Tell England by Ernest Raymond
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Ernest Raymond >> Tell England
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26 TELL ENGLAND
_A Study in a Generation_
By ERNEST RAYMOND
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
1922
_For all emotions that are tense and strong,
And utmost knowledge, I have lived for these--
Lived deep, and let the lesser things live long,
The everlasting hills, the lakes, the trees,
Who'd give their thousand years to sing this song
Of Life, and Man's high sensibilities,
Which I into the face of Death can sing--
O Death, then poor and disappointed thing--
Strike if thou wilt, and soon; strike breast and brow;
For I have lived: and thou canst rob me now
Only of some long life that ne'er has been.
The life that I have lived, so full, so keen,
Is mine! I hold it firm beneath thy blow
And, dying, take it with me where I go._
CONTENTS
A PROLOGUE BY PADRE MONTY
BOOK I: FIVE GAY YEARS OF SCHOOL
_Part I: Tidal Reaches_
Chapter
I RUPERT RAY BEGINS HIS STORY
II RUPERT OPENS A GREAT WAR
III AWFUL ROUT OF RAY
IV THE PREFECTS GO OVER TO THE ENEMY
V CHEATING
VI AN INTERLUDE
_Part II: Long, Long Thoughts_
VII CAUGHT ON THE BEATEN TRACK
VIII THE FREEDHAM REVELATIONS
IX WATERLOO OPENS
X WATERLOO CONTINUES: THE CHARGE AT THE END OF THE DAY
XI THE GREAT MATCH
XII CASTLES AND BRICK-DUST
BOOK II: AND THE REST--WAR
_Part I: "Rangoon" Nights_
I THE ETERNAL WATERWAY
II PADRE MONTY AND MAJOR HARDY COME ABOARD
III "C. OF E., NOW AND ALWAYS"
IV THE VIGIL
V PENANCE
VI MAJOR HARDY AND PADRE MONTY FINISH THE VOYAGE
_Part II: The White Heights_
VII MUDROS, IN THE ISLE OF LEMNOS
VIII THE GREEN ROOM
IX PROCEEDING FORTHWITH TO GALLIPOLI
X SUVLA AND HELLES AT LAST
XI AN ATMOSPHERE OF SHOCKS AND SUDDEN DEATH
XII SACRED TO WHITE
XIII "LIVE DEEP, AND LET THE LESSER THINGS LIVE LONG"
XIV THE NINETEENTH OF DECEMBER
XV TRANSIT
XVI THE HOURS BEFORE THE END
XVII THE END OF GALLIPOLI
XVIII THE END OF RUPERT'S STORY
TELL ENGLAND
A PROLOGUE BY PADRE MONTY
Sec.1
In the year that the Colonel died he took little Rupert to see the
swallows fly away. I can find no better beginning than that.
When there devolved upon me as a labour of love the editing of
Rupert Ray's book, "Tell England," I carried the manuscript into my
room one bright autumn afternoon, and read it during the fall of a
soft evening, till the light failed, and my eyes burned with the
strain of reading in the dark. I could hardly leave his ingenuous
tale to rise and turn on the gas. Nor, perhaps, did I want such
artificial brightness. There are times when one prefers the
twilight. Doubtless the tale held me fascinated because it revealed
the schooldays of those boys whom I met in their young manhood, and
told afresh that wild old Gallipoli adventure which I shared with
them. Though, sadly enough, I take Heaven to witness that I was not
the idealised creature whom Rupert portrays. God bless them, how
these boys will idealise us!
Then again, as Rupert tells you, it was I who suggested to him the
writing of his story. And well I recall how he demurred, asking:
"But what am I to write about?" For he was always diffident and
unconscious of his power.
"Is Gallipoli nothing to write about?" I retorted. "And you can't
have spent five years at a great public school like Kensingtowe
without one or two sensational things. Pick them out and let us have
them. For whatever the modern theorists say, the main duty of a
story-teller is certainly to tell stories."
"But I thought," he broke in, "that you're always maintaining that
the greatest fiction should be occupied with Subjective Incident."
"Don't interrupt, you argumentative child," I said (you will find
Rupert is impertinent enough in one place to suggest that I have a
tendency to be rude and a tendency to hold forth). "Surely the ideal
story must contain the maximum of Objective Incident with the
maximum of Subjective Incident. Only give us the exciting events of
your schooldays, and describe your thoughts as they happened, and
you will unconsciously reveal what sort of scoundrelly characters
you and your friends were. And when you get to the Gallipoli part,
well, you can give us chiefly your thoughts, for Gallipoli, as far
as dramatic incident is concerned, is well able to shift for
itself."
Little wonder that I was fascinated to read Rupert's final
manuscript. And, when I had finished the last words, I
announced aloud a weighty decision: "We must have a Prologue,
Rupert,"--though, to be sure, my study was empty at the time--"and
it must give pictures of what your three heroes were like, when they
were small, abominable boys."
And thereafter I busied myself in seeking information of the early
childhood of Rupert Ray, Archibald Pennybet, and Edgar Gray Doe. Not
without misgiving do I offer the result of these researches, for I
fear all the time lest my self-conscious hand should profane
Rupert's artless narrative.
In the year that the Colonel died he took little Rupert to see the
swallows fly away. Colonel Ray was a stately, grey-bearded
grandfather; and Rupert his flushed and blue-eyed grandson of six
years old; and the two stood side by side and watched. Behind them
lay the French town, Boulogne; beside them went the waters of the
French river, the Liane. Suddenly Rupert, who had kept his blue eyes
on a sky but little bluer, cried out excitedly: "There they are!"
For him at that moment the most interesting thing in the world was
the flight of swallows overhead. The Colonel, also, looked at the
birds till they were out of sight, and then, after keeping silence
awhile, uttered a remark which was rather sent in pursuit of the
birds than addressed to his young companion. "I shall not see the
swallows again," he said.
Colonel Rupert Ray was no ordinary person. He was one of those of
whom tales are told; and such people are never ordinary. The most
treasured of these tales is the story of the swallows; and it goes
on to tell, as you would expect, how the Colonel died that year,
before the swallows came flying north and home again. He was buried,
while little Rupert and Rupert's mother looked on, in that untidy
corner of the Boulogne Cemetery, where many another English half-pay
officer had been laid before him.
Of course the burial of the Colonel was very sad for Rupert; but he
soon forgot it all in the excitement of preparing for the journey
back to London. The Colonel, you see, had known that his old life
would break up soon, and had summoned from their home in London the
widow and child of his favourite son, "that Rupert, the best of the
lot," as he used to call him. And now the Colonel was dead. So his
grandson, the last of the Rupert Rays, could look forward to all the
jolly thrills of steaming across the Channel to Folkestone and
bowling in a train to London. Really life was an excellent thing.
The day of the venturesome voyage began with excited sleeplessness
and glowing health, and ended with a headache and great tiredness.
There was the bustle of embarkation on to the boat; the rattle and
bang of falling luggage; the jangle of French and English tongues;
the unstraining of mighty ropes; the "hoot! hoot!" from the funnel,
a side-splitting incident; the _suff-suff-lap-suff_ of the
ploughed-up sea; the spray of the Channel, which sprinkling one's
cheeks, caused one to roar with laughter, till more moderation was
enjoined; the incessant throb of the engines; the vision of white
cliffs, and the excitement among the passengers; the headache; the
landing on a black old pier; the privilege of guarding the luggage
by sitting upon as much of one trunk as six years' growth of boy
will cover, and pressing firmly upon two other trunks with either
hand, while Mrs. Ray (that capable lady) changed francs into
shillings; there was the wearisome and rolling train-journey,
wherein one slept, first against the window and then against the
black sleeve of an unknown gentleman; and lastly there was the
realisation that pale and sunny France had withdrawn into the past
to make room for pale and smutty London.
Now the Captain of all these manoeuvres, as the meanest
intelligence will have observed, was Mrs. Ray. Mrs. Ray was Rupert's
mother, and as beautiful as every mother must be, who has an only
son, and is a widow. Moreover she was a perfect teller of stories:
all really beautiful mothers are. And, for years after, she used at
evening time to draw young Rupert against her knees, and tell him
the traditional stories of that old half-pay officer at Boulogne.
And grandfather was indeed a hero in these stories. We suspect--but
who can sound the artful depths of a woman who is at once young,
lovely, a mother, and a widow?--that Mrs. Ray, knowing that Rupert
could never recall his father, was determined that at least one
soldierly figure should loom heroic in his childish memories. She
would tell again and again how he asked repeatedly, as he lay dying,
for "that Rupert, the best of the lot." And her son would say: "I
s'pose he meant Daddy, mother." "Yes," she would answer. "You see,
you were all Ruperts: Grandfather Rupert Ray, Daddy Rupert Ray, and
Sonny Rupert Ray, my own little Sonny Ray." (Mothers talk in this
absurd fashion, and Mrs. Ray was the chief of such offenders.)
But quite the masterpiece of all her tales was this. One summer
morning, when the Boulogue promenade was bright and crowded and
lively, the Colonel was seated with his grandson beside him. A
little distance away sat Rupert's mother, who was just about as shy
of the Colonel as the Colonel was shy of her (which fact accounts,
probably, for Rupert Ray's growing up into the shy boy we knew).
Well, all of a sudden, the boy got up, stood immediately in front of
his grandsire, and leaned forward against his knees. There was no
mistaking the meaning in the child's eyes; they said plainly: "This
is entirely the best attitude for story-telling, so please."
The officer, with military quickness, summed up the perilous
situation on his front; he had suffered himself to be bombarded by a
pair of patient eyes. And now he must either acknowledge his
incompetence by a shameful retreat, or he must stir up the dump of
his imagination and see what stories it contained. So with no small
apprehension, he drew upon his inventive genius.
A wonderful story resulted--wonderful as a prophetic parable of
things which the Colonel would not live to see. Perhaps it was only
coincidence that it should be so; perhaps the approach of death
endowed the old gentleman with the gift of dim prophecy--did he not
know that he would follow the swallows away?--perhaps all the Rays,
when they stand in that shadow, possess a mystic vision. Certainly
the boy Rupert--but there! I knew I was in danger of spoiling his
story.
If the Colonel's tale this morning was wonderful to the listener,
the author suspected that he was plagiarising. The hero was a knight
of peculiar grace, who sustained the spotless name of Sir R----
R----. He was not very handsome, having hair that was neither gold
nor brown, and a brace of absurdly sea-blue eyes. But he was
distinguished by many estimable qualities; he was English, for
example, and not French, very brave, very sober, and quite fond of
an elderly relation. And one day he was undoubtedly (although the
Colonel's conscience pricked him) plunging on foot through a dense
forest to the aid of a fellow-knight who had been captured and
imprisoned.
"What was the other knight like?" interrupted Rupert.
"What, indeed?" echoed the Colonel, temporising till he should
evolve an answer. "Yes, that's a very relevant question. Well, he
was a good deal fairer than Sir R---- R----, but about the same age,
only with brown eyes, and he was a very nice little boy--young
fellow, I mean."
"What was his name?"
"His name? Oh, well--" and here the Colonel, feeling with some taste
that "Smith," or "Jones," or "Robinson" was out of place in a forest
whose mediaeval character was palpable, and being quite unable at
such short notice to recall any other English names, gained time by
the following ingenious detail: "Oh, well, he lost his good name by
being captured. And then--and then to his aid came the stalwart Sir
R----, with his sword drawn, and his--er--"
"Revoller," suggested the listener.
"Yes, his revolver fixed to his chain-mail--"
In this strain the Colonel proceeded, wondering whether such
abominable nonsense was interesting the child, whose gaze had now
begun to reach out to sea. In reality Rupert was thrilled, and did
not like to disturb the flow of a story so affecting. But the
strength of his feelings was too much. He was obliged to suggest an
amendment.
"Are you sure I didn't go upon a horse?" he asked.
"Why, of course, the unknown knight in question did, and the sheath
of his sword clanked against his horse's side, as he dashed through
the thicket."
"Had the fair-haired knight anything to eat all this time?"
This important problem was duly settled, and several others which
were seen to be involved in such an intricate story; and a very
happy conclusion was reached, when Mrs. Ray decided that it was time
for Rupert to be taken home. She was about to lead him away, when
the Colonel, who seldom spoke to her much, abruptly murmured:
"He has that Rupert's eyes."
For a moment she was quite taken aback, and then timorously replied:
"Yes, they are very blue."
"Very blue," repeated the Colonel.
Mrs. Ray thereupon felt she must obviate an uncomfortable silence,
and began with a nervous laugh:
"He was born when we were in Geneva, you know, and we used to call
him 'our mountain boy,' saying that he had brought a speck of the
mountain skies away in his eyes."
The Colonel conceded a smile, but addressed his reply to the child:
"A mountain boy, is he?" and, placing his hand on Rupert's head, he
turned the small face upward, and watched it break into a smile.
"Well, well. A mountain boy, eh?--from the lake of Geneva. H'm. _Il
a dans les yeux un coin du lac._"
At this happy description the tears of pleasure sprang to the
foolish eyes of Mrs. Ray, while Rupert, thinking with much wisdom
that all the conditions were favourable, gazed up into the Colonel's
face, and fired his last shot.
"What really was the fair-haired knight's name?"
"Perhaps you will know some day," answered the Colonel, half
playfully, half wearily.
Sec.2
In the course of the same summer Master Archibald Pennybet, of
Wimbledon, celebrated his eighth birthday. He celebrated it by a
riotous waking-up in the sleeping hours of dawn; he celebrated it by
a breakfast which extended him so much that his skin became
unbearably tight; and then, in a new white sailor-suit and brown
stockings turned over at the calves to display a couple of
magnificent knees, he celebrated some more of it in the garden.
There on the summer lawn he stood, unconsciously deliberating how
best to give new expression to the personality of Archibald
Pennybet. He was dark, gloriously built, and possessed eyes that
lazily drooped by reason of their heavy lashes; and, I am sorry to
say, he evoked from a boudoir window the gurgling admiration of his
fashionable mother, who, while her hair was being dressed, allowed
her glance to swing from her hand-mirror, which framed a gratifying
vision of herself, to the window, which framed a still more
gratifying vision of her son. "He gets his good looks from me," she
thought. And, having noticed the drooping of his eyelids,
over-weighted with lashes, she brought her hand-mirror into play
again. "He is lucky," she added, "to have inherited those lazy eyes
from me."
Soon Archie retired in the direction of the kitchen-garden. The
kitchen-garden, with its opportunities of occasional refreshment
such as would not add uncomfortably to his present feeling of
tightness, was the place for a roam. Five minutes later he was
leaning against the wire-netting of the chicken-run, and offering an
old cock, who asked most pointedly for bread, a stone. To know how
to spend a morning was no easier on a birthday than on any ordinary
day.
Suddenly, however, he overheard the gardener mentioning a murder
which had been committed on Wimbledon Common, a fine tract of wild
jungle and rolling prairie, that lay across the main road. Without
waiting to prosecute inquiries which would have told him that,
although the confession was only in the morning papers, the murder
was twenty years old, he escaped unseen and set his little white
figure on a walk through the common. He was out to see the blood.
But, for a birthday, it was a disappointing morning. He discovered
for the first time that Wimbledon Common occupied an interminable
expanse of country; and really there was nothing unusual this
morning about its appearance, or about the looks of the people whom
he passed. So he gave up his quest and returned homeward. Then it
was that his lazy eyes looked down a narrow, leafy lane that ran
along the high wall of his own garden. Now all Wimbledon suspects
that this lane was designed by the Corporation as a walk for lovers.
There is evidence of the care and calculation that one spends on a
chicken-run. For the Corporation, knowing the practice of lovers,
has placed in the shady recesses of the lane a seat where these
comical people can intertwine. At the sight of the lane and the
seat, Master Pennybet immediately decided how he would occupy his
afternoon. He would move that seat along his garden wall, till it
rested beneath some ample foliage where he could lie hidden. Then he
would wait the romantic moments of the evening.
This idea proved so exciting that the luncheon of which he partook
was (for a birthday) regrettably small. And no sooner was it
finished than he rushed into the lane, and addressed his splendid
muscles to removing the seat.
To begin with he tried pushing. This failed. The more he pushed the
more his end of the seat went up into the air, while the other
remained fast in the ground. The only time he succeeded in making
the seat travel at all it went so fast that it laid him on his
stomach in the lane. So he tried pulling from the other end. This
was only partially successful. The seat moved towards him with
jerks, at one time arriving most damnably on his shins, and at
another throwing him into a sitting position on to the ground. And
there is a portion of small boys which is very sensitive to stony
ground. At these repeated checks the natural child in Mr. Pennybet
caused his eyes to become moist, whereupon the strong and
unconquerable man in him choked back a sob of temper, and pulled the
seat with a passionate determination. I tell you, such indomitable
grit will always get its way, and the seat was well lodged against
Mr. Pennybet's wall and beneath his green fastness, before the
afternoon blushed into the lovers' hour. He returned into his
garden, and, climbing up the wall by means of the mantling ivy,
reached his chosen observation-post. Through curtains of greenery he
watched the arrival of a pair of lovers, and held his breath, as
they seated themselves beneath him.
They were an even more ridiculous couple than their kind usually
are. And, when the gentleman squeezed the lady, she laughed so
foolishly that Archie Pennybet was within an ace of forgetting
himself and heartily laughing too. It was worse still, when they
began the pernicious practice of "rubbing noses." For the operation
was so new and unexpected, and withal so congenial to Archie, that
he risked discovery by craning forward to study it. He watched with
jaws parted in a wide gape of amazement, and then said to himself:
"Well, I'm damned!" There is but one step (I am told) from rubbing
noses to the real business of the kiss. And it was when the
gentleman brought the lady's lips into contact with his own, and the
peculiar sound was heard in the lane, that Mr. Pennybet's moment had
come.
"Hem! Hem! Oh, I say!" he suggested loudly, and sought safety by
slipping rapidly down his side of the wall, scratching his hands and
bare knees as he fell.
This fine triumph had been at a cost. Archie surveyed himself. His
new suit was clearly disreputable. And, in his mother's eyes, the
one crime punishable by whipping was to make a new suit
disreputable. The more he studied the extent of the damage, the more
he felt convinced that, in the expiation of this potty little
offence, his body would be commandeered to play a painful and rather
passive part.
His brain, therefore, worked rapidly and well. It was more than
possible, thought he, that his mother's sympathy could be induced to
exceed her indignation. She was really an affectionate woman; and
this was the line to go upon. So he squeezed the scratches in his
knees to expedite the issue of blood, and bravely entered the house.
"Mother," he called, introducing suitable pathos into his tones,
"Mother, I've fallen all down the wall!"
This effective opening, should it seem successful, it was his
intention to follow up with seasonable allusions to his birthday.
But alas! one glimpse of Mrs. Pennybet's face when she saw his suit,
showed him the folly of remaining on the scene, and with the speed
of a fawn, he was out in the garden, and up an elm tree, swaying
about like a crow's nest. And there, a minute later, was Mrs.
Pennybet standing below, her skirts held up in one hand, a small
cane in the other.
"Come down, Archie," she said. "Come down."
"Not a bit of it," replied her son. "You come up!"
* * * * *
At least Mrs. Pennybet, a vivacious _raconteuse_, always declared to
me that such was his reply. I do not trust these mothers, however,
and regard it as a piece of her base embroidery. At any rate, it is
certain that her effort to secure Archie for punishment was quite
unsuccessful. And, an hour afterwards, a small figure came quietly
down the trunk of the tree, and, entering the room where his mother
was, sat quickly in a big arm-chair, and held on tightly to its
arms. This position prevented access to that particular area of
Archie Pennybet, which, in the view of himself, his mother, and all
sound conservatives, must be exposed, if corporal punishment is to
be the standard thing. Mrs. Pennybet, good woman, admitted her
defeat, and kissed him repeatedly, while he still held himself tight
in his chair.
Such was Archie Pennybet, whom Mrs. Pennybet considered a remarkably
fine boy, and the son of a remarkably fine woman. In this battle of
wits he undoubtedly won. And it is a fact that throughout life he
made a point of winning, as all shall see, who read Rupert Ray's
story.
He was a mischievous, tumbling scamp, I suppose; but what are we to
say? All young animals gambol, and are saucy. Only this morning I
was watching a lamb butt its mother in the ribs, and roll in the
grass, and dirty its wool--the graceless young rascal!
Sec.3
But come, we are keeping Edgar Gray Doe waiting.
If you have ever steamed up the Estuary of the Fal, that stately
Cornish river, and gazed with rapture at the lofty and thick-wooded
hills, through which the wide stream runs, you have probably seen on
the eastern bank the splendid mansion of Graysroof. You have admired
its doric facade and the deep, green groves that embrace it on every
side. Perhaps it has been pointed out to you as the home of Sir
Peter Gray, the once-famous Surrey bowler, and the parent of a whole
herd of young cricketing Grays.
It was in this palatial dwelling that little Edgar Gray Doe awoke to
a consciousness of himself, and of many other remarkable things;
such things as the broad, silver mouth of the Fal; the green slopes,
on which his house stood; the rather fearsome woods that surrounded
it; and, above all, the very obvious fact that he was not as other
boys. For instance, his cricketing cousins, these Gray boys, were
sons with a visible mother and father, and, in being so, appeared to
conform to a normal condition, while _he_ was a nephew with an uncle
and aunt. Again these fellows were blue-eyed and drab, and, as such,
were decent and reasonable, while _he_ was brown-eyed and
preposterously fair-haired. To be sure, it was only his oval face
that saved him from the horrible indignity of being called
"Snowball."
One morning of that perfect summer, which was the sixth of Rupert
Ray, and the eighth of Archie Pennybet, Edgar Gray Doe felt some
elation at the prospect of a visit from a very imposing friend. This
person was staying down the stream at Falmouth; and he and his
mother had been invited by Lady Gray to spend the day at Graysroof.
His name was Archie Pennybet. And the power of his personality lay
in these remarkable qualities: first, he enjoyed the distinction of
being two years older than Master Doe; secondly, he had a genius for
games that thrilled, because they were clearly sin; and thirdly, his
hair was dark and glossy, so he could legitimately twit other people
with being albinos.
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