Cowley had been recommended by the colonel of the depot, Sergeant-Major Ledoux by his own colonel. Tietjens felt as if he had been let down — but of course he had not been. It was just the way of the army, all the time. You got a platoon, or a battalion, or, for the matter of that, a dug-out or a tent, by herculean labours into good fettle. It ran all right for a day or two, then it all fell to pieces, the personnel scattered to the four winds by what appeared merely wanton orders, coming from the most unexpected headquarters, or the premises were smashed up by a chance shell that might just as well have fallen somewhere else…. The finger of Fate!
But it put a confounded lot more work on him…. He said to Sergeant-Major Cowley, whom he found in the next hut where all the paper work of the unit was done:
“I should have thought you would have been enormously better off as regimental sergeant-major than with a commission. I know I would rather have the job.” Cowley answered — he was very pallid and shaken — that with his unfortunate infirmity, coming on at any moment of shock, he would be better in a job where he could slack off, like an O.T.C. He had always been subject to small fits, over in a minute, or couple of seconds even…. But getting too near a H.E. shell — after Noircourt which had knocked out Tietjens himself — had brought them on, violent. There was also, he finished, the gentility to be considered. Tietjens said:
“Oh, the gentility! That’s not worth a flea’s jump…. There won’t be any more parades after this war. There aren’t any now. Look at who your companions will be in an officer’s quarters; you’d be in a great deal better society in any self-respecting sergeants’ mess.” Cowley answered that he knew the service had gone to the dogs. All the same his missis liked it. And there was his daughter Winnie to be considered. She had always been a bit wild, and his missis wrote that she had gone wilder than ever, all due to the war. Cowley thought that the bad boys would be a little more careful how they monkeyed with her if she was an officer’s daughter…. There was probably something in that!
Coming out into the open, confidentially with Tietjens, Cowley dropped his voice huskily to say:
“Take Quartermaster-Sergeant Morgan for R.S.M., sir.”
Tietjens said explosively:
“I’m damned if I will.” Then he asked: “Why?” The wisdom of old N.C.O.s is a thing no prudent officer neglects.
“He can do the work, sir,” Cowley said. “He’s out for a commission, and he’ll do his best….” He dropped his husky voice to a still greater depth of mystery:
“You’re over two hundred — I should say nearer three hundred — pounds down in your battalion stores. I don’t suppose you want to lose a sum of money like that?”
Tietjens said:
“I’m damned if I do…. But I don’t see…. Oh, yes, I do…. If I make him sergeant-major he has to hand over the stores all complete…. To-day… Can he do it?”
Cowley said that Morgan could have till the day after to-morrow. He would look after things till then.
“But you’ll want to have a flutter before you go,” Tietjens said. “Don’t stop for me.”
Cowley said that he would stop and see the job through. He had thought of going down into the town and having a flutter. But the girls down there were a common sort, and it was bad for his complaint…. He would stop and see what could be done with Morgan. Of course it was possible that Morgan might decide to face things out. He might prefer to stick to the money he’d got by disposing of Tietjens’ stores to other battalions that were down, or to civilian contractors. And stand a court martial! But it wasn’t likely. He was a Nonconformist deacon, a pew-opener, or even a minister possibly, at home in Wales…. From near Denbigh! And Cowley had got a very good man, a first- class man, an Oxford professor, now a lance-corporal at the depot, for Morgan’s place. The colonel would lend him to Tietjens and would get him rated acting quartermaster-sergeant unpaid…. Cowley had it all arranged…. Lance- Corporal Caldicott was a first-class man, only he could not tell his right hand from his left on parade. Literally could not tell them….
So the battalion settled itself down…. Whilst Cowley and he were at the colonel’s orderly room arranging for the transfer of the professor — he was really only a fellow of his college — who did not know his right hand from his left, Tietjens was engaged in the remains of the colonel’s furious argument as to the union of the Anglican and Eastern rites. The colonel — he was a full colonel — sat in his lovely private office, a light, gay compartment of a tin-hutment, the walls being papered in scarlet, with, on the purplish, thick, soft baize of his table-cover, a tall glass vase from which sprayed out pale Riviera roses, the gift of young lady admirers amongst the V.A.D.s in the town because he was a darling, and an open, very gilt and leather-bound volume of a biblical encyclopaedia beneath his delicate septuagenarian features. He was confirming his opinion that a union between the Church of England and the Greek Orthodox Church was the only thing that could save civilization. The whole war turned on that. The Central Empires represented Roman Catholicism, the Allies Protestantism and Orthodoxy. Let them unite. The papacy was a traitor to the cause of civilization. Why had the Vatican not protested with no uncertain voice about the abominations practiced on the Belgian Catholics?…
Tietjens pointed out languidly objections to this theory. The first thing our ambassador to the Vatican had found out on arriving in Rome and protesting about massacres of Catholic laymen in Belgium was that the Russians before they had been a day in Austrian Poland had hanged twelve Roman Catholic bishops in front of their palaces.
Cowley was engaged with the adjutant at another table. The colonel ended his theologico-political tirade by saying:
“I shall be very sorry to lose you, Tietjens. I don’t know what we shall do without you. I never had a moment’s peace with your unit until you came.”
Tietjens said:
“Well, you aren’t losing me, sir, as far as I know.”
The colonel said:
“Oh, yes, we are. You are going up the line next week….” He added: “Now, don’t get angry with me…. I’ve protested very strongly to old Campion — General Campion — that I cannot do without you.” And he made, with his delicate, thin, hairy-backed, white hands a motion as of washing.
The ground moved under Tietjens’ feet. He felt himself clambering over slopes of mud with his heavy legs and labouring chest. He said:
“Damn it all!… I’m not fit…. I’m C3…. I was ordered to live in an hotel in the town…. I only mess here to be near the battalion.”
The colonel said with some eagerness:
“Then you can protest to Garrison…. I hope you will…. But I suppose you are the sort of fellow that won’t.”
Tietjens said:
“No, sir…. Of course I cannot protest…. Though it’s probably a mistake of some clerk…. I could not stand a week in the line….” The profound misery of brooding apprehension in the line was less on his mind than, precisely, the appalling labour of the lower limbs when you live in mud to the neck. Besides, whilst he had been in hospital, practically the whole of his equipment had disappeared from his kitbag — including Sylvia’s two pair of sheets! — and he had no money with which to get more. He had not even any trench-boots. Fantastic financial troubles settled on his mind.
The colonel said to the adjutant at the other purple baize-covered table:
“Show Captain Tietjens those marching orders of his…. They’re from Whitehall, aren’t they?… You never know where these things come from nowadays. I call them the arrow that flieth by night!”
The adjutant, a diminutive, a positively miniature gentleman with Coldstream badges up and a dreadfully worried brow, drifted a quarto sheet of paper out of a pile, across his table-cloth towards Tietjens. His tiny hands seemed about to fall off at the wrists; his temples shuddered with neuralgia. He said:
“For God’s sake do protest to Garrison if you feel you can…. We
The sumptuous paper, with the royal arms embossed at the top, informed Tietjens that he would report to his VIth battalion on the Wednesday of next week in preparation for taking up the duties of divisional transport officer to the XIXth division. The order came from room G 14 R, at the War Office. He asked what the deuce G 14 R was, of the adjutant, who in an access of neuralgic agony, shook his head miserably, between his two hands, his elbows on the table-cloth.
Sergeant-Major Cowley, with his air of a solicitor’s clerk, said the room G 14 R was the department that dealt
