LXVIII.
My Dear Charles,—I don't know that I think so much of these alliances after all, and I'll tell you why.
When I first heard that my old friend Italy was in trouble I paraded my officer at once. "Stand to attention, George," I said, "and tell me what we are going to do about it."
"Oh, that'll be all right," said he. "I've booked my seat in the train."
I think that George, my subordinate, sometimes forgets who I am and what importance attaches to me. I feel that he ought at least to consult me formally before he decides what instructions I am going to issue to him. After all, I am only fifteen years younger than he is.
"You will proceed forthwith to Italy," I said, "and will there study the local conditions on the spot. You will then take such action as the occasion seems to you to demand." George was cleaning out his pipe, so for once he didn't interrupt. "You will report progress to me in triplicate."
George frowned. Having been the Supreme White Man in some African district for dozens of years before the War, all his hair seems to have got into his eyebrows, and his frown is a terrible thing to see.
"At any rate," I said, "you might just drop me a post-card to tell me how you're getting on."
George's eyebrows stood at ease and then stood easy.
"It's all very well for you," I added. "But what about me, when it comes to totting up your travelling allowances later on?"
George has private means, which work out at about one-and-fourpence, less income tax, a day. Consequently he is a little careless about money matters. "Oh, that'll be all right," he said.
George was away for three weeks. What he did all the time I'm sure I don't know, though I kept on reporting to my superiors that the necessary steps were being taken and the requisite measures were being initiated. When he got back he wanted to start in at once telling me all about it. But I said no, and insisted on getting down to the War.
"In making out travelling claims," I said, producing the appropriate Army Form, "care should be taken to comply with the instructions contained in the King's Regulations. We have a quarter of an hour before your breakfast will be ready. Let us deal with our more formidable enemies, the Pay People, first."
George is the sort of person who gets you into trouble on the very first line of any Army Form. Asked as to his rank, he told me he was a Second Lieutenant in the Army, temporary Lieutenant, acting Captain. All these ranks get a different rate of allowance. Which of the three was George in fact?
"A man of your age ought to know better," I said.
We were half-an-hour late for breakfast, and even so George hadn't got to the station of departure, as far as A.F.O. 1771 was concerned.
I determined to devote the morning to the matter, clearing the court for the purpose. Our Mr. Booth, however, who is intolerably precise and accurate in these matters, had profited by my absence at breakfast to collect a folio of relevant Orders and Instructions, numbered one to seventy-three consecutively.
It all sounds so simple, doesn't it? You get so many francs a day for subsistence, and so many francs a night for accommodation, in France; so many lire a day for subsistence, and so many lire a night for accommodation, in Italy. Ah yes, but you don't know George when he is in action. Not content with travelling in the dark, and so subsisting by night when he ought to be accommodated, and being accommodated by day when he ought to be subsisting, he could never make up his mind to stay in the same country for two days together. As to his constant movements from one country to the other, three times he had supposed he had finished with Italy and was due back in France; each time he had got comfortably across the frontier into France he had been recalled to Italy. Never once had he the sense to cross the frontier on the stroke of midnight, and so make a complete twenty-four hours of it on each side, and all the time the rate of exchange was varying by a fraction. But, as George said, it wasn't himself who was manipulating the rate of exchange as between the two countries, and courtesy to allied nations prevented him from manipulating the trains.
It was towards teatime when he satisfied me of his own innocence on these points; but don't run away with the idea that by this time we were well on with the business. We had barely as much as started. How are you to fix the "date of journey" in such a manner as to give the traveller a clear night for accommodation in one country, or a clear day for subsistence in another, when he leaves his home at 5.15 P.M., arrives at the end of the first stage at 6.10 P.M., sleeps in a hotel till 11 P.M., gets in the train at thirty-five minutes past, crosses the frontier at 2 P.M. on the following day, arrives at his Italian destination at 5 A.M. on the morning after that, and then, if you please, goes to bed in another hotel? Old soldier though I am, there didn't seem to me to be a single line in a single column which I could satisfactorily fill in. True, there was the space for "Remarks," but our Mr. Booth was quite sure that my remarks were not what the Pay People called for.
By this time I was for giving in, but George was now the persistent one. It was never his pocket he cared for; it was just one of his confounded principles not to be beaten by anything, not even an Army Form. I expressed some surprise that in the course of this tour of duty he had not managed to find his way to America for an hour or two, if only to complicate my business with the dollar question...
I read the whole Form again, from start to finish, including the bit about vouchers being required for any unusual expenditure, such as cab-fares of over ten shillings. I then told George to write down on a piece of paper how much money he had when he started on his silly journey, and how much he had in hand when he got back; to deduct the latter from the former and tell me the result; to go away, leave me to wrestle all night with the problem, come back next morning at nine, remain motionless and strictly in one country in the meanwhile, neither accommodated nor subsisting. He gave me the figure, 173 francs, and never mentioned the subject to me again for days owing to the sullen fury he noted in my expression every time he cleared his throat to do so.
After ten days I handed George a chit from the Pay People for "one hundred and seventy francs for travelling expenses, 30/10/1917 to 20/11/1917, for tour of duty to Italy." George said I had a dashed fine brain to have worked out the claim; I told him the Pay Man had a dashed kind heart to settle it. I hadn't been able to avoid mentioning Italy; but for the rest the Pay Man simply must have thought that George had driven all the way to the frontier and back in cabs and done precious little duty on the other side of it. Wouldn't you have thought so, Charles, if you had received a claim merely for eighty-five cabs, at two francs a time, and all in France, too?
Yours ever,
HENRY.
From a church notice-board:—
Matins.—Hymn 43:
'Great God, what do I see and hear?'
Preacher, Rev. Dr. ——.
Hymn 45:
'Hark! an awful voice is sounding.'
