It was about three o’clock when the taxi passed the gates of Brotherhood’s Explosive Works and drew up outside the officers’ quarters at Clitherland. The sky was cloudless and the lines of huts had an air of ominous inactivity. Nobody seemed to be about, for at that hour the troops were out on the training field. A bored sentry was the only witness of my arrival, and for him there was nothing remarkable in a second-lieutenant telling a taximan to dump his luggage down outside the officers’ mess. For me however there now seemed something almost surreptitious about my return. It was as though I’d come skulking back to see how much damage had been caused by that egregious projectile, my protest. But the Camp was exactly as it would have been if I’d returned as a dutiful young officer. It was I who was desolate and distracted; and it would have been no consolation to me if I could have realized that, in my mind, the familiar scene was having a momentary and ghastly existence which would never be repeated.
For a few moments I stared wildly at the huts, conscious (though my brain was blank) that there was some sort of climax in my stupefied recognition of reality. One final wrench, and all my obedient associations with Clitherland would be shattered.
It is probable that I put my tie straight and adjusted my belt-buckle to its central position between the tunic buttons. There was only one thing to be done after that. I walked into the orderly room, halted in front of a table, and saluted dizzily.
After the glaring sunlight, the room seemed almost dark. When I raised my eyes it was not the Colonel who was sitting at the table, but Major Macartney. At another table, ostensibly busy with Army forms and papers, was the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant (a good friend of mine who had lost a leg in Gallipoli). I stood there, incapable of expectation. Then, to my astonishment, the Major rose, leant across the table, and shook hands with me.
“How are you, Sherston? I’m glad to see you back again.” His deep voice had its usual kindly tone, but his manner betrayed acute embarrassment. No one could have been less glad to see me back again than he was. But he at once picked up his cap and asked me to come with him to his room, which was only a few steps away. Silently we entered the hut, our feet clumping along the boards of the passage. Speechless and respectful, I accepted the chair which he offered me. There we were, in the comfortless little room which had been his local habitation for the past twenty-seven months. There we were; and the unfortunate Major hadn’t a ghost of an idea what to say.
He was a man of great delicacy of feeling. I have seldom known as fine a gentleman. For him the interview must have been as agonizing as it was for me. I wanted to make things easier for him; but what could I say? And what could he do for me, except, perhaps, offer me a cigar? He did so. I can honestly say that I have never refused a cigar with anything like so much regret. To have accepted it would have been a sign of surrender. It would have meant that the Major and myself could have puffed our cigars and debated—with all requisite seriousness, of course—the best way of extricating me from my dilemma. How blissful that would have been! For my indiscretion might positively have been “laughed off” (as a temporary aberration brought on, perhaps, by an overdose of solitude after coming out of hospital). No such agreeable solution being possible, the Major began by explaining that the Colonel was away on leave. “He is deeply concerned about you, and fully prepared to overlook the—” here he hesitated—“the paper which you sent him. He has asked me to urge you most earnestly to—er—dismiss the whole matter from your mind.” Nothing could have been more earnest than the way he looked at me when he stopped speaking. I replied that I was deeply grateful but I couldn’t change my mind. In the ensuing silence I felt that I was committing a breach, not so much of discipline as of decorum.
The disappointed Major made a renewed effort. “But Sherston, isn’t it possible for you to reconsider your—er—ultimatum?” This was the first time I’d heard it called an ultimatum, and the locution epitomized the Major’s inability to find words to fit the situation. I embarked on a floundering explanation of my mental attitude with regard to the War; but I couldn’t make it sound convincing, and at the back of my mind was a misgiving that I must seem to him rather crazy. To be telling the acting-Colonel of my regimental Training Depot that I had come to the conclusion that England ought to make peace with Germany—was this altogether in focus with right-mindedness? No; it was useless to expect him to take me seriously as an ultimatumist. So I gazed fixedly at the floor and said, “Hadn’t you better have me put under arrest at once?”—thereby causing
