THE AGED NUN AND THE SOLDIER-LAD

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIV, Issue 1, 4 January 1917, Page 15

THE AGED NUN AND THE SOLDIER-LAD

Monsignor Bickerstafi'e-Drew. known to the literary public as John Ayscough, describes a pretty scene in a village in West Flanders, in the Month. 'The Ancient ' mentioned in the sketch is the writer's name for himself. We quote: Next morning we went on to E., arriving there quite early. It looked pretty as we drew near to it, and even the actual village was much nicer than V. To the left, as we came in, in a really park-like -pore, there was a large placid-looking eltote.au that lay dreaming in a sunny haze: the old master was there, they told us at the lodge-gates: his sons all away at the war —everyone always spoke of the war as if it were somewhere else. Not far from the chateau was a hamlet of half a dozen houses and a mill, and in one quite small house the whole of us, nearly three hundred, were billeted. The Ancient sallied forth, by himself, to explore. The village consisted of two streets, now packed with French artillery and cavalry : the houses were homely-looking and not ugly; and there was a large church and a large convent of nuns. It was a pretty church, and old and pleasant: and the convent, which joined the back of the chateau, had the air of nestling under its protection. In the church they were beginning a Requiem, and the dead person was carried in just as the Ancient arrived. A very old nun, they said: but the nuns who acted as chief mourners, walking nearest to the bier, holding tall white lilies in their hands, were young girls —novices. The Office was very well sung, and almost every one ill the large crowded church joined in the plainchant. There were many soldiers, French and Belgian, and they were all very reverent and devout. Somehow, the Dies hue, sung by them, in the midst of the war, added to its thousand meanings a new one, august and awful like the others. It would have made a marvellous picture: the open bier (there was no catafalque) with its sumptuous but simple pall, the novices nearest to it, the older nuns next and then the great crowd of soldiers and priests' and village-folk, and behind all the arches and sunlit windows of the fine old Flemish church. It is all gone now. The church' is gone, and the village, the convent, and presbytery : not a house left, except the chateau. Out of a hamlet, we ourselves were shelled that, very night. The old nun got her peaceful burial only just in time. When the Requiem was over, and the dead nun had been laid in her grave bv the convent wall, there was another funeral, a stranger this time; a young French soldier-lad who had been killed near the village the day before. A French priest, not a chaplain, read the Office—hi»)Helf a young soldier too, a roupe-m?ifaln'n—

the .j red .-..trousers. are gone now V the war has carried off them and a hundred other prettinesses that have been found useless. For the war is all grim fact, and pomp and circumstance Ms a discarded tradition. i I;,:, fancied that the priest, who was a fantassm-, had been a comrade 4 of; the- lad he was layinp- back into the bosom of our '•; mother earth ■; what ;he had* to do moved him visibly, audibly. -His fine, sensitive mouth' was hard to control, and the words shook as they came out. ' Even though he be 'dead, yet shall he live. And no man living that believeth in Me shall be dead for ever.' And all his mother came into his eyes- : as he watched the raw "coffin' disappear under ' the rattling clods of earth. .;'.' v " ".;''.'•', ■'.-''■',■ The old nun and the young soldier lay quite near to one another; one so close to her home, the other so far from his; both bound on the same journey, with the same patient Guide.