it, through the battle. They had been ordered to advance and take a
certain position in what was supposed to be the flank, had forced
their way forward over the open under a scourging shell-fire, had
suffered heavy losses, and at last gained the point from which they
were to make the final attacking rush. But now that they were here it
seemed impossible for men to go further and live. A stretch of open
still lay before them, and this was swept with a tornado of rifle
and machine-gun fire. What was supposed to be a flank of the enemy
had become a frontal position, strongly held and evidently meant to
be bitterly defended. It was vital to the success of the day that it
should be taken, for various tactical reasons we need not touch here.
The Colonel had passed the word through his officers and N.C.O.'s of
what they were needed to do, and, briefly, why and how much depended
on them.
The moment came.
A battalion on their left surged out and went plunging across the
open, the high-explosive shells bursting and flinging fountains of
spouting black earth and smoke amongst them, the ground puffing
and dust-spurting under the hailing bullets. The Highlanders were
supposed to wait until this other battalion had gained a certain line
before they, the Highlanders, attacked; so they lay in their ditch,
watching the line struggle forward and the men falling in swathes
under the pouring fire, watched it stop at last and drop flat and
then begin to break back to cover. It was no time to wait longer, and
the Colonel, making up his mind swiftly, launched his attack. It was
met by a devastating storm of fire, even heavier and more deadly than
the one they had watched. The battalion, barely clear of their cover,
wilted under the storm, hesitated, stopped, and began to fire back at
the enemy they could not see. Those of the men who stood firing were
cut down quickly, the others dropped prone or jumped into shell-holes
or such cover as they could find. The officers did their best,
jumping up and running forward and calling on their men to follow.
But few of them ran more than a score of paces before bullet or shell
fragment found them, and they fell; such men as rose and tried to
follow only followed them into the next world. The air was alive and
trembling to the whistle and whine and hiss of bullets, their snap
and smack and crack, and to the quick following crash on crash of the
earth shaking shell-bursts.
Again some of the officers tried to rally and start the line forward;
but, by now, so great was the noise, so dense the air with smoke and
dust, so chaotic and confused the whole business, that the officers'
attempts resulted in no more than spasmodic and isolated movements of
little groups, movements that were worse than useless, because each
could be dealt with in detail, and, one after another, the sweeping
machine-guns sluicing bullets on each and cutting them to pieces in
turn. Those that made these separate attempts were mostly cut down;
those that watched their failure were more convinced than ever that
the whole was useless.
The Colonel, too, saw that it was useless and vain slaughter unless
by some desperate chance the line should move together ... and even
now it was perhaps too late, because the battalion on the left,
lying in the open and scourged with fire, was giving way solidly and
struggling back to cover.
It was a crisis in the battle, and where in the crisis many brave men
had failed, one brave man tried and won. From somewhere down the line
high over the roar of the battle there rose a wailing skirl of the
pipes. There was no note of the music that was not familiar to every
man there, that they did not know each word to fit to it. The pipes
might have been crying the very words aloud to them instead of the
music:
"_Thro' the depths of Loch Katrine the steed shall career,
O'er the peaks o' Ben Lomond the galley shall steer,
And the rocks of Craig Royston like icicles melt
Ere our wrongs be forgot, ere our vengeance unfelt._"
It was the voice of their own Highlands, their own clansmen, their
own regiment, that was calling to those crouching men in the ditch.
They stirred, lifting their heads and looking for the piper. They
could not see him, but the pipes shrilled on:
"_Then gather, gather, gather ..._"
The men knew what was coming. "_Gather_" sang the pipes, and, when
they were ready gathered, the word or the sign would surely come.
The music was rousing them to other memories beyond their Scotland
and their name and fame in the Highlands. "_Landless, landless,
landless_," cried the pipes, and the men remembered those women back
in the village, houseless and homeless, tortured and shamed past
telling, remembered too a woman's final word, "But we are women and
you are men."
Along the line the wild and useless fire was steadying and dying
away; they could see now that this was no time for shooting, but for
the cold steel. The Colonel saw and felt that the moment had come,
rose crouching to his knees, made ready to leap out and forward. He,
too, had been looking for the piper without seeing sign of him. But
now, just as he rose,--"_Hulloo, Hulloo ... Gregorlach!_" skirled
the pipes, and down the line a figure leaped from cover into full
view, halted, marked time for a few steps to the beat of the music,
moved steadily forward, the kilt swaying, shoulders and pipe drones
swinging, streamers fluttering, and the pipes screaming their hardest.
All along the line men were scrambling to their feet and into the
open. "_ ... Gregorlach!_"
The Colonel was out and running forward, the line was up and
away--"_Hulloo, Gregorlach!_" and the pipe streamers still fluttering
and dancing ahead of the solid rushing wave of kilt and khaki and
glinting steel. "_Give their roofs to the flames...._"
In that rush many fell and died; but at the end of it so did many
Germans. For this time no bullet storm could stay the charge, the
position was reached and taken, and the cold steel came to its own
again--came to its own and drove home the meaning of the music that
alone had brought it there--"_Their flesh ... to the eagles._"
THE BLACK CHANTER
By CHARLES LAING WARR
It was April above Lucerne, in the year of grace nineteen hundred and
fourteen, and everything was young. A witchery of sunlight and scent
and blossom etherealised the earth and the heavens; and fields, green
as the green diamond at the heart of the world, rioted wantonly to
kiss the white dazzling peaks that glittered in the sapphire sky.
On a fallen tree, its bark all frosted with lichen, two young people
sat at the edge of a pine copse. They were both in the springtide
of life, and they sat in enchanted silence inhaling the perfume of
the trees and listening to the birth song of an awakening universe.
She was not much over twenty, perhaps, and she was enhaloed with the
soul of France. It lurked in the dark glistening coils of her hair,
in the gestures of her shoulders and white, nervous hands, her lips.
Her eyes, half mystic, half tigerish, wells of lightly slumbering
passion, told the eternal story of that indomitable race whose
destiny it seems to have been to demonstrate to the world that the
life of a nation's soul may be unquenchable, though drowned in every
century with blood.
He was obviously from across the Channel; clean built, healthy
and handsome. One versed in the characteristic physiognomy of
the denizens of our islands would have told you after a moment's
observation that he was a Celt. And indeed, the Honourable Gordon
Niall, son and heir of the fifteenth Baron Niall of the Western
Isles, could play the _piob mor_ and speak the Gaelic as his mother
tongue. Twelve years of public school and university life had left
him still dreaming foolish dreams and seeing great visions. Which is
a proof that he was born into this world a trifle late.
They were happy, these two, in their nest in the hills. They looked
out on the world as the good God made it. Among the flower-smothered
fields stretched at their feet a placid-minded peasantry lived and
moved and had their being. Content with their tree-bowered, log-built
chalets and their daily bread, they follow the slow-footed oxen and
their wooden ploughs, just as their fathers did a thousand years ago.
From day to day their stainless, uneventful life unfolds to them the
secret of the untroubled heart, and they believe in the beauty of the
world they see and the goodness of the Creator they one day hope to
see. They are simple folk, of course.
Helene von Behr loved it as she looked. It made her remember so
vividly an old-age worn chateau in the peace of southern France.
She felt again in her inmost soul those scents of childhood which
outlive all human forgetfulness. She sat and dreamed of it all,
and as she dreamed her thoughts became words, and she told them to
her companion, who listened with his blue eyes full of a boyish
unconcealed adoration for the lovely girl beside him. Her eyes
sometimes puzzled him; they puzzled him now. A sad, lambent light was
in them; like sunset glints on the shadowing hills of vanished years.
She talked on: about the moat round the grey creeper-covered house,
the moat into which she had fallen one day when only six years old.
And the forest--so deep and dark and wonderful--with the great
oak, into whose branches Napoleon III. had climbed to smoke his
everlasting cigarette in peace when he had been the unwelcome guest
of her great-uncle, a _grand seigneur_ who had despised the new
régime. Old Jean Barbé, the coachman, was remembered too--old Jean,
who was always cross but didn't mean to be; and what a funny scar it
was over his left eye where her white cat had scratched him!
Then there was the village curé. She said, with simple innocence,
that her nurse had told her as a secret that it was whispered he
was her uncle, and would have reigned in the chateau had he only
travelled into this life down the broad road which leadeth from the
altar. But, what a dear he was! She remembered when she made her
first confession to him, and how she had wondered if he was smiling,
or angry, behind the grating when she told that she had stolen a
cigarette from the big silver box on the writing-table of M. le
Vicomte de Fontaigne, her father, and had smoked it surreptitiously
in the stable beside her pet horse. He used to dine with them every
Wednesday evening; and in the calm summer night the table was laid
beneath the pear tree at the end of the terrace near the river, which
glowed so red in the light of the westering sun. How shabby his
soutane always was, and all brown with the stains of snuff!
So she rambled on and spoke of her father, that proud aristocrat,
bearing a name to be found in the most abbreviated histories. She
laughed when she said that he lived there in magnificent isolation,
too proud to serve the Republic!
Then she sighed, and did not tell that nevertheless he had married
her against her will to that dull old German diplomatist sitting down
there in the Schweizerhof immersed in the voluminous correspondence
which was the breath of his life: that correspondence which she
secretly blessed in her heart for the free, careless hours it had
given her these last ten days with this fresh-faced boy, the only
occupant of the scantily filled hotel with whom her lord and master
would allow her to associate.
She sat silent, and gazed dreamily at the undulating countryside,
radiant in bloom and light and colour, with old Pilatus in the
distance, sentinel of ages. The shimmering sunshine quivered all over
it, and the scattered chalets, and orchards pink and white with foam,
seemed lulled to sleep in the security of God. Once a priest passed,
trudging down the white dusty road beneath; once a peasant, the
smoke of his long black cigar hanging in a blue filmy wreath about
his round felt hat. Far down in the valley tinkled the music of cow
bells. A little stream, crystal clear, trickled at her feet ... flies
danced in clouds above the edging rushes. The warm smell of the earth
was intoxicating like incense....
She was dimly conscious that her companion was whistling softly. He
had a habit of doing this when deep in thought, and she recognised
the odd little refrain. She had heard him whistle it a dozen
times--queer, uncanny, elusive as the mountain mist, with the mystery
of the hills in it, and sorrow, and the spirit of brave men. She
glanced at him. She knew that this boy had begun to exercise a
strange fascination over her, stronger and more dangerous than she
dared to confess even to herself. It was not unnatural, for her life
these last three years in that grim, dull old schloss in Hanover had
been very lonely. The bud will not mate with the yellow leaf, but
spring must call to spring; albeit the mongers of the matrimonial
market prattle as they please.
"What is it you whistle, my Gordon?" she asked suddenly. "There are
strange things in the air. Has it a story from your Scottish hills?"
He sat back and laughed his gay laugh.
"Yes, it has," he answered. "I'll tell it you, if it won't bore you."
"But no: tell me," she said, and prepared to listen, her chin in her
hand.
It was a tune they played on the pipes, he said: and it was a wild,
barbaric story of war and the fierce passion of men and the tottering
fortunes of his race. Six hundred years ago Castle Niall had been
besieged by a neighbouring clan, for the Niall of the day had carried
off the daughter of its chief, and held her within his walls. The
beleaguered garrison was on the verge of starvation, when to Niall
came a dream which told him that deliverance would come from a black
chanter which would drop from heaven upon the castle roof. Three
times, and three times only, would it play a mysterious tune, which
none but the head of the house would be able to awaken from the reed;
and in the hour of peril or distress the playing of the chanter
would bring salvation. When the morning dawned grey over the castle
ramparts, they found, lying on the roof, a black chanter as had been
foretold. The chief blew on it with trembling lips, and lo! it played
of its own accord. Immediately Niall and his men sallied from the
fortress and drove their enemies into the sea.
In the intervening centuries the chanter had again been used and
brought deliverance. Its virtue would be efficacious only once more.
The strange, haunting air had become the battle charge of his race.
It was that which he had been whistling. The last time it had been
played, in the sixteenth century, the family piper had caught the air
and fixed it indelibly on the scroll of memory. He laughed nervously
when he had finished. He was afraid she would treat it lightly. But
he had told his tale with an old-world seriousness, and although
she had felt inclined to smile when he had ended his recital of it,
something in his face restrained her. Instead, she patted his brown
curly head.
"Come," she said, "it is late. We must go home."
* * * * *
It was their last evening together, for Helene and her husband were
leaving the following day. As they walked along under the chestnut
trees on the Schweizerhof Quai, Niall was dull and silent. She
had stirred the very depths of his young, impressionable heart,
this girl. He didn't attempt to deceive himself: he knew he was
passionately in love with her. He felt that he hated old von Behr.
But--it was all so hopeless.
That night he dined with them. The dinner was not a great success.
They were all pre-occupied--Helene and Gordon with crowding thoughts
that were very much akin, the Count with a disquieting dispatch from
the Wilhelmstrasse and a severe attack of indigestion. At ten o'clock
he excused himself: he had writing to do. He pointedly suggested that
his wife should go to bed; and he made his adieux to Niall, remarking
that they were leaving early in the morning and would not likely see
him. Furious with stifled anger, the boy said a conventional good-bye
to the woman he loved. She moved away. Count von Behr lingered for a
moment, and then betook himself with shambling gait to his accustomed
corner of the writing-room, which, for some reason, he preferred to
his own private apartment.
The moment he was out of sight Niall hurriedly left the lounge
and hastened upstairs. On the first floor he saw her, obviously
lingering, a little way down the corridor. She came back as she
saw him approach. The boy blushed deeply as he took her hand, and
stammered something about not being able to say good-bye in such a
beastly cold fashion. His head seemed to be swimming. He had some
confused impressions about the white of her evening gown and a great
crimson rose at her breast.
"My Gordon," she said softly, with that fascinating inability to
control her r's that thrilled him; "Whistle me your tune once
again--quickly, for I must go. I shall remember you by it, boy.
Perhaps, some day if we meet again, I may be able to whistle it to
you!"
She smiled, but her eyes were moist. And Niall drew his parched lips
together and managed to whistle the strange, mysterious air. He
finished and stood awkwardly facing her, tall and distinguished in
his evening clothes. No word of love had ever passed between them,
but as they looked into each other's eyes, each read the secret that
nothing could hide.
"Adieu, my Gordon," she whispered hastily. "You have been good to me.
I won't forget you ... and you'll help me often ... but be sensible,
boy--and forget me!"
A moment later she was running down the corridor and vanished at the
end. The boy stood for a minute or two rigid where he was, staring
blankly at a red rose in his hands, his head reeling with the
delicious joy of the knowledge that for one never-to-be-forgotten
moment her arms had been thrown round his neck, and on his mouth her
warm lips had pressed a swift, burning kiss.
II
Captain Gordon Niall of the Uist Highlanders lay flat on his face
beside a loophole in the wall. With a subaltern, two men, and a stray
sergeant of the Yorkshire Rifles, he occupied the remains of a former
farmstead, now a jumbled heap of bricks and mortar. The only portion
of this mass of refuse that looked like a house was a right angle
formed by the ends of two walls which rose like a skeleton from the
shattered piles of rafters, rubbish, stones, lime, and dead bodies of
mangled men.
It was one of the supreme moments resultant upon the German break
through near Armentières, that grim, bloody month of April, 1918.
The British line existed only in the imagination of an exhausted and
bewildered Staff, their faculties half paralysed with fatigue and
over work. No one knew with anything even approaching certainty what
the situation was. Only one thing was certain because it was obvious,
and that was that the very existence of our Armies was hanging in
the balance. The British front was hopelessly, irretrievably broken;
and a disorganised rabble of tattered regiments, half crazy with
weariness and strain and hunger, were retreating in mixed, irregular
bands back from the river Lys, through a withering hail of bullets
and a raging tornado of shrapnel and high explosive; valiantly and
uncomplainingly to take up new positions and renew the desperate
struggle against overwhelming odds.
Gordon Niall had arrived at the stage when all emotion had been
frozen to its depths. He looked phlegmatically out upon a dreary,
muddy countryside literally alive with the grey advancing hordes of
the enemy. The little group huddled in the shelter of the tottering
walls manipulated a Lewis gun with the dull ceaseless energy of men
in a dream. Dirty, ragged, verminous, with a week's growth on their
smoke-grimed emaciated faces, they were unquestioningly carrying out
to the last their final act in the mighty drama of that last awful
month which clouded their minds like a nightmare from Hell.
They had been all through the sickening horror of the struggle on the
Somme, and after three weeks hard fighting had arrived a week ago at
Armentières for a rest, to find themselves swirled into the vortex
of the new German offensive. Gordon Niall as he stoically waited for
death, knew very little about the facts of it all. He had been told
that the Portuguese who held the line on the left had broken; and
that out of the welter of shattered, scurrying, disordered units, he
had been ordered to take up an advanced position, to stem the rush
with a handful of men he had managed to gather round him out of the
retreating forces. And there he was, with four others--all that were
left--with the German masses two hundred yards ahead, and behind him
the river Lys, its muddy waters splashing under the bursting barrage,
ironically emphasising the fact that for him there was no retreat.
It was only a matter of minutes, and at last the end came. A confused
babel of sounds; a smothering avalanche of men, stamping, yelling,
pushing; the collapse of the whole universe about him; a deadly pain
in his head; a strange, swift, kaleidoscopic vision of home ... his
mother's face ... then darkness.
He didn't know how long afterwards it was that he felt himself
jerked roughly to his feet. As his senses slowly returned he
realised that a German officer was searching him. He watched the
man stupidly as he went through the papers in his pocket-book: then
something fell from a letter to the ground, something brown like a
dead leaf, and Niall lurched forward with a snarl.
"Give it me!" he said hoarsely.
The officer looked up, surprised, and then down at his feet. He
stooped and picked the little fragment from the ground, glanced at it
casually, and handed it to Niall with a look of half amused wonder
in his eyes. Then he went on reading. Niall thrust the recovered
treasure into his tunic pocket--only a faded rose given to him four
years ago by a girl at Lucerne, whose memory the passion of war had
not succeeded in effacing.
The officer soon finished, and Niall was marched off with a small
escort. It all seemed like a bad dream, that scurry over the
fire-swept zone, the arrival at the battered hamlet where more
prisoners were waiting. Then the long weary march, hour after hour,
their numbers constantly swelling, on through the fading twilight and
a dark drizzling night. Like drunken men the straggling column reeled
along, half delirious with hunger and fatigue, past stores and camps
and dumps and villages, while ever past them the reserve masses of
horse, foot and artillery incessantly pressed on the heels of the
advancing German forces. At last, long after midnight, they reached a
smallish town; and, packed into an empty building, they fell on the
cold concrete floor and slept the sleep of utter exhaustion.
Early in the morning they were marched to the station, and Niall
found himself in a third class compartment with eleven other
officers. Some time before the train started a bowl of some sticky,
soupy substance was handed in, with a loaf of bread; and on this they
subsisted during the twenty-six hours which elapsed before they were
detrained at their destination, a dreary, drab little town; and,
cramped and weak as children, they marched two miles out into the
country to the wire-encircled encampment which awaited their coming.
III
Those unfortunates who endured the lonely monotonous horror of
prison life in Germany will tell you what "barbed-wire madness" was.
They will tell you of men who got the disease; and of that furtive,
piteous look that haunted the tragic sunken eyes of weary creatures
who became frenzied with the longing for freedom. It is perhaps
difficult to appreciate from the depths of an arm-chair the terrible
gnawing pain of this consuming passion to which some natures were
so very susceptible. But strong men who have lived, if only just
lived, for three long ghastly months, without letters or parcels, on
a diet of turnip-soup and small lumps of black bread, till the skin
was stretched tight over their protruding cheek-bones like yellow
parchment, their filthy, ragged clothes hanging like mildewed sacks
on their emaciated bodies, and their hollow eyes gleaming like the
eyes of famished beasts--they understand how easy it was to fall a
prey to "barbed-wire madness."