They both leaned on their elbows and gazed out of the tiny aperture, under the sacking, away over the sea-like ridges of pulverized mud, into the autumn evening. Between the rain-clouds, torn and shredded as if by the shell-fire, watery gleams were pouring, as though the heavens were wounded and bled. They spilled all over the jagged stonework of that little old medieval walled town, compact within its ramparts, for the third time in its history garrisoned by an English army. Kavanagh told him of it, but Dormer remained unimpressed. The history of the world that mattered began after the battle of Waterloo, with Commerce and Banking, Railway and Telegraph, the Education and Ballot Acts. Previous events were all very well, as scenery for Shakespeare’s plays or Wagner’s Operas. But otherwise, negligible. Yet the interlude did him good. He felt he had brought Kavanagh up short, in an argument, and he went to his night’s work with a lighter heart, and a strengthened confidence in himself.
Of course, a few weeks later, the offensive was over, with the results he had foreseen, and with another result he was also not alone in foreseeing. Once back in rest, near Watten, he heard people talking in this strain, in G. office:
“I suppose, sir, we shall go on fighting next year?”
“Um—I suppose we shall. But perhaps some arrangement may be come to, first. There’s been a good deal of talk about Peace!”
That was the mood of Divisional Head-quarters. A growing scepticism as to the continuance of the War. At the moment, Dormer missed the motive at the back of it. Away from H.Q. while the Division was in action, he had lost a good deal of ominous news. The talk about the transference of German Divisions from one front to another was old talk. He had heard it for years. He did not at the moment grasp that it had now a new significance. Then something happened that put everything else out of his head. He was not feeling too well, though he had nothing to complain of worse than the usual effects of damp and loss of sleep. Colonel Birchin had got himself transferred to a better appointment, and his place was taken by a much younger officer, glad to take it as a “step” up from a dangerous and difficult staff-captaincy. They had been out at rest less than a week and Dormer had assumed as a matter of course that he would be put in charge of organized sports for the winter, as usual. But he was only just becoming sensible of the change that had come over H.Q. Colonel Birchin used to have a certain pre-War regular soldier’s stiffness and want of imagination (which Dormer had privately deplored), but he had kept the Q. office well in hand. This new man, Vinyolles, very amicable and pleasant, and much nearer to Dormer’s new army view of the War (he was in fact younger than Dormer, and than most of the clerical N.C.O.’s in the office), had nothing like the standoff power of his predecessor. Also, the office, like everything else, had grown, half a dozen odd-job officers were now attached, and without wearing red, sat and worked with Dormer. So that when Dormer went to show his Football Competition Time Table and his schedule for use of the Boxing Stadium, he found that he had to explain how these things were usually done. Colonel Vinyolles had no idea. Dormer ought to have been warned. But his head was not working at its very best. He had a temperature, he thought, and wanted to go and lie down at his billet for a bit and take some aconite, a remedy he had carried with him throughout the War. Colonel Vinyolles was quite nice about the Sports, and just as Dormer was turning to go, said to him:
“Perhaps you can help me in this matter. I see your name occurs in the correspondence!”
Of course, he might have known. It was the familiar dossier, as the French called it, the sheaf of papers, clipped together, at the bottom the original blue Questionnaire form that old Jerome Vanderlynden had signed. At the top a fresh layer of official correspondence, “Passed to you please, for necessary action.” “This does not appear to concern this office.” “Kindly refer to A.Q.M.G.’s minute dated July 1916.” And so on. Dormer knew quite a lot of it by heart and the remainder he could have “reconstructed” with no difficulty. The only fresh thing that had happened was a minute from the new chief of the French Mission enclosing a cutting from a newspaper—a French newspaper of all conceivable rags—from which it appeared that some deputy or other had “interpellated” a minister about the matter, asked a question in the “House” would be the English of it, Dormer supposed.
“What am I to tell the Mission?” Colonel Vinyolles was asking.
Dormer was not a violent man by habit, but he felt that he was getting to his limit with this affair. He thought a moment, wanting to say: “Tell them to go to the Devil!” but held it in reserve, and substituted: “Tell them the matter has attention!”
“Thanks very much!”