A Man Could Stand Up— · Part II · Chapter 2 5 (1/3)

V

The Colonel said:

“Look here, Tietjens, lend me two hundred and fifty quid. They say you’re a damn beastly rich fellow. My accounts are all out. I’ve got a loathsome complaint. My friends have all gone back on me. I shall have to face a Court of Enquiry if I go home. But my nerve’s gone. I’ve got to go home.”

He added:

“I daresay you knew all that.”

From the sudden fierce hatred that he felt at the thought of giving money to this man, Tietjens knew that his inner mind based all its calculations on the idea of living with Valentine Wannop⁠ ⁠… when men could stand up on hills.

He had found the Colonel in his cellar⁠—it really, actually was a cellar, the remains of a farm⁠—sitting on the edge of his camp-bed, in his shorts, his khaki shirt very open at the neck. His eyes were a little bloodshot, but his cropped, silver-grey hair was accurately waved, his grey moustache beautifully pointed. His silver-backed hairbrushes and a small mirror were indeed on the table in front of him. By the rays of the lamp that, hung overhead, rendered that damp stone place faintly nauseating, he looked keen, clean and resolute. Tietjens wondered how he would look by daylight. He had remarkably seldom seen the fellow by daylight. Beside the mirror and the brushes lay, limply, an unfilled pipe, a red pencil and the white buff papers from Whitehall that Tietjens had already read.

He had begun by looking at Tietjens with a keen, hard, bloodshot glance. He had said:

“You think you can command this battalion? Have you had any experience? It appears you suggest that I take two months’ leave.”

Tietjens had expected a violent outbreak. Threats even. None had come. The Colonel had continued to regard him with intentness, nothing more. He sat motionless, his long arms, bare to the elbow, dependent over each of his knees which were far apart. He said that if he decided to go he didn’t want to leave his battalion to a man that would knock it about. He continued staring hard at Tietjens. The phrase was singular in that place and at that hour, but Tietjens understood it to mean that he did not want his battalion discipline to go to pieces.

Tietjens answered that he did not think he would let the discipline go to pieces. The Colonel had said:

“How do you know? You’re no soldier, are you?”

Tietjens said he had commanded in the line a Company at full strength⁠—nearly as large as the battalion and, out of it, a unit of exactly eight times its present strength. He did not think any complaints had been made of him. The Colonel said, frostily:

“Well! I know nothing about you.” He had added:

“You seem to have moved the battalion all right the night before last. I wasn’t in a condition to do it myself. I’m not well. I’m obliged to you. The men appear to like you. They’re tired of me.”

Tietjens felt himself on tenterhooks. He had, now, a passionate desire to command that battalion. It was the last thing he would have expected of himself. He said:

“If it becomes a question of a war of motion, sir, I don’t know that I should have much experience.”

The Colonel answered:

“It won’t become a war of motion before I come back. If I ever do come back.”

Tietjens said:

“Isn’t it rather like a war of motion now, sir?” It was perhaps the first time in his life he had ever asked for information from a superior in rank⁠—with an implicit belief that he would get an exact answer. The Colonel said:

“No. This is only falling back on prepared positions. There will be positions prepared for us right back to the sea. If the Staff has done its work properly. If it hasn’t, the war’s over. We’re done, finished, smashed, annihilated, nonexistent.”

Tietjens said:

“But if the great strafe that, according to Division, is due now⁠ ⁠…”

The Colonel said: “What?” Tietjens repeated his words and added:

“We might get pushed beyond the next prepared position.”

The Colonel appeared to withdraw his thoughts from a great distance.

“There isn’t going to be any great strafe,” he said. He was beginning to add: “Division has got.⁠ ⁠…” A considerable thump shook the hill behind their backs. The Colonel sat listening without much attention. His eyes gloomily rested on the papers before him. He said, without looking up:

“Yes: I don’t want my battalion knocked about!” He went on reading again⁠—the communication from Whitehall. He said: “You’ve read this?” and then:

“Falling back on prepared positions isn’t the same as moving in the open. You don’t have to do more than you do in a trench-to-trench attack. I suppose you can get your direction by compass all right. Or get someone to, for you.”

Another considerable Crump of sound shook the earth but from a little further away. The Colonel turned the sheet of paper over. Pinned to the back of it was the private note of the Brigadier. He perused this also with gloomy and unsurprised eyes.

“Pretty stiff, all this,” he said, “you’ve read it? I shall have to go back and see about this.”

He exclaimed:

“It’s rough luck. I should have liked to leave my battalion to someone that knew it. I don’t suppose you do. Perhaps you do, though.”

An immense collection of fire-irons: all the fire-irons in the world fell just above their heads. The sound seemed to prolong itself in echoes, though of course it could not have. It was repeated.

The Colonel looked upwards negligently. Tietjens proposed to go to see. The Colonel said:

“No, don’t. Notting will tell us if anything’s wanted.⁠ ⁠… Though nothing can be wanted!” Notting was the beady-eyed Adjutant in the adjoining cellar. “How could they expect us to keep accounts straight in August 1914? How can they expect me to remember what happened? At the Depot. Then!” He appeared listless, but without resentment. “Rotten luck⁠ ⁠…” he said. “In the battalion and⁠ ⁠… with this!” He rapped the back of his hand on the papers. He looked up at Tietjens.

“I suppose I could get rid of you; with a bad report,” he said. “Or perhaps I couldn’t⁠ ⁠… General Campion put you here. You’re said to be his bastard.”

“He’s my godfather,” Tietjens said. “If you put in a bad report of me I should not protest. That is, if it were on the grounds of lack of experience. I should go to the Brigadier over anything else.”

“It’s the same thing,” the Colonel said. “I mean a godson. If I had thought you were General Campion’s bastard, I should not have said it.⁠ ⁠… No; I don’t want to put in a bad report of you. It’s my own fault if you don’t know the battalion. I’ve kept you out of it. I didn’t want you to see what a rotten state the papers are in. They say you’re the devil of a paper soldier. You used to be in a Government office, didn’t you?”

Heavy blows were being delivered to the earth with some regularity on each side of the cellar. It was as if a boxer of the size of a mountain were delivering rights and lefts in heavy alternation. And it made hearing rather difficult.

“Rotten luck,” the Colonel said. “And Mckechnie’s dotty. Clean dotty.” Tietjens missed some words. He said that he would probably be able to get the paper work of the battalion straight before the Colonel came back.

The noise rolled down hill like a heavy cloud. The Colonel continued talking and Tietjens, not being very accustomed to his voice, lost a good deal of what he said but, as if in a rift, he did hear:

“I’m not going to burn my fingers with a bad report on you that may bring a General on my back⁠—to get back Mckechnie who’s dotty.⁠ ⁠… Not fit to.⁠ ⁠…”

The noise rolled in again. Once the Colonel listened to it, turning his head on one side and looking upwards. But he appeared satisfied with what he heard and recommenced his perusal of the Horse Guards letter. He took the pencil, underlined words and then sat idly stabbing the paper with the point.

With every minute Tietjen’s respect for him increased. This man at least knew his job⁠—as an engine-dresser does, or the captain of a steam tramp. His nerves might have gone to pieces. They probably had; probably he could not go very far without stimulants: he was probably under bromides now.

And, all things considered, his treatment of Tietjens had been admirable and Tietjens had to revise his view of it. He realised that it was Mckechnie who had given him the idea that the Colonel hated him: but he would not have said anything. He was too old a hand in the Army to give Tietjens a handle by saying anything definite.⁠ ⁠… And he had always treated Tietjens with the sort of monumental deference that, in a Mess, the Colonel should bestow on his chief assistant. Going through a door at mealtimes, for instance, if they happened to be side by side, he would motion with his hand for Tietjens to go first, naturally though, taking his proper precedence when Tietjens halted. And here he was, perfectly calm. And quite ready to be instructive.

Tietjens was not calm: he was too much bothered by Valentine Wannop and by the thought that, if the strafe was on, he ought to be seeing about his battalion. And of course by the bombardment. But the Colonel said, when Tietjens with the aid of signs again made proposals to take a look around:

“No. Stop where you are. This isn’t the strafe. There is not going to be a strafe. This is only a little extra Morning Hate. You can tell by the noise. That’s only four point twos. There’s nothing really heavy. The really heavies don’t come so fast. They’ll be turning on to the Worcesters now and only giving us one every half minute.⁠ ⁠… That’s their game. If you don’t know that, what are you doing here?” He added! “You hear?” pointing his forefinger to the roof. The noise shifted. It went away to the right as a slow coal-wagon might. He went on:

“This is your place. Not doing things up above. They’ll come and tell you if they want things. And you’ve got a first-rate Adjutant in Notting and Dunne’s a good man.⁠ ⁠… The men are all under cover: that’s an advantage in having your strength down to three hundred. There’s dugouts for all and to spare.⁠ ⁠… All the same, this is no place for you. Nor for me. This is a young man’s war. We’re old uns. Three and a half years of it have done for me. Three and a half months will do for you.”

He looked gloomily at his reflection in the mirror that stood before him.

“You’re a gone coon!” he said to it. Then he took it and, holding it for a moment poised at the end of a bare white arm, flung it violently at the rough stones of the wall behind Tietjens. The fragments tinkled to the ground.

“There’s seven years’ bad luck,” he said. “God take ’em, if they can give me seven years worse than this last I’d find it instructive!”

He looked at Tietjens with infuriated eyes.

“Look here you!” he said, “You’re an educated man⁠ ⁠… What’s the worst thing about this war? What’s the worst thing? Tell me that!” His chest began to heave. “It’s that they won’t let us alone. Never! Not one of us! If they’d let us alone we could fight. But never.⁠ ⁠… No one! It’s not only the beastly papers of the battalion, though I’m no good with papers. Never was and never shall be.⁠ ⁠… But it’s the people at home. One’s own people. God help us, you’d think that when a poor devil was in the trenches they’d let him alone.⁠ ⁠… Damn it: I’ve had solicitors’ letters about family quarrels when I was in hospital. Imagine that!⁠ ⁠… Imagine it! I don’t mean tradesmen’s dunnings. But one’s own people. I haven’t even got a bad wife as Mckechnie has and they say you have. My wife’s a bit extravagant and the children are expensive. That’s worry enough.⁠ ⁠… But my father died eighteen months ago. He was in partnership with my uncle. A builder. And they tried to do his estate out of his share of the business and leave my old mother with nothing. And my brother and sister threw the estate into Chancery in order to get back the little bit my father spent on my wife and children. My wife and children lived with my father whilst I was in India.⁠ ⁠… And out here.⁠ ⁠… My solicitor says they can get it out of my share: the cost of their keep. He calls it the doctrine of ademption.⁠ ⁠… Ademption⁠ ⁠… Doctrine of⁠ ⁠… I was better off as a Sergeant,” he added gloomily. “But Sergeants don’t get let alone. They’ve always got women after them. Or their wives take up with Belgians and they get written to about it. Sergeant Cutts of D Company gets an anonymous letter every week about his wife. How’s he to do his duty! But he does. So have I till now.⁠ ⁠…” He added with renewed violence:

“Look here. You’re an educated man, aren’t you? The sort of man that could write a book. You write a book about that. You write to the papers about it. You’d be more use to the Army doing that than being here. I daresay you’re a good enough officer. Old Campion is too keen a commander to stick a rotten officer into this job, godson or no godson.⁠ ⁠… Besides, I don’t believe the whole story about you. If a General wanted to give a soft godson’s job to a fellow, it would be a soft job and a fat one. He wouldn’t send him here. So take the battalion with my blessing. You won’t worry over it more than I have: the poor bloody Glamorgan’s.”

So he had his battalion! He drew an immense breath. The bumps began to come back along the line. He figured those shells as being like sparrow-hawks beating along a hedge. They were probably pretty accurate. The Germans were pretty accurate. The trenches were probably being knocked about a good deal, the pretty, pinkish gravel falling about in heaps as it would lie in a park, ready to be spread on paths. He remembered how he had been up on the Montagne Noire, still, thank God, behind where they were now. Why did he thank God? Did he really care where the Army was. Probably! But enough to say “thank God” about? Probably too.⁠ ⁠… But as long as they kept on at the job did anything matter? Anything else? It was keeping on that mattered. From the Montagne Noir he had seen our shells bursting on a thinnish line in the distance, in shining weather. Each shell existing in a white puff, beautifully. Forward and backward along the line.⁠ ⁠… Under Messines village. He had felt exhilaration to think that our gunners were making such good practice. Now some Hun on a hill was feeling exhilaration over puffs of smoke in our line!⁠ ⁠… But he, Tietjens was⁠ ⁠… Damn it, he was going to make two hundred and fifty quid towards living with Valentine Wannop⁠—when you really could stand up on a hill⁠ ⁠… anywhere!

The Adjutant, Notting, looked in and said:

“Brigade wants to know if we’re suffering any, sir?”

The Colonel surveyed Tietjens with irony:

“Well, what are you going to report?” he asked.⁠ ⁠… “This officer is taking over from me,” he said to Notting. Notting’s beady eyes and red-varnished cheeks expressed no emotions.

“Oh, tell Brigade,” the Colonel said, “that we’re all as happy as sand-boys. We could stand this till Kingdom come.” He asked: “We aren’t suffering any, are we?”

Notting said: “No, not in particular. C Company was grumbling that all its beautiful revetments had been knocked to pieces. The sentry near their own dugout complained that the pebbles in the gravel were nearly as bad as shrapnel.”

“Well, tell Brigade what I said. With Major Tietjen’s compliments, not mine. He’s in command.”

“… You may as well make a cheerful impression to begin with,” he added to Tietjens.

It was then that, suddenly, he burst out with:

“Look here! Lend me two hundred and fifty quid!”

He remained staring fixedly at Tietjens with an odd air of a man who has just asked a teasing, jocular conundrum.⁠ ⁠…

Tietjens had recoiled⁠—really half an inch. The man said he was suffering from a loathsome disease: it was being near something dirty. You don’t contract loathsome diseases except from the cheapest kind of women or through being untidy-minded.⁠ ⁠… The man’s pals had gone back on him. That sort of man’s pals do go back on him! His accounts were all out.⁠ ⁠… He was in short the sort of swindling, unclean scoundrel to whom one lent money.⁠ ⁠… Irresistibly!