“I had a better job.”
“There is no better job, except perhaps the one we are doing. I do admire your descriptions of them. All you want is to put in a personal allegorical note. You might condense the whole thing by saying that you will be Minerva if I will be Mercury. Yep?”
“Whatever are you talking about?”
“Yours to see that all is in order. That is a matter of reason. You are the Goddess. I am merely a lesser God. Mercury was God of Communications. I wonder whether they’d let me design a cap badge for signallers. Mercury playing on a buzzer. You may have your Owl!”
“Oh, shut up.”
“I fear I must, the bugle calls, and I must follow, or my watch shows it is time I was looking after my chaps. But you’ve had a brilliant idea, Dormer.”
“I?”
“You’ve had the idea of fighting the War allegorically. Wisdom and Light we are. That would do away with half the horror. So long!”
Then queerly, instead of feeling relieved from an annoyance, Dormer felt more despondent than ever. What could it be? Was the fellow right? Surely not! All that nonsense! And yet—and yet what would not he, Dormer, conscious of his own probity, have given to be conscious instead, of Kavanagh’s lightness of heart? That very probity drove him out in the all-too-late summer dusk to see that everything was going right. Yes, here they were; details of transport, parties to dig, parties to carry, details of services, engineers of all their various grades. Punctual, incredibly docile, honest English in their gestureless manner of getting on with the job. They took care of their mules, look at these beasts pulling as though they were English too (instead of the Argentine crossbreds he knew them to be), not because it was a duty, although it was, and not because the mule was a miracle, like a tank or an aeroplane, but just because it was a mule, that meant, to English soldiers, and to English soldiers only, a fellow-creature, a human being. On they went, reporting to him, and pushing on, sometimes with a hurried question as to map square, or other crucial uncertain detail, sometimes with only a grunt. That endless procession had not been in progress many minutes before, amid the considerable and gently growing shell-fire, there came a bang that seemed to go right through his head. He knew from old trench experience what it was. Nothing but a gun pointing straight at you could make that particular hrrmph.
He set his feet, not a moment too soon. It was a five-nine, the sort the French called “Grande Vitesse.” A whirlwind, a small special whirlwind pointed like an arrow, hit the causeway so that it shook and then went up with a wheel of splintered bits. He was glad he had devised his patent card system. The units were not too close together. He had time to shout to the next, “Come on, you’ve two minutes to get over!” and over they went, as if the Devil were after them, instead of a lump of Krupp steel fitted with lethal chemicals. They were hardly over before the second came, whump! To say that Dormer was frightened, was to fail to describe the matter. He was stiffened all over, his hair stood up, his heart thumped so that it hurt him, his feet were stone cold, but he knew his job and did it.