Back Aa

Rough Road

<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XVIII</h2> The replies to the telegrams were satisfactory. Peggy, adjuring him to write a full account of himself, announced her intention of coming up to see him as soon as he could guarantee his fitness to receive visitors. Jeanne wired: “Paquet reçu. Mille remerciements.” The news cheered him exceedingly. It was worth a hole in the leg. Henceforward Jeanne would be independent of Aunt Morin, of whose generous affection, in spite of Jeanne’s loyal reticence, he had formed but a poor opinion. Now the old lady could die whenever she liked, and so much the better for Jeanne. Jeanne would then be freed from the unhealthy sick-room, from dreary little Frélus, and from enforced consorting with the riff-raff (namely, all other regiments except his own) of the British Army. Even as it was, he did not enjoy thinking of her as hail-fellow-well-met with his own fellow-privates—perhaps with the exception of Phineas and Mo, who were in a different position, having been formally admitted into a peculiar intimacy. Of course, if Doggie had possessed a more analytical mind, he would have been greatly surprised to discover that these feelings arose from a healthy, barbaric sense of ownership of Jeanne; that Mo and Phineas were in a special position because they humbly recognized this fact of ownership and adopted a respectful attitude towards his property, and that of all other predatory men in uniform he was distrustful and jealous. But Doggie was a simple soul and went through a great many elementary emotions, just as Monsieur Jourdain spoke prose, sans le savoir. Without knowing it, he would have gone to the ends of the earth for Jeanne, have clubbed over the head any fellow-savage who should seek to rob him of Jeanne. It did not occur to him that savage instinct had already sent him into the jaws of death, solely in order to establish his primitive man’s ownership of Jeanne. When he came to reflect, in his Doggie-ish way, on the motives of his exploit, he was somewhat baffled. Jeanne, with her tragic face, and her tragic history, and her steadfast soul shining out of her eyes, was the most wonderful woman he had ever met. She personified the heroic womanhood of France. The foul invader had robbed her of her family and her patrimony. The dead were dead, and could not be restored; but the material wealth, God—who else?—had given him this miraculous chance to recover; and he had recovered it. National pride helped to confuse issues. He, an Englishman, had saved this heroic daughter of France from poverty…. If only he could have won back to his own trench, and, later, when the company returned to Frélus, he could have handed her the packet and seen the light come into those wonderful eyes! <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> Anyhow, she had received it. She sent him a thousand thanks. How did she look, what did she say when she cut the string and undid the seals and found her little fortune? Translate Jeanne into a princess, the dirty waterproof package into a golden casket, himself into a knight disguised as a squire of low degree, and what more could you want for a first-class fairy-tale? The idea struck Doggie at the moment of “lights out,” and he laughed aloud. “It doesn’t take much to amuse some people,” growled his neighbour, Penworthy. “Sign of a happy disposition,” said Doggie. “What’ve you got to be happy about?” “I was thinking how alive we are, and how dead you and I might be,” said Doggie. “Well, I don’t think it funny thinking how one might be dead,” replied Penworthy. “It gives me the creeps. It’s all very well for you. You’ll stump around for the rest of your life like a gentleman on a wooden leg. Chaps like you have all the luck; but as soon as I get out of this, I’ll be passed fit for active service … and not so much of your larfing at not being dead. See?” “All right, mate,” said Doggie. “Good night.” Penworthy made no immediate reply; but presently he broke out: “What d’you mean by talking like that? I’d hate being dead.” A voice from the far end of the room luridly requested that the conversation should cease. Silence reigned. <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> A letter from Jeanne. The envelope bore a French stamp with the Frélus postmark, and the address was in a bold feminine hand. From whom could it be but Jeanne? His heart gave a ridiculous leap and he tore the envelope open as he had never torn open envelope of Peggy’s. But at the first two words the leap seemed to be one in mid-air, and his heart went down, down, down like an aeroplane done in, and arrived with a hideous bump upon rocks. “Cher Monsieur” Cher Monsieur from Jeanne—Jeanne who had called him “Dog-gie” in accents that had rendered adorable the once execrated syllables. Cher Monsieur! And the following, in formal French—it might have been a convent exercise in composition—is what she said: <blockquote> “The military authorities have remitted into my possession the package which you so heroically rescued from the well of the farm of La Folette. It contains all that my father was able to save of his fortune, and on consultation with Maître Pépineau here, it appears that I have sufficient to live modestly for the rest of my life. For the marvellous devotion of you, monsieur, an English gentleman, to the poor interests of an obscure young French girl, I can never be sufficiently grateful. There will never be a prayer of mine, until I die, in which you will not be mentioned. To me it will be always a symbolic act of your chivalrous England in the aid of my beloved France. That you have been wounded in this noble and selfless enterprise, is to me a subject both of pride and terrifying dismay. I am moved to the depths of my being. But I have been assured, and your telegram confirms the assurance, that your wound is not dangerous. If you had been killed while rendering me this wonderful service, or incapacitated so that you could no longer strike a blow for your country and mine, I should never have forgiven myself. I should have felt that I had robbed France of a heroic defender. I pray God that you may soon recover, and in fighting once more against our common enemy, you may win the glory that no English soldier can deserve more than you. Forgive me if I express badly the emotions which overwhelm me. It is impossible that we shall meet again. One of the few English novels I have tried to read, à coups de dictionnaire, was <cite>Ships that Pass in the Night</cite>. In spite of the great thing that you have done for me, it is inevitable that we should be such passing vessels. It is life. If, as I shall ceaselessly pray, you survive this terrible war, you will follow your destiny as an Englishman of high position, and I that which God marks out for me. “I ask you to accept again the expression of my imperishable gratitude. Adieu. “Jeanne Bossière.” </blockquote> The more often Doggie read this perfectly phrased epistle, the greater waxed his puzzledom. The gratitude was all there; more than enough. It was gratitude and nothing else. He had longed for a human story telling just how the thing had happened, just how Jeanne had felt. He had wanted her to say: “Get well soon and come back, and I’ll tell you all about it.” But instead of that she dwelt on the difference of their social status, loftily announced that they would never meet again and that they would follow different destinies, and bade him the adieu which in French is the final leave-taking. All of which to Doggie, the unsophisticated, would have seemed ridiculous, had it not been so tragic. He couldn’t reconcile the beautiful letter, written in faultless handwriting and impeccable French, with the rain-swept girl on the escarpment. What did she mean? What had come over her? But the ways of Jeannes are not the ways of Doggies. How was he to know of the boastings of Phineas McPhail, and the hopelessness with which they filled Jeanne’s heart? How was he to know that she had sat up most of the night in her little room over the gateway, drafting and redrafting this precious composition, until, having reduced it to soul-devastating correctitude, and, with aching eyes and head, made a fair and faultless copy, she had once more cried herself into miserable slumber? At once Doggie called for pad and pencil, and began to write: <blockquote> “My dear Jeanne,— “I don’t understand. What fly has stung you? (Quelle mouche vous a piquée?) Of course we shall meet again. Do you suppose I am going to let you go out of my life?” </blockquote> (He sucked his pencil. Jeanne must be spoken to severely.) <blockquote> “What rubbish are you talking about my social position? My father was an English parson (pasteur anglais) and yours a French lawyer. If I have a little money of my own, so have you. And we are not ships and we have not passed in the night. And that we should not meet again is not Life. It is absurdity. We are going to meet as soon as wounds and war will let me, and I am not your ‘Cher Monsieur,’ but your ‘Cher Dog-gie,’ and——” </blockquote> “Here is a letter for you, brought by hand,” said the nurse, bustling to his bedside. It was from Peggy. “Oh, lord!” said Doggie. Peggy was there. She had arrived from Durdlebury all alone, the night before, and was putting up at an hotel. The venerable idiot, with red crosses and bits of tin all over her, who seemed to run the hospital, wouldn’t let her in to see him till the regulation visiting hour of three o’clock. That she, Peggy, was a Dean’s daughter, who had travelled hundreds of miles to see the man she was engaged to, did not seem to impress the venerable idiot in the least. Till three o’clock then. With love from Peggy. “The lady, I believe, is waiting for an answer,” said the nurse. “Oh, my hat!” said Doggie below his breath. To write the answer, he had to strip from the pad the page on which he had begun the letter to Jeanne. He wrote: “Dearest Peggy.” Then the pencil-point’s impress through the thin paper stared at him. Almost every word was decipherable. Recklessly he tore the pad in half and on a virgin page scribbled his message to Peggy. The nurse departed with it. He took up the flimsy sheet containing his interrupted letter to Jeanne and glanced at it in dismay. For the first time it struck him that such words, to a girl even of the lowest intelligence, could only have one interpretation. Doggie said, “Oh, lord!” and “Oh, my hat!” and Oh all sorts of unprintable things that he had learned in the army. And he put to himself the essential question: What the Hades was he playing at? Obviously, the first thing to do was to destroy the letter to Jeanne and the tell-tale impress. This he forthwith did. He tore the sheets into the tiniest fragments, stretched out his arm to put the handful on the table by the bed, missed his aim and dropped it on the floor. Whereby he incurred the just wrath of the hard-worked nurse. Again he took up Jeanne’s letter. After all, what was wrong with it? He must look at things from her point of view. What had really happened? Let him set out the facts judicially. They had struck up a day or two’s friendship. She had told him, as she might have told any decent soul, her sad and romantic story. The English during the great retreat had rendered her unforgettable services. She was a girl of a generously responsive nature. She would pay her debt of gratitude to the English soldier. Her fine vale on the memorable night of rain was part payment of her debt to England. Yes. Let him get things in the right perspective…. She had made friends with him because he was one of the few private soldiers who could speak her language. It was but natural that she should tell him of the sunken packet. It was one of the most vital facts of her life. But just an outside fact: nothing to do with any shy mysterious workings of her woman’s soul. She might have told the story to any man in the company without derogation from her womanly dignity. And any man Jack of them, having Jeanne’s confidence, having the knowledge of the situation of the ruined well, having the God-sent opportunity of recovering the treasure, would, of absolute certainty, have done exactly what he, Doggie, had done. Supposing Mo Shendish had been the privileged person, instead of himself. What, by way of thanks, could Jeanne have written? A letter practically identical. Practically. A very comfortable sort of word; but Doggie’s cultivated mind disliked it. It was a slovenly word, a makeshift for the hard broom of clean thought. This infernal “practically” begged the whole question. Jeanne would not have sentimentalized to Mo Shendish about ships passing in the night. No, she wouldn’t, in spite of all his efforts to persuade himself that she would. Well, perhaps dear old Mo was a rough, uneducated sort of chap. He could not have established with Jeanne such delicate relations of friendship as exist between social equals. Obviously the finer shades of her letter would have varied according to the personality of the recipient. Jeanne and himself, owing to the abnormal conditions of war, had suddenly become very intimate friends. The war, as she imagined, must part them for ever. She bade him a touching and dignified farewell, and that was the end of the matter. It had all been an idyllic episode; beginning, middle, and end; neatly rounded off; a thing done, and done with—except as a strange romantic memory. It was all over. As long as he remained in the army, a condition for which, as a private soldier, he was not responsible, how could he see Jeanne again? By the time he rejoined, the regiment would be many miles away from Frélus. This, in her clear, steady way, she realized. Her letter must be final. It had to be final. Was not Peggy coming at three o’clock? Again Doggie thought, somewhat wistfully, of the old care-free, full physical life, and again he murmured: “It’s all dam funny!” <hr class="thoughtbreak" /> Peggy stood for a moment at the door scanning the ward; then perceiving him, she marched down with a defiant glance at nurses and blue-uniformed comrades and men in bed and other strangers, swung a chair and established herself by his bedside. “You dear old thing, I couldn’t bear to think of you lying here alone,” she said, with the hurry that seeks to cover shyness. “I had to come. Mother’s gone fut and can’t travel, and Dad’s running all the parsons’ shows in the district. Otherwise one of them would have come too.” “It’s awfully good of you, Peggy,” he said, with a smile, for fair and flushed she was pleasant to look upon. “But it must have been a fiendish journey.” “Rotten!” said Peggy. “But that’s a trifle. You’re the all-important thing. Tell me straight. You’re not badly hurt, are you?” “Lord, no,” he replied cheerfully. “Just the fleshy part of the leg—a clean bullet-wound. Bone touched; but they say I’ll be fit quite soon.” “Sure? They’re not going to cut off your leg or do anything horrid?” He laughed. “Sure,” said he. “That’s all right.” There was a pause. Now that they had met they seemed to have little to say. She looked around. Presently she remarked: “Everything looks quite fresh and clean.” “It’s perfect.” “Rather public, though,” said Peggy. “Publicity is the paradoxical condition of the private’s life,” laughed Doggie. Another pause. “Well, how are you feeling?” “First-rate,” said Doggie. “It’s nothing to fuss over. I hope to be out again in a month or two.” “Out where?” “In France—with the regiment.” Peggy drew a little breath of astonishment and sat up on her chair. His surprising statement seemed to have broken up the atmosphere of restraint. “Do you mean to say you want to go back to the trenches?” Conscientious Doggie knitted his brows. A fervent “Yes” would proclaim him a modern Paladin, eager to slay Huns. Now, as a patriotic Englishman he loved Huns to be slain, but as the survivor of James Marmaduke Trevor, dilettante expert on the theorbo and the viol da gamba and owner of the peacock and ivory room in Denby Hall, to say nothing of the collector of little china dogs, he could not honestly declare that he enjoyed the various processes of slaying them. “I can’t explain,” he replied, after a while. “When I was out, I thought I hated every minute of it. Now I look back, I find I’ve had quite a good time. I’ve not once really been sick or sorry. For instance, I’ve often thought myself beastly miserable with wet and mud and east wind—but I’ve never had even a cold in the head. I never knew how good it was to feel fit. And there are other things. When I left Durdlebury, I hadn’t a man friend in the world. Now I have a lot of wonderful pals who would go through hell for one another—and for me.” “Tommies?” “Of course—Tommies.” “You mean gentlemen in the ranks?” “Not a bit of it. Or yes. All are gentlemen in the ranks. All sorts and conditions of men. The man whom I honour and love more than anyone else, comes from a fish-shop in Hackney. That’s the fascinating part of it. Do understand me, Peggy,” he continued, after a short silence, during which she regarded him almost uncomprehendingly. “I don’t say I’m yearning to sleep in a filthy dug out or to wallow in the ground under shell-fire, or anything of that sort. That’s beastly. There’s only one other word for it, which begins with the same letter, and the superior kind of private doesn’t use it in ladies’ society…. But while I’m lying here I wonder what all the other fellows are doing—they’re such good chaps—real, true, clean men—out there you seem to get to essentials—all the rest is leather and prunella—and I want to be back among them again. Why should I be in clover while they’re in choking dust—a lot of it composed of desiccated Boches?” “How horrid!” cried Peggy, with a little shiver. “Of course it’s horrid. But they’ve got to stick it, haven’t they? And then there’s another thing. Out there one hasn’t any worries.” Peggy pricked up her ears. “Worries? What kind of worries?” Doggie became conscious of indiscretion. He temporized. “Oh, all kinds. Every man with a sort of trained intellect must have them. You remember John Stuart Mill’s problem: ‘Which would you sooner be—a contented hog, or a discontented philosopher?’ At the Front you have all the joys of the contented hog.” Instinctively he stretched out his hand for a cigarette. She bent forward, gripped a matchbox, and lit the cigarette for him. Doggie thanked her politely; but in a dim way he felt conscious of something lacking in her little act of helpfulness. It had been performed with the unsmiling perfunctoriness of the nurse; an act of duty, not of tenderness. As she blew out the match, which she did with an odd air of deliberation, her face wore the same expression of hardness it had done on that memorable day when she had refused him her sympathy over the white feather incident. “I can’t understand your wanting to go back at all. Surely you’ve done your bit,” she said. “No one has done his bit who’s alive and able to carry on,” replied Doggie. Peggy reflected. Yes. There was some truth in that. But she thought it rather hard lines on the wounded to be sent back as soon as they were patched up. Most of them hated the prospect. That was why she couldn’t understand Doggie’s desire. “Anyhow, it’s jolly noble of you, dear old thing,” she declared with rather a spasmodic change of manner, “and I’m very proud of you.” “For God’s sake, don’t go imagining me a hero,” cried Doggie in alarm, “for I’m not. I hate the fighting like poison. The only reason I don’t run away is because I can’t. It would be far more dangerous than standing still. It would mean an officer’s bullet through my head at once.” “Any man who is wounded in the defence of his country is a hero,” said Peggy defiantly. “Rot!” said Doggie. “And all this time you haven’t told me how you got it. How did you?” Doggie squirmed. The inevitable and dreaded question had come at last. “I just got sniped when I was out, at night, with a wiring party,” he said hurriedly. “But that’s no description at all,” she objected. “I’m afraid it’s all I can give,” Doggie replied. Then, by way of salve to a sensitive conscience, he added: “There was nothing brave or heroic about it, at all—just a silly accident. It was as safe as tying up hollyhocks in a garden. Only an idiot Boche let off his gun on spec and got me. Don’t let us talk about it.” But Peggy was insistent. “I’m not such a fool as not to know what mending barbed wire at night means. And whatever you may say, you got wounded in the service of your country.” It was on Doggie’s agitated lips to shout a true “I didn’t!” For that was the devil of it. Had he been so wounded, he could have purred contentedly while accepting the genuine hero’s meed of homage and consolation. But he had left his country’s service to enter that of Jeanne. In her service he had been shot through the leg. He had no business to be wounded at all. Jeanne saw that very clearly. To have exposed himself to the risk of his exploit was contrary to all his country’s interests. His wound had robbed her of a fighting man, not a particularly valuable warrior, but a soldier in the firing line all the same. If every man went off like that on private missions of his own and got properly potted, there would be the end of the Army. It was horrible to be an interesting hero under false pretences. Of course he might have been George Washingtonian enough to shout: “I cannot tell a lie. I didn’t.” But that would have meant relating the whole story of Jeanne. And would Peggy have understood the story of Jeanne? Could Peggy, in her plain-sailing, breezy British way, have appreciated all the subtleties of his relations with Jeanne? She would ask pointed, probably barbed, questions about Jeanne. She would tear the whole romance to shreds. Jeanne stood too exquisite a symbol for him to permit the sacrilege of Peggy’s ruthless vivisection. For vivisect she would, without shadow of doubt. His long and innocent familiarity with womankind in Durdlebury had led him instinctively to the conclusion formulated by one of the world’s greatest cynics in his advice to a young man: “If you care for happiness, never speak to a woman about another woman.” Doggie felt uncomfortable as he looked into Peggy’s clear blue eyes; not conscience-stricken at the realization of himself as a scoundrelly Don Juan—that never entered his ingenuous mind; but he hated his enforced departure from veracity. The one virtue that had dragged the toy Pom successfully along the Rough Road of the soldier’s life was his uncompromising attitude to Truth. It cost him a sharp struggle with his soul to reply to Peggy: “All right. Have it so if it pleases you, my dear. But it was an idiot fluke all the same.” “I wonder if you know how you’ve changed,” she said, after a while. “For better or worse?” “The obvious thing to say would be ‘for the better.’ But I wonder. Do you mind if I’m frank?” “Not a bit.” “There’s something hard about you, Marmaduke.” Doggie wrinkled lips and brow in a curious smile. “I’ll be frank too. You see, I’ve been living among men, instead of a pack of old women.” “I suppose that’s it,” Peggy said thoughtfully. “It’s a dud sort of place, Durdlebury,” said he. “Dud?” He laughed. “It never goes off.” “You used to say, in your letters, that you longed for it.” “Perhaps I do now—in a way. I don’t know.” “I bet you’ll settle down there after the war, just as though nothing had happened.” “I wonder,” said Doggie. “Of course you will. Do you remember our plans for the reconstruction of Denby Hall, which were knocked on the head? All that’ll have to be gone into again.” “That doesn’t mean that we need curl ourselves up there for ever like caterpillars in a cabbage.” She arched her eyebrows. “What would you like to do?” “I think I’ll want to go round and round the world till I’m dizzy.” At this amazing pronouncement from Marmaduke Trevor, Peggy gasped. It also astonished Doggie himself. He had not progressed so far on the road to self-emancipation as to dream of a rupture of his engagement. His marriage was as much a decree of destiny as had been his enlistment when he walked to Peter Pan’s statue in Kensington Gardens. But the war had made the prospect a distant one. In the vague future he would marry and settle down. But now Peggy brought it into alarming nearness, thereby causing him considerable agitation. To go back to vegetation in Durdlebury, even with so desirable a companion cabbage as Peggy, just when he was beginning to conjecture what there might be of joy and thrill in life—the thought dismayed him; and the sudden dismay found expression in his rhetorical outburst. “Oh, if you want to travel for a year or two, I’m all for it,” cried Peggy. “I can’t say I’ve seen much of the world. But we’ll soon get sick of it, and yearn for home. There’ll be lots of things to do. We’ll take up our position as county people—no more of the stuffy old women you’re so down on—and you’ll get into Parliament and sit on committees, and so on, and altogether we’ll have a topping time.” Doggie had an odd sensation that a stranger spoke through Peggy’s familiar lips. Well, perhaps, not a stranger, but a half-forgotten dead and gone acquaintance. “Don’t you think the war will change things—if it hasn’t changed them already?” “Not a bit,” Peggy replied. “Dad’s always talking learnedly about social reconstruction, whatever that means. But if people have got money and position and all that sort of thing, who’s going to take it away from them? You don’t suppose we’re all going to turn socialists and pool the wealth of the country, and everybody’s going to live in a garden-city and wear sandals and eat nuts?” “Of course not,” said Doggie. “Well, how are people like ourselves going to feel any difference in what you call social conditions?” Doggie lit another cigarette, chiefly in order to gain time for thought; but an odd instinct made him secure the matchbox before he picked out the cigarette. Superficially, Peggy’s proposition was incontrovertible. Unless there happened some social cataclysm, involving a newly democratized world in ghastly chaos, which after all was a remote possibility, the externals of gentle life would undergo very slight modification. Yet there was something fundamentally wrong in Peggy’s conception of post-war existence. Something wrong in essentials. Now, a critical attitude towards Peggy, whose presence was a proof of her splendid loyalty, seemed hateful. But there was something wrong all the same. Something wrong in Peggy herself that put her into opposition. In one aspect, she was the pre-war Peggy, with her cut-and-dried little social ambitions and her definite projects of attainment; but in another she was not. The pre-war Peggy had swiftly turned into the patriotic English girl who had hounded him into the army. He found himself face to face with an amorphous, characterless sort of Peggy whom he did not know. It was perplexing, baffling. Before he could formulate an idea, she went on: “You silly old thing, what change is there likely to be? What change is there now, after all? There’s a scarcity of men. Naturally. They’re out fighting. But when they come home on leave, life goes on just the same as before—tennis parties, little dances, dinners. Of course, lots of people are hard hit. Did I tell you that Jack Paunceby was killed—the only son? The war’s awful and dreadful, I know—but if we don’t go through with it cheerfully, what’s the good of us?” “I think I’m pretty cheerful,” said Doggie. “Oh, you’re not grousing and you’re making the best of it. You’re perfectly splendid. But you’re philosophizing such a lot over it. The only thing before us is to do in Germany, Prussian militarism, and so on, and then there’ll be peace, and we’ll all be happy again.” “Have you met many men who say that?” he asked. “Heaps. Oliver was only talking about it the other day.” “Oliver?” At his quick challenge he could not help noticing a little cloud, as of vexation, pass over her face. “Yes, Oliver,” she replied, with an unnecessary air of defiance. “He has been over here on short leave. Went back a fortnight ago. He’s as cheerful as cheerful can be. Jollier than ever he was. I took him out in the dear old two-seater and he insisted on driving to show how they drove at the Front—and it’s only because the Almighty must have kept a special eye on a Dean’s daughter that I’m here to tell the tale.” “You saw a lot of him, I suppose?” said Doggie. A flush rose on Peggy’s cheek. “Of course. He was staying at the Deanery most of his time. I wrote to you about it. I’ve made a point of telling you everything. I even told you about the two-seater.” “So you did,” said Doggie. “I remember.” He smiled. “Your description made me laugh. Oliver’s a major now, isn’t he?” “Yes. And just before he got his majority they gave him the Military Cross.” “He must be an awful swell,” said Doggie. She replied with some heat. “He hasn’t changed the least little bit in the world.” Doggie shook his head. “No one can go through it, really go through it, and come back the same.” “You don’t insinuate that Oliver hasn’t really gone through it?” “Of course not, Peggy dear. They don’t throw M.C.’s about like Iron Crosses. In order to get it Oliver must have looked into the jaws of hell. They all do. But no man is the same afterwards. Oliver has what the French call panache——” “What’s panache?” “The real heroic swagger—something spiritual about it. Oliver’s not going to let you notice the change in him.” “We went to the Alhambra, and he laughed as if such a thing as war had never been heard of.” “Naturally,” said Doggie. “All that’s part of the panache.” “You’re talking through your hat, Marmaduke,” she exclaimed with some irritation. “Oliver’s a straight, clean, English soldier.” “I’ve been doing my best to tell you so,” said Doggie. “But you seem to be criticizing him because he’s concealing something behind what you call his panache.” “Not criticizing, dear. Only stating. I think I’m more Oliverian than you.” “I’m not Oliverian,” cried Peggy, with burning cheeks. “And I don’t see why we should discuss him like this. All I said was that Oliver, who has made himself a distinguished man and will be even more distinguished, and, at any rate, knows what he’s talking about, doesn’t worry his head with social reconstruction and all that sort of rot. I’ve come here to talk about you, not about Oliver. Let us leave him out of the question.” “Willingly,” said Doggie. “I never had any reason to love Oliver; but I must do him justice. I only wanted to show you that he must be a bigger man than you imagine.” “I’m glad to hear you say so,” cried Peggy, with a flash of the eyes. “I hope it’s true.” “The war’s such a whacking big thing, you see,” he said with a conciliatory smile. “No one can prophesy exactly what’s going to come out of it. But the whole of human society … the world, the whole of civilization, is being stirred up like a Christmas pudding. The war’s bound to change the trend of all human thought. There must be an entire rearrangement of social values.” “I’m sorry; but I don’t see it,” said Peggy. Doggie again wrinkled his brow and looked at her, and she returned his glance stonily. “You think I’m mulish.” She had interpreted Doggie’s thought, but he raised a hand in protest. “No, no.” “Yes, yes. Every man looks at a woman like that when he thinks her a mule or an idiot. We get to learn it in our cradles. But in spite of your superior wisdom, I know I’m right. After the war there won’t be a bit of change, really. A duke will be a duke, and a costermonger a costermonger.” “These are extreme cases. The duke may remain a duke, but he won’t be such a little tin god on wheels. He’ll find himself in the position of a democratic country gentleman. And the costermonger will rise to the political position of an important tradesman. But between the two there’ll be any old sort of flux.” “Did you learn all this horrible, rank socialism in France?” “Perhaps, but it seems so obvious.” “It’s only because you’ve been living among Tommies, who’ve got these stupid ideas into their heads. If you had been living among your social equals——” “In Durdlebury?” She flashed rebellion. “Yes. In Durdlebury. Why not?” “I’m afraid, Peggy dear,” he said, with his patient, pleasant smile, “you are rather sheltered from the war in Durdlebury.” She cried out indignantly. “Indeed we’re not. The newspapers come to Durdlebury, don’t they? And everybody’s doing something. We have the war all around us. We’ve even succeeded in getting wounded soldiers in the Cottage Hospital. Nancy Murdoch is a V.A.D. and scrubs floors. Cissy James is driving a Y.M.C.A. motor-car in Calais. Jane Brown-Gore is nursing in Salonika. We read all their letters. Personally, I can’t do much, because mother has crocked up and I’ve got to run the Deanery. But I’m slaving from morning to night. Only last week I got up a concert for the wounded. Alone I did it—and it takes some doing in Durdlebury, now that you’re away and the Musical Association has perished of inanition. Old Dr. Flint’s no earthly good, since Tom, the eldest son—you remember—was killed in Mesopotamia. So I did it all, and it was a great success. We netted four hundred and seventy pounds. And whenever I can get a chance, I go round the hospital and talk and read to the men and write their letters, and hear of everything. I don’t think you’ve any right to say we’re out of touch with the war. In a sort of way, I know as much about it as you do.” Doggie in some perplexity scratched his head, a thing which he would never have done at Durdlebury. With humorous intent he asked: “Do you know as much as Oliver?” “Oliver’s a field officer,” she replied tartly, and Doggie felt snubbed. “But I’m sure he agrees with everything I say.” She paused and, in a different tone, went on: “Don’t you think it’s rather rotten to have this piffling argument when I’ve come all this long way to see you?” “Forgive me, Peggy,” he said penitently; “I appreciate your coming more than I can say.” She was not appeased. “And yet you don’t give me credit for playing the game.” “What game?” he asked with a smile. “Surely you ought to know.” He reached out his hand and took hers. “Am I worth it, Peggy?” Her lips twitched and tears stood in her eyes. “I don’t know what you mean?” “Neither do I quite,” he replied simply. “But it seems that I’m a Tommy through and through, and that I’ll never get Tommy out of my soul.” “That’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she declared stoutly. “Of course not. But it makes one see all sorts of things in a different light.” “Oh, don’t worry your head about that,” she said, with pathetic misunderstanding. “We’ll put you all right as soon as we get you back to Durdlebury. I suppose you won’t refuse to come this time.” “Yes, I’ll come this time,” said Doggie. So he promised, and the talk drifted on to casual lines. She gave him the mild chronicle of the sleepy town, described plays which she had seen on her rare visits to London, sketched out a programme for his all too short visit to the Deanery. “And in the meanwhile,” she remarked, “try to get these morbid ideas out of your silly old head.” Time came for parting. She rose and shook hands. “Don’t think I’ve said anything in depreciation of Tommies. I understand them thoroughly. They’re wonderful fellows. Good-bye, old boy. Get well soon.” She kissed her hand to him at the door, and was gone. It was now that Doggie began to hate himself. For all the time that Peggy had been running on, eager to convince him that his imputation of aloofness from the war was undeserved, the voice of one who, knowing its splendours and its terrors, had pierced to the heart of its mysteries, ran in his ears. “Leur gaieté fait peur.” </div> <div class="chapter" id="chapter_XIX"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.