No More Parades - Ford Madox Ford (the gingerbread man read aloud .TXT) 📗

along the brink of the plateau to the other lines. It gave him satisfaction to observe that he had got his men into their lines seventy-five percent quicker than the best of the N.C.O.s who had had charge of the other lines. Nevertheless, he swore bitingly at the sergeants: their men were in knots round the entrance to the alleys of ghost-pyramids⁠ ⁠… Then there were no more, and he drifted with regret across the plain towards his country street of huts. One of them had a coarse evergreen rose growing over it. He picked a leaf, pressed it to his lips and threw it up into the wind⁠ ⁠… “That’s for Valentine,” he said meditatively. “Why did I do that?⁠ ⁠… Or perhaps it’s for England⁠ ⁠…” He said: “Damn it all, this is patriotism?⁠ ⁠… This is patriotism⁠ ⁠…” It wasn’t what you took patriotism as a rule to be. There were supposed to be more parades, about that job!⁠ ⁠… But this was just a broke to the wide, wheezy, half-frozen Yorkshireman, who despised everyone in England not a Yorkshireman, or from more to the North, at two in the morning picking a leaf from a rose-tree and slobbering over it, without knowing what he was doing. And then discovering that it was half for a pug-nosed girl whom he presumed, but didn’t know, to smell like a primrose; and half for⁠ ⁠… England!⁠ ⁠… At two in the morning with the thermometer ten degrees below zero⁠ ⁠… Damn, it was cold!⁠ ⁠…

And why these emotions?⁠ ⁠… Because England, not before it was time, had been allowed to decide not to do the dirty on her associates!⁠ ⁠… He said to himself: “It is probably because a hundred thousand sentimentalists like myself commit similar excesses of the subconscious that we persevere in this glorious but atrocious undertaking. All the same, I didn’t know I had it in me!” A strong passion!⁠ ⁠… For his girl and his country!⁠ ⁠… Nevertheless, his girl was a pro-German⁠ ⁠… It was a queer mix-up⁠ ⁠… Not of course a pro-German, but disapproving of the preparation of men, like bullocks, with sleek healthy skins for the abattoirs in Smithfield⁠ ⁠… Agreeing presumably with the squits who had been hitherto starving the B.E.F. of men⁠ ⁠… A queer mix-up⁠ ⁠…

At half-past one the next day, in chastened winter sunlight, he mounted Schomburg, a coffin-headed, bright chestnut, captured from the Germans on the Marne by the second battalion of the Glamorganshires. He had not been on the back of the animal two minutes before he remembered that he had forgotten to look it over. It was the first time in his life that he had ever forgotten to look at an animal’s hoofs, fetlocks, knees, nostrils and eyes, and to take a pull at the girth before climbing into the saddle. But he had ordered the horse for a quarter to one and, even though he had bolted his cold lunch like a cannibal in haste, there he was three-quarters of an hour late, and with his head still full of teasing problems. He had meant to clear his head by a long canter over the be-hutted downs, dropping down into the city by a bypath.

But the ride did not clear his head⁠—rather, the sleeplessness of the night began for the first time then to tell on him after a morning of fatigues, during which he had managed to keep the thought of Sylvia at arm’s length. He had to wait to see Sylvia before he could see what Sylvia wanted. And morning had brought the commonsense idea that probably she wanted to do nothing more than pull the string of the showerbath⁠—which meant committing herself to the first extravagant action that came into her head⁠—and exulting in the consequences.

He had not managed to get to bed at all the night before. Captain McKechnie, who had had some cocoa⁠—a beverage Tietjens had never before tasted⁠—hot and ready for him on his return from the lines, had kept him till past half-past four, relating with a male fury his really very painful story. It appeared that he had obtained leave to go home and divorce his wife, who, during his absence in France, had been living with an Egyptologist in Government service. Then, acting under conscientious scruples of the younger school of the day, he had refrained from divorcing her. Campion had in consequence threatened to deprive him of his commission⁠ ⁠… The poor devil⁠—who had actually consented to contribute to the costs of the household of his wife and the Egyptologist⁠—had gone raving mad and had showered an extraordinary torrent of abuse at the decent old fellow that Campion was⁠ ⁠… A decent old fellow, really. For the interview, being delicate, had taken place in the general’s bedroom and the general had not felt it necessary, there being no orderlies or junior officers present, to take any official notice of McKechnie’s outburst. McKechnie was a fellow with an excellent military record; you could in fact hardly have found a regimental officer with a better record. So Campion had decided to deal with the man as suffering from a temporary brainstorm and had sent him to Tietjens’ unit for rest and recuperation. It was an irregularity, but the general was of a rank to risk what irregularities he considered to be of use to the service.

It had turned out that McKechnie was actually the nephew of Tietjens’ very old intimate, Sir Vincent Mac-master, of the Department of Statistics, being the son of his sister who had married the assistant to the elder Macmaster, a small grocer in the Port of Leith in Scotland⁠ ⁠… That indeed had been why Campion had been interested in him. Determined as he was to show his godson no unreasonable military favours, the general was perfectly ready to do a kindness that he thought would please Tietjens. All these pieces of information Tietjens had packed away in his mind for future consideration and, it being after four-thirty before McKechnie had calmed himself down, Tietjens had taken the opportunity to inspect