Parade's End (59 page)

‘I’m damned if I do… . But I don’t see… . Oh, yes, I do… . If I make him sergeant-major he has to hand over the stores all complete… . To-day … Can he do it?’

Cowley said that Morgan could have till the day after to-morrow. He would look after things till then.

‘But you’ll want to have a flutter before you go,’ Tietjens said. ‘Don’t stop for me.’

Cowley said that he would stop and see the job through. He had thought of going down into the town and having a flutter. But the girls down there were a common sort, and it was bad for his complaint… . He would stop and see what could be done with Morgan. Of course it was possible that Morgan might decide to face things out. He might prefer to stick to the money he’d got by disposing of Tietjens’ stores to other battalions that were down, or to civilian contractors. And stand a court martial! But it wasn’t likely. He was a Nonconformist deacon, a pew-opener, or even a minister possibly, at home in Wales… . From near Denbigh! And Cowley had got a very good man, a first-class man, an Oxford professor, now a lance-corporal at the depot, for Morgan’s place. The colonel would lend him to Tietjens and would get him rated acting quartermaster-sergeant unpaid… . Cowley had it all arranged… . Lance-Corporal Caldicott was a first-class man, only he could not tell his right hand from his left on parade. Literally could not tell them… .

So the battalion settled itself down… . Whilst Cowley and he were at the colonel’s orderly room arranging for the transfer of the professor – he was really only a fellow of his college – who did not know his right hand from his left, Tietjens was engaged in the remains of the colonel’s furious argument as to the union of the Anglican and Eastern rites. The colonel – he was a full colonel – sat in his lovely private office, a light, gay compartment of a tin-hutment, the walls being papered in scarlet, with, on the purplish, thick, soft baize of his table-cover, a tall glass vase from which sprayed out pale Riviera roses, the gift of young lady admirers amongst the V.A.D.s in the town because he was a darling, and an open, very gilt and
leather-bound
volume of a biblical encyclopædia beneath his delicate septuagenarian features. He was confirming his opinion that a union between the Church of England and the Greek Orthodox Church was the only thing that could save civilization. The whole war turned on that. The Central Empires represented Roman Catholicism, the Allies Protestantism and Orthodoxy. Let them unite. The papacy was a traitor to the cause of civilisation. Why had the Vatican not protested with no uncertain voice about the abominations practised on the Belgian Catholics? …

Tietjens pointed out languidly objections to this theory. The first thing our ambassador to the Vatican had found out on arriving in Rome and protesting about massacres of Catholic laymen in Belgium was that the Russians before they had been a day in Austrian Poland had hanged twelve Roman Catholic bishops in front of their palaces.

Cowley was engaged with the adjutant at another table. The colonel ended his theologico-political tirade by saying:

‘I shall be very sorry to lose you, Tietjens. I don’t know what we shall do without you. I never had a moment’s peace with your unit until you came.’

Tietjens said:

‘Well, you aren’t losing me, sir, as far as I know.’

The colonel said:

‘Oh, yes, we are. You are going up the line next week… .’ He added: ‘Now, don’t get angry with me… . I’ve protested very strongly to old Campion – General Campion – that I cannot do without you.’ And he made, with his delicate, thin, hairy-backed, white hands a motion as of washing.

The ground moved under Tietjens’ feet. He felt himself clambering over slopes of mud with his heavy legs and labouring chest. He said:

‘Damn it all! … I’m not fit… . I’m C3… . I was ordered to live in an hotel in the town… . I only mess here to be near the battalion.’

The colonel said with some eagerness:

‘Then you can protest to Garrison… . I hope you will… . But I suppose you are the sort of fellow that won’t.’

Tietjens said:

‘No, sir… . Of course I cannot protest… . Though it’s probably a mistake of some clerk… . I could not stand a week in the line… .’ The profound misery of brooding apprehension in the line was less on his mind than, precisely, the appalling labour of the lower limbs when you live in mud to the neck. Besides, whilst he had been in hospital, practically the whole of his equipment had disappeared from his kit-bag – including Sylvia’s two pair of sheets! – and he had no money with which to get more. He had not even any trench-boots. Fantastic financial troubles settled on his mind.

The colonel said to the adjutant at the other purple baize-covered table:

‘Show Captain Tietjens those marching orders of his… . They’re from Whitehall, aren’t they? … You never know where these things come from nowadays. I call them the arrow that flieth by night!’

The adjutant, a diminutive, a positively miniature gentleman with Coldstream badges up and a dreadfully worried brow, drifted a quarto sheet of paper out of a pile, across his table-cloth towards Tietjens. His tiny hands seemed about to fall off at the wrists; his temples shuddered with neuralgia. He said:

‘For God’s sake do protest to Garrison if you feel you can… . We
can’t
have more work shoved on us… . Major Lawrence and Major Halkett left the whole of the work of your unit to us… .’

The sumptuous paper, with the royal arms embossed at the top, informed Tietjens that he would report to his VIth battalion on the Wednesday of next week in preparation for taking up the duties of divisional transport officer to the XIXth division. The order came from room G14 R, at the War Office. He asked what the deuce G14 R was, of the adjutant, who in an access of neuralgic agony, shook his head miserably, between his two hands, his elbows on the table-cloth.

Sergeant-Major Cowley, with his air of a solicitor’s clerk, said the room G14 R was the department that dealt with civilian requests for the services of officers. To the adjutant who asked what the devil a civilian request for the employment of officers could have to do with sending Captain Tietjens to the XIXth division, Sergeant-Major Cowley presumed that it was because of the activities of
the
Earl of Beichan. The Earl of Beichan, a Levantine financier and race-horse owner, was interesting himself in army horses, after a short visit to the lines of communication. He also owned several newspapers. So they had been waking up the army transport-animals’ department to please him. The adjutant would no doubt have observed a Veterinary-Lieutenant Hotchkiss or Hitchcock. He had come to them through G14 R at the request of Lord Beichan, who was personally interested in Lieutenant Hotchkiss’s theories. He was to make experiments on the horses of the Fourth Army – in which the XIXth division was then to be found… . ‘So,’ Cowley said, ‘you’ll be under him as far as your horse lines go. If you go up.’ Perhaps Lord Beichan was a friend of Captain Tietjens and had asked for him, too: Captain Tietjens was known to be wonderful with horses.

Tietjens, his breath rushing through his nostrils, swore he would not go up the line at the bidding of a hog like Beichan, whose real name was Stavropolides, formerly Nathan.

He said the army was reeling to its base because of the continual interference of civilians. He said it was absolutely impossible to get through his programmes of parades because of the perpetual extra drills that were forced on them at the biddings of civilians. Any fool who owned a newspaper, nay, any fool who could write to a newspaper, or any beastly little squit of a novelist could frighten the Government and the War Office into taking up one more hour of the men’s parade time for patent manœuvres with jampots or fancy underclothing. Now he was asked if his men wanted lecturing on the causes of the war and whether he – he, good God! – would not like to give the men cosy chats on the nature of the Enemy nations.

The colonel said:

‘There, there, Tietjens! … There, there! … We all suffer alike.
We’ve
got to lecture our men on the uses of a new patent sawdust stove. If you don’t want that job, you can easily get the general to take you off it. They say you can turn him round your little finger… .’

‘He’s my godfather,’ Tietjens thought it wise to say. ‘I never asked him for a job, but I’m damned if it isn’t his duty as a Christian to keep me out of the clutches of this
Greek-’Ebrew
pagan peer… . He’s not even Orthodox, colonel… .’

The adjutant here said that Colour-Sergeant Morgan of their orderly room wanted a word with Tietjens. Tietjens said he hoped to goodness that Morgan had some money for him! The adjutant said he understood that Morgan had unearthed quite a little money that ought to have been paid to Tietjens by his agents and hadn’t.

Colour-Sergeant Morgan was the regimental magician with figures. Inordinately tall and thin, his body, whilst his eyes peered into distant columns of cyphers, appeared to be always parallel with the surface of his table and, as he always answered the several officers whom he benefited without raising his head, his face was very little known to his superiors. He was, however, in appearance a very ordinary, thin, N.C.O. whose spidery legs, when very rarely he appeared on a parade, had the air of running away with him as a race-horse might do. He told Tietjens that, pursuant to his instructions and the A.C.P. i 96 b that Tietjens had signed, he had ascertained that command pay at the rate of two guineas a day and supplementary fuel and light allowance at the rate of 6
s
. 8
d
. was being paid weekly by the Paymaster-General’s Department to his, Tietjens’, account at his agents’. He suggested that Tietjens should write to his agents that if they did not immediately pay to his account the sum of £194 13
s
. 4
d
., by them received from the Paymaster’s Department, he would proceed against the Crown by Petition of Right. And he strongly recommended Tietjens to draw a cheque on his own bank for the whole of the money because, if by any chance the agents had not paid the money in, he could sue them for damages and get them cast in several thousand pounds. And serve the devils right. They must have a million or so in hand in unpaid command and detention allowances due to officers. He only wished he could advertise in the papers offering to recover unpaid sums due by agents. He added that he had a nice little computation as to variations in the course of Gunter’s Second Comet that he would like to ask Tietjens’ advice about one of these days. The colour-sergeant was an impassioned amateur astronomer.

So Tietjens’ morning went up and down… . The money at the moment, Sylvia being in that town, was of
tremendous
importance to him and came like an answer to prayer. It was not so agreeable, however, even in a world in which, never, never, never for ten minutes did you know whether you stood on your head or your heels, for Tietjens, on going back to the colonel’s private office, to find Sergeant-Major Cowley coming out of the next room in which, on account of the adjutant’s neuralgia, the telephone was kept. Cowley announced to the three of them that the general had the day before ordered his correspondence-corporal to send a very emphatic note to Colonel Gillum to the effect that he was informing the competent authority that he had no intention whatever of parting with Captain Tietjens, who was invaluable in his command. The correspondence-corporal had informed Cowley that neither he nor the general knew who was the competent authority for telling Room G14 R at the War Office to go to hell, but the matter would be looked up and put all right before the chit was sent off… .

That was good as far as it went. Tietjens was really interested in his present job, and although he would have liked well enough to have the job of looking after the horses of a division, or even an army, he felt that he would rather it was put off till the spring, given the weather they were having and the state of his chest. And the complication of possible troubles with Lieutenant Hotchkiss who, being a professor, had never really seen a horse – or not for ten years! – was something to be thought about very seriously. But all this appeared quite another matter when Cowley announced that the civilian authority who had asked for Tietjens’ transfer was the permanent secretary to the Ministry of Transport… .

Colonel Gillum said:

‘That’s your brother, Mark… .’ And indeed the permanent secretary to the Ministry of Transport was Tietjens’ brother Mark, known as the Indispensable Official. Tietjens felt a real instant of dismay. He considered that his violent protest against the job would appear rather a smack in the face for poor old wooden-featured Mark who had probably taken a good deal of trouble to get him the job. Even if Mark should never hear of it, a man should not slap his brother in the face! Moreover, when he came to think of his last day in London, he remembered that
Valentine
Wannop, who had exaggerated ideas as to the safety of First Line Transport, had begged Mark to get him a job as divisional officer… . And he imagined Valentine’s despair if she heard that he – Tietjens – had moved heaven and earth to get out of it. He saw her lower lip quivering and the tears in her eyes. But he probably had got that from some novel, because he had never seen her lower lip quiver. He had seen tears in her eyes!

He hurried back to his lines to take his orderly room. In the long hut McKechnie was taking that miniature court of drunks and defaulters for him and, just as Tietjens reached it, he was taking the case of Girtin and two other Canadian privates… . The case of Girtin interested him, and when McKechnie slid out of his seat Tietjens occupied it. The prisoners were only just being marched in by a Sergeant Davis, an admirable N.C.O. whose rifle appeared to be part of his rigid body and who executed an amazing number of stamps in seriously turning in front of the C.O.’s table. It gave the impression of an Indian war dance… .

Tietjens glanced at the charge sheet, which was marked as coming from the Provost-Marshal’s Office. Instead of the charge of absence from draft he read that of conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline in that… . The charge was written in a very illiterate hand; an immense beery lance-corporal of Garrison Military Police, with a red hat-band, attended to give evidence… . It was a tenuous and disagreeable affair. Girtin had not gone absent, so Tietjens had to revise his views of the respectable, at any rate of the respectable Colonial private soldier with mother complete. For there really had been a mother, and Girtin had been seeing her into the last tram down into the town. A frail old lady. Apparently, trying to annoy the Canadian, the beery lance-corporal of the Garrison Military Police had hustled the mother. Girtin had remonstrated; very moderately, he said. The lance-corporal had shouted at him. Two other Canadians returning to camp had intervened and two more police. The police had called the Canadians — conscripts, which was almost more than the Canadians could stand, they being voluntarily enlisted 1914 or 1915 men. The police – it was an old trick – had kept the men talking until two minutes after the last post had sounded and then had run
them
in for being absent off pass – and for disrespect to their red hat-bands.