"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:

"Where _did_ your 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 Victorian _Correct 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. You _are_ a 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 I

_am_? 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 you _can_ joke 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 with

_us_. . . . 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 in _vino 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 you

_did_ say. . . . 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 what

_did_ happen 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. . . ."

He went on again:

"But I wasn't to know that. ... I had shut the door on Perowne and

didn't even know he was Perowne. I really thought he was the night

porter coming to call me to the telephone. I only saw a roaring satyr.

I mean that was what I thought O'Hara was. . . . And I assure you I kept

my head. . . . When he persisted in leaning against the doorpost and

asking for another look at Mrs. Tietjens, he kept on saying: 'The woman'

and 'The hussy.' Not 'Mrs. Tietjens.' . . . I thought then that there

was something queer. I said: 'This is my wife's room,' several times. He

said something to the effect of how could he know she was my wife,

and . . . that she had made eyes at himself in the lounge, so it might have

been himself as well as Perowne. . . . I dare say he had got it into his

head that I had imported some tart to blackmail someone. . . . But you

know. . . . I grew exhausted after a time. . . . I saw outside in the

corridor one of the little subalterns he has on his staff, and I said:

'If you do not take General O'Hara away I shall order you to put him

under arrest for drunkenness.' That seemed to drive the general crazy. I

had gone closer to him, being determined to push him out of the door,

and he decidedly smelt of whisky. Strongly. . . . But I dare say he was

thinking himself outraged, really. And perhaps also coming to his

senses. As there was nothing else for it I pushed him gently out of the

room. In going he shouted that I was to consider myself under arrest. I

so considered myself. . . . That is to say that, as soon as I had

settled certain details with Mrs. Tietjens, I walked up to the camp,

which I took to be my quarters, though I am actually under the M.O.'s

orders to reside in this hotel owing to the state of my lungs. I saw the

draft off, that not necessitating my giving any orders. I went to my

sleeping quarters, it being then about six-thirty, and towards seven

awakened McKechnie, whom I asked to take my adjutant's and battalion

parade and orderly-room. I had breakfast in my hut, and then went into

my private office to await developments. I think I have now told you

everything material. . . ."

CHAPTER II

General Lord Edward Campion, G.C.B., K.C. M.G., (military), D.S.O.,

etc., sat, radiating glory and composing a confidential memorandum to

the Secretary of State for War, on a bully-beef case, leaning forward

over a military blanket that covered a deal table. He was for the moment

in high good humour on the surface, though his subordinate minds were

puzzled and depressed. At the end of each sentence that he wrote--and he

wrote with increasing satisfaction!--a mind that he was not using said:

"What the devil am I going to do with that fellow?" Or: "How the devil

is that girl's name to be kept out of this mess?"

Having been asked to write a confidential memorandum for the information

of the home authorities as to what, in his opinion, was the cause of the

French railway strike, he had hit on the ingenious device of reporting

what was the opinion of the greater part of the forces under his

command. This was a dangerous line to take, for he might well come into

conflict with the home Government. But he was pretty certain that any

inquiries that the home Government could cause to be made amongst the

local civilian population would confirm what he was writing--which he

was careful to state was not to be taken as a communication of his own

opinion. In addition, he did not care what the Government did to him.

He was satisfied with his military career. In the early part of the war,

after materially helping mobilisation, he had served with great

distinction in the East, in command mostly of mounted infantry. He had

subsequently so distinguished himself in the organising and transporting

of troops coming and going overseas that, on the part of the lines of

communication where he now commanded becoming of great importance, he

knew that he had seemed the only general that could be given that

command. It had become of enormous importance--these were open

secrets!--because, owing to divided opinions in the Cabinet, it might at

any moment be decided to move the bulk of H.M. Forces to somewhere in

the East. The idea underlying this--as General Campion saw it--had at

least some relation to the necessities of the British Empire and

strategy embracing world politics as well as military movements--a fact

which is often forgotten--there was this much to be said for it: The

preponderance of British Imperial interests might be advanced as lying

in the Middle and Far Easts--to the east, that is to say, of

Constantinople. This might be denied, but it was a feasible proposition.

The present operations on the Western front, arduous, and even

creditable, as they might have been until relatively lately, were very

remote from our Far-Eastern possessions and mitigated from, rather than

added to, our prestige. In addition, the unfortunate display in front of

Constantinople in the beginning of the war had almost eliminated our

prestige with the Mohammedan races. Thus a demonstration in enormous

force in any region between European Turkey and the north-western

frontiers of India might point out to Mohammedans, Hindus, and other

Eastern races, what overwhelming forces Great Britain, were she so

minded, could put into the field. It is true that would mean the

certain loss of the war on the Western front, with corresponding loss of

prestige in the West. But the wiping out of the French republic would

convey little to the Eastern races, whereas we could no doubt make terms

with the enemy nations, as a price for abandoning our allies that might

well leave the Empire, not only intact, but actually increased in

colonial extent, since it was unlikely that the enemy empires would wish

to be burdened with colonies for some time.

General Campion was not overpoweringly sentimental over the idea of the

abandonment of our allies. They had won his respect as fighting

organisations and that, to the professional soldier, is a great deal;

but still he _was_ a professional soldier, and the prospect of widening

the bounds of the British Empire could not be contemptuously dismissed

at the price of rather sentimental dishonour. Such bargains had been

struck before during wars involving many nations, and doubtless such

bargains would be struck again. In addition, votes might be gained by

the Government from the small but relatively noisy and menacing part of

the British population that favoured the enemy nations.

But when it came to tactics--which it should be remembered concerns

itself with the movement of troops actually in contact with enemy

forces--General Campion had no doubt that plan was the conception

of the brain of a madman. The dishonour of such a proceeding must of

course be considered--and its impracticability was hopeless. The

dreadful nature of what would be our debacle did we attempt to evacuate

the Western front might well be unknown to, or might be deliberately

ignored by, the civilian mind. But the general could almost see the

horrors as a picture--and, professional soldier as he was, his mind

shuddered at the picture. They had by now in the country enormous bodies

of troops who had hitherto not come into contact with the enemy forces.

Did they attempt to withdraw these in the first place the native

population would at once turn from a friendly into a bitterly hostile

factor, and moving troops through hostile country is to the _n_th power

a more lengthy matter than moving them through territory where the

native populations lend a helping hand, or are at least not obstructive.

They had in addition this enormous force to ration, and they would

doubtless have to supply them with ammunition on the almost certain

breaking through of the enemy forces. It would be impossible to do this

without the use of the local railways--and the use of these would at

once be prohibited. If, on the other hand, they attempted to begin the

evacuation by shortening the front, the operation would be very

difficult with troops who, by now, were almost solely men trained only

in trench warfare, with officers totally unused to that keeping up of

communications between units which is the life and breath of a

retreating army. Training, in fact, in that element had been almost

abandoned in the training camps where instruction was almost limited to

bomb-throwing, the use of machine-guns, and other departments which had

been forced on the War Office by eloquent civilians--to the almost

complete neglect of the rifle. Thus at the mere hint of a retreat the

enemy forces must break through and come upon the vast, unorganised, or

semi-organised bodies of troops in the rear. . . .

The temptation for the professional soldier was to regard such a state

of things with equanimity. Generals have not infrequently enormously

distinguished themselves by holding up retreats from the rear when

vanguard commanders have disastrously failed. But General Campion

resisted the temptation of even hoping that this chance of

distinguishing himself might offer itself. He could not contemplate with

equanimity the slaughter of great bodies of men under his command, and

not even a successful retreating action of that description could be

carried out without horrible slaughter. And he would have little hope of

conducting necessarily delicate and very hurried movements with an army

that, except for its rough training in trench warfare, was practically

civilian in texture. So that although, naturally, he had made his plans

for such an eventuality, having indeed in his private quarters four

enormous paper-covered blackboards upon which he had changed daily the

names of units according as they passed from his hands or came into them

and became available, he prayed specifically every night before retiring

to bed that the task might not be cast upon his shoulders. He prized

very much his universal popularity in his command, and he could not bear

to think of how the eyes of the Army would regard him as he put upon

them a strain so appalling and such unbearable sufferings. He had,

moreover, put that aspect of the matter very strongly in a memorandum

that he had prepared in answer to a request from the home Government for

a scheme by which an evacuation might be effected. But he considered

that the civilian element in the Government was so entirely indifferent

to the sufferings of the men engaged in these operations, and was so

completely ignorant of what are military exigencies, that the words he

had devoted to that department of the subject were merely wasted. . . .

So everything pushed him into writing confidentially to the Secretary of

State for War a communication that he knew must be singularly

distasteful to a number of the gentlemen who would peruse it. He

chuckled indeed as he wrote, the open door behind him and the sunlight

pouring in on his radiant figure. He said:

"Sit down, Tietjens. Levin, I shall not want you for ten minutes,"

without raising his head, and went on writing. It annoyed him that, from

the corner of his eye, he could see that Tietjens was still standing,

and he said rather irritably: "Sit down, sit down. . . ."

He wrote:

"It is pretty generally held here by the native population that the

present very serious derangement of traffic, if not actively promoted,

is at least winked at by the Government of this country. It is, that is

to say, intended to give us a taste of what would happen if I took any

measures here for returning any large body of men to the home country or

elsewhere, and it is said also to be a demonstration in favour of a

single command--a measure which is here regarded by a great weight of

instructed opinion as indispensable to the speedy and successful

conclusion of hostilities. . . ."

The general paused over that sentence. It came very near the quick. For

himself he was absolutely in favour of a single command, and in his

opinion, too, it was indispensable to any sort of conclusion of

hostilities at all. The whole of military history, in so far as it

concerned allied operations of any sort--from the campaigns of Xerxes

and operations during the wars of the Greeks and Romans, to the

campaigns of Marlborough and Napoleon and the Prussian operations of

1866 and 1870--pointed to the conclusion that a relatively small force

acting homogeneously was, to the _n_th power again, more effective than

vastly superior forces of allies acting only imperfectly in accord or

not in accord at all. Modern developments in arms had made no shade at

all of difference to strategy and had made differences merely of time

and numbers to tactics. To-day, as in the days of the Greek Wars of the

Allies, success depended on apt timing of the arrival of forces at given

points, and it made no difference whether your lethal weapons acted from

a distance of thirty miles or were held and operated by hand; whether

you dealt death from above or below the surface of the ground, through

the air by dropped missiles or by mephitic and torturing vapours. What

won combats, campaigns, and, in the end, wars, was the brain which timed

the arrival of forces at given points--and that must be one brain which

could command their presence at these points, not a half-dozen

authorities requesting each other to perform operations which might or

might not fall in with the ideas or the prejudices of any one or other

of the half-dozen. . . .

Levin came in noiselessly, slid a memorandum slip on to the blanket

beside the paper on which the general was writing. The general read: _T.

agrees completely, sir, with your diagnosis of the facts, except that he

is much more ready to accept General O'H.'s acts as reasonable. He

places himself entirely in your hands_.

The general heaved an immense sigh of relief. The sunlight streaming in

became very bright. He had had a real sinking at the heart when Tietjens

had boggled for a second over putting on his belt. An officer may not

demand or insist on a court martial. But he, Campion, could not in

decency have refused Tietjens his court martial if he stood out for it.

He had a right to clear his character publicly. It would have been

impossible to refuse him. Then the fat would have been in the fire. For,

knowing O'Hara through pretty nearly twenty-five years--or it must be

thirty!--of service Campion was pretty certain that O'Hara had made a

drunken beast of himself. Yet he was very attached to O'Hara--one of the

old type of rough-diamond generals who swore your head off, but were

damn capable men! . . . It was a tremendous relief.

He said sharply:

"Sit down, can't you, Tietjens! You irritate me by standing there!" He

said to himself: "An obstinate fellow. . . . Why, he's gone!" and his

mind and eyes being occupied by the sentence he had last written, the

sense of irritation remained with him. He re-read the closing clause:

". . . a single command--a measure which is here regarded by a great weight

of instructed opinion as indispensable to the speedy and successful

termination of hostilities. . . ."

He looked at this, whistling beneath his breath. It was pretty thick. He

was not asked for his opinion as to the single command: yet he decidedly

wanted to get in and was pretty well prepared to stand the consequences.

The consequences might be something pretty bad: he might be sent home.

That was quite possible. That, even, was better than what was happening

to poor Puffles, who was being starved of men. He had been at Sandhurst

with Puffles, and they had got their commissions on the same day to the

same regiment. A damn good soldier, but too hot-tempered. He was making

an extraordinarily good thing of it in spite of his shortage of men,

which was the talk of the army. But it must be damn agonizing for him,

and a very improper strain on his men. One day--as soon as the weather

broke--the enemy _must_ break through. Then he, Puffles, would be sent

home. That was what the fellows at Westminster and in Downing Street

wanted. Puffles had been a great deal too free with his tongue. They

would not send him home before he had a disaster because, unless he were

in disgrace, he would be a thorn in their sides: whereas if he were

disgraced no one much would listen to him. It was smart practice. . . .

_Sharp_ practice!

He tossed the sheet on which he had been writing across the table and

said to Tietjens:

"Look at that, will you?" In the centre of the hut Tietjens was sitting

bulkily on a bully-beef case that had been brought in ceremoniously by a

runner. "He _does_ look beastly shabby," the general said. "There are

three . . . four grease stains on his tunic. He ought to get his hair

cut!" He added: "It's a perfectly damnable business. No one but this

fellow would have got into it. He's a firebrand. That's what he is. A

regular firebrand!"

Tietjens' troubles had really shaken the general not a little. He was

left up in the air. He had lived the greater part of his life with his

sister, Lady Claudine Sandbach, and the greater part of the remainder of

his life at Groby, at any rate after he came home from India and during

the reign of Tietjens' father. He had idolized Tietjens' mother, who was

a saint! What indeed there had been of the idyllic in his life had

really all passed at Groby, if he came to think of it. India was not so

bad, but one had to be young to enjoy that. . . .

Indeed, only the day before yesterday he had been thinking that if this

letter that he was thinking out did result in his being sent back, he

should propose to stand for the half of the Cleveland Parliamentary

Division in which Groby stood. What with the Groby influence and his

nephew's in the country districts, though Castlemaine had not much land

left up there, and with Sandbach's interest in the ironworking

districts, he would have an admirable chance of getting in. Then he

would make himself a thorn in the side of certain persons.

He had thought of quartering himself on Groby. It would have been easy

to get Tietjens out of the army and they could all--he, Tietjens and

Sylvia--live together. It would have been his ideal of a home and of an

occupation. . . .

For, of course, he was getting old for soldiering: unless he got a

fighting army there was not much more to it as a career for a man of

sixty. If he _did_ get an army he was pretty certain of a peerage and

hefty political work could still be done in the Lords. He would have a

good claim on India and that meant dying a Field-Marshal.

On the other hand, the only command that was at all likely to be

going--except for deaths, and the health rate amongst army commanders

was pretty high!--was poor Puffles'. And that would be no pleasant

command--with the men all hammered to pieces. He decided to put the

whole thing to Tietjens. Tietjens, like a meal-sack, was looking at him

over the draft of the letter that he had just finished reading. The

general said:

"Well?"

Tietjens said:

"It's splendid, sir, to see you putting the matter so strongly. It must

be put strongly, or we're lost."

The general said:

"You think that?"

Tietjens said:

"I'm sure of it, sir. . . . But unless you are prepared to throw up your

command and take to politics. . . ."

The general exclaimed:

"You're a most extraordinary fellow. . . . That was exactly what I was

thinking about: this very minute."

"It's not so extraordinary," Tietjens said. "A really active general

thinking as you do is very badly needed in the House. As your

brother-in-law is to have a peerage whenever he asks for it, West

Cleveland will be vacant at any moment, and with his influence and Lord

Castlemaine's--your nephew's not got much land, but the name is

immensely respected in the country districts. . . . And, of course,

using Groby for your headquarters. . . ."

The general said:

"That's pretty well botched, isn't it?"

Tietjens said without moving a muscle:

"Why, no, sir. Sylvia is to have Groby and you would naturally make it

your headquarters. . . . You've still got your hunters there. . . ."

The general said:

"Sylvia is really to have Groby. . . . Good God!"

Tietjens said:

"So it was no great conjuring trick, sir, to see that you might not

mind. . . ."

The general said:

"Upon my soul, I'd as soon give up my chance of heaven . . . no, not

heaven, but India, as give up Groby."

"You've got," Tietjens said, "an admirable chance of India. . . . The

point is: which way? If they give you the sixteenth section. . . ."

"I hate," the general said, "to think of waiting for poor Puffles'

shoes. I was at Sandhurst with him. . . ."

"It's a question, sir," Tietjens said, "of which is the best way. For

the country and yourself. I suppose if one were a general one would like

to have commanded an army on the Western front. . . ."

The general said:

"I don't know. . . . It's the logical end of a career. . . . But I don't

feel that my career is ending. . . . I'm as sound as a roach. And in ten

years' time what difference will it make?"

"One would like," Tietjens said, "to see you doing it. . . ."

The general said:

"No one will know whether I commanded a fighting army or this damned

Whiteley's outfitting store. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I know that, sir. . . . But the sixteenth section will desperately need

a good man if General Perry is sent home. And particularly a general who

has the confidence of all ranks. . . . It will be a wonderful position.

You will have every man that's now on the Western front at your back

after the war. It's a certain peerage. . . . It's certainly a sounder

proposition than that of a free-lance--which is what you'd be--in the

House of Commons."

The general said:

"Then what am I to do with my letter? It's a damn good letter. I don't

like wasting letters."

Tietjens said:

"You want it to show through that you back the single command for all

you are worth, yet you don't want them to put their finger on your

definitely saying so yourself?"

The general said:

". . . That's it. That's just what I do want. . . ." He added: "I

suppose you take my view of the whole matter. The Government's pretence

of evacuating the Western front in favour of the Middle East is probably

only a put-up job to frighten our Allies into giving up the single

command. Just as this railway strike is a counterdemonstration by way of

showing what would happen to us if we did begin to evacuate. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"It looks like that. . . . I'm not, of course, in the confidence of the

Cabinet. I'm not even in contact with them as I used to be. . . . But I

should put it that the section of the Cabinet that is in favour of the

Eastern expedition is very small. It's said to be a one-man party--with

hangers-on--but arguing him out of it has caused all this delay. That's

how I see it."

The general exclaimed:

"But, good God! . . . How is such a thing possible? That man must walk

along his corridors with the blood of a million--I mean it, of a

million--men round his head. He could not stand up under it. . . . That

fellow is prolonging the war indefinitely by delaying us now. And men

being killed all the time! . . . I can't. . . ." He stood up and paced,

stamping up and down the hut. . . . "At Bonderstrom," he said, "I had

half a company wiped out under me. . . . By my own fault, I admit. I had

wrong information . . ." He stopped and said: "Good God! . . . Good

God! . . . I can see it now. . . . And it's unbearable! After eighteen

years. I was a brigadier then. It was your own regiment--the

Glamorganshires. . . . They were crowded into a little nullah and shelled

to extinction. . . . I could see it going on and we could not get on to the

Boer guns with ours to stop 'em. . . . That's hell," he said, "that's the

real hell. . . . I never inspected the Glamorganshires after that for the

whole war. I could not bear the thought of facing their eyes. . . .

Buller was the same. . . . Buller was worse than I. . . . He never held

up his head again after. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"If you would not mind, sir, not going on . . ."

The general stamped to a halt in his stride. He said:

"Eh? . . . What's that? What's the matter with you?"

Tietjens said:

"I had a man killed on me last night. In this very hut; where I'm

sitting is the exact spot. It makes me . . . It's a sort of . . .

Complex, they call it now. . . ."

The general exclaimed:

"Good God! I beg your pardon, my dear boy. . . . I ought not to have . . .

I have never behaved like that before another soul in the world. . . .

Not to Buller. . . . Not to Gatacre, and they were my closest

friends. . . . Even after Spion Kop I never. . . ." He broke off and said:

"But those old memories won't interest you. . . ." He said: "I've such an

absolute belief in your trustworthiness. I _know_ you won't betray what

you've seen. . . . What I've just said. . . ." He paused and tried to adopt

the air of the listening magpie. He said: "I was called Butcher Campion in

South Africa, just as Gatacre was called Backacher. I don't want to be

called anything else because I've made an ass of myself before you. . . .

No, damn it all, not an ass. I was immensely attached to your sainted

mother. . . ." He said: "It's the proudest tribute any commander of men

can have. . . . To be called Butcher and have your men follow you in

spite of it. It shows confidence, and it gives you, as commander,

confidence! . . . One has to be prepared to lose men in hundreds at the

right minute in order to avoid losing them in tens of thousands at the

wrong! . . ." He said: "Successful military operations consist not in

taking or retaining positions, but in taking or retaining them with a

minimum sacrifice of effectives. . . . I wish to God you civilians would

get that into your heads. The men have it. They know that I will use

them ruthlessly--but that I will not waste one life. . . ." He

exclaimed: "Damn it, if I had ever thought I should have such troubles,

in your father's days . . .!" He said: "Let's get back to what we were

talking about . . . My memorandum to the secretary. . . ." He burst out:

"My God! . . . _What_ can that fellow think when he reads Shakespeare's

_When all those heads, legs, arms, joined together on the Last Day

shall_ . . . How does it run? Henry V's address to his soldiers . . .

_Every subject's body is the king's_ . . . _but every subject's soul is

his own_. . . . _And there is no king, be his cause ever so

just_. . . . My God! My God! . . . _as can try it out with all unspotted

soldiers_. . . . Have you ever thought of that?"

Alarm overcame Tietjens. The general was certainly in disorder. But over

what? There was not time to think. Campion was certainly dreadfully

overworked. . . . He exclaimed:

"Sir, hadn't you better! . . ." He said: "If we could get back to your

memorandum . . . I am quite prepared to write a report to the effect of

your sentence as to the French civilian population's attitude. That

would throw the onus on me. . . ."

The general said agitatedly:

"No! No! . . . You've got quite enough on your back as it is. Your

confidential report states that you are suspected of having too great

common interests with the French. That's what makes the whole position

so impossible. . . . I'll get Thurston to write something. He's a good

man, Thurston. Reliable. . . ." Tietjens shuddered a little. The general

went on astonishingly:

"'But at my back I always hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near:

And yonder all before me lie

Deserts of vast eternity!' . . .

That's a general's life in this accursed war. . . . You think all

generals are illiterate fools. But I have spent a great deal of time in

reading, though I never read anything written later than the seventeenth

century."

Tietjens said:

"I know, sir. . . . You made me read Clarendon's _History of the Great

Rebellion_ when I was twelve."

The general said:

"In case we . . . I shouldn't like . . . In short . . ." He swallowed:

it was singular to see him swallow. He was lamentably thin when you

looked at the man and not the uniform.

Tietjens thought:

"What's he nervous about? He's been nervous all the morning."

The general said:

"I am trying to say--it's not much in my line--that in case we never met

again, I do not wish you to think me an ignoramus."

Tietjens thought:

"He's not ill . . . and he can't think me so ill that I'm likely to

die. . . . A fellow like that doesn't really know how to express himself.

He's trying to be kind and he doesn't know how to. . . ."

The general had paused. He began to say:

"But there are finer things in Marvell than that. . . ."

Tietjens thought:

"He's trying to gain time. . . . Why on earth should he? . . . What is

this all about?" His mind slipped a notch. The general was looking at

his finger-nails on the blanket. He said:

"There's, for instance:

"'_The graves a fine and secret place

But none I think do there embrace_. . . .'"

At those words it came to Tietjens suddenly to think of Sylvia, with the

merest film of clothing on her long, shining limbs. . . . She was

working a powder-puff under her armpits in a brilliant illumination from

two electric lights, one on each side of her dressing-table. She was

looking at him in the glass with the corners of her lips just moving. A

little curled. . . . He said to himself:

"One is going to that fine and secret place. . . . Why not have?" She

had emanated a perfume founded on sandalwood. As she worked her

swansdown powder-puff over those intimate regions he could hear her

humming. Maliciously! It was then that he had observed the handle of

the door moving minutely. She had incredible arms, stretched out amongst

a wilderness of besilvered cosmetics. Extraordinarily lascivious! Yet

clean! Her gilded sheath gown was about her hips on the chair. . . .

Well! She had pulled the strings of one too many shower-baths!

Shining; radiating glory but still shrivelled so that he reminded

Tietjens of an old apple inside a damascened helmet; the general had

seated himself once more on the bully-beef case before the blanketed

table. He fingered his very large, golden fountain-pen. He said:

"Captain Tietjens, I should be glad of your careful attention!"

Tietjens said:

"Sir!" His heart stopped.

The general said that afternoon Tietjens would receive a movement

order. He said stiffly that he must not regard this new movement order

as a disgrace. It was promotion. He, Major-General Campion, was

requesting the colonel commanding the depot to inscribe the highest

possible testimonial in his, Tietjens', small-book. He, Tietjens, had

exhibited the most extraordinary talent for finding solutions for

difficult problems.--The colonel was to write that!--In addition he,

General Campion, was requesting his friend, General Perry, commanding

the sixteenth section . . .

Tietjens thought:

"Good God. I am being sent up the line. He's sending me to Perry's

Army. . . . That's certain death!"

. . . To give Tietjens the appointment of second in command of the VIth

Battalion of his regiment!

Tietjens said, but he did not know where the words came from:

"Colonel Partridge will not like that. He's praying for McKechnie to

come back!"

To himself he said:

"I shall fight this monstrous treatment of myself to my last breath."

The general suddenly called out:

"There you are. . . . There is another of your infernal worries. . . ."

He put a strong check on himself, and, dryly, like the very great

speaking to the very unimportant, asked:

"What's your medical category?"

Tietjens said:

"Permanent base, sir. My chest's rotten!"

The general said:

"I should forget that, if I were you. . . . The second in command of a

battalion has nothing to do but sit about in arm-chairs waiting for the

colonel to be killed." He added: "It's the best I can do for you. . . .

I've thought it out very carefully. It's the best I can do for you."

Tietjens said:

"I shall, of course, forget my category, sir. . . ."

Of course he would never fight any treatment of himself! . . .

There it was then: the natural catastrophe! As when, under thunder, a

dam breaks. His mind was battling with the waters. What would it pick

out as the main terror? The mud: the noise: dread always at the back of

the mind? Or the worry! The worry! Your eyebrows always had a slight

tension on them. . . . Like eye-strain!

The general had begun, soberly:

"You will recognize that there is nothing else that I can do."

His answering:

"I recognize, naturally, sir, that there is nothing else that you can

do . . ." seemed rather to irritate the general. He wanted opposition: he

_wanted_ Tietjens to argue the matter. He was the Roman father counselling

suicide to his son: but he wanted Tietjens to expostulate. So that he,

General Campion, might absolutely prove that he, Tietjens, was a

disgraceful individual. . . . It could not be done. Tietjens was not

going to give him the opportunity. The general said:

"You will understand that I can't--no commander could!--have such things

happening in my command. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I must accept that, if you say it, sir."

The general looked at him under his eyebrows. He said:

"I have already told you that this is promotion. I have been much

impressed by the way you have handled this command. You are, of course,

no soldier, but you will make an admirable officer for the militia, that

is all that our troops now are. . . ." He said: "I will emphasize what I

am saying. . . . No officer could--without being militarily in the

wrong--have a private life that is as incomprehensible and embarrassing

as yours. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"He's hit it! . . ."

The general said:

"An officer's private life and his life on parade are as strategy to

tactics. . . . I don't want, if I can avoid it, to go into your private

affairs. It's extremely embarrassing. . . . But let me put it to you

that . . . I wish to be delicate. But you are a man of the world! . . .

Your wife is an extremely beautiful woman. . . . There has been a

scandal . . . I admit not of your making. . . . But if, on the top of

that, I appeared to show favouritism to you . . ."

Tietjens said:

"You need not go on, sir. . . . I understand. . . ." He tried to

remember what the brooding and odious McKechnie had said . . . only two

nights ago. . . . He couldn't remember. . . . It was certainly a

suggestion that Sylvia was the general's mistress. It had then, he

remembered, seemed fantastic. . . . Well, what else _could_ they think? He

said to himself: "It absolutely blocks out my staying here!" He said

aloud: "Of course, it's my own fault. If a man so handles his womenfolk

that they get out of hand, he has only himself to blame."

The general was going on. He pointed out that one of his predecessors

had lost that very command on account of scandals about women. He had

turned the place into a damned harem! . . .

He burst out, looking at Tietjens with a peculiar goggle-eyed

intentness:

"If you think I'd care about losing my command over Sylvia or any other

damned Society woman. . . ." He said: "I beg your pardon . . ." and

continued reasoningly:

"It's the men that have to be considered. They think--and they've every

right to think it if they wish to--that a man who's a wrong 'un over

women isn't the man they can trust their lives in the hands of. . . ."

He added: "And they're probably right. . . . A man who's a real wrong

'un. . . . I don't mean who sets up a gal in a tea-shop. . . . But one

who sells his wife, or . . . At any rate, in _our_ army. . . . The French

may be different! . . . Well, a man like that usually has a yellow

streak when it comes to fighting. . . . Mind, I'm not saying always. . . .

Usually. . . . There was a fellow called . . ."

He went off into an anecdote. . . .

Tietjens recognized the pathos of his trying to get away from the

agonizing present moment, back to an India where it was all real

soldiering and good leather and parades that had been parades. But he

did not feel called upon to follow. He could not follow. He was going up

the line. . . .

He occupied himself with his mind. What was it going to do? He cast back

along his military history: what had his mind done in similar moments

before? . . . But there had never been a similar moment! There had been

the sinister or repulsive-businesses of going up, getting over, standing

to--even of the casualty clearing-station! . . . But he had always been

physically keener, he had never been so depressed or overwhelmed.

He said to the general:

"I recognise that I cannot stop in this command. I regret it, for I have

enjoyed having this unit. . . . But does it necessarily mean the VIth

Battalion?"

He wondered what was his own motive at the moment. Why had he asked the

general that! . . . The thing presented itself as pictures: getting down

bulkily from a high French train, at dawn. The light picked out for you

the white of large hunks of bread--half-loaves--being handed out to

troops themselves duskily invisible. . . . The ovals of light on the

hats of English troops: they were mostly West Countrymen. They did not

seem to want the bread much. . . . A long ridge of light above a wooded

bank: then suddenly, pervasively: a sound! . . . For all the world as,

sheltering from rain in a cottager's washhouse on the moors, you hear

the cottager's clothes boiling in a copper . . . Bubble . . . bubble . . .

bubbubbub . . . bubble . . . Not terribly loud--but terribly

demanding attention! . . . The Great Strafe! . . .

The general had said:

"If I could think of anything else to do with you, I'd do it. . . . But

all the extraordinary rows you've got into. . . . They block me

everywhere. . . . Do you realize that I have requested General O'Hara to

suspend his functions until now? . . ."

It was amazing to Tietjens how the general mistrusted his

subordinates--as well as how he trusted them! . . . It was probably that

that made him so successful an officer. Be worked for by men that you

trust: but distrust them all the time--along certain lines of frailty:

liquor,' women, money! . . . Well, he had long knowledge of men!

He said:

"I admit, sir, that I misjudged General O'Hara. I have said as much to

Colonel Levin and explained why."

The general said with a gloating irony:

"A damn pretty pass to come to. . . . You put a general officer under

arrest. . . . Then you say you had misjudged him! . . . I am not saying

you were not performing a duty. . . ." He went on to recount the

classical case of a subaltern, cited in King's Regulations, temp.

William IV, who was court-martialled and broken for not putting under

arrest his colonel who came drunk on to parade. ... He was exhibiting

his sensuous delight in misplaced erudition.

Tietjens heard himself say with great slowness:

"I absolutely deny, sir, that I put General O'Hara under arrest! I have

gone into the matter very minutely with Colonel Levin."

The general burst out:

"By God! I had taken that woman to be a saint. . . . I swear she is a

saint. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"There is no accusation against Mrs. Tietjens, sir!"

The general said:

"By God, there is!"

Tietjens said:

"I am prepared to take all the blame, sir."

The general said:

"You shan't. . . . I am determined to get to the bottom of all this. . . .

You have treated your wife damn badly. . . . You admit to that. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"With great want of consideration, sir. . . ."

The general said:

"You have been living practically on terms of separation from her for a

number of years? You don't deny that was on account of your own

misbehaviour. For how many years?"

Tietjens said:

"I don't know, sir. . . . Six or seven!"

The general said sharply:

"Think, then. . . . It began when you admitted to me that you had been

sold up because you kept a girl in a tobacco-shop? That was at Rye in

1912. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"We have not been on terms since 1912, sir."

The general said:

"But why? . . . She's a most beautiful woman. She's adorable. What could

you want better? . . . She's the mother of your child. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Is it necessary to go into all this, sir? . . . Our differences were

caused by . . . by differences of temperament. She, as you say, is a

beautiful and reckless woman. . . . Reckless in an admirable way. I, on

the other hand . . ."

The general exclaimed:

"Yes! that's just it. . . . What the hell are you? . . . You're not a

soldier. You've got the makings of a damn good soldier. You amaze me at

times. Yet you're a disaster; you are a disaster to every one who has to

do with you. You are as conceited as a hog; you are as obstinate as a

bullock. . . . You drive me mad. . . . And you have ruined the life of

that beautiful woman. . . . For I maintain she once had the disposition

of a saint. . . . Now: I'm waiting for your explanation!"

Tietjens said:

"In civilian life, sir, I was a statistician. Second secretary to the

Department of Statistics. . . ."

The general exclaimed convictingly:

"And they've thrown you out of that! Because of the mysterious rows you

made. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Because, sir, I was in favour of the single command. . . ."

The general began a long wrangle: "But why were you? What the hell had

it got to do with you?" Couldn't Tietjens have given the Department the

statistics they wanted--even if it meant faking them? What was

discipline for if subordinates were to act on their consciences? The home

Government had wanted statistics faked in order to dish the Allies. . . .

Well . . . Was Tietjens French or English? Every damn thing

Tietjens did . . . Every _damn_ thing, made it more impossible to do

anything for him! With his attainments he ought to be attached to the

staff of the French Commander-in-Chief. But that was forbidden in his,

Tietjens', confidential report. There was an underlined note in it to

that effect Where else, then, in Heaven's name, could Tietjens be sent

to? He looked at Tietjens with intent blue eyes:

"Where else, in God's name . . . I am not using the Almighty's name

blasphemously . . . _can_ you be sent to? I _know_ it's probably death

to send you up the line--in your condition of health. And to poor

Perry's Army. The Germans will be through it the minute the weather

breaks."

He began again: "You understand: I'm not the War Office. I can't send

any officer anywhere. I can't send you to Malta or India. Or to other

commands in France. I can send you home--in disgrace. I can send you to

your own battalion. On promotion! . . . Do you understand my

situation? . . . I have no alternative."

Tietjens said:

"Not altogether, sir."

The general swallowed and wavered from side to side. He said:

"For God's sake, try to. . . . I am genuinely concerned for you. I

won't--I'm damned if I will!--let it appear that you're disgraced. . . .

If you were McKechnie himself I wouldn't! The only really good jobs I've

got to give away are on my own staff. I can't have you there. Because of

the men. At the same time . . ."

He paused and said with a ponderous shyness:

"I believe there's a God. . . . I believe that, though wrong may

flourish, right will triumph in the end! . . . If a man is innocent, his

innocence will one day appear. . . . In a humble way I want to . . .

help Providence. . . . I want some one to be able one day to say:

'_General Campion, who knew the ins and outs of the affair_ . . .'

promoted you! In the middle of it. . . ." He said: "It isn't much. But

it's not nepotism. I would do as much for any man in your position."

Tietjens said:

"It's at least the act of a Christian gentleman!"

A certain lack-lustre joy appeared in the general's eyes. He said:

"I'm not used to this sort of situation. . . . I hope I've always tried

to help my junior officers. . . . But a case like this. . . ." He said:

"Damn it. . . . The general commanding the 9th French Army is an

intimate friend of mine. . . . But in face of your confidential

report--I _can't_ ask him to ask for you. That's blocked!"

Tietjens said:

"I do not propose, sir, at any rate in your eyes, to pass as putting the

interests of any power before those of my own country. If you examine my

confidential report you will find that the unfavourable insertions are

initialled _G. D._ . . . They are the initials of a Major Drake. . . ."

The general said bewilderingly:

"Drake . . . Drake . . . I've heard the name."

Tietjens said:

"It doesn't matter, sir. . . . Major Drake's a gentleman who doesn't

like me. . . ."

The general said:

"There are so many. You don't try to make yourself popular, I must say!"

Tietjens said to himself:

"The old fellow feels it! . . . But he can hardly expect me to tell him

that Sylvia thinks Drake was the father of my own son, and desires my

ruin!" But of course the old man _would_ feel it. He, Tietjens, and his

wife Sylvia, were as near a son and daughter as the old man had. The

obvious answer to make to the old man's query as to where he, Tietjens,

ought to be sent was to remind him that his brother Mark had had an

order put through to the effect that Tietjens was to be put in command

of divisional transport. . . . _Could_ he remind the old man of that? Was

it a thing one could do?

Yet the idea of commanding divisional transport was like a vision of

Paradise to Tietjens. For two reasons: it was relatively safe, being

concerned with a lot of horses . . . and the knowledge that he had that

employment would put Valentine Wannop's mind at rest.

Paradise! . . . But _could_ one wangle out of a hard into a soft job?

Some other poor devil very likely wanted it. On the other hand--think

of Valentine Wannop! He imagined her torture of mind, wandering about

London, thinking of him in the very worst spot of a doomed army. She

would get to hear of that. Sylvia would tell her! He would bet Sylvia

would ring her up and tell her. Imagine, then, writing to Mark to say

that he was with the transport! Mark would pass it on to the girl within

half a minute. Why . . . he, Tietjens, would wire. He imagined himself

scribbling the wire while the general talked and giving it to an orderly

the moment the talk was over. . . . But _could_ he put the idea into the

old man's head? _Is_ it done? . . . Would, say . . . say, an Anglican

saint do it?

And then . . . Was he up to the job? What about the accursed obsession

of O Nine Morgan that intermittently jumped on him? All the while he had

been riding Schomburg the day before, O Nine Morgan had seemed to be

just before the coffin-headed brute's off-shoulder. The animal must

fall! . . . He had had the passionate impulse to pull up the horse. And

all the time a dreadful depression! A weight! In the hotel last night he

had nearly fainted over the thought that Morgan might have been the man

whose life he had spared at Noircourt. . . . It was getting to be a

serious matter! It might mean that there was a crack in his, Tietjens',

brain. A lesion! If that was to go on . . . O Nine Morgan, dirty as he

always was, and with the mystified eyes of the subject races on his

face, rising up before his horse's off-shoulder! But alive, not with

half his head cut away. . . . If that was to go on he would not be fit

to deal with transport, which meant a great deal of riding.

But he would chance that. . . . Besides, some damn fool of a literary

civilian had been writing passionate letters to the papers insisting

that all horses and mules must be abolished in the army. . . . Because

of their pestilence-spreading dung! ... It might be decreed by A.C.I.

that no more horses were to be used! . . . Imagine taking battalion

supplies down by night with motor lorries, which was what that genius

desired to see done! . . .

He remembered once or twice--it must have been in September, '16--having

had the job of taking battalion transport down from Locre to B.H.Q.,

which were in the château of Kemmell village. . . . You muffled every

bit of metal you could think of: bits, trace-chains, axles . . . and

_yet_, whilst you hardly breathed, in the thick darkness some damn thing

would always chink and jolt: beef tins made a noise of old iron. . . .

And _bang_, after the long whine, would come the German shell,

registered exactly on to the corner of the road where it went down by

the shoulder of the hill: where the placards were ordering you not to go

more than two men together. . . . Imagine doing it with lorries, that

could be heard five miles away! . . . The battalion would go pretty

short of rations! . . . The same anti-chevaline genius had emitted the

sentiment that he had rather the Allies lost the war than that cavalry

should distinguish themselves in any engagement! . . . A wonderful

passion for the extermination of dung . . .! Or perhaps this hatred of

the horse was social. . . . Because the cavalry wear long moustaches

dripping with Macassar oil and breakfast off caviare, chocolate and

Pommery Greno they must be abolished! . . . Something like that. . . .

He exclaimed: "By God! How my mind wanders! How long will it go on?" He

said: "I am at the end of my tether." He had missed what the general had

said for some time.

The general said:

"Well. Has he?"

Tietjens said:

"I didn't catch, sir!"

"Are you deaf?" the general asked. "I'm sure I speak plain enough.

You've just said there are no horses attached to this camp. I asked you

if there is not a horse for the colonel commanding the depot. . . . A

German horse, I understand!"

Tietjens said to himself:

"Great heavens! I've been talking to him. What in the world about?" It

was as if his mind were falling off a hillside. He said:

"Yes, sir . . . Schomburg. But as that's a German prisoner, captured on

the Marne, it is not on our strength. It is the private property of the

colonel. I ride it myself. . . ."

The general exclaimed dryly:

"You _would_. . . ." He added more dryly still: "Are you aware that

there is a hell of a strafe put in against you by a R.A.S.C.

second-lieutenant called Hotchkiss? . . ."

Tietjens said quickly:

"If it's over Schomburg, sir . . . it's a washout. Lieutenant Hotchkiss

has no more right to give orders about him than as to where I shall

sleep. . . . And I would rather die than subject any horse for which I

am responsible to the damnable torture Hotchkiss and that swine Lord

Beichan want to inflict on service horses. . . ."

The general said maleficently:

"It looks as if you damn well will die on that account!"

He added: "You're perfectly right to object to wrong treatment of

horses. But in this case your objection blocks the only other job open

to you." He quietened himself a little. "You are probably not aware," he

went on, "that your brother Mark . . ."

Tietjens said:

"Yes, I am aware . . ."

The general said: "Do you know that the 19th Division to which your

brother wants you sent is attached to Fourth Army now--and it's Fourth

Army horses that Hotchkiss is to play with? . . . How could I send you

there to be under his orders?"

Tietjens said:

"That's perfectly correct, sir. There is nothing else that you can

do. . . ." He was finished. There was now nothing left but to find out how

his mind was going to take it. He wished they could go to his cook-houses!

The general said:

"What was I saying? . . . I'm dreadfully tired. . . . No one could stand

this. . . ." He drew from inside his tunic a lapis-lazuli coloured,

small be-coroneted note-case and selected from it a folded paper that he

first looked at and then slipped between his belt and his tunic. He

said: "On top of all the responsibility I have to bear!" He asked: "Has

it occurred to you that, if I'm of any service to the country, your

taking up my energy--_sapping_ my energy over your affairs!--is aiding

your country's enemies? . . . I can only afford four hours' sleep as it

is. . . . I've got some questions to ask you. . . ." He referred to the

slip of paper from his belt, folded it again and again slipped it into

his belt.

Tietjens' mind missed a notch again. . . . It _was_ the fear of the mud

that was going to obsess him. Yet, curiously, he had never been under

heavy fire in mud. . . . You would think that would not have

obsessed him. But in his ear he had just heard uttered in a whisper of

intense weariness, the words: _Es ist nicht zu ertragen; es ist das dasz

uns verloren hat_ . . . words in German, of utter despair, meaning: It

is unbearable: it is that has ruined us. . . . The mud! . . . He

had heard those words, standing amidst volcano craters of mud, amongst

ravines, monstrosities of slime, cliffs and distances, all of slime. . . .

He had been going, for curiosity or instruction, from Verdun where he

had been attached to the French--on a holiday afternoon when nothing was

doing, with a guide, to visit one of the outlying forts. . . .

Deaumont? . . . No, Douaumont. . . . Taken from the enemy about a week

before. . . . When would that be? He had lost all sense of

chronology. . . . In November. . . . A beginning of some November. . . .

With a miracle of sunshine: not a cloud: the mud towering up shut you in

intimately with a sky that ached for limpidity. . . . And the slime had

moved . . . following a French bombardier who was strolling along eating

nuts, disreputably, his shoulders rolling. . . . _Déserteurs_. . . . The

moving slime was German deserters. . . . You could not see them: the

leader of them--an officer!--had his glasses so thick with mud that you

could not see the colour of his eyes, and his half-dozen decorations were

like the beginnings of swallows' nests, his beard like stalactites. . . .

Of the other men you could only see the eyes--extraordinarily

vivid: mostly blue like the sky! . . . Deserters! Led by an officer! Of

the Hamburg Regiment! As if an officer of the Buffs had gone over! . . .

It was incredible. . . . And that was what the officer had said as he

passed: not shamefacedly, but without any humanity left in him . . .

_Done_! . . . Those moving saurians compacted of slime kept on passing

him afterwards, all the afternoon. . . . And he could not help picturing

their immediate antecedents for two months. . . . In advanced

pill-boxes. . . . No, they didn't have pill-boxes then. . . . In

advanced pockets of mud, in dreadful solitude amongst those ravines. . . .

suspended in eternity, at the last day of the world. And it had

horribly shocked him to hear again the German language a rather soft

voice, a little suety. . . . Like an obscene whisper. . . . The voice

obviously of the damned: hell could hold nothing curious for those poor

beasts. . . . His French guide had said sardonically: _On dirait

l'Inferno de Dante_! . . . Well, those Germans were getting back on him.

They were now to become an obsession! A complex, they said nowadays. . . .

The general said coolly:

"I presume you refuse to answer?"

That shook him cruelly.

He said desperately:

"I had to end what I took to be an unbearable position for both parties.

In the interests of my son!" Why in the world had he said that? . . . He

was going to be sick. It came back to him that the general had been

talking of his separation from Sylvia. Last night that had happened. He

said: "I may have been right: I may have been wrong. . . ."

The general said icily:

"If you don't choose to go into it. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I would prefer not to. . . ."

The general said:

"There is no end to this. . . . But there are questions it's my duty to

ask. . . . If you do not wish to go into your marital relations, I

cannot force you. . . . But, damn it, are you sane? Are you responsible?

Do you intend to get Miss Wannop to live with you before the war is

over? Is she, perhaps, here, in this town, now? Is that your reason for

separating from Sylvia? Now, of all times in the world!"

Tietjens said:

"No, sir. I ask you to believe that I have absolutely no relations with

that young lady. None! I have no intention of having any. None! . . ."

The general said:

"I believe that!"

"Circumstances last night," Tietjens said, "convinced me suddenly,

there, on the spot, that I had been wronging my wife. . . . I had been

putting a strain on the lady that was unwarrantable. It humiliates me to

have to say it! I had taken a certain course for the sake of the future

of our child. But it was an atrociously wrong course. We ought to have

separated years ago. It has led to the lady's pulling the strings of all

these shower-baths. . . ."

The general said:

"Pulling the . . ."

Tietjens said:

"It expresses it, sir. . . . Last night was nothing but pulling the

string of a shower-bath. Perfectly justifiable. I maintain that it was

perfectly justifiable."

The general said:

"Then why have you given her Groby? . . . You're not a little soft, are

you? . . . You don't imagine you've . . . say, got a mission? Or that

you're another person? . . . That you have to . . . to forgive. . . ."

He took off his pretty hat and wiped his forehead with a tiny cambric

handkerchief. He said: "Your poor mother was a little . . ."

He said suddenly:

"To-night when you are coming to my dinner . . . I hope you'll be

decent. Why do you so neglect your personal appearance? Your tunic is a

disgusting spectacle. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I had a better tunic, sir . . . but it has been ruined by the blood of

the man who was killed here last night . . ."

The general said:

"You don't say you have only two tunics? . . . Have you no mess

clothes?"

Tietjens said:

"Yes, sir, I've my blue things. I shall be all right for to-night. . . .

But almost everything else I possessed was stolen from my kit when I was

in hospital. . . . Even Sylvia's two pair of sheets. . . ."

"But hang it all," the general exclaimed, "you don't mean to say you've

spaffled all your father left you?"

Tietjens said:

"I thought fit to refuse what my father left me owing to the way it was

left. . . ."

The general said:

"But, good God! . . . Read that!" He tossed the small sheet of paper at

which he had been looking across the table. It fell face downwards.

Tietjens read, in the minute handwriting of the general's:

"Colonel's horse: Sheets: Jesus Christ: Wannop girl: Socialism?"

The general said irritably:

"The other side . . . the other side. . . ."

The other side of the paper displayed the words in large capitals:

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, a wood-cut of a sickle and some other objects.

Then high treason for a page.

The general said:

"Have you ever seen anything like that before? Do you know what it is?"

Tietjens answered:

"Yes, sir. I sent that to you. To your Intelligence. . . ."

The general thumped both his fists violently on the army blanket:

"You . . ." he said. "It's incomprehensible. . . . It's incredible. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"No, sir. . . . You sent out an order asking commanders of units to

ascertain what attempts were being made by Socialists to undermine the

discipline of their other ranks. . . . I naturally asked my

sergeant-major, and he produced this sheet, which one of the men had

given to him as a curiosity. It had been handed to the man in the street

in London. You can see my initials on the top of the sheet!"

The general said:

"You . . . you'll excuse me, but you're not a Socialist yourself? . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I knew you were working round to that, sir: But I've no politics that

did not disappear in the eighteenth century. You, sir, prefer the

seventeenth!"

"Another shower-bath, I suppose," the general said.

"Of course," Tietjens said, "if it's Sylvia that called me a Socialist,

it's not astonishing. I'm a Tory of such an extinct type that she might

take me for anything. The last megatherium. She's absolutely to be

excused. . . ."

The general was not listening. He said:

"What was wrong with the way your father left his money to you? . . ."

"My father," Tietjens said--the general saw his jaw stiffen--"committed

suicide because a fellow called Ruggles told him that I was . . . what

the French called _maquereau_ . . . I can't think of the English word.

My father's suicide was not an act that can be condoned. A gentleman

does not commit suicide when he has descendants. It might influence my

boy's life very disastrously. . . ."

The general said:

"I can't . . . I _can't_ get to the bottom of all this. . . . What in

the world did Ruggles want to go and tell your father that for? . . .

What are you going to do for a living after the war? They won't take you

back into your office, will they?"

Tietjens said:

"No, sir. The Department will not take me back. Every one who has served

in this war will be a marked man for a long time after it is over.

That's proper enough. _We're_ having our fun now."

The general said:

"You say the wildest things."

Tietjens answered:

"You generally find the things I say come true, sir. Could we get this

over? Ruggles told my father what he did because it is not a good thing

to belong to the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries in the twentieth.

Or really, because it is not good to have taken one's public-school's

ethical system seriously. I am really, sir, the English public

schoolboy. That's an eighteenth-century product. What with the love of

truth that--God help me!--they rammed into me at Clifton and the belief

Arnold forced upon Rugby that the vilest of sins--the vilest of all

sins--is to peach to the head master! That's me, sir. Other men get over

their schooling. I never have. I remain adolescent. These things are

obsessions with me. Complexes, sir!"

The general said:

"All this seems to be very wild. . . . What's this about peaching to a

head master?"

Tietjens said:

"For a swan song, it's not wild, sir. You're asking for a swan song. I

am to go up into the line so that the morals of the troops in your

command may not be contaminated by the contemplation of my marital

infelicities."

The general said:

"You don't want to go back to England, do you?"

Tietjens exclaimed:

"Certainly not! Very certainly not! I can never go home. I have to go

underground somewhere. If I went back to England there would be nothing

for me but going underground by suicide."

The general said:

"You see all that? I can give you testimonials. . . ."

Tietjens asked:

"Who couldn't see that it's impossible?"

The general said:

"But . . . suicide! You won't do that. As you said: think of your son."

Tietjens said:

"No, sir. I shan't do that. But you see how bad for one's descendants

suicide is. That is why I do not forgive my father. Before he did it I

should never have contemplated the idea. Now I have contemplated it.

That's a weakening of the moral fibre. It's contemplating a fallacy as a

possibility. For suicide is no remedy for a twisted situation of a

psychological kind. It is for bankruptcy. Or for military disaster. For

the man of action, not for the thinker. Creditors' meetings wipe the one

out. Military operations sweep on. But my problem will remain the same

whether I'm here or not. For it's insoluble. It's the whole problem of

the relations of the sexes."

The general said:

"Good God! . . ."

Tietjens said:

"No, sir, I've not gone off my chump. That's my problem! . . . But I'm a

fool to talk so much. . . . It's because I don't know what to say."

The general sat staring at the tablecloth: his face was suffused with

blood. He had the appearance of a man in monstrous ill-humour. He said:

"You had better say what you want to say. What the devil do you mean? . . .

What's this all about? . . ."

Tietjens said:

"I'm enormously sorry, sir. It's difficult to make myself plain."

The general said:

"Neither of us do. What is language for? What the _hell_ is language

for? We go round and round. I suppose I'm an old fool who cannot

understand your modern ways . . . But you're not modern. I'll do you

_that_ justice. . . . That beastly little McKechnie is modern. . . . I

shall ram him into your divisional-transport job, so that he won't

incommode you in your battalion. . . . Do you understand what the little

beast did? He got leave to go and get a divorce. And then did not get a

divorce. _That's_ modernism. He said he had scruples. I understand that

he and his wife and . . . some dirty other fellow . . . slept three in a

bed. That's modern scruples. . . ."

Tietjens said:

"No, sir, it's not really. . . . But what is a man to do if his wife is

unfaithful to him?"

The general said as if it were an insult:

"Divorce the harlot! Or live with her! . . ." Only a beast, he went on,

would expect a woman to live all her life alone in a cockloft! She's

bound to die. Or go on the streets. . . . What sort of a fellow wouldn't

see that? Was there any sort of beast who'd expect a woman to live . . .

with a man beside her. . . . Why, she'd . . . she'd be bound to. . . .

He'd have to take the consequences of whatever happened. The general

repeated: "Whatever happened! If she pulled all the strings of all the

shower-baths in the world!"

Tietjens said:

"Still, sir . . . there are . . . there used to be . . . in families

of . . . position . . . a certain . . ." He stopped.

The general said:

"Well . . ."

Tietjens said:

"On the part of the man . . . a certain . . . Call it . . . parade!"

The general said:

"Then there had better be no more parades. . . ." He said: "Damn it! . . .

Beside us, all women are saints. . . . Think of what child-bearing is.

I know the world. . . . Who would stand that? . . . You? . . . I . . .

I'd rather be the last poor devil in Perry's lines!"

He looked at Tietjens with a sort of injurious cunning:

"Why _don't_ you divorce?" he asked.

Panic came over Tietjens. He knew it would be his last panic of that

interview. No brain could stand more. Fragments of scenes of fighting,

voices, names, went before his eyes and ears. Elaborate problems. . . .

The whole map of the embattled world ran out in front of him-as large as

a field. An embossed map in greenish _papier mâché_--a ten-acre field

of embossed _papier mâché_: with the blood of O Nine Morgan blurring

luminously over it. Years before . . . How many months? . . . Nineteen,

to be exact, he had sat on some tobacco plants on the Mont de Kats. . . .

No, the Montagne Noire. In Belgium. . . . What had he been doing? . . .

Trying to get the lie of the land. . . . No. . . . Waiting to point

out positions to some fat home general who had never come. The Belgian

proprietor of the tobacco plants had arrived, and had screamed his head

off over the damaged plants. . . .

But, up there you saw the whole war. . . . Infinite miles away, over the

sullied land that the enemy forces held: into Germany proper. Presumably

you could breathe in Germany proper. . . . Over your right shoulder you

could see a stump of a tooth. The Cloth Hall at Ypres: at an angle of

50° below. . . . Dark lines behind it. . . . The German trenches before

Wytschaete! ...

That was before the great mines had blown Wytschaete to hell. . . .

But--every half-minute by his wrist-watch--white puffs of cotton-wool

existed on the dark lines--the German trenches before Wytschaete. Our

artillery practice. . . . Good shooting. Jolly good shooting!

Miles and miles away to the left . . . beneath the haze of light that,

on a clouded day, the sea threw off, a shaft of sunlight fell, and was

reflected in a grey blur. . . . It was the glass roofs of a great

airplane shelter!

A great plane, the largest he had then seen, was moving over, behind his

back, with four little planes as an escort. . . . Over the vast

slag-heaps by Béthune. . . . High, purplish-blue heaps, like the steam

domes of engines or the breasts of women. . . . Bluish purple. More blue

than purple. . . . Like all Franco-Belgian Gobelins tapestry. . . . And

all quiet. . . . Under the vast pall of quiet cloud! . . .

There were shells dropping in Poperinghe. . . . Five miles out, under

his nose. . . . The shells dropped. White vapour rose and ran away in

plumes. . . . What sort of shells? . . . There were twenty different

kinds of shells. . . .

The Huns were shelling Poperinghe! A senseless cruelty. It was five

miles behind the line! Prussian brutality. . . . There were two girls

who kept a tea-shop in Poperinghe. . . . High coloured. . . . General

Plumer had liked them . . . a fine old general. . . . The shells had

killed them both . . . Any man might have slept with either of them with

pleasure and profit. . . . Six thousand of H.M. officers must have

thought the same about those high-coloured girls. Good girls! . . . But

the Hun shells got them. . . . What sort of fate was that? . . . To be

desired by six thousand men and smashed into little gobbets of flesh by

Hun shells?

It appeared to be mere Prussianism--the senseless cruelty of the

Hun!--to shell Poperinghe. An innocent town with a tea-shop five miles

behind Ypres. . . . Little noiseless plumes of smoke rising under the

quiet blanketing of the pale maroon skies, with the haze from the

aeroplane shelters, and the great aeroplanes over the Béthune

slag-heaps. . . . What a dreadful name--Béthune. . . .

Probably, however, the Germans had heard that we were massing men in

Poperinghe. It was reasonable to shell a town where men were being

assembled. . . . Or we might have been shelling one of their towns with

an Army H.Q. in it. So they shelled Poperinghe in the silent grey

day. . . .

That was according to the rules of the service. . . . General Campion,

accepting with equanimity what German airplanes did to the hospitals,

camps, stables, brothels, theatres, boulevards, chocolate stalls and

hotels of his town would have been vastly outraged if Hun planes had

dropped bombs on his private lodgings. . . . The rules of war! . . . You

spare, mutually, each other's headquarters and blow to pieces girls that

are desired by six thousand men apiece. . . .

That had been nineteen months before! . . . Now, having lost so much

emotion, he saw the embattled world as a map. . . . An embossed map of

greenish _papier mâché_. The blood of O Nine Morgan was blurring

luminously over it. At the extreme horizon was territory labelled _White

Ruthenians_! Who the devil were _those_ poor wretches?

He exclaimed to himself: "By heavens! Is this epilepsy?" He prayed:

"Blessed saints, get me spared that!" He exclaimed: "No, it isn't! . . .

I've complete control of my mind. My uppermost mind." He said to the

general:

"I can't divorce, sir. I've no grounds."

The general said:

"Don't lie. You know what Thurston knows. Do you mean that you have been

guilty of contributory misconduct. . . . Whatever it is? And can't

divorce! I don't believe it."

Tietjens said to himself:

"_Why_ the devil am I so anxious to shield that whore? It's not

reasonable. It is an obsession!"

White Ruthenians are miserable peoples to the south of Lithuania. You

don't know whether they incline to the Germans or to the Poles. The

Germans don't even know. . . . The Germans were beginning to take their

people out of the line where we were weak: they were going to give them

proper infantry training. That gave him, Tietjens, a chance. They would

not come over strong for at least two months. It meant, though, a great

offensive in the spring. Those fellows had sense. In the poor, beastly

trenches the Tommies knew nothing but how to chuck bombs. Both sides did

that. But the Germans were going to cure it! Stood chucking bombs at

each other from forty yards. The rifle was obsolete! Ha! ha!

Obsolete! . . . The civilian psychology!

The general said:

"No I don't believe it. I know you did not keep any girl in any

tobacco-shop. I remember every word you said at Rye in 1912. I wasn't

sure then. I am now. You tried to let me think it. You had shut up your

house because of your wife's misbehaviour. You let me believe you had

been sold up. You weren't sold up at all."

. . . _Why_ should it be the civilian psychology to chuckle with

delight, uproariously, when the imbecile idea was promulgated that the

rifle was obsolete? _Why_ should public opinion force on the War Office

a training-camp course that completely cut out any thorough instruction

in the rifle and communication drill? It was queer. . . . It was of

course disastrous. Queer. Not altogether mean. Pathetic, too. . . .

"Love of truth!" the general said. "Doesn't that include a hatred for

white lies? No; I suppose it doesn't, or your servants could not say you

were not at home. . . ."

. . . Pathetic! Tietjens said to himself. Naturally the civilian

population wanted soldiers to be made to look like fools: and to be done

in. They wanted the war won by men who would at the end be either

humiliated or dead. Or both. Except, naturally, their own cousins or

fiancées' relatives. That was what it came to. That was what it meant

when important gentlemen said that they had rather the war were lost

than that cavalry should gain any distinction in it! . . . But it was

partly the simple, pathetic illusion of the day that great things could

only be done by new inventions. You extinguished the Horse, invented

something very simple and became God! That is the real pathetic fallacy.

You fill a flower-pot with gunpowder and chuck it in the other fellow's

face, and heigh presto! the war is won. _All_ the soldiers fall down

dead! And You: you who forced the idea on the reluctant military, are

the Man that Won the War. You deserve all the women in the world. And . . .

you get them! Once the cavalry are out of the way! . . .

The general was using the words:

"Head master!" It brought Tietjens completely back.

He said collectedly:

"Really, sir, why this strafe of yours is so terribly long is that it

embraces the whole of life."

The general said:

"You're not going to drag a red herring across the trail. . . . I say

you regarded me as a head master in 1912. Now I am your commanding

officer--which is the same thing. You must not peach to me. That's what

you call the Arnold of Rugby touch. . . . But who was it said: _Magna

est veritas et prev_ . . . _Prev_ something?"

Tietjens said:

"I don't remember, sir."

The general said:

"What was the secret grief your mother had? In 1912? She died of it. She

wrote to me just before her death and said she had great troubles. And

begged me to look after you, very specially! Why did she do that?" He

paused and meditated. He asked: "How do you define Anglican sainthood?

The other fellows have canonizations, all shipshape like Sandhurst

examinations. But us Anglicans . . . I've heard fifty persons say your

mother was a saint. She was. But why?"

Tietjens said:

"It's the quality of harmony, sir. The quality of being in harmony with

your own soul. God having given you your own soul you are then in

harmony with Heaven."

The general said:

"Ah, that's beyond me. . . . I suppose you will refuse any money I leave

you in my will?"

Tietjens said:

"Why, no, sir."

The general said:

"But you refused your father's money. Because he believed things against

you. What's the difference?"

Tietjens said:

"One's friends ought to believe that one is a gentleman. Automatically.

That is what makes one and them in harmony. Probably your friends are

your friends because they look at situations automatically as you look

at them. . . . Mr. Ruggles knew that I was hard up. He envisaged the

situation. If he were hard up, what would he do? Make a living out of

the immoral earnings of women. . . . That translated into the Government

circles in which he lives means selling your wife or mistress. Naturally

he believed that I was the sort of fellow to sell my wife. So that's

what he told my father. The point is, my father should not have believed

him."

"But I . . ." the general said.

Tietjens said:

"You never believed anything against me, sir."

The general said:

"I know I've damn well worried myself to death over you . . ."

Tietjens was sentimentally at rest, still with wet eyes. He was walking

near Salisbury in a grove, regarding long pastures and ploughlands

running to dark, high elms from which, embowered. . . . Embowered was

the word!--peeped the spire of George Herbert's church. . . . One ought

to be a seventeenth-century parson at the time of the renaissance of

Anglican saintliness . . . who, wrote, perhaps poems. No, not poems.

Prose. The statelier vehicle!

That was home-sickness! . . . He himself was never to go home!

The general said:

"Look here. . . . Your father. . . . I'm concerned about your father. . . .

Didn't Sylvia perhaps tell him some of the things that distressed him?"

Tietjens said distinctly:

"No, sir. That responsibility cannot be put on to Sylvia. My father

chose to believe things that were said against me by a perfect--or a

nearly perfect--stranger. . . ." He added: "As a matter of fact, Sylvia

and my father were not on any sort of terms. I don't believe they

exchanged two words for the last five years of my father's life."

The general's eyes were fixed with an extreme hardness on Tietjens'. He

watched Tietjens' face, beginning with the edges round the nostrils, go

chalk white. He said: "He knows he's given his wife away! . . . Good

God!" With his face colourless, Tietjens' eyes of porcelain-blue stuck

out extraordinarily. The general thought: "What an ugly fellow! His face

is all crooked!" They remained looking at each other.

In the silence the voices of men talking over the game of House came as

a murmur to them. A rudimentary card game monstrously in favour of the

dealer. When you heard voices going on like that you knew they were

playing House. . . . So they had had their dinners.

The general said:

"It isn't Sunday, is it?"

Tietjens said:

"No, sir; Thursday, the seventeenth, I think, of January. . . ."

The general said:

"Stupid of me. . . ."

The men's voices had reminded him of church bells on a Sunday. And of

his youth. . . . He was sitting beside Mrs. Tietjens' hammock under the

great cedar at the corner of the stone house at Groby. The wind being

from the east-north-east the bells of Middlesbrough came to them

faintly. Mrs. Tietjens was thirty; he himself thirty; Tietjens--the

father--thirty-five or so. A most powerful, quiet man. A wonderful

landowner. Like his predecessors for generations. It was not from him

that this fellow got his . . . his . . . his what? . . . Was it

mysticism? . . . Another word! He himself home on leave from India: his

head full of polo. Talking for hours about points in ponies with

Tietjens' father, who was a wonderful hand with a horse. . . . But this

fellow was much more wonderful! . . . Well, he got that from the sire,

not the dam! . . . He and Tietjens continued to look at each other. It

was as if they were hypnotized. The men's voices went on in a mournful

cadence. The general supposed that he too must be pale. He said to

himself: "This fellow's mother died of a broken heart in 1912. The

father committed suicide five years after. He had not spoken to the

son's wife for four or five years! That takes us back to 1912. . . .

Then, when I strafed him in Rye, the wife was in France with Perowne."

He looked down at the blanket on the table. He intended again to look up

at Tietjens' eyes with ostentatious care. That was his technique with

men. He was a successful general because he knew men. He knew that all

men will go to hell over three things: alcohol, money . . . and sex.

This fellow apparently hadn't. Better for him if he had! He thought:

"It's all gone . . . mother! father! Groby! This fellow's down and out.

It's a bit thick."

He thought:

"But he's right to do as he is doing."

He prepared to look at Tietjens. . . . He stretched out a sudden,

ineffectual hand. Sitting on his beef-case, his hands on his knees,

Tietjens had lurched. A sudden lurch--as an old house lurches when it is

hit by a H.E. shell. It stopped at that. Then he righted himself. He

continued to stare direct at the general. The general looked carefully

back. He said--very carefully too:

"In case I decide to contest West Cleveland, it is your wish that I

should make Groby my headquarters?"

Tietjens said:

"I beg, sir, that you will!"

It was as if they both heaved an enormous sigh of relief. The general

said:

"Then I need not keep you. . . ."

Tietjens stood on his feet, wanly, but with his heels together.

The general also rose, settling his belt He said:

". . . You can fall out."

Tietjens said:

"My cook-houses, sir. . . . Sergeant-Cook Case will be very

disappointed. . . . He told me that you couldn't find anything wrong if

I gave him ten minutes to prepare. . . ."

The general said:

"Case. . . . Case. . . . Case was in the drums when we were at Delhi. He

ought to be at least Quartermaster by now. . . . But he had a woman he

called his sister . . ."

Tietjens said:

"He still sends money to his sister."

The general said:

". . . He went absent over her when he was colour-sergeant and was

reduced to the ranks. . . . Twenty years ago that must be! . . . Yes,

I'll see your dinners!"

In the cook-house, brilliantly accompanied by Colonel Levin, the

cook-house spotless with limed walls and mirrors that were the tops of

camp-cookers, the general, Tietjens at his side, walked between

goggle-eyed men in white who stood to attention holding ladles. Their

eyes bulged, but the corners of their lips curved because they liked the

general and his beautifully unconcerned companions. The cook-house was

like a cathedral's nave, aisles being divided off by the pipes of

stoves. The floor was of coke-brise shining under french polish and

turpentine.

The building paused, as when a godhead descends. In breathless focusing

of eyes the godhead, frail and shining, walked with short steps up to a

high-priest who had a walrus moustache and, with seven medals on his

Sunday tunic, gazed away into eternity. The general tapped the

sergeant's Good Conduct ribbon with the heel of his crop. All stretched

ears heard him say:

"How's your sister, Case? . . ."

Gazing away, the sergeant said:

"I'm thinking of making her Mrs. Case . . ."

Slightly leaving him, in the direction of high, varnished, pitch-pine

panels, the general said:

"I'll recommend you for a Quartermaster's commission any day you

wish. . . . Do you remember Sir Garnet inspecting field kitchens at

Quetta?"

All the white tubular beings with global eyes resembled the pierrots of

a child's Christmas nightmare. The general said: "Stand at ease, men. . . .

Stand easy!" They moved as white objects move in a childish dream.

It was all childish. Their eyes rolled.

Sergeant Case gazed away into infinite distance.

"My sister would not like it, sir," he said. "I'm better off as a

first-class warrant officer!"

With his light step the shining general went swiftly to the varnished

panels in the eastern aisle of the cathedral. The white figure beside

them became instantly tubular, motionless and global-eyed. On the panels

were painted: TEA! SUGAR! SALT! CURRY PDR! FLOUR! PEPPER!

The general tapped with the heel of his crop on the locker-panel

labelled PEPPER: the top, right-hand locker-panel. He said to the

tubular, global-eyed white figure beside it: "Open that, will you, my

man? . . ."

To Tietjens this was like the sudden bursting out of the regimental

quick-step, as after a funeral with military honours the band and drums

march away, back to barracks.