CHAPTER XVIII
Thus it happened that when war broke out I was deep in the wilderness. For more than a month I had had no contact with the outside world, not a letter, not a newspaper. I had escaped from New York without leaving an address, since Cantyre was absent. I had meant to write to him to have my letters forwarded, but I never had. Could I have guessed that war was to begin and to last so long I might have acted differently; but the name of Gavrilo Prinzip was still meaningless.
All sportsmen in my part of Canada know Jack Hiller’s, just as frequenters of the Adirondacks know Paul Smith’s. From Jack Hiller’s we struck farther in, to the rude camp where I had spent many a happy holiday when I was a lad. Two guides, an Indian and a half-breed, did the heavy work; and some long-forgotten, atavistic sporting strain in Lovey allowed him, groaningly and discontentedly, to enjoy himself.
But if I expected to find peace I saw I was mistaken. The distance I had put between myself and the house dominating Long Island Sound was only geographical. In spirit I was always back on that veranda, living through again the minutes of the long waiting. So the solitude was no solitude for me. And then one day the half-breed’s canoe shot over the waters of the lake, bringing supplies from Jack Hiller’s, with the news that the world had gone to war.
I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of men and women there are to whom the war came as a blessed opportunity to get away from uselessness or heartache. Stranded, purposeless, spiritless, futile, tired, empty, with something broken in the life or seemingly at an end, they suddenly found themselves called on to put forth energies they never knew they had, to meet needs they had never heard of.
“Son of man, can these dry bones live?” one might have been asking oneself a few years previously; and all at once there were multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision, energized into newness of being. Among them I was only one humble, stupid individual; but the summons was like that which came to the dust when it was bidden to be Adam and a man.
I have no intention of telling you in detail what happened to me between that August morning in 1914 and the day I stepped on board the boat at Liverpool more than two years later. There is no need. You know the outlines of that tale already. My case hardly differed externally from any other of the millions of cases you have heard about. The machine of war does not vary in its working much more than any other machine, except for the drama played in each man’s soul.
And of that I can say nothing. I don’t know why—but I cannot. Day and night I think of what I saw and heard and did in those two years, but some other language must be coined before I can begin to speak of it.
In this I am not singular; it is a rule to which I know few, if any, exceptions. I have heard returned soldiers on the lecture platform, telling part of the truth, and nothing but the truth, but never the whole truth nor the most vital truth. I have talked with some of themwhen the lectures were over, and a flare in the eye has said, “This is for public consumption; but you and I know that the realities are not to be put into words.”
One little incident I must give you, however, before I revert to what happened on the boat.
Having in that early August made my way to Ottawa with Lovey, and decided that I must respond at once to the country’s call, I expected a struggle with him, or something bitter in the way of protest. But in this I was mistaken. He, too, had been thinking the matter over, and, hard as it would be for him to see me do it, that quiet valor which practically no Englishman is without raised him at once to the level of his part.
“All right, Slim. It’s yer dooty to go, and mine to give ye up. We won’t say no more about that.”
“Thanks, Lovey, for making it so easy for me. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. Now there’s only one thing—”
“If it’s about me goin’ straight, sonny, while ye’re away, I’ll swear to God not to look so much as on the same side o’ the street as a drop o’ liquor till He brings ye back to me.”
“Then I believe He will bring me back, old fellow.”
“Sure He’ll bring ye back. Ye’ll be ’ome before Christmas; and, Slim, if it isn’t goin’ to cost ye too much money, won’t ye ’old on to them rooms so as I can keep our little place together, like, and ’ave it all clean and nice for you—?”
Having consented to this, I was able to make further provision for the old man when Cantyre joined me for a day or two in Montreal to bid me good-by. Lovey’s heroism was the sort of thing to draw out Cantyre’s sentimental vein of approval.
“I’ll take him and look after him, Frank. He’ll valet me till you come back. I’ve always wanted a man to do that sort of thing, and only haven’t had one because I thought it would look like putting on side. But now that he drops down to me out of heaven, as you might say, I’ll take him as a souvenir of you.”