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, god-son or no god-son…. Besides, I don’t believe the whole story about you. If a General wanted to give a soft god-son’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 Glamorgans.”
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 Noire 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
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
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 dug-out complained that the pebbles in the gravel were nearly as bad as shrapnel.”
“Well, tell Brigade what I said. With Major Tietjens’ 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!
A crash of the sort that you couldn’t ignore, as is the case with certain claps in thunderstorms, sent a good deal of gravel down their cellar steps. It crashed against their shaky door. They heard Notting come out of his cellar and tell someone to shovel the beastly stuff back again where it had come from.
The Colonel looked up at the roof. He said that had knocked their parapet about a bit. Then he resumed his fixed glaze at Tietjens.
Tietjens said to himself:
“I’m losing my nerve…. It’s the damned news that Campion is coming…. I’m becoming a wretched, irresolute Johnny.”
The Colonel said:
“I’m not a beastly sponger. I never borrowed before!” His chest heaved…. It really expanded and then got smaller again, the orifice in the khaki at his throat contracting. Perhaps he never had borrowed before….
After all, it didn’t matter what kind of man this was, it was a question of what sort of a man Tietjens was becoming. He said:
“I can’t lend you the money. I’ll guarantee an overdraft to your agents. For two hundred and fifty.”
Well, then, he remained the sort of man who automatically lent money. He was glad.
The Colonel’s face fell. His martially erect shoulders indeed collapsed. He exclaimed ruefully:
“Oh, I say, I thought you were the sort one could go to.”
Tietjens said:
“It’s the same thing. You can draw a cheque on your bank exactly as if I paid the money,in.”
The Colonel said:
“I
... He obviously was not a sponger. He was a financial virgin. There could not be a subaltern of eighteen in the whole army who did not know what it meant to have an overdraft guaranteed after a fortnight’s leave…. Tietjens only wished they didn’t. He said:
“You’ve practically got the money in your hand as you sit there. I’ve only to write the letter. It’s impossible your agents should refuse my guarantee. If they do, I’ll raise the money and send it you.”
He wondered why he didn’t do that last in any case. A year or so ago he would have had no hesitation about overdrawing his account to any extent. Now he had an insupportable objection. Like a hatred!
He said:
“You’d better let me have your address.” He added, for his mind was really wandering a little. There was too much talk! “I suppose you’ll go to No. IX Red Cross at Rouen for a bit.”
The Colonel sprang to his feet:
“My God, what’s that?” he cried out. “Me… to No. IX.”
Tietjens exclaimed:
“I don’t know the procedure. You said you had…”
The other cried out:
“I’ve got cancer. A big swelling under the armpit.” He passed his hand over his bare flesh through the opening of his shirt, the long arm disappearing to the elbow. “Good God… I suppose when I said my pals had gone back on me you thought I’d asked them for help and been refused. I haven’t…. They’re all killed. That’s the worst way you can go back on a pal, isn’t it! Don’t you understand men’s language?”
He sat heavily down on his bed again.
He said:
“By jove, if you hadn’t promised to let me have the money there would have been nothing for me but to make a hole in the water.”
Tietjens said:
“Well, don’t contemplate it now. Get yourself well looked after. What does Derry say?”
