‘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 am 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 cookhouses 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: Tut 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 of 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 remembered 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 couldn’t 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 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.’
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