The Pomp of Yesterday Part 17

'Private Edgec.u.mbe,--what of him? He did everything, you know.'

'I think he has gone back to duty.'

'Duty!' I gasped. 'Why--why----'

'The fellow's a miracle, from what I can hear. No, he wasn't wounded.

The man who told me about it said that he might have a charmed life.

He's all right, anyhow. Now be quiet, I must be off.'

For the next few days, although, as I was told, I was by no means a bad case, I knew what it was to be a shattered ma.s.s of nerves. A man with a limb shot away, or who has had shrapnel or bullets taken from his body, can laugh and be gay,--I have seen that again and again. But one suffering from sh.e.l.l shock goes through agonies untold. I am not going to _try_ to describe it, but I shall never forget what I suffered. As soon as I was fit, I was moved to another hospital nearer the base, and there, as fortune would have it, I met Edgec.u.mbe's colonel. By this time I was able to think coherently, and my spells of nerves were becoming rarer and less violent.

'Yes, my boy, you are a case for home,' said Colonel Gray. 'You are a lucky beggar to get out of it so well. I was talking with your C.O.

yesterday; you are going back to England at once. I won't tell you what else he told me about you; your nerves are not strong enough.'

'There's nothing wrong, is there?'

Colonel Gray laughed. 'No, it's all the other way. Don't your ears tingle?'

'Not a tingle,' I said. 'But what about Edgec.u.mbe?'

'He's a friend of yours, isn't he?' asked the colonel.

'Yes,' I replied.

'Who is he?'

'I don't know,--I wish I did.'

'He's a wonderful chap. I've had my eye on him for a long time, and I haven't been able to make him out. What really aroused my interest in him was the way--but of course you know all about that, you were in that show. I never laughed so much in my life as when those Boches were brought in. Of course you know he's to get his decoration? It couldn't be helped after that Springfield affair.'

As it happened, however, I did not cross to England for several days, but stayed at a base hospital until, in the opinion of the M.O., I was fit to be removed. Meanwhile the carnage went on, and the great battle of the Somme developed according to the plans we had made, although there were some drawbacks. At length the day came when I was to go back to England, and no sooner had I stepped on board the boat than, to my delight, I saw Edgec.u.mbe.

'I _am_ glad to see you!' I cried.

'Thank you, sir.'

'Got it bad?'

'A mere nothing, sir. Just a bruised arm. In a few days I shall be as right as ever.'

It was a beautiful day, and as it happened the boat was not crowded. I looked for a quiet spot where we could talk.

'You didn't finish telling me your story when we met last,' I said presently. 'I want to hear it badly.'

'I want you to hear it,' was his reply, and I noted that bright look in his eyes which had so struck me before.

CHAPTER XIII

EDGEc.u.mBE'S MADNESS

'After all, it's nothing that one can talk much about,' he continued.

'I've become a Christian, that's all. But it's changed everything, _everything_!'

'How?'

'I find it difficult to tell you, sir; but after I'd got back from the Y.M.C.A. meeting I got hold of a New Testament, and for days I did nothing but read it. You see it was a new book to me.'

He hesitated a few seconds and then went on. 'Loss of memory is a curious thing, isn't it? I suppose I must have read it as a boy, just as nearly all other English boys have, but it was a strange book to me.

I had not forgotten how to read, but I had forgotten what I had read.

I seemed to remember having heard of some one called Jesus Christ, but He meant nothing to me. That was why the reading of the New Testament was such a revelation.'

'Well, go on,' I said when he stopped.

'Presently I began to pray,' and his voice quivered as he spoke. 'It was something new to me, but I did it almost unconsciously. You see, when I left the Y.M.C.A. hut, I had a consciousness that there was a G.o.d, but after I'd read the New Testament----; no I can't explain, I can't find words! But I prayed, and I felt that G.o.d was listening to me, and presently something new came into my life! It seemed to me as though some part of my nature which had been lying dormant leapt into life. I looked at things from a new standpoint. I saw new meanings in everything. I knew that I was no longer an orphan in the world, but that an Almighty, All-pervading G.o.d was my Father. That He cared for me, that nothing was outside the realm of His love. I saw what G.o.d was like, too. As I read that story of Jesus, and opened my life to Him, my whole being was flooded with the consciousness that He cared for me, that He watched me, and protected me. I saw, too, that there was no death to the man in whom Christ lived. That the death of the body was nothing because the man, the essential man lived on,--where I did not know, did not care, because G.o.d was.'

He looked across the sunlit sea as he spoke, and I think he had almost forgotten me.

'I had an awful time though,' he went on.

'How? In what way?'

'It was when I read the Sermon on the Mount. I could not for a time see how a Christian could be a soldier. The whole idea of killing men seemed a violation of Christianity.'

'It is,' I said.

'Yes, in a way you are right, and when I read those words of the Lord telling us that we must love our enemies, and bless them that cursed us, I was staggered. Where could there be any Christianity in great guns hurling men by the thousand into eternity?'

'There isn't,' I persisted.

'That's what I believed at first, but I got deeper presently. I saw that I had only been looking at the surface of things.'

'How?' I asked. I was curious to see how this man who had forgotten his past would look at things.

'I found after a daily study of this great Magna Charta of Jesus Christ, that He meant us to live by the law of love.'

'There's not much living by the law of love over yonder,' I said, nodding in the direction of the Somme.

'Yes there is,' he cried. 'Oh, I realize the apparent anomaly of it all, but don't you see? _It wouldn't be living by the law of love to allow Germany to master the world by brute force_! This was the situation. Prussianism wanted to dominate the world. The Germans wanted to dethrone mercy, pity, kindness, love, and to set up a G.o.d who spoke only by big guns. They wanted to rule the world by brute force, devilry. Now then, what ought Christians to do? It would be poor Christianity, it would be poor love to the world, to allow the devil to reign.

'You see,' he went on, 'Christ's law is, not only that we must love our enemies, but we must love our neighbours too. We must live for the overthrow of wrong and the setting up of His Kingdom of truth, and mercy, and love. But how? Here were Germany's rulers who were bent on forcing war. They were moral madmen. They believed only in force.

For forty years they had been feeding on the poison of the thought that might was right, and that it was right to do the thing you _could_ do.'

'And what is war but accepting that idea. It is simply overcoming force by force. Where does Christianity come in?'

'You don't argue with a mad dog,' he said. 'You kill it. It's best for the dog, and it's essential for the good of the community.

Germany's a mad dog, and this virus of war must be overcome, destroyed.