Ford Madox Ford - The Parade's End Tetralogy - Some Do Not, No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up & Last Post

‘All that the suffragettes have left of me,’ he said laughingly. ‘Isn’t one of you fellows a genius called Tietjens?’ He was looking at Macmaster. The General said:

‘Tietjens Macmaster . . . ’ The Minister went on very friendly:

‘Oh, it’s you? . . . I just wanted to take the opportunity of thanking you.’

Tietjens said:

‘Good God! What for?’

‘ You know!’ the Minister said, ‘we couldn’t have got the Bill before the House till next session without your figures . . . ’ He said slyly: ‘Could we, Sandbach?’ and added to Tietjens: ‘Ingleby told me . . . ’

Tietjens was chalk-white and stiffened. He stuttered: ‘I can’t take any credit . . . I consider . . . ’

Macmaster exclaimed:

‘Tietjens . . . you . . . ’ he didn’t know what he was going to say.

‘Oh, you’re too modest,’ Mr Waterhouse overwhelmed Tietjens. ‘We know whom we’ve to thank . . . ’ His eyes drifted to Sandbach a little absently. Then his face lit up.

‘Oh I Look here, Sandbach,’ he said . . . ‘Come here, will you?’ He walked a pace or two away, calling to one of his young men: ‘Oh, Sanderson, give the bobbie a drink. A good stiff one.’ Sandbach jerked himself awkwardly out of his chair and limped to the Minister.

Tietjens burst out:

‘Me too modest! Me ! . . . The swine . . . The unspeakable swine!’

The General said:

‘What’s it all about, Chrissie? You probably are too modest.’

Tietjens said:

‘Damn it. It’s a serious matter. It’s driving me out of the unspeakable office I’m in.’

Macmaster said:

‘No! No! You’re wrong. It’s a wrong view you take.’ And with a good deal of real passion he began to explain to the General. It was an affair that had already given him a great deal of pain. The Government had asked the statistical department for figures illuminating a number of schedules that they desired to use in presenting their new Bill to the Commons. Mr Waterhouse was to present it.

Mr Waterhouse at the moment was slapping Mr Sandbach on the back, tossing the hair out of his eyes and laughing like an hysterical schoolgirl. He looked suddenly tired. A police constable, his buttons shining, appeared, drinking from a pewter-pot outside the glazed door. The two city men ran across the angle from the dressing-room to the same door, buttoning their clothes. The Minister said loudly:

‘Make it guineas!’

It seemed to Macmaster painfully wrong that Tietjens should call anyone so genial and unaffected an unspeakable swine. It was unjust. He went on with his explanation to the General.

The Government had wanted a set of figures based on a calculation called B7. Tietjens, who had been working on one called h29—for his own instruction—had persuaded himself that h29 was the lowest figure that was actuarially sound.

The General said pleasantly: ‘All this is Greek to me.’

‘Oh no, it needn’t be,’ Macmaster heard himself say. ‘It amounts to this. Chrissie was asked by the Government—by Sir Reginald Ingleby—to work out what 3 x 3 comes to: it was that sort of thing in principle. He said that the only figure that would not ruin the country was nine times nine . . . ’

‘The Government wanted to shovel money into the working man’s pockets, in fact,’ the General said. ‘Money for nothing . . . or votes, I suppose.’

‘But that isn’t the point, sir,’ Macmaster ventured to say. ‘All that Chrissie was asked to do was to say what 3 X 3 was.’

‘Well, he appears to have done it and earned no end of kudos,’ the General said. ‘That’s all right. We’ve all, always, believed in Chrissie’s ability. But he’s a strong-tempered beggar.’

‘He was extraordinarily rude to Sir Reginald over it,’ Macmaster went on.

The General said:

‘Oh dear! Oh dear!’ He shook his head at Tietjens and assumed with care the blank, slightly disappointing air of the regular officer. ‘I don’t like to hear of rudeness to a superior. In any service.’

‘I don’t think,’ Tietjens said with extreme mildness, ‘that Macmaster is quite fair to me. Of course he’s a right to his opinion as to what the discipline of a service demands. I certainly told Ingleby that I’d rather resign than do that beastly job . . . ’

‘You shouldn’t have,’ the General said. ‘What would become of the services if everyone did as you did?’

Sandbach came back laughing and dropped painfully into his low arm-chair.

‘That fellow . . . ’ he began.

The General slightly raised his hand.

‘A minute!’ he said. ‘I was about to tell Chrissie, here, that if I am offered the job—of course it’s an order really—of suppressing the Ulster Volunteers . . . I’d rather cut my throat than do it . . . ’

Sandbach said:

‘Of course you would, old chap. They’re our brothers. You’d see the beastly, lying Government damned first.’

‘I was going to say that I should accept,’ the General said, ‘I shouldn’t resign my commission.’

Sandbach said:

‘Good God !’

Tietjens said:

‘Well, I didn’t.’

Sandbach exclaimed:

‘General! You! After all Claudine and I have said . . . ’ Tietjens interrupted:

‘Excuse me, Sandbach. I’m receiving this reprimand for the moment. I wasn’t, then, rude to Ingleby. If I’d expressed contempt for what he said or for himself, that would have been rude. I didn’t. He wasn’t in the least offended. He looked like a cockatoo, but he wasn’t offended. And I let him over-persuade me. He was right, really. He pointed out that, if I didn’t do the job, those swine would put on one of our little competition wallah head clerks and get all the schedules faked, as well as starting off with false premises!’

‘That’s the view I take,’ the General said, ‘if I don’t take the Ulster job the Government will put on a fellow who’ll burn all the farm-houses and rape all the women in the three counties. They’ve got him up their sleeve. He only asks for the Connaught Rangers to go through the north with. And you know what that means. All the same . . . ’ He looked at Tietjens: ‘One should not be rude to one’s superiors.’

‘I tell you I wasn’t rude,’ Tietjens exclaimed. ‘Damn your nice, paternal old eyes. Get that into your mind!’ The General shook his head:

‘You brilliant fellows!’ he said. ‘The country, or the army, or anything, could not be run by you. It takes stupid fools like me and Sandbach, along with sound moderate heads like our friend here.’ He indicated Macmaster and, rising, went on: ‘Come along. You’re playing me, Macmaster. They say you’re hot stuff. Chrissie’s no good. He can take Sandbach on.’

He walked off with Macmaster towards the dressing-room.

Sandbach, wriggling awkwardly out of his chair, shouted: