NO MORE
PARADES




by




FORD MADOX FORD




GROSSET & DUNLAP

Publishers New York

by arrangement with A. & C. BONI




_Copyright, 1925, By Albert y Charles Boni, Inc_




To WILLIAM BIRD

MY DEAR BIRD,--

I have always held--and I hold as strongly now as ever--that a novel
should have no preface. It should have no preface for æsthetico-moral
reasons, and because prefatory matter takes away from the reality of,
and therefore damages, a book. A dedicatory letter is a subterfuge. That
subterfuge I feel forced to adopt, and must take the consequences.

The reason is this: All novels are historical, but all novels do not
deal with such events as get on to the pages of history. This _No More
Parades_ does. It becomes, therefore, necessary to delimit what, in it,
is offered as, on the author's responsibility, observed event.

State, underline and emphasize the fact how you will it is impossible to
get into the heads of even intelligent public critics the fact that the
opinions of a novelist's characters as stated in any novel are not of
necessity the opinions of the novelist. It cannot be done. How it may be
with one's public one has no means of knowing. Perhaps they read one
with more generosity and care. Presumably they do, for they have either
spent money on, or taken some trouble to obtain, the volume.

In this novel the events, such as it treats of, are vouched for by
myself. There was in France, at the time covered by this novel, an
immense base camp, unbelievably crowded with men whom we were engaged in
getting up the line, working sometimes day and night in the effort. That
immense army was also extremely depressed by the idea that those who
controlled it overseas would--I will not use the word betray, since that
implies volition--but "let us down." We were oppressed, ordered,
counter-ordered, commanded, countermanded, harassed, strafed,
denounced--and, above all, dreadfully worried. The never-ending sense of
worry, in fact, far surpassed any of the "exigencies of troops actually
in contact with enemy forces," and that applied not merely to the bases,
but to the whole field of military operations. Unceasing worry!

We took it out in what may or may not have been unjust suspicions of the
all-powerful ones who had our lives in their hands--and seemed
indifferent enough to the fact. So this novel recounts what those
opinions were: it does not profess to dictate whether those opinions
were or were not justified. There is, I think, not one word in it which
records any opinions or words of mine as being my words or opinions. I
believe I may say that, as to the greater part of such public matters as
are here discussed, I have no opinions at all. After seven or eight
years I have been unable to form any. I present therefore only what I
observed or heard.

Few writers can have engaged themselves as combatants in what, please
God, will yet prove to be the war that ended war, without the intention
of aiding with their writings, if they survived, in bringing about such
a state of mind as should end wars as possibilities.

This obviously is a delicate task. If you overstate horrors you induce
in your reader a state of mind such as, by reaction, causes the horrors
to become matters of indifference. If you overstate heroisms you induce
indifference to heroisms--of which the late war produced, Heaven knows,
plenty enough, so that to be indifferent to them is villainy. Casting
about, then, for a medium through which to view this spectacle, I
thought of a man--by then dead--with whom I had been very intimate and
with whom--as with yourself--I had at one time discussed most things
under the sun. He was the English Tory.

Even then--it must have been in September, 1916, when I was in a region
called the Salient, and I remember the very spot where the idea
came to me--I said to myself: How would all this look in the eyes of
X . . .--already dead, along with all English Tories? For, as a medium
through which to view struggles that are after all in the end mostly
emotional struggles--since as a rule for every twenty minutes of actual
fighting you were alone with your emotions, which, being English, you did
not express, for at least a month!--as a medium, what could be better than
the sceptical, not ungenerous, not cold, not unconvincible eyes of an
extinct frame of mind? For by the time of my relative youth when I knew
X . . . so intimately, Toryism had gone beyond the region of any
practising political party. It said for a year or two: A plague on all
your houses, and so expired.

To this determination--to use my friend's eyes as a medium--I am
adhering in this series of books. _Some Do Not_--of which this one is
not so much a continuation as a reinforcement--showed you the Tory at
home during war-time; this shows you the Tory going up the line. If I am
vouchsafed health and intelligence for long enough I propose to show you
the same man in the line and in process of being re-constructed.

There is nothing more to it: I no more back the political opinions of
General Campion than those of Sylvia Tietjens, who considered that the
World War was just an excuse for male agapemones; I no more accept
responsibility for the inaccuracies of Tietjens quoting King's
Regulations than for the inaccuracies of the general in quoting _Henry
V_. I was roundly taken to task by the only English critic whose review
of my last book I read--after he had _horribly_ misrepresented the plot
of the work at a crucial point--for _my_ inaccuracy in stating that poor
Roger Casement was shot. As a matter of fact, I had been struck by the
fact that a lady with whom I had been discussing Casement twice
deliberately referred to the shooting of Casement, and stated that she
did so because she could not bear to think that we had hanged him. In
making therefore a lady--who had loved Casement--refer to his execution
in the book in question, I let her say that Casement was shot. . . .
Indeed, I should prefer to think that he had been shot, myself. . . . Or
still more to think that we had allowed him to escape, or commit
suicide, or be imprisoned during His Majesty's pleasure. . . . The
critic preferred to rub in the hanging. It is a matter of relative
patriotism.

Whilst we are chipping, I may as well say that I have been informed that
a lively controversy has raged over the same work in the United States,
a New York critic having stated that I was a disappointed man intent on
giving a lurid picture of present-day matrimonial conditions in England.
I hope I am no rabid patriot, but I pray to be preserved from the
aspiration of painting any nation's lurid matrimonial conditions. The
peculiar ones adumbrated in _Some Do Not_ were suggested by the fate of
a poor fellow living in a place in the south of France in which I
happened to be stopping when I began the book. His misfortunes were much
those of my central character, but he drank himself to death, it was
said deliberately, after he had taken his wife back. He came from
Philadelphia.

So, in remembrance of our joint labours and conspiracies, and in token
of my admiration for your beautiful achievements in another art,

I subscribe myself, my dear Bird,

         Your humble, obedient and obliged

                             F. M. F.

PARIS, 31 _October_, '24--

GUERMANTES, 25 _May_, '25.



CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
PART II
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
PART III
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II




PART I




CHAPTER I


When you came in the space was desultory, rectangular, warm after the
drip of the winter night, and transfused with a brown-orange dust that
was light. It was shaped like the house a child draws. Three groups of
brown limbs spotted with brass took dim high-lights from shafts that
came from a bucket pierced with holes, filled with incandescent coke and
covered in with a sheet of iron in the shape of a tunnel. Two men, as if
hierarchically smaller, crouched on the floor beside the brazier; four,
two at each end of the hut, drooped over tables in attitudes of extreme
indifference. From the eaves above the parallelogram of black that was
the doorway fell intermittent drippings of collected moisture,
persistent, with glass-like intervals of musical sound. The two men
squatting on their heels over the brazier--they had been miners--began
to talk in a low sing-song of dialect, hardly audible. It went on and
on, monotonously, without animation. It was as if one told the other
long, long stories to which his companion manifested his comprehension
or sympathy with animal grunts. . . .

An immense tea-tray, august, its voice filling the black circle of the
horizon, thundered to the ground. Numerous pieces of sheet-iron said,
"Pack. Pack. Pack." In a minute the clay floor of the hut shook, the
drums of ears were pressed inwards, solid noise showered about the
universe, enormous echoes pushed these men--to the right, to the left,
or down towards the tables, and crackling like that of flames among vast
underwood became the settled condition of the night. Catching the light
from the brazier as the head leaned over, the lips of one of the two men
on the floor were incredibly red and full and went on talking and
talking. . . .

The two men on the floor were Welsh miners, of whom the one came from
the Rhondda Valley and was unmarried; the other, from Pontardulais, had
a wife who kept a laundry, he having given up going underground just
before the war. The two men at the table to the right of the door were
sergeants-major; the one came from Suffolk and was a time-serving man of
sixteen years' seniority as a sergeant in a line regiment. The other was
Canadian of English origin. The two officers at the other end of the hut
were captains, the one a young regular officer born in Scotland but
educated at Oxford; the other, nearly middle-aged and heavy, came from
Yorkshire, and was in a militia battalion. The one runner on the floor
was filled with a passionate rage because the elder officer had refused
him leave to go home and see why his wife, who had sold their laundry,
had not yet received the purchase money from the buyer; the other was
thinking about a cow. His girl, who worked on a mountainy farm above
Caerphilly, had written to him about a queer cow: a black-and-white
Holstein--surely to goodness a queer cow. The English sergeant-major was
almost tearfully worried about the enforced lateness of the draft. It
would be twelve midnight before they could march them off. It was not
right to keep men hanging about like that. The men did not like to be
kept waiting, hanging about. It made them discontented. They did not
like it. He could not see why the depot quartermaster could not keep up
his stock of candles for the hooded lamps. The men had no call to be
kept waiting, hanging about. Soon they would have to be having some
supper. Quarter would not like that. He would grumble fair. Having to
indent for suppers. Put his accounts out, fair, it would. Two thousand
nine hundred and thirty-four suppers at a penny half-penny. But it was
not right to keep the men hanging about till midnight and no suppers. It
made them discontented and them going up the line for the first time,
poor devils.

The Canadian sergeant-major was worried about a pig-skin leather
pocket-book. He had bought it at the ordnance depot in the town. He
imagined himself bringing it out on parade, to read out some return or
other to the adjutant. Very smart it would look on parade, himself
standing up straight and tall. But he could not remember whether he had
put it in his kitbag. On himself it was not. He felt in his right and
left breast pockets, his right and left skirt pockets, in all the
pockets of his overcoat that hung from a nail within reach of his chair.
He did not feel at all certain that the man who acted as his batman had
packed that pocket-book with his kit, though he declared he had. It was
very annoying. His present wallet, bought in Ontario, was bulging and
split. He did not like to bring it out when Imperial officers asked for
something out of a return. It gave them a false idea of Canadian troops.
Very annoying. He was an auctioneer. He agreed that at this rate it
would be half-past one before they had the draft down to the station and
entrained. But it was very annoying to be uncertain whether that
pocket-book was packed or not. He had imagined himself making a good
impression on parade, standing up straight and tall, taking out that
pocket-book when the adjutant asked for a figure from one return or the
other. He understood their adjutants were to be Imperial officers now
they were in France. It was very annoying.

An enormous crashing sound said things of an intolerable intimacy to
each of those men, and to all of them as a body. After its mortal
vomiting all the other sounds appeared a rushing silence, painful to
ears in which the blood audibly coursed. The young officer stood
violently up on his feet and caught at the complications of his belt
hung from a nail. The elder, across the table, lounging sideways,
stretched out one hand with a downwards movement. He was aware that the
younger man, who was the senior officer, was just upon out of his mind.
The younger man, intolerably fatigued, spoke sharp, injurious, inaudible
words to his companion. The elder spoke sharp, short words, inaudible
too, and continued to motion downwards with his hand over the table. The
old English sergeant-major said to his junior that Captain Mackenzie had
one of his mad fits again, but what he said was inaudible and he knew
it. He felt arising in his motherly heart that yearned at the moment
over his two thousand nine hundred and thirty-four nurslings a
necessity, like a fatigue, to extend the motherliness of his functions
to the orfcer. He said to the Canadian that Captain Mackenzie there
going temporary off his nut was the best orfcer in His Majesty's army.
And going to make a bleedin' fool of hisself. The best orfcer in His
Majesty's army. Not a better. Careful, smart, brave as an 'ero. And
considerate of his men in the line. You wouldn't believe. . . . He felt
vaguely that it was a fatigue to have to mother an officer. To a
lance-corporal, or a young sergeant, beginning to go wrong you could
mutter wheezy suggestions through your moustache. But to an officer you
had to say things slantways. Difficult it was. Thank God they had a
trustworthy, cool hand in the other captain. Old and good, the proverb
said.

Dead silence fell.

"Lost the -----, they 'ave," the runner from the Rhondda made his voice
startlingly heard. Brilliant illuminations flickered on hut-gables
visible through the doorway.

"No reason," his mate from Pontardulais rather whined in his native
sing-song, "why the bleedin' searchlights, surely to goodness, should
light us up for all the ---- 'Un planes to see. I want to see my
bleedin' little 'ut on the bleedin' Mumbles again, if they don't."

"Not so much swear words, O Nine Morgan," the sergeant-major said.

"Now, Dai Morgan, I'm telling you," 09 Morgan's mate continued. "A queer
cow it must have been whatever. Black-and-white Holstein it was. . . ."

It was as if the younger captain gave up listening to the conversation.
He leant both hands on the blanket that covered the table. He exclaimed:

"Who the hell are you to give me orders? I'm your senior. Who the
hell . . . Oh, by God, who the hell . . . Nobody gives me orders . . ."
His voice collapsed weakly in his chest. He felt his nostrils to be
inordinately dilated so that the air pouring into them was cold. He felt
that there was an entangled conspiracy against him, and all round him.
He exclaimed: "You and your ---- pimp of a general . . .!" He desired to
cut certain throats with a sharp trench-knife that he had. That would
take the weight off his chest. The "Sit _down_" of the heavy figure
lumping opposite him paralysed his limbs. He felt an unbelievable
hatred. If he could move his hand to get at his trench-knife . . .

09 Morgan said: "The ----'s name who's bought my bleedin' laundry is
Williams. . . . If I thought it was Evans Williams of Castell Goch, I'd
desert."

"Took a hatred for its cawve," the Rhondda man said. "And look you,
before you could say . . ." The conversation of orfcers was a thing to
which they neither listened. Officers talked of things that had no
interest. Whatever could possess a cow to take a hatred of its calf? Up
behind Caerphilly on the mountains? On an autumny morning the whole
hillside was covered with spider-webs. They shone down the sun like spun
glass. Overlooked the cow must be.

The young captain leaning over the table began a long argument as to
relative seniority. He argued with himself, taking both sides in an
extraordinarily rapid gabble. He himself had been gazetted after
Gheluvelt. The other not till a year later. It was true the other was in
permanent command of that depot, and he himself attached to the unit
only for rations and discipline. But that did not include orders to sit
down. What the hell, he wanted to know, did the other mean by it? He
began to talk, faster than ever, about a circle. When its circumference
came whole by the disintegration of the atom the world would come to an
end. In the millennium there would be no giving or taking orders. Of
course he obeyed orders till then.

To the elder officer, burdened with the command of a unit of
unreasonable size, with a scratch headquarters of useless subalterns who
were continually being changed, with N.C.O.'s all unwilling to work,
with rank and file nearly all colonials and unused to doing without
things, and with a depot to draw on that, being old established, felt
that it belonged exclusively to a regular British unit and resented his
drawing anything at all, the practical difficulties of his everyday life
were already sufficient, and he had troublesome private affairs. He was
lately out of hospital; the sackcloth hut in which he lived, borrowed
from the Depot medical officer who had gone to England on leave, was
suffocatingly hot with the paraffin heater going, and intolerably cold
and damp without it; the batman whom the M.O. had left in charge of the
hut appeared to be half-witted. These German air-raids had lately become
continuous. The Base was packed with men, tighter than sardines. Down in
the town you could not move in the streets. Draft-finding units were
commanded to keep their men out of sight as much as possible. Drafts
were to be sent off only at night. But how could you send off a draft at
night when every ten minutes you had two hours of lights out for an
air-raid? Every man had nine sets of papers and tags that had to be
signed by an officer. It was quite proper that the poor devils should be
properly documented. But how was it to be done? He had two thousand nine
hundred and ninety-four men to send off that night and nine times two
thousand nine hundred and ninety-four is twenty-six thousand nine
hundred and forty-six. They would not or could not let him have a
disc-punching machine of his own, but how was the Depot armourer to be
expected to punch five thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight extra
identity discs in addition to his regular jobs?

The other captain rambled on in front of him. Tietjens did not like his
talk of the circle and the millennium. You get alarmed, if you have any
sense, when you hear that. It may prove the beginnings of definite,
dangerous lunacy. . . . But he knew nothing about the fellow. He was too
dark and good-looking, too passionate, probably, to be a good regular
officer on the face of him. But he _must_ be a good officer: he had the
D.S.O. with a clasp, the M.C., and some foreign ribbon up. And the
general said he was: with the additional odd piece of information that
he was a Vice-Chancellor's Latin Prize man. . . . He wondered if General
Campion knew what a Vice-Chancellor's Latin Prize man was. Probably he
did not, but had just stuck the piece of information into his note as a
barbaric ornament is used by a savage chief. Wanted to show that he,
General Lord Edward Campion, was a man of culture. There was no knowing
where vanity would not break out.

So this fellow was too dark and good-looking to be a good officer: yet
he _was_ a good officer. That explained it. The repressions of the
passionate drive them mad. He must have been being sober, disciplined,
patient, absolutely repressed ever since 1914--against a background of
hell-fire, row, blood, mud, old tins. . . . And indeed the elder officer
had a vision of the younger as if in a design for a full-length
portrait--for some reason with his legs astride, against a background of
tapestry scarlet with fire and more scarlet with blood. . . . He sighed
a little; that was the life of all those several millions. . . .

He seemed to see his draft: two thousand nine hundred and ninety-four
men he had had command of for over a couple of months--a long space of
time as that life went--men he and Sergeant-Major Cowley had looked
after with a great deal of tenderness, superintending their morale,
their morals, their feet, their digestions, their impatiences, their
desires for women. . . . He seemed to see them winding away over a great
stretch of country, the head slowly settling down, as in the Zoo
you will see an enormous serpent slowly sliding down into its
water-tank. . . . Settling down out there, a long way away, up against that
impassable barrier that stretched from the depths of the ground to the
peak of heaven. . . .

Intense dejection: endless muddles: endless follies: endless villainies.
All these men given into the hands of the most cynically care-free
intriguers in long corridors who made plots that harrowed the hearts of
the world. All these men toys: all these agonies mere occasions for
picturesque phrases to be put into politicians' speeches without heart
or even intelligence. Hundreds of thousands of men tossed here and there
in that sordid and gigantic mud-brownness of midwinter . . . by God,
exactly as if they were nuts wilfully picked up and thrown over the
shoulder by magpies. . . . But men. Not just populations. Men you
worried over there. Each man a man with a backbone, knees, breeches,
braces, a rifle, a home, passions, fornications, drunks, pals, some
scheme of the universe, corns, inherited diseases, a greengrocer's
business, a milk walk, a paper stall, brats, a slut of a wife. . . . The
Men: the Other Ranks! And the poor ---- little officers. God help them.
Vice-Chancellor's Latin Prize men. . . .

This particular poor ---- Prize man seemed to object to noise. They
ought to keep the place quiet for him. . . .

By God, he was perfectly right. That place was meant for the quiet and
orderly preparation of meat for the shambles. Drafts! A Base is a place
where you meditate: perhaps you should pray: a place where in peace the
Tommies should write their last letters home and describe 'ow the guns
are 'owling 'orribly.

But to pack a million and a half of men into and round that small town
was like baiting a trap for rats with a great chunk of rotten meat. The
Hun planes could smell them from a hundred miles away. They could do
more harm there than if they bombed a quarter of London to pieces. And
the air defences there were a joke: a mad joke. They popped off,
thousands of rounds, from any sort of pieces of ordnance, like
schoolboys bombarding swimming rats with stones. Obviously your best
trained air-defence men would be round your metropolis. But this was no
joke for the sufferers.

Heavy depression settled down more heavily upon him. The distrust of the
home Cabinet, felt by then by the greater part of that army, became like
physical pain. These immense sacrifices, this ocean of mental
sufferings, were all undergone to further the private vanities of men
who amidst these hugenesses of landscapes and forces appeared pigmies!
It was the worries of all these wet millions in mud-brown that worried
him. They could die, they could be massacred, by the quarter million, in
shambles. But that they should be massacred without jauntiness, without
confidence, with depressed brows: without parade. . . .

He knew really nothing about the officer in front of him. Apparently the
fellow had stopped for an answer to some question. What question?
Tietjens had no idea. He had not been listening. Heavy silence settled
down on the hut. They just waited. The fellow said with an intonation of
hatred:

"Well, what about it? That's what I want to know!"

Tietjens went on reflecting. . . . There were a great many kinds of
madness. What kind was this? The fellow was not drunk. He talked like a
drunkard, but he was not drunk. In ordering him to sit down Tietjens had
just chanced it. There are madmen whose momentarily subconscious selves
will respond to a military command as if it were magic. Tietjens
remembered having barked: "About . . . turn," to a poor little lunatic
fellow in some camp at home and the fellow who had been galloping
hotfoot past his tent, waving a naked bayonet with his pursuers fifty
yards behind, had stopped dead and faced about with a military stamp
like a guardsman. He had tried it on this lunatic for want of any better
expedient. It had apparently functioned intermittently. He risked
saying:

"What about what?"

The man said as if ironically:

"It seems as if I were not worth listening to by your high and
mightiness. I said: 'What about my foul squit of an uncle?' Your filthy,
best friend."

Tietjens said:

"The general's your uncle? General Campion? What's he done to you?"

The general had sent this fellow down to him with a note asking him,
Tietjens, to keep an eye in his unit on a very good fellow and an
admirable officer. The chit was in the general's own writing, and
contained the additional information as to Captain Mackenzie's
scholastic prowess. . . . It had struck Tietjens as queer that the
general should take so much trouble about a casual infantry company
commander. How could the fellow have been brought markedly to his
notice? Of course, Campion was good-natured, like another man. If a
fellow, half dotty, whose record showed that he was a very good man, was
brought to his notice Campion would do what he could for him. And
Tietjens knew that the general regarded himself Tietjens, as a heavy,
bookish fellow, able reliably to look after one of his protégés. . . .
Probably Campion imagined that they had no work to do in that unit: they
might become an acting lunatic ward. But if Mackenzie was Campion's
nephew the thing was explained.

The lunatic exclaimed:

"Campion, _my_ uncle? Why, he's _yours_!"

Tietjens said:

"Oh, no, he isn't." The general was not even a connection of his, but he
did happen to be Tietjen's godfather and his father's oldest friend.

The other fellow answered:

"Then it's damn funny. _Damn_ suspicious. . . . Why should he be
interested in you if he's not your filthy uncle? You're no soldier. . . .
You're no sort of a soldier. . . . A meal sack, that's what you look
like. . . ." He paused and then went on very quickly: "They say up at
H.Q. that your wife has got hold of the disgusting general. I didn't
believe it was true. I didn't believe you were that sort of fellow. I've
heard a lot about you!"

Tietjens laughed at this madness. Then, in the dark brownness, an
intolerable pang went all through his heavy frame--the intolerable pang
of home news to these desperately occupied men, the pain caused by
disasters happening in the darkness and at a distance. You could do
nothing to mitigate them! . . . The extraordinary beauty of the wife
from whom he was separated--for she was extraordinarily
beautiful!--might well have caused scandals about her to have penetrated
to the general's headquarters, which was a sort of family party!
Hitherto there had, by the grace of God, been no scandals. Sylvia
Tietjens had been excruciatingly unfaithful, in the most painful manner.
He could not be certain that the child he adored was his own. . . . That
was not unusual with extraordinarily beautiful--and cruel!--women. But
she had been haughtily circumspect.

Nevertheless, three months ago, they had parted. . . . Or he thought
they had parted. Almost complete blankness had descended upon his home
life. She appeared before him so extraordinarily bright and clear in the
brown darkness that he shuddered: very tall, very fair, extraordinarily
fit and clean even. Thoroughbred! In a sheath gown of gold tissue, all
illuminated, and her mass of hair, like gold tissue too, coiled round
and round in plaits over her ears. The features very clean-cut and
thinnish; the teeth white and small; the breasts small; the arms thin,
long and at attention at her sides. . . . His eyes, when they were
tired, had that trick of reproducing images on their retinas with that
extreme clearness, images sometimes of things he thought of, sometimes of
things merely at the back of the mind. Well, to-night his eyes were very
tired! She was looking straight before her, with a little inimical
disturbance of the corners of her lips. She had just thought of a way to
hurt terribly his silent personality. . . . The semi-clearness became a
luminous blue, like a tiny gothic arch, and passed out of his vision to
the right. . . .

He knew nothing of where Sylvia was. He had given up looking at the
illustrated papers. She had said she was going into a convent at
Birkenhead--but twice he had seen photographs of her. The first showed
her merely with Lady Fiona Grant, daughter of the Earl and Countess of
Ulleswater--and a Lord Swindon, talked of as next minister for
International Finance--a new Business Peer. . . . All three walking
straight into the camera in the courtyard of Lord Swindon's castle . . .
all three smiling! . . . It announced Mrs. Christopher Tietjens as
having a husband at the front.

The sting had, however, been in the second picture--in the description
of it supplied by the journal! It showed Sylvia standing in front of a
bench in the park. On the bench in profile there extended himself in a
guffaw of laughter, a young man in a top hat jammed well on to his head,
which was thrown back, his prognathous jaw pointing upwards. The
description stated that the picture showed Mrs. Christopher Tietjens,
whose husband was in hospital at the Front, telling a good story to the
son and heir of Lord Brigham! . . . Another of these pestilential,
crooked newspaper-owning financial peers . . .

It had struck him for a painful moment whilst looking at the picture in
a dilapidated mess anteroom after he had come out of hospital--that,
considering the description, the journal had got its knife into
Sylvia. . . . But the illustrated papers do not get their knives into
society beauties. They are too precious to the photographers. . . . Then
Sylvia must have supplied the information; she desired to cause comment by
the contrast of her hilarious companions and the statement that her husband
was in hospital at the Front. . . . It had occurred to him that she was
on the warpath. But he had put it out of his mind. . . . Nevertheless,
brilliant mixture as she was, of the perfectly straight, perfectly
fearless, perfectly reckless, of the generous, the kind even--and the
atrociously cruel, nothing might suit her better than positively to show
contempt--no, not contempt! cynical hatred--for her husband, for the
war, for public opinion . . . even for the interest of their child! . . .
Yet, it came to him, the image of her that he had just seen had been
the image of Sylvia, standing at attention, her mouth working a little,
whilst she read out the figures beside the bright filament of mercury in
a thermometer. . . . The child had had, with measles, a temperature
that, even then, he did not dare think of. And--it was at his sister's
in Yorkshire, and the local doctor hadn't cared to take the
responsibility--he could still feel the warmth of the little mummy-like
body; he had covered the head and face with a flannel, for he didn't
care for the sight, and lowered the warm, terrible, fragile weight into
a shining surface of crushed ice in water. . . . She had stood at
attention, the corners of her mouth moving a little: the thermometer
going down as you watched it. . . . So that she mightn't want, in
damaging the father, atrociously to damage the child. . . . For there
could not be anything worse for a child than to have a mother known as a
whore. . . .

Sergeant-Major Cowley was standing beside the table. He said:

"Wouldn't it be a good thing, sir, to send a runner to the depot
sergeant cook and tell him we're going to indent for suppers for the
draft? We could send the other with the 128's to Quarter. They're
neither wanted here for the moment."

The other captain went on incessantly talking--but about his fabulous
uncle, not about Sylvia. It was difficult for Tietjens to get what he
wanted said. He wanted the second runner sent to the depot quartermaster
with a message to the effect that if G.S. candles for hooded lamps were
not provided for the use of his orderly room by return of bearer he
Captain Tietjens, commanding Number XVI Casual Battalion, would bring
the whole matter of supplies for his battalion that same night before
Base Headquarters. They were all three talking at once: heavy fatalism
overwhelmed Tietjens at the thought of the stubbornness showed by the
depot quartermaster. The big unit beside his camp was a weary obstinacy
of obstruction. You would have thought they would have displayed some
eagerness to get his men up into the line. Let alone that the men were
urgently needed, the more of his men went the more of _them_ stayed
behind. Yet they tried to stop his meat, his groceries, his braces, his
identification discs, his soldiers' small books. . . . Every imaginable
hindrance, and not even self-interested common sense! . . . He managed
also to convey to Sergeant-Major Cowley that, as everything seemed to
have quieted down, the Canadian sergeant-major had better go and see if
everything was ready for falling his draft in. . . . If things remained
quiet for another ten minutes, the "All Clear" might then be
expected. . . . He knew that Sergeant-Major Cowley wanted to get the Other
Ranks out of the hut with that captain carrying on like that, and he did
not see why the old N.C.O. should not have what he wanted.

It was as if a tender and masculine butler withdrew himself. Cowley's
grey walrus moustache and scarlet cheeks showed for a moment beside the
brazier, whispering at the ears of the runners, a hand kindly on each of
their shoulders. The runners went; the Canadian went. Sergeant-Major
Cowley, his form blocking the doorway, surveyed the stars. He found it
difficult to realize that the same pinpricks of light through black
manifolding paper as he looked at, looked down also on his villa and his
elderly wife at Isleworth beside the Thames above London. He knew it to
be the fact, yet it was difficult to realize. He imagined the trams
going along the High Street, his missus in one of them with her supper
in a string bag on her stout knees. The trams lit up and shining. He
imagined her having kippers for supper: ten to one it would be kippers.
Her favourites. His daughter was in the W.A.A.C.'s by now. She had been
cashier to Parks's, the big butchers in Brentford, and pretty she had
used to look in the glass case. Like as if it might have been the
British Museum where they had Pharaohs and others in glass cases. . . .
There were threshing machines droning away all over the night. He always
said they were like threshing machines. . . . Crikey, if only they
were! . . . But they might be our own planes, of course. A good welsh
rarebit he had had for tea.

In the hut, the light from the brazier having fewer limbs on which to
fall, a sort of intimacy seemed to descend, and Tietjens felt himself
gain in ability to deal with his mad friend. Captain Mackenzie--Tietjens
was not sure that the name was Mackenzie: it had looked something like
it in the general's hand--Captain Mackenzie was going on about the
wrongs he had suffered at the hands of some fabulous uncle. Apparently
at some important juncture the uncle had refused to acknowledge
acquaintanceship with the nephew. From that all the misfortunes of the
nephew had arisen. . . . Suddenly Tietjens said:

"Look here, pull yourself together. Are you mad? Stark, staring? . . .
Or only just play-acting?"

The man suddenly sank down on to the bully-beef case that served for a
chair. He stammered a question as to what--what--what Tietjens meant.

"If you let yourself go," Tietjens said, "you may let yourself go a tidy
sight farther than you want to."

"You're not a mad doctor," the other said. "It's no good your trying to
come it over me. I know all about you. I've got an uncle who's done the
dirty on me--the dirtiest dirty ever was done on a man. If it hadn't
been for him I shouldn't be here now."

"You talk as if the fellow had sold you into slavery," Tietjens said.

"He's your closest friend," Mackenzie seemed to advance as a motive for
revenge on Tietjens. "He's a friend of the general's, too. Of your
wife's as well. He's in with every one."

A few desultory, pleasurable "pop-op-ops" sounded from far overhead to
the left.

"They imagine they've found the Hun again," Tietjens said. "That's all
right; you concentrate on your uncle. Only don't exaggerate his
importance to the world. I assure you are mistaken if you call him
a friend of mine. I have not got a friend in the world." He added: "Are
you going to mind the noise? If it is going to get on your nerves you can
walk in a dignified manner to a dugout, now, before it gets bad. . . ." He
called out to Cowley to go and tell the Canadian sergeant-major to
get his men back into their shelters if they had come out. Until the
"All Clear" went.

Captain Mackenzie sat himself gloomily down at table.

"Damn it all," he said, "don't think I'm afraid of a little shrapnel.
I've had two periods solid of fourteen and nine months in the line. I
could have got out on to the rotten staff. . . . It's damn it: it's the
beastly row. . . . Why isn't one a beastly girl and privileged to
shriek? By God, I'll get even with some of them one of these days. . . ."

"Why not shriek?" Tietjens asked. "You can, for me. No one's going to
doubt your courage here."

Loud drops of rain spattered down all round the hut; there was a
familiar thud on the ground a yard or so away, a sharp tearing sound
above, a sharper knock on the table between them. Mackenzie took the
shrapnel bullet that had fallen and turned it round and round between
finger and thumb.

"You think you caught me on the hop just now," he said injuriously.
"You're damn clever."

Two stories down below some one let two hundred-pound dumb-bells drop on
the drawing-room carpet; all the windows of the house slammed in a race
to get it over; the "pop-op-ops" of the shrapnel went in wafts all over
the air. There was again sudden silence that was painful, after you had
braced yourself up to bear noise. The runner from the Rhondda came in
with a light step bearing two fat candles. He took the hooded lamps from
Tietjens and began to press the candles up against the inner springs,
snorting sedulously through his nostrils. . . .

"Nearly got me, one of those candlesticks did," he said. "Touched my
foot as it fell, it did. I did run. Surely to goodness I did run,
cahptn."

Inside the shrapnel shell was an iron bar with a flattened, broad nose.
When the shell burst in the air this iron object fell to the ground and,
since it came often from a great height, its fall was dangerous. The men
called these candlesticks, which they much resembled.

A little ring of light now existed on the puce colour of the
blanket-covered table. Tietjens showed, silver-headed, fresh-coloured
and bulky; Mackenzie, dark, revengeful eyes above a prognathous jaw. A
very thin man; thirtyish.

"You can go into the shelter with the Colonial troops, if you like,"
Tietjens said to the runner. The man answered after a pause, being very
slow thinking, that he preferred to wait for his mate, 09 Morgan
whatever.

"They ought to let my orderly room have tin hats," Tietjens said to
Mackenzie. "I'm damned if they didn't take these fellows' tin hats into
store again when they attached to me for service, and I'm equally damned
if they did not tell me that, if I wanted tin hats for my own
headquarters, I had to write to H.Q. Canadians, Aldershot, or some such
place in order to get the issue sanctioned."

"Our headquarters are full of Huns doing the Huns' work," Mackenzie said
hatefully. "I'd like to get among them one of these days."

Tietjens looked with some attention at that young man with the Rembrandt
shadows over his dark face. He said:

"Do you believe that tripe?"

The young man said:

"No . . . I don't know that I do. . . . I don't know what to think. . . .
The world's rotten. . . ."

"Oh, the world's pretty rotten, all right," Tietjens answered. And, in
his fatigue of mind caused by having to attend to innumerable concrete
facts like the providing of households for a thousand men every few
days, arranging parade states for an extraordinarily mixed set of troops
of all arms with very mixed drills, and fighting the Assistant Provost
Marshal to keep his own men out of the clutches of the beastly Garrison
Military Police who had got a down on all Canadians, he felt he had not
any curiosity at all left. . . . Yet he felt vaguely that, at the back
of his mind, there was some reason for trying to cure this young member
of the lower middle classes.

He repeated:

"Yes, the world's certainly pretty rotten. But that's not its particular
line of rottenness as far as we are concerned. . . . We're tangled up,
not because we've got Huns in our orderly rooms, but just because we've
got English. That's the bat in our belfry. . . . That Hun plane is
presumably coming back. Half a dozen of them. . . ."

The young man, his mind eased by having got off his chest a confounded
lot of semi-nonsensical ravings, considered the return of the Hun
planes with gloomy indifference. His problem really was: could he stand
the ---- noise that would probably accompany their return? He had to get
really into his head that this was an open space to all intents and
purposes. There would not be splinters of stone flying about. He was
ready to be hit by iron, steel, lead, copper, or brass shell rims, but
not by beastly splinters of stone knocked off house fronts. That
consideration had come to him during his beastly, his beastly, his
infernal, damnable leave in London, when just such a filthy row had been
going on. . . . Divorce leave! . . . Captain McKechnie, second attached
ninth Glamorganshires, is granted leave from the 14/11 to the 29/11 for
the purpose of obtaining a divorce. . . . The memory seemed to burst
inside him with the noise of one of those beastly enormous tin-pot
crashes--and it always came when guns made that particular kind of
tin-pot crash: the two came together, the internal one and the crash
outside. He felt that chimney-pots were going to crash on to his head.
You protected yourself by shouting at damned infernal idiots; if you
could out-shout the row you were safe. . . . That was not sensible, but
you got ease that way! . . .

"In matters of Information they're not a patch on us." Tietjens tried
the speech on cautiously, and concluded: "We know what the Enemy rulers
read in the sealed envelopes beside their breakfast bacon-and-egg
plates."

It had occurred to him that it was a military duty to bother himself
about the mental equilibrium of this member of the lower classes. So he
talked . . . _any_ old talk, wearisomely, to keep his mind employed!
Captain Mackenzie was an officer of His Majesty the King: the property,
body and soul, of His Majesty and His Majesty's War Office. It was
Tietjens' duty to preserve this fellow as it was his duty to prevent
deterioration in any other piece of the King's property. That was
implicit in the oath of allegiance. He went on talking:

The curse of the army, as far as the organization is concerned, was our
imbecile national belief that the game is more than the player. That was
our ruin, mentally, as a nation. We were taught that cricket is more
than clearness of mind, so the blasted quartermaster, O.C. Depot
Ordnance Stores next door, thought he had taken a wicket if he refused
to serve out tin hats to their crowd. That's the Game! And if any of
his, Tietjens', men were killed, he grinned and said the game was more
than the players of the game. . . . And of course if he got his bowling
average down low enough he got promotion. There was a quartermaster in a
west country cathedral city who'd got more D.S.O.'s and combatant medals
than anyone on active service in France, from the sea to Peronne, or
wherever our lines ended. His achievement was to have robbed almost
every wretched Tommie in the Western Command of several weeks'
separation allowance . . . for the good of the taxpayer, of course. The
poor ---- Tommies' kids went without proper food and clothing, and the
Tommies themselves had been in a state of exasperation and resentment.
And nothing in the world was worse for discipline and the army as a
fighting machine. But there that quartermaster sat in his office,
playing the romantic game over his A.F.B.'s till the broad buff sheets
fairly glowed in the light of the incandescent gas. "And," Tietjens
concluded, "for every quarter of a million sterling for which he bowls
out the wretched fighting men he gets a new clasp on his fourth D.S.O.
ribbon. . . . The game, in short, is more than the players of the game."

"Oh, damn it!" Captain Mackenzie said. "That's what's made us what we
are, isn't it?"

"It is," Tietjens answered. "It's got us into the hole and it keeps us
there."

Mackenzie remained dispiritedly looking down at his fingers.

"You may be wrong or you may be right," he said. "It's contrary to
everything that I ever heard. But I see what you mean."

"At the beginning of the war," Tietjens said, "I had to look in on the
War Office, and in a room I found a fellow . . . What do you think he
was doing . . . what the hell do you think he was doing? He was devising
the ceremonial for the disbanding of a Kitchener battalion. You can't
say we were not prepared in one matter at least . . . Well, the end of
the show was to be: the adjutant would stand the battalion at ease: the
band would play _Land of Hope and Glory_, and then the adjutant would
say: _There will be no more parades_. . . . Don't you see how symbolical
it was: the band playing _Land of Hope and Glory_, and then the adjutant
saying _There will be no more parades_? . . . For there won't. There
won't, there damn well won't. . . . No more Hope, no more Glory, no more
parades for you and me any more. Nor for the country . . . Nor for the
world, I dare say . . . None . . . Gone . . . Na poo, finny! No . . .
more . . . parades!"

"I dare say you're right," the other said slowly. "But, all the same,
what am I doing in this show? I hate soldiering. I hate this whole
beastly business. . . ."

"Then why didn't you go on the gaudy Staff?" Tietjens asked. "The gaudy
Staff apparently was yearning to have you. I bet God intended you for
Intelligence: not for the footslogging department."

The other said wearily:

"I don't know. I was with the battalion. I wanted to stop with the
battalion. I was intended for the Foreign Office. My miserable uncle got
me hoofed out of that. I was with the battalion. The C.O. wasn't up to
much. _Someone_ had to stay with the battalion. I was not going to do
the dirty on it, taking any soft job. . .

"I suppose you speak seven languages and all?" Tietjens asked.

"Five," the other said patiently, "and read two more. And Latin and
Greek, of course."

A man, brown, stiff, with a haughty parade step, burst into the light.
He said with a high wooden voice:

"'Ere's another bloomin' casualty." In the shadow he appeared to have
draped half his face and the right side of his breast with crape. He
gave a high, rattling laugh. He bent, as if in a stiff bow, woodenly at
his thighs. He pitched, still bent, on to the iron sheet that covered
the brazier, rolled off that and lay on his back across the legs of the
other runner, who had been crouched beside the brazier. In the bright
light it was as if a whole pail of scarlet paint had been dashed across
the man's face on the left and his chest. It glistened in the
firelight--just like fresh paint, moving! The runner from the Rhondda,
pinned down by the body across his knees, sat with his jaw fallen,
resembling one girl that should be combing the hair of another recumbent
before her. The red viscousness welled across the floor; you sometimes
so see fresh water bubbling up in sand. It astonished Tietjens to see
that a human body could be so lavish of blood. He was thinking it was a
queer mania that fellow should have, that his uncle was a friend of
his, Tietjens. He had no friend in trade, uncle of a fellow who in
ordinary times would probably bring you pairs of boots on approval. . . .
He felt as he did when you patch up a horse that has been badly hurt.
He remembered a horse from a cut on whose chest the blood had streamed
down over the off foreleg like a stocking. A girl had lent him her
petticoat to bandage it. Nevertheless his legs moved slowly and heavily
across the floor.

The heat from the brazier was overpowering on his bent face. He hoped he
would not get his hands all over blood, because blood is very sticky. It
makes your fingers stick together impotently. But there might not be any
blood in the darkness under the fellow's back where he was putting his
hand. There was, however: it was very wet.

The voice of Sergeant-Major Cowley said from outside:

"Bugler, call two sanitary lance-corporals and four men. Two sanitary
corporals and four men." A prolonged wailing with interruptions
transfused the night, mournful, resigned, and prolonged.

Tietjens thought that, thank God, someone would come and relieve him of
that job. It was a breathless affair holding up the corpse with the fire
burning his face. He said to the other runner:

"Get out from under him, damn you! Are you hurt?" Mackenzie could not
get at the body from the other side because of the brazier. The runner
from under the corpse moved with short sitting shuffles as if he were
getting his legs out from under a sofa. He was saying:

"Poor ---- O Nine Morgan! Surely to goodness I did not recognice the
pore ---- . . . Surely to goodness I did not recognice the pore ----"

Tietjens let the trunk of the body sink slowly to the floor. He was more
gentle than if the man had been alive. All hell in the way of noise
burst about the world. Tietjen's thoughts seemed to have to shout to him
between earthquake shocks. He was thinking it was absurd of that fellow
Mackenzie to imagine that he could know any uncle of his. He saw very
vividly also the face of his girl who was a pacifist. It worried him not
to know what expression her face would have if she heard of his
occupation, now. Disgust? . . . He was standing with his greasy, sticky
hands held out from the flaps of his tunic. . . . Perhaps disgust! . . .
It was impossible to think in this row. . . . His very thick soles moved
gluily and came up after suction. . . . He remembered he had not sent a
runner along to I.B.D. Orderly Room to see how many of his crowd would
be wanted for garrison fatigue next day, and this annoyed him acutely.
He would have no end of a job warning the officers he detailed. They
would all be in brothels down in the town by now. . . . He could not
work out what the girl's expression would be. He was never to see her
again, so what the hell did it matter? . . . Disgust, probably! . . . He
remembered that he had not looked to see how Mackenzie was getting on in
the noise. He did not want to see Mackenzie. He was a bore. . . . How
would her face express disgust? He had never seen her express disgust.
She had a perfectly undistinguished face. Fair . . . O God, how suddenly
his bowels turned over! . . . Thinking of the girl . . . The face below
him grinned at the roof--the half face! The nose was there, half the
mouth with the teeth showing in the firelight. . . . It was
extraordinary how defined the peaked nose and the serrated teeth were in
that mess . . . The eye looked jauntily at the peak of the canvas
hut-roof. . . . Gone with a grin. Singular the fellow should have
spoken! After he was dead. He must have been dead when he spoke. It had
been done with the last air automatically going out of the lungs. A
reflex action, probably, in the dead. . . . If he, Tietjens, had given
the fellow the leave he wanted he would be alive now! . . . Well, he was
quite right not to have given the poor devil his leave. He was, anyhow,
better where he was. And so was he, Tietjens. He had not had a single
letter from home since he had been out this time! Not a single letter.
Not even gossip. Not a bill. Some circulars of old furniture dealers.
They never neglected him! They had got beyond the sentimental stage at
home. Obviously so. . . . He wondered if his bowels would turn over
again if he thought of the girl. He was gratified that they had. It
showed that he had strong feelings. . . . He thought about her
deliberately. Hard. Nothing happened. He thought of her fair,
undistinguished, fresh face that made your heart miss a beat when you
thought about it. His heart missed a beat. Obedient heart! Like the
first primrose. Not _any_ primrose. The _first_ primrose. Under a bank with
the hounds breaking through the underwood. . . . It was sentimental to
say _Du bist wie eine Blume_. . . . Damn the German language! But that
fellow was a Jew. . . . One should not say that one's young woman was
like _a_ flower, _any_ flower. Not even to oneself. That was sentimental.
But one might say one special flower. A _man_ could say that. A man's job.
She smelt like a primrose when you kissed her. But, damn it, he had
never kissed her. So how did he know how she smelt! She was a little
tranquil, golden spot. He himself must be a ---- eunuch. By temperament.
That dead fellow down there must be one, physically. It was probably
indecent to think of a corpse as impotent. But he was, very likely. That
would be why his wife had taken up with the prize-fighter Red Evans
Williams of Castell Goch. If he had given the fellow leave the
prize-fighter would have smashed him to bits. The police of Pontardulais
had asked that he should not be let come home--because of the
prize-fighter. So he was better dead. Or perhaps not. Is death better
than discovering that your wife is a whore and being done in by her
cully? _Gwell angau na gwillth_, their own regimental badge bore the
words. "_Death is better than dishonour_" . . . No, not death, _angau_
means pain. Anguish! Anguish is better than dishonour. The devil it is!
Well, that fellow would have got both. Anguish and dishonour. Dishonour
from his wife and anguish when the prize-fighter hit him. . . . That was
no doubt why his half-face grinned at the roof. The gory side of it had
turned brown. Already! Like a mummy of a Pharaoh, _that_ half looked. . . .
He was born to be a blooming casualty. Either by shell-fire or by the
fist of the prize-fighter. . . . Pontardulais! Somewhere in Mid-Wales.
He had been through it once in a car, on duty. A long, dull village. Why
should anyone want to go back to it? . . .

A tender butler's voice said beside him: "This ain't your job, sir.
Sorry you had to do it. . . . Lucky it wasn't you, sir. . . . This was
what done it, I should say."

Sergeant-Major Cowley was standing beside him holding a bit of metal
that was heavy in his hand and like a candlestick. He was aware that a
moment before he had seen the fellow, Mackenzie, bending over the
brazier, putting the sheet of iron back. Careful officer, Mackenzie. The
Huns must not be allowed to see the light from the brazier. The edge of
the sheet had gone down on the dead man's tunic, nipping a bit by the
shoulder. The face had disappeared in shadow. There were several men's
faces in the doorway.

Tietjens said: "No: I don't believe that did it. Something bigger. . . .
Say a prize-fighter's fist. . . ."

Sergeant Cowley said:

"No, no prize-fighter's fist would have done that, sir. . . ." And then
he added, "Oh, I take your meaning, sir . . . O Nine Morgan's wife,
sir. . . ."

Tietjens moved, his feet sticking, towards the sergeant-major's table.
The other runner had placed a tin basin with water on it. There was a
hooded candle there now, alight; the water shone innocently, a half-moon
of translucence wavering over the white bottom of the basin. The runner
from Pontardulais said:

"Wash your hands first, sir!"

He said:

"Move a little out of it, cahptn." He had a rag in his black hands.
Tietjens moved out of the blood that had run in a thin stream under the
table. The man was on his knees, his hands rubbing Tietjens' boot welts
heavily, with the rags. Tietjens placed his hands in the innocent water
and watched light purple-scarlet mist diffuse itself over the pale
half-moon. The man below him breathed heavily, sniffing. Tietjens said:

"Thomas, O Nine Morgan was your mate?"

The man's face, wrinkled, dark and ape-like, looked up.

"He was a good pal, pore old ----," he said. "You would not like, surely
to goodness, to go to mess with your shoes all bloody."

"If I had given him leave," Tietjens said, "he would not be dead now."

"No, surely not," One Seven Thomas answered. "But it is all one. Evans
of Castell Goch would surely to goodness have killed him."

"So you knew, too, about his wife!" Tietjens said.

"We thocht it wass that," One Seven Thomas answered, "or you would have
given him leave, cahptn. You are a good cahptn."

A sudden sense of the publicity that life was came over Tietjens.

"You knew that," he said. "I wonder what the hell you fellows don't know
and all!" he thought. "If anything went wrong with one it would be all
over the command in two days. Thank God, Sylvia can't get here!"

The man had risen to his feet. He fetched a towel of the
sergeant-major's, very white with a red border.

"We know," he said, "that your honour is a very goot cahptn. And Captain
McKechnie is a _fery_ goot cahptn. And Captain Prentiss, and Le'tennant
Jonce of Merthyr . . ."

Tietjens said:

"That'll do. Tell the sergeant-major to give you a pass to go with your
mate to the hospital. Get someone to wash this floor."

Two men were carrying the remains of O Nine Morgan, the trunk wrapped in
a ground sheet. They carried him in a bandy chair out of the hut. His
arms over his shoulders waved a jocular farewell. There would be an
ambulance stretcher on bicycle wheels outside.




CHAPTER II


The "All Clear" went at once after that. Its suddenness was something
surprising, the mournful-cheerful, long notes dying regretfully on a
night that had only just gone quiet after the perfectly astonishing row.
The moon had taken it into its head to rise; begumboiled, jocular and
grotesque, it came from behind the shoulder of one of the hut-covered
hills and sent down the lines of Tietjen's huts, long, sentimental rays
that converted the place into a slumbering, pastoral settlement. There
was no sound that did not contribute to the silence, little dim lights
shone through the celluloid casements. Of Sergeant-Major Cowley, his
numerals gilded by the moon in the lines of A Company, Tietjens, who was
easing his lungs of coke vapours for a minute, asked in a voice that
hushed itself in tribute to the moonlight and the now keen frost:

"Where the deuce is the draft?"

The sergeant-major looked poetically down a ribbon of whitewashed stones
that descended the black downside. Over the next shoulder of hill was
the blur of a hidden conflagration.

"There's a Hun plane burning down there. In Twenty-Seven's parade
ground. The draft's round that, sir," he said.

Tietjens said:

"Good God!" in a voice of caustic tolerance. He added, "I did think we
had drilled some discipline into these blighters in the seven weeks we
have had them. . . . You remember the first time when we had them on
parade and that acting lance-corporal left the ranks to heave a rock at
a sea-gull. . . . And called you 'OI' Hunkey! . . . Conduct prejudicial
to good order and military discipline? Where's that Canadian
sergeant-major? Where's the officer in charge of the draft?"

Sergeant-Major Cowley said:

"Sergeant-Major Ledoux said it was like a cattle-stampede on the . . .
some river where they come from. You _couldn't_ stop them, sir. It was
their first German plane. . . . And they going up the line to-night,
sir."

"To-night!" Tietjens exclaimed. "Next Christmas!"

The sergeant-major said:

"Poor boys!" and continued to gaze into the distance. "I heard another
good one, sir," he said. "The answer to the one about the King saluting
a private soldier and he not taking any notice is: when he's dead. . . .
But if you marched a company into a field through a gateway and you
wanted to get it out again but you did not know any command in the drill
book for change of direction, what would you do, sir? . . . You have to
get that company out, but you must not use About Turn, or Right or Left
Wheel. . . . There's another one, too, about saluting. . . . The officer
in charge of draft is Second-Lieutenant Hotchkiss. . . . But he's an
A.S.C. officer and turned of sixty. A farrier he is, sir, in civil life.
An A.S.C. major was asking me, sir, very civil, if you could not detail
someone else. He says he doubts if Second-Lieutenant Hitchcock . . .
Hotchkiss could walk as far as the station, let alone march the men, him
not knowing anything but cavalry words of command, if he knows them.
He's only been in the army a fortnight. . . ."

Tietjens turned from the idyllic scene with the words:

"I suppose the Canadian sergeant-major and Lieutenant Hotchkiss are
doing what they can to get their men to come back."

He re-entered the hut.

Captain Mackenzie in the light of a fantastically brilliant hurricane
lamp appeared to be bathing dejectedly in a surf of coiling papers
spread on the table before him.

"There's all this bumph," he said, "just come from all the headquarters
in the bally world."

Tietjens said cheerfully:

"What's it all about?" There were, the other answered, Garrison
Headquarter orders, Divisional orders, Lines of Communication orders,
half a dozen A.F.B.W. two four two's. A terrific strafe from First Army
forwarded from Garrison H.Q. about the draft's not having reached
Hazebrouck the day before yesterday. Tietjens said:

"Answer them politely to the effect that we had orders not to send off
the draft without its complement of four hundred Canadian Railway
Service men--the fellows in furred hoods. They only reached us from
Etaples at five this afternoon without blankets or ring papers. Or any
other papers for the matter of that."

Mackenzie was studying with increased gloom a small buff memorandum
slip:

"This appears to be meant for you privately," he said. "I can't make
head or tail of it otherwise. It isn't _marked_ private."

He tossed the buff slip across the table.

Tietjens sank down bulkily on to his bully-beef case. He read on the
buff at first the initials of the signature, "E.C. Genl.," and then:
"For God's sake keep your wife off me. I _will_ not have skirts round my
H.Q. You are more trouble to me than all the rest of my command put
together."

Tietjens groaned and sank more deeply on to his beef case. It was as if
an unseen and unsuspected wild beast had jumped on his neck from an
overhanging branch. The sergeant-major at his side said in his most
admirable butler manner:

"Colour-Sergeant Morgan and Lance-Corporal Trench are obliging us by
coming from depot orderly room to help with the draft's papers. Why
don't you and the other officer go and get a bit of dinner, sir? The
colonel and the padre have only just come in to mess, and I've warned
the mess orderlies to keep your food 'ot. . . . Both good men with
papers, Morgan and Trench. We can send the soldiers' small books to you
at table to sign. . . ."

His feminine solicitude enraged and overwhelmed Tietjens with blackness.
He told the sergeant-major that he was to go to hell, for he himself was
not going to leave that hut till the draft was moved off. Captain
Mackenzie could do as he pleased. The sergeant-major told Captain
Mackenzie that Captain Tietjens took as much trouble with his rag-time
detachments as if he had been the Coldstream adjutant at Chelsea sending
off a draft of Guards. Captain Mackenzie said that was why they
damn well got their details off four days faster than any other I.B.D.
in that camp. He _would_ say that much, he added grudgingly and dropped
his head over his papers again. The hut was moving slowly up and down
before the eyes of Tietjens. He might have just been kicked in the
stomach. That was how shocks took him. He said to himself that by God he
must take himself in hand. He grabbed with his heavy hands at a piece of
buff paper and wrote on it in a column of fat, wet letters:


              a
              b
              b
              a
              a
              b
              b
              a and so on.


He said opprobriously to Captain Mackenzie:

"Do you know what a sonnet is? Give me the rhymes for a sonnet. That's
the plan of it."

Mackenzie grumbled:

"Of course I know what a sonnet is. What's your game?"

Tietjens said:

"Give me the fourteen end-rhymes of a sonnet and I'll write the lines.
In under two minutes and a half."

Mackenzie said injuriously:

"If you do I'll turn it into Latin hexameters in three. In _under_ three
minutes."

They were like men uttering deadly insults the one to the other. To
Tietjens it was as if an immense cat were parading, fascinated and
fatal, round that hut. He had imagined himself parted from his wife. He
had not heard from his wife since her four-in-the-morning departure from
their flat, months and eternities ago, with the dawn just showing up the
chimney-pots of the Georgian roof-trees opposite. In the complete
stillness of dawn he had heard her voice say very clearly "Paddington"
to the chauffeur, and then all the sparrows in the inn waking up in
chorus. . . . Suddenly and appallingly it came into his head that it
might not have been his wife's voice that had said "Paddington," but her
maid's . . . He was a man who lived very much by rules of conduct. He
had a rule: _Never think on the subject of a shock at a moment of
shock_. The mind was then too sensitized. Subjects of shock require to
be thought all round. If your mind thinks when it is too sensitized its
then conclusions will be too strong. So he exclaimed to Mackenzie:

"Haven't you got your rhymes yet? Damn it _all_!"

Mackenzie grumbled offensively:

"No, I haven't. It's more difficult to get rhymes than to write
sonnets. . . . death, moil, coil, breath . . ." He paused.

"Heath, soil, toil, staggereth," Tietjens said contemptuously. "That's
your sort of Oxford young woman's rhyme. . . . Go on . . . _What is
it_?"

An extremely age-faded and unmilitary officer was beside the blanketed
table. Tietjens regretted having spoken to him with ferocity. He had a
grotesquely thin white beard. Positively, white whiskers! He must have
gone through as much of the army as he had gone through, with those
whiskers, because no superior officer--not even a field-marshal--would
have the heart to tell him to take them off! It was the measure of his
pathos. This ghost-like object was apologizing for not having been able
to keep the draft in hand: he was requesting his superior to observe
that these Colonial troops were without any instincts of discipline.
None at all. Tietjens observed that he had a blue cross on his right arm
where the vaccination marks are as a rule. He imagined the Canadians
talking to this hero. . . . The hero began to talk to, Major Cornwallis
of the R. A. S. C.

Tietjens said apropos of nothing:

"Is there a major Cornwallis in the A.S.C.? Good God!"

The hero protested faintly:

"The _R.A.S.C._"

Tietjens said kindly:

"Yes. Yes. The _Royal_ Army Service Corps."

Obviously his mind until now had regarded his wife's "_Paddington_" as
the definite farewell between his life and hers. . . . He had imagined
her, like Eurydice, tall, but faint and pale, sinking back into the
shades. . . . "_Che faro senz' Eurydice_? . . ." he hummed. Absurd! And
of course it might have been only the maid that had spoken. . . . She
too had a remarkably clear voice. So that the mystic word "Paddington"
might perfectly well be no symbol at all, and Mrs. Sylvia Tietjens, far
from being faint and pale, might perfectly well be playing the very
devil with half the general officers commanding in chief from Whitehall
to Alaska.

Mackenzie--he _was_ like a damned clerk--was transferring the rhymes
that he had no doubt at last found, onto another sheet of paper.
Probably he had a round, copy-book hand. Positively, his tongue followed
his pen round, inside his lips. These were what His Majesty's regular
officers of to-day were. Good God! A damned intelligent, dark-looking
fellow. Of the type that is starved in its youth and takes all the
scholarships that the board schools have to offer. Eyes too big and
black. Like a Malay's. . . . Any blasted member of any subject race.

The A.S.C. fellow had been talking positively about horses. He had
offered his services in order to study the variation of pink-eye that
was decimating all the service horses in the lines. He had been a
professor--positively a professor--in some farriery college or other.
Tietjens said that, in that case, he ought to be in the A.V.C.--the
_Royal_ Army Veterinary Corps perhaps it was. The old man said he didn't
know. He imagined that the R.A.S.C. had wanted his service for their own
horses. . . .

Tietjens said:

"I'll tell you what to do, Lieutenant Hitchcock. . . . For, damn it,
you're a stout fellow. . . ." The poor old fellow, pushing out at that
age from the cloisters of some provincial university . . . He certainly
did not look a horsy sportsman. . . .

The old lieutenant said:

"Hotchkiss . . ." And Tietjens exclaimed:

"Of course it's Hotchkiss . . . I've seen your name signing a
testimonial to Pigg's Horse Embrocation. . . . Then if you don't want to
take this draft up the line . . . Though I'd advise you to . . . It's
merely a Cook's Tour to Hazebrouck . . . No, Bailleul . . . And the
sergeant-major will march the men for you . . . And you will have been
in the First Army Lines and able to tell all your friends you've been on
active service at the real front. . . ."

His mind said to himself while his words went on . . .

"Then, good God, if Sylvia is actively paying attention to my career I
shall be the laughing-stock of the whole army. I was thinking that ten
minutes ago! . . . What's to be done? What in God's name is to be done?"
A black crape veil seemed to drop across his vision . . . Liver . . .

Lieutenant Hotchkiss said with dignity:

"I'm _going_ to the front. I'm going to the real front. I was passed A1
this morning. I am going to study the blood reactions of the service
horse under fire."

"Well, you're a damn good chap," Tietjens said. There was nothing to be
done. The amazing activities of which Sylvia would be capable were just
the thing to send laughter raging like fire through a cachinnating army.
She could not, thank God, get into France: to that place. But she could
make scandals in the papers that every Tommie read. There was no game of
which she was not capable. That sort of pursuit was called "pulling the
strings of shower-baths" in her circle of friends. Nothing. Nothing to
be done. . . . The beastly hurricane lamp was smoking.

"I'll tell you what to do," he said to Lieutenant Hotchkiss.

Mackenzie had tossed his sheet of rhymes under his nose. Tietjens read:
_Death, moil, coil, breath_. . . _Saith_--"The dirty Cockney!" _Oil, soil,
wraith_. . . .

"I'd be blowed," Mackenzie said with a vicious grin, "if I was going to
give you rhymes you had suggested yourself . . ."

The officer said:

"I don't of course want to be a nuisance if you're busy."

"It's no nuisance," Tietjens said. "It's what we're for. But I'd suggest
that now and then you say 'sir' to the officer commanding your unit. It
sounds well before the men. . . . Now you go to No. XVI I.B.D.
Mess ante-room . . . The place where they've got the broken
bagatelle-table. . . ."

The voice of Sergeant-Major Cowley exclaimed tranquilly from outside:

"Fall in now. Men who've got their ring papers and identity disks--three
of them--on the left. Men who haven't, on the right. Any man who has not
been able to draw his blankets tell Colour-Sergeant Morgan. Don't
forget. You won't get any where you're going. Any man who hasn't made
his will in his Soldier's Small Book or elsewhere and wants to, to
consult Captain Tietjens. Any man who wants to draw money, ask Captain
Mackenzie. Any R.C. who wants to go to confession after he has got his
papers signed can find the R.C. padre in the fourth hut from the left in
the Main Line from here. . . . And damn kind it is of his reverence to
put himself out for a set of damn blinking mustard-faced red herrings
like you who can't keep from running away to the first baby's bonfire
you sees. You'll be running the other way before you're a week older,
though what good they as asks for you thinks you'll be out there God
knows. You _look_ like a squad of infants' companions from a Wesleyan
Sunday school. That's what you look like and, thank God, we've got a
Navy."

Under cover of his voice Tietjens had been writing:

"Now we affront the grinning chops of _Death_," and saying to Lieutenant
Hotchkiss: "In the I.B.D. anteroom you'll find any number of dirty
little squits of Glamorganshires drinking themselves blind over _La Vie
Parisienne_. . . . Ask any one of them you like. . . ." He wrote:


    "And in between our carcass and the _moil_
     Of marts and cities, toil and moil and _coil_. . ."


"You think this difficult!" he said to Mackenzie. "Why, you've written a
whole undertaker's mortuary ode in the rhymes alone," and went on to
Hotchkiss: "Ask anyone you like as long as he's a P.B. officer. . . . Do
you know what P.B. means? No, not Poor B----y, Permanent Base. Unfit . . .
If he'd like to take a draft to Bailleul."

The hut was filling with devious, slow, ungainly men in yellow-brown.
Their feet shuffled desultorily; they lumped dull canvas bags along the
floor and held in unliterary hands small open books that they dropped
from time to time. From outside came a continuing, swelling and
descending chant of voices; at times it would seem to be all one laugh,
at times one menace, then the motives mingled fugally, like the sea on a
beach of large stones. It seemed to Tietjens suddenly extraordinary how
shut in on oneself one was in this life. . . . He sat scribbling fast:
"Old Spectre blows a cold protecting _breath_ . . . Vanity of vanities,
the preacher _saith_ . . . No more parades, Not any more, no _oil_ . . ."
He was telling Hotchkiss, who was obviously shy of approaching the
Glamorganshires in their ante-room . . . "Unambergris'd our limbs in the
naked _soil_ . . ." that he did not suppose any P.B. officer would
object. They would go on a beanfeast up into the giddy line in a
first-class carriage and get draft leave and command pay too probably . . .
"No funeral instruments cast before our wraiths . . ." If any fellow
does object, you just send his name to me and I will damn well shove it
into extra orders. . . .

The advanced wave of the brown tide of men was already at his feet. The
extraordinary complications of even the simplest lives; . . . A fellow
was beside him . . . Private Logan, formerly, of all queer things for a
Canadian private, a trooper of the Inniskillings: owner, of all queer
things, of a milk-walk or a dairy farm, outside Sydney, which is in
Australia . . . A man of sentimental complications, jauntiness as became
an Inniskilling, a Cockney accent such as ornaments the inhabitants of
Sydney, and a complete distrust of lawyers. On the other hand, with the
completest trust in Tietjens. Over his shoulder--he was blonde, upright,
with his numerals shining like gold, looked a lumpish, _café-au-lait_,
eagle-nosed countenance: a half-caste member of one of the Six Nations,
who had been a doctor's errand boy in Quebec . . . He had his troubles,
but was difficult to understand. Behind him, very black-avised with a
high colour, truculent eyes and an Irish accent, was a graduate of
McGill University who had been a teacher of languages in Tokio and had
some sort of claim against the Japanese Government . . . And faces, two
and two, in a coil round the hut . . . Like dust: like a cloud of dust
that would approach and overwhelm a landscape: every one with
preposterous troubles and anxieties, even if they did not overwhelm you
personally with them . . . Brown dust . . .

He kept the Inniskilling waiting while he scribbled the rapid sestet to
his sonnet which ought to make a little plainer what it all meant. Of
course the general idea was that, when you got into the line or near it,
there was no room for swank: typified by expensive funerals. As you
might say: No flowers by compulsion . . . No more parades! . . . He had
also to explain, while he did it, to the heroic veterinary sexagenarian
that he need not feel shy about going into the Glamorganshire Mess on a
man-catching expedition. The Glamorganshires were bound to lend him,
Tietjens, P.B. officers if they had not got other jobs. Lieutenant
Hotchkiss could speak to Colonel Johnson, whom he would find in the mess
and quite good-natured over his dinner. A pleasant and sympathetic old
gentleman who would appreciate Hotchkiss's desire not to go
superfluously into the line. Hotchkiss could offer to take a look at the
colonel's charger: a Hun horse, captured on the Marne and called
Schomburg, that was off its feed. . . . He added: "But don't do anything
professional to Schomburg. I ride him myself!"

He threw his sonnet across to Mackenzie, who with a background of
huddled khaki limbs and anxious faces was himself anxiously counting out
French currency notes and dubious-looking tokens . . . What the deuce
did men want to draw money--sometimes quite large sums of money, the
Canadians being paid in dollars converted into local coins--when in an
hour or so they would be going up? But they always did and their
accounts were always in an incredibly entangled state. Mackenzie might
well look worried. As like as not he might find himself a fiver or more
down at the end of the evening for unauthorized payments. If he had only
his pay and an extravagant wife to keep, that might well put the wind up
him. But that was _his_ funeral. He told Lieutenant Hotchkiss to come and
have a chat with him in his hut, the one next the mess. About horses. He
knew a little about horse-illnesses himself. Only empirically, of
course.

Mackenzie was looking at his watch.

"You took two minutes and eleven seconds," he said. "I'll take it for
granted it's a sonnet . . . I have not read it because I can't turn it
into Latin here . . . I haven't got your knack of doing eleven things at
once. . . ."

A man with a worried face, encumbered by a bundle and a small book, was
studying figures at Mackenzie's elbow. He interrupted Mackenzie in a
high American voice to say that he had never drawn fourteen dollars
seventy-five cents in Thrasna Barracks, Aldershot.

Mackenzie said to Tietjens:

"You understand. I have not read your sonnet. I shall turn it into Latin
in the mess: in the time stipulated. I don't want you to think I've read
it and taken time to think about it."

The man beside him said:

"When I went to the Canadian Agent, Strand, London, his office was shut
up . . ."

Mackenzie said with white fury:

"How much service have you got? Don't you know better than to interrupt
an officer when he is talking. You must settle your own figures with
your own confounded Colonial paymaster. I've sixteen dollars thirty
cents here for you. Will you take them or leave them?"

Tietjens said:

"I know that man's case. Turn him over to me. It isn't complicated. He's
got his paymaster's cheque, but doesn't know how to cash it and of
course they won't give him another. . . ."

The man with slow, broad, brown features looked from one to the other
officer's face and back again with a keen black-eyed scrutiny as if he
were looking into a wind and dazed by the light. He began a long story
of how he owed Fat-Eared Bill fifty dollars lost at House. He was
perhaps half-Chinese, half-Finn. He continued to talk, being in a state
of great anxiety about his money. Tietjens addressed himself to the
cases of the Sydney Inniskilling ex-trooper and the McGill graduate who
had suffered at the hands of the Japanese Educational Ministry. It made
altogether a complicated effect. "You would say," Tietjens said to
himself, "that, all together, it ought to be enough to take my mind up."

The upright trooper had a very complicated sentimental history. It was
difficult to advise him before his fellows. He, however, felt no
diffidence. He discussed the points of the girl called Rosie whom he had
followed from Sydney to British Columbia, of the girl called Gwen with
whom he had taken up in Aberystwyth, of the woman called Mrs. Hosier
with whom he had lived maritally, on a sleeping-out pass, at Berwick St.
James, near Salisbury Plain. Through the continuing voice of the
half-caste Chinaman he discussed them with a large tolerance, explaining
that he wanted them all to have a bit, as a souvenir, if he happened to
stop one out there. Tietjens handed him the draft of a will he had had
written out for him, asked him to read it attentively and copy it with
his own hand into his soldier's small book. Then Tietjens would witness
it for him. He said:

"Do you think this will make my old woman in Sydney part? I guess it
won't. She's a sticker, sir. A regular July bur, God bless her." The
McGill graduate was beginning already to introduce a further
complication into his story of complications with the Japanese
Government. It appeared that in addition to his scholastic performances
he had invested a little money in a mineral water spring near Kobe, the
water, bottled, being exported to San Francisco. Apparently his company
had been indulging in irregularities according to Japanese law, but a
pure French Canadian, who had experienced some difficulties in obtaining
his baptismal certificate from a mission somewhere in the direction of
the Klondike, was allowed by Tietjens to interrupt the story of the
graduate; and several men without complications, but anxious to get
their papers signed so as to write last letters home before the draft
moved, overflowed across Tietjen's table. . . .

The tobacco smoke from the pipes of the N.C.O.'s at the other end of the
room hung, opalescent, beneath the wire cages of the brilliant hurricane
lamps hung over each table; buttons and numerals gleamed in the air that
the universal khaki tinge of the limbs seemed to turn brown, as if into
a gas of dust. Nasal voices, throat voices, drawling voices, melted into
a rustle so that the occasional high, sing-song profanity of a Welsh
N.C.O.: Why the _hell_ haffn't you got your 124? Why the ---- hell
haffn't you got your 124? Don't you _know_ you haff to haff your
bleedin' 124's? seemed to wail tragically through a silence . . . The
evening wore on and on. It astounded Tietjens, looking at one time at
his watch to discover that it was only 21 hrs. 19. He seemed to have
been thinking drowsily of his own affairs for ten hours. . . . For, in
the end, these were his own affairs. . . . Money, women, testamentary
bothers. Each of these complications from over the Atlantic and round
the world were his own troubles: a world in labour: an army being moved
off in the night. Shoved off. Anyhow. And over the top. A lateral
section of the world. . . .

He had happened to glance at the medical history of a man beside him and
noticed that he had been described as C1. . . . It was obviously a slip
of the pen on the part of the Medical Board, or one of their orderlies.
He had written C instead of A. The man was Pte. 197394 Thomas Johnson, a
shining-faced lump of beef, an agricultural odd jobman from British
Columbia where he had worked on the immense estates of Sylvia Tietjens'
portentous ducal second cousin Rugeley. It was a double annoyance.
Tietjens had not wanted to be reminded of his wife's second cousin,
because he had not wanted to be reminded of his wife. He had determined
to give his thoughts a field day on that subject when he got warm into
his flea-bag in his hut that smelt of paraffin whilst the canvas walls
crackled with frost and the moon shone. . . . He would think of Sylvia
beneath the moon. He was determined not to now! But 197394 Pte. Johnson,
Thomas, was otherwise a nuisance and Tietjens cursed himself for having
glanced at the man's medical history. If this preposterous yokel was C3
he could not go on a draft . . . C1 rather! It was all the same. That
would mean finding another man to make up the strength and that would
drive Sergeant-Major Cowley out of his mind. He looked up towards the
ingenuous, protruding, shining, liquid, bottle-blue eyes of Thomas
Johnson. . . . The fellow had never had an illness. He could not have
had an illness--except from a surfeit of cold, fat, boiled pork--and for
that you would give him a horse's blue ball and drench which, ten to
one, would not remove the cause of the belly-ache. . . .

His eyes met the non-committal glance of a dark, gentlemanly thin fellow
with a strikingly scarlet hatband, a lot of gilt about his khaki and
little strips of steel chain-armour on his shoulders. . . . Levin . . .
Colonel Levin, G.S.O. II, or something, attached to General Lord Edward
Campion. . . . How the hell did fellows get into these intimacies of
commanders of units and their men? Swimming in like fishes into the
brown air of a tank and there at your elbow . . .----spies! . . . The
men had all been called to attention and stood like gasping codfish. The
ever-watchful Sergeant-Major Cowley had drifted to his, Tietjens',
elbow. You protect your orfcers from the gawdy Staff as you protect your
infant daughters in lambswool from draughts. The dark, bright, cheerful
staffwallah said with a slight lisp:

"Busy, I see." He might have been standing there for a century and have
a century of the battalion headquarters' time to waste like that. "What
draft is this?"

Sergeant-Major Cowley, always ready in case his orfcer should not know
the name of his unit or his own name, said:

"No. 16 I.B.D. Canadian First Division Casual Number Four Draft, sir."

Colonel Levin let air lispingly out between his teeth.

"No. 16 Draft not off yet . . . Dear, dear! Dear, dear! . . . We shall
be strafed to hell by First Army. . . ." He used the word hell as if he
had first wrapped it in eau-de-cologned cotton-wadding.

Tietjens, on his feet, knew this fellow very well: a fellow who had been
a very bad Society water-colour painter of good family on the mother's
side: hence the cavalry gadgets on his shoulders. Would it then be
good . . . say good taste to explode? He let the sergeant-major do it.
Sergeant-Major Cowley was of the type of N.C.O. who carried weight
because he knew ten times as much about his job as any Staff officer.
The sergeant-major explained that it had been impossible to get off the
draft earlier. The colonel said:

"But surely, sergeant-majah . . ."

The sergeant-major, now a deferential shopwalker in a lady's store,
pointed out that they had had urgent instructions not to send up the
draft without the four hundred Canadian Railway Service men who were to
come from Etaples. These men had only arrived that evening at 5.30 . . .
at the railway station. Marching them up had taken three-quarters of an
hour. The colonel said:

"But surely, sergeant-majah . . ."

Old Cowley might as well have said "madam" as "sir" to the red
hat-band. . . . The four hundred had come with only what they stood up in.
The unit had had to wangle everything: boots, blankets, toothbrushes,
braces, rifles, iron-rations, identity disks out of the depot store. And
it was now only twenty-one twenty. . . . Cowley permitted his commanding
officer at this point to say:

"You must understand that we work in circumstances of extreme
difficulty, sir. . . ."

The graceful colonel was lost in an absent contemplation of his
perfectly elegant knees.

"I know, of course. . . ." he lisped. "Very difficult . . ." He
brightened up to add: "But you must admit you're unfortunate. . . . You
must admit that. . . ." The weight settled, however, again on his mind.

Tietjens said:

"Not, I suppose, sir, any more unfortunate than any other unit working
under a dual control for supplies. . . ."

The colonel said:

"What's that? Dual . . . Ah, I see you're there, Mackenzie. . . .
Feeling well . . . feeling fit, eh?"

The whole hut stood silent. His anger at the waste of time made Tietjens
say:

"If you understand, sir, we are a unit whose principal purpose is
drawing things to equip drafts with. . . ." This fellow was delaying
them atrociously. He was brushing his knees with a handkerchief! "I've
had," Tietjens said, "a man killed on my hands this afternoon because we
have to draw tin-hats for my orderly room from Dublin on an A.F.B.
Canadian from Aldershot. . . . Killed here. . . . We've only just
mopped up the blood from where you're standing. . . ."

The cavalry colonel exclaimed:

"Oh, good gracious me! . . ." jumped a little and examined his
beautiful, shining, knee-high aircraft boots. "Killed! . . . . Here! . . .
But there'll have to be a court of inquiry. . . . You certainly are
_most_ unfortunate, Captain Tietjens. . . . Always these mysterious . . .
Why wasn't your man in a dug-out? . . . Most unfortunate. . . . We
cannot have casualties among the Colonial troops. . . . Troops from the
Dominions, I mean. . . ."

Tietjens said grimly:

"The man was from Pontardulais . . . not from any Dominion. . . . One of
my orderly room. . . . We are forbidden on pain of court martial to let
any but Dominion Expeditionary Force men go into the dugouts. . . . My
Canadians were all there. . . . It's an A.C.I. local of the eleventh of
November. . . ."

The Staff officer said:

"It makes, of course, a difference! . . . Only a Glamorganshire? You
say . . . Oh, well. . . . But these mysterious . . ."

He exclaimed, with the force of an explosion, and the relief:

"Look here . . . can you spare, possibly, ten . . . twenty . . . eh . . .
minutes? . . . It's not exactly a service matter . . . so per . . ."

Tietjens exclaimed:

"You see how we're situated, colonel . . ." and, like one sowing grass
seed on a lawn, extended both hands over his papers and towards his
men. . . . He was choking with rage. Colonel Levin had, under the
chaperonage of an English dowager, who ran a chocolate store down on the
quays in Rouen, a little French piece to whom he was quite seriously
engaged. In the most naïve manner. And the young woman, fantastically
jealous, managed to make endless insults to herself out of her almost too
handsome colonel's barbaric French. It was an idyll, but it drove the
colonel frantic. At such times Levin would consult Tietjens, who passed
for a man of brains and a French scholar as to really nicely turned
compliments in a difficult language. . . . And as to how you explained
that it was necessary for a G.S.O. II, or whatever the colonel was, to
be seen quite frequently in the company of very handsome V.A.D.'s and
female organizers of all arms . . . It was the sort of silliness as to
which no gentleman ought to be consulted. . . . And here was Levin with
the familiar feminine-agonized wrinkle on his bronzed-alabaster brow. . . .
Like a beastly soldier-man out of a revue. Why didn't the ass burst
into gesture and a throaty tenor. . . .

Sergeant-Major Cowley naturally saved the situation. Just as Tietjens
was as near saying _Go to hell_ as you can be to your remarkably senior
officer on parade, the sergeant-major, now a very important solicitor's
most confidential clerk, began whispering to the colonel. . . .

"The captain might as well take a spell as not. . . . We're through with
all the men except the Canadian Railway batch, and they can't be issued
with blankets not for half an hour . . . not for three-quarters. If
then! It depends if our runner can find where Quarter's lance-corporal
is having his supper, to issue them. . . ." The sergeant-major had
inserted that last speech deftly. The Staff officer, with a vague
reminiscence of his regimental days, exclaimed:

"Damn it! . . . I wonder you don't break into the depot blanket store
and take what you want. . . ."

The sergeant-major, becoming Simon Pure, exclaimed:

"Oh, no, sir, we could never do that, sir. . . ."

"But the confounded men are urgently needed in the line," Colonel Levin
said. "Damn it, it's touch and go! . . . We're rushing . . ." He
appreciated the fact again that he was on the gawdy Staff, and that the
sergeant-major and Tietjens, playing like left backs into each other's
hands, had trickily let him in.

"We can only pray, sir," the sergeant-major said, "that these 'ere
bloomin' 'Uns has got quartermasters and depots and issuing departments,
same as ourselves." He lowered his voice into a husky whisper. "Besides,
sir, there's a rumour . . . round the telephone in depot orderly room . . .
that there's a W.O. order at 'Edquarters . . . countermanding this
and other drafts. . . ."

Colonel Levin said: "Oh, my God!" and consternation rushed upon both him
and Tietjens. The frozen ditches, in the night, out there; the agonized
waiting for men; the weight upon the mind like a weight upon the brows;
the imminent sense of approaching unthinkableness on the right or the
left, according as you looked up or down the trench; the solid
protecting earth of the parapet then turns into pierced mist . . . and
no reliefs coming from here. . . . The men up there thinking naïvely
that they were coming, and they not coming. Why not? Good God, why not?
Mackenzie said:

"Poor ---- old Bird . . . His crowd had been in eleven weeks last
Wednesday. . . . About all they could stick. . . ."

"They'll have to stick a damn lot more," Colonel Levin said. "I'd like
to get at some of the brutes. . . ." It was at that date the settled
conviction of His Majesty's Expeditionary Force that the army in the
field was the tool of politicians and civilians. In moments of routine
that cloud dissipated itself lightly: when news of ill omen arrived it
settled down again heavily like a cloud of black gas. You hung your head
impotently. . . .

"So that," the sergeant-major said cheerfully, "the captain could very
well spare half an hour to get his dinner. Or for anything else. . . ."
Apart from the domestic desire that Tietjens' digestion should not
suffer from irregular meals he had the professional conviction that for
his captain to be in intimate private converse with a member of the
gawdy Staff was good for the unit. ... "I suppose, sir," he added
valedictorily to Tietjens, "I'd better arrange to put this draft, and
the nine hundred men that came in this afternoon to replace them, twenty
in a tent. . . . It's lucky we didn't strike them. . . ."

Tietjens and the colonel began to push men out of their way, going
towards the door. The Inniskilling-Canadian, a small open brown book,
extended deprecatingly stood, modestly obtrusive, just beside the
doorpost. Catching avidly at Tietjens' "Eh?" he said:

"You'd got the names of the girls wrong in your copy, sir. It was Gwen
Lewis I had a child by in Aberystwyth that I wanted to have the lease of
the cottage and the ten bob a week. Mrs. Hosier that I lived with in
Berwick St. James, she was only to have five guineas for a soovneer. . . .
I've took the liberty of changing the names back again. . . ."

Tietjens grabbed the book from him, and bending down at the
sergeant-major's table scrawled his signature on the bluish page. He
thrust the book back at the man and said:

"There . . . fall out." The man's face shone. He exclaimed:

"Thank you, sir. Thank you kindly, captain. . . . I wanted to get off
and go to confession. I did bad. . . ." The McGill graduate with his
arrogant black moustache put himself in the way as Tietjens struggled
into his British warm.

"You won't forget, sir, . . ." he began.

Tietjens said:

"Damn you, I've told you I won't forget. I never forget. You instructed
the ignorant Jap in Asaki, but the educational authority is in Tokio.
And your flagitious mineral-water company had their headquarters at the
Tan Sen spring near Kobe. . . . Is that right? Well, I'll do my best for
you."

They walked in silence through the groups of men that hung round the
orderly room door and gleamed in the moonlight. In the broad country
street of the main line of the camp Colonel Levin began to mutter
between his teeth:

"You take enough trouble with your beastly crowd . . . a whole lot of
trouble. . . . Yet . . ."

"Well, what's the matter with us?" Tietjens said. "We get our drafts
ready in thirty-six hours less than any other unit in this command."

"I know you do," the other conceded. "It's only all these mysterious
rows. Now . . ."

Tietjens said quickly:

"Do you mind my asking: Are we still on parade? Is this a strafe from
General Campion as to the way I command my unit?"

The other conceded quite as quickly and much more worriedly:

"God forbid." He added more quickly still: "Old bean!" and prepared to
tuck his wrist under Tietjens' elbow. Tietjens, however, continued to
face the fellow. He was really in a temper.

"Then tell me," he said, "how the deuce you can manage to do without an
overcoat in this weather?" If only he could get the chap off the topics
of his mysterious rows they might drift to the matter that had brought
him up there on that bitter night when he should be sitting over a good
wood fire philandering with Mlle Nanette de Bailly. He sank his neck
deeper into the sheepskin collar of his British warm. The other, slim,
was with all his badges, ribands and mail, shining darkly in a cold that
set all Tietjens' teeth chattering like porcelain. Levin became
momentarily animated:

"You should do as I do. . . . Regular hours . . . lots of exercise . . .
horse exercise. . . . I do P.T. every morning at the open window of my
room . . . hardening. . . ."

"It must be very gratifying for the ladies in the rooms facing yours,"
Tietjens said grimly. "Is that what's the matter with Mlle Nanette,
now? . . . I haven't got time for proper exercise. . . ."

"Good gracious, no," the colonel said. He now tucked his hand firmly
under Tietjens' arm and began to work him towards the left hand of the
road: in the direction leading out of the camp. Tietjens worked their
steps as firmly towards the right and they leant one against the other.
"In fact, old bean," the colonel said, "Campy is working so hard to get
the command of a fighting army--though he's indispensable here--that we
might pack up bag and baggage any day. . . . That is what has made
Nanette see reason. . . ."

"Then what am I doing in this show?" Tietjens asked. But Colonel Levin
continued blissfully:

"In fact I've got her almost practically for certain to promise that
next week . . . or the week after next at latest . . . she'll . . . damn
it, she'll name the happy day."

Tietjens said:

"Good hunting! . . . How splendidly Victorian!" "That's, damn it," the
colonel exclaimed manfully, "what I say myself. . . . Victorian is what
it is. . . . All these marriage settlements. . . . And what is it . . .
_Droits du Seigneur_? . . . And notaires . . . And the Count, having his
say . . . And the Marchioness . . . And two old grand aunts . . . But . . .
Hoopla! . . ." He executed with his gloved right thumb in the
moonlight a rapid pirouette . . . "Next week . . . or at least the week
after . . ." His voice suddenly dropped.

"At least," he wavered, "that was what it was at lunch-time. . . . Since
then . . . something happened. . . ."

"You've not been caught in bed with a V.A.D.?" Tietjens asked.

The colonel mumbled:

"No . . . not in bed. . . . Not with a V.A.D. . . . Oh, damn it, at the
railway station. . . . With . . . The general sent me down to meet
her . . . and Nanny of course was seeing off her grandmother, the
Duchesse . . . The giddy cut she handed me out. . . ."

Tietjens became coldly furious.

"Then it _was_ over one of your beastly imbecile rows with Miss de Bailly
that you got me out here," he exclaimed. "Do you mind going down with me
towards the I.B.D. headquarters? Your final orders may have come in
there. The sappers won't let me have a telephone, so I have to look in
there the last thing. . . ." He felt a yearning towards rooms in huts,
warmed by coke-stoves and electrically lit, with acting lance-corporals
bending over A.F.B.'s on a background of deal pigeon-holes filled with
returns on buff and blue paper. You got quiet and engrossment there. It
was a queer thing: the only place where he, Christopher Tietjens of
Groby, could be absently satisfied was in some orderly room or other.
The only place in the world. . . . And why? It was a queer thing. . . .

But not queer, really. It was a matter of inevitable selection if you
came to think it out. An acting orderly-room lance-corporal was selected
for his penmanship, his power of elementary figuring, his
trustworthiness amongst innumerable figures and messages, his
dependability. For this he differed a hair's breadth in rank from the
rank and file. A hairbreadth that was to him the difference between life
and death. For, if he proved not to be dependable, back he
went--returned to duty! As long as he was dependable he slept under a
table in a warm room, his toilette arrangements and washing in a
bully-beef case near his head, a billy full of tea always stewing for
him on an always burning stove. . . . A paradise! . . . No! Not a
paradise: _the_ paradise of the Other Ranks! . . . He might be awakened at
one in the morning. Miles away the enemy might be beginning a strafe. . . .
He would roll out from among the blankets under the table amongst
the legs of hurrying N.C.O.'s and officers, the telephone going like
hell. . . . He would have to manifold innumerable short orders on buff
slips, on a typewriter. . . . A bore to be awakened at one in the
morning, but not unexciting: the enemy putting up a tremendous barrage
in front of the village of Dranoutre: the whole nineteenth division to
be moved into support along the Bailleul-Nieppe road. In case . . .

Tietjens considered the sleeping army. . . . That country village under
the white moon, all of sackcloth sides, celluloid windows, forty men to
a hut . . . That slumbering Arcadia was one of . . . how many?
Thirty-seven thousand five hundred, say for a million and a half of
men. . . . But there were probably more than a million and a half in that
base. . . . Well, round the slumbering Arcadias were the fringes of
virginly glimmering tents. . . . Fourteen men to a tent. . . . For a
million. . . . Seventy-one thousand four hundred and twenty-one tents
round, say, one hundred and fifty I.B.D.'s, C.B.D.'s, R.E.B.D.'s. . . .
Base depots for infantry, cavalry, sappers, gunners, airmen,
anti-airmen, telephone-men, vets, chiropodists, Royal Army Service Corps
men, Pigeon Service men, Sanitary Service men, Women's Auxiliary Army
Corps women, V.A.D. women--what in the world did V.A.D. stand
for?--canteens, rest-tent attendants, barrack damage superintendents,
parsons, priests, rabbis, Mormon bishops, Brahmins, Lamas, Imams, Fanti
men, no doubt, for African troops. And all really dependent on the
acting orderly-room lance-corporals for their temporal and spiritual
salvation. . . . For, if by a slip of the pen a lance-corporal sent a
Papist priest to an Ulster regiment, the Ulster men would lynch him, and
all go to hell. Or, if by a slip of the tongue at the telephone, or a
slip of the typewriter, he sent a division to Westoutre instead of to
Dranoutre at one in the morning, the six or seven thousand poor devils
in front of Dranoutre might all be massacred and nothing but His
Majesty's Navy could save us. . . .

Yet, in the end, all this tangle was satisfactorily unravelled; the
drafts moved off, unknotting themselves like snakes, coiling out of
inextricable bunches, sliding vertebrately over the mud to dip into
their bowls--the rabbis found Jews dying to whom to administer; the
vets, spavined mules; the V.A.D.'s, men without jaws and shoulders in
C.C.S.'s; the camp-cookers, frozen beef; the chiropodists, ingrowing
toenails; the dentists, decayed molars; the naval howitzers, camouflaged
emplacements in picturesquely wooded dingles. . . . Somehow they got
there--even to the pots of strawberry jam by the ten dozen!

For if the acting lance-corporal, whose life hung by a hair, made a slip
of the pen over a dozen pots of jam, back he went, _Returned to duty_ . . .
back to the frozen rifle, the ground-sheet on the liquid mud, the
desperate suction on the ankle as the foot was advanced, the landscapes
silhouetted with broken church towers, the continual drone of the
planes, the mazes of duckboards in vast plains of slime, the unending
Cockney humour, the great shells labelled _Love to Little Willie_. . . .
Back to the Angel with the Flaming Sword. The wrong side of him! . . . So,
on the whole, things moved satisfactorily. . . .

He was walking Colonel Levin imperiously between the huts towards the
mess quarters, their feet crunching on the freezing gravel, the colonel
hanging back a little; but a mere light-weight and without nails in his
elegant bootsoles, so he had no grip on the ground. He was remarkably
silent. Whatever he wanted to get out he was reluctant to come to. He
brought out, however:

"I wonder you don't apply to be returned to duty . . . to your
battalion. I jolly well should if I were you. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Why? Because I've had a man killed on me? . . . There must have been a
dozen killed to-night."

"Oh, more, very likely," the other answered. "It was one of our own
planes that was brought down. . . . But it isn't that. . . . Oh, damn
it! . . . Would you mind walking the other way? . . . I've the greatest
respect . . . oh, almost ... for you personally. . . . You're a man of
intellect. . . ."

Tietjens was reflecting on a nice point of military etiquette.

This lisping, ineffectual fellow--he was a very careful Staff officer or
Campion would not have had him about the place!--was given to moulding
himself exactly on his general. Physically, in costume as far as
possible, in voice--for his lisp was not his own so much as an
adaptation of the general's slight stutter--and above all in his
uncompleted sentences and point of view. . . . Now, if he said:

"Look here, colonel . . ." or "Look here, Colonel Levin . . ." or "Look
here, Stanley, my boy . . ." For the one thing an officer may not say to a
superior whatever their intimacy was: "Look here, Levin . . ." If he
said then:

"Look here, Stanley, you're a silly ass. It's all very well for Campion
to say that I am unsound because I've some brains. He's my godfather and
has been saying it to me since I was twelve, and had more brain in my
left heel than he had in the whole of his beautifully barbered skull. . . .
But when you say it you are just a parrot. You did not think that
out for yourself. You do not even think it. You know I'm heavy, short in
the wind, and self-assertive . . . but you know perfectly well that I'm
as good on detail as yourself. And a damned sight more. You've never
caught me tripping over a return. Your sergeant in charge of returns may
have. But not you. . . ."

If Tietjens should say that to this popinjay, would that be going
farther than an officer in charge of detachment should go with a member
of the Staff set above him, though not on parade and in a conversation
of intimacy? Off parade and in intimate conversation all His Majesty's
poor ---- officers are equals . . . gentlemen having His Majesty's
commission: there can be no higher rank and all that Bilge! . . . For
how off parade could this descendant of an old-clo'man from Frankfurt be
the equal of him, Tietjens of Groby? He wasn't his equal in any
way--let alone socially. If Tietjens hit him he would drop dead; if he
addressed a little sneering remark to Levin, the fellow would melt so
that you would see the old spluttering Jew swimming up through his
carefully arranged Gentile features. He couldn't shoot as well as
Tietjens, or ride, or play a hand at auction. Why, damn it, he,
Tietjens, hadn't the least doubt that he could paint better water-colour
pictures. . . . And, as for returns . . . he would undertake to tear the
guts out of half a dozen new and contradictory A.C.I.'s--Army Council
Instructions--and write twelve correct Command Orders founded on them,
before Levin had lisped out the date and serial number of the first
one. . . . He had done it several times up in the room, arranged like a
French blue stocking's salon, where Levin worked at Garrison
headquarters . . . He had written Levin's blessed command orders while
Levin fussed and fumed about their being delayed for tea with Mlle de
Bailly . . . and curled his delicate moustache . . . Mlle de Bailly,
chaperoned by old Lady Sachse, had tea by a clear wood fire in an
eighteenth-century octagonal room, with blue-grey tapestried walls and
powdering closets, out of priceless porcelain cups without handles. Pale
tea that tasted faintly of cinnamon!

Mlle de Bailly was a long, dark, high-coloured Provençale. Not heavy,
but precisely long, slow, and cruel; coiled in a deep arm-chair, saying
the most wounding, slow things to Levin, she resembled a white Persian
cat luxuriating, sticking out a tentative pawful of expanding claws.
With eyes slanting pronouncedly upwards and a very thin hooked nose . . .
Almost Japanese . . . And with a terrific cortège of relatives, swell
in a French way. One brother a chauffeur to a Marshal of France . . . An
aristocratic way of shirking!

With all that, obviously even off parade, you might well be the social
equal of a Staff colonel: but you jolly well had to keep from showing
that you were his superior. Especially intellectually. If you let
yourself show a Staff officer that he _was_ a silly ass--you could say it
as often as you liked as long as you didn't prove it!--you could be
certain that you would be for it before long. And quite properly. It was
not English to be intellectually adroit. Nay, it was positively
un-English. And the duty of field officers is to keep messes as English
as possible. . . . So a Staff officer would take it out of such a
regimental inferior. In a perfectly creditable way. You would never
imagine the hash headquarters warrant officers would make of your
returns. Until you were worried and badgered and in the end either you
were ejected into, or prayed to be transferred to . . . any other
command in the whole service. . . .

And that was beastly. The process, not the effect. On the whole Tietjens
did not care where he was or what he did as long as he kept out of
England, the thought of that country, at night, slumbering across the
Channel, being sentimentally unbearable to him. . . . Still, he was fond
of old Campion, and would rather be in his command than any other. He
had attached to his staff a very decent set of fellows, as decent as you
could be in contact with . . . if you had to be in contact with your
kind. . . . So he just said:

"Look here, Stanley, you are a silly ass," and left it at that, without
demonstrating the truth of the assertion.

The colonel said:

"Why, what have I been doing now? . . . I _wish_ you would walk the other
way. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"No, I can't afford to go out of camp. . . . I've got to come to witness
your fantastic wedding-contract to-morrow afternoon, haven't I? . . . I
can't leave camp twice in one week. . . ."

"You've got to come down to the camp-guard," Levin said. "I hate to keep
a woman waiting in the cold . . . though she _is_ in the general's
car. . . ."

Tietjens exclaimed:

"You've not been . . . oh, extraordinarily enough, to bring Miss de
Bailly out here? To talk to me?"

Colonel Levin mumbled, so low Tietjens almost imagined that he was not
meant to hear:

"It isn't Miss de Bailly!" Then he exclaimed quite aloud: "Damn it all,
Tietjens, haven't you had hints enough? . . ."

For a lunatic moment it went through Tietjens' mind that it must be Miss
Wannop in the general's car, at the gate, down the hill beside the camp
guard-room. But he knew folly when it presented itself to his mind. He
had nevertheless turned and they were going very slowly back along the
broad way between the huts. Levin was certainly in no hurry. The broad
way would come to an end of the hutments; about two acres of slope would
descend blackly before them, white stones to mark a sort of coastguard
track glimmering out of sight beneath a moon gone dark with the frost.
And, down there in the dark forest, at the end of that track, in a
terrific Rolls-Royce, was waiting something of which Levin was certainly
deucedly afraid. . . .

For a minute Tietjens' backbone stiffened. He didn't intend to interfere
between Mlle de Bailly and any married woman Levin had had as a
mistress. . . . Somehow he was convinced that what was in that car was a
married woman. . . . He did not dare to think otherwise. If it was not a
married woman it might be Miss Wannop. If it was, it couldn't be. . . .
An immense waft of calm, sentimental happiness had descended upon him.
Merely because he had imagined her! He imagined her little, fair, rather
pug-nosed face: under a fur cap, he did not know why. Leaning forward
she would be, on the seat of the general's illuminated car: glazed in: a
regular raree show! Peering out, shortsightedly on account of the
reflections on the inside of the glass. . . .

He was saying to Levin:

"Look here, Stanley . . . why I said you are a silly ass is because Miss
de Bailly has one chief luxury. It's exhibiting jealousy. Not feeling
it; exhibiting it."

"_Ought_ you," Levin asked ironically, "to discuss my fiancée before
me? As an English gentleman. Tietjens of Groby and all."

"Why, of course," Tietjens said. He continued feeling happy. "As a sort
of swollen best man, it's my duty to instruct you. Mothers tell their
daughters things before marriage. Best men do it for the innocent
Benedict. . . . And you're always consulting me about the young
woman. . . ."

"I'm not doing it now," Levin grumbled direly.

"Then what, in God's name, are you doing? You've got a cast mistress,
haven't you, down there in old Campion's car? . . ." They were beside
the alley that led down to his orderly room. Knots of men, dim, and
desultory, still half filled it, a little way down.

"I _haven't_," Levin exclaimed almost tearfully. "I never _had_ a
mistress. . . ."

"And you're not married?" Tietjens asked. He used on purpose the
schoolboy's ejaculation "Lummy!" to soften the jibe. "If you'll excuse
me," he said, "I must just go and take a look at my crowd. To see if
your orders have come down."

He found no orders in a hut as full as ever of the dull mists and odours
of khaki, but he found in revenge a fine upstanding, blond,
Canadian-born lance-corporal of old Colonial lineage, with a moving
story as related by Sergeant-Major Cowley:

"This man, sir, of the Canadian Railway lot, 'is mother's just turned up
in the town, come on from Eetarpels. Come all the way from Toronto where
she was bedridden."

Tietjens said:

"Well, what about it? Get a move on."

The man wanted leave to go to his mother who was waiting in a decent
estaminet at the end of the tramline, just outside the camp where the
houses of the town began.

Tietjens said: "It's impossible. It's absolutely impossible. You know
that."

The man stood erect and expressionless; his blue eyes looked
confoundedly honest to Tietjens who was cursing himself. He said to the
man:

"You can see for yourself that it's impossible, can't you?"

The man said slowly:

"Not knowing the regulations in these circumstances I can't say, sir.
But my mother's is a very special case. . . . She's lost two sons
already."

Tietjens said:

"A great many people have. . . . Do you understand, if you went absent
off my pass I might--I quite possibly might--lose my commission? I'm
responsible for you fellows getting up the line."

The man looked down at his feet. Tietjens said to himself that it was
Valentine Wannop doing this to him. He ought to turn the man down at
once. He was pervaded by a sense of her being. It was imbecile. Yet it
was so. He said to the man:

"You said good-bye to your mother, didn't you, in Toronto, before you
left?"

The man said:

"No, sir." He had not seen his mother in seven years. He had been up in
the Chilkoot when war broke out and had not heard of it for ten months.
Then he had at once joined up in British Columbia, and had been sent
straight through for railway work, on to Aldershot where the Canadians
have a camp in building. He had not known that his brothers were killed
till he got there and his mother, being bedridden at the news, had not
been able to get down to Toronto when his batch had passed through. She
lived about sixty miles from Toronto. Now she had risen from her bed
like a miracle and come all the way. A widow: sixty-two years of age.
Very feeble.

It occurred to Tietjens as it occurred to him ten times a day that it
was idiotic of him to figure Valentine Wannop to himself. He had not the
slightest idea where she was: in what circumstances, or even in what
house. He did not suppose she and her mother had stayed on in that
dog-kennel of a place in Bedford Park. They would be fairly comfortable.
His father had left them money. "It is preposterous," he said to
himself, "to persist in figuring a person to yourself when you have no
idea of where they are." He said to the man:

"Wouldn't it do if you saw your mother at the camp gate, by the
guard-room?"

"Not much of a leave-taking, sir," the man said; "she not allowed in the
camp and I not allowed out. Talking under a sentry's nose very likely."

Tietjens said to himself:

"What a monstrous absurdity this is of seeing and talking, for a minute or
so! You meet and talk . . ." And next day at the same hour. Nothing. . . .
As well not to meet or talk. . . . Yet the mere fantastic idea of
seeing Valentine Wannop for a minute. . . . She not allowed in the camp
and he not going out. Talking under a sentry's nose, very likely. . . .
It had made him smell primroses. Primroses, like Miss Wannop. He said to
the sergeant-major:

"What sort of a fellow is this?" Cowley, in openmouthed suspense, gasped
like a fish. Tietjens said:

"I suppose your mother is fairly feeble to stand in the cold?"

"A very decent man, sir," the sergeant-major got out, "one of the best.
No trouble. A perfectly clean conduct sheet. Very good education. A
railway engineer in civil life. . . . Volunteered, of course, sir."

"That's the odd thing," Tietjens said to the man, "that the percentages
of absentees is as great amongst the volunteers as the Derby men or the
compulsorily enlisted. . . . Do you understand what will happen to you
if you miss the draft?"

The man said soberly:

"Yes, sir. Perfectly well."

"You understand that you will be shot? As certainly as that you stand
there. And that you haven't a chance of escape."

He wondered what Valentine Wannop, hot pacifist, would think of him if
she heard him. Yet it was his duty to talk like that: his human, not
merely his military duty. As much his duty as that of a doctor to warn a
man that if he drank of typhoid-contaminated water he would get typhoid.
But people are unreasonable. Valentine too was unreasonable. She would
consider it brutal to speak to a man of the possibility of his being
shot by a firing party. A groan burst from him. At the thought that
there was no sense in bothering about what Valentine Wannop would or
would not think of him. No sense. No sense. No sense. . . .

The man, fortunately, was assuring him that he knew, very soberly, all
about the penalty for going absent off a draft. The sergeant-major,
catching a sound from Tietjens, said with admirable fussiness to the
man:

"There, there! Don't you hear the officer's speaking? Never interrupt an
officer."

"You'll be shot," Tietjens said, "at dawn. . . . Literally at dawn." Why
did they shoot them at dawn? To rub it in that they were never going to
see another sunrise. But they drugged the fellows so that they wouldn't
know the sun if they saw it: all roped in a chair. . . . It was really
the worse for the firing party. He added to the man:

"Don't think I'm insulting you. You appear to be a very decent fellow.
But very decent fellows have gone absent. . . ." He said to the
sergeant-major:

"Give this man a two-hours' pass to go to the . . . whatever's the name
of the estaminet. . . . The draft won't move off for two hours, will
it?" He added to the man: "If you see your draft passing the pub you run
out and fall in. Like mad, you understand. You'd never get another
chance."

There was a mumble like applause and envy of a mate's good luck from a
packed audience that had hung on the lips of simple melodrama . . . an
audience that seemed to be all enlarged eyes, the khaki was so
colourless. . . . They came as near applause as they dared, but there
was no sense in worrying about whether Valentine Wannop would have
applauded or not. . . . And there was no knowing whether the fellow
would not go absent, either. As likely as not there was no mother. A
girl very likely. And very likely the man would desert. . . . The man
looked you straight in the eyes. But a strong passion, like that for
escape--or a girl--will give you control over the muscles of the eyes. A
little thing that, before a strong passion! One would look God in the
face on the day of judgment and lie, in that case.

Because what the devil did he want of Valentine Wannop? Why could he not
stall off the thought of her? He could stall off the thought of his
wife . . . or his not-wife. But Valentine Wannop came wriggling in. At all
hours of the day and night It was an obsession. A madness. . . . What
those fools called "a complex"! . . . Due, no doubt, to something your
nurse had done, or your parents said to you. At birth . . . A strong
passion . . . or no doubt not strong enough. Otherwise he, too, would
have gone absent At any rate, from Sylvia . . . Which he hadn't done.
Which he hadn't done. Or hadn't he? There was no saying. . . .

It was undoubtedly colder in the alley between the huts. A man was
saying: "Hoo . . . Hooo . . . Hoo . . ." A sound like that, and flapping
his arms and hopping . . . "Hand and foot, mark time! . . ." Somebody
ought to fall these poor devils in and give them that to keep their
circulations going. But they might not know the command. . . . It was a
Guards' trick, really. . . . What the devil were these fellows kept
hanging about here for? he asked.

One or two voices said that they did not know. The majority said
gutturally:

"Waiting for our mates, sir. . . ."

"I should have thought you could have waited under cover," Tietjens said
caustically. "But never mind; it's your funeral, if you like it. . . ."
This getting together . . . a strong passion. There was a warmed
recreation-hut for waiting drafts not fifty yards away. . . . But they
stood, teeth chattering and mumbling "Hoo . . . Hooo . . ." rather than
miss thirty seconds of gabble. . . . About what the English
sergeant-major said and about what the officer said and how many dollars
did they give you. . . . And of course about what you answered back. . . .
Or perhaps not that. These Canadian troops were husky, serious
fellows, without the swank of the Cockney or the Lincolnshire
Moonrakers. They wanted, apparently, to learn the rules of war. They
discussed anxiously information that they received in orderly rooms, and
looked at you as if you were expounding the gospels. . . .

But, damn it, he, he himself, would make a pact with Destiny, at that
moment, willingly, to pass thirty months in the frozen circle of hell,
for the chance of thirty seconds in which to tell Valentine Wannop what
he had answered back . . . to Destiny! . . . What was the fellow in the
Inferno who was buried to the neck in ice and begged Dante to clear the
icicles out of his eyelids so that he could see out of them? And Dante
kicked him in the face because he was a Ghibelline. . . . Always a bit
of a swine, Dante. . . . Rather like . . . like whom? . . . Oh, Sylvia
Tietjens. . . . A good hater! . . . He imagined hatred coming to him in
waves from the convent in which Sylvia had immured herself. . . . Gone
into retreat. . . . He imagined she had gone into retreat. She had said
she was going. For the rest of the war. . . . For the duration of
hostilities or life, whichever were the longer. . . . He imagined
Sylvia, coiled up on a convent bed. . . . Hating. . . . Her certainly
glorious hair all round her. . . . Hating. . . . Slowly and coldly. . . .
Like the head of a snake when you examined it. . . . Eyes motionless:
mouth closed tight. . . . Looking away into the distance and hating. . . .
She was presumably in Birkenhead. ... A long way to send your hatred. . . .
Across a country and a sea in an icy night. . .! Over all that
black land and water . . . with the lights out because of air-raids and
U-boats. . . . Well, he did not have to think of Sylvia at the moment.
She was well out of it. . . .

It was certainly getting no warmer as the night drew on. . . . Even that
ass Levin was pacing swiftly up and down in the dusky moon-shadow of the
last hutments that looked over the slope and the vanishing trail of
white stones. . . . In spite of his boasting about not wearing an
overcoat: to catch women's eyes with his pretty Staff gadgets he was
carrying on like a leopard at feeding time. . . .

Tietjens said:

"Sorry to keep you waiting, old man. . . . Or rather your lady. . . .
But there were some men to see to. . . . And, you know . . . 'The
comfort and--what is it?--of the men comes before every--is it
"consideration"?--except the exigencies of actual warfare' . . . My
memory's gone phut these days. . . . And you want me to slide down this
hill and wheeze back again. . . . To see a woman! . . ."

Levin screeched: "Damn you, you ass! It's your wife who's waiting for
you at the bottom there."




CHAPTER III


The one thing that stood out sharply in Tietjens' mind when at last,
with a stiff glass of rum punch, his officer's pocket-book complete with
pencil because he had to draft before eleven a report as to the
desirability for giving his unit special lectures on the causes of the
war, and a cheap French novel on a camp chair beside him he sat in his
flea-bag with six army blankets over him--the one thing that stood out
as sharply as Staff tabs was that ass Levin was rather pathetic.
His unnailed bootsoles very much cramping his action on the frozen
hillside, he had alternately hobbled a step or two, and, reduced to
inaction, had grabbed at Tietjens' elbow, while he brought out
breathlessly puzzled sentences. . . .

There resulted a singular mosaic of extraordinary, bright-coloured and
melodramatic statements, for Levin, who first hobbled down the hill with
Tietjens and then hobbled back up, clinging to his arm, brought out
monstrosities of news about Sylvia's activities, without any sequence,
and indeed without any apparent aim except for the great affection he
had for Tietjens himself. . . . All sorts of singular things seemed to
have been going on round him in the vague zone, outside all this
engrossed and dust-coloured world--in the vague zone that held. . . .
Oh, the civilian population, tea-parties short of butter! . . .

And as Tietjens, seated on his hams, his knees up, pulled the soft
woolliness of his flea-bag under his chin and damned the paraffin heater
for letting out a new and singular stink, it seemed to him that this
affair was like coming back after two months and trying to get the hang
of battalion orders. . . . You come back to the familiar, slightly
battered mess ante-room. You tell the mess orderly to bring you the last
two months' orders, for it is as much as your life is worth not to know
what is or is not in them. . . . There might be an A.C.I. ordering you
to wear your helmet back to the front, or a battalion order, that Mills
bombs must always be worn in the left breast pocket. Or there might be
the detail for putting on a new gas helmet! . . . The orderly hands you
a dishevelled mass of faintly typewritten matter, thumbed out of all
chance of legibility, with the orders for November 16 fastened
inextricably into the middle of those for the 1st of December, and those
for the 10th, 15th and 29th missing altogether. . . . And all that you
gather is that headquarters has some exceedingly insulting things to say
about A Company; that a fellow called Hartopp, whom you don't know, has
been deprived of his commission; that at a court of inquiry held to
ascertain deficiencies in C Company Captain Wells--poor Wells!--has been
assessed at £27 11_s_. 4_d_., which he is requested to pay forthwith
to the adjutant. . . .

So, on that black hillside, going and returning, what stuck out for
Tietjens was that Levin had been taught by the general to consider that
he, Tietjens, was an extraordinarily violent chap who would certainly
knock Levin down when he told him that his wife was at the camp gates;
that Levin considered himself to be the descendant of an ancient Quaker
family. . . . (Tietjens had said _Good God_! at that); that the mysterious
"rows" to which in his fear Levin had been continually referring had
been successive letters from Sylvia to the harried general . . .
and that Sylvia had accused him, Tietjens, of stealing two pairs
of her best sheets. . . . There was a great deal more. But, having faced
what he considered to be the worst of the situation, Tietjens set
himself coolly to recapitulate every aspect of his separation from his
wife. He had meant to face every aspect, not that merely social one upon
which, hitherto, he had automatically imagined their disunion to rest.
For, as he saw it, English people of good position consider that the
basis of all marital unions or disunions, is the maxim: No scenes.
Obviously for the sake of the servants--who are the same thing as the
public. No scenes, then, for the sake of the public. And indeed, with
him, the instinct for privacy--as to his relationships, his passions, or
even as to his most unimportant motives--was as strong as the instinct
of life itself. He would, literally, rather be dead than an open book.

And, until that afternoon, he had imagined that his wife, too, would
rather be dead than have her affairs canvassed by the other ranks. . . .
But that assumption had to be gone over. Revised. . . . Of course he
might say she had gone mad. But, if he said she had gone mad he would
have to revise a great deal of their relationships, so it would be as
broad as it was long. . . .

The doctor's batman, from the other end of the hut, said:

"Poor ---- O Nine Morgan! . . ." in a sing-song, mocking voice. . . .

For though, hours before, Tietjens had appointed this moment of physical
ease that usually followed on his splurging heavily down on to his
creaking camp-bed in the doctor's lent hut, for the cool consideration
of his relations with his wife, it was not turning out a very easy
matter. The hut was unreasonably warm: he had invited Mackenzie--whose
real name turned out to be McKechnie, James Grant McKechnie--to occupy
the other end of it. The other end of it was divided from him by a
partition of canvas and a striped Indian curtain. And McKechnie,
who was unable to sleep, had elected to carry on a long--an
interminable--conversation with the doctor's batman.

The doctor's batman also could not sleep and, like McKechnie, was more
than a little barmy on the crumpet--an almost non-English--speaking
Welshman from God knows what up-country valley. He had shaggy hair like
a Caribbean savage and two dark, resentful wall-eyes; being a miner he
sat on his heels more comfortably than on a chair and his almost
incomprehensible voice went on in a low sort of ululation, with an
occasionally and startlingly comprehensible phrase sticking out now and
then.

It was troublesome, but orthodox enough. The batman had been blown
literally out of most of his senses and the VIth Battalion of the
Glamorganshire Regiment by some German high explosive or other, more
than a year ago. But before then, it appeared, he had been in
McKechnie's own company in that battalion. It was perfectly in order
that an officer should gossip with a private formerly of his own platoon
or company, especially on first meeting him after long separation caused
by a casualty to one or the other. And McKechnie had first re-met this
scoundrel Jonce, or Evanns, at eleven that night--two and a half hours
before. So there, in the light of a single candle stuck in a stout
bottle they were tranquilly at it: the batman sitting on his heel by the
officer's head; the officer, in his pyjamas, sprawling half out of bed
over his pillows, stretching his arms abroad, occasionally yawning,
occasionally asking: "What became of Company-Sergeant-Major Hoyt?" . . .
They might talk till half-past three.

But that was troublesome to a gentleman seeking to recapture what
exactly were his relations with his wife.

Before the doctor's batman had interrupted him by speaking startlingly
of O Nine Morgan, Tietjens had got as far as what follows with his
recapitulation: The lady, Mrs. Tietjens, was certainly without
mitigation a whore; he himself equally certainly and without
qualification had been physically faithful to the lady and their
marriage tie. In law, then, he was absolutely in the right of it. But
that fact had less weight than a cobweb. For after the last of her
high-handed divagations from fidelity he had accorded to the lady the
shelter of his roof and of his name. She had lived for years beside him,
apparently on terms of hatred and miscomprehension. But certainly in
conditions of chastity. Then, during the tenuous and lugubrious small
hours, before his coming out there again to France, she had given
evidence of a madly vindictive passion for his person. A physical
passion at any rate.

Well, those were times of mad, fugitive emotions. But even in the
calmest times a man could not expect to have a woman live with him as
the mistress of his house and mother of his heir without establishing
some sort of claim upon him. They hadn't slept together. But was it not
possible that a constant measuring together of your minds was as proper
to give you a proprietary right as the measuring together of the limbs?
It was perfectly possible. Well then . . .

What, in the eyes of God, severed a union? . . . Certainly he had
imagined--until that very afternoon--that their union had been cut, as
the tendon of Achilles is cut in a hamstringing, by Sylvia's clear voice,
outside his house, saying in the dawn to a cabman, "Paddington!" . . .
He tried to go with extreme care through every detail of their
last interview in his still nearly dark drawing-room at the other end of
which she had seemed a mere white phosphorescence. . . .

They had, then, parted for good on that day. He was going out to France;
she into retreat in a convent near Birkenhead--to which place you go
from Paddington. Well then, that was one parting. That, surely, set him
free for the girl!

He took a sip from the glass of rum and water on the canvas chair beside
him. It was tepid and therefore beastly. He had ordered the batman to
bring it him hot, strong and sweet, because he had been certain of an
incipient cold. He had refrained from drinking it because he had
remembered that he was to think cold-bloodedly of Sylvia, and he made a
practice of never touching alcohol when about to engage in protracted
reflection. That had always been his theory: it had been immensely and
empirically strengthened by his warlike experience. On the Somme, in the
summer, when stand-to had been at four in the morning, you would come
out of your dug-out and survey, with a complete outfit of pessimistic
thoughts, a dim, grey, repulsive landscape over a dull and much too thin
parapet. There would be repellent posts, altogether too fragile
entanglements of barbed wire, broken wheels, detritus, coils of mist
over the positions of revolting Germans. Grey stillness; grey horrors,
in front; and behind amongst the civilian populations! And clear, hard
outlines to every thought. . . . Then your batman brought you a cup of
tea with a little--quite a little--rum in it. In three or four minutes
the whole world changed beneath your eyes. The wire aprons became jolly
efficient protections that your skill had devised and for which you
might thank God; the broken wheels were convenient landmarks for raiding
at night in No Man's Land. You had to confess that, when you had
re-erected that parapet, after it had last been jammed in, your company
had made a pretty good job of it. And, even as far as the Germans were
concerned, you were there to kill the swine; but you didn't feel that
the thought of them would make you sick beforehand. . . . You were, in
fact, a changed man. With a mind of a different specific gravity. You
could not even tell that the roseate touches of dawn on the mists were
not really the effects of rum. . . .

Therefore he had determined not to touch his grog. But his throat had
gone completely dry; so, mechanically, he had reached out for something
to drink, checking himself when he had realized what he was doing. But
why should his throat be dry? He hadn't been on the drink. He had not
even had any dinner. And why was he in this extraordinary state? . . .
For he was in an extraordinary state. It was because the idea had
suddenly occurred to him that his parting from his wife had set him free
for his girl. . . . The idea had till then never entered his head.

He said to himself: We must go methodically into this! Methodically into
the history of his last day on earth. . . .

Because he swore that when he had come out to France this time he had
imagined that he was cutting loose from this earth. And during the
months that he had been there he had seemed to have no connection with
any earthly things. He had imagined Sylvia in her convent and done with;
Miss Wannop he had not been able to imagine at all. But she had seemed
to be done with.

It was difficult to get his mind back to that night. You cannot force
your mind to a deliberate, consecutive recollection unless you are in
the mood; then it will do whether you want it to or not. . . . He had
had then, three months or so ago, a very painful morning with his wife,
the pain coming from a suddenly growing conviction that his wife was
forcing herself into an attitude of caring for him. Only an attitude
probably, because, in the end, Sylvia was a lady and would not allow
herself really to care for the person in the world for whom it would be
least decent of her to care. . . . But she would be perfectly capable of
forcing herself to take that attitude if she thought that it would
enormously inconvenience himself. . . .

But that wasn't the way, wasn't the way, wasn't the way his excited mind
said to himself. He was excited because it was possible that Miss
Wannop, too, might not have meant their parting to be a permanency. That
opened up an immense perspective. Nevertheless, the contemplation of
that immense perspective was not the way to set about a calm analysis of
his relations with his wife. The facts of the story _must_ be stated
before the moral. He said to himself that he must put, in exact
language, as if he were making a report for the use of garrison
headquarters, the history of himself in his relationship to his wife. . . .
And to Miss Wannop, of course. "Better put it into writing," he
said.

Well then. He clutched at his pocket-book and wrote in large pencilled
characters:

"When I married Miss Satterthwaite,"--he was attempting exactly to
imitate a report to General Headquarters--"unknown to myself, she
imagined herself to be with child by a fellow called Drake. I think she
was not. The matter is debatable. I am passionately attached to the
child who is my heir and the heir of a family of considerable position.
The lady was subsequently, on several occasions, though I do not know
how many, unfaithful to me. She left me with a fellow called Perowne,
whom she had met constantly at the house of my godfather, General Lord
Edward Campion, on whose staff Perowne was. That was long before the
war. This intimacy was, of course, certainly unsuspected by the general.
Perowne is again on the staff of General Campion, who has the quality of
attachment to his old subordinates, but as Perowne is an inefficient
officer, he is used only for more decorative jobs. Otherwise, obviously,
as he is an old regular, his seniority should make him a general, and he
is only a major. I make this diversion about Perowne because his
presence in this garrison causes me natural personal annoyance.

"My wife, after an absence of several months with Perowne, wrote and
told me that she wished to be taken back into my household. I allowed
this. My principles prevent me from divorcing any woman, in particular
any woman who is the mother of a child. As I had taken no steps to
ensure publicity for the escapade of Mrs. Tietjens, no one, as far as I
know, was aware of her absence. Mrs. Tietjens, being a Roman Catholic,
is prevented from divorcing me.

"During this absence of Mrs. Tietjens with the man Perowne, I made the
acquaintance of a young woman, Miss Wannop, the daughter of my father's
oldest friend, who was also an old friend of General Campion's. Our
station in Society naturally forms rather a close ring. I was immediately
aware that I had formed a sympathetic but not violent attachment for
Miss Wannop, and fairly confident that my feeling was returned. Neither
Miss Wannop nor myself being persons to talk about the state of our
feelings, we exchanged no confidences. . . . A disadvantage of being
English of a certain station.

"The position continued thus for several years. Six or seven. After her
return from her excursion with Perowne, Mrs. Tietjens remained, I
believe, perfectly chaste. I saw Miss Wannop sometimes frequently, for a
period, in her mother's house or on social occasions, sometimes not for
long interval! No expression of affection on the part of either of us
ever passed. Not one. Ever.

"On the day before my second going out to France I had a very painful
scene with my wife, during which, for the first time, we went into the
question of the parentage of my child and other matters. In the
afternoon I met Miss Wannop by appointment outside the War Office. The
appointment had been made by my wife, not by me. I knew nothing about
it. My wife must have been more aware of my feelings for Miss Wannop
than was I myself.

"In St. James's Park I invited Miss Wannop to become my mistress that
evening. She consented and made an assignation. It is to be presumed
that was evidence of her affection for me. We have never exchanged
words of affection. Presumably a young lady does not consent to go to
bed with a married man without feeling affection for him. But I have no
proof. It was, of course, only a few hours before my going out to
France. Those are emotional sorts of moments for young women. No doubt
they consent more easily.

"But we didn't. We were together at one-thirty in the morning, leaning
over her suburban garden gate. And nothing happened. We agreed that we
were the sort of persons who didn't. I do not know how we agreed. We
never finished a sentence. Yet it was a passionate scene. So I touched
the brim of my cap and said: _So long_! . . . Or perhaps I did not even
say _So long_. . . . Or she. . . . I don't remember. I remember the
thoughts I thought and the thoughts I gave her credit for thinking. But
perhaps she did not think them. There is no knowing. It is no good going
into them . . . except that I gave her credit for thinking that we were
parting for good. Perhaps she did not mean that. Perhaps I could write
letters to her. And live . . ."

He exclaimed:

"God, what a sweat I am in! . . ."

The sweat, indeed, was pouring down his temples. He became instinct with
a sort of passion to let his thoughts wander into epithets and go about
where they would. But he stuck at it. He was determined to get it
expressed. He wrote on again:

"I got home towards two in the morning and went into the dining-room in
the dark. I did not need a light. I sat thinking for a long time. Then
Sylvia spoke from the other end of the room. There was thus an
abominable situation. I have never been spoken to with such hatred. She
went, perhaps, mad. She had apparently been banking on the idea that if
I had physical contact with Miss Wannop I might satisfy my affection for
the girl. . . . And feel physical desires for _her_. . . . But she knew,
without my speaking, that I had not had physical contact with the girl.
She threatened to ruin me; to ruin me in the Army; to drag my name
through the mud. . . . I never spoke. I am damn good at not speaking.
She struck me in the face. And went away. Afterwards she threw into the
room, through the half-open doorway, a gold medallion of St. Michael,
the R.C. patron of soldiers in action that she had worn between her
breasts. I took it to mean the final act of parting. As if by no longer
wearing it she abandoned all prayer for my safety. . . . It might just
as well mean that she wished me to wear it myself for my personal
protection. . . . I heard her go down the stairs with her maid. The dawn
was just showing through the chimney-pots opposite. I heard her say:
_Paddington_. Clear, high syllables! And a motor drove off.

"I got my things together and went to Waterloo. Mrs. Satterthwaite, her
mother, was waiting to see me off. She was very distressed that her
daughter had not come, too. She was of opinion that it meant we had
parted for good. I was astonished to find that Sylvia had told her
mother about Miss Wannop because Sylvia had always been extremely
reticent, even to her mother. . . . Mrs. Satterthwaite, who was _very_
distressed--she likes me!--expressed the most gloomy forebodings as to
what Sylvia might not be up to. I laughed at her. She began to tell me a
long anecdote about what a Father Consett, Sylvia's confessor, had said
about Sylvia years before. He had said that if I ever came to care for
another woman Sylvia would tear the world to pieces to get at me. . . .
Meaning, to disturb my equanimity! . . . It was difficult to follow Mrs.
Satterthwaite. The side of an officer's train, going off, is not a good
place for confidences. So the interview ended rather untidily."

At this point Tietjens groaned so audibly that McKechnie, from the other
end of the hut, asked if he had not said anything. Tietjens saved
himself with:

"That candle looks from here to be too near the side of the hut. Perhaps
it isn't. These buildings are very inflammable."

It was no good going on writing. He was no writer, and this writing gave
no sort of psychological pointers. He wasn't himself ever much the man
for psychology, but one ought to be as efficient at it as at anything
else. . . . Well then . . . What was at the bottom of all the madness
and cruelty that had distinguished both himself and Sylvia on his last
day and night in his native country? . . . For, mark! It was Sylvia who
had made, unknown to him, the appointment through which the girl had met
him. Sylvia had wanted to force him and Miss Wannop into each other's
arms. Quite definitely. She had said as much. But she had only said that
afterwards. When the game had not come off. She had had too much
knowledge of amatory manœuvres to show her hand before. . . .

Why then had she done it? Partly, undoubtedly, out of pity for him. She
had given him a rotten time; she had undoubtedly, at one moment, wanted
to give him the consolation of his girl's arms. . . . Why, damn it, she,
Sylvia, and no one else, had forced out of him the invitation to the
girl to become his mistress. Nothing but the infernal cruelty of their
interview of the morning could have forced him to the pitch of sexual
excitement that would make him make a proposal of illicit intercourse to
a young lady to whom hitherto he had spoken not even one word of
affection. It was an effect of a Sadic kind. That was the only way to
look at it scientifically. And without doubt Sylvia had known what she
was doing. The whole morning, at intervals, like a person directing the
whiplash to a cruel spot of pain, reiteratedly, she had gone on and on.
She had accused him of having Valentine Wannop for his mistress. She had
accused him of having Valentine Wannop for his mistress. She had accused
him of having Valentine Wannop for his mistress. . . . With maddening
reiteration, like that. They had disposed of an estate; they had settled
up a number of business matters; they had decided that his heir was to
be brought up as a Papist--the mother's religion! They had gone,
agonizedly enough, into their own relationships and past history. Into
the very paternity of his child. . . . But always, at moments when his
mind was like a blind octopus, squirming in an agony of knife-cuts she
would drop in that accusation. She had accused him of having Valentine
Wannop for his mistress. . . .

He swore by the living God. . . . He had never realized that he had a
passion for the girl till that morning; that he had a passion deep and
boundless like the sea, shaking like a tremor of the whole world, an
unquenchable thirst, a thing the thought of which made your bowels turn
over. . . . But he had not been the sort of fellow who goes into his
emotions. . . . Why, damn it, even at that moment when he thought of the
girl, there, in that beastly camp, in that Rembrandt beshadowed hut,
when he thought of the girl he named her to himself Miss Wannop. . . .

It wasn't in that way that a man thought of a young woman whom he was
aware of passionately loving. He wasn't aware. He hadn't been aware.
Until that morning. . . .

Then . . . that let him out . . . Undoubtedly that let him out. . . . A
woman cannot throw her man, her official husband, into the arms of the
first girl that comes along and consider herself as having any further
claims upon him. Especially if, on the same day, you part with him, he
going out to France! _Did_ it let him out? Obviously it did.

He caught with such rapidity at his glass of rum and water that a little
of it ran over on to his thumb. He swallowed the lot, being instantly
warmed. . . .

What in the world was he doing? Now? With all this introspection? . . .
Hang it all, he was not justifying himself. . . . He had acted perfectly
correctly as far as Sylvia was concerned. Not perhaps to Miss Wannop. . . .
Why, if he, Christopher Tietjens of Groby, had the need to justify
himself, what did it stand for to be Christopher Tietjens of Groby? That
was the unthinkable thought.

Obviously he was not immune from the seven deadly sins. In the way of a
man. One might lie, yet not bear false witness against a neighbour; one
might kill, yet not without fitting provocation or for self-interest;
one might conceive of theft as reiving cattle from the false Scots which
was the Yorkshireman's duty; one might fornicate, obviously, as long as
you did not fuss about it unhealthily. That was the right of the
Seigneur in a world of Other Ranks. He hadn't personally committed any
of these sins to any great extent. One reserved the right so to do and
to take the consequences. . . .

But what in the world had gone wrong with Sylvia? She was giving away
her own game, and that he had never known her do. But she could not have
made more certain, if she had wanted to, of returning him to his
allegiance to Miss Wannop than by forcing herself there into his private
life, and doing it with such blatant vulgarity. For what she had done
had been to make scenes before the servants! All the while he had been
in France she had been working up to it. Now she had done it. Before the
Tommies of his own unit. But Sylvia did not make mistakes like that. It
was a game. What game? He didn't even attempt to conjecture! She could
not expect that he would in the future even extend to her the shelter of
his roof. . . . What then was the game? He could not believe that she
could be capable of vulgarity except with a purpose. . . .

She was a thoroughbred. He had always credited her with being that. And
now she was behaving as if she had every mean vice that a mare could
have. Or it looked like it. Was that, then, because she had been in his
stable? But how in the world otherwise could he have run their lives?
She had been unfaithful to him. She had never been anything but
unfaithful to him, before or after marriage. In a high-handed way so
that he could not condemn her, though it was disagreeable enough to
himself. He took her back into his house after she had been off with the
fellow Perowne. What more could she ask? . . . He could find no answer.
And it was not his business!

But even if he did not bother about the motives of the poor beast of a
woman, she was the mother of his heir. And now she was running about the
world declaiming about her wrongs. What sort of a thing was that for a
boy to have happen to him? A mother who made scenes before the servants!
That was enough to ruin any boy's life. . . .

There was no getting away from it that was what Sylvia had been
doing. She had deluged the general with letters for the last two months
or so, at first merely contenting herself with asking where he,
Tietjens, was and in what state of health, conditions of danger, and the
like. Very decently, for some time, the old fellow had said nothing
about the matter to him. He had probably taken the letters to be the
naturally anxious inquiries of a wife with a husband at the front; he
had considered that Tietjens' letters to her must have been
insufficiently communicative, or concealed what she imagined to be
wounds or a position of desperate danger. That would not have been very
pleasant in any case; women should not worry superior officers about the
vicissitudes of their menfolk. It was not done. Still, Sylvia was very
intimate with Campion and his family--more intimate than he himself was,
though Campion was his godfather. But quite obviously her letters had
got worse and worse.

It was difficult for Tietjens to make out exactly what she had said. His
channel of information had been Levin, who was too gentlemanly ever to
say anything direct at all. Too gentlemanly, too implicitly trustful of
Tietjens' honour . . . and too bewildered by the charms of Sylvia, who
had obviously laid herself out to bewilder the poor Staff-wallah. . . .
But she had gone pretty far, either in her letters or in her
conversation since she had been in that city, to which--it was
characteristic--she had come without any sort of passports or papers,
just walking past gentlemen in their wooden boxes at pierheads and the
like, in conversation with--of all people in the world!--with Perowne,
who had been returning from leave with King's dispatches, or something
glorified of the Staff sort! In a special train very likely. That was
Sylvia all over.

Levin said that Campion had given Perowne the most frightful dressing
down he had ever heard mortal man receive. And it really was _damn_ hard
on the poor general, who, after happenings to one of his predecessors,
had been perfectly rabid to keep skirts out of his headquarters. Indeed
it was one of the crosses of Levin's worried life that the general had
absolutely refused him, Levin, leave to marry Miss de Bailly if he would
not undertake that young woman should leave France by the first
boat after the ceremony. Levin, of course, was to go with her, but the
young woman was not to return to France for the duration of hostilities.
And a fine row all her noble relatives had raised over that It had cost
Levin another hundred and fifty thousand francs in the marriage
settlements. The married wives of officers in any case were not allowed
in France, though you could not keep out their unmarried ones. . . .

Campion, anyhow, had dispatched his furious note to Tietjens after
receiving, firstly, in the early morning, a letter from Sylvia in which
she said that her ducal second-cousin, the lugubrious Rugeley, highly
disapproved of the fact that Tietjens was in France at all, and after
later receiving, towards four in the afternoon, a telegram, dispatched
by Sylvia herself from Havre, to say that she would be arriving by a
noon train. The general had been almost as much upset at the thought
that his car would not be there to meet Sylvia as by the thought that
she was coming at all. But a strike of French railway civilians had
delayed Sylvia's arrival. Campion had dispatched, within five minutes,
his snorter to Tietjens, who he was convinced knew all about Sylvia's
coming, and his car to Rouen Station with Levin in it.

The general, in fact, was in a fine confusion. He was convinced that
Tietjens, as Man of Intellect, had treated Sylvia badly, even to the
extent of stealing two pair of her best sheets, and he was also
convinced that Tietjens was in close collusion with Sylvia. As Man of
Intellect, Campion was convinced, Tietjens was dissatisfied with his
lowly job of draft-forwarding officer, and wanted a place of an
extravagantly cooshy kind in the general's own entourage. . . . And
Levin had said that it made it all the worse that Campion in his
bothered heart thought that Tietjens really ought to have more exalted
employment. He had said to Levin:

"Damn it all, the fellow ought to be in command of my Intelligence
instead of you. But he's unsound. That's what he is: unsound. He's too
brilliant. . . . And he'd talk both the hind legs off Sweedlepumpkins."
Sweedlepumpkins was the general's favourite charger. The general was
afraid of talk. He practically never talked with anyone except about his
job--certainly never with Tietjens--without being proved to be in the
wrong, and that undermined his belief in himself.

So that altogether he was in a fine fume. And confusion. He was almost
ready to believe that Tietjens was at the bottom of every trouble that
occurred in his immense command.

But, when all that was gathered, Tietjens was not much farther forward
in knowing what his wife's errand in France was.

"She complains," Levin had bleated painfully at some point on the
slippery coastguard path, "about your taking her sheets. And about a
Miss . . . a Miss Wanostrocht, is it? . . . The general is not inclined
to attach much importance to the sheets. . . ."

It appeared that a sort of conference on Tietjens' case had taken place
in the immense tapestried salon in which Campion lived with the more
intimate members of his headquarters, and which was, for the moment,
presided over by Sylvia, who had exposed various wrongs to the general
and Levin. Major Perowne had excused himself on the ground that he was
hardly competent to express an opinion. Really, Levin said, he was
sulking, because Campion had accused him of running the risk of getting
himself and Mrs. Tietjens "talked about." Levin thought it was a bit
thick of the general. Were none of the members of his staff ever to
escort a lady anywhere? As if they were sixth-form schoolboys. . . .

"But you . . . you . . . you . . ." he stuttered and shivered together,
"certainly _do_ seem to have been remiss in not writing to Mrs. Tietjens.
The poor lady--excuse me!--really appears to have been out of her mind
with anxiety. . . ." That was why she had been waiting in the general's
car at the bottom of the hill. To get a glimpse of Tietjens' living
body. For they had been utterly unable, up at H.Q., to convince her that
Tietjens was even alive, much less in that town.

She hadn't in fact waited even so long. Having apparently convinced
herself by conversation with the sentries outside the guard-room that
Tietjens actually still existed, she had told the chauffeur-orderly to
drive her back to the Hôtel de la Poste, leaving the wretched Levin to
make his way back into the town by tram, or as best he might. They had
seen the lights of the car below them, turning, with its gaily lit
interior, and disappearing among the trees along the road farther
down. . . . The sentry, rather monosyllabically and gruffly--you can tell
all right when a Tommie has something at the back of his mind!--informed
them that the sergeant had turned out the guard so that all his men
together could assure the lady that the captain was alive and well. The
obliging sergeant said that he had adopted that manœuvre which
generally should attend only the visits of general officers and, once a
day, for the C.O., because the lady had seemed so distressed at having
received no letters from the captain. The guard-room itself, which was
unprovided with cells, was decorated by the presence of two drunks who,
having taken it into their heads to destroy their clothing, were in a
state of complete nudity. The sergeant hoped, therefore, that he had
done no wrong. Rightly the Garrison Military Police ought to take drunks
picked up outside camp to the A.P.M.'s guard-room, but seeing the state
of undress and the violent behaviour of these two, the sergeant had
thought right to oblige the Red Caps. The voices of the drunks, singing
the martial anthem of the "Men of Harlech" could be heard corroborating
the sergeant's opinion as to their states. He added that he would not
have turned out the guard if it had not been for its being the captain's
lady.

"A damn smart fellow, that sergeant," Colonel Levin had said. "There
couldn't have been any better way of convincing Mrs. Tietjens."

Tietjens had said--and even whilst he was saying it he tremendously
wished he hadn't:

"Oh, a _damned_ smart fellow," for the bitter irony of his tone had
given Levin the chance to remonstrate with him as to his attitude
towards Sylvia. Not at all as to his actions--for Levin conscientiously
stuck to his thesis that Tietjens was the soul of honour--but just as to
his tone of voice in talking of the sergeant who had been kind to
Sylvia, and, just precisely, because Tietjens' not writing to his wife
had given rise to the incident. Tietjens had thought of saying that,
considering the terms on which they had parted, he would have considered
himself as molesting the lady if he had addressed to her any letter at
all. But he said nothing and, for quarter of an hour, the incident
resolved itself into a soliloquy on the slippery hillside, delivered by
Levin on the subject of matrimony. It was a matter which, naturally, at
that moment very much occupied his thoughts. He considered that a man
should so live with his wife that she should be able to open all his
letters. That was his idea of the idyllic. And when Tietjens remarked
with irony that he had never in his life either written or received a
letter that his wife might not have read, Levin exclaimed with such
enthusiasm as almost to lose his balance in the mist:

"I was sure of it, old fellow. But it enormously cheers me up to hear
you say so." He added that he desired as far as possible to model his
ideas of life and his behaviour on those of this his friend. For,
naturally, about as he was to unite his fortunes with those of Miss de
Bailly, that could be considered a turning point of his career.




CHAPTER IV


They had gone back up the hill so that Levin might telephone to
headquarters for his own car in case the general's chauffeur should not
have the sense to return for him. But that was as far as Tietjens got in
uninterrupted reminiscence of that scene. . . . He was sitting in his
flea-bag, digging idly with his pencil into the squared page of his
note-book which had remained open on his knees, his eyes going over and
over again over the words with which his report on his own case had
concluded--the words: _So the interview ended rather untidily_. Over the
words went the image of the dark hillside with the lights of the town,
now that the air-raid was finished, spreading high up into the sky below
them. . . .

But at that point the doctor's batman had uttered, as if with a jocular,
hoarse irony, the name:

"Poor ---- O Nine Morgan! . . ." and over the whitish sheet of paper on
a level with his nose Tietjens perceived thin films of reddish purple to
be wavering, then a glutinous surface of gummy scarlet pigment. Moving!
It was once more an effect of fatigue, operating on the retina, that was
perfectly familiar to Tietjens. But it filled him with indignation
against his own weakness. He said to himself: Wasn't the name of the
wretched O Nine Morgan to be mentioned in his hearing without his retina
presenting him with the glowing image of the fellow's blood? He watched
the phenomenon, growing fainter, moving to the righthand top corner of
the paper and turning a faintly luminous green. He watched it with a
grim irony.

Was he, he said to himself, to regard himself as responsible for the
fellow's death? Was his inner mentality going to present that claim upon
him. That would be absurd. The end of the earth! The absurd end of the
earth. . . . Yet that insignificant ass Levin had that evening asserted
the claim to go into his, Tietjens of Groby's, relations with his wife.
That was an end of the earth as absurd! It was the unthinkable thing, as
unthinkable as the theory that the officer can be responsible for the
death of the man. . . . But the idea had certainly presented itself to
him. How could he be responsible for the death? In fact--in
literalness--he was. It had depended absolutely upon his discretion
whether the man should go home or not. The man's life or death had been
in his hands. He had followed the perfectly correct course. He had
written to the police of the man's home town, and the police had urged
him not to let the man come home. . . . Extraordinary morality on the
part of a police force! The man, they begged, should not be sent home
because a prize-fighter was occupying his bed and laundry. . . .
Extraordinary common sense, very likely. . . . They probably did not
want to get drawn into a scrap with Red Evans of the Red Castle. . . .

For a moment he seemed to see . . . he actually saw . . . O Nine
Morgan's eyes, looking at him with a sort of wonder, as they had looked
when he had refused the fellow his leave. . . . A sort of wonder!
Without resentment, but with incredulity. As you might look at God, you
being very small and ten feet or so below His throne when He pronounced
some inscrutable judgment! . . . The Lord giveth home-leave, and the
Lord refuseth. . . . Probably not blessed, but queer, be the name of
God-Tietjens!

And at the thought of the man as he was alive and of him now, dead, an
immense blackness descended all over Tietjens. He said to himself: _I am
very tired_. Yet he was not ashamed. . . . It was the blackness that
descends on you when you think of your dead. . . . It comes, at any
time, over the brightness of sunlight, in the grey of evening, in the
grey of the dawn, at mess, on parade; it comes at the thought of one man
or at the thought of half a battalion that you have seen, stretched out,
under sheeting, the noses making little pimples: or not stretched out,
lying face downwards, half buried. Or at the thought of dead that you
have never seen dead at all. . . . Suddenly the light goes out. . . . In
this case it was because of one fellow, a dirty enough man, not even
very willing, not in the least endearing, certainly contemplating
desertion. . . . But your dead . . . _Yours_ . . . Your own. As if
joined to your own identity by a black cord. . . .

In the darkness outside, the brushing, swift, rhythmic pacing of an
immense number of men went past, as if they had been phantoms. A great
number of men in fours, carried forward, irresistibly, by the
overwhelming will of mankind in ruled motion. The sides of the hut were
so thin that it was peopled by an innumerable throng. A sodden voice,
just at Tietjens' head, chuckled: "For God's sake, sergeant-major, stop
these ----. I'm too ---- drunk to halt them. . . ."

It made for the moment no impression on Tietjens' conscious mind. Men
were going past. Cries went up in the camp. Not orders, the men were
still marching. Cries.

Tietjens' lips--his mind was still with the dead--said:

"That obscene Pitkins! . . . I'll have him cashiered for this. . . ." He
saw an obscene subaltern, small, with one eyelid that drooped.

He came awake at that. Pitkins was the subaltern he had detailed to
march the draft to the station and go on to Bailleul under a boozy field
officer of sorts.

McKechnie said from the other bed:

"That's the draft back."

Tietjens said:

"Good God! . . ."

McKechnie said to the batman:

"For God's sake go and see if it is. Come back at once. . . ."

The intolerable vision of the line, starving beneath the moon, of grey
crowds murderously elbowing back a thin crowd in brown, zigzagged across
the bronze light in the hut. The intolerable depression that, in those
days, we felt--that all those millions were the playthings of ants busy
in the miles of corridors beneath the domes and spires that rise up over
the central heart of our comity, that intolerable weight upon the brain
and the limbs, descended once more on those two men lying upon their
elbows. As they listened their jaws fell open. The long, polyphonic
babble, rushing in from an extended line of men stood easy, alone
rewarded their ears.

Tietjens said:

"That fellow won't come back. . . . He can never do an errand and come
back. . . ." He thrust one of his legs cumbrously out of the top of his
flea-bag. He said:

"By God, the Germans will be all over here in a week's time!"

He said to himself:

"If they so betray us from Whitehall that fellow Levin has no right to
pry into my matrimonial affairs. It is proper that one's individual
feelings should be sacrificed to the necessities of a collective entity.
But not if that entity is to be betrayed from above. Not if it hasn't
the ten-millionth of a chance. . . ." He regarded Levin's late incursion
on his privacy as inquiries set afoot by the general. . . . Incredibly
painful to him: like a medical examination into nudities, but perfectly
proper. Old Campion had to assure himself that the other ranks were not
demoralized by the spectacle of officers' matrimonial infidelities. . . .
But such inquiries were not to be submitted to if the whole show were
one gigantic demoralization!

McKechnie said, in reference to Tietjens' protruded foot:

"There's no good your going out. . . . Cowley will get the men into
their lines. He was prepared." He added: "If the fellows in Whitehall
are determined to do old Puffles in, why don't they recall him?"

The legend was that an eminent personage in the Government had a great
personal dislike for the general in command of one army--the general
being nicknamed Puffles. The Government, therefore, were said to be
starving his command of men so that disaster should fall upon his
command.

"They can recall generals easy enough," McKechnie went on, "or anyone
else!"

A heavy dislike that this member of the lower middle classes should have
opinions on public affairs overcame Tietjens. He exclaimed: "Oh, that's
all tripe!"

He was himself outside all contact with affairs by now. But the other
rumour in that troubled host had it that, as a political manœuvre, the
heads round Whitehall--the civilian heads--were starving the army of
troops in order to hold over the allies of Great Britain the threat of
abandoning altogether the Western Front. They were credited with
threatening a strategic manœuvre on an immense scale in the Near East,
perhaps really intending it, or perhaps to force the hands of their
allies over some political intrigue. These atrocious rumours
reverberated backwards and forwards in the ears of all those millions
under the black vault of heaven. All their comrades in the line were to
be sacrificed as a rearguard to their departing host. That whole land
was to be annihilated as a sacrifice to one vanity. Now the draft had
been called back. That seemed proof that the Government meant to starve
the line! McKechnie groaned:

"Poor ---- old Bird! . . . He's booked. Eleven months in the front line,
he's been. . . . Eleven _months_! . . . I was nine, this stretch. With
him."

He added:

"Get back into bed, old bean. . . . I'll go and look after the men if
it's necessary. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"You don't so much as know where their lines are. . . ." And sat
listening. Nothing but the long roll of tongues came to him. He said:

"Damn it! The men ought not to be kept standing in the cold like
that. . . ." Fury filled him beneath despair. His eyes filled with tears.
"God," he said to himself, "the fellow Levin presumes to interfere in my
private affairs. . . . Damn it," he said again, "it's like doing a
little impertinence in a world that's foundering. . . ."

The world was foundering.

"I'd go out," he said, "but I don't want to have to put that filthy
little Pitkins under arrest. He only drinks because he's shellshocked.
He's not man enough else, the unclean little Noncomformist. . . ."

McKechnie said:

"Hold on! . . . I'm a Presbyterian myself. . . ."

Tietjens answered:

"You would be! . . ." He said: "I beg your pardon. . . . There will be
no more parades. . . . The British Army is dishonoured for ever. . . ."

McKechnie said:

"That's all right, old bean. . . ."

Tietjens exclaimed with sudden violence:

"What the hell are you doing in the officers' lines? . . . Don't you
know it's a court-martial offence?"

He was confronted with the broad, mealy face of his regimental
quartermaster-sergeant, the sort of fellow who wore an officer's cap
against the regulations, with a Tommie's silver-plated badge. A man
determined to get Sergeant-Major Cowley's job. The man had come in
unheard under the roll of voices outside. He said:

"Excuse me, sir, I took the liberty of knocking. . . . The
sergeant-major is in an epileptic fit. . . . I wanted your directions
before putting the draft into the tents with the other men. . . ."
Having said that tentatively he hazarded cautiously: "The sergeant-major
throws these fits, sir, if he is suddenly woke up. . . . And
Second-Lieutenant Pitkins woke him very suddenly. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"So you took on you the job of a beastly informer against both of
them. . . . I shan't forget it." He said to himself:

"I'll get this fellow one day . . ." and he seemed to hear with pleasure
the clicking and tearing of the scissors as, inside three parts of a
hollow square, they cut off his stripes and badges.

McKechnie exclaimed:

"Good God, man, you aren't going out in nothing but your pyjamas. Put
your slacks on under your British warm. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Send the Canadian sergeant-major to me at the double. . . ." to the
quarter. "My slacks are at the tailor's, being pressed." His slacks were
being pressed for the ceremony of the signing of the marriage contract
of Levin, the fellow who had interfered in his private affairs. He
continued into the mealy broad face and vague eyes of the
quartermaster: "You know as well as I do that it was the Canadian
sergeant-major's job to report to me. . . . I'll let you off this time,
but, by God, if I catch you spying round the officers' lines again you
are for a D.C.M. . . ."

He wrapped a coarse, Red Cross, grey-wool muffler under the turned-up
collar of his British warm.

"That swine," he said to McKechnie, "spies on the officers' lines in the
hope of getting a commission by catching out ---- little squits like
Pitkins, when they're drunk. . . . I'm seven hundred braces down. Morgan
does not know that I know that I'm that much down. But you can bet he
knows where they have gone. . . ."

McKechnie said:

"I wish you would not go out like that. . . . I'll make you some
cocoa. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I can't keep the men waiting while I dress. . . . I'm as strong as a
horse. . . ."

He was out amongst the bitterness, the mist, and the moongleams on three
thousand rifle barrels, and the voices. . . . He was seeing the Germans
pour through a thin line, and his heart was leaden. . . . A tall,
graceful man swam up against him and said, through his nose, like any
American:

"There has been a railway accident, due to the French strikers. The
draft is put back till three pip emma the day after to-morrow, sir."

Tietjens exclaimed:

"It isn't countermanded?" breathlessly.

The Canadian sergeant-major said:

"No, sir. . . . A railway accident. . . . Sabotage by the French, they
say. . . . Four Glamorganshire sergeants, all nineteen-fourteen men,
killed, sir, going home on leave. But the draft is not cancelled. . . ."
Tietjens said:

"Thank God!"

The slim Canadian with his educated voice said:

"You're thanking God, sir, for what's very much to our detriment. Our
draft was ordered for Salonika till this morning. The sergeant in charge
of draft returns showed me the name _Salonika_ scored off in his draft
roster. Sergeant-Major Cowley had got hold of the wrong story. Now it's
going up the line. The other would have been a full two months' more
life for us."

The man's rather slow voice seemed to continue for a long time. As it
went on Tietjens felt the sunlight dwelling on his nearly coverless
limbs, and the tide of youth returning to his veins. It was like
champagne. He said:

"You sergeants get a great deal too much information. The sergeant in
charge of returns had no business to show you his roster. It's not your
fault, of course. But you are an intelligent man. You can see how useful
that news might be to certain people: people that it's not to your own
interest should know these things. . . ." He said to himself: "A
landmark in history. . . ." And then: "Where the devil did my mind get
hold of that expression at this moment?"

They were walking in mist, down an immense lane, one hedge of which was
topped by the serrated heads and irregularly held rifles that showed
here and there. He said to the sergeant-major: "Call 'em to attention.
Never mind their dressing, we've got to get 'em into bed. Roll-call will
be at nine to-morrow."

His mind said:

"If this means the single command. . . . And it's bound to mean the
single command, it's the turning point. . . . Why the hell am I so
extraordinarily glad? What's it to me?"

He was shouting in a round voice:

"Now then, men, you've got to go six extra in a tent. See if you can
fall out six at a time at each tent. It's not in the drill book, but see
if you can do it for yourselves. You're smart men: use your
intelligences. The sooner you get to bed the sooner you'll be warm. I
wish I was. Don't disturb the men who're already in the tents. They've
got to be up for fatigues to-morrow at five, poor devils. You can lie
soft till three hours after that. . . . The draft will move to the left
in fours. . . . Form fours . . . Left . . ." Whilst the voices of the
sergeants in charge of companies yelped varyingly to a distance in the
quick march order he said to himself:

"Extraordinarily glad. . . . A strong passion. . . . How damn well these
fellows move! . . . Cannon fodder. . . . Cannon fodder. . . . That's
what their steps say. . . ." His whole body shook in the grip of the
cold that beneath his loose overcoat gnawed his pyjamaed limbs. He could
not leave the men, but cantered beside them with the sergeant-major till
he came to the head of the column in the open in time to wheel the first
double company into a line of ghosts that were tents, silent and austere
in the moon's very shadowy light. . . . It appeared to him a magic
spectacle. He said to the sergeant-major: "Move the second company to B
line, and so on," and stood at the side of the men as they wheeled,
stamping, like a wall in motion. He thrust his stick half-way down
between the second and third files. "Now then, a four and half a four to
the right; remaining half-four and next four to the left. Fall out into
first tents to right and left. . . ." He continued saying "First four
and half, this four to the right. . . . Damn you, by the left! How can
you tell which beastly four you belong to if you don't march by the
left. . . . Remember you're soldiers, not new-chum lumbermen. . . ."

It was sheer exhilaration to freeze there on the downside in the
extraordinarily pure air with the extraordinarily fine men. They came
round, marking time with the stamp of guardsmen. He said, with tears in
his voice:

"Damn it all, I gave them that extra bit of smartness. . . . Damn it
all, there's something I've done. . . ." Getting cattle into condition
for the slaughterhouse. . . . They were as eager as bullocks running
down by Camden Town to Smithfield Market. . . . Seventy per cent, of
them would never come back. . . . But it's better to go to heaven with
your skin shining and master of your limbs than as a hulking
lout. . . . The Almighty's orderly room will welcome you better in all
probability. . . . He continued exclaiming monotonously . . . "Remaining
half-four and next four to the left. . . . Hold your beastly tongues when
you fall out. I can't hear myself give orders. . . ." It lasted a long
time. Then they were all swallowed up.

He staggered, his knees wooden-stiff with the cold, and the cold more
intense now the wall of men no longer sheltered him from the wind, out
along the brink of the plateau to the other lines. It gave him
satisfaction to observe that he had got his men into their lines
seventy-five per cent, quicker than the best of the N.C.O.'s who had had
charge of the other lines. Nevertheless, he swore bitingly at the
sergeants: their men were in knots round the entrance to the alleys of
ghost-pyramids. . . . Then there were no more, and he drifted with
regret across the plain towards his country street of huts. One of them
had a coarse evergreen rose growing over it. He picked a leaf, pressed
it to his lips and threw it up into the wind. . . . "That's for
Valentine," he said meditatively. "Why did I do that? . . . Or perhaps
it's for England. . . ." He said: "Damn it all, this is patriotism! . . .
_This_ is patriotism. . . ." It wasn't what you took patriotism as a
rule to be. There were supposed to be more parades about that job! . . .
But this was just a broke to the wide, wheezy, half-frozen Yorkshireman,
who despised every one in England not a Yorkshireman, or from more to
the North, at two in the morning picking a leaf from a rose-tree and
slobbering over it, without knowing what he was doing. And then
discovering that it was half for a pug-nosed girl whom he presumed, but
didn't know, to smell like a primrose; and half for . . . England! . . .
At two in the morning with the thermometer ten degrees below zero. . . .
Damn, it was cold! . . .

And why these emotions? . . . Because England, not before it was time,
had been allowed to decide not to do the dirty on her associates! . . .
He said to himself: "It is probably because a hundred thousand
sentimentalists like myself commit similar excesses of the subconscious
that we persevere in this glorious but atrocious undertaking. All the
same, I didn't know I had it in me!" A strong passion! . . . For his
girl and his country! . . . Nevertheless, his girl was a pro-German. . . .
It was a queer mix-up! . . . Not of course a pro-German, but
disapproving of the preparation of men, like bullocks, with sleek
healthy skins for the abattoirs in Smithfield. . . . Agreeing presumably
with the squits who had been hitherto starving the B.E.F. of men. . . .
A queer mix-up. . . .


At half-past one the next day, in chastened winter sunlight, he mounted
Schomburg, a coffin-headed, bright chestnut, captured from the Germans
on the Marne, by the second battalion of the Glamorganshires. He had not
been on the back of the animal two minutes before he remembered that he
had forgotten to look it over. It was the first time in his life that he
had ever forgotten to look at an animal's hoofs, fetlocks, knees,
nostrils and eyes, and to take a pull at the girth before climbing into
the saddle. But he had ordered the horse for a quarter to one and, even
though he had bolted his cold lunch like a cannibal in haste, there he
was three-quarters of an hour late, and with his head still full of
teasing problems. He had meant to clear his head by a long canter over
the be-hutted downs, dropping down into the city by a bypath.

But the ride did not clear his head--rather, the sleeplessness of the
night began for the first time then to tell on him after a morning of
fatigues, during which he had managed to keep the thought of Sylvia at
arm's length. He had to wait to see Sylvia before he could see what
Sylvia wanted. And morning had brought the common-sense idea that
probably she wanted to do nothing more than pull the string of the
showerbath--which meant committing herself to the first extravagant
action that came into her head--and exulting in the consequences.

He had not managed to get to bed at all the night before. Captain
McKechnie, who had had some cocoa--a beverage Tietjens had never before
tasted--hot and ready for him on his return from the lines, had kept him
till past half-past four, relating with a male fury his really very
painful story. It appeared that he had obtained leave to go home and
divorce his wife, who, during his absence in France, had been living
with an Egyptologist in Government service. Then, acting under
conscientious scruples of the younger school of the day, he had
refrained from divorcing her. Campion had in consequence threatened to
deprive him of his commission. . . . The poor devil--who had actually
consented to contribute to the costs of the household of his wife and
the Egyptologist--had gone raving mad and had showered an extraordinary
torrent of abuse at the decent old fellow that Campion was. . . . A
decent old fellow, really. For the interview, being delicate, had taken
place in the general's bedroom and the general had not felt it
necessary, there being no orderlies or junior officers present, to take
any official notice of McKechnie's outburst. McKechnie was a fellow with
an excellent military record; you could in fact hardly have found a
regimental officer with a better record. So Campion had decided to deal
with the man as suffering from a temporary brain-storm and had sent him
to Tietjen's unit for rest and recuperation. It was an irregularity, but
the general was of a rank to risk what irregularities he considered to
be of use to the service.

It had turned out that McKechnie was actually the nephew of Tietjens'
very old intimate, Sir Vincent Macmaster, of the Department of
Statistics, being the son of his sister who had married the assistant to
the elder Macmaster, a small grocer in the Port of Leith in Scotland. . . .
That indeed had been why Campion had been interested in him.
Determined as he was to show his godson no unreasonable military
favours, the general was perfectly ready to do a kindness that he
thought would please Tietjens. All these pieces of information Tietjens
had packed away in his mind for future consideration and, it being after
four-thirty before McKechnie had calmed himself down, Tietjens had taken
the opportunity to inspect the breakfasts of the various fatigues
ordered for duty in the town, these being detailed for various hours
from a quarter to five to seven. It was a matter of satisfaction to
Tietjens to have seen to the breakfasts, and inspected his cook-houses,
since he did not often manage to make the opportunity and he could by no
means trust his orderly officers.

At breakfast in the depot mess-hut he was detained by the colonel in
command of the depot, the Anglican padre and McKechnie; the colonel,
very old, so frail that you would have thought that a shudder or a cough
would have shaken his bones one from another, had yet a passionate
belief that the Greek Church should exchange communicants with the
Anglican: the padre, a stout, militant Churchman, had a gloomy contempt
for Orthodox theology. McKechnie from time to time essayed to define the
communion according to the Presbyterian rite. They all listened to
Tietjens whilst he dilated on the historic aspects of the various
schisms of Christianity and accepted his rough definition to the effect
that, in transubstantiation, the host actually became the divine
presence, whereas in consubstantiation the substance of the host, as if
miraculously become porous, was suffused with the presence as a sponge
is with water. . . . They all agreed that the breakfast bacon supplied
from store was uneatable and agreed to put up half a crown a week a
piece to get better for their table.

Tietjens had walked in the sunlight down the lines, past the hut with
the evergreen climbing rose, in the sunlight, thinking in an interval,
good-humouredly about his official religion: about the Almighty as, on a
colossal scale, a great English Landowner, benevolently awful, a
colossal duke who never left his study and was thus invisible, but
knowing all about the estate down to the last hind at the home farm and
the last oak: Christ, an almost too benevolent Land-Steward, son of the
Owner, knowing all about the estate down to the last child at the
porter's lodge, apt to be got round by the more detrimental tenants: the
Third Person of the Trinity, the spirit of the estate, the Game as it
were, as distinct from the players of the game: the atmosphere of the
estate, that of the interior of Winchester Cathedral just after a Handel
anthem has been finished, a perpetual Sunday, with, probably, a little
cricket for the young men. Like Yorkshire of a Saturday afternoon; if
you looked down on the whole broad county you would not see a single
village green without its white flannels. That was why Yorkshire always
leads the averages. . . . Probably by the time you got to heaven you
would be so worn out by work on this planet that you would accept the
English Sunday, for ever, with extreme relief!

With his belief that all that was good in English literature ended with
the seventeenth century, his imaginations of heaven must be
materialist--like Bunyan's. He laughed good-humouredly at his projection
of a hereafter. It was probably done with. Along with cricket. There
would be no more parades of that sort. Probably they would play some
beastly yelping game. . . . Like baseball or Association football. . . .
And heaven? . . . Oh, it would be a revival meeting on a Welsh hillside.
Or Chatauqua, wherever that was. . . . And God? A Real Estate Agent,
with Marxist views. . . . He hoped to be out of it before the cessation
of hostilities, in which case he might be just in time for the last
train to the old heaven. . . .

In his orderly hut he found an immense number of papers. On the top an
envelope marked _Urgent_. Private with a huge rubber stamp. From Levin.
Levin, too, must have been up pretty late. It was not about Mrs.
Tietjens, or even Miss de Bailly. It was a private warning that Tietjens
would probably have his draft on his hands another week or ten days, and
very likely another couple of thousand men extra as well. He warned
Tietjens to draw all the tents he could get hold of as soon as
possible. . . . Tietjens called to a subaltern with pimples who was picking
his teeth with a pen-nib at the other end of the hut: "Here, you! . . .
Take two companies of the Canadians to the depot store and draw all the
tents you can get up to two hundred and fifty. . . . Have 'em put alongside
my D lines. . . . Do you know how to look after putting up tents? . . .
Well then, get Thompson . . . no, Pitkins, to help you. . . ." The
subaltern drifted out sulkily. Levin said that the French railway
strikers, for some political reason, had sabotaged a mile of railway,
the accident of the night before had completely blocked up all the
lines, and the French civilians would not let their own breakdown gangs
make any repairs. German prisoners had been detailed for that fatigue,
but probably Tietjens' Canadian railway corps would be wanted. He had
better hold them in readiness. The strike was said to be a manœuvre for
forcing our hands--to get us to take over more of the line. In that case
they had jolly well dished themselves, for how could we take over more
of the line without more men, and how could we send up more men without
the railway to send them by? We had half a dozen army corps all ready to
go. Now they were all jammed. Fortunately the weather at the front was
so beastly that the Germans could not move. He finished up "Four in the
morning, old bean, _à tantôt_!" the last phrase having been learned
from Mlle de Bailly. Tietjens grumbled that if they went on piling up
the work on him like this he would never get down to the signing of that
marriage contract.

He called the Canadian sergeant-major to him.

"See," he said, "that you keep the Railway Service Corps in camp with
their arms ready, whatever their arms are. Tools, I suppose. Are their
tools all complete? And their muster roll?"

"Girtin has gone absent, sir," the slim dark fellow said, with an air of
destiny. Girtin was the respectable man with the mother to whom Tietjens
had given the two hours' leave the night before.

Tietjens answered:

"He would have!" with a sour grin. It enhanced his views of strictly
respectable humanity. They blackmailed you with lamentable and pathetic
tales and then did the dirty on you. He said to the sergeant-major:

"You will be here for another week or ten days. See that you get your
tents up all right and the men comfortable. I will inspect them as soon
as I have taken my orderly room. Full marching order. Captain McKechnie
will inspect their kits at two."

The sergeant-major, stiff but graceful, had something at the back of his
mind. It came out:

"I have my marching orders for two-thirty this afternoon. The notice for
inserting my commission in depot orders is on your table. I leave for
the O.T.C. by the three train. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Your commission! . . ." It was a confounded nuisance.

The sergeant-major said:

"Sergeant-Major Cowley and I applied for our commissions three months
ago. The communications granting them are both on your table
together. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Sergeant-Major Cowley. . . . Good God! Who recommended you?"

The whole organization of his confounded battalion fell to pieces. It
appeared that a circular had come round three months before--before
Tietjens had been given command of that unit--asking for experienced
first-class warrant officers capable of serving as instructors in
Officers' Training Corps, with commissions. Sergeant-Major Cowley had
been recommended by the colonel of the depot, Sergeant-Major Ledoux by
his own colonel. Tietjens felt as if he had been let down--but of course
he had not been. It was just the way of the army, all the time. You got
a platoon, or a battalion, or, for the matter of that, a dug-out or a
tent, by herculean labours into good fettle. It ran all right for a day
or two, then it all fell to pieces, the personnel scattered to the four
winds by what appeared merely wanton orders, coming from the most
unexpected headquarters, or the premises were smashed up by a chance
shell that might just as well have fallen somewhere else. . . . The
finger of Fate! . . .

But it put a confounded lot more work on him. . . . He said to
Sergeant-Major Cowley, whom he found in the next hut where all the paper
work of the unit was done:

"I should have thought you would have been enormously better off as
regimental sergeant-major than with a commission. I know I would rather
have the job." Cowley answered--he was very pallid and shaken--that
with his unfortunate infirmity, coming on at any moment of shock, he
would be better in a job where he could slack off, like an O.T.C. He had
always been subject to small fits, over in a minute, or couple of
seconds even. . . . But getting too near a H.E. shell--after Noircourt
which had knocked out Tietjens himself--had brought them on, violent.
There was also, he finished, the gentility to be considered. Tietjens
said:

"Oh, the gentility! . . . That's not worth a flea's jump. . . . There
won't be any more parades after this war. There aren't any now. Look at
who your companions will be in an officer's quarters; you'd be in a
great deal better society in any self-respecting sergeants' mess."
Cowley answered that he knew the service had gone to the dogs. All the
same his missis liked it. And there was his daughter Winnie to be
considered. She had always been a bit wild, and his missis wrote that
she had gone wilder than ever, all due to the war. Cowley thought that
the bad boys would be a little more careful how they monkeyed with her
if she was an officer's daughter. . . . There was probably something in
that!

Coming out into the open, confidentially with Tietjens, Cowley dropped
his voice huskily to say:

"Take Quartermaster-Sergeant Morgan for R.S.M., sir."

Tietjens said explosively:

"I'm damned if I will." Then he asked: "Why?" The wisdom of old N.C.O.'s
is a thing no prudent officer neglects.

"He can do the work, sir," Cowley said. "He's out for a commission, and
he'll do his best. . . ." He dropped his husky voice to a still greater
depth of mystery:

"You're over two hundred--I should say nearer three hundred--pounds
down in your battalion stores. I don't suppose you want to lose a sum of
money like that?"

Tietjens said:

"I'm damned if I do. . . . But I don't see. . . . Oh, yes, I do. . . .
If I make him sergeant-major he has to hand over the stores all
complete. . . . To-day. . . . Can he do it?"

Cowley said that Morgan could have till the day after to-morrow. He
would look after things till then.

"But you'll want to have a flutter before you go," Tietjens said. "Don't
stop for me."

Cowley said that he would stop and see the job through. He had thought
of going down into the town and having a flutter. But the girls down
there were a common sort, and it was bad for his complaint. . . . He
would stop and see what could be done with Morgan. Of course it was
possible that Morgan might decide to face things out. He might prefer to
stick to the money he'd got by disposing of Tietjens' stores to other
battalions that were down, or to civilian contractors. And stand a court
martial! But it wasn't likely. He was a Noncomformist deacon, or
pew-opener, or even a minister possibly, at home in Wales. . . . From
near Denbigh! And Cowley had got a very good man, a first-class man, an
Oxford professor, now a lance-corporal at the depot, for Morgan's place.
The colonel would lend him to Tietjens and would get him rated acting
quartermaster-sergeant unpaid. . . . Cowley had it all arranged. . . .
Lance-Corporal Caldicott was a first-class man, only he could not tell
his right hand from his left on parade. Literally could not tell
them. . . .

So the battalion settled itself down. . . . Whilst Cowley and he were at
the colonel's orderly room arranging for the transfer of the
professor--he was really only a fellow of his college--who did not know
his right hand from his left, Tietjens was engaged in the remains of the
colonel's furious argument as to the union of the Anglican and Eastern
rites. The colonel--he was a full colonel--sat in his lovely private
office, a light, gay compartment of a tin-hutment, the walls being
papered in scarlet, with, on the purplish, thick, soft baize of his
table-cover, a tall glass vase from which sprayed out pale Riviera
roses, the gift of young lady admirers amongst the V.A.D.'s in the town
because he was a darling, and an open, very gilt and leather-bound
volume of a biblical encyclopædia beneath his delicate septuagenarian
features. He was confirming his opinion that a union between the Church
of England and the Greek Orthodox Church was the only thing that could
save civilization. The whole war turned on that. The Central Empires
represented Roman Catholicism, the Allies Protestantism and Orthodoxy.
Let them unite. The papacy was a traitor to the cause of civilization.
Why had the Vatican not protested with no uncertain voice about the
abominations practised on the Belgian Catholics? . . .

Tietjens pointed out languidly objections to this theory. The first
thing our ambassador to the Vatican had found out on arriving in Rome
and protesting about massacres of Catholic laymen in Belgium was that
the Russians before they had been a day in Austrian Poland had hanged
twelve Roman Catholic bishops in front of their palaces.

Cowley was engaged with the adjutant at another table. The colonel ended
his theologico-political tirade by saying:

"I shall be very sorry to lose you, Tietjens. I don't know what we shall
do without you. I never had a moment's peace with your unit until you
came."

Tietjens said:

"Well, you aren't losing me, sir, as far as I know."

The colonel said:

"Oh, yes, we are. You are going up the line next week. . . ." He added:
"Now, don't get angry with me. . . . I've protested very strongly to old
Campion--General Campion--that I cannot do without you." And he made,
with his delicate, thin, hairy-backed, white hands a motion as of
washing.

The ground moved under Tietjens' feet. He felt himself clambering over
slopes of mud with his heavy legs and labouring chest. He said:

"Damn it all! ... I'm not fit. . . . I'm C3. . . . I was ordered to live
in an hotel in the town. . . . I only mess here to be near the
battalion."

The colonel said with some eagerness:

"Then you can protest to Garrison. . . . I hope you will. . . . But I
suppose you are the sort of fellow that won't."

Tietjens said:

"No, sir. . . . Of course I cannot protest . . . Though it's probably a
mistake of some clerk. . . . I could not stand a week in the line. . . ."
The profound misery of brooding apprehension in the line was less on
his mind than, precisely, the appalling labour of the lower limbs when
you live in mud to the neck. . . . Besides, whilst he had been in
hospital, practically the whole of his equipment had disappeared from
his kitbag--including Sylvia's two pair of sheets!--and he had no money
with which to get more. He had not even any trench-boots. Fantastic
financial troubles settled on his mind.

The colonel said to the adjutant at the other purple baize-covered
table:

"Show Captain Tietjens those marching orders of his. . . . They're from
Whitehall, aren't they? . . . You never know where these things come
from nowadays. I call them the arrow that flieth by night!"

The adjutant, a diminutive, a positively miniature gentleman with
Coldstream badges up and a dreadfully worried brow, drifted a quarto
sheet of paper out of a pile, across his tablecloth towards Tietjens.
His tiny hands seemed about to fall off at the wrists; his temples
shuddered with neuralgia. He said:

"For God's sake do protest to Garrison if you feel you can. . . . We
_can't_ have more work shoved on us. . . . Major Lawrence and Major
Halkett left the whole of the work of your unit to us. . . ."

The sumptuous paper, with the royal arms embossed at the top, informed
Tietjens that he would report to his VIth battalion on the Wednesday of
next week in preparation for taking up the duties of divisional
transport officer to the XIXth division. The order came from room G 14
R, at the War Office. He asked what the deuce G 14 R was, of the
adjutant, who in an access of neuralgic agony, shook his head miserably,
between his two hands, his elbows on the tablecloth.

Sergeant-Major Cowley, with his air of a solicitor's clerk, said the
room G 14 R was the department that dealt with civilian requests for the
services of officers. To the adjutant who asked what the devil a
civilian request for the employment of officers could have to do with
sending Captain Tietjens to the XIXth division, Sergeant-Major Cowley
presumed that it was because of the activities of the Earl of Beichan.
The Earl of Beichan, a Levantine financier and race-horse owner, was
interesting himself in army horses, after a short visit to the lines of
communication. He also owned several newspapers. So they had been waking
up the army transport-animals' department to please him. The adjutant
would no doubt have observed a Veterinary-Lieutenant Hotchkiss or
Hitchcock. He had come to them through G 14 R. At the request of Lord
Beichan, who was personally interested in Lieutenant Hotchkiss's
theories. He was to make experiments on the horses of the Fourth
Army--in which the XIXth division was then to be found. . . . "So,"
Cowley said, "you'll be under him as far as your horse lines go. If you
go up." Perhaps Lord Beichan was a friend of Captain Tietjens and had
asked for him, too: Captain Tietjens was known to be wonderful with
horses.

Tietjens, his breath rushing through his nostrils, swore he would not go
up the line at the bidding of a hog like Beichan, whose real name was
Stavropolides, formerly Nathan.

He said the army was reeling to its base because of the continual
interference of civilians. He said it was absolutely impossible to get
through his programmes of parades because of the perpetual extra drills
that were forced on them at the biddings of civilians. Any fool who
owned a newspaper, nay, any fool who could write to a newspaper, or any
beastly little squit of a novelist could frighten the Government and the
War Office into taking up one more hour of the men's parade time for
patent manœuvres with jampots or fancy underclothing. Now he was asked
if his men wanted lecturing on the causes of the war and whether he--he,
good God!--would not like to give the men cosy chats on the nature of
the Enemy nations. . . .

The colonel said:

"There, there, Tietjens! . . . There, there! . . . We all suffer alike.
_We've_ got to lecture our men on the uses of a new patent sawdust stove.
If you don't want that job, you can easily get the general to take you
off it. They say you can turn him round your little finger. . . ."

"He's my godfather," Tietjens thought it wise to say. "I never asked him
for a job, but I'm damned if it isn't his duty as a Christian to keep me
out of the clutches of this Greek-'Ebrew pagan peer. . . . He's not even
Orthodox, colonel. . . ."

The adjutant here said that Colour-Sergeant Morgan of their orderly room
wanted a word with Tietjens. Tietjens said he hoped to goodness that
Morgan had some money for him! The adjutant said he understood that
Morgan had unearthed quite a little money that ought to have been paid
to Tietjens by his agents and hadn't.

Colour-Sergeant Morgan was the regimental magician with figures.
Inordinately tall and thin, his body, whilst his eyes peered into
distant columns of cyphers, appeared to be always parallel with the
surface of his table and, as he always answered the several officers
whom he benefited without raising his head, his face was very little
known to his superiors. He was, however, in appearance a very ordinary,
thin, N.C.O. whose spidery legs, when very rarely he appeared on a
parade, had the air of running away with him as a race-horse might do.
He told Tietjens that, pursuant to his instructions and the A.C.P. i 96
b that Tietjens had signed, he had ascertained that command pay at the
rate of two guineas a day and supplementary fuel and light allowance at
the rate of 6_s_. 8_d_. was being paid weekly by the Paymaster-General's
Department to his, Tietjens', account at his agents'. He suggested that
Tietjens should write to his agents that if they did not immediately pay
to his account the sum of £194 13_s_. 4 _d_., by them received from the
Paymaster's Department, he would proceed against the Crown by Petition
of Right. And he strongly recommended Tietjens to draw a cheque on his
own bank for the whole of the money because, if by any chance the agents
had not paid the money in, he could sue them for damages and get them
cast in several thousand pounds. And serve the devils right. They must
have a million or so in hand in unpaid command and detention allowances
due to officers. He only wished he could advertise in the papers
offering to recover unpaid sums due by agents. He added that he had a
nice little computation as to variations in the course of Gunter's
Second Comet that he would like to ask Tietjen's advice about one of
these days. The colour-sergeant was an impassioned amateur astronomer.

So Tietjens' morning went up and down. . . . The money at the moment,
Sylvia being in that town, was of tremendous importance to him and came
like an answer to prayer. It was not so agreeable, however, even in a
world in which, never, never, never for ten minutes did you know whether
you stood on your head or your heels, for Tietjens, on going back to the
colonel's private office, to find Sergeant-Major Cowley coming out of
the next room in which, on account of the adjutant's neuralgia, the
telephone was kept. Cowley announced to the three of them that the
general had the day before ordered his correspondence-corporal to send a
very emphatic note to Colonel Gillum to the effect that he was informing
the competent authority that he had no intention whatever of parting
with Captain Tietjens, who was invaluable in his command. The
correspondence-corporal had informed Cowley that neither he nor the
general knew who was the competent authority for telling Room G 14 R at
the War Office to go to hell, but the matter would be looked up and put
all right before the chit was sent off. . . .

That was good as far as it went. Tietjens was really interested in his
present job, and although he would have liked well enough to have the
job of looking after the horses of a division, or even an army, he felt
that he would rather it was put off till the spring, given the weather
they were having and the state of his chest. And the complication of
possible troubles with Lieutenant Hotchkiss who, being a professor, had
never really seen a horse--or not for ten years!--was something to be
thought about very seriously. But all this appeared quite another matter
when Cowley announced that the civilian authority who had asked for
Tietjens' transfer was the permanent secretary to the Ministry of
Transport. . . .

Colonel Gillum said:

"That's your brother, Mark. . . ." And indeed the permanent secretary to
the Ministry of Transport was Tietjens' brother Mark, known as the
Indispensable Official. Tietjens felt a real instant of dismay. He
considered that his violent protest against the job would appear rather
a smack in the face for poor old wooden-featured Mark who had probably
taken a good deal of trouble to get him the job. Even if Mark should
never hear of it, a man should not slap his brother in the face!
Moreover, when he came to think of his last day in London, he remembered
that Valentine Wannop, who had exaggerated ideas as to the safety of
First Line Transport, had begged Mark to get him a job as divisional
officer. . . . And he imagined Valentine's despair if she heard that
he--Tietjens--had moved heaven and earth to get out of it. He saw her
lower lip quivering and the tears in her eyes. . . . But he probably had
got that from some novel, because he had never seen her lower lip
quiver. He had seen tears in her eyes!

He hurried back to his lines to take his orderly room. In the long hut
McKechnie was taking that miniature court of drunks and defaulters for
him and, just as Tietjens reached it, he was taking the case of Girtin
and two other Canadian privates. . . . The case of Girtin interested
him, and when McKechnie slid out of his seat Tietjens occupied it. The
prisoners were only just being marched in by a Sergeant Davis, an
admirable N.C.O. whose rifle appeared to be part of his rigid body and
who executed an amazing number of stamps in seriously turning in front
of the C.O.'s table. It gave the impression of an Indian war dance. . . .

Tietjens glanced at the charge sheet, which was marked as coming from
the Provost-Marshal's Office. Instead of the charge of absence from
draft he read that of conduct prejudicial to good order and military
discipline in that. . . . The charge was written in a very illiterate
hand; an immense beery lance-corporal of Garrison Military Police, with
a red hat-band, attended to give evidence. . . . It was a tenuous and
disagreeable affair. Girtin had not gone absent, so Tietjens had to
revise his views of the respectable. At any rate of the respectable
Colonial private soldier with mother complete. For there really had been
a mother, and Girtin had been seeing her into the last tram down into
the town. A frail old lady. Apparently, trying to annoy the Canadian,
the beery lance-corporal of the Garrison Military Police had hustled the
mother. Girtin had remonstrated; very moderately, he said. The
lance-corporal had shouted at him. Two other Canadians returning to camp
had intervened and two more police. The police had called the
Canadians ---- conscripts, which was almost more than the Canadians could
stand, they being voluntarily enlisted 1914 or 1915 men. The police--it was
an old trick--had kept the men talking until two minutes after the last
post had sounded and then had run them in for being absent off pass--and
for disrespect to their red hat-bands.

Tietjens, with a carefully measured fury, first cross-examined and then
damned the police witness to hell. Then he marked the charge sheets with
the words "Case explained," and told the Canadians to go and get ready
for his parade. It meant he was aware a frightful row with the
provost-marshal, who was a port-winey old general called O'Hara and
loved his police as if they had been ewe-lambs.

He took his parade, the Canadian troops looking like real soldiers in
the sunlight, went round his lines with the new Canadian sergeant-major,
who had his appointment, thank goodness, from his own authorities; wrote
a report on the extreme undesirability of lecturing his men on the
causes of the war, since his men were either graduates of one or other
Canadian university and thus knew twice as much about the causes of the
war as any lecturer the civilian authorities could provide, or else they
were half-breed Micamuc Indians, Esquimaux, Japanese, or Alaskan
Russians, none of whom could understand any English lecturer. . . . He
was aware that he would have to re-write his report so as to make it
more respectful to the newspaper proprietor peer who, at that time, was
urging on the home Government the necessity of lecturing all the
subjects of His Majesty on the causes of the war. But he wanted to get
that grouse off his chest and its disrespect would pain Levin, who would
have to deal with these reports if he did not get married first. Then he
lunched off army sausage-meat and potatoes, mashed with their skins
complete, watered with an admirable 1906 brut champagne which they
bought themselves, and an appalling Canadian cheese--at the headquarters
table to which the colonel had invited all the subalterns who that day
were going up the line for the first time. They had some h's in their
compositions, but in revenge they must have boasted of a pint of adenoid
growths between them. There was, however, a charming young half-caste
Goa second-lieutenant, who afterwards proved of an heroic bravery. He
gave Tietjens a lot of amusing information as to the working of the
purdah in Portuguese India.

So, at half-past one Tietjens sat on Schomburg, the coffin-headed,
bright chestnut from the Prussian horse-raising establishment near
Celle. Almost a pure thoroughbred, this animal had usually the paces of
a dining-room table, its legs being fully as stiff. But to-day its legs
might have been made of cotton-wool, it lumbered over frosty ground
breathing stertorously and, at the jumping ground of the Deccan Horse, a
mile above and behind Rouen, it did not so much refuse a very moderate
jump as come together in a lugubrious crumple. It was, in the light of a
red, jocular sun, like being mounted on a broken-hearted camel. In
addition, the fatigues of the morning beginning to tell, Tietjens was
troubled by an obsession of O Nine Morgan which he found tiresome to
have to stall off.

"What the hell," he asked of the orderly, a very silent private on a
roan beside him, "what the hell is the matter with his horse? . . . Have
you been keeping him warm?" He imagined that the clumsy paces of the
animal beneath him added to his gloomy obsessions.

The orderly looked straight in front of him over a valley full of
hutments. He said:

"No, sir." The 'oss 'ad been put in the 'oss-standings of G depot. By
the orders of Lieutenant 'Itchcock. 'Osses, Lieutenant 'Itchcock said,
'ad to be 'ardened.

Tietjens said:

"Did you tell him that it was my orders that Schomburg was to be kept
warm? In the stables of the farm behind No. XVI I.B.D."

"The lieutenant," the orderly explained woodenly, "said as 'ow henny
departure f'm 'is orders would be visited by the extreme displeasure of
Lord Breech'em, K.C.V.O., K.C.B., etcetera." The orderly was quivering
with rage.

"You will," Tietjens said very carefully, "when you fall out with the
horses at the Hôtel de la Poste, take Schomburg and the roan to the
stables of La Volonté Farm, behind No. XVI I.B.D." The orderly was to
close all the windows of the stable, stopping up any chinks with
wadding. He would procure, if possible, a sawdust stove, new pattern,
from Colonel Gillum's store and light it in the stables. He was also to
give Schomburg and the roan oatmeal and water warmed as hot as the
horses would take it. . . . And Tietjens finished sharply, "If
Lieutenant Hotchkiss makes any comments, you will refer him to me. As
his C.O."

The orderly seeking information as to horse-ailments, Tietjens said:

"The school of horse-copers, to which Lord Beichan belongs, believes in
the hardening of all horse-flesh other than racing cattle." They bred
racing-cattle; Under six blankets apiece! Personally Tietjens did not
believe in the hardening process and would not permit any animal over
which he had control to be submitted to it. . . . It had been observed
that if any animal was kept at a lower temperature than that of its
normal climatic condition it would contract diseases to which ordinarily
it was not susceptible. . . . If you keep a chicken for two days in a
pail of water it will contract human scarlet-fever or mumps if injected
with either bacillus. If you remove the chicken from the water, dry it,
and restore it to its normal conditions, the scarlet-fever or the mumps
will die out of the animal. . . . He said to the orderly: "You are an
intelligent man. What deduction do you draw?"

The orderly looked away over the valley of the Seine.

"I suppose, sir," he said, "that our 'osses, being kept alwise cold in
their standings, 'as hillnesses they wouldn't otherwise 'ave."

"Well then," Tietjens said, "keep the poor animals warm."

He considered that here was the makings of a very nasty row for himself
if, by any means, his sayings came round to the ears of Lord Beichan.
But that he had to chance. He could not let a horse for which he was
responsible be martyred. . . . There was too much to think about . . .
so that nothing at all stood out to be thought of. The sun was glowing.
The valley of the Seine was blue-grey, like a Gobelin tapestry. Over it
all hung the shadow of a deceased Welsh soldier. An odd skylark was
declaiming over an empty field behind the incinerators' headquarters. . . .
An odd lark. For as a rule larks do not sing in December. Larks sing
only when courting, or over the nest. . . . The bird must be oversexed.
O Nine Morgan was the other thing, that accounting for the
prize-fighter!

They dropped down a mud lane between brick walls into the town. . . .




PART II




CHAPTER I


In the admirably appointed, white-enamelled, wickerworked, bemirrored
lounge of the best hotel of that town Sylvia Tietjens sat in a
wickerwork chair, not listening rather abstractedly to a staff-major who
was lachrymosely and continuously begging her to leave her bedroom door
unlocked that night. She said:

"I don't know. . . . Yes, perhaps. . . . I don't know. . . ." And looked
distantly into a bluish wall-mirror that, like all the rest, was framed
with white-painted cork bark. She stiffened a little and said:

"There's Christopher!"

The staff-major dropped his hat, his stick and his gloves. His black
hair, which was without parting and heavy with some preparation of a
glutinous kind, moved agitatedly on his scalp. He had been saying that
Sylvia had ruined his life. Didn't Sylvia know that she had ruined his
life? But for her he might have married some pure young thing. Now he
exclaimed:

"But what does he want? . . . Good God! . . . what does he want?"

"He wants," Sylvia said, "to play the part of Jesus Christ."

Major Perowne exclaimed:

"Jesus Christ! . . . But he's the most foul-mouthed officer in the
general's command. . . ."

"Well," Sylvia said, "if you had married your pure young thing she'd
have . . . What is it? . . . cuckolded you within nine months. . . ."

Perowne shuddered a little at the word. He mumbled:

"I don't see. ... It seems to be the other way . . ."

"Oh, no, it isn't," Sylvia said. "Think it over. . . . Morally, _you're_
the husband. . . . _Im_morally, I should say. . . . Because he's the man I
want. . . . He looks ill. . . . Do hospital authorities always tell
wives what is the matter with their husbands?"

From his angle in the chair from which he had half-emerged Sylvia seemed
to him to be looking at a blank wall.

"I don't see him," Perowne said.

"I can see him in the glass," Sylvia said. "Look! From here you can see
him."

Perowne shuddered a little more.

"I don't want to see him. . . . I have to see him sometimes in the
course of duty. . . . I don't like to . . . ."

Sylvia said:

"_You_," in a tone of very deep contempt. "You only carry chocolate
boxes to flappers. . . . How can he come across you in the course of
duty? . . . You're not a _soldier_!"

Perowne said:

"But what are we going to do? What will _he_ do?"

"I," Sylvia answered, "shall tell the page-boy when he comes with his
card to say that I'm engaged. . . . I don't know what _he'll_ do. Hit
you, very likely. . . . He's looking at your back now. . . ."

Perowne became rigid, sunk into his deep chair.

"But he _couldn't_!" he exclaimed agitatedly. "You said that he was
playing the part of Jesus Christ. Our Lord wouldn't hit people in an
hotel lounge. . . ."

"Our Lord!" Sylvia said contemptuously. "What do you know about our
Lord? . . . Our Lord was a gentleman. . . . Christopher is playing at
being our Lord calling on the woman taken in adultery. . . . He's giving
me the social backing that his being my husband seems to him to call
for."

A one-armed, bearded _maître d'hôtel_ approached them through groups
of arm-chairs arranged for _tête-à-tête_. He said:

"Pardon . . . I did not see madame at first. . . ." And displayed a card
on a salver. Without looking at it, Sylvia said:

"_Dîtes à ce monsieur_ . . . that I am occupied." The _maître
d'hôtel_ moved austerely away.

"But he'll smash me to pieces . . ." Perowne exclaimed. "What am I to
do? . . . What the deuce am I to do?" There would have been no way of
exit for him except across Tietjens' face.

With her spine very rigid and the expression of a snake that fixes a
bird, Sylvia gazed straight in front of her and said nothing until she
exclaimed:

"For God's sake leave off trembling. . . . He would not do anything to a
girl like you. . . . He's a man. . . ." The wickerwork of Perowne's
chair had been crepitating as if it had been in a railway car. The sound
ceased with a jerk. . . . Suddenly she clenched both her hands and let
out a hateful little breath of air between her teeth.

"By the immortal saints," she exclaimed, "I swear I'll make his wooden
face wince yet."

In the bluish looking-glass, a few minutes before, she had seen the
agate-blue eyes of her husband, thirty feet away, over arm-chairs and
between the fans of palms. He was standing, holding a riding-whip,
looking rather clumsy in the uniform that did not suit him. Rather
clumsy and worn out, but completely expressionless! He had looked
straight into the reflection of her eyes and then looked away. He moved
so that his profile was towards her, and continued gazing motionless at
an elk's head that decorated the space of wall above glazed doors giving
into the interior of the hotel. The hotel servant approaching him, he
had produced a card and had given it to the servant, uttering three
words. She saw his lips move in the three words: Mrs. Christopher
Tietjens. She said, beneath her breath:

"Damn his chivalry! . . . Oh, God damn his chivalry!" She knew what was
going on in his mind. He had seen her, with Perowne, so he had neither
come towards her nor directed the servant to where she sat. For fear of
embarrassing her! He would leave it to her to come to him if she wished.

The servant, visible in the mirror, had come and gone deviously back,
Tietjens still gazing at the elk's head. He had taken the card and
restored it to his pocket-book and then had spoken to the servant. The
servant had shrugged his shoulders with the formal hospitality of his
class and, with his shoulders still shrugged and his one hand pointing
towards the inner door, had preceded Tietjens into the hotel. Not one
line of Tietjens' face had moved when he had received back his card. It
had been then that Sylvia had sworn that she would yet make his wooden
face wince. . . .

His face was intolerable. Heavy; fixed. Not insolent, but simply gazing
over the heads of all things and created beings, into a word too distant
for them to enter. . . . And yet it seemed to her, since he was so
clumsy and worn out, almost not sporting to persecute him. It was like
whipping a dying bulldog. . . .

She sank back into her chair with a movement almost of discouragement.
She said:

"He's gone into the hotel. . . ."

Perowne lurched agitatedly forward in his chair. He exclaimed that he
was going. Then he sank discouragedly back again:

"No, I'm not," he said, "I'm probably much safer here. I might run
against him going out."

"You've realized that my petticoats protect you," Sylvia said
contemptuously. "Of course, Christopher would never hit anyone in my
presence."

Major Perowne was interrupting her by asking:

"What's he going to do? What's he doing in the hotel?"

Mrs. Tietjens said:

"Guess!" She added: "What would you do in similar circumstances?"

"Go and wreck your bedroom," Perowne answered with promptitude. "It's
what I did when I found you had left Yssingueux."

Sylvia said:

"Ah, that was what the place was called."

Perowne groaned:

"You're callous," he said. "There's no other word for it. Callous.
That's what you are."

Sylvia asked absently why he called her callous at just that juncture.
She was imagining Christopher stumping clumsily along the hotel corridor
looking at bedrooms, and then giving the hotel servant a handsome tip to
ensure that he should be put on the same floor as herself. She could
almost hear his not disagreeable male voice that vibrated a little from
the chest and made her vibrate.

Perowne was grumbling on. Sylvia was callous because she had forgotten
the name of the Brittany hamlet in which they had spent three blissful
weeks together, though she had left it so suddenly that all her outfit
remained in the hotel.

"Well, it wasn't any kind of a beanfeast for me," Sylvia went on, when
she again gave him her attention. "Good heavens! . . . Do you think it
_would_ be any kind of a beanfeast with you, _pour tout potage_? Why
should I remember the name of the hateful place?"

Perowne said:

"Yssingueux-les-Pervenches, such a pretty name," reproachfully.

"It's no good," Sylvia answered, "your trying to awaken sentimental
memories in me. You will have to make me forget what you were like if
you want to carry on with me. . . . I'm stopping here and listening to
your corncrake of a voice because I want to wait until Christopher goes
out of the hotel . . . Then I am going to my room to tidy up for Lady
Sachse's party and you will sit here and wait for me."

"I'm _not_," Perowne said, "going to Lady Sachse's. Why, _he_ is going to be
one of the principal witnesses to sign the marriage contract. And Old
Campion and all the rest of the staff are going to be there. . . . You
don't catch _me_. . . . An unexpected prior engagement is my line. No
fear."

"You'll come with me, my little man," Sylvia said, "if you ever want to
bask in my smile again. . . . I'm not going to Lady Sachse's alone,
looking as if I couldn't catch a man to escort me, under the eyes
of half the French house of peers. . . . If they've got a house of
peers! . . . You don't catch _me_. . . . No fear!" she mimicked his creaky
voice. "You can go away as soon as you've shown yourself as my
escort. . . ."

"But, good God!" Perowne cried out, "that's just what I mustn't do.
Campion said that if he heard any more of my being seen about with you
he would have me sent back to my beastly regiment. And my beastly
regiment is in the trenches. . . . You don't see _me_ in the trenches, do
you?"

"I'd rather see you there than in my own room," Sylvia said. "Any day!"

"Ah, there you are!" Perowne exclaimed with animation. "What guarantee
have I that if I do what you want I shall bask in your smile as you call
it? I've got myself into a most awful hole, bringing you here without
any papers. You never told me you hadn't any papers. General O'Hara, the
P.M., has raised a most awful strafe about it. . . . And what have I got
for it? . . . Not the ghost of a smile. . . . And you should see old
O'Hara's purple face! . . . Someone woke him from his afternoon nap to
report to him about your heinous case and he hasn't recovered from the
indigestion yet. . . . Besides, he hates Tietjens . . . Tietjens is
always chipping away at his military police . . . O'Hara's lambs. . . ."

Sylvia was not listening, but she was smiling a slow smile at an inward
thought. It maddened him.

"What's your game?" he exclaimed. "Hell and hounds, what's your game? . . .
You can't have come here to see . . . _him_. You don't come here to
see me, as far as I can see. Well then . . ."

Sylvia looked round at him with all her eyes, wide open as if she had
just awakened from a deep sleep.

"I didn't know I was coming," she said. "It came into my head to come
suddenly. Ten minutes before I started. And I came. I didn't know papers
were wanted. I suppose I could have got them if I had wanted them. . . .
You never asked me if I had any papers. You just froze on to me and had
me into your special carriage. ... I didn't know you were coming."

That seemed to Perowne the last insult. He exclaimed:

"Oh, damn it, Sylvia! you _must_ have known. . . . You were at the
Quirks' squash on Wednesday evening. And _they_ knew. My best friends."

"Since you ask for it," she said, "I didn't know. . . . And I would not
have come by that train if I had known you would be going by it. You
force me to say rude things to you." She added: "Why can't you be more
conciliatory?" to keep him quiet for a little. His jaw dropped down.

She was wondering where Christopher had got the money to pay for a bed
at the hotel. Only a very short time before she had drawn all the
balance of his banking account, except for a shilling. It was the middle
of the month and he could not have drawn any more pay. . . . That, of
course, was a try on her part. He might be forced into remonstrating. In
the same way she had tried on the accusation that he had carried off her
sheets. It was sheer wilfulness, and when she looked again at his
motionless features she knew that she had been rather stupid. . . . But
she was at the end of her tether: she had before now tried making
accusations against her husband, but she had never tried inconveniencing
him. . . . Now she suddenly realized the full stupidity of which she had
been guilty. He would know perfectly well that those petty
frightfulnesses of hers were not in the least in her note; so he would
know, too, that each of them was just a try on. He would say: "She is
trying to make me squeal. I'm damned if I will!"

She would have to adopt much more formidable methods. She said: "He
shall . . . he shall . . . he _shall_ come to heel."

Major Perowne had now closed his jaw. He was reflecting. Once he
mumbled: "More _conciliatory_! Holy smoke!"

She was feeling suddenly in spirits: it was the sight of Christopher had
done it: the perfect assurance that they were going to live under the
same roof again. She would have betted all she possessed and her
immortal soul on the chance that he would not take up with the Wannop
girl. And it would have been betting on a certainty! . . . But she had
had no idea what their relations were to be, after the war. At first she
had thought that they had parted for good when she had gone off from
their flat at four o'clock in the morning. It had seemed logical. But,
gradually, in retreat at Birkenhead, in the still, white, nun's room,
doubt had come upon her. It was one of the disadvantages of living as
they did that they seldom spoke their thoughts. But that was also at
times an advantage. She had certainly meant their parting to be for
good. She had certainly raised her voice in giving the name of her
station to the taxi-man with the pretty firm conviction that he would
hear her; and she had been pretty well certain that he would take it as
a sign that the breath had gone out of their union. . . . Pretty
certain. But not quite! . . .

She would have died rather than write to him; she would die, now, rather
than give any inkling that she wanted them to live under the same roof
again. . . . She said to herself:

"Is he writing to that girl?" And then: "No! . . . I'm certain that he
isn't." . . . She had had all his letters stopped at the flat, except
for a few circulars that she let dribble through to him, so that he
might imagine that all his correspondence was coming through. From the
letters to him that she did read she was pretty sure that he had given
no other address than the flat in Gray's Inn. . . . But there had been
no letters from Valentine Wannop. . . . Two from Mrs. Wannop, two from
his brother Mark, one from Port Scatho, one or two from brother officers
and some officials chits. . . . She said to herself that, if there _had_
been any letters from that girl, she would have let all his letters go
through, including the girl's. . . . Now she was not so certain that she
would have.

In the glass she saw Christopher marching woodenly out of the hotel,
along the path that led from door to door behind her. . . . It came to
her with extraordinary gladness--the absolute conviction that he was not
corresponding with Miss Wannop. The absolute conviction. . . . If he had
come alive enough to do that he would have looked different. She did not
know how he would have looked. But different . . . Alive! Perhaps
self-conscious: perhaps . . . satisfied . . .

For some time the major had been grumbling about his wrongs. He said
that he followed her about all day, like a lap-dog, and got nothing for
it. Now she wanted him to be conciliatory. She said she wanted to have a
man on show as escort. Well then, an escort got something. . . . At just
this moment he was beginning again with:

"Look here . . . will you let me come to your room to-night or will you
not?"

She burst into high, loud laughter. He said:

"Damn it all, it isn't any laughing matter! . . . Look here! You don't
know what I risk. . . . There are A.P.M.'s and P.M.'s and deputy
sub-acting A.P.M.'s walking about the corridors of all the hotels in
this town, all night long. . . . It's as much as my job is worth. . . ."

She put her handkerchief to her lips to hide a smile that she knew would
be too cruel for him not to notice. And even when she took it away, he
said:

"Hang it all, what a cruel-looking fiend you are! . . . Why the devil do
I hang around you? . . . There's a picture that my mother's got, by
Burne-Jones . . . A cruel-looking woman with a distant smile . . . Some
vampire ... La belle Dame sans Merci . . . That's what you're like."

She looked at him suddenly with considerable seriousness. . . .

"See here, Potty . . ." she began. He groaned:

"I believe you'd like me to be sent to the beastly trenches. . . . Yet a
big, distinguished-looking chap like me wouldn't have a chance. . . . At
the first volley the Germans fired, they'd pick me off. . . ."

"Oh, Potty," she exclaimed, "try to be serious for a minute. . . . I
tell you I'm a woman who's trying . . . who's desperately wanting . . .
to be reconciled to her husband! . . . I would not tell that to another
soul. . . . I would not tell it to myself. . . . But one owes
something . . . a parting scene, if nothing else. . . . Well,
something . . . to a man one's been in bed with. . . . I didn't give you a
parting scene at . . . ah, Yssingueux-les-Pervenches ... so I give you
this tip instead. . . ."

He said:

"Will you leave your bedroom door unlocked, or won't you?"

She said:

"If that man would throw his handkerchief to me, I would follow him
round the world in my shift! . . . Look here . . . see me shake when I
think of it. . . ." She held out her hand at the end of her long arm:
hand and arm trembled together, minutely, then very much. . . . "Well,"
she finished, "if you see that and still want to come to my room . . .
your blood be on your own head. . . ." She paused for a breath or two
and then said:

"You can come. . . . I won't lock my door. . . . But I don't say that
you'll get anything . . . or that you'll like what you get . . . That's
a fair tip. . . ." She added suddenly: "You _sale fat_ . . . take what
you get and be damned to you! . . ."

Major Perowne had suddenly taken to twirling his moustaches; he said:

"Oh, I'll chance the A.P.M.'s. . . ."

She suddenly coiled her legs into her chair.

"I know now what I came here for," she said.


Major Wilfrid Fosbrooke Eddicker Perowne of Perowne, the son of his
mother, was one of those individuals who have no history, no strong
proclivities, nothing, his knowledge seemed to be bounded by the
contents of his newspaper for the immediate day; at any rate, his
conversation never went any farther. He was not bold, he was not shy: he
was neither markedly courageous nor markedly cowardly. His mother was
immoderately wealthy, owned an immense castle that hung over crags,
above a western sea, much as a birdcage hangs from a window of a high
tenement building, but she received few or no visitors, her cuisine
being indifferent and her wine atrocious. She had strong temperance
opinions and, immediately after the death of her husband, she had
emptied the contents of his cellar, which were almost as historic as his
castle, into the sea, a shudder going through county-family and no, or
almost no, characteristics. He had done England. But even this was not
enough to make Perowne himself notorious.

His mother allowed him--after an eyeopener in early youth--the income of
a junior royalty, but he did nothing with it. He lived in a great house
in Palace Gardens, Kensington, and he lived all alone with rather a
large staff of servants who had been selected by his mother, but they
did nothing at all, for he ate all his meals, and even took his bath and
dressed for dinner at the Bath Club. He was otherwise parsimonious.

He had, after the fashion of his day, passed a year or two in the army
when young. He had been first gazetted to His Majesty's Forty-second
Regiment, but on the Black Watch proceeding to India he had exchanged
into the Glamorganshires, at that time commanded by General Campion and
recruiting in and around Lincolnshire. The general had been an old
friend of Perowne's mother, and, on being promoted to brigadier, had
taken Perowne on to his staff as his galloper, for, although Perowne
rode rather indifferently, he had a certain social knowledge and could
be counted on to know how correctly to address a regimental invitation
to a dowager countess who had married a viscount's third son. . . . As a
military figure otherwise he had a very indifferent word of command, a
very poor drill and next to no control of his men, but he was popular
with his batmen, and in a rather stiff way was presentable in the old
scarlet uniform or the blue mess jacket. He was exactly six foot, to a
hairbreadth, in his stockings, had very dark eyes, and a rather grating
voice; the fact that his limbs were a shade too bulky for his trunk,
which was not at all corpulent, made him appear a little clumsy. If in a
club you asked what sort of a fellow he was your interlocutor would tell
you, most probably, that he had or was supposed to have warts on his
head, this to account for his hair which all his life he had combed
back, unparted from his forehead. But as a matter of fact he had no
warts on his head.

He had once started out on an expedition to shoot big game in Portuguese
East Africa. But on its arrival his expedition was met with the news
that the natives of the interior were in revolt, so Perowne had returned
to Kensington Palace Gardens. He had had several mild successes with
women, but, owing to his habits of economy and fear of imbroglios, until
the age of thirty-four, he had limited the field of his amours to young
women of the lower social orders. . . .

His affair with Sylvia Tietjens might have been something to boast
about, but he was not boastful, and indeed he had been too hard hit when
she had left him even to bear to account lyingly for the employment of
the time he had spent with her in Brittany. Fortunately no one took
sufficient interest in his movements to wait for his answer to their
indifferent questions as to where he had spent the summer. When his mind
reverted to her desertion of him moisture would come out of his eyes,
undemonstratively, as water leaves the surface of a sponge. . . .

Sylvia had left him by the simple expedient of stepping without so much
as a reticule on to the little French tramway that took you to the main
railway line. From there she had written to him in pencil on a closed
correspondence card that she had left him because she simply could not
bear either his dullness or his craking voice. She said they would
probably run up against each other in the course of the autumn season in
town and, after purchase of some night, things, had made straight for
the German spa to which her mother had retreated.

At the later date Sylvia had no difficulty in accounting to herself for
her having gone off with such an oaf: she had simply reacted in a
violent fit of sexual hatred, from her husband's mind. And she could not
have found a mind more utterly dissimilar than Perowne's in any decently
groomed man to be found in London. She could recall, even in the French
hotel lounge, years after, the almost painful emotion of joyful hatred
that had visited her when she had first thought of going off with him.
It was the self-applause of one who has just hit upon an excruciatingly
inspiring intellectual discovery. In her previous transitory
infidelities to Christopher she had discovered that, however presentable
the man with whom she might have been having an affair, and however
short the affair, even if it were only a matter of a week-end . . .
Christopher had spoilt her for the other man. It was the most damnable
of his qualities that to hear any other man talk of any subject--any,
any subject--from stable form to the balance of power, or from the voice
of a given opera singer to the recurrence of a comet--to have to pass a
week-end with any other man and hear his talk after having spent the
inside of the week with Christopher, hate his ideas how you might, was
the difference between listening to a grown man and, with an intense
boredom, trying to entertain an inarticulate schoolboy. As beside him,
other men simply did not seem ever to have grown up. . . .

Just before, with an extreme suddenness, consenting to go away with
Perowne, the illuminating idea had struck her: If I did go away with him
it would be the most humiliating thing I could do to Christopher. . . .
And just when the idea _had_ struck her, beside her chair in the
conservatory at a dance given by the general's sister, Lady Claudine
Sandbach, Perowne, his voice rendered more throaty and less disagreeable
than usual by emotion, had been going on and on begging her to elope
with him. . . . She had suddenly said:

"Very well . . . let's. . . ."

His emotion had been so unbridled in its astonishment that she had, even
at that, almost been inclined to treat her own speech as a joke and to
give up the revenge. . . . But the idea of the humiliation that
Christopher must feel proved too much for her. For, for your wife to
throw you over for an attractive man is naturally humiliating, but that
she should leave you publicly for a man of hardly any intelligence at
all, you priding yourself on your brains, must be nearly as mortifying a
thing as can happen to you.

But she had hardly set out upon her escapade before two very serious
defects in her plan occurred to her with extreme force: the one that,
however humiliated Christopher might feel she would not be with him to
witness his humiliation; the other that, oaf as she had taken Perowne to
be in casual society, in close daily relationship he was such an oaf as
to be almost insufferable. She had imagined that he would prove a person
out of whom it might be possible to make _something_ by a judicious course
of alternated mothering and scorn: she discovered that his mother had
already done for him almost all that woman could do. For, when he had
been an already rather backward boy at a private school, his mother had
kept him so extremely short of pocket-money that he had robbed other
boys' desks of a few shillings here and there--in order to subscribe
towards a birthday present for the head master's wife. His mother, to
give him a salutary lesson, had given so much publicity to the affair
that he had become afflicted with a permanent bent towards shyness that
rendered him by turns very mistrustful of himself or very boastful and,
although he repressed manifestations of either tendency towards the
outside world, the continual repression rendered him almost incapable of
any vigorous thought or action. . . .

That discovery did not soften Sylvia towards him: it was, as she
expressed it, _his_ funeral and, although she would have been ready for
any normal job of smartening up a roughish man, she was by no means
prepared to readjust other women's hopeless maternal misfits.

So she had got no farther than Ostend, where they had proposed to spend
a week or so at the tables, before she found herself explaining to some
acquaintances whom she met that she was in that gay city merely for an
hour or two, between trains, on the way to join her mother in a German
health resort. The impulse to say that had come upon her by surprise,
for, until that moment, being completely indifferent to criticism, she
had intended to cast no veil at all over her proceedings. But, quite
suddenly, on seeing some well-known English faces in the casino it had
come over her to think that, however much she imagined Christopher to be
humiliated by her going off with an oaf like Perowne, that humiliation
must be as nothing compared with that which she might be expected to
feel at having found no one better than an oaf like Perowne to go off
with. Moreover . . . she began to miss Christopher.

These feelings did not grow any less intense in the rather stuffy but
inconspicuous hotel in the Rue St. Roque in Paris to which she
immediately transported the bewildered but uncomplaining Perowne, who
had imagined that he was to be taken to Wiesbaden for a course of light
gaieties. And Paris, when you avoid the more conspicuous resorts, and
when you are unprovided with congenial companionship can prove nearly as
overwhelming as is, say, Birmingham on a Sunday.

So that Sylvia waited for only just long enough to convince herself that
her husband had no apparent intention of applying for an immediate
divorce and had, indeed, no apparent intention of doing anything at all.
She sent him, that is to say, a postcard saying that letters and other
communications would reach her at her inconspicuous hotel--and it
mortified her not a little to have to reveal the fact that her hotel was
so inconspicuous. But, except that her own correspondence was forwarded
to her with regularity, no communications at all came from Tietjens.

In an air-resort in the centre of France to which she next removed
Perowne, she found herself considering rather seriously what it might be
expected that Tietjens _would_ do. Through indirect and unsuspecting
allusions in letters from her personal friends she found that if
Tietjens did not put up, he certainly did not deny, the story that she
had gone to nurse or be with her mother, who was supposed to be
seriously ill. . . . That is to say, her friends said how rotten it was
that her mother, Mrs. Satterthwaite, should be so seriously ill; how
rotten it must be for her to be shut up in a potty little German kur-ort
when the world could be so otherwise amusing: and how well Christopher
whom they saw from time to time seemed to be getting on considering how
rotten it must be for him to be left all alone. . . .

At about this time Perowne began to become, if possible, more irritating
than ever. In their air-resort, although the guests were almost entirely
French, there was a newly opened golf-course, and at the game of golf
Perowne displayed an inefficiency and at the same time a morbid conceit
that were surprising in one naturally lymphatic. He would sulk for a
whole evening if either Sylvia or any Frenchman beat him in a round,
and, though Sylvia was by then completely indifferent to his sulking,
what was very much worse was that he became gloomily and loud-voicedly
quarrelsome over his games with foreign opponents.

Three events, falling within ten minutes of each other, made her
determined to get as far away from that air-resort as was feasible. In
the first place she observed at the end of the street some English
people called Thurston, whose faces she faintly knew, and the emotion
she suddenly felt let her know how extremely anxious she was that she
should let it remain feasible for Tietjens to take her back. Then, in
the golf club-house, to which she found herself fiercely hurrying in
order to pay her bill and get her clubs, she overheard the conversation
of two players that left no doubt in her mind that Perowne had been
detected in little meannesses of moving his ball at golf or juggling
with his score. . . . This was almost more than she could stand. And, at
the same moment, her mind, as it were, condescended to let her remember
Christopher's voice as it had once uttered the haughty opinion that no
man one could speak to would ever think of divorcing any woman. If he
could not defend the sanctity of his hearth he must lump it unless the
woman wanted to divorce him. . . .

At the time when he had said it her mind--she had been just then hating
him a good deal--had seemed to take no notice of the utterance. But now
that it presented itself forcibly to her again it brought with it the
thought: Supposing he wasn't really only talking through his hat!

. . . She dragged the wretched Perowne off his bed where he had been
lost in an after-lunch slumber and told him that they must both leave
that place at once, and, that as soon as they reached Paris or some
larger town where he could find waiters and people to understand his
French, she herself was going to leave him for good. They did not, in
consequence, get away from the air-resort until the six o'clock train
next morning. Perowne's passion of rage and despair at the news that she
wished to leave him took an inconvenient form, for instead of announcing
any intention of committing suicide, as might have been expected, he
became gloomily and fantastically murderous. He said that unless Sylvia
swore on a little relic of St. Anthony she carried that she had no
intention of leaving him he would incontinently kill her. He said, as he
said for the rest of his days, that she had ruined his life and caused
great moral deterioration in himself. But for her he might have married
some pure young thing. Moreover, influencing him against his mother's
doctrines, she had forced him to drink wine, by an effect of pure scorn.
Thus he had done harm, he was convinced, both to his health and to his
manly proportions. . . . It was indeed for Sylvia one of the most
unbearable things about this man--the way he took wine. With every glass
he put to his lips he would exclaim with an unbearable titter some such
imbecility as: Here is another nail in my coffin. And he had taken to
wine, and even to stronger liquor, very well.

Sylvia had refused to swear by St. Anthony. She definitely was not going
to introduce the saint into her amorous affairs, and she definitely was
not going to take on any relic an oath that she meant to break at an
early opportunity. There was such a thing as playing it too low down:
there are dishonours to which death is preferable. So, getting hold of
his revolver at a time when he was wringing his hands, she dropped it
into the water-jug and then felt reasonably safe.

Perowne knew no French and next to nothing about France, but he had
discovered that the French did nothing to you for killing a woman who
intended to leave you. Sylvia, on the other hand, was pretty certain
that, without a weapon, he could not do much to her. If she had had no
other training at her very expensive school she had had so much drilling
in calisthenics as to be singularly mistress of her limbs, and, in the
interests of her beauty she had always kept herself very fit. . . .

She said at last:

"Very well. We will go to Yssingueux-les-Pervenches. . . ."

A rather pleasant French couple in the hotel had spoken of this little
place in the extreme west of France as a lonely paradise, they having
spent their honeymoon there. . . . And Sylvia wanted a lonely paradise
if there was going to be any scrapping before she got away from
Perowne. . . .

She had no hesitation as to what she was going to do: the long journey
across half France by miserable trains had caused her an agony of
home-sickness! Nothing less! . . . It was a humiliating disease from
which to suffer. But it was unavoidable, like mumps. You had to put up
with it. Besides, she even found herself wanting to see her child, whom
she imagined herself to hate, as having been the cause of all her
misfortunes. . . .

She therefore prepared, after great thought, a letter telling Tietjens
that she intended to return to him. She made the letter as nearly as
possible like one she would write announcing her return from a country
house to which she should have been invited for an indefinite period,
and she added some rather hard instructions about her maid, these being
intended to remove from the letter any possible trace of emotion. She
was certain that, if she showed any emotion at all, Christopher would
never take her under his roof again. . . . She was pretty certain that
no gossip had been caused by her escapade. Major Thurston had been at
the railway station when they had left, but they had not spoken--and
Thurston was a very decentish, brown-moustached fellow, of the sort that
does not gossip.

It had proved a little difficult to get away, for Perowne during several
weeks watched her like an attendant in a lunatic asylum. But at last the
idea presented itself to him that she would never go without her frocks,
and, one day, in a fit of intense somnolence after a lunch, washed down
with rather a large quantity of the local and fiery cordial, he let her
take a walk alone. . . .


She was by that time tired of men . . . or she imagined that she was;
for she was not prepared to be certain, considering the muckers she saw
women coming all round her over the most unpresentable individuals. Men,
at any rate, never fulfilled expectations. They might, upon
acquaintance, turn out more entertaining than they appeared; but almost
always taking up with a man was like reading a book you had read when
you had forgotten that you had read it. You had not been for ten minutes
in any sort of intimacy with any man before you said: "But I've read all
this before. . . ." You knew the opening, you were already bored by the
middle, and, especially, you knew the end. . . .

She remembered, years ago, trying to shock her mother's spiritual
adviser, Father Consett, whom they had lately murdered in Ireland, along
with Casement. . . . The poor saint had not in the least been shocked.
He had gone her one better. For when she had said something like that
her idea of a divvy life--they used in those days to say divvy--would be
to go off with a different man every week-end, he had told her that
after a short time she would be bored already by the time the poor dear
fellow was buying the railway tickets. . . .

And, by heavens, he had been right. . . . For when she came to think of
it, from the day that poor saint had said that thing in her mother's
sitting-room in the little German spa--Lobscheid, it must have been
called--in the candle-light, his shadow denouncing her from all over the
walls, to now when she sat in the palmish wickerwork of that hotel that
had been new-whitely decorated to celebrate hostilities, never once had
she sat in a train with a man who had any right to look upon himself as
justified in mauling her about. . . . She wondered if, from where he sat
in heaven, Father Consett would be satisfied with her as he looked down
into that lounge. . . . Perhaps it was really he that had pulled off
that change in her. . . .

Never once till yesterday. . . . For perhaps the unfortunate Perowne
might just faintly have had the right yesterday to make himself for
about two minutes--before she froze him into a choking, pallid snowman
with goggle eyes--the perfectly loathsome thing that a man in a railway
train becomes. . . . Much too bold and yet stupidly awkward with the
fear of the guard looking in at the window, the train doing over sixty,
without corridors. . . . No, never again for _me_, father, she addressed
her voice towards the ceiling. . . .

Why in the world couldn't you get a man to go away with you and be
just--oh, light comedy--for a whole, a whole blessed week-end. For a
whole blessed life. . . Why not? . . . Think of it . . . A whole blessed
life with a man who was a good sort and yet didn't go all gurgly in the
voice, and cod-fish-eyed and all-overish--to the extent of not being
able to find the tickets when asked for them. . . . Father, dear, she
said again upwards, if I could find men like that, that would be just
heaven . . . where there is no marrying. . . . But, of course, she went
on almost resignedly, he would not be faithful to you. . . . And then:
one would have to stand it. . . .

She sat up so suddenly in her chair that beside her, too, Major Perowne
nearly jumped out of his wickerwork, and asked if _he_ had come back. . . .
She explained:

"No, I'd be damned if I would. . . . I'd be damned, I'd be damned, I'd
be damned if I would. . . . Never. Never. By the living God!"

She asked fiercely of the agitated major:

"Has Christopher got a girl in this town? . . . You'd better tell me the
truth!"

The major mumbled:

"He . . . No. . . . He's too much of a stick. . . . He never even goes
to Suzette's. . . . Except once to fetch out some miserable little squit
of a subaltern who was smashing up Mother Hardelot's furniture. . . ."

He grumbled:

"But you shouldn't give a man the jumps like that! . . . Be
conciliatory, you said. . . ." He went on to grumble that her manners
had not improved since she had been at Yssingueux-les-Pervenches, . . .
and then went on to tell her that in French the words _yeux des
pervenches_ meant eyes of periwinkle blue. And that was the only French
he knew, because a Frenchman he had met in the train had told him so and
he had always thought that if _her_ eyes had been periwinkle blue . . .
"But you're not listening. . . . Hardly polite, I call it," he had
mumbled to a conclusion. . . .

She was sitting forward in her chair still clenching her hand under her
chin at the thought that perhaps Christopher had Valentine Wannop in
that town. That was perhaps why he elected to remain there. She asked:

"Why does Christopher stay on in this God-forsaken hole? . . . The
inglorious base, they call it. . .

"Because he's jolly well got to. . . ." Major Perowne said. "He's got to
do what he's told. . . ."

She said: "Christopher! . . . You mean to say they'd keep a man like
_Christopher_ anywhere he didn't want to be . . ."

"They'd jolly well knock spots off him if he went away," Major Perowne
exclaimed. . . . "What the deuce do you think your blessed fellow is? . . .
The King of England? . . ." He added with a sudden sombre ferocity:
"They'd shoot him like anybody else if he bolted. . . . What do _you_
think?"

She said: "But all that wouldn't prevent his having a girl in this
town?"

"Well, he hasn't got one," Perowne said. "He sticks up in that blessed
old camp of his like a blessed she-chicken sitting on addled eggs. . . .
That's what they say of him. . . . I don't know anything about the
fellow. . . ."

Listening vindictively and indolently, she thought she caught in his
droning tones a touch of the homicidal lunacy that had used to underlie
his voice in the bedroom at Yssingueux. The fellow had undoubtedly about
him a touch of the dull, mad murderer of the police-courts. With a
sudden animation she thought:

"Suppose he tried to murder Christopher. . . ." And she imagined her
husband breaking the fellow's back across his knee, the idea going
across her mind as fire traverses the opal. Then, with a dry throat, she
said to herself:

"I've got to find out whether he has that girl in Rouen. . . ." Men stuck
together. The fellow Perowne might well be protecting Tietjens. It would
be unthinkable that any rules of the service could keep Christopher in
that place. They could not shut up the upper classes. If Perowne had any
sense he would know that to shield Tietjens was the way not to get
her. . . . But he had no sense. . . . Besides, sexual solidarity was a
terribly strong thing. . . . She knew that she herself would not give a
woman's secrets away in order to get her man. Then . . . how was she to
ascertain whether the girl was not in that town? How? . . . She imagined
Tietjens going home every night to her. . . . But he was going to spend
that night with herself. . . . She knew that. . . . Under that roof. . . .
Fresh from the other. . . .

She imagined him there, now. . . . In the parlour of one of the little
villas you see from the tram on the top of the town. . . . They were
undoubtedly, now, discussing her. . . . Her whole body writhed, muscle
on muscle, in her chair. . . . She must discover. . . . But how do you
discover? Against a universal conspiracy. . . . This whole war was an
agapemone. . . . You went to war when you desired to rape innumerable
women. . . . It was what war was for. . . . All these men, crowded in
this narrow space. . . . She stood up:

"I'm going," she said, "to put on a little powder for Lady Sachse's
feast. . . . You needn't stay if you don't want to. . . ." She was going
to watch every face she saw until it gave up the secret of where in that
town Christopher had the Wannop girl hidden. . . . She imagined her
freckled, snubnosed face pressed--squashed was the word--against his
cheek. . . . She was going to investigate. . . .




CHAPTER II


She found an early opportunity to carry on her investigations. For, at
dinner that night, she found herself, Tietjens having gone to the
telephone with a lance-corporal, opposite what she took to be a small
tradesman, with fresh-coloured cheeks, and a great, grey,
forward-sprouting moustache, in a uniform so creased that the creases
resembled the veins of a leaf. . . . A very trustworthy small tradesman:
the grocer from round the corner whom, sometimes, you allow to supply
you with paraffin. . . . He was saying to her:

"If, ma'am, you multiply two-thousand nine hundred and something by ten
you arrive at twenty-nine thousand odd. . . ."

And she had exclaimed:

"You really mean that my husband, Captain Tietjens, spent yesterday
afternoon in examining twenty-nine thousand toe-nails. . . . And two
thousand nine hundred toothbrushes. . . ."

"I told him," her interlocutor answered with deep seriousness, "that
these being Colonial troops it was not so necessary to examine their
toothbrushes. . . . Imperial troops _will_ use the brush they clean
their buttons with for their teeth so as to have a clean toothbrush to
show the medical officer. . . ."

"It sounds," she said with a little shudder, "as if you were all
schoolboys playing a game. . . . And you say my husband really occupies
his mind with such things. . . ."

Second-Lieutenant Cowley, dreadfully conscious that the shoulder-strap
of his Sam Browne belt, purchased that afternoon at the Ordnance, and
therefore brand-new, did not match the abdominal part of the belt that
he had had for nearly ten years--a splendid bit of leather,
that!--answered nevertheless stoutly:

"Madam! If the brains of an army aren't, the life of an army _is_ . . .
in its feet. . . . And nowadays, the medical officers say, in its
teeth. . . . Your husband, ma'am, is an admirable officer. . . . He says
that no draft he turns out shall. . . ."

She said:

"He spent three hours in . . . You say, foot and kit inspection. . . ."

Second-Lieutenant Cowley said:

"Of course he had other officers to help him with the kit . . . but he
looked at every foot himself. . . ."

She said:

"That took him from two till five. . . . Then he had tea, I suppose. . . .
And went to . . . What is it? . . . The papers of the draft. . . ."

Second-Lieutenant Cowley said, muffledly through his moustache:

"If the captain is a little remiss in writing letters . . . I _have_
heard. . . . You might, madam . . . I'm a married man myself . . . with
a daughter. . . . And the army is not very good at writing letters. . . .
You might say, in that respect, that thank God we have got a navy,
ma'am. . . ."

She let him stagger on for a sentence or two, imagining that, in his
confusion, she might come upon traces of Miss Wannop in Rouen. Then she
said handsomely:

"Of course you have explained everything, Mr. Cowley, and I am very much
obliged. . . . Of course my husband would not have time to write very
full letters. . . . He is not like the giddy young subalterns who run
after . . ."

He exclaimed in a great roar of laughter:

"The captain run after skirts. . . . Why, I can number on my hands the
times he's been out of my sight since he's had the battalion!"

A deep wave of depression went over Sylvia.

"Why," Lieutenant Cowley laughed on, "if we _had_ a laugh against him it
was that he mothered the lot of us as if he was a hen sitting on addled
eggs. . . . For it's only a rag-time army, as the saying is, when you've
said the best for it that you can. . . . And look at the other
commanding officers we've had before we had him. . . . There was Major
Brooks. . . . Never up before noon, if then, and out of camp by
two-thirty. Get your returns ready for signing before then or never get
'em signed. . . . And Colonel Potter . . . Bless my soul . . . 'e
wouldn't sign any blessed papers at all. . . . He lived down here in
this hotel, and we never saw him up at the camp at all. . . . But the
captain. . . . We always say that . . . if 'e was a Chelsea adjutant
getting off a draft of the Second Coldstreams. . . ."

With her indolent and gracious beauty--Sylvia knew that she was
displaying indolent and gracious beauty--Sylvia leaned over the
tablecloth listening for items in the terrible indictment that,
presently, she was going to bring against Tietjens. . . . For the morality
of these matters is this: . . . If you have an incomparably beautiful
woman on your hands you must occupy yourself solely with her. . . .
Nature exacts that of you . . . until you are unfaithful to her
with a snub-nosed girl with freckles: that, of course, being a reaction,
is still in a way occupying yourself with your woman! . . . But to
betray her with a battalion. . . . That is against decency, against
Nature. . . . And for him, Christopher Tietjens, to come down to the
level of the men you met here! . . .

Tietjens, mooning down the room between tables, had more than his
usually aloof air since he had just come out of a telephone box. He
slipped, a weary mass, into the polished chair between her and the
lieutenant. He said:

"I've got the washing arranged for . . ." and Sylvia gave to herself a
little hiss between the teeth, of vindictive pleasure! This was indeed
betrayal to a battalion. He added: "I shall have to be up in camp before
four-thirty to-morrow morning. . . ."

Sylvia could not resist saying:

"Isn't there a poem . . . _Ah me, the dawn, the dawn, it comes too
soon_! . . . said of course by lovers in bed? . . . Who was the poet?"

Cowley went visibly red to the roots of his hair and evidently beyond.
Tietjens finished his speech to Cowley, who had remonstrated against his
going up to the camp so early by saying that he had not been able to get
hold of an officer to march the draft. He then said in his leisurely
way:

"There were a great many poems with that refrain in the Middle Ages. . . .
You are probably thinking of an albade by Arnaut Daniel, which someone
translated lately. . . . An albade was a song to be sung at dawn when,
presumably, no one but lovers would be likely to sing. . . ."

"Will there," Sylvia asked, "be anyone but you singing up in your camp
to-morrow at four?"

She could not help it. . . . She knew that Tietjens had adopted his slow
pomposity in order to give the grotesque object at the table with them
time to recover from his confusion. She hated him for it. What right had
he to make himself appear a pompous ass in order to shield the confusion
of anybody?

The second-lieutenant came out of his confusion to exclaim, actually
slapping his thigh:

"There you are, madam. . . . Trust the captain to know everything! . . .
I don't believe there's a question under the sun you could ask him that
he couldn't answer. . . . They say up at the camp . . ." He went on with
long stories of all the questions Tietjens _had_ answered up at the
camp. . . .

Emotion was going all over Sylvia . . . at the proximity of Tietjens.
She said to herself: "Is this to go on for ever?" Her hands were ice-cold.
She touched the back of her left hand with the fingers of her right.
It _was_ ice-cold. She looked at her hands. They were bloodless. . . .
She said to herself: "It's pure sexual passion . . . it's pure
sexual passion . . . God! Can't I get over this?" She said: "Father! . . .
You used to be fond of Christopher. . . . _Get_ our Lady to get me over
this. . . . It's the ruin of him and the ruin of me. But, oh _damn_,
don't! . . . For it's all I have to live for. . . ." She said: "When he
came mooning back from the telephone I thought it was all right. . . . I
thought what a heavy wooden-horse he looked. . . . For two minutes. . . .
Then it's all over me again. . . . I want to swallow my saliva and I
can't. My throat won't work. . . ."

She leaned one of her white bare arms on the tablecloth towards the
walrus-moustache that was still snuffling gloriously:

"They used to call him Old Sol at school," she said. "But there's one
question of Solomon's he could not answer. . . . The one about the way
of a man with . . . Oh, a maid! . . . Ask him what happened before the
dawn ninety-six--no, ninety-eight days ago. . . ."

She said to herself: "I can't help it. . . . Oh, I _can't_ help it. . . ."

The ex-sergeant-major was exclaiming happily:

"Oh, no one ever said the captain was one of these thought-readers. . . .
It's real solid knowledge of men and things he has. . . . Wonderful
how he knows the men considering he was not born in the service. . . .
But there, your born gentleman mixes with men all his days and knows
them. Down to the ground and inside their puttees. . . ."

Tietjens was looking straight in front of him, his face perfectly
expressionless.

"But I bet I got him, . . ." she said to herself and then to the
sergeant-major:

"I suppose now an army officer--one of your born gentlemen--when
a back-from-leave train goes out from any of the great
stations--Paddington, say--to the front . . . He knows how all the men
are feeling. . . . But not what the married women think . . . or the . . .
the girl. . . ."

She said to herself: "Damn it, how clumsy I am getting! . . . I used to
be able to take his hide off with a word. Now I take sentences at a
time. . . ."

She went on with her uninterrupted sentence to Cowley:

"Of course he may never be going to see his only son again, so it makes
him sensitive. . . . The officer at Paddington, I mean. . . ."

She said to herself: "By God, if that beast does not give in to me
to-night he never _shall_ see Michael again. . . . Ah, but I got him. . . ."
Tietjens had his eyes closed, round each of his high-coloured
nostrils a crescent of whiteness was beginning. And increasing. . . .
She felt a sudden alarm and held the edge of the table with her extended
arm to steady herself. . . . Men went white at the nose like that when
they were going to faint. . . . She did not want him to faint. . . . But
he _had_ noticed the word Paddington. . . . Ninety-eight days before. . . .
She had counted every day since. . . . She had got that much
information. . . . She had said _Paddington_ outside the house at dawn
and he had taken it as a farewell. He _had_ . . . He had imagined himself
free to do what he liked with the girl. . . . Well, he wasn't. . . .
That was why he was white about the gills. . . .

Cowley exclaimed loudly:

"Paddington! . . . It isn't from there that back-from-leave trains go.
Not for the front: the B.E.F. . . . Not from Paddington. . . . The
Glamorganshires go from there to the depot. . . . And the Liverpools. . . .
They've got a depot at Birkenhead. . . . Or is that the Cheshires? . . ."
He asked of Tietjens: "Is it the Liverpools or the Cheshires that
have a depot at Birkenhead, sir? . . . You remember we recruited a draft
from there when we were at Penhally. ... At any rate, you go to
Birkenhead from Paddington. . . . I was never there myself. . . . They
say it's a nice place. . . ."

Sylvia said--she did not want to say it:

"It's quite a nice place . . . but I should not think of staying there
for ever. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"The Cheshires have a training camp--not a depot--near Birkenhead. And
of course there are R.G.A.'s there. . . ." She had been looking away
from him. . . . Cowley exclaimed:

"You were nearly off, sir," hilariously. "You had your peepers shut. . . ."
Lifting a champagne glass, he inclined himself towards her. "You must
excuse the captain, ma'am," he said. "He had no sleep last night. . . .
Largely owing to my fault. . . . Which is what makes it so kind of
him. . . . I tell you, ma'am, there are few things I would not do for the
captain. . . ." He drank his champagne and began an explanation: "You
may not know, ma'am, this is a great day for me. . . . And you and the
captain are making it the greatest day of my life. . . ." Why, at four
this morning there hadn't been a wretcheder man in Ruin town. . . . And
now . . . He must tell her that he suffered from an unfortunate--a
miserable--complaint. . . . One that makes one have to be careful of
celebrations. . . . And to-day was a day that he had to celebrate. . . .
But he dare not have done it where Sergeant-Major Ledoux is along with a
lot of their old mates. . . . "I dare not . . . I dussn't!" he
finished. . . . "So I might have been sitting, now, at this very moment,
up in the cold camp. . . . But for you and the captain. . . . Up in the
cold camp. . . . You'll excuse me, ma'am. . . ."

Sylvia felt that her lids were suddenly wavering:

"I might have been myself," she said, "in a cold camp, too . . . if I
hadn't thrown myself on the captain's mercy! . . . At Birkenhead, you
know. . . . I happened to be there till three weeks ago. . . . It's
strange that you mentioned it. . . . There _are_ things like signs . . .
but you're not a Catholic! They could hardly be coincidences. . . ."

She was trembling. . . . She looked, fumblingly opening it, into the
little mirror of her powder-box--of chased, very thin gold with a small
blue stone, like a forget-me-not in the centre of the concentric
engravings. . . . Drake--the possible father of Michael--had given it to
her. . . . The first thing he had ever given her. She had brought it down
to-night out of defiance. She imagined that Tietjens disliked it. . . .
She said breathlessly to herself: "Perhaps the damn thing is an ill
omen. . . ." Drake had been the first man who had ever . . . A
hot-breathed brute! . . . In the little glass her features were
chalk-white. . . . She looked like . . . she looked like . . . She had a
dress of golden tissue. . . . The breath was short between her white set
teeth. . . . Her face was as white as her teeth. . . . And . . . Yes!
Nearly! Her lips. . . . What was her face like? . . . In the chapel of
the convent of Birkenhead there was a tomb all of alabaster. . . . She
said to herself:

"He was near fainting. . . . I'm near fainting. . . . What's this
beastly thing that's between us? . . . If I let myself faint. . . . But
it would not make that beast's face any less wooden! . . ."

She leaned across the table and patted the ex-sergeant-major's
black-haired hand:

"I'm sure," she said, "you're a very good man. . . ." She did not try to
keep the tears out of her eyes, remembering his words: "Up in the cold
camp," . . . "I'm glad the captain, as you call him, did not leave you
in the cold camp. . . . You're devoted to him, aren't you? . . . There
are others he does leave . . . up in . . . the cold camp. . . . For
punishment, you know. . . ."

The ex-sergeant-major, the tears in his eyes too, said:

"Well, there _is_ men you 'as to give the C.B. to. . . . C.B. means
confined to barracks. . . ."

"Oh, there are!" she exclaimed. "There are! . . . And women, too. . . .
Surely there are women, too? . . ."

The sergeant-major said:

"Wacks, per'aps. . . . I don't know. . . . They say women's discipline
is much like ours. . . . Founded on hours!"

She said:

"Do you know what they used to say of the captain? . . ." She said to
herself: "I pray to God the stiff, fatuous beast likes sitting here
listening to this stuff. . . . Blessed Virgin, mother of God, make him
take me. . . . Before midnight. Before eleven. ... As soon as we get rid
of this . . . No, he's a decent little man. . . . Blessed Virgin!" . . .
"Do you know what they used to say of the captain? ... I heard the
warmest banker in England say it of him. . . ."

The sergeant-major, his eyes enormously opened, said:

"Did you know the warmest banker in England? . . . But there, we always
knew the captain was well connected. . . ." She went on:

"They said of him. . . . He was always helping people." . . . "Holy
Mary, mother of God! . . . He's my _husband_. . . . It's not a sin. . . .
Before midnight . . . Oh, give me a sign. . . . Or before . . . the
termination of hostilities. . . . If you give me a sign I could
wait." . . . "He helped virtuous Scotch students, and broken-down
gentry. . . . And women taken in adultery. . . . All of them. . . .
Like . . . You know Who. . . . That is his model. . . ." She said to
herself: "Curse him! . . . I hope he likes it. . . . You'd think the only
thing he thinks about is the beastly duck he's wolfing down." . . . And
then aloud: "They used to say: 'He saved others; himself he could not
save. . . .'"

The ex-sergeant-major looked at her gravely:

"Ma'am," he said, "we couldn't say exactly that of the captain. . . .
For I fancy it was said of our Redeemer. . . . But we _'ave_ said that
if ever there was a poor bloke the captain could 'elp, 'elp 'im 'e
would. . . . Yet the unit was always getting 'ellish strafe from
headquarters. . . ."

Suddenly Sylvia began to laugh. . . . As she began to laugh she had
remembered . . . The alabaster image in the nun's chapel at Birkenhead
the vision of which had just presented itself to her, had been the
recumbent tomb of an honourable Mrs. Tremayne-Warlock. . . . She was
said to have sinned in her youth . . . And her husband had never
forgiven her. . . . That was what the nuns said. . . . She said aloud:

"A sign. . . ." Then to herself: "Blessed Mary! . . . You've given it me
in the neck. . . . Yet you could not name a father for your child, and I
can name two'. . . . I'm going mad. . . . Both I and he are going to go
mad. . . ."

She thought of dashing an enormous patch of red upon either cheek. Then
she thought it would be rather melodramatic. . . .


She made in the smoking-room, whilst she was waiting for both Tietjens
and Cowley to come back from the telephone, another pact. . . . This
time with Father Consett in heaven! She was fairly sure that Father
Consett--and quite possibly other of the heavenly powers--wanted
Christopher not to be worried, so that he could get on with the war--or
because he was a good sort of dullish man such as the heavenly
authorities are apt to like. . . . Something like that. . . .

She was by that time fairly calm again. You cannot keep up fits of
emotion by the hour: at any rate, with her, the fits of emotion were
periodical and unexpected, though her colder passion remained always the
same. . . . Thus, when Christopher had come into Lady Sachse's that
afternoon, she had been perfectly calm. He had mooned through a number
of officers, both French and English, in a great octagonal, bluish salon
where Lady Sachse gave her teas, and had come to her side with just a
nod--the merest inflexion of the head! . . . Perowne had melted away
somewhere behind the disagreeable duchess. The general, very splendid
and white-headed and scarlet-tipped and gilt, had also borne down upon
her at that. . . . At the sight of Perowne with her he had been sniffing
and snorting whilst he talked to the young nobleman--a dark fellow in
blue with a new belt who seemed just a shade too theatrical, he being
chauffeur to a marshal of France and first cousin and nearest relative,
except for parents and grandparents, of the prospective bride. . . .

The general had told her that he was running the show pretty strong on
purpose because he thought it might do something to cement the Entente
Cordiale. But it did not seem to be doing it. The French--officers,
soldiers and women--kept pretty well all on the one side of the
room--the English on the other. The French were as a rule more gloomy
than men and women are expected to be. A marquis of sorts--she
understood that these were all Bonapartist nobility--having been
introduced to her had distinguished himself no more than by saying that,
for his part, he thought the duchess was right, and by saying that to
Perowne who, knowing no French, had choked exactly as if his tongue had
suddenly got too big for his mouth. . . .

She had not heard what the duchess--a very disagreeable duchess who sat
on a sofa and appeared savagely careworn--had been saying, so that she
had inclined herself, in the courtly manner that at school she had been
taught to reserve for the French legitimist nobility, but that she
thought she might expend upon a rather state function even for the
Bonapartists, and had replied that without the least doubt the duchess
had the right of the matter. . . . The marquis had given her from dark
eyes one long glance, and she had returned it with a long cold glance
that certainly told him she was meat for his masters. It extinguished
him. . . .

Tietjens had staged his meeting with herself remarkably well. It was the
sort of lymphatic thing he _could_ do, so that, for the fifth of a
minute, she wondered if he had any feelings or emotions at all. But she
knew that he had. . . . The general, at any rate, bearing down upon them
with satisfaction, had remarked:

"Ah, I see you've seen each other before to-day. . . . I thought perhaps
you wouldn't have found time before, Tietjens. . . . Your draft must be
a great nuisance. . . ."

Tietjens said without expression:

"Yes, we have seen each other before. . . . I made time to call at
Sylvia's hotel, sir."

It was at Tietjens' terrifying expressionlessness, at that completely
being up to a situation, that the first wave of emotion had come over
her. . . . For, till that very moment, she had been merely sardonically
making the constatation that there was not a single presentable man in the
room. . . . There was not even one that you could call a gentleman . . .
for you cannot size up the French . . . ever! . . . But, suddenly,
she was despairing! . . . How, she said to herself, could she ever move,
put emotion into, this lump! It was like trying to move an immense
mattress filled with feathers. You pulled at one end, but the whole mass
sagged down and remained immobile until you seemed to have no strength
at all. . . . Until virtue went out from you. . . .

It was as if he had the evil eye: or some special protector. He was so
appallingly competent, so appallingly always in the centre of his own
picture:

The general said, rather joyfully:

"Then you can spare a minute, Tietjens, to talk to the duchess! About
coal! . . . For goodness' sake, man, save the situation! I'm worn
out. . . ."

Sylvia bit the inside of her lower lip--she never bit her lip
itself!--to keep herself from exclaiming aloud. It was just exactly what
should not happen to Tietjens at that juncture. . . . She heard the
general explaining to her in his courtly manner, that the duchess was
holding up the whole ceremony because of the price of coal. The general
loved her desperately. Her, Sylvia! In quite a proper manner for an
elderly general. . . . But he would go to no small extremes in her
interests! So would his sister!

She looked hard at the room to get her senses into order again. She
said:

"It's like a Hogarth picture. . . ."

The undissolvable air of the eighteenth century that the French contrive
to retain in all their effects kept the scene singularly together. On a
sofa sat the duchess, relatives leaning over her. She was a duchess with
one of those impossible names: Beauchain-Radigutz or something like it.
The bluish room was octagonal and vaulted, up to a rosette in the centre
of the ceiling. English officers and V.A.D.'s of some evident presence
opened out to the left, French military and very black-clothed women of
all ages, but all apparently widows, opened out to the right, as if the
duchess shone down a sea at sunset. Beside her on the sofa you did not
see Lady Sachse; leaning over her you did not see the prospective bride.
This stoutish, unpresentable, coldly venomous woman, in black clothes so
shabby that they might have been grey tweed, extinguished other
personalities as the sun conceals planets. A fattish, brilliantined
personality, in mufti, with a scarlet rosette, stood sideways to the
duchess's right, his hands extended forward as if in an invitation to a
dance; an extremely squat lady, also apparently a widow, extended, on
the left of the duchess, both her black-gloved hands, as if she too were
giving an invitation to the dance. . . .

The general, with Sylvia beside him, stood glorious in the centre of the
clearing that led to the open doorway of a much smaller room. Through
the doorway you could see a table with a white damask cloth; a
silver-gilt inkpot, fretted, like a porcupine with pens, a fat, flat
leather case for the transportation of documents and two notaires: one
in black, fat, and bald-headed; one in blue uniform, with a shining
monocle, and a brown moustache that he continued to twirl. . . .

Looking round that scene Sylvia's humour calmed her and she heard the
general say:

"She's supposed to walk on my arm to that table and sign the
settlement. . . . We're supposed to be the first to sign it together. . . .
But she won't. Because of the price of coal. It appears that she has
hothouses in miles. And she thinks the English have put up the price of
coal as if . . . damn it you'd think we did it just to keep her hothouse
stoves out."

The duchess had delivered, apparently, a vindictive, cold, calm and
uninterruptible oration on the wickedness of her country's allies as
people who should have allowed France to be devastated, and the flower
of her youth slain in order that they might put up the price of a
comestible that was absolutely needed in her life. There was no arguing
with her. There was no British soul there who both knew anything about
economics and spoke French. And there she sat, apparently immovable. She
did not refuse to sign the marriage contract. She just made no motion to
go to it and, apparently, the resulting marriage would be illegal if
that document were brought to her! . . .

The general said:

"Now, what the deuce will Christopher find to say to her? He'll find
something because he could talk the hind legs off anything. But what the
deuce will it be? . . ."

It almost broke Sylvia's heart to see how exactly Christopher did the
right thing. He walked up that path to the sun and made in front of the
duchess a little awkward nick with his head and shoulders that was
rather more like a curtsy than a bow. It appeared that he knew the
duchess quite well . . . as he knew everybody in the world quite well.
He smiled at her and then became just suitably grave. Then he began to
speak an admirable, very old-fashioned French with an atrocious English
accent Sylvia had no idea that he knew a word of the language--that she
herself knew very well indeed. She said to herself that upon her word it
was like hearing Chateaubriand talk--if Chateaubriand had been brought
up in an English hunting country. . . . Of course Christopher _would_
cultivate an English accent: to show that he was an English county
gentleman. And he would speak correctly--to show that an English Tory
can do anything in the world if he wants to. . . .

The British faces in the room looked blank: the French faces turned
electrically upon him. Sylvia said:

"Who would have thought . . .?" The duchess jumped to her feet and took
Christopher's arm. She sailed with him imperiously past the general and
past Sylvia. She was saying that was just what she would have
expected of a _milor Anglais_ . . . _Avec un spleen tel que vous
l'avez_!

Christopher, in short, had told the duchess that as his family owned
almost the largest stretch of hot-house coal-burning land in England and
her family the largest stretch of hothouses in the sister-country of
France, what could they do better than make an alliance? He would
instruct his brother's manager to see that the duchess was supplied for
the duration of hostilities and as long after as she pleased with all
the coal needed for her glass at the pit-head prices of the
Middlesbrough-Cleveland district as the prices were on the 3rd of
August, nineteen fourteen. . . . He repeated: "The pit-head price . . .
_livrable au prix de l'houille-maigre dans l'enceinte des puits de ma
campagne_." . . . Much to the satisfaction of the duchess, who knew all
about prices.

. . . A triumph for Christopher was at that moment so exactly what
Sylvia thought she did not want that, she decided to tell the general
that Christopher was a Socialist. That might well take him down a peg or
two in the general's esteem . . . for the general's arm-patting
admiration for Tietjens, the man who did not argue but acted over the
price of coal, was as much as she could bear. . . . But, thinking it
over in the smoking-room after dinner, by which time she was a good deal
more aware of what she did want, she was not so certain that she _had_
done what she wanted. . . . Indeed, even in the octagonal room during
the economical festivities that followed the signatures, she had been
far from certain that she had not done almost, exactly what she did not
want. . . .

It had begun with the general's exclaiming to her:

"You know your man's the most unaccountable fellow. . . . He wears the
damn-shabbiest uniform of any officer I ever have to talk to. He's said
to be unholily hard up. . . . I even heard he had a cheque sent back to
the club. . . . Then he goes and makes a princely gift like that--just
to get Levin out of ten minutes' awkwardness. . . . I wish to goodness I
could understand the fellow. . . . He's got a positive genius for
getting all sorts of things out of the most beastly muddles. . . . Why
he's even been useful to me. . . . And then he's got a positive genius
for getting into the most disgusting messes. . . . You're too young to
have heard of Dreyfus. . . . But I always say that Christopher is a
regular Dreyfus. . . . I shouldn't be astonished if he didn't end by
being drummed out of the army . . . which heaven forfend!"

It had been then that Sylvia had said:

"Hasn't it ever occurred to you that Christopher was a Socialist?"

For the first time in her life Sylvia saw her husband's godfather look
grotesque. . . . His jaw dropped down, his white hair became disarrayed
and he dropped his pretty cap with all the gold oakleaves and the
scarlet. When he rose from picking it up his thin old face was purple
and distorted. She wished she hadn't said it: she wished she hadn't said
it. He exclaimed:

"Christopher! . . . A So . . ." He gasped as if he could not pronounce
the word. He said: "Damn it all! . . . I've loved that boy. . . . He's
my only godson. . . . His father was my best friend. . . . I've watched
over him. . . . I'd have married his mother if she would have had me. . . .
Damn it all, he's down in my will as residuary legatee after a few
small things left to my sister and my collection of horns to the
regiment I commanded. . . ."

Sylvia--they were sitting on the sofa the duchess had left--patted him
on the forearm and said:

"But general . . . godfather. . . ."

"It explains everything," he said with a mortification that was painful.
His white moustache drooped and trembled. "And what makes it all the
worse--he's never had the courage to tell me his opinions." He stopped,
snorted and exclaimed: "By God, I _will_ have him drummed out of the
service. . . . By God, I will. I can do that much. . . ."

His grief so shut him in on himself that she could say nothing to
him. . . .

"You tell me he seduced the little Wannop girl. . . . The last person in
the world he should have seduced. . . . Ain't there millions of other
women? . . . He got you sold up, didn't he? . . . Along with keeping a
girl in a tobacco-shop. . . . By jove, I almost lent him . . . offered
to lend him money on that occasion. . . . You can forgive a young man
for going wrong with women. . . . We all do. . . . We've all set up
girls in tobacco-shops in our time. . . . But, damn it all, if the
fellow's a Socialist it puts a different complexion. . . . I could
forgive him even for the little Wannop girl, if he wasn't . . . But . . .
Good God, isn't it just the thing that a dirty-minded Socialist would
do? . . . To seduce the daughter of his father's oldest friend, next to
me. . . . Or perhaps Wannop was an older friend than me. . . ."

He had calmed himself a little--and he was not such a fool. He looked at
her now with a certain keenness in his blue eyes that showed no sign of
age. He said:

"See here, Sylvia. . . . You aren't on terms with Christopher for all
the good game you put up here this afternoon. . . . I shall have to go
into this. It's a serious charge to bring against one of His Majesty's
officers. . . . Women do say things against their husbands when they are
not on good terms with them. . . ." He went on to say that he did not
say she wasn't justified. If Christopher had seduced the little Wannop
girl it was enough to make her wish to harm him. He had always found her
the soul of honour, straight as a die, straight as she rode to hounds.
And if she wished to nag against her husband, even if in little things
it wasn't quite the truth, she was perhaps within her rights as a woman.
She had said, for instance, that Tietjens had taken two pair of her best
sheets. Well, his own sister, her friend, raised Cain if he took
anything out of the house they lived in. She had made an atrocious row
because he had taken his own shaving-glass out of his own bedroom at
Mountsby. Women liked to have sets of things. Perhaps, she, Sylvia had
sets of pairs of sheets. His sister had linen sheets with the date of
the battle of Waterloo on them. . . . Naturally you would not want a set
spoiled. . . . But this was another matter. He ended up very seriously:

"I have not got time to go into this now. . . . I ought not to be
another minute away from my office. These are very serious days. . . ."
He broke off to utter against the Prime Minister and the Cabinet at home
a series of violent imprecations. He went on:

"But this will have to be gone into. . . . It's heartbreaking that my
time should be taken up by matters like this in my own family. . . . But
these fellows aim at sapping the heart of the army. . . . They say they
distribute thousands of pamphlets recommending the rank and file to
shoot their officers and go over to the Germans. . . . Do you seriously
mean that Christopher belongs to an organization? What is it you are
going on? What evidence have you? . . ."

She said:

"Only that he is heir to one of the biggest fortunes in England, for a
commoner, and he refuses to touch a penny. . . . His brother Mark tells
me Christopher could have . . . Oh, a fabulous sum a year. . . . But he
has made over Groby to me. . . ."

The general nodded his head as if he were ticking off ideas.

"Of course, refusing property is a sign of being one of these fellows.
By Jove, I must go. . . . But as for his not going to live at Groby: If
he is setting up house with Miss Wannop. . . . Well, he could not flaunt
her in the face of the county. . . . And, of course, those sheets! . . .
As you put it looked as if he'd beggared himself with his
dissipations. . . . But of course, if he is refusing money from Mark,
it's another matter. . . . Mark would make up a couple of hundred dozen
pairs of sheets without turning a hair. . . . Of course there are the
extraordinary things Christopher says. . . . I've often heard you
complain of the immoral way he looks at the serious affairs of life. . . .
You said he once talked of lethal-chambering unfit children."

He exclaimed:

"I must go. There's Thurston looking at me. . . . But what then is it
that Christopher has said? . . . Hang it all: what _is_ at the bottom of
that fellow's mind? . . ."

"He desires," Sylvia said, and she had no idea when she said it, "to
model himself upon our Lord. . . ."

The general leant back in the sofa. He said almost indulgently:

"Who's that . . . our _Lord_?"

Sylvia said:

"Upon our Lord Jesus Christ. . . ."

He sprang to his feet as if she had stabbed him with a hatpin.

"Our . . ." he exclaimed. "Good God! . . . I always knew he had a screw
loose. . . . But . . ." He said briskly: "Give all his goods to the
poor! . . . But He wasn't a . . . Not a Socialist! What was it He said:
Render under Cæsar . . . It wouldn't be necessary to drum Him out of
the army . . ." He said: "Good Lord! . . . Good Lord! . . . Of course
his poor dear mother was a little . . . But, hang it! . . . The Wannop
girl! . . ." Extreme discomfort overcame him. . . . Tietjens was
half-way across from the inner room, coming towards them.

He said:

"Major Thurston is looking for you, sir. Very urgently. . . ." The
general regarded him as if he had been the unicorn of the royal arms,
come alive. He exclaimed:

"Major Thurston! . . . Yes! Yes! . . ." and, Tietjens saying to him:

"I wanted to ask you, sir . . ." He pushed Tietjens away as if he
dreaded an assault and went off with short, agitated steps.


So sitting there, in the smoking-lounge of the hotel which was cram-jam
full of officers, and no doubt perfectly respectable, but over-giggling
women--the sort of place and environment which she had certainly never
expected to be called upon to sit in; and waiting for the return of
Tietjens and the ex-sergeant-major--who again was certainly not the sort
of person that she had ever expected to be asked to wait for, though for
long years she had put up with Tietjens' protégé, the odious Sir
Vincent Macmaster, at all sorts of meals and all sorts of places . . .
but of course that was only Christopher's rights . . . to have in his
own house, which, in the circumstances, wasn't morally hers, any
snuffling, nervous, walrus-moustached or orientally obsequious protégé
that he chose to patronize. . . . And she quite believed that Tietjens,
when he had invited the sergeant-major to celebrate his commission with
himself at dinner, hadn't expected to dine with her. . . . It was the
sort of obtuseness of which he was disconcertingly capable, though at
other times he was much more disconcertingly capable of reading your
thoughts to the last hairsbreadth. . . . And, as a matter of fact, she
objected much less to dining with the absolute lower classes than with
merely snuffly little official critics like Macmaster, and the
sergeant-major had served her turn very well when it had come to flaying
the hide off Christopher. . . . So, sitting there, she made a new pact,
this time with Father Consett in heaven. . . .

Father Consett was very much in her mind, for she was very much in the
midst of the British military authorities who had hung him. . . . She
had never seemed before to be so in the midst of these negligible,
odious, unpresentable, horse-laughing schoolboys. It antagonized her,
and it was a weight upon her, for hitherto she had completely ignored
them: in this place they seemed to have a coherence, a mass . . . almost
a life. . . . They rushed in and out of rooms occupied, as
incomprehensibly, as unpresentably, with things like boots, washing,
vaccination certificates. . . . Even with old tins! . . . A man with
prematurely white hair and a pasty face, with a tunic that bulged both
above and below his belt, would walk into the drawing-room of a lady who
superintended all the acid-drop and cigarette stalls of that city and
remark to a thin-haired, deaf man with an amazingly red nose--a nose
that had a perfectly definite purple and scarlet diagonal demarcation
running from the bridge to the upper side of the nostrils--that he had
got his old tins off his hands at last. He would have to repeat it in a
shout because the red-nosed man, his head hanging down, would have heard
nothing at all. The deaf man would say Humph! Humph! Snuffle. The woman
giving the tea--a Mrs. Hemmerdine, of Tarbolton, whom you might have met
at home, would be saying that at last she had got twelve reams of
notepaper with forget-me-nots in the top corners when the deaf-faced man
would begin, gruffly and uninterruptedly, a monologue on his urgent need
for twenty thousand tons of sawdust for the new slow-burning stoves in
the men's huts. . . .

It was undeniably like something moving. . . . All these things going in
one direction. . . . A disagreeable force set in motion by gawky
schoolboys--but schoolboys of the Sixth Form, sinister, hobbledehoy,
waiting in the corners of playgrounds to torture someone, weak and
unfortunate. . . . In one or other corner of their world-wide playground
they had come upon Father Consett and hanged him. No doubt they tortured
him first. And, if he made an offering of his sufferings, then and there
to Heaven, no doubt he was already in paradise. . . . Or, if he was not
yet in heaven, certain of the souls in purgatory were yet listened to in
the midst of their torments. . . .

So she said:

"Blessed and martyred father, I know that you loved Christopher and wish
to save him from trouble I will make this pact with you. Since I have
been in this room I have kept my eyes in the boat--almost in my lap. I
will agree to leave off torturing Christopher and I will go into retreat
in a convent of Ursuline Dames Nobles--for I can't stand the nuns of
that other convent--for the rest of my life. . . . And I know that will
please you, too, for you were always anxious for the good of my soul. . .
She was going to do that if when she raised her eyes and really looked
round the room she saw in it one man that looked presentable. She did
not ask that he should more than look presentable, for she wanted
nothing to do with the creature. He was to be a sign: not a prey!

She explained to the dead priest that she could not go all the world
over to see if it contained a presentable man, but she could not bear to
be in a convent for ever, and have the thought that there wasn't, for
other women, one presentable man in the world. . . . For Christopher
would be no good to them. He would be mooning for ever over the Wannop
girl. Or her memory. That was all one . . . He was content with love. . . .
If he knew that the Wannop girl was loving him in Bedford Park, and
he in the Khyber States with the Himalayas between them, he would be
quite content. . . . That would be correct in its way, but not very
helpful for other women. . . . Besides, if he were the only presentable
man in the world, half the women would be in love with him. . . . And
that would be disastrous, because he was no more responsive than a
bullock in a fatting pen.

"So, father," she said, "work a miracle. . . . It's not very much of a
little miracle. . . . Even if a presentable man doesn't exist you could
put him there. . . . I'll give you ten minutes before I look. . . ."

She thought it was pretty sporting of her, for, she said to herself, she
was perfectly in earnest. If in that long, dim, green-lamp-shaded, and
of course be-palm-leaved, badly-proportioned, glazed, ignoble public
room, there appeared one decentish man, as decentish men went before
this beanfeast began, she would go into retreat for the rest of her
life. . . .

She fell into a sort of dim trance after she had looked at her watch.
Often she went into these dim trances . . . ever since she had been a
girl at school with Father Consett for her spiritual adviser! . . . She
seemed to be aware of the father moving about the room, lifting up a
book and putting it down. . . . Her ghostly friend! . . . Goodness, he
was unpresentable enough, with his broad, open face that always looked
dirtyish, his great dark eyes, and his great mouth. . . . But a saint
and a martyr. . . . She felt him there. . . . What had they murdered him
for? Hung at the word of a half-mad, half-drunk subaltern, because he
had heard the confession of some of the rebels the night before they
were taken. . . . He was over in the far corner of the room. . . . She
heard him say: they had not understood, the men that had hanged him.
That is what you would say, father . . . Have mercy on them, for they
know not what they do. . . .

Then have mercy on me, for half the time I don't know what I'm doing! . . .
It was like a spell you put on me. At Lobscheid. Where my mother
was, when I came back from that place without my clothes. . . . You
said, didn't you, to mother, but she told me afterwards: The real hell
for that poor boy, meaning Christopher, will come when he falls in love
with some young girl--as, mark me, he will. . . . For she, meaning me,
will tear the world down to get at him. . . . And when mother said she
was certain I would never do anything vulgar you obstinately did not
agree. . . . You knew me. . . .

She tried to rouse herself and said: He _knew_ me. . . . Damn it, he
knew me! . . . What's vulgarity to me, Sylvia Tietjens, born
Satterthwaite? I do what I want and that's good enough for any one.
Except a priest. Vulgarity! I wonder mother could be so obtuse. If I am
vulgar I'm vulgar with a purpose. Then it's not vulgarity. It may be
vice. Or viciousness. . . . But if you commit a mortal sin with your
eyes open it's not vulgarity. . . . You chance hell fire for ever. . . .
Good enough!

The weariness sank over her again and the sense of the father's
presence. . . . She was back again in Lobscheid, thirty-six hours free
of Perowne with the father and her mother in the dim sitting-room, all
antlers, candle-lit, with the father's shadow waving over the pitchpine
walls and ceilings. . . . It was a bewitched place, in the deep forests
of Germany. The father himself said it was the last place in Europe to
be Christianized. Or perhaps it was never Christianized. . . . That was
perhaps why those people, the Germans, coming from those deep,
devil-infested woods, did all these wickednesses. Or maybe they were not
wicked. . . . One would never know properly. . . . But maybe the father
had put a spell on her. . . . His words had never been out of her mind,
much. ... At the back of her brain, as the saying was. . . .

Some man drifted near her and said:

"How do you do, Mrs. Tietjens? Who would have thought of seeing you
here?"

She answered:

"I have to look after Christopher now and then." He remained hanging
over her with a schoolboy grin for a minute, then he drifted away as an
object sinks into deep water. . . . Father Consett again hovered near
her. She exclaimed:

"But the real point is, father. . . . Is it sporting? . . . Sporting or
whatever it is?" And Father Consett breathed: "Ah! . . ." with his
terrible power of arousing doubts. . . . She said:

"When I saw Christopher . . . Last night? . . . Yes, it _was_ last
night . . . Turning back to go up that hill. . . . And I had been talking
about him to a lot of grinning private soldiers. . . . To _madden_
him. . . . You _mustn't_ make scenes before the servants. . . . A heavy
man, tired . . . come down the hill and lumbering up again. . . . There was
a searchlight turned on him just as he turned. . . . I remembered the
white bulldog I thrashed on the night before it died. . . . A tired,
silent beast . . . with a fat white behind. . . . Tired out. . . . You
couldn't see its tail because it was turned down, the stump. . . . A
great, silent beast. . . . The vet said it had been poisoned with red
lead by burglars. . . . It's beastly to die of red lead. ... It eats up
the liver. . . . And you think you're getting better for a fortnight.
And you're always cold . . . freezing in the blood-vessels. . . . And
the poor beast had left its kennel to try and be let into the fire. . . .
And I found it at the door when I came in from a dance without
Christopher. . . . And got the rhinoceros whip and lashed into it. . . .
There's a pleasure in lashing into a naked white beast. . . . Obese and
silent . . . Like Christopher. . . . I thought Christopher might. . . .
That night. . . . It went through my head. . . . It hung down its
head. . . . A great head, room for a whole British encyclopædia of
misinformation, as Christopher used to put it. . . . It said: 'What a
hope!' ... As I hope to be saved, though I never shall be, the dog said:
'What a hope!' . . . Snow-white in quite black bushes. . . . And it went
under a bush. . . . They found it dead there in the morning. . . . You
can't imagine what it looked like, with its head over its shoulder, as
it looked back and said: What a hope! to me. . . . Under a dark bush. An
eu . . . eu . . . euonymus, isn't it? . . . In thirty degrees of frost
with all the blood-vessels exposed on the naked surface of the skin. . . .
It's the seventh circle of hell, isn't it? the frozen one . . . The
last stud-white bulldog of that breed. . . . As Christopher is the last
stud-white hope of the Groby Tory breed. . . . Modelling himself on our
Lord. . . . But our Lord was never married. He never touched on topics
of sex. Good for Him. . . ."

She said: "The ten minutes is up, father . . ." and looked at the round,
starred surface between the diamonds of her wrist watch. She said: "Good
God! . . . Only one minute. . . . I've thought all that in only one
minute. . . . I understand how hell can be an eternity. . . ."

Christopher, very weary, and ex-Sergeant-Major Cowley, very talkative by
now, loomed down between palms. Cowley was saying: "It's infamous! . . .
It's past bearing. . . . To re-order the draft at eleven. . . ." They
sank into chairs. . . . Sylvia extended towards Tietjens a small packet
of letters. She said: "You had better look at these. . . . I had your
letters sent to me from the flat as there was so much uncertainty about
your movements. . . ." She found that she did not dare, under Father
Consett's eyes, to look at Tietjens as she said that. She said to
Cowley: "We might be quiet for a minute or two while the captain reads
his letters. . . . Have another liqueur? . . ."

She then observed that Tietjens just bent open the top of the letter
from Mrs. Wannop and then opened that from his brother Mark:

"Curse it," she said, "I've given him what he wants! . . . He knows. . . .
He's seen the address . . . that they're still in Bedford Park. . . .
He can think of the Wannop girl as there. . . . He has not been able to
know, till now, where she is. . . . He'll be imagining himself in bed
with her there. . . ."

Father Consett, his broad, unmodelled dark face full of intelligence and
with the blissful unction of the saint and martyr, was leaning over
Tietjens' shoulder. . . . He must be breathing down Christopher's back
as, her mother said, he always did when she held a hand at auction and
he could not play because it was between midnight and his celebrating
the holy mass. . . .

She said:

"No, I am not going mad. . . . This is an effect of fatigue on the
optic nerves. . . . Christopher has explained that to me . . . He
says that when his eyes have been very tired with making one of
his senior wrangler's calculations he has often seen a woman in a
eighteenth-century dress looking into a drawer in his bureau. . . .
Thank God, I've had Christopher to explain things to me. . . . I'll
never let him go. . . . Never, never, let him go. . . ."

It was not, however, until several hours later that the significance of
the father's apparition came to her and those intervening hours were
extraordinarily occupied--with emotions, and even with action. To begin
with, before he had read the fewest possible words of his brother's
letter, Tietjens looked up over it and said:

"Of course you will occupy Groby. . . . With Michael. . . . Naturally
the proper business arrangements will be made. . . ." He went on reading
the letter, sunk in his chair under the green shade of a lamp. . . .

The letter, Sylvia knew, began with the words: "Your ---- of a wife has
been to see me with the idea of getting any allowance I might be minded
to make you transferred to herself. Of course she can have Groby, for I
shan't let it, and could not be bothered with it myself. On the other
hand, you may want to live at Groby with that girl and chance the
racket. I should if I were you. You would probably find the place worth
the . . . what is it? ostracism, if there was any. . . . But I'm
forgetting that the girl is not your mistress unless anything has
happened since I saw you. . . . And you probably would want Michael to
be brought up at Groby, in which case you couldn't keep the girl there,
even if you camouflaged her as governess. At least I think that kind of
arrangement always turns out badly: there's bound to be a stink, though
Crosby of Ulick did it and nobody much minded. . . . But it was mucky
for the Crosby children. Of course if you want your wife to have Groby
she must have enough to run it with credit, and expenses are rising
damnably. Still, our incomings rise not a little, too, which is not the
case with some. The only thing I insist on is that you make plain to
that baggage that whatever I allow her, even if it's no end of a hot
income, not one penny of it comes out of what I wish you would allow me
to allow you. I mean I want you to make plain to that rouged piece--or
perhaps it's really natural, my eyes are not what they were--that what
you have is absolutely independent of what she sucks up as the mother of
our father's heir and to keep our father's heir in the state of life
that is his due. . . . I hope you feel satisfied that the boy is your
son, for it's more than I should be, looking at the party. . . . But
even if he is not he is our father's heir all right and must be so
treated. . . .

"But be plain about that, for the trollop came to me, if you please,
with the proposal that I should dock you of any income I might propose
to allow you--and to which of course you are absolutely entitled under
our father's will, though it is no good reminding you of that!--as a
token from me that I disapproved of your behaviour when, damn it, there
is not an action of yours that I would not be proud to have to my
credit. At any rate in this affair, for I cannot help thinking that you
could be of more service to the country if you were anywhere else but
where you are. But you know what your conscience demands of you better
than I, and I dare say these hell-cats have so mauled you that you are
glad to be able to get away into any hole. But don't let yourself die in
your hole. Groby will have to be looked after, and even if you do not
live there you can keep a strong hand on Sanders, or whoever you elect
to have as manager. That monstrosity you honour with your name--which is
also mine, thank you!--suggested that if I consented to let her live at
Groby she would have her mother to live with her, in which case her
mother would be good to look after the estate. I dare say she would,
though she has had to let her own place. But then almost every one else
has. She seems anyhow a notable woman, with her head screwed on the
right way. I did not tell the discreditable daughter that she--her
mother--had come to see me at breakfast immediately after seeing you
off, she was so upset. And she _keawert ho down i' th' ingle and had a
gradely pow_. You remember how Gobbles the gardener used to say that. A
good chap, though he came from Lancasheere! . . . The mother has no
illusions about the daughter and is heart and soul for you. She was
dreadfully upset at your going, the more so as she believes that it's
her offspring has driven you out of the country and that you purpose . . .
isn't stopping one the phrase? Don't do that.

"I saw your girl yesterday. . . . She looked peaky. But of course I have
seen her several times, and she always looks peaky. I do not understand
why you do not write to them. The mother is clamorous because you have
not answered several letters and have not sent her military information
she wants for some article she is writing for a Swiss magazine. . . ."

Sylvia knew the letter almost by heart as far as that because in the
unbearable white room of the convent near Birkenhead she had twice begun
to copy it out, with the idea of keeping the copies for use in some sort
of publicity. But, at that point, she had twice been overcome by the
idea that it was not a very sporting thing to do, if you really think
about it. Besides, the letter after that--she _had_ glanced through
it--occupied itself almost entirely with the affairs of Mrs. Wannop.
Mark, in his naïve way, was concerned that the old lady, although now
enjoying the income from the legacy left her by their father, had not
immediately settled down to write a deathless novel; although, as he
added, he knew nothing about novels. . . .

Christopher was reading away at his letters beneath the green-shaded
lamp; the ex-quartermaster had begun several sentences and dropped into
demonstrative silence at the reminder that Tietjens was reading.
Christopher's face was completely without expression; he might have been
reading a return from the office of statistics in the old days at
breakfast. She wondered, vaguely, if he would see fit to apologize for
the epithets that his brother had applied to her. Probably he would not.
He would consider that she having opened the letter must take the
responsibility of the contents. Something like that. Thumps and rumbles
began to exist in the relative silence. Cowley said: "They're coming
again then!" Several couples passed them on the way out of the room.
Amongst them there was certainly no presentable man; they were all
either too old or too hobbledehoy, with disproportionate noses and
vacant, half-opened mouths.

Accompanying Christopher's mind, as it were, whilst he read his letter
had induced in her a rather different mood. The pictures in her own mind
were rather of Mark's dingy breakfast-room in which she had had her
interview with him--and of the outside of the dingy house in which the
Wannops lived, at Bedford Park. . . . But she was still conscious of her
pact with the father and, looking at her wrist watch, saw that by now
six minutes had passed. . . . It was astonishing that Mark, who was a
millionaire at least, and probably a good deal more, should live in such
a dingy apartment--it had for its chief decoration the hoofs of several
deceased race-winners, mounted as ink-stands, as pen-racks, as
paper-weights--and afford himself only such a lugubrious breakfast of
fat slabs of ham over which bled pallid eggs. . . . For she too, like
her mother, had looked in on Mark at breakfast-time--her mother because
she had just seen Christopher off to France, and she because, after a
sleepless night--the third of a series--she had been walking about St.
James's Park and, passing under Mark's windows, it had occurred to her
that she might do Christopher some damage by putting his brother wise
about the entanglement with Miss Wannop. So, on the spur of the moment,
she had invented a desire to live at Groby with the accompanying
necessity for additional means. For, although she was a pretty wealthy
woman, she was not wealthy enough to live at Groby and keep it up. The
immense old place was not so immense because of its room-space, though,
as far as she could remember, there must be anything between forty and
sixty rooms, but because of the vast old grounds, the warren of
stabling, wells, rose-walks and fencing. . . . A man's place, really,
the furniture very grim and the corridors on the ground floor all
slabbed with great stones. So she had looked in on Mark, reading his
correspondence with his copy of _The Times_ airing on a chair-back
before the fire--for he was just the man to retain the eighteen-forty
idea that you can catch cold by reading a damp newspaper. His grim,
tight, brown-wooden features that might have been carved out of an old
chair, had expressed no emotion at all during the interview. He had
offered to have up some more ham and eggs for her and had asked one or
two questions as to how she meant to live at Groby if she went there.
Otherwise he had said nothing about the information she had given him as
to the Wannop girl having had a baby by Christopher--for purposes of
conversation she had adhered to that old story, at any rate till that
interview. He had said nothing at all. Not one word. . . . At the end of
the interview, when he had risen and produced from an adjoining room a
bowler hat and an umbrella, saying that he must now go to his office, he
had put to her without any expression pretty well what stood in the
letter, as far as business was concerned. He said that she could have
Groby, but she must understand that, his father being now dead and he a
public official, without children and occupied in London with work that
suited him, Groby was practically Christopher's property to do what he
liked with as long as--which he certainly would--he kept it in proper
style. So that, if she wished to live there, she must produce
Christopher's authorization to that effect. And he added, with an
equableness so masking the proposition that it was not until she was
well out of the house and down the street that its true amazingness took
her breath away:

"Of course, Christopher, if what you say is true, might want to live at
Groby with Miss Wannop. In that case he would have to." And he had
offered her an expressionless hand and shepherded her, rather fussily,
through his dingy and awkward front passages that were lit only from
ground-glass windows giving apparently on to his bathroom. . . .

It wasn't until that moment, really, that, at once with exhilaration and
also with a sinking at the heart, she realized what she was up against
in the way of a combination. For, when she had gone to Mark's, she had
been more than half-maddened by the news that Christopher at Rouen was
in hospital and, although the hospital authorities had assured her, at
first by telegram and then by letter, that it was nothing more than his
chest, she had not had any knowledge of to what extent Red Cross
authorities did or did not mislead the relatives of casualties.

So it had seemed natural that she should want to inflict on him all the
injuries that she could at the moment, the thought that he was probably
in pain making her wish to add all she could to that pain. . . .
Otherwise, of course, she would not have gone to Mark's. . . . For it
was a mistake in strategy. But then she said to herself: "Confound it!. . .
What strategy was it a mistake in? What do I care about strategy?
What am I out for? . . ." She did what she wanted to, on the spur of the
moment! . . .

Now she certainly realized. How Christopher had got round Mark she did
not know or much care, but there Christopher certainly was, although his
father had certainly died of a broken heart at the rumours that were
going round about his son--rumours she, almost as efficiently as the man
called Ruggles and more irresponsible gossips, had set going about
Christopher. They had been meant to smash Christopher: they had smashed
his father instead. . . . But Christopher had got round Mark, whom he
had not seen for ten years. . . . Well, he probably would. Christopher
was perfectly immaculate, that was a fact, and Mark, though he appeared
half-witted in a North Country way, was no fool. He could not be a fool.
He was a really august public official. And, although as a rule Sylvia
gave nothing at all for any public official, if a man like Mark had the
position by birth amongst presentable men that he certainly ought to
have and was also the head of a department and reputed absolutely
indispensable--you could not ignore him. . . . He said, indeed, in the
later, more gossipy parts of his letter that he had been offered a
baronetcy, but he wanted Christopher to agree with his refusing it.
Christopher would not want the beastly title after his death, and for
himself he would be rather struck with the pip than let that
harlot--meaning herself--become Lady T. by any means of his. He had
added, with his queer solicitude, "Of course if you thought of
divorcing--which I wish to God you would, though I agree that you are
right not to--and the title would go to the girl after my decease I'd
take it gladly, for a title is a bit of a help after a divorce. But as
it is I propose to refuse it and ask for a knighthood, if it won't too
sicken you to have me a Sir. . . . For I hold no man ought to refuse an
honour in times like these, as has been done by certain sickening
intellectuals because it is like slapping the sovereign in the face and
bound to hearten the other side, which no doubt was what was meant by
those fellows."

There was no doubt that Mark--with the possible addition of the
Wannops--made a very strong backing for Christopher if she decided to
make a public scandal about him. . . . As for the Wannops . . . the girl
was negligible. Or possibly not, if she turned nasty and twisted
Christopher round her fingers. But the old mother was a formidable
figure--with a bad tongue, and viewed with a certain respect in places
where people talked . . . both on account of her late husband's position
and of the solid sort of articles she wrote. . . . She, Sylvia, had gone
to take a look at the place where these people lived . . . a dreary
street in an outer suburb, the houses--she knew enough about estates to
know--what is called tile-healed, the upper parts of tile, the lower
flimsy brick and the tiles in bad condition. Oldish houses really, in
spite of their sham artistic aspect, and very much shadowed by old trees
that must have been left to add to the picturesqueness. . . . The rooms
poky, and they must be very dark. . . . The residence of extreme
indigence, or of absolute poverty. . . . She understood that the old
lady's income had so fallen off during the war that they had nothing to
live on but what the girl made as a school-teacher, or a teacher of
athletics in a girls' school. . . . She had walked two or three times up
and down the street with the idea that the girl might come out: then it
had struck her that was rather an ignoble proceeding, really. . . .
It was, for the matter of that, ignoble that she should have a rival who
starved in an ashbin. . . . But that was what men were like: she might
think herself lucky that the girl did not inhabit a sweetshop. . . . And
the man, Macmaster, said that the girl had a good head and talked well,
though the woman Macmaster said that she was a shallow ignoramus. . . .
That last probably was not true; at any rate the girl had been the
Macmaster woman's most intimate friend for many years--as long as they
were sponging on Christopher and until, lower middle-class snobs as they
were, they began to think they could get into Society by carneying to
herself. . . . Still, the girl probably was a good talker and, if
little, yet physically uncommonly fit. . . . A good homespun article. . . .
She wished her no ill!

What was incredible was that Christopher should let her go on starving
in such a poverty-stricken place when he had something like the wealth
of the Indies at his disposal. . . . But the Tietjens were hard people!
You could see that in Mark's rooms . . . and Christopher would lie on
the floor as lief as in a goose-feather bed. And probably the girl would
not take his money. She was quite right. That was the way to keep
him. . . . She herself had no want of comprehension of the stimulation to
be got out of parsimonious living. . . . In retreat at her convent she lay
as hard and as cold as any anchorite, and rose to the nuns' matins at
four.

It was not, in fact, their fittings or food that she objected to--it was
that the lay-sisters, and some of the nuns, were altogether too much of
the lower classes for her to like to have always about her. . . . That
was why it was to the Dames Nobles that she would go, if she had to go
into retreat for the rest of her life, according to contract. . . .

A gun manned by exhilarated anti-aircraft fellows, and so close that it
must have been in the hotel garden, shook her physically at almost the
same moment as an immense maroon popped off on the quay at the bottom of
the street in which the hotel was. She was filled with annoyance at
these schoolboy exercises. A tall, purple-faced, white-moustached
general of the more odious type, appeared in the doorway and said that
all the lights but two must be extinguished and, if they took his
advice, they would go somewhere else. There were good cellars in the
hotel. He loafed about the room extinguishing the lights, couples and
groups passing him on the way to the door. . . . Tietjens looked up from
his letter--he was now reading one of Mrs. Wannop's--but seeing that
Sylvia made no motion he remained sunk in his chair. . . .

The old general said:

"Don't get up, Tietjens. ... Sit down, lieutenant. . . . Mrs. Tietjens,
I presume. . . . But of course I know you are Mrs. Tietjens. . . .
There's a portrait of you in this week's . . . I forget the name. . . ."
He sat down on the arm of a great leather chair and told her of all the
trouble her escapade to that city had caused him. . . . He had been
awakened immediately after a good lunch by some young officer on his
staff who was scared to death by her having arrived without papers. His
digestion had been deranged ever since. . . . Sylvia said she was very
sorry. He should drink hot water and no alcohol with his lunch. She had
had very important business to discuss with Tietjens, and she had really
not understood that they wanted papers of grown-up people. The general
began to expatiate on the importance of his office and the number of
enemy agents his perspicacity caused to be arrested every day in that
city and the lines of communication. . . .

Sylvia was overwhelmed at the ingenuity of Father Consett. She looked at
her watch. The ten minutes were up, but there did not appear to be a
soul in the dim place. . . . The father had--and no doubt as a Sign that
there could be no mistaking!--completely emptied that room. It was like
his humour!

To make certain, she stood up. At the far end of the room, in the
dimness of the one other reading lamp that the general had not
extinguished, two figures were rather indistinguishable. She walked
towards them, the general at her side extending civilities all over her.
He said that she need not be under any apprehension there. He adopted
that device of clearing the room in order to get rid of the beastly
young subalterns who would use the place to spoon in when the lights
were turned down. She said she was only going to get a timetable from
the far end of the room. . . .

The stab of hope that she had that one of the two figures would turn out
to be the presentable man died. . . . They were a young mournful
subaltern, with an incipient moustache and practically tears in his
eyes, and an elderly, violently indignant baldheaded man in evening
civilian clothes that must have been made by a country tailor. He was
smacking his hands together to emphasize what, with great agitation, he
was saying.

The general said that it was one of the young cubs on his own staff
getting a dressing down from his dad for spending too much money. The
young devils would get amongst the girls--and the old ones too. There
was no stopping it. The place was a hotbed of . . . He left the sentence
unfinished. She would not believe the trouble it gave him. . . . That
hotel itself. . . . The scandals. . . .

He said she would excuse him if he took a little nap in one of the
arm-chairs too far away to interfere with their business talk. He would
have to be up half the night. He seemed to Sylvia a blazingly
contemptible personage--too contemptible really for Father Consett to
employ as an agent, in clearing the room. . . . But the omen was given.
She had to consider her position. It meant--or did it?--that she had to
be at war with the heavenly powers! . . . She clenched her hands. . . .

In passing by Tietjens in his chair the general boomed out the words:

"I got your chit of this morning, Tietjens. . . . I must say . . ."

Tietjens lumbered out of his chair and stood at attention, his
leg-of-mutton hands stiffly on the seams of his breeches.

"It's pretty strong," the general said, "marking a charge-sheet sent
down from _my_ department: _Case explained_. We don't lay charges without
due thought. And Lance-Corporal Berry is a particularly reliable N.C.O. I
have difficulty enough to get them. Particularly after the late riots.
It takes courage, I can tell you."

"If," Tietjens said, "you would see fit, sir, to instruct the G.M.P. not
to call Colonial troops damned conscripts, the trouble would be over. . . .
We're instructed to use special discretion, as officers, in dealing
with troops from the Dominions. They are said to be very susceptible of
insult. . . ."

The general suddenly became a boiling pot from which fragments of
sentences came away: _damned_ insolence; court of inquiry; damned
conscripts they were too. He calmed enough to say:

"They _are_ conscripts, your men, aren't they? They give me more
trouble . . . I should have thought you would have wanted . . ."

Tietjens said:

"No, sir. I have not a man in my unit, as far as it's Canadian or
British Columbian, that is not voluntarily enlisted. . . ."

The general exploded to the effect that he was bringing the whole matter
before the G.O.C.I.C.'s department. Campion could deal with it how he
wished: it was beyond himself. He began to bluster away from them;
stopped; directed a frigid bow to Sylvia who was not looking at him;
shrugged his shoulders and stormed off.

It was difficult for Sylvia to get hold again of her thoughts in the
smoking-room, for the evening was entirely pervaded with military
effects that seemed to her the pranks of schoolboys. Indeed, after
Cowley, who had by now quite a good skinful of liquor, had said to
Tietjens:

"By Jove, I would not like to be you and a little bit on if old Blazes
caught sight of you to-night," she said to Tietjens with real wonder:

"You don't mean to say that a gaga old fool like that could have any
possible influence over you . . . _You_!"

Tietjens said:

"Well, it's a troublesome business, all this. . . ."

She said that it so appeared to be, for before he could finish his
sentence an orderly was at his elbow extending, along with a pencil, a
number of dilapidated papers. Tietjens looked rapidly through them,
signing one after the other and saying intermittently:

"It's a trying time." "We're massing troops up the line as fast as we
can go." "And with an endlessly changing personnel. . . ." He gave a
snort of exasperation and said to Cowley: "That horrible little Pitkins
has got a job as bombing instructor. He can't march the draft. . . . Who
the deuce am I to detail? Who the deuce is there? . . . You know all the
little . . ." He stopped because the orderly could hear. A smart boy.
Almost the only smart boy left him.

Cowley barged out of his seat and said he would telephone to the mess to
see who was there. . . . Tietjens said to the boy:

"Sergeant-Major Morgan made out these returns of religions in the
draft?"

The boy answered: "No sir, I did. They're all right." He pulled a slip
of paper out of his tunic pocket and said shyly:

"If you would not mind signing this, sir . . . I can get a lift on an
A.S.C. trolley that's going to Boulogne to-morrow at six. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"No, you can't have leave. I can't spare you. What's it for?"

The boy said almost inaudibly that he wanted to get married.

Tietjens, still signing, said: "Don't. . . . Ask your married pals what
it's like!"

The boy, scarlet in his khaki, rubbed the sole of one foot on the instep
of the other. He said that saving madam's presence it was urgent. It was
expected any day now. She was a real good gel. Tietjens signed the boy's
slip and handed it to him without looking up. The boy stood with his
eyes on the ground. A diversion came from the telephone, which was at
the far end of the room. Cowley had not been able to get on to the camp
because an urgent message with regard to German espionage was coming
through to the sleeping general.

Cowley began to shout: "For goodness' sake hold the line. . . . For
goodness' sake hold the line. . . . I'm not the general. . . . I'm _not_
the general. . . ." Tietjens told the orderly to awaken the sleeping
warrior. A violent scene at the mouth of the quiescent instrument took
place. The general roared to know who was the officer speaking. . . .
Captain Bubbleyjocks. . . . Captain Cuddlestocks . . . what in hell's
name! And who was he speaking for? . . . Who? Himself? . . . Urgent was
it? . . . Didn't he know the proper procedure was by writing? . . .
Urgent damnation! . . . Did he not know where he was? . . . In the First
Army by the Cassell Canal. . . . Well then . . . But the spy was in L.
of C. territory, across the canal. . . . The French civilian authorities
were very concerned. . . . They were, damn them! . . . And damn the
officer. And damn the French _maire_. And damn the horse the supposed
spy rode upon. . . . And when the officer was damned let him write to
First Army Headquarters about it and attach the horse and the bandoliers
as an exhibit. . . .

There was a great deal more of it. Tietjens reading his papers
still, intermittently explained the story as it came in fragments over
the telephone in the general's repetitions. . . . Apparently the French
civilian authorities of a place called Warendonck had been alarmed by a
solitary horseman in English uniform who had been wandering desultorily
about their neighbourhood for several days, seeming to want to cross the
canal bridges, but finding them guarded. . . . There was an immense
artillery dump in the neighbourhood, said to be the largest in the
world, and the Germans dropped bombs as thick as peas all over those
parts in the hopes of hitting it. . . . Apparently the officer speaking
was in charge of the canal bridgehead guards: but, as he was in First
Army country, it was obviously an act of the utmost impropriety to
awaken a general in charge of the spy-catching apparatus on the other
side of the canal. . . . The general, returning past them to an
arm-chair farther from the telephone, emphasized this point of view with
great vigour.

The orderly had returned; Cowley went once more to the telephone, having
consumed another liqueur brandy. Tietjens finished his papers and went
through them rapidly again. He said to the boy: "Got anything saved up?"
The boy said: "A fiver and a few bob." Tietjens said: "How many bob?"
The boy: "Seven, sir." Tietjens, fumbling clumsily in an inner pocket
and a little pocket beneath his belt, held out one leg-of-mutton fist
and said: "There! That will double it. Ten pounds fourteen! But it's
very improvident of you. See that you save up a deuced lot more against
the next one. Accouchements are confoundedly expensive things, as you'll
learn, and ring money doesn't stretch for ever! . . ." He called out to
the retreating boy: "Here, orderly, come back. . . ." He added: "Don't
let it get all over camp. . . . I can't afford to subsidize all the
seven-months children in the battalion. . . . I'll recommend you for
paid lance-corporal when you return from leave if you go on as well as
you have done." He called the boy back again to ask him why Captain
McKechnie had not signed the papers. The boy stuttered and stammered
that Captain McKechnie was . . . He was . . .

Tietjens muttered: "Good God!" beneath his breath. He said:

"The captain has had another nervous breakdown. . . ." The orderly
accepted the phrase with gratitude. That was it. A nervous breakdown.
They say he had been very queer at mess. About divorce. Or the captain's
uncle. A barrow-night! Tietjens said: "Yes, yes!" He half rose in his
chair and looked at Sylvia. She exclaimed painfully:

"You can't go. I insist that you can't go." He sank down again and
muttered wearily that it was very worrying. He had been put in charge of
this officer by General Campion. He ought not to have left the camp at
all perhaps. But McKechnie had seemed better. A great deal of the
calmness of her insolence had left her. She had expected to have the
whole night in which luxuriously to torment the lump opposite her. To
torment him and to allure him. She said:

"You have settlements to come to now and here that will affect your
whole life. Our whole lives! You propose to abandon them because a
miserable little nephew of your miserable little friend. . . ." She
added in French: "Even as it is you cannot pay any attention to these
serious matters, because of these childish preoccupations of yours. That
is to be intolerably insulting to me!" She was breathless.

Tietjens asked the orderly where Captain McKechnie was now. The orderly
said he had left the camp. The colonel of the depot had sent a couple of
officers as a search-party. Tietjens told the orderly to go and find a
taxi. He could have a ride himself up to camp. The orderly said taxis
would not be running on account of the air-raid. Could he order the
G.M.P. to requisition one on urgent military service? The exhilarated
air-gun pooped off thereupon three times from the garden. For the next
hour it went off every two or three minutes. Tietjens said: "Yes! Yes!"
to the orderly. The noises of the air-raid became more formidable. A
blue express letter of French civilian make was handed to Tietjens. It
was from the duchess to inform him that coal for the use of greenhouses
was forbidden by the French Government. She did not need to say that she
relied on his honour to ensure her receiving her coal through the
British military authority, and she asked for an immediate reply.
Tietjens expressed real annoyance while he read this. Distracted by the
noise, Sylvia cried out that the letter must be from Valentine Wannop in
Rouen. Did not the girl intend to let him have an hour in which to
settle the whole business of his life? Tietjens moved to the chair next
to hers. He handed her the duchess's letter.

He began a long, slow, serious explanation with a long, slow, serious
apology. He said he regretted very much that when she should have taken
the trouble to come so far in order to do him the honour to consult him
about a matter which she would have been perfectly at liberty to settle
for herself, the extremely serious military position should render him
so liable to interruption. As far as he was concerned Groby was entirely
at her disposal with all that it contained. And of course a sufficient
income for the upkeep.

She exclaimed in an access of sudden and complete despair:

"That means that you do not intend to live there." He said that
must settle itself later. The war would no doubt last a good deal
longer. While it lasted there could be no question of his coming back.
She said that meant that he intended to get killed. She warned him
that, if he got killed, she should cut down the great cedar at the
south-west corner of Groby. It kept all the light out of the principal
drawing-room and the bed-rooms above it . . . He winced: he certainly
winced at that. She regretted that she had said it. It was along other
lines that she desired to make him wince.

He said that, apart from his having no intention of getting himself
killed, the matter was absolutely out of his hands. He had to go where
he was ordered to go and do what he was told to do.

She exclaimed:

"You! _You_! Isn't it ignoble. That you should be at the beck and call of
these ignoramuses. You!"

He went on explaining seriously that he was in no great danger--in no
danger at all unless he was sent back to his battalion. And he was not
likely to be sent back to his battalion unless he disgraced himself or
showed himself negligent where he was. That was unlikely. Besides his
category was so low that he was not eligible for his battalion, which,
of course, was in the line. She ought to understand that every one that
she saw employed there was physically unfit for the line. She said:

"That's why they're such an awful lot. . . . It is not to this place
that one should come to look for a presentable man. . . . Diogenes with
his lantern was nothing to it."

He said:

"There's that way of looking at it. . . . It is quite true that most
of . . . let's say _your_ friends . . . were killed off during the early
days, or if they're still going they're in more active employments."
What she called presentableness was very largely a matter of physical
fitness. . . . The horse, for instance, that he rode was rather a
crock. . . . But though it was German and not thoroughbred it contrived to
be up to his weight. . . . Her friends, more or less, of before the war
were professional soldiers or of the type. Well, they were gone: dead or
snowed under. But on the other hand, this vast town full of crocks did
keep the thing going, if it could be made to go. It was not they that
hindered the show: if it was hindered, that was done by her much less
presentable friends, the ministry who, if they were professionals at all
were professional boodlers.

She exclaimed with bitterness:

"Then why didn't you stay at home to check them, if they _are_
boodlers." She added that the only people at home who kept social
matters going at all with any life were precisely the more successful
political professionals. When you were with them you would not know
there was any war. And wasn't that what was wanted? Was the _whole_ of
life to be given up to ignoble horseplay? . . . She spoke with increased
rancour because of the increasing thump and rumble of the air-raid. . . .
Of course the politicians were ignoble beings that, before the war,
you would not have thought of having in your house. . . . But whose
fault was that, if not that of the better classes, who had gone away
leaving England a dreary wilderness of fellows without consciences or
traditions or manners? And she added some details of the habits at a
country house of a member of the Government whom she disliked. "And,"
she finished up, "it's your fault. Why aren't _you_ Lord Chancellor, or
Chancellor of the Exchequer, instead of whoever is, for I am sure I
don't know? You could have been, with your abilities and your interests.
Then things would have been efficiently and honestly conducted. If your
brother Mark, with not a tithe of your abilities can be a permanent head
of a department, what could you not have risen to with your gifts, and
your influence . . . and your integrity?" And she ended up: "Oh,
Christopher!" on almost a sob.

Ex-Sergeant-Major Cowley, who had come back from the telephone, and
during an interval in the thunderings, had heard some of Sylvia's light
cast on the habits of members of the home Government, so that his jaw
had really hung down, now, in another interval, exclaimed:

"Hear, hear! Madam! . . . There is nothing the captain might not have
risen to. . . . He is doing the work of a brigadier now on the pay of an
acting captain. . . . And the treatment he gets is scandalous. . . .
Well, the treatment we all get is scandalous, tricked and defrauded as
we are all at every turn. . . . And look at this new start with the
draft. . . ." They had ordered the draft to be ready and countermanded
it, and ordered it to be ready and countermanded it, until no one knew
whether he stood on is 'ed or is 'eels. . . . It was to have gone off
last night: when they'd 'ad it marched down to the station they 'ad it
marched back and told them all it would not be wanted for six weeks. . . .
Now it was to be got ready to go before daylight to-morrow morning in
motor-lorries to the rail Ondekoeter way, the rail here 'aving been
sabotaged! . . . Before daylight so that the enemy aeroplanes should not
see it on the road. . . . Wasn't that a thing to break the 'arts of men
_and_ horderly rooms? It was outrageous. Did they suppose the 'Uns did
things like that?

He broke off to say with husky enthusiasm of affection to Tietjens:
"Look 'ere old . . . I mean, sir . . . There's _no_ way of getting hold
of an officer to march the draft. Them as are eligible gets to 'ear of
what drafts is going and they've all bolted into their burries. Not a
man of 'em will be back in camp before five to-morrow morning. Not when
they 'ears there's a draft to go at four of mornings like this. . . .
Now . . ." His voice became husky with emotion as he offered to take the
draft hisself to oblige Captain Tietjens. And the captain knew he could
get a draft off pretty near as good as himself: or very near. As for the
draft-conducting major he lived in that hotel and he, Cowley, 'ad seen
'im. No four in the morning for 'im. He was going to motor to Ondekoeter
Station about seven. So there was no sense in getting the draft off
before five, and it was still dark then: too dark for the 'Un planes to
see what was moving. He'd be glad if the captain would be up at the camp
by five to take a final look and to sign any papers that only the
commanding officer could sign. But he knew the captain had had no sleep
the night before because of his, Cowley's, infirmity, mostly, so he
couldn't do less than give up a day and a half of his leave to taking
the draft. Besides, he was going home for the duration and he would not
mind getting a look at the old places they'd seen in 'fourteen, for the
last time as a Cook's tourist. . . .

Tietjens, who was looking noticeably white, said:

"Do you remember O Nine Morgan at Noircourt?"

Cowley said:

"No. . . . Was 'e there? In your company, I suppose? . . . The man you
mean that was killed yesterday. Died in your arms owing to my oversight.
I ought to have been there." He said to Sylvia with the gloating idea
N.C.O.'s had that wives liked to hear of their husband's near escapes:
"Killed within a foot of the captain, 'e was. An 'orrible shock it must
'ave been for the captain." A horrible mess. . . . The captain held him
in his arms while he died. ... As if he'd been a baby. Wonderful tender,
the captain was! Well, you're apt to be when it's one of your own
men. . . . No rank then! "Do you know the only time the King must salute a
private soldier and the private takes no notice? . . . When 'e's
dead. . . ." Both Sylvia and Tietjens were silent--and silvery white in the
greenish light from the lamp. Tietjens indeed had shut his eyes. The old
N.C.O. went on rejoicing to have the floor to himself. He had got on his
feet preparatory to going up to camp, and he swayed a little. . . .

"No," he said and he waved his cigar gloriously, "I don't remember O
Nine Morgan at Noircourt. . . . But I remember . . ."

Tietjens, with his eyes still shut, said:

"I only thought he might have been a man. . . ."

"No," the old fellow went on imperiously, "I don't remember 'im. . . .
But, Lord, I remember what happened to _you_!" He looked down gloriously
upon Sylvia: "The captain caught 'is foot in. . . . You'd never believe
what 'e caught 'is foot in! Never! . . . A pretty quiet affair it was,
with a bit of moonlight. . . . Nothing much in the way of artillery. . . .
Perhaps we surprised the 'Uns proper, perhaps they were wanting to
give up their front-line trenches for a purpose. . . . There was next to
no one in 'em. . . . I know it made me nervous. . . . My heart was fair
in my boots, because there was so little doing! . . . It was when there
was little doing that the 'Uns could be expected to do their worst. ...
Of course there was some machine-gunning. . . . There was one in
particular away to the right of us. . . . And the moon, it was shining
in the early morning. Wonderful peaceful. And a little mist. . . . And
frozen hard. . . . Hard as you wouldn't believe. . . . Enough to make
the shells dangerous."

Sylvia said:

"It's not always mud, then?" and Tietjens, to her: "He'll stop if you
don't like it." She said monotonously: "No . . . I want to hear."

Cowley drew himself for his considerable effect:

"Mud!" he said. "Not then. . . . Not by half. . . . I tell you, ma'am,
we trod on the frozen faces of dead Germans as we doubled. . . . A
terrible lot of Germans we'd killed a day or so before. . . . That was
no doubt the reason they give up the trenches so easy: difficult to
attack from, they was. . . . Anyhow, they left the dead for us to bury,
knowing probably they were going, with a better 'eart! . . . But it fair
put the wind up me anyhow to think of what their counter-attack was
going to be. . . . The counter-attack is always ten times as bad as the
preliminary resistance. They 'as you with the rear of their
trenches--the parades, we call it--as your front to boot. So I was precious
glad when the moppers-up and supports come and went through us. . . .
Laughing, they was. . . . Wiltshires. . . . My missus comes from
that county. . . . Mrs. Cowley, I mean. . . . So I'd seen the captain go
down earlier on and I'd said: 'There's another of the best stopped
one. . . .'" He dropped his voice a little: he was one of the noted yarners
of the regiment: "Caught 'is foot, 'e 'ad, between two 'ands. . . .
Sticking up out of the frozen ground. . . . As it might be in prayer. . . .
Like this!" He elevated his two hands, the cigar between the
fingers, the wrists close together and the fingers slightly curled
inwards: "Sticking up in the moonlight. . . . Poor devil!"

Tietjens said:

"I thought perhaps it was O Nine Morgan I saw that night. . . .
Naturally I looked dead. . . . I hadn't a breath in my body. . . . And I
saw a Tommy put his rifle to his pal's upper arm and fire. . . . As I
lay on the ground. . . ."

Cowley said:

"Ah, you saw that . . . I heard the men talking of it. . . . But they
naturally did not say who and where!"

Tietjens said with a negligence that did not ring true:

"The wounded man's name was Stilicho. . . . A queer name. . . . I
suppose it's Cornish. . . . It was B Company in front of us."

"You didn't bring 'em to a court martial?" Cowley asked. Tietjens said:
No. He could not be quite certain. Though he _was_ certain. But he had
been worrying about a private matter. He had been worrying about it
while he lay on the ground and that rather obscured his sense of what he
saw. Besides, he said faintly, an officer must use his judgment. He had
judged it better in this case not to have seen the . . . His voice had
nearly faded away: it was clear to Sylvia that he was coming to a climax
of some mental torture. Suddenly he exclaimed to Cowley:

"Supposing I let him off one life to get him killed two years after. My
God! That would be too beastly!"

Cowley snuffled in Tietjens' ear something that Sylvia did not
catch--consolatory and affectionate. That intimacy was more than she
could bear. She adopted her most negligent tone to ask:

"I suppose the one man had been trifling with the other's girl. Or
wife!"

Cowley exploded: "God bless you, no! They'd agreed upon it between them.
To get one of them sent 'ome and the other, at any rate, out of _that_
'ell, leading him back to the dressing-station." She said:

"You mean to say that a man would do _that_, to get out of it? . . ."

Cowley said:

"God bless you, ma'am, with the _'ell_ the Tommies 'as of it. . . . For
it's in the line that the difference between the Other Ranks' life and
the officers' comes in. . . . I tell you, ma'am, old soldier as I am,
and I've been in seven wars one with another . . . there were times in
this war when I could have shrieked, holding my right hand down. . . ."

He paused and said: "It was my idea. . . . And it's been a good many
others,' that if I 'eld my 'and up over the parapet with perhaps my hat
on it, in two minutes there would be a German sharpshooter's bullet
through it. And then me for Blighty, as the soldiers say. . . . And if
that could happen to me, a regimental sergeant-major, with twenty-three
years in the service . . ."

The bright orderly came in, said he had found a taxi, and melted into
the dimness.

"A man," the sergeant-major said, "would take the risk of being shot for
wounding his pal. . . . They get to love their pals, passing the love of
women. . . ." Sylvia exclaimed: "Oh!" as if at a pang of toothache. "They
do, ma'am," he said, "it's downright touching. . . ."

He was by now very unsteady as he stood, but his voice was quite clear.
That was the way it took him. He said to Tietjens:

"It's queer, what you say about home worries taking up your mind. ... I
remember in the Afghan campaign, when we were in the devil of a hot
corner, I got a letter from my wife, Mrs. Cowley, to say that our Winnie
had the measles. . . . And there was only one difference between me and
Mrs. Cowley: I said that a child must have flannel next its skin, and
she said flannelette was good enough. Wiltshire doesn't hold by wool as
Lincolnshire does. Long fleeces the Lincolnshire sheep have. . . . And
dodging the Afghan bullets all day among the boulders as we was, all I
could think of. . . . For you know, ma'am, being a mother yourself, that
the great thing with measles is to keep a child warm. . . . I kep'
saying to myself--'arf crying I was--'If she only keeps wool next
Winnie's skin! If she only keeps wool next Winnie's skin!' . . . But you
know that, being a mother yourself. I've seen your son's photo on the
captain's dressing-table. Michael, 'is name is. . . . So you see, the
captain doesn't forget you and 'im."

Sylvia said in a clear voice:

"Perhaps you would not go on!"

Distracted as she was by the anti-air-gun in the garden, though it was
on the other side of the hotel and permitted you to get in a sentence or
two before splitting your head with a couple of irregular explosions,
she was still more distracted by a sudden vision--a remembrance of
Christopher's face when their boy had had a temperature of 105° with
the measles, up at his sister's house in Yorkshire. He had taken the
responsibility, which the village doctor would not face, of himself
placing the child in a bath full of split ice. . . . She saw him
bending, expressionless in the strong lamp-light, with the child in his
clumsy arms over the glittering, rubbled surface of the bath. . . . He
was just as expressionless then as now. . . . He reminded her now of how
he had been then: some strain in the lines of the face perhaps that she
could not analyse. . . . Rather as if he had a cold in the head--a
little suffocating, with suppressing his emotions, of course: his eyes
looking at nothing. You would not have said that he even saw the
child--heir to Groby and all that! . . . Something had said to her, just
in between two crashes of the gun "It's his own child. He went as you
might say down to hell to bring it back to life. . . ." She knew it was
Father Consett saying that. She knew it was true: Christopher had been
down to hell to bring the child back. . . . Fancy facing its pain in
that dreadful bath! . . . The thermometer had dropped, running down
under their eyes. . . . Christopher had said: "A good heart, he's got!
A good plucked one!" and then held his breath, watching the thin
filament of bright mercury drop to normal. . . . She said now, between
her teeth: "The child is his property as much as the damned estate. . . .
Well, I've got them both. . . ."

But it wasn't at this juncture that she wanted him tortured over that.
So, when the second gun had done its crash, she had said to the bibulous
old man:

"I wish you would not go on!" And Christopher had been prompt to the
rescue of the _convenances_ with:

"Mrs. Tietjens does not see eye to eye with us in some matters!"

She said to herself: "Eye to eye! My God! . . ." The whole of this
affair, the more she saw of it, overwhelmed her with a sense of
hatred. . . . And of depression! . . . She saw Christopher buried in this
welter of fools, playing a schoolboy's game of make-believe. But of a
make-believe that was infinitely formidable and infinitely sinister. . . .
The crashings of the gun and of all the instruments for making noise
seemed to her so atrocious and odious because they were, for her, the
silly pomp of a schoolboy-man's game. . . . Campion, or some similar
schoolboy, said: "Hullo! Some German airplanes about . . . That lets us
out on the air-gun! Let's have some pops!" . . . As they fire guns in
the park on the King's birthday. It was sheer insolence to have a gun in
the garden of an hotel where people of quality might be sleeping or
wishing to converse!

At home she had been able to sustain the conviction that it was such a
game. . . . Anywhere: at the house of a minister of the Crown, at
dinner, she had only to say: "Do let us leave off talking of these
odious things. . . ." And immediately there would be ten or a dozen
voices, the minister's included, to agree with Mrs. Tietjens of Groby
that they had altogether too much of it. . . .

But here! . . . She seemed to be in the very belly of the ugly
affair. . . . It moved and moved, under your eyes dissolving, yet always
there. As if you should try to follow one diamond of pattern in the coil of
an immense snake that was in irrevocable motion. . . . It gave her a sense
of despair: the engrossment of Tietjens, in common with the engrossment
of this disreputable toper. She had never seen Tietjens put his head
together with any soul before: he was the lonely buffalo. . . . Now!
Anyone: any fatuous staff-officer, whom at home he would never so much
as have spoken to: any trustworthy beer-sodden sergeant, any street
urchin dressed up as orderly. . . . They had only to appear and all his
mind went into a close-headed conference over some ignoble point in the
child's game: The laundry, the chiropody, the religions, the bastards . . .
of millions of the indistinguishable. . . . Or their deaths as well!
But, in heaven's name what hypocrisy, or what inconceivable
chicken-heartedness was this? They promoted this beanfeast of carnage
for their own ends: they caused the deaths of men in inconceivable
holocausts of pain and terror. Then they had crises of agony over the
death of one single man. For it was plain to her that Tietjens was in
the middle of a full nervous breakdown. Over one man's death! She had
never seen him so suffer; she had never seen him so appeal for sympathy:
him, a cold fiend of reticence! Yet he was now in an agony! _Now_! . . .
And she began to have a sense of the infinitely spreading welter of
pain, going away to an eternal horizon of night. . . . 'Ell for the
Other Ranks! Apparently it was hell for the officers as well.

The real compassion in the voice of that snuffling, half-drunken old man
had given her a sense of that enormous wickedness. . . . These horrors,
these infinities of pain, this atrocious condition of the world had been
brought about in order that men should indulge themselves in orgies of
promiscuity. . . . That in the end was at the bottom of male honour, of
male virtue, observance of treaties, upholding of the flag. . . . An
immense warlock's carnival of appetites, lusts, ebrieties. . . . And
once set in motion there was no stopping it. . . . This state of things
would never cease. . . . Because once they had tasted of the joy--the
blood--of this game, who would let it end? . . . These men talked of
these things that occupied them there with the lust of men telling dirty
stories in smoking-rooms. . . . That was the only parallel!

There was no stopping it, any more than there was any stopping the by
now all but intoxicated ex-sergeant-major. He was off! With, as might be
expected, advice to a young couple with differences of opinion! The wine
had made him bold!

In the depth of her pictures of these horrors, snatches of his wisdom
penetrated to her intelligence. . . . Queer snatches. . . . She was
getting it certainly in the neck! . . . Someone, to add to the noise,
had started some mechanical musical instrument in an adjacent hall.


    "Corn an' lasses
     Served by Ras'us!"


a throaty voice proclaimed,


    "I'd be tickled to death to know that I could go
     And stay right there . . ."


The ex-sergeant-major was adding to her knowledge the odd detail that
when he, Sergeant-Major Cowley, went to the wars--seven of them--his
missus, Mrs. Cowley, spent the first three days and nights unpicking and
re-hemstitching every sheet and pillow-slip in the 'ouse. To keep
'erself f'm thinking. . . . This was apparently meant as a reproof or an
exhortation to her, Sylvia Tietjens. . . . Well, he was all right! Of
the same class as Father Consett, and with the same sort of wisdom.

The gramophone howled: a new note of rumbling added itself to the
exterior tumult and continued through six mitigated thumps of the gun in
the garden. . . . In the next interval, Cowley was in the midst of a
valedictory address to her. He was asking her to remember that the
captain had had a sleepless night the night before.

There occurred to her irreverent mind a sentence of one of the Duchess
of Marlborough's letters to Queen Anne. The duchess had visited the
general during one of his campaigns in Flanders. "My Lord," she wrote,
"did me the honour three times in his boots!" . . . The sort of thing
she would remember. . . . She would--she _would_--have tried it on the
sergeant-major, just to see Tietjens' face, for the sergeant-major would
not have understood. . . . And who cared if he did! . . . He was
bibulously skirting round the same idea. . . .

But the tumult increased to an incredible volume: even the thrillings of
the near-by gramophone of two hundred horse-power, or whatever it was,
became mere shimmerings of a gold thread in a drab fabric of sound. She
screamed blasphemies that she was hardly aware of knowing. She had to
scream against the noise: she was no more responsible for the blasphemy
than if she had lost her identity under an anæsthetic. She _had_ lost
her identity. . . . She was one of this crowd!

The general woke in his chair and gazed malevolently at their group as
if they alone were responsible for the noise. It dropped. Dead! You only
knew it, because you caught the tail end of a belated woman's scream
from the hall and the general shouting: "For God's sake don't start that
damned gramophone again!" In the blessed silence, after preliminary
wheezings and guitar noises an astonishing voice burst out:


    "Less than the dust . . .
     Before thy char . . ."


And then, stopping after a murmur of voices, began:

    "Pale hands I loved . . ."


The general sprang from his chair and rushed to the hall. . . . He came
back crestfallenly.

"It's some damned civilian big-wig. . . . A novelist, they say. . . . I
can't stop _him_. . . ." He added with disgust: "The hall's full of
young beasts and harlots. . . . _Dancing_!". . . The melody had indeed,
after a buzz, changed to a languorous and interrupted variation of a
waltz. "Dancing in the dark!" the general said with enhanced disgust. . . .
"And the Germans may be here at any moment. ... If they knew what I
know! . . ."

Sylvia called across to him:

"Wouldn't it be fun to see the blue uniform with the silver buttons
again and some decently set-up men? . . ."

The general shouted:

"_I'd_ be glad to see them. . . . I'm sick to death of these. . . ."

Tietjens took up something he had been saying to Cowley: what it was
Sylvia did not hear, but Cowley answered, still droning on with an idea
Sylvia thought they had got past:

"I remember when I was sergeant in Quetta, I detailed a man--called
Herring--for watering the company horses, after he begged off it because
he had a fear of horses. . . . A horse got him down in the river and
drowned 'im. . . . Fell with him and put its foot on his face. . . . A
fair sight he was. . . . It wasn't any good my saying anything about
military exigencies. . . . Fair put me off my feed, it did. . . . Cost
me a fortune in Epsom salts. . . ."

Sylvia was about to scream out that if Tietjens did not like men being
killed it ought to sober him in his war-lust, but Cowley continued
meditatively:

"Epsom salts they say is the cure for it. . . . For seeing your dead. . . .
And of course you should keep off women for a fortnight. . . . I
know I did. Kept seeing Herring's face with the hoof-mark. And . . .
there was a piece: a decent bit of goods in what we called the
Government Compound. . . ."

He suddenly exclaimed:

"Saving your . . . Ma'am, I'm . . ." He stuck the stump of the cigar
into his teeth and began assuring Tietjens that he could be trusted with
the draft next morning, if only Tietjens would put him into the taxi.

He went away, leaning on Tietjens' arm, his legs at an angle of sixty
degrees with the carpet. . . .

"He can't . . ." Sylvia said to herself, "he can't, not . . . If he's a
gentleman. . . . After all that old fellow's hints. . . . He'd be a damn
coward if he kept off. . . . For a fortnight. . . . And who else is
there not a public . . ." She said: "O God! . . ."

The old general, lying in his chair, turned his face aside to say:

"I wouldn't, madam, not if I were you, talk about the blue uniform with
silver buttons here. . . . _We_, of course, understand. . . ."

She said: "You see . . . even that extinct volcano . . . He's undressing
me with his eyes full of blood veins. . . . Then why can't _he_? . . ."

She said aloud:

"Oh, but even you, general, said you were sick of your companions!"

She said to herself:

"Hang it! . . . I will have the courage of my convictions. . . . No man
shall say I am a coward. . . ."

She said:

"Isn't it saying the same thing as you, general, to say that I'd rather
be made love to by a well-set-up man in blue and silver--or anything
else!--than by most of the people one sees here! . . ."

The general said:

"Of course, if you put it that way, madam. . . ."

She said:

"What other way should a woman put it?" . . . She reached to the table
and filled herself a lot of brandy. The old general was leering towards
her:

"Bless me," he said, "a lady who takes liquor like that . . ."

She said:

"You're a Papist, aren't you? With the name of O'Hara and the touch of
the brogue you have . . . And the devil you no doubt are with. . . . You
know what. . . . Well, then . . . It's with a special intention! . . .
As you say your Hail, Maries. . . ."

With the liquor burning inside her she saw Tietjens loom in the dim
light.

The general, to her bitter amusement, said to him:

"Your friend was more than a bit on. . . . Not the Society surely for
madam!"

Tietjens said:

"I never expected to have the pleasure of dining with Mrs. Tietjens
to-night . . . That officer was celebrating his commission and I could
not put him off. . . ." The general said: "Oh, ah! . . . Of course
not. . . . I dare say . . ." and settled himself again in his chair. . . .

Tietjens was overwhelming her with his great bulk. She had still lost
her breath. ... He stooped over and said: It was the luck of the
half-drunk; he said:

"They're dancing in the lounge. . . ."

She coiled herself passionately into her wickerwork. It had dull blue
cushions. She said:

"Not with anyone else. . . . I don't want any introductions. . . ."
Fiercely! . . . He said:

"There's no one there that I could introduce you to. . . ."

She said:

"Not if it's a charity!"

He said:

"I thought it might be rather dull. . . . It's six months since I
danced. . . ." She felt beauty flowing over all her limbs. She had a
gown of gold tissue. Her matchless hair was coiled over her ears. . .
She was humming Venusberg music: she knew music if she knew nothing
else. . . .

She said: "You call the compounds where you keep the W.A.A.C.'s
Venusberg's, don't you? Isn't it queer that Venus should be your own? . . .
Think of poor Elisabeth!"

The room where they were dancing was very dark. . . . It was queer to be
in his arms. . . . She had known better dancers. . . . He had looked
ill. . . . Perhaps he was. . . . Oh, poor Valentine-Elisabeth. . . . What
a funny position! . . . The good gramophone played. . . . _Destiny_! . . .
You see, father! . . . In his arms! . . . Of course, dancing is
not really. . . . But so near the real thing! So near! . . . "Good luck
to the special intention! . . ." She had almost kissed him on the
lips. . . . All but! . . . _Effleurer_, the French call it. . . . But she
was not as humble. . . . He had pressed her tighter. . . . All these months
without . . . My lord did me honour . . . Good for Malbrouck _s'en
va-t-en guerre_. . . . He _knew_ she had almost kissed him on the
lips. . . . And that his lips had almost responded. . . . The civilian, the
novelist, had turned out the last light. . . . Tietjens said, "Hadn't we
better talk? . . ." She said: "In my room, then! I'm dog-tired. . . . I
haven't slept for six nights. . . . In spite of drugs. . . ." He said:
"Yes. Of course! Where else? . . ." Astonishingly. . . . Her gown of
gold tissue was like the colobium sidonis the King wore at the
coronation. . . . As they mounted the stairs she thought what a fat
tenor Tannhauser always was! . . . The Venusberg music was dinning in
her ears. . . . She said: "Sixty-six inexpressibles! I'm as sober as a
judge . . . I need to be!"




PART III




CHAPTER I


A shadow--the shadow of the General Officer Commanding in Chief--falling
across the bar of light that the sunlight threw in at his open door
seemed providentially to awaken Christopher Tietjens, who would have
thought it extremely disagreeable to be found asleep by that officer.
Very thin, graceful and gay with his scarlet gilt oak-leaves, and
ribbons, of which he had many, the general was stepping attractively
over the sill of the door, talking backwards over his shoulder, to
someone outside. So, in the old days, Gods had descended! It was, no
doubt, really the voices from without that had awakened Tietjens, but he
preferred to think the matter a slight intervention of Providence,
because he felt in need of a sign of some sort! Immediately upon
awakening he was not perfectly certain of where he was, but he had sense
enough to answer with coherence the first question that the general put
to him and to stand stiffly on his legs. The general had said:

"Will you be good enough to inform me, Captain Tietjens, why you have no
fire-extinguishers in your unit? You are aware of the extremely
disastrous consequences that would follow a conflagration in your
lines?"

Tietjens said stiffly:

"It seems impossible to obtain them, sir."

The general said:

"How is this? You have indented for them in the proper quarter. Perhaps
you do not know what the proper quarter is?"

Tietjens said:

"If this were a British unit, sir, the proper quarter would be the Royal
Engineers." When he had sent his indent in for them to the Royal
Engineers they informed him that this being a unit of troops from the
Dominions, the quarter to which to apply was the Ordnance. On applying
to the Ordnance, he was informed that no provision was made of
fire-extinguishers for troops from the Dominions under Imperial
officers, and that the proper course was to obtain them from a civilian
firm in Great Britain, charging them against barrack damages. . . . He
had applied to several firms of manufacturers, who all replied that they
were forbidden to sell these articles to anyone but to the War Office
direct. . . . "I am still applying to civilian firms," he finished.

The officer accompanying the general was Colonel Levin, to whom, over
his shoulder, the general said: "Make a note of that, Levin, will you?
and get the matter looked into." He said again to Tietjens:

"In walking across your parade-ground I noticed that your officer in
charge of your physical training knew conspicuously nothing about it.
You had better put him on to cleaning out your drains. He was
unreasonably dirty."

Tietjens said:

"The sergeant-instructor, sir, is quite competent. The officer is an
R.A.S.C. officer. I have at the moment hardly any infantry officers in
the unit. But officers have to be on these parades--by A.C.I. They give
no orders."

The general said dryly:

"I was aware from the officer's uniform of what arm he belonged to. I am
not saying you do not do your best with the material at your command."
From Campion on parade this was an extraordinary graciousness. Behind
the general's back Levin was making signs with his eyes which he
meaningly closed and opened. The general, however, remained
extraordinarily dry in manner, his face having its perfectly
expressionless air of studied politeness which allowed no muscle of its
polished-cherry surface to move. The extreme politeness of the extremely
great to the supremely unimportant!

He glanced round the hut markedly. It was Tietjens' own office and
contained nothing but the blanket-covered tables and, hanging from a
strut, an immense calendar on which days were roughly crossed out in red
ink and blue pencil. He said:

"Go and get your belt. You will go round your cook-houses with me in a
quarter of an hour. You can tell your sergeant-cook. What sort of
cooking arrangements have you?"

Tietjens said:

"Very good cook-houses, sir."

The general said:

"You're extremely lucky, then. Extremely lucky! . . . Half the units
like yours in this camp haven't anything but company cookers and field
ovens in the open. . . ." He pointed with his crop at the open door. He
repeated with extreme distinctness "Go and get your belt!" Tietjens
wavered a very little on his feet. He said:

"You are aware, sir, that I am under arrest."

Campion imported a threat into his voice:

"I gave you," he said, "an order. To perform a duty!"

The terrific force of the command from above to below took Tietjens
staggering through the door. He heard the general's voice say: "I'm
perfectly aware he's not drunk." When he had gone four paces, Colonel
Levin was beside him.

Levin was supporting him by the elbow. He whispered:

"The general wishes me to go with you if you are feeling unwell. You
understand you are released from arrest!" He exclaimed with a sort of
rapture: "You're doing splendidly. . . . It's amazing. Everything I've
ever told him about you. . . . Yours is the only draft that got off this
morning. . . ."

Tietjens grunted:

"Of course I understand that if I'm given an order to perform a duty, it
means I am released from arrest." He had next to no voice. He managed to
say that he would prefer to go alone. He said: ". . . He's forced my
hand. . . . The last thing I want is to be released from arrest. . . ."

Levin said breathlessly:

"You _can't_ refuse. . . . You can't upset him. . . . Why, you
_can't_. . . . Besides, an officer cannot demand a court martial."

"You look," Tietjens said, "like a slightly faded bunch of
wallflowers. . . . I'm sure I beg your pardon. . . . It came into my head!"
The colonel drooped intangibly, his moustache a little ragged, his eyes a
little rimmed, his shaving a little ridged. He exclaimed:

"Damn it! . . . Do you suppose I don't _care_ what happens to you? . . .
O'Hara came storming into my quarters at half-past three. . . . I'm not
going to tell you what he said. . . ." Tietjens said gruffly:

"No, don't! I've all I can stand for the moment. . . ."

Levin exclaimed desperately:

"I want you to understand. . . . It's impossible to believe anything
against . . ."

Tietjens faced him, his teeth showing like a badger's. He said:

"Whom? . . . Against whom? Curse you!"

Levin said pallidly:

"Against . . . Against . . . either of you. . . ."

"Then leave it at that!" Tietjens said. He staggered a little until he
reached the main lines. Then he marched. It was purgatory. They peeped
at him from the corners of huts and withdrew. . . . But they always did
peep at him from the corners of huts and withdraw! That is the habit of
the Other Ranks on perceiving officers. The fellow called McKechnie also
looked out of a hut door. He too withdrew. . . . There was no mistaking
that! He had the news. . . . On the other hand, McKechnie too was under
a cloud. It might be his, Tietjens', duty, to strafe McKechnie to hell
for having left camp last night. So he might be avoiding him. . . .
There was no knowing. . . . He lurched infinitesimally to the right. The
road was rough. His legs felt like detached and swollen objects that he
dragged after him. He must master his legs. He mastered his legs. A
batman carrying a cup of tea ran against him. Tietjens said: "Put that
down and fetch me the sergeant-cook at the double. Tell him the
general's going round the cook-houses in a quarter of an hour." The
batman ran, spilling the tea in the sunlight.

In his hut, which was dim and profusely decorated with the doctor's
ideals of female beauty in every known form of pictorial reproduction,
so that it might have been lined with peach-blossom, Tietjens had the
greatest difficulty in getting into his belt. He had at first forgotten
to remove his hat, then he put his head through the wrong opening; his
fingers on the buckles operated like sausages. He inspected himself in
the doctor's cracked shaving-glass: he was exceptionally well shaved.

He had shaved that morning at six-thirty: five minutes after the draft
had got off. Naturally, the lorries had been an hour late. It was
providential that he had shaved with extra care. An insolently calm man
was looking at him, the face divided in two by the crack in the glass: a
naturally white-complexioned double-half of a face: a patch of high
colour on each cheekbone; the pepper-and-salt hair ruffled, the white
streaks extremely silver. He had gone very silver lately. But he swore
he did not look worn. Not careworn. McKechnie said from behind his back:

"By Jove, what's this all about. The general's been strafing me to hell
for not having my table tidy!"

Tietjens, still looking in the glass, said:

"You should keep your table tidy. It's the only strafe the battalion's
had."

The general, then, must have been in the orderly room of which he had
put McKechnie in charge. McKechnie went on, breathlessly:

"They say you knocked the general. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Don't you know enough to discount what they say in this town?" He said
to himself: "That was all right!" He had spoken with a cool edge on a
contemptuous voice.

He said to the sergeant-cook who was panting--another heavy,
grey-moustached, very senior N.C.O.:

"The general's going round the cook-houses. . . . You be damn certain
there's no dirty cook's clothing in the lockers!" He was fairly sure
that otherwise his cook-houses would be all right. He had gone round
them himself the morning of the day before yesterday. Or was it
yesterday? . . .

It was the day after he had been up all night because the draft had been
countermanded. . . . It didn't matter. He said:

"I wouldn't serve out white clothing to the cooks. . . . I bet you've
got some hidden away, though it's against orders."

The sergeant looked away into the distance, smiled all-knowingly over
his walrus moustache.

"The general likes to see 'em in white," he said, "and he won't know the
white clothing has been countermanded."

Tietjens said:

"The snag is that the beastly cooks always will tuck some piece of
beastly dirty clothing away in a locker rather than take the trouble to
take it round to their quarters when they've changed."

Levin said with great distinctness:

"The general has sent me to you with this, Tietjens. Take a sniff of it
if you're feeling dicky. You've been up all night on end two nights
running." He extended in the palm of his hand a bottle of smelling-salts
in a silver section of tubing. He said the general suffered from vertigo
now and then. Really he himself carried that restorative for the benefit
of Miss de Bailly.

Tietjens asked himself why the devil the sight of that smelling-salts
container reminded him of the brass handle of the bedroom door moving
almost imperceptibly . . . and incredibly. It was, of course, because
Sylvia had on her illuminated dressing-table, reflected by the glass,
just such another smooth, silver segment of tubing. . . . Was everything
he saw going to remind him of the minute movement of that handle?

"You can do what you please," the sergeant-cook said, "but there will
always be one piece of clothing in a locker for a G.O.C.I.C.'s
inspection. And the general always walks straight up to that locker and
has it opened. I've seen General Campion do it three times."

"If there's any found this time, the man it belongs to goes for a
D.C.M.," Tietjens said. "See that there's a clean diet-sheet on the
messing board."

"The generals really like to find dirty clothing," the sergeant-cook
said; "it gives them something to talk about if they don't know anything
else about cook-houses. . . . I'll put up my own diet-sheet, sir. . . .
I suppose you can keep the general back for twenty minutes or so? It's
all I ask."

Levin said towards his rolling, departing back:

"That's a damn smart man. Fancy being as confident as that about an
inspection. . . . Ugh! . . ." and Levin shuddered in remembrance of
inspections through which in his time he had passed.

"He's a damn smart man!" Tietjens said. He added to McKechnie:

"You might take a look at dinners in case the general takes it into his
head to go round them."

McKechnie said darkly:

"Look here, Tietjens, are you in command of this unit or am I?"

Levin exclaimed sharply, for him:

"What's that? What the . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Captain McKechnie complains that he is the senior officer and should
command this unit."

Levin ejaculated:

"Of all the . . ." He addressed McKechnie with vigour: "My man, the
command of these units is an appointment at disposition of headquarters.
Don't let there be any mistake about that!"

McKechnie said doggedly:

"Captain Tietjens asked me to take the battalion this morning. I
understood he was under . . ."

"You," Levin said, "are attached to this unit for discipline and
rations. You damn well understand that if some uncle or other of yours
were not, to the general's knowledge, a protégé of Captain Tietjens',
you'd be in a lunatic asylum at this moment. . . ."

McKechnie's face worked convulsively, he swallowed as men are said to
swallow who suffer from hydrophobia. He lifted his fist and cried out:

"My un . . ."

Levin said:

"If you say another word you go under medical care the moment it's said.
I've the order in my pocket. Now, fall out. At the double!"

McKechnie wavered on the way to the door. Levin added:

"You can take your choice of going up the line to-night. Or a court of
inquiry for obtaining divorce leave and then not getting a divorce. Or
the other thing. And you can thank Captain Tietjens for the clemency the
general has shown you!"

The hut now reeling a little, Tietjens put the opened smelling bottle to
his nostrils. At the sharp pang of the odour the hut came to attention.
He said:

"We can't keep the general waiting."

"He told me," Levin said, "to give you ten minutes. He's sitting in your
hut. He's tired. This affair has worried him dreadfully. O'Hara is the
first C.O. he ever served under. A useful man, too, at his job."

Tietjens leaned against his dressing-table of meat-cases.

"You told that fellow McKechnie off, all right," he said. "I did not
know you had it in you. . . ."

"Oh," Levin said, "it's just being with _him_. . . . I get his manner
and it does all right. . . . Of course I don't often hear him have to
strafe anybody in that manner. There's nobody really to stand up to him.
Naturally. . . . But just this morning I was in his cabinet doing
private secretary, and he was talking to Pe . . . Talking while he
shaved. And he said exactly that: You can take your choice of going up
the line to-night or a court martial! . . . So naturally I said as near
the same as I could to your little friend. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"We'd better go now."

In the winter sunlight Levin tucked his arm under Tietjens', leaning
towards him gaily and not hurrying. The display was insufferable to
Tietjens, but he recognized that it was indispensable. The bright day
seemed full of things with hard edges--a rather cruel definiteness. . . .
Liver! . . .

The little depot adjutant passed them going very fast, as if before a
wind. Levin just waved his hand in acknowledgment of his salute and went
on, being enraptured in Tietjens' conversation. He said:

"You and . . . and Mrs. Tietjens are dining at the general's to-night.
To meet the G.O.C.I.C. Western Division. And General O'Hara. . . . We
understand that you have definitely separated from Mrs. Tietjens. . . ."
Tietjens forced his left arm to violence to restrain it from tearing
itself from the colonel's grasp.

His mind had become a coffin-headed, leather-jawed charger, like
Schomburg. Sitting on his mind was like sitting on Schomburg at a dull
water-jump. His lips said: "Bub-bub-bub-bub!" He could not feel his
hands. He said:

"I recognize the necessity. If the general sees it in that way. I saw it
in another way myself." His voice was intensely weary. "No doubt," he
said, "the general knows best!"

Levin's face exhibited real enthusiasm. He said:

"You decent fellow! You awfully decent fellow! We're all in the same
boat. . . . Now, will you tell me? For _him_. Was O'Hara drunk last
night or wasn't he?"

Tietjens said:

"I think he was not drunk when he burst into the room with Major
Perowne. . . . I've been thinking about it! I think he became drunk. . . .
When I first requested and then ordered him to leave the room he leant
against the doorpost. ... He was certainly then--in disorder! . . . I
then told him that I should order him under arrest, if he didn't go. . . ."

Levin said:

"Mm! Mm! Mm!"

Tietjens said:

"It was my obvious duty. . . . I assure you that I was perfectly
collected. . . . I beg to assure you that I was perfectly collected. . . ."

Levin said: "I am not questioning the correctness. . . . But . . . we
are all one family. . . . I admit the atrocious . . . the unbearable
nature. . . . But you understand that O'Hara had the right to enter your
room. . . . As P.M.! . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I am not questioning that it was his right. I was assuring you that I
was perfectly collected because the general had honoured me by asking my
opinion on the condition of General O'Hara. . . ."

They had by now walked far beyond the line leading to Tietjens' office
and, close together, were looking down upon the great tapestry of the
French landscape.

"_He_," Levin said, "is anxious for your opinion. It really amounts to
as to whether O'Hara drinks too much to continue in his job! . . . And
he says he will take your word. . . . You could not have a greater
testimonial. . . ."

"He could not," Tietjens said studiedly, "do anything less. Knowing me."

Levin said:

"Good heavens, old man, you rub it in!" He added quickly: "He wishes me
to dispose of this side of the matter. He will take my word and yours.
You will forgive . . ."

The mind of Tietjens had completely failed: the Seine below looked
like an S on fire in an opal. He said: "Eh?" And then: "Oh, yes! I
forgive. . . . It's painful. . . . You probably don't know what you are
doing."

He broke off suddenly:

"By God! . . . Were the Canadian Railway Service to go with my draft?
They were detailed to mend the line here to-day. Also to go . . . I kept
them back. . . . Both orders were dated the same day and hour. I could
not get on to headquarters either from the hotel or from here. . . ."

Levin said:

"Yes, that's all right. He'll be immensely pleased. He's going to speak
to you about _that_!" Tietjens gave an immense sigh of relief.

"I remembered that my orders were conflicting just before. . . . It was
a terrible shock to remember. . . . If I sent them up in the lorries,
the repairs to the railway might be delayed. . . . If I didn't, you
might get strafed to hell. . . . It was an intolerable worry. . . ."

Levin said:

"You remember it just as you saw the handle of your door moving. . . ."

Tietjens said from a sort of a mist:

"Yes. You know how beastly it is when you suddenly remember you have
forgotten something in orders. As if the pit of your stomach had . . ."

Levin said:

"All I ever thought about if I'd forgotten anything was what would be a
good excuse to put up to the adjutant . . . When I was a regimental
officer . . ."

Suddenly Tietjens said insistently:

"How did you know that? . . . About the door handle? Sylvia could not
have seen it. . . ." He added: "And she could not have known what I was
thinking. . . . She had her back to the door. . . . And to me. . . .
Looking at me in the glass. . . . She was not even aware of what had
happened. . . . So she could not have seen the handle move!"

Levin hesitated:

"I . . ." he said. "Perhaps I ought not to have said that. . . . You've
told us. . . . That is to say, you've told . . ." He was pale in the
sunlight. He said: "Old man . . . Perhaps you don't know. . . . Didn't
you perhaps ever, in your childhood? . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Well . . . what is it?"

"That you talk . . . when you're sleeping!" Levin said.

Astonishingly, Tietjens said:

"What of that? . . . It's nothing to write home about! With the overwork
I've had and the sleeplessness. . . ."

Levin said, with a pathetic appeal to Tietjens' omniscience:

"But doesn't it mean . . . We used to say when we were boys . . . that
if you talk in your sleep . . . you're . . . in fact a bit dotty?"

Tietjens said without passion:

"Not necessarily. It means that one has been under mental pressure, but
all mental pressure does not drive you over the edge. Not by any
means. . . . Besides, what does it matter?"

Levin said:

"You mean you don't care. . . . Good God!" He remained looking at the
view, drooping, in intense dejection. He said: "This _beastly_ war! This
_beastly_ war! . . . Look at all that view. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"It's an encouraging spectacle, really. The beastliness of human nature
is always pretty normal. We lie and betray and are wanting in
imagination and deceive ourselves, always, at about the same rate. In
peace and in war! But, somewhere in that view there are enormous bodies
of men. . . . If you got a still more extended range of view over this
whole front you'd have still more enormous bodies of men. . . . Seven to
ten million. . . . All moving towards places towards which they
desperately don't want to go. Desperately! Every one of them is
desperately afraid. But they go on. An immense blind will forces them in
the effort to consummate the one decent action that humanity has to its
credit in the whole of recorded history. The one we are engaged in. That
effort is the one certain creditable fact in all their lives. . . . But
the _other_ lives of all those men are dirty, potty and discreditable
little affairs. . . . Like yours. . . . Like mine. . . ."

Levin exclaimed:

"Just heavens! _What_ a pessimist you are!"

Tietjens said: "Can't you see that is optimism?"

"But," Levin said, "we're being beaten out of the field. . . . You don't
know how desperate things are."

Tietjens said:

"Oh, I know pretty well. As soon as this weather really breaks we're
probably done."

"We can't," Levin said, "possibly hold them. Not possibly."

"But success or failure," Tietjens said, "have nothing to do with the
credit of a story. And a consideration of the virtues of humanity does
not omit the other side. If we lose they win. If success is necessary to
your idea of virtue--_virtus_--they then provide the success instead of
ourselves. But the thing is to be able to stick to the integrity of your
character, whatever earthquake sets the house tumbling over your
head. . . . That, thank God, we're doing. . . ."

Levin said:

"I don't know. ... If you knew what is going on at home . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Oh, I know. . . . I know that ground as I know the palm of my hand. I
could invent that life if I knew nothing at all about the facts."

Levin said:

"I believe you could." He added: "Of course you could. . . . And yet the
only use we can make of you is to martyrize you because two drunken
brutes break into your wife's bedroom. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"You betray your non-Anglo-Saxon origin by being so vocal. . . . And by
your illuminative exaggerations!"

Levin suddenly exclaimed:

"What the devil were we talking about?"

Tietjens said grimly:

"I am here at the disposal of the competent military
authority--You!--that is inquiring into my antecedents. I am ready to go
on belching platitudes till you stop me."

Levin answered:

"For goodness' sake help me. This is horribly painful. _He_--the
general--has given me the job of finding out what happened last night.
He won't face it himself. He's attached to you both."

Tietjens said:

"It's asking too much to ask me to help you. . . . What did I say in my
sleep? What has Mrs. Tietjens told the general?"

"The general," Levin said, "has not seen Mrs. Tietjens. He could not
trust himself. He knew she would twist him round her little finger."

Tietjens said:

"He's beginning to learn. He was sixty last July, but he's beginning."

"So that," Levin said, "what we do know we learnt in the way I have told
you. And from O'Hara of course. The general would not let Pe . . ., the
other fellow, speak a word, while he was shaving. He just said: 'I won't
hear you. I won't hear you. You can take your choice of going up the
line as soon as there are trains running or being broke on my personal
application to the King in Council."

"I didn't know," Tietjens said, "that he could talk as straight as
that."

"He's dreadfully hard hit," Levin answered; "if you and Mrs. Tietjens
separate--and still more if there's anything real against either of
you--it's going to shatter all his illusions. And . . ." He paused: "Do
you know Major Thurston? A gunner? Attached to our anti-aircraft
crowd? . . . The general is very thick with him. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"He's one of the Thurstons of Lobden Moorside. . . . I don't know him
personally. . . ."

Levin said:

"He's upset the general a good deal. . . . With something he told
him. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Good God!" And then: "He can't have told the general anything against
me. . . . Then it must be against . . ."

Levin said:

"Do you want the general always to be told things against you in
contradistinction to things about . . . another person."

Tietjens said:

"We shall be keeping the fellows in my cook-house a confoundedly long
time waiting for inspections. . . . I'm in your hands as regards the
general. . . ."

Levin said:

"The general's in your hut: thankful to goodness to be alone. He never
is. He said he was going to write a private memorandum for the Secretary
of State, and I could keep you any time I liked as long as I got
everything out of you. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Did what Major Thurston allege take place . . . Thurston has lived most
of his life in France. . . . But you had better not tell me. . . ."

Levin said:

"He's our anti-craft liaison officer with the French civilian
authorities. Those sort of fellows generally have lived in France a good
deal. A very decentish, quiet man. He plays chess with the general and
they talk over the chess. . . . But the general is going to talk about
what he said to you himself. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Good God! ... He going to talk as well as you. . . . You'd say the
coils were closing in. . . ."

Levin said:

"We can't go on like this. . . . It's my own fault for not being more
direct. But this can't last all day. We could neither of us stand it. . . .
I'm pretty nearly done. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Where _did_ your father come from, really? Not from Frankfurt? . . ."

Levin said:

"Constantinople. . . . His father was financial agent to the Sultan; my
father was his son by an Armenian presented to him by the Selamlik along
with the Order of the Medjidje, first class."

"It accounts for your very decent manner, and for your common sense. If
you had been English I should have broken your neck before now."

Levin said:

"Thank you! I hope I always behave like an English gentleman. But I am
going to be brutally direct now. . . ." He went on: "The really queer
thing is that you should always address Miss Wannop in the language of
the Victorian _Correct Letter-Writer_. You must excuse my mentioning the
name: it shortens things. You said 'Miss Wannop' every two or three
half-minutes. It convinced the general more than any possible assertions
that your relations were perfectly . . ."

Tietjens, his eyes shut, said:

"I talked to Miss Wannop in my sleep. . . ."

Levin, who was shaking a little, said:

"It was very queer. . . . Almost ghostlike. . . . There you sat, your
arms on the table. Talking away. You appeared to be writing a letter to
her. And the sunlight streaming in at the hut. I was going to wake you,
but he stopped me. He took the view that he was on detective work, and
that he might as well detect He had got it into his mind that you were a
Socialist."

"He would," Tietjens commented. "Didn't I tell you he was beginning to
learn things? . . ."

Levin exclaimed:

"But you aren't a So . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Of course, if your father came from Constantinople and his mother was a
Georgian, it accounts for your attractiveness. You _are_ a most handsome
fellow. And intelligent. . . . If the general has put you on to inquire
whether I am a Socialist I will answer your questions."

Levin said:

"No. . . . That's one of the questions he's reserving for himself to
ask. It appears that if you answer that you are a Socialist he intends
to cut you out of his will. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"His will! . . . Oh, yes, of course, he might very well leave me
something. But doesn't that supply rather a motive for me to say that I
_am_? I don't want his money."

Levin positively jumped a step backwards. Money, and particularly money
that came by way of inheritance, being one of the sacred things of life
for him, he exclaimed:

"I don't see that you _can_ joke about such a subject!"

Tietjens answered good-humouredly:

"Well, you don't expect me to play up to the old gentleman in order to
get his poor old shekels." He added "Hadn't we better get it over?"

Levin said:

"You've got hold of yourself?"

Tietjens answered:

"Pretty well. . . . You'll excuse my having been emotional so far. You
aren't English, so it won't have embarrassed you."

Levin exclaimed in an outraged manner:

"Hang it, I'm English to the backbone! What's the matter with me?"

Tietjens said:

"Nothing. . . . Nothing in the world. That's just what makes you
un-English. We're all . . . well, it doesn't matter what's wrong with
_us_. . . . What did you gather about my relations with Miss Wannop?"

The question was so unemotionally put and Levin was still so concerned
as to his origins that he did not at first grasp what Tietjens had said.
He began to protest that he had been educated at Winchester and
Magdalen. Then he exclaimed, "_Oh_!" And took time for reflection.

"If," he said finally, "the general had not let out that she was young
and attractive . . . at least, I suppose attractive . . . I should have
thought that you regarded her as an old maid. . . . You know, of course,
that it came to me as a shock, the thought that there was anyone. . . .
That you had allowed yourself . . . Anyhow . . . I suppose I'm
simple. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"What did the general gather?"

"He . . ." Levin said, "he stood over you with his head held to one
side, looking rather cunning . . . like a magpie listening at a hole
it's dropped a nut into. . . . First he looked disappointed: then quite
glad. A simple kind of gladness. Just glad, you know. . . . When we got
outside the hut he said 'I suppose in _vino veritas_,' and then he asked
me the Latin for 'sleep' . . . But I had forgotten it too. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"What did I say?"

"It's . . ." Levin hesitated, "extraordinarily difficult to say what you
_did_ say. . . . I don't profess to remember long speeches to the
letter. . . . Naturally it was a good deal broken up. . . . I tell you, you
were talking to a young lady about matters you don't generally talk to young
ladies about. . . . And obviously you were trying to let your . . . Mrs.
Tietjens, down easily. . . . You were trying to explain also why you had
definitely decided to separate from Mrs. Tietjens. . . . And you took it
that the young lady might be troubled ... at the separation. . . ."

Tietjens said carelessly:

"This is rather painful. Perhaps you would let me tell you exactly what
_did_ happen last night. . . ."

Levin said:

"If you only would!" He added rather diffidently: "If you would not mind
remembering that I am a military court of inquiry. It makes it easier
for me to report to the general if you say things dully and in the order
they happened."

Tietjens said:

"Thank you . . ." and after a short interval, "I retired to rest with my
wife last night at. . . . I cannot say the hour exactly. Say half-past
one. I reached this camp at half-past four, taking rather over half an
hour to walk. What happened, as I am about to relate, took place
therefore before four."

"The hour," Levin said, "is not material. We know the incident occurred
in the small hours. General O'Hara made his complaint to me at
three-thirty-five. He probably took five minutes to reach my quarters."

Tietjens asked:

"The exact charge was . . ."

"The complaints," Levin answered, "were very numerous indeed. . . . I
could not catch them all. The succinct charge was at first being drunk
and striking a superior officer, then merely that of conduct prejudicial
in that you struck . . . There is also a subsidiary charge of conduct
prejudicial in that you improperly marked a charge-sheet in your orderly
room. . . . I did not catch what all that was about. . . . You appear to
have had a quarrel with him about his red-caps. . . ."

"That," Tietjens said, "is what it is really all about." He asked: "The
officer I was said to have struck was . . .?"

Levin said:

"Perowne . . ." dryly.

Tietjens said:

"You are sure it was not himself. I am prepared to plead guilty to
striking General O'Hara."

"It is not," Levin said, "a question of pleading guilty. There is no
charge to that effect against you, and you are perfectly aware that you
are not under arrest. . . . An order to perform any duty after you have
been placed under arrest in itself releases you and dissolves the
arrest."

Tietjens said coolly:

"I am perfectly aware of that. And that was General Campion's
intention in ordering me to accompany him round my cook-houses. . . .
But I doubt. . . . I put it to you for your serious attention whether
that is the best way to hush this matter up. . . . I think it would be
more expedient that I should plead guilty to a charge of striking
General O'Hara. And naturally to being drunk. An officer does not strike
a general when he is sober. That would be a quite inconspicuous affair.
Subordinate officers are broken every day for being drunk."

Levin had said "Wait a minute," twice. He now exclaimed with a certain
horror:

"Your mania for sacrificing yourself makes you lose all . . . all sense
of proportion. You forget that General Campion is a gentleman. Things
cannot be done in a hole-and-corner manner in this command. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"They're done unbearably. . . . It would be nothing to me to be broke
for being drunk, but raking up all this is hell."

Levin said:

"The general is anxious to know exactly what has happened. You will
kindly accept an order to relate exactly what happened."

Tietjens said:

"That is what is perfectly damnable. . . ." He remained silent for
nearly a minute, Levin slapping his leggings with his riding-crop in a
nervously passionate rhythm. Tietjens stiffened himself and began:

"General O'Hara came to my wife's room and burst in the door. I was
there. I took him to be drunk. But from what he exclaimed I have since
imagined that he was not so much drunk as misled. There was another man
lying in the corridor where I had thrown him. General O'Hara exclaimed
that this was Major Perowne. I had not realised that this was Major
Perowne. I do not know Major Perowne very well and he was not in
uniform. I had imagined him to be a French waiter coming to call me to
the telephone. I had seen only his face round the door: he was looking
round the door. My wife was in a state . . . bordering on nudity. I had
put my hand under his chin and thrown him through the doorway. I am
physically very strong and I exercised all my strength. I am aware of
that. I was excited, but not more excited than the circumstances seemed
to call for. . . ."

Levin exclaimed:

"But . . . At three in the morning! The telephone!"

"I was ringing up my headquarters and yours. All through the night. The
O.I.C. draft, Lieutenant Cowley, was also ringing me up. I was anxious
to know what was to be done about the Canadian railway men. I had three
times been called to the telephone since I had been in Mrs. Tietjens'
room, and once an orderly had come down from the camp. I was also
conducting a very difficult conversation with my wife as to the disposal
of my family's estates, which are large, so that the details were
complicated. I occupied the room next door to Mrs. Tietjens and till
that moment, the communicating door between the rooms being open, I had
heard when a waiter or an orderly had knocked at my own door in the
corridor. The night porter of the hotel was a dark, untidy, surly sort
of fellow. . . . Not unlike Perowne."

Levin said:

"Is it necessary to go into all this? We . . ."

Tietjens said:

"If I am to make a statement it seems necessary. I would prefer you to
question me . . ."

Levin said:

"Please go on. . . . We accept the statement that Major Perowne was not
in uniform. He states that he was in his pyjamas and dressing-gown.
Looking for the bathroom."

Tietjens said: "Ah!" and stood reflecting. He said:

"May I hear the . . . the purport of Major Perowne's statement?"

"He states," Levin said, "what I have just said. He was looking for the
bathroom. He had not slept in the hotel before. He opened a door and
looked round it, and was immediately thrown with great violence down
into the passage with his head against the wall. He says that this dazed
him so that, not really appreciating what had happened, he shouted
various accusations against the person who had assaulted him. . . .
General O'Hara then came out of his room. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"What accusations did Major Perowne shout?"

"He doesn't. . . ." Levin hesitated, "eh! . . . elaborate them in his
statement."

Tietjens said:

"It is, I imagine, material that I should know what they are. . . ."

Levin said:

"I don't know that. . . . If you'll forgive me . . . Major Perowne came
to see me, reaching me half an hour after General O'Hara. He was very . . .
extremely nervous and concerned. I am bound to say . . . for Mrs.
Tietjens. . . . And also very concerned to spare yourself! . . . It
appears that he had shouted out just anything. . . . As it might be
'Thieves!' or 'Fire!' . . . But when General O'Hara came out he told
him, being out of himself, that he had been invited to your wife's room,
and that . . . Oh, excuse me. . . . I'm under great obligations to
you . . . the very greatest . . . that you had attempted to blackmail him!"

Tietjens said:

"Well! . . ."

"You understand," Levin said, and he was pleading, "that is what he
said to General O'Hara in the corridor. He even confessed it was
madness. . . . He did not maintain the accusation to me. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Not that Mrs. Tietjens had given him leave? . . ."

Levin said with tears in his eyes:

"I'll not go on with this. . . . I will rather resign my commission than
go on tormenting you. . . ."

"You can't resign your commission," Tietjens said.

"I can resign my appointment," Levin answered. He went on sniffling:
"This beastly war! . . . This beastly war! . . ."

Tietjens said:

"If what is distressing you is having to tell me that you believe Major
Perowne came with my wife's permission I know it's true. It's also true
that my wife expected me to be there. She wanted some fun: not adultery.
But I am also aware--as Major Thurston appears to have told General
Campion--that Mrs. Tietjens was with Major Perowne. In France. At a
place called Yssingueux-les-Pervenches. . . ."

"That wasn't the name," Levin blubbered. "It was Saint . . . Saint . . .
Saint something. In the Cevennes. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Don't, there! . . . Don't distress yourself. . . ."

"But I'm . . ." Levin went on, "under great obligations to you. . . ."

"I'd better," Tietjens said, "finish this matter myself."

Levin said:

"It will break the general's heart. He believes so absolutely in Mrs.
Tietjens. Who wouldn't? . . . How the devil could you guess what Major
Thurston told him?"

"He's the sort of brown, trustworthy man who always does know that sort
of thing," Tietjens answered. "As for the general's belief in Mrs.
Tietjens, he's perfectly justified. . . . Only there will be no more
parades. Sooner or later it has to come to that for us all. . . ." He added
with a little bitterness: "Only not for you. Being a Turk or a Jew you
are a simple, Oriental, monogamous, faithful soul. . . ." He added
again: "I hope to goodness the sergeant-cook has the sense not to keep
the men's dinners back for the general's inspection. . . . But of course
he will not. . . ."

Levin said:

"What in the world would that matter?" fiercely. "He keeps men waiting
as much as three hours. On parade."

"Of course," Tietjens said, "if that is what Major Perowne told General
O'Hara it removes a good deal of my suspicions of the latter's sobriety.
Try to get the position. General O'Hara positively burst in the little
sneck of the door that I had put down and came in shouting: 'Where is
the ---- blackmailer?' And it was a full three minutes before I could
get rid of him. I had had the presence of mind to switch off the light
and he persisted in asking for another look at Mrs. Tietjens. You see,
if you consider it, he is a very heavy sleeper. He is suddenly awakened
after, no doubt, not a few pegs. He hears Major Perowne shouting about
blackmail and thieves. . . . I dare say this town has its quota of
blackmailers. O'Hara might well be anxious to catch one in the act. He
hates me, anyhow, because of his Red Caps. I'm a shabby-looking chap he
doesn't know much about. Perowne passes for being a millionaire. I dare
say he is: he's said to be very stingy. That would be how he got hold of
the idea of blackmail and hypnotised the general with it. . . ."

He went on again:

"But I wasn't to know that. ... I had shut the door on Perowne and
didn't even know he was Perowne. I really thought he was the night
porter coming to call me to the telephone. I only saw a roaring satyr.
I mean that was what I thought O'Hara was. . . . And I assure you I kept
my head. . . . When he persisted in leaning against the doorpost and
asking for another look at Mrs. Tietjens, he kept on saying: 'The woman'
and 'The hussy.' Not 'Mrs. Tietjens.' . . . I thought then that there
was something queer. I said: 'This is my wife's room,' several times. He
said something to the effect of how could he know she was my wife,
and . . . that she had made eyes at himself in the lounge, so it might have
been himself as well as Perowne. . . . I dare say he had got it into his
head that I had imported some tart to blackmail someone. . . . But you
know. . . . I grew exhausted after a time. . . . I saw outside in the
corridor one of the little subalterns he has on his staff, and I said:
'If you do not take General O'Hara away I shall order you to put him
under arrest for drunkenness.' That seemed to drive the general crazy. I
had gone closer to him, being determined to push him out of the door,
and he decidedly smelt of whisky. Strongly. . . . But I dare say he was
thinking himself outraged, really. And perhaps also coming to his
senses. As there was nothing else for it I pushed him gently out of the
room. In going he shouted that I was to consider myself under arrest. I
so considered myself. . . . That is to say that, as soon as I had
settled certain details with Mrs. Tietjens, I walked up to the camp,
which I took to be my quarters, though I am actually under the M.O.'s
orders to reside in this hotel owing to the state of my lungs. I saw the
draft off, that not necessitating my giving any orders. I went to my
sleeping quarters, it being then about six-thirty, and towards seven
awakened McKechnie, whom I asked to take my adjutant's and battalion
parade and orderly-room. I had breakfast in my hut, and then went into
my private office to await developments. I think I have now told you
everything material. . . ."




CHAPTER II


General Lord Edward Campion, G.C.B., K.C. M.G., (military), D.S.O.,
etc., sat, radiating glory and composing a confidential memorandum to
the Secretary of State for War, on a bully-beef case, leaning forward
over a military blanket that covered a deal table. He was for the moment
in high good humour on the surface, though his subordinate minds were
puzzled and depressed. At the end of each sentence that he wrote--and he
wrote with increasing satisfaction!--a mind that he was not using said:
"What the devil am I going to do with that fellow?" Or: "How the devil
is that girl's name to be kept out of this mess?"

Having been asked to write a confidential memorandum for the information
of the home authorities as to what, in his opinion, was the cause of the
French railway strike, he had hit on the ingenious device of reporting
what was the opinion of the greater part of the forces under his
command. This was a dangerous line to take, for he might well come into
conflict with the home Government. But he was pretty certain that any
inquiries that the home Government could cause to be made amongst the
local civilian population would confirm what he was writing--which he
was careful to state was not to be taken as a communication of his own
opinion. In addition, he did not care what the Government did to him.

He was satisfied with his military career. In the early part of the war,
after materially helping mobilisation, he had served with great
distinction in the East, in command mostly of mounted infantry. He had
subsequently so distinguished himself in the organising and transporting
of troops coming and going overseas that, on the part of the lines of
communication where he now commanded becoming of great importance, he
knew that he had seemed the only general that could be given that
command. It had become of enormous importance--these were open
secrets!--because, owing to divided opinions in the Cabinet, it might at
any moment be decided to move the bulk of H.M. Forces to somewhere in
the East. The idea underlying this--as General Campion saw it--had at
least some relation to the necessities of the British Empire and
strategy embracing world politics as well as military movements--a fact
which is often forgotten--there was this much to be said for it: The
preponderance of British Imperial interests might be advanced as lying
in the Middle and Far Easts--to the east, that is to say, of
Constantinople. This might be denied, but it was a feasible proposition.
The present operations on the Western front, arduous, and even
creditable, as they might have been until relatively lately, were very
remote from our Far-Eastern possessions and mitigated from, rather than
added to, our prestige. In addition, the unfortunate display in front of
Constantinople in the beginning of the war had almost eliminated our
prestige with the Mohammedan races. Thus a demonstration in enormous
force in any region between European Turkey and the north-western
frontiers of India might point out to Mohammedans, Hindus, and other
Eastern races, what overwhelming forces Great Britain, were she so
minded, could put into the field. It is true that would mean the
certain loss of the war on the Western front, with corresponding loss of
prestige in the West. But the wiping out of the French republic would
convey little to the Eastern races, whereas we could no doubt make terms
with the enemy nations, as a price for abandoning our allies that might
well leave the Empire, not only intact, but actually increased in
colonial extent, since it was unlikely that the enemy empires would wish
to be burdened with colonies for some time.

General Campion was not overpoweringly sentimental over the idea of the
abandonment of our allies. They had won his respect as fighting
organisations and that, to the professional soldier, is a great deal;
but still he _was_ a professional soldier, and the prospect of widening
the bounds of the British Empire could not be contemptuously dismissed
at the price of rather sentimental dishonour. Such bargains had been
struck before during wars involving many nations, and doubtless such
bargains would be struck again. In addition, votes might be gained by
the Government from the small but relatively noisy and menacing part of
the British population that favoured the enemy nations.

But when it came to tactics--which it should be remembered concerns
itself with the movement of troops actually in contact with enemy
forces--General Campion had no doubt that plan was the conception
of the brain of a madman. The dishonour of such a proceeding must of
course be considered--and its impracticability was hopeless. The
dreadful nature of what would be our debacle did we attempt to evacuate
the Western front might well be unknown to, or might be deliberately
ignored by, the civilian mind. But the general could almost see the
horrors as a picture--and, professional soldier as he was, his mind
shuddered at the picture. They had by now in the country enormous bodies
of troops who had hitherto not come into contact with the enemy forces.
Did they attempt to withdraw these in the first place the native
population would at once turn from a friendly into a bitterly hostile
factor, and moving troops through hostile country is to the _n_th power
a more lengthy matter than moving them through territory where the
native populations lend a helping hand, or are at least not obstructive.
They had in addition this enormous force to ration, and they would
doubtless have to supply them with ammunition on the almost certain
breaking through of the enemy forces. It would be impossible to do this
without the use of the local railways--and the use of these would at
once be prohibited. If, on the other hand, they attempted to begin the
evacuation by shortening the front, the operation would be very
difficult with troops who, by now, were almost solely men trained only
in trench warfare, with officers totally unused to that keeping up of
communications between units which is the life and breath of a
retreating army. Training, in fact, in that element had been almost
abandoned in the training camps where instruction was almost limited to
bomb-throwing, the use of machine-guns, and other departments which had
been forced on the War Office by eloquent civilians--to the almost
complete neglect of the rifle. Thus at the mere hint of a retreat the
enemy forces must break through and come upon the vast, unorganised, or
semi-organised bodies of troops in the rear. . . .

The temptation for the professional soldier was to regard such a state
of things with equanimity. Generals have not infrequently enormously
distinguished themselves by holding up retreats from the rear when
vanguard commanders have disastrously failed. But General Campion
resisted the temptation of even hoping that this chance of
distinguishing himself might offer itself. He could not contemplate with
equanimity the slaughter of great bodies of men under his command, and
not even a successful retreating action of that description could be
carried out without horrible slaughter. And he would have little hope of
conducting necessarily delicate and very hurried movements with an army
that, except for its rough training in trench warfare, was practically
civilian in texture. So that although, naturally, he had made his plans
for such an eventuality, having indeed in his private quarters four
enormous paper-covered blackboards upon which he had changed daily the
names of units according as they passed from his hands or came into them
and became available, he prayed specifically every night before retiring
to bed that the task might not be cast upon his shoulders. He prized
very much his universal popularity in his command, and he could not bear
to think of how the eyes of the Army would regard him as he put upon
them a strain so appalling and such unbearable sufferings. He had,
moreover, put that aspect of the matter very strongly in a memorandum
that he had prepared in answer to a request from the home Government for
a scheme by which an evacuation might be effected. But he considered
that the civilian element in the Government was so entirely indifferent
to the sufferings of the men engaged in these operations, and was so
completely ignorant of what are military exigencies, that the words he
had devoted to that department of the subject were merely wasted. . . .

So everything pushed him into writing confidentially to the Secretary of
State for War a communication that he knew must be singularly
distasteful to a number of the gentlemen who would peruse it. He
chuckled indeed as he wrote, the open door behind him and the sunlight
pouring in on his radiant figure. He said:

"Sit down, Tietjens. Levin, I shall not want you for ten minutes,"
without raising his head, and went on writing. It annoyed him that, from
the corner of his eye, he could see that Tietjens was still standing,
and he said rather irritably: "Sit down, sit down. . . ."

He wrote:

"It is pretty generally held here by the native population that the
present very serious derangement of traffic, if not actively promoted,
is at least winked at by the Government of this country. It is, that is
to say, intended to give us a taste of what would happen if I took any
measures here for returning any large body of men to the home country or
elsewhere, and it is said also to be a demonstration in favour of a
single command--a measure which is here regarded by a great weight of
instructed opinion as indispensable to the speedy and successful
conclusion of hostilities. . . ."

The general paused over that sentence. It came very near the quick. For
himself he was absolutely in favour of a single command, and in his
opinion, too, it was indispensable to any sort of conclusion of
hostilities at all. The whole of military history, in so far as it
concerned allied operations of any sort--from the campaigns of Xerxes
and operations during the wars of the Greeks and Romans, to the
campaigns of Marlborough and Napoleon and the Prussian operations of
1866 and 1870--pointed to the conclusion that a relatively small force
acting homogeneously was, to the _n_th power again, more effective than
vastly superior forces of allies acting only imperfectly in accord or
not in accord at all. Modern developments in arms had made no shade at
all of difference to strategy and had made differences merely of time
and numbers to tactics. To-day, as in the days of the Greek Wars of the
Allies, success depended on apt timing of the arrival of forces at given
points, and it made no difference whether your lethal weapons acted from
a distance of thirty miles or were held and operated by hand; whether
you dealt death from above or below the surface of the ground, through
the air by dropped missiles or by mephitic and torturing vapours. What
won combats, campaigns, and, in the end, wars, was the brain which timed
the arrival of forces at given points--and that must be one brain which
could command their presence at these points, not a half-dozen
authorities requesting each other to perform operations which might or
might not fall in with the ideas or the prejudices of any one or other
of the half-dozen. . . .

Levin came in noiselessly, slid a memorandum slip on to the blanket
beside the paper on which the general was writing. The general read: _T.
agrees completely, sir, with your diagnosis of the facts, except that he
is much more ready to accept General O'H.'s acts as reasonable. He
places himself entirely in your hands_.

The general heaved an immense sigh of relief. The sunlight streaming in
became very bright. He had had a real sinking at the heart when Tietjens
had boggled for a second over putting on his belt. An officer may not
demand or insist on a court martial. But he, Campion, could not in
decency have refused Tietjens his court martial if he stood out for it.
He had a right to clear his character publicly. It would have been
impossible to refuse him. Then the fat would have been in the fire. For,
knowing O'Hara through pretty nearly twenty-five years--or it must be
thirty!--of service Campion was pretty certain that O'Hara had made a
drunken beast of himself. Yet he was very attached to O'Hara--one of the
old type of rough-diamond generals who swore your head off, but were
damn capable men! . . . It was a tremendous relief.

He said sharply:

"Sit down, can't you, Tietjens! You irritate me by standing there!" He
said to himself: "An obstinate fellow. . . . Why, he's gone!" and his
mind and eyes being occupied by the sentence he had last written, the
sense of irritation remained with him. He re-read the closing clause:
". . . a single command--a measure which is here regarded by a great weight
of instructed opinion as indispensable to the speedy and successful
termination of hostilities. . . ."

He looked at this, whistling beneath his breath. It was pretty thick. He
was not asked for his opinion as to the single command: yet he decidedly
wanted to get in and was pretty well prepared to stand the consequences.
The consequences might be something pretty bad: he might be sent home.
That was quite possible. That, even, was better than what was happening
to poor Puffles, who was being starved of men. He had been at Sandhurst
with Puffles, and they had got their commissions on the same day to the
same regiment. A damn good soldier, but too hot-tempered. He was making
an extraordinarily good thing of it in spite of his shortage of men,
which was the talk of the army. But it must be damn agonizing for him,
and a very improper strain on his men. One day--as soon as the weather
broke--the enemy _must_ break through. Then he, Puffles, would be sent
home. That was what the fellows at Westminster and in Downing Street
wanted. Puffles had been a great deal too free with his tongue. They
would not send him home before he had a disaster because, unless he were
in disgrace, he would be a thorn in their sides: whereas if he were
disgraced no one much would listen to him. It was smart practice. . . .
_Sharp_ practice!

He tossed the sheet on which he had been writing across the table and
said to Tietjens:

"Look at that, will you?" In the centre of the hut Tietjens was sitting
bulkily on a bully-beef case that had been brought in ceremoniously by a
runner. "He _does_ look beastly shabby," the general said. "There are
three . . . four grease stains on his tunic. He ought to get his hair
cut!" He added: "It's a perfectly damnable business. No one but this
fellow would have got into it. He's a firebrand. That's what he is. A
regular firebrand!"

Tietjens' troubles had really shaken the general not a little. He was
left up in the air. He had lived the greater part of his life with his
sister, Lady Claudine Sandbach, and the greater part of the remainder of
his life at Groby, at any rate after he came home from India and during
the reign of Tietjens' father. He had idolized Tietjens' mother, who was
a saint! What indeed there had been of the idyllic in his life had
really all passed at Groby, if he came to think of it. India was not so
bad, but one had to be young to enjoy that. . . .

Indeed, only the day before yesterday he had been thinking that if this
letter that he was thinking out did result in his being sent back, he
should propose to stand for the half of the Cleveland Parliamentary
Division in which Groby stood. What with the Groby influence and his
nephew's in the country districts, though Castlemaine had not much land
left up there, and with Sandbach's interest in the ironworking
districts, he would have an admirable chance of getting in. Then he
would make himself a thorn in the side of certain persons.

He had thought of quartering himself on Groby. It would have been easy
to get Tietjens out of the army and they could all--he, Tietjens and
Sylvia--live together. It would have been his ideal of a home and of an
occupation. . . .

For, of course, he was getting old for soldiering: unless he got a
fighting army there was not much more to it as a career for a man of
sixty. If he _did_ get an army he was pretty certain of a peerage and
hefty political work could still be done in the Lords. He would have a
good claim on India and that meant dying a Field-Marshal.

On the other hand, the only command that was at all likely to be
going--except for deaths, and the health rate amongst army commanders
was pretty high!--was poor Puffles'. And that would be no pleasant
command--with the men all hammered to pieces. He decided to put the
whole thing to Tietjens. Tietjens, like a meal-sack, was looking at him
over the draft of the letter that he had just finished reading. The
general said:

"Well?"

Tietjens said:

"It's splendid, sir, to see you putting the matter so strongly. It must
be put strongly, or we're lost."

The general said:

"You think that?"

Tietjens said:

"I'm sure of it, sir. . . . But unless you are prepared to throw up your
command and take to politics. . . ."

The general exclaimed:

"You're a most extraordinary fellow. . . . That was exactly what I was
thinking about: this very minute."

"It's not so extraordinary," Tietjens said. "A really active general
thinking as you do is very badly needed in the House. As your
brother-in-law is to have a peerage whenever he asks for it, West
Cleveland will be vacant at any moment, and with his influence and Lord
Castlemaine's--your nephew's not got much land, but the name is
immensely respected in the country districts. . . . And, of course,
using Groby for your headquarters. . . ."

The general said:

"That's pretty well botched, isn't it?"

Tietjens said without moving a muscle:

"Why, no, sir. Sylvia is to have Groby and you would naturally make it
your headquarters. . . . You've still got your hunters there. . . ."

The general said:

"Sylvia is really to have Groby. . . . Good God!"

Tietjens said:

"So it was no great conjuring trick, sir, to see that you might not
mind. . . ."

The general said:

"Upon my soul, I'd as soon give up my chance of heaven . . . no, not
heaven, but India, as give up Groby."

"You've got," Tietjens said, "an admirable chance of India. . . . The
point is: which way? If they give you the sixteenth section. . . ."

"I hate," the general said, "to think of waiting for poor Puffles'
shoes. I was at Sandhurst with him. . . ."

"It's a question, sir," Tietjens said, "of which is the best way. For
the country and yourself. I suppose if one were a general one would like
to have commanded an army on the Western front. . . ."

The general said:

"I don't know. . . . It's the logical end of a career. . . . But I don't
feel that my career is ending. . . . I'm as sound as a roach. And in ten
years' time what difference will it make?"

"One would like," Tietjens said, "to see you doing it. . . ."

The general said:

"No one will know whether I commanded a fighting army or this damned
Whiteley's outfitting store. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I know that, sir. . . . But the sixteenth section will desperately need
a good man if General Perry is sent home. And particularly a general who
has the confidence of all ranks. . . . It will be a wonderful position.
You will have every man that's now on the Western front at your back
after the war. It's a certain peerage. . . . It's certainly a sounder
proposition than that of a free-lance--which is what you'd be--in the
House of Commons."

The general said:

"Then what am I to do with my letter? It's a damn good letter. I don't
like wasting letters."

Tietjens said:

"You want it to show through that you back the single command for all
you are worth, yet you don't want them to put their finger on your
definitely saying so yourself?"

The general said:

". . . That's it. That's just what I do want. . . ." He added: "I
suppose you take my view of the whole matter. The Government's pretence
of evacuating the Western front in favour of the Middle East is probably
only a put-up job to frighten our Allies into giving up the single
command. Just as this railway strike is a counterdemonstration by way of
showing what would happen to us if we did begin to evacuate. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"It looks like that. . . . I'm not, of course, in the confidence of the
Cabinet. I'm not even in contact with them as I used to be. . . . But I
should put it that the section of the Cabinet that is in favour of the
Eastern expedition is very small. It's said to be a one-man party--with
hangers-on--but arguing him out of it has caused all this delay. That's
how I see it."

The general exclaimed:

"But, good God! . . . How is such a thing possible? That man must walk
along his corridors with the blood of a million--I mean it, of a
million--men round his head. He could not stand up under it. . . . That
fellow is prolonging the war indefinitely by delaying us now. And men
being killed all the time! . . . I can't. . . ." He stood up and paced,
stamping up and down the hut. . . . "At Bonderstrom," he said, "I had
half a company wiped out under me. . . . By my own fault, I admit. I had
wrong information . . ." He stopped and said: "Good God! . . . Good
God! . . . I can see it now. . . . And it's unbearable! After eighteen
years. I was a brigadier then. It was your own regiment--the
Glamorganshires. . . . They were crowded into a little nullah and shelled
to extinction. . . . I could see it going on and we could not get on to the
Boer guns with ours to stop 'em. . . . That's hell," he said, "that's the
real hell. . . . I never inspected the Glamorganshires after that for the
whole war. I could not bear the thought of facing their eyes. . . .
Buller was the same. . . . Buller was worse than I. . . . He never held
up his head again after. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"If you would not mind, sir, not going on . . ."

The general stamped to a halt in his stride. He said:

"Eh? . . . What's that? What's the matter with you?"

Tietjens said:

"I had a man killed on me last night. In this very hut; where I'm
sitting is the exact spot. It makes me . . . It's a sort of . . .
Complex, they call it now. . . ."

The general exclaimed:

"Good God! I beg your pardon, my dear boy. . . . I ought not to have . . .
I have never behaved like that before another soul in the world. . . .
Not to Buller. . . . Not to Gatacre, and they were my closest
friends. . . . Even after Spion Kop I never. . . ." He broke off and said:
"But those old memories won't interest you. . . ." He said: "I've such an
absolute belief in your trustworthiness. I _know_ you won't betray what
you've seen. . . . What I've just said. . . ." He paused and tried to adopt
the air of the listening magpie. He said: "I was called Butcher Campion in
South Africa, just as Gatacre was called Backacher. I don't want to be
called anything else because I've made an ass of myself before you. . . .
No, damn it all, not an ass. I was immensely attached to your sainted
mother. . . ." He said: "It's the proudest tribute any commander of men
can have. . . . To be called Butcher and have your men follow you in
spite of it. It shows confidence, and it gives you, as commander,
confidence! . . . One has to be prepared to lose men in hundreds at the
right minute in order to avoid losing them in tens of thousands at the
wrong! . . ." He said: "Successful military operations consist not in
taking or retaining positions, but in taking or retaining them with a
minimum sacrifice of effectives. . . . I wish to God you civilians would
get that into your heads. The men have it. They know that I will use
them ruthlessly--but that I will not waste one life. . . ." He
exclaimed: "Damn it, if I had ever thought I should have such troubles,
in your father's days . . .!" He said: "Let's get back to what we were
talking about . . . My memorandum to the secretary. . . ." He burst out:
"My God! . . . _What_ can that fellow think when he reads Shakespeare's
_When all those heads, legs, arms, joined together on the Last Day
shall_ . . . How does it run? Henry V's address to his soldiers . . .
_Every subject's body is the king's_ . . . _but every subject's soul is
his own_. . . . _And there is no king, be his cause ever so
just_. . . . My God! My God! . . . _as can try it out with all unspotted
soldiers_. . . . Have you ever thought of that?"

Alarm overcame Tietjens. The general was certainly in disorder. But over
what? There was not time to think. Campion was certainly dreadfully
overworked. . . . He exclaimed:

"Sir, hadn't you better! . . ." He said: "If we could get back to your
memorandum . . . I am quite prepared to write a report to the effect of
your sentence as to the French civilian population's attitude. That
would throw the onus on me. . . ."

The general said agitatedly:

"No! No! . . . You've got quite enough on your back as it is. Your
confidential report states that you are suspected of having too great
common interests with the French. That's what makes the whole position
so impossible. . . . I'll get Thurston to write something. He's a good
man, Thurston. Reliable. . . ." Tietjens shuddered a little. The general
went on astonishingly:


    "'But at my back I always hear
      Time's winged chariot hurrying near:
      And yonder all before me lie
      Deserts of vast eternity!' . . .


That's a general's life in this accursed war. . . . You think all
generals are illiterate fools. But I have spent a great deal of time in
reading, though I never read anything written later than the seventeenth
century."

Tietjens said:

"I know, sir. . . . You made me read Clarendon's _History of the Great
Rebellion_ when I was twelve."

The general said:

"In case we . . . I shouldn't like . . . In short . . ." He swallowed:
it was singular to see him swallow. He was lamentably thin when you
looked at the man and not the uniform.

Tietjens thought:

"What's he nervous about? He's been nervous all the morning."

The general said:

"I am trying to say--it's not much in my line--that in case we never met
again, I do not wish you to think me an ignoramus."

Tietjens thought:

"He's not ill . . . and he can't think me so ill that I'm likely to
die. . . . A fellow like that doesn't really know how to express himself.
He's trying to be kind and he doesn't know how to. . . ."

The general had paused. He began to say:

"But there are finer things in Marvell than that. . . ."

Tietjens thought:

"He's trying to gain time. . . . Why on earth should he? . . . What is
this all about?" His mind slipped a notch. The general was looking at
his finger-nails on the blanket. He said:

"There's, for instance:


    "'_The graves a fine and secret place
       But none I think do there embrace_. . . .'"


At those words it came to Tietjens suddenly to think of Sylvia, with the
merest film of clothing on her long, shining limbs. . . . She was
working a powder-puff under her armpits in a brilliant illumination from
two electric lights, one on each side of her dressing-table. She was
looking at him in the glass with the corners of her lips just moving. A
little curled. . . . He said to himself:

"One is going to that fine and secret place. . . . Why not have?" She
had emanated a perfume founded on sandalwood. As she worked her
swansdown powder-puff over those intimate regions he could hear her
humming. Maliciously! It was then that he had observed the handle of
the door moving minutely. She had incredible arms, stretched out amongst
a wilderness of besilvered cosmetics. Extraordinarily lascivious! Yet
clean! Her gilded sheath gown was about her hips on the chair. . . .

Well! She had pulled the strings of one too many shower-baths!

Shining; radiating glory but still shrivelled so that he reminded
Tietjens of an old apple inside a damascened helmet; the general had
seated himself once more on the bully-beef case before the blanketed
table. He fingered his very large, golden fountain-pen. He said:

"Captain Tietjens, I should be glad of your careful attention!"

Tietjens said:

"Sir!" His heart stopped.

The general said that afternoon Tietjens would receive a movement
order. He said stiffly that he must not regard this new movement order
as a disgrace. It was promotion. He, Major-General Campion, was
requesting the colonel commanding the depot to inscribe the highest
possible testimonial in his, Tietjens', small-book. He, Tietjens, had
exhibited the most extraordinary talent for finding solutions for
difficult problems.--The colonel was to write that!--In addition he,
General Campion, was requesting his friend, General Perry, commanding
the sixteenth section . . .

Tietjens thought:

"Good God. I am being sent up the line. He's sending me to Perry's
Army. . . . That's certain death!"

. . . To give Tietjens the appointment of second in command of the VIth
Battalion of his regiment!

Tietjens said, but he did not know where the words came from:

"Colonel Partridge will not like that. He's praying for McKechnie to
come back!"

To himself he said:

"I shall fight this monstrous treatment of myself to my last breath."

The general suddenly called out:

"There you are. . . . There is another of your infernal worries. . . ."

He put a strong check on himself, and, dryly, like the very great
speaking to the very unimportant, asked:

"What's your medical category?"

Tietjens said:

"Permanent base, sir. My chest's rotten!"

The general said:

"I should forget that, if I were you. . . . The second in command of a
battalion has nothing to do but sit about in arm-chairs waiting for the
colonel to be killed." He added: "It's the best I can do for you. . . .
I've thought it out very carefully. It's the best I can do for you."

Tietjens said:

"I shall, of course, forget my category, sir. . . ."

Of course he would never fight any treatment of himself! . . .

There it was then: the natural catastrophe! As when, under thunder, a
dam breaks. His mind was battling with the waters. What would it pick
out as the main terror? The mud: the noise: dread always at the back of
the mind? Or the worry! The worry! Your eyebrows always had a slight
tension on them. . . . Like eye-strain!

The general had begun, soberly:

"You will recognize that there is nothing else that I can do."

His answering:

"I recognize, naturally, sir, that there is nothing else that you can
do . . ." seemed rather to irritate the general. He wanted opposition: he
_wanted_ Tietjens to argue the matter. He was the Roman father counselling
suicide to his son: but he wanted Tietjens to expostulate. So that he,
General Campion, might absolutely prove that he, Tietjens, was a
disgraceful individual. . . . It could not be done. Tietjens was not
going to give him the opportunity. The general said:

"You will understand that I can't--no commander could!--have such things
happening in my command. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I must accept that, if you say it, sir."

The general looked at him under his eyebrows. He said:

"I have already told you that this is promotion. I have been much
impressed by the way you have handled this command. You are, of course,
no soldier, but you will make an admirable officer for the militia, that
is all that our troops now are. . . ." He said: "I will emphasize what I
am saying. . . . No officer could--without being militarily in the
wrong--have a private life that is as incomprehensible and embarrassing
as yours. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"He's hit it! . . ."

The general said:

"An officer's private life and his life on parade are as strategy to
tactics. . . . I don't want, if I can avoid it, to go into your private
affairs. It's extremely embarrassing. . . . But let me put it to you
that . . . I wish to be delicate. But you are a man of the world! . . .
Your wife is an extremely beautiful woman. . . . There has been a
scandal . . . I admit not of your making. . . . But if, on the top of
that, I appeared to show favouritism to you . . ."

Tietjens said:

"You need not go on, sir. . . . I understand. . . ." He tried to
remember what the brooding and odious McKechnie had said . . . only two
nights ago. . . . He couldn't remember. . . . It was certainly a
suggestion that Sylvia was the general's mistress. It had then, he
remembered, seemed fantastic. . . . Well, what else _could_ they think? He
said to himself: "It absolutely blocks out my staying here!" He said
aloud: "Of course, it's my own fault. If a man so handles his womenfolk
that they get out of hand, he has only himself to blame."

The general was going on. He pointed out that one of his predecessors
had lost that very command on account of scandals about women. He had
turned the place into a damned harem! . . .

He burst out, looking at Tietjens with a peculiar goggle-eyed
intentness:

"If you think I'd care about losing my command over Sylvia or any other
damned Society woman. . . ." He said: "I beg your pardon . . ." and
continued reasoningly:

"It's the men that have to be considered. They think--and they've every
right to think it if they wish to--that a man who's a wrong 'un over
women isn't the man they can trust their lives in the hands of. . . ."
He added: "And they're probably right. . . . A man who's a real wrong
'un. . . . I don't mean who sets up a gal in a tea-shop. . . . But one
who sells his wife, or . . . At any rate, in _our_ army. . . . The French
may be different! . . . Well, a man like that usually has a yellow
streak when it comes to fighting. . . . Mind, I'm not saying always. . . .
Usually. . . . There was a fellow called . . ."

He went off into an anecdote. . . .

Tietjens recognized the pathos of his trying to get away from the
agonizing present moment, back to an India where it was all real
soldiering and good leather and parades that had been parades. But he
did not feel called upon to follow. He could not follow. He was going up
the line. . . .

He occupied himself with his mind. What was it going to do? He cast back
along his military history: what had his mind done in similar moments
before? . . . But there had never been a similar moment! There had been
the sinister or repulsive-businesses of going up, getting over, standing
to--even of the casualty clearing-station! . . . But he had always been
physically keener, he had never been so depressed or overwhelmed.

He said to the general:

"I recognise that I cannot stop in this command. I regret it, for I have
enjoyed having this unit. . . . But does it necessarily mean the VIth
Battalion?"

He wondered what was his own motive at the moment. Why had he asked the
general that! . . . The thing presented itself as pictures: getting down
bulkily from a high French train, at dawn. The light picked out for you
the white of large hunks of bread--half-loaves--being handed out to
troops themselves duskily invisible. . . . The ovals of light on the
hats of English troops: they were mostly West Countrymen. They did not
seem to want the bread much. . . . A long ridge of light above a wooded
bank: then suddenly, pervasively: a sound! . . . For all the world as,
sheltering from rain in a cottager's washhouse on the moors, you hear
the cottager's clothes boiling in a copper . . . Bubble . . . bubble . . .
bubbubbub . . . bubble . . . Not terribly loud--but terribly
demanding attention! . . . The Great Strafe! . . .

The general had said:

"If I could think of anything else to do with you, I'd do it. . . . But
all the extraordinary rows you've got into. . . . They block me
everywhere. . . . Do you realize that I have requested General O'Hara to
suspend his functions until now? . . ."

It was amazing to Tietjens how the general mistrusted his
subordinates--as well as how he trusted them! . . . It was probably that
that made him so successful an officer. Be worked for by men that you
trust: but distrust them all the time--along certain lines of frailty:
liquor,' women, money! . . . Well, he had long knowledge of men!

He said:

"I admit, sir, that I misjudged General O'Hara. I have said as much to
Colonel Levin and explained why."

The general said with a gloating irony:

"A damn pretty pass to come to. . . . You put a general officer under
arrest. . . . Then you say you had misjudged him! . . . I am not saying
you were not performing a duty. . . ." He went on to recount the
classical case of a subaltern, cited in King's Regulations, temp.
William IV, who was court-martialled and broken for not putting under
arrest his colonel who came drunk on to parade. ... He was exhibiting
his sensuous delight in misplaced erudition.

Tietjens heard himself say with great slowness:

"I absolutely deny, sir, that I put General O'Hara under arrest! I have
gone into the matter very minutely with Colonel Levin."

The general burst out:

"By God! I had taken that woman to be a saint. . . . I swear she is a
saint. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"There is no accusation against Mrs. Tietjens, sir!"

The general said:

"By God, there is!"

Tietjens said:

"I am prepared to take all the blame, sir."

The general said:

"You shan't. . . . I am determined to get to the bottom of all this. . . .
You have treated your wife damn badly. . . . You admit to that. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"With great want of consideration, sir. . . ."

The general said:

"You have been living practically on terms of separation from her for a
number of years? You don't deny that was on account of your own
misbehaviour. For how many years?"

Tietjens said:

"I don't know, sir. . . . Six or seven!"

The general said sharply:

"Think, then. . . . It began when you admitted to me that you had been
sold up because you kept a girl in a tobacco-shop? That was at Rye in
1912. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"We have not been on terms since 1912, sir."

The general said:

"But why? . . . She's a most beautiful woman. She's adorable. What could
you want better? . . . She's the mother of your child. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Is it necessary to go into all this, sir? . . . Our differences were
caused by . . . by differences of temperament. She, as you say, is a
beautiful and reckless woman. . . . Reckless in an admirable way. I, on
the other hand . . ."

The general exclaimed:

"Yes! that's just it. . . . What the hell are you? . . . You're not a
soldier. You've got the makings of a damn good soldier. You amaze me at
times. Yet you're a disaster; you are a disaster to every one who has to
do with you. You are as conceited as a hog; you are as obstinate as a
bullock. . . . You drive me mad. . . . And you have ruined the life of
that beautiful woman. . . . For I maintain she once had the disposition
of a saint. . . . Now: I'm waiting for your explanation!"

Tietjens said:

"In civilian life, sir, I was a statistician. Second secretary to the
Department of Statistics. . . ."

The general exclaimed convictingly:

"And they've thrown you out of that! Because of the mysterious rows you
made. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Because, sir, I was in favour of the single command. . . ."

The general began a long wrangle: "But why were you? What the hell had
it got to do with you?" Couldn't Tietjens have given the Department the
statistics they wanted--even if it meant faking them? What was
discipline for if subordinates were to act on their consciences? The home
Government had wanted statistics faked in order to dish the Allies. . . .
Well . . . Was Tietjens French or English? Every damn thing
Tietjens did . . . Every _damn_ thing, made it more impossible to do
anything for him! With his attainments he ought to be attached to the
staff of the French Commander-in-Chief. But that was forbidden in his,
Tietjens', confidential report. There was an underlined note in it to
that effect Where else, then, in Heaven's name, could Tietjens be sent
to? He looked at Tietjens with intent blue eyes:

"Where else, in God's name . . . I am not using the Almighty's name
blasphemously . . . _can_ you be sent to? I _know_ it's probably death
to send you up the line--in your condition of health. And to poor
Perry's Army. The Germans will be through it the minute the weather
breaks."

He began again: "You understand: I'm not the War Office. I can't send
any officer anywhere. I can't send you to Malta or India. Or to other
commands in France. I can send you home--in disgrace. I can send you to
your own battalion. On promotion! . . . Do you understand my
situation? . . . I have no alternative."

Tietjens said:

"Not altogether, sir."

The general swallowed and wavered from side to side. He said:

"For God's sake, try to. . . . I am genuinely concerned for you. I
won't--I'm damned if I will!--let it appear that you're disgraced. . . .
If you were McKechnie himself I wouldn't! The only really good jobs I've
got to give away are on my own staff. I can't have you there. Because of
the men. At the same time . . ."

He paused and said with a ponderous shyness:

"I believe there's a God. . . . I believe that, though wrong may
flourish, right will triumph in the end! . . . If a man is innocent, his
innocence will one day appear. . . . In a humble way I want to . . .
help Providence. . . . I want some one to be able one day to say:
'_General Campion, who knew the ins and outs of the affair_ . . .'
promoted you! In the middle of it. . . ." He said: "It isn't much. But
it's not nepotism. I would do as much for any man in your position."

Tietjens said:

"It's at least the act of a Christian gentleman!"

A certain lack-lustre joy appeared in the general's eyes. He said:

"I'm not used to this sort of situation. . . . I hope I've always tried
to help my junior officers. . . . But a case like this. . . ." He said:

"Damn it. . . . The general commanding the 9th French Army is an
intimate friend of mine. . . . But in face of your confidential
report--I _can't_ ask him to ask for you. That's blocked!"

Tietjens said:

"I do not propose, sir, at any rate in your eyes, to pass as putting the
interests of any power before those of my own country. If you examine my
confidential report you will find that the unfavourable insertions are
initialled _G. D._ . . . They are the initials of a Major Drake. . . ."

The general said bewilderingly:

"Drake . . . Drake . . . I've heard the name."

Tietjens said:

"It doesn't matter, sir. . . . Major Drake's a gentleman who doesn't
like me. . . ."

The general said:

"There are so many. You don't try to make yourself popular, I must say!"

Tietjens said to himself:

"The old fellow feels it! . . . But he can hardly expect me to tell him
that Sylvia thinks Drake was the father of my own son, and desires my
ruin!" But of course the old man _would_ feel it. He, Tietjens, and his
wife Sylvia, were as near a son and daughter as the old man had. The
obvious answer to make to the old man's query as to where he, Tietjens,
ought to be sent was to remind him that his brother Mark had had an
order put through to the effect that Tietjens was to be put in command
of divisional transport. . . . _Could_ he remind the old man of that? Was
it a thing one could do?

Yet the idea of commanding divisional transport was like a vision of
Paradise to Tietjens. For two reasons: it was relatively safe, being
concerned with a lot of horses . . . and the knowledge that he had that
employment would put Valentine Wannop's mind at rest.

Paradise! . . . But _could_ one wangle out of a hard into a soft job?
Some other poor devil very likely wanted it. On the other hand--think
of Valentine Wannop! He imagined her torture of mind, wandering about
London, thinking of him in the very worst spot of a doomed army. She
would get to hear of that. Sylvia would tell her! He would bet Sylvia
would ring her up and tell her. Imagine, then, writing to Mark to say
that he was with the transport! Mark would pass it on to the girl within
half a minute. Why . . . he, Tietjens, would wire. He imagined himself
scribbling the wire while the general talked and giving it to an orderly
the moment the talk was over. . . . But _could_ he put the idea into the
old man's head? _Is_ it done? . . . Would, say . . . say, an Anglican
saint do it?

And then . . . Was he up to the job? What about the accursed obsession
of O Nine Morgan that intermittently jumped on him? All the while he had
been riding Schomburg the day before, O Nine Morgan had seemed to be
just before the coffin-headed brute's off-shoulder. The animal must
fall! . . . He had had the passionate impulse to pull up the horse. And
all the time a dreadful depression! A weight! In the hotel last night he
had nearly fainted over the thought that Morgan might have been the man
whose life he had spared at Noircourt. . . . It was getting to be a
serious matter! It might mean that there was a crack in his, Tietjens',
brain. A lesion! If that was to go on . . . O Nine Morgan, dirty as he
always was, and with the mystified eyes of the subject races on his
face, rising up before his horse's off-shoulder! But alive, not with
half his head cut away. . . . If that was to go on he would not be fit
to deal with transport, which meant a great deal of riding.

But he would chance that. . . . Besides, some damn fool of a literary
civilian had been writing passionate letters to the papers insisting
that all horses and mules must be abolished in the army. . . . Because
of their pestilence-spreading dung! ... It might be decreed by A.C.I.
that no more horses were to be used! . . . Imagine taking battalion
supplies down by night with motor lorries, which was what that genius
desired to see done! . . .

He remembered once or twice--it must have been in September, '16--having
had the job of taking battalion transport down from Locre to B.H.Q.,
which were in the château of Kemmell village. . . . You muffled every
bit of metal you could think of: bits, trace-chains, axles . . . and
_yet_, whilst you hardly breathed, in the thick darkness some damn thing
would always chink and jolt: beef tins made a noise of old iron. . . .
And _bang_, after the long whine, would come the German shell,
registered exactly on to the corner of the road where it went down by
the shoulder of the hill: where the placards were ordering you not to go
more than two men together. . . . Imagine doing it with lorries, that
could be heard five miles away! . . . The battalion would go pretty
short of rations! . . . The same anti-chevaline genius had emitted the
sentiment that he had rather the Allies lost the war than that cavalry
should distinguish themselves in any engagement! . . . A wonderful
passion for the extermination of dung . . .! Or perhaps this hatred of
the horse was social. . . . Because the cavalry wear long moustaches
dripping with Macassar oil and breakfast off caviare, chocolate and
Pommery Greno they must be abolished! . . . Something like that. . . .
He exclaimed: "By God! How my mind wanders! How long will it go on?" He
said: "I am at the end of my tether." He had missed what the general had
said for some time.

The general said:

"Well. Has he?"

Tietjens said:

"I didn't catch, sir!"

"Are you deaf?" the general asked. "I'm sure I speak plain enough.
You've just said there are no horses attached to this camp. I asked you
if there is not a horse for the colonel commanding the depot. . . . A
German horse, I understand!"

Tietjens said to himself:

"Great heavens! I've been talking to him. What in the world about?" It
was as if his mind were falling off a hillside. He said:

"Yes, sir . . . Schomburg. But as that's a German prisoner, captured on
the Marne, it is not on our strength. It is the private property of the
colonel. I ride it myself. . . ."

The general exclaimed dryly:

"You _would_. . . ." He added more dryly still: "Are you aware that
there is a hell of a strafe put in against you by a R.A.S.C.
second-lieutenant called Hotchkiss? . . ."

Tietjens said quickly:

"If it's over Schomburg, sir . . . it's a washout. Lieutenant Hotchkiss
has no more right to give orders about him than as to where I shall
sleep. . . . And I would rather die than subject any horse for which I
am responsible to the damnable torture Hotchkiss and that swine Lord
Beichan want to inflict on service horses. . . ."

The general said maleficently:

"It looks as if you damn well will die on that account!"

He added: "You're perfectly right to object to wrong treatment of
horses. But in this case your objection blocks the only other job open
to you." He quietened himself a little. "You are probably not aware," he
went on, "that your brother Mark . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Yes, I am aware . . ."

The general said: "Do you know that the 19th Division to which your
brother wants you sent is attached to Fourth Army now--and it's Fourth
Army horses that Hotchkiss is to play with? . . . How could I send you
there to be under his orders?"

Tietjens said:

"That's perfectly correct, sir. There is nothing else that you can
do. . . ." He was finished. There was now nothing left but to find out how
his mind was going to take it. He wished they could go to his cook-houses!

The general said:

"What was I saying? . . . I'm dreadfully tired. . . . No one could stand
this. . . ." He drew from inside his tunic a lapis-lazuli coloured,
small be-coroneted note-case and selected from it a folded paper that he
first looked at and then slipped between his belt and his tunic. He
said: "On top of all the responsibility I have to bear!" He asked: "Has
it occurred to you that, if I'm of any service to the country, your
taking up my energy--_sapping_ my energy over your affairs!--is aiding
your country's enemies? . . . I can only afford four hours' sleep as it
is. . . . I've got some questions to ask you. . . ." He referred to the
slip of paper from his belt, folded it again and again slipped it into
his belt.

Tietjens' mind missed a notch again. . . . It _was_ the fear of the mud
that was going to obsess him. Yet, curiously, he had never been under
heavy fire in mud. . . . You would think that would not have
obsessed him. But in his ear he had just heard uttered in a whisper of
intense weariness, the words: _Es ist nicht zu ertragen; es ist das dasz
uns verloren hat_ . . . words in German, of utter despair, meaning: It
is unbearable: it is that has ruined us. . . . The mud! . . . He
had heard those words, standing amidst volcano craters of mud, amongst
ravines, monstrosities of slime, cliffs and distances, all of slime. . . .
He had been going, for curiosity or instruction, from Verdun where he
had been attached to the French--on a holiday afternoon when nothing was
doing, with a guide, to visit one of the outlying forts. . . .
Deaumont? . . . No, Douaumont. . . . Taken from the enemy about a week
before. . . . When would that be? He had lost all sense of
chronology. . . . In November. . . . A beginning of some November. . . .
With a miracle of sunshine: not a cloud: the mud towering up shut you in
intimately with a sky that ached for limpidity. . . . And the slime had
moved . . . following a French bombardier who was strolling along eating
nuts, disreputably, his shoulders rolling. . . . _Déserteurs_. . . . The
moving slime was German deserters. . . . You could not see them: the
leader of them--an officer!--had his glasses so thick with mud that you
could not see the colour of his eyes, and his half-dozen decorations were
like the beginnings of swallows' nests, his beard like stalactites. . . .
Of the other men you could only see the eyes--extraordinarily
vivid: mostly blue like the sky! . . . Deserters! Led by an officer! Of
the Hamburg Regiment! As if an officer of the Buffs had gone over! . . .
It was incredible. . . . And that was what the officer had said as he
passed: not shamefacedly, but without any humanity left in him . . .
_Done_! . . . Those moving saurians compacted of slime kept on passing
him afterwards, all the afternoon. . . . And he could not help picturing
their immediate antecedents for two months. . . . In advanced
pill-boxes. . . . No, they didn't have pill-boxes then. . . . In
advanced pockets of mud, in dreadful solitude amongst those ravines. . . .
suspended in eternity, at the last day of the world. And it had
horribly shocked him to hear again the German language a rather soft
voice, a little suety. . . . Like an obscene whisper. . . . The voice
obviously of the damned: hell could hold nothing curious for those poor
beasts. . . . His French guide had said sardonically: _On dirait
l'Inferno de Dante_! . . . Well, those Germans were getting back on him.
They were now to become an obsession! A complex, they said nowadays. . . .
The general said coolly:

"I presume you refuse to answer?"

That shook him cruelly.

He said desperately:

"I had to end what I took to be an unbearable position for both parties.
In the interests of my son!" Why in the world had he said that? . . . He
was going to be sick. It came back to him that the general had been
talking of his separation from Sylvia. Last night that had happened. He
said: "I may have been right: I may have been wrong. . . ."

The general said icily:

"If you don't choose to go into it. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I would prefer not to. . . ."

The general said:

"There is no end to this. . . . But there are questions it's my duty to
ask. . . . If you do not wish to go into your marital relations, I
cannot force you. . . . But, damn it, are you sane? Are you responsible?
Do you intend to get Miss Wannop to live with you before the war is
over? Is she, perhaps, here, in this town, now? Is that your reason for
separating from Sylvia? Now, of all times in the world!"

Tietjens said:

"No, sir. I ask you to believe that I have absolutely no relations with
that young lady. None! I have no intention of having any. None! . . ."

The general said:

"I believe that!"

"Circumstances last night," Tietjens said, "convinced me suddenly,
there, on the spot, that I had been wronging my wife. . . . I had been
putting a strain on the lady that was unwarrantable. It humiliates me to
have to say it! I had taken a certain course for the sake of the future
of our child. But it was an atrociously wrong course. We ought to have
separated years ago. It has led to the lady's pulling the strings of all
these shower-baths. . . ."

The general said:

"Pulling the . . ."

Tietjens said:

"It expresses it, sir. . . . Last night was nothing but pulling the
string of a shower-bath. Perfectly justifiable. I maintain that it was
perfectly justifiable."

The general said:

"Then why have you given her Groby? . . . You're not a little soft, are
you? . . . You don't imagine you've . . . say, got a mission? Or that
you're another person? . . . That you have to . . . to forgive. . . ."
He took off his pretty hat and wiped his forehead with a tiny cambric
handkerchief. He said: "Your poor mother was a little . . ."

He said suddenly:

"To-night when you are coming to my dinner . . . I hope you'll be
decent. Why do you so neglect your personal appearance? Your tunic is a
disgusting spectacle. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I had a better tunic, sir . . . but it has been ruined by the blood of
the man who was killed here last night . . ."

The general said:

"You don't say you have only two tunics? . . . Have you no mess
clothes?"

Tietjens said:

"Yes, sir, I've my blue things. I shall be all right for to-night. . . .
But almost everything else I possessed was stolen from my kit when I was
in hospital. . . . Even Sylvia's two pair of sheets. . . ."

"But hang it all," the general exclaimed, "you don't mean to say you've
spaffled all your father left you?"

Tietjens said:

"I thought fit to refuse what my father left me owing to the way it was
left. . . ."

The general said:

"But, good God! . . . Read that!" He tossed the small sheet of paper at
which he had been looking across the table. It fell face downwards.
Tietjens read, in the minute handwriting of the general's:

"Colonel's horse: Sheets: Jesus Christ: Wannop girl: Socialism?"

The general said irritably:

"The other side . . . the other side. . . ."

The other side of the paper displayed the words in large capitals:
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, a wood-cut of a sickle and some other objects.
Then high treason for a page.

The general said:

"Have you ever seen anything like that before? Do you know what it is?"

Tietjens answered:

"Yes, sir. I sent that to you. To your Intelligence. . . ."

The general thumped both his fists violently on the army blanket:

"You . . ." he said. "It's incomprehensible. . . . It's incredible. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"No, sir. . . . You sent out an order asking commanders of units to
ascertain what attempts were being made by Socialists to undermine the
discipline of their other ranks. . . . I naturally asked my
sergeant-major, and he produced this sheet, which one of the men had
given to him as a curiosity. It had been handed to the man in the street
in London. You can see my initials on the top of the sheet!"

The general said:

"You . . . you'll excuse me, but you're not a Socialist yourself? . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I knew you were working round to that, sir: But I've no politics that
did not disappear in the eighteenth century. You, sir, prefer the
seventeenth!"

"Another shower-bath, I suppose," the general said.

"Of course," Tietjens said, "if it's Sylvia that called me a Socialist,
it's not astonishing. I'm a Tory of such an extinct type that she might
take me for anything. The last megatherium. She's absolutely to be
excused. . . ."

The general was not listening. He said:

"What was wrong with the way your father left his money to you? . . ."

"My father," Tietjens said--the general saw his jaw stiffen--"committed
suicide because a fellow called Ruggles told him that I was . . . what
the French called _maquereau_ . . . I can't think of the English word.
My father's suicide was not an act that can be condoned. A gentleman
does not commit suicide when he has descendants. It might influence my
boy's life very disastrously. . . ."

The general said:

"I can't . . . I _can't_ get to the bottom of all this. . . . What in
the world did Ruggles want to go and tell your father that for? . . .
What are you going to do for a living after the war? They won't take you
back into your office, will they?"

Tietjens said:

"No, sir. The Department will not take me back. Every one who has served
in this war will be a marked man for a long time after it is over.
That's proper enough. _We're_ having our fun now."

The general said:

"You say the wildest things."

Tietjens answered:

"You generally find the things I say come true, sir. Could we get this
over? Ruggles told my father what he did because it is not a good thing
to belong to the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries in the twentieth.
Or really, because it is not good to have taken one's public-school's
ethical system seriously. I am really, sir, the English public
schoolboy. That's an eighteenth-century product. What with the love of
truth that--God help me!--they rammed into me at Clifton and the belief
Arnold forced upon Rugby that the vilest of sins--the vilest of all
sins--is to peach to the head master! That's me, sir. Other men get over
their schooling. I never have. I remain adolescent. These things are
obsessions with me. Complexes, sir!"

The general said:

"All this seems to be very wild. . . . What's this about peaching to a
head master?"

Tietjens said:

"For a swan song, it's not wild, sir. You're asking for a swan song. I
am to go up into the line so that the morals of the troops in your
command may not be contaminated by the contemplation of my marital
infelicities."

The general said:

"You don't want to go back to England, do you?"

Tietjens exclaimed:

"Certainly not! Very certainly not! I can never go home. I have to go
underground somewhere. If I went back to England there would be nothing
for me but going underground by suicide."

The general said:

"You see all that? I can give you testimonials. . . ."

Tietjens asked:

"Who couldn't see that it's impossible?"

The general said:

"But . . . suicide! You won't do that. As you said: think of your son."

Tietjens said:

"No, sir. I shan't do that. But you see how bad for one's descendants
suicide is. That is why I do not forgive my father. Before he did it I
should never have contemplated the idea. Now I have contemplated it.
That's a weakening of the moral fibre. It's contemplating a fallacy as a
possibility. For suicide is no remedy for a twisted situation of a
psychological kind. It is for bankruptcy. Or for military disaster. For
the man of action, not for the thinker. Creditors' meetings wipe the one
out. Military operations sweep on. But my problem will remain the same
whether I'm here or not. For it's insoluble. It's the whole problem of
the relations of the sexes."

The general said:

"Good God! . . ."

Tietjens said:

"No, sir, I've not gone off my chump. That's my problem! . . . But I'm a
fool to talk so much. . . . It's because I don't know what to say."

The general sat staring at the tablecloth: his face was suffused with
blood. He had the appearance of a man in monstrous ill-humour. He said:

"You had better say what you want to say. What the devil do you mean? . . .
What's this all about? . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I'm enormously sorry, sir. It's difficult to make myself plain."

The general said:

"Neither of us do. What is language for? What the _hell_ is language
for? We go round and round. I suppose I'm an old fool who cannot
understand your modern ways . . . But you're not modern. I'll do you
_that_ justice. . . . That beastly little McKechnie is modern. . . . I
shall ram him into your divisional-transport job, so that he won't
incommode you in your battalion. . . . Do you understand what the little
beast did? He got leave to go and get a divorce. And then did not get a
divorce. _That's_ modernism. He said he had scruples. I understand that
he and his wife and . . . some dirty other fellow . . . slept three in a
bed. That's modern scruples. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"No, sir, it's not really. . . . But what is a man to do if his wife is
unfaithful to him?"

The general said as if it were an insult:

"Divorce the harlot! Or live with her! . . ." Only a beast, he went on,
would expect a woman to live all her life alone in a cockloft! She's
bound to die. Or go on the streets. . . . What sort of a fellow wouldn't
see that? Was there any sort of beast who'd expect a woman to live . . .
with a man beside her. . . . Why, she'd . . . she'd be bound to. . . .
He'd have to take the consequences of whatever happened. The general
repeated: "Whatever happened! If she pulled all the strings of all the
shower-baths in the world!"

Tietjens said:

"Still, sir . . . there are . . . there used to be . . . in families
of . . . position . . . a certain . . ." He stopped.

The general said:

"Well . . ."

Tietjens said:

"On the part of the man . . . a certain . . . Call it . . . parade!"

The general said:

"Then there had better be no more parades. . . ." He said: "Damn it! . . .
Beside us, all women are saints. . . . Think of what child-bearing is.
I know the world. . . . Who would stand that? . . . You? . . . I . . .
I'd rather be the last poor devil in Perry's lines!"

He looked at Tietjens with a sort of injurious cunning:

"Why _don't_ you divorce?" he asked.

Panic came over Tietjens. He knew it would be his last panic of that
interview. No brain could stand more. Fragments of scenes of fighting,
voices, names, went before his eyes and ears. Elaborate problems. . . .
The whole map of the embattled world ran out in front of him-as large as
a field. An embossed map in greenish _papier mâché_--a ten-acre field
of embossed _papier mâché_: with the blood of O Nine Morgan blurring
luminously over it. Years before . . . How many months? . . . Nineteen,
to be exact, he had sat on some tobacco plants on the Mont de Kats. . . .
No, the Montagne Noire. In Belgium. . . . What had he been doing? . . .
Trying to get the lie of the land. . . . No. . . . Waiting to point
out positions to some fat home general who had never come. The Belgian
proprietor of the tobacco plants had arrived, and had screamed his head
off over the damaged plants. . . .

But, up there you saw the whole war. . . . Infinite miles away, over the
sullied land that the enemy forces held: into Germany proper. Presumably
you could breathe in Germany proper. . . . Over your right shoulder you
could see a stump of a tooth. The Cloth Hall at Ypres: at an angle of
50° below. . . . Dark lines behind it. . . . The German trenches before
Wytschaete! ...

That was before the great mines had blown Wytschaete to hell. . . .

But--every half-minute by his wrist-watch--white puffs of cotton-wool
existed on the dark lines--the German trenches before Wytschaete. Our
artillery practice. . . . Good shooting. Jolly good shooting!

Miles and miles away to the left . . . beneath the haze of light that,
on a clouded day, the sea threw off, a shaft of sunlight fell, and was
reflected in a grey blur. . . . It was the glass roofs of a great
airplane shelter!

A great plane, the largest he had then seen, was moving over, behind his
back, with four little planes as an escort. . . . Over the vast
slag-heaps by Béthune. . . . High, purplish-blue heaps, like the steam
domes of engines or the breasts of women. . . . Bluish purple. More blue
than purple. . . . Like all Franco-Belgian Gobelins tapestry. . . . And
all quiet. . . . Under the vast pall of quiet cloud! . . .

There were shells dropping in Poperinghe. . . . Five miles out, under
his nose. . . . The shells dropped. White vapour rose and ran away in
plumes. . . . What sort of shells? . . . There were twenty different
kinds of shells. . . .

The Huns were shelling Poperinghe! A senseless cruelty. It was five
miles behind the line! Prussian brutality. . . . There were two girls
who kept a tea-shop in Poperinghe. . . . High coloured. . . . General
Plumer had liked them . . . a fine old general. . . . The shells had
killed them both . . . Any man might have slept with either of them with
pleasure and profit. . . . Six thousand of H.M. officers must have
thought the same about those high-coloured girls. Good girls! . . . But
the Hun shells got them. . . . What sort of fate was that? . . . To be
desired by six thousand men and smashed into little gobbets of flesh by
Hun shells?

It appeared to be mere Prussianism--the senseless cruelty of the
Hun!--to shell Poperinghe. An innocent town with a tea-shop five miles
behind Ypres. . . . Little noiseless plumes of smoke rising under the
quiet blanketing of the pale maroon skies, with the haze from the
aeroplane shelters, and the great aeroplanes over the Béthune
slag-heaps. . . . What a dreadful name--Béthune. . . .

Probably, however, the Germans had heard that we were massing men in
Poperinghe. It was reasonable to shell a town where men were being
assembled. . . . Or we might have been shelling one of their towns with
an Army H.Q. in it. So they shelled Poperinghe in the silent grey
day. . . .

That was according to the rules of the service. . . . General Campion,
accepting with equanimity what German airplanes did to the hospitals,
camps, stables, brothels, theatres, boulevards, chocolate stalls and
hotels of his town would have been vastly outraged if Hun planes had
dropped bombs on his private lodgings. . . . The rules of war! . . . You
spare, mutually, each other's headquarters and blow to pieces girls that
are desired by six thousand men apiece. . . .

That had been nineteen months before! . . . Now, having lost so much
emotion, he saw the embattled world as a map. . . . An embossed map of
greenish _papier mâché_. The blood of O Nine Morgan was blurring
luminously over it. At the extreme horizon was territory labelled _White
Ruthenians_! Who the devil were _those_ poor wretches?

He exclaimed to himself: "By heavens! Is this epilepsy?" He prayed:
"Blessed saints, get me spared that!" He exclaimed: "No, it isn't! . . .
I've complete control of my mind. My uppermost mind." He said to the
general:

"I can't divorce, sir. I've no grounds."

The general said:

"Don't lie. You know what Thurston knows. Do you mean that you have been
guilty of contributory misconduct. . . . Whatever it is? And can't
divorce! I don't believe it."

Tietjens said to himself:

"_Why_ the devil am I so anxious to shield that whore? It's not
reasonable. It is an obsession!"

White Ruthenians are miserable peoples to the south of Lithuania. You
don't know whether they incline to the Germans or to the Poles. The
Germans don't even know. . . . The Germans were beginning to take their
people out of the line where we were weak: they were going to give them
proper infantry training. That gave him, Tietjens, a chance. They would
not come over strong for at least two months. It meant, though, a great
offensive in the spring. Those fellows had sense. In the poor, beastly
trenches the Tommies knew nothing but how to chuck bombs. Both sides did
that. But the Germans were going to cure it! Stood chucking bombs at
each other from forty yards. The rifle was obsolete! Ha! ha!
Obsolete! . . . The civilian psychology!

The general said:

"No I don't believe it. I know you did not keep any girl in any
tobacco-shop. I remember every word you said at Rye in 1912. I wasn't
sure then. I am now. You tried to let me think it. You had shut up your
house because of your wife's misbehaviour. You let me believe you had
been sold up. You weren't sold up at all."

. . . _Why_ should it be the civilian psychology to chuckle with
delight, uproariously, when the imbecile idea was promulgated that the
rifle was obsolete? _Why_ should public opinion force on the War Office
a training-camp course that completely cut out any thorough instruction
in the rifle and communication drill? It was queer. . . . It was of
course disastrous. Queer. Not altogether mean. Pathetic, too. . . .

"Love of truth!" the general said. "Doesn't that include a hatred for
white lies? No; I suppose it doesn't, or your servants could not say you
were not at home. . . ."

. . . Pathetic! Tietjens said to himself. Naturally the civilian
population wanted soldiers to be made to look like fools: and to be done
in. They wanted the war won by men who would at the end be either
humiliated or dead. Or both. Except, naturally, their own cousins or
fiancées' relatives. That was what it came to. That was what it meant
when important gentlemen said that they had rather the war were lost
than that cavalry should gain any distinction in it! . . . But it was
partly the simple, pathetic illusion of the day that great things could
only be done by new inventions. You extinguished the Horse, invented
something very simple and became God! That is the real pathetic fallacy.
You fill a flower-pot with gunpowder and chuck it in the other fellow's
face, and heigh presto! the war is won. _All_ the soldiers fall down
dead! And You: you who forced the idea on the reluctant military, are
the Man that Won the War. You deserve all the women in the world. And . . .
you get them! Once the cavalry are out of the way! . . .

The general was using the words:

"Head master!" It brought Tietjens completely back.

He said collectedly:

"Really, sir, why this strafe of yours is so terribly long is that it
embraces the whole of life."

The general said:

"You're not going to drag a red herring across the trail. . . . I say
you regarded me as a head master in 1912. Now I am your commanding
officer--which is the same thing. You must not peach to me. That's what
you call the Arnold of Rugby touch. . . . But who was it said: _Magna
est veritas et prev_ . . . _Prev_ something?"

Tietjens said:

"I don't remember, sir."

The general said:

"What was the secret grief your mother had? In 1912? She died of it. She
wrote to me just before her death and said she had great troubles. And
begged me to look after you, very specially! Why did she do that?" He
paused and meditated. He asked: "How do you define Anglican sainthood?
The other fellows have canonizations, all shipshape like Sandhurst
examinations. But us Anglicans . . . I've heard fifty persons say your
mother was a saint. She was. But why?"

Tietjens said:

"It's the quality of harmony, sir. The quality of being in harmony with
your own soul. God having given you your own soul you are then in
harmony with Heaven."

The general said:

"Ah, that's beyond me. . . . I suppose you will refuse any money I leave
you in my will?"

Tietjens said:

"Why, no, sir."

The general said:

"But you refused your father's money. Because he believed things against
you. What's the difference?"

Tietjens said:

"One's friends ought to believe that one is a gentleman. Automatically.
That is what makes one and them in harmony. Probably your friends are
your friends because they look at situations automatically as you look
at them. . . . Mr. Ruggles knew that I was hard up. He envisaged the
situation. If he were hard up, what would he do? Make a living out of
the immoral earnings of women. . . . That translated into the Government
circles in which he lives means selling your wife or mistress. Naturally
he believed that I was the sort of fellow to sell my wife. So that's
what he told my father. The point is, my father should not have believed
him."

"But I . . ." the general said.

Tietjens said:

"You never believed anything against me, sir."

The general said:

"I know I've damn well worried myself to death over you . . ."

Tietjens was sentimentally at rest, still with wet eyes. He was walking
near Salisbury in a grove, regarding long pastures and ploughlands
running to dark, high elms from which, embowered. . . . Embowered was
the word!--peeped the spire of George Herbert's church. . . . One ought
to be a seventeenth-century parson at the time of the renaissance of
Anglican saintliness . . . who, wrote, perhaps poems. No, not poems.
Prose. The statelier vehicle!

That was home-sickness! . . . He himself was never to go home!

The general said:

"Look here. . . . Your father. . . . I'm concerned about your father. . . .
Didn't Sylvia perhaps tell him some of the things that distressed him?"

Tietjens said distinctly:

"No, sir. That responsibility cannot be put on to Sylvia. My father
chose to believe things that were said against me by a perfect--or a
nearly perfect--stranger. . . ." He added: "As a matter of fact, Sylvia
and my father were not on any sort of terms. I don't believe they
exchanged two words for the last five years of my father's life."

The general's eyes were fixed with an extreme hardness on Tietjens'. He
watched Tietjens' face, beginning with the edges round the nostrils, go
chalk white. He said: "He knows he's given his wife away! . . . Good
God!" With his face colourless, Tietjens' eyes of porcelain-blue stuck
out extraordinarily. The general thought: "What an ugly fellow! His face
is all crooked!" They remained looking at each other.

In the silence the voices of men talking over the game of House came as
a murmur to them. A rudimentary card game monstrously in favour of the
dealer. When you heard voices going on like that you knew they were
playing House. . . . So they had had their dinners.

The general said:

"It isn't Sunday, is it?"

Tietjens said:

"No, sir; Thursday, the seventeenth, I think, of January. . . ."

The general said:

"Stupid of me. . . ."

The men's voices had reminded him of church bells on a Sunday. And of
his youth. . . . He was sitting beside Mrs. Tietjens' hammock under the
great cedar at the corner of the stone house at Groby. The wind being
from the east-north-east the bells of Middlesbrough came to them
faintly. Mrs. Tietjens was thirty; he himself thirty; Tietjens--the
father--thirty-five or so. A most powerful, quiet man. A wonderful
landowner. Like his predecessors for generations. It was not from him
that this fellow got his . . . his . . . his what? . . . Was it
mysticism? . . . Another word! He himself home on leave from India: his
head full of polo. Talking for hours about points in ponies with
Tietjens' father, who was a wonderful hand with a horse. . . . But this
fellow was much more wonderful! . . . Well, he got that from the sire,
not the dam! . . . He and Tietjens continued to look at each other. It
was as if they were hypnotized. The men's voices went on in a mournful
cadence. The general supposed that he too must be pale. He said to
himself: "This fellow's mother died of a broken heart in 1912. The
father committed suicide five years after. He had not spoken to the
son's wife for four or five years! That takes us back to 1912. . . .
Then, when I strafed him in Rye, the wife was in France with Perowne."

He looked down at the blanket on the table. He intended again to look up
at Tietjens' eyes with ostentatious care. That was his technique with
men. He was a successful general because he knew men. He knew that all
men will go to hell over three things: alcohol, money . . . and sex.
This fellow apparently hadn't. Better for him if he had! He thought:

"It's all gone . . . mother! father! Groby! This fellow's down and out.
It's a bit thick."

He thought:

"But he's right to do as he is doing."

He prepared to look at Tietjens. . . . He stretched out a sudden,
ineffectual hand. Sitting on his beef-case, his hands on his knees,
Tietjens had lurched. A sudden lurch--as an old house lurches when it is
hit by a H.E. shell. It stopped at that. Then he righted himself. He
continued to stare direct at the general. The general looked carefully
back. He said--very carefully too:

"In case I decide to contest West Cleveland, it is your wish that I
should make Groby my headquarters?"

Tietjens said:

"I beg, sir, that you will!"

It was as if they both heaved an enormous sigh of relief. The general
said:

"Then I need not keep you. . . ."

Tietjens stood on his feet, wanly, but with his heels together.

The general also rose, settling his belt He said:

". . . You can fall out."

Tietjens said:

"My cook-houses, sir. . . . Sergeant-Cook Case will be very
disappointed. . . . He told me that you couldn't find anything wrong if
I gave him ten minutes to prepare. . . ."

The general said:

"Case. . . . Case. . . . Case was in the drums when we were at Delhi. He
ought to be at least Quartermaster by now. . . . But he had a woman he
called his sister . . ."

Tietjens said:

"He still sends money to his sister."

The general said:

". . . He went absent over her when he was colour-sergeant and was
reduced to the ranks. . . . Twenty years ago that must be! . . . Yes,
I'll see your dinners!"


In the cook-house, brilliantly accompanied by Colonel Levin, the
cook-house spotless with limed walls and mirrors that were the tops of
camp-cookers, the general, Tietjens at his side, walked between
goggle-eyed men in white who stood to attention holding ladles. Their
eyes bulged, but the corners of their lips curved because they liked the
general and his beautifully unconcerned companions. The cook-house was
like a cathedral's nave, aisles being divided off by the pipes of
stoves. The floor was of coke-brise shining under french polish and
turpentine.

The building paused, as when a godhead descends. In breathless focusing
of eyes the godhead, frail and shining, walked with short steps up to a
high-priest who had a walrus moustache and, with seven medals on his
Sunday tunic, gazed away into eternity. The general tapped the
sergeant's Good Conduct ribbon with the heel of his crop. All stretched
ears heard him say:

"How's your sister, Case? . . ."

Gazing away, the sergeant said:

"I'm thinking of making her Mrs. Case . . ."

Slightly leaving him, in the direction of high, varnished, pitch-pine
panels, the general said:

"I'll recommend you for a Quartermaster's commission any day you
wish. . . . Do you remember Sir Garnet inspecting field kitchens at
Quetta?"

All the white tubular beings with global eyes resembled the pierrots of
a child's Christmas nightmare. The general said: "Stand at ease, men. . . .
Stand easy!" They moved as white objects move in a childish dream.
It was all childish. Their eyes rolled.

Sergeant Case gazed away into infinite distance.

"My sister would not like it, sir," he said. "I'm better off as a
first-class warrant officer!"

With his light step the shining general went swiftly to the varnished
panels in the eastern aisle of the cathedral. The white figure beside
them became instantly tubular, motionless and global-eyed. On the panels
were painted: TEA! SUGAR! SALT! CURRY PDR! FLOUR! PEPPER!

The general tapped with the heel of his crop on the locker-panel
labelled PEPPER: the top, right-hand locker-panel. He said to the
tubular, global-eyed white figure beside it: "Open that, will you, my
man? . . ."


To Tietjens this was like the sudden bursting out of the regimental
quick-step, as after a funeral with military honours the band and drums
march away, back to barracks.