A Man Could Stand Up— · Part II · Chapter 2 2 (1/3)

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 guardroom 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 09 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 tonight, 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, Tietjen’s, 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, Tietjen’s, widow.⁠ ⁠… Sylvia in crêpe. With perhaps a little white about it!

The cornet⁠—obviously it was not a key-bugle⁠—remarked:

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 today? Or, still more, tomorrow? 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 hedgerows, 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 today, 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-Hinduish 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 meal-sack, and what the devil’s to become of my battalion.⁠ ⁠… Mine.⁠ ⁠… My battalion! Our battalion of pals!”

That had been in, presumably, February, and, presumably, it was now April. The way the dawn came up looked like April.⁠ ⁠… What did it matter?⁠ ⁠… That damned truck had stayed under that bridge for two hours and a half⁠ ⁠… in the process of the eternal waiting that is War. You hung about and you hung about, and you kicked your heels and you kicked your heels: waiting for Mills bombs to come, or for jam, or for generals, or for the tanks, or transport, or the clearance of the road ahead. You waited in offices under the eyes of somnolent orderlies, under fire on the banks of canals, you waited in hotels, dugouts, tin sheds, ruined houses. There will be no man who survives of His Majesty’s Armed Forces that shall not remember those eternal hours when Time itself stayed still as the true image of bloody War!⁠ ⁠…

Well, in that case Providence seemed to have decreed a waiting just long enough to allow Tietjens to persuade the unhappy mortal called Perowne that death was not a very dreadful affair.⁠ ⁠… He had enough intellectual authority to persuade the fellow with his glued-down black hair that Death supplied His own anaesthetics. That was the argument. On the approach of Death all the faculties are so numbed that you feel neither pain nor apprehension.⁠ ⁠… He could still hear the heavy, authoritative words that, on that occasion, he had used.

The Providence of Perowne! For, when he was dug out after, next night having been buried in going up into the trenches, they said, he had a smile like a young baby’s on his face. He didn’t have long to wait and died with a smile on his face⁠ ⁠… nothing having so much become him during the life as⁠ ⁠… Well, a becoming smile! During life he had seemed a worried, fussing sort of chap.

Bully for Perowne.⁠ ⁠… But what about him, Tietjens? Was that the sort of thing that Providence ought to do to one?⁠ ⁠… That’s tempting God!

The Sergeant beside him said:

“Then a man could stand hup on an ill.⁠ ⁠… You really mean to say, sir, that you think a man will be able to stand up on a bleedin’ ill.⁠ ⁠…”

Presumably Tietjens had been putting heart into that acting temporary Sergeant-Major. He could not remember what he had been saying to the N.C.O. because his mind had been so deeply occupied with the image of Perowne.⁠ ⁠… He said:

“You’re a Lincolnshire man, aren’t you? You come from a Fen country. What do you want to stand up on a hill for?”

The man said:

“Ah, but you do, sir!”

He added:

“You want to stand up! Take a look around.⁠ ⁠…” He struggled for expression: “Like as if you wanted to breathe deep after bein’ in a stoopin’ posture for a long time!”

Tietjens said:

“Well, you can do that here. With discretion. I did it just now.⁠ ⁠…”

The man said:

“You, sir.⁠ ⁠… You’re a law hunto yourself!”

It was the most considerable shock that Tietjens received in the course of his military career. And the most considerable reward.

There were all these inscrutable beings: the Other Ranks, a brownish mass, spreading underground, like clay strata in the gravel, beneath all this waving country that the sun would soon be warming: they were in holes, in tunnels, behind sackcloth curtains, carrying on⁠ ⁠… carrying on some sort of life: conversing, breathing, desiring. But completely mysterious, in the mass. Now and then you got a glimpse of a passionate desire: “A man could stand up on a bleedin’ ill!”; now and then you got⁠—though you knew that they watched you eternally and knew the minutest gestures of your sleep⁠—you got some sort of indication as to how they regarded you: “You are a law unto yourself!”

That must be hero-worship: an acting temporary regimental Sergeant-Major, without any real knowledge of his job, extemporising, not so long ago a carrier in an eastern county of remarkable flatness does not tell his Acting Commanding Officer that he is a law unto himself without meaning it to be a flattering testimony: a certificate, as far as it went, of trustworthiness.⁠ ⁠…

They were now crawling out into the light of day;⁠ ⁠… from behind the sacking: six files that he had last night transferred from C to D Coy., D having been reduced to forty-three rank and file. They shuffled out, an extraordinary Falstaff’s battalion of muddy odd-come shorts; fell into some sort of alignment in the trench; shuffled an inch further this way, an inch further that; pushed up their chin-straps and pulled them down; humped up their packs by hunching their shoulders and jerking; adjusted their water bottles and fell into some sort of immobility, their rifles, more or less aligned, poked out before them. In that small company they were men of all sorts of sizes, of all sorts of disparities and grotesquenesses of physique. Two of them were music-hall comedians and the whole lot looked as if they made up a knockabout turn.⁠ ⁠… The Rag Time Army: at its vocation: living and breathing.

The Sergeant called them to attention and they wavered back and forward. The Sergeant said:

“The Commadin’ Officer’s lookin’ at you. Fix⁠ ⁠… B’ts!”

And, positively, a dwarf concealed under a pudding basin shuffled a foot-length and a half forward in the mud, protruded his rifle-muzzle between his bent knees, jerked his head swiftly to strain his sight along the minute line.⁠ ⁠… It was like a blurred fairytale! Why did that dwarf behave in a smart and soldierly manner? Through despair? It wasn’t likely!

The men wavered like the edge of a field of tall grass with the wind running along it; they felt round themselves for their bayonet-handles, like women attempting difficult feats with their skirts.⁠ ⁠… The dwarf cut his hand smartly away to his side, as the saying is; the men pulled their rifles up into line. Tietjens exclaimed: