CHEZ NOUS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 63, 15 March 1915, Page 8

CHEZ NOUS.

(By J. MAC_K>UGA_JL-_IAY.)

Home was 'home then, my dear, full of tender faces; Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.

I The male ward of the little Cottage 'Hospital built at the foot of the Gleniflfer Braes, and within a stone's throw of the-place where Sir William Wallace was born, had lost its decorum. Its quiet was ravished. Its regulations about smoking and the like had gone adrift on a tide and storm of gaiety. It was captured by the spirit of Belgium, so faithfully revealed hy Verhaeren. Though twelve men, they seemed a legion. The hospital was a hospital no more, hut a nest of song and tumultuous laughter foreign to the reserve and canniness of th e Scot. The place of healing burgeoned suddenly from the soil of sickness and wounds, like a "blossom of the South casting a marvellous radiance -beneath our grey winter skies. Quips, jests, badinage in broken English along with their French; abundance of mirth; above all, and at all impossible times, " Tipperary." It had heen learned in Stobbill Hospital, Glasgow, and had been perfected in the hours of convalescence in the lee of the house of Wallace beneath the Braes of Gleniffer, of which Tannahill sang and where he roamed.

The other Scottish inmates in the side rooms and in the female ward were so infected with the joyance that they often forgot that they were sick.

"Are they no' the he'rty anes?" I overheard a Scotswoman say to her next, bed neighbour; "it'll tak niair than the Germans to haud thir boys doon."

" Ay," ' came the answer. " they're boiling awa' the leeve-lang day like a pot o' potatoes. I'm in wi' thae rheumatisms, an' I feel my feet jig-jiggin' awa ablow the blankets when they stairt on ' Tippirarav.' It wnd make the very hens leave off frae their corn-seed."

They had escaped from a blood-stained land; had suffered all the plenteous hardships which war can inflict. In dogged retreat they had yielded up inch hy inch their country, covering it "with slain as they retired, and had witnessed their land laid waste hy a. savagery as meaningless as it was merciless. They were left with nothing hut their wounds. Harassed to despair and death, they remained unvanquished. The time was blithe. To an indifferent observer, inideed, they appeared to be satisfied with the good fortune of the day as it ran now, and, singing their songs in a foreign land, were indifferent to the woes and tragedies of their country. One, a doctor, carried his hand, shattered by shrapinel, in a sling. -He was the worst ca_e. Yet his smile was like an outburst of sunshine. Had they a wound at all in 'their heart, those gay exiles?

Certainly, they had admiration for grandeur of spirit, for one of them, a schoolmaster of some thirty years, accompanied mc to where I pointed out to him the spot where Scotland's patriot was born. In the shadow of the monument of Aberdeen granite I told him the Odyssey of Wallace, of his triumph in the sacred name of liberty, and h : s tragedy. He looked up at the Crown of Scotland carved on the top of the granite column; he gazed at the gigantic fabled sword of the hero, wrought out in the dour grey stone.

"He was our Albert; our Scottish Albert," I said.

A smile of understanding .flashed across his face. 'He took off his cap with his left hand.

' "Salul; niille fois saint," and raised his right to his forehead.

The following night I was called to I the hospital. After I had seen the patilent in the female ward I walked down [the long corridor towards the hall-stand for my hat. I noticed that the male ! ward, where the Belgians were lodsed ot the other end of this corridor*, was strangely quiet, and the lights were turned down. Presently from one of the side-room,, the matron appeared in the corridor at the end near the male ward. She was about to enter this ward, but suddenly, as it seemed, she chansed her mind, and stood still with a listening air. At this moment she caught s:ght of mc and beckoned with her hand.

"No 'Tipperary' to-night," I said, 'and -lights out, and cease firing."

She shook her head "and made a gesture for silence. .

The ward within was profoundly quiet, and the Belgians were all in bed. Sudj denly, in a bed near the' door, I heard someone sobbing. The-sound was low and smothered. T saw the lips of the matron droop, and begin to tremble. Neither of u« dared so much ns whisper. I Again that st -nd out of the dimness, a3 of a spirit in pain, broke the silence — low at first; a heart fighting unsuccessfully to "conceal its anguish; low, fierce sobs, which all at once gave way to a paroxysms of weeping—the heart of Belgium's sorrow finding utterance. And all the other beds, I knew, were listening in the gloom. Many ere? and groans 1 had heard in that ward from sick and wounded men, but never anvth'n? 'ike this terribl e unrestrained "rief. I had always found the matron full of cheer, with eyes of laughter and a radiant f ace worth more than doctor's drugs. 'Sow her face was white and sad, and her eves scared. ""What is it?" I whispered. "They hav e been out. .'. .this evening ... at tea." Her lips were trembling violently. " They hive been ... in a home. . . they remember." 2Thcrc were sobs also in her voice. . . . Outside I leaned on the iron pMi"g. 'still hearing that fierce weeping. Tbey had been unsubdued in war. TJnconquered by disaster, one is sobbing s>t last, and his comrades are Iving so quiet. bo quiet, hearing sohs which were the litany of a homeless people. '"'They have been in a honje.,. . they remember." Those sobs wandered far away out to waste-place* of a hlfdrowned and ravaged land, whose roofs are burned, whose hearths are briken, whose cote and cribs are desecrated. My grief swelled within mc a<i I groaned to the homeless "wind sobV.ng across the tree tops:

"Home was home, then, my dear, full of tender faces."