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

the canal bridges, but finding them guarded⁠ ⁠… There was an immense artillery dump in the neighbourhood, said to be the largest in the world, and the Germans dropped bombs as thick as peas all over those parts in the hopes of hitting it⁠ ⁠… Apparently the officer speaking was in charge of the canal bridgehead guards; but, as he was in First Army country, it was obviously an act of the utmost impropriety to awaken a general in charge of the spy-catching apparatus on the other side of the canal⁠ ⁠… The general, returning past them to an armchair farther from the telephone, emphasized this point of view with great vigour.

The orderly had returned; Cowley went once more to the telephone, having consumed another liqueur brandy. Tietjens finished his papers and went through them rapidly again. He said to the boy: “Got anything saved up?” The boy said: “A fiver and a few bob.” Tietjens said: “How many bob?” The boy: “Seven, sir.” Tietjens, fumbling clumsily in an inner pocket and a little pocket beneath his belt, held out one leg-of-mutton fist and said: “There! That will double it. Ten pounds fourteen! But it’s very improvident of you. See that you save up a deuced lot more against the next one. Accouchements are confoundedly expensive things, as you’ll learn, and ring money doesn’t stretch forever!⁠ ⁠…” He called out to the retreating boy: “Here, orderly, come back⁠ ⁠…” He added: “Don’t let it get all over camp⁠ ⁠… I can’t afford to subsidize all the seven-months children in the battalion⁠ ⁠… I’ll recommend you for paid lance-corporal when you return from leave if you go on as well as you have done.” He called the boy back again to ask him why Captain McKechnie had not signed the papers. The boy stuttered and stammered that Captain McKechnie was⁠ ⁠… He was⁠ ⁠…

Tietjens muttered: “Good God!” beneath his breath. He said:

“The captain has had another nervous breakdown⁠ ⁠…” The orderly accepted the phrase with gratitude. That was it. A nervous breakdown. They say he had been very queer at mess. About divorce. Or the captain’s uncle. A barrow-night! Tietjens said: “Yes, yes.” He half rose in his chair and looked at Sylvia. She exclaimed painfully:

“You can’t go. I insist that you can’t go.” He sank down again and muttered wearily that it was very worrying. He had been put in charge of this officer by General Campion. He ought not to have left the camp at all perhaps. But McKechnie had seemed better. A great deal of the calmness of her insolence had left her. She had expected to have the whole night in which luxuriously to torment the lump opposite her. To torment and to allure him. She said:

“You have settlements to come to now and here that will affect your whole life. Our whole lives! You propose to abandon them because a miserable little nephew of your miserable little friend⁠ ⁠…” She added in French: “Even as it is you cannot pay attention to these serious matters, because of these childish preoccupations of yours. That is to be intolerably insulting to me!” She was breathless.

Tietjens asked the orderly where Captain McKechnie was now. The orderly said he had left the camp. The colonel of the depot had sent a couple of officers as a search-party. Tietjens told the orderly to go and find a taxi. He could have a ride himself up to camp. The orderly said taxis would not be running on account of the air-raid. Could he order the G.M.P. to requisition one on urgent military service? The exhilarated airgun pooped off thereupon three times from the garden. For the next hour it sent off every two or three minutes. Tietjens said: “Yes! Yes!” to the orderly. The noises of the air raid became more formidable. A blue express letter of French civilian make was handed to Tietjens. It was from the duchess to inform him that coal for the use of greenhouses was forbidden by the French Government. She did not need to say that she relied on his honour to ensure her receiving her coal through the British military authorities, and she asked for an immediate reply. Tietjens expressed real annoyance while he read this. Distracted by the noise, Sylvia cried out that the letter must be from Valentine Wannop in Rouen. Did not the girl intend to let him have an hour in which to settle the whole business of his life? Tietjens moved to the chair next to hers. He handed her the duchess’s letter.

He began a long, slow, serious explanation with a long, slow, serious apology. He said he regretted very much that when she should have taken the trouble to come so far in order to do him the honour to consult him about a matter which she would have been perfectly at liberty to settle for herself, the extremely serious military position should render him so liable to interruption. As far as he was concerned Groby was entirely at her disposal with all that it contained. And of course a sufficient income for the upkeep.

She exclaimed in an access of sudden and complete despair:

“That means that you do not intend to live there.” He said that that must settle itself later. The war would no doubt last a good deal longer. While it lasted there could be no question of his coming back. She said that that meant that he intended to get killed. She warned him that, if he got killed, she would cut down the great cedar at the southwest corner of Groby. It kept all the light out of the principal drawing-room and the bedrooms above it⁠ ⁠… He winced: he certainly winced at that. She regretted that she had said it. It was along other lines that she desired to make him wince.

He said that, apart from his having no intention of getting himself killed, the matter was absolutely out of his hands. He had to go where he was ordered to go and do what