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

of which he had not had time to read the whole ended up with an assertion something like: “Thus the honour of the Corps of Officers has been triumphantly vindicated.”

It was a ghastly thought, that of that whole vast territory that confronted them, filled with millions of half-empty stomachs that bred disorders in the miserable brains. Those fellows must be the most miserable human beings that had ever existed. God knows, the life of our own Tommies must be Hell. But those fellows.⁠ ⁠… It would not bear thinking of.

And it was curious to consider how the hatred that one felt for the inhabitants of those regions seemed to skip in a wide trajectory over the embattled ground. It was the civilian populations and their rulers that one hated with real hatred. Now the swine were starving the poor devils in the trenches!

They were detestable. The German fighters and their Intelligence and staffs were merely boring and grotesque. Unending nuisances. For he was confoundedly irritated to think of the mess they had made of his nice clean trenches. It was like when you go out for an hour and leave your dog in the drawing-room. You come back and find that it has torn to pieces all your sofa-cushions. You would like to knock its head off.⁠ ⁠… So you would like to knock the German soldiers’ heads off. But you did not wish them much real harm. Nothing like having to live in that hell on perpetually half empty, windy stomachs with the nightmares they set up! Naturally influenza was decimating them.

Anyhow, Germans were the sort of people that influenza would bowl over. They were bores because they came forever true to type. You read their confounded circulars and they made you grin whilst a little puking. They were like continual caricatures of themselves and they were continually hysterical.⁠ ⁠… Hypochondriacal.⁠ ⁠… Corps of Officers.⁠ ⁠… Proud German Army.⁠ ⁠… His Glorious Majesty.⁠ ⁠… Mighty Deeds.⁠ ⁠… Not much of the Ragtime Army about that, and that was welling out continuously all the time.⁠ ⁠… Hypochondria!

A ragtime army was not likely to have influenza so badly. It felt neither its moral nor its physical pulse.⁠ ⁠… Still, here was influenza in B Company. They must have got it from the Huns the night before last. B Company had had them jump in on top of them; then and there had been hand-to-hand fighting. It was a nuisance. B Company was a nuisance. It had naturally been stuck into the dampest and lowest part of their line. Their company dugout was reported to be like a well with a dripping roof. It would take B Company to be afflicted with such quarters.⁠ ⁠… It was difficult to see what to do⁠—not to drain their quarters, but to exorcise their ill-luck. Still, it would have to be done. He was going into their quarters to make a strafe, but he sent Aranjuez to announce his coming so as to give the decent young Company Commander a chance to redd up his house.⁠ ⁠…

The beastly Huns! They stood between him and Valentine Wannop. If they would go home he could be sitting talking to her for whole afternoons. That was what a young woman was for. You seduced a young woman in order to be able to finish your talks with her. You could not do that without living with her. You could not live with her without seducing her; but that was the byproduct. The point is that you can’t otherwise talk. You can’t finish talks at street corners; in museums; even in drawing-rooms. You mayn’t be in the mood when she is in the mood⁠—for the intimate conversation that means the final communion of your souls. You have to wait together⁠—for a week, for a year, for a lifetime, before the final intimate conversation may be attained⁠ ⁠… and exhausted. So that.⁠ ⁠…

That in effect was love. It struck him as astonishing. The word was so little in his vocabulary.⁠ ⁠… Love, ambition, the desire for wealth. They were things he had never known of as existing⁠—as capable of existing within him. He had been the Younger Son, loafing, contemptuous, capable, idly contemplating life, but ready to take up the position of the Head of the Family if Death so arranged matters. He had been a sort of eternal Second-in-Command.

Now: what the Hell was he? A sort of Hamlet of the Trenches? No, by God he was not.⁠ ⁠… He was perfectly ready for action. Ready to command a battalion. He was presumably a lover. They did things like commanding battalions. And worse!

He ought to write her a letter. What in the world would she think of this gentleman who had once made improper proposals to her; balked; said “So long!” or perhaps not even “So long!” And then walked off. With never a letter! Not even a picture postcard! For two years! A sort of a Hamlet all right! Or a swine!

Well, then, he ought to write her a letter. He ought to say: “This is to tell you that I propose to live with you as soon as this show is over. You will be prepared immediately on cessation of active hostilities to put yourself at my disposal; Please. Signed, Xtopher Tietjens, Acting O.C. 9th Glams.” A proper military communication. She would be pleased to see that he was commanding a battalion. Or perhaps she would not be pleased. She was a Pro-German. She loved these tiresome fellows who tore his, Tietjens’, sofa-cushions to pieces.

That was not fair. She was a Pacifist. She thought these proceedings pestilential and purposeless. Well, there were times when they appeared purposeless enough. Look at what had happened to his neat gravel walks. And to the marle too. Though that served the purpose of letting him sit sheltered. In the sunlight. With any number of larks. Someone once wrote:

“A myriad larks in unison sang o’er her, soaring out of sight!”

That was imbecile really. Larks cannot sing in unison. They make a heartless noise like that produced