‘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 tomorrow 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, emphasised 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 subsidise 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 t
o 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 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 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 bedrooms 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 everyone 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 ’earts 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 up 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 parados, 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!’