‘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 Waacs Venusbergs, 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 sindonis the King wore at the coronation… . As they mounted the stairs she thought what a fat tenor Tannhäuser 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 THREE
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 and 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 drily:
‘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 tonight. 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 h
as 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 recognised 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 tonight. 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 recognise 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?’