He found no orders in a hut as full as ever of the dull mists and odours of khaki, but he found in revenge a fine upstanding, blond, Canadian-born lance-corporal of old Colonial lineage, with a moving story as related by Sergeant-Major Cowley:
“This man, sir, of the Canadian Railway lot, ’is mother’s just turned up in the town, come on from Eetarpels. Come all the way from Toronto where she was bedridden.”
Tietjens said:
“Well, what about it? Get a move on.”
The man wanted leave to go to his mother who was waiting in a decent estaminet at the end of the tramline, just outside the camp where the houses of the town began.
Tietjens said: “It’s impossible. It’s absolutely impossible. You know that.”
The man stood erect and expressionless; his blue eyes looked confoundedly honest to Tietjens who was cursing himself. He said to the man:
“You can see for yourself that it’s impossible, can’t you?”
The man said slowly:
“Not knowing the regulations in these circumstances I can’t say, sir. But my mother’s is a very special case…. She’s lost two sons already.”
Tietjens said:
“A great many people have…. Do you understand, if you went absent off my pass I might — I quite possibly might — lose my commission? I’m responsible for you fellows getting up the line.”
The man looked down at his feet. Tietjens said to himself that it was Valentine Wannop doing this to him. He ought to turn the man down at once. He was pervaded by a sense of her being. It was imbecile. Yet it was so. He said to the man:
“You said good-bye to your mother, didn’t you, in Toronto, before you left?”
The man said:
“No, sir.” He had not seen his mother in seven years. He had been up in the Chilkoot when war broke out and had not heard of it for ten months. Then he had at once joined up in British Columbia, and had been sent straight through for railway work, on to Aldershot where the Canadians have a camp in building. He had not known that his brothers were killed till he got there and his mother, being bedridden at the news, had not been able to get down to Toronto when his batch had passed through. She lived about sixty miles from Toronto. Now she had risen from her bed like a miracle and come all the way. A widow, sixty-two years of age. Very feeble.
It occurred to Tietjens as it occurred to him ten times a day that it was idiotic of him to figure Valentine Wannop to himself. He had not the slightest idea where she was: in what circumstances, or even in what house. He did not suppose she and her mother had stayed on in that dog-kennel of a place in Bedford Park. They would be fairly comfortable. His father had left them money. “It is preposterous,” he said to himself, “to persist in figuring a person to yourself when you have no idea of where they are.” He said to the man:
“Wouldn’t it do if you saw your mother at the camp gate, by the guard-room?”
“Not much of a leave-taking, sir,” the man said; “she not allowed in the camp and I not allowed out. Talking under a sentry’s nose very likely.”
Tietjens said to himself:
“What a monstrous absurdity this is of seeing and talking, for a minute or so! You meet and talk…” And next day at the same hour. Nothing…. As well not to meet or talk…. Yet the mere fantastic idea of seeing Valentine Wannop for a minute…. She not allowed in the camp and he not going out. Talking under a sentry’s nose, very likely…. It had made him smell primroses. Primroses, like Miss Wannop. He said to the sergeant-major:
“What sort of a fellow is this?” Cowley, in open-mouthed suspense, gasped like a fish. Tietjens said:
“I suppose your mother is fairly feeble to stand in the cold?”
“A very decent man, sir,” the sergeant-major got out, “one of the best. No trouble. A perfectly clean conduct sheet. Very good education. A railway engineer in civil life…. Volunteered, of course, sir.”
“That’s the odd thing,” Tietjens said to the man, “that the percentages of absentees is as great amongst the volunteers as the Derby men or the compulsorily enlisted…. Do you understand what will happen to you if you miss the draft?”
The man said soberly:
“Yes, sir. Perfectly well.”
“You understand that you will be shot? As certainly as that you stand there. And that you haven’t a chance of escape.”
He wondered what Valentine Wannop, hot pacifist, would think of him if she heard him. Yet it was his duty to talk like that: his human, not merely his military duty. As much his duty as that of a doctor to warn a man that if he drank of typhoid-contaminated water he would get typhoid. But people are unreasonable. Valentine too was unreasonable. She would consider it brutal to speak to a man of the possibility of his being shot by a firing party. A groan burst from him at the thought that there was no sense in bothering about what Valentine Wannop would or would not think of him. No sense. No sense. No sense…
The man, fortunately, was assuring him that he knew, very soberly, all about the penalty for going absent off a draft. The sergeant-major, catching a sound from Tietjens, said with admirable fussiness to the man:
“There, there! Don’t you hear the officer’s speaking? Never interrupt an officer.”
“You’ll be shot,” Tietjens said, “at dawn…. Literally at dawn.” Why did they shoot them at dawn? To rub it in that they were never going to see another sunrise. But they drugged the fellows so that they wouldn’t know the sun if they saw it; all roped in a chair…. It was really the worse for the firing party. He added to the man:
“Don’t think I’m insulting you. You appear to be a very decent fellow. But very decent fellows have gone absent….” He said to the sergeant-major:
“Give this man a two-hours’ pass to go to the… whatever’s the name of the estaminet…. The draft won’t move off for two hours, will it?” He added to the man: “If you see your draft passing the pub you run out and fall in. Like mad, you understand. You’d never get another chance.”
There was a mumble like applause and envy of a mate’s good luck from a packed audience that had hung on the lips of simple melodrama… an audience that seemed to be all enlarged eyes, the khaki was so colourless…. They came as near applause as they dared, but there was no sense in worrying about whether Valentine Wannop would have applauded or not…. And there was no knowing whether the fellow would not go absent, either. As likely as not there was no mother. A girl very likely. And very likely the man would desert…. The man looked you straight in the eyes. But a strong passion, like that for escape — or a girl — will give you control over the muscles of the eyes. A little thing that, before a strong passion! One would look God in the face on the day of judgment and lie, in that case.
Because what the devil did he want of Valentine Wannop? Why could he not stall off the thought of her? He could stall off the thought of his wife… or his not-wife. But Valentine Wannop came wriggling in. At all hours of the day and night. It was an obsession. A madness… what those fools called “a complex”!… Due, no doubt, to something your nurse had done, or your parents said to you. At birth… A strong passion… or no doubt not strong enough. Otherwise he, too, would have gone absent. At any rate, from Sylvia… Which he hadn’t done. Which he hadn’t done. Or hadn’t he? There was no saying….
It was undoubtedly colder in the alley between the huts. A man was saying: “Hoo… Hooo… Hoo…” A sound like that, and flapping his arms and hopping… “Hand and foot, mark time!…” Somebody ought to fall these poor devils in and give them that to keep their circulations going. But they might not know the command…. It was a Guards’ trick, really…. What the devil were these fellows kept hanging about here for? he asked.