THE ETERNAL WATERWAY
§1
The most clearly marked moment of my life was when I passed the fat policeman who was standing just inside the great gateway of Devonport Dockyard. I was to embark that morning on a troopship bound for the Dardanelles. As I stepped out of the public thoroughfare, and walking through the gate, saw the fat policeman. I passed out of one period of my life and entered upon another.
The first period that remained outside the tall walls of the dockyard was made up of chapters of boyhood and schooldays; and a gallant last chapter of playing at soldiers. Ah! this last chapter—it had tennis and theatres and girls and kisses: a great patch of life! And I left it all outside the docks.
The second period, on to which I now abruptly set foot, was to be intense, highly-coloured, and scented; a rush of rapidly moving pictures of the blue waters of the Mediterranean, the bleak hills of Mudros, and the exploding shells on the peninsula of Gallipoli.
The fat policeman had a revolver slung over his shoulder, and his businesslike weapon expressed better than anything else that England was at war and taking no risks. He suitably challenged me:
"Your authority to go through, sir?" demanded he.
"That's where I've got you by the winter garments," said I vulgarly; and, diving my hand into my pocket, I drew out my Embarkation Orders. They were heavily marked in red "SECRET," but I judged the policeman to be "in the know," and showed them to him. Properly impressed with the historic document, he turned to a fair-haired young officer who was with me, and asked:
"You the same, sir?"
"Surely," answered my companion, which was a new way he had acquired of saying "yes."
"Right y'are, sir," said the policeman, and we crossed the line.
My fair-haired companion was, of course, Second Lieutenant Edgar Gray Doe; and it was in keeping with the destiny that entwined our lives that we should pass the fat policeman together. And now I had better tell you how it happened.
§2
On August 3, 1914, eleven months before my solemn admission into Devonport Dockyard, I was a young schoolboy on my holidays, playing tennis in a set of mixed doubles. About five o'clock a paper-boy entered the tennis-club grounds with the Evening News. My male opponent, although he was serving, stopped his game for a minute and bought a paper.
"Hang the paper!" called I, indifferent to the fact that the Old World was falling about our ears and England's last day of peace was going down with the afternoon sun. "Your service. Love—fifteen."
"By Jove," he cried, after scanning the paper, "we're in!"
"What do you mean," cried the girls, "have the Germans declared war on us?"
"No. But we've sent an ultimatum to Germany which expires at twelve to-night. That means Britain will be in a state of war with Germany as from midnight." The hand that held the paper trembled with excitement.
"How frightfully thrilling!" said one girl.
"How awful!" whispered the other.
"How ripping!" corrected I. "Crash on with the game. Your service. Love—fifteen."
Five days later it was decided that I should not return to school, but should go at once into the army. So it was that I never finished up in the correct style at Kensingtowe with an emotional last chapel, endless good wishes and a lump in my throat. I just didn't go back.
Instead, an influential friend, who knew the old Colonel of the 2nd Tenth East Cheshires, a territorial battalion of my grandfather's regiment, secured for me and, at my request, for Doe commissions in that unit. His Majesty the King (whom, and whose dominions, might God preserve in this grand moment of peril) had, it seemed, great faith in the loyalty and gallantry of "Our trusty and well-beloved Rupert Ray," as also of "Our trusty and well-beloved Edgar Gray Doe," and was pleased to accept our swords in the defence of his realm.
So one day we two trusty and well-beloved subjects, flushed, very nervous, and clad in the most expensive khaki uniforms that London could provide, took train for the North to interview the Colonel of the 2nd Tenth. He was sitting at a littered writing-table, when we were shown in by a smart orderly. We saw a plump old territorial Colonel, grey-haired, grey-moustached, and kindly in face. His khaki jacket was brightened by the two South African medal ribbons; and we were so sadly fresh to things military as to wonder whether either was the V.C. We saluted with great smartness, and hoped we had made the movement correctly: for really, we knew very little about it. I wasn't sure whether we ought to salute indoors; and Doe, having politely bared his fair head on entering the office, saluted without a cap. I blushed at my bad manners and surreptitiously removed mine. Not knowing what to do with my hands, I put them in my pockets. I knew that, if something didn't happen quickly, I should start giggling. Here in the presence of our new commanding officer I felt as I used to when I stood before the head master.
"Sit down," beamed the C.O.
We sat down, crossed our legs, and tried to appear at our ease, and languid; as became officers.
"How old are you?" the Colonel asked Doe.
Doe hesitated, wondering whether to perjure himself and say "Twenty."
"Eighteen, sir," he admitted, obviously ashamed.
"And you, Ray?"
"Eighteen, sir," said I, feeling Doe's companion in guilt.
"Splendid, perfectly splendid!" replied the Colonel. "Eighteen, by Jove! You've timed your lives wonderfully, my boys. To be eighteen in 1914 is to be the best thing in England. England's wealth used to consist in other things. Nowadays you boys are the richest thing she's got. She's solvent with you, and bankrupt without you. Eighteen, confound it! It's a virtue to be your age, just as it's a crime to be mine. Now, look here"—the Colonel drew up his chair, as if he were going to get to business—"look here. Eighteen years ago you were born for this day. Through the last eighteen years you've been educated for it. Your birth and breeding were given you that you might officer England's youth in this hour. And now you enter upon your inheritance. Just as this is the day in the history of the world so yours is the generation. No other generation has been called to such grand things, and to such crowded, glorious living. Any other generation at your age would be footling around, living a shallow existence in the valleys, or just beginning to climb a slope to higher things. But you"—here the Colonel tapped the writing-table with his forefinger—"you, just because you've timed your lives aright, are going to be transferred straight to the mountain-tops. Well, I'm damned. Eighteen!"
I remember how his enthusiasm radiated from him and kindled a responsive excitement in me. I had entered his room a silly boy with no nobler thought than a thrill in the new adventure on which I had so suddenly embarked. But, as this fatherly old poet, touched by England's need and by the sight of two boys entering his room, so fresh and strong and ready for anything, broke into eloquence, I saw dimly the great ideas he was striving to express. I felt the brilliance of being alive in this big moment; the pride of youth and strength. I felt Aspiration surging in me and speeding up the action of my heart. I think I half hoped it would be my high lot to die on the battlefield. It was just the same glowing sensation that pervaded me one strange evening when, standing outside the baths at Kensingtowe, I first awoke to the joy of conscious life.
"D'you see what I'm driving at?" asked the old Colonel.
"Rather!" answered Doe, with eagerness. Turning towards him as he spoke, I saw by the shining in his brown eyes that the poet in him had answered to the call of the old officer's words. His aspiration as well as mine was inflamed. Doe was feeling great. He was picturing himself, no doubt, leading a forlorn hope into triumph, or fighting a rearguard action and saving the British line. The heroic creature was going to be equal to the great moment and save England dramatically.
Pleased with Doe's ready understanding—my friend always captivated people in the first few minutes—our C.O. warmed still more to his subject. Having put his hands in his pockets and leant back in his chair to survey us the better, he continued:
"What I mean is—had you been eighteen a generation earlier, the British Empire could have treated you as very insignificant fry, whereas to-day she is obliged to come to you boys and say 'You take top place in my aristocracy. You're on top because I must place the whole weight of everything I have upon your shoulders. You're on top because you are the Capitalists, possessing an enormous capital of youth and strength and boldness and endurance. You must give it all to me—to gamble with—for my life. I've nothing to give you in return, except suffering and—'"
The Colonel paused, feeling he had said enough—or too much. We made no murmur of agreement. It would have seemed like applauding in church. Then he proceeded:
"Well, you're coming to my battalion, aren't you?"
"Yes, rather, sir," said Doe.
"Right. You're just the sort of boys that I want. If you're young and bold, your men will follow you anywhere. In this fight it's going to be better to be a young officer, followed and loved because of his youth, than to be an old one, followed and trusted because of his knowledge. Dammit! I wish I could make you see it. But, for God's sake, be enthusiastic. Be enthusiastic over the great crisis, over the responsibility, over your amazingly high calling."
He stopped, and began playing with a pencil; and it was some while before he added, speaking uncomfortably and keeping his eyes upon the pencil:
"Take a pride in your bodies, and hold them in condition. You'll want 'em. There are more ways than one of getting them tainted in the life of temptations you're going to face. I expect you—you grasp my meaning.... But, if only you'll light up your enthusiasm, everything else will be all right."
He raised his eyes and looked at us again, saying:
"Well, good-bye for the present."
We shook hands, saluted, and went out. And, as I shut the door, I heard the old enthusiast call out to someone who must have been in an inner room: "I've two gems of boys there—straight from school. Bless my soul, England'll win through."
§3
But, lack-a-day, here's the trouble with me. My moments of exaltation have always been fleeting. Just as in the old school-days I would leave Radley's room, brimful of lofty resolutions, and fall away almost immediately into littleness again, so now I soon allowed the lamp of enthusiasm, lit by the Colonel, to grow very dim.
It was ridicule of the fine old visionary that destroyed his power. "Hallo, here come two more of the Colonel's blue-eyed boys," laughed the officers of our new battalion the first time we came into their view. And "The old man's mounted his hobby again," said they, after any lecture in which he alluded to Youth and Enthusiasm.
Yet the Colonel was right, and the scoffers wrong. The Colonel was a poet who could listen and hear how the heart of the world was beating; the scoffers were prosaic cattle who scarcely knew that the world had a heart at all. He turned us, if only for a moment, into young knights of high ideals, while they made us sorry, conceited young knaves.
You shall know what knaves we were.
So far from being enthusiastic over parades and field days, we found them most detestably dull and longed for the pleasures that followed the order to dismiss. And after the Dismiss we were utterly happy.
It was happiness to walk the streets in our new uniforms, and to take the salutes of the Tommies, the important boy-scouts, and the military-minded gutter urchins. I longed to go home on leave, so that in company with my mother I could walk through the world saluted at every twenty paces, and thus she should see me in all my glory. And when one day I strolled with her past a Hussar sentry who brought his sword flashing in the sun to the salute, I felt I had seldom experienced anything so satisfying.
I was secretly elated, too, in possessing a soldier servant to wait on me hand and foot—almost to bath me. I spoke with a concealed relish of "my agents," and loved to draw cheques on Cox and Co. I looked forward to Sunday Church Parade, for there I could wear my sword. It was my grandfather's sword, and I'm afraid I thought less of the romance of bearing it in defence of the Britain that he loved and the France where he lay buried than of its flashy appearance and the fine finish it gave to my uniform. I was a strange mixture, for, when the preacher, looking down the old Gothic arches, said: "This historic church has often before filled with armed men," I shivered with the poetry of it; and yet, no sooner had I come out into the modern sunlight and seen the congregation waiting for the soldiers to be marched off, than I must needs be occupied again with the peculiarly dashing figure I was cutting.
Once Doe and I went on a visit to Kensingtowe, partly out of loyalty to the old school, and partly to display ourselves in our new greatness. We wore our field-service caps at the jaunty angle of all right-minded subalterns. Though only unmounted officers, we were dressed in yellow riding-breeches with white leather strappings. Fixed to our heels were the spurs that we had long possessed in secret. They jingled with every step, and the only thing that marred the music of their tinkle was the anxiety lest some officer of the 2nd Tenth should see us thus arrayed. Doe was in field boots, but his pleasure in being seen in this cavalry kit was quite spoiled by his fear of being ridiculed for "swank." Both of us would have liked to take our batmen with us and to say: "Don't trouble, my man will do that for you."
We created a gratifying sensation at Kensingtowe. It was exhilarating to have a friend come up to me and exclaim: "By Jove, Ray, you're no end of a dog now," and to notice that he didn't heed my self-depreciatory answer because he was busy looking into every detail of my uniform. "What devilish fine fellows we are, eh what?" cried our admirers, and we blushed and said "Oh, shut up." We met old Dr. Chappy, who looked us up and down, roared with laughter, and said "Well, I'll be damned!" We were welcomed into Radley's room, and were boys enough to address him as "sir" as though we were still his pupils. He examined our appearance like a big brother proud of two young ones, and said after a silence:
"So this is what it has all come to."
I took a lot of my cronies out to tea in the town, and, as we walked to the shops, stared down the road to see if any Tommies were coming who would salute me in front of my guests. Luck was kind to me. For a large party, marching under an N.C.O., approached us; and the N.C.O. in a voice like the crack of doom cried "Party—eyes RIGHT!" Heads and eyes swung towards me, the N.C.O. saluted briskly, and, when the party had passed us, yelled "Eyes FRONT!" It was one of the most triumphant moments of my career.
Scarcely, however, had this pride-tickling honour been paid to me before there happened as distressing a thing as—oh, it was dreadful! I passed one of your full-blooded regular-army sergeants, and, since he raised his hand towards his face, I apprehended he was about to salute me. Promptly I acknowledged the expected salute, only to discover that the sergeant had raised his hand for no other purpose than to blow his nose with his naked fingers. Believe me, even now, when I think of this blunder, I catch my breath with shame.
What young bucks we were, Doe and I! We bought motor-bicycles and raced over the country-side, Doe, ever a preacher of Life, calling out "This is Life, isn't it?" I remember our bowling along a deserted country road and shouting for a lark: "Sing of joy, sing of bliss, it was never like this, Yip-i-addy-i-ay!" I remember our scorching recklessly down white English highways, with a laugh for every bone-shaking bump, and a heart-thrill for every time we risked our lives tearing through a narrow passage between two War Department motor lorries. I see the figure of Doe standing breathless by his bicycle after a break-neck run, his hair blown into disorder by the wind, and the white dust of England round his eyes and on his cheeks, and saying: "My godfathers, this is Life!" Oh, yes, it was a rosy patch of life and freedom.
§4
But, in our abandonment, we tumbled into more sinister things. It was disillusionment that bowled us down. The evil that we saw in the world and the army smashed our allegiance to the old moral codes. We suddenly lost the old anchors and blew adrift, strange new theories filling our sails. We ceased to think there was any harm in being occasionally "blotto" at night, or in employing the picturesque army word "bloody." Worse than that, we began to believe that vicious things, which in our boyhood had been very secret sins, were universally committed and bragged about.
"It's so, Rupert," said Doe, in a corner of the Officers' ante-room one night before dinner, "I'm an Epicurean. Surely the Body doesn't prompt to pleasure only to be throttled? There's something in what they were saying at Mess yesterday that these things are normal and natural. I mean, human nature is human nature, and you can't alter it. I don't think any man is, or can be, what they call 'pure.' I s'pose every man has done these things, don't you?"
"No, I don't," I answered, conscious of hot cheeks. "We may do them, but there are people I can't imagine it of."
"But, again, there's the question whether War doesn't mean the suspension of all ordinary moral laws. The law that you shan't kill is in abeyance. The instinct of self-preservation has to be suppressed. There's some justification for being an Epicurean for the duration of the war."
"Perhaps so," acknowledged I. "I don't know."
As we left the ante-room and sat down to Mess, Doe announced:
"I've every intention of getting tight to-night."
"Pourquoi pas?" said I. "C'est la guerre!"
"Before I die," continued Doe, who was already flushed with gin and vermouth, "I want to have lived. I want to have touched all the joys and experiences of life. Pass the Chablis. Here's to you, Rupert. Cheerioh!"
"Cheerioh!" toasted I, raising my glass. "Happy days!"
"I'm determined to be able to say, Rupert, whatever happens: 'Never mind, I had a good time while it lasted!'"
"I'm with you," said I, who was now nearly as flushed as he. "Let's be in everything up to the neck."
"Surely," Doe endorsed. "C'est la guerre!"
So with the meat and sweets went the wines of France; with the nuts the sparkling "bubbly"; and in the ante-room Martinis, Benedictines, and Whisky-Macdonalds. Soon the night became noisy, and Doe, encouraged by riotous subalterns, jumped on a table and declaimed a little thickly his prize Horatian Ode:
"Bring out the mellow wine, the best,
The sweet, convivial wine, and test
Its four-year-old maturity;
To Jove commit the rest:
Nor question his divine intents,
For, when he stays the battling elements
The wind shall brood o'er prostrate sea
And fail to move the ash's crest
Or stir the stilly cypress trees.
Be no forecaster of the dawn;
Deem it an asset, and be gay—
Come, merge to-morrow's misty morn
In the resplendence of to-day."
And, after all this, it was an easy step, lightly taken, to the things of night. We set out for the strange streets; and there, in the night air, the precocious young pedant, Edgar Doe, became, despite all the new theories, the shy, simple boy he really was. We would both become shy—shy of each other, and shy of the shameful doorway.
And then the misery of the morning, to be quickly forgotten in the joy of life!
§5
It was now that the Battle of Neuve Chapelle quenched Pennybet. Archibald Pennybet, the boy who left school, determined to conquer the world, and coolly confident of his power to mould circumstances to his own ends, was crushed like an insect beneath the heavy foot of war. He was just put out by a high-explosive shell. It didn't kill him outright, but whipped forty jagged splinters into his body. He was taken to an Advanced Dressing Station, where a chaplain, who told us about his last minutes, found him, swathed in bandages from his head to his heel. On a stretcher that rested on trestles he was lying, conscious, though a little confused by morphia. He saw the chaplain approaching him, and murmured, "Hallo, padre." So numerous were his bandages that the chaplain saw nothing of the boy who was speaking save the lazy Arab eyes and the mouth that had framed impudence for twenty years.
"Hallo, what have you been doing to yourself?" asked the chaplain.
"Oh, only trying conclusions with an H.E., padre." The mouth smiled at the corners.
"What about a cup of tea, now? Could you drink it?"
"I'll—try, padre." The eyes twinkled a little.
So the chaplain brought a mug of stewed tea, and Penny, laughing weakly, said:
"You'll—have to pour it down—for me, padre. I can't move a muscle. These bloody bandages—sorry, padre—these bandages. O God—"
"In pain?" gently inquired the chaplain.
"No. Only a prisoner. I can't move. Pour the tea down."
He gulped a little of the drink, and, dropping the heavily-fringed eyelids, so that he appeared to be asleep, muttered:
"I suppose—I haven't a dog's chance. Find out if—I'm done for. Find out for me, please."
"I asked the doctor before I came to you, old chap."
On hearing this, Penny opened and shut his eyes, and remained so long just breathing that the chaplain wondered if he had lost consciousness. But the eyes unclosed again, and the lips asked:
"Aren't you going to tell me, padre?"
"Yes, I—you won't be a prisoner much longer, old chap."
Not a word said Penny, but stared in wonder at his informant. It was clear that he wanted to live, and to mould the world to his will. There was a long silence, and then he murmured:
"Well, there are lots of others—who've gone through it—and lots more who'll—have to go." And he shut his eyes in weary submission.
The chaplain suggested a prayer with him, and Penny agreed in the half-jesting words: "But you'll—have to do it all for me, just as you poured the tea down. I'm no good at that sort of thing."
And, when the prayer was over, he said with his old haughtiness:
"You know, padre—I was thinking—while you prayed. I suppose I've led a selfish life—seeking my own ends—but, by Jove, I've had my good time—and am ready to pay for it—if I must." His eyes flashed defiantly. "If God puts me through it, I shan't whine."
As the end drew nearer, he turned more and more into a child. After all, he had never come of age. He spoke about his mother, sending her his love, and saying: "I'm afraid, padre, that I led her a life—but I'll bet she'd rather have had me and my plagues than not. Don't you think so?"
He mentioned us with affection as "those two kids," and sent the message that he hoped we at least should come through all right.
And then the lazy eyes closed in their last weariness, the impudent lips parted, and Penny was dead. The War had beaten him. It was too big a circumstance for him to tame.
§6
The night we heard of it, Doe threw himself into a chair and said:
"I'm miserable to-night, Rupert."
"So'm I," said I, looking out of the window over a moonlit sea. "Poor old Penny. I don't know why it makes one feel a cur, but it does, doesn't it?"
"Surely," answered Doe.
For a time we smoked our pipes in silence. I gazed at the long silver pathway that the light of the moon had laid on the sea. Right on the horizon, where the pathway met the sky, a boat with a tall sail stood black against the light. Fancifully I imagined that its dark shape resembled the outline of a man—say, perhaps, the figure of Destiny—walking down the sparkling pathway towards us. I was in the mood to fancy such things. Then Doe from his chair said:
"Old Penny always took the lead with us, didn't he? He's taken it again."
"I don't see what you mean," answered I.
"Oh, it doesn't matter what I mean. I'm depressed to-night."
We spoke of it with the Colonel the next afternoon, when we were having tea in his private room.
"It doesn't seem fair," complained Doe. "He could have done anything with his life," and he added rather tritely: "Penny's story which might have been monumental is now only a sort of broken pillar over a churchyard grave."
"Nonsense," snapped the Colonel. "It was splendid, perfectly splendid." And he arose from his chair and took down from a shelf a little blue volume bearing the title "1914." With a pencil he underlined certain phrases in a sonnet, and handed the book to us. Doe brought his head close to mine, and we leant over the marked page and read the lines together:
"These laid the world away, poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth, gave up the years to be
Of hope and joy—
Blow, bugles, blow—
Nobleness walks in our ways again—"
The Colonel—how like him!—saw the story of Pennybet, not as a broken pillar, but as a graceful, upright column, with a richly foliated capital.
§7
The march of History in these wonderful months brought with it an event that stirred the world. This was the first great landing of the British Forces on the toe of the Gallipoli Peninsula, in their attempt to win a way for the Allied Navy through the Straits of the Dardanelles. On April 25th, 1915, as all the world knows, the men of the 29th Division came up like a sea-breeze out of the sea, and, driving the Turks and Germans from their coastal defences, swept clear for themselves a small tract of breathing room across that extremity of Turkey. Leaping out of their boats, and crashing through a murderous fire, they won a footing on Cape Helles, and planted their feet firmly on the invaded territory.
Three Kensingtonians known to us fell dead in that costly battle. Stanley, who tried me in the Prefects' Room, took seven machine-gun bullets in his body, and died in a lighter as it approached the beach. Lancaster, who in less grand years would undoubtedly have bowled for Oxford and England, lay down on W. Beach and died. And White, the gentle giant—Moles White, who swam so bravely in the Bramhall-Erasmus Race, was knocked out somewhere on the high ground inland.
And, almost immediately after that distant battle of the Helles beaches, in the early days of May, when England was all blossom and bud, our First Line of the Cheshires was landed on Gallipoli to support the 29th Division. The news was all over the regiment in no time. The First Line had gone to the Dardanelles! Had we heard the latest? The First Line were actually on Gallipoli!
Consider what it meant to us. We were the Second Line, whose object was to supply reinforcing drafts to the First Line in whatever country it might be ordered to fight. The First Line—we were proud of the fact—had been the first territorial division to leave England. In September, 1914, it had sailed away, in an imposing convoy of transports escorted by cruisers and destroyers, under orders to garrison Egypt. There it had acted as the Army of Occupation till that April day when the 29th Division laughed at the prophecies of the German experts and stormed from the Ægean Sea the beaches of Cape Helles. Scarcely had the news electrified Egypt before the First Line received its orders to embark for Overseas. And every man of them knew what that meant.
So all we of the 2nd Tenth seemed marked down like branded sheep for the Gallipoli front. The Colonel was full of it. With his elect mind that saw right into the heart of things, he quickly unveiled the poetry and romance of Britain's great enterprise at Gallipoli. He crowded all his young officers into his private room for a lecture on the campaign that was calling them. Having placed them on chairs, on the carpet, on the hearth-rug, and on the fender, he seated himself at his writing-table, like a hen in the midst of its chickens, and began:
"For epic and dramatic interest this Dardanelles business is easily top."
To the Colonel everything that he was enthusiastic about was epic and dramatic and "on top." Just as he told us that our day was the day and our generation the generation, so now he set out to assure us that Gallipoli was the front.
"If you'll only get at the IDEAS behind what's going on at the Helles beaches," he declared, with a rap on the table, "you'll be thrilled, boys."
Then he reminded us that the Dardanelles Straits were the Hellespont of the Ancient world, and the neighbouring Ægean Sea the most mystic of the "wine-dark seas of Greece": he retold stories of Jason and the Argonauts; of "Burning Sappho" in Lesbos; of Achilles in Scyros; of Poseidon sitting upon Samothrace to watch the fight at Troy; and of St. John the Divine at Patmos gazing up into the Heavenly Jerusalem.
As he spoke, we were schoolboys again and listened with wide-open, wistful eyes. From the fender and the hearth-rug, we saw Leander swimming to Hero across the Dardanelles; we saw Darius, the Persian, throwing his bridge over the same narrow passage, only to be defeated at Marathon; and Xerxes, too, bridging the famous straits to carry victory into Greece, till at last his navy went under at Salamis. We saw the pathetic figure of Byron swimming where Leander swam; and, in all, such an array of visions that the lure of the Eternal Waterway gripped us, and we were a-fidget to be there.
"Have eyes to see this idea also," said the Colonel, who was a Tory of Tories. "England dominates Gibraltar and Suez, the doors of the Mediterranean; let her complete her constellation by winning from the Turk the lost star of the Dardanelles, the only other entrance to the Great Sea."
This roused the jingo devil in us, and we burst into applause.
Knowing thereby that he had won his audience, the Colonel beamed with inspiration. He rose, as though so enthralling a subject could only be dealt with standing, and cried:
"See this greater idea. For 500 years the Turk, by occupying Constantinople, has blocked the old Royal Road to India and the East. He is astride the very centre of the highways that should link up the continents. He oppresses and destroys the Arab world, which should be the natural junction of the great trunk railways that, to-morrow, shall join Asia, Africa, and Europe in one splendid spider's web. You are going to move the block from the line, and to join the hands of the continents. Understand, and be enthusiastic. I tell you, this joining of the continents is an unborn babe of history that leapt in the womb the moment the British battleships appeared off Cape Helles."
"By Jove, the Colonel's great!" thought I, as my heart jumped at his magnificent words. "Where are his scoffers to-day? He's come into his own." Lord, how small my little vanities seemed now! A fig for them all! I was going out to build history. The Colonel had one at least who was with him to the death.
"So much for secular interest," continued the Colonel, dropping his voice. "Now, boys, follow me through this. You're not over-religious, I expect, but you're Christians before you're Moslems, and your hands should fly to your swords when I say the Gallipoli campaign is a New Crusade. You're going out to force a passage through the Dardanelles to Constantinople. And Constantinople is a sacred city. It's the only ancient city purely Christian in its origin, having been built by the first Christian Emperor in honour of the Blessed Virgin. Which brings us to the noblest idea of all. In their fight to wrest this city from the Turk, the three great divisions of the Church are united once more. The great Roman branch is represented by the soldiers and ships of France: the great Eastern Orthodox branch by the Russians, who are behind the fight: the great Anglican branch by the British, who can be proud to have started the movement, and to be leading it. Thus Christendom United fights for Constantinople, under the leadership of the British, whose flag is made up of the crosses of the saints. The army opposing the Christians fights under the crescent of Islam.
"It's the Cross against the Crescent again, my lads. By Jove, it's splendid, perfectly splendid! And an English cross, too!
"Thank you, gentlemen; that's all; thank you."
§8
The blossom and buds of our English May became the fruit and flowers of July, and Doe and I, maturing too, entered upon the age for Active Service. There came a day when we were ordered to report for a doctor's examination to see if we were fit for the front.
I shan't forget that testing. All thought we had little to fear from the doctor. The drills and route-marches in sun, wind and rain had tanned our flesh to pink and brown, and lit the lamps of health in our eyes. And the whites of those eyes were blue-white.
But the doctor, a curt major, said "Strip," and took Doe first.
Now, a glance at Doe, when stripped, ought to have satisfied a doctor. His figure, small in the hips, widened to a chest like a Greek statue's; his limbs were slender and rounded; his skin was a baby's. But no, the stolid old doctor carried on, as though Doe were nothing to sing songs about. He tested his eyes, surveyed his teeth, tried his chest, tapping him before and behind, and telling him to say "99" and to cough. All these liberties so amused Doe that he could scarcely manage the "99" or the cough for giggling. And I was doing my best to increase his difficulty by pretending to be in convulsions of smothered laughter.
Then the doctor sounded Doe's heart, and, as he did it, all the laughter went out of my life. I suddenly remembered a scene, wherein I lay in the baths at Kensingtowe, recovering from a faint, and Dr. Chappy looked down upon me and said: "There may be a weakness at your heart." As I remembered it, the first time for years, my heart missed its beats. I saw rapidly succeeding visions of my rejection by the doctor; my farewell to Doe, as he left for romantic Gallipoli; and my return to the undistinguished career of the Medically Unfit. I found myself repeating, after the fashion of younger days (though at this wild-colt period I had done with God): "O God, make him pass me. O God, make him pass me."
"All right, get dressed," the doctor commanded Doe.
"Come here, you," he said to me, brutally.
My eyes, teeth, and chest satisfied him; and then, like a loathly eavesdropper, he listened at my heart. I was afraid my nervousness would cause some irregular action of the detestable organ that would finally down me in his eyes.
"All right, get dressed," he said; and, having put his stethoscope away, he wrote something on two printed Army Forms and sealed them.
"Are we fit, sir?" asked I, in suspense.
"I've written my verdict," he said snappily, looking at me as much as to say: "You aren't asked to converse. This isn't a conversazione"; but, when he caught my gaze, he seemed, to repent of his harshness, and answered gruffly:
"Both perfect."
"Oh, thanks, sir," said I. I could have kissed the old churl.
And so, before July was out, when Doe and I were at our separate homes on a last leave, we received from the Director-General of Movements our Embarkation Orders. Marked "SECRET," the documents informed us that we were to report at Devonport "in service dress uniform," with a view to proceeding to "the Mediterranean." Seemingly we were to take no drafts of men, but travel independently as reinforcements to the First Line at Cape Helles.
My mother turned very white when I showed her the letter. She had heard ugly things about the Gallipoli Peninsula. People were saying that the life of a junior subaltern on Helles was working out to an average of fourteen days; and that, in the heat, the flies and dust were scattering broadcast the germs of dysentery and enteric. And I believe my restless excitement hurt her. But she only said: "I'm so proud of it all," and kissed me.
The last night, however, as she sat in her chair, and I, after walking excitedly about, stood in front of her, she took both my hands and drew me, facing her, against her knees. I know she found it sweet and poignant to have me in that position, for, when I was a very small boy, it had been thus that she had drawn me to tell me stories of my grandfather, Colonel Ray. She had dropped the habit, when I was a shy and undemonstrative schoolboy, but had resumed it happily during the last two years, for, by then, I had learnt in my growing mannishness to delight in half-protectingly, half-childishly stroking and embracing her.
She drew me, then, this last night against her knees and looked lovingly at me. Her yearning heart was in her eyes. Her hands, clasping mine, involuntarily gripped them very tight, as though she were thinking: "I cannot give him up; I cannot let him go."
I smiled down at her, and, as I saw the moisture veil her eyes, I felt that I, too, would like to cry. At last she said:
"If I'm never to see you again, Rupert, I shall yet always be thankful for the nineteen years' happiness you've given me."
"Oh, mother," I said. No more words could I utter, for my eyes were smarting worse than ever. I felt about eight years old.
"If all the rest of my life had to be sorrow," she whispered, no longer concealing the fact that she was breaking down, "the last nineteen years of you, Rupert, have made it all so well worth living. I shall have had more happiness out of it than sorrow. Thank you—for all you've given me."
She let go of my left hand, so as to free her own, with which she might wipe her overflowing eyes. Then she dropped the cambric handkerchief into her lap, and grasped my hand again. As for me, I kept silence, for my mother's thanks were making my breath come in those short, quick gasps, which a man must control if he would prevent them breaking into sobs.
"You see," she explained, "you had his eyes. Your grandfather used to say of you, 'he has that Rupert's eyes.'"
"Mother!" I ejaculated. Only in that last moment did I, thoughtless boy that I was, enter into an understanding of my mother's love for the father I had never seen. In the last evening of nineteen years there was revealed to me all that my mother's young widowhood had meant to her.
"I didn't want to break down," she apologised, drawing me even closer to her, as though appealing for my forgiveness, "but, oh! I couldn't help it. I've never loved you so desperately as I do at this moment."
"Mother," I stuttered, "I've been rotten—more rotten than you know."
"No, my big boy, you've been perfect. I wouldn't have had you different in any way. Everything about you pleased me. And how—how can I give you up?"
"I'll come back to you, mother. I swear I will."
"Oh, but you mustn't allow any thought of me to unnerve you out there, Rupert," she said, quickly releasing my hands, lest it were traitorous to hold me back. "Do everything you are called to do—however dangerous—" The word caused her to sob. "Don't think of me when you've got to fight. No, I don't mean that—" Mother was torn between her emotions. "Rather think of me, and do the—dangerous thing—if it's right—yes, do it—because I want you to, but oh!" she sobbed, "come back to me—come back—come back."
I leant over and, lifting her face up gently with both my hands, kissed her and said:
"Yes, mother."
And then by a sudden effort of her will she seemed to recover. She said smilingly and almost calmly:
"I'm so proud. I think it's wonderful your going out there."
§9
What more is there to tell of that old first period of my life which ended at the gates of Devonport Dockyard? There was a long railway journey with Doe, where half the best of green England, clad in summer dress, swept in panorama past our carriage windows. Perhaps we both watched it pass a little wistfully. Perhaps we thought of bygone holiday-runs, when we had watched the same telegraph lines switchbacking to Falmouth. There was a one-night stay at the Royal Hotel, Devonport; and a walk together in the fresh morning down to the Docks. There was a woman who touched Doe's sleeve and said: "You poor dear lamb," and annoyed him grievously. There was the fat policeman's challenge at the gates. And then we were through.
We had walked a little way, when a boy from the Royal Hotel, whom the policeman suffered to pass, ran up to us like a messenger from a world we had left behind.
"Lieutenant Ray, sir," he called.
I turned round and said "Yes?" inquiringly.
"Here's a telegram, sir, that arrived just after you left."
I took it undismayed, knowing it to be yet another telegram of good wishes. "I'll bet you, you poor dear lamb," I said to Doe, "the words are either 'Good-bye and God-speed,' or 'Cheerioh and a safe return.'"
"Not taking the bet," said Doe. "How else could it be phrased?"
"Well, we'll see," said I, and opened the envelope. The words were:
"I am with you every moment—MOTHER."