The Prussian Officer | Page 8

servant leapt with a flash, and he felt

the strength come over his body. But he turned in mechanical
obedience, and set on at a heavy run downhill, looking almost like a
bear, his trousers bagging over his military boots. And the officer
watched this blind, plunging run all the way.
But it was only the outside of the orderly's body that was obeying so
humbly and mechanically. Inside had gradually accumulated a core into
which all the energy of that young life was compact and concentrated.
He executed his commisssion, and plodded quickly back uphill. There
was a pain in his head, as he walked, that made him twist his features
unknowingly. But hard there in the centre of his chest was himself,
himself, firm, and not to be plucked to pieces.
The captain had gone up into the wood. The orderly plodded through
the hot, powerfully smelling zone of the company's atmosphere. He had
a curious mass of energy inside him now. The Captain was less real
than himself..He approached the green entrance to the wood. There, in
the half-shade, he saw the horse standing, the sunshine and the
tuckering shadow of leaves dancing over his brown body. There was a
clearing where timber had lately been felled. Here, in the gold-green
shade beside the brilliant cup of sunshine, stood two figures, blue and
pink, the bits of pink showing out plainly. The Captain was talking to
his lieutenant.
The orderly stood on the edge of the bright clearing, where great trunks
of trees, stripped and glistening, lay stretched like naked,
brown-skinned bodies. Chips of wood littered the trampled floor, like
splashed light, and the bases of the felled trees stood here and there,
with their raw, level tops. Beyond was the brilliant, sunlit green of a
beech.
"Then I will ride forward," the orderly heard his Captain say. The
lieutenant saluted and strode away. He himself went forward. A hot
flash passed through his belly, as he tramped towards his officer.
The Captain watched the rather heavy figure of the young soldier
stumble forward, and his veins, too, ran hot. This was to be man to man
between them. He yielded before the solid, stumbling figure with bent

head. The orderly stooped and put the food on a level-sawn tree-base.
The Captain watched the glistening, sun-inflamed, naked hands. He
wanted to speak to the young soldier, but could not. The servant
propped a bottle against his thigh, pressed open the cork, and poured
out the beer into the mug. He kept his head bent. The Captain accepted
the mug.
"Hot!" he said, as if amiably.
The flame sprang out of the orderly's heart, nearly suffocating mm.
"Yes, sir," he replied, between shut teeth.
And he heard the sound of the Captain's drinking, and he clenched his
fists, such a strong torment came into his wrists. Then came the faint
clang of the closing of the pot-lid. He looked up. The Captain was
watching him. He glanced swiftly away. Then he saw the officer stoop
and take a piece of bread from the tree-base. Again the flash of flame
went through the young soldier, seeing the stiff body stoop beneath him,
and his hands jerked. He looked away. He could feel the officer was
nervous. The bread fell as it was being broken The officer ate the other
piece. The two men stood tense and still, the master laboriously
chewing his bread, the servant staring with averted face, his fist
clenched.
Then the young soldier started. The officer had pressed open the lid of
the mug again. The orderly watched the lid of the mug, and the white
hand that clenched the handle, as if he were fascinated. It was raised.
The youth followed it with his eyes. And then he saw the thin, strong
throat of the elder man moving up and down as he drank, the strong
jaw working. And the instinct which had been jerking at the young
man's wrists suddenly jerked free. He jumped, feeling as if it were rent
in two by a strong flame.
The spur of the officer caught in a tree-root, he went down backwards
with a crash, the middle of his back thudding sickeningly against a
sharp-edged tree-base, the pot flying away. And in a second the orderly,
with serious, earnest young face, and under-lip between his teeth, had

got his knee in the officer's chest and was pressing the chin backward
over the farther edge of the tree-stump, pressing, with all his heart
behind in a passion of relief, the tension of his wrists exquisite with
relief. And with the base of his palms he shoved at the chin, with all his
might. And it was pleasant, too, to have that chin, that hard jaw already
slightly rough with beard, in