Orpheus in Mayfair, and Other Stories and Sketches Part 3

THE FLUTE OF CHANG LIANG

To P. Kershaw

The village was called Moe-tung. It was on the edge of the big main road which leads from Liao-yang to Ta-shi-chiao. It consisted of a few baked mud-houses, a dilapidated temple, a wall, a clump of willows, and a pond. One of the houses I knew well; in its square open yard, in which the rude furniture of toil lay strewn about, I had halted more than once for my midday meal, when riding from Liao-yang to the South. I had been entertained there by the owner of the house, a brawny husbandman and his fat brown children, and they had given me eggs and Indian corn. Now it was empty; the house was deserted; the owner, his wife and his children, had all gone, to the city probably, to seek shelter. We occupied the house; and the Cossacks at once made a fire with the front door and any fragments of wood they could find. The house was converted into a stable and a kitchen, and the officers' quarters were established in another smaller building across the road, on the edge of a great plain, which was bright green with the standing giant millet.

This smaller cottage had an uncultivated garden in front of it, and a kind of natural summer-house made by the twining of a pumpkin plant which spread its broad leaves over some stakes. We lay down to rest in this garden. About five miles to the north of us was the town of Liao-yang; to the east in the distance was a range of pale blue hills, and immediately in front of us to the south, and scarcely a mile off, was the big hill of Sho-shantze. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and we had been on the move since two o'clock in the morning. The Cossacks brought us tea and pancakes, and presently news came from the town that the big battle would be fought the next day: the big battle; the real battle, which had been expected for so long and which had been constantly put off. There was a complete stillness everywhere. The officers unpacked their valises and their camp-beds. Every one arranged his bed and his goods in his chosen place, and it seemed as if we had merely begun once more to settle down for a further period of siesta in the long picnic which had been going on for the last two months. n.o.body was convinced in spite of the authentic news which we had received, that the j.a.panese would attack the next day.

The sunset faded into a twilight of delicious summer calm.

From the hills in the east came the noise of a few shots fired by the batteries there, and a captive balloon soared slowly, like a soap-bubble, into the eastern sky. I walked into the village; here and there fires were burning, and I was attracted by the sight of the deserted temple in which the wooden painted G.o.ds were grinning, bereft of their priest and of their accustomed dues. I sat down on the mossy steps of the little wooden temple, and somewhere, either from one of the knolls hard by or from one of the houses, came the sound of a flute, or rather of some primitive wooden pipe, which repeated over and over again a monotonous and piercingly sad little tune. I wondered whether it was one of the soldiers playing, but I decided this could not be the case, as the tune was more eastern than any Russian tune. On the other hand, it seemed strange that any Chinaman should be about. The tune continued to break the perfect stillness with its iterated sadness, and a vague recollection came into my mind of a Chinese legend or poem I had read long ago in London, about a flute-player called Chang Liang. But I could not bring my memory to work; its tired wheels all seemed to be buzzing feebly in different directions, and my thoughts came like thistledown and seemed to elude all efforts of concentration. And so I capitulated utterly to my drowsiness, and fell asleep as I sat on the steps of the temple.

I thought I had been sleeping for a long time and had woken before the dawn: the earth was misty, although the moon was shining; and I was no longer in the temple, but back once more at the edge of the plain. "They must have fetched me back while I slept," I thought to myself. But when I looked round I saw no trace of the officers, nor of the Cossacks, nor of the small house and the garden, and, stranger still, the millet had been reaped and the plain was covered with low stubble, and on it were pitched some curiously-shaped tents, which I saw were guarded by soldiers. But these soldiers were Chinamen, and yet unlike any Chinamen I had ever seen; for some of them carried halberds, the double-armed halberds of the period of Charles I., and others, halberds with a crescent on one side, like those which were used in the days of Henry VII. And I then noticed that a whole mult.i.tude of soldiers were lying asleep on the ground, armed with two-edged swords and bows and arrows.

And their clothes seemed unfamiliar and brighter than the clothes which Chinese soldiers wear nowadays.

As I wondered what all this meant, a note of music came stealing through the night, and at first it seemed to be the same tune as I heard in the temple before I dropped off to sleep; but presently I was sure that this was a mistake, for the sound was richer and more mellow, and like that of a bell, only of an enchanted bell, such as that which is fabled to sound beneath the ocean. And the music seemed to rise and fall, to grow clear and full, and just as it was floating nearer and nearer, it died away in a sigh: but as it did so the distant hills seemed to catch it and to send it back in the company of a thousand echoes, till the whole night was filled and trembling with an unearthly chorus. The sleeping soldiers gradually stirred and sat listening spellbound to the music.

And in the eyes of the sentries, who were standing as motionless as bronze statues in front of the tents, I could see the tears glistening.

And the whole of the sleeping army awoke from its slumber and listened to the strange sound. From the tents came men in glittering silks (the Generals, I supposed) and listened also. The soldiers looked at each other and said no word. And then all at once, as though obeying some silent word of command given by some unseen captain, one by one they walked away over the plain, leaving their tents behind them. They all marched off into the east, as if they were following the music into the heart of the hills, and soon, of all that great army which had been gathered together on the plain, not one man was left. Then the music changed and seemed to grow different and more familiar, and with a start I became aware that I had been asleep and dreaming, and that I was sitting on the temple steps once more in the twilight, and that not far off, round a fire, some soldiers were singing. It was a dream, and my sleep could not have been a long one, for it was still twilight and the darkness had not yet come.

Fully awake now, I remembered clearly the old legend which had haunted me, and had taken shape in my dream. It was that of an army which on the night before the battle had heard the flute of Chang Liang. By his playing he had brought before the rude soldiers the far-off scenes of their childhood, which they had not looked upon for years--the sights and sounds of their homes, the faces and the spots which were familiar to them and dear. And they, as they heard this music, and felt these memories well up in their hearts, were seized with a longing and a desire for home so potent and so imperative that one by one they left the battlefield in silence, and when the enemy came at the dawn, they found the plain deserted and empty, for in one minute the flute of Chang Liang had stolen the hearts of eight thousand men.

And I felt certain that I had heard the flute of Chang Liang this night and that the soldiers had heard it too; for now round a fire a group of them were listening to the song of one of their comrades, a man from the south, who was singing of the quiet waters of the Don, and of a Cossack who had come back to his native land after many days and found his true love wedded to another. I felt it was the flute of Chang Liang which had prompted the southerner to sing, and without doubt the men saw before them the great moon shining over the broad village street in the dark July and August nights, and heard the noise of dancing and song and the cheerful rhythmic accompaniment of the concertina. Or (if they came from the south) they saw the smiling thatched farms, whitewashed, or painted in light green distemper, with vines growing on their walls; or again, they felt the smell of the beanfields in June, and saw in their minds'

eye the panorama of the melting snows, when at a fairy touch the long winter is defeated, the meadows are flooded, and the trees seem to float about in the shining water like shapes invoked by a wizard. They saw these things and yearned towards them with all their hearts, here in this uncouth country where they were to fight a strange people for some unaccountable reason. But Chang Liang had played his flute to them in vain. It was in vain that he had tried to lure them back to their homes, and in vain that he had melted their hearts with the memories of their childhood. For the battle began at dawn the next morning, and when the enemy attacked they found an army there to meet them; and the battle lasted for two days on this very spot; and many of the men to whom Chang Liang had brought back through his flute the sights and the sounds of their childhood, were fated never to hear again those familiar sounds, nor to see the land and the faces which they loved.

"WHAT IS TRUTH?"

To E. I. Huber

Sitting opposite me in the second-cla.s.s carriage of the express train which was crawling at a leisurely pace from Moscow to the south was a little girl who looked as if she were about twelve years old, with her mother. The mother was a large fair-haired person, with a good-natured expression. They had a dog with them, and the little girl, whose whole face twitched every now and then from St. Vitus' dance, got out at nearly every station to buy food for the dog. On the same side of the carriage, in the opposite corner, another lady (thin, fair, and wearing a pince-nez) was reading the newspaper. She and the mother of the child soon made friends over the dog. That is to say, the dog made friends with the strange lady and was reproved by its mistress, and the strange lady said: "Please don't scold him. He is not in the least in my way, and I like dogs." They then began to talk.

The large lady was going to the country. She and her daughter had been ordered to go there by the doctor. She had spent six weeks in Moscow under medical treatment, and they had now been told to finish this cure with a thorough rest in the country air. The thin lady asked her the name of her doctor, and before ascertaining what was the disease in question, recommended another doctor who had cured a friend of hers, almost as though by miracle, of heart disease. The large lady seemed interested and wrote down the direction of the marvellous physician.

She was herself suffering, she said, from a nervous illness, and her daughter had St. Vitus' dance. They were so far quite satisfied with their doctor. They talked for some time exclusively about medical matters, comparing notes about doctors, diseases, and remedies. The thin lady said she had been cured of all her ills by aspirin and cinnamon.

In the course of the conversation the stout lady mentioned her husband, who, it turned out, was the head of the gendarmerie in a town in Siberia, not far from Irkutsk. This seemed to interest the thin lady immensely. She at once asked what were his political views, and what she herself thought about politics.

The large lady seemed to be reluctant to talk politics and evaded the questions for some time, but after much desultory conversation, which always came back to the same point, she said:--

"My husband is a Conservative; they call him a 'Black Hundred,' but it's most unfair and untrue, because he is a very good man and very just.

He has his own opinions and he is sincere. He does not believe in the revolution or in the revolutionaries. He took the oath to serve the Emperor when everything went quietly and well, and now, although I have often begged him to leave the Service, he says it would be very wrong to leave just because it is dangerous. 'I have taken the oath,' he says, 'and I must keep it.'"

Here she stopped, but after some further questions on the part of the thin lady, she said: "I never had time or leisure to think of these questions. I was married when I was sixteen. I have had eight children, and they all died one after the other except this one, who was the eldest. I used to see political exiles and prisoners, and I used to feel sympathy for them. I used to hear about people being sent here and there, and sometimes I used to go down on my knees to my husband to do what he could for them, but I never thought about there being any particular idea at the back of all this." Then after a short pause she added: "It first dawned on me at Moscow. It was after the big strike, and I was on my way home. I had been staying with some friends in the country, and I happened by chance to see the funeral of that man Bauman, the doctor, who was killed. I was very much impressed when I saw that huge procession go past, all the men singing the funeral march, and I understood that Bauman himself had nothing to do with it. Who cared about Bauman? But I understood that he was a symbol. I saw that there must be a big idea which moves all these people to give up everything, to go to prison, to kill, and be killed. I understood this for the first time at that funeral. I cried when the crowd went past. I understood there was a big idea, a great cause behind it all. Then I went home.

"There were disorders in Siberia: you know in Siberia we are much freer than you are. There is only one society. The officials, the political people, revolutionaries, exiles, everybody, in fact, all meet constantly. I used to go to political meetings, and to see and talk with the Liberal and revolutionary leaders. Then I began to be disappointed because what had always struck me as unjust was that one man, just because he happened to be, say, Ivan Pavlovitch, should be able to rule over another man who happened to be, say, Ivan Ivanovitch. And now that these Republics were being made, it seemed that the same thing was beginning all over again--that all the places of authority were being seized and dealt out amongst another lot of people who were behaving exactly like those who had authority before. The arbitrary authority was there just the same, only it had changed hands, and this puzzled me very much, and I began to ask myself, 'Where is the truth?'"

"What did your husband think?" asked the thin lady.

"My husband did not like to talk about these things," she answered. "He says, 'I am in the Service, and I have to serve. It is not my business to have opinions.'"

"But all those Republics didn't last very long," rejoined the thin lady.

"No," continued the other; "we never had a Republic, and after a time they arrested the chief agitator, who was the soul of the revolutionary movement in our town, a wonderful orator. I had heard him speak several times and been carried away. When he was arrested I saw him taken to prison, and he said 'Good-bye' to the people, and bowed to them in the street in such an exaggerated theatrical way that I was astonished and felt uncomfortable. Here, I thought, is a man who can sacrifice himself for an idea, and who seemed to be thoroughly sincere, and yet he behaves theatrically and poses as if he were not sincere. I felt more puzzled than ever, and I asked my husband to let me go and see him in prison. I thought that perhaps after talking to him I could solve the riddle, and find out once for all who was right and who was wrong. My husband let me go, and I was admitted into his cell.

"'You know who I am,' I said, 'since I am here, and I am admitted inside these locked doors?' He nodded. Then I asked him whether I could be of any use to him. He said that he had all that he wanted; and like this the ice was broken, and I asked him presently if he believed in the whole movement. He said that until the 17th of October, when the Manifesto had been issued, he had believed with all his soul in it; but the events of the last months had caused him to change his mind. He now thought that the work of his party, and, in fact, the whole movement, which had been going on for over fifty years, had really been in vain.

'We shall have,' he said, 'to begin again from the very beginning, because the Russian people are not ready for us yet, and probably another fifty years will have to go by before they are ready.'

"I left him very much perplexed. He was set free not long afterwards, in virtue of some manifesto, and because there had been no disorders in our town and he had not been the cause of any bloodshed. Soon after he came out of prison my husband met him, and he said to my husband: 'I suppose you will not shake hands with me?' And my husband replied: 'Because our views are different there is no reason why both of us should not be honest men,' and he shook hands with him."

The conversation now became a discussion about the various ideals of various people and parties holding different political views. The large lady kept on expressing the puzzled state of mind in which she was.

The whole conversation, of which I have given a very condensed report, was spread over a long time, and often interrupted. Later they reached the subject of political a.s.sa.s.sination, and the large lady said:--

"About two months after I came home that year, one day when I was out driving with my daughter in a sledge the revolutionaries fired six shots at us from revolvers. We were not hit, but one bullet went through the coachman's cap. Ever since then I have had nervous fits and my daughter has had St. Vitus' dance. We have to go to Moscow every year to be treated. And it is so difficult. I don't know how to manage. When I am at home I feel as if I ought to go, and when I am away I never have a moment's peace, because I cannot help thinking the whole time that my husband is in danger. A few weeks after they shot at us I met some of the revolutionary party at a meeting, and I asked them why they had shot at myself and my daughter. I could have understood it if they had shot at my husband. But why at us? He said: 'When the wood is cut down, the chips fly about.'[*] And now I don't know what to think about it all.

[*] A Russian proverb.

"Sometimes I think it is all a mistake, and I feel that the revolutionaries are posing and playing a part, and that so soon as they get the upper hand they will be as bad as what we have now; and then I say to myself, all the same they are acting in a cause, and it is a great cause, and they are working for liberty and for the people. And, then, would the people be better off if they had their way? The more I think of it the more puzzled I am. Who is right? Is my husband right?

Are they right? Is it a great cause? How can they be wrong if they are imprisoned and killed for what they believe? Where is the truth, and what is truth?"

A LUNCHEON-PARTY

I

Mrs. Bergmann was a widow. She was American by birth and marriage, and English by education and habits. She was a fair, beautiful woman, with large eyes and a white complexion. Her weak point was ambition, and ambition with her took the form of luncheon-parties.

It was one summer afternoon that she was seized with the great idea of her life. It consisted in giving a luncheon-party which should be more original and amusing than any other which had ever been given in London.

The idea became a mania. It left her no peace. It possessed her like venom or like madness. She could think of nothing else. She racked her brains in imagining how it could be done. But the more she was hara.s.sed by this aim the further off its realisation appeared to her to be. At last it began to weigh upon her. She lost her spirits and her appet.i.te; her friends began to remark with anxiety on the change in her behaviour and in her looks. She herself felt that the situation was intolerable, and that success or suicide lay before her.

One evening towards the end of June, as she was sitting in her lovely drawing-room in her house in Mayfair, in front of her tea-table, on which the tea stood untasted, brooding over the question which unceasingly tormented her, she cried out, half aloud:--

"I'd sell my soul to the devil if he would give me what I wish."

At that moment the footman entered the room and said there was a gentleman downstairs who wished to speak with her.

"What is his name?" asked Mrs. Bergmann.

The footman said he had not caught the gentleman's name, and he handed her a card on a tray.

She took the card. On it was written:--

MR. NICHOLAS L. SATAN, I, Pandemonium Terrace, BURNING MARLE, h.e.l.l.

Telephone, No. I Central.

"Show him up," said Mrs. Bergmann, quite naturally, as though she had been expecting the visitor. She wondered at her own behaviour, and seemed to herself to be acting inevitably, as one does in dreams.