Читать книгу Harper of Heaven - Robert William Service - Страница 12

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One morning I noticed on my leg a tiny black speck that was sore to the touch. I thought it was an insect bite, but next day it tumefied and was distinctly painful. Then it swelled to such an extent I showed it to our Chief. “A boil,” he said. “You’ve been working too hard. Lay off and rest a bit. You’re badly run down.” And indeed I felt so slack and stale I was glad of the respite. So I went back to the Rabbit Hutch for a while.

I thought when my boil would be cured that would be the end; but immediately it healed another began. To make a long story short I was afflicted with a plague of boils that would have taxed the patience of Job himself. In the course of eight months I had ninety-nine of the devilish things. I was only sorry I had not one more for I have a preference for round figures. Sometimes I had three all at once, sometimes just a super-one. I felt impotent to prevent them and lived in a state of nervous tension, wondering where the next would break out. I was tired and weak and often sick at the stomach. Quite unfit for my war work, this worried me more than all my other miseries.

I went down to Dream Haven and there, with sea bathing and rest, I became more cheerful. But the boils continued, so I consulted the most famous doctor in the country, showing him a hole in my leg like an open sore. “It’s a bad one,” he said, “but I can do nothing for you. I’ve just had a series of over fifty. How can I cure you if I could not cure myself?” However, I was encouraged by the fact that if he had got over them I would too. So I lived chiefly on fruit, and spent much time wallowing in the warm sea.... Then, just as suddenly as they had come, my boils disappeared. The last of them healed and I waited in vain for its successor. It was really incredible that there should be no more, for I had the habit of them and life seemed lonely without them. It was then the Chief wrote, telling me they had need of me at the Front. But alas! something else had happened and I was obliged to disappoint him....

It was a resplendent morning. Joy reigned everywhere, but I brooded fitfully on a rock by the shore. As I thought of the boys out there doing their bit I felt so futile. Then suddenly the idea came to me to write about it all. I had not kept a diary, and I had not made a note, but those long months at the Front were terribly vivid in my mind and I could put my memories into words.... Why not into verse? At the idea I felt strangely lyrical. I was due again to do a book of rhyme and here was my material hot to hand. As I had grabbed my stuff from the Yukon now I would make the War my meat.

All at once I felt excited, even exhilarated. I forgot my misery and in a mood of exultation I sought my typewriter. Ideas for story poems came surging at me—the man with no legs, the man with no arms, the blind man, the faceless man—all seemed capable of treatment in verse. I made a list of themes, adding to them from time to time. I was so eager to begin I could not sleep that night, and next morning with a heart of joy I began to write. I took the first item from my list and stared at the blank sheet in my typewriter. Inspiration was not long in coming. By night I had written the first poem.

But though it was not all so easy as that, it was marvellous how my impulse kept up. I was in rare fettle and rhymes came readily to heel. If they did not I left them blank. Or sometimes I would find the rhyme and leave the line blank. Afterwards, milling it over on the beach, everything would come right. But quite often the smoothness of my inspiration surprised me, because, I suppose, my material was so compelling. So in orderly sequence I took each of my themes and converted them into a finished set of verses. It was just a job like any other. On an average I wrote three poems a week and in five months I had over sixty.

There! My book was finished. It could not be very good for it had cost me scarcely an effort. Sitting before my typewriter I had just emptied myself out. Sustained by coffee so strong it made my heart throb I had worked far into the night, with the waves pounding under my window. Now I made a clean copy and sent it to Fisher Unwin, hoping it would please him. I remember posting my neat parcel with such a blissful feeling of relief and freedom. Again I was ecstatically happy and as I sat at peace and watched the sunset glow I seemed to hear once more my music so ineffably sweet—the Harps of Heaven....

I need not have worried about my book. My publisher wrote predicting its success. And it was—beyond my dreams. The American publishers were enthusiastic. I seemed to have hit the market and for nine months I headed the list of best sellers in The Bookman. For a bit I felt as if I were sitting on the top of the world.

And now the time had come to go back to the Ambulance and I wrote to the Chief, but he answered that it was too late. Alas! The Corps was being disbanded. America had entered the war and the army had taken over. All those young Americans who talked with an Oxford accent and wore handkerchiefs in their sleeves had joined the regulars. Our Chief refused to take a minor position and died soon afterwards. I think his heart was broken to see his beloved work disregarded, but he will always be remembered with affection by those who served him.

Having now disposed of my book and my boils I felt free to listen to the voice of conscience which again adjured me to join the army. But at that moment we in Paris were right in the firing line, for the Big Bertha was bombarding us daily. At regular intervals we heard the boom as another shell crashed on the city. As I sat on a bench on the Boul’ Miche’ one fell nearby. A bearded Frenchman sitting alongside me went on reading his paper calmly, but I felt very jumpy. The streets were strangely empty. I went up to the Rabbit Hutch to reassure my family.

Suddenly there was a blast in the area across the way and a shell fragment smashed our window. I was holding my little daughter who began to howl. Then another crash behind us which destroyed the entire basement of a neighbouring house. We were due for the next, because they were bracketing the fire. However, there was nothing I could do about it: with Big Bertha one was helpless. So, holding my bawling infant in my arms, I tried to soothe her, and with a sense of fate we waited for the next shell-burst that we were sure would destroy us. Bertha was regular in her visitations and we counted the minutes as we watched the clock. How slowly the time passed! Now she was due.... Now she was dubious.... Could it be she had knocked off for lunch? Breathless we waited, but the minutes passed and no doom dropped from the skies. Satisfied with her triumph—a church and two hundred victims—she was through for the day.

After that, I got my family away to the peace and safety of Dream Haven, and a good job too, for the very day we left the Zeps came over and gave us a proper pasting. We would have spent all night in the cellar, which was getting to be a regular thing now. When we took the train in the serenity of the summer evening I realised that soon hell would be breaking loose and I conceived a horror of this sinister city under the bombs. As we drew away from it I breathed relief with every mile. And oh, how I welcomed the blessed tranquillity of my home, the windmill girt horizon, my scoop of yellow sand with the sky an azure dream....

Yet I was troubled, for I felt I should surrender my liberty once again. So I cast about for some way of getting back into the Show and one day I received a letter from the Canadian Government offering me a war assignment. It was one of those things a writer dreams of, a commission to tour the country, reporting the activities of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. I was to have a Cadillac, a chauffeur, an officer guide and freedom to choose and plan my itinerary. So, buying a new uniform, I fastened on it the green band of “Intelligence” and very proud I was of it. “Intelligence” sounded armyish and implied a modicum of mentality. But one of the official war correspondents sneered. On his shoulder straps he had a nickel badge with the letters “W.C.” “Why don’t you get one of these,” he said, “instead of that green abomination?” “I would, only I don’t want to pass myself off as a fighting man,” I answered. As he was of military age he gave me a nasty look.

To supply their Front the Canadian Army had many activities in the rear, and one of the most important was the production of lumber. They had camps all over France where trees were cut and sawn into boards. I visited many of these, some in the beech woods of the Channel area, some in the gummy pine groves of the Landes, some in the forest aisles of the Bosges. In this way I covered much of the country, so that apart from my work it was an educative experience.

At the same time I came to know many splendid fellows, and in their messes ate, drank and played poker. I made notes, took down names and documented myself for future articles. I inspected air fields, hospitals, bakeries and ordnance depots, having rather a glorious time for the guides looked on the trip as a holiday. I even visited sections of the Front and one day ate lunch in a crumbled cottage with a Canadian General. As he chewed his pork chops a stream of wounded were passing and he watched it serenely. “No, I do not think I lost too many men in our last battle,” he remarked with an aloofness I envied.

But my most interesting experiences were to come. From the Foresters I was transferred to the Engineers, and that took me over the entire Front. For the Engineers were building light railways and linking up with the light railways of the Germans. We went along these last very cautiously in electric motors trying to discover mines. The way we discovered them was by getting blown up, which was not so interesting. As we zig-zagged through ruined villages, in old battlefields and by battered, shell-shocked towns I felt quite uncomfortable. I got to know the Ypres salient and saw the grave of my brother who was killed there.

I also visited many of the camps of the Labour Battalions, one of which was commanded by my old friend James Cornwall. “Athabaska Jim” greeted me genially and that night some members of his staff celebrated my visit into the small hours of the morning. They only needed that excuse to pour the wassail, while Jim pored over his reports. It was somewhere in Belgium, for attempts at definite geography were discouraged just then. The Germans were beginning their final retreat and on the roads we could see streams of them filing to the rear, prodded by the bayonets of avenging Belgians.

Jim routed me out early next morning, even though I suffered from a hangover. I think he was determined to put one over on me by taking me to the hottest spots of the battle ground. I fancy him saying: “If this guy wants gore I’ll see he has the guts to take it.” I had not. Gone was my insouciance of the early days. I was a craven now, and the shattering of a shell-burst made me cower and cringe. As a preliminary he took me over one of those narrow gauge railways left by the Boche and supposed to be mined. They were primed to go up as we passed, and he gleefully showed me several places where they had done just that.

Soon we arrived at a small village that had been evacuated by the enemy. It was deserted and the open homes were pictures of destruction. Dead Germans sprawled amid the ruins. From the corpse of an officer I took a Luger pistol and lugged it round in triumph. Then, as I ferreted for further souveniers, three Germans came out of an empty house with their hands up, and gravely and bravely I marched them to the nearest Tommy. Life seemed to have no value just then: if I had potted the poor devils no one would have objected but themselves. Thus I realised the primitive irresponsibility of the battle-field, where the only law was that of survival.

Around us shells were dropping and as I stood in the middle of the village square one made a direct hit on the Mairie. In dust and smother of debris I saw it vanish. A moment before it had been there—plain, placid, peaceful. Now it was a heap of smoking rubble. I quaked to my very gizzard as other shells began to drop unpleasantly near. Right there in the centre of the Square I felt painfully exposed. Some Tommies were running for shelter and I wanted to beat them to it, but my legs were butter and my heart was in my boots. I gritted my teeth. “Think of the uniform you’re wearing,” I said. “You must be calm, show an example. Somewhere Jim Cornwall is grinning derisively as he watches you. Don’t let him see you’re in a funk.”

So deliberately I lit a cigarette; then, wishing I had a monocle to adjust, I strolled with a display of languid indifference to that crowded shelter. It was as solid as an Egyptian tomb, I thought gratefully, though the word “tomb” seemed unhappy just then. Another shell-burst and a buffet of concussion! How I wanted to bolt, but I would not give Cornwall that satisfaction. No, as if I was enjoying the strafing I strolled to the shelter, and there in the heart of it, snugly installed, was “Athabaska Jim.”

These were hectic times for the war was drawing to a climax and the scene was one vast battle ground. Every day I poked around, appalled at the plentitude of rich, gory copy. I ceased to take notes and my diary was unwritten. I have no record of this period but my memories are too many to put on paper.... Le Cateau, with its reek of mustard gas and its streets strewn with civilian corpses. One stepped over them, taking little notice. One peered through the open doors of houses, empty but for the dead. In a dim room I saw five wax-like women lying on their beds as if sleeping peacefully. In a kitchen were a Tommy and a German who had fought it out with bayonets. The Tommy had spitted the Hun and was poised over his still defiant foe. Again, in an open space a Belgian machine gunner lay sprawled over his mitrailleuse while round him were seven dead Germans. Everywhere were macabre scenes like the chamber of horrors of some super Madam Tussaud.

With the smoke of battle hanging over them, burial parties were busy in the high grass of the fields. The Padre would hastily mutter a prayer over a body and pass on. Many of the dead had been robbed and in some cases even their boots had been taken. Rifling the slain was almost invariable. But some seemed sacred even to the callous looter. I will always remember one British boy who had fallen in a charge. He was very beautiful with his waxen face and long dark hair. He looked so pitifully young. He still clutched his rifle with his bayonet pointed at the foe, but his face was poignantly serene.

Heaps of bodies littered the ground. Some were headless, others mere torsos, like butcher-meat fresh from the slaughter house. Dead, dead everywhere—so many of them. One hoped they would be buried before they had time to putrefy. But the burial parties were working night and day.... It was so terribly tragic, this last of the battle-fields. In one village street every door was open and the interior a scene of wanton destruction. The floor was usually a mass of feathers from ripped bed-covers. Stuffed chairs and sofas were slashed open, inlaid cabinets smashed to matchwood, pictures scored with knives—everything of beauty destroyed by a beaten and bitter Hun. Except one. Under a heap of debris I found an ivory figure of Christ on the Cross. Even the vandals had held that inviolate.

It was so strange to see those hamlets, once happy homes, now charred shells and horror-haunted infernos. The air was heavy with gas, the streets staked with mines and full of sinister emptiness. Some villages were just huge rubble heaps with a sign: HERE WAS ... then the former name. Barbed wire and stacks of empty brass shells everywhere; grave-yards with skulls grinning from shell-torn tombs; packets of high explosive strewn carelessly; and on the roads streams of guns with their gunners now gallant and gay, hot on the heels of the flying foe. It was a wonderful time, a revival of hope, an almost incredulous realisation of victory. Despite death and desolation hearts were high and everyone seemed keyed up for the grand climax.

For me that came one day when I ventured further forward than ever before. I took my car as near to the battle front as I dared. Through gutted and abandoned villages I threaded my way till I came to a point where my chauffeur told me he was unwilling to venture any further. Not only was it dangerous, but we were in the line of the actual advance. Not so very far away the Germans were flying as if they were being swept forward by a giant besom. The dust of the battle broom masked the horizon in furious smoke-cloud and the rumble of gun-fire was continuous. My companion, a gallant Canadian Major, was doubtful if we should go on.

Consulting our maps we saw we were in the coal mining area around Denain, further than any British troops had yet penetrated. We knew this for from wayside cottages and tiny hamlets villagers emerged and greeted us with cries of joy. We were the advance guard of the liberators, the first allied uniforms they had seen. We had already far exceeded our limit of advance, but I felt that nothing could hold me back and the Major said he would stick by me, even at the risk of a court martial. We did not know where we were going, or what would happen to us, but we did know that at the end of that dusty road was the big city of Lille, and Lille was supposed to be occupied by the enemy.

But the way seemed ridiculously clear. No sign of the Germans, while by the side of the road, from cottages that a little way back had been gutted and abandoned, people were cautiously emerging. They seemed amazed at the sight of us, yet their joy knew no bounds. They were either women, children or old men, and they wept and cheered at the same time. Miserably thin and ill nourished, at that moment they seemed the happiest people on earth. They kept telling us that the Boches were running away, that we could go forward, for we would meet no Germans of the rear-guard. We were doubtful, but we decided to take a chance.

So we marched merrily on the road to Lille. We must have gone forward for about two hours when we saw a band of girls coming towards us, their arms full of flowers. They were simple garden blossoms, but there was a pathetic appeal in them that touched the heart. And there was pathos, too, in the haggard faces of these girls, now so radiant with joy. They hung garlands round the Major’s neck till he seemed buried in them, only his honest face coyly emerging. Then they filled his arms with bouquets and banked him with blossom. He was a delicate minded man who did not like to refuse floral tributes; but I got off more easily, for I commandeered some children and put most of my posies in their charge. And so we marched forward—two men in khaki in a band of jubilant maidens, and festooned with flowers.

Now it was I who wanted to turn back, but the Major’s blood was up. Court martial or not he was going through with this. He was a man of great sex appeal—unlike myself, who am singularly lacking in that enviable quality. Already some women had made efforts to kiss him, which he had feebly sought to evade. I don’t think he minded the girls so much, but when an ancient gaffer tottered from a doorway and saluted him on both cheeks he seemed rather taken aback. He was a brave man, however, and even that did not daunt him.

And now the crowd about us grew denser. Two pretty girls had the Major by the arms and were urging him forward. “Lille!” they cried, pointing to the grim walls down the dusty road. And Lille it was. Exultant citizens came running to meet us, crying: “They’re gone! The Boches have cleared out. You can enter Lille.” To me it seemed incredible, and I told the Major it would be just too bad to be taken prisoner at this stage of the game. But maddened by maiden kisses the man was reckless. “We’re going to be the first of the allied army to enter Lille,” he cried.

AND WE WERE. We entered it by the Cambrai gate just as the Germans were leaving by the gate on the other side of the city. “Are you sure they are all gone?” I kept asking, for I expected a trap. But they were so certain we were safe I allowed myself to be borne on what was now a surging throng. I never saw people more mad with joy. They pressed bottles of wine and cigarettes on us and it was difficult to refuse. In front of the gate was a gigantic crater, down which we had to climb; but on the other side the women of Lille awaited us in a serried mass. As we scrambled up the crater they clutched us hysterically and swept us through the massive portals of the city.

Now we were in a maelstrom of mad women, all of them making desperate efforts to get at us. Hundreds there were, fighting to embrace us. They flung their arms around us and pressed their lips to our cheeks. Some were homely, of course, but by no means all. And so we were tossed in a tempest of osculatory enthusiasm, in which the Major with his superior sex appeal was the chief victim. I could see him struggling in that welter of womanhood, for now they were begging for souvenirs and tearing away his buttons. I feared he would soon be reduced to a state of near nudity, so I shouted: “We’d better beat a retreat!” He agreed, and after he had sawn off a few more chunks of osculation, gallantly defending his few remaining buttons, he fought his way to the edge of the crater.

There on the other side we were safe, and standing on the rim of that vast pit I made a speech to the mob that blacked the entrance to the town. I told them of our latest war triumphs and that their own troops were on the way. How the crowd cheered! I might have been a Marshal announcing a great victory. Then a bearded man appeared who told us he was the Maire and invited us to the Hotel de Ville for a civic reception. But suddenly we saw a staff car approaching with what we thought was Haig, Currie and a few more Generals, so we decided it was time to fold up....

The fact remains, however, we were the leaders of the allied army to enter Lille after the Germans fled. We trod on the very heels of the Hun. We were the first to be acclaimed by the crowd and welcomed by the Maire himself. I fear the triumphal arrival of the staff was an anti-climax. So at least we thought as we sped homeward in a blaze of glory. When we met the gang at supper that evening and they asked us how we had spent the day we casually remarked: “Just strolling round Lille and giving the girls a treat.” Only no one would believe us. “Oh no,” they said. “Poor boobs, you’re all wet! You’ve made a mistake. You’ve been in Denain or Douai. But LILLE—never!” So we were laughed at; but when the big news came through that evening our triumph was complete. They listened with wonder and envy. All were planning to go next day when an order came through putting the city out of bounds.

After this I felt that anything I could do would be an anti-climax, so I returned to the Rabbit Hutch and proceeded to write up my experiences. The family were at Dream Haven and there in my quiet apartment I hammered away at my Remington till my brain was muzzy. I saw none of my friends and spoke to no one. All I wanted was to do the job in front of me. And I would not let it be a dull job. Even hack-work may be radiated by joyful memories. I wrote with immense gusto, for I was so very happy. Article after article I turned out. I described saw-mills, hospitals, bakeries, ordnance camps—all the organisation that makes fighting possible. I gave the names of hundreds of those “who also serve,” and said something interesting about each. As I went on I saw a book in the making. War Winners I would call it, and it would deal with the efforts of those who worked without glory to win glory for others. I never wrote better. Graphically I covered all France with its pictorial background. I became more and more enthusiastic, then....

One morning about eleven as I plugged away I heard bells begin to ring. Then more bells took up the clangor. Then all the bells of the city began to peal. I went downstairs and the old concierge greeted me. Tears were rolling down his cheeks but this time they were tears of joy. “THE ARMISTICE, Monsieur!” he cried. “The war is over. This is the victory. Vive la France!”

“Vive la France!” I yelled, and ran down the street. Already every building was a rash of bunting. Flags flamed and pennants streamed. Everywhere was colour, joy, triumph, and above the mad cheering was the madder tumult of the bells. Never again would there be such a frenzy of joy. The people were heading for the Grand Boulevards, crazy to celebrate the victory. Down the Boul’ Miche’ I hurried in the midst of a riotous throng, across the flag festooned Tuileries, up the Rue de la Paix to the Opera which was a mass of bunting. There a prima-donna was singing the Marseillaise and everyone joined in. Dancing, cheering, singing, hugging, kissing—for two days and nights the boulevards were given up to a saturnalia of romping rowdyism.

For a while I remained in the midst of it, carried away by the extravagances of a mirth-mad mob; then I tired of it all. I thought of those out there who had given their lives for this, and for whom no one in all that cheering multitude had a single tear. So back to the Rabbit Hutch I crawled with sorrow in my heart. There on my desk were the articles I had written with such enthusiasm—excellent work, a month of effort. With sudden loathing I looked at them. I need not go on. Taking up my manuscript I tore it in tatters. “That ends it,” I said. “No more war. Not in my lifetime. Curse the memory of it. Now I will rest and forget. Now I will enjoy the peace and sweetness of Dream Haven.”