Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 618
He said to the Corporal:
‘Let me come.’ Duckett’s left hand and wrist had appeared, the hand drooping and improbably clean, level with the thigh. It gave the line of the body; you could clear away beside him.
‘‘E wasn’t on’y twenty-two,’ the Corporal said. Cockshott said: ‘Same age as me. Very particular e was about your rifle pull-throughs.’
A minute later they pulled Duckett out, by the legs. A stone might have been resting on his face, in that case his face would have been damaged. It wasn’t, though you had had to chance it. It was black but asleep...As if Valentine Wannop had been reposing in an ash-bin. Tietjens left Cockshott applying artificial respiration very methodically and efficiently to the prostrate form.
It was to him a certain satisfaction that, at any rate, in that minute affair he hadn’t lost one of the men but only an officer. As satisfaction it was not militarily correct, though as it harmed no one there was no harm in it. But for his men he always felt a certain greater responsibility; they seemed to him to be there infinitely less of their own volition. It was akin to the feeling that made him regard cruelty to an animal as a more loathsome crime than cruelty to a human being, other than a child. It was no doubt irrational.
Leaning, in the communication trench, against the corrugated iron that boasted a great whitewashed A, in, a very clean thin Burberry boasting half a bushel of badges of rank — worsted crowns and things! — and in a small tin hat that looked elegant, was a slight figure. How the devil can you make a tin hat look elegant! It carried a hunting switch and wore spurs. An Inspecting General. The General said benevolently:
‘Who are you?’ and then with irritation: ‘Where the devil is the officer commanding this Battalion? Why can’t he be found?’ He added: ‘You’re disgustingly dirty. Like a blackamoor. I suppose you’ve an explanation.’
Tietjens was being spoken to by General Campion. In a hell of a temper. He stood to attention like a scarecrow. He said:
‘I am in command of this Battalion, sir. I am Tietjens, second-in-command. Now in command temporarily. I could not be found because I was buried. Temporarily.’
The General said:
‘You...Good God!’ and fell back a step, his jaw dropping. He said: ‘I’ve just come back from London!’ And then: ‘By God, you don’t stop in command of a Battalion of mine a second after I take over!’ He said: ‘They said this was the smartest battalion in my unit!’ and snorted with passion. He added: ‘Neither my galloper nor Levin can find you or get you found. And there you come strolling along with your hands in your pockets!’
In the complete stillness, for, the guns having stopped, the skylarks. too, were taking a spell, Tietjens could hear his heart beat, little dry scraping sounds out of his lungs. The heavy beats were very accelerated. It gave an effect of terror. He said to himself:
‘What the devil has his having been in London to do with it?’ And then: ‘He wants to marry Sylvia! I’ll bet he wants to marry Sylvia!’ That was what his having been to London had to do with it. It was an obsession with him: the first thing he said when surprised and passionate.
They always arranged these periods of complete silence for the visits of Inspecting Generals. Perhaps the Great General Staffs of both sides arrange that for each other. More probably our guns had split themselves in the successful attempt to let the Huns know that we wanted them to shut up — that we were firing with what Papists call a special intention. That would be as effective as a telephone message. The Huns would know there was something up. Never put the other side in a temper when you can help it.
He said:
‘I’ve just had a scratch, sir. I was feeling in my pockets for my field-dressing.’
The General said:
‘A fellow like you has no right to be where he can be wounded. Your place is the lines of communication. I was mad when I sent you here. I shall send you back.’
He added:
‘You can fall out. I want neither your assistance nor your information. They said there was a damn smart officer in command here. I wanted to see him...Of the name of...Of the name of...It does not matter. Fall out...
Tietjens went heavily along the trench. It came into his head to say to himself:
‘It is a land of Hope and Glory!’ Then he exclaimed: ‘By God! I’ll take the thing before the Commander-in-Chief. I’ll take the thing before the King in Council if necessary. By God I will!’ The old fellow had no business to speak to him like that. It was importing personal enmity into service matters. He stood still reflecting on the terms of his letter to Brigade. The Adjutant Notting came along the trench. He said:
‘General Campion wants to see you, sir. He takes over this Army on Monday.’ He added: ‘You’ve been in a nasty place, sir. Not hurt, I trust!’ It was a most unusual piece of loquacity for Notting.
Tietjens said to himself:
‘Then I’ve got five days in command of this unit. He can’t kick me out before he’s in command.’ The Huns would be through them before then. Five days’ fighting! Thank God!
He said:
‘Thanks. I’ve seen him. No, I’m all right. Beastly dirty!’ Notting’s beady eyes had a tinge of agony in them. He said:
‘When they said you had stopped one, sir, I thought I should go mad. We can’t get through the work!’
Tietjens was wondering whether he should write his letter to Brigade before or after the old fellow took over. Notting was saying:
‘The doctor says Aranjuez will get through all right.’
It would be better, if he were going to base his appeal on the grounds of personal prejudice. Notting was saying:
‘Of course he will lose his eye. In fact it...it is not practically there. But he’ll get through.’
PART THREE
I
Coming into the Square was like being suddenly dead, it was so silent and so still to one so lately jostled by the innumerable crowd and deafened by unceasing shouts. The shouting had continued for so long that it had assumed the appearance of being a solid and unvarying thing: like life. So the silence appeared like Death; and now she had death in her heart. She was going to confront a madman in a stripped house. And the empty house stood in an empty square all of whose houses were so eighteenth-century and silver-grey and rigid and serene that they ought all to be empty too and contain dead, mad men. And was this the errand? For to-day when all the world was mad with joy? To become bear-ward to a man who had got rid of all his furniture and did not know the porter — mad without joy!
It turned out to be worse than she expected. She had expected to turn the handle of a door of a tall empty room; in a space made dim with shutters she would see him, looking suspiciously round over his shoulder, a grey badger or a bear taken at its dim occupations. And in uniform. But she was not given time even to be ready. In the last moment she was to steel herself incredibly. She was to become the cold nurse of a shell-shock case.
But there was not any last moment. He charged upon her. There in the open. More like a lion. He came, grey all over, his grey hair — or the grey patches of his hair — shining, charging down the steps, having slammed the hall door. And lopsided. He was carrying under his arm a diminutive piece of furniture. A cabinet.
It was so quick. It was like having a fit. The houses tottered. He regarded her. He had presumably checked violently in his clumsy stride. She hadn’t seen because of the tottering of the houses. His stone-blue eyes came fishily into place in his wooden countenance — pink and white. Too pink where it was pink and too white where it was white. Too much so for health. He was in grey homespuns. He should not wear homespuns or grey. It increased his bulk. He could be made to look...Oh, a fine figure of a man, let us say!
What was he doing? Fumbling in the pocket of his clumsy trousers. He exclaimed — she shook at the sound of his slightly grating, slightly gasping voice:
‘I’m going to sell this thing...Stay here.’ He had produced a latchkey. He was panting fiercely beside her. Up the steps. He was beside her. Beside her. Beside her. It was infinitely sad to be beside this madman. It was infinitely glad. Because if he had been sane she would not have been beside him. She could be beside him for long spaces of time if he were mad. Perhaps he did not recognize her! She might be beside him for long spaces of time with him not recognizing her. Like tending your baby!
He was stabbing furiously at the latchhole with his little key. He would: that was normal. He was a stab-the-keyhole sort of clumsy man. She would not want that altered. But she would see about his clothes. She said: ‘I am deliberately preparing to live with him for a long time!’ Think of that! She said to him:
‘Did you send for me?’
He had the door open: he said, panting — his poor lungs!:
‘No.’ Then: ‘Go in!’ and then: ‘I was just going...
She was in his house. Like a child...He had not sent for her...Like a child faltering on the sill of a vast black cave.
It was black. Stone flags. Pompeian red walls scarred pale-pink where fixed hall furniture had been removed. Was it here she was going to live?
He said, panting, from behind her back:
‘Wait here!’ A little more light fell into the hall. That was because he was gone from the doorway.
He was charging down the steps. His boots were immense. He lolloped all over on one side because of the piece of furniture he had under his arm. He was grotesque, really. But joy radiated from his homespuns when you walked beside him. It welled out; it enveloped you...Like the warmth from an electric heater, only that did not make you want to cry and say your prayers — the haughty oaf.
No, but he was not haughty. Gauche, then! No, but he was not gauche...She would not run after him. He was a bright patch, with his pink ears and silver hair. Gallumphing along the rails in front of the eighteenth-century houses. He was eighteenth-century all right...But then the eighteenth century never went mad. The only century that never went mad. Until the French Revolution: and that was either not mad or not eighteenth century.
She stepped irresolutely into the shadows; she returned irresolutely to the light...A long hollow sound existed: the sea saying: Ow, Ow, Ow along miles and miles. It was the armistice. It was Armistice Day. She had forgotten it. She was to be cloistered on Armistice Day! Ah, not cloistered! Not cloistered there. My beloved is mine and I am his! But she might as well close the door!
She closed the door as delicately as if she were kissing him on the lips. It was a symbol. It was Armistice Day. She ought to go away; instead she had shut the door on...Not on Armistice Day! What was it like to be...changed!
No! She ought not to go away! She ought not to go away! She ought not! He had told her to wait. She was not cloistered. This was the most exciting spot on the earth. It was not her fate to live nun-like. She was going to pass her day beside a madman; her night, too...Armistice Night! That night would be remembered down unnumbered generations. Whilst one lived that had seen it the question would be asked: What did you do on Armistice Night? My beloved is mine and I am his!
The great stone stairs were carpetless: to mount them would be like taking part in a procession. The hall came in straight from the front door. You had to turn a corner to the right before you came to the entrance of a room. A queer arrangement. Perhaps the eighteenth century was afraid of draughts and did not like the dining-room door near the front entrance...My beloved is...Why does one go on repeating that ridiculous thing? Besides it’s from the Song of Solomon, isn’t it? The Canticle of Canticles! Then to quote it is blasphemy when one is...No, the essence of prayer is volition, so the essence of blasphemy is volition. She did not want to quote the thing. It was jumped out of her by sheer nerves. She was afraid. She was waiting for a madman in an empty house. Noises whispered up the empty stairway!
She was like Fatima. Pushing open the door of the empty room. He might come back to murder her. A madness caused by sex obsessions is not infrequently homicidal...What did you do on Armistice Night? ‘I was murdered in an empty house?’ For, no doubt he would let her live till midnight.
But perhaps he had not got sex-obsessions. She had not the shadow of a proof that he had; rather that he hadn’t! Certainly, rather that he hadn’t. Always the gentleman.
They had left the telephone! The windows were duly shuttered but in the dim light from between cracks the nickel gleamed on white marble. The mantel-shelf. Pure Parian marble, the shelf supported by rams’ heads. Singularly chaste. The ceilings and rectilinear mouldings in an intricate symmetry. Chaste, too. Eighteenth century. But the eighteenth century was not chaste...He was eighteenth century.
She ought to telephone to her mother to inform that Eminence in untidy black with violet tabs here and there of the grave step that her daughter was...
What was her daughter going to do?
She ought to rush out of the empty house. She ought to be trembling with fear at the thought that he was coming home very likely to murder her. But she wasn’t. What was she? Trembling with ecstasy? Probably. At the thought that he was coming. If he murdered her...Can’t be helped! She was trembling with ecstasy all the same. She must telephone to her mother. Her mother might want to know where she was. But her mother never did want to know where she was. She had her head too screwed on to get into mischief I...Think of that!
Still, on such a day her mother might like to. They ought to exchange gladnesses that her brother was safe for good now. And others, too. Normally her mother was irritated when she rang up. She would be at her work. It was amazing to see her at work. Perhaps she never would again. Such untidiness of papers. In a little room. Quite a little room. She never would work in a big room because a big room tempted her to walk about and she could not afford the time to walk about.
She was writing at two books at once now. A novel...Valentine did not know what it was about. Her mother never let them know what her novels were about till they were finished. And a woman’s history of the War. A history by a woman for women. And there she would be sitting at a large table that hardly left room for more than getting round it. Grey, large, generous-featured and tired, she would be poking over one set of papers on one side of the table or just getting up from over the novel, her loose pince-nez falling off, pushing round the table between its edge and the wall to peer at the sheets of the woman’s history that were spread all over that region. She would work for ten minutes or twenty-five or an hour at the one and then an hour and a half or half an hour or three-quarters at the other. What a muddle her dear old head must be in!
With a little trepidation she took the telephone. It had got to be done. She could not live with Christopher Tietjens without first telling her mother. Her mother ought to be given the chance of dissuading. They say you ought to give a lover a chance of a final scene before leaving him or her for good. Still more your mother. That was jannock.
It broke the word of promise to the ear, the telephone!...Was it blasphemy to quote Shakespeare when one was going to...Perhaps bad taste. Shakespeare, however, was not spotless. So they said...Waiting! Waiting! How much of one’s life wasn’t spent waiting, with one’s weight boring one’s heels into the ground...But this thing was dead. No roar came from its mouth and when you jabbed the little gadget at the side up and down no bell tinkled...It had probably been disconnected. They had perhaps cut him off for not paying. Or he had cut it off so that she might not scream for the police through it whilst he was strangling her. Anyhow they were cut off. They would be cut off from the world on Armistice Night...Well, they would probably be cut off for good!
What nonsense. He had not known that she was coming. He had not asked her to come.
So, slowly, slowly she went up the great stone staircase, the noises all a-whispering up before her...’So, slowly, slowly she went up and slowly looked about her. Henceforth take warning by the fall...’ Well, she did not need to take warning: she was not going to fall in the way Barbara Allen did. Contrariwise!
He had not sent for her. He had not asked Edith Ethel to ring her up. Then presumably she felt humiliated. But she did not feel humiliated! It was in effect fairly natural. He was quite noticeably mad, rushing out, lopsided, with bits of furniture under his arm and no hat on his noticeable hair. Noticeable! That was what he was. He would never pass in a crowd!...He had got rid of all his furniture as Edith Ethel had alleged. Very likely he had not recognized the porter, too. She, Valentine Wannop, had seen him going to sell his furniture. Madly! Running to it. You do not run when you are selling furniture if you are sane. Perhaps Edith Ethel had seen him running along with a table on his head. And she was by no means certain that he had recognized her, Valentine Wannop!
So Edith Ethel might have been almost justified in ringing her up. Normally it would have been an offence, considering the terms on which they had parted. Considering that Edith Ethel had accused her of having had a child by this very man! It was pretty strong, even if she had seen him running about the Square with furniture, and even if there had been no one else who could help...But she ought to have sent her miserable rat of a husband. There was no excuse!
Still, there had been nothing else for her, Valentine, to do. So there was not call for her to feel humiliated. Even if she had not felt for this man as she did she would have come, and, if he had been very bad, would have stayed.
He had not sent for her! This man who had once proposed love to her and then had gone away without a word and who had never so much as sent her a picture-postcard! Gauche! Haughty! Was there any other word for him? There could not be. Then she ought to feel humiliated. But she did not.
She felt frightened, creeping up the great staircase, and entering a great room. A very great room. All white; again with stains on the walls from which things had been removed. From over the way the houses confronted her, eighteenth-centuryishly. But with a touch of gaiety from their red chimney-pots...And now she was spying: with her heart in her mouth. She was terribly frightened. This room was inhabited. As if set down in a field, the room being so large, there camped...A camp-bed for the use of officers, G.S. one, as the saying is. And implements of green canvas, supported on crossed white-wood staves: a chair, a bucket with a rope handle, a washing-basin, a table. The bed was covered over with a flea-bag of brown wool. She was terribly frightened. The further she penetrated the house the more she was at his mercy. She ought to have stayed downstairs. She was spying on him.
