Tell England Part 65

"'All men and all nations are the better for remembering that once they were holy. England's past, then, is holy; her future is unwritten. But Idealism is mightily abroad among those who shall make the England that is to be. And all that remains for the preacher to say is this: Nothing but Christianity will ever gather in that harvest of spiritual ideals which alone will make good our prodigal outlay; for, after all, we have sown the world with the broken dreams and spilled ambitions of a generation of schoolboys....

"'All you who have suffered, you fathers and mothers, remember this: only by turning your sufferings into the seeds of G.o.d-like things will you make their memory beautiful.'

"Oh, Rupert, I was elevated by all he said, and I prayed that you might go on with willingness and resolution to the end, and that I might face the last few weeks of the war with courage. I thought of the remark of your old Ches.h.i.+re Colonel, that, instead of wandering during these years among the undistinguished valleys, you have been transferred straight to the mountain-tops. Do you remember how I used to call you 'my mountain boy'? The name has a new meaning now. Even if you are in danger at this time, I try to be proud. I think of you as on white heights."

--3

"Only by turning your sufferings into the seeds of G.o.d-like things will you make their memory beautiful."

As I copied just now those last words of Monty's sermon, I laid down my pencil on the dug-out floor with a little start. As in a flashlight I saw their truth. They created in my mind the picture of that aegean evening, when Monty turned the moment of Doe's death, which so nearly brought me discouragement and debas.e.m.e.nt, into an enn.o.bling memory. And I foresaw him going about healing the sores of this war with the same priestly hand.

Yes, there are reasons why such wistful visions should haunt me now.

Everything this evening has gone to produce a certain exaltation in me. First, there has been the bombardment, with its thought of going over the top to-morrow. Then comes my mother's glowing letter, which somehow has held me enthralled, so that I find sentences from it reiterating themselves in my mind, just as they did in the old schooldays. And lastly, there has been the joyous sense of having completed my book, on which for three years I have laboured lovingly in tent, and billet, and trench.

I meant to close it on the last echo of Monty's sermon. But the fascination was on me, and I felt I wanted to go on writing. I had so lost myself in the old scenes of schoolroom, playing-fields, starlit decks, and Grecian battlegrounds, which I had been describing, that I actually ceased to hear the bombardment. And the atmosphere of the well-loved places and well-loved friends remained all about me. It was the atmosphere that old portraits and fading old letters throw around those who turn them over. So I took up again my pencil and my paper.

I thought I would add a paragraph or two, in case I go down in the morning. If I come through all right, I shall wipe these paragraphs out. Meanwhile, in these final hours of wonder and waiting, it is happiness to write on.

I fear that, as I write, I may appear to dogmatise, for I am still only twenty-two. But I must speak while I can.

What silly things one thinks in an evening of suspense and twilight like this! One minute I feel I want to be alive this time to-morrow, in order that my book, which has become everything to me, may have a happy ending. Pennybet fell at Neuve Chapelle, Doe at Cape h.e.l.les, and one ought to be left alive to save the face of the tale. Still, if these paragraphs stand and I fall, it will at least be a _true_ ending--true to things as they were for the generation in which we were born.

And the glorious bombardment a.s.serts itself through my thoughts, and with a thrill I conceive of it--for we would-be authors are persons obsessed by one idea--as an effort of the people of Britain to make it possible for me to come through unhurt and save my story. I feel I want to thank them.

Another minute I try to recapture that moment of ideal patriotism which I touched on the deck of the _Rangoon_. I see a death in No Man's Land to-morrow as a wonderful thing. There you stand exactly between two nations. All Britain with her might is behind your back, reaching down to her frontier, which is the trench whence you have just leapt. All Germany with her might is before your face. Perhaps it is not ill to die standing like that in front of your nation.

I cannot bear to think of my mother's pain, if to-morrow claims me.

But I leave her this book, into which I seem to have poured my life.

It is part of myself. No, it _is_ myself--and I shall only return her what is her own.

Oh, but if I go down, I want to ask you not to think it anything but a happy ending. It will be happy, because victory came to the nation, and that is more important than the life of any individual.

Listen to that bombardment outside, which is increasing, if possible, as the darkness gathers--well, it is one of the last before the extraordinary Sabbath-silence, which will be the Allies'

Peace.

And, if these pages can be regarded as my spiritual history, they will have a happy ending, too. This is why.

In the Mediterranean on a summer day, I learned that I was to pursue beauty like the Holy Grail. And I see it now in everything. I know that, just as there is far more beauty in nature than ugliness, so there is more goodness in humanity than evil. There is more happiness in life than pain. Yes, there is. As Monty used to say, we are given now and then moments of surpa.s.sing joy which outweigh decades of grief, I think I knew such a moment when I won the swimming cup for Bramhall. And I remember my mother whispering one night: "If all the rest of my life, Rupert, were to be sorrow, the last nineteen years of you have made it so well worth living."

Happiness wins hands down. Take any hundred of us out here, and for ten who are miserable you will find ninety who are lively and laughing. Life is good--else why should we cling to it as we do?--oh, yes, we surely do, especially when the chances are all against us. Life is good, and youth is good. I have had twenty glorious years.

I may be whimsical to-night, but I feel that the old Colonel was right when he saw nothing unlovely in Penny's death; and that Monty was right when he said that Doe had done a perfect thing at the last, and so grasped the Grail. And I have the strange idea that very likely I, too, shall find beauty in the morning.

THE END