Then, with the Commandant's clothes again lying round me on the floor, I
grappled with the mystery of the jib-sails and their cords. The
jib-sails and their cords were, so to speak, the heart of this infernal
triple entity.
They were treacherous. They had all the appearance of pockets, but owing
to the intricate and malign relations of their cords, it was impossible
to deal faithfully with them on this footing. When the contents had been
packed inside them, the field-tent asserted itself as against the
hold-all and refused to roll up. And I am sure that if the field-tent
had had to be set up in a field in a hurry, the hold-all and the
sleeping-bag would have arisen and insisted on their consubstantial
rights.
I unpacked the field-tent and packed it all over again exactly as I had
packed it before, but more carefully, swearing gently and continuously,
as I tugged with my arms and pushed with my knees, and pressed hard on
it with my waist to keep it still. I cursed the day when I had first
heard of it; I cursed myself for giving it to the Commandant; more than
all I cursed the combined ingenuity and levity of its creator, who had
indulged his fantasy at our expense, without a thought to the actual
conditions of the retreat of armies and of ambulances.
And in the middle of it all Janet came in, and curled herself up in a
corner, and forecast luridly and inconsolably the possible fate of her
friends, the nurses in the "Flandria." For the moment her coolness and
her wise impassivity had gone. Her behaviour was lacerating.