A War Romance

by F. W. Harvey

  Eric had his difficulties. The course of true love, even for Christ, seldom, if ever, ‘runs smooth’. Yet on the side of nobleness enlisted firmly one meets difficulties at pleasant storms, and even disillusion itself carries no terror.

  Eric encountered both and, being human, found the latter less tolerable (though disillusion is in fact but a step nearer Truth – that which unmoved abides the ages!).

  It is difficult for a grown man to go back to schooldays and learn again the things he could so much more easily have learnt then. Yet the difficulties even of Greek vanished before the knowledge that it was a step towards Christ’s badge of service – nay, became a joy. In all his hardships he was (as Willie had said) ‘on the road’.

  When he stepped off it, or seemed to, was in his disillusions.

  There is no doubt that the Varsity that year lost a fine centre forward at soccer, and a fourth wicket bat at cricket who might have saved them against Cambridge. But it was blissfully unconscious of the fact, and so had no cause for tears. College games gave Eric all the recreation he needed for his work. He too was satisfied. He no longer took these things seriously – and had probably never done so. But in talks after matches were over, in the general conversation, in the lectures themselves, he discovered the church of Christ viewed in a light which gave cause for deep reflection, the attitude was general, and (this, the point) was not without reason as a foundation. He took it seriously because he was compelled to.

  ‘You will meet useful people here – the chaps to give you preferment,’ was a phrase which apparently explained his very presence amongst these men – nice fellows. It has never entered his head. They said it was a matter of fact. Then he was led to watch other men who were preparing to take ‘Holy Orders’. He considered their habitual association with men of position, which could be explained onno other ground – their seeking; their flattery of these people with whom no decent man would exchange ‘Good-day’. What answer had he to himself? – to his friends?

  He thought. And he replied – ‘Then do away with the influence of mere wealth – if necessary with all endowment.’ They laughed. ‘Then the funny old C. of E. is finished. The chief bulwark of the country against an onslaught of democracy goes down. We must rediscover St Francis!’

  ‘Christianity is the first and the last defence of democracy!’, he cried. But without contradicting that statement – which was true – they answered that it was not the question. ‘What we are talking about is (what we know) the jolly old C. of E.’

  ‘But does not that Church stand as organised Christianity, both here and the world over?’

  ‘Ask yourself!’ they said. And he was friven to carried out the advice – a very disheartening process! (Why disheartening? Reader – ask yourself!).

  Again and again he read, pondered, and prayed over, the Sermon on the Mount. Those were Christ’s words. He viewed them as no more code of morality, but as of One Who lived – Who was present with all. He prayed to Him.

  Quite casually, someone then told him of the reply made by Bernard Shaw to a carpenter who wrote saying he had been ‘Converted to Socialism’. ‘What shall I do?’ he had asked. ‘Make yourself the best carpenter in the village’ was Shaw’s reported reply.

  ‘Then,’ said Eric, ‘the children of this world verily are wiser than the children of light. What concern is the Church of England and its doings to me? Let me only make myself ‘the best carpenter in the village!’. And he worked harder than ever.

  Yet joyfully to join an army upholds, and in this trouble he was again and again driven into agreement with a pronouncement of what laughing philosopher of our age – G.K. Chesterton – to the effect that Christianity had not (as many appeared to think) failed in its trial; but that it had been tried, and found difficult, and abandoned – this not only by the people, but by the clergy themselves.

  ‘The R.C.s may, as some think and others deny, hold fast to superstitions’ said a scoffing footballer to him one evening, ‘but they command this respect, that they hold to the only church which permits a vow of poverty, and actually enforce a celibacy which results in the only effective missionary work in the world.’

  ‘But did Christ?’ asked Eric.

  ‘I haven’t the least idea, but at all events they give up something to their faith,’ was the reply of that very average man, and he was provoked to add – ‘The patron Saint of these people is said to be Peter. He was crucified for his God though he trice denied him. Who is yours?’

  ‘I don’t think we have anyone but Christ.’

  ‘You have though, if any of us are to believe our ears – Thomas.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Only that you may believe just what you like, and just as much of that as you bally well want to. Of course you mustn’t do everything,’ he concluded slyly.

  Eric tried to argue that dogmas were sign-posts to point the way, rather than brick walls to keep people in, but he did not convince even himself. He knew that to take a thing with both hands you must let fall whatever is in them. ‘But does that also apply to one’s head?’ he asked himself – and replied most crushingly, ‘that depends on what is inside,’ adding ‘Yes, your head of all things must be swept clean of fashionable rubbish’ …

  As so he turned again to the Sermon on the Mount, and was comforted, but also perplexed. ‘Was it true that Christ by that meant the teaching of non-resistance to evil which Tolstoy had expounded?’ The war had not then come, but there was sufficient talk of its likelihood (though that had been going on for years) to make the decision of importance to Christians.

  ‘O Lord Jesus,’ he prayed, ‘I love you and I want to serve you faithfully and truly at any cost, at any price of suffering and endeavour. Then show me how! Let me understand your commands!’

  That prayer was answered only by the sudden news of war’s proclamation, which fell like a clap of thunder upon millions of ears.

  CHAPTER VI

  ‘Had not the fortune of the commonwealth

  Come Pallas-like to every Roman thought.’

  It happened in the long vacation. Eric was keeping himself fit – running up body and mind – by work in the hay-fields. Those Gloucestershire hayfields were in fact his last peace-memory of England. How fittingly so! At more the continuing corncrake rattle of the mowing machine began with the first song of the birds, before sunrise – for grass should be cut with the dew upon it. A scraping of stone against ringing metal told of scythes being sharpened to mow the corners and nooks of the meadow and such uneven patches, banks, and ‘grips’ as should be found inaccessible to the long and level blade of the machine pulled round and round in an ever narrowing circle by two horses who never became giddy.

  Round and round they went like horses in a dream driven by Sleep himself in the shape of an ancient and bearded man by name of Rehoboam. Nodding wise patient faces, went the three together.

  The swathed grass was turned and tedded to dry and sweeten in sun and wind. It was cocked to keep out the dense dew, and, having ripened to hay, carried to rick yards beyond reach of winter flood on waggons whose rumble was mixed with song and hoof clatter as they swayed through quarter of a mile of rutted lane whose leafage was only cleared of hay-whisps when the autumn gales bared all branches thereabouts.

  On August the 5th they were pitching the last loads of that field called Cornham which was one of the great Severn meadows once owned by Eric’s father (and still by his mother) but now let to a neighbouring farmer and cider maker – John Helps, one of whose workmen (being a reservist) had received his papers and departed mysteriously a day or two before. It was a soldier’s place which Eric had volunteered to take in the hayfield, and the fact revived in his head all those old arguments about ‘non resistance to evil’ which had recently been born in him in his pondering upon the Sermon on the Mount.

  Ned Holly – he knew him well – had gone away. By this time who knows but that he was not already in Flanders risking stolidly all he had to keep back t
he German hordes whose atrocities were filling every newspaper in the land. Holly, that simple country man … It was queer! For two days Eric had considered it as he kept his place in a rhythmic line of rakers, and now pitching hay to the loaders he was worked to a feverish excitement which caused his fellow workers to marvel at such industry, for they could not keep pace with it. The dream-like and regular rhythm, ‘without haste, without rest’, which is the work of a skilled haymaker, had quickened monstrously to an exhausting display of effort which yet did not tire him – as all prophesied was bound to happen in an hour or two.

  ‘Tolstoy may or may not be right about the message of the Sermon on the Mount, but he is undoubtedly right in saying that every man should each day perform some body-labour,’ grunted Eric, heaving up an enormous hay-cock.

  ‘Steady there, maaster Ereich: Quiet does it!’ remonstrated a shiny loader. Sweat was dripping like rain from Eric’s face, which had a queer look as though the eyes were watching things more real than that hay-field … More real than a Gloucestershire hayfield!

  ‘Ned Holly may now be killed!’ he thought. Evening mists turned a sinking sun to the colour of blood. It seemed to Eric like the blood of a guideless man and of his master Christ. ‘Ned was not a religious man, but religious or not, the cause was noble for which he risked dear life; perhaps already has laid it down!’ Eric balanced up another haycock, forgetting to turn the prongs of his pike inward to the waggon so that it might be slipped off.

  ‘Tother way!’ cried down a loader.

  Eric twisted his hill of hay till it lay correctly.

  ‘How can a man be noble,’ he asked, ‘save by taking the path of Gethsemane? Tragedy is the crown set upon all human nobility. It has always been so.’

  And again, as he lifted his load of lightness – purging his spirit – ‘If this is the war to end war –.’

  And again, ‘War, barbarous bloody war – I hate it! but for that reason, must I hand over all sacred things to desecration of brutes and bullies?’

  The voices of his work-mates uttered England. That old countryman to whom he was pitching hay – badly enough he knew –, was in humour, in patience, something to be kept – as he was. The life he had led was hard but sweet – good. (Why people in towns ever enlisted he never truly knew.) That life must be preserved! …

  And then a soldier entered the field. He walked up against the sun through the last hay-cocks. And knowing him, even in khaki, ‘Willie!’ cried Eric, and dropped his pike under the horse’s hooves.

  ‘Where have you been? We haven’t heard from you for a month,’ he cried, and kissed him.

  ‘That,’ said Willie, dropping a mock salute as he disengaged himself, ‘is a long story. I will keep it till we get home to sleep again in the same bedroom. But it will be only once more, for I am now (pointing to his uniform) a “tommy” of His Majesty’s Expeditionary Force.’

  ‘It will be more than once that we shall sleep together again,’ said Eric, ‘though God knows where we may sleep hereafter! But take off your coat off – well, tunic,’ he added at Willie’s correction, ‘and go with a memory of England, and what she is, in your mind – take my pike!’

  Willie took it (having greeted the men of his country) and worked for dear life – yet not so unbearably fast as had his brother. And Eric threw himself down on a haycock, and watched. Tears were in his eyes.

  The last load was piled. Trampling with song and a jingle of harness the horses brought it home.

  ‘Cover ’un wi’ a tarpaulin, and lit un bide!’

  Tots of cider were drained, hands shaken, and the brothers walked home together. ‘How’s Mother?’ asked Willie.

  ‘She’ll be glad to see you,’ said Eric, ‘even in that’ – pointing to his uniform.

  ‘And I her.’

  ‘She – we – were getting anxious.’

  ‘I was afraid you would be.’

  ‘But where –’.

  ‘I’ll tell you later – tonight. I am safe now anyway. The war has saved me!’ cried this surprising brother.

  They had crossed the home barton and were approaching the farm-house. Familiar sounds, smells and shadows brought tears to Willie’s eyes.

  ‘You haven’t seen her?’ asked Eric.

  ‘No, old Tom Jones (I met him) told me you were working in Cornham, and I came straight there. I was ashamed (why I don’t know) to see her … Afraid … I didn’t know what she would say, or rather what I should say, and how she would look.

  ‘She loves you,’ said Eric. ‘Let me go on first, and say you’ve come.’ He stepped quickly on, and Willie followed slowly up the mossed garden path between roses and dark dahlia threaded like two seasons upon a twisted line of faint forget-me-not and love-in-the-mist.

  Ere either had reached the door, Mrs. Harvey came out carrying something in her hands. She was wearing her bonnet and outdoor cape. She stood on the first of those three steps which are sheltered with trellised jassimine and passion flower. Willie watched her blinking to recognise him. ‘Hullo, Mother!’ he cried.

  ‘Darling! It is you. I felt it was – only those clothes. My poor eyes wouldn’t recognise you. Well, if they make you happy … You look happy. Kiss me! Now take care’ (as Willie embraced her), ‘these eggs are for a poor dying woman’

  ‘What can a dying woman want with eggs, darling?’

  ‘Ah, poor soul, she can’t die.’

  ‘Then it’s Nanny Rivers!’ cried he, thinking of that wrinkled face and rounded hoop-like body which had been the terror of children and even of grown-ups who were timid or dealt in superstition. ‘The witch!’ they cried from afar. She, ten years ago, had taken to her bed to die at seventy years – the allotted span. But she could not. People said that neither the devil or the angels would have her. She had lived an evil youth (the more appalling since none could remember it!) and every midnight a ghostly hand put back the fingers of the clock – a tall, black and grim ‘grandfather’ into which a child might creep, or be shut away – so that it never chimed, but told always the same day, standing at the foot of her bed, like an evil presence.

  ‘The witch,’ laughed Willie.

  ‘Only a poor, old woman – as I shall be some day – with a mind that rambles back and back.’

  ‘Don’t talk so, dearest!’

  ‘Come with me then!’ Willie took from her hand the basked of eggs! ‘It was cruel of you not to write,’ she began, ‘but –’.

  ‘I know that,’ said Willie, but –’. (Eric had gone forward to the house.)

  ‘There is no need of ‘buts’, darling,’ said Mrs. Harvey to her son as they walked together, ‘we love one another … Only I am very sorry that you have been unhappy, and I am glad that you are happy again, even if that means that I must lose you.’ Willie choked.

  ‘I suppose I must lose Eric, too?’ she enquired. Willie nodded, and by this time they had arrived at the cottage. They tapped on the door.

  ‘Come in, then!’ called a voice in something between a welcome and a curse. The old yellow face seemed to brighten a little on recognition of her visitors. A frightened little girl who had come in to look after the old woman arose and offered her chair to Mrs. Harvey. Willie remained standing. The propped-up, bedridden woman gazed piercingly upon both on them. ‘Bible,’ she said. Recognition vanished from her eyes.

  ‘Eric usually comes with me and reads bits out of the Gospels’ whispered her mother to Willie. She put a bottle of brandy and the eggs on a shelf in a corner of the room, and sat down.

  ‘She says she have got noises in her head,’ said the little girl.

  ‘Such drummerdery noises!’ cried a sepulchral voice from the bed. Those words were all she said during their visit save for a disconnected word or two muttered to herself. ‘Summer,’ and ‘Summer’ again; and then in a voice of fear, ‘water-floods!’ and ‘fires! fires!’.

  ‘Let not your heart be troubled’ … Willie heard his mother reading … ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions’ … and again
, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’ The tall clock ticked on at the bed-foot.

  Then they said goodbye to the frightened little girl, and departed.

  ‘So I must lose both my babies. When do you go?’

  ‘Not out of England for a good long time I expect,’ answered Willie, ‘but my leave is up tomorrow – Sunday evening.’

  ‘So soon.’

  ‘I think Eric means to come with me.’

  ‘I am not surprised. He is a good boy. I have heard him in the room next praying loud like Christ in the garden these last three nights. This terrible war is on his mind heavy and heavy. He couldn’t tell what was the right thing to do. Now he will be less unhappy – with a decision come to.’

  ‘You are much more happy than you have been for a year,’ she said as they re-entered the garden.

  ‘That is true, Mother.’

  ‘I can see it in your face, and I am glad; but the misery that can be made glad by such a thing as war frightens me more than any death dangering the body of my son’ – she cried clasping his hand – ‘my first little son!’

  Now she was weeping.

  ‘Dear, dear Mother – don’t cry! I am happy – in everything but the thought of leaving you here alone. I have leapt into chances to live as a man should, to risk life finely for all I love: instead of living like a beetle … a snake … a crawling poison’

  ‘Dearest, don’t! how unhappy you must have been!’

  ‘Yes, I am sick,’ he cried, ‘of bread at the world’s price. I will eat it at God’s price – joyfully – though I eat nothing after. The hope fills me with glorious happiness.’

  ‘Then, if my sons are happy, I have no excuse to be unhappy. They are all I have left, God save them!’ spoke his mother as they entered the house.

  CHAPTER VII

  Of his life at Eccleton Willie would not speak, but after supper had been cleared away, he sketched, with the help of tobacco, what kind of life had befallen him since his hurried departure from it.