“Damn it all, the fellow ought to be in command of my Intelligence instead of you. But he’s unsound. That’s what he is: unsound. He’s too brilliant … And he’d talk both the hind legs off Sweedlepumpkins.” Sweedlepumpkins was the general’s favourite charger. The general was afraid of talk. He practically never talked with anyone except about his job—certainly never to Tietjens—without being proved to be in the wrong, and that undermined his belief in himself.
So that altogether he was in a fine fume. And confusion. He was almost ready to believe that Tietjens was at the bottom of every trouble that occurred in his immense command.
But, when all that was gathered, Tietjens was not much farther forward in knowing what his wife’s errand in France was.
“She complains,” Levin had bleated painfully at some point on the slippery coastguard path, “about your taking her sheets. And about a Miss … a Miss Wanostrocht, is it? … The general is not inclined to attach much importance to the sheets …”
It appeared that a sort of conference on Tietjens’ case had taken place in the immense tapestried salon in which Campion lived with the more intimate members of his headquarters, and which was, for the moment, presided over by Sylvia, who had exposed various wrongs to the general and Levin. Major Perowne had excused himself on the ground that he was hardly competent to express an opinion. Really, Levin said, he was sulking, because Campion had accused him of running the risk of getting himself and Mrs. Tietjens “talked about.” Levin thought it was a bit thick of the general. Were none of the members of his staff ever to escort a lady anywhere? As if they were sixth-form schoolboys …
“But you … you … you …” he stuttered and shivered together, “certainly do seem to have been remiss in not writing to Mrs. Tietjens. The poor lady—excuse me!—really appears to have been out of her mind with anxiety …” That was why she had been waiting in the general’s car at the bottom of the hill. To get a glimpse of Tietjens’ living body. For they had been utterly unable, up at H.Q., to convince her that Tietjens was even alive, much less in that town.
She hadn’t in fact waited even so long. Having apparently convinced herself by conversation with the sentries outside the guardroom that Tietjens actually still existed, she had told the chauffeur-orderly to drive her back to the Hotel de la Poste, leaving the wretched Levin to make his way back into the town by tram, or as best he might. They had seen the lights of the car below them, turning, with its gaily lit interior, and disappearing among the trees along the road farther down … The sentry, rather monosyllabically and gruffly—you can tell all right when a Tommie has something at the back of his mind!—informed them that the sergeant had turned out the guard so that all his men together could assure the lady that the captain was alive and well. The obliging sergeant said that he had adopted that manoeuvre which generally should attend only the visits of general officers and, once a day, for the C.O., because the lady had seemed so distressed at having received no letters from the captain. The guardroom itself, which was unprovided with cells, was decorated by the presence of two drunks who, having taken it into their heads to destroy their clothing, were in a state of complete nudity. The sergeant hoped, therefore, that he had done no wrong. Rightly the Garrison Military Police ought to take drunks picked up outside camp to the A.P.M.’s guardroom, but seeing the state of undress and the violent behaviour of these two, the sergeant had thought right to oblige the Red Caps. The voices of the drunks, singing the martial anthem of the “Men of Harlech,” could be heard corroborating the sergeant’s opinion as to their states. He added that he would not have turned out the guard if it had not been for its being the captain’s lady.
“A damn smart fellow, that sergeant,” Colonel Levin had said. “There couldn’t have been any better way of convincing Mrs. Tietjens.”
Tietjens had said—and even whilst he was saying it he tremendously wished he hadn’t:
“Oh, a damned smart fellow,” for the bitter irony of his tone had given Levin the chance to remonstrate with him as to his attitude towards Sylvia. Not at all as to his actions—for Levin conscientiously stuck to his thesis that Tietjens was the soul of honour—but just as to his tone of voice in talking of the sergeant who had been kind to Sylvia, and, just precisely, because Tietjens’ not writing to his wife had given rise to the incident. Tietjens had thought of saying that, considering the terms on which they had parted, he would have considered himself as molesting the lady if he had addressed to her any letter at all. But he said nothing and, for a quarter of an hour, the incident resolved itself into soliloquy on the slippery hillside, delivered by Levin on the subject of matrimony. It was a matter which, naturally, at that moment very much occupied his thoughts. He considered that a man should so live with his wife that she should be able to open all his letters. That was his idea of the idyllic. And when Tietjens remarked with irony that he had never in his life either written or received a letter that his wife might not have read, Levin exclaimed with such enthusiasm as almost to lose his balance in the mist:
“I was sure of it, old fellow. But it enormously cheers me up to hear you say so.” He added that he desired as far as possible to model his ideas of life and his behaviour on those of this his friend. For, naturally, about as he was to unite his fortunes with
