No More Parades_ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [20]
Tietjens said grimly:
The man was from Pontardulias...not from any Dominion...One of my orderly room...We are forbidden on pain of court martial to let any but Dominion Expeditionary Force men go into the dug-outs...My Canadians were all there...It's an A.C.I. local of the eleventh of November...'
The Staff Offcer said:
'It makes of course, a difference!...Only a Glamorgan-shire? You say...Oh well...But these mysterious...'
He exclaimed, with the force of an explosion, and the relief:
'Look here...can you spare possible ten...twenty...eh...minutes?...It's not exactly a service matter...so per...'
Tietjens exclaimed:
'You see how we're situated, colonel...' and like one sowing grass seed on a lawn, extended both hands over his papers and towards his men...He was choking with rage. Colonel Levin had, under the chaperonage of an English dowager, who ran a chocolate store down on the quays in Rouen, a little French piece to whom he was quite seriously engaged. In the most naïve manner. And the young woman, fantastically jealous, managed to make endless insults to herself out of her almost too handsome colonel's barbaric French. It was an idyll, but it drove the colonel frantic. At such times Levin would consult Tietjens, who passed for a man of brains and a French scholar as to really nicely turned compliments in a difficult language...And as to how you explained that is was necessary for a G.S.O. II, or whatever the colonel was, to be seen quite frequently in the company of very handsome V.A.D.'s and female organizers of all arms...It was the sort of silliness as to which no gentleman ought to be consulted...And here was Levin with the familiar feminine-agonized wrinkle on his bronzed-alabaster brow...Like a beastly soldier-man out of a revue. Why didn't the ass burst into gesture and a throaty tenor...
Sergeant-Major Cowley naturally saved the situation. Just as Tietjens was as near saying Go to hell as you can be to your remarkably senior officer on parade, the sergeant-major, now a very important solicitor's most confidential clerk, began whispering to the colonel...
'The captain might as well take a spell as not...We're through with all the men except the Canadian Railway batch, and they can't be issued with blankets not for half an hour...not for three-quarters. If then! It depends if our runner can find where Quarter's lance-corporal is having his supper, to issue them...! The sergeant-major had inserted that last speech deftly. The Staff officer, with a vague reminiscence of his regimental days, exclaimed:
'Damn it!...I wonder you don't break into the depot blanket store and take what you want...'
The sergeant-major, becoming Simon Pure, exclaimed:
'Oh, no, sir, we could never do that, sir...'
'But the confounded men are urgently needed in the line,' Colonel Levin said. 'Damn it, it's touch and go!...We're rushing...' He appreciated the fact again that he was on the gawdy Staff, and that the sergeant-major and Tietjens, playing like left backs into each other's hands, had trickily let him in.
'We can only pray, sir,' the sergeant-major said, 'that these 'ere bloomin' 'Uns has got quartermasters and depots and issuing departments, same as ourselves.' He lowered his voice into a husky whisper. 'Besides, sir, there's a rumour...round the telephone in depot orderly room...that there's a W.O. order at 'Edquarters...countermanding this and other drafts...'
Colonel Levin said: 'Oh, my God!' and consternation rushed upon both him and Tietjens. The frozen ditches, in the night, out there; the agonized waiting for men; the weight upon the mind like a weight upon the brows; the imminent sense of approaching unthinkableness on the right or the left, according as you looked up or down the trench;