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 recu. 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 Frelus, 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 Frelus, he could have handed her the packet and
seen the light come into those wonderful eyes!
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
A letter from Jeanne. The envelope bore a French stamp with the
Frelus 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:
"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 Maitre Pepineau
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, _a coups de dictionnaire_, was
_Ships that Pass in the Night_. 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 BOSSIERE."
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:
"MY DEAR JEANNE,--
"I don't understand. What fly has stung you? (_Quelle mouche
vous a piquee?_) Of course we shall meet again. Do you suppose
I am going to let you go out of my life?"
(He sucked his pencil. Jeanne must be spoken to severely.)
"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----"
"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 Frelus. 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!"
* * * * *
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 gaiete fait peur._"