“It is,” Tietjens answered. “It’s got us into the hole and it keeps us there.”
Mackenzie remained dispiritedly looking down at his fingers.
“You may be wrong or you may be right,” he said. “It’s contrary to everything that I ever heard. But I see what you mean.”
“At the beginning of the war,” Tietjens said, “I had to look in on the War Office, and in a room I found a fellow … What do you think he was doing … what the hell do you think he was doing? He was devising the ceremonial for the disbanding of a Kitchener battalion. You can’t say we were not prepared in one matter at least … Well, the end of the show was to be: the adjutant would stand the battalion at ease: the band would play ‘Land of Hope and Glory,’ and then the adjutant would say: ‘There will be no more parades’ … Don’t you see how symbolical it was: the band playing ‘Land of Hope and Glory,’ and then the adjutant saying ‘There will be no more parades?’ … For there won’t. There won’t, there damn well won’t … No more Hope, no more Glory, no more parades for you and me any more. Nor for the country … Nor for the world, I dare say … None … Gone … Na poo, finny! No … more … parades!”
“I dare say you’re right,” the other said slowly. “But, all the same, what am I doing in this show? I hate soldiering. I hate this whole beastly business …”
“Then why didn’t you go on the gaudy Staff?” Tietjens asked. “The gaudy Staff apparently was yearning to have you. I bet God intended you for Intelligence: not for the footslogging department.”
The other said wearily:
“I don’t know. I was with the battalion. I wanted to stop with the battalion. I was intended for the Foreign Office. My miserable uncle got me hoofed out of that. I was with the battalion. The C.O. wasn’t up to much. Someone had to stay with the battalion. I was not going to do the dirty on it, taking any soft job …”
“I suppose you speak seven languages and all?” Tietjens asked.
“Five,” the other said patiently, “and read two more. And Latin and Greek, of course.”
A man, brown, stiff, with a haughty parade step, burst into the light. He said with a high wooden voice:
“ ’Ere’s another bloomin’ casualty.” In the shadow he appeared to have draped half his face and the right side of his breast with crape. He gave a high, rattling laugh. He bent, as if in a stiff bow, woodenly at his thighs. He pitched, still bent, on to the iron sheet that covered the brazier, rolled off that and lay on his back across the legs of the other runner, who had been crouched beside the brazier. In the bright light it was as if a whole pail of scarlet paint had been dashed across the man’s face on the left and his chest. It glistened in the firelight—just like fresh paint, moving! The runner from the Rhondda, pinned down by the body across his knees, sat with his jaw fallen, resembling one girl that should be combing the hair of another recumbent before her. The red viscousness welled across the floor; you sometimes so see fresh water bubbling up in sand. It astonished Tietjens to see that a human body could be so lavish of blood. He was thinking it was a queer mania that that fellow should have, that his uncle was a friend of his, Tietjens. He had no friend in trade, uncle of a fellow who in ordinary times would probably bring you pairs of boots on approval … He felt as he did when you patch up a horse that has been badly hurt. He remembered a horse from a cut on whose chest the blood had streamed down over the off foreleg like a stocking. A girl had lent him her petticoat to bandage it. Nevertheless his legs moved slowly and heavily across the floor.
The heat from the brazier was overpowering on his bent face. He hoped he would not get his hands all over blood, because blood is very sticky. It makes your fingers stick together impotently. But there might not be any blood in the darkness under the fellow’s back where he was putting his hand. There was, however: it was very wet.
The voice of Sergeant-Major Cowley said from outside:
“Bugler, call two sanitary lance-corporals and four men. Two sanitary corporals and four men.” A prolonged wailing with interruptions transfused the night, mournful, resigned, and prolonged.
Tietjens thought that, thank God, someone would come and relieve him of that job. It was a breathless affair holding up the corpse with the fire burning his face. He said to the other runner:
“Get out from under him, damn you! Are you hurt?” Mackenzie could not get at the body from the other side because of the brazier. The runner from under the corpse moved with short sitting shuffles as if he were getting his legs out from under a sofa. He was saying:
“Poor ⸻ O Nine Morgan! Surely to goodness I did not recognice the pore ⸻ … Surely to goodness I did not recognice the pore ⸻.”
Tietjens let the trunk of the body sink slowly to the floor. He was more gentle than if the man had been alive. All hell in the way of noise burst about the world. Tietjens’ thoughts seemed to have to shout to him between earthquake shocks. He was thinking it was absurd of that fellow Mackenzie to imagine that he could know any uncle of his. He saw very vividly also the face of his girl who was a pacifist. It worried him not to know what expression her face would have if she heard of his occupation, now. Disgust? … He was standing with his greasy, sticky hands held out from the flaps of his tunic … Perhaps disgust! … It was impossible to think in this row … His very thick soles moved gluily and came up after
