The Dean of an English cathedral is a personage.
He has power. He can stand with folded arms at its door and forbid
entrance to anyone, save, perhaps, the King in person. He can tell not
only the Bishop of the Diocese, but the very Archbishop of the
Province, to run away and play. Having power and using it benignly and
graciously, he can exert its subtler form known as influence. In the
course of his distinguished career he is bound to make many queer
friends in high places.
"My dear Field-Marshal, could you do me a little favour...?"
"My dear Ambassador, my daughter, etc., etc...."
Deans, discreet, dignified gentlemen, who would not demand the
impossible, can generally get what they ask for.
When Peggy returned to Durdlebury and put Doggie's case before her
father, and with unusual fervour roused him from his first
stupefaction at the idea of her mad project, he said mildly:
"Let me understand clearly what you want to do. You want to go to
Paris by yourself, discover a girl called Jeanne Bossiere, concerning
whose address you know nothing but two words--Port Royal--of course
there is a Boulevard Port Royal somewhere south of the Luxembourg
Gardens----"
"Then we've found her," cried Peggy. "We only want the number."
"Please don't interrupt," said the Dean. "You confuse me, my dear. You
want to find this girl and re-establish communication between her and
Marmaduke, and--er--generally play Fairy Godmother."
"If you like to put it that way," said Peggy.
"Are you quite certain you would be acting wisely? From Marmaduke's
point of view----"
"Don't call him Marmaduke"--she bent forward and touched his knee
caressingly--"Marmaduke could never have risked his life for a woman.
It was Doggie who did it. She thinks of him as Doggie. Every one
thinks of him now and loves him as Doggie. It was Oliver's name for
him, don't you see? And he has stuck it out and made it a sort of
title of honour and affection--and it was as Doggie that Oliver
learned to love him, and in his last letter to Oliver he signed
himself 'Your devoted Doggie.'"
"My dear," smiled the Dean, and quoted: "'What's in a name? A
rose----'"
"Would be unendurable if it were called a bug-squash. The poetry would
be knocked out of it."
The Dean said indulgently: "So the name Doggie connotes something
poetic and romantic?"
"You ask the girl Jeanne."
The Dean tapped the back of his daughter's hand that rested on his
knee.
"There's no fool like an old fool, my dear. Do you know why?"
She shook her head.
"Because the old fool has learned to understand the young fool,
whereas the young fool doesn't understand anybody."
She laughed and threw herself on her knees by his side.
"Daddy, you're immense!"
He took the tribute complacently. "What was I saying before you
interrupted me? Oh yes. About the wisdom of your proposed action. Are
you sure they want each other?"
"As sure as I'm sitting here," said Peggy.
"Then, my dear," said he, "I'll do what I can."
Whether he wrote to Field-Marshals and Ambassadors or to lesser
luminaries, Peggy did not know. The Dean observed an old-world
punctilio about such matters. At the first reply or two to his letters
he frowned; at the second or two he smiled in the way any elderly
gentleman may smile when he finds himself recognized by
high-and-mightiness as a person of importance.
"I think, my dear," said he at last, "I've arranged everything for
you."
* * * * *
So it came to pass that while Doggie, with a shattered shoulder and a
touched left lung, was being transported from a base hospital in
France to a hospital in England, Peggy, armed with all kinds of
passports and recommendations, and a very fixed, personal sanctified
idea, was crossing the Channel on her way to Paris and Jeanne.
* * * * *
And, after all, it was no wild-goose chase, but a very simple matter.
An urbane, elderly person at the British Embassy performed certain
telephonic gymnastics. At the end:
"_Merci, merci. Adieu!_"
He turned to her.
"A representative from the Prefecture of Police will wait on you at
your hotel at ten o'clock to-morrow morning."
The official called, took notes, and confidently assured her that he
would obtain the address of Mademoiselle Jeanne Bossiere within
twelve hours.
"But how, monsieur, are you going to do it?" asked Peggy.
"Madame," said he, "in spite of the war, the telegraphic, telephonic,
and municipal systems of France work in perfect order--to say nothing
of that of the police. Frelus, I think, is the name of the place she
started from?"
At eight o'clock in the evening, after her lonely dinner in the great
hotel, the polite official called again. She met him in the lounge.
"Madame," said he, "I have the pleasure to inform you that
Mademoiselle Jeanne Bossiere, late of Frelus, is living in Paris at
743^bis Boulevard Port Royal, and spends all her days at the
succursale of the French Red Cross in the Rue Vaugirard."
"Have you seen her and told her?"
"No, madame, that did not come within my instructions."
"I am infinitely grateful to you," said Peggy.
"_Il n'y a pas de quoi_, madame. I perform the tasks assigned to me
and am only too happy, in this case, to have been successful."
"But, monsieur," said Peggy, feeling desperately lonely in Paris, and
pathetically eager to talk to a human being, even in her rusty Vevey
school French, "haven't you wondered why I've been so anxious to find
this young lady?"
"If we began to wonder," he replied with a laugh, "at the things which
happen during the war, we should be so bewildered that we shouldn't be
able to carry on our work. Madame," said he, handing her his card, "if
you should have further need of me in the matter, I am always at your
service."
He bowed profoundly and left her.
Peggy stayed at the Ritz because, long ago, when her parents had
fetched her from Vevey and had given her the one wonderful fortnight
in Paris she had ever known, they had chosen this dignified and not
inexpensive hostelry. To her girlish mind it had breathed the last
word of splendour, movement, gaiety--all that was connoted by the
magical name of the City of Light. But now the glamour had departed.
She wondered whether it had ever been. Oliver had laughed at her
experiences. Sandwiched between dear old Uncle Edward and Aunt Sophia,
what in the sacred name of France could she have seen of Paris? Wait
till they could turn round. He would take her to Paris. She would have
the unimagined time of her life. They dreamed dreams of the Rue de la
Paix--he had five hundred pounds laid by, which he had ear-marked for
an orgy of shopping in that Temptation Avenue of a thoroughfare; of
Montmartre, the citadel of delectable wickedness and laughter; of
funny little restaurants in dark streets where you are delighted to
pay twenty francs for a mussel, so exquisitely is it cooked; of dainty
and crazy theatres; of long drives, folded in each other's arms, when
moonlight touches dawn, through the wonders of the enchanted city.
Her brief dreams had eclipsed her girlish memories. Now the dreams had
become blurred. She strove to bring them back till her soul ached,
till she broke down into miserable weeping. She was alone in a
strange, unedifying town; in a strange, vast, commonplace hotel. The
cold, moonlit Place de la Vendome, with its memorable column, just
opposite her bedroom window, meant nothing to her. She had the
desolating sense that nothing in the world would ever matter to her
again--nothing as far as she, Peggy Manningtree, was concerned. Her
life was over. Altruism alone gave sanction to continued existence.
Hence her present adventure. Paris might have been Burslem for all the
interest it afforded.
* * * * *
Jeanne worked from morning to night in the succursale of the Croix
Rouge in the Rue Vaugirard. She had tried, after the establishment of
her affairs, to enter, in no matter what capacity, a British base
hospital. It would be a consolation for her surrender of Doggie to
work for his wounded comrades. Besides, twice in her life she owed
everything to the English, and the repayment of the debt was a matter
of conscience. But she found that the gates of English hospitals were
thronged with English girls; and she could not even speak the
language. So, guided by the Paris friend with whom she lodged, she
made her way to the Rue Vaugirard, where, in the packing-room, she had
found hard unemotional employment. Yet the work had to be done: and it
was done for France, which, after all, was dearer to her than England;
and among her fellow-workers, women of all classes, she had pleasant
companionship.
When, one day, the old concierge, bemedalled from the war of 1870,
appeared to her in the packing-room, with the announcement that a
_dame anglaise_ desired to speak to her, she was at first bewildered.
She knew no English ladies--had never met one in her life. It took a
second or two for the thought to flash that the visit might concern
Doggie. Then came conviction. In blue overall and cap, she followed
the concierge to the ante-room, her heart beating. At the sight of the
young Englishwoman in black, with a crape hat and little white band
beneath the veil, it nearly stopped altogether.
Peggy advanced with outstretched hand.
"You are Mademoiselle Jeanne Bossiere?"
"Yes, madame."
"I am a cousin of Monsieur Trevor----"
"Ah, madame"--Jeanne pointed to the mourning--"you do not come to tell
me he is dead?"
Peggy smiled. "No. I hope not."
"Ah!" Jeanne sighed in relief, "I thought----"
"This is for my husband," said Peggy quietly.
"_Ah, madame! je demande bien pardon. J'ai du vous faire de la peine.
Je n'y pensais pas_----"
Jeanne was in great distress. Peggy smiled again. "Widows dress
differently in England and France." She looked around and her eyes
fell upon a bench by the wall. "Could we sit down and have a little
talk?"
"_Pardon, madame, c'est que je suis un peu emue_ ..." said Jeanne.
She led the way to the bench. They sat down together, and for a
feminine second or two took stock of each other. Jeanne's first
rebellious instinct said: "I was right." In her furs and her perfect
millinery and perfect shoes and perfect black silk stockings that
appeared below the short skirt, Peggy, blue-eyed, fine-featured, the
fine product of many generations of scholarly English gentlefolk,
seemed to incarnate her vague conjectures of the social atmosphere in
which Doggie had his being. Her peasant blood impelled her to
suspicion, to a half-grudging admiration, to self-protective jealousy.
The Englishwoman's ease of manner, in spite of her helter-skelter
French, oppressed her with an angry sense of inferiority. She was also
conscious of the blue overall and close-fitting cap. Yet the
Englishwoman's smile was kind and she had lost her husband.... And
Peggy, looking at this girl with the dark, tragic eyes and refined,
pale face and graceful gestures, in the funny instinctive British way
tried to place her socially. Was she a lady? It made such a
difference. This was the girl for whom Doggie had performed his deed
of knight-errantry; the girl whom she proposed to take back to Doggie.
For the moment, discounting the uniform which might have hidden a
midinette or a duchess, she had nothing but the face and the gestures
and the beautifully modulated voice to go upon, and between the accent
of the midinette and the duchess--both being equally charming to her
English ear--Peggy could not discriminate. She had, however,
beautiful, capable hands, and took care of her finger-nails.
Jeanne broke the tiny spell of embarrassed silence.
"I am at your disposal, madame."
Peggy plunged at once into facts.
"It may seem strange, my coming to you; but the fact is that my
cousin, Monsieur Trevor, is severely wounded...."
"_Mon Dieu!_" said Jeanne.
"And his friend, Mr. McPhail, who is also wounded, thinks that if
you--well----"
Her French failed her--to carry off a very delicate situation one must
have command of language--she could only blurt out--"_Il faut
comprendre, mademoiselle. Il a fait beaucoup pour vous._"
She met Jeanne's dark eyes. Jeanne said:
"_Oui, madame, vous avez raison. Il a beaucoup fait pour moi._"
Peggy flushed at the unconscious correction--"_beaucoup fait_" for
"_fait beaucoup_."
"He has done not only much, but everything for me, madame," Jeanne
continued. "And you who have come from England expressly to tell me
that he is wounded, what do you wish me to do?"
"Accompany me back to London. I had a telegram this morning to say
that he had arrived at a hospital there."
"Then you have not seen him?"
"Not yet."
"Then how, madame, do you know that he desires my presence?"
Peggy glanced at the girl's hands clasped on her lap, and saw that the
knuckles were white.
"I am sure of it."
"He would have written, madame. I only received one letter from him,
and that was while I still lived at Frelus."
"He wrote many letters and telegraphed to Frelus, and received no
answers."
"Madame," cried Jeanne, "I implore you to believe what I say: but not
one of those letters have ever reached me."
"Not one?"
At first Peggy was incredulous. Phineas McPhail had told her of
Doggie's despair at the lack of response from Frelus; and, after all,
Frelus had a properly constituted post office in working order, which
might be expected to forward letters. She had therefore come prepared
to reproach the girl. But ...
"_Je le jure_, madame," said Jeanne.
And Peggy believed her.
"But I wrote to Monsieur McPhail, giving him my address in Paris."
"He lost the letter before he saw Doggie again"--the name slipped
out--"and forgot the address."
"But how did you find me?"
"I had a lot of difficulty. The British Embassy--the Prefecture of
Police----"
"_Mon Dieu!_" cried Jeanne again. "Did you do all that for me?"
"For my cousin."
"You called him Doggie. That is how I know him and think of him."
"All right," smiled Peggy. "For Doggie then."
Jeanne's brain for a moment or two was in a whirl--Embassies and
Prefectures of Police!
"Madame, to do this, you must love him very much."
"I loved him so much--I hope you will understand me--my French I know
is terrible--but I loved him so much that until he came home wounded
we were _fiances_."
Jeanne drew a short breath. "I felt it, madame. An English gentleman
of great estate would naturally marry an English lady of his own
social class. That is why, madame, I acted as I have done."
Then something of what Jeanne really was became obvious to Peggy. Lady
or no lady, in the conventional British sense, Jeanne appealed to her,
in her quiet dignity and restraint, as a type of Frenchwoman whom she
had never met before. She suddenly conceived an enormous respect for
Jeanne. Also for Phineas McPhail, whose eulogistic character sketch
she had accepted with feminine reservations subconsciously derisive.
"My dear," she said. "_Vous etes digne de toute dame
anglaise!_"--which wasn't an elegant way of putting it in the French
tongue---but Jeanne, with her odd smile of the lips, showed that she
understood her meaning; she had served her apprenticeship in the
interpretation of Anglo-Gallic. "But I want to tell you. Doggie and I
were engaged. A family matter. Then, when he came home wounded--you
know how--I found that I loved some one--_aimais d'amour_, as you
say--and he found the same. I loved the man whom I married. He loved
you. He confessed it. We parted more affectionate friends than we had
ever been. I married. He searched for you. My husband has been killed.
Doggie, although wounded, is alive. That is why I am here."
They were sitting in a corner of the ante-room, and before them passed
a continuous stream of the busy life of the war, civilians, officers,
badged workers, elderly orderlies in pathetic bits of uniform that
might have dated from 1870, wheeling packages in and out, groups
talking of the business of the organization, here and there a
blue-vested young lieutenant and a blue-overalled packer, talking--it
did not need God to know of what. But neither of the two women heeded
this multitude.
Jeanne said: "Madame, I am profoundly moved by what you have told me.
If I show little emotion, it is because I have suffered greatly from
the war. One learns self-restraint, madame, or one goes mad. But as
you have spoken to me in your noble English frankness--I have only to
confess that I love Doggie with all my heart, with all my soul----"
With her two clenched hands she smote her breast--and Peggy noted it
was the first gesture that she had made. "I feel the infinite need,
madame--you will understand me--to care for him, to protect him----"
Peggy raised a beautifully gloved hand.
"Protect him?" she interrupted. "Why, hasn't he shown himself to be a
hero?"
Jeanne leant forward and grasped the protesting hand by the wrist; and
there was a wonderful light behind her eyes and a curious vibration in
her voice.
"It is only _les petits heros tout faits_--the little ready-made
heroes--ready made by the _bon Dieu_--who have no need of a woman's
protection. But it is a different thing with the great heroes who have
made themselves without the aid of a _bon Dieu_, from little dogs of
no account (_des petits chiens de rien du tout_) to what Doggie is at
the moment. The woman then takes her place. She fixes things for ever.
She alone can understand."
Peggy gasped as at a new Revelation. The terms in which this French
girl expressed herself were far beyond the bounds of her philosophy.
The varying aspects in which Doggie had presented himself to her, in
the past few months, had been bewildering. Now she saw him, in a fresh
light, though as in a glass darkly, as reflected by Jeanne. Still, she
protested again, in order to see more clearly.
"But what would you protect him from?"
"From want of faith in himself; from want of faith in his destiny,
madame. Once he told me he had come to France to fight for his soul.
It is necessary that he should be victorious. It is necessary that the
woman who loves him should make him victorious."
Peggy put out her hand and touched Jeanne's wrist.
"I'm glad I didn't marry Doggie, mademoiselle," she said simply. "I
couldn't have done that." She paused. "Well?" she resumed. "Will you
now come with me to London?"
A faint smile crept into Jeanne's eyes.
"_Mais oui, madame._"
* * * * *
Doggie lay in the long, pleasant ward of the great London hospital,
the upper left side of his body a mass of bandaged pain. Neck and
shoulder, front and back and arm, had been shattered and torn by high
explosive shell. The top of his lung had been grazed. Only the
remorseless pressure at the base hospital had justified the sending of
him, after a week, to England. Youth and the splendid constitution
which Dr. Murdoch had proclaimed in the far-off days of the war's
beginning, and the toughening training of the war itself, carried him
through. No more fighting for Doggie this side of the grave. But the
grave was as far distant as it is from any young man in his twenties
who avoids abnormal peril.
Till to-day he had not been allowed to see visitors, or to receive
letters. They told him that the Dean of Durdlebury had called; had
brought flowers and fruit and had left a card "From your Aunt, Peggy
and myself." But to-day he felt wonderfully strong, in spite of the
unrelenting pain, and the nurse had said: "I shouldn't wonder if you
had some visitors this afternoon." Peggy, of course. He followed the
hands of his wrist-watch until they marked the visiting hour. And sure
enough, a minute afterwards, amid the stream of men and women--chiefly
women--of all grades and kinds, he caught sight of Peggy's face
smiling beneath her widow's hat. She had a great bunch of violets in
her bodice.
"My dear old Doggie!" She bent down and kissed him. "Those rotten
people wouldn't let me come before."
"I know," said Doggie. He pointed to his shoulder. "I'm afraid I'm in
a hell of a mess. It's lovely to see you."
She unpinned the violets and thrust them towards his face.
"From home. I've brought 'em for you."
"My God!" said Doggie, burying his nose in the huge bunch. "I never
knew violets could smell like this." He laid them down with a sigh.
"How's everybody?"
"Quite fit."
There was a span of silence. Then he stretched out his hand and she
gave him hers and he gripped it tight.
"Poor old Peggy dear!"
"Oh, that's all right," she said bravely. "I know you care, dear
Doggie. That's enough. I've just got to stick it like the rest." She
withdrew her hand after a little squeeze. "Bless you. Don't worry
about me. I'm contemptibly healthy. But you----?"
"Getting on splendidly. I say, Peggy, what kind of people are the
Pullingers who have taken Denby Hall?"
"They're all right, I believe. He's something in the
Government--Controller of Feeding-bottles--I don't know. But, oh,
Doggie, what an ass you were to sell the place up!"
"I wasn't."
"You were."
Doggie laughed. "If you've come here to argue with me, I shall cry,
and then you'll be turned out neck and crop."
Peggy looked at him shrewdly. "You seem to be going pretty strong."
"Never stronger in my life," lied Doggie.
"Would you like to see somebody you are very fond of?"
"Somebody I'm fond of? Uncle Edward?"
"No, no." She waved the Very Reverend the Dean to the empyrean.
"Dear old Phineas? Has he come through? I've not had time to ask
whether you've heard anything about him."
"Yes, he's flourishing. He wrote to me. I've seen him."
"Praise the Lord!" cried Doggie. "My dear, there's no one on earth,
save you, whom I should so much love to see as Phineas. If he's there,
fetch him along."
Peggy nodded and smiled mysteriously and went away down the ward. And
Doggie thought: "Thank God, Peggy has the strength to face the
world--and thank God Phineas has come through." He closed his eyes,
feeling rather tired, thinking of Phineas. Of his last words as he
passed him stretcher-borne in the trench. Of the devotion of the man.
Of his future. Well, never mind his future. In all his vague post-war
schemes for reorganization of the social system, Phineas had his
place. No further need for dear old Phineas to stand in light green
and gold outside a picture palace. He had thought it out long ago,
although he had never said a word to Phineas. Now he could set the
poor chap's mind at rest for ever.
He looked round contentedly, and saw Peggy and a companion coming down
the ward, together. But it was not Phineas. It was a girl in black.
He raised himself, forgetful of exquisite pain, on his right elbow,
and stared in a thrill of amazement.
And Jeanne came to him, and there were no longer ghosts behind her
eyes, for they shone like stars.