Parade's End (68 page)

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 bald-headed man in civilian evening 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 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 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 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.