The First Canadians in France
It is just as well we cannot look into the future. We walk blindfolded, clinging to the hand of Hope, and trust to her for kindly guidance. None of us at that moment guessed how soon we were to "hear" from those brave men.
Later, when we were about to start for home, they all came out to the car to say au revoir.
"It's a good expression – 'au revoir,'" Captain Stewart cried, as we were parting; "much better than 'Good-bye.'"
"Take care of yourselves," we cried, "but don't forget if you need us, we are waiting!"
"We'll remember," Stewart returned, "for I have a premonition I'll not be killed in this war."
He waved his hand as we left, and when we looked back the little group, whom we were never to see together again, waved their hands in a last farewell.
After about an hour's run we saw in the distance, set like a jewel of the Tyrolese Alps, the pretty town of Cassel, near which our own Canadian boys were shortly to be quartered. It was about twenty miles in a direct line from the trenches, and soon after our visit the long-range German guns dropped their tremendous shells on its outskirts.
When we reached the hospital a cablegram was waiting for the colonel. He tore it open hastily, fearing bad news from home. As he read its contents his mouth expanded in a broad grin, and he passed it silently to us. We read, and Reggy, looking over Jack's shoulder, had the grace to blush as he too saw his mother's message:
"Greatly worried about my son. No word from him for weeks. He was troubled with insomnia at home. Does he sleep better now? Cable my expense."
And the colonel sat down and forthwith wrote this soothing reply:
"Reggy splendid. Awake only at meal hours. Don't worry!"
Late one night, about a week after our visit to the firing line, we were at the railway yard assisting in the unloading of a train of wounded. About three hundred and fifty had arrived, and we were transporting them rapidly to the hospital. The Medical Officer commanding the train approached me and said:
"I have one car filled with wounded officers, and nearly all are stretcher cases. Will you come and see them?"
We walked down the line of cars and, mounting the steps, entered the officers' coach. We passed between the cots, and chatted with each officer in turn; they seemed quite cheery and bright. But one, who had pulled the blankets high about his neck, and whose face was partly covered with a sleeping-cap, looked very ill indeed. Unlike the others, he didn't smile as we approached, but looked up without interest. His face was white and he took no notice of his surroundings. I asked him how he felt. He answered slowly and in a weak voice:
"I'm all in, I guess – don't trouble about me."
Something in the voice and the jerky manner of speech seemed familiar. I looked at him more keenly.
"Stewart!" I exclaimed with involuntary dismay. "Good Lord, it's Charley Stewart!"
"Oh, is that you, Major?" he said, with a faint show of interest. "I've come to call, you see, sooner than I expected. It'll be a short visit," he continued grimly. "Short trip and a dull one."
"Surely it's not as bad as that," I said, as encouragingly as I could, but feeling very sick at heart as I looked down at his pale face.
"Hole through the stomach," he replied weakly. "Bad enough for a start."
"We'll take you up to the hospital – I'm sure we can fix you up all right," I said, with as much assurance as I could assume.
"Take me wherever you like," he replied dully; "it won't be for long."
I assisted in getting him into an ambulance, and cautioned the driver to go carefully, and after seeing the others safely transferred, sprang into a motor and followed. Imagine my surprise and chagrin when I reached the hospital to find that he had not arrived, and after due enquiry discovered that he had been taken, through some misunderstanding on the part of the ambulance driver, to Lady Danby's hospital. We concluded it would be unsafe to move him again that night, and after 'phoning the commanding officer to give him his very best attention, proceeded with the urgent work of caring for the hundreds of others who had already arrived.
In the meantime Captain Stewart was carried through the imposing portal of his new abode. As the stretcher was deposited with a slight jar upon the floor in the centre of a great hall, he opened his eyes and stared in wonder, first at the vaulted roof, then at the magnificent paintings on the walls, the stage at the far end of the hall, and last, but by no means least, at Lady Danby's beautiful face as she leaned over him to assist him. Her golden hair, her big blue eyes and flushed cheeks, and her graceful figure were too much even for a man half dead. He gave one more helpless glance at the stage, then his gaze returned to this vision, and, closing his eyes in a sort of drowsy ecstasy, murmured:
"Where's George Cohan and the chorus?"
"What does he say?" asked Lady Danby in surprise.
"He takes this for a theatre, and is asking where the chorus girls are," a sprightly nurse volunteered, with keen appreciation, and not a little amused at the shocked expression on Lady Danby's face.
"Dear me," she exclaimed, "it must be one of those dreadful Canadians!"
"I'm afraid he's not quite himself at present, your ladyship," the nurse protested, scarcely able to repress a smile.
Stewart opened his eyes once more and remarked coolly as Lady Danby hastened to another patient: "No – not quite all there – part shot away, excuse me." He then closed his eyes again and lay still until the orderlies removed him to his bed.
The Medical Officer came to examine him, and the nurse cut away the dressings from his side. He inspected the wound very carefully and finally said:
"Rifle bullet wound through the lower lobe of left lung. It might have been worse."
"How long do you think I have to live?" Stewart enquired, with some anxiety.
"To live?" cried the surgeon, with a laugh. "About thirty or forty years, with luck."
"What!" shouted Stewart, as he half sat up in bed with a quick jerk. "Do you mean to tell me I have the ghost of a chance?"
"You'll have a splendid chance if you keep quiet and don't shout like that. You'd better lie down again," the surgeon commanded, not unkindly.
"But, good Lord," Stewart protested animatedly, "here I've been trying to die for three days, – every one encouraged me to do it; and after passing through four surgeons' hands, you're the first to tell me I have a chance. It's wonderful. Now I will live – I've made up my mind."
"Who said you would die?"
"First the Chaplain at the Field Ambulance where they carried me in – more dead than alive. He came and shook his head over me. He was a good chap and meant well, I'm sure – he looked very dismal. I asked him if I would die, and he answered pityingly: 'A man shot through the stomach can't live, my poor fellow. Shall I pray for you?' I told him to go as far as he liked – he got on his knees and prayed like the deuce."
"But you said you were wounded three days ago," the surgeon remarked. "What kept you so long from reaching here?"
"I lay one whole day in front of the trench where I was wounded. The stretcher-bearers, against my wishes, came out to bring me in – just as the man at my head stooped down they shot him through the brain. I heard the bullet go 'chuck,' – he fell stone dead across me. I ordered the others back at once – that they must leave me until night. They refused to go at first, but I commanded them again to get back – at last when they saw I was determined, they went. Poor chaps! I know they felt worse at leaving me than as if they had been shot down."
During this conversation the surgeon had dressed the wound, and now, admonishing his patient that he must not talk any more, left him for the night. In the morning Lady Danby came to his cot and marvelled at his bright face and cheery smile.
"You're feeling better this morning, I see," she remarked brightly.
"Much the better for seeing you, madam," Stewart returned, with his customary chivalry; "and one does recover rapidly with such excellent nursing and care."
"I'm afraid we're going to lose you to-day," she replied, with a tinge of regret in her tone. "The Canadians insist on claiming you as their own, and I suppose we must let you go."
"I must admit," he returned, "that I am sorry to leave such congenial company – come and see me sometimes, won't you, please?"
Lady Danby smiled. "When I first saw you last night, I thought I shouldn't care to see you again – but you aren't really quite as dreadful as I thought. Some day soon I'll run in to see how you are getting on."
A few hours later, when Stewart was safely ensconced in our hospital, he observed reminiscently: "I'm awfully glad to be among old friends once more – but those English hospitals are not without their attractions!"
CHAPTER XVI
He was a mere boy, scarce nineteen years of age, a sub-lieutenant in the Territorials, and a medallist in philosophy from Oxford.
Who would have guessed that this frail, delicate-looking Welsh youth with the fair hair and grey eyes was gifted with an intellect of which all England might be proud? He might have passed unnoticed had one not spoken to him, and, having spoken, had seen the handsome face light up with fascinating vivacity as he replied.
One cannot attempt to recollect or depict the mystic workings of his marvellous mind; for, once aroused, gems of thought, clear cut and bright as scintillations from a star, dropped from his lips and left his hearers steeped in wonder.
It was then, you may well believe, no ordinary youth who walked into the hospital, with mud-covered clothes and his kit still strapped to his back. He dropped the kit upon the floor of his room, and, sinking wearily into a chair, brushed back with his hand the unruly hair which sought to droop over his high forehead.
His commanding officer, who had accompanied him to the hospital, had taken me aside, before I entered the room, and had told me privately his views about the boy.
"You look tired," I remarked, as I noted the weary droop of the head.
He smiled quickly as he looked up and said: "Done up, I think. Those six months in Malta were a bit too much for me."
"But you have been home before coming to France, have you not?" I asked him.
"Home!" he cried in surprise. "No such luck! We had expected a week or two in England after our return, but it's off. There were four thousand of us in Malta, but we're all here now, at Etaples, and liable to be sent to the trenches any moment. When I stood on the cliffs at Wimereux yesterday and saw the dear old shores across the Channel – " He stopped suddenly, overpowered by some strong emotion. "I'd be a better soldier farther off. Between homesickness and the pain in my chest, I'm about all in."
He did look tired and faint, and even the pink rays of the setting sun failed to tint the pallor of his cheeks. I told him I would send the orderly to help him undress and that he must get into bed at once.
When I returned shortly and examined his chest, I found that he was suffering from a touch of pleurisy; there were, too, traces of more serious trouble in the lungs.
"What do you think of me, Major?" he enquired with a quizzical smile, when I had completed the examination. "Anything interesting inside?"
"Interesting enough to call for a long rest," I replied. "We'll have to keep you here a while and later send you home to England."
"My O.C., who by the way is my uncle too, and a medical man, insisted on my coming here," he remarked. "He says I'm not strong enough for trench life. But the old boy – bless his heart! – loves me like a son, and I'm morally certain he wants to pack me off for fear I'll get killed. I simply can't go home, you know, until I've done my bit. It would be jolly weak of me, wouldn't it?"
"You might go for a time," I replied guardedly, "and return later on when you get stronger."
He started to laugh, but a quick stabbing pain in the chest caught him halfway, and he stopped short with a twisted smile as he exclaimed:
"I believe the old chap has been talking to you too! You're all in league to get me out of France."
This was so close to the truth that I could not contradict him, but shook my head in partial negative. His uncle felt, as I too came to feel later, that the loss to the world of such a brilliant mind and one with such potentialities would not be compensated for by the little good its master could accomplish physically in the trenches.
"After all," he argued, "how much poorer would Wales be if I were gone? The hole would soon be filled."
"I can't agree with you," I answered slowly; "your life is more important to others than you think, and you would risk it in a field for which you are not physically fitted. You have overdrawn your brain account at the Bank of Nature, and flesh is paying up. You must go home until the note is settled."
"Sounds rational but horribly mathematical – and I always hated mathematics. Hope I'll be able," he continued mischievously, "to repay the 'interest' you and uncle are taking in me."
"We want you to consider the matter philosophically," I said, "not mathematically."
"That's better," he replied, with his usual bright smile; "philosophy comes more natural to me. True, it savours of Euclid, but I can forgive it that offence; it has so many virtues."
He remained silent a few moments, thinking, and then asked me suddenly: "If I go home, how soon can I get back to France?"
"I hope you won't return here," I replied gravely; "it would be suicidal, and, flattery aside, your life is too valuable to be sacrificed over here."
"Perhaps you are right," he murmured pensively, as though we were discussing a third party whose life interested him only in an impersonal manner, and without exhibiting the slightest self-consciousness or vanity. "It might be better if I stayed at home. I admit," he continued more brightly, "I have a selfish desire to live. I am so young and have seen so little of this great big interesting world and I want so much to know what it all means. Still I would far sooner die than feel myself a slacker or a 'skrimshanker.'"
"No one will mistake you for either," I returned warmly. "Your lungs are not strong, and I fear if you remain here in the cold and wet you will not recover."
"There's so much in life to live for," he cried animatedly; "besides, I'm a little dubious of the after world. For a little longer I should like to learn what tangible pleasures this world offers, rather than tempt the unsubstantiated promises of a future state."
"But surely you believe in an after life?" I enquired, in some surprise.
"It's difficult to believe what one cannot prove," he returned evasively.
"But," I ventured argumentatively, "I can imagine that if the total matter in the universe is indestructible and cannot be added to or taken from, the soul too is indestructible – it may be changed, but cannot be destroyed."
"Ah!" he exclaimed quickly, "you are assuming the reality of the abstract. Suppose I do not agree with your hypothesis, and deny the existence of the soul! You cannot prove me wrong. Sometimes I fear," he continued more softly, "the soul, or what we conceive to be the soul, is merely the reflection of poor Humanity beating its anxious wings against the horror of extinction."
"Or the shadow of a poor physician scuttling away from the terrors of your philosophy," I laughed. "You iconoclasts would pull our castles-in-the-air about our ears and leave us standing in the ruins."
"I'll build another castle for you," he returned with a queer, sad smile, as though he sympathised with my dilemma.
"But not to-night," I urged, as I arose to go; "you must wait until you are stronger; you have been talking too much already for one so ill, and I must say good night."
It was several days later, and the youthful philosopher was making good progress on the road to recovery, when another young officer, very similar in appearance to our patient, drove up to the door of the hospital in a motor car. He was attended by two senior officers of distinguished appearance and very military bearing, and who showed considerable deference towards their young companion.
Apparently they had come from the front and, as the colonel showed them about the various wards, took the keenest interest in the patients. At last they came to the young Welshman's room. As they entered he turned to look at them, and, dropping his arms, suddenly lay at "attention" in bed.
"Llewellyn, by Jove!" exclaimed the youngest of the trio, as he stepped forward and shook our patient warmly by the hand. "I had no idea you were here. How are you?"
"Much better, thank you, your Royal Highness," said Llewellyn, with his ready smile, "and greatly honoured by your visit, sir."
"I hope it is nothing serious," said the Prince of Wales kindly – for it was he – "you are looking quite bright!"
"It isn't very serious, I believe, sir – a touch of pleurisy, that's all. But the doctors insist on sending me home on account of it. That is my chief grievance."
The young Prince smiled understandingly. It was not so long since he too had unwillingly been detained at home by illness. His blue eyes lit up with a quick sympathy as he remarked:
"I hadn't expected to find an old class-mate here; I hope you will soon be quite well again and able to return to France."
"I shall do my best to get well soon," Llewellyn answered thoughtfully; "but the doctors seem to consider my constitution too delicate for trench life, sir. I have the consolation, though, of knowing that our college is well represented at the front, for of the seventy-five students at Magdalen only five are home, and three of those were physically unfit."
"Isn't that a splendid record!" cried the Prince with enthusiasm. "It makes one feel proud of one's college."
They chatted on various topics for a few moments longer, and then as his Royal Highness turned to go he exclaimed:
"This is a wonderful hospital; a great credit to Canada! I must write father and tell him about it. I consider it one of the finest in France. I am sure you will do well here. Good-bye, dear chap, and the best of good luck to you!"
The kindly and earnest good wishes of his Royal young friend touched Llewellyn deeply, and there was a suspicious trace of moisture in his eyes as he returned:
"Good-bye, sir, and many, many thanks for your kindness in coming to see me."
CHAPTER XVII
The senior major bought a motor car. It was his supreme extravagance. If there were others who frittered away their substance in riotous living, at least the major could not be accused of such frivolity. He had none of the petty vices which eat like a wicked moth into the fabric of one's income. Any vice that got at his income bit it off in large chunks and bolted it before you could say "Jack Robinson." The motor car was the greatest of these. There may be some who do not consider a motor car a vice. The only answer I can give them is that they never saw the major's car. When he first unearthed its skeletal remains in the hospital garage, it bore a remote resemblance to a vehicle. It had part of an engine, four tireless wheels, and places which were meant for seats. A vision of its possibilities immediately arose before his mind's eye, and he could see it, rehabilitated and carefully fed, growing into a "thing of beauty and a joy forever."
Some of the officers argued it was German, because no such thing could have been made by human beings. Others maintained it had been left on the hospital grounds centuries before and the garage had grown up around it. The maker, out of modesty, had omitted to inscribe his name, but it had a number whose hieroglyphics antedated "Bill Stump's Mark." The original owner sacrificed it, from a spirit of patriotism, no doubt, for the paltry sum of three hundred dollars, and in the course of time, with the trifling expenditure of three hundred and fifty more, two mechanics succeeded in getting it started.
That was a memorable day when, with a noise like an asthmatic steam-roller, it came ambling out of the hospital yard, peered around the corner of the fence, and struck off down the road at a clip of three good English miles an hour.
We rushed to the door to see it, and when the smoke of the exhaust cleared a little, there sat the major ensconced in the front seat. There was a beatific smile about his mouth and a gleam of pride in his eye – the pride of possession. He wasn't quite sure what it was he possessed, but it was something which moved, something instinct with life.
"Sounds a bit noisy yet," he murmured confidentially to himself, "but it will loosen up when it gets running a while."
What prophetic sagacity there was in this remark! It did loosen up, and to such good purpose that several parts fell off upon the road. Little by little it got going, and in less than a month you might have heard it almost any bright afternoon, groaning in the garage preparatory to sallying forth upon its quest.
But about this time another event of such importance occurred that the major's car was thrust into the background. We had in our hospital a venerable old sergeant of peripatetic propensities, who had two claims to recognition: first, that he was, and is, the oldest soldier in the Canadian force in France; and secondly – but this was never proved – that he could "lick," according to his own testimony, any man within fifteen years of his age in that part of the world.
Sergeant Plantsfield, our postman and general messenger, travelled into Boulogne and back from once to thrice daily – in other words, inside the year he accomplished a motor trip of sufficient length to encompass the earth. His stock of rumours was inexhaustible, for he developed and launched upon an unappreciative world at least one new tale daily.
Now if there is one thing a soldier loves more than another it's a "rumour"; and the more glaringly absurd, the more readily he will listen to it. So when the worthy old sergeant burst into the hospital with excited eyes, flushed cheeks and cap all awry after his latest trip from Boulogne, the boys crowded round to hear the news.
"They're here! By gosh! They're here at last!" he shouted, as he deposited his overflowing mail bag in the hall and looked triumphantly from one to another of his listeners.
"Who's here," demanded Barker, "the Germans?"
"Germans be blowed!" declared the sergeant with scornful emphasis. "They won't never be here!"
"Put a little pep in it, dad!" said Huxford. "Wot is it?"
The sergeant waited a full minute to give impress to his announcement, and then in a tense whisper ejaculated: "The rest of the Canadians are in France – the whole division's at the front!"
There was a dead silence for a moment, and then a wild cheer went up that shook the hall until the windows rattled.
"Ye ain't stuffin' us again?" Wilson queried anxiously, when the noise had died away. "Ye done it so often afore."
Plantsfield looked at him with withering contempt. That his word – the word of the chief "rumourist" of the unit – should be doubted was almost too much for human endurance.
"I'll stuff you, ye young cub, if ye dare to doubt a man old enough to be yer grandfather," he returned scathingly; and then turning to the others he continued: "I seen the Mechanical Transport near Boulogne and was talkin' to them."
"Oh, I'll bet you wos talkin', all right," Wilson came back vindictively, "if ye got within fifty yards uv 'em."
Plantsfield's garrulity was proverbial. He had been known to buttonhole generals and draw them to one side to whisper a choice bit of scandal in their unwilling ears – his age excusing him from reprimand.
He looked wrathfully at Wilson, but that wily youth kept his rosy cheeks carefully out of arm-shot. Turning back to his more respectful auditors, and for the nonce ignoring the disrespectful one, he pursued:
"The Supply Column on their way to the front saw a German aeroplane over them, forgot discipline in their excitement, jumped down off their waggons and blazed away at it with their rifles."
"Without orders, I'll bet?" exclaimed Jogman, slapping his knee.
"Of course," grinned Plantsfield.