Fable, A - William Faulkner [9]
Because by ordinary he believed himself incapable of hoping: only of daring, without fear or qualm or regret within the iron and simple framework of the destiny which he believed would never betray him so long as he continued to dare without question or qualm or regret, but which apparently had abandoned him, leaving him only the capacity to dare, until two days ago when his corps commander sent for him. The corps commander was his only friend in France, or anywhere else above earth, for that mat-ter. They had been subalterns together in the same regiment into which he had been commissioned. But Lallemont, though a poor man too, had along with ability just enough of the sort of connections which not only made the difference between division and corps command at the same length of service, but placed Lallemont quite favorably for the next vacant army command. Though when Lallemont said, I've something for you, if you want it,' he realised that what he had thought was the capacity to dare was still soiled just a little with the baseless hoping which is the diet of weaklings. But that was all right too: who, even though apparently abandoned by destiny, still had not been wrong in dedicating his life as he had: even though abandoned, he had never let his chosen vocation down; and sure enough in his need, the vocation had remembered him.
So he said, Thanks. What?' Lallemont told him. Whereupon for a moment he believed that he had not understood. But this passed, because in the next one he saw the whole picture. The attack was already doomed in its embryo, and whoever commanded it, delivered it, along with it. It was not that his trained professional judgment told him that the affair, as the corps commander presented it, would be touch-and-go and hence more than doubt-ful. That would not have stopped him. On the contrary, that would have been a challenge, as if the old destiny had not abandoned him at all. It was because that same trained judgment saw at once that this particular attack was intended to fail: a sacrifice already planned and doomed in some vaster scheme, in which it would not matter either way, whether the attack failed or not: only that the attack must be made: and more than that, since here the whole long twenty-odd years of training and dedication paid him off in clairvoyance; he saw the thing not only from its front and public view, but from behind it too: the cheapest attack would be one which must fail, harmlessly to all if delivered by a man who had neither friends nor influence to make people with five stars on the General Staff, or civilians with red rosettes in the Quai d'Or-say, squirm. He didn't for even one second think of the old gray man in the Hotel de Ville at Chaulnesmont. He thought for even less time than that: Lallemont is saving his own neck. He thought-and now he knew that he was indeed lost-It's Mama Bidet. But he only said: 'I cant afford a failure,'
'There will be a ribbon,' the corps commander said.
'I dont have enough rank to get the one they give for failures,'
'Yes,' the corps commander said. 'This time,'
'So it's that bad,' the division commander said. 'That serious. That urgent. All between Bidet and his baton is one infantry division. And that one, mine,' They stared at each other. Then the corps commander started to speak. The division commander didn't permit him to. 'Stow it,' the division commander said. That