Nanko, when Christmas really comes, you’ll see.
(With a sudden note of fear in her voice.)
Rada (putting an arm round her).
It’s all right, darling.
Bettine.
The new tunes on the gramophone?
Nanko.
(Bettine pulls the little Christmas-tree out from the corner. Rada glances from the child to the men, as if hoping that her play will win them to help her.)
Bettine.
Isn’t it, Nanko, since you had your tree?
Brander.
Nanko (clapping his hands).
Tarrasch.
Of that now? (He hangs his revolver on the tree.)
Bettine (laughing merrily).
That’ll be father’s present! And now what else?
Nanko (eagerly).
Brander.
How prettily it hangs upon the bough!
Isn’t that fine? (He hangs the ring upon the tree.)
Bettine (staring at it).
Tarrasch.
Nanko (clapping his hands and capering).
Light all the little candles on the tree!
Oh, doesn’t the pistol shine, doesn’t the ring
Glitter!
Bettine.
He had a little piece of mother’s hair
Plaited inside it, just like that. It is
My father’s ring.
Rada.
Bettine, just like it, hundreds, hundreds of others.
Brander.
Bettine.
That’s father’s Christmas present to us all.
Nanko.
Nobody else, in these parts, would have thought
Of buying a gramophone. Let’s open it.
Bettine.
(Brander opens the package. Nanko rubs his hands in delight. They get the gramophone ready.)
Nanko.
There now—just see how this kind gentleman
Has opened the package for us. Now you see
The good of war. It benefits the health.
Sets a man up. Look at old Peter’s legs,
He’s a disgrace to the village, a disgrace!
Nobody shoots him either, so he spoils
Everything; for you know, you must admit,
Bettine, that war means natural selection—
Survival of the fittest, don’t you see?
For instance, I survive, and you survive:
Don’t we? So Peter shouldn’t spoil it all.
They say that all the tall young men in France
Were killed in the Napoleonic wars,
So that most Frenchmen at the present day
Are short and fat. Isn’t that funny, Bettine?
(She laughs.)
To-day. So nobody knows. Perhaps thin legs
Like Peter’s may be useful, after all,
In aeroplanes, or something. Every ounce
Makes a great difference there. Nobody knows.
It’s natural selection. See, Bettine?
Ah, now the gramophone’s ready. Make it play
A Christmas tune. That’s what the churches do
On Christmas Eve: for all the churches now,
And all the tall cathedrals with their choirs,
What do you think they are, Bettine? I’ll tell you.
I’ll whisper it. They’re great big gramophones!
(She laughs.)
Tarrasch (adjusting a record).
In your idea, my friend, that would delight
The ghost of Nietzsche! Certainly, it shall play
A Christmas tune. Here is the very thing.
(There is an uproar of drunken shouts in the distance. Brander locks the outer door.)
Bettine.
Mother. D’ you hear them? Mother, was it an inn
Like that—the one that’s in my Christmas piece?
Brander (to Tarrasch).
Tarrasch.
Till morning. When the men have slept it off
They’ll stand a better chance of slipping away.
They’re all drunk, officers and men as well.
Brander.
Nanko.
That we should have some music. Well—I know!
Tell us the Christmas piece you learned in school.
That’s right. Stand there! No, stand up on this bench.
Your mother tells me that you won the prize
For learning it so beautifully, Bettine.
That’s right. Now, while you say it, I will stand
Here, with a candle. See, that illustrates
The scene.
(He lifts one of the candles to illuminate the picture of the Madonna and child. For a moment he speaks with a curious dignity.)
About this Christmas Eve. The wise men say
That Time is a delusion. Now then, speak
Your Christmas piece.
Bettine (with her hands behind her, as if in school, she obeys him).
She laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night,
And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, “Fear not: for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
“For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
“And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying:—
“Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace....”
(There is silence for a moment, then a pistol-shot, a scream, and a roar of drunken laughter without, followed by a furious pounding on the door. Bettine runs to her mother.)
Brander.
About this child?
(He calls through the door.)
Is full. We want to sleep.
(The uproar grows outside, and the pounding is resumed. There is a crash of broken glass at the window.)
Bettine.
It is the Boches! Mother, it is the Boches!
Where are the British, mother? You said the British
Were sure to be here first!
Brander.
Into that room, woman, at once!
(Rada snatches the revolver from the Christmas-tree and hurries Bettine into the bedroom just as the other door is burst open and a troop of soldiers appear on the threshold, shouting and furious with drink. They sing, with drunken gestures, in the doorway:)
First Soldier.
They’re in that room. I saw them! The only skirts
Left in the village. Comrades, you’ve had your fun—
It’s time for ours.
Brander.
We want to sleep.
Second Soldier.
Tarrasch.
First Soldier.
I saw them.
Nanko.
Second Soldier.
(They make a rush towards the room.)
Nanko.
The Christmas-tree! You’ll smash the gramophone!
(A soldier tries the bedroom door. It is opened from within, and Rada appears on the threshold with the revolver in her hand.)
First Soldier.
Rada.
Second Soldier.
Nanko (who is hugging his Christmas-tree near the fire again).
That life’s a battle.
Rada.
Up to your necks in blood, you hear this fool,
This poor old fool, piping his dreary cry.
And through his lips, and through his softening brain,
The men that use you, cheat you, drive you out
To slaughter and be slaughtered, teach the world
That this black vampire, sucking at our breasts,
Is good. Men! Men! The pestilence of your dead
Is murdering you by legions. All the trains
Of quicklime that your Emperor sends behind you
Can never eat its way through all that flesh—
Three hundred miles of dead! Your dead!
First Soldier.
A speech!
(They make a movement towards her, which she arrests by raising the revolver.)
Rada.
I tell you, you are doing it in a dream.
You are drugged. You are not awake.
Nanko.
The very same.
Rada.
Listen! If you have children of your own,
Listen to me ... the child is twelve years old.
She has never had one hard word spoken to her
In all her life.
Second Soldier.
Where is she? Bring her out!
First Soldier.
Add two, because her mother loves her so!
That’s ripe enough for marriage to a soldier.
(They laugh uproariously, and sing again mockingly:)
(They move forward again.)
Rada (raising the revolver).
Soldiers.
The dogs!
Rada.
And, where they hold, they never will let go.
Though they may come too late for me and mine,
You are on your trial now before the world.
You never can escape it. They are coming,
With justice and the unconquerable law!
I warn you, though their speech is not my own,
And I shall be but one of all the dead,
Dead, with that child, in a forgotten grave—
I speak for them, and they will keep my word.
Yes, if you harm that child ... the British.... Ah!
(They advance towards her.)
To share between you and myself.
First Soldier.
She can’t shoot! Look at the way she’s holding it!
Duck down, and make a rush for it.
Soldiers.
(They make a rush. Rada steps back into the bedroom and shuts the door in their faces.)
Second Soldier.
Bettine (crying within).
Brander (trying to interpose).
Tarrasch.
First Soldier.
(They put their shoulders to it. Brander makes a sign to Tarrasch. They try to pull the men back. There is a scuffle and Brander is knocked over. He rises with the blood running down his face, while Tarrasch still struggles. The door begins to give. A shot is heard within. The men pause and there is another shot.)
Brander.
(There is a booming of distant artillery.)
(A bugle-call sounds in the village street.)
Tarrasch.
(They all rush out except Nanko, who peers after them from the door. Leaving it open to the night, he takes a marron glacé from the table, crosses the room, and begins to examine the gramophone.
Confused sounds of men rushing to arms, thin bugle-calls in the distance, and the occasional clatter of a galloping horse blow in from the blackness framed in the open door. The deep pulsation of the British artillery is heard throughout, in a steady undertone.)
Nanko (calling aloud as he munches).
Rada, these marrons glacés are delicious.
It’s over now! Come, I don’t think it’s right
To spoil a person’s pleasure on Christmas Eve.
(He tiptoes to the door and peers into the night.)
They are breaking into clusters of green stars!
Oh, there’s a red one! You could see for miles
When that one broke. The willow-trees jumped out
Like witches; and, between them, the canal
Dwindled away to a little thread of blood.
And there were lines of men running and falling,
And guns and horses floundering in a ditch.
Oh, Rada! there’s a bonfire by the mill.
They’ve burned the little cottage.
There’s a man
Hanging above the bonfire by his hands,
And heaps of dead all round him.
Come and see!
It’s terrible, but it’s magnificent,
Like one of Goya’s pictures. That’s the way
He painted war. Well, everybody’s gone....
To think I was the fittest, after all!
(He returns to the gramophone.)
He said the tune that he was putting in
Was just the thing for Christmas Eve.
I wonder,
I wonder what it was. Listen to this!
(He reads the title.)
Sung by the Grand Imperial Choir—d’ you hear?—
At midnight in St. Petersburg—Adeste
Fideles! Fancy that! A Christmas carol
Upon the gramophone!
So all the future ages will be sure
To know exactly what religion was.
To think we must not hear it! Rada, they say
The Angel Gabriel composed that tune
On the first Christmas Eve. So don’t you think
That we might hear it?
Everybody is gone, except the dead.
It will not wake them....
Come, Rada, you’re pretending! Do not make
The war more dreadful than it really is.
(He accidentally sets the gramophone working and jumps back, a little alarmed. He runs to the bedroom door.)
The gramophone’s working.
(The artillery booms like a thunder-peal in the distance. Then the gramophone drowns it with the massed voices of the Imperial Choir singing:)
Læti triumphantes,
Adeste, adeste in Bethlehem!
Natum videte
Regem angelorum:
Venite, adoremus,
Venite, adoremus,
Venite, adoremus Dominum.
(Nanko touches the floor under the door of the bedroom and stares at his hand.)
Nanko.
Blood, I suppose....
(A look of horror comes into his face as he stands listening to the music. Then, as if slowly waking from a dream and almost as if sanity had returned for a moment, he cries:)
I am awake! And, in the name of Christ,
I accuse, I accuse ... O God, forgive us all!
(He falls on his knees by the bedroom door and calls, as if to the dead within:)
Bettine, Bettine! the British, they are coming!
Rada, you said it—they are coming quickly!
They are coming, with the reign of right and law.
But, O Bettine! Bettine! will they remember?
Are they awake? I only hear their guns.
What if they should grow used to it, Bettine,
And fail to wipe this horror from the world?
God, is there any hope for poor mankind?
God, are Thy little nations and Thy weak,
Thine innocent, condemned to hell for ever?
God, will the strong deliverers break the sword
And bring this world at last to Christmas Eve?
The Imperial Choir.
Splendorem Æternum,
Velatum sub carne videbimus,
Deum infantem,
Pannis involutum,
Venite, adoremus,
Venite, adoremus,
Venite, adoremus Dominum.
Nanko.
But in the soul of man, the abode of God?
There, in that deep, undying soul of man
(I still believe it), that immortal soul,
Will they lift up the cross with Christ upon it,
The Fool of God, whom intellectual fools,
The little fools of dust, in every land,
Grinning their What is Truth? still crucify.
Could they not thrust their hands into His wounds?
His wounds are these—these dead are all His wounds.
Bettine! Bettine! the British, they are coming!
But you are silent now, so silent now!
Will they lift up God’s poor old broken Fool,
And sleep no more until His kingdom come,
His infinite kingdom come?
Will they remember?
(He bows his head against the closed door, while the gramophone lifts the chorus of the Imperial Choir over the deepening thunder of the guns:)
Chorus angelorum,
Cantet nunc aula celestium
Gloria, Gloria,
In excelsis Deo!
Venite, adoremus,
Venite, adoremus,
Venite, adoremus Dominum.
INTERCESSION
Now the night has cloaked the slain,
Now the stars patrol the skies,
Hear our sleepless prayer again!
They who work their country’s will,
Fight and die for Britain still,
Soldiers, but not haters, know
Thou must pity friend and foe.
Therefore hear,
Both for foe and friend, our prayer.
Over every land and sea,
Thoughts too deep for human speech
Rise from all our souls to Thee;
Deeper than the wrath that burns
Round our hosts when day returns;
Deeper than the peace that fills
All these trenched and waiting hills.
Hear, O hear!
Both for foe and friend, our prayer.
Sees, beyond the death we wield,
Faces of the young and brave
Hurled against us in the field.
Cannon-fodder! They must come,
We must slay them, and be dumb,
Slaughter, while we pity, these
Most implacable enemies.
Master, hear,
Both for foe and friend, our prayer.
Urged by duties past reply.
Ours is but the task assigned;
Theirs to strike us ere they die.
Who can see his country fall?
Who but answers at her call?
Who has power to pause and think
When she reels upon the brink?
Hear, O hear,
Both for foe and friend, our prayer.
Laughed by fools who quote their mirth,
When the wings of death go by
And their brother shrieks on earth.
Though they clamp their hearts with steel,
Conquering every fear they feel.
There are dreams they dare not tell.
Shield, O shield, their eyes from hell.
Father, hear,
Both for foe and friend, our prayer.
Where the wounded toss at home,
Weep and bleed and laugh in turn,
Yes, the masking jest may come.
Let him jest who daily dies.
But O hide his haunted eyes.
Pain alone he might control.
Shield, O shield his wounded soul.
Master, hear,
Both for foe and friend, our prayer.
Hope betrayed us, long ago.
Duty binds both foe and friend.
It is ours to break the foe.
Then, O God! that we might break
This red Moloch for Thy sake;
Know that Truth indeed prevails,
And that Justice holds the scales.
Father, hear,
Both for foe and friend, our prayer.
Dawning on thy long renown,
Mark the purpose of thy power,
Crown thee with that mightier crown!
Broadening to that purpose climb
All the blood-red wars of Time....
Set the struggling peoples free,
Crown with Law their Liberty!
England, hear,
Both for foe and friend, our prayer!
The Gresham Press
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED
WOKING AND LONDON