Bourne ate very little, and then went off to smoke alone. He had the faculty of withdrawing right into himself, his consciousness shrinking into its inmost recesses, contracting to a mere point, while the bodily part of him followed its ordinary train of habit unconsciously, like an automaton. He did not resent anything that Captain Malet had said to him. He felt a kind of vague impersonal resentment against enveloping circumstances, that was all. When one was in the ranks, one lived in a world of men, full of flexible movement and human interest: when one became an officer, one became part of an inflexible and inhuman machine; and though he thought that the war as a moral effort was magnificent, he felt that as a mechanical operation it left a great deal to be desired.

They paraded again at two, and at three there was a kit-inspection, during which Bourne’s tin-hat was condemned for the second time. Mr Marsden, who had come back to them after having been slightly wounded on the Somme, was the first to examine the hat, and then Mr Sothern remembered that it had been condemned at Méaulte. He reminded the sergeant-major of the fact, and turned to Bourne again.

‘Did you see the quartermaster-sergeant about it?’ he asked Bourne.

Bourne had a very vivid recollection of his interview with the quartermaster-sergeant, a bad old devil like the colour-sergeant, only violent as well because he drank. He had gone, too, pensioned-off, and had reached by this time the summit of his ambition in the proprietorship of a pub.

‘Yes, sir,’ Bourne replied mechanically.

‘What did he say?’ continued Mr Sothern inquisitively.

‘He told me to go to buggery, sir,’ replied Bourne very quietly.

Sergeant-Major Robinson, and Sergeant Tozer as well, were scandalized that Bourne should divulge even part of a conversation so obviously intended to be confidential. The officers seemed to be only a little surprised by his candour.

‘What d’you mean, talkin’ like that?’ said the sergeant-major severely. ‘’e only meant ’e didn’t ’ave any.’

Bourne thought that the quartermaster-sergeant’s words might be interpreted in various ways; but in the face of the sergeant-major’s righteous indignation, he didn’t feel called on to supply any alternative glosses; so he stood to attention rigidly while he was told off by Mr Marsden, Mr Sothern, and the sergeant-major in succession. The sergeant-major thought it necessary to say to Mr Marsden that Quartermaster-Sergeant Leak had gone home.

‘’e was no good, sir. ’e was too old, an’ it made ’im irritable-like,’ he remarked with reasonable indulgence.

‘See that this man has a new steel-helmet by tonight,’ said Mr Marsden imperiously.

‘There are none here, sir,’ protested the sergeant-major. ‘There may be a few at the quartermaster’s stores in Noeux-les-Mines; but even there, they’ve probably got all their stuff packed ready for the move.’

‘Then see that he gets one at the first possible opportunity,’ said Mr. Marsden; and with this indefinite extension of the original time-limit he passed, somewhat hastily, to a detailed criticism of the next man’s deficiencies.