It was undoubtedly colder in the alley between the huts. A man was saying: "Hoo . . . Hooo . . . Hoo . . ." A sound like that, and flapping his arms and hopping . . . "Hand and foot, mark time! . . ." Somebody ought to fall these poor devils in and give them that to keep their circulations going. But they might not know the command. . . . It was a Guards' trick, really. . . . What the devil were these fellows kept hanging about here for? he asked.
One or two voices said that they did not know. The majority said gutturally:
"Waiting for our mates, sir. . . ."
"I should have thought you could have waited under cover," Tietjens said caustically. "But never mind; it's your funeral, if you like it. . . ." This getting together . . . a strong passion. There was a warmed recreation-hut for waiting drafts not fifty yards away. . . . But they stood, teeth chattering and mumbling "Hoo . . . Hooo . . ." rather than miss thirty seconds of gabble. . . . About what the English sergeant-major said and about what the officer said and how many dollars did they give you. . . . And of course about what you answered back. . . . Or perhaps not that. These Canadian troops were husky, serious fellows, without the swank of the Cockney or the Lincolnshire Moonrakers. They wanted, apparently, to learn the rules of war. They discussed anxiously information that they received in orderly rooms, and looked at you as if you were expounding the gospels. . . .
But, damn it, he, he himself, would make a pact with Destiny, at that moment, willingly, to pass thirty months in the frozen circle of hell, for the chance of thirty seconds in which to tell Valentine Wannop what he had answered back . . . to Destiny! . . . What was the fellow in the Inferno who was buried to the neck in ice and begged Dante to clear the icicles out of his eyelids so that he could see out of them? And Dante kicked him in the face because he was a Ghibelline. . . . Always a bit of a swine, Dante. . . . Rather like . . . like whom? . . . Oh, Sylvia Tietjens. . . . A good hater! . . . He imagined hatred coming to him in waves from the convent in which Sylvia had immured herself. . . . Gone into retreat. . . . He imagined she had gone into retreat. She had said she was going. For the rest of the war. . . . For the duration of hostilities or life, whichever were the longer. . . . He imagined Sylvia, coiled up on a convent bed. . . . Hating. . . . Her certainly glorious hair all round her. . . . Hating. . . . Slowly and coldly. . . . Like the head of a snake when you examined it. . . . Eyes motionless: mouth closed tight. . . . Looking away into the distance and hating. . . . She was presumably in Birkenhead. ... A long way to send your hatred. . . . Across a country and a sea in an icy night. . .! Over all that black land and water . . . with the lights out because of air-raids and U-boats. . . . Well, he did not have to think of Sylvia at the moment. She was well out of it. . . .
It was certainly getting no warmer as the night drew on. . . . Even that ass Levin was pacing swiftly up and down in the dusky moon-shadow of the last hutments that looked over the slope and the vanishing trail of white stones. . . . In spite of his boasting about not wearing an overcoat: to catch women's eyes with his pretty Staff gadgets he was carrying on like a leopard at feeding time. . . .
Tietjens said:
"Sorry to keep you waiting, old man. . . . Or rather your lady. . . . But there were some men to see to. . . . And, you know . . . 'The comfort and—what is it?—of the men comes before every—is it "consideration"?—except the exigencies of actual warfare' . . . My memory's gone phut these days. . . . And you want me to slide down this hill and wheeze back again. . . . To see a woman! . . ."
Levin screeched: "Damn you, you ass! It's your wife who's waiting for you at the bottom there."