Dormer had heard it all before, from Colonel Birchin, Major Stevenage and others, with exactly the same well-meant condescension, and the same grotesque ineffectiveness. This old Colonel, like all his sort, couldn’t solve the difficulty nor shut the French up, nor appease G.H.Q.
Presently, the old man went off to the orderly room to sign the day’s correspondence, the Mess thinned and Dormer dozed discreetly, he had had a poor night and was desperately sleepy. Some one came to wake him up and offered him a wash, and he was glad to move, stiff with cold, and only anxious to pass the time until he could get the midnight train from Bailleul. They were very hospitable, made much of him at dinner, and he ate and drank all he could get, being ravenous and hoping to sleep through the discomforts of the long train journey in the dark. He was getting fairly cheerful by the time the Colonel left the hut, and only became conscious, in the intervals of a learned and interesting discussion of the relative theories of wire-cutting, that a “rag” was in progress at the other end of the room.
A gunner officer, a young and happy boy who was still in the stage of thinking the War the greatest fun out, was holding a mock Court of Inquiry. Gradually, the “rag” got the better of the argument and Dormer found himself being addressed as “Gentlemen of the jury.” A target frame was brought in by some one to act as a witness-box, but the gunner genius who presided, soon had it erected into a sort of Punch and Judy Proscenium. Then only did it dawn on Dormer that the play was not Punch and Judy. It was the Mayor of Hondebecq being derided by the troops, with a Scotch officer in a kilt impersonating Madeleine Vanderlynden, and receiving with the greatest equanimity, various suggestions that ranged from the feebly funny to the strongly obscene. O.C. 469 T.M.B. found a willing column formed behind him which he had to lead round the table, an infantryman brought a wastepaper basket to make the Mayor’s top hat, and in the midst of other improvisations, Dormer discovered the gunner standing in front of him with a mock salute.
“Do you mind coming out of the Jury and taking your proper part?”
It was cheek, of course, but Dormer was not wearing red tabs, and beside, what was the use of standing on one’s dignity. He asked:
“What part do I play?”
“You’re Jack Ketch. You come on in the fourth Act, and land Nobby one on the nob!”
“I see. What are you?”
“Me? I’m the Devil. Watch me devilling,” and with a long map-roller he caught the players in turn resounding cracks upon their several heads.
They turned on him with common consent, and in the resulting struggle, the table broke and subsided with the whole company in an ignominious mass. The dust rose between the grey canvas-covered walls and the tin suspension lamp rocked like that of a ship at sea. Everybody picked themselves up, slightly sobered, and began to discuss how to get the damage repaired before the Colonel saw it in the morning.