A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [75]
Reprehensible! He said. For God's sake let us be reprehensible! And have done with it! We aren't Hun strategists for ever balancing pros and cons of militant morality!
He took with his left hand the cup from the rock. Little Aranjuez came round the mound. Tietjens threw the cup downhill at a large bit of rock. He said to Aranjuez's wistful enquiring eyes:
'So that no toast more ignoble may ever be drunk out of it!'
The boy gasped and blushed:
'Then you've got some one that you love, sir!' he said in his tone of hero-worship. 'Is she like Nancy, in Bailleul?' Tietjens said:
'No, not like Nancy...Or, perhaps, yes, a little like Nancy!' He did not want to hurt the boy's feelings by the suggestion that any one unlike Nancy could be loved. He felt a premonition that that child was going to be hurt. Or, perhaps, it was only that he was already so suffering.
The boy said:
'Then you'll get her, sir. You'll certainly get her!' 'Yes, I shall probably get her!' Tietjens said.
The Lance-Corporal came, too, round the mound. He said that 'A' Company were all under cover. They went all together round the heap in the direction of 'B' Company's trench down into which they slid. It descended sharply. It was certainly wet. It ended practically in a little swamp. The next battalion had even some yards of sand-bag parapet before entering the slope again with its trench. This was Flanders. Duck country. The bit of swamp would make personal keeping in communication difficult. Where Tietjens had put in his tile-syphons a great deal of water had exuded. The young O.C. Company said that they had had to bale the trench out, until they had made a little drain down into the bog. They baled out with shovels. Two of the shovels still stood against the brushwood revetments of the parapet.
'Well, you should not leave your shovels about!' Tietjens shouted. He was feeling considerable satisfaction at the working of his syphon. In the meantime we had begun a considerable artillery demonstration. It became overwhelming. There was some sort of Bloody Mary somewhere a few yards off, or so it seemed. She pooped off. The planes had perhaps reported the position of the Austrian gun. Or we might be strafing their trenches to make them shut up that weapon. It was like being a dwarf at a conversation, a conflict--of mastodons. There was so much noise it seemed to grow dark. It was a mental darkness. You could not think. A Dark Age! The earth moved.
He was looking at Aranjuez from a considerable height. He was enjoying a considerable view. Aranjuez's face had a rapt expression--like that of a man composing poetry. Long dollops of liquid mud surrounded them in the air. Like black pancakes being tossed. He thought: 'Thank God I did not write to her. We are being blown up!' The earth turned like a weary hippopotamus. It settled down slowly over the face of Lance-Corporal Duckett who lay on his side, and went on in a slow wave.
It was slow, slow, slow...like a slowed down movie. The earth manoeuvred for an infinite time. He remained suspended in space. As if he were suspended as he had wanted to be in front of that cockscomb in whitewash. Coincidence!
The earth sucked slowly and composedly at his feet.
It assimilated his calves, his thighs. It imprisoned him above the waist. His arms being free, he resembled a man in a life-buoy. The earth moved him slowly. It was solidish.
Below him, down a mound, the face of little Aranjuez, brown, with immense black eyes in bluish whites, looked at him. Out of viscous mud. A head on a charger! He could see the imploring lips form the words: 'Save me, Captain!' He said: 'I've got to save myself first!'