Tietjens’ eyes were drawn aside and upwards. His knees were still weak. If he were levitated to the level of that thing he would not have to use his legs for support.
The elderly Sergeant went on with enthusiasm about skylarks. Wonderful the trust they showed in hus ’uman beens! Never left ther nesteses till you trod on them tho hall ’ell was rockin’ around them. … An appropriate skylark from above and before the parapet made its shrill and heartless noise heard. No doubt the skylark that Tietjens had frightened—that had frightened him.
Therd bin, the Sergeant went on still enthusiastically, pointing a hand in the direction of the noise, skylarks singin’ on the mornin’ of every straf’e’d ever bin in! Won’erful trust in yumanity! Won’erful hinstinck set in the fethered brest by the Halmighty! For oo was goin’ to ’it a skylark on a battlefield!
The solitary Man drooped beside his long, bayonetted rifle that was muddied from stock to bayonet attachment. Tietjens said mildly that he thought the Sergeant had got his natural history wrong. He must divide the males from the females. The females sat on the nest through obstinate attachment to their eggs; the males obstinately soared above the nests in order to pour out abuse at other male skylarks in the vicinity.
He said to himself that he must get the doctor to give him a bromide. A filthy state his nerves had got into unknown to himself. The agitation communicated to him by that bird was still turning his stomach round. …
“Gilbert White of Selbourne,” he said to the Sergeant, “called the behaviour of the female storge: a good word for it.” But, as for trust in humanity, the Sergeant might take it that larks never gave us a thought. We were part of the landscape and if what destroyed their nests whilst they sat on them was a bit of H.E. shell or the coulter of a plough it was all one to them.
The Sergeant said to the rejoined Lance-Corporal whose box now hung correctly on his muddied chest:
“Now it’s hay post you gotter wait at!” They were to go along the trench and wait where another trench ran into it and there was a great A in whitewash on a bit of corrugated iron that was half-buried. “You can tell a great hay from a bull’s foot as well as another, can’t you Corporal?” patiently.
Wen they Mills bombs come ’e was to send ’is Man into Hay Cumpny dugout fer a fatigue to bring ’em along ’ere, but Hay Cumpny could keep is little lot fer ’isself.
An if they Mills Bombs did’n’ come the Corporal’d better manufacture them on ’is own. An not make no mistakes!
The Lance-Corporal said “Yes sargint, no sargint!” and the two went desultorily wavering along the duckboards, grey silhouettes against the wet bar of light, equilibrating themselves with hands on the walls of the trench.
“Ju ’eer what the orfcer said, Corporal,” the one said to the other. “Wottever’ll ’e say next! Skylarks not trust ’uman beens in battles! Cor!” The other grunted and, mournfully, the voices died out.
The cockscomb-shaped splash became of overwhelming interest momentarily to Tietjens; at the same time his mind began upon abstruse calculation of chances. Of his chances! A bad sign when the mind takes to doing that. Chances of direct hits by shells, by rifle bullets, by grenades, by fragments of shells or grenades. By any fragment of metal impinging on soft flesh. He was aware that he was going to be hit in the soft spot behind the collarbone. He was conscious of that spot—the right hand one; he felt none of the rest of his body. It is bad when the mind takes charge like that. A bromide was needed. The doctor must give him one. His mind felt pleasure at the thought of the M.O. A pleasant little fellow of the no account order that knows his job. And carried liquor cheerfully. Confoundedly cheerfully!
He saw the doctor—plainly! It was one of the plainest things he could see of this whole show. … The doctor, a slight figure, vault on to the parapet, like a vaulting horse for height; stand up in the early morning sun. … Blind to the world, but humming “Father O’Flynn.” And stroll in the sunlight, a swagger cane of all things in the world, under his arms, right straight over to the German trench. … Then throw his cap down into that trench. And walk back! Delicately avoiding the strands in the cut apron of wire that he had to walk through!
The doctor said he had seen a Hun—probably an officer’s batman—cleaning a top-boot with an apron over his knees. The Hun had shied a boot brush at him and he had shied his cap at the Hun. The blinking Hun, he called him! No doubt the fellow had blinked!
No doubt you could do the unthinkable with impunity!
No manner of doubt: if you were blind drunk and all! … And however you strained, in an army you fell into routine. Of a quiet morning you do not expect drunken doctors strolling along your parapet. Besides, the German front lines were very thinly held. Amazingly! There might not have been a Hun with a gun within half a mile of that bootblack!
If he, Tietjens, stood in space, his head level with that cockscomb, he would be in an inviolable vacuum—as far as projectiles were concerned!
He was asking desultorily of the Sergeant whether he often shocked the men by what he said and the Sergeant was answering with blushes: Well, you do say things, sir! Not believing in skylarks now! If there was one thing the men believed hit was in the hinstincks of them little
