McKechnie withdrew precipitately into the recessed pathway. The column of earth in their faces gave a sense of oppression. He said:
“Did you put that fellow up to saying that damnable thing?…” He repeated: “That perfectly damnable thing! Damnable!” Besides hating Tietjens he was shocked, pained, femininely lachrymose. He gazed into Tietjens’ eyes like a forsaken mistress fit to do a murder, with a sort of wistful incredulity of despair.
To that Tietjens was accustomed. For the last two months McKechnie whispering in the ear of the C.O. wherever Battalion Headquarters might happen to be — McKechnie, with his arms spread abroad on the table and his chin nearly on the cloth that they had always managed to retain in spite of three precipitate moves, McKechnie, with his mad eyes every now and then moving in the direction of Tietjens, had been almost the most familiar object of Tietjens’ night landscapes. They wanted him gone so that McKechnie might once again become Second in Command of that body of pals…. That indeed was what they were… with the addition of a great deal too much of what they called ’Ooch.
Tietjens obviously could not go. There was no way of managing it: he had been put there by old Campion and there he must remain. So that by the agreeable irony of Providence there was Tietjens who had wanted above all McKechnie’s present relatively bucolic job hated to hell by half a dozen quite decent if trying young squits — the pals — because Tietjens was in his, McKechnie’s, desired position. It seemed to make it all the worse that they were all, with the exception of the Commanding Officer himself, of the little, dark, Cockney type and had the Cockney’s voice, gesture, and intonation, so that Tietjens felt himself like a blond Gulliver with hair very silver in patches, rising up amongst a lot of Lilliputian brown creatures… Portentous and unreasonably noticeable.
A large cannon, nearer than the one that had lately spoken, but as it were with a larger but softer voice, remarked: “Phohhhhhhhhh,” the sound wandering round the landscape for a long while. After a time about four coupled railway-trains hurtled jovially amongst the clouds and went a long way away — four in one. They were probably trying to impress the North Sea.
It might of course be the signal for the German barrage to begin. Tietjens’ heart stopped; his skin on the nape of the neck began to prickle; his hands were cold. That was fear: the Battle Fear, experienced in strafes. He might not again be able to hear himself think. Not ever. What did he want of life?… Well, just not to lose his reason. One would pray. Not that…. Otherwise, perhaps a nice parsonage might do. It was just thinkable. A place in which for ever to work at the theory of waves…. But of course it was not thinkable….
He was saying to McKechnie:
“You ought not to be here without a tin hat. You will have to put a tin hat on if you mean to stop here. I can give you four minutes if that is not the strafe beginning. Who’s been saying what?”
McKechnie said.
“I’m not stopping here. I’m going back, after I’ve given you a piece of my mind, to the beastly job you have got me defiled with.”
Tietjens said:
“Well, you’ll put on a tin hat to go there, please. And don’t ride your horse, if you’ve got it here, till after you’re a hundred yards, at least, down a communication trench.”
McKechnie asked how Tietjens dared give him orders and Tietjens said: Fine he would look with Divisional Transport dead in his lines at five in the morning in a parade hat. McKechnie with objurgations said that the Transport Officer had the right to consult the C.O. of a battalion he supplied. Tietjens said:
“I’m commanding here. You’ve not consulted me.”
It appeared to him queer that they should be behaving like that when you could hear… oh, say, the wings of the angel of death…. You can “almost hear the very rustling of his wings” was the quotation. Good enough rhetoric. But of course that was how armed men would behave…. At all times!
He had been trying the old trick of the military, clipped voice on the half-dotty subject. It had before then reduced McKechnie to some sort of military behaviour.
It reduced him in this case to a maudlin state. He exclaimed with a sort of lachrymose agony:
“This is what it has come to with the old battalion… the b—y; b—w, b—y old battalion of z—rs!” Each imprecation was a sob. “How we worked at it…. And now… you’ve got it!”
Tietjens said:
“Well, you were Vice-Chancellor’s Latin Prize-man once. It’s what we get reduced to.” He added: “Vos mellificatis apes!”
McKechnie said with gloomy contempt:
“You…. You’re no Latinist!”
By now Tietjens had counted two hundred and eighty since the big cannon had said “Phooooh.” Perhaps then it was not the signal for the barrage to begin… Had it been it would have begun before now; it would have come thumping along on the heels of the “Phoooh.” His hands and the nape of his neck were preparing to become normal.
Perhaps the strafe would not come at all that day.
There was the wind. If anything it was strengthening. Yesterday he had suspected that the Germans hadn’t got any tanks handy. Perhaps the ugly, senseless armadillos — and incapable at that! under-engined! — had all got stuck in the marshes in front of G section. Perhaps the heavy artillery fire of ours that had gone on most of yesterday had been meant to pound the beastly things to pieces. Moving, they looked like slow rats, their noses to the ground, snouting crumbs of garbage. When they were still they looked merely pensive!
Perhaps the strafe would not come. He hoped it would not. He did not want a strafe with himself in command of the battalion. He did not know what to do, what he ought to do by the book. He knew what he would do. He would stroll about along those deep trenches. Stroll. With his hands in his pockets. Like General Gordon in pictures. He would say contemplative things as the time dragged on…. A rather abominable sort of Time, really…. But that would introduce into the Battalion a spirit of calm that it had lately lacked…. The night before last the C.O. with a bottle in each hand had hurled them both at Huns who did not materalise for an hour and a half. Even the Pals had omitted to laugh. After that he, Tietjens, had taken command. With lots of the Orderly Room papers under both arms. They had had to be in a hurry, at night; with men suggesting pale grey Canadian trappers coming out of holes!
He did not want to command in a strafe, or at any other time! He hoped the unfortunate C.O. would get over his trouble by the evening…. But he supposed that he, Tietjens, would get through it all right if he had to. Like the man who had never tried playing the violin!
McKechnie had suddenly become lachrymosely feminine, like a woman pleading, large-eyed, for her lover, his eyes explored Tietjens’ face for signs of treachery, for signs that what he said was not what he meant in his heart. He said:
“What are you going to do about Bill? Poor old Bill that has sweated for his Battalion as you never…” He began again:
“Think of poor old Bill! You can’t be thinking of doing the dirty on him…. No man could be such a swine!”
It was curious how those circumstances brought out the feminine that was in man. What was that ass of a German Professor’s theory… formula? My plus Wx equals Man?… Well, if God hadn’t invented woman men would have had to do so. In that sort of place. You grew sentimental. He, Tietjens, was growing sentimental. He said: