"No," he said and he waved his cigar gloriously, "I don't remember O Nine Morgan at Noircourt. . . . But I remember . . ."
Tietjens, with his eyes still shut, said:
"I only thought he might have been a man. . . ."
"No," the old fellow went on imperiously, "I don't remember 'im. . . . But, Lord, I remember what happened toyou!" He looked down gloriously upon Sylvia: "The captain caught 'is foot in. . . . You'd never believe what 'e caught 'is foot in! Never! . . . A pretty quiet affair it was, with a bit of moonlight. . . . Nothing much in the way of artillery. . . . Perhaps we surprised the 'Uns proper, perhaps they were wanting to give up their front-line trenches for a purpose. . . . There was next to no one in 'em. . . . I know it made me nervous. . . . My heart was fair in my boots, because there was so little doing! . . . It was when there was little doing that the 'Uns could be expected to do their worst. ... Of course there was some machine-gunning. . . . There was one in particular away to the right of us. . . . And the moon, it was shining in the early morning. Wonderful peaceful. And a little mist. . . . And frozen hard. . . . Hard as you wouldn't believe. . . . Enough to make the shells dangerous."
Sylvia said:
"It's not always mud, then?" and Tietjens, to her: "He'll stop if you don't like it." She said monotonously: "No . . . I want to hear."
Cowley drew himself for his considerable effect:
"Mud!" he said. "Not then. . . . Not by half. . . . I tell you, ma'am, we trod on the frozen faces of dead Germans as we doubled. . . . A terrible lot of Germans we'd killed a day or so before. . . . That was no doubt the reason they give up the trenches so easy: difficult to attack from, they was. . . . Anyhow, they left the dead for us to bury, knowing probably they were going, with a better 'eart! . . . But it fair put the wind up me anyhow to think of what their counter-attack was going to be. . . . The counter-attack is always ten times as bad as the preliminary resistance. They 'as you with the rear of their trenches—the parades, we call it—as your front to boot. So I was precious glad when the moppers-up and supports come and went through us. . . . Laughing, they was. . . . Wiltshires. . . . My missus comes from that county. . . . Mrs. Cowley, I mean. . . . So I'd seen the captain go down earlier on and I'd said: 'There's another of the best stopped one. . . .'" He dropped his voice a little: he was one of the noted yarners of the regiment: "Caught 'is foot, 'e 'ad, between two 'ands. . . . Sticking up out of the frozen ground. . . . As it might be in prayer. . . . Like this!" He elevated his two hands, the cigar between the fingers, the wrists close together and the fingers slightly curled inwards: "Sticking up in the moonlight. . . . Poor devil!"
Tietjens said:
"I thought perhaps it was O Nine Morgan I saw that night. . . . Naturally I looked dead. . . . I hadn't a breath in my body. . . . And I saw a Tommy put his rifle to his pal's upper arm and fire. . . . As I lay on the ground. . . ."
Cowley said:
"Ah, you saw that . . . I heard the men talking of it. . . . But they naturally did not say who and where!"
Tietjens said with a negligence that did not ring true:
"The wounded man's name was Stilicho. . . . A queer name. . . . I suppose it's Cornish. . . . It was B Company in front of us."
"You didn't bring 'em to a court martial?" Cowley asked. Tietjens said: No. He could not be quite certain. Though hewascertain. But he had been worrying about a private matter. He had been worrying about it while he lay on the ground and that rather obscured his sense of what he saw. Besides, he said faintly, an officer must use his judgment. He had judged it better in this case not to have seen the . . . His voice had nearly faded away: it was clear to Sylvia that he was coming to a climax of some mental torture. Suddenly he exclaimed to Cowley:
"Supposing I let him off one life to get him killed two years after. My God! That would be too beastly!"
Cowley snuffled in Tietjens' ear something that Sylvia did not catch—consolatory and affectionate. That intimacy was more than she could bear. She adopted her most negligent tone to ask:
"I suppose the one man had been trifling with the other's girl. Or wife!"
Cowley exploded: "God bless you, no! They'd agreed upon it between them. To get one of them sent 'ome and the other, at any rate, out ofthat'ell, leading him back to the dressing-station." She said:
"You mean to say that a man would dothat, to get out of it? . . ."
Cowley said:
"God bless you, ma'am, with the'ellthe Tommies 'as of it. . . . For it's in the line that the difference between the Other Ranks' life and the officers' comes in. . . . I tell you, ma'am, old soldier as I am, and I've been in seven wars one with another . . . there were times in this war when I could have shrieked, holding my right hand down. . . ."
He paused and said: "It was my idea. . . . And it's been a good many others,' that if I 'eld my 'and up over the parapet with perhaps my hat on it, in two minutes there would be a German sharpshooter's bullet through it. And then me for Blighty, as the soldiers say. . . . And if that could happen to me, a regimental sergeant-major, with twenty-three years in the service . . ."
The bright orderly came in, said he had found a taxi, and melted into the dimness.
"A man," the sergeant-major said, "would take the risk of being shot for wounding his pal. . . . They get to love their pals, passing the love of women. . . ." Sylvia exclaimed: "Oh!" as if at a pang of toothache. "They do, ma'am," he said, "it's downright touching. . . ."
He was by now very unsteady as he stood, but his voice was quite clear. That was the way it took him. He said to Tietjens:
"It's queer, what you say about home worries taking up your mind. ... I remember in the Afghan campaign, when we were in the devil of a hot corner, I got a letter from my wife, Mrs. Cowley, to say that our Winnie had the measles. . . . And there was only one difference between me and Mrs. Cowley: I said that a child must have flannel next its skin, and she said flannelette was good enough. Wiltshire doesn't hold by wool as Lincolnshire does. Long fleeces the Lincolnshire sheep have. . . . And dodging the Afghan bullets all day among the boulders as we was, all I could think of. . . . For you know, ma'am, being a mother yourself, that the great thing with measles is to keep a child warm. . . . I kep' saying to myself—'arf crying I was—'If she only keeps wool next Winnie's skin! If she only keeps wool next Winnie's skin!' . . . But you know that, being a mother yourself. I've seen your son's photo on the captain's dressing-table. Michael, 'is name is. . . . So you see, the captain doesn't forget you and 'im."
Sylvia said in a clear voice:
"Perhaps you would not go on!"
Distracted as she was by the anti-air-gun in the garden, though it was on the other side of the hotel and permitted you to get in a sentence or two before splitting your head with a couple of irregular explosions, she was still more distracted by a sudden vision—a remembrance of Christopher's face when their boy had had a temperature of 105° with the measles, up at his sister's house in Yorkshire. He had taken the responsibility, which the village doctor would not face, of himself placing the child in a bath full of split ice. . . . She saw him bending, expressionless in the strong lamp-light, with the child in his clumsy arms over the glittering, rubbled surface of the bath. . . . He was just as expressionless then as now. . . . He reminded her now of how he had been then: some strain in the lines of the face perhaps that she could not analyse. . . . Rather as if he had a cold in the head—a little suffocating, with suppressing his emotions, of course: his eyes looking at nothing. You would not have said that he even saw the child—heir to Groby and all that! . . . Something had said to her, just in between two crashes of the gun "It's his own child. He went as you might say down to hell to bring it back to life. . . ." She knew it was Father Consett saying that. She knew it was true: Christopher had been down to hell to bring the child back. . . . Fancy facing its pain in that dreadful bath! . . . The thermometer had dropped, running down under their eyes. . . . Christopher had said: "A good heart, he's got! A good plucked one!" and then held his breath, watching the thin filament of bright mercury drop to normal. . . . She said now, between her teeth: "The child is his property as much as the damned estate. . . . Well, I've got them both. . . ."
But it wasn't at this juncture that she wanted him tortured over that. So, when the second gun had done its crash, she had said to the bibulous old man:
"I wish you would not go on!" And Christopher had been prompt to the rescue of theconvenanceswith:
"Mrs. Tietjens does not see eye to eye with us in some matters!"
She said to herself: "Eye to eye! My God! . . ." The whole of this affair, the more she saw of it, overwhelmed her with a sense of hatred. . . . And of depression! . . . She saw Christopher buried in this welter of fools, playing a schoolboy's game of make-believe. But of a make-believe that was infinitely formidable and infinitely sinister. . . . The crashings of the gun and of all the instruments for making noise seemed to her so atrocious and odious because they were, for her, the silly pomp of a schoolboy-man's game. . . . Campion, or some similar schoolboy, said: "Hullo! Some German airplanes about . . . That lets us out on the air-gun! Let's have some pops!" . . . As they fire guns in the park on the King's birthday. It was sheer insolence to have a gun in the garden of an hotel where people of quality might be sleeping or wishing to converse!
At home she had been able to sustain the conviction that it was such a game. . . . Anywhere: at the house of a minister of the Crown, at dinner, she had only to say: "Do let us leave off talking of these odious things. . . ." And immediately there would be ten or a dozen voices, the minister's included, to agree with Mrs. Tietjens of Groby that they had altogether too much of it. . . .
But here! . . . She seemed to be in the very belly of the ugly affair. . . . It moved and moved, under your eyes dissolving, yet always there. As if you should try to follow one diamond of pattern in the coil of an immense snake that was in irrevocable motion. . . . It gave her a sense of despair: the engrossment of Tietjens, in common with the engrossment of this disreputable toper. She had never seen Tietjens put his head together with any soul before: he was the lonely buffalo. . . . Now! Anyone: any fatuous staff-officer, whom at home he would never so much as have spoken to: any trustworthy beer-sodden sergeant, any street urchin dressed up as orderly. . . . They had only to appear and all his mind went into a close-headed conference over some ignoble point in the child's game: The laundry, the chiropody, the religions, the bastards . . . of millions of the indistinguishable. . . . Or their deaths as well! But, in heaven's name what hypocrisy, or what inconceivable chicken-heartedness was this? They promoted this beanfeast of carnage for their own ends: they caused the deaths of men in inconceivable holocausts of pain and terror. Then they had crises of agony over the death of one single man. For it was plain to her that Tietjens was in the middle of a full nervous breakdown. Over one man's death! She had never seen him so suffer; she had never seen him so appeal for sympathy: him, a cold fiend of reticence! Yet he was now in an agony!Now! . . . And she began to have a sense of the infinitely spreading welter of pain, going away to an eternal horizon of night. . . . 'Ell for the Other Ranks! Apparently it was hell for the officers as well.
The real compassion in the voice of that snuffling, half-drunken old man had given her a sense of that enormous wickedness. . . . These horrors, these infinities of pain, this atrocious condition of the world had been brought about in order that men should indulge themselves in orgies of promiscuity. . . . That in the end was at the bottom of male honour, of male virtue, observance of treaties, upholding of the flag. . . . An immense warlock's carnival of appetites, lusts, ebrieties. . . . And once set in motion there was no stopping it. . . . This state of things would never cease. . . . Because once they had tasted of the joy—the blood—of this game, who would let it end? . . . These men talked of these things that occupied them there with the lust of men telling dirty stories in smoking-rooms. . . . That was the only parallel!
There was no stopping it, any more than there was any stopping the by now all but intoxicated ex-sergeant-major. He was off! With, as might be expected, advice to a young couple with differences of opinion! The wine had made him bold!
In the depth of her pictures of these horrors, snatches of his wisdom penetrated to her intelligence. . . . Queer snatches. . . . She was getting it certainly in the neck! . . . Someone, to add to the noise, had started some mechanical musical instrument in an adjacent hall.
"Corn an' lassesServed by Ras'us!"
"Corn an' lassesServed by Ras'us!"
a throaty voice proclaimed,
"I'd be tickled to death to know that I could goAnd stay right there . . ."
"I'd be tickled to death to know that I could goAnd stay right there . . ."
The ex-sergeant-major was adding to her knowledge the odd detail that when he, Sergeant-Major Cowley, went to the wars—seven of them—his missus, Mrs. Cowley, spent the first three days and nights unpicking and re-hemstitching every sheet and pillow-slip in the 'ouse. To keep 'erself f'm thinking. . . . This was apparently meant as a reproof or an exhortation to her, Sylvia Tietjens. . . . Well, he was all right! Of the same class as Father Consett, and with the same sort of wisdom.
The gramophone howled: a new note of rumbling added itself to the exterior tumult and continued through six mitigated thumps of the gun in the garden. . . . In the next interval, Cowley was in the midst of a valedictory address to her. He was asking her to remember that the captain had had a sleepless night the night before.
There occurred to her irreverent mind a sentence of one of the Duchess of Marlborough's letters to Queen Anne. The duchess had visited the general during one of his campaigns in Flanders. "My Lord," she wrote, "did me the honour three times in his boots!" . . . The sort of thing she would remember. . . . She would—shewould—have tried it on the sergeant-major, just to see Tietjens' face, for the sergeant-major would not have understood. . . . And who cared if he did! . . . He was bibulously skirting round the same idea. . . .
But the tumult increased to an incredible volume: even the thrillings of the near-by gramophone of two hundred horse-power, or whatever it was, became mere shimmerings of a gold thread in a drab fabric of sound. She screamed blasphemies that she was hardly aware of knowing. She had to scream against the noise: she was no more responsible for the blasphemy than if she had lost her identity under an anæsthetic. Shehadlost her identity. . . . She was one of this crowd!
The general woke in his chair and gazed malevolently at their group as if they alone were responsible for the noise. It dropped. Dead! You only knew it, because you caught the tail end of a belated woman's scream from the hall and the general shouting: "For God's sake don't start that damned gramophone again!" In the blessed silence, after preliminary wheezings and guitar noises an astonishing voice burst out:
"Less than the dust . . .Before thy char . . ."
"Less than the dust . . .Before thy char . . ."
And then, stopping after a murmur of voices, began:
"Pale hands I loved . . ."
"Pale hands I loved . . ."
The general sprang from his chair and rushed to the hall. . . . He came back crestfallenly.
"It's some damned civilian big-wig. . . . A novelist, they say. . . . I can't stophim. . . ." He added with disgust: "The hall's full of young beasts and harlots. . . .Dancing!". . . The melody had indeed, after a buzz, changed to a languorous and interrupted variation of a waltz. "Dancing in the dark!" the general said with enhanced disgust. . . . "And the Germans may be here at any moment. ... If they knew what I know! . . ."
Sylvia called across to him:
"Wouldn't it be fun to see the blue uniform with the silver buttons again and some decently set-up men? . . ."
The general shouted:
"I'dbe glad to see them. . . . I'm sick to death of these. . . ."
Tietjens took up something he had been saying to Cowley: what it was Sylvia did not hear, but Cowley answered, still droning on with an idea Sylvia thought they had got past:
"I remember when I was sergeant in Quetta, I detailed a man—called Herring—for watering the company horses, after he begged off it because he had a fear of horses. . . . A horse got him down in the river and drowned 'im. . . . Fell with him and put its foot on his face. . . . A fair sight he was. . . . It wasn't any good my saying anything about military exigencies. . . . Fair put me off my feed, it did. . . . Cost me a fortune in Epsom salts. . . ."
Sylvia was about to scream out that if Tietjens did not like men being killed it ought to sober him in his war-lust, but Cowley continued meditatively:
"Epsom salts they say is the cure for it. . . . For seeing your dead. . . . And of course you should keep off women for a fortnight. . . . I know I did. Kept seeing Herring's face with the hoof-mark. And . . . there was a piece: a decent bit of goods in what we called the Government Compound. . . ."
He suddenly exclaimed:
"Saving your . . . Ma'am, I'm . . ." He stuck the stump of the cigar into his teeth and began assuring Tietjens that he could be trusted with the draft next morning, if only Tietjens would put him into the taxi.
He went away, leaning on Tietjens' arm, his legs at an angle of sixty degrees with the carpet. . . .
"He can't . . ." Sylvia said to herself, "he can't, not . . . If he's a gentleman. . . . After all that old fellow's hints. . . . He'd be a damn coward if he kept off. . . . For a fortnight. . . . And who else is there not a public . . ." She said: "O God! . . ."
The old general, lying in his chair, turned his face aside to say:
"I wouldn't, madam, not if I were you, talk about the blue uniform with silver buttons here. . . .We, of course, understand. . . ."
She said: "You see . . . even that extinct volcano . . . He's undressing me with his eyes full of blood veins. . . . Then why can'the? . . ."
She said aloud:
"Oh, but even you, general, said you were sick of your companions!"
She said to herself:
"Hang it! . . . I will have the courage of my convictions. . . . No man shall say I am a coward. . . ."
She said:
"Isn't it saying the same thing as you, general, to say that I'd rather be made love to by a well-set-up man in blue and silver—or anything else!—than by most of the people one sees here! . . ."
The general said:
"Of course, if you put it that way, madam. . . ."
She said:
"What other way should a woman put it?" . . . She reached to the table and filled herself a lot of brandy. The old general was leering towards her:
"Bless me," he said, "a lady who takes liquor like that . . ."
She said:
"You're a Papist, aren't you? With the name of O'Hara and the touch of the brogue you have . . . And the devil you no doubt are with. . . . You know what. . . . Well, then . . . It's with a special intention! . . . As you say your Hail, Maries. . . ."
With the liquor burning inside her she saw Tietjens loom in the dim light.
The general, to her bitter amusement, said to him:
"Your friend was more than a bit on. . . . Not the Society surely for madam!"
Tietjens said:
"I never expected to have the pleasure of dining with Mrs. Tietjens to-night . . . That officer was celebrating his commission and I could not put him off. . . ." The general said: "Oh, ah! . . . Of course not. . . . I dare say . . ." and settled himself again in his chair. . . .
Tietjens was overwhelming her with his great bulk. She had still lost her breath. ... He stooped over and said: It was the luck of the half-drunk; he said:
"They're dancing in the lounge. . . ."
She coiled herself passionately into her wickerwork. It had dull blue cushions. She said:
"Not with anyone else. . . . I don't want any introductions. . . ." Fiercely! . . . He said:
"There's no one there that I could introduce you to. . . ."
She said:
"Not if it's a charity!"
He said:
"I thought it might be rather dull. . . . It's six months since I danced. . . ." She felt beauty flowing over all her limbs. She had a gown of gold tissue. Her matchless hair was coiled over her ears. . . She was humming Venusberg music: she knew music if she knew nothing else. . . .
She said: "You call the compounds where you keep the W.A.A.C.'s Venusberg's, don't you? Isn't it queer that Venus should be your own? . . . Think of poor Elisabeth!"
The room where they were dancing was very dark. . . . It was queer to be in his arms. . . . She had known better dancers. . . . He had looked ill. . . . Perhaps he was. . . . Oh, poor Valentine-Elisabeth. . . . What a funny position! . . . The good gramophone played. . . .Destiny! . . . You see, father! . . . In his arms! . . . Of course, dancing is not really. . . . But so near the real thing! So near! . . . "Good luck to the special intention! . . ." She had almost kissed him on the lips. . . . All but! . . .Effleurer, the French call it. . . . But she was not as humble. . . . He had pressed her tighter. . . . All these months without . . . My lord did me honour . . . Good for Malbroucks'en va-t-en guerre. . . . Heknewshe had almost kissed him on the lips. . . . And that his lips had almost responded. . . . The civilian, the novelist, had turned out the last light. . . . Tietjens said, "Hadn't we better talk? . . ." She said: "In my room, then! I'm dog-tired. . . . I haven't slept for six nights. . . . In spite of drugs. . . ." He said: "Yes. Of course! Where else? . . ." Astonishingly. . . . Her gown of gold tissue was like the colobium sidonis the King wore at the coronation. . . . As they mounted the stairs she thought what a fat tenor Tannhauser always was! . . . The Venusberg music was dinning in her ears. . . . She said: "Sixty-six inexpressibles! I'm as sober as a judge . . . I need to be!"
A shadow—the shadow of the General Officer Commanding in Chief—falling across the bar of light that the sunlight threw in at his open door seemed providentially to awaken Christopher Tietjens, who would have thought it extremely disagreeable to be found asleep by that officer. Very thin, graceful and gay with his scarlet gilt oak-leaves, and ribbons, of which he had many, the general was stepping attractively over the sill of the door, talking backwards over his shoulder, to someone outside. So, in the old days, Gods had descended! It was, no doubt, really the voices from without that had awakened Tietjens, but he preferred to think the matter a slight intervention of Providence, because he felt in need of a sign of some sort! Immediately upon awakening he was not perfectly certain of where he was, but he had sense enough to answer with coherence the first question that the general put to him and to stand stiffly on his legs. The general had said:
"Will you be good enough to inform me, Captain Tietjens, why you have no fire-extinguishers in your unit? You are aware of the extremely disastrous consequences that would follow a conflagration in your lines?"
Tietjens said stiffly:
"It seems impossible to obtain them, sir."
The general said:
"How is this? You have indented for them in the proper quarter. Perhaps you do not know what the proper quarter is?"
Tietjens said:
"If this were a British unit, sir, the proper quarter would be the Royal Engineers." When he had sent his indent in for them to the Royal Engineers they informed him that this being a unit of troops from the Dominions, the quarter to which to apply was the Ordnance. On applying to the Ordnance, he was informed that no provision was made of fire-extinguishers for troops from the Dominions under Imperial officers, and that the proper course was to obtain them from a civilian firm in Great Britain, charging them against barrack damages. . . . He had applied to several firms of manufacturers, who all replied that they were forbidden to sell these articles to anyone but to the War Office direct. . . . "I am still applying to civilian firms," he finished.
The officer accompanying the general was Colonel Levin, to whom, over his shoulder, the general said: "Make a note of that, Levin, will you? and get the matter looked into." He said again to Tietjens:
"In walking across your parade-ground I noticed that your officer in charge of your physical training knew conspicuously nothing about it. You had better put him on to cleaning out your drains. He was unreasonably dirty."
Tietjens said:
"The sergeant-instructor, sir, is quite competent. The officer is an R.A.S.C. officer. I have at the moment hardly any infantry officers in the unit. But officers have to be on these parades—by A.C.I. They give no orders."
The general said dryly:
"I was aware from the officer's uniform of what arm he belonged to. I am not saying you do not do your best with the material at your command." From Campion on parade this was an extraordinary graciousness. Behind the general's back Levin was making signs with his eyes which he meaningly closed and opened. The general, however, remained extraordinarily dry in manner, his face having its perfectly expressionless air of studied politeness which allowed no muscle of its polished-cherry surface to move. The extreme politeness of the extremely great to the supremely unimportant!
He glanced round the hut markedly. It was Tietjens' own office and contained nothing but the blanket-covered tables and, hanging from a strut, an immense calendar on which days were roughly crossed out in red ink and blue pencil. He said:
"Go and get your belt. You will go round your cook-houses with me in a quarter of an hour. You can tell your sergeant-cook. What sort of cooking arrangements have you?"
Tietjens said:
"Very good cook-houses, sir."
The general said:
"You're extremely lucky, then. Extremely lucky! . . . Half the units like yours in this camp haven't anything but company cookers and field ovens in the open. . . ." He pointed with his crop at the open door. He repeated with extreme distinctness "Go and get your belt!" Tietjens wavered a very little on his feet. He said:
"You are aware, sir, that I am under arrest."
Campion imported a threat into his voice:
"I gave you," he said, "an order. To perform a duty!"
The terrific force of the command from above to below took Tietjens staggering through the door. He heard the general's voice say: "I'm perfectly aware he's not drunk." When he had gone four paces, Colonel Levin was beside him.
Levin was supporting him by the elbow. He whispered:
"The general wishes me to go with you if you are feeling unwell. You understand you are released from arrest!" He exclaimed with a sort of rapture: "You're doing splendidly. . . . It's amazing. Everything I've ever told him about you. . . . Yours is the only draft that got off this morning. . . ."
Tietjens grunted:
"Of course I understand that if I'm given an order to perform a duty, it means I am released from arrest." He had next to no voice. He managed to say that he would prefer to go alone. He said: ". . . He's forced my hand. . . . The last thing I want is to be released from arrest. . . ."
Levin said breathlessly:
"Youcan'trefuse. . . . You can't upset him. . . . Why, youcan't. . . . Besides, an officer cannot demand a court martial."
"You look," Tietjens said, "like a slightly faded bunch of wallflowers. . . . I'm sure I beg your pardon. . . . It came into my head!" The colonel drooped intangibly, his moustache a little ragged, his eyes a little rimmed, his shaving a little ridged. He exclaimed:
"Damn it! . . . Do you suppose I don'tcarewhat happens to you? . . . O'Hara came storming into my quarters at half-past three. . . . I'm not going to tell you what he said. . . ." Tietjens said gruffly:
"No, don't! I've all I can stand for the moment. . . ."
Levin exclaimed desperately:
"I want you to understand. . . . It's impossible to believe anything against . . ."
Tietjens faced him, his teeth showing like a badger's. He said:
"Whom? . . . Against whom? Curse you!"
Levin said pallidly:
"Against . . . Against . . . either of you. . . ."
"Then leave it at that!" Tietjens said. He staggered a little until he reached the main lines. Then he marched. It was purgatory. They peeped at him from the corners of huts and withdrew. . . . But they always did peep at him from the corners of huts and withdraw! That is the habit of the Other Ranks on perceiving officers. The fellow called McKechnie also looked out of a hut door. He too withdrew. . . . There was no mistaking that! He had the news. . . . On the other hand, McKechnie too was under a cloud. It might be his, Tietjens', duty, to strafe McKechnie to hell for having left camp last night. So he might be avoiding him. . . . There was no knowing. . . . He lurched infinitesimally to the right. The road was rough. His legs felt like detached and swollen objects that he dragged after him. He must master his legs. He mastered his legs. A batman carrying a cup of tea ran against him. Tietjens said: "Put that down and fetch me the sergeant-cook at the double. Tell him the general's going round the cook-houses in a quarter of an hour." The batman ran, spilling the tea in the sunlight.
In his hut, which was dim and profusely decorated with the doctor's ideals of female beauty in every known form of pictorial reproduction, so that it might have been lined with peach-blossom, Tietjens had the greatest difficulty in getting into his belt. He had at first forgotten to remove his hat, then he put his head through the wrong opening; his fingers on the buckles operated like sausages. He inspected himself in the doctor's cracked shaving-glass: he was exceptionally well shaved.
He had shaved that morning at six-thirty: five minutes after the draft had got off. Naturally, the lorries had been an hour late. It was providential that he had shaved with extra care. An insolently calm man was looking at him, the face divided in two by the crack in the glass: a naturally white-complexioned double-half of a face: a patch of high colour on each cheekbone; the pepper-and-salt hair ruffled, the white streaks extremely silver. He had gone very silver lately. But he swore he did not look worn. Not careworn. McKechnie said from behind his back:
"By Jove, what's this all about. The general's been strafing me to hell for not having my table tidy!"
Tietjens, still looking in the glass, said:
"You should keep your table tidy. It's the only strafe the battalion's had."
The general, then, must have been in the orderly room of which he had put McKechnie in charge. McKechnie went on, breathlessly:
"They say you knocked the general. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Don't you know enough to discount what they say in this town?" He said to himself: "That was all right!" He had spoken with a cool edge on a contemptuous voice.
He said to the sergeant-cook who was panting—another heavy, grey-moustached, very senior N.C.O.:
"The general's going round the cook-houses. . . . You be damn certain there's no dirty cook's clothing in the lockers!" He was fairly sure that otherwise his cook-houses would be all right. He had gone round them himself the morning of the day before yesterday. Or was it yesterday? . . .
It was the day after he had been up all night because the draft had been countermanded. . . . It didn't matter. He said:
"I wouldn't serve out white clothing to the cooks. . . . I bet you've got some hidden away, though it's against orders."
The sergeant looked away into the distance, smiled all-knowingly over his walrus moustache.
"The general likes to see 'em in white," he said, "and he won't know the white clothing has been countermanded."
Tietjens said:
"The snag is that the beastly cooks always will tuck some piece of beastly dirty clothing away in a locker rather than take the trouble to take it round to their quarters when they've changed."
Levin said with great distinctness:
"The general has sent me to you with this, Tietjens. Take a sniff of it if you're feeling dicky. You've been up all night on end two nights running." He extended in the palm of his hand a bottle of smelling-salts in a silver section of tubing. He said the general suffered from vertigo now and then. Really he himself carried that restorative for the benefit of Miss de Bailly.
Tietjens asked himself why the devil the sight of that smelling-salts container reminded him of the brass handle of the bedroom door moving almost imperceptibly . . . and incredibly. It was, of course, because Sylvia had on her illuminated dressing-table, reflected by the glass, just such another smooth, silver segment of tubing. . . . Was everything he saw going to remind him of the minute movement of that handle?
"You can do what you please," the sergeant-cook said, "but there will always be one piece of clothing in a locker for a G.O.C.I.C.'s inspection. And the general always walks straight up to that locker and has it opened. I've seen General Campion do it three times."
"If there's any found this time, the man it belongs to goes for a D.C.M.," Tietjens said. "See that there's a clean diet-sheet on the messing board."
"The generals really like to find dirty clothing," the sergeant-cook said; "it gives them something to talk about if they don't know anything else about cook-houses. . . . I'll put up my own diet-sheet, sir. . . . I suppose you can keep the general back for twenty minutes or so? It's all I ask."
Levin said towards his rolling, departing back:
"That's a damn smart man. Fancy being as confident as that about an inspection. . . . Ugh! . . ." and Levin shuddered in remembrance of inspections through which in his time he had passed.
"He's a damn smart man!" Tietjens said. He added to McKechnie:
"You might take a look at dinners in case the general takes it into his head to go round them."
McKechnie said darkly:
"Look here, Tietjens, are you in command of this unit or am I?"
Levin exclaimed sharply, for him:
"What's that? What the . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Captain McKechnie complains that he is the senior officer and should command this unit."
Levin ejaculated:
"Of all the . . ." He addressed McKechnie with vigour: "My man, the command of these units is an appointment at disposition of headquarters. Don't let there be any mistake about that!"
McKechnie said doggedly:
"Captain Tietjens asked me to take the battalion this morning. I understood he was under . . ."
"You," Levin said, "are attached to this unit for discipline and rations. You damn well understand that if some uncle or other of yours were not, to the general's knowledge, a protégé of Captain Tietjens', you'd be in a lunatic asylum at this moment. . . ."
McKechnie's face worked convulsively, he swallowed as men are said to swallow who suffer from hydrophobia. He lifted his fist and cried out:
"My un . . ."
Levin said:
"If you say another word you go under medical care the moment it's said. I've the order in my pocket. Now, fall out. At the double!"
McKechnie wavered on the way to the door. Levin added:
"You can take your choice of going up the line to-night. Or a court of inquiry for obtaining divorce leave and then not getting a divorce. Or the other thing. And you can thank Captain Tietjens for the clemency the general has shown you!"
The hut now reeling a little, Tietjens put the opened smelling bottle to his nostrils. At the sharp pang of the odour the hut came to attention. He said:
"We can't keep the general waiting."
"He told me," Levin said, "to give you ten minutes. He's sitting in your hut. He's tired. This affair has worried him dreadfully. O'Hara is the first C.O. he ever served under. A useful man, too, at his job."
Tietjens leaned against his dressing-table of meat-cases.
"You told that fellow McKechnie off, all right," he said. "I did not know you had it in you. . . ."
"Oh," Levin said, "it's just being withhim. . . . I get his manner and it does all right. . . . Of course I don't often hear him have to strafe anybody in that manner. There's nobody really to stand up to him. Naturally. . . . But just this morning I was in his cabinet doing private secretary, and he was talking to Pe . . . Talking while he shaved. And he said exactly that: You can take your choice of going up the line to-night or a court martial! . . . So naturally I said as near the same as I could to your little friend. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"We'd better go now."
In the winter sunlight Levin tucked his arm under Tietjens', leaning towards him gaily and not hurrying. The display was insufferable to Tietjens, but he recognized that it was indispensable. The bright day seemed full of things with hard edges—a rather cruel definiteness. . . . Liver! . . .
The little depot adjutant passed them going very fast, as if before a wind. Levin just waved his hand in acknowledgment of his salute and went on, being enraptured in Tietjens' conversation. He said:
"You and . . . and Mrs. Tietjens are dining at the general's to-night. To meet the G.O.C.I.C. Western Division. And General O'Hara. . . . We understand that you have definitely separated from Mrs. Tietjens. . . ." Tietjens forced his left arm to violence to restrain it from tearing itself from the colonel's grasp.
His mind had become a coffin-headed, leather-jawed charger, like Schomburg. Sitting on his mind was like sitting on Schomburg at a dull water-jump. His lips said: "Bub-bub-bub-bub!" He could not feel his hands. He said:
"I recognize the necessity. If the general sees it in that way. I saw it in another way myself." His voice was intensely weary. "No doubt," he said, "the general knows best!"
Levin's face exhibited real enthusiasm. He said:
"You decent fellow! You awfully decent fellow! We're all in the same boat. . . . Now, will you tell me? Forhim. Was O'Hara drunk last night or wasn't he?"
Tietjens said:
"I think he was not drunk when he burst into the room with Major Perowne. . . . I've been thinking about it! I think he became drunk. . . . When I first requested and then ordered him to leave the room he leant against the doorpost. ... He was certainly then—in disorder! . . . I then told him that I should order him under arrest, if he didn't go. . . ."
Levin said:
"Mm! Mm! Mm!"
Tietjens said:
"It was my obvious duty. . . . I assure you that I was perfectly collected. . . . I beg to assure you that I was perfectly collected. . . ."
Levin said: "I am not questioning the correctness. . . . But . . . we are all one family. . . . I admit the atrocious . . . the unbearable nature. . . . But you understand that O'Hara had the right to enter your room. . . . As P.M.! . . ."
Tietjens said:
"I am not questioning that it was his right. I was assuring you that I was perfectly collected because the general had honoured me by asking my opinion on the condition of General O'Hara. . . ."
They had by now walked far beyond the line leading to Tietjens' office and, close together, were looking down upon the great tapestry of the French landscape.
"He," Levin said, "is anxious for your opinion. It really amounts to as to whether O'Hara drinks too much to continue in his job! . . . And he says he will take your word. . . . You could not have a greater testimonial. . . ."
"He could not," Tietjens said studiedly, "do anything less. Knowing me."
Levin said:
"Good heavens, old man, you rub it in!" He added quickly: "He wishes me to dispose of this side of the matter. He will take my word and yours. You will forgive . . ."
The mind of Tietjens had completely failed: the Seine below looked like an S on fire in an opal. He said: "Eh?" And then: "Oh, yes! I forgive. . . . It's painful. . . . You probably don't know what you are doing."
He broke off suddenly:
"By God! . . . Were the Canadian Railway Service to go with my draft? They were detailed to mend the line here to-day. Also to go . . . I kept them back. . . . Both orders were dated the same day and hour. I could not get on to headquarters either from the hotel or from here. . . ."
Levin said:
"Yes, that's all right. He'll be immensely pleased. He's going to speak to you aboutthat!" Tietjens gave an immense sigh of relief.
"I remembered that my orders were conflicting just before. . . . It was a terrible shock to remember. . . . If I sent them up in the lorries, the repairs to the railway might be delayed. . . . If I didn't, you might get strafed to hell. . . . It was an intolerable worry. . . ."
Levin said:
"You remember it just as you saw the handle of your door moving. . . ."
Tietjens said from a sort of a mist:
"Yes. You know how beastly it is when you suddenly remember you have forgotten something in orders. As if the pit of your stomach had . . ."
Levin said:
"All I ever thought about if I'd forgotten anything was what would be a good excuse to put up to the adjutant . . . When I was a regimental officer . . ."
Suddenly Tietjens said insistently:
"How did you know that? . . . About the door handle? Sylvia could not have seen it. . . ." He added: "And she could not have known what I was thinking. . . . She had her back to the door. . . . And to me. . . . Looking at me in the glass. . . . She was not even aware of what had happened. . . . So she could not have seen the handle move!"
Levin hesitated:
"I . . ." he said. "Perhaps I ought not to have said that. . . . You've told us. . . . That is to say, you've told . . ." He was pale in the sunlight. He said: "Old man . . . Perhaps you don't know. . . . Didn't you perhaps ever, in your childhood? . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Well . . . what is it?"
"That you talk . . . when you're sleeping!" Levin said.
Astonishingly, Tietjens said:
"What of that? . . . It's nothing to write home about! With the overwork I've had and the sleeplessness. . . ."
Levin said, with a pathetic appeal to Tietjens' omniscience:
"But doesn't it mean . . . We used to say when we were boys . . . that if you talk in your sleep . . . you're . . . in fact a bit dotty?"
Tietjens said without passion:
"Not necessarily. It means that one has been under mental pressure, but all mental pressure does not drive you over the edge. Not by any means. . . . Besides, what does it matter?"
Levin said:
"You mean you don't care. . . . Good God!" He remained looking at the view, drooping, in intense dejection. He said: "Thisbeastlywar! Thisbeastlywar! . . . Look at all that view. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"It's an encouraging spectacle, really. The beastliness of human nature is always pretty normal. We lie and betray and are wanting in imagination and deceive ourselves, always, at about the same rate. In peace and in war! But, somewhere in that view there are enormous bodies of men. . . . If you got a still more extended range of view over this whole front you'd have still more enormous bodies of men. . . . Seven to ten million. . . . All moving towards places towards which they desperately don't want to go. Desperately! Every one of them is desperately afraid. But they go on. An immense blind will forces them in the effort to consummate the one decent action that humanity has to its credit in the whole of recorded history. The one we are engaged in. That effort is the one certain creditable fact in all their lives. . . . But theotherlives of all those men are dirty, potty and discreditable little affairs. . . . Like yours. . . . Like mine. . . ."
Levin exclaimed:
"Just heavens!Whata pessimist you are!"
Tietjens said: "Can't you see that is optimism?"
"But," Levin said, "we're being beaten out of the field. . . . You don't know how desperate things are."
Tietjens said:
"Oh, I know pretty well. As soon as this weather really breaks we're probably done."
"We can't," Levin said, "possibly hold them. Not possibly."
"But success or failure," Tietjens said, "have nothing to do with the credit of a story. And a consideration of the virtues of humanity does not omit the other side. If we lose they win. If success is necessary to your idea of virtue—virtus—they then provide the success instead of ourselves. But the thing is to be able to stick to the integrity of your character, whatever earthquake sets the house tumbling over your head. . . . That, thank God, we're doing. . . ."
Levin said:
"I don't know. ... If you knew what is going on at home . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Oh, I know. . . . I know that ground as I know the palm of my hand. I could invent that life if I knew nothing at all about the facts."
Levin said:
"I believe you could." He added: "Of course you could. . . . And yet the only use we can make of you is to martyrize you because two drunken brutes break into your wife's bedroom. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"You betray your non-Anglo-Saxon origin by being so vocal. . . . And by your illuminative exaggerations!"
Levin suddenly exclaimed:
"What the devil were we talking about?"
Tietjens said grimly:
"I am here at the disposal of the competent military authority—You!—that is inquiring into my antecedents. I am ready to go on belching platitudes till you stop me."
Levin answered:
"For goodness' sake help me. This is horribly painful.He—the general—has given me the job of finding out what happened last night. He won't face it himself. He's attached to you both."
Tietjens said:
"It's asking too much to ask me to help you. . . . What did I say in my sleep? What has Mrs. Tietjens told the general?"
"The general," Levin said, "has not seen Mrs. Tietjens. He could not trust himself. He knew she would twist him round her little finger."
Tietjens said:
"He's beginning to learn. He was sixty last July, but he's beginning."
"So that," Levin said, "what we do know we learnt in the way I have told you. And from O'Hara of course. The general would not let Pe . . ., the other fellow, speak a word, while he was shaving. He just said: 'I won't hear you. I won't hear you. You can take your choice of going up the line as soon as there are trains running or being broke on my personal application to the King in Council."
"I didn't know," Tietjens said, "that he could talk as straight as that."
"He's dreadfully hard hit," Levin answered; "if you and Mrs. Tietjens separate—and still more if there's anything real against either of you—it's going to shatter all his illusions. And . . ." He paused: "Do you know Major Thurston? A gunner? Attached to our anti-aircraft crowd? . . . The general is very thick with him. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"He's one of the Thurstons of Lobden Moorside. . . . I don't know him personally. . . ."
Levin said:
"He's upset the general a good deal. . . . With something he told him. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Good God!" And then: "He can't have told the general anything against me. . . . Then it must be against . . ."
Levin said:
"Do you want the general always to be told things against you in contradistinction to things about . . . another person."
Tietjens said:
"We shall be keeping the fellows in my cook-house a confoundedly long time waiting for inspections. . . . I'm in your hands as regards the general. . . ."
Levin said:
"The general's in your hut: thankful to goodness to be alone. He never is. He said he was going to write a private memorandum for the Secretary of State, and I could keep you any time I liked as long as I got everything out of you. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Did what Major Thurston allege take place . . . Thurston has lived most of his life in France. . . . But you had better not tell me. . . ."
Levin said:
"He's our anti-craft liaison officer with the French civilian authorities. Those sort of fellows generally have lived in France a good deal. A very decentish, quiet man. He plays chess with the general and they talk over the chess. . . . But the general is going to talk about what he said to you himself. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Good God! ... He going to talk as well as you. . . . You'd say the coils were closing in. . . ."
Levin said:
"We can't go on like this. . . . It's my own fault for not being more direct. But this can't last all day. We could neither of us stand it. . . . I'm pretty nearly done. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Wheredidyour father come from, really? Not from Frankfurt? . . ."
Levin said:
"Constantinople. . . . His father was financial agent to the Sultan; my father was his son by an Armenian presented to him by the Selamlik along with the Order of the Medjidje, first class."
"It accounts for your very decent manner, and for your common sense. If you had been English I should have broken your neck before now."
Levin said:
"Thank you! I hope I always behave like an English gentleman. But I am going to be brutally direct now. . . ." He went on: "The really queer thing is that you should always address Miss Wannop in the language of the VictorianCorrect Letter-Writer. You must excuse my mentioning the name: it shortens things. You said 'Miss Wannop' every two or three half-minutes. It convinced the general more than any possible assertions that your relations were perfectly . . ."
Tietjens, his eyes shut, said:
"I talked to Miss Wannop in my sleep. . . ."
Levin, who was shaking a little, said:
"It was very queer. . . . Almost ghostlike. . . . There you sat, your arms on the table. Talking away. You appeared to be writing a letter to her. And the sunlight streaming in at the hut. I was going to wake you, but he stopped me. He took the view that he was on detective work, and that he might as well detect He had got it into his mind that you were a Socialist."
"He would," Tietjens commented. "Didn't I tell you he was beginning to learn things? . . ."
Levin exclaimed:
"But you aren't a So . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Of course, if your father came from Constantinople and his mother was a Georgian, it accounts for your attractiveness. Youarea most handsome fellow. And intelligent. . . . If the general has put you on to inquire whether I am a Socialist I will answer your questions."
Levin said:
"No. . . . That's one of the questions he's reserving for himself to ask. It appears that if you answer that you are a Socialist he intends to cut you out of his will. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"His will! . . . Oh, yes, of course, he might very well leave me something. But doesn't that supply rather a motive for me to say that Iam? I don't want his money."
Levin positively jumped a step backwards. Money, and particularly money that came by way of inheritance, being one of the sacred things of life for him, he exclaimed:
"I don't see that youcanjoke about such a subject!"
Tietjens answered good-humouredly:
"Well, you don't expect me to play up to the old gentleman in order to get his poor old shekels." He added "Hadn't we better get it over?"
Levin said:
"You've got hold of yourself?"
Tietjens answered:
"Pretty well. . . . You'll excuse my having been emotional so far. You aren't English, so it won't have embarrassed you."
Levin exclaimed in an outraged manner:
"Hang it, I'm English to the backbone! What's the matter with me?"
Tietjens said:
"Nothing. . . . Nothing in the world. That's just what makes you un-English. We're all . . . well, it doesn't matter what's wrong withus. . . . What did you gather about my relations with Miss Wannop?"
The question was so unemotionally put and Levin was still so concerned as to his origins that he did not at first grasp what Tietjens had said. He began to protest that he had been educated at Winchester and Magdalen. Then he exclaimed, "Oh!" And took time for reflection.
"If," he said finally, "the general had not let out that she was young and attractive . . . at least, I suppose attractive . . . I should have thought that you regarded her as an old maid. . . . You know, of course, that it came to me as a shock, the thought that there was anyone. . . . That you had allowed yourself . . . Anyhow . . . I suppose I'm simple. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"What did the general gather?"
"He . . ." Levin said, "he stood over you with his head held to one side, looking rather cunning . . . like a magpie listening at a hole it's dropped a nut into. . . . First he looked disappointed: then quite glad. A simple kind of gladness. Just glad, you know. . . . When we got outside the hut he said 'I suppose invino veritas,' and then he asked me the Latin for 'sleep' . . . But I had forgotten it too. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"What did I say?"
"It's . . ." Levin hesitated, "extraordinarily difficult to say what youdidsay. . . . I don't profess to remember long speeches to the letter. . . . Naturally it was a good deal broken up. . . . I tell you, you were talking to a young lady about matters you don't generally talk to young ladies about. . . . And obviously you were trying to let your . . . Mrs. Tietjens, down easily. . . . You were trying to explain also why you had definitely decided to separate from Mrs. Tietjens. . . . And you took it that the young lady might be troubled ... at the separation. . . ."
Tietjens said carelessly:
"This is rather painful. Perhaps you would let me tell you exactly whatdidhappen last night. . . ."
Levin said:
"If you only would!" He added rather diffidently: "If you would not mind remembering that I am a military court of inquiry. It makes it easier for me to report to the general if you say things dully and in the order they happened."
Tietjens said:
"Thank you . . ." and after a short interval, "I retired to rest with my wife last night at. . . . I cannot say the hour exactly. Say half-past one. I reached this camp at half-past four, taking rather over half an hour to walk. What happened, as I am about to relate, took place therefore before four."
"The hour," Levin said, "is not material. We know the incident occurred in the small hours. General O'Hara made his complaint to me at three-thirty-five. He probably took five minutes to reach my quarters."
Tietjens asked:
"The exact charge was . . ."
"The complaints," Levin answered, "were very numerous indeed. . . . I could not catch them all. The succinct charge was at first being drunk and striking a superior officer, then merely that of conduct prejudicial in that you struck . . . There is also a subsidiary charge of conduct prejudicial in that you improperly marked a charge-sheet in your orderly room. . . . I did not catch what all that was about. . . . You appear to have had a quarrel with him about his red-caps. . . ."
"That," Tietjens said, "is what it is really all about." He asked: "The officer I was said to have struck was . . .?"
Levin said:
"Perowne . . ." dryly.
Tietjens said:
"You are sure it was not himself. I am prepared to plead guilty to striking General O'Hara."
"It is not," Levin said, "a question of pleading guilty. There is no charge to that effect against you, and you are perfectly aware that you are not under arrest. . . . An order to perform any duty after you have been placed under arrest in itself releases you and dissolves the arrest."
Tietjens said coolly:
"I am perfectly aware of that. And that was General Campion's intention in ordering me to accompany him round my cook-houses. . . . But I doubt. . . . I put it to you for your serious attention whether that is the best way to hush this matter up. . . . I think it would be more expedient that I should plead guilty to a charge of striking General O'Hara. And naturally to being drunk. An officer does not strike a general when he is sober. That would be a quite inconspicuous affair. Subordinate officers are broken every day for being drunk."
Levin had said "Wait a minute," twice. He now exclaimed with a certain horror:
"Your mania for sacrificing yourself makes you lose all . . . all sense of proportion. You forget that General Campion is a gentleman. Things cannot be done in a hole-and-corner manner in this command. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"They're done unbearably. . . . It would be nothing to me to be broke for being drunk, but raking up all this is hell."
Levin said:
"The general is anxious to know exactly what has happened. You will kindly accept an order to relate exactly what happened."
Tietjens said:
"That is what is perfectly damnable. . . ." He remained silent for nearly a minute, Levin slapping his leggings with his riding-crop in a nervously passionate rhythm. Tietjens stiffened himself and began:
"General O'Hara came to my wife's room and burst in the door. I was there. I took him to be drunk. But from what he exclaimed I have since imagined that he was not so much drunk as misled. There was another man lying in the corridor where I had thrown him. General O'Hara exclaimed that this was Major Perowne. I had not realised that this was Major Perowne. I do not know Major Perowne very well and he was not in uniform. I had imagined him to be a French waiter coming to call me to the telephone. I had seen only his face round the door: he was looking round the door. My wife was in a state . . . bordering on nudity. I had put my hand under his chin and thrown him through the doorway. I am physically very strong and I exercised all my strength. I am aware of that. I was excited, but not more excited than the circumstances seemed to call for. . . ."
Levin exclaimed:
"But . . . At three in the morning! The telephone!"
"I was ringing up my headquarters and yours. All through the night. The O.I.C. draft, Lieutenant Cowley, was also ringing me up. I was anxious to know what was to be done about the Canadian railway men. I had three times been called to the telephone since I had been in Mrs. Tietjens' room, and once an orderly had come down from the camp. I was also conducting a very difficult conversation with my wife as to the disposal of my family's estates, which are large, so that the details were complicated. I occupied the room next door to Mrs. Tietjens and till that moment, the communicating door between the rooms being open, I had heard when a waiter or an orderly had knocked at my own door in the corridor. The night porter of the hotel was a dark, untidy, surly sort of fellow. . . . Not unlike Perowne."
Levin said:
"Is it necessary to go into all this? We . . ."
Tietjens said:
"If I am to make a statement it seems necessary. I would prefer you to question me . . ."
Levin said:
"Please go on. . . . We accept the statement that Major Perowne was not in uniform. He states that he was in his pyjamas and dressing-gown. Looking for the bathroom."
Tietjens said: "Ah!" and stood reflecting. He said:
"May I hear the . . . the purport of Major Perowne's statement?"
"He states," Levin said, "what I have just said. He was looking for the bathroom. He had not slept in the hotel before. He opened a door and looked round it, and was immediately thrown with great violence down into the passage with his head against the wall. He says that this dazed him so that, not really appreciating what had happened, he shouted various accusations against the person who had assaulted him. . . . General O'Hara then came out of his room. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"What accusations did Major Perowne shout?"
"He doesn't. . . ." Levin hesitated, "eh! . . . elaborate them in his statement."
Tietjens said:
"It is, I imagine, material that I should know what they are. . . ."
Levin said:
"I don't know that. . . . If you'll forgive me . . . Major Perowne came to see me, reaching me half an hour after General O'Hara. He was very . . . extremely nervous and concerned. I am bound to say . . . for Mrs. Tietjens. . . . And also very concerned to spare yourself! . . . It appears that he had shouted out just anything. . . . As it might be 'Thieves!' or 'Fire!' . . . But when General O'Hara came out he told him, being out of himself, that he had been invited to your wife's room, and that . . . Oh, excuse me. . . . I'm under great obligations to you . . . the very greatest . . . that you had attempted to blackmail him!"
Tietjens said:
"Well! . . ."
"You understand," Levin said, and he was pleading, "that is what he said to General O'Hara in the corridor. He even confessed it was madness. . . . He did not maintain the accusation to me. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Not that Mrs. Tietjens had given him leave? . . ."
Levin said with tears in his eyes:
"I'll not go on with this. . . . I will rather resign my commission than go on tormenting you. . . ."
"You can't resign your commission," Tietjens said.
"I can resign my appointment," Levin answered. He went on sniffling: "This beastly war! . . . This beastly war! . . ."
Tietjens said:
"If what is distressing you is having to tell me that you believe Major Perowne came with my wife's permission I know it's true. It's also true that my wife expected me to be there. She wanted some fun: not adultery. But I am also aware—as Major Thurston appears to have told General Campion—that Mrs. Tietjens was with Major Perowne. In France. At a place called Yssingueux-les-Pervenches. . . ."
"That wasn't the name," Levin blubbered. "It was Saint . . . Saint . . . Saint something. In the Cevennes. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Don't, there! . . . Don't distress yourself. . . ."
"But I'm . . ." Levin went on, "under great obligations to you. . . ."
"I'd better," Tietjens said, "finish this matter myself."
Levin said:
"It will break the general's heart. He believes so absolutely in Mrs. Tietjens. Who wouldn't? . . . How the devil could you guess what Major Thurston told him?"
"He's the sort of brown, trustworthy man who always does know that sort of thing," Tietjens answered. "As for the general's belief in Mrs. Tietjens, he's perfectly justified. . . . Only there will be no more parades. Sooner or later it has to come to that for us all. . . ." He added with a little bitterness: "Only not for you. Being a Turk or a Jew you are a simple, Oriental, monogamous, faithful soul. . . ." He added again: "I hope to goodness the sergeant-cook has the sense not to keep the men's dinners back for the general's inspection. . . . But of course he will not. . . ."
Levin said:
"What in the world would that matter?" fiercely. "He keeps men waiting as much as three hours. On parade."
"Of course," Tietjens said, "if that is what Major Perowne told General O'Hara it removes a good deal of my suspicions of the latter's sobriety. Try to get the position. General O'Hara positively burst in the little sneck of the door that I had put down and came in shouting: 'Where is the —— blackmailer?' And it was a full three minutes before I could get rid of him. I had had the presence of mind to switch off the light and he persisted in asking for another look at Mrs. Tietjens. You see, if you consider it, he is a very heavy sleeper. He is suddenly awakened after, no doubt, not a few pegs. He hears Major Perowne shouting about blackmail and thieves. . . . I dare say this town has its quota of blackmailers. O'Hara might well be anxious to catch one in the act. He hates me, anyhow, because of his Red Caps. I'm a shabby-looking chap he doesn't know much about. Perowne passes for being a millionaire. I dare say he is: he's said to be very stingy. That would be how he got hold of the idea of blackmail and hypnotised the general with it. . . ."