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

snouting crumbs of garbage. When they were still they looked merely pensive!

Perhaps the strafe would not come. He hoped it would not. He did not want a strafe with himself in command of the battalion. He did not know what to do: what he ought to do by the book. He knew what he would do. He would stroll about along those deep trenches. Stroll. With his hands in his pockets. Like General Gordon in pictures. He would say contemplative things as the time dragged on.⁠ ⁠… A rather abominable sort of Time really.⁠ ⁠… But that would introduce into the Battalion a spirit of calm that it had lately lacked⁠ ⁠… The night before last the C.O., with a bottle in each hand had hurled them both at Huns who did not materialise for an hour and a half. Even the Pals had omitted to laugh. After that he, Tietjens, had taken command. With lots of the Orderly Room papers under both arms. They had had to be in a hurry. At night. With men suggesting pale grey Canadian trappers coming out of holes!

He did not want to command in a strafe: or at any other time! He hoped the unfortunate C.O. would get over his trouble by the evening.⁠ ⁠… But he supposed that he, Tietjens, would get through it all right if he had to. Like the man who had never tried playing the violin!

Mckechnie had suddenly become lachrymosely feminine: like a woman pleading, large-eyed, for her lover, his eyes explored Tietjens’ face for signs of treachery: for signs that what he said was not what he meant in his heart. He said:

“What are you going to do about Bill? Poor old Bill that has sweated for his Battalion as you never.⁠ ⁠…” He began again:

“Think of poor old Bill! You can’t be thinking of doing the dirty on him.⁠ ⁠… No man could be such a swine!”

It was curious how those circumstances brought out the feminine that was in man. What was that ass of a German Professor’s theory⁠ ⁠… formula? My plus Wx equals Man?⁠ ⁠… Well, if God hadn’t invented woman men would have had to do so. In that sort of place. You grew sentimental. He, Tietjens was growing sentimental. He said:

“What does Terence say about him this morning?”

The nice thing to have said would have been:

“Of course, old man, I’ll do all I can to keep it dark!” Terence was the M.O.⁠—the man who had chucked his cap at the Hun orderly.

Mckechnie said:

“That’s the damnable thing! Terence is ratty with him. He won’t take a pill!”

Tietjens said:

“What’s that? What’s that?”

Mckechnie wavered: his desire for comfort became overpowering.

He said:

“Look here! Do the decent thing! You know how poor Bill has worked for us! Get Terence not to report him to Brigade!”

This was wearisome: but it had to be faced.

A very minute subaltern⁠—Aranjuez⁠—in a perfectly impossible tin hat peered round the side of the bank. Tietjens sent him away for a moment.⁠ ⁠… These tin hats were probably all right: but they were the curse of the army. They bred distrust! How could you trust a man whose incapable hat tumbled forward on his nose? Or another, with his hat on the back of his head, giving him the air of a ruined gambler! Or a fellow who had put on a soap-dish. To amuse the children: not a serious proceeding.⁠ ⁠… The German things were better⁠—coming down over the nape of the neck and rising over the brows. When you saw a Hun sideways he looked something: a serious proposition. Full of ferocity. A Hun up against a Tommie looked like a Holbein lansknecht fighting a music-hall turn. It made you feel that you were indeed a ragtime army. Rubbed it in!

Mckechnie was reporting that the C.O. had refused to take a pill ordered him by the M.O. Unfortunately the M.O. was ratty that morning⁠—too much hooch overnight! So he said he should report the C.O. to Brigade. Not as being unfit for further service, for he wasn’t. But for refusing to take the pill. It was damnable. Because if Bill wouldn’t take a pill he wouldn’t⁠ ⁠… The M.O. said that if he took a pill, and stayed in bed that day⁠—without hooch of course!⁠—he would be perfectly fit on the morrow. He had been like that often enough before. The C.O. had always been given the dose before as a drench. He swore he would not take it as a ball. Sheer contrariety!

Tietjens was accustomed to think of the C.O. as a lad⁠—a good lad, but young. They were, all the same, much of an age, and, for the matter of that, because of his deeply-lined forehead the Colonel looked the older often enough. But when he was fit he was fine. He had a hooked nose, a forcible, grey moustache, like two badger-haired paintbrushes joined beneath the nose, pink skin as polished as the surface of a billiard ball, a noticeably narrow but high forehead, an extremely piercing glance from rather colourless eyes; his hair was black and most polished in slight waves. He was a soldier.

He was, that is to say, the ranker. Of soldiering in the English sense⁠—the real soldiering of peacetime, parades, social events, spit and polish, hard worked summers, leisurely winters, India, the Bahamas, Cairo seasons and the rest he only knew the outside, having looked at it from the barrack windows, the parade ground and, luckily for him, from his Colonel’s house. He had been a most admirable batman to that Colonel, had⁠—in Simla⁠—married the Colonel memsahib’s lady’s maid, had been promoted to the orderly-room, to the Corporal’s and Sergeant’s messes, had become a Musketry-Colour Sergeant and, two months before the war had been given a commission. He would have gained this before but for a slight⁠—a very slight⁠—tendency to overdrinking, which had given on occasion a similarly slight tone of insolence to his answers to Field-Officers. Elderly Field-Officers on parade are apt