No More Parades_ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [22]
'You should do as I do...Regular hours...lots of exercise...horse exercise...I do P.T. every morning at the open window of my room...hardening...'
'It must be very gratifying for the ladies in the rooms facing yours,' Tietjens said grimly. 'Is that what's the matter with Mlle Nanette, now?...I haven't got time for proper exercise...
'Good gracious, no,' the colonel, said. He now tucked his hand firmly under Tietjens' arm and began to work him towards the left hand of the road: in the direction leading out of camp. Tietjens worked their steps as firmly towards the right and they leant one against the other. 'In fact, old bean,' the colonel said, 'Campy is working so hard to get the command of a fighting army--though he's indispensable here--that we might pack up bag and baggage any day...That is what has made Nanette see reason...'
'Then what am I doing in this show?' Tietjens asked. But Colonel Levin continued blissfully:
'In fact I've got her almost practically for certain to promise that next week...or the week after next at latest...she'll...damn it, she'll name the happy day.'
Tietjens said:
'Good hunting!...How splendidly Victorian!'
'That's, damn it,' the colonel exclaimed manfully, 'what I say myself...Victorian is what it is...All these marriage settlements...And what is it...Droits du Seigneur?...And notaires...And the Count, having his say...And the Marchioness...And two old grand aunts...But...Hoopla!...' He executed with his gloved right thumb in the moonlight a rapid pirouette...'Next week...or at least the week after...' His voice suddenly dropped.
'At least,' he wavered, 'that was what it was at lunchtime...Since then...something happened...'
'You've not been caught in bed with a V.A.D.?' Tietjens asked.
The colonel mumbled:
'No...not in bed...Not with a V.A.D...Oh, damn it, at the railway station...With...The general sent me down to meet her...and Nanny of course was seeing off her grandmother, the Duchesse...The giddy cut she handed me out...
Tietjens became coldly furious.
'Then it was over one of your beastly imbecile rows with Miss de Bailly that you got me out here,' he exclaimed. 'Do you mind going down with me towards the I.B.D. headquarters? Your final orders may have come in there. The sappers won't let me have a telephone, so I have to look in there the last thing...' He felt a yearning towards rooms in huts, warmed by coke-stoves and electrically lit, with acting lance-corporals bending over A.F.B.'s on a background of deal pigeon-holes filled with returns on buff and blue paper. You got quiet and engrossment there. It was a queer thing: the only place where he, Christopher Tietjens of Groby, could be absently satisfied was in some orderly room or other. The only place in the world...And why? It was a queer thing...
But not queer, really. It was a matter of inevitable selection if you came to think it out. An acting orderly-room lance-corporal was selected for his penmanship, his power of elementary figuring, his trustworthiness amongst innumerable figures and messages, his dependability. For this he differed a hair's breadth in rank from the rank and file. A hairbreadth that was to him the difference between life and death. For, if he proved not to be dependable, back he went--returned to duty! As long as he was dependable he slept under a table in a warm room, his toilette arrangements and washing in a bully-beef case near his head, a billy full of tea always stewing for him on an always burning stove...A paradise!...No! Not a paradise: the paradise of the Other Ranks!...He might be awakened at one in the morning. Miles away the enemy might be beginning a strafe...He would roll out from among the blankets under the table amongst the legs of hurrying N.C.O.'s and officers, the telephone going like hell...He would have to manifold innumerable short orders on buff slips on a typewriter...A bore to be awakened