Parade's End

“You… Good God!” and fell back a step, his jaw dropping. He said: “I’ve just come from London!” And then: “By God, you don’t stop in command of a Battalion of mine a second after I take over!” He said: “They said this was the smartest battalion in my unit!” and snorted with passion. He added: “Neither my galloper nor Levin can find you or get you found. And there you come strolling along with your hands in your pockets!”

In the complete stillness, for, the guns having stopped, the skylarks, too, were taking a spell, Tietjens could hear his heart beat out of little dry scraping sounds from his lungs. The heavy beats were very accelerated. It gave an effect of terror. He said to himself:

“What the devil has his having been in London to do with it?” And then: “He wants to marry Sylvia! I’ll bet he went to marry Sylvia!” That was what his having been to London had to do with it. It was an obsession with him: the first thing he said when surprised and passionate.

They always arranged these periods of complete silence for the visits of Inspecting Generals. Perhaps the Great General Staffs of both sides arrange that for each other. More probably our guns had split themselves in the successful attempt to let the Huns know that we wanted them to shut up — that we were firing with what Papists call a special intention. That would be as effective as a telephone message. The Huns would know there was something up. Never put the other side in a temper when you can help it.

He said:

“I’ve just had a scratch, sir. I was feeling in my pockets for my field-dressing.”

The General said:

“A fellow like you has no right to be where he can be wounded. Your place is the lines of communication. I was mad when I sent you here. I shall send you back.”

He added:

“You can fall out. I want neither your assistance nor your information. They said there was a damn smart officer in command here. I wanted to see him…. Of the name of… Of the name of… It does not matter. Fall out….”

Tietjens went heavily along the trench. It came into his head to say to himself:

“It is a land of Hope and Glory!” Then he exclaimed: “By God! I’ll take the thing before the Commander-in-Chief. I’ll take the thing before the King in Council if necessary. By God I will!” The old fellow had no business to speak to him like that. It was importing personal enmity into service matters. He stood still reflecting on the terms of his letter to Brigade. The Adjutant Notting came along the trench. He said:

“General Campion wants to see you, sir. He takes over this Army on Monday.” He added: “You’ve been in a nasty place, sir. Not hurt, I trust!” It was a most unusual piece of loquacity for Notting.

Tietjens said to himself:

“Then I’ve got five days in command of this unit. He can’t kick me out before he’s in command.” The Huns would be through them before then. Five days’ fighting! Thank God!

He said:

“Thanks. I’ve seen him. No, I’m all right. Beastly dirty!”

Notting’s beady eyes had a tinge of agony in them. He said:

“When they said you had stopped one, sir, I thought I should go mad. We can’t get through the work!”

Tietjens was wondering whether he should write his letter to Brigade before or after the old fellow took over. Notting was saying:

“The doctor says Aranjuez will get through all right.”

It would be better, if he were going to base his appeal on the grounds of personal prejudice. Notting was saying:

“Of course he will lose his eye. In fact it… it is not practically there. But he’ll get through.”

Part Three

COMING INTO THE SQUARE was like being suddenly dead, it was so silent and so still to one so lately jostled by the innumerable crowd and deafened by unceasing shouts. The shouting had continued for so long that it had assumed the appearance of being a solid and unvarying thing, like life. So the silence appeared like Death; and now she had death in her heart. She was going to confront a madman in a stripped house. And the empty house stood in an empty square all of whose houses were so eighteenth-century and silver grey and rigid and serene that they ought all to be empty too and contain dead, mad men. And was this the errand? For to-day when all the world was mad with joy? To become bear-ward to a man who had got rid of all his furniture and did not know the porter — mad without joy!

It turned out to be worse than she expected. She had expected to turn the handle of a door of a tall, empty room; in a space made dim with shutters she would see him, looking suspiciously round over his shoulder, a grey badger or a bear taken at its dim occupations. And in uniform. But she was not given time even to be ready. In the last moment she was to steel herself incredibly. She was to become the cold nurse of a shell-shock case.

But there was not any last moment. He charged upon her. There in the open. More like a lion. He came, grey all over, his grey hair — or the grey patches of his hair — shining, charging down the steps, having slammed the hall door. And lopsided. He was carrying under his arm a diminutive piece of furniture. A cabinet.

It was so quick. It was like having a fit. The houses tottered. He regarded her. He had presumably checked violently in his clumsy stride. She hadn’t seen because of the tottering of the houses. His stone-blue eyes came fishily into place in his wooden countenance — pink and white. Too pink where it was pink and too white where it was white. Too much so for health. He was in grey homespuns. He should not wear homespuns or grey. It increased his bulk. He could be made to look… Oh, a fine figure of a man, let us say!

What was he doing? Fumbling in the pocket of his clumsy trousers. He exclaimed — she shook at the sound of his slightly grating, slightly gasping voice —:

“I’m going to sell this thing…. Stay here.” He had produced a latchkey. He was panting fiercely beside her. Up the steps. He was beside her. Beside her. Beside her. It was infinitely sad to be beside this madman. It was infinitely glad. Because if he had been sane she would not have been beside him. She could be beside him for long spaces of time if he were mad. Perhaps he did not recognise her! She might be beside him for long spaces of time with him not recognising her. Like tending your baby!

He was stabbing furiously at the latchhole with his little key. He would: that was normal. He was a stab-the-keyhole sort of clumsy man. She would not want that altered. But she would see about his clothes. She said: “I am deliberately preparing to live with him for a long time!” Think of that! She said to him:

“Did you send for me?”

He had the door open; he said, panting — his poor lungs!

“No.” Then: “Go in!” and then: “I was just going…”

She was in his house. Like a child…. He had not sent for her…. Like a child faltering on the sill of a vast black cave.

It was black. Stone flags. Pompeian-red walls scarred pale-pink where fixed hall- furniture had been removed. Was it here she was going to live?

He said, panting, from behind her back:

“Wait here!” A little more light fell into the hall. That was because he was gone from the doorway.

He was charging down the steps. His boots were immense. He lolloped all over on one side because of the piece of furniture he had under his arm. He was grotesque, really. But joy radiated from his homespuns when you walked beside him. It welled out; it enveloped you…. Like the warmth from an electric heater, only that did not make you want to cry and say your prayers — the haughty oaf.

No, but he was not haughty. Gauche, then! No, but he was not gauche…. She could not run after him. He was a bright patch, with his pink ears and silver hair. Gallumphing along the rails in front of the eighteenth-century houses. He was eighteenth-century all right…. But then the eighteenth century never went mad. The only century that never went mad. Until the French Revolution; and that was either not mad or not eighteenth-century.

She stepped irresolutely into the shadows; she returned irresolutely to the light…. A long hollow sound