Well, it was a black story, but I made one or two footnotes at once.
The very first night he was back. The awful luck—the cruelty of it! Just back, in the condition of nerves I knew him to be in, with that first miserable feeling upon him, wondering probably why the hell he had driven himself out there, and praying to be let down easy for one night at least—and then to be sent straight up on a job like that, the job that had broken him before.
And by Philpott! I seemed to see Philpott arranging that, with a kind of savage glee: 'Oh, here's Master Penrose again—well, he'd better take that party to-night—instead of Mr. Gibson....'
And who was the Assistant Adjutant? God knows, if every working-party that went wrong meant a court-martial, there would be no officers left in the army; and if some busy-body had been at work....
'Who's the Assistant Adjutant?' I asked.
'Fellow who was attached to Division—used to be in this battalion in your time, I believe—what's-his-name?—Burnett—Burnett—he rang up the Colonel and told him about it.'
Burnett! I groaned. The gods were against Harry indeed. Burnett had been away from the battalion for eighteen months, drifting about from odd job to odd job—Town Major here, Dump Officer there, never in the line.... Why the devil had he come back now to put his foot in it—and, perhaps——But I could not believe that.
Stephenson's two young officers—Wallace and Brown—made no footnote, naturally. They had come out by the same draft as Harry, one from Sandhurst, the other from a cadet school; they were fresh, as Harry had been, and they had no mercy. And while I resented their tone, I tried to remember that they knew not Harry, and said nothing.
But when young Wallace summed up the subject with 'Well, all I can say is he's a cold-footed swine, and deserves all he gets,' I exploded. 'You ---- young pup,' I said, 'just out, and hardly seen a shot fired—you dare to say anything about Penrose. I tell you you're not fit to lick his boots. Do you know that he joined up in the ranks in August '14, and went through Gallipoli, and had done two years' active service before you even had a uniform? Do you know he's just refused a job at home in order to come out here, and another job at the Base? Does that look like cold feet? You wait till you've been out a year, my son, before you talk about cold feet. You——' But I couldn't control myself any further. I went out, cursing.