No More Parades_ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [37]
'Poor ---- old Bird!...He's booked. Eleven months in the front line, he's been...Eleven months!...I was nine, this stretch. With him.'
He added:
'Get back into bed, old bean...I'll go and look after the men if it's necessary...'
Tietjens said:
'You don't so much as know where their lines are...' And sat listening. Nothing but the long roll of tongues came to him. He said:
'Damn it 1 The men ought not to be kept standing in the cold like that...' Fury filled him beneath despair. His eyes filled with tears. 'God,' he said to himself, 'the fellow Levin presumes to interfere in my private affair...Damn it,' he said again, 'it's like doing a little impertinence in a world that's foundering...'
'I'd go out,' he said, 'but I don't want to have to put that filthy little Pitkins under arrest. He only drinks because he's shellshocked. He's not man enough else, the unclean little Nonconformist...'
McKechnie said:
'Hold on!...I'm a Presbyterian myself...'
Tietjens answered:
'You would be!...' He said: 'I beg your pardon...There will be no more parades...The British Army is dishonoured for ever...'
McKechnie said:
'That's all right, old bean...'
Tietjens exclaimed with sudden violence:
'What the hell are you doing in the officers' lines?...Don't you know it's a court-martial offence?'
He was confronted with the broad, mealy face of his regimental quartermaster-sergeant, the sort of fellow who wore an officer's cap against the regulations, with a Tommie's silver-plated badge. A man determined to get Sergeant-Major Cowley's job. The man had come in unheard under the roll of voices outside. He said:
'Excuse me, sir, I took the liberty of knocking...The sergeant-major is in an epileptic fit...I wanted your directions before putting the draft into the tents with the other men...' Having said that tentatively he hazarded cautiously: 'The sergeant-major throws these fits, sir, if he is suddenly woke up...And Second-Lieutenant Pitkins woke him very suddenly...'
Tietjens said:
'So you took on you the job of a beastly informer against both of them...I shan't forget it.' He said to himself:
'I'll get this fellow one day...' and he seemed to hear with pleasure the clicking and tearing of the scissors as, inside three parts of a hollow square, they cut off his stripes and badges.
McKechnie exclaimed:
'Good God, man, you aren't going out in nothing but your pyjamas. Put your slacks on under your British warm...'
Tietjens said:
'Send the Canadian sergeant-major to me at the double...' to the quarter. 'My slacks are at the tailor's, being pressed.' His slacks were being pressed for the ceremony of the signing of the marriage contract of Levin, the fellow who had interfered in his private affairs. He continued into the mealy broad face and vague eyes of the quartermaster: 'You know as well as I do that it was the Canadian sergeant-major's job to report to me...I'll let you off this time, but, by God, if I catch you spying round the officers' lines again you are for a D.C.M...'
He wrapped a coarse, Red Cross, grey-wool muffler under the turned-up collar of his British warm.
'That swine,' he said to McKechnie, 'spies on the officers' lines in the hope of getting a commission by catching out ---- little squits like Pitkins, when they're drunk...I'm seven hundred braces down. Morgan does not know that I know that I'm that much down. But you can bet he knows where they have gone...'
McKechnie said:
'I wish you would not go out like that...I'll make you some cocoa...'
Tietjens said:
'I can't keep the men waiting while I dress...I'm as strong as a horse...'
He was out amongst the bitterness, the mist, and the moongleams on three thousand rifle barrels, and the voices...He was seeing the Germans pour through a thin line, and his heart was leaden...A tall, graceful man swam up against him and said, through his nose, like an American: 'There has been a railway accident, due to the French strikers. The draft is put back till three pip emma the day after to-morrow, sir.'
Tietjens exclaimed:
'It isn't countermanded?' breathlessly.