Tell England Part 49

"Yes, and had it succeeded we'd have won. But the Turks have got us held at Suvla beneath Sari Bair, same as they've got us held at h.e.l.les beneath Achi Baba. The news is just filtering through."

With horror I listened to the cold-blooded statement. The shock of it produced a beating in the head, and a sickness. And I felt foolish, as though I might do something lunatic, like giving a witless shout, or running amok with a table-knife. I touched Doe, and whispered: "I'm going to get out of this. The old fool doesn't know what he's talking about."

I went away, and flung myself down on my valise in my flapping tent.

I lay on my back, my hands clasped behind my head, and gazed up into the tent-roof loud with flies. Suvla had failed! It was a lie--an alarmist lie! Why, only yesterday we had exulted in it as the winning move, declaring that the game was over bar shouting, and regretting that we could not be in at the death. What was it reminding me of--this sudden "black-out," just as the lights had been brightest? Ah, I had it: that moment, when, in the flush of winning the Swimming Cup for Bramhall, I learned that I had lost it.

How similar this was! Then the prize had been a silver cup, which had been fought for by a parcel of schoolboys. Now the grander trophy was that silver strip of the Dardanelles which men called "the Narrows," and the combatants were a pack of nations.

Suvla had failed! Why was I identifying my tiny self with a huge thing like Britain, and feeling that, because she had failed in her great fight for the Dardanelles, so I would fail, and purposely, in my little struggle after moral beauty? What a fool I was--but that was how it was working out. Beauty be hanged! Monty was badly wrong in proclaiming that nature was chiefly beautiful, and life on the whole was good. And, if he were wrong, why, then there was no further need to toil after a beauty of character to match the beauty of seas and hills. Good heavens! Beauty in the Mudros Hills! They were but homes of thirsty gra.s.s and dying thistles, dust and torturing flies. These ideals of Monty's were vapoury. Why not throw them up--throw up moral effort? I would. There was _not_ more beauty--

It was at this moment that Monty himself stood in the tent door.

"Down, Rupert?" he asked. "What's the matter?"

I looked up into his eyes, and saw in them that inquiring sympathy which could so quickly transfigure him from a lively friend into a gentle priest.

"Oh, nothing," I said. I was in no mood just now to tell him anything. "Bored, that's all."

And then I looked round, and noticed that the tent was full of a violet light. It was as if limelight had been turned on from behind a violet gla.s.s.

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "The air's all coloured!"

"Yes," said he, "I was coming to tell you to look at the sunset.

It's bad old Mudros's one good deed."

Out to the tent door I went, and looked over the harbour to the western sh.o.r.es. And there, very rapidly, the ball of the sun was going down behind the hills with an affair of gold and crimson lights, while all the hills were violet. The colour was so strong that it came out and flushed with violet the black hulls of the ships. And they, strangely motionless, lay mirrored in a water of white and gold.

"Listen!" said Monty.

For from all the camps the British bugles were singing the sad call of "Retreat"; the French trumpets wailing "Sun-down," and their rifles firing a rapid fusillade to speed the departing day.

Meanwhile the heat had died into a refreshing coolness; the wind had dropped, leaving the dust undisturbed on the ground; and the flies were roosting in the tops of the tents.

Very soon it was quite dark. Then everything lit up: first, the camps on the hills, their innumerable hurricane-lamps resembling the lights of great cities; then, the vessels in the bay--and, in the quiet of the windless evening, their bells, telling the hour, came clearly over the water. The long hulls of the hospital ships marked themselves off by rows of green lights and large, luminous red crosses. Reflected in the still water, they gave to the basin the appearance of a pleasure lake, gay with red and green fairy lamps.

The battleships hid their bellicose features in the darkness, and, since one or two of them had their bands playing, might have been pleasure steamers. And from an Indian encampment behind us came a weird incantation and the steady beat of the tom-tom.

Somehow, in the beauty of the Mudros night, I felt a spring of new hope in our campaign. We would win in the end. And with this re-born confidence went n.o.bler resolutions for myself. To-morrow I would resume moral effort. To-morrow I would begin again.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GREEN ROOM

--1

The story of our two-months' delay at Mudros is largely the story of Monty's eccentricities. As for Doe and myself, we just watched with growing pride our knees burning in the sun to a Maori brown. When we bathed in the bay and saw that, while our bodies as a whole were a pale English pink, our elbows, knees and necks, that were daily exposed to the sun, were turning to this beautiful tint, we would place our limbs side by side to see which of us achieved the greater depth of colour. For this we drew our pay.

Jimmy Doon received early his orders to join his regiment on the Peninsula. He left us, declaring that he only contemplated paying a flying visit to the front, as the very sound of the guns convinced him that he was a civilian at heart. He would be back soon, he said.

Monty appointed himself Chaplain to No. 16 Stationary Hospital, and set to work. And during this period at Mudros he was just about as regrettable and impossible in his behaviour as I have ever known him. He procured a gramophone, and, touring the tents, in which the sick men lay, would set the atrocious instrument playing, "Kitty, Kitty, isn't it a pity in the city you work so hard?" The invalids loved the jingling refrain, and added to the plagues of Mudros by roaring its chorus. Then Monty would return in the worst of tempers to our tent, and, putting the instrument roughly away, sit down and look miserable. If Doe asked permission to feel his pulse or see his tongue, he would shut him up with the words, "Oh, stuff!" But once he laughed sarcastically and burst, with all the Monty enthusiasm and emphasis, into a diatribe against Broad Churchmanship, the ignorance of laymen, the timidity of the clergy, wishy-washy sermons--in short, the criminal lack of dogmatic teaching. Not seeing any connexion between dogmatic teaching and a gramophone, Doe looked so amazed that Monty laughed, and grumbled:

"It's fine priestly work I'm doing for these lads, isn't it? Work any hospital orderly could do. I ought to be hearing their confessions, and saying Ma.s.s for them. Instead I play them 'Kitty, Kitty, isn't it a pity--?' But they don't understand--they don't understand."

"But, gracious heavens," said Doe, "you can't be always doing priestly work. And we know to our sorrow that you do have sing-song services sometimes. Why, last night you had at least a couple of hundred bawling hymns at the tops of their voices, and making the night hideous. Wasn't that priestly enough?"

"No," he snapped. "It was a service any layman or hot-gospeller could hold. There they were--a ma.s.s of bonny lads, all calling themselves 'C. of E.,' and none of them knowing anything about the Ma.s.s or confession. Ah, they don't understand. It breaks my heart, Rupert. All sons of the Church; and they don't know the lines of their mother's face!"

"Well, why on earth," said Doe, impatiently, "do you run your beastly gramophone and your rousing services, if they're not your proper work?"

"Why, don't you see?" murmured Monty, turning away to watch the sun setting behind a sweep of violet hills, "I _must_ pull my weight. I can feel patriotic at times. And, if I can't be a priest to the big majority, I can at least be their pal. That's how a padre's work pans out: a priest to the tiny few, and a pal to the big majority. I suppose it's something. Perhaps it's something."

--2

It was Monty who first called Mudros, "The Green Room." The name was happily chosen, for here at Mudros the actors either prepared for their entry on the Gallipoli stage, or returned for a breather, till the call-boy should summon them again. In it, after the manner of green rooms, we discussed how the show in the limelight was going.

We saw much that made us gossip.

We saw the huge black transports bear into Mudros Bay. Many were ships that were the pride of this watery planet. Like a d.u.c.h.ess sailing into a ball-room came the _Mauretania_, making the mere professional warships and the common merchantmen look very small indeed. But even she, haughty lady, was put in the shade, when her young but gargantuan sister, the _Aquitania_, floating leisurely between the booms, claimed the attention of the harbour, and reduced us all to a state of grovelling homage. And then the _Olympic_, not to be outdone by these overrated Cunarders, would join the company with her nose in the air.

They were packed with yellow-clad and helmeted soldiers, who were as noisy about their entrance as the great ships were silent. Tommy, coming into harbour at the end of a voyage, had a habit of announcing his approach. So, when we on the land heard over the water shouting, singing, genial oaths, "How-d'ye-do's," and "What-ho's"; and such advices as "Cheerioh! The Cheshires are here!"

"We'll open them Narrows for you"; "Here we are, here we are, here we are again," or the simple statement "We've coom!" we left our tents, and just went into our field-gla.s.ses, as one goes into a theatre.

The men in the transports were delayed a night in the harbour, and on the following day disgorged into the floating omnibuses that plied nightly to Suvla or h.e.l.les. These omnibuses were old Isle of Man pa.s.senger steamers, jolly old tubs, doing their bit like papa and uncle and grandad in the National Guard at home. Being due to arrive with their crowds of fighting men at the Peninsula in the darkness of midnight, they would get under way just before dusk.

They went out with the sun, travelling straight and slowly between the hulls.

To the lads, thus being drawn to the danger-zone, a send-off would be given in salvos of cheers from the sides of the anch.o.r.ed vessels, the bands of the Navy sometimes playing them out with the old airs of England. And the lads themselves, enjoying their evanescent triumph, and feeling like the applauded heroes on a carnival car, would shout back a merry response, or pick up the chorus of the tune rendered by the distant band.

Many a still evening Doe and I watched their departure, knowing that soon we should go out of the port like that in the red of a sunset. And Monty, hearing the cries of "Good Luck," "Love to Johnny Turk," "Finish it off quickly," "Hi, put yer trust in Gawd, and keep your 'ead down," and the faint strains of "Steady, boys, steady, we'll fight and we'll conquer again and again," would bewail the fact that he was too far off to cheer, and give vent to rising and choking feelings. He wanted to pat these departing lads on the back.

For in the Green Room they had dressed for their parts, and were now going through the door on their way to the stage.

--3

Were we really winning on the Peninsula or losing? August, in spite of that black remark of the O.C. Rest Camp, decided that all was well. The fresh arrivals on the troopships brought with them like a breeze from the homeland that atmosphere of glowing optimism which prevailed in England in the early August days. The same news came from the opposite direction. For the streams of wounded, who in the weeks following the Suvla invasion poured into our Mudros hospitals, told us that the Turk was fairly on the run. "It can't last long,"

they said. "We've only to climb one of them two hills--either Sari Bair on the Suvla front, or old Achi Baba at h.e.l.les--and the trick's done. From the top of either of 'em we shall look down upon the Narrows, and blow their forts to glory. Up'll go the Navy, and there y'are!" It would be over by Christmas, they believed; for Christmas was always the pivot of Tommy's time.

So spoke August, drinking deep from cups overflowing with confidence. September detected a taste of doubt in the cheery optimism of the Green Room, and like a loyal British September, spat out the unpalatable mouthful. But the taste remained.

Nothing but stagnation seemed to be prevailing on the Peninsula. The incessant roll of guns could no longer be heard at Mudros. The old-time shifts of wounded ceased to pour into our hospitals. In their stead came daily crowds of dysentery, jaundice and septic cases. And these men told a different tale from the wounded, who, a month before, had returned from the stage like actors aglow with triumph. All reported "Nothing doing" on Gallipoli.

And the Big Rains were fast drawing due. The time was at hand when the ravines and gorges that cracked and spliced the Mudros Hills would roar to the torrents, and the hard, dust-strewn earth would become acres of mud, from which our tent-pegs would be drawn like pins out of b.u.t.ter. We remembered Elijah on Mount Carmel, and looked at the sky for rain.

But we looked in alarm and not hope. For, if the Narrows were not forced before the rains and sea-storms began, the campaign, we understood, would be doomed to disaster. The rain would turn our great Intermediate Base, Mudros, into a useless lagoon, and the sea-storms would beat on the beaches of the Peninsula, smash the frail jetties built at Suvla and h.e.l.les, and, by preventing the landing of supplies, condemn the Suvla army and the h.e.l.les army to annihilation or surrender.

"Surely, oh surely," said Monty, looking up one day at a cloudy sky, "something largely conceived will be attempted before the rains work havoc among the communications on land, and the storms slash at the communications by sea. We _must_ be going to win."

"O Lord, yes," echoed I.