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<h2> THE FLUTE OF CHANG LIANG </h2>
<h3> To P. Kershaw </h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. Nobody was convinced in spite of the authentic
news which we had received, that the Japanese would attack the next day.</p>
<p>The sunset faded into a twilight of delicious summer calm.</p>
<p>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 gods 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.</p>
<p>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 multitude 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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