Ford Madox Ford

“ And as Tietjens, seated on his hams, his knees up, pulled the soft woolliness of his flea-bag under his chin and damned the paraffin heater for letting out a new and singular stink, it seemed to him that this affair was like coming back after two months and trying to get the hang of battalion orders. . . . You come back to the familiar, slightly battered mess ante-room. You tell the mess orderly to bring you the last two months' orders, for it is as much as your life is worth not to know what is or is not in them. ”

“ He said to the other runner:
"Get out from under him, damn you! Are you hurt?" Mackenzie could not get at the body from the other side because of the brazier. The runner from under the corpse moved with short sitting shuffles as if he were getting his legs out from under a sofa. He was saying:
"Poor —— O Nine Morgan! Surely to goodness I did not recognice the pore —— . . . Surely to goodness I did not recognice the pore ——"
Tietjens let the trunk of the body sink slowly to the floor. He was more gentle than if the man had been alive. All hell in the way of noise burst about the world. ”

“ Colonel Levin said: "Oh, my God!" and consternation rushed upon both him and Tietjens. The frozen ditches, in the night, out there; the agonized waiting for men; the weight upon the mind like a weight upon the brows; the imminent sense of approaching unthinkableness on the right or the left, according as you looked up or down the trench; the solid protecting earth of the parapet then turns into pierced mist . ”

“ They were like men uttering deadly insults the one to the other. To Tietjens it was as if an immense cat were parading, fascinated and fatal, round that hut. He had imagined himself parted from his wife. He had not heard from his wife since her four-in-the-morning departure from their flat, months and eternities ago, with the dawn just showing up the chimney-pots of the Georgian roof-trees opposite. In the complete stillness of dawn he had heard her voice say very clearly "Paddington" to the chauffeur, and then all the sparrows in the inn waking up in chorus. ”

“ The general said bewilderingly:
"Drake . . . Drake . . . I've heard the name."
Tietjens said:
"It doesn't matter, sir. . . . Major Drake's a gentleman who doesn't like me. . . ."
The general said:
"There are so many. You don't try to make yourself popular, I must say!"
Tietjens said to himself:
"The old fellow feels it! . . . But he can hardly expect me to tell him that Sylvia thinks Drake was the father of my own son, and desires my ruin!" But of course the old man would feel it. He, Tietjens, and his wife Sylvia, were as near a son and daughter as the old man had. ”

“ In the darkness outside, the brushing, swift, rhythmic pacing of an immense number of men went past, as if they had been phantoms. A great number of men in fours, carried forward, irresistibly, by the overwhelming will of mankind in ruled motion. The sides of the hut were so thin that it was peopled by an innumerable throng. A sodden voice, just at Tietjens' head, chuckled: "For God's sake, sergeant-major, stop these ——. ”

“ The runner from the Rhondda, pinned down by the body across his knees, sat with his jaw fallen, resembling one girl that should be combing the hair of another recumbent before her. The red viscousness welled across the floor; you sometimes so see fresh water bubbling up in sand. It astonished Tietjens to see that a human body could be so lavish of blood. He was thinking it was a queer mania that fellow should have, that his uncle was a friend of his, Tietjens. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The general said:
"But . . . suicide! You won't do that. As you said: think of your son."
Tietjens said:
"No, sir. I shan't do that. But you see how bad for one's descendants suicide is. That is why I do not forgive my father. Before he did it I should never have contemplated the idea. Now I have contemplated it. That's a weakening of the moral fibre. It's contemplating a fallacy as a possibility. For suicide is no remedy for a twisted situation of a psychological kind. It is for bankruptcy. Or for military disaster. For the man of action, not for the thinker. ”

“ They promoted this beanfeast of carnage for their own ends: they caused the deaths of men in inconceivable holocausts of pain and terror. Then they had crises of agony over the death of one single man. For it was plain to her that Tietjens was in the middle of a full nervous breakdown. Over one man's death! She had never seen him so suffer; she had never seen him so appeal for sympathy: him, a cold fiend of reticence! Yet he was now in an agony! Now! . . . And she began to have a sense of the infinitely spreading welter of pain, going away to an eternal horizon of night. ”

“ The maître d'hôtel moved austerely away.
"But he'll smash me to pieces . . ." Perowne exclaimed. "What am I to do? . . . What the deuce am I to do?" There would have been no way of exit for him except across Tietjens' face.
With her spine very rigid and the expression of a snake that fixes a bird, Sylvia gazed straight in front of her and said nothing until she exclaimed:
"For God's sake leave off trembling. . . . He would not do anything to a girl like you. . . . He's a man. . . ." The wickerwork of Perowne's chair had been crepitating as if it had been in a railway car. ”

“ Levin said:
"You mean you don't care. . . . Good God!" He remained looking at the view, drooping, in intense dejection. He said: "This beastly war! This beastly war! . . . Look at all that view. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"It's an encouraging spectacle, really. The beastliness of human nature is always pretty normal. We lie and betray and are wanting in imagination and deceive ourselves, always, at about the same rate. In peace and in war! But, somewhere in that view there are enormous bodies of men. ”

“ Tietjens said, "you may let yourself go a tidy sight farther than you want to."
"You're not a mad doctor," the other said. "It's no good your trying to come it over me. I know all about you. I've got an uncle who's done the dirty on me—the dirtiest dirty ever was done on a man. If it hadn't been for him I shouldn't be here now."
"You talk as if the fellow had sold you into slavery," Tietjens said.
"He's your closest friend," Mackenzie seemed to advance as a motive for revenge on Tietjens. "He's a friend of the general's, too. Of your wife's as well. He's in with every one." ”

“ An immense blind will forces them in the effort to consummate the one decent action that humanity has to its credit in the whole of recorded history. The one we are engaged in. That effort is the one certain creditable fact in all their lives. . . . But the other lives of all those men are dirty, potty and discreditable little affairs. . . . Like yours. . . . Like mine. . . ."
Levin exclaimed:
"Just heavens! What a pessimist you are!"
Tietjens said: "Can't you see that is optimism?"
"But," Levin said, "we're being beaten out of the field. . . . You don't know how desperate things are." ”

“ And without doubt Sylvia had known what she was doing. The whole morning, at intervals, like a person directing the whiplash to a cruel spot of pain, reiteratedly, she had gone on and on. She had accused him of having Valentine Wannop for his mistress. She had accused him of having Valentine Wannop for his mistress. She had accused him of having Valentine Wannop for his mistress. . . . With maddening reiteration, like that. They had disposed of an estate; they had settled up a number of business matters; they had decided that his heir was to be brought up as a Papist—the mother's religion! ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ In the broad country street of the main line of the camp Colonel Levin began to mutter between his teeth:
"You take enough trouble with your beastly crowd . . . a whole lot of trouble. . . . Yet . . ."
"Well, what's the matter with us?" Tietjens said. "We get our drafts ready in thirty-six hours less than any other unit in this command."
"I know you do," the other conceded. "It's only all these mysterious rows. Now . . ."
Tietjens said quickly:
"Do you mind my asking: Are we still on parade? Is this a strafe from General Campion as to the way I command my unit?" ”

“ It was amazing to Tietjens how the general mistrusted his subordinates—as well as how he trusted them! . . . It was probably that that made him so successful an officer. Be worked for by men that you trust: but distrust them all the time—along certain lines of frailty: liquor,' women, money! . . . Well, he had long knowledge of men!
He said:
"I admit, sir, that I misjudged General O'Hara. I have said as much to Colonel Levin and explained why."
The general said with a gloating irony:
"A damn pretty pass to come to. . . . You put a general officer under arrest. . . . ”

“ You only knew it, because you caught the tail end of a belated woman's scream from the hall and the general shouting: "For God's sake don't start that damned gramophone again!" In the blessed silence, after preliminary wheezings and guitar noises an astonishing voice burst out:
"Less than the dust . . .
Before thy char . . ."
And then, stopping after a murmur of voices, began:
"Pale hands I loved . . ."
The general sprang from his chair and rushed to the hall. . . . He came back crestfallenly.
"It's some damned civilian big-wig. . . . A novelist, they say. . . . I can't stop him. . ”

“ Tietjens said:
"That fellow won't come back. . . . He can never do an errand and come back. . . ." He thrust one of his legs cumbrously out of the top of his flea-bag. He said:
"By God, the Germans will be all over here in a week's time!"
He said to himself:
"If they so betray us from Whitehall that fellow Levin has no right to pry into my matrimonial affairs. It is proper that one's individual feelings should be sacrificed to the necessities of a collective entity. But not if that entity is to be betrayed from above. Not if it hasn't the ten-millionth of a chance. . . ." ”

“ Tietjens said, "keep the poor animals warm."
He considered that here was the makings of a very nasty row for himself if, by any means, his sayings came round to the ears of Lord Beichan. But that he had to chance. He could not let a horse for which he was responsible be martyred. . . . There was too much to think about . . . so that nothing at all stood out to be thought of. The sun was glowing. The valley of the Seine was blue-grey, like a Gobelin tapestry. Over it all hung the shadow of a deceased Welsh soldier. ”

“ Tietjens said:
"I must accept that, if you say it, sir."
The general looked at him under his eyebrows. He said:
"I have already told you that this is promotion. I have been much impressed by the way you have handled this command. You are, of course, no soldier, but you will make an admirable officer for the militia, that is all that our troops now are. . . ." He said: "I will emphasize what I am saying. . . . No officer could—without being militarily in the wrong—have a private life that is as incomprehensible and embarrassing as yours. ”

“ As Man of Intellect, Campion was convinced, Tietjens was dissatisfied with his lowly job of draft-forwarding officer, and wanted a place of an extravagantly cooshy kind in the general's own entourage. . . . And Levin had said that it made it all the worse that Campion in his bothered heart thought that Tietjens really ought to have more exalted employment. He had said to Levin:
"Damn it all, the fellow ought to be in command of my Intelligence instead of you. But he's unsound. That's what he is: unsound. He's too brilliant. . . . And he'd talk both the hind legs off Sweedlepumpkins." ”

“ The real hell for that poor boy, meaning Christopher, will come when he falls in love with some young girl—as, mark me, he will. . . . For she, meaning me, will tear the world down to get at him. . . . And when mother said she was certain I would never do anything vulgar you obstinately did not agree. . . . You knew me. . . .
She tried to rouse herself and said: He knew me. . . . Damn it, he knew me! . . . What's vulgarity to me, Sylvia Tietjens, born Satterthwaite? I do what I want and that's good enough for any one. Except a priest. Vulgarity! I wonder mother could be so obtuse. ”