took some comfort from that. I remember one in which he told his mother how good a bed he had finally made for himself the night before. For some reason he was without quarters--either a billet or a dug-out. He had to skirmish around, for he did not care to sleep simply in Flanders mud. But at last he found two handfuls of straw, and with them made his couch.

”I got a good two hours' sleep,” he wrote to his mother. ”And I was perfectly comfortable. I can tell you one thing, too, Mother. If I ever get home after this experience, there'll be one in the house who'll never grumble! This business puts the grumbling out of your head. This is where the men are. This is where every man ought to be.”

In another letter he told us that nine of his men had been killed.

”We buried them last night,” he wrote, ”just as the sun went down. It was the first funeral I have ever attended. It was most impressive.

We carried the boys to one huge grave. The padre said a prayer, and we lowered the boys into the ground, and we all sang a little hymn: 'Peace, Perfect Peace!' Then I called my men to attention again, and we marched straight back into the trenches, each of us, I dare say, wondering who would be the next.”

John was promoted for the second time in Flanders. He was a captain, having got his step on the field of battle. Promotion came swiftly in those days to those who proved themselves worthy. And all of the few reports that came to us of John showed us that he was a good officer.

His men liked him, and trusted him, and would follow him anywhere.

And little more than that can be said of any officer.

While Captain John Lauder was playing his part across the Channel, I was still trying to do what I could at home. My band still travelled up and down, the length and width of the United Kingdom, skirling and drumming and drawing men by the score to the recruiting office.

There was no more talk now of a short war. We knew what we were in for now.

But there was no thought or talk of anything save victory. Let the war go on as long as it must--it could end only in one way. We had been forced into the fight--but we were in, and we were in to stay.

John, writing from France, was no more determined than those at home.

It was not very long before there came again a break in John's letters. We were used to the days--far apart--that brought no word.

Not until the second day and the third day pa.s.sed without a word, did Mrs. Lauder and I confess our terrors and our anxiety to ourselves and one another. This time our suspense was comparatively short-lived.

Word came that John was in hospital again--at the Duke of Westminster's hospital at Le Toquet, in France. This time he was not wounded; he was suffering from dysentery, fever and--a nervous breakdown. That was what staggered his mother and me. A nervous breakdown! We could not reconcile the John we knew with the idea that the words conveyed to us. He had been high strung, to be sure, and sensitive. But never had he been the sort of boy of whom to expect a breakdown so severe as this must be if they had sent him to the hospital.

We could only wait to hear from him, however. And it was several weeks before he was strong enough to be able to write to us. There was no hint of discouragement in what he wrote then. On the contrary, he kept on trying to rea.s.sure us, and if he ever grew downhearted, he made it his business to see that we did not suspect it. Here is one of his letters--like most of them it was not about himself.

”I had a sad experience yesterday,” he wrote to me. ”It was the first day I was able to be out of bed, and I went over to a piano in a corner against the wall, sat down, and began playing very softly, more to myself than anything else.

”One of the nurses came to me, and said a Captain Webster, of the Gordon Highlanders, who lay on a bed in the same ward, wanted to speak to me. She said he had asked who was playing, and she had told him Captain Lauder--Harry Lauder's son. 'Oh,' he said, 'I know Harry Lauder very well. Ask Captain Lauder to come here?'

”This man had gone through ten operations in less than a week. I thought perhaps my playing had disturbed him, but when I went to his bedside, he grasped my hand, pressed it with what little strength he had left, and thanked me. He asked me if I could play a hymn. He said he would like to hear 'Lead, Kindly Light.'

”So I went back to the piano and played it as softly and as gently as I could. It was his last request. He died an hour later. I was very glad I was able to soothe his last moments a little. I am very glad now I learned the hymn at Sunday School as a boy.”

[ILl.u.s.tRATION: ”'Carry On!' were the last words of my boy, Captain John Lauder, to his men, but he would mean them for me, too.” (See Lauder03.jpg)]

Soon after we received that letter there came what we could not but think great news. John was ordered home! He was invalided, to be sure, and I warned his mother that she must be prepared for a shock when she saw him. But no matter how ill he was, we would have our lad with us for a s.p.a.ce. And for that much British fathers and mothers had learned to be grateful.

I had warned John's mother, but it was I who was shocked when I saw him first on the day he came back to our wee hoose at Dunoon. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes very bright, as a man's are who has a fever. He was weak and thin, and there was no blood in his cheeks. It was a sight to wring one's heart to see the laddie so brought down-- him who had looked so braw and strong the last time we had seen him.

That had been when he was setting out for the wars, you ken! And now he was back, sae thin and weak and pitiful as I had not seen him since he had been a bairn in his mother's arms.

Aweel, it was for us, his mother and I, and all the folks at home, to mend him, and make him strong again. So he told us, for he had but one thing on his mind--to get back to his men.

”They'll be needing me, out there,” he said. ”They're needing men. I must go back so soon as I can. Every man is needed there.”

”You'll be needing your strength back before you can be going back, son,” I told him. ”If you fash and fret it will take you but so much the longer to get back.”