Parade's End (69 page)

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!’

Tietjens said:

‘I thought perhaps it was O Nine Morgan I saw that night… . Naturally I looked dead… . I hadn’t a breath in my body… . And I saw a Tommy put his rifle to his pal’s upper arm and fire… . As I lay on the ground… .’

Cowley said:

‘Ah, you saw that… I heard the men talking of it… . But they naturally did not say who and where!’

Tietjens said with a negligence that did not ring true:

‘The wounded man’s name was Stilicho… . A queer name … I suppose it’s Cornish… . It was B Company in front of us.’

‘You didn’t bring ’em to a court martial?’ Cowley asked. Tietjens said: No. He could not be quite certain. Though he
was
certain. But he had been worrying about a private matter. He had been worrying about it while he lay on the ground and that rather obscured his sense of what he saw. Besides, he said faintly, an officer must use his judgment. He had judged it better in this case not to have seen the … His voice had nearly faded away. It was clear to Sylvia that he was coming to a climax of some mental torture. Suddenly he exclaimed to Cowley:

‘Supposing I let him off one life to get him killed two years after. My God! That would be too beastly!’

Cowley snuffled in Tietjens’ ear something that Sylvia did not catch – consolatory and affectionate. That intimacy was more than she could bear. She adopted her most negligent tone to ask:

‘I suppose the one man had been trifling with the other’s girl. Or wife!’

Cowley exploded: ‘God bless you, no! They’d agreed upon it between them. To get one of them sent ’ome and the other, at any rate, out of
that
’ell, leading him back to the dressing-station.’ She said:

‘You mean to say that a man would do
that
, to get out of it? …’

Cowley said:

‘God bless you, ma’am, with the ’
ell
the Tommies ’as of it… . For it’s in the line that the difference between the Other Ranks’ life and the officers’ comes in… . I tell you, ma’am, old soldier as I am, and I’ve been in seven wars one with another … there were times in this war when I could have shrieked, holding my right hand down… .’

He paused and said: ‘It was my idea… . And it’s been a good many others’, that if I ’eld my ’and up over the parapet with perhaps my hat on it, in two minutes there would be a German sharpshooter’s bullet through it. And then me for Blighty, as the soldiers say… . And if that could happen to me, a regimental sergeant-major, with twenty-three years in the service …’

The bright orderly came in, said he had found a taxi, and melted into the dimness.

‘A man,’ the sergeant-major said, ‘would take the risk of being shot for wounding his pal… . They get to love their pals, passing the love of women… .’ Sylvia exclaimed: ‘Oh!’ as if at a pang of toothache. ‘They do, ma’am,’ he said, ‘it’s downright touching… .’

He was by now very unsteady as he stood, but his voice was quite clear. That was the way it took him. He said to Tietjens:

‘It’s queer, what you say about home worries taking up your mind… . I remember in the Afghan campaign, when we were in the devil of a hot corner, I got a letter from my wife, Mrs. Cowley, to say that our Winnie had the measles… . And there was only one difference between me and Mrs. Cowley: I said that a child must have flannel next its skin, and she said flannelette was good enough. Wiltshire doesn’t hold by wool as Lincolnshire does. Long fleeces the Lincolnshire sheep have… . And dodging the Afghan bullets all day among the boulders as we was, all I could think of … For you know, ma’am, being a mother yourself, that the great thing with measles is to keep a child warm… . I kep’ saying to myself – ’arf crying I was – “If she only keeps wool next Winnie’s skin! If she only keeps wool next Winnie’s skin!” … But you know that, being a mother yourself. I’ve seen your son’s photo on
the
captain’s dressing-table. Michael, ’is name is… . So you see, the captain doesn’t forget you and ’im.’

Sylvia said in a clear voice:

‘Perhaps you would not go on!’

Distracted as she was by the anti-air-gun in the garden, though it was on the other side of the hotel and permitted you to get in a sentence or two before splitting your head with a couple of irregular explosions, she was still more distracted by a sudden vision – a remembrance of Christopher’s face when their boy had had a temperature of 105° with the measles, up at his sister’s house in Yorkshire. He had taken the responsibility, which the village doctor would not face, of himself placing the child in a bath full of split ice… . She saw him bending, expressionless in the strong lamp-light, with the child in his clumsy arms over the glittering, rubbled surface of the bath. He was just as expressionless then as now… . He reminded her now of how he had been then: some strain in the lines of the face perhaps that she could not analyse… . Rather as if he had a cold in the head – a little suffocating, with suppressing his emotions, of course; his eyes looking at nothing. You would not have said that he even saw the child – heir to Groby and all that! … Something had said to her, just in between two crashes of the gun: ‘It’s his own child. He went as you might say down to hell to bring it back to life… .’ She knew it was Father Consett saying that. She knew it was true: Christopher had been down to hell to bring the child back… . Fancy facing its pain in that dreadful bath! … The thermometer had dropped, running down under their eyes… . Christopher had said: ‘A good heart, he’s got! A good plucked one!’ and then held his breath, watching the thin filament of bright mercury drop to normal… . She said now, between her teeth: ‘The child is his property as much as the damned estate… . Well, I’ve got them both… .’

But it wasn’t at this juncture that she wanted him tortured over that. So, when the second gun had done its crash, she had said to the bibulous old man:

‘I wish you would not go on!’ And Christopher had been prompt to the rescue of the
convenances
with:

‘Mrs. Tietjens does not see eye to eye with us in some matters!’

She said to herself: ‘Eye to eye! My God! …’ The whole of this affair, the more she saw of it, overwhelmed her with a sense of hatred… . And of depression! She saw Christopher buried in this welter of fools, playing a schoolboy’s game of make-believe. But of a make-believe that was infinitely formidable and infinitely sinister… . The crashings of the gun and of all the instruments for making noise seemed to her so atrocious and odious because they were, for her, the silly pomp of a schoolboy-man’s game… . Campion, or some similar schoolboy, said: ‘Hullo! Some German aeroplanes about… That lets us out on the air-gun! Let’s have some pops!’ … As they fire guns in the park on the King’s birthday. It was sheer insolence to have a gun in the garden of an hotel where people of quality might be sleeping or wishing to converse!

At home she had been able to sustain the conviction that it was such a game… . Anywhere: at the house of a minister of the Crown, at dinner, she had only to say: ‘Do let us leave off talking of these odious things… .’ And immediately there would be ten or a dozen voices, the minister’s included, to agree with Mrs. Tietjens of Groby that they had altogether too much of it.

But here! … She seemed to be in the very belly of the ugly affair… . It moved and moved, under your eyes dissolving, yet always there. As if you should try to follow one diamond of pattern in the coil of an immense snake that was in irrevocable motion… . It gave her a sense of despair: the engrossment of Tietjens, in common with the engrossment of this disreputable toper. She had never seen Tietjens put his head together with any soul before; he was the lonely buffalo… . Now! Anyone, any fatuous staff-officer, whom at home he would never so much as have spoken to; any trustworthy beer-sodden sergeant, any street urchin dressed up as orderly… . They had only to appear and all his mind went into a close-headed conference over some ignoble point in the child’s game: the laundry, the chiropody, the religions, the bastards … of millions of the indistinguishable… . Or their deaths as well! But, in heaven’s name what hypocrisy, or what inconceivable chicken-heartedness was this? They promoted this beanfeast of carnage for their own ends; they caused the deaths of men in inconceivable holocausts of pain and terror. Then they had crises of agony over the
death
of one single man. For it was plain to her that Tietjens was in the middle of a full nervous breakdown. Over one man’s death! She had never seen him so suffer; she had never seen him so appeal for sympathy – him, a cold fiend of reticence! Yet he was now in an agony!
Now!
… And she began to have a sense of the infinitely spreading welter of pain, going away to an eternal horizon of night… . ’Ell for the Other Ranks! Apparently it was hell for the officers as well.