But it did not disturb Martin’s slumbers. A brigadier general happened to hear his name given to an orderly.
“Who’s that?” he inquired sharply. “Grant, did you say?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the brigade major.
“Don’t be such a Heaven-condemned idiot!” said the general, or, rather, he used words to that effect. “Grant was all through that push. Find some other fellow.”
Brigade majors are necessarily inhuman. It is nothing to them what a man may have done—they think only of the next job. They are steeled alike to pity and reproach. This one was no exception among the tribe. He merely thumbed a list and said to the orderly:
“Give that chit to Mr. Fortescue.”
So a subaltern began the chase. He smelt the rum through a whole company of Gordons, but the barrel lies hid a fathom deep in the mud of Flanders.
That same afternoon Martin woke up, refreshed in mind and body. He secured a hot bath, “dolled up” in clean clothes, and strolled out to buy some socks from “Madame,” the famous Frenchwoman who has kept her shop open in Armentières throughout three years of shell fire.
A Yorkshire battalion was “standing at ease” in the street while their officers and color sergeants engaged in a wrangle about billets. The regiment had taken part in the “push” and bore the outward and visible signs of that inward grace which had carried them beyond the third line German trench. A lance corporal was playing “Tipperary” on a mouth-organ.
Someone shouted: “Give us ‘Home Fires,’ Jim”—and “Jim” ran a preliminary flourish before Martin recognized the musician.