“Because there was a strong Celtic influence in America. I don’t care what you say, Alfred, if the man who made that tune was not a Scotsman or an Irishman, or else under hypnotic Celtic influence, I would—I would break my violin. It is a Celtic tune. Now sing me or whistle me an English tune. I think I will have the violin out again to play it. I can hear it when you whistle, but it is not quite itself.”
“No German but you has ever heard this tune,” said Alfred. “It is a secret one.”
Alfred whistled a tune, and the Knight played it through. He smiled.
“And what words do you sing to it? Secret rebellious words ?”
“Yes. We sing: “God send our warrior-king,
God send our valiant king,
God send our king.
Send him victorious,
War-worn but glorious
Long to rule over us,
God send him soon.
“Thy choicest arms in store
On us be pleased to pour
On churl and thegn,
Scatter the enemy !
Death to all Germany !
England will yet be free
In that great reign.”
“What!” cried the Knight. “Do you mean all you good English Hitlerians sing that song?”
“No. It’s a heathen song. But all of us know it, and some of us sing it, sometimes. A great leader is to arise and arm us, you see. There are stores of arms taken from the Germans left over from the war if we knew where to find them. Parts of aeroplanes and tanks and things.”
“They’d be a lot of use, after six hundred years and more, wouldn’t they?”
“Oh, I know. It’s all nonsense really.”
“What do churl and thegn mean?”
“Nobody knows. They’re the men who are to be armed, anyway.”
“Kerl, of course,” said the Knight. “Those must be very old Anglo-Saxon words meaning common fellow, Kerl, and officer. Like Nazis and Knights.”
“And king means leader. Fuehrer. We have two words for leader, you’ve only one.”
“On the contrary, king is a German word. It comes in von Hess. Koenig. A king was not in later history quite the same as a Fuehrer. It became a hereditary office. Der Fuehrer is chosen. Kings were born. When there were no more dynastic kings in Germany, and history had vanished, the word vanished too. But you’ve still got it because you are still fundamentally irreligious and disloyal. I’m glad. Only you’ll never beat Germany and free yourselves by force of arms. You mustn’t allow yourselves to be made stupid and violent by your secret song.”
“We don’t really. Only the English tune helps us to keep ourselves together—such of us as want to.”
“But then it is not an English tune,” said the Knight.
“It is an English tune!” said Alfred angrily. “It is a very old sacred English tune. I’ll bet you it was sung all over the old empire to different words.”
“It may have been, but for all that it is not an English tune. It is a German tune. I have heard it in Saxony. Besides, I should know it was German if I had not heard it in Saxony. It is a typical good, sound, rather dull German tune.”
“You want to have everything, even our tunes now! You leave us nothing, nothing at all! I wonder you allow us to eat or to wear any clothes!”
“Alfred, do not get so heated. I shall have to play you some more double-stopping. And whatever you say, and if you kill me, you will never get me to admit that that tune is anything but German. Whistle me another English tune.”
Alfred whistled another, a sad but sweet melody. The Knight played it, first in single notes and then with harmonies that brought tears to Alfred’s eyes and made him forget the insult the Knight had offered to the sacred secret English tune.
“The double-stopping is all right for that melody,” he said. “It is more sophisticated than the Highland air, not quite so purely sweet—yes, it is allowed to have double-stopping. It goes well. Ganz gut !”
He played it again. Alfred thanked him, bending his head down so that the Knight should not see his tears. He was ashamed of himself for being so deeply affected, and yet there was something about the old German’s playing or about the tune itself——
“You are allowed to have that tune,” said the Knight, laying the violin back in its case. “It is not Celtic, and not German. Certainly not Russian, ‘nor is it at all like the French or Spanish folk-melodies. It has a quality of its own. What are the words?”
“It is a love-song from a man to a beautiful youth, and it starts, ‘Drink to me only with thine eyes.’”
The Knight softly sang these words in a voice that had lost all tone but was true and clear.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Of course it is a love song. But it was never written for a boy. The words have got altered like your rebel song. It’s an old song written in the time when women were beautiful, and men had to woo them, to court them, perhaps to be rejected. Ah, yes. Now if you think of that German girl in the photograph you can come to a faint understanding of the tune—not musically, it is very simple there, but emotionally. No tunes like that have been written since men gave up loving women. No tunes at all of any kind a quarter as good as that little English song. But, Alfred, you must go. I have wasted all our time in trifling matters and have explained nothing. I have to go to Munich to-night.”
“In the aeroplane? The new one ?”
“I’m going in my car. I’m being more careful now, taking no risks whatever. And have you had any supper?”
“No, sir.”
“Then go to the kitchen and find out what Knights’ personal servants get to eat. They live too high for an officially Spartan empire, but the Knights are not Spartans except voluntarily, and the food is always there, so naturally the servants eat it.”
“What is Spartan?”
“Another warlike half-civilisation like ours. Now, be quiet, Alfred. Stand to attention. I am going to summon Heinrich to take you to the kitchen. Come to-morrow earlier, say at four. Bring Hermann with you. I must find out what he really wants to do. And think of some more tunes. But no, we have so little time. Only I must show you—ach, here is Heinrich !”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“HERMANN,” said von Hess, when this curious trio were together again upon the following day, “are you really willing, you an innocent man, or a comparatively innocent man (you killed that boy), to submit to Permanent Exile in order to go to England with Alfred?”
Hermann’s face twisted like that of a man in severe pain, but not out of any unmanly feeling of pity for his youthful victim.
“My lord, I am willing,” he said in a low voice.
“And are you sure you can put up with the examination, the confession, the Knights’ Court sentence, the public degradation, and the journey through Germany?”
“I can put up with all that, sir. Please, highly-born, I am not a coward.”
“You don’t know what it’ll be like. Have you ever seen a Nazi degraded and sent to Permanent Exile?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, I have once. It’s terrible. Even though I do not believe in the Blood, I found it terrible. And I cannot do anything for you, or give you countenance, or speak to you after the sentence is passed. I shall never be able to speak to you or see you any more after that.”
Hermann’s face twisted again.
“My lord, it will be my deep grief not to see you any more. I—I think I will not do it.”
“Then will you be a good lad and do your work and behave yourself sensibly?”
“No, my lord. If I don’t go I shall kill myself.”
“But then you won’t see me any more either, at least it’s all very problematical.”
“I think I had better go, sir,” said Hermann.
“You must be certain. Once I’ve started this I can’t possibly stop it. It’ll roll over you like a tank. Do you think you can live in England without killing yourself? Because if you’re going to do that anyway you migh
t just as well die a good German in Germany and be buried here.”
“I can live in England with Alfred. He says he can get me work in an English farm, under Englishmen. In Wiltshire somewhere not too far from Bulfort.”
“And will you protect Alfred and my book that I’ve given him as far as you are able?”
Hermann held his head up higher, and drew a deep breath.
“With my heart’s blood, my lord.”
“Well then, as you can’t go on being a Nazi and my man, you are Alfred’s man, to serve him and protect him as you would me.”
“I shall do that, my lord.”
“Then now listen. I went to Munich last night on this business of the boy Rudolf, who died the day before yesterday. I have shown no one your deposition yet. You are officially under Knight’s Marshal’s arrest for beating the boy so severely that he died. But that would be an accidental killing and naturally nothing much would happen except that you would be flogged to teach you to be more careful in future and remember that boys of fourteen, however tough, are not men. If I make this deposition public”—the Knight touched his tunic pocket nothing would happen at all. To kill a boy in the commission of the disgusting crime of race defilement is not murder in any true German’s eyes, any more than it is murder to kill a bluebottle. But to get you Permanent Exile you must dictate another confession to me, that this first deposition is a malicious false accusation, and to make it plausible you’d better say you brought it out of sudden jealous hatred of Rudolf, because he wouldn’t have anything to do with you.“
“Yes, sir,” said Hermann, in an expressionless voice.
The Knight paused.
“Hermann, there is a Knights’ Court in a week. But I must give notice of the case to be brought. If you miss this one there will be no more for three months.”
“I’ll go before this one.”
“But it means that you must come and make your second deposition to-night. It must be taken with the other to Munich to-morrow. And to-morrow you will have to go to jail in Munich.”
“I will do that, sir.”
“And you won’t be able to go to England with Alfred. In Germany he must pretend to be as disgusted with you as anyone else. Besides, you’ll be under guard till you’re on the ship.”
“Will they send me straight there after the degradation?”
“I believe they will.”
“Then I shall be there about the same time as he is.”
“You can go to my house even if you do get there first,” Alfred said. “Thomas and Fred and young James will be there. Will he have any money, sir? Or will he have to walk from wherever he lands into Wiltshire?”
“He’ll have any money I give him. I can’t give him very much, of course. But they won’t take it away from him. In England until he gets work he’ll be entitled to an old woman’s ration of food, which is half nothing, and of course if any English farm foreman cares to employ him the estate owner won’t stop his wages. And, Hermann, you won’t be allowed to look like an Englishman, or be able to pass for an Englishman as long as you don’t speak.”
“I know, sir. I shall have to wear a special red uniform and if I take it off I shall be beaten.”
“Yes, you’ll be a recognisable outcast. Every Nazi has the right to kick you, and every Englishman to scorn you. Are you sure you can stand it?”
“Yes, sir. When shall I come to give the highly-born my second deposition?”
“Oh. About five. But stay now if you like, Hermann.”
“Sir, I would rather work on the farm to-day, if you please. We have not even to-day quite finished the mangolds.”
“Oh, damn the mangolds. Oh, well, all right, you’d better go. You’ll be happier working, I expect. I’ll give you my last commands and advice to-night. Dismiss.”
Hermann went out. The Knight looked very distressed, but he said nothing.
“Sir,” Alfred ventured after a long silence, “will they let him choose his place of exile? What if they send him to Russia after all he’ll have been through?”
“They let them choose any place in the Empire so long as it is out of Germany. If an exile said he wanted to go to South Africa they’d send him there. The punishment is in the exile and being an outcast, they don’t mind where a man goes to.”
“A real one must feel bad about it.”
“I’m afraid Hermann will for a bit, even though he loves you and he’s not a real one. He ought not to have been told, Alfred.”
“All Germans ought to be told.”
“Yes, but not yet. The time is not come.”
“How will it come?”
“I don’t know how. There are two things that might happen. First, I do not think, the nation can stand another fifty years without war. Perhaps they can’t even stand thirty. Then the deep wretchedness which comes from being unable to adapt to changed conditions, permanent peace in this case, will make them do something. They may turn upon the Knights and der Fuehrer, revive some of the old socialist feeling and believe that it is the Social Order only that is causing them misery. In that case there would be civil war, some Nazis being loyal to the Knights, and some Knights, a very few of them, siding with the discontented Nazis. But the subject races would probably not be content to let the Germans smash themselves up, but would raise idiotic rebellions; that would pull the Germans instantly together, and whatever they did about the Social Order Germany would turn and rend and smash the subject races again, and be glad to do it. But I don’t believe any of that is so likely to happen as a gradual, or not so gradual, loss of faith. An uncertainty about the religion, the ethic, our whole philosophy. Because it is a stinking corpse, and its smell is coming through. It is a religion which must die directly there is no possibility of war, it is really only very useful and lively actually in time of war. Well, then, when this loss of faith is getting a real hold in Germany, when men in their extreme wretchedness are beginning to grope about for new ideas, for new thought, for a new ethic, that is the time the Evangelists of Truth must start their mission. They may come from all sorts of places, both within Germany and without, but I know one place from which, if we all have good luck, a message will come, and that is from England. Not in my lifetime, not probably in yours, but some time. You must make the nucleus, Alfred, with the help of my book and your own character, and you must train the men. Train your sons—have you sons?”
“Three.”
“Good. Get three more. And train other men’s sons. Accept no weaklings into your truth society, and no stupid men, not yet. Make sure of every man you have, and don’t try to have too many. And warn them, warn them, Alfred, with all the soul-force you have, against violence. I don’t mean telling them just not to kick physically against the German authority, I mean warn them against accepting violence as a noble, manly thing. We Germans have done that, we have brought force to its highest power, and we have failed to make life good, or even, now, possible. So for God’s sake warn them against all our bodily soldierly virtues, and make a new set of spiritual virtues, and preach them. Make them understand von Hess. Officially and on the top he still believed in force, in conquest, in physical domination of man by man, but his virtue and his heroism were of the soul. Remember that ‘the choicest arms in store’ for men are spiritual honesty and courage. Sometimes,” the Knight went on, fixing his large grey eyes dreamily on Alfred’s, “I think that the past civilisations with all their unimaginable complexity and richness—for von Hess says he cannot tell a millionth part of their wonder—sometimes I think that perhaps even they were only the childhood of the race; that this gulf, this dreary blankness, is like the dullness that comes on boys sometimes at adolescence, and that our manhood is yet to be. That perhaps God allowed men to commit this crime against truth through his handy instruments, the Germans and the Japanese, to make a break between childhood and manhood, to give us a rest, to enable us to overcome regret for what cannot come again. If we knew the marvels of our childhood we might want to get back
into it again; so long as we do not know, but only know that it was there, we can go forward with good heart. It will be your business, and the business of your descendants, to let these dull boys, these stupid destructive adolescents, know that they are not perfect, that they have had a brilliant childhood, and that they will, if they can but proceed with their duty of growing up, pass on to a maturity before which the childhood genius even will be like a candle in daylight. Have you any man to whom you could trust the guardianship of the book now? You must not leave it, like I did, to chance. You have no reason to do so. I was uncertain of my duty, you are not.”
“I have a man,” Alfred said.
“How old is he?”
“Seventeen.”
“Too young,” said the Knight, shaking his head.
“He’s the best man to leave the book to I know. It’s not that he’s braver or stronger-minded or more trustworthy than lots of others of my friends, but he’s the cleverest.”
“Well, I hope he will be a great deal older before he actually has to take charge of it. It is your son, I suppose?”
“Yes, young Alfred.”
The Knight smiled, remembering something.
“Has this valiant King-Fuehrer who is to deliver you all from Germany got a name, by any chance?”
“Why, yes. His name is to be Alfred. The same name as a great English king who lived some time before we were conquered.”
“Conquered which time?”
“Ah, I don’t know.”
“But you do know you were conquered twice? That the Germans were not the first invaders, but the second?”
“We have a legend that we were conquered before, but that we ate up the conquerors. But the Scots say they had never been conquered at all.”
“That is interesting. Yes, you were conquered, and von Hess mentions it because it had important results in Europe. About a thousand years before Hitler, the Normans, who were men of Scandinavian descent, settled in the north part of France, conquered the Anglo-Saxons and took England.”
“And did we eat them up? It doesn’t sound like it.”
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