"All right, Peddle, I can find my way about," said Doggie, dismissing
the old butler and his wife after a little colloquy in the hall.
"Everything's in perfect order, sir, just as it was when you left; and
there are the keys," said Mrs. Peddle.
The Peddles retired. Doggie eyed the heavy bunch of keys with an air
of distaste. For two years he had not seen a key. What on earth could
be the good of all this locking and unlocking? He stuffed the bunch in
his tunic pocket and looked around him. It seemed difficult to realize
that everything he saw was his own. Those trees visible from the hall
windows were his own, and the land on which they grew. This spacious,
beautiful house was his own. He had only to wave a hand, as it were,
and it would be filled with serving men and serving maids ready to do
his bidding. His foot was on his native heath, and his name was James
Marmaduke Trevor.
Did he ever actually live here, have his being here? Was he ever part
and parcel of it all--the Oriental rugs, the soft stair-carpet on the
noble oak staircase leading to the gallery, the oil paintings, the
impressive statuary, the solid, historical, oak hall furniture? Were
it not so acutely remembered, he would have felt like a man accustomed
all his life to barns and tents and hedgerows and fetid holes in the
ground, who had wandered into some ill-guarded palace. He entered the
drawing-room. The faithful Peddles, with pathetic zeal to give him a
true home-coming, had set it out fresh and clean and polished; the
windows were like crystal, and flowers welcomed him from every
available vase. And so in the dining-room. The Chippendale
dining-table gleamed like a sombre translucent pool. On the sideboard,
amid the array of shining silver, the very best old Waterford
decanters filled with whisky and brandy, and old cut-glass goblets
invited him to refreshment. The precious mezzotint portraits, mostly
of his own collecting, regarded him urbanely from the walls. _The
Times_ and the _Morning Post_ were laid out on the little table by his
accustomed chair near the massive marble mantelpiece.
"The dear old idiots," said Doggie, and he sat down for a moment and
unfolded the newspapers and strewed them around, to give the
impression that he had read and enjoyed them.
And then he went into his own private and particular den, the peacock
and ivory room, which had been the supreme expression of himself and
for which he had ached during many nights of misery. He looked round
and his heart sank. He seemed to come face to face with the
ineffectual, effeminate creature who had brought upon him the disgrace
of his man's life. But for the creator and sybarite enjoyer of this
sickening boudoir, he would now be in honoured command of men. He
conceived a sudden violent hatred of the room. The only thing in the
place worth a man's consideration, save a few water-colours, was the
honest grand piano, which, because it did not aesthetically harmonize
with his squeaky, pot-bellied theorbos and tinkling spinet, he had
hidden in an alcove behind a curtain. He turned an eye of disgust on
the vellum backs of his books in the closed Chippendale cases, on the
drawers containing his collection of wall-papers, on the footling
peacocks, on the curtains and cushions, on the veined ivory paper
which, beginning to fade two years ago, now looked mean and
meaningless. It was an abominable room. It ought to be smelling of
musk or pastilles or joss-sticks. It might have done so, for once he
had tried something of the sort, and did not renew the experiment only
because the smell happened to make him sick.
There was one feature of the room at which for a long time he avoided
looking: but wherever he turned, it impressed itself on his
consciousness as the miserable genius of the despicable place. And
that was his collection of little china dogs.
At last he planted himself in front of the great glass cabinet, whence
thousands of little dogs looked at him out of little black dots of
eyes. There were dogs of all nationalities, all breeds, all twisted
enormities of human invention. There were monstrous dogs of China and
Japan; Aztec dogs; dogs in Sevres and Dresden and Chelsea; sixpenny
dogs from Austria and Switzerland; everything in the way of a little
dog that man had made. He stood in front of it with almost a doggish
snarl on his lips. He had spent hundreds and hundreds of pounds over
these futile dogs. Yet never a flesh and blood, real, lusty _canis
futilis_ had he possessed. He used to dislike real dogs. The shivering
rat, Goliath, could scarcely be called a dog. He had wasted his heart
over these contemptible counterfeits. To add to his collection,
catalogue it, describe it, correspond about it with the semi-imbecile
Russian prince, his only rival collector, had once ranked with his
history of wall-papers as the serious and absorbing pursuit of his
life.
Then suddenly Doggie's hatred reached the crisis of ferocity. He saw
red. He seized the first instrument of destruction that came to his
hand, a little gilt Louis XV music stool, and bashed the cabinet full
in front. The glass flew into a thousand splinters. He bashed again.
The woodwork of the cabinet, stoutly resisting, worked hideous damage
on the gilt stool. But Doggie went on bashing till the cabinet sank in
ruins and the little dogs, headless, tailless, rent in twain, strewed
the floor. Then Doggie stamped on them with his heavy munition boots
until dogs and glass were reduced to powder and the Aubusson carpet
was cut to pieces.
"Damn the whole infernal place!" cried Doggie, and he heaved a
mandolin tied up with disgusting peacock-blue ribbons at the bookcase,
and fled from the room.
He stood for a while in the hall, shaken with his anger; then mounted
the staircase and went into his own bedroom with the satinwood
furniture and nattier blue hangings. God! what a bedchamber for a man!
He would have liked to throw bombs into the nest of effeminacy. But
his mother had arranged it, so in a way it was immune from his
iconoclastic rage. He went down to the dining-room, helped himself to
a whisky and soda from the sideboard, and sat down in the arm-chair
amidst the scattered newspapers and held his head in his hands and
thought.
The house was hateful; all its associations were hateful. If he lived
there until he was ninety, the abhorred ghost of the pre-war little
Doggie Trevor would always haunt every nook and cranny of the place,
mouthing the quarter of a century's shame that had culminated in the
Great Disgrace. At last he brought his hand down with a bang on the
arm of his chair. He would never live in this House of Dishonour
again. Never. He would sell it.
"By God!" he cried, starting to his feet, as the inspiration came.
He would sell it, as it stood, lock, stock and barrel, with everything
in it. He would wipe out at one stroke the whole of his unedifying
history. Denby Hall gone, what could tie him to Durdlebury? He would
be freed, for ever, from the petrification of the grey, cramping
little city. If Peggy didn't like it, that was Peggy's affair. In
material things he was master of his destiny. Peggy would have to
follow him in his career, whatever it was, not he Peggy. He saw
clearly that which had been mapped out for him, the silly little
social ambitions, the useless existence, little Doggie Trevor for ever
trailing obediently behind the lady of Denby Hall. Doggie threw
himself back in his chair and laughed. No one had ever heard him laugh
like that. After a while he was even surprised at himself.
He was perfectly ready to marry Peggy. It was almost a preordained
thing. A rupture of the engagement was unthinkable. Her undeviating
loyalty bound him by every fibre of gratitude and honour. But it was
essential that Peggy should know whom and what she was marrying. The
Doggie trailing in her wake no longer existed. If she were prepared to
follow the new Doggie, well and good. If not, there would be conflict.
For that he was prepared.
He strode, this time contemptuously, into his wrecked peacock and
ivory room, where his telephone (blatant and hideous thing) was
ingeniously concealed behind a screen, and rang up Spooner and
Smithson, the leading firm of auctioneers and estate agents in the
town. At the mention of his name, Mr. Spooner, the senior partner,
came to the telephone.
"Yes, I'm back, Mr. Spooner, and I'm quite well," said Doggie. "I want
to see you on very important business. When can you fix it up? Any
time? Can you come along now to Denby Hall?"
Mr. Spooner would be pleased to wait upon Mr. Trevor immediately. He
would start at once. Doggie went out and sat on the front doorstep and
smoked cigarettes till he came.
"Mr. Spooner," said he, as soon as the elderly auctioneer descended
from his little car, "I'm going to sell the whole of the Denby Hall
estate, and, with the exception of a few odds and ends, family relics
and so forth, which I'll pick out, all the contents of the
house--furniture, pictures, sheets, towels and kitchen clutter. I've
only got six days' leave, and I want all the worries, as far as I am
concerned, settled and done with before I go. So you'll have to buck
up, Mr. Spooner. If you say you can't do it, I'll put the business by
telephone into the hands of a London agent."
It took Mr. Spooner nearly a quarter of an hour to recover his breath,
gain a grasp of the situation and assemble his business wits.
"Of course I'll carry out your instructions, Mr. Trevor," he said at
last. "You can safely leave the matter in our hands. But, although it
is against my business interests, pray let me beg you to reconsider
your decision. It is such a beautiful home, your grandfather, the
Bishop's, before you."
"He bought it pretty cheap, didn't he, somewhere in the 'seventies?"
"I forget the price he paid for it, but I could look it up. Of course
we were the agents."
"And then it was let to some dismal people until my father died and my
mother took it over. I'm sorry I can't get sentimental about it, as if
it were an ancestral hall, Mr. Spooner. I want to get rid of the
place, because I hate the sight of it."
"It would be presumptuous of me to say anything more," answered the
old-fashioned country auctioneer.
"Say what you like, Mr. Spooner," laughed Doggie in his disarming way.
"We're old friends. But send in your people this afternoon to start on
inventories and measuring up, or whatever they do, and I'll look round
to-morrow and select the bits I may want to keep. You'll see after the
storing of them, won't you?"
"Of course, Mr. Trevor."
Mr. Spooner drove away in his little car, a much dazed man.
Like the rest of Durdlebury and the circumjacent county, he had
assumed that when the war was over Mr. James Marmaduke Trevor would
lead his bride from the Deanery into Denby Hall, where the latter, in
her own words, would proceed to make things hum.
"My dear," said he to his wife at luncheon, "you could have knocked me
over with a feather. What he's doing it for, goodness knows. I can
only assume that he has grown so accustomed to the destruction of
property in France, that he has got bitten by the fever."
"Perhaps Peggy Conover has turned him down," suggested his wife, who,
much younger than he, employed more modern turns of speech. "And I
shouldn't wonder if she has. Since the war girls aren't on the look
out for pretty monkeys."
"If Miss Conover thinks she has got hold of a pretty monkey in that
young man, she is very much mistaken," replied Mr. Spooner.
Meanwhile Doggie summoned Peddle to the hall. He knew that his
announcement would be a blow to the old man; but this was a world of
blows; and after all, one could not organize one's life to suit the
sentiments of old family idiots of retainers, served they never so
faithfully.
"Peddle," said he, "I'm sorry to say I'm going to sell Denby Hall.
Messrs. Spooner and Smithson's people are coming in this afternoon. So
give them every facility. Also tea, or beer, or whisky, or whatever
they want. About what's going to happen to you and Mrs. Peddle, don't
worry a bit. I'll look after that. You've been jolly good friends of
mine all my life, and I'll see that everything's as right as rain."
He turned, before the amazed old butler could reply, and marched away.
Peddle gaped at his retreating figure. If those were the ways which
Mr. Marmaduke had learned in the army, the lower sank the army in
Peddle's estimation. To sell Denby Hall over his head! Why, the place
and all about it was _his_! So deeply are squatters' rights implanted
in the human instinct.
Doggie marched along the familiar high road, strangely exhilarated.
What was to be his future he neither knew nor cared. At any rate, it
would not lie in Durdlebury. He had cut out Durdlebury for ever from
his scheme of existence. If he got through the war, he and Peggy would
go out somewhere into the great world where there was man's work to
do. Parliament! Peggy had suggested it as a sort of country
gentleman's hobby that would keep him amused during the London
seasons--so might prospective bride have talked to prospective husband
fifty years ago. Parliament! God help him and God help Peggy if ever
he got into Parliament. He would speak the most unpopular truths about
the race of politicians if ever he got into Parliament. Peggy would
wish that neither of them had ever been born. He held the trenches'
views on politicians. No fear. No muddy politics as an elegant
amusement for him. He laughed as he had laughed in the dining-room at
Denby Hall.
He would have a bad quarter of an hour with Peggy. Naturally. She
would say, and with every right: "What about me? Am I not to be
considered?" Yes, of course she would be considered. The position his
fortune assured him would always be hers. He had no notion of asking
her to share a log cabin in the wilds of Canada, or to bury herself in
Oliver's dud island of Huaheine. The great world would be before them.
"But give me some sort of an idea of what you propose to do," she
would with perfect propriety demand. And there Doggie was stuck. He
had not the ghost of a programme. All he had was faith in the war,
faith in the British spirit and genius that would bring it to a
perfect end, in which there would be unimagined opportunities for a
man to fling himself into a new life, and new conditions, and begin
the new work of a new civilization.
"If she'll only understand," said he, "that I can't go back to those
blasted little dogs, all will be well."
Not quite all. Although his future was as nebulous as the planetary
system in the Milky Way, at the back of his mind was a vague conviction
that it would be connected somehow with the welfare of those men whom
he had learned to know and love: the men to whom reading was little
pleasure, writing a school-child's laborious task, the glories of the
earth as interpreted through art a sealed book; the men whose daily
speech was foul metaphor; the men, hemi-demi-semi-educated, whose
crude socialistic opinions the open lessons of history and the eternal
facts of human nature derisively refuted; the men who had sweated and
slaved in factory and in field to no other purpose than to obey the
biological laws of the perpetuation of the species; yet the men with
the sweet minds of children, the gushing tenderness of women, the
hearts of lions; the men compared to whom the rotten squealing heroes
of Homer were a horde of cowardly savages. They were _men_, these
comrades of his, swift with all that there can be of divine glory in
men.
And when they came home and the high gods sounded the false trumpet of
peace?
There would be men's work in England for all the Doggies in England to
do.
Again, if Peggy could understand this, all would be well. If she
missed the point altogether, and tauntingly advised him to go and join
his friends the Socialists at once--then--he shoved his cap to the
back of his head and wrinkled his forehead--then----
"Everything will be in the soup," said he.
These reflections brought him to the Deanery. The nearest way of
entrance was the stable-yard gate, which was always open. He strode
in, waved a hand to Chipmunk who was sitting on the ground with his
back against the garage, smoking a pipe, and entered the house by the
French window of the dining-room. Where should he find Peggy? His
whole mind was set on the immediate interview. Obviously the
drawing-room was the first place of search. He opened the drawing-room
door, the hinges and lock oily, noiseless, perfectly ordained, like
everything in the perfectly ordained English Deanery, and strode in.
His entrance was so swift, so protected from sound, that the pair had
no time to start apart before he was there, with his amazed eyes full
upon them. Peggy's hands were on Oliver's shoulders, tears were
streaming down her face, as her head was thrown back from him, and
Oliver's arm was around her. Her back was to the door. Oliver withdrew
his arm and retired a pace or two.
"Lord Almighty," he whispered, "here's Doggie!"
Then Peggy, realizing what had happened, wheeled round and stared
tragically at Doggie, who, preoccupied with the search for her, had
not removed his cap. He drew himself up.
"I beg your pardon," he said with imperturbable irony, and turned.
Oliver rushed across the room.
"Stop, you silly fool!"
He slammed the open door, caught Doggie by the arm and dragged him
away from the threshold. His blue eyes blazed and the lips beneath the
short-cropped moustache quivered.
"It's all my fault, Doggie. I'm a beast and a cad and anything you
like to call me. But for things you said last night--well--no, hang it
all, there's no excuse. Everything's on me. Peggy's as true as gold."
Peggy, red-eyed, pale-cheeked, stood a little way back, silent, on the
defensive. Doggie, looking from one to the other, said quietly:
"A triangular explanation is scarcely decent. Perhaps you might let me
have a word or two with Peggy."
"Yes. It would be best," she whispered.
"I'll be in the dining-room if you want me," said Oliver, and went
out.
Doggie took her hand and, very gently, led her to a chair.
"Let us sit down. There," said he, "now we can talk more comfortably.
First, before we touch on this situation, let me say something to you.
It may ease things."
Peggy, humiliated, did not look at him. She nodded.
"All right."
"I made up my mind this morning to sell Denby Hall and its contents.
I've given old Spooner instructions."
She glanced at him involuntarily. "Sell Denby Hall?"
"Yes, dear. You see, I have made up my mind definitely, if I'm spared,
not to live in Durdlebury after the war."
"What were you thinking of doing?" she asked, in a low voice.
"That would depend on after-war circumstances. Anyhow, I was coming to
you, when I entered the room, with my decision. I knew, of course,
that it wouldn't please you--that you would have something to say to
it--perhaps something very serious."
"What do you mean by something very serious?"
"Our little contract, dear," said Doggie, "was based on the
understanding that you would not be uprooted from the place in which
are all your life's associations. If I broke that understanding it
would leave you a free agent to determine the contract, as the lawyers
say. So perhaps, Peggy dear, we might dismiss--well--other
considerations, and just discuss this."
Peggy twisted a rag of handkerchief and wavered for a moment. Then she
broke out, with fresh tears on her cheek.
"You're a dear of dears to put it that way. Only you could do it. I've
been a brute, old boy; but I couldn't help it. I _did_ try to play the
game."
"You did, Peggy dear. You've been wonderful."
"And although it didn't look like it, I was trying to play the game
when you came in. I really was. And so was he." She rose and threw the
handkerchief away from her. "I'm not going to step out of the
engagement by the side door you've left open for me, you dear old
simple thing. It stands if you like. We're all honourable people, and
Oliver"--she drew a sharp little breath--"Oliver will go out of our
lives."
Doggie smiled--he had risen--and taking her hands, kissed them.
"I've never known what a splendid Peggy it is, until I lose her. Look
here, dear, here's the whole thing in a nutshell. While I've been
morbidly occupied with myself and my grievances and my disgrace and my
efforts to pull through, and have gradually developed into a sort of
half-breed between a Tommy and a gentleman with every mortal thing in
me warped and changed, you've stuck to the original rotten ass you
lashed into the semblance of a man, in this very room, goodness knows
how many months, or years, or centuries ago. In my infernal
selfishness, I've treated you awfully badly."
"No, you haven't," she decided stoutly.
"Yes, I have. The ordinary girl would have told a living experiment
like me to go hang long before this. But you didn't. And now you see a
totally different sort of Doggie and you're making yourself miserable
because he's a queer, unsympathetic, unfamiliar stranger."
"All that may be so," she said, meeting his eyes bravely. "But if the
unfamiliar Doggie still cares for me, it doesn't matter."
Here was a delicate situation. Two very tender-skinned vanities
opposed to each other. The smart of seeing one's affianced bride in
the arms of another man hurts grievously sore. It's a primitive sex
affair, independent of love in its modern sense. If the savage's
abandoned squaw runs off with another fellow, he pursues him with
clubs and tomahawks until he has avenged the insult. Having known ME,
to decline to Spotted Crocodile! So the finest flower of civilization
cannot surrender the lady who once was his to the more favoured male
without a primitive pang. On the other hand, Doggie knew very well
that he did not love Peggy, that he had never loved Peggy. But how in
common decency could a man tell a girl, who had wasted a couple of
years of her life over him, that he had never loved her? Instead of
replying to her questions, he walked about the room in a worried way.
"I take it," said Peggy incisively, after a while, "that you don't
care for me any longer."
He turned and halted at the challenge. He snapped his fingers. What
was the good of all this beating of the bush?
"Look here, Peggy, let's face it out. If you'll confess that you and
Oliver are in love with each other, I'll confess to a girl in France."
"Oh?" said Peggy, with a swift change to coolness. "There's a girl in
France, is there? How long has this been going on?"
"The last four days in billets before I got wounded," said Doggie.
"What is she like?"
Then Doggie suddenly laughed out loud and took her by the shoulders in
a grasp rougher than she had ever dreamed to lie in the strength or
nature of Marmaduke Trevor, and kissed her the heartiest, honestest
kiss she had ever had from man, and rushed out of the room.
Presently he returned, dragging with him the disconsolate Major.
"Here," said he, "fix it up between you. I've told Peggy about a girl
in France and she wants to know what she's like."
Peggy, shaken by the rude grip and the kiss, flashed and cried
rebelliously:
"I'm not quite so sure that I want to fix it up with Oliver."
"Oh yes, you do," cried Oliver.
He snatched up Doggie's cap and jammed it on Doggie's head and cried:
"Doggie, you're the best and truest and finest of dear old chaps in
the whole wide world."
Doggie settled his cap, grinned, and moved to the door.
"Anything else, sir?"
Oliver roared, delighted: "No, Private Trevor, you can go."
"Very good, sir."
Doggie saluted smartly and went out. He passed through the French
window of the dining-room into the mellow autumn sunshine. Found
himself standing in front of Chipmunk, who still smoked the pipe of
elegant leisure by the door of the garage.
"This is a dam good old world all the same. Isn't it?" said he.
"If it was always like this, it would have its points," replied the
unworried Chipmunk.
Doggie had an inspiration. He looked at his watch. It was nearly one
o'clock.
"Hungry?"
"Always 'ungry. Specially about dinner-time."
"Come along of me to the Downshire Arms and have a bite of dinner."
Chipmunk rose slowly to his feet, and put his pipe into his tunic
pocket, and jerked a slow thumb backwards.
"Ain't yer having yer meals 'ere?"
"Only now and then, as sort of treats," said Doggie. "Come along."
"Ker-ist!" said Chipmunk. "Can yer wait a bit until I've cleaned me
buttons?"
"Oh, bust your old buttons!" laughed Doggie. "I'm hungry."
So the pair of privates marched through the old city to the Downshire
Arms, the select, old-world hotel of Durdlebury, where Doggie was
known since babyhood; and there, sitting at a window table with
Chipmunk, he gave Durdlebury the great sensation of its life. If the
Dean himself, clad in tights and spangles, had juggled for pence by
the west door of the cathedral, tongues could scarcely have wagged
faster. But Doggie worried his head about gossip not one jot. He was
in joyous mood and ordered a gargantuan feast for Chipmunk and bottles
of the strongest old Burgundy, such as he thought would get a grip on
Chipmunk's whiskyfied throat; and under the genial influence of food
and drink, Chipmunk told him tales of far lands and strange
adventures; and when they emerged much later into the quiet streets,
it was the great good fortune of Chipmunk's life that there was not
the ghost of an Assistant Provost-Marshal in Durdlebury.
"Doggie, old man," said Oliver afterwards, "my wonder and reverence
for you increases hour by hour. You are the only man in the whole
world who has ever made Chipmunk drunk."
"You see," said Doggie modestly, "I don't think he ever really loved
anyone who fed him before."