“I want to know,” went on Andrews speaking slowly, “can you help me to get put on the list to be sent to the University of Paris?... I know that a list has been made out, although the General Order has not come yet. I am disliked by most of the noncoms and I don't see how I can get on without somebody's help...I simply can't go this life any longer.” Andrews closed his lips firmly and looked at the ground, his face flushing.
“Well, a man of your attainments certainly ought to go,” said Lieutenant Bleezer, with a faint tremor of hesitation in his voice. “I'm going to Oxford myself.”
“Trust me, my boy,” said Sheffield. “I'll fix it up for you, I promise. Let's shake hands on it.” He seized Andrews's hand and pressed it warmly in a moist palm. “If it's within human power, within human power,” he added.
“Well, I must go,” said Lieutenant Bleezer, suddenly striding to the door. “I promised the Marquise I'd drop in. Good-bye.... Take a cigar, won't you?” He held out three cigars in the direction of Andrews.
“Oh, don't you think the old aristocracy of France is just too wonderful? Lieutenant Bleezer goes almost every evening to call on the Marquise de Rompemouville. He says she is just too spirituelle for words.... He often meets the Commanding Officer there.”
Andrews had dropped into a chair and sat with his face buried in his hands, looking through his fingers at the fire, where a few white fingers of flame were clutching intermittently at a grey beech log. His mind was searching desperately for expedients.
“I can't go this life any more, do you hear that? No possible future is worth all this. If I can get to Paris, all right. If not, I'll desert and damn the consequences.”
“But I've already promised I'll do all I can....”
“Well, do it now,” interrupted Andrews brutally.
“All right, I'll go and see the colonel and tell him what a great musician you are.”
“I don't give a damn, come along.... You can talk to him. You seem to be thick with all the officers.”
“You must wait till I tidy up,” said Sheffield.
Andrews strode up and down in the mud in front of the house, snapping his fingers with impatience, until Sheffield came out, then they walked off in silence.
“Now wait outside a minute,” whispered Sheffield when they came to the white house with bare grapevines over the front, where the colonel lived.