This fellow apparently hadn't. Better for him if he had! He thought:
“It's all gone… mother! father! Groby! This fellow's down and out. It's a bit thick.”
He thought:
“But he's right to do as he is doing.”
He prepared to look at Tietjens… He stretched out a sudden, ineffectual hand. Sitting on his beef-case, his hands on his knees, Tietjens had lurched. A sudden lurch—as an old house lurches when it is hit by a H.E. shell. It stopped at that. Then he righted himself. He continued to stare direct at the general. The general looked carefully back. He said—very carefully too:
“In case I decide to contest West Cleveland, it is your wish that I should make Groby my headquarters?”
Tietjens said:
“I beg, sir, that you will!”
It was as if they both heaved an enormous sigh of relief. The general said:
“Then I need not keep you…”
Tietjens stood on his feet, wanly, but with his heels together.
The general also rose, settling his belt. He said:
“… You can fall out.”
Tietjens said:
“My cook-houses, sir… Sergeant-Cook Case will be very disappointed… He told me that you couldn't find anything wrong if I gave him ten minutes to prepare…”
The general said:
“Case… Case… Case was in the drums when we were at Delhi. He ought to be at least Quartermaster by now… But he had a woman he called his sister…”
Tietjens said:
“He still sends money to his sister.”
The general said:
“… He went absent over her when he was colour-sergeant and was reduced to the ranks… Twenty years ago that must be!… Yes, I'll see your dinners!”
In the cook-houses, brilliantly accompanied by Colonel Levin, the cook-house spotless with limed walls and mirrors that were the tops of camp-cookers, the general, Tietjens at his side, walked between goggle-eyed men in white who stood to attention holding ladles. Their eyes bulged, but the corners of their lips curved because they liked the general and his beautifully unconcerned companions. The cook-house was like a cathedral's nave, aisles being divided off by the pipes of stoves. The floor was of coke-brize shining under french polish and turpentine.
The building paused, as when a godhead descends. In breathless focusing of eyes the godhead, frail and shining, walked with short steps up to a high-priest who had a walrus moustache and, with seven medals on his Sunday tunic, gazed away into eternity. The general tapped the sergeant's Good Conduct ribbon with the heel of his crop. All stretched ears heard him say:
“How's your sister, Case?…”
Gazing away, the sergeant said:
“I'm thinking of making her Mrs Case…”
Slightly leaving him, in the direction of high, varnished pitch-pine panels, the general said:
“I'll recommend you for a Quartermaster's commission any day you wish… Do you remember Sir Garnet inspecting field kitchens at Quetta?”
All the white tubular beings with global eyes resembled the pierrots of a child's Christmas nightmare. The general said: “Stand at ease, men… Stand easy!” They moved as white objects move in a childish dream. It was all childish. Their eyes rolled.
Sergeant Case gazed away into infinite distance.
“My sister would not like it, sir,” he said. “I'm better off as a first-class warrant officer!”
With his light step the shining general went swiftly to the varnished panels in the eastern aisle of the cathedral. The white figure beside them became instantly tubular, motionless and global-eyed. On the panels were painted: TEA! SUGAR! SALT! CURRY PDR! FLOUR! PEPPER!
The general tapped with the heel of his crop on the locker-panel labelled PEPPER: the top, right-hand locker-panel. He said to the tubular, global-eyed white figure beside it: “Open that, will you, my man?…”
To Tietjens this was like the sudden bursting out of the regimental quick-step, as after a funeral with military honours the band and drums march away, back to barracks.
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