Part 8 (1/2)
For a moment I could not go on. I was choking. The tears were in my Eyes, and my throat was choked with sobs. But the music went on, and the chorus took up the song, and between the singers and the orchestra they covered the break my emotion had made. And in a little s.p.a.ce I was able to go on with the next verse, and to carry on until my part in the show was done for the night. But I still wondered how it was that they had not had to ring down the curtain upon me, and that Tom Valiance and the others had been right and I the one that was wrong!
Ah, weel, I learned that night what many and many another Briton had learned, both at home and in France--that you can never know what you can do until you have to find it out! Yon was the hardest task ever I had to undertake, but for my boy's sake, and because they had made me understand that it was what he would have wanted me to do, I got through with it.
They rose to me again, and cheered and cheered, after I had finished singing ”The Laddies Who Fought and Won.” And there were those who called to me for a speech, but so much I had to deny them, good though they had been to me, and much as I loved them for the way they had received me. I had no words that night to thank them, and I could not have spoken from that stage had my life depended upon it. I could only get through, after my poor fas.h.i.+on, with my part in the show.
But the next night I did pull myself together, and I was able to say a few words to the audience--thanks that were simply and badly put, it may be, but that came from the bottom of my overflowing heart.
CHAPTER X
I had not believed it possible. But there I was, not only back at work, back upon the stage to which I thought I had said good-by forever, but successful as I had thought I could never be again. And so I decided that I would remain until the engagement of ”Three Cheers” closed. But my mind was made up to retire after that engagement. I felt that I had done all I could, and that it was time for me to retire, and to cease trying to make others laugh. There was no laughter in my heart, and often and often, that season, as I cracked my merriest jokes, my heart was sore and heavy and the tears were in my eyes.
But slowly a new sort of courage came to me. I was able to meet my friends again, and to talk to them, of myself and of my boy. I met brother officers of his, and I heard tales of him that gave me a new and even greater pride in him than I had known before. And my friends begged me to carry on in every way.
”You were doing a great work and a good work, Harry,” they said. ”The boy would want you to carry on. Do not drop all the good you were doing.”
I knew that they were right. To sit alone and give way to my grief was a selfish thing to do at such a time. If there was work for me to do, still, it was my duty to try to do it, no matter how greatly I would have preferred to rest quiet. At this time there was great need of making the people of Britain understand the need of food conservation, and so I began to go about London, making speeches on that subject wherever people could be gathered together to listen to me. They told me I did some good. And at least, I tried.
And before long I was glad, indeed, that I had listened to the counsel of my friends and had not given way to my selfish desire to nurse my grief in solitude and silence. For I realized that there was a real work for me to do. Those folk who had begged me to do my part in lightening the gloom of Britain had been right. There was so much sorrow and grief in the land that it was the duty of all who could dispel it, if even for a little s.p.a.ce, to do what they could. I remembered that poem of Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x--”Laugh and the World Laughs With You!” And so I tried to laugh, and to make the part of the world that I chanced to be in laugh with me. For I knew there was weeping and sorrowing enough.
And all the time I felt that the spirit of my boy was with me, and that he knew what I was doing, and why, and was glad, and that he understood that if I laughed it was not because I thought less often of him, or missed him less keenly and bitterly than I had done from the very beginning.
There was much praise for my work from high officials, and it made me proud and glad to know that the men who were at the head of Britain's effort in the war thought I was being of use. One time I spoke with Mr. Balfour, the former Prime Minister, at Drury Lane Theatre to one of the greatest war gatherings that was ever held in London.
And always and everywhere there were the hospitals, full of the laddies who had been brought home from France. Ah, but they were pitiful, those laddies who had fought, and won, and been brought back to be nursed back to the life they had been so bravely willing to lay down for their country! But it was hard to look at them, and know how they were suffering, and to go through with the task I had set myself of cheering them and comforting them in my own way! There were times when it was all I could do to get through with my program.
They never complained. They were always bright and cheerful, no matter how terrible their wounds might be; no matter what sacrifices they had made of eyes and limbs. There were men in those hospitals who knew that they were going out no more than half the men they had been. And yet they were as brave and careless of themselves as if their wounds had been but trifles. I think the greatest exhibition of courage and nerve the world has ever seen was to be found in those hospitals in London and, indeed, all over Britain, where those wonderful lads kept up their spirits always, though they knew they could never again be sound in body.
Many and many of them there were who knew that they could never walk again the shady lanes of their hameland or the little streets of their hame towns! Many and many more there were who knew that, even after the bandages were taken from about their eyes, they would never gaze again upon the trees and the gra.s.s and the flowers growing upon their native hillsides; that never again could they look upon the faces of their loved ones. They knew that everlasting darkness was their portion upon this earth.
But one and all they talked and laughed and sang! And it was there among the hospitals, that I came to find true courage and good cheer.
It was not there that I found talk of discouragement, and longing for any early peace, even though the final victory that could alone bring a real peace and a worthy peace had not been won. No--not in the hospitals could I find and hear such talk as that! For that I had to listen to those who had not gone--who had not had the courage and the nerve to offer all they had and all they were and go through that h.e.l.l of h.e.l.ls that is modern war!
I saw other hospitals besides the ones in London. After a time, when I was very tired, and far from well, I went to Scotland for a s.p.a.ce to build myself up and get some rest. And in the far north I went fis.h.i.+ng on the River Dee, which runs through the Durrie estate. And while I was there the Laird heard of it. And he sent word to tell me of a tiny hospital hard by where a guid lady named Mrs. Baird was helping to nurse disabled men back to health and strength. He asked me would I no call upon the men and try to give them a little cheer.
And I was glad to hear of the chance to help.
I laid down my rod forthwith, for here was better work than fis.h.i.+ng-- and in my ain country. They told me the way that I should go, and that this Mrs. Baird had turned a little school house into a convalescent home, and was doing a fine and wonderful work for the laddies she had taken in. So I set out to find it, and I walked along a country road to come to it.
Soon I saw a man, strong and hale, as it seemed, pus.h.i.+ng a wheel chair along the road toward me. And in the chair sat a man, and I could see at once that he had lost the use of his legs--that he was paralyzed from the waist down. It was the way he called to him who was pus.h.i.+ng him that made me tak notice.
”Go to the right, mon!” he would call. Or, a moment later, ”To the left now.”
And then they came near to the disaster. The one who was pus.h.i.+ng was heading straight for the side of the road, and the one in the chair bellowed out to him:
”Whoa there!” he called. ”Mon--ye're taking me into the ditch! Where would ye be going with me, anyway?”
And then I understood. The man who was pus.h.i.+ng was blind! They had but the one pair of eyes and the one pair of legs between the two of them, and it was so that they contrived to go out together without taking help from anyone else! And they were both as cheerful as wee laddies out for a lark. It was great sport for them. And it was they who gave me my directions to get to Mrs. Baird's.
They disputed a little about the way. The blind man, puir laddie, thought he knew. And he did not--not quite. But he corrected the man who could see but could not walk.
”It's the wrong road you're giving the gentleman,” he said. ”It's the second turn he should be taking, not the first.”
And the other would not argue with him. It was a kindly thing, the way he kept quiet, and did but wink at me, that I might know the truth. He trusted me to understand and to know why he was acting as he was, and I blessed him in my heart for his thoughtfulness. And so I thanked them, and pa.s.sed on, and reached Mrs. Baird's, and found a royal welcome there, and when they asked me if I would sing for the soldiers, and I said it was for that that I had come, there were tears in Mrs. Baird's eyes. And so I gave a wee concert there, and sang my songs, and did my best to cheer up those boys.