The General

by C. S. Forester

  ‘There are other divisions besides the Ninety-first,’ said Curzon. This was the first he had ever heard about any venture being made against Constantinople, and his opinion was against it from the start. It appeared to him to involve an unmilitary dispersal of force, and now he was more anxious than ever for his division to go to France where the real fighting was to be had.

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Mackenzie. ‘There are other divisions. But yours was the one I had selected as the most suitable.’

  ‘On what grounds?’ asked Curzon, and his interest nearly betrayed his ignorance.

  There was a struggle on Mackenzie’s face as he looked back at the variety of motives which had influenced his choice, some military, some not. Curzon’s lack of seniority as a major-general had played its part, as making it easy to fit him into the hierarchy of a small army; so had the fact that Miller, his G.S.O.1, had had experience in Egypt and Cyprus. But also there was the wish to get someone who might be a dangerous enemy and had served most of his purpose as a friend removed well away from London. Incidentally, there were other generals commanding divisions who also had influential connexions in need of propitiation. Mackenzie much regretted the failure of his original plan to order Curzon off without leaving him time to protest. He would have to send someone else now – a decision which would cause him further trouble but which must be adhered to, he was afraid. A man whose father-in-law held office with the certain prospect of a seat in the Cabinet, and who was hand in glove with the Bude House women, must not be offended, the more so because Mackenzie had sure and certain knowledge that Curzon had saved him once from annihilation.

  ‘It’s too long a story for me to tell you now,’ said Mackenzie. ‘Anyway, since you’re so damned keen about it, I’ll see what I can do about France for you.’

  Mackenzie allowed no indication to creep into his tone of his fervent wish that as soon as the Ninety-first Division arrived in France some bomb or shell would relieve him of this Old Man of the Sea who was clinging so tightly to his shoulders.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Curzon. ‘I’m very much obliged to you. And I’d better not take up any more of your time. Good-bye.’

  ‘Good-bye,’ said Mackenzie, resignedly.

  Curzon ran down the War Office stairs like a schoolboy, without waiting for the lift. The bathchair on Bournemouth promenade had been brought appreciably nearer by that interview, but no thought of bathchairs had ever crossed his mind. He walked briskly back across war-time London; his red tabs and his row of ribbons brought him the salutes of every uniform he passed. At Bude House the butler opened the door for him with all the reverence to be accorded to one who was nearly a son of the house and who had the additional merit of being a General. He sat down and fidgeted as he re-read The Times and waited for Emily to return with her mother from her visit to Sir Trevor Choape.

  The women came back soon enough, and the moment Curzon heard the subdued noise of their arrival in the hall he hastened down to greet them. Emily put off her furs with a little gesture of weariness; she had vomited badly that morning and still felt slightly upset, and Sir Trevor’s brusque treatment of her had not helped to make her more comfortable.

  ‘Well?’ said Curzon, smiling at her, but for the moment Emily could only nod to him as a sign that her suspicions had been confirmed – there were too many servants about, relieving her and the Duchess of their coats, for her to say more at present. And later the Duchess was still very much in charge of her daughter. It was she who told Curzon about what Sir Trevor had said.

  ‘Everything’s quite all right, Bertie,’ said the Duchess. ‘Sir Trevor agrees with me that it will be about the end of October. He says we must take care of her, of course.’

  ‘What about this sickness?’ asked Curzon, consumed with the anxiety which was only natural to him as an inexperienced prospective father.

  ‘Oh, that’s only to be expected,’ said the Duchess, echoing Sir Trevor’s bluff words – Sir Trevor was one of the old school who took it for granted that a pregnant woman must always vomit her heart out every morning.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Curzon feebly. From the little he had heard about pregnancy he found it easy to believe the same, although some instinct or intuition inspired him with tiny doubts which he naturally put aside.

  ‘At the same time, Bertie,’ said the Duchess, clearing for action, ‘I think it would be most unwise for Emily to make the journey to Narling to-day, as I believe you were intending.’

  The Duchess clearly anticipated violent opposition to this suggestion.

  ‘I certainly must get back,’ said Curzon. ‘I can’t be away from the Division any longer.’

  He glanced at Emily, lying back lax in her chair.

  ‘I should like to come too,’ said Emily, ‘but – but I think I’m going to be sick again.’

  There was an immediate bustle and upheaval.

  ‘I’ll have that nurse here to-day or know the reason why,’ said the Duchess decisively when the excitement passed. ‘You see, it’s impossible for Emily to come with you, Bertie.’

  Curzon could only agree, weakly.

  ‘At the same time –’ he began hesitantly, and paused, looking first at Emily and then at the Duchess, wondering whether he ought to continue.

  ‘Well?’ said the Duchess. Now that she had gained her point she had little more attention to spare for this mere man. ‘Speak up, and don’t dither like that. You’ll upset Emily again.’

  The fact that a man like Curzon should dither ought to have made her believe that he had something important to say, but it did not.

  ‘I expect I shall be receiving orders for France very shortly,’ Curzon managed to blurt out in the end.

  ‘Indeed?’ said the Duchess. She did not feel that her son-in-law’s prospective re-entry into active service was a tiny bit as important as her daughter’s pregnancy.

  ‘Oh, Bertie,’ said Emily. She was feeling too limp to say more.

  But Emily had known for months that Curzon’s greatest wish was to command a division in France; she was glad that his ambition was going to be gratified so soon. And she felt little fear for him. The war had not yet lasted long enough for the fear of death to their best loved to have crept into every heart, and she had so much confidence in him that she felt it to be impossible for him to come to any harm – and, beyond all these considerations there was the fact that he was a general. No one, not even a loving wife, can be quite as afraid for a general as for a subaltern. She would miss him sadly, but not so much now that her mother was reasserting her old dominion over her. There might perhaps even be the slightest suspicion of pique in her attitude, that he should be going off on his own concerns and leave her to bear her troubles alone.

  ‘When do you think you will be going?’ asked the Duchess, as a concession to politeness.

  Curzon came as near to a shrug of his shoulders as a man of his upbringing can.

  ‘I don’t know for certain,’ he said. ‘Next week, perhaps. Any time.’

  ‘Then,’ said the Duchess, ‘Emily need not worry any more about this house of yours. I suppose you will have to give it back to the War Office when you go?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s all right then. You can trust Thompson, my dear, to settle about the inventories and so on, of course. Perhaps you will be good enough, Bertie, when you reach Narling, to instruct Hammett to return to us here and bring Emily’s clothes with her?’

  For a moment Curzon was on the verge of acquiescence. The domineering woman who was addressing him seemed to exert a spell on all who come into contact with her, by virtue of her calm assumption that no one could deny her. And then Curzon braced himself up. He was nettled that his announcement that he was shortly going to risk his life for King and Country should be received as calmly as if he had said he was going shooting in Scotland. He wanted to have his wife with him for his last few days in England.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I want to do that.’

/>   ‘I beg your pardon?’ said the Duchess, in a tone which left a doubt as to whether she did anything of the kind.

  ‘I should like Emily to come back to Narling as soon as she’s well enough to travel. I think to-morrow she might be, easily.’

  The Duchess turned on Emily.

  ‘I think so too,’ said Emily. ‘That’s what we settled yesterday, wasn’t it, mother?’

  Curzon had only to speak to bring Emily back to his side again, and the Duchess had the perspicacity to see it.

  ‘Just as you like,’ she said, washing her hands of them. ‘I have already expressed my opinion, and if you two wish to act in a manner contrary to it I cannot say more.’

  So that although Curzon dined that night in the headquarters mess, the next afternoon as he sat discussing with Hill the newest instructions from France regarding liaison between infantry and artillery, there was a sound of wheels on the gravel outside, and Curzon just had time to see the ducal motor car come slowly past the window with Emily inside. It was typical of Curzon that after glancing up he was able, despite the throb of excitement in his breast, to go on in an even tone with what he was saying. Curzon had the feeling that it would be harmful to discipline if a Major-General were to admit to his subordinates that he had human attributes – that he was capable of making a woman pregnant, or of being anxious about her afterwards. He prided himself on the way in which he brought the discussion to an end without apparently cutting it short, and on the unhurried and disinterested manner in which he said good-bye to Hill and walked calmly out of the office towards the private half of the house.

  He might have been disconcerted if he had seen the quiet wink which Hill exchanged with Runcorn the C.R.E. – in a headquarters which buzzed with rumours like a hive of bees no one could hope to have any private life at all. Headquarters knew of Emily’s little secret already – although it would be difficult to discover how. Any private in the Ninety-first Division who might be interested would know of it before a week was out, but, as Curzon would not know he knew, there was no harm in it.

  Curzon ran with clinking spurs up the stairs to Emily’s bedroom, reaching the door just as Hammett, the parlourmaid and lady’s maid, was coming out. Inside, Emily, without her frock, was lying down on the ugly Victorian bed. She smiled with pleasure at sight of him.

  ‘All safe and sound?’ asked Curzon bluffly.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Emily, and then she stretched out her thin arms to him and drew him to her. That brought about the new miracle, whereby Curzon forgot the self-consciousness and the formality acquired during forty years of bachelorhood, and felt surging up within him the wave of hot passion which submerged his cold manner so that he kissed his wife with an ardour which otherwise he would have felt to sit incongruously upon a Major-General.

  In this fashion there began a second instalment of their honeymoon, into which in a few days they managed to cram as much happiness as they had succeeded in finding in the previous three months – and this despite the handicaps under which they laboured, of Curzon’s increasing work and the wretchedness which Emily experienced each morning when sickness overtook her. It might have been the fault of the long formidable corset which Emily had worn since her childhood, or it may have been the result of a faulty heredity, but Emily’s pregnancy was highly uncomfortable to her, and Curzon found himself tortured with apprehension and remorse even while he rejoiced in the coming of that son for whom he was making such lofty plans.

  Not very long after the last interview with Mackenzie there came a large official envelope for Major-General H. Curzon, C.B., D.S.O., and Curzon read its contents with a grimly neutral expression. They were his orders for France. Curzon was instructed temporarily to hand over the command of the Ninety-first Division to Brigadier-General J. Webb, D.S.O., and proceed with his personal staff and Colonel Miller to the headquarters of the Forty-second Corps, Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Wayland-Leigh, K.C.M.G., D.S.O. His division was to follow in accordance with the orders enclosed.

  Emily felt a sudden pang when Curzon told her the news, and brought her face to face with the reality instead of merely the possibility. In that first spring of the war the passing of every month altered the attitude of the civilians towards it. It was growing usual now for families, who in 1914 had no military connexions whatever, to have relations killed. Even in the last month Emily had developed a fear lest Curzon, although he was her invulnerable husband and a General to boot, might soon be lost to her for more than just a few weeks.

  ‘Now the boy’s on his way, m’dear,’ said Curzon, ‘it almost makes me wish I wasn’t going. But there it is. And with any luck the war’ll be won and I’ll be back with you before he’s born.’

  Curzon’s pathetic faith in the sex of the child to be born raised a wan smile on Emily’s face – she had never yet had the courage to break the news to him of her perfect certainty that she was going to bear a daughter.

  ‘I hope you will,’ she said bravely, and then, her tone altering, ‘I do hope you will, dear.’

  ‘Why, are you going to miss me?’ said Curzon.

  ‘Yes.’

  No one had ever said that to Curzon before in his life. It gave him a sudden thrill; it brought reality to his statement that he almost wished that he had not been ordered to France. He kissed her desperately.

  But there was small time for love-making for a General anxious about his professional success, who was shortly due to lose sight of his division completely until he next saw it under conditions of active service. Curzon spent his last days reassuring himself about his division. Time and again the sweating battalions, plodding along the dusty roads on the route marches which were getting them finally into condition, received the order ‘March at attention. Eyes left,’ and gazed with interest at the stiffly erect figure at the roadside who controlled their destinies. The red and gold on his cap and the ribbons on his breast marked him off as one far different from themselves, and to those amateur soldiers, who never yet had experienced the muddle and slaughter of battle, a general was an object of interest, about whom they felt curiosity but little else.

  During those glorious spring days of 1915, the Hampshire lanes echoed with the music of bands (Curzon had laboured long and hard to see that every battalion had its band) as the finest division in the finest army England had ever raised put a final polish on its training under the anxious eyes of its general. Strangely, he, a cavalryman, had come to love the long-ordered ranks of infantry. He could thrill to the squeal of the fifes and the roar of the sidedrums where once the sweetest music to his ears had been kettledrums and trumpets. He loved this division of his now, with the love the single-minded and the simple-minded can give so readily to what they have laboured over. He could not feel the least doubt but that these big battalions of weatherbeaten men would crash their way almost unimpeded through the German line. He looked forward with confidence now to riding with them across the Rhine to Berlin.

  The thought of his wonderful division sustained him when he kissed Emily good-bye, which was as well, for the parting was an even bigger wrench than he had feared. He had no doubt about himself; but there was the coming of the child, and Emily’s constant sickness (about which his fears were steadily increasing) and his apprehension lest his mother-in-law should succeed in alienating his wife from him.

  ‘Look after yourself, dear,’ he said, his old-time brusqueness concealing his anxiety as he patted her on the shoulder with the gesture which seems universal among departing husbands.

  ‘You must do the same,’ said Emily, trying to smile, and he tore himself away and climbed into the waiting Vauxhall where his chief-of-staff and his two aides-de-camp (the latter perched uncomfortably on the stools of repentance with their backs to the driver) sat waiting for him. The tyres tore up the gravel, and they had started, for Southampton and France.

  Two days later the party, four officers, eight horses, and eight grooms and servants, reached Saint-Cérisy, the headquarters of the Forty-secon
d Corps, and Curzon reported his arrival to Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Wayland-Leigh. The Lieutenant-General was a huge man with a face the colour of mahogany and a suspicion of corpulence.

  ‘Glad to see you, Curzon,’ he said, although he showed no signs of it at all and made no attempt to shake hands. He ran his eyes up and down Curzon, from his military crop to his glittering field-boots, sizing up with cold, green eyes the new subordinate upon whose capacity depended in part his own reputation.

  Curzon felt no inclination to resent his manner, for Wayland-Leigh was a much more eminent general than he was himself – he had been a general in the original expeditionary force of 1914. He stood stiffly to attention and submitted to scrutiny.

  ‘Ha!’ said Wayland-Leigh, abruptly and without committing himself – or he might even have been merely clearing his throat. ‘Here, Norton. This is Norton, my B.G.G.S. I expect you’ll know him better quite soon. General Curzon.’

  The Brigadier-General, General Staff – chief staff officer of the Corps – was dark and pale, but his face was stamped with the same truculent and imperious expression as his Chief’s, as befitted a man whose word swayed the destinies of forty thousand men. There was the same cold eye, the same slight scowl between the eyebrows, the same thrust-forward jaw and cruel mouth. Yet despite Curzon’s more modest attitude as a new-comer, his face had just the same trade-marks, curiously enough. He met the stare of the two generals without flinching. No observer could have witnessed that encounter without thinking of the proverb about the meeting of Greek with Greek.