| “NO,
SIR! Not for me,” Bert Hooper was saying. “I
won’t join the crowd if Billy is going. Do you
fellows suppose I’m going to have my holiday all
spoiled, and not get any game, all because you want
Billy? He’s no good on a hunting trip. I tell
you he’s gun-shy.”
“That’s
so,” said another boy. “I’ve seen
him stop his ears with his fingers when Bert shot his
gun off—more than once, too.”
“Ought
to be named ‘Gussie,’” said Bert.
“A great big fellow like Billy, scared of
a gun! He must be sixteen, and large for his age
at that. He’s worse than that dog I had last year—don’t
you remember, boys? He’d follow us for miles through
the bush, raise game, point a partridge all right, and
the second we shot a gun off—no more dog. All
you’d see was a white-and-tan streak with its
tail curled under it, making for home.”
“Well,”
said Tommy McLean, a boy who never spoke until all the
rest had thrashed a subject out, “I’d rather
see a fellow gun-shy than see him a bally idiot with
fire-arms. I know when I got my gun, I got a lesson
with it. Father gave it to me himself, when I was fourteen,
last year. I never saw him look so serious as when he
put it in my hands and said, ‘Tom,’ (he
always calls me Tom, not Tommy, when he’s in earnest)—‘Tom,’
he said, ‘a gun is a good thing in the right hands,
a bad thing in the wrong. A boy that is careless with
a gun is worse than a born idiot; a boy that in play
points a gun, loaded or unloaded, at any person, place,
or thing, should be, and often does, land in prison.
A gun is made for three [Page 204]
things only: the first, to shoot animals and birds for
food alone, not for sport; the second, to defend one’s
life from the attack of wild beasts; the third, to shoot
the tar out of the enemy when you are fighting as a
soldier for your sovereign and your flag.’”
“Bully
for Tommy’s father!” yelled Bert. “I
hate being lectured, but that sounds like good common
sporting sense, and we’ll all try to stick by
it on this hunting trip.”
They
were a nice lot of boys, all jolly, sturdy, manly chaps,
who, however, seldom included Billy Jackson in their
outings, for every holiday seemed to find him to busy
to join them. For notwithstanding his unfortunate fear
of a gunshot, Billy had always been a great lover of
a uniform. As a youngster he would follow the soldiers
every parade day, not for the glory of marching in step
to the music of the band, but for the chance it gave
him to throw back his shoulders, puff out his small
chest, and blow on his tin pipe-whistle in adoring imitation
of the bugler. He thought there was nothing in the world
so important as the bugler. Billy thought it did not
matter that the shining little “trumpet”
merely voiced an officer’s commands. The fact
always remained that at the clear, steady notes the
soldiers wheeled to do his bidding; that the bugler
was a power for courage or cowardice, whichever way
a boy was built.
Then,
as he grew older, he, too, began to practice on a bugle.
He would sit out on the little side verandah, early
and late, tooting every regimental call he could remember,
until the time cane when his perseverance met with reward.
He actually found himself installed as bugler to the
little regiment of smartly-uniformed men that was the
pride of the gay Ontario city that Billy called home.
Then
it was that the other boys never got Billy on a holiday.
When Victoria Day came the soldiers always went “into
camp” for three days, strict military discipline
reigned, and Billy must be with his company. When [Page
205] Dominion Day arrived the regiment always
visited some distant city to assist in some important
patriotic celebration. Thanksgiving Day always found
them in the thick of annual drill, and there was sure
to be a “sham battle” at which poor Billy
had to toot the commands, his eyes blinking and the
nerves chasing themselves up and down his back, while
the blank cartridges peppered away harmlessly, and the
field-pieces roared innocently past his ears.
“The
boys” usually came with throngs of citizens to
see the “sham fights.” They would range
themselves on a slope of hills, as near as possible
to the “battlefield,” and often above the
bellowing guns, above the colonel’s command, above
his own shrill bugle calls, Billy could hear Bert Hooper
and Tommy McLean egging him on, sometimes with jeers,
sometimes with admiration, telling him to “Look
up plucky now, Billy, and don’t stop your ears
with your fingers!” He used to be astonished at
himself that he cared so little whether they teased
or cheered. He seemed to care for nothing in all the
world but the Colonel’s voice and his bugle.
Then
the day came when he knew there was something greater
than the colonel to be obeyed, something dearer than
his bugle to be proud of. For many weeks the newspapers
had teemed with little else but news of the South African
War. Nothing was talked of in all Canada, from the Atlantic
to the Pacific Ocean, but the battles, the hardships,
the privations, of the gallant British regiments in
the far-off enemy’s country. Then came the cry,
wrung from England’s heart to her colonies, “Come
over and help us!”
Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, sprang to their feet like obedient
children, ready and anxious to fight and die for their
mother at her first call.
Billy
and his father faced each other—one was sixteen,
the other forty. They did not stand looking at each
other as father and son, but as man and man.
“Billy,”
said his father, “you don’t remember your
[Page 206] mother; she died while you were
still a baby. If she were living, I would not hint of
this to you, but—I go to South Africa
with the very first Canadian contingent. You are the
best bugler in Canada. What do you want to
do?”
For an instant Billy was speechless.
His nerves shook with a boy’s first fear of battle.
His old gun-shyness had him in its grip. Then his heart
swelled with the pride aroused by his father’s
words; he raised his head, his chin, his eyes, and suddenly
his look caught a picture hanging in its deep gold frame
on the wall. It was a picture of a little old grey-haired
woman—a sad-faced old woman dressed in black and
wearing a widow’s cap. It was a picture of Queen
Victoria.
Then Billy’s voice came.
“I
can’t remember ever having heard my mother speak,
but”—pointing to the picture—“she
has been calling me ever since the war began. I know
I’m only a big kid, and I can’t fight with
the men, but I can bugle, and, Dad, you and
I’ll go together.”
Once
more they looked at each other as man to man. Then Billy’s
father shook hands with him—a hard, true, clinging
shake—and, without a word, left the room.
Oh,
what a day it was for the little city when the picked
men of the regiment marched out in their khaki uniforms,
halting at the railway station for all the last good-byes
before the train pulled them out eastward, to board
the transport ships that swung so impatiently in Halifax
harbor! The whole town was at the station, every boy
in the place shouting and cheering and wishing he were
grown up, were clad in khaki, were shouldering an Enfield
rifle, and were going to fight for the queen. When it
was all over Bert and Tommy stood watching with straining
eyes the fast disappearing train, handkerchiefs and
caps and hands were waving from every window, faint
snatches of cheers, and the tune of “The Girl
I Left Behind Me,” came floating backward. But
the boys only [Page 207] saw a small
blotch of khaki color on the rear platform of the train,
and a brilliant point of light where the golden Canada
sun flung back its reflections from a well-polished
bugle. They watched that light growing less and less
in the distance, until it finally faded like a setting
star.
*
* *
* *
*
Weeks
afterwards the newspapers rang with the glory of it
all. The fame and the bravery of the Canadian regiments
at the terrible battle of Paardeburg was known to all
the world. Bert and Tommy and the rest of the boys devoured
every line that touched on that wonderful fight, but
their pride fairly broke bounds when in the great city
papers they read this description.
“Throughout the thickest
of the fight, a small but noticeable figure held his
ground like a rock. It was a stocky little ‘Canuck’
bugler, whose life seemed almost charmed, so thickly
did the Boer bullets pepper about him, leaving him absolutely
unhurt.”
“That’s Billy!”
they shouted hoarsely at each other. “Billy, as
sure as you’re alive!” Then they fairly
covered the town with the news, gathering all the boys
together in one big rejoicing crowd, telling each other
over and over again the story of the battle, and joining
in the monster parade, carrying banners, flags, lanterns
and torches, to give honor to Canadian pluck and patriotism.
*
* *
* *
*
And
then, one day, a train came steaming and roaring into
the station. The thronging crowds, the gay flags, the
merry bands, and the ringing cheers, were a welcome
greeting for the little knot of war-worn men who had
fought so loyally for queen and country.
“The
stocky little Canuck!” as everyone now called
Billy Jackson, was almost the last to alight from the
train. He looked terribly shy and bashful at the uproarious
reception he got; but he stood erect in his faded and
patched old khaki uniform, his battered bugle still
flashed back [Page 208] the sunlight,
and his handgrip was as firm as his father’s as
the boys crowded up, yelling, “What’s the
matter with Gun-Shy Billy? He’s all right!”
But
even as they cheered and welcomed him, Billy’s
eyes grew strangely odd-looking. The shyness and the
smile seemed to sink out of them. His glance had caught
sight of a slender, black-draped figure standing far
back from the welcoming crowd—the figure of a
young woman whose fingers clasped the chubby hand of
a boy about three years old. For an instant Billy stood
voiceless, his eyes staring, his mouth twitching nervously,
his hands rigid and icy.
“Come
on! Come on, fellows!” shouted the boys, as the
crowd surged closer about him, and friendly hands seized
him by arm and shoulder.
But
he moved not a step.
“Why, Billy, what’s
up?” exclaimed a dozen excited voices. “Come
on! The carriages are waiting to start the parade! The
band’s getting in line. Hurry up! Hurry up!”
Then Billy spoke. His voice
came, shaky, as in the old, gun-shy days; but quietly
as he spoke, the words seemed to reach across the whole
station platform.
“Boys! Oh, boys! There’s
poor Jack Morrison’s wife and the little lad he
sent his love to!”
The crowd hushed its gay clamor
and every head turned towards the woman in black and
the chubby child. They stood quite alone, silent, white-faced,
weary. Jack Morrison was the only one who had not returned
with the brave little band of soldiers who had set forth
so valiantly months before.
“I saw him fall,”
said Billy hoarsely; “fall, shot in a dozen places.
For a moment, boys, I think I failed to bugle. I dropped
on my knees and raised his poor face out of the dust.
‘Billy,’ he said, ‘Billy, when you
get home, give my love to my wife and little Buddie.’
Then [Page 209] he just seemed to sink
into a heap, and I sprang up to ‘commands.’
Boys, through the rest of that fight I could see nothing
but Mrs. Morrison’s white face, hear nothing but
her sobs. Oh, the misery of it all! I seemed to grow
into an old man all at once. I could see myself coming
home, and all of us here cheering—all but Jack
Morrison.
No one spoke. A vast silence
fell, and the cheering ceased. Then Billy walked quietly
through the crowd, and standing beside the white-faced
widow, picked up the child in his strong young arms.
He was not used to babies, and looked awkward and stiff
and terribly conscious. Then he pulled himself together.
“I have a message for
you, Mrs. Morrison, and for this little chap here. I’ll
come and see you to-morrow, if I may, when all this
fuss and flag-waving is over.”
The woman looked blankly at
him, with eyes that seemed watching for something—something
that never came. Billy dared not trust himself to say
another word. He finally set the child down and turned
away.
In a few minutes the “procession”
was in full swing, Billy and his father, in one of the
carriages, being driven beneath arches and banners,
and handclasped on all sides. Somehow, he got through
that uproarious day smiling, but shy as usual, but when
night came he was tired and utterly undone, and “turned
in” early. But sleep would not come. Then he arose
and crept to his little bedroom window, standing there
a long, long time alone in the dark—thinking.
How glorious it all had been!—the glad, loyal
faces of his boy friends, the magnificent welcome home—if
only they could have brought Jack Morrison back with
them! Oh! Billy would have given up all the glory, the
music, the cheers, the banners, to get away from the
haunting memory of a woman’s white, suffering
face and black-robed figure, and the feel of the clinging
hands of a tiny fatherless boy! His eyes did not see
the homely [Page 210] street at his feet—the dying
rockets and fireworks glaring against the sky. He saw
only a simple grave in the open veldt in far-away Africa—a
grave that he, himself, had heaped with stones formed
in the one word “Canada.” At the recollection
of it, poor Billy buried his aching head in his hands.
The glory had paled and vanished. There was nothing
left of this terrible war but the misery, the mourning,
the heartbreak of it all! [Page 211]
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