over this whole front you’d have still more enormous bodies of men. Seven to ten million…. All moving towards places towards which they desperately don’t want to go. Desperately! Every one of them is desperately afraid. But they go on. An immense blind will forces them in the effort to consummate the one decent action that humanity has to its credit in the whole of recorded history; the one we are engaged in. That effort is the one certain creditable fact in all their lives…. But the
Levin exclaimed:
“Just heavens!
Tietjens said: “Can’t you see that that is optimism?”
“But,” Levin said, “we’re being beaten out of the field…. You don’t know how desperate things are.”
Tietjens said:
“Oh, I know pretty well. As soon as this weather really breaks we’re probably done.”
“We can’t,” Levin said, “possibly hold them. Not possibly.”
“But success or failure,” Tietjens said, “have nothing to do with the credit of a story. And a consideration of the virtues of humanity does not omit the other side. If we lose, they win. If success is necessary to your idea of virtue —
Levin said:
“I don’t know…. If you knew what is going on at home…”
Tietjens said:
“Oh, I know…. I know that ground as I know the palm of my hand. I could invent that life if I knew nothing at all about the facts.”
Levin said:
“I believe you could.” He added: “Of course you could…. And yet the only use we can make of you is to martyrise you because two drunken brutes break into your wife’s bedroom….”
Tietjens said:
“You betray your non-Anglo-Saxon origin by being so vocal… And by your illuminative exaggerations!”
Levin suddenly exclaimed:
“What the devil were we talking about?”
Tietjens said grimly:
“I am here at the disposal of the competent military authority — you! — that is inquiring into my antecedents. I am ready to go on belching platitudes till you stop me.”
Levin answered:
“For goodness’ sake help me. This is horribly painful.
Tietjens said:
“It’s asking too much to ask me to help you…. What did I say in my sleep? What has Mrs. Tietjens told the general?”
“The general,” Levin said, “has not seen Mrs. Tietjens. He could not trust himself. He knew she would twist him round her little finger.”
Tietjens said:
“He’s beginning to learn. He was sixty last July, but he’s beginning.”
“So that,” Levin said, “what we do know we learnt in the way I have told you. And from O’Hara of course. The general would not let Pe…, the other fellow, speak a word, while he was shaving. He just said: ‘I won’t hear you. I won’t hear you. You can take your choice of going up the line as soon as there are trains running or being broke on my personal application to the King in Council.”
“I didn’t know,” Tietjens said, “that he could talk as straight as that.”
“He’s dreadfully hard hit,” Levin answered; “if you and Mrs. Tietjens separate — and still more if there’s anything real against either of you — it’s going to shatter all his illusions. And…” He paused: “Do you know Major Thurston? A gunner? Attached to our anti-aircraft crowd?… The general is very thick with him…”
Tietjens said:
“He’s one of the Thurstons of Lobden Moorside…. I don’t know him personally….”
Levin said:
“He’s upset the general a good deal…. With something he told him….”
Tietjens said:
“Good God!” And then: “He can’t have told the general anything against me…. Then it must be against…”
Levin said:
“Do you want the general always to be told things against you in contradistinction to things about… another person.”
Tietjens said:
“We shall be keeping the fellows in my cook-house a confoundedly long time waiting for inspections…. I’m in your hands as regards the general….”
Levin said:
“The general’s in your hut, thankful to goodness to be alone. He never is. He said he was going to write a private memorandum for the Secretary of State, and I could keep you any time I liked as long as I got everything out of you….”
Tietjens said:
“Did what Major Thurston allege take place… Thurston has lived most of his life in France…. But you had better not tell me….”
Levin said:
“He’s our anti-craft liaison officer with the French civilian authorities. Those sort of fellows generally have lived in France a good deal. A very decentish, quiet man. He plays chess with the general and they talk over the chess…. But the general is going to talk about what he said to you himself….”
Tietjens said:
“Good God!… He going to talk as well as you…. You’d say the coils were closing in….”
Levin said:
“We can’t go on like this…. It’s my own fault for not being more direct. But this can’t last all day. We could neither of us stand it…. I’m pretty nearly done….”
Tietjens said:
“Where
Levin said:
“Constantinople…. His father was financial agent to the Sultan; my father was his son by an Armenian presented to him by the Selamlik along with the Order of the Medjidje, first class.”
“It accounts for your very decent manner, and for your common sense. If you had been English I should have broken your neck before now.”
Levin said:
“Thank you! I hope I always behave like an English gentleman. But I am going to be brutally direct now….” He went on: “The really queer thing is that you should always address Miss Wannop in the language of the Victorian
Tietjens, his eyes shut, said:
“I talked to Miss Wannop in my sleep….”
Levin, who was shaking a little, said:
“It was very queer…. Almost ghostlike…. There you sat, your arms on the table. Talking away. You appeared to be writing a letter to her. And the sunlight streaming in at the hut. I was going to wake you, but he stopped me. He took the view that he was on detective work, and that he might as well detect. He had got it into his mind that
