A Minstrel in France

by Sir Harry Lauder

But there is a God—there is! I have seen the stark horror of war. I know, as none can know until he has seen it at close quarters, what a thing war is as it is fought to-day. And I believe as I do believe, and as I shall believe until the end, because I know God's comfort and His grace. I know that my boy is surely waiting for me. In America, now, there are mothers and fathers by the scores of thousands who have bidden their sons good-by; who water their letters from France with their tears—who turn white at the sight of a telegram and tremble at the sudden clamor of a telephone. Ah, I know—I know! I suffered as they are suffering! And I have this to tell them and to beg them. They must believe as I believe—then shall they find the peace and the comfort that I have found.

So it was that there, on the Clyde, John's mother and I came out of the blackness of our first grief. We began to be able to talk to one another. And every day we talked of John. We have never ceased to do that, his mother and I. We never shall. We may not have him with us bodily, but his spirit is never absent. And each day we remember some new thing about him that one of us can call to the other's mind. And it is as if, when we do that, we bring back some part of him out of the void.

Little, trifling memories of when he was a baby, and when he was a boy, growing up! And other memories, of later days. Often and often it was the days that were furthest away that we remembered best of all, and things connected with those days.

But I had small wish to see others. John's mother was enough for me. She and the peace that was coming to me on the Clyde. I could not bear to think of London. I had no plans to make. All that was over. All that part of my life, I thought, had ended with the news of my boy's death. I wanted no more than to stay at home on the Clyde and think of him. My wife and I did not even talk about the future. And no thing was further from all my thoughts than that I should ever step upon a stage again.

What! Go out before an audience and seek to make it laugh? Sing my songs when my heart was broken? I did not decide not to do it. I did not so much as think of it as a thing I had to decide about.

CHAPTER IX

And then one thing and another brought the thought into my mind, so that I had to face it and tell people how I felt about it. There were neighbors, wanting to know when I would be about my work again. That it was that first made me understand that others did not feel as I was feeling.

"They're thinking I'll be going back to work again," I told John's mother. "I canna'!"

She felt as I did. We could not see, either one of us, in our grief, how anyone could think that I could begin again where I had left off.

"I canna'! I will not try!" I told her, again and again. "How can I tak up again with that old mummery? How can I laugh when my heart is breaking, and make others smile when the tears are in my eyes?"