A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [62]
The Adjutant, Notting, looked in and said:
'Brigade wants to know if we're suffering any, sir?' The Colonel surveyed Tietjens with irony:
'Well, what are you going to report?' he asked...'This officer is taking over from me,' he said to Notting. Notting's beady eyes and red-varnished cheeks expressed no emotions.
'Oh, tell Brigade,' the Colonel said, 'that we're all as happy as sand-boys. We could stand this till Kingdom come.' He asked: 'We aren't suffering any, are we?'
Notting said: no, not in particular. 'C' Company was grumbling that all its beautiful revetments had been knocked to pieces. The sentry near their own dugout complained that the pebbles in the gravel were nearly as bad as shrapnel.
'Well, tell Brigade what I said. With Major Tietjens' compliments, not mine. He's in command.'
...You may as well make a cheerful impression to begin with,' he added to Tietjens.
It was then that, suddenly, he burst out with:
'Look here! Lend me two hundred and fifty quid!'
He remained staring fixedly at Tietjens with an odd air of a man who has just asked a teasing, jocular conundrum...
Tietjens had recoiled--really half an inch. The man said he was suffering from a loathsome disease: it was being near something dirty. You don't contract loathsome diseases except from the cheapest kind of women or through being untidy-minded...The man's pals had gone back on him. That sort of man's pals do go back on him His accounts were all out...He was in short the sort of swindling, unclean scoundrel to whom one lent money...Irresistibly!
A crash of the sort you couldn't ignore, as is the case with certain claps in thunderstorms, sent a good deal of gravel down their cellar steps. It crashed against their shaky door. They heard Notting come out of his cellar and tell someone to shovel the beastly stuff back again where it had come from.
The Colonel looked up at the roof. He said that had knocked their parapet about a bit. Then he resumed his fixed gaze at Tietjens.
Tietjens said to himself.
'I'm losing my nerve...It's the damned news that Campion is coming...I'm becoming a wretched, irresolute Johnny.'
The Colonel said:
'Pm not a beastly sponger. I never borrowed before!' His chest heaved...It really expanded and then got smaller again, the orifice in the khaki at his throat contracting...Perhaps he had never borrowed before...
After all, it didn't matter what kind of man this was, it was a question of what sort of a man Tietjens was becoming. He said:
'I can't lend you the money. I'll guarantee an overdraft to your agents. For two hundred and fifty.'
Well, then, he remained the sort of man who automatically lent money. He was glad.
The Colonel's face fell. His martially erect shoulders indeed collapsed. He exclaimed ruefully:
'Oh, I say, I thought you were the sort one could go to.' Tietjens said:
'It's the same thing. You can draw a cheque on your bank exactly as if I paid the money in.'
The Colonel said:
'I can? It's the same thing? You're sure?' His questions were like the pleas of a young woman asking you not to murder her.
...He obviously was not a sponger. He was a financial virgin. There could not be a subaltern of eighteen in the whole army who did not know what it meant to have an overdraft guaranteed after a fortnight's leave...Tietjens only wished they didn't. He said:
'You've practically got the money in your hand as you sit there. I've only to write the letter. It's impossible your agents should refuse my guarantee. If they do, I'll raise the money and send it to you.'
He wondered why he didn't do that last in any case. A year or so ago he would have had no hesitation