Chapter IV

The Countess von Behr sat in a deep chair by the open fireplace of her boudoir in the Schloss Bersenburg. On the white marble mantelshelf a painted china clock pointed to a quarter past eleven. The luxuriously furnished room was in deep shadow, the only light coming from two massive silver candelabra upon the grand piano in a recess by the window. The flickering glow from the red embers lit up fitfully the face of the woman who gazed abstractedly into the fire.

Four years of mental strain and suffering had left their mark on Helene von Behr, for there were lines about her eyes and her mouth had grown harder. These years had fallen with tragic weight upon the shoulders of the exiled girl, doomed by the exigencies of the times to live alone in this vast gloomy house, her heart in bleeding France, her body in a country which by hereditary instinct she had always disliked, but now hated with all the intensity of her passionate southern heart. So she had dragged out her solitary days in the seclusion of the Schloss, one of that vast multitude, young in years but old in suffering, whose souls have been ruthlessly crushed beneath the iron wheels of the chariots of war.

The Count had been keenly alive to the delicacy of his domestic situation, and from the outbreak of hostilities, though he had been almost constantly resident in Berlin owing to his important connection with the Foreign Office, he had deemed it the prudent course to leave his French wife in the solitariness of his country home; a policy which saved both himself and her from inevitable embarrassments which might at once prove detrimental to the interests of the one, and intolerable to the other.

The unutterable agony of the weary months in a position which was both false and horrible to her, conscious as she could not fail to be of the veiled contempt and cleverly concealed hostility of her servants, and the less disguised dislike of her few neighbours, had told heavily upon the lonely woman. Two months ago things had become almost insufferable when the news came that the Vicomte de Fontaigne had been laid in a soldier's grave. To fight for the Republic was one thing, but to fight for France was quite another: and so, at the hour of crisis, like the rest of his order, the haughty nobleman had put his politics in his pocket and offered his services to the Govermnent. The grief of her father's death, borne alone, friendless and exiled, had almost crushed Helene. Yet it seemed as if her perplexities were never to end: for that very afternoon a telegram had come intimating in crude staring words, that the Count von Behr had been shot dead in the Wilhelmstrasse while endeavouring from a window to appease a revolutionary mob.

She had tried to analyse her feelings when the news was conveyed to her. She had never loved him, but in his own blunt way he had been kind and considerate to her; and the sudden tears which she shed were from the heart, for she sincerely regretted his death. Yet despite this fact she could not stifle the insistent thought that she was free--free to go back to France and to the Chateau Fontaigne, that pearl of her soul, when this holocaust of death was past and over; a thought rendered doubly moving by the knowledge that the dawn was already breaking! She had often wondered what it would be like in the future for a child of France to be wedded for ever to a German.

As she sat before the fire she felt restless and ill at ease. Her jumbled thoughts refused to be focussed on any one aspect of her affairs. She felt something strange in the atmosphere, something that oppressed her. It seemed in the air, it was all around, real yet indefinable. Time and again she looked round half nervously as if expecting to find someone in the room with her....

She settled deeper into her chair and listlessly watched a morsel that fell red from the fire ... it grew pink and then grey. It still smoked a little, then died. As the lonely woman stared into the embers there suddenly rose before her a boyish face, so clear and vivid that she was startled by it. There was pain in the eyes that looked at her, pain and dull weariness, and the dumb suffering of a yearning spirit. Helene shivered.... How often during these last years had that face risen before her, and the sunlight and happiness of ten brief days in a deserted Lucerne had fallen on her tired heart like the dew of heaven. She had never forgotten him--how could she? She had wondered so often where he was. She knew he was not dead: for he was first in that list of names which she had given to a friend in Berne, desiring him to keep her acquainted with their fortunes. She often thought, had she done wrong that night when she kissed his young mouth? But it didn't really matter, after all: she had done him no harm, and long ago he would have forgotten her. Men forgot so quickly. For his own sake she hoped he had: yet--in spite of herself she prayed that he hadn't. And as she looked ahead, to-night, to her coming liberty, she wondered.... But the face in the fire made her uneasy. A queer tune throbbed in her head--his tune! She had heard it in her thoughts all night; wild, unrhythmical, it seemed to have vibrated in the stillness of the shadowy room--mysterious, passionate, compelling. Once it had been so realistic that she had been convinced that she actually heard it--out in the night; and she had pulled aside the curtains and peered out into the darkness.

She stretched her arms above her head. She felt stifled: surely the room was very hot. Rising, she moved restlessly to the window and looked out. It was a clear, starry night; with a silver moon peeping from behind some scudding clouds. She lingered, gazing up at the beauty of the heavens. Then, just as she was about to let the thick curtain drop, suddenly, muffled yet distinct, she heard a man's voice rise on the night air. It cried one English word--"Help!"

For a minute she stood startled and irresolute, then she flung open the window. Below, on the white of the wide gravel sweep, she could dimly see a dark form lying stretched before the massive steps of the doorway. She leaned over the edge and called. No answer came. She drew back into the room and touched the electric bell. A few seconds later, an old sleepy-eyed footman appeared, their last remaining manservant.

"Quick," she cried, "there is a man lying outside on the gravel. I think he is dead. Get some help and bring him into the hall. I'll come down myself immediately."

The man bowed solemnly and withdrew; and when five minutes later she descended the broad oak staircase, Helene saw an excited knot of servants depositing a human burden on the great fur rug before the cavernous hall fireplace. She approached and looked down upon the form of a man, little more than a skeleton, his clothes ragged and smeared with filth, his thin sunken face bearded and dirty. The cluster of servants stared at him open-mouthed.

The sick man moved an arm. He drowsily muttered a few words; feebly, but Helene and the domestics heard them:

"Must be near the frontier now.... Thank God!"

"English," said the old footman resentfully, but a quick look from his mistress silenced any further remark. She despatched the man for the local doctor and sent the women for blankets, hot water, brandy, pillows; and she herself knelt by the miserable creature and gently loosened his ragged collar. The emaciated face recalled nothing to her as she looked--but, a few seconds later, Gordon Niall opened his eyes, and, trembling like an aspen leaf, and white to the lips, Helene von Behr recognised him.

"Mother of God!" she gasped.

The floodgates of memory opened and the great waters poured over her soul. She felt the walls and the floor of the vast gloomy hall reeling about her; but, with an almost superhuman effort of will, she regained her composure, and met the eyes that looked into her ashen face with a look of wonder and amazement. The fever seemed to have left him, and for the moment Niall was perfectly conscious. She bent down and pillowed his head on her arm.

"Helene," he whispered, "is it you?... where am I?"

"It's all right, dear," she said soothingly. "You're quite safe. Don't speak--you must rest."

The servants returned and Niall was made as comfortable as possible. Helene thought rapidly. At all costs she must be alone with him for a time. She dismissed the whispering women upon various errands. Yes, she said to their enquiries, she would stay with him till they returned.

When they were alone Niall looked up.

"I escaped, you know," he said weakly. "I've had an awful time--but I'm safe now, Helene, am I not?... across the frontier, eh?"

"Yes, yes, my Gordon," she answered, smoothing back his matted hair, "you're across the frontier, and you'll soon be well." She almost choked as she remembered that the frontier was only five miles away.

He sighed contentedly and closed his eyes. For a while he lay very still; then he spoke, with difficulty.

"My left tunic pocket," he gasped, "feel in it, Helene ... that's right ... now, open that flap."

From the tattered leather pocket-book she pulled out a dried withered flower. His eyes gleamed as he saw it. He turned his face to her.

"Your rose," he whispered--"at Lucerne, you know."

A severe fit of shivering seized him. His eyes closed. From the corners of his mouth two thin rivulets of blood began to trickle ... he opened his eyes.

"Helene," he muttered spasmodically, "Helene--the frontier ... I must get across the frontier ... before the morning."

The end was near and she knew it. With her left hand she extracted from her bosom a little gold crucifix and held it before the dying eyes. In a voice, choked with emotion, she said in his ear,

"Say after me, my Gordon ... 'Jesu, have mercy!'"

"_Jesu--have--mercy!_"

"Now, and in the hour of death"--

"_Now, and--in--the hour of--death_"--

"Have mercy on me, a sinner!"

"_Have mercy--on--me--a sinner!_"--

He shivered as in a blast of icy wind, then smiled like a tired child and nestled his head against her breast. And very quietly he crossed the silent frontier of that shadowy country, whence no traveller returns.

* * * * *

The servants were clustered about her, and the stout village doctor was bending over the thin body stretched on the fur rug; but Helene, her head bowed, neither looked up nor spoke....

THE PIPES

BY EDMUND CANDLER

On Christmas night the pipers came into the mess. They had piped the regiment across many a hot place in France and escorted bombing parties down many a German trench. In one action four out of the eight were hit and two killed. They touch a chord deep down somewhere which no doubt has its proper scientific name. The eye of the piper which conceals his gladness, denying all rapture, is a key to the undemonstrative temper of the men who would rather die than throw up their bonnets and shout.

A subaltern of nineteen years put the case for the pipes to me in his own eloquent slang.

"Of course I get cold feet sometimes" he said, "like everyone else. But the pipes soon warm one. MacFarlane, the Company Piper, piped us across on the 25th, the regimental slogan, you know. By Jove, it was top-hole."

We called him the Chicken. Being bigger in the beam than in the shoulders and having a slightly forward stoop he looked in his kilt like a preternaturally large nestling just emerged from the egg. To see him walking reminded one of a determined young chicken. He had an assurance unnatural in the new-born which set off his callowness and puzzled one. It was not side. To hear him talk made one smile. You would think he had plumbed experience and was already convinced about the main issues of life, celibacy or marriage, the rights and wrongs of Demos, peace and war, and the like. One smiled in sympathy, not in derision, accepting the indisputable explanation that the Chicken had had special privileges in the egg. And one thanked the war for an ingenuousness of speech, the bloom of which would have been rubbed off in a week of peace-time conditions in a mess.

"MacFarlane was killed with a bombing party," the subaltern went on. "They let hell loose,--all their machine guns, rifle grenades, trench mortars, and every rifle thirty rounds at least. Our fellows came in half an hour afterwards, having been snug in a shell-hole through the whole show. Only two of our men were hit--by a trench mortar. One was MacFarlane. It was a horrid sight--made me feel a bit green. Nothing was left of them, and you couldn't tell who they were save by their identity discs. I put a sentry by the traverse on both sides and gave orders that no one was to pass. It wouldn't have done for these young recruits to see the mess," this pink-faced subaltern of nineteen explained with paternal solicitude.

His tenderness for the recruits amused me, for the absence of down on his chin made the Chicken look younger than his years. But I marvelled more at the complacency with which he found himself in command. He spoke of his blooded veterans--Perthshires, if you please, the salt of the British Army, as if he were a huntsman holding them in the leash; yet it was only in spirit that he had attained to man's estate. One phrase struck me. He was describing the capture of Hun murderers, or if not actual murderers the comrades and accomplices of murderers, men whom his Highlanders wanted to kill.

"They were all holding up their hands," the boy told me, "and trembling with funk and holding out pictures of their Fraus and kids, and calling out 'Don't shoot, Kamarade! Don't shoot!' and my men wanted to shoot them. The Perthshires had been out for blood since the 9th of May when the Huns had burnt their wounded comrades, shooting them with petrol bullets so that their clothes burst into flame and they died in agony, and men who couldn't stick the sight of it any longer crept out of their trenches, in spite of orders, to drag them in and were burnt alive too. That day my company swore that they would take no more Prussian prisoners, and now word had been passed round by the Brigade, 'The 15th Prussians are in front of you, who burnt the men of your regiment. You will know how to behave.' My men wanted to shoot them all down, make the place a shambles; but, of course, I wouldn't have it. I told them they had to take the men prisoners."

"Did they obey you?" I asked.

The Nestling looked at me in surprise as if I were a very ignorant person.

"Obey! They knew very well that the first man who fired I'd blow out his brains with my revolver."

After all, the Chicken's assurance was a compliment to the regiment, where discipline is an elemental fact. And it spoke well for the boy too, that he realized what admission into that Kingdom, or corporation, meant,--all self and chickenhood being merged in the subaltern of the Perthshires, whose powers were as natural and inalienable as the properties of carbon or oxygen.

Yet this callow youth on whom authority sat so lightly spurned his profession. It appeared that he had ambitions. He scoffed at the idea of sticking in the army after the war. He wanted "to do something," he said. I could not understand how he could resist the glamour of it all. His Colonel thought well of him and he knew it. The O.C., a reserved man, and sparing of praise, had been talking to me about the Chicken before dinner; he told me that the boy had the right spirit and no fear in him. "I sent him on a patrol," he said, "a day or two after he arrived at the front, to a building between the lines which was supposed to be occupied by Germans. My orders were, 'Find out if the house is held. Find out for yourself, remember, and don't take your men's word for it. They'll always see Germans, especially on a wet night when they want to be snug in the trenches.'"

The Subaltern had the sight of an owl, but he was determined not to come back until he had seen Germans. So far he had seen none, having arrived at the trenches straight from Winchester, where he held a commission in the O.T.C. and had just won a scholarship for New College. He swore he would see Germans that night or promenade the empty house between the lines.

A slip of a moon showed above the clouds and the rain ceased when they were within fifty yards of the building. The Corporal touched the Subaltern's sleeve and said, "They're there, Sir. I can see about a dozen of them."

"Where? I don't see."

"Straight ahead, Sir, by the wall."

The Chicken approached nearer. Within forty--thirty yards. The Corporal warned him again in a throaty whisper:--"There's 'arf a company, Sir, lining the side of the house. We're almost agin them."

Still the Chicken could not see. He gave the order to move forward.

At fifteen yards the Germans opened fire. A quick volley. The patrol threw themselves flat. Luckily they were concealed in a slight depression, and in a few seconds the moon went under a dark cloud.

The Subaltern whispered the order to return the enemy's fire, and his four men blazed away into the shadow under the house. The Germans replied vigorously; by a miracle none of the little party were hit. Then the Huns turned the machine gun on to them from somewhere farther back. The Subaltern heard the spray of bullets coming nearer, spattering the earth, searching every inch of soil, passing with a thirsty sucking noise overhead. He was the most exposed of his party, but he felt for the body of the dead man he had stumbled against, and drew it into a close embrace. The current of lead passed an inch over them where they lay interlaced, the live man clinging for life to the dead. The fire dropped. The body received a bullet and shook as if it were wrestling with him. Its head butted his own. A faint smell of cigar fume clung to its moustache. The boy had let the situation go for a moment, and was wondering, with a detachment at which he was surprised, whether all Germans smoked Havanas in the trenches, when a new kind of explosion added to the din. It was "A" Company's patrol bombing the house. The little scouting party received their first casualty from them. The man behind the Chicken uttered a cry of pain. A splinter from a bomb had taken away part of his right ear.

This extended attack was too much for the Huns, who thought the whole line was advancing and decamped. The moon peeped out again as they were going off, and the Subaltern, Corporal and the two men accounted for at least half a dozen of them. These dark figures which rolled up like rabbits were the first Germans the Chicken had seen.

The Subaltern entered the house with the two privates and sent the Corporal back to tell the Colonel that we were in possession. He had taken a rather important Observation Post marked 2.22 on the map.

I had some of the story from the boy and some from the Colonel, but I will let the boy finish it.

"The next day we had some burying," he said. "From the new post we could send out patrols to bring in our fellows who had been knocked out on the 12th. You won't mind me talking about things which make you feel a bit squeamish, will you, Sir?"--the boy called everybody above the age of forty "Sir"--"Tell me to shut up if it is too beastly; but, you see, most of these bodies had been out for six weeks and were more or less decomposed. We dug a shallow trench towards them, threw out a hook on a bit of rope and drew them in. We had to find their identification discs. It was not a pleasant business taking off a man's shirt and not always easy, and my Corporal being sick every minute didn't help things either. I generally went for their pockets for letters; that was easier, but ..." I omit here some details which are too unpleasant to print. "The Corporal with his weak stomach was a bit of a nuisance, especially at night, for if the Germans heard him they would send up a flare."

Then he told me about a frontal attack at Loos. The Chicken had seen and suffered more and lived more in six months in France, and done more for England than I had in two score odd years. He was clearly a born soldier. He was happy in the regiment and quite one of them--one of the new incarnation at least who approximate in some ways to the old. I could not see what more he desired.

"You really think of throwing up the army after the war?" I asked. The Chicken turned on me the wistful smile that talk of "after the war" evoked among the sanguine at the time. "In war time of course everybody has got to be a soldier," he said, "but in peace time--no thank you!"

"But what are you going to do?"

"Anything, but inspect meat and tunic buttons. Something that counts. I suppose I shall go into the Bar or Parliament."

I would have asked him if he really thought these talking shops counted more than the Perthshires; but the pipes were coming in again and they were playing the regimental slogan. It gave one the most extraordinary feeling in the pit of one's stomach and all down one's back.

"I'm not sure, though," the boy said ingenuously when they had gone out, "I may stick to the regiment on the chance of another show."

I understood, I had passed through the two moods myself in a long route march when the pipes took over charge from the brass band.

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _The Bagpipe_. Grattan Flood.

[2] Probably the first pipers to play on French soil were those of the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders on their landing at Boulogne.

[3] _Echoes of Flanders._ C. L. Warr.

[4] Philip Gibbs.

[5] "We will take the high road."

[6] _The Adventures of a Despatch Rider._ Major W. H. Watson.

[7] _More Adventures in Kilt and Khaki._ Thomas Lyon.

[8] Stephen Graham.--_The Times_, 16th January, 1919.

[9] Philip Gibbs.

[10] "The battle beyond Baghdad--'A Highland Officer.'"--_Blackwood's Magazine._

[11] Stephen Graham.--"A Private in the Guards."

[12] _With the Gordons at Ypres._--Rev. A. M. Maclean, C.M.G.

[13] Lieut.-Col. Cyrus Peck, V.C., D.S.O.

[14] _Musical Memoirs of Scotland_, 1849, p. 9.

[15] Sir John was wrong in his date: this incident happened in 1816.

[16] The names of the tunes are largely written in rather badly spelt Gaelic, including in some cases the letter 'v,' _e.g._, Vuirlin instead of A Bhirlinn, and h is the commonest consonant in the vocables--neither 'v' nor 'h' alone being used in correct Gaelic.

[17] Since this was written I have discovered this line in staff notation in an old MS. by Donald Macdonald, son of the man who published the Collection of Piobaireachd in the early nineteenth century.

[18] The commas are thrown about haphazard in this tune.

[19] Something is omitted here--probably 'a.'

[20] It is not easy to see what 'ved[(are]' means here: comparing it with same point in First, Second and Third Motions, it should probably be 'dari' instead of ved[(are] or 'vedari' perhaps. As written in D. Macdonald, Jr's. MS. it would be 'dari.'

[21] 'h' is probably inserted here to show that C and not B is meant.

[22] Perhaps this cadence is a clerical error.

[23] Probably a clerical error for hadarem.

[24] "The pipers' hollow."

[25] Keeper of family records, genealogist.

[26] "The anger of winking Patrick."

[27] "The blind man's leap."

[28] "The Broom of Peril," the banner borne by Oscar in battle.

[29] "Sons of the Gael shoulder to shoulder."

[30] All the atrocities mentioned above are not fiction but fact. Day and date, names and places can be given for all of them.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
A superscript is denoted by ^{x}.

In the pipe music notation an accent over a group of letters xyz is
denoted by [(xyz]; for example end[(are], and hodr[(od]in.

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.

The one hundred and twenty table headers in the 'REGIMENTAL RECORDS'
section have been made identical; a small number in the original text
omitted the column header 'REG. NO.'

Footnote [20] is correctly referenced twice from pg 189.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained. For example,
unrhythmical; outwith; bagpipe, bag-pipe; dugout, dug-out.

Pg ix, 'The Cameron Highlanders' replaced by 'The Queen's Own Cameron
Highlanders'.
Pg 5, 'invididuals' replaced by 'individuals'.
Pg 7, 'Ch till mi' replaced by 'Cha till me'.
Pg 11, 'sons of Erc' replaced by 'sons of Ere'.
Pg 19, 'unfavourably' replaced by 'unfavourable'.
Pg 52, 'dipersed' replaced by 'dispersed'.
Pg 65, 'sporans' replaced by 'sporrans'.
Pg 73, 'REG. NO. NAME. RANK.' replaced by 'REG. NO. RANK. NAME.'.
Pg 102, '23/121/7' replaced by '23/12/17'.
Pg 124, '24/10/141' replaced by '24/10/14'.
Pg 130, 'Piper Major' replaced by 'Pipe Major'.
Pg 166, 'June, 1615' replaced by 'June, 1915'.
Pg 183, 'himbandrc' replaced by 'himbandre'.
Pg 183, 'hobandrc' replaced by 'hobandre'.
Pg 200, 'Higlanders' replaced by 'Highlanders'.
Pg 202, 'The musi' replaced by 'The music'.
Pg 222, 'Higland' replaced by 'Highland'.
Pg 229, 'shapnel' replaced by 'shrapnel'.
Pg 236, 'Nifinsky' replaced by 'Nijinsky'.
Pg 248, 'Bretannach' replaced by 'Brettanach'.
Pg 262, 'boys haled' replaced by 'boys hauled'.
Pg 282, 'unrythmical' replaced by 'unrhythmical'.
Pg 287, 'shell-hope' replaced by 'shell-hole'.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Pipes of War, by Sir Bruce Seton and John Grant