Parade's End

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 in 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 roof-trees 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 a shock. The mind was then too sensitised. Subjects of shock require to be thought all round. If your mind thinks when it is too sensitised 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 field-marshal — would have the heart to tell him to take them off! It was the measure of his pathos. This ghost- like object was apologising 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 to 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, onto another sheet of paper. Probably he had a round, copy-book hand. Positively, his tongue followed his pen round, inside his lips. These were what His Majesty’s regular officers of to-day 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 pink-eye 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 lieutenant 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 laughing-stock 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 Ai 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 ante-room… the