It looked like that. For almost immediately all the guns had fallen silent except for one or two that bumped and grumped… . It had all been just for fun, then!
Well, they were damn near Bailleul now. They would be driven past it in a day or two. On the way to the Channel. Aranjuez would have to hurry to see his girl. The little devil! He had overdrawn his confounded little account over his girl, and Tietjens had had to guarantee his overdraft – which he could not afford to do. Now the little wretch would probably overdraw still more – and Tietjens would have to guarantee still more of an overdraft.
But that night, when Tietjens had gone down into the black silence of his own particular branch of a cellar – they really had been in wine-cellars at that date, cellars stretching for hundreds of yards under chalk with strata of clay which made the mud so particularly sticky and offensive – he had found the sound of the pick-axes beneath his flea-bag almost unbearable. They were probably our own men. Obviously they were our own men. But it had not made much difference, for, of course, if they were there they would be an attraction, and the Germans might just as well be below them, countermining.
His nerves had been put in a bad way by that rotten strafe – that had been just for fun. He knew his nerves were in a bad way because he had a ghostly visit from O Nine Morgan, a fellow whose head had been smashed, as it were, on his, Tietjens’, own hands, just after Tietjens had refused him home leave to go and get killed by a prizefighter who had taken up with his, O Nine Morgan’s, wife. It was complicated, but Tietjens wished that fellows who wished to fall on him when they were stopping things would choose to stop things with something else than their heads. That wretched Hun dropping on his shoulder, when, by the laws of war, he ought to have been running back to his own lines, had given him a jar that still shook his whole body. And, of course, a shock. The fellow had looked something positively Apocalyptic, his whitey-grey arms and legs spread abroad… . And it had been an imbecile affair, with no basis of real fighting… .
That thin surge of whitey-grey objects of whom not more than a dozen had reached the line – Tietjens knew that, because, with a melodramatically drawn revolver and the fellows who would have been really better employed carrying away the unfortunate Hun who had had in consequence to wait half an hour before being attended to – with those fellows loaded up with Mills bombs like people carrying pears, he had dodged, revolver first, round half a dozen traverses, and in quite enough of remains of gas to make his lungs unpleasant… . Like a child playing a game of ‘I spy!’ Just like that… . But only to come on several lots of Tommies standing round unfortunate objects who were either trembling with fear and wet and sweat, or panting with their nice little run.
This surge then of whitey-grey objects, sacrificed for fun, was intended … was intended ulti … ultim … then …
A voice, just under his camp-bed, said:
‘Bringt dem Hauptmann eine Kerze… .’ As who should say: ‘Bring a candle for the Captain… .’ Just like that! A dream!
It hadn’t been as considerable a shock as you might have thought to a man just dozing off. Not really as bad as the falling dream, but quite as awakening… . His mind had resumed that sentence.
The handful of Germans who had reached the trench had been sacrificed for the stupid sort of fun called Strategy, probably. Stupid! … It was, of course, just like German spooks to go mining by candle-light. Obsoletely Nibelungen-like. Dwarfs probably! … They had sent over that thin waft of men under a blessed lot of barrage and stuff… . A lot! A whole lot! It had been really quite an artillery strafe. Ten thousand shells as like as not. Then, somewhere up the line they had probably made a demonstration in force. Great bodies of men, an immense surge. And twenty to thirty thousand shells. Very likely some miles of esplanade, as it were, with the sea battering against it. And only a demonstration in force… .
It could not be real fighting. They had not been ready for their spring advance.
It had been meant to impress somebody imbecile… . Somebody imbecile in Wallachia, or Sofia, or Asia Minor. Or Whitehall, very likely. Or the White House! … Perhaps they had killed a lot of Yankees – to make themselves Trans-Atlantically popular. There were no doubt, by then, whole American Army Corps in the line somewhere. By then! Poor devils, coming so late into such an accentuated hell. Damnably accentuated… . The sound of even that little bit of fun had been portentously more awful than even quite a big show say in ’15. It was better to have been in then and got used to it… . If it hadn’t broken you, just by duration …
Might be to impress anybody… . But, who was going to be impressed? Of course, our legislators with the stewed-pear brains running about the ignoble corridors with coke-brise floors and mahogany doors … might be impressed… . You must not rhyme! … Or, of course, our own legislators might have been trying a nice little demonstration in force, equally idiotic somewhere else, to impress someone just as unlikely to be impressed… . This, then, would be the answer! But no one ever would be impressed again. We all had each other’s measures. So it was just wearisome… .
It was remarkably quiet in that thick darkness. Down below, the picks continued their sinister confidences in each other’s ears… . It was really like that. Like children in the corner of a schoolroom whispering nasty comments about their masters, one to the other… . Girls, for choice… . Chop, chop, chop, a pick whispered. Chop? another asked in an undertone. The first said Chopchopchop. Then Chup… . And a silence of irregular duration… . Like what happens when you listen to typewriting and the young woman has to stop to put in another page… .
Nice young women with typewriters in Whitehall had very likely taken from dictation, on hot-pressed, square sheets with embossed royal arms, the plan for that very strafe… . Because, obviously it might have been dictated from Whitehall almost as directly as from Unter den Linden. We might have been making a demonstration in force on the Dwolologda in order to get the Huns to make a counter-demonstration in Flanders. Hoping poor old Puffles would get it in the neck. For they were trying still to smash poor old General Puffles and stop the single command… . They might very well be hoping that our losses through the counter-demonstration would be so heavy that the country would cry out for the evacuation of the Western Front… . If they could get half a million of us killed perhaps the country might … They, no doubt, thought it worth trying. But it was wearisome: those fellows in Whitehall never learned. Any more than Brother Boche… .
Nice to be in poor old Puffles’ army. Nice but wearisome… . Nice girls with typewriters in well-ventilated offices. Did they still put paper cuffs on to keep their sleeves from ink? He would ask Valen … Valen … It was warm and still… . On such a night …
‘Bringt dem Hauptmann eine Kerze!’ A voice from under his camp bed! He imagined that the Hauptmann spark must be myopic; short-sightedly examining a tamping fuse… . If they used tamping fuses or if that was what they called them in the army!
He could not see the face or the spectacles of the Hauptmann any more than he could see the faces of his men. Not through his flea-bag and shins! They were packed in the tunnel; whitish-grey, tubular agglomerations… . Large! Like the maggots that are eaten by Australian natives… . Fear possessed him!
He sat up in his flea-bag, dripping with icy sweat.
‘By Jove, I’m for it!’ he said. He imagined that his brain was going; he was mad and seeing himself go mad. He cast about in his mind for some subject about which to think so that he could prove to himself that he had not gone mad.
II
THE KEY-BUGLE REMARKED with singular distinctness to the dawn:
A sudden waft of pleasure at the seventeenth-century air that the tones gave to the landscape went all over Tietjens… . Herrick and Purcell! … Or it was perhaps a modern imitation. Good enough. He asked:
‘What the devil’s that row, Sergeant?’
The sergeant disappeared behind the muddied sacking curtain. There was a guard-room in there. The key-bugle said:
It might be two hundred yards off along the trenches. Astonishing pleasure came to him from that seventeenth-century air and the remembrance of those exact, quiet words… . Or perhaps he had not got them right. Nevertheless, they were exact and quiet. As efficient working beneath the soul as the picks of miners in the dark.
The sergeant returned with the obvious information that it was O Nine Griffiths practising on the cornet. Captain McKechnie ’ad promised to ’ear ’im after breakfast ’n recommend ’im to the Divisional Follies to play at the concert to-night, if ’e likes ’im.
Tietjens said:
‘Well, I hope Captain McKechnie likes him!’
He hoped McKechnie, with his mad eyes and his pestilential accent, would like that fellow. That fellow spread seventeenth-century atmosphere across the landscape over which the sun’s rays were beginning to flood a yellow wash. Then, might the seventeenth century save the fellow’s life, for his good taste! For his life would probably be saved. He, Tietjens, would give him a pass back to Division to get ready for the concert. So he would be out of the strafe… . Probably none of them would be alive after the strafe that Brigade reported to be coming in… . Twenty-seven minutes, by now! Three hundred and twenty-eight fighting men against … say, a Division. Any preposterous number… . Well, the seventeenth century might as well save one man!
What had become of the seventeenth century? And Herbert and Donne and Crashaw and Vaughan, the Silurist? … Sweet day so cool, so calm, so bright, the bridal of the earth and sky! … By Jove, it was that! Old Campion, flashing like a popinjay in the scarlet and gilt of the major-general, had quoted that in the base camp, years ago. Or was it months? Or wasn’t it: ‘But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariots hurrying near’, that he had quoted?
Anyhow, not bad for an old general!
He wondered what had become of that elegant collection of light yellow, scarlet, and gilt… . Somehow he always thought of Campion as in light yellow, rather than khaki, so much did he radiate light… . Campion and his, Tietjens’, wife, radiating light together – she in a golden gown!
Campion was about due in these latitudes. It was astonishing that he had not turned up before. But poor old Puffles with his abominably weakened Army had done too jolly well to be replaced. Even at the request of the Minister who hated him. Good for him!
It occurred to him that if he … call it ‘stopped one’ that day, Campion would probably marry his, Tietjens’, widow… . Sylvia in crêpe. With perhaps a little white about it!
The cornet – obviously it was not a key-bugle – remarked:
I did but view …
and then stopped to reflect. After a moment it added meditatively:
That would scarcely refer to Sylvia… . Still, perhaps in crêpe, with a touch of white, passing by, very tall… . Say, in a seventeenth-century street… .
The only satisfactory age in England! … Yet what chance had it to-day. Or, still more, to-morrow. In the sense that the age of, say, Shakespeare had a chance. Or Pericles! Or Augustus!
Heaven knew, we did not want a preposterous drum-beating such as the Elizabethans produced – and received. Like lions at a fair… . But what chance had quiet fields, Anglican sainthood, accuracy of thought, heavy-leaved, timbered hedge-rows, slowly creeping plough-lands moving up the slopes? … Still, the land remains… .
The land remains… . It remains! … At that same moment the dawn was wetly revealing; over there in George Herbert’s parish … What was it called? … What the devil was its name? Oh, Hell! … Between Salisbury and Wilton… . The tiny church … But he refused to consider the plough-lands, the heavy groves, the slow high-road above the church that the dawn was at that moment wetly revealing – until he could remember that name… . He refused to consider that, probably even to-day, that land ran to … produced the stock of … Anglican sainthood. The quiet thing!
But until he could remember the name he would consider nothing… .
He said:
‘Are those damned Mills bombs coming?’
The sergeant said:
‘In ten minutes they’ll be ’ere, sir. HAY Cumpny had just telephoned that they were coming in now.’
It was almost a disappointment; in an hour or so, without bombs, they might all have been done with. As quiet as the seventeenth century: in heaven… . The beastly bombs would have to explode before that, now! They might, in consequence, survive… . Then what was he, Tietjens, going to do! Take orders! It was thinkable… .
He said:
‘Those bloody imbeciles of Huns are coming over in an hour’s time, Brigade says. Get the beastly bombs served out, but keep enough in store to serve as an emergency ration if we should want to advance… . Say a third. For ‘C’ and ‘D’ Companies… . Tell the Adjutant I’m going along all the trenches and I want the Assistant-Adjutant, Mr. Aranjuez, and Orderly-Corporal Colley to come with me… . As soon as the bombs come for certain! … I don’t want the men to think they’ve got to stop a Hun rush without bombs… . They’re due to begin their barrage in fourteen minutes, but they won’t really come over without a hell of a lot of preparation… . I don’t know how Brigade knows all this!’
The name Bemerton suddenly came on to his tongue. Yes, Bemerton, Bemerton, Bemerton was George Herbert’s parsonage. Bemerton, outside Salisbury… . The cradle of the race as far as our race was worth thinking about. He imagined himself standing up on a little hill, a lean contemplative parson, looking at the land sloping down to Salisbury spire. A large, clumsily bound seventeenth-century testament, Greek, beneath his elbow… . Imagine standing up on a hill! It was the unthinkable thing there!
The sergeant was lamenting, a little wearily, that the Huns were coming.
‘Hi did think them bleeding ’Uns, ’xcuse me, sir, wasn’ per’aps coming this morning… . Giv us a rest an’ a chance to clear up a bit… .’ He had the tone of a resigned schoolboy saying that the Head might have given the school a holiday on the Queen’s birthday. But what the devil did that man think about his approaching dissolution?
That was the unanswerable question. He, Tietjens, had been asked several times what death was like… . Once, in a cattle-truck under a bridge, near a Red-Cross Clearing Station, by a miserable fellow called Perowne. In the presence of the troublesome lunatic called McKechnie. You would have thought that even a Movement Order Officer would have managed to send up the line that triangle differently arranged. Perowne was known to have been his wife’s lover; he, Tietjens, against his will, had been given the job, as second-in-command of the battalion, that McKechnie wanted madly. And indeed he had a right to it. They ought not to have been sent up together.
But there they had been – Perowne broken down, principally at the thought that he was not going to see his, Tietjens’, wife ever again in a golden gown… . Unless, perhaps, with a golden harp on a cloud, for he looked at things like that… . And, positively, as soon as that baggage-car – it had been a baggage-car, not a cattle-truck! – had discharged the deserter with escort and the three wounded Cochin-Chinese platelayers whom the French authorities had palmed off on them … And where the devil had they all been going? Obviously up into the line, and already pretty near it: near Division Headquarters. But where? … God knew? Or when? God knew too! … A fine-ish day with a scanty remains of not quite melted snow in the cutting and the robins singing in the coppice above. Say February… . Say St. Valentine’s Day, which, of course, would agitate Perowne some more… . Well, positively as soon as the baggage-car had discharged the wounded who had groaned, and the sheepish escort who did not know whether they ought to be civil to the deserter in the presence of the orfcers, and the deserter who kept on defiantly – or if you like broken-heartedly, for there was no telling the difference – asking the escort questions as to the nature of their girls, or volunteering information as to the intimate behaviour of his… . The deserter a gipsyfied, black-eyed fellow with an immense jeering mouth; the escort a corporal and two Tommies, blond and
blushing East Kents, remarkably polished about the buttons and brass numerals, with beautifully neatly-put-on puttees: obviously Regulars, coming from behind the lines; the Cochin-Chinese, with indistinguishable broad yellow faces, brown poetic eyes, furred top-boots and blue furred hoods over their bandaged heads and swathed faces. Seated, leaning back against the side of the box-truck and groaning now and then and shivering all the time …
Well, the moment they had been cleared out at the Deputy Sub. R.T.O.’s tin shed by the railway bridge, the fellow Perowne with his well-padded presence and his dark babu-Hindooish aspect had bubbled out with questions as to the hereafter according to Tietjens and as to the nature of Death; the immediate process of dissolution: dying… . And in between Perowne’s questions McKechnie, with his unspeakable intonation and his dark eyes as mad as a cat’s, had asked Tietjens how he dared get himself appointed second-in-command of his, McKechnie’s, own battalion… . ‘You’re no soldier,’ he would burst out. ‘Do you think you are a b—y infantryman? You’re a mealsack, and what the devil’s to become of my battalion… . Mine… . My battalion! Our battalion of pals!’