第122章 At the Battle-Fronts in the Great War (4)

"Oh, yes, but like all our boys they are lying there joking with each other."Bok was taken into what remained of a room in a badly shelled farmhouse, and there, on two roughly constructed cots, lay the two boys.Their faces had been bandaged so that nothing was visible except the eyes of each boy.A candle in a bottle standing on a box gave out the only light.But the eyes of the boys were smiling as Bok came in and sat down on the box on which the nurse had been sitting.He talked with the boys, got as much of their stories from them as he could, and told them such home news as he thought might interest them.

After half an hour he arose to leave, when the nurse said: "There is no one here, Mr.Bok, to say the last words to these boys.Will you do it?"Bok stood transfixed.In sending men over in the service of the Y.M.C.

A.he had several times told them to be ready for any act that they might be asked to render, even the most sacred one.And here he stood himself before that duty.He felt as if he stood stripped before his Maker.Through the glassless window the sky lit up constantly with the flashes of the guns, and then followed the booming of a shell as it landed.

"Yes, won't you, sir?" asked the boy on the right cot as he held out his hand.Bok took it, and then the hand of the other boy reached out.

What to say, he did not know.Then, to his surprise, he heard himself repeating extract after extract from a book by Lyman Abbott called The Other Room, a message to the bereaved declaring the non-existence of death, but that we merely move from this earth to another: from one room to another, as it were.Bok had not read the book for years, but here was the subconscious self supplying the material for him in his moment of greatest need.Then he remembered that just before leaving home he had heard sung at matins, after the prayer for the President, a beautiful song called "Passing Souls." He had asked the rector for a copy of it; and, wondering why, he had put it in his wallet that he carried with him.He took it out now and holding the hand of the boy at his right, he read to them:

For the passing souls we pray, Saviour, meet them on their way;Let their trust lay hold on Thee Ere they touch eternity.

Holy counsels long forgot Breathe again 'mid shell and shot;Through the mist of life's last pain None shall look to Thee in vain.

To the hearts that know Thee, Lord, Thou wilt speak through flood or sword;Just beyond the cannon's roar, Thou art on the farther shore.

For the passing souls we pray, Saviour, meet them on the way;Thou wilt hear our yearning call, Who hast loved and died for all.

Absolute stillness reigned in the room save for the half-suppressed sob from the nurse and the distant booming of the cannon.As Bok finished, he heard the boy at his right say slowly: "Saviour-meet-me-on-my-way":

with a little emphasis on the word "my." The hand in his relaxed slowly, and then fell on the cot; and he saw that the soul of another brave American boy had "gone West."Bok glanced at the other boy, reached for his hand, shook it, and looking deep into his eyes, he left the little hut.

He little knew where and how he was to look into those eyes again!

Feeling the need of air in order to get hold of himself after one of the most solemn moments of his visit to the front, Bok strolled out, and soon found himself on what only a few days before had been a field of carnage where the American boys had driven back the Germans.Walking in the trenches and looking out, in the clear moonlight, over the field of desolation and ruin, and thinking of the inferno that had been enacted there only so recently, he suddenly felt his foot rest on what seemed to be a soft object.Taking his "ever-ready" flash from his pocket, he shot a ray at his feet, only to realize that his foot was resting on the face of a dead German!

Bok had had enough for one evening! In fact, he had had enough of war in all its aspects; and he felt a sigh of relief when, a few days thereafter, he boarded The Empress of Asia for home, after a ten-weeks absence.

He hoped never again to see, at first hand, what war meant!