The A.S.C. fellow had been talking positively about horses. He had offered his services in order to study the variation of pinkeye that was decimating all the service horses in the lines. He had been a professor—positively a professor—in some farriery college or other. Tietjens said that, in that case, he ought to be in the A.V.C.—the Royal Army Veterinary Corps perhaps it was. The old man said he didn’t know. He imagined that the R.A.S.C. had wanted his service for their own horses …
Tietjens said:
“I’ll tell you what to do, Lieutenant Hitchcock … For, damn it, you’re a stout fellow …” The poor old fellow, pushing out at that age from the cloisters of some provincial university … He certainly did not look a horsy sportsman …
The old lietutenant said:
“Hotchkiss …” And Tietjens exclaimed:
“Of course it’s Hotchkiss … I’ve seen your name signing a testimonial to Pigg’s Horse Embrocation … Then if you don’t want to take this draft up the line … Though I’d advise you to … It’s merely a Cook’s Tour to Hazebrouck … No, Bailleul … And the sergeant-major will march the men for you … And you will have been in the First Army Lines and able to tell all your friends you’ve been on active service at the real front …”
His mind said to himself while his words went on …
“Then, good God, if Sylvia is actively paying attention to my career I shall be the laughingstock of the whole army. I was thinking that ten minutes ago! … What’s to be done? What in God’s name is to be done?” A black crape veil seemed to drop across his vision … Liver …
Lieutenant Hotchkiss said with dignity:
“I’m going to the front. I’m going to the real front. I was passed A1 this morning. I am going to study the blood reactions of the service horse under fire.”
“Well, you’re a damn good chap,” Tietjens said. There was nothing to be done. The amazing activities of which Sylvia would be capable were just the thing to send laughter raging like fire through a cachinnating army. She could not thank God, get into France: to that place. But she could make scandals in the papers that every Tommie read. There was no game of which she was not capable. That sort of pursuit was called “pulling the strings of shower-baths” in her circle of friends. Nothing. Nothing to be done … The beastly hurricane lamp was smoking.
“I’ll tell you what to do,” he said to Lieutenant Hotchkiss.
Mackenzie had tossed his sheet of rhymes under his nose. Tietjens read: Death, moil, coil, breath … Saith—“The dirty Cockney!” Oil, soil, wraith …
“I’d be blowed,” Mackenzie said with a vicious grin, “if I was going to give you rhymes you had suggested yourself …”
The officer said:
“I don’t of course want to be a nuisance if you’re busy.”
“It’s no nuisance,” Tietjens said. “It’s what we’re for. But I’d suggest that now and then you say ‘sir’ to the officer commanding your unit. It sounds well before the men … Now you go to No. XVI I.B.D. Mess anteroom … The place where they’ve got the broken bagatelle-table …”
The voice of Sergeant-Major Cowley exclaimed tranquilly from outside:
“Fall in now. Men who’ve got their ring papers and identity disks—three of them—on the left. Men who haven’t, on the right. Any man who has not been able to draw his blankets tell Colour-Sergeant Morgan. Don’t forget. You won’t get anywhere you’re going. Any man who hasn’t made his will in his Soldier’s Small Book or elsewhere and wants to, to consult Captain Tietjens. Any man who wants to draw money, ask Captain Mackenzie. Any R.C. who wants to go to confession after he has got his papers signed can find the R.C. padre in the fourth hut from the left in the Main Line from here … And damn kind it is of his reverence to put himself out for a set of damn blinking mustard-faced red herrings like you who can’t keep from running away to the first baby’s bonfire you sees. You’ll be running the other way before you’re a week older, though what good they as asks for you thinks you’ll be out there God knows. You look like a squad of infants’ companions from a Wesleyan Sunday school. That’s what you look like and, thank God, we’ve got a Navy.”
Under cover of his voice Tietjens had been writing:
“Now we affront the grinning chops of Death,” and saying to Lieutenant Hotchkiss: “In the I.B.D. anteroom you’ll find any number of dirty little squits of Glamorganshires drinking themselves blind over La Vie Parisienne … Ask any one of them you like …” He wrote:
“And in between the carcases and the moil
Of marts and cities, toil and moil and coil …”
“You think this difficult!” he said to Mackenzie. “Why, you’ve written a whole undertaker’s mortuary ode in the rhymes alone,” and went on to Hotchkiss: “Ask anyone you like as long as he’s a P.B. officer … Do you know what P.B. means? No, not Poor B⸺y, Permanent Base. Unfit … If he’d like to take a draft to Bailleul.”
The hut was filling with devious, slow, ungainly men in yellow-brown. Their feet shuffled desultorily; they lumped dull canvas bags along the floor and held in unliterary hands small open books that they dropped from time to time. From outside came a continuing, swelling and descending chant of voices; at times it would seem to be all one laugh, at times one menace, then the motives mingled fugally, like the sea on a beach of large stones. It seemed to Tietjens suddenly extraordinary how shut in on oneself one was in this life … He sat scribbling fast: “Old Spectre blows a cold
