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

“Girtin has gone absent, sir,” the slim dark fellow said, with an air of destiny. Girtin was the respectable man with the mother to whom Tietjens had given the two hours’ leave the night before.

Tietjens answered:

“He would have!” with a sour grin. It enhanced his views of strictly respectable humanity. They blackmailed you with lamentable and pathetic tales and then did the dirty on you. He said to the sergeant-major:

“You will be here for another week or ten days. See that you get your tents up all right and the men comfortable. I will inspect them as soon as I have taken my orderly room. Full marching order. Captain McKechnie will inspect their kits at two.”

The sergeant-major, stiff but graceful, had something at the back of his mind. It came out:

“I have my marching orders for two-thirty this afternoon. The notice for inserting my commission in depot orders is on your table. I leave for the O.T.C. by the three train⁠ ⁠…”

Tietjens said:

“Your commission!⁠ ⁠…” It was a confounded nuisance.

The sergeant-major said:

“Sergeant-Major Cowley and I applied for our commissions three months ago. The communications granting them are both on your table together⁠ ⁠…”

Tietjens said:

“Sergeant-Major Cowley⁠ ⁠… Good God! Who recommended you?”

The whole organization of his confounded battalion fell to pieces. It appeared that a circular had come round three months before⁠—before Tietjens had been given command of that unit⁠—asking for experienced first-class warrant officers capable of serving as instructors in Officers’ Training Corps, with commissions. Sergeant-Major Cowley had been recommended by the colonel of the depot, Sergeant-Major Ledoux by his own colonel. Tietjens felt as if he had been let down⁠—but of course he had not been. It was just the way of the army, all the time. You got a platoon, or a battalion, or, for the matter of that, a dugout or a tent, by herculean labours into good fettle. It ran all right for a day or two, then it all fell to pieces, the personnel scattered to the four winds by what appeared merely wanton orders, coming from the most unexpected headquarters, or the premises were smashed up by a chance shell that might just as well have fallen somewhere else⁠ ⁠… The finger of Fate!⁠ ⁠…

But it put a confounded lot more work on him⁠ ⁠… He said to Sergeant-Major Cowley, whom he found in the next hut where all the paper work of the unit was done:

“I should have thought you would have been enormously better off as regimental sergeant-major than with a commission. I know I would rather have the job.” Cowley answered⁠—he was very pallid and shaken⁠—that with his unfortunate infirmity, coming on at any moment of shock, he would be better in a job where he could slack off, like an O.T.C. He had always been subject to small fits, over in a minute, or couple of seconds even⁠ ⁠… But getting too near a H.E. shell⁠—after Noircourt, which had knocked out Tietjens himself⁠—had brought them on, violent. There was also, he finished, the gentility to be considered. Tietjens said:

“Oh, the gentility!⁠ ⁠… That’s not worth a flea’s jump⁠ ⁠… There won’t be any more parades after this war. There aren’t any now. Look at who your companions will be in an officer’s quarters; you’d be in a great deal better society in any self-respecting sergeants’ mess.” Cowley answered that he knew the service had gone to the dogs. All the same his missis liked it. And there was his daughter Winnie to be considered. She had always been a bit wild, and his missis wrote that she had gone wilder than ever, all due to the war. Cowley thought that the bad boys would be a little more careful how they monkeyed with her if she was an officer’s daughter⁠ ⁠… There was probably something in that!

Coming out into the open, confidentially with Tietjens, Cowley dropped his voice huskily to say:

“Take Quartermaster-Sergeant Morgan for R.S.M., sir.” Tietjens said explosively:

“I’m damned if I will.” Then he asked: “Why?” The wisdom of an old N.C.O.s is a thing no prudent officer neglects.

“He can do the work, sir,” Cowley said. “He’s out for a commission, and he’ll do his best⁠ ⁠…” He dropped his husky voice to a still greater depth of mystery:

“You’re over two hundred⁠—I should say nearer three hundred⁠—pounds down in your battalion stores. I don’t suppose you want to lose a sum of money like that?”

Tietjens said:

“I’m damned if I do⁠ ⁠… But I don’t see⁠ ⁠… Oh, yes, I do⁠ ⁠… If I make him sergeant-major he has to hand over the stores all complete⁠ ⁠… Today⁠ ⁠… Can he do it?”

Cowley said that Morgan could have till the day after tomorrow. He would look after things till then.

“But you’ll want to have a flutter before you go,” Tietjens said. “Don’t stop for me.”

Cowley said that he would stop and see the job through. He had thought of going down into the town and having a flutter. But the girls down there were a common sort, and it was bad for his complaint⁠ ⁠… He would stop and see what could be done with Morgan. Of course it was possible that Morgan might decide to face things out. He might prefer to stick to the money he’d got by disposing of Tietjens’ stores to other battalions that were down, or to civilian contractors. And stand a court martial! But it wasn’t likely. He was a Nonconformist deacon, or pew-opener, or even a minister possibly, at home in Wales⁠ ⁠… From near Denbigh! And Cowley had got a very good man, a first-class man, an Oxford professor, now a lance-corporal at the depot, for Morgan’s place. The colonel would lend him to Tietjens and would get him rated acting quartermaster-sergeant unpaid⁠ ⁠… Cowley had it all arranged⁠ ⁠… Lance-Corporal Caldicott was a first-class man, only he could not tell his right hand from his left on parade. Literally could not tell them⁠ ⁠…

So the battalion settled itself down⁠ ⁠… Whilst Cowley and he were at the colonel’s orderly room arranging for the transfer of the professor⁠—he was