The money,' the runner said. 'What is it?'
'It's the Association,' the man said.
'All right, all right,' the runner said, almost testily. 'How do you get it? Can anybody...'
'Right,' the man said. 'You take ten bob. Then on the next pay-day you begin paying him sixpence a day for thirty days,'
'If you're still alive,' the runner said.
'Right,' the other said. 'When you have paid up you can start over again,'
'But suppose you're not,' the runner said. But this time the man merely looked at him, so that he said, almost pettishly again: 'All right, all right, I'm not really that stupid; to still be alive a year from now is worth six hundred percent of anything,' But still the man looked at him, with something so curious in his face, behind his eyes, that the runner said quickly, 'Yes. What?'
'You're new,' the other said.
'Yes,' the runner said. 'I was in London last week. Why?'
The rate aint so high, if you're a..,' the voice stopping, ceasing, the eyes still watching him so curiously, so intently, that it Tuesday seemed to the runner that his own gaze was drawn, as though by some physical force, down the man's side to where his hand hung against his flank: at which instant the hand flicked out in a ges-ture, a signal, so brief, so rapid before it became again immobile against its owner's khaki leg that the runner could hardly believe he had seen it.
'What?' the runner said. 'What?' But now the face was closed, inscrutable; the man was already turning away.
'Why dont you ask him what you want to know?' he said. 'He wont bite yer. He wont even make you take the ten bob, if you dont want,'
The runner watched the long car back and fill in the narrow street, to return wherever it came from: nor had he even seen the battalion adjutant yet, who at worse could be no more than cap-tain and very likely not even as old as he: so the preliminaries would not take long, probably no more than this: the adjutant: Oh, you re that one. Why haven't you got up your M. C.? Or did they take that back too, along with the pip?
Then he: I don't know. Could I wear an M. C. on this?
Then the adjutant: I dont know either. What else did you want? You re not due here until Orderly Room Monday.
Then he would ask: who by now had divined who the rich American woman would be, since for two years now Europe-France anyway-had been full of them-the wealthy Philadelphia and Wall Street and Long Island names whose money supported ambulance units and air squadrons in the French front-the com-mittees, organizations, of officially nonbelligerent amateurs by means of which America fended off not Germans but war itself; he could ask then, saying, But why here? Granted that they have one with at the head of it an old blackamoor who looks like a nonconformist preacher, why did the French Government send him up here in a State motorcar for a two-minute visit with a pri-vate soldier in a British infantry battalion?--oh yes, he could ask, getting nothing probably except the old Negro's name, which he already knew and hence was not what he lacked, needed, must have if there were peace: which took another three days from that Monday when, reporting at Orderly Room, he became officially a member of the battalion family and could cultivate the orderly corporal in charge of the battalion correspondence and so hold at last in his own hands the official document signed by the chief-of-staff at Poperinghe, containing not only the blackamoor's name but the rich and organ-rolling one of the organization, committee, which he headed: Les Amis Myriades et Anonymes la France de Tout le Monde-a title, a designation, so embracing, so richly sonorous with grandeur and faith, as to have freed itself completely from man and his agonies, majestic in its empyrean capacity, as weightless and palpless upon the anguished earth as the adumbration of a cloud. And if he had hoped to get anything at all, even that much, let alone anything more, from the owner of the money-belt, he would have been wrong indeed there: which (the failure) cost him five shillings in francs: hunting the man down and stop-ping him by simply getting in front of him and standing there, saying baldly and bluntly: 'Who is Reverend Tobe Sutterfield?' then still standing there for better than another minute beneath the harsh spent vituperation, until he could say at last: 'Are you finished now? Then I apologise. All I really want is ten bob': and watched his name go down into the little dogeared book and took the francs which he would not even spend, so that the thirty sixpences would go back to their source in the original notes. But at least he had established a working, a speaking relationship: because of his orderly-room contact, he was able to use it, not needing to block the way this time to speak: 'Best keep this a staff matter, though I think you should know. We're going back in tonight,' The man looked at him. 'Something is going to happen. They have brought too many troops down here. It's a battle. The ones who thought up Loos cant rest on their laurels forever, you know,' Still the man only looked at him. 'It's your money. So you can protect yourself. Who knows? you may be one of the ones to stay alive. Instead of letting us bring you only Tuesday sixpence a day, demand it all at once and bury it somewhere,' Still the man just looked at him, not even with contempt; suddenly the runner thought, with humility, abasement almost. He has ethics, like a banker, not to his clients because they are people, but be-cause they are clients. Not pity: he -would bankrupt any-all-of them without turning a hair, once they had accepted the gambit; it's ethics toward his vocation, his trade, his profession. It's purity. No: it's even more than that: it's chastity, like Caesar's wife-watching it; the battalion went in that night, and he was right: when it came out again-the sixty-odd percent which was left of it-it bore forever across its memory like the sear of a heated poker, the name of the little stream not much wider in places than a good downwind spit, and the other Somme names-Arras and Albert, Bapaume and St. Quentin and Beaumont Hamel-ineradicable, to last as long as the capacity for breathing would, the capacity for tears-saying (the runner) this time: Tou mean that all that out there is just a perfectly healthy and normal panic, like a market-crash: necessary to keep the body itself strong and hale? that the ones who die and will still die in it were allotted to do so, like the little brokers and traders without wit or intelligence or perhaps just enough money backing, whose high destiny it is to commit suicide in order to keep the edifice of finance solvent?' And still the other only looked at him, not even con-temptuous, not even with pity: just waiting until the runner had finished this time. Then he said: 'Well? Do you want the tanner, or dont you?'