AND then one thing and another brought the thought
into my mind, so that I had to face it and tell people how I felt about
it. There were neighbours, wanting to know when I would be about my work
again. That it was that first made me understand that others did not
feel as I was feeling.
"They're thinking I'll be going back to work again,"
I told John's mother. "I canna'!"
She felt as I did. We could not see, either of us, in
our grief, how any one could think that I could begin again where I had
left off.
"I canna'! I will not try!" I told her, again and
again. "How can I tak up again with that old mummery? How can I laugh
when my heart is breaking, and make others smile when the tears are in
my eyes?"
And she thought as I did, that I could not, and that
no one should be asking me. The war had taken much of what
I had earned, in one way or another. I was not
so rich as I had been, but there was enough. There was no need for me to
go back to work, so far as our living was concerned. And so it seemed to
be settled between us. Planning we left for the future. It was no time
for us to be making plans. It mattered little enough to us what might be
in store for us. We could take things as they might come.
So we bided quiet in our home, and talked of John.
And from every part of the earth and from people in all walks and
conditions of life there began to pour in upon us letters and telegrams
of sympathy and sorrow. I think there were four thousand kindly folk who
remembered us in our sorrow, and let us know that they could think of us
in spite of all the other care and trouble that filled the world in
those days. Many celebrated names were signed to those letters and
telegrams, and there were many, too, from simple folk whose very names I
did not know, who told me that I had given them cheer and courage from
the stage, and so they felt that they were friends of mine, and must let
me know that they were sorry for the blow that had befallen me.
Then it came out that I meant to leave the stage.
They sent word from London, at last, to ask when they might look for me
to be back at the Shaftesbury Theatre. And when they found what it was
in my mind to do all my friends began to plead with me and argue with
me. They said it was my duty to myself to go back.
"You're too young a man to retire, Harry," they said.
"What would you do? How could you pass your time if you had no work to
do? Men who retire at your age are always sorry. They wither away and
die of dry rot."
"There'll be plenty for me to be doing," I told them.
"I'll not be idle."
But still they argued. I was not greatly moved. They
were thinking of me, and their arguments were addressed to my selfish
interests and needs, and just then I was not thinking very much about
myself.
And then another sort of argument came to me. People
wrote to me, men and women, who, like me, had lost their sons. Their
letters brought the tears to my eyes anew. They were tender letters, and
beautiful letters, most of them, and letters to make proud and glad, as
well as sad, the heart of the man to whom they were written. I will not
copy those letters down here, for they were written for my eyes, and for
no others. But I can tell you the message that they all bore.
"Don't desert us now, Harry!" It was so that they put
it, one after another, in those letters. "Ah, Harry—there is so much woe
and grief and pain in the world that you, who can, must do all that is
in your power to make them easier to bear! There are few forces enough
in the world to-day to make us happy, even for a little space. Come back
to us, Harry—make us laugh again!"
It was when those letters came that, for the first
time, I saw that I had others to consider beside myself, and that it was
not only my own wishes that I might take into account. I talked to my
wife, and I told her of those letters, and there were tears in the eyes
of us both as we thought about those folks who knew the sorrow that was
in our hearts.
"You must think about them, Harry," she said.
And so I did think about them. And then I began to
find that there were others still about whom I must think. There were
three hundred people in the cast of "Three Cheers," at the Shaftesbury
Theatre, in London. And I began to hear now that unless I went back the
show would be closed, and all of them would be out of work. At that
season of the year, in the theatrical world, it would be hard for them
to find other engagements, and they were not, most of them, like me,
able to live without the salaries from the show. They wrote to me, many
of them, and begged me to come back. And I knew that it was a desperate
time for any one to be without employment. I had to think about those
poor souls. And I could not bear the thought that I might be the means,
however innocent, of bringing hardship and suffering upon others. It
might not be my fault, and yet it would lie always upon my conscience.
Yet, even with all such thoughts and prayers to move
me, I did not see how I could yield to them and go back. Even after I
had come to the point of being willing to go back if I could, I did not
think I could go through with it. I was afraid I would break down if I
tried to play my part. I talked to Tom Vallance, my brother-in-law.
"It's very well to talk, Tom," I said. "But they'd
ring the curtain down on me! I can never do it!"
"You must!" he said. "Harry, you must go back! It's
your duty. What would the boy be saying and having you do? Don't you
remember, Harry? John's last words to his men were— 'Carry On!' That's
what it is they're asking you to do, too, Harry, and it's what John
would have wanted. It would be his wish."
And I knew that he was right. Tom had found the one
argument that could really move me and make me see my duty as the others
did. So I gave in. I wired to the management that I would rejoin the
cast of "Three Cheers," and I took the train to London. And as I rode in
the train it seemed to me that the roar of the wheels made a refrain,
and I could hear them pounding out those two words, in my boy's
voice: "Carry On!"
But how hard it was to face the thought of going
before an audience again ! And especially in such circumstances. There
were to be gaiety and life and light and sparkle all about me. There
were to be lassies, in their gay dresses, and the merriest music in
London. And my part was to be merry, too, and to make the great audience
laugh that I would see beyond the footlights. And I thought of the
Merryman in "The Yeomen of the Guard,'' and that I must be a little like
him, though my cause for grief was different.
But I had given my word, and though I longed, again
and again, as I rode toward London, and as the time drew near for my
performance, to back out, there was no way that I could do so. And Tom
Vallance did his best to cheer me and hearten me, and relieve my
nervousness. I have never been so nervous before. Not since I made my
first appearance before an audience have I •been so near to stage
fright.
I would not see any one that night, when I reached
the theatre. I stayed in my dressing-room, and Tom Vallance stayed with
me, and kept every one who tried to speak with me away. There were good
folk, and kindly folk, friends of mine in the company, who wanted to
shake my hand and tell me how they felt for me, but he knew that it was
better for them not to see me yet, and he was my bodyguard.
"It's no use, Tom," I said to him, again and again,
after I was dressed and in my make-up. I was cold first, and then hot.
And I trembled in every limb. "They'll have to ring the curtain down on
me."
"You'll be all right, Harry," he said. "As soon as
you're out there ! Remember, they're all your friends!"
But he could not comfort me. I felt sure that it was
a foolish thing for me to try to do; that I could not go through with
it. And I was sorry, for the thousandth time, that I had let them
persuade me to make the effort.
A call boy came at last to warn me that it was nearly
time for my first entrance. I went with Tom into the wings, and stood
there, waiting. I was pale under my make-up, and I was shaking and
trembling like a baby. And even then I wanted to cry off. But I
remembered my boy, and those last words of his—"Carry On!" I must not
fail him without at least trying to do what he would have wanted me to
do!
My entrance was with a lilting little song called "I
Love My Jean." And I knew that in a moment my cue would be given, and I
would hear the music of that song beginning. I was as cold as if I had
been in an icy street, although it was hot. I thought of the two
thousand people who were waiting for me beyond the footlights—the house
was a big one, and it was packed full that night.
"I can't, Tom—I can't! " I cried.
But he only smiled, and gave me a little push as my
cue came and the music began. I could scarcely hear it; it was like
music a great distance off, coming very faintly to my ears. And I said a
prayer, inside. I asked God to be good to me once more, and to give me
strength, and to bear me through this ordeal that I was facing, as He
had borne me through before. And then I had to step into the full glare
of the great lights.
I felt as if I were in a dream. The people were
unreal—stretching away from me in long, sloping rows, their white faces
staring at me from the darkness beyond the great lights. And there was a
little ripple that ran through them as I went out, as if a great many
people, all at the same moment, had caught their breath.
I stood and faced them, and the music sounded in my
ears. For just a moment they were still. And then they were shaken by a
mighty roar. They cheered and cheered and cheered. They stood up and
waved to me. I could hear their voices rising, and cries coming to me,
with my own name among them.
"Bravo, Harry!" I heard them call. And then there
were more cheers, and a great clapping of hands. And I have been told
that everywhere in that great audience men and women were crying, and
that the tears were rolling down their cheeks without ever an attempt by
any of them to hide them or to check them. It was the most wonderful and
the most beautiful demonstration I have ever seen, in all the years that
I have been upon the stage. Many and many a time audiences have been
good to me. They have clapped me and they have cheered me, but never has
an audience treated me as that one did. I had to use every bit of
strength and courage that I had to keep from breaking down.
To this day I do not know how I got through with that
first song that night. I do not even know whether I really sang it. But
I think that, somehow, blindly, without knowing what I was doing, I did
get through; I did sing it to the end. Habit, the way that I was used to
it, I suppose, helped me to carry on. And when I left the stage the
whole company, it seemed to me, was waiting for me. They were crying and
laughing, hysterically, and they crowded around me, and kissed me, and
hugged me, and wrung my hand.
It seemed that the worst of my ordeal was over.
But in the last act I had to face another test.
There was a song for me in that last act that was the
great song in London that season. I have sung it all over America since
then—"The Laddies Who Fought and Won." It has been successful
everywhere—that song has been one of the most popular I have ever sung.
But it was a cruel song for me to sing that night!
It was the climax of the last act and of the whole
piece. In "Three Cheers" soldiers were brought on each night to
be on the stage behind me when I sang that song. They were from the
battalion of the Scots Guards in London, and they were real soldiers, in
uniform. Different men were used each night, and the money that was paid
to the Tommies for their work went into the company fund of the men who
appeared, and helped to provide them with comforts and luxuries. And the
War Office was glad of the arrangement, too, for it was a great song to
stimulate recruiting.
There were two lines in the refrain that I shall
never forget. And it was when I came to those two lines that night that
I did, indeed, break down. Here they are :
"When we all gather round the old fireside And the
fond mother kisses her son------"
Were they not cruel words for me to have to sing, who
knew that his mother could never kiss my son again? They brought it all
back to me ! My son was gone, he would never come back with the laddies
who had fought and won!
For a moment I could not go on. I was choking. The
tears were in my eyes, and my throat was choked with sobs. But the music
went on, and the chorus took up the song, and between the singers and
the orchestra they covered the break my emotion had made. And in a
little space I was able to go on with the next verse, and to carry on
until my part in the show was done for the night. But I still wondered
how it was that they had not had to ring down the curtain upon me, and
that Tom Vallance and the others had been right and I the one that was
wrong.
A'weel, I learned that night what many and many
another Briton had learned, both at home and in France—that you never
know what you can do until you have to find it out. Yon was the hardest
task ever I had to undertake, but for my boy's sake, and because they
had made me understand that it was what he would have wanted me to do, I
got through with it.
They rose to me again, and cheered and cheered after
I had finished singing "The Laddies Who Fought and Won." And there were
those who called to me for a speech, but so much I had to deny them,
good though they had been to me, and much as I loved them for the way
they had received me. I had no words that night to thank them, and I
could not have spoken from that stage had my life depended upon it. I
could only get through after my poor fashion, with my part in the show.
But the next night I did pull myself together, and I
was able to say a few words to the audience —thanks that were simply and
badly put, it maybe, but that came from the bottom of my overflowing
heart.