A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [50]
But things had got in the way. A fellow called O9 Morgan had got himself killed over their feet. In the hut. Then they had been busy: with the Draft!
Apparently McKechnie had sealed up that sonnet in an envelope. In that envelope. Then and there. Apparently McKechnie had been inspired with a blind, Celtic, snorting rage to prove that he was better as a Latinist than Tietjens as a sonneteer. Apparently he was still so inspired. He was mad to engage in competition with Tietjens.
It was perhaps that that made him not quite mad. He kept sane in order to be fit for this competition. He was now repeating, holding out the envelope, seal upwards:
'I suppose you believe I have not read your sonnet, sir. I suppose you believe I have not read your sonnet, sir...To prepare myself to translate it more quickly.'
Tietjens said:
'Yes! No!...I don't care.'
He couldn't tell the fellow that the idea of a competition was loathsome to him. Any sort of competition was loathsome to Tietjens. Even competitive games. He liked playing tennis. Real tennis. But he very rarely played because he couldn't get fellows to play with, that beating would not be disagreeable...And it would be loathsome to be drawn into any sort of competition with this Prize-man...They were moving very slowly along the trench, McKechnie retreating sideways and holding out the seal.
'It's your seal, sir!' he was repeating. 'Your own seal. You see, it isn't broken...You don't perhaps imagine that I read the sonnet quickly and made a copy from memory?'
...The fellow wasn't even a decent Latinist. Or verse-maker, though he was always boasting about it to the impossible, adenoidy, Cockney subalterns who made up the battalion's mess. He would translate their chits into Latin verse...But it was always into tags. Generally from the Aeneid. Like:
'Conticuere omnes', or 'Vino somnoque sepultum!'
That was, presumably, what Oxford of just before the War was doing.
He said:
'I'm not a beastly detective...Yes, of course, I quite believe it.'
He thought of emerging into the society of little Aranjuez who was some sort of gentle earnest Levantine with pleasure. Think of thinking of a Levantine with pleasure! He said:
'Yes. It's all right, McKechnie.'
He felt himself solid. He was really in a competition with this fellow. It was deterioration. He, Tietjens, was crumpling up morally. He had accepted responsibility: he had thought of two hundred and fifty pounds with pleasure: now he was competing with a Cockney-Celtic-Prizeman. He was reduced to that level...Well, as like as not he would be dead before the afternoon. And no one would know.
Think of thinking about whether any one would know or no!...But it was Valentine Wannop that wasn't to know. That he had deteriorated under the strain!...That enormously surprised him. He said to his subconscious self:
'What! Is that still there!'
That girl was at least an admirable Latinist. He remarked, with a sort of sardonic glee that, years before, in a dog-cart, emerging from mist, somewhere in Sussex-Udimore!--she had made him look silly. Over Catullus! Him, Tietjens!...Shortly afterwards old Campion had run into them with his motor that he couldn't drive but would drive.
McKechnie, apparently assuaged, said:
'I don't know if you know, sir, that General Campion is to take over his Army the day after to-morrow...But, of course, you would know.'
Tietjens said:
'No. I didn't...You fellows in touch with Headquarters get to hear of things long before us.' He added:
'It means that we shall be getting reinforcements...It means the Single Command.'
IV
It meant that the end of the war was in sight.
In the next sector, in front of the Headquarters' dug-out sacking they found only Second-Lieutenant Aranjuez and Lance-Corporal Duckett of