A Man Could Stand Up—, Ford Madox Ford [ebook reader macos .txt] 📗

would probably marry his, Tietjen’s, widow.⁠ ⁠… Sylvia in crêpe. With perhaps a little white about it!

The cornet⁠—obviously it was not a key-bugle⁠—remarked:

and then stopped to reflect. After a moment it added meditatively:

That would scarcely refer to Sylvia.⁠ ⁠… Still, perhaps in crêpe, with a touch of white, passing by, very tall.⁠ ⁠… Say, in a seventeenth century street.⁠ ⁠…

The only satisfactory age in England!⁠ ⁠… Yet what chance had it today? Or, still more, tomorrow? In the sense that the age of, say, Shakespeare had a chance. Or Pericles! or Augustus!

Heaven knew, we did not want a preposterous drum-beating such as the Elizabethans produced⁠—and received. Like lions at a fair.⁠ ⁠… But what chance had quiet fields, Anglican sainthood, accuracy of thought, heavy-leaved, timbered hedgerows, slowly creeping plough-lands moving up the slopes?⁠ ⁠… Still, the land remains.⁠ ⁠…

The land remains.⁠ ⁠… It remains!⁠ ⁠… At that same moment the dawn was wetly revealing; over there in George Herbert’s parish.⁠ ⁠… What was it called?⁠ ⁠… What the devil was its name? Oh, Hell!⁠ ⁠… Between Salisbury and Wilton.⁠ ⁠… The tiny church.⁠ ⁠… But he refused to consider the plough-lands, the heavy groves, the slow highroad above the church that the dawn was at that moment wetly revealing⁠—until he could remember that name.⁠ ⁠… He refused to consider that, probably even today, that land ran to⁠ ⁠… produced the stock of⁠ ⁠… Anglican sainthood. The quiet thing!

But until he could remember the name he would consider nothing.⁠ ⁠…

He said:

“Are those damned Mills bombs coming?”

The Sergeant said:

“In ten minutes they’ll be ere, sir. Hay Cumpny had just telephoned that they were coming in now.”

It was almost a disappointment: in an hour or so, without bombs, they might all have been done with. As quiet as the seventeenth century: in heaven.⁠ ⁠… The beastly bombs would have to explode before that, now! They might, in consequence, survive.⁠ ⁠… Then what was he, Tietjens, going to do! Take orders! It was thinkable.⁠ ⁠…

He said:

“Those bloody imbeciles of Huns are coming over in an hour’s time, brigade says. Get the beastly bombs served out, but keep enough in store to serve as an emergency ration if we should want to advance.⁠ ⁠… Say a third. For C and D Companies.⁠ ⁠… Tell the Adjutant I’m going along all the trenches and I want the Assistant-Adjutant, Mr. Aranjuez, and Orderly-Corporal Colley to come with me.⁠ ⁠… As soon as the bombs come for certain!⁠ ⁠… I don’t want the men to think they’ve got to stop a Hun rush without bombs.⁠ ⁠… They’re due to begin their barrage in fourteen minutes, but they won’t really come over without a hell of a lot of preparation.⁠ ⁠… I don’t know how brigade knows all this!”

The name Bemerton suddenly came on to his tongue. Yes, Bemerton, Bemerton, Bemerton was George Herbert’s parsonage. Bemerton, outside Salisbury.⁠ ⁠… The cradle of the race as far as our race was worth thinking about. He imagined himself standing up on a little hill, a lean contemplative parson, looking at the land sloping down to Salisbury spire. A large, clumsily bound seventeenth century testament, Greek, beneath his elbow.⁠ ⁠… Imagine standing up on a hill! It was the unthinkable thing there!

The Sergeant was lamenting, a little wearily, that the Huns were coming.

“Hi did think them bleeding ’uns, ’xcuse me, sir, wasn’ per’aps coming this morning.⁠ ⁠… Giv us a rest an’ a chance to clear up a bit.⁠ ⁠…” He had the tone of a resigned schoolboy saying that the Head might have given the school a holiday on the Queen’s birthday. But what the devil did that man think about his approaching dissolution?

That was the unanswerable question. He, Tietjens, had been asked several times what death was like.⁠ ⁠… Once, in a cattle-truck under a bridge, near a Red-Cross Clearing Station, by a miserable fellow called Perowne. In the presence of the troublesome lunatic called Mckechnie. You would have thought that even a Movement Order Officer would have managed to send up the line that triangle differently arranged. Perowne was known to have been his wife’s lover; he, Tietjens, against his will, had been given the job, as second-in-command of the battalion, that Mckechnie wanted madly. And indeed he had a right to it. They ought not to have been sent up together.

But there they had been⁠—Perowne broken down, principally at the thought that he was not going to see his, Tietjens’ wife ever again in a golden gown.⁠ ⁠… Unless, perhaps, with a golden harp on a cloud, for he looked at things like that.⁠ ⁠… And, positively, as soon as that baggage-car⁠—it had been a baggage-car, not a cattle-truck!⁠—had discharged the deserter with escort and the three wounded Cochin-Chinese platelayers whom the French authorities had palmed off on them.⁠ ⁠… And where the devil had they all been going? Obviously up into the line, and already pretty near it: near Division Headquarters. But where?⁠ ⁠… God knew? Or when? God knew too!⁠ ⁠… A fine-ish day with a scanty remains of not quite melted snow in the cutting and the robins singing in the coppice above. Say February.⁠ ⁠… Say St. Valentine’s Day: which, of course, would agitate Perowne some more.⁠ ⁠… Well, positively as soon as the baggage-car had discharged the wounded who had groaned, and the sheepish escort who did not know whether they ought to be civil to the deserter in the presence of the orfcers, and the deserter who kept on defiantly⁠—or if you like broken-heartedly, for there was no telling the difference⁠—asking the escort questions as to the nature of their girls, or volunteering information as to the intimate behaviour of his.⁠ ⁠… The deserter a gipsyfied, black-eyed fellow with an immense jeering mouth; the escort a Corporal and two Tommies, blond and blushing East Kents, remarkably polished about the buttons and brass numerals, with beautifully neatly put on puttees: obviously Regulars, coming from behind the lines: the Cochin-Chinese, with indistinguishable broad yellow faces, brown poetic eyes, furred top-boots and blue furred hoods over their bandaged heads and swathed faces. Seated, leaning back against the side of the