“We can only pray, sir,” the sergeant-major said, “that these ’ere bloomin’ ’Uns has got quartermasters and depots and issuing departments, same as ourselves.” He lowered his voice into a husky whisper. “Besides, sir, there’s a rumour … round the telephone in depot orderly room … that there’s a W.O. order at ’Edquarters … countermanding this and other drafts …”
Colonel Levin said: “Oh, my God!” and consternation rushed upon both him and Tietjens. The frozen ditches, in the night, out there; the agonized waiting for men; the weight upon the mind like a weight upon the brows; the imminent sense of approaching unthinkableness on the right or the left, according as you looked up or down the trench; the solid protecting earth of the parapet then turns into pierced mist … and no reliefs coming from here … The men up there thinking naively that they were coming, and they not coming. Why not? Good God, why not? Mackenzie said:
“Poor ⸻ old Bird … His crowd had been in eleven weeks last Wednesday … About all they could stick …”
“They’ll have to stick a damn lot more,” Colonel Levin said. “I’d like to get at some of the brutes …” It was at that date the settled conviction of His Majesty’s Expeditionary Force that the army in the field was the tool of politicians and civilians. In moments of routine that cloud dissipated itself lightly: when news of ill omen arrived it settled down again heavily like a cloud of black gas. You hung your head impotently …
“So that,” the sergeant-major said cheerfully, “the captain could very well spare half an hour to get his dinner. Or for anything else …” Apart from the domestic desire that Tietjens’ digestion should not suffer from irregular meals he had the professional conviction that for his captain to be in intimate private converse with a member of the gawdy Staff was good for the unit … “I suppose, sir,” he added valedictorily to Tietjens, “I’d better arrange to put this draft, and the nine hundred men that came in this afternoon to replace them, twenty in a tent … It’s lucky we didn’t strike them …”
Tietjens and the colonel began to push men out of their way, going towards the door. The Inniskilling-Canadian, a small open brown book extended deprecatingly, stood, modestly obtrusive, just beside the doorpost. Catching avidly at Tietjens’ “Eh?” he said:
“You’d got the names of the girls wrong in your copy, sir. It was Gwen Lewis I had a child by in Aberystwyth that I wanted to have the lease of the cottage and the ten bob a week. Mrs. Hosier that I lived with in Berwick St. James, she was only to have five guineas for a soovneer … I’ve took the liberty of changing the names back again.”
Tietjens grabbed the book from him, and bending down at the sergeant-major’s table scrawled his signature on the bluish page. He thrust the book back at the man and said:
“There … fall out.” The man’s face shone. He exclaimed:
“Thank you, sir. Thank you kindly, captain … I wanted to get off and go to confession. I did bad …” The McGill graduate with his arrogant black moustache put himself in the way as Tietjens struggled into his British warm.
“You won’t forget, sir …” he began.
Tietjens said:
“Damn you, I’ve told you I won’t forget. I never forget. You instructed the ignorant Jap in Asaki, but the educational authority is in Tokyo. And your flagitious mineral-water company had their headquarters at the Tan Sen spring near Kobe … Is that right? Well, I’ll do my best for you.”
They walked in silence through the groups of men that hung around the orderly room door and gleamed in the moonlight. In the broad country street of the main line of the camp Colonel Levin began to mutter between his teeth:
“You take enough trouble with your beastly crowd … a whole lot of trouble … Yet …”
“Well, what’s the matter with us?” Tietjens said. “We get our drafts ready in thirty-six hours less than any other unit in this command.”
“I know you do,” the other conceded. “It’s only all these mysterious rows. Now …”
Tietjens said quickly:
“Do you mind my asking: Are we still on parade? Is this a strafe from General Campion as to the way I command my unit?”
The other conceded quite as quickly and much more worriedly:
“God forbid.” He added more quickly still: “Old bean!” and prepared to tuck his wrist under Tietjens’ elbow. Tietjens, however, continued to face the fellow. He was really in a temper.
“Then tell me,” he said, “how the deuce you can manage to do without an overcoat in this weather?” If only he could get the chap off the topics of his mysterious rows they might drift to the matter that had brought him up there on that bitter night when he should be sitting over a good wood fire philandering with Mlle. Nanette de Bailly. He sank his neck deeper into the sheepskin collar of his British warm. The other, slim, was with all his badges, ribands and mail, shining darkly in a cold that set all Tietjens’ teeth chattering like porcelain. Levin became momentarily animated:
“You should do as I do … Regular hours … lots of exercise … horse exercise … I do P.T. every morning at the open window of my room … hardening …”
“It must be very gratifying for the ladies in the rooms facing yours,” Tietjens said grimly. “Is that what’s the matter with Mlle. Nanette, now? … I haven’t got time for proper exercise …”
“Good gracious, no,” the colonel, said. He now tucked his hand firmly under Tietjens’ arm and began to work him towards the left hand of the road: in the direction leading out of camp. Tietjens worked their steps as firmly towards the right and they leant one against the other. “In fact, old bean,” the colonel said, “Campy is working so hard to get the command of a fighting army—though he’s indispensable here—that we might pack up bag and baggage any day … That is what has made Nanette see reason …”
“Then what am I doing in this show?” Tietjens asked. But Colonel Levin continued blissfully:
“In
