No More Parades · Part I · Chapter 1 2 (1/5)

II

The “All Clear” went at once after that. Its suddenness was something surprising, the mournful-cheerful, long notes dying regretfully on a night that had only just gone quiet after the perfectly astonishing row. The moon had taken it into its head to rise; begumboiled, jocular and grotesque, it came from behind the shoulder of one of the hut-covered hills and sent down the lines of Tietjens’ huts long, sentimental rays that converted the place into a slumbering, pastoral settlement. There was no sound that did not contribute to the silence, little dim lights shone through the celluloid casements. Of Sergeant-Major Cowley, his numerals gilded by the moon in the lines of A Company, Tietjens, who was easing his lungs of coke vapours for a minute, asked in a voice that hushed itself in tribute to the moonlight and the now keen frost:

“Where the deuce is the draft?”

The sergeant-major looked poetically down a ribbon of whitewashed stones that descended the black down-side. Over the next shoulder of hill was the blur of a hidden conflagration.

“There’s a Hun plane burning down there. In Twenty-Seven’s parade ground. The draft’s round that, sir,” he said. Tietjens said:

“Good God!” in a voice of caustic tolerance. He added, “I did think we had drilled some discipline into these blighters in the seven weeks we have had them⁠ ⁠… You remember the first time when we had them on parade and that acting lance-corporal left the ranks to heave a rock at a seagull⁠ ⁠… And called you Ol’ Hunkey!⁠ ⁠… Conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline? Where’s that Canadian sergeant-major? Where’s the officer in charge of the draft?”

Sergeant-Major Cowley said:

“Sergeant-Major Ledoux said it was like a cattle-stampede on the⁠ ⁠… some river where they come from. You couldn’t stop them, sir. It was their first German plane⁠ ⁠… And they going up the line tonight, sir.”

“Tonight!” Tietjens exclaimed. “Next Christmas!” The sergeant-major said:

“Poor boys!” and continued to gaze into the distance. “I heard another good one, sir,” he said. “The answer to the one about the King saluting a private soldier and he not taking any notice is: when he’s dead⁠ ⁠… But if you marched a company into a field through a gateway and you wanted to get it out again but you did not know any command in the drill book for change of direction, what would you do, sir?⁠ ⁠… You have to get that company out, but you must not use About Turn, or Right or Left Wheel⁠ ⁠… There’s another one, too, about saluting⁠ ⁠… The officer in charge of draft is Second-Lieutenant Hotchkiss⁠ ⁠… But he’s an A.S.C. officer and turned of sixty. A farrier he is, sir in civil life. An A.S.C. major was asking me, sir, very civil, if you could not detail someone else. He says he doubts if Second Lieutenant Hitchcock⁠ ⁠… Hotchkiss could walk as far as the station, let alone march the men, him not knowing anything but cavalry words of command, if he knows them. He’s only been in the army a fortnight⁠ ⁠…”

Tietjens turned from the idyllic scene with the words:

“I suppose the Canadian sergeant-major and Lieutenant Hotchkiss are doing what they can to get their men come back.”

He reentered the hut.

Captain Mackenzie in the light of a fantastically brilliant hurricane lamp appeared to be bathing dejectedly in a surf of coiling papers spread on the table before him.

“There’s all this bumph,” he said, “just come from all the headquarters in the bally world.”

Tietjens said cheerfully:

“What’s it all about?” There were, the other answered, Garrison Headquarter orders, Divisional orders, Lines of Communication orders, half a dozen A.F.W.B. two four twos. A terrific strafe from First Army forwarded from Garrison H.Q. about the draft’s not having reached Hazebrouck the day before yesterday. Tietjens said:

“Answer them politely to the effect that we had orders not to send off the draft without its complement of four hundred Canadian Railway Service men⁠—the fellows in furred hoods. They only reached us from Etaples at five this afternoon without blankets or ring papers. Or any other papers for the matter of that.”

Mackenzie was studying with increased gloom a small buff memorandum slip:

“This appears to be meant for you privately,” he said. “I can’t make head or tail of it otherwise. It isn’t marked private.”

He tossed the buff slip across the table.

Tietjens sank down bulkily on to his bully-beef case. He read on the buff at first the initials of the signature, “E. C. Genl.”, and then: “For God’s sake keep your wife off me. I will not have skirts round my H.Q. You are more trouble to me than all the rest of my command put together.”

Tietjens groaned and sank more deeply on to his beef case. It was as if an unseen and unsuspected wild beast had jumped on his neck from an overhanging branch. The sergeant-major at his side said in his most admirable butler manner:

“Colour-Sergeant Morgan and Lance-Corporal Trench are obliging us by coming from depot orderly room to help with the draft’s papers. Why don’t you and the other officer go and get a bit of dinner, sir? The colonel and the padre have only just come in to mess, and I’ve warned the mess orderlies to keep your food ’ot⁠ ⁠… Both good men with papers, Morgan and Trench. We can send the soldiers’ small books to you at table to sign⁠ ⁠…”

His feminine solicitude enraged and overwhelmed Tietjens with blackness. He told the sergeant-major that he was to go to hell, for he himself was not going to leave that hut till the draft was moved off. Captain Mackenzie could do as he pleased. The sergeant-major told Captain Mackenzie that Captain Tietjens took as much trouble with his ragtime detachments as if he had been the Coldstream adjutant at Chelsea sending off a draft of Guards. Captain Mackenzie said that that was why they damn well got their details off four days faster than any other I.B.D. in that camp. He would say that much, he added grudgingly and dropped his head over his papers again. The hut was moving slowly up and down before the eyes of Tietjens. He might have just been kicked in the stomach. That was how shocks took him. He said to himself that by God he must take himself in hand. He grabbed with his heavy hands at a piece of buff paper and wrote on it a column of fat, wet letters

a

b

b

a

a

b

b

a

and so on.

He said opprobriously to Captain Mackenzie:

“Do you know what a sonnet is? Give me the rhymes for a sonnet. That’s the plan of it.”

Mackenzie grumbled:

“Of course I know what a sonnet is. What’s your game?”

Tietjens said:

“Give me the fourteen end-rhymes of a sonnet and I’ll write the lines. In under two minutes and a half.”

Mackenzie said injuriously:

“If you do I’ll turn it into Latin hexameters in three. In under three minutes.”

They were like men uttering deadly insults the one to the other. To Tietjens it was as if an immense cat were parading, fascinated and fatal, round that hut. He had imagined himself parted from his wife. He had not heard from his wife since her four-in-the-morning departure from their flat, months and eternities ago, with the dawn just showing up the chimney-pots of the Georgian rooftrees opposite. In the complete stillness of dawn he had heard her voice say very clearly “Paddington” to the chauffeur, and then all the sparrows in the inn waking up in chorus⁠ ⁠… Suddenly and appallingly it came into his head that it might not have been his wife’s voice that had said “Paddington,” but her maid’s⁠ ⁠… He was a man who lived very much by rules of conduct. He had a rule: Never think on the subject of a shock at a moment of shock. The mind was then too sensitized. Subjects of shock require to be thought all round. If your mind thinks when it is too sensitized its then conclusions will be too strong. So he exclaimed to Mackenzie:

“Haven’t you got your rhymes yet? Damn it all!”

Mackenzie grumbled offensively:

“No, I haven’t. It’s more difficult to get rhymes than to write sonnets⁠ ⁠… death, moil, coil, breath⁠ ⁠…” He paused.

“Heath, soil, toil, staggereth,” Tietjens said contemptuously. “That’s your sort of Oxford young woman’s rhyme⁠ ⁠… Go on⁠ ⁠… What is it?”

An extremely age-faded and unmilitary officer was beside the blanketed table. Tietjens regretted having spoken to him with ferocity. He had a grotesquely thin white beard. Positively, white whiskers! He must have gone through as much of the army as he had gone through with those whiskers, because no superior officer⁠—not even a fieldmarshal⁠—would have the heart to tell him to take them off! It was the measure of his pathos. This ghostlike object was apologizing for not having been able to keep the draft in hand: he was requesting his superior to observe that these Colonial troops were without any instincts of discipline. None at all. Tietjens observed that he had a blue cross on his right arm where the vaccination marks are as a rule. He imagined the Canadians talking to this hero⁠ ⁠… The hero began to talk of Major Cornwallis of the R.A.S.C.

Tietjens said apropos of nothing:

“Is there a Major Cornwallis in the A.S.C.? Good God!”

The hero protested faintly:

“The R.A.S.C.”

Tietjens said kindly:

“Yes. Yes. The Royal Army Service Corps.”

Obviously his mind until now had regarded his wife’s “Paddington” as the definite farewell between his life and hers⁠ ⁠… He had imagined her, like Eurydice, tall, but faint and pale, sinking back into the shades⁠ ⁠… “Che faro senz’ Eurydice?⁠ ⁠…” he hummed. Absurd! And of course it might have been only the maid that had spoken⁠ ⁠… She too had a remarkably clear voice. So that the mystic word “Paddington” might perfectly well be no symbol at all, and Mrs. Sylvia Tietjens, far from being faint and pale, might perfectly well be playing the very devil with half the general officers commanding in chief from Whitehall to Alaska.

Mackenzie⁠—he was like a damned clerk⁠—was transferring the rhymes that he had no doubt at last found, on to another sheet of paper. Probably he had a round, copybook hand. Positively, his tongue followed his pen round, inside his lips. These were what His Majesty’s regular officers of today were. Good God! A damned intelligent, dark-looking fellow. Of the type that is starved in its youth and takes all the scholarships that the board schools have to offer. Eyes too big and black. Like a Malay’s⁠ ⁠… Any blasted member of any subject race.

The A.S.C. fellow had been talking positively about horses. He had offered his services in order to study the variation of pinkeye that was decimating all the service horses in the lines. He had been a professor⁠—positively a professor⁠—in some farriery college or other. Tietjens said that, in that case, he ought to be in the A.V.C.⁠—the Royal Army Veterinary Corps perhaps it was. The old man said he didn’t know. He imagined that the R.A.S.C. had wanted his service for their own horses⁠ ⁠…

Tietjens said:

“I’ll tell you what to do, Lieutenant Hitchcock⁠ ⁠… For, damn it, you’re a stout fellow⁠ ⁠…” The poor old fellow, pushing out at that age from the cloisters of some provincial university⁠ ⁠… He certainly did not look a horsy sportsman⁠ ⁠…

The old lietutenant said:

“Hotchkiss⁠ ⁠…” And Tietjens exclaimed:

“Of course it’s Hotchkiss⁠ ⁠… I’ve seen your name signing a testimonial to Pigg’s Horse Embrocation⁠ ⁠… Then if you don’t want to take this draft up the line⁠ ⁠… Though I’d advise you to⁠ ⁠… It’s merely a Cook’s Tour to Hazebrouck⁠ ⁠… No, Bailleul⁠ ⁠… And the sergeant-major will march the men for you⁠ ⁠… And you will have been in the First Army Lines and able to tell all your friends you’ve been on active service at the real front⁠ ⁠…”

His mind said to himself while his words went on⁠ ⁠…

“Then, good God, if Sylvia is actively paying attention to my career I shall be the laughingstock of the whole army. I was thinking that ten minutes ago!⁠ ⁠… What’s to be done? What in God’s name is to be done?” A black crape veil seemed to drop across his vision⁠ ⁠… Liver⁠ ⁠…

Lieutenant Hotchkiss said with dignity:

“I’m going to the front. I’m going to the real front. I was passed A1 this morning. I am going to study the blood reactions of the service horse under fire.”

“Well, you’re a damn good chap,” Tietjens said. There was nothing to be done. The amazing activities of which Sylvia would be capable were just the thing to send laughter raging like fire through a cachinnating army. She could not thank God, get into France: to that place. But she could make scandals in the papers that every Tommie read. There was no game of which she was not capable. That sort of pursuit was called “pulling the strings of shower-baths” in her circle of friends. Nothing. Nothing to be done⁠ ⁠… The beastly hurricane lamp was smoking.

“I’ll tell you what to do,” he said to Lieutenant Hotchkiss.

Mackenzie had tossed his sheet of rhymes under his nose. Tietjens read: Death, moil, coil, breath⁠ ⁠… Saith⁠—“The dirty Cockney!” Oil, soil, wraith⁠ ⁠…

“I’d be blowed,” Mackenzie said with a vicious grin, “if I was going to give you rhymes you had suggested yourself⁠ ⁠…”

The officer said:

“I don’t of course want to be a nuisance if you’re busy.”

“It’s no nuisance,” Tietjens said. “It’s what we’re for. But I’d suggest that now and then you say ‘sir’ to the officer commanding your unit. It sounds well before the men⁠ ⁠… Now you go to No. XVI I.B.D. Mess anteroom⁠ ⁠… The place where they’ve got the broken bagatelle-table⁠ ⁠…”

The voice of Sergeant-Major Cowley exclaimed tranquilly from outside:

“Fall in now. Men who’ve got their ring papers and identity disks⁠—three of them⁠—on the left. Men who haven’t, on the right. Any man who has not been able to draw his blankets tell Colour-Sergeant Morgan. Don’t forget. You won’t get any where you’re going. Any man who hasn’t made his will in his Soldier’s Small Book or elsewhere and wants to, to consult Captain Tietjens. Any man who wants to draw money, ask Captain Mackenzie. Any R.C. who wants to go to confession after he has got his papers signed can find the R.C. padre in the fourth hut from the left in the Main Line from here⁠ ⁠… And damn kind it is of his reverence to put himself out for a set of damn blinking mustard-faced red herrings like you who can’t keep from running away to the first baby’s bonfire you sees. You’ll be running the other way before you’re a week older, though what good they as asks for you thinks you’ll be out there God knows. You look like a squad of infants’ companions from a Wesleyan Sunday school. That’s what you look like and, thank God, we’ve got a Navy.”

Under cover of his voice Tietjens had been writing:

“Now we affront the grinning chops of Death,” and saying to Lieutenant Hotchkiss: “In the I.B.D. anteroom you’ll find any number of dirty little squits of Glamorganshires drinking themselves blind over La Vie Parisienne⁠ ⁠… Ask any one of them you like⁠ ⁠…” He wrote:

“And in between the carcases and the moil

Of marts and cities, toil and moil and coil⁠ ⁠…”

“You think this difficult!” he said to Mackenzie. “Why, you’ve written a whole undertaker’s mortuary ode in the rhymes alone,” and went on to Hotchkiss: “Ask anyone you like as long as he’s a P.B. officer⁠ ⁠… Do you know what P.B. means? No, not Poor B⁠⸺⁠y, Permanent Base. Unfit⁠ ⁠… If he’d like to take a draft to Bailleul.”