No More Parades_ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [89]
Levin was supporting him by the elbow. He whispered:
'The general wishes me to go with you if you are feeling unwell. You understand you are released from arrest!' He exclaimed with a sort of rapture: 'You're doing splendidly...It's amazing. Everything I've ever told him about you...Yours is the only draft that got off this morning...
Tietjens grunted:
'Of course I understand that if I'm given an order to perform a duty, it means I am released from arrest.' He had next to no voice. He managed to say that he would prefer to go alone. He said: '...He's forced my hand...The last thing I want is to be released from arrest...Levin said breathlessly:
'You can't refuse...You can't upset him...Why, you can't...Besides, an officer cannot demand a court martial.'
'You look,' Tietjens said, 'like a slightly faded bunch of wallflowers...I'm sure I beg your pardon...It came into my head!' The colonel drooped intangibly, his moustache a little ragged, his eyes a little rimmed, his shaving a little ridged. He exclaimed:
'Damn it!...Do you suppose I don't care what happens to you?...O'Hara came storming into my quarters at half-past three...I'm not going to tell you what he said...' Tietjens said gruffly:
'No, don't! I've all I can stand for the moment...'
Levin exclaimed desperately:
'I want you to understand...It's impossible to believe anything against...'
Tietjens faced him, his teeth showing like a badger's. He said:
'Whom?...Against whom? Curse you!'
Levin said pallidly:
'Against...Against...either of you...
'Then leave it at that!' Tietjens said. He staggered a little until he reached the main lines. Then he marched. It was purgatory. They peeped at him from the corners of huts and withdrew...But they always did peep at him from the corners of huts and withdraw! That is the habit of the Other Ranks on perceiving officers. The fellow called McKechnie also looked out of a hut door. He too withdrew...There was no mistaking that! He had the news...On the other hand, McKechnie too was under a cloud. It might be his, Tietjens', duty, to strafe McKechnie to hell for having left camp last night. So he might be avoiding him...There was no knowing...He lurched infinitesimally to the right. The road was rough. His legs felt like detached and swollen objects that he dragged after him. He must master his legs. He mastered his legs. A batman carrying a cup of tea ran against him. Tietjens said: Tut that down and fetch me the sergeant-cook at the double. Tell him the general's going round the cook-houses in a quarter of an hour.' The batman ran, spilling the tea in the sunlight.
In his hut, which was dim and profusely decorated with the doctor's ideals of female beauty in every known form of pictorial reproduction, so that it might have been lined with peach-blossom, Tietjens had the greatest difficulty in getting into his belt. He had at first forgotten to remove his hat, then he put his head through the wrong opening; his fingers on the buckles operated like sausages. He inspected himself in the doctor's cracked shaving-glass; he was exceptionally well shaved.
He had shaved that morning at six-thirty: five minutes after the draft had got off. Naturally, the lorries had been an hour late. It was providential that he had shaved with extra care. An insolently calm man was looking at him, the face divided in two by the crack in the glass: a naturally white-complexioned double-half of a face: a patch of high colour on each cheekbone; the pepper-and-salt hair ruffled, the white streaks extremely silver. He had gone very silver lately. But he swore he did not look worn. Not careworn. McKechnie said from behind his back:
'By Jove, what's this all about? The general's been strafing me to hell for not having my table tidy!'
Tietjens, still looking in the glass, said:
'You should keep your table tidy. It's the only strafe the battalion's had.'
The general, then, must have been in the orderly room of which he had put McKechnie in charge. McKechnie went on, breathlessly:
'They say you knocked the general...