Tietjens said quickly:
“If it’s over Schomburg, sir… it’s a washout. Lieutenant Hotchkiss has no more right to give orders about him than as to where I shall sleep…. And I would rather die than subject any horse for which I am responsible to the damnable torture Hotchkiss and that swine Lord Beichan want to inflict on service horses….”
The general said maleficently:
“It looks as if you damn well will die on that account!”
He added: “You’re perfectly right to object to wrong treatment of horses. But in this case your objection blocks the only other job open to you.” He quietened himself a little. “You are probably not aware,” he went on, “that your brother Mark…”
Tietjens said:
“Yes, I am aware…”
The general said: “Do you know that the 19th Division to which your brother wants you sent is attached to Fourth Army now — and it’s Fourth Army horses that Hotchkiss is to play with?… How could I send you there to be under his orders?”
Tietjens said:
“That’s perfectly correct, sir. There is nothing else that you can do…” He was finished. There was now nothing left but to find out how his mind was going to take it. He wished they could go to his cook-houses!
The general said:
“What was I saying?… I’m dreadfully tired…. No one could stand this…” He drew from inside his tunic a lapis-lazuli coloured, small be-coroneted note-case and selected from it a folded paper that he first looked at and then slipped between his belt and his tunic. He said: “On top of all the responsibility I have to bear!” He asked: “Has it occurred to you that, if I’m of any service to the country, your taking up my energy — sapping my energy over your affairs! —is aiding your country’s enemies?… I can only afford four hours’ sleep as it is…. I’ve got some questions to ask you….” He referred to the slip of paper from his belt, folded it again and again slipped it into his belt.
Tietjens’ mind missed a notch again…. It was the fear of the mud that was going to obsess him. Yet, curiously, he had never been under heavy fire in mud…. You would think that that would not have obsessed him. But in his ear he had just heard uttered in a whisper of intense weariness, the words: Es ist nicht zu ertragen; es ist das dasz uns verloren hat… words in German, of utter despair, meaning: It is unbearable: it is that that has ruined us…. The mud!… He had heard those words, standing amidst volcano craters of mud, amongst ravines, monstrosities of slime, cliffs and distances, all of slime…. He had been going, for curiosity or instruction, from Verdun where he had been attached to the French – on a holiday afternoon when nothing was doing, with a guide, to visit one of the outlying forts…. Deamont? No, Douaumont…. Taken from the enemy about a week before…. When would that be? He had lost all sense of chronology…. In November…. A beginning of some November…. With a miracle of sunshine; not a cloud, the mud towering up shut you in intimately with a sky that ached for limpidity…. And the slime had moved… following a French bombardier who was strolling along eating nuts, disreputably, his shoulders rolling…. Déserteurs…. The moving slime was German deserters…. You could not see them: the leader of them – an officer! – had his glasses so thick with mud that you could not see the colour of his eyes, and his half-dozen decorations were like the beginnings of swallows’ nests, his beard like stalactites…. Of the other men you could only see the eyes – extraordinarily vivid: mostly blue like the sky!… Deserters! Led by an officer! Of the Hamburg Regiment! As if an officer of the Buffs had gone over! It was incredible…. And that was what the officer had said as he passed, not shamefacedly, but without any humanity left in him…. Done!… Those moving saurians compacted of slime kept on passing him afterwards, all the afternoon…. And he could not help picturing their immediate antecedents for two months…. In advanced pill-boxes…. No, they didn’t have pill-boxes then. In advanced pockets of mud, in dreadful solitude amongst those ravines… suspended in eternity, at the last day of the world. And it had horribly shocked him to hear again the German language a rather soft voice, a little suety, like an obscene whisper…. The voice obviously of thé damned; hell could hold nothing curious for those poor beasts…. His French guide had said sardonically: On dirait l’Inferno de Dante!… Well, those Germans were getting back on him. They were now to become an obsession! A complex, they said nowadays…. The general said coolly:
“I presume you refuse to answer?”
That shook him cruelly.
He said desperately:
“I had to end what I took to be an unbearable position for both parties. In the interests of my son!” Why in the world had he said that?… He was going to be sick. It came back to him that the general had been talking of his separation from Sylvia. Last night that had happened. He said: “I may have been right: I may have been wrong….”
The general said icily:
“If you don’t choose to go into it….”
Tietjens said:
“I would prefer not to….”
The general said:
“There is no end to this…. But there are questions it’s my duty to ask…. If you do not wish to go into your marital relations, I cannot force you…. But, damn it, are you sane? Are you responsible? Do you intend to get Miss Wannop to live with you before the war is over? Is she, perhaps, here, in this town, now? Is that your reason for separating from Sylvia? Now, of all times in the world!”
Tietjens said:
“No, sir. I ask you to believe that I have absolutely no relations with that young lady. None! I have no intention of having any. None!…”
The general said:
“I believe that!”
“Circumstances last night,” Tietjens said, “convinced me suddenly, there, on the spot, that I had been wronging my wife…. I had been putting a strain on the lady that was unwarrantable. It humiliates me to have to say it! I had taken a certain course for the sake of the future of our child. But it was an atrociously wrong course. We ought to have separated years ago. It has led to the lady’s pulling the strings of all these shower-baths….”
The general said:
“Pulling the…”
Tietjens said:
“It expresses it, sir…. Last night was nothing but pulling the string of a shower-bath. Perfectly justifiable. I maintain that it was perfectly justifiable.”
The general said:
“Then why have you given her Groby?… You’re not a little soft, are you?… You don’t imagine you’ve… say, got a mission? Or that you’re another person?… That you have to… to forgive….” He took off his pretty hat and wiped his forehead with a tiny cambric handkerchief. He said: “Your poor mother was a little…”
He said suddenly:
“To-night when you are coming to my dinner… I hope you’ll be decent. Why do you so neglect your personal appearance? Your tunic is a disgusting spectacle….”
Tietjens said:
“I had a better tunic, sir… but it has been ruined by the blood of the man who was killed here last night….”
The general said:
“You don’t say you have only two tunics?… Have you no mess clothes?”
Tietjens said:
“Yes, sir, I’ve my blue things. I shall be all right for to-night… But almost everything else I possessed was stolen from my kit when I was in hospital… Even Sylvia’s two pair of sheets….”
“But hang it all,” the general exclaimed, “you don’t mean to say you’ve spaffled all your father left you?”