From Billabong to London

by Mary Grant Bruce

From Piccadilly they turned into Hyde Park. Above the great gateway was a queer erection—the searchlight that every night scanned the sky above London for aeroplanes. Everywhere in the Park were soldiers; companies marching and drilling, some in khaki, and others in any scraps of uniform that could be found for them temporarily—including even the scarlet tunic of other days. Officers were riding their chargers in the Row; and carriages drove up and down with wounded soldiers out for an airing in charge of nurses; men with arms or legs in splints, or with bandages showing under their caps. The Park looked shabby and worn, its brilliant grass trodden almost out of existence by the thousands of men who drilled there daily. Its sacred precincts were even invaded by rough buildings and tents—war stores, outside which stood sentries with fixed bayonets. No longer was it London’s most cherished pleasure-ground, but a part of the machinery of War.

Everything about them spoke of War: the marching soldiers, the wounded men, the newsboys who shouted the latest tidings in the streets. The shops were full of soldiers’ comforts and of Service kit: the darkened lamps gave mute testimony to its nearness. There was no topic in all their world but War. Men and women alike were preparing and helping; even children had taken on a new gravity since they had learned how many of the fathers and brothers who marched away came back no more. Boys fresh from school had been swallowed up by its hungry mouth; boys still in the playground were drilling, impatient for the day that saw them old enough to follow their companions.

And they themselves were part of its machinery. War had brought them across the world; and the more nearly they approached the thunder of the guns, the less important became their own concerns, except so far as they touched War. Home—Australia—Billabong; all their little story faded into insignificance, even to themselves. Things which had been important no longer counted: personal grief and happiness, personal success and failure, a wave of great happenings had swept them all away—of all their concerns nothing mattered now except the two cheery lads in khaki who looked with curious eyes at London, and thought no high-souled thoughts at all, but simply of doing the “decent thing.”

To Norah the realisation came home suddenly. Dimly she had been seeing and feeling these things during the weeks that she had lain ill while her father and the boys were busied about commissions and uniforms: and now the knowledge came to her that where great matters of duty and honour are concerned, individual matters drop out. The nation’s honour was the individual’s honour: therefore the individual became as never before, a part of the nation, and forgot his or her own concerns in the greater responsibility. Suffering and trouble might come: but there would always be the help of pride in the knowledge that honour was the only thing that really lasted.

The boys were merry enough as they drove round the Park, and, leaving the carriage, strolled through Kensington Gardens. Peter Pan’s statue looked at them from its green background; and Norah found a quaint hint of Wally in the carved face of the boy “who wouldn’t grow up.” Children in woollen coats and long gaiters were sailing boats on the Round Pond; Jim rescued an adventurous cutter which had gone too far, to the loudly expressed despair of its owner, an intrepid navigator of four. But the ordinary Park games of the children were almost deserted, for there was a daily game of absorbing interest now—soldiers to watch, who manœuvred and drilled and marched, until there were few Park children who did not know half the drill themselves. Small boys drew themselves up and saluted Jim and Wally smartly—to the embarrassment of those yet unfledged warriors: even babies in perambulators crowed at the sight of the uniforms and the cheery sound of bands playing the men back to barracks.

They came upon one ridiculous knot of street urchins—ragged youngsters who had manufactured caps and belts and putties out of yellow paper, and were marching in excellent order under their leader, a proud lad with a wooden sword. They halted, and engaged an imaginary enemy vigorously; some falling gloriously on the field of battle, the others routing the foe with great slaughter, and finally carrying off the wounded. Jim gave them sixpence, which the captain accepted with the gravity with which a soldier may receive the V.C.

There were other people in the Gardens—women in mourning, and some who wore only an armlet of black or purple. They were sad-faced women; and yet they bore themselves proudly, and their look was high as it dwelt upon the uniformed lads who passed them. It was not possible to see them, and not to know what their proud thoughts were, and what their grief. Men looked at them reverently—women who had given up their dear ones to Empire and were steadfast and brave in the memories that were all they had left.

The afternoon darkened, and a chilly wind began to ruffle the surface of the Round Pond and to fill the sails of the tiny yachts. Mr. Linton hurried Norah to the shelter of the carriage, and they drove back to the hotel, through the roaring traffic of Oxford Street.

“Did you ever see such a jam?” Wally ejaculated. They were halted in a block near Oxford Circus; ahead of them dozens of motor-’buses, around them taxi-cabs, carriages, and huge carts; and all fitted into the smallest available spaces, like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. In front of all a policeman held a mighty, white-gloved hand, huge and compelling. Presently he lowered it, and the packed vehicles began to move across the open space of the Circus, while the released body of foot-passengers streamed over like a swarm of ants.

“You know,” said Jim, looking with admiring reverence at the policeman, “a few of those chaps would be very useful at the Front, in case of a rout among our fellows. They would only have to hold up that immense white hand and the flight would stop like a shot!”