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Tell England by Ernest Raymond

E >> Ernest Raymond >> Tell England




I thought I would add a paragraph or two, in case I go down in the
morning. If I come through all right, I shall wipe these paragraphs
out. Meanwhile, in these final hours of wonder and waiting, it is
happiness to write on.

I fear that, as I write, I may appear to dogmatise, for I am still
only twenty-two. But I must speak while I can.

What silly things one thinks in an evening of suspense and twilight
like this! One minute I feel I want to be alive this time to-morrow,
in order that my book, which has become everything to me, may have a
happy ending. Pennybet fell at Neuve Chapelle, Doe at Cape Helles,
and one ought to be left alive to save the face of the tale. Still,
if these paragraphs stand and I fall, it will at least be a _true_
ending--true to things as they were for the generation in which we
were born.

And the glorious bombardment asserts itself through my thoughts, and
with a thrill I conceive of it--for we would-be authors are persons
obsessed by one idea--as an effort of the people of Britain to make
it possible for me to come through unhurt and save my story. I feel
I want to thank them.

Another minute I try to recapture that moment of ideal patriotism
which I touched on the deck of the _Rangoon_. I see a death in No
Man's Land to-morrow as a wonderful thing. There you stand exactly
between two nations. All Britain with her might is behind your back,
reaching down to her frontier, which is the trench whence you have
just leapt. All Germany with her might is before your face. Perhaps
it is not ill to die standing like that in front of your nation.

I cannot bear to think of my mother's pain, if to-morrow claims me.
But I leave her this book, into which I seem to have poured my life.
It is part of myself. No, it _is_ myself--and I shall only return
her what is her own.

Oh, but if I go down, I want to ask you not to think it anything but
a happy ending. It will be happy, because victory came to the
nation, and that is more important than the life of any individual.
Listen to that bombardment outside, which is increasing, if
possible, as the darkness gathers--well, it is one of the last
before the extraordinary Sabbath-silence, which will be the Allies'
Peace.

And, if these pages can be regarded as my spiritual history, they
will have a happy ending, too. This is why.

In the Mediterranean on a summer day, I learned that I was to
pursue beauty like the Holy Grail. And I see it now in everything. I
know that, just as there is far more beauty in nature than ugliness,
so there is more goodness in humanity than evil. There is more
happiness in life than pain. Yes, there is. As Monty used to say, we
are given now and then moments of surpassing joy which outweigh
decades of grief, I think I knew such a moment when I won the
swimming cup for Bramhall. And I remember my mother whispering one
night: "If all the rest of my life, Rupert, were to be sorrow, the
last nineteen years of you have made it so well worth living."
Happiness wins hands down. Take any hundred of us out here, and for
ten who are miserable you will find ninety who are lively and
laughing. Life is good--else why should we cling to it as we
do?--oh, yes, we surely do, especially when the chances are all
against us. Life is good, and youth is good. I have had twenty
glorious years.

I may be whimsical to-night, but I feel that the old Colonel was
right when he saw nothing unlovely in Penny's death; and that Monty
was right when he said that Doe had done a perfect thing at the
last, and so grasped the Grail. And I have the strange idea that
very likely I, too, shall find beauty in the morning.


THE END

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