That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
overwhelmed by numbers and forced to Retreat? Will nobody stop that
horrible organ? Will nobody answer me?"
It was the tragic crowning of that day of trivial happenings that the
Iron Curtain that had baffled us so persistently should rise to the tune
of a music-hall ballad at the touch of a schoolgirl's hand. Long before
the huge funeral broadsheets broke out in the gutters of Fleet Street,
the Strand, Pall Mall, and Piccadilly, screaming of the RETIREMENT OF
THE FRENCH FORCES FROM NAMUR AND CHARLEROI, DISASTER TO THE BRITISH
EXPEDITIONARY ARMY, DECIMATION OF FAMOUS REGIMENTS, AND THE RETREAT FROM
MONS, the Tidal Wave of Mourning that was to sweep the United Kingdom
from end to end had crashed down upon the Club.
Ah! how one had underrated them, those dead men who, living, had seemed
to hold themselves so lightly. Who, submitting to be outclassed in
Sport even while holding it the thing best worth living for, had
smilingly accepted those hateful records of 1912-1913.
Theirs is a glorious record now. Above the huge Roll that is wreathed
with bloodstained laurels, droop the Flags of the Allied Nations, their
heavy folds all gemmed with bitter tears. Each nightfall finds the
endless Roll grown longer. Each day-dawn sees the Hope of noble houses,
the pride and stay of homes gentle and simple swallowed up in the abyss
that is never glutted! How long, O Lord? we cry, yet comes no nearer
the End for which the smallest children pray.
And the women.... In the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel we read of a
valley of dry bones over which the Spirit of the Creator breathed. When
that Wind from Heaven stirred them, the dead white bones put on Life and
rose up. A change as miraculous has been wrought in Woman since the
Black Deluge left a deposit of new-made widows and mourning mothers,
red-eyed sisters and silent wan-faced sweethearts, sitting about the
little tables where the empty places showed as awful gaps.
The bereaved did not shed many tears. Their grief was too deep to be
emotional, their newly-awakened spirit too lofty for complaint. Their
pride in their dead men was their upholding. Their bleeding hearts they
only showed to GOD. Before then, He was for many of us non-existent:
for many more a remote, passively observant Personality but tepidly
interested in the affairs of the human race. Would these have learned to
know Him, think you, if there had been no War?
And those whom every newspaper unfolded, every knock at the door might
smite with dire intelligence, right bravely they bore themselves through
that fortnight-long, hideous pipe-dream of the Long Retreat South. For
many of these the torture of suspense was to give place to cruel
certainty, after that unforgettable Sunday of the Sixth September, when
at a distance of twelve kilometres from Paris the retirement of the
Allied Armies suddenly changed to an Advance, and the columns of German
Guard Uhlans in hot pursuit of the British Force, were routed by
Generals Gough and Chetwode with our 3rd and 5th Cavalry Brigades. For
many, many others, the strain has never since slackened. They lie o'
nights as they lay through those nights of September, 1914, and feel the
bed shaking, and the floors and walls vibrating, as the outer rings of
vast concussions spread to them through the troubled ocean of
atmosphere. And in the mornings they will tell you calmly:
"Oh, yes. _He_ is alive, but where he is there is terrible fighting. I
heard the guns." ...
No arguments of people whose sons or husbands are not with the Army in
Belgium, or France, Italy, or Palestine, will convince them that they do
not hear the guns. Or that, borne upon the waves of a subtler medium
than air are not conveyed to them finer, more mysterious vibrations.
Thoughts that meet thoughts. Mental appeals--demands--entreaties....
The hands of their souls, reaching out through the dark hours, clasp
those of other souls in greetings and farewells.
*CHAPTER LX*
*KULTUR!*
The Belgian village-town had been so sorely knocked about that the names
of its faubourgs, boulevards, and thoroughfares were obliterated.
Hence, one is fain to substitute others, such as the Street Where The
Naked Body Of The Little Girl Hung Up On Hooks In the Butcher's Window,
the Passage Of The Three Dead British Soldiers With Slit Noses And
Pounded Feet,--The Square Of The Forty Blindfolded Civilian Corpses, and
the Place Of The Church Of The Cure They Crucified For Warning The
British By Ringing The Bells. Of this sacred edifice--Romanesque and
dating from the tenth century--little remained beyond the crypt and the
stump of the tower. Some calcined and twisted bones, a scorched rag of
a cassock, represented M. le Cure, that faithful shepherd of souls. Of
M. le Cure's flock, not one remained to tell the story of the tragic
episode that had reared the grim pile of blackening corpses in the
Market Square, and added seven hundred homeless refugees to the rivers
of human wretchedness ceaselessly rolling South.
In the bright sunshine of the fine October morning that had followed a
night of rain and thunder, the grimly-altered shadows of shell-torn
buildings lay black on the ripped-up pavements and shrapnel-pocked
walls. A sandy-white cat lapped gratefully at a puddle, a dishevelled
fowl pecked between the cobblestones, a pigeon or two preened on the
broken ridge-tiles. To the eye of a skilled observer hovering hawk-like
in the hot blue heavens, raking the streets through high-powered Zeiss
binoculars, nothing human remained alive in this Aceldama. Yet when the
two-seated bomb-carrying Taube with the big man and the small boy in it
had banked and climbed, and hummed away Southwards on its aerial mission
of ruin and destruction, one British officer, sorely wounded, lay in
what had been the ground-floor living-room of a well-to-do baker's shop.
A Captain of a Guards infantry battalion belonging to a Brigade of the
First Division of the First Army Corps. Marching, counter-marching,
digging, and fighting rearguard actions had kept the Brigade's hands
full during those blazing days and drenching nights of August and
September, whilst the battered Divisions that had borne the brunt of the
huge German offensive, reduced to one-twentieth of their effective, had
hurried Southwards, leaving a trail of blood.
"Those other beggars have had all the luck!" the Brigade had growled
when it had any time for growling. But it had won shining honours at
the Marne, and had been heavily engaged at the Aisne, losing many of its
men and officers. In the Aisne battle, particularly, the man we are
concerned with had won special mention in Dispatches for a deed of great
gallantry. Three days previously, an order from General Headquarters
had moved his battalion on the little village town.
Their R.F.A. Battery had been posted a quarter-mile distant, commanding
the north-east and east where the Germans were known to be.
Machine-guns were placed at the principal road-ends debouching on the
west where the Germans might be: the main streets had been barricaded
with transport-waggons and motor-lorries, all the Maxims left had been
hidden behind the sand-bagged windows of a factory--a gaunt, brick
sky-scraper, long a thorn to the beauty-loving eye of M. le Cure--the
walls of houses ending streets leading to the country had been loopholed
for musketry, and a howitzer from the battery and a machine-gun had been
spared to protect the bridge south of the town, a little place resting
in the elbow of a small babbling river. Watches and patrols had been set
and pickets placed, and then these war-worn Britons had dispersed into
billets, or gone into barracks, too weary to eat, craving only for
sleep.... That big mound of blackened ruins near the railway station,
left intact for strategic purposes by the enemy, now stood for the
barracks--just as that calcined heap of masonry, and twisted iron
girders at the town's north angle now represented the hospital. Both
had blazed, two huge, unquenchable, incendiary-shell-kindled pyres, to
light the retreat of the battalion south.
Secure on those points of menace, north-east, east, and west, the
exhausted battalion had slept like dead men. The townspeople, relieved
in mind by the presence of so many English soldiers, slept like
Flemings--very nearly the same thing. The Burgomaster slept; M. le
Maire followed his example. M. le Docteur and M. l'Avocat slumbered
profoundly too. Only M. le Cure, being restless for some reason or
other, resolved to spend the night on the church-tower in the company of
his breviary, an electric reading-lamp, a bottle of strong coffee, and a
battered but excellent night-glass, the property of his late maternal
uncle, an Admiral of the French Navy.
Four hours they had slept, when a furious clangour from the church bells
awakened the sleepers. Shrill whistles screamed, bugles were sounded,
Staff officers and company commanders clattered out of their
quarters--the battalion jumped like one man to its feet. Voices talked
over the wires of the field-telephones. An artillery patrol-leader had
ridden into the advance of a column of heavy motor-lorries approaching
the bridge that crossed the river, carrying the highway that had brought
the battalion from the south. Lorries heavy-laden with--French
infantry!--for an outpost's flashlight on the advance had revealed the
Allies' uniform. Well, what of it! French troops were in the east upon
the Yser. But still the crazy church-bells jangled and clanged and
pealed, shrieking:
"REVEILLEZ-VOUS, MESSIEURS LES ANGLAIS! VOUS ETES SURPRIT, LES
ALLEMANDS SONT ICI! REVEILLEZ-VOUS! AUX ARMES! AUX ARMES!"
And another broad arrow of dazzling blue-white light showed
motor-lorries packed with spiked helmets and green-grey tunics, behind
the _kepis_ topping men in blue coats and red breeches. The gunners of
the howitzer, spared for the point commanding the road south of the
bridge, were picked off by German sharpshooters before they could fire.
The officer with the machine-gun was bayoneted and the gun itself
seized. Revolvers cracked and spat incessantly, bayonets plunged
through the darkness into grunting bodies. Britons and Boches strove in
a melee of whirling rifle-butts and pounding fists. And by the light of
star-shell, shrapnel, and machine-gun-fire from the other side of the
river began to play indiscriminately on the assailants and the assailed.
Under cover of this fire, the Germans would have rushed the bridge, but
for the Factory stuffed with machine-guns, pumping lead from its
windows, and the howitzer--Oh! bully for the howitzer! thought the
wounded man.
His company had been entrenched as a reserve near the bridge in the
mouth of a faubourg running westwards. They had doubled out to support
the bridge-party in the moment of alarm. He had been shot then in the
right arm and had gone on using his revolver with the left hand. It was
not until some well-timed shrapnel from the R.F.A. battery north-east of
the town began to burst among the green-grey uniforms, and the Kaisermen
took to their motor-lorries and went off, carrying their wounded and
leaving many dead--that Franky had been sensible of any pain.
"You've been pipped, old man," had said the commander of the
bridge-company, mopping a smudged and perspiring visage with a
handkerchief that shrieked for the wash.
"By the Great Brass Hat! so I have, but I'd forgotten all about it,"
said Franky, surveying the carnage in the golden sunlight of the
newly-minted day. "Look at these fellows in French uniforms. It's an
insult to the Allies to bury 'em like that. Couldn't we take off the
blue coats and red baggies before we stow 'em underground? And the