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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Rough Road, by William John Locke
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Rough Road
+
+
+Author: William John Locke
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 12, 2009  [eBook #27786]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROUGH ROAD***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Clarke, Barbara Tozier, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE ROUGH ROAD
+
+by
+
+WILLIAM J. LOCKE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+First Edition ... September 1918
+
+John Lane
+The Bodley Head Ltd
+
+
+
+
+TO
+SHEILA
+
+THIS LITTLE TALE OF
+THE GREAT WAR
+AS A MEMORY FOR AFTER YEARS
+
+
+
+
+THE ROUGH ROAD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+This is the story of Doggie Trevor. It tells of his doings and of a
+girl in England and a girl in France. Chiefly it is concerned with the
+influences that enabled him to win through the war. Doggie Trevor did
+not get the Victoria Cross. He got no cross or distinction whatever.
+He did not even attain the sorrowful glory of a little white cross
+above his grave on the Western Front. Doggie was no hero of romance,
+ancient or modern. But he went through with it and is alive to tell
+the tale.
+
+The brutal of his acquaintance gave him the name of "Doggie" years
+before the war was ever thought of, because he had been brought up
+from babyhood like a toy Pom. The almost freak offspring of elderly
+parents, he had the rough world against him from birth. His father
+died before he had cut a tooth. His mother was old enough to be his
+grandmother. She had the intense maternal instinct and the brain, such
+as it is, of an earwig. She wrapped Doggie--his real name was James
+Marmaduke--in cotton-wool, and kept him so until he was almost a grown
+man. Doggie had never a chance. She brought him up like a toy Pom
+until he was twenty-one--and then she died. Doggie being comfortably
+off, continued the maternal tradition and kept on bringing himself up
+like a toy Pom. He did not know what else to do. Then, when he was
+five-and-twenty, he found himself at the edge of the world gazing in
+timorous starkness down into the abyss of the Great War. Something
+kicked him over the brink and sent him sprawling into the thick of it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That the world knows little of its greatest men is a commonplace among
+silly aphorisms. With far more justice it may be stated that of its
+least men the world knows nothing and cares less. Yet the Doggies of
+the War, who on the cry of "Havoc!" have been let loose, much to their
+own and everybody else's stupefaction, deserve the passing tribute
+sometimes, poor fellows, of a sigh, sometimes of a smile, often of a
+cheer. Very few of them--very few, at any rate, of the English
+Doggies--have tucked their little tails between their legs and run
+away. Once a brawny humorist wrote to Doggie Trevor "_Sursum cauda._"
+Doggie happened to be at the time in a water-logged front trench in
+Flanders and the writer basking in the mild sunshine of Simla with his
+Territorial regiment. Doggie, bidden by the Hedonist of circumstance
+to up with his tail, felt like a scorpion.
+
+Such feelings, however, will be more adequately dealt with hereafter.
+For the moment, it is only essential to obtain a general view of the
+type to which Trevor belonged.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If there is one spot in England where the present is the past, where
+the future is still more of the past, where the past wraps you and
+enfolds you in the dreamy mist of Gothic beauty, where the lazy
+meadows sloping riverward deny the passage of the centuries, where the
+very clouds are secular, it is the cathedral town of Durdlebury. No
+factory chimneys defile with their smoke its calm air, or defy its
+august and heaven-searching spires. No rabble of factory hands shocks
+its few and sedate streets. Divine Providence, according to the
+devout, and the crass stupidity of the local authorities seventy years
+ago, according to progressive minds, turned the main line of railway
+twenty miles from the sacred spot. So that to this year of grace it is
+the very devil of a business to find out, from Bradshaw, how to get to
+Durdlebury, and, having found, to get there. As for getting away, God
+help you! But whoever wanted to get away from Durdlebury, except the
+Bishop? In pre-motor days he used to grumble tremendously and threaten
+the House of Lords with Railway Bills and try to blackmail the
+Government with dark hints of resignation, and so he lived and
+threatened and made his wearisome diocesan round of visits and died.
+But now he has his episcopal motor-car, which has deprived him of his
+grievances.
+
+In the Close of Durdlebury, greenswarded, silent, sentinelled by
+immemorial elms that guard the dignified Gothic dwellings of the
+cathedral dignitaries, was James Marmaduke Trevor born. His father, a
+man of private fortune, was Canon of Durdlebury. For many years he
+lived in the most commodious canonical house in the Close with his
+sisters Sophia and Sarah. In the course of time a new Dean, Dr.
+Conover, was appointed to Durdlebury, and, restless innovator that he
+was, underpinned the North Transept and split up Canon Trevor's home
+by marrying Sophia. Then Sarah, bitten by the madness, committed
+abrupt matrimony with the Rev. Vernon Manningtree, Rector of
+Durdlebury. Canon Trevor, many years older than his sisters, remained
+for some months in bewildered loneliness, until one day he found
+himself standing in front of the cathedral altar with Miss Mathilda
+Jessup, while the Bishop pronounced over them words diabolically
+strange yet ecclesiastically familiar. Miss Jessup, thus transformed
+into Mrs. Trevor, was a mature and comfortable maiden lady of ample
+means, the only and orphan daughter of a late Bishop of Durdlebury.
+Never had there been such a marrying and giving in marriage in the
+cathedral circle. Children were born in Decanal, Rectorial and
+Canonical homes. First a son to the Manningtrees, whom they named
+Oliver. Then a daughter to the Conovers. Then a son, named James
+Marmaduke, after the late Bishop Jessup, was born to the Trevors. The
+profane say that Canon Trevor, a profound patristic theologian and an
+enthusiastic palæontologist, couldn't make head or tail of it all,
+and, unable to decide whether James Marmaduke should be attributed to
+Tertullian or the Neolithic period, expired in an agony of dubiety. At
+any rate, the poor man died. The widow, of necessity, moved from the
+Close, in order to make way for the new Canon, and betook herself with
+her babe to Denby Hall, the comfortable house on the outskirts of the
+town in which she had dwelt before her marriage.
+
+The saturated essence of Durdlebury ran in Marmaduke's blood: an
+honourable essence, a proud essence; an essence of all that is
+statically beautiful and dignified in English life; but an essence
+which, without admixture of wilder and more fluid elements, is apt to
+run thick and clog the arteries. Marmaduke was coddled from his birth.
+The Dean, then a breezy, energetic man, protested. Sarah Manningtree
+protested. But when the Dean's eldest born died of diphtheria, Mrs.
+Trevor, in her heart, set down the death as a judgment on Sophia for
+criminal carelessness; and when young Oliver Manningtree grew up to be
+an intolerable young Turk and savage, she looked on Marmaduke and,
+thanking heaven that he was not as other boys were, enfolded him more
+than ever beneath her motherly wing. When Oliver went to school in the
+town and tore his clothes, and rolled in mud and punched other boys'
+heads, Marmaduke remained at home under the educational charge of a
+governess. Oliver, lean and lanky and swift-eyed, swaggered through
+the streets unattended from the first day they sent him to a
+neighbouring kindergarten. As the months and years of his childish
+life passed, he grew more and more independent and vagabond. He swore
+blood brotherhood with a butcher-boy and, unknown to his pious
+parents, became the leader of a ferocious gang of pirates. Marmaduke,
+on the other hand, was never allowed to cross the road without
+feminine escort. Oliver had the profoundest contempt for Marmaduke.
+Being two years older, he kicked him whenever he had a chance.
+Marmaduke loathed him. Marmaduke shrank into Miss Gunter, the
+governess's, skirts whenever he saw him. Mrs. Trevor therefore
+regarded Oliver as the youthful incarnation of Beelzebub, and
+quarrelled bitterly with her sister-in-law.
+
+One day, Oliver, with three or four of his piratical friends, met
+Marmaduke and Miss Gunter and a little toy terrier in the High Street.
+The toy terrier was attached by a lead to Miss Gunter on the one side,
+Marmaduke by a hand on the other. Oliver straddled rudely across the
+path.
+
+"Hallo! Look at thet two little doggies!" he cried. He snapped his
+fingers at the terrier. "Come along, Tiny!" The terrier yapped. Oliver
+grinned and turned to Marmaduke. "Come along, Fido, dear little
+doggie."
+
+"You're a nasty, rude, horrid boy, and I shall tell your mother,"
+declared Miss Gunter indignantly.
+
+But Oliver and his pirates laughed with the truculence befitting their
+vocation, and bowing with ironical politeness, let their victim depart
+to the parody of a popular song: "Good-bye, Doggie, we shall miss
+you."
+
+From that day onwards Marmaduke was known as "Doggie" throughout all
+Durdlebury, save to his mother and Miss Gunter. The Dean himself grew
+to think of him as "Doggie." People to this day call him Doggie,
+without any notion of the origin of the name.
+
+To preserve him from persecution, Mrs. Trevor jealously guarded him
+from association with other boys. He neither learned nor played any
+boyish games. In defiance of the doctor, whom she regarded as a member
+of the brutal anti-Marmaduke League, Mrs. Trevor proclaimed
+Marmaduke's delicacy of constitution. He must not go out into the
+rain, lest he should get damp, nor into the hot sunshine, lest he
+should perspire. She kept him like a precious plant in a carefully
+warmed conservatory. Doggie, used to it from birth, looked on it as
+his natural environment. Under feminine guidance and tuition he
+embroidered and painted screens and played the piano and the mandolin,
+and read Miss Charlotte Yonge and learned history from the late Mrs.
+Markham. Without doubt his life was a happy one. All that he asked for
+was sequestration from Oliver and his associates.
+
+Now and then the cousins were forced to meet--at occasional children's
+parties, for instance. A little daughter, Peggy, had been born in the
+Deanery, replacing the lost firstborn, and festivals--to which came
+the extreme youth of Durdlebury--were given in her honour. She liked
+Marmaduke, who was five years her senior, because he was gentle and
+clean and wore such beautiful clothes and brushed his hair so nicely;
+whereas she detested Oliver, who, even at an afternoon party, looked
+as if he had just come out of a rabbit-hole. Besides, Marmaduke danced
+beautifully; Oliver couldn't and wouldn't, disdaining such effeminate
+sports. His great joy was to put out a sly leg and send Doggie and his
+partner sprawling. Once the Dean caught him at it, and called him a
+horrid little beast, and threatened him with neck and crop expulsion
+if he ever did it again. Doggie, who had picked himself up and
+listened to the rebuke, said:
+
+"I'm very glad to hear you talk to him like that, Uncle. I think his
+behaviour is perfectly detestable."
+
+The Dean's lips twitched and he turned away abruptly. Oliver glared at
+Doggie.
+
+"Oh, my holy aunt!" he whispered hoarsely. "Just you wait till I get
+you alone!"
+
+Oliver got him alone, an hour later, in a passage, having lain in
+ambush for him, and after a few busy moments, contemplated a bruised
+and bleeding Doggie blubbering in a corner.
+
+"Do you think my behaviour is detestable now?"
+
+"Yes," whimpered Doggie.
+
+"I've a good mind to go on licking you until you say 'no,'" said
+Oliver.
+
+"You're a great big bully," said Doggie.
+
+Oliver reflected. He did not like to be called a bully. "Look here,"
+said he, "I'll stick my right arm down inside the back of my trousers
+and fight you with my left."
+
+"I don't want to fight. I can't fight," cried Doggie.
+
+Oliver put his hands in his pockets.
+
+"Will you come and play Kiss-in-the-Ring, then?" he asked
+sarcastically.
+
+"No," replied Doggie.
+
+"Well, don't say I haven't made you generous offers," said Oliver, and
+stalked away.
+
+It was all very well for the Rev. Vernon Manningtree, when discussing
+this incident with the Dean, to dismiss Doggie with a contemptuous
+shrug and call him a little worm without any spirit. The unfortunate
+Doggie remained a human soul with a human destiny before him. As to
+his lack of spirit----
+
+"Where," said the Dean, a man of wider sympathies, "do you suppose he
+could get any from? Look at his parentage. Look at his upbringing by
+that idiot woman."
+
+"If he belonged to me, I'd drown him," said the Rector.
+
+"If I had my way with Oliver," said the Dean, "I'd skin him alive."
+
+"I'm afraid he's a young devil," said the Rector, not without paternal
+pride. "But he has the makings of a man."
+
+"So has Marmaduke," replied the Dean.
+
+"Bosh!" said Mr. Manningtree.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Oliver went to Rugby, happier days than ever dawned for
+Marmaduke. There were only the holidays to fear. But as time went on,
+the haughty contempt of Oliver, the public-school boy, for the
+home-bred Doggie, forbade him to notice the little creature's
+existence; so that even the holidays lost their gloomy menace and
+became like the normal halcyontide. Meanwhile Doggie grew up. When he
+reached the age of fourteen, the Dean, by strenuous endeavour, rescued
+him from the unavailing tuition of Miss Gunter. But school for
+Marmaduke Mrs. Trevor would not hear of. It was brutal of Edward--the
+Dean--to suggest such a thing. Marmaduke--so sensitive and
+delicate--school would kill him. It would undo all the results of her
+unceasing care. It would make him coarse and vulgar, like other horrid
+boys. She would sooner see him dead at her feet than at a public
+school. It was true that he ought to have the education of a
+gentleman. She did not need Edward to point out her duty. She would
+engage a private tutor.
+
+"All right. I'll get you one," said the Dean.
+
+The Master of his old college at Cambridge sent him an excellent
+youth, who had just taken his degree--a second class in the Classical
+Tripos--an all-round athlete and a gentleman. The first thing he did
+was to take Marmaduke on the lazy river that flowed through the
+Durdlebury meadows, thereby endangering his life, woefully blistering
+his hands, and making him ache all over his poor little body. After a
+quarter of an hour's interview with Mrs. Trevor, the indignant young
+man threw up his post and departed.
+
+Mrs. Trevor determined to select a tutor herself. A scholastic agency
+sent her a dozen candidates. She went to London and interviewed them
+all. A woman, even of the most limited intelligence, invariably knows
+what she wants, and invariably gets it. Mrs. Trevor got Phineas
+McPhail, M.A. Glasgow, B.A. Cambridge (Third Class Mathematical
+Greats), reading for Holy Orders.
+
+"I was training for the ministry in the Free Kirk of Scotland," said
+he, "when I gradually became aware of the error of my ways, and saw
+that there could only be salvation in the episcopal form of Church
+government. As the daughter of a bishop, Mrs. Trevor, you will
+appreciate my conscientious position. An open scholarship and the
+remainder of my little patrimony enabled me to get my Oxford degree.
+You would have no objection to my continuing my theological studies
+while I undertake the education of your son?"
+
+Phineas McPhail pleased Mrs. Trevor. He had what she called a rugged,
+honest Scotch face, with a very big nose in the middle of it, and
+little grey eyes overhung by brown and shaggy eyebrows. He spoke with
+the mere captivating suggestion of an accent. The son of decayed,
+proud, and now extinct gentlefolk, he presented personal testimonials
+of an unexceptionable quality.
+
+Phineas McPhail took to Doggie and Durdlebury as a duck to water. He
+read for Holy Orders for seven years. When the question of his
+ordination arose, he would declare impressively that his sacred duty
+was the making of Marmaduke into a scholar and a Christian. That duty
+accomplished, he would begin to think of himself. Mrs. Trevor
+accounted him the most devoted and selfless friend that woman ever
+had. He saw eye to eye with her in every detail of Marmaduke's
+upbringing. He certainly taught the boy, who was naturally
+intelligent, a great deal, and repaired the terrible gaps in Miss
+Gunter's system of education. McPhail had started life with many eager
+curiosities, under the impulse of which he had amassed considerable
+knowledge of a superficial kind which, lolling in an arm-chair, with a
+pipe in his mouth, he found easy to impart. To the credit side of Mrs.
+Trevor's queer account it may be put that she did not object to
+smoking. The late Canon smoked incessantly. Perhaps the odour of
+tobacco was the only keen memory of her honeymoon and brief married
+life.
+
+During his seven years of soft living, Phineas McPhail scientifically
+developed an original taste for whisky. He seethed himself in it as
+the ancients seethed a kid in its mother's milk. He had the art to do
+himself to perfection. Mrs. Trevor beheld in him the mellowest and
+blandest of men. Never had she the slightest suspicion of evil
+courses. To such a pitch of cunning in the observance of the
+proprieties had he arrived, that the very servants knew not of his
+doings. It was only later--after Mrs. Trevor's death--when a surveyor
+was called in by Marmaduke to put the old house in order, that a
+disused well at the back of the house was found to be half filled with
+hundreds of whisky bottles secretly thrown in by Phineas McPhail.
+
+The Dean and Mr. Manningtree, although ignorant of McPhail's habits,
+agreed in calling him a lazy hound and a parasite on their fond
+sister-in-law. And they were right. But Mrs. Trevor turned a deaf ear
+to their slanders. They were unworthy to be called Christian men, let
+alone ministers of the Gospel. Were it not for the sacred associations
+of her father and her husband, she would never enter the cathedral
+again. Mr. McPhail was exactly the kind of tutor that Marmaduke
+needed. Mr. McPhail did not encourage him to play rough games, or take
+long walks, or row on the river, because he appreciated his
+constitutional delicacy. He was the only man in the world during her
+unhappy widowhood who understood Marmaduke. He was a treasure beyond
+price.
+
+When Doggie was sixteen, fate, fortune, chance, or whatever you like
+to call it, did him a good turn. It made his mother ill, and sent him
+away with her to foreign health resorts. Doggie and McPhail travelled
+luxuriously, lived in luxurious hotels and visited in luxurious ease
+various picture galleries and monuments of historic or æsthetic
+interest. The boy, artistically inclined and guided by the idle yet
+well-informed Phineas, profited greatly. Phineas sought profit to them
+both in other ways.
+
+"Mrs. Trevor," said he, "don't you think it a sinful shame for
+Marmaduke to waste his time over Latin and mathematics, and such
+things as he can learn at home, instead of taking advantage of his
+residence in a foreign country to perfect himself in the idiomatic and
+conversational use of the language?"
+
+Mrs. Trevor, as usual, agreed. So thenceforward, whenever they were
+abroad, which was for three or four months of each year, Phineas
+revelled in sheer idleness, nicotine, and the skilful consumption of
+alcohol, while highly paid professors taught Marmaduke--and,
+incidentally, himself--French and Italian.
+
+Of the world, however, and of the facts, grim or seductive, of life,
+Doggie learned little. Whether by force of some streak of honesty,
+whether through sheer laziness, whether through canny self-interest,
+Phineas McPhail conspired with Mrs. Trevor to keep Doggie in darkest
+ignorance. His reading was selected like that of a young girl in a
+convent: he was taken only to the most innocent of plays: foreign
+theatres, casinos, and such-like wells of delectable depravity,
+existed almost beyond his ken. Until he was twenty it never occurred
+to him to sit up after his mother had gone to bed. Of strange
+goddesses he knew nothing. His mother saw to that. He had a mild
+affection for his cousin Peggy, which his mother encouraged. She
+allowed him to smoke cigarettes, drink fine claret, the remains of the
+cellar of her father, the bishop, a connoisseur, and _crème de
+menthe_. And, until she died, that was all poor Doggie knew of the
+lustiness of life.
+
+Mrs. Trevor died, and Doggie, as soon as he had recovered from the
+intensity of his grief, looked out upon a lonely world. Phineas, like
+Mrs. Micawber, swore he would never desert him. In the perils of Polar
+exploration or the comforts of Denby Hall, he would find Phineas
+McPhail ever by his side. The first half-dozen or so of these
+declarations consoled Doggie tremendously. He dreaded the Church
+swallowing up his only protector and leaving him defenceless.
+Conscientiously, however, he said:
+
+"I don't want your affection for me to stand in your way, sir."
+
+"'Sir'?" cried Phineas, "is it not practicable for us to do away with
+the old relations of master and pupil, and become as brothers? You are
+now a man, and independent. Let us be Pylades and Orestes. Let us
+share and share alike. Let us be Marmaduke and Phineas."
+
+Doggie was touched by such devotion. "But your ambitions to take Holy
+Orders, which you have sacrificed for my sake?"
+
+"I think it may be argued," said Phineas, "that the really beautiful
+life is delight in continued sacrifice. Besides, my dear boy, I am not
+quite so sure as I was when I was young, that by confining oneself
+within the narrow limits of a sacerdotal profession, one can retain
+all one's wider sympathies both with human infirmity and the gladder
+things of existence."
+
+"You're a true friend, Phineas," said Doggie.
+
+"I am," replied Phineas.
+
+It was just after this that Doggie wrote him a cheque for a thousand
+pounds on account of a vaguely indicated year's salary.
+
+If Phineas had maintained the wily caution which he had exercised for
+the past seven years, all might have been well. But there came a time
+when unneedfully he declared once more that he would never desert
+Marmaduke, and declaring it, hiccoughed so horribly and stared so
+glassily, that Doggie feared he might be ill. He had just lurched into
+Doggie's own peacock-blue and ivory sitting-room when he was
+mournfully playing the piano.
+
+"You're unwell, Phineas. Let me get you something."
+
+"You're right, laddie," Phineas agreed, his legs giving way
+alarmingly, so that he collapsed on a brocade-covered couch. "It's a
+touch of the sun, which I would give you to understand," he continued
+with a self-preservatory flash, for it was an overcast day in June,
+"is often magnified in power when it is behind a cloud. A wee drop of
+whisky is what I require for a complete recovery."
+
+Doggie ran into the dining-room and returned with a decanter of
+whisky, glass and siphon--an adjunct to the sideboard since Mrs.
+Trevor's death. Phineas filled half the tumbler with spirit, tossed it
+off, smiled fantastically, tried to rise, and rolled upon the carpet.
+Doggie, frightened, rang the bell. Peddle, the old butler, appeared.
+
+"Mr. McPhail is ill. I can't think what can be the matter with him."
+
+Peddle looked at the happy Phineas with the eyes of experience.
+
+"If you will allow me to say so, sir," said he, "the gentleman is dead
+drunk."
+
+And that was the beginning of the end of Phineas. He lost grip of
+himself. He became the scarlet scandal of Durdlebury and the terror of
+Doggie's life. The Dean came to the rescue of a grateful nephew. A
+swift attack of delirium tremens crowned and ended Phineas McPhail's
+Durdlebury career.
+
+"My boy," said the Dean on the day of Phineas's expulsion, "I don't
+want to rub it in unduly, but I've warned your poor mother for years,
+and you for months, against this bone-idle, worthless fellow. Neither
+of you would listen to me. But you see that I was right. Perhaps now
+you may be more inclined to take my advice."
+
+"Yes, Uncle," replied Doggie submissively.
+
+The Dean, a comfortable florid man in the early sixties, took up his
+parable and expounded it for three-quarters of an hour. If ever young
+man heard that which was earnestly meant for his welfare, Doggie heard
+it from his Very Reverend Uncle's lips.
+
+"And now, my dear boy," said the Dean by way of peroration, "you
+cannot but understand that it is your bounden duty to apply yourself
+to some serious purpose in life."
+
+"I do," said Doggie. "I've been thinking over it for a long time. I'm
+going to gather material for a history of wall-papers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER  II
+
+
+Thenceforward Doggie, like the late Mr. Matthew Arnold's
+fellow-millions, lived alone. He did not complain. There was little to
+complain about. He owned a pleasant old house set in fifteen acres of
+grounds. He had an income of three thousand pounds a year. Old Peddle,
+the butler, and his wife, the housekeeper, saved him from domestic
+cares. Rising late and retiring early, like the good King of Yvetot, he
+cheated the hours that might have proved weary. His meals, his toilet,
+his music, his wall-papers, his drawing and embroidering--specimens of
+the last he exhibited with great success at various shows held by Arts
+and Crafts Guilds, and such-like high and artistic fellowships--his
+sweet-peas, his chrysanthemums, his postage stamps, his dilettante
+reading and his mild social engagements, filled most satisfyingly the
+hours not claimed by slumber. Now and then appointments with his
+tailor summoned him to London. He stayed at the same mildewed old
+family hotel in the neighbourhood of Bond Street at which his mother
+and his grandfather, the bishop, had stayed for uncountable years.
+There he would lunch and dine stodgily in musty state. In the evenings
+he would go to the plays discussed in the less giddy of Durdlebury
+ecclesiastical circles. The play over, it never occurred to him to do
+otherwise than drive decorously back to Sturrocks's Hotel. Suppers at
+the Carlton or the Savoy were outside his sphere of thought or
+opportunity. His only acquaintance in London were vague elderly female
+friends of his mother, who invited him to chilly semi-suburban teas
+and entertained him with tepid reminiscence and criticism of their
+divers places of worship. The days in London thus passed drearily, and
+Doggie was always glad to get home again.
+
+In Durdlebury he began to feel himself appreciated. The sleepy society
+of the place accepted him as a young man of unquestionable birth and
+irreproachable morals. He could play the piano, the harp, the viola,
+the flute, and the clarinet, and sing a very true mild tenor. As
+secretary of the Durdlebury Musical Association, he filled an
+important position in the town. Dr. Flint--Joshua Flint, Mus.
+Doc.--organist of the cathedral, scattered broadcast golden opinions
+of Doggie. There was once a concert of old English music, which the
+dramatic critics of the great newspapers attended--and one of them
+mentioned Doggie--"Mr. Marmaduke Trevor, who played the viol da gamba
+as to the manner born." Doggie cut out the notice, framed it, and
+stuck it up in his peacock and ivory sitting-room.
+
+Besides music, Doggie had other social accomplishments. He could
+dance. He could escort young ladies home of nights. Not a dragon in
+Durdlebury would not have trusted Doggie with untold daughters. With
+women, old and young, he had no shynesses. He had been bred among
+them, understood their purely feminine interests, and instinctively
+took their point of view. On his visits to London, he could be
+entrusted with commissions. He could choose the exact shade of silk
+for a drawing-room sofa cushion, and had an unerring taste in the
+selection of wedding presents. Young men, other than budding
+ecclesiastical dignitaries, were rare in Durdlebury, and Doggie had
+little to fear from the competition of coarser masculine natures. In a
+word, Doggie was popular.
+
+Although of no mean or revengeful nature, he was human enough to feel
+a little malicious satisfaction when it was proved to Durdlebury that
+Oliver had gone to the devil. His Aunt Sarah, Mrs. Manningtree, had
+died midway in the Phineas McPhail period; Mr. Manningtree a year or
+so later had accepted a living in the North of England, and died when
+Doggie was about four-and-twenty. Meanwhile Oliver, who had been
+withdrawn young from Rugby, where he had been a thorn in the side of
+the authorities, and had been pinned like a cockchafer to a desk in a
+family counting-house in Lothbury, E.C., had broken loose, quarrelled
+with his father, gone off with paternal malediction and a maternal
+heritage of a thousand pounds to California, and was lost to the
+family ken. When a man does not write to his family, what explanation
+can there be save that he is ashamed to do so? Oliver was ashamed of
+himself. He had taken to desperate courses. He was an outlaw. He had
+gone to the devil. His name was rarely mentioned in Durdlebury--to
+Marmaduke Trevor's very great and catlike satisfaction. Only to the
+Dean's ripe and kindly wisdom was his name not utterly anathema.
+
+"My dear," said he once to his wife, who was deploring her nephew's
+character and fate--"I have hopes of Oliver even yet. A man must have
+something of the devil in him if he wants to drive the devil out."
+
+Mrs. Conover was shocked. "My dear Edward!" she cried.
+
+"My dear Sophia," said he, with a twinkle in his mild blue eyes that
+had puzzled her from the day when he first put a decorous arm round
+her waist. "My dear Sophia, if you knew what a ding-dong scrap of
+fiends went on inside me before I could bring myself to vow to be a
+virtuous milk-and-water parson, your hair, which is as long and
+beautiful as ever, would stand up straight on end."
+
+Mrs. Conover sighed.
+
+"I give you up."
+
+"It's too late," said the Dean.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Manningtrees, father and mother and son, were gone. Doggie bore
+the triple loss with equanimity. Then Peggy Conover, hitherto under
+the eclipse of boarding-schools, finishing schools and foreign travel,
+swam, at the age of twenty, within his orbit. When first they met,
+after a year's absence, she very gracefully withered the symptoms of
+the cousinly kiss, to which they had been accustomed all their lives,
+by stretching out a long, frank, and defensive arm. Perhaps if she had
+allowed the salute, there would have been an end of the matter. But
+there came the phenomenon which, unless she was a minx of craft and
+subtlety, she did not anticipate; for the first time in his life he
+was possessed of a crazy desire to kiss her. Doggie fell in love. It
+was not a wild consuming passion. He slept well, he ate well, and he
+played the flute without a sigh causing him to blow discordantly into
+the holes of the instrument. Peggy vowing that she would not marry a
+parson, he had no rivals. He knew not even the pinpricks of jealousy.
+Peggy liked him. At first she delighted in him as in a new and
+animated toy. She could pull strings and the figure worked amazingly
+and amusingly. He proved himself to be a useful toy, too. He was at
+her beck all day long. He ran on errands, he fetched and carried.
+Peggy realized blissfully that she owned him. He haunted the Deanery.
+
+One evening after dinner the Dean said:
+
+"I am going to play the heavy father. How are things between you and
+Peggy?"
+
+Marmaduke, taken unawares, reddened violently. He murmured that he
+didn't know.
+
+"You ought to," said the Dean. "When a young man converts himself into
+a girl's shadow, even although he is her cousin and has been brought
+up with her from childhood, people begin to gossip. They gossip even
+within the august precincts of a stately cathedral."
+
+"I'm very sorry," said Marmaduke. "I've had the very best intentions."
+
+The Dean smiled.
+
+"What were they?"
+
+"To make her like me a little," replied Marmaduke. Then, feeling that
+the Dean was kindly disposed, he blurted out awkwardly: "I hoped that
+one day I might ask her to marry me."
+
+"That's what I wanted to know," said the Dean.
+
+"You haven't done it yet?"
+
+"No," said Marmaduke.
+
+"Why don't you?"
+
+"It seems taking such a liberty," replied Marmaduke.
+
+The Dean laughed. "Well, I'm not going to do it for you. My chief
+desire is to regularize the present situation. I can't have you two
+running about together all day and every day. If you like to ask
+Peggy, you have my permission and her mother's."
+
+"Thank you, Uncle Edward," said Marmaduke.
+
+"Let us join the ladies," said the Dean.
+
+In the drawing-room the Dean exchanged glances with his wife. She saw
+that he had done as he had been bidden. Marmaduke was not an ideal
+husband for a brisk, pleasure-loving modern young woman. But where was
+another husband to come from? Peggy had banned the Church. Marmaduke
+was wealthy, sound in health and free from vice. It was obvious to
+maternal eyes that he was in love with Peggy. According to the Dean,
+if he wasn't, he oughtn't to be for ever at her heels. The young woman
+herself seemed to take considerable pleasure in his company. If she
+cared nothing for him, she was acting in a reprehensible manner. So
+the Dean had been deputed to sound Marmaduke.
+
+Half an hour later the young people were left alone. First the Dean
+went to his study. Then Mrs. Conover departed to write letters.
+Marmaduke advancing across the room from the door which he had opened,
+met Peggy's mocking eyes as she stood on the hearthrug with her hands
+behind her back. Doggie felt very uncomfortable. Never had he said a
+word to her in betrayal of his feelings. He had a vague idea that
+propriety required a young man to get through some wooing before
+asking a girl to marry him. To ask first and woo afterwards seemed
+putting the cart before the horse. But how to woo that remarkably cool
+and collected young person standing there, passed his wit.
+
+"Well," she said, "the dear old birds seem very fussy to-night. What's
+the matter?" And as he said nothing, but stood confused with his hands
+in his pockets, she went on. "You, too, seem rather ruffled. Look at
+your hair."
+
+Doggie, turning to a mirror, perceived that an agitated hand had
+disturbed the symmetry of his sleek black hair, brushed without a
+parting away from the forehead over his head. Hastily he smoothed down
+the cockatoo-like crest.
+
+"I've been talking to your father, Peggy."
+
+"Have you really?" she said with a laugh.
+
+Marmaduke summoned his courage.
+
+"He told me I might ask you to marry me," he said.
+
+"Do you want to?"
+
+"Of course I do," he declared.
+
+"Then why not do it?"
+
+But before he could answer, she clapped her hands on his shoulders,
+and shook him, and laughed out loud.
+
+"Oh, you dear silly old thing! What a way to propose to a girl!"
+
+"I've never done such a thing before," said Doggie, as soon as he was
+released.
+
+She resumed her attitude on the hearthrug.
+
+"I'm in no great hurry to be married. Are you?"
+
+He said: "I don't know. I've never thought of it. Just whenever you
+like."
+
+"All right," she returned calmly. "Let it be a year hence. Meanwhile,
+we can be engaged. It'll please the dear old birds. I know all the
+tabbies in the town have been mewing about us. Now they can mew about
+somebody else."
+
+"That's awfully good of you, Peggy," said Marmaduke. "I'll go up to
+town to-morrow and get you the jolliest ring you ever saw."
+
+She sketched him a curtsy. "That's one thing, at any rate, I can trust
+you in--your taste in jewellery."
+
+He moved nearer to her. "I suppose you know, Peggy dear, I've been
+awfully fond of you for quite a long time."
+
+"The feeling is more or less reciprocated," she replied lightly. Then,
+"You can kiss me if you like. I assure you it's quite usual."
+
+He kissed her somewhat shyly on the lips.
+
+She whispered: "I do think I care for you, old thing." Marmaduke
+replied sententiously: "You have made me a very happy man." Then they
+sat down side by side on the sofa, and for all Peggy's mocking
+audacity, they could find nothing in particular to say to each other.
+
+"Let us play patience," she said at last.
+
+And when Mrs. Conover appeared awhile later, she found them poring
+over the cards in a state of unruffled calm. Peggy looked up, smiled,
+and nodded.
+
+"We've fixed it up, Mummy; but we're not going to be married for a
+year."
+
+Doggie went home that evening in a tepid glow. It contented him. He
+thought himself the luckiest of mortals. A young man with more passion
+or imagination might have deplored the lack of romance in the
+betrothal. He might have desired on the part of the maiden either more
+shyness, delicacy, and elusiveness, or more resonant emotion. The
+finer tendrils of his being might have shivered, ready to shrivel, as
+at a touch of frost, in the cool ironical atmosphere which the girl
+had created around her. But Doggie was not such a young man. Such
+passions as heredity had endowed him with had been drugged by
+training. No tales of immortal love had ever fired his blood. Once,
+somewhere abroad, the unprincipled McPhail found him reading _Manon
+Lescaut_--he had bought a cheap copy haphazard--and taking the
+delectable volume out of his hands, asked him what he thought of it.
+
+"It's like reading about a lunatic," replied the bewildered Doggie.
+"Do such people as Des Grieux exist?"
+
+"Ay, laddie," replied McPhail, greatly relieved. "Your acumen has
+pierced to the root of the matter. They do exist, but nowadays we put
+them into asylums. We must excuse the author for living in the
+psychological obscurity of the eighteenth century. It's just a silly,
+rotten book."
+
+"I'm glad you're of the same opinion as myself," said Doggie, and
+thought no more of the absurd but deathless pair of lovers. The
+unprincipled McPhail, not without pawky humour, immediately gave him
+_Paul et Virginie_, which Doggie, after reading it, thought the truest
+and most beautiful story in the world. Even in later years, when his
+intelligence had ripened and his sphere of reading expanded, he looked
+upon the passion of a Romeo or an Othello as a conventional peg on
+which the poet hung his imagery, but having no more relation to real
+life as it is lived by human beings than the blood-lust of the
+half-man, half-bull Minotaur, or the uncomfortable riding conversation
+of the Valkyrie.
+
+So Doggie Trevor went home perfectly contented with himself, with
+Peggy Conover, with his Uncle and Aunt, of whom hitherto he had been
+just a little bit afraid, with Fortune, with Fate, with his house,
+with his peacock and ivory room, with a great clump of typescript and
+a mass of coloured proof-prints, which represented a third of his
+projected history of wall-papers, with his feather-bed, with Goliath,
+his almost microscopic Belgian griffon, with a set of Nile-green silk
+underwear that had just come from his outfitters in London, with his
+new Rolls-Royce car and his new chauffeur Briggins (parenthetically it
+may be remarked that a seven-hour excursion in this vehicle, youth in
+the back seat and Briggins at the helm, all ordained by Peggy, had
+been the final cause of the evening's explanations), with the starry
+heavens above, with the well-ordered earth beneath them, and with all
+human beings on the earth, including Germans, Turks, Infidels, and
+Hereticks--all save one: and that, as he learned from a letter
+delivered by the last post, was a callous, heartless London manicurist
+who, giving no reasons, regretted that she would be unable to pay her
+usual weekly visit to Durdlebury on the morrow. Of all days in the
+year: just when it was essential that he should look his best!
+
+"What the deuce am I going to do?" he cried, pitching the letter into
+the waste-paper basket.
+
+He sat down to the piano in the peacock and ivory room and tried to
+play the nasty crumpled rose-leaf of a manicurist out of his mind.
+
+Suddenly he remembered, with a kind of shock, that he had pledged
+himself to go up to London the next day to buy an engagement-ring. So
+after all the manicurist's defection did not matter. All was again
+well with the world.
+
+Then he went to bed and slept the sleep of the just and perfect man
+living the just and perfect life in a just and perfect universe.
+
+And the date of this happening was the fifteenth day of July in the
+year of grace one thousand nine hundred and fourteen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The shadow cast by the great apse of the cathedral slanted over the
+end of the Deanery garden, leaving the house in the blaze of the
+afternoon sun, and divided the old red-brick wall into a vivid
+contrast of tones. The peace of centuries brooded over the place. No
+outside convulsions could ever cause a flutter of her calm wings. As
+it was thirty years ago, when the Dean first came to Durdlebury, as it
+was three hundred, six hundred years ago, so it was now; and so it
+would be hundreds of years hence as long as that majestic pile housing
+the Spirit of God should last.
+
+Thus thought, thus, in some such words, proclaimed the Dean, sitting
+in the shade, with his hands clasped behind his head. Tea was over.
+Mrs. Conover, thin and faded, still sat by the little table, wondering
+whether she might now blow out the lamp beneath the silver kettle. Sir
+Archibald Bruce, a neighbouring landowner, and his wife had come,
+bringing their daughter Dorothy to play tennis. The game had already
+started on the court some little distance off--the players being
+Dorothy, Peggy and a couple of athletic, flannel-clad parsons.
+Marmaduke Trevor reposed on a chair under the lee of Lady Bruce. He
+looked very cool and spick and span in a grey cashmere suit, grey
+shirt, socks and tie, and grey _suède_ shoes. He had a weak,
+good-looking little face and a little black moustache turned up at the
+ends. He was discoursing to his neighbour on Palestrina.
+
+The Dean's proclamation had been elicited by some remark of Sir
+Archibald.
+
+"I wonder how you have stuck it for so long," said the latter. He had
+been a soldier in his youth and an explorer, and had shot big game.
+
+"I haven't your genius, my dear Bruce, for making myself
+uncomfortable," replied the Dean.
+
+"You were energetic enough when you first came here," said Sir
+Archibald. "We all thought you a desperate fellow who was going to
+rebuild the cathedral, turn the Close into industrial dwellings, and
+generally play the deuce."
+
+The Dean sighed pleasantly. He had snowy hair and a genial, florid,
+clean-shaven face.
+
+"I was appointed very young--six-and-thirty--and I thought I could
+fight against the centuries. As the years went on I found I couldn't.
+The grey changelessness of things got hold of me, incorporated me into
+them. When I die--for I hope I shan't have to resign through doddering
+senility--my body will be buried there"--he jerked his head slightly
+towards the cathedral--"and my dust will become part and parcel of the
+fabric--like that of many of my predecessors."
+
+"That's all very well," said Sir Archibald, "but they ought to have
+caught you before this petrification set in, and made you a bishop."
+
+It was somewhat of an old argument, for the two were intimates. The
+Dean smiled and shook his head.
+
+"You know I declined----"
+
+"After you had become petrified."
+
+"Perhaps so. It is not a place where ambitions can attain a riotous
+growth."
+
+"I call it a rotten place," said the elderly worldling. "I wouldn't
+live in it myself for twenty thousand a year."
+
+"Lots like you said the same in crusading times--Sir Guy de Chevenix,
+for instance, who was the Lord, perhaps, of your very Manor, and an
+amazing fire-eater--but--see the gentle irony of it--there his bones
+lie, at peace for ever, in the rotten place, with his effigy over them
+cross-legged and his dog at his feet, and his wife by his side. I
+think he must sometimes look out of Heaven's gate down on the
+cathedral and feel glad, grateful--perhaps a bit wistful--if the
+attribution of wistfulness, which implies regret, to a spirit in
+Paradise doesn't savour of heresy----"
+
+"I'm going to be cremated," interrupted Sir Archibald, twirling his
+white moustache.
+
+The Dean smiled and did not take up the cue. The talk died. It was a
+drowsy day. The Dean went off into a little reverie. Perhaps his old
+friend's reproach was just. Dean of a great cathedral at thirty-six,
+he had the world of dioceses at his feet. Had he used to the full the
+brilliant talents with which he started? He had been a good Dean, a
+capable, business-like Dean. There was not a stone of the cathedral
+that he did not know and cherish. Under his care the stability of
+every part of the precious fabric had been assured for a hundred
+years. Its financial position, desperate on his appointment, was now
+sound. He had come into a scene of petty discords and jealousies; for
+many years there had been a no more united chapter in any cathedral
+close in England. As an administrator he had been a success. The
+devotion of his life to the cathedral had its roots deep in spiritual
+things. For the greater glory of God had the vast edifice been
+erected, and for the greater glory of God had he, its guardian,
+reverently seen to its preservation and perfect appointment. Would he
+have served God better by pursuing the ambitions of youth? He could
+have had his bishopric; but he knew that the choice lay between him
+and Chanways, a flaming spirit, eager for power, who hadn't the sacred
+charge of a cathedral, and he declined. And now Chanways was a force
+in the Church and the country, and was making things hum. If he,
+Conover, after fifteen years of Durdlebury, had accepted, he would
+have lost the power to make things hum. He would have made a very
+ordinary, painstaking bishop, and his successor at Durdlebury might
+possibly have regarded that time-worn wonder of spiritual beauty
+merely as a stepping-stone to higher sacerdotal things. Such a man, he
+considered, having once come under the holy glamour of the cathedral,
+would have been guilty of the Unforgivable Sin. He had therefore saved
+two unfortunate situations.
+
+"You are quite an intelligent man, Bruce," he said, with a sudden
+whimsicality, "but I don't think you would ever understand."
+
+The set of tennis being over, Peggy, flushed and triumphant, rushed
+into the party in the shade.
+
+"Mr. Petherbridge and I have won--six--three," she announced. The old
+gentlemen smiled and murmured their congratulations. She swung to the
+tea-table some paces away, and plucked Marmaduke by the sleeve,
+interrupting him in the middle of an argument. He rose politely.
+
+"Come and play."
+
+"My dear," he said, "I'm such a duffer at games."
+
+"Never mind; you'll learn in time."
+
+He drew out a grey silk handkerchief as if ready to perspire at the
+first thought of it. "Tennis makes one so dreadfully hot," said he.
+
+Peggy tapped the point of her foot irritably, but she laughed as she
+turned to Lady Bruce.
+
+"What's the good of being engaged to a man if he can't play tennis
+with you?"
+
+"There are other things in life besides tennis, my dear," replied Lady
+Bruce.
+
+The girl flushed, but being aware that a pert answer turneth away
+pleasant invitations, said nothing. She nodded and went off to her
+game, and informing Mr. Petherbridge that Lady Bruce was a
+platitudinous old tabby, flirted with him up to the nice limits of his
+parsonical dignity. But Marmaduke did not mind.
+
+"Games are childish and somewhat barbaric. Don't you think so, Lady
+Bruce?"
+
+"Most young people seem fond of them," replied the lady. "Exercise
+keeps them in health."
+
+"It all depends," he argued. "Often they get exceedingly hot, then
+they sit about and catch their death of cold."
+
+"That's very true," said Lady Bruce. "It's what I'm always telling Sir
+Archibald about golf. Only last week he caught a severe chill in that
+very way. I had to rub his chest with camphorated oil."
+
+"Just as my poor dear mother used to do to me," said Marmaduke.
+
+There followed a conversation on ailments and their treatment, in
+which Mrs. Conover joined. Marmaduke was quite happy. He knew that the
+two elderly ladies admired the soundness of his views and talked to
+him as to one of themselves.
+
+"I'm sure, my dear Marmaduke, you're very wise to take care of
+yourself," said Lady Bruce, "especially now, when you have the
+responsibilities of married life before you."
+
+Marmaduke curled himself up comfortably in his chair. If he had been a
+cat, he would have purred. The old butler, grown as grey in the
+service of the Deanery as the cathedral itself--he had been page and
+footman to Dr. Conover's predecessor--removed the tea-things and
+brought out a tray of glasses and lemonade with ice clinking
+refreshingly against the sides of the jug. When the game was over, the
+players came and drank and sat about the lawn. The shadow of the apse
+had spread over the garden to the steps of the porch. Anyone looking
+over the garden wall would have beheld a scene typical of the heart of
+England--a scene of peace, ease and perfectly ordered comfort. The two
+well-built young men, one a minor canon, the other a curate, lounging
+in their flannels, clever-faced, honest-eyed, could have been bred
+nowhere but in English public schools and at Oxford or Cambridge. The
+two elderly ladies were of the fine flower of provincial England; the
+two old men, so different outwardly, one burly, florid, exquisitely
+ecclesiastical, the other thin, nervous, soldierly, each was an
+expression of high English tradition. The two young girls, unerringly
+correct and dainty, for all their modern abandonment of attitude,
+pretty, flushed of cheek, frank of glance, were two of a hundred
+thousand flowers of girlhood that could have been picked that
+afternoon in lazy English gardens. And Marmaduke's impeccable grey
+costume struck a harmonizing English note of Bond Street and the
+Burlington Arcade. The scent of the roses massed in delicate splendour
+against the wall, and breathing now that the cool shade had fallen on
+them, crept through the still air to the flying buttresses and the
+window mullions and traceries and the pinnacles of the great English
+cathedral. And in the midst of the shaven lawn gleamed the old
+cut-glass jug on its silver tray.
+
+Some one did look over the wall and survey the scene: a man,
+apparently supporting himself with tense, straightened arms on the
+coping; a man with a lean, bronzed, clean-shaven face, wearing an old
+soft felt hat at a swaggering angle; a man with a smile on his face
+and a humorous twinkle in his eyes. By chance he had leisure to survey
+the scene for some time unobserved. At last he shouted:
+
+"Hello! Have none of you ever moved for the last ten years?"
+
+At the summons every one was startled. The young men scrambled to
+their feet. The Dean rose and glared at the intruder, who sprang over
+the wall, recklessly broke through the rose-bushes and advanced with
+outstretched hand to meet him.
+
+"Hello, Uncle Edward!"
+
+"Goodness gracious me!" cried the Dean. "It's Oliver!"
+
+"Right first time," said the young man, gripping him by the hand.
+"You're not looking a day older. And Aunt Sophia----" He strode up to
+Mrs. Conover and kissed her. "Do you know," he went on, holding her at
+arm's length and looking round at the astonished company, "the last
+time I saw you all you were doing just the same! I peeped over the
+wall just before I went away, just such a summer afternoon as this,
+and you were all sitting round drinking the same old lemonade out of
+the same old jug--and, Lady Bruce, you were here, and you, Sir
+Archibald"--he shook hands with them rapidly. "You haven't changed a
+bit. And you--good Lord! Is this Peggy?" He put his hand on the Dean's
+shoulder and pointed at the girl.
+
+"That's Peggy," said the Dean.
+
+"You're the only thing that's grown. I used to gallop with you on my
+shoulders all round the lawn. I suppose you remember? How do you do?"
+
+And without waiting for an answer he kissed her soundly. It was all
+done with whirlwind suddenness. The tempestuous young man had
+scattered every one's wits. All stared at him. Releasing Peggy----
+
+"My holy aunt!" he cried, "there's another of 'em. It's Doggie! You
+were in the old picture, and I'm blessed if you weren't wearing the
+same beautiful grey suit. How do, Doggie?"
+
+He gripped Doggie's hand. Doggie's lips grew white.
+
+"I'm glad to welcome you back, Oliver," he said. "But I would have you
+to know that my name is Marmaduke."
+
+"Sooner be called Doggie myself, old chap," said Oliver.
+
+He stepped back, smiling at them all--a handsome devil-may-care
+fellow, tall, tough and supple, his hands in the pockets of a
+sun-stained double-breasted blue jacket.
+
+"We're indeed glad to see you, my dear boy," said the Dean, recovering
+equanimity; "but what have you been doing all this time? And where on
+earth have you come from?"
+
+"I've just come from the South Seas. Arrived in London last evening.
+This morning I thought I'd come and look you up."
+
+"But if you had let us know you were coming, we should have met you at
+the station with the car. Where's your luggage?"
+
+He jerked a hand. "In the road. My man's sitting on it. Oh, don't
+worry about him," he cried airily to the protesting Dean. "He's well
+trained. He'll go on sitting on it all night."
+
+"You've brought a man--a valet?" asked Peggy.
+
+"It seems so."
+
+"Then you must be getting on."
+
+"I don't think he turns you out very well," said Doggie.
+
+"You must really let one of the servants see about your things,
+Oliver," said Mrs. Conover, moving towards the porch. "What will
+people say?"
+
+He strode after her, and kissed her. "Oh, you dear old Durdlebury
+Aunt! Now I know I'm in England again. I haven't heard those words for
+years!"
+
+Mrs. Conover's hospitable intentions were anticipated by the old
+butler, who advanced to meet them with the news that Sir Archibald's
+car had been brought round. As soon as he recognized Oliver he started
+back, mouth agape.
+
+"Yes, it's me all right, Burford," laughed Oliver. "How did I get
+here? I dropped from the moon."
+
+He shook hands with Burford, of whose life he had been the plague
+during his childhood, proclaimed him as hardy and unchanging as a
+gargoyle, and instructed him where to find man and luggage.
+
+The Bruces and the two clerical tennis players departed. Marmaduke was
+for taking his leave too. All his old loathing of Oliver had suddenly
+returned. His cousin stood for everything he detested--swagger,
+arrogance, self-assurance. He hated the shabby rakishness of his
+attire, the self-assertive aquiline beak of a nose which he had
+inherited from his father, the Rector. He dreaded his aggressive
+masculinity. He had come back with the same insulting speech on his
+lips. His finger-nails were dreadful. Marmaduke desired as little as
+possible of his odious company. But his Aunt Sophia cried out:
+
+"You'll surely dine with us to-night, Marmaduke, to celebrate Oliver's
+return?"
+
+And Oliver chimed in, "Do! And don't worry about changing," as Doggie
+began to murmur excuses, "I can't. I've no evening togs. My old ones
+fell to bits when I was trying to put them on, on board the steamer,
+and I had to chuck 'em overboard. They turned up a shark, who went for
+'em. So don't you worry, Doggie, old chap. You look as pretty as paint
+as you are. Doesn't he, Peggy?"
+
+Peggy, with a slight flush on her cheek, came to the rescue and linked
+her arm in Marmaduke's.
+
+"You haven't had time to learn everything yet, Oliver; but I think you
+ought to know that we are engaged."
+
+"Holy Gee! Is that so? My compliments." He swept them a low bow. "God
+bless you, my children!"
+
+"Of course he'll stay to dinner," said Peggy; and she looked at Oliver
+as who should say, "Touch him at your peril: he belongs to me."
+
+So Doggie had to yield. Mrs. Conover went into the house to arrange
+for Oliver's comfort, and the others strolled round the garden.
+
+"Well, my boy," said the Dean, "so you're back in the old country?"
+
+"Turned up again like a bad penny."
+
+The Dean's kindly face clouded. "I hope you'll soon be able to find
+something to do."
+
+"It's money I want, not work," said Oliver.
+
+"Ah!" said the Dean, in a tone so thoughtful as just to suggest a lack
+of sympathy.
+
+Oliver looked over his shoulder--the Dean and himself were preceding
+Marmaduke and Peggy on the trim gravel path. "Do you care to lend me a
+few thousands, Doggie?"
+
+"Certainly not," replied Marmaduke.
+
+"There's family affection for you, Uncle Edward! I've come half-way
+round the earth to see him, and--say, will you lend me a fiver?"
+
+"If you need it," said Marmaduke in a dignified way, "I shall be very
+happy to advance you five pounds."
+
+Oliver brought the little party to a halt and burst into laughter.
+
+"I believe you good people think I've come back broke to the world.
+The black sheep returned like a wolf to the fold. Only Peggy drew a
+correct inference from the valet--wait till you see him! As Peggy
+said, I've been getting on." He laid a light hand on the Dean's
+shoulder. "While all you folks in Durdlebury, especially my dear
+Doggie, for the last ten years have been durdling, I've been doing.
+I've not come all this way to tap relations for five-pound notes. I'm
+swaggering into the City of London for Capital--with a great big C."
+
+Marmaduke twirled his little moustache. "You've taken to company
+promoting," he remarked acidly.
+
+"I have. And a damn--I beg your pardon, Uncle Edward--we poor Pacific
+Islanders lisp in damns for want of deans to hold us up--and a jolly
+good company too. We--that's I and another man--that's all the company
+as yet--two's company, you know--own a trading fleet."
+
+"You own ships?" cried Peggy.
+
+"Rather. Own 'em, sail 'em, navigate 'em, stoke 'em, clean out the
+boilers, sit on the safety valves when we want to make speed, do every
+old thing----"
+
+"And what do you trade in?" asked the Dean.
+
+"Copra, bêche-de-mer, mother-of-pearl----"
+
+"Mother-of-pearl! How awfully romantic!" cried Peggy.
+
+"We've got a fishery. At any rate, the concession. To work it properly
+we require capital. That's why I'm here--to turn the concern into a
+limited company."
+
+"And where is this wonderful place?" asked the Dean.
+
+"Huaheine."
+
+"What a beautiful word!"
+
+"Isn't it?" said Oliver. "Like the sigh of a girl in her sleep."
+
+The old Dean shot a swift glance at his nephew; then took his arm and
+walked on, and looked at the vast mass of the cathedral and at the
+quiet English garden in its evening shadow.
+
+"Copra, bêche-de-mer, mother-of-pearl, Huaheine," he murmured. "And
+these strange foreign things are the commonplaces of your life!"
+
+Peggy and Marmaduke lagged behind a little. She pressed his arm.
+
+"I'm so glad you're staying for dinner. I shouldn't like to think you
+were running away from him."
+
+"I was only afraid of losing my temper and making a scene," replied
+Doggie with dignity.
+
+"His manners are odious," said Peggy. "You leave him to me."
+
+Suddenly the Dean, taking a turn that brought him into view of the
+porch, stopped short.
+
+"Goodness gracious!" he cried. "Who in the world is that?"
+
+He pointed to a curious object slouching across the lawn; a short
+hirsute man wearing a sailor's jersey and smoking a stump of a
+blackened pipe. His tousled head was bare; he had very long arms and
+great powerful hands protruded at the end of long sinewy wrists from
+inadequate sleeves. A pair of bright eyes shone out of his dark shaggy
+face, like a Dandy Dinmont's. His nose was large and red. He rolled as
+he walked. Such a sight had never been seen before in the Deanery
+garden.
+
+"That's my man. Peggy's valet," said Oliver airily. "His name is
+Chipmunk. A beauty, isn't he?"
+
+"Like master, like man," murmured Doggie.
+
+Oliver's quick ears caught the words intended only for Peggy. He
+smiled brightly.
+
+"If you knew what a compliment you were paying me, Doggie, you
+wouldn't have said such a thing."
+
+The man seeing the company stare at him, halted, took his pipe out of
+his mouth, and scratched his head.
+
+"But--er--forgive me, my dear Oliver," said the Dean. "No doubt he is
+an excellent fellow--but don't you think he might smoke his pipe
+somewhere else?"
+
+"Of course he might," said Oliver. "And he jolly well shall." He put
+his hand to his mouth, sea-fashion--they were about thirty yards
+apart--and shouted: "Here, you! What the eternal blazes are you doing
+here?"
+
+"Please don't hurt the poor man's feelings," said the kindly Dean.
+
+Oliver turned a blank look on his Uncle. "His what? Ain't got any. Not
+that kind of feelings." He proceeded: "Now then, look lively! Clear
+out! Skidoo!"
+
+The valet touched his forehead in salute, and--"Where am I to go to,
+Cap'en?"
+
+"Go to----"
+
+Oliver checked himself in time, and turned to the Dean.
+
+"Where shall I tell him to go?" he asked sweetly.
+
+"The kitchen garden would be the best place," replied the Dean.
+
+"I think I'd better go and fix him up myself," said Oliver. "A little
+conversation in his own language might be beneficial."
+
+"But isn't he English?" asked Peggy.
+
+"Born and bred in Wapping," said Oliver.
+
+He marched off across the lawn; and, could they have heard it, the
+friendly talk that he had with Chipmunk would have made the Saint and
+the Divines, and even the Crusader, Sir Guy de Chevenix, who were
+buried in the cathedral, turn in their tombs.
+
+Doggie, watching the disappearing Chipmunk, Oliver's knuckles in his
+neck, said:
+
+"I think it monstrous of Oliver to bring such a disreputable creature
+down here."
+
+Said the Dean: "At any rate, it brings a certain excitement into our
+quiet surroundings."
+
+"They must be having the time of their lives in the Servants' Hall,"
+said Peggy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+After breakfast the next morning Doggie, attired in a green shot-silk
+dressing-gown, entered his own particular room and sat down to think.
+In its way it was a very beautiful room--high, spacious,
+well-proportioned, facing south-east. The wall-paper, which he had
+designed himself, was ivory-white with veinings of peacock-blue. Into
+the ivory-silk curtains were woven peacocks in full pride. The
+cushions were ivory and peacock-blue. The chairs, the writing-table,
+the couch, the bookcases, were pure Sheraton and Hepplewhite.
+Vellum-bound books filled the cases--Doggie was very particular about
+his bindings. Delicate water-colours alone adorned the walls. On his
+neatly arranged writing-table lay an ivory set--inkstand, pen-tray,
+blotter and calendar. Bits of old embroidery harmonizing with the
+peacock shades were spread here and there. A pretty collection of
+eighteenth-century Italian ivory statuettes were grouped about the
+room. A spinet, inlaid with ebony and ivory, formed a centre for the
+arrangement of many other musical instruments--a viol, mandolins gay
+with ribbons, a theorbo, flutes and clarinets. Through the curtains,
+draped across an alcove, could be guessed the modern monstrosity of a
+grand piano. One tall closed cabinet was devoted to his collection of
+wall-papers. Another, open, to a collection of little dogs in china,
+porcelain, faïence; thousands of them; he got them through dealers
+from all over the world. He had the finest collection in existence,
+and maintained a friendly and learned correspondence with the other
+collector--an elderly, disillusioned Russian prince, who lived
+somewhere near Nijni-Novgorod. On the spinet and on the writing-table
+were great bowls of golden _rayon d'or_ roses.
+
+Doggie sat down to think. An unwonted frown creased his brow. Several
+problems distracted him. The morning sun streaming into the room
+disclosed, beyond doubt, discolorations, stains and streaks on the
+wall-paper. It would have to be renewed. Already he had decided to
+design something to take its place. But last night Peggy had declared
+her intention to turn this abode of bachelor comfort into the
+drawing-room, and to hand over to his personal use some other
+apartment, possibly the present drawing-room, which received all the
+blaze and glare of the afternoon sun. What should he do? Live in the
+sordidness of discoloured wall-paper for another year, or go through
+the anxiety of artistic effort and manufacturers' stupidity and delay,
+to say nothing of the expense, only to have the whole thing scrapped
+before the wedding? Doggie had a foretaste of the dilemmas of
+matrimony. He had a gnawing suspicion that the trim and perfect life
+was difficult of attainment.
+
+Then, meandering through this wilderness of dubiety, ran thoughts of
+Oliver. Every one seemed to have gone crazy over him. Uncle Edward and
+Aunt Sophia had hung on his lips while he lied unblushingly about his
+adventures. Even Peggy had listened open-eyed and open-mouthed when he
+had told a tale of shipwreck in the South Seas: how the schooner had
+been caught in some beastly wind and the masts had been torn out and
+the rudder carried away, and how it had struck a reef, and how
+something had hit him on the head, and he knew no more till he woke up
+on a beach and found that the unspeakable Chipmunk had swum with him
+for a week--or whatever the time was--until they got to land. If
+hulking, brainless dolts like Oliver, thought Doggie, like to fool
+around in schooners and typhoons, they must take the consequences.
+There was nothing to brag about. The higher man was the intellectual,
+the æsthetic, the artistic being. What did Oliver know of Lydian modes
+or Louis Treize decoration or Astec clay dogs? Nothing. He couldn't
+even keep his socks from slopping about over his shoes. And there was
+Peggy all over the fellow, although before dinner she had said she
+couldn't bear the sight of him. Doggie was perturbed. On bidding him
+good night, she had kissed him in the most perfunctory manner--merely
+the cousinly peck of a dozen years ago--and had given no thought to
+the fact that he was driving home in an open car without an overcoat.
+He had felt distinctly chilly on his arrival, and had taken a dose of
+ammoniated quinine. Was Peggy's indifference a sign that she had
+ceased to care for him? That she was attracted by the buccaneering
+Oliver?
+
+Now suppose the engagement was broken off, he would be free to do as
+he chose with the redecoration of the room. But suppose, as he
+sincerely and devoutly hoped, it wasn't? Dilemma on dilemma. Added to
+all this, Goliath, the miniature Belgian griffon, having probably
+overeaten himself, had complicated pains inside, and the callous vet.
+could or would not come round till the evening. In the meantime,
+Goliath might die.
+
+He was at this point of his reflections, when to his horror he
+heard a familiar voice outside the door.
+
+"All right, Peddle. Don't worry. I'll show myself in. Look after that
+man of mine. Quite easy. Give him some beer in a bucket and leave him
+to it."
+
+Then the door burst open and Oliver, pipe in mouth and hat on one
+side, came into the room.
+
+"Hallo, Doggie! Thought I'd look you up. Hope I'm not disturbing you."
+
+"Not at all," said Doggie. "Do sit down."
+
+But Oliver walked about and looked at things.
+
+"I like your water-colours. Did you collect them yourself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I congratulate you on your taste. This is a beauty. Who is it by?"
+
+The appreciation brought Doggie at once to his side. Oliver, the
+connoisseur, was showing himself in a new and agreeable light. Doggie
+took him delightedly round the pictures, expounding their merits and
+their little histories. He found that Oliver, although unlearned, had
+a true sense of light and colour and tone. He was just beginning to
+like him, when the tactless fellow, stopping before the collection of
+little dogs, spoiled everything.
+
+"My holy aunt!" he cried--an objurgation which Doggie had abhorred
+from boyhood--and he doubled with laughter in his horrid schoolboy
+fashion--"My dear Doggie--is that your family? How many litters?"
+
+"It's the finest collection of the kind in the world," replied Doggie
+stiffly, "and is worth several thousand pounds."
+
+Oliver heaved himself into a chair--that was Doggie's impression of
+his method of sitting down--a Sheraton chair with delicate arms and
+legs.
+
+"Forgive me," he said, "but you're such a funny devil."--Doggie gaped.
+The conception of himself as a funny devil was new.--"Pictures and
+music I can understand. But what the deuce is the point of these dam
+little dogs?"
+
+But Doggie was hurt. "It would be useless to try to explain," said he.
+
+Oliver took off his hat and sent it skimming on to the couch.
+
+"Look here, old chap," he said, "I seem to have put my foot into it
+again. I didn't mean to, really. Peggy gave me hell this morning for
+not treating you as a man and a brother, and I came round to try to
+put things right."
+
+"It's very considerate of Peggy, I'm sure," said Marmaduke.
+
+"Now look here, old Doggie----"
+
+"I told you when we first met yesterday that I vehemently object to
+being called Doggie."
+
+"But why?" asked Oliver. "I've made inquiries, and find that all your
+pals----"
+
+"I haven't any pals, as you call them."
+
+"Well, all our male contemporaries in the place who have the honour of
+your acquaintance--they all call you Doggie, and you don't seem to
+mind."
+
+"I do mind," replied Marmaduke angrily, "but as I avoid their company
+as much as possible, it doesn't very much matter."
+
+Oliver stretched out his legs and put his hands behind his back--then
+wriggled to his feet. "What a beast of a chair! Anyhow," he went on,
+puffing at his pipe, "don't let us quarrel. I'll call you Marmaduke,
+if you like, when I can remember--it's a beast of a name--like the
+chair. I'm a rough sort of chap. I've had ten years' pretty rough
+training. I've slept on boards. I've slept in the open without a cent
+to hire a board. I've gone cold and I've gone hungry, and men have
+knocked me about and I've knocked men about--and I've lost the
+Durdlebury sense of social values. In the wilds if a man once gets the
+name, say, of Duck-Eyed Joe, it sticks to him, and he accepts it and
+answers to it, and signs 'Duck-Eyed Joe' on an IOU and honours the
+signature."
+
+"But I'm not in the wilds," said Marmaduke, "and haven't the slightest
+intention of ever leading the unnatural and frightful life you
+describe. So what you say doesn't apply to me."
+
+"Quite so," replied Oliver. "That wasn't the moral of my discourse.
+The habit of mind engendered in the wilds applies to me. Just as I
+could never think of Duck-Eyed Joe as George Wilkinson, so you, James
+Marmaduke Trevor, will live imperishably in my mind as Doggie. I was
+making a sort of apology, old chap, for my habit of mind."
+
+"If it is an apology----" said Marmaduke.
+
+Oliver, laughing, clapped him boisterously on the shoulder. "Oh, you
+solemn comic cuss!" He strode to a rose-bowl and knocked the ashes of
+his pipe into the water--Doggie trembled lest he might next squirt
+tobacco juice over the ivory curtains. "You don't give a fellow a
+chance. Look here, tell me, as man to man, what are you going to do
+with your life? I don't mean it in the high-brow sense of people who
+live in unsuccessful plays and garden cities, but in the ordinary
+common-sense way of the world. Here you are, young, strong, educated,
+intelligent----"
+
+"I'm not strong," said Doggie.
+
+"Oh, shucks! A month's exercise would make you as strong as a mule.
+Here you are--what the blazes are you going to do with yourself?"
+
+"I don't admit that you have any right to question me," said Doggie,
+lighting a cigarette.
+
+"Peggy has given it to me. We had a heart to heart talk this morning,
+I assure you. She called me a swaggering, hectoring barbarian. So I
+told her what I'd do. I said I'd come here and squeak like a little
+mouse and eat out of your hand. I also said I'd take you out with me
+to the Islands and give you a taste for fresh air and salt water and
+exercise. I'll teach you how to sail a schooner and how to go about
+barefoot and swab decks. It's a life for a man out there, I tell you.
+If you've nothing better to do than living here snug like a flea on a
+dog's back, until you get married, you'd better come."
+
+Doggie smiled pityingly, but said politely:
+
+"Your offer is very kind, Oliver; but I don't think that kind of life
+would suit me."
+
+"Oh yes it would," said Oliver. "It would make you healthy,
+wealthy--if you took a fancy to put some money into the pearl
+fishery--and wise. I'd show you the world, make a man of you, for
+Peggy's sake, and teach you how men talk to one another in a gale of
+wind."
+
+The door opened and Peddle appeared.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Oliver--but your man----"
+
+"Yes? What about him? Is he misbehaving himself? Kissing the maids?"
+
+"No, sir," said Peddle--"but none of them can get on with their work.
+He has drunk two quart jugs of beer and wants a third."
+
+"Well, give it to him."
+
+"I shouldn't like to see the man intoxicated, sir," said Peddle.
+
+"You couldn't. No one has or ever will."
+
+"He is also standing on his head, sir, in the middle of the kitchen
+table."
+
+"It's his great parlour-trick. You just try to do it,
+Peddle--especially after two quarts of beer. He's showing his
+gratitude, poor chap--just like the juggler of Notre-Dame in the
+story. And I'm sure everybody's enjoying themselves?"
+
+"The maids are nearly in hysterics, sir."
+
+"But they're quite happy?"
+
+"Too happy, sir."
+
+"Lord!" cried Oliver, "what a lot of stuffy owls you are! What do you
+want me to do? What would you like me to do, Doggie? It's your house."
+
+"I don't know," said Doggie. "I've had nothing to do with such people.
+Perhaps you might go and speak to him."
+
+"No, I won't do that. I tell you what, Peddle," said Oliver brightly.
+"You lure him out into the stable yard with a great hunk of pie--he
+adores pie--and tell him to sit there and eat it till I come. Tell him
+I said so."
+
+"I'll see what can be done, sir," said Peddle.
+
+"I don't mean to be inhospitable," said Doggie, after the butler had
+gone, "but why do you take this extraordinary person about with you?"
+
+"I wanted him to see Durdlebury and Durdlebury to see him. Do it
+good," replied Oliver. "Now, what about my proposition? Out there of
+course you'll be my guest. Put yourself in charge of Chipmunk and me
+for eight months, and you'll never regret it. What Chipmunk doesn't
+know about ships and drink and hard living isn't knowledge. We'll let
+you down easy--treat you kindly--word of honour."
+
+Doggie being a man of intelligence realized that Oliver's offer arose
+from a genuine desire to do him some kind of service. But if a
+friendly bull out of the fullness of its affection invited you to
+accompany him to the meadow and eat grass, what could you do but
+courteously decline the invitation? This is what Doggie did. After a
+further attempt at persuasion, Oliver grew impatient, and picking up
+his hat stuck it on the side of his head. He was a simple-natured,
+impulsive man. Peggy's spirited attack had caused him to realize that
+he had treated Doggie with unprovoked rudeness; but then, Doggie was
+such a little worm. Suddenly the great scheme for Doggie's
+regeneration had entered his head, and generously he had rushed to
+begin to put it into execution. The pair were his blood relations
+after all. He saw his way to doing them a good turn. Peggy, with all
+her go--exemplified by the manner in which she had gone for him--was
+worth the trouble he proposed to take with Doggie. It really was a
+handsome offer. Most fellows would have jumped at the prospect of
+being shown round the Islands with an old hand who knew the whole
+thing backwards, from company promoting to beach-combing. He had not
+expected such a point-blank, bland refusal. It made him angry.
+
+"I'm really most obliged to you, Oliver," said Doggie finally. "But
+our ideals are so entirely different. You're primitive, you know. You
+seem to find your happiness in defying the elements, whereas I find
+mine in adopting the resources of civilization to circumvent them."
+
+He smiled, pleased with his little epigram.
+
+"Which means," said Oliver, "that you're afraid to roughen your hands
+and spoil your complexion."
+
+"If you like to put it that way--symbolically."
+
+"Symbolically be hanged!" cried Oliver, losing his temper. "You're an
+effeminate little rotter, and I'm through with you. Go on and wag your
+tail and sit up and beg for biscuits----"
+
+"Stop!" shouted Doggie, white with sudden anger which shook him from
+head to foot. He marched to the door, his green silk dressing-gown
+flapping round his legs, and threw it wide open. "This is my house.
+I'm sorry to have to ask you to get out of it."
+
+Oliver looked intently for a few seconds into the flaming little dark
+eyes. Then he said gravely:
+
+"I'm a beast to have said that. I take it all back. Good-bye!"
+
+"Good day to you," said Doggie; and when the door was shut he went and
+threw himself, shaken, on the couch, hating Oliver and all his works
+more than ever. Go about barefoot and swab decks! It was Bedlam
+madness. Besides being dangerous to health, it would be excruciating
+discomfort. And to be insulted for not grasping at such martyrdom. It
+was intolerable.
+
+Doggie stayed away from the Deanery all that day. On the morrow he
+heard, to his relief, that Oliver had returned to London with the
+unedifying Chipmunk. He took Peggy for a drive in the Rolls-Royce, and
+told her of Oliver's high-handed methods. She sympathized. She said,
+however:
+
+"Oliver's a rough diamond."
+
+"He's one of Nature's non-gentlemen," said Doggie.
+
+She laughed and patted his arm. "Clever lad!" she said.
+
+So Doggie's wounded vanity was healed. He confided to her some of his
+difficulties as to the peacock and ivory room.
+
+"Bear with the old paper for my sake," she said. "It's something you
+can do for me. In the meanwhile, you and I can put our heads together
+and design a topping scheme of decoration. It's not too early to start
+in right now, for it'll take months and months to get the house just
+as we want."
+
+"You're the best girl in the world," said Doggie; "and the way you
+understand me is simply wonderful."
+
+"Dear old thing," smiled Peggy; "you're no great conundrum."
+
+Happiness once more settled on Doggie Trevor. For the next two or
+three days he and Peggy tackled the serious problem of the
+reorganization of Denby Hall. Peggy had the large ideas of a limited
+though acute brain, stimulated by social ambitions. When she became
+mistress of Denby Hall, she intended to reverse the invisible boundary
+that included it in Durdlebury and excluded it from the County. It was
+to be County--of the fine inner Arcanum of County--and only Durdlebury
+by the grace of Peggy Trevor. No "durdling," as Oliver called it, for
+her. Denby Hall was going to be the very latest thing of September,
+1915, when she proposed, the honeymoon concluded, to take smart and
+startling possession. Lots of Mrs. Trevor's rotten old stuffy
+furniture would have to go. Marmaduke would have to revolutionize his
+habits. As she would have all kinds of jolly people down to stay,
+additions must be made to the house. Within a week after her
+engagement she had devised all the improvements. Marmaduke's room,
+with a great bay thrown out, would be the drawing-room. The present
+drawing-room, nucleus of a new wing, would be a dancing-room, with
+parquet flooring; when not used for tangos and the fashionable negroid
+dances, it would be called the morning-room; beyond that there would
+be a billiard-room. Above this first floor there could easily be built
+a series of guest chambers. As for Marmaduke's library, or study, or
+den, any old room would do. There were a couple of bedrooms
+overlooking the stable yard which thrown into one would do
+beautifully.
+
+With feminine tact she dangled these splendours before Doggie's
+infatuated eyes, instinctively choosing the opportunity of his
+gratitude for soothing treatment. Doggie telegraphed for Sir Owen
+Julius, R.A., Surveyor to the Cathedral, the only architect of his
+acquaintance. The great man sent his partner, plain John Fox, who
+undertook to prepare a design.
+
+Mr. Fox came down to Durdlebury on the 28th of July. There had been a
+lot of silly talk in the newspapers about Austria and Serbia, to which
+Doggie had given little heed. There was always trouble in the Balkan
+States. Recently they had gone to war. It had left Doggie quite cold.
+They were all "Merry Widow," irresponsible people. They dressed in
+queer uniforms and picturesque costumes, and thought themselves
+tremendously important, and were always squabbling among themselves
+and would go on doing it till the day of Doom. Now there was more
+fuss. He had read in the _Morning Post_ that Sir Edward Grey had
+proposed a Conference of the Great Powers. Only sensible thing to do,
+thought Doggie. He dismissed the trivial matter from his mind. On the
+morning of the 29th he learned that Austria had declared war on
+Serbia. Still, what did it matter?
+
+Doggie had held aloof from politics. He regarded them as somewhat
+vulgar. Conservative by caste, he had once, when the opportunity was
+almost forced on him, voted for the Conservative candidate of the
+constituency. European politics on the grand scale did not arouse his
+interest at all. England, save as the wise Mentor, had nothing to do
+with them. Still, if Russia fought, France would have to join her
+ally. It was not till he went to the Deanery that he began to
+contemplate the possibility of a general European war. For the next
+day or two he read his newspapers very carefully.
+
+On Saturday, the 1st of August, Oliver suddenly reappeared, proposing
+to stay over the Bank Holiday. He brought news and rumours of war from
+the great city. He had found money very tight, Capital with a big C
+impossible to obtain. Every one told him to come back when the present
+European cloud had blown over. In the opinion of the judicious, it
+would not blow over. There was going to be war, and England could not
+stay out of it. The Sunday morning papers confirmed all he said.
+Germany had declared war on Russia. France was involved. Would Great
+Britain come in, or for ever lose her honour?
+
+That warm beautiful Sunday afternoon they sat on the peaceful lawn
+under the shadow of the great cathedral. Burford brought out the
+tea-tray and Mrs. Conover poured out tea. Sir Archibald and Lady Bruce
+and their daughter Dorothy were there. Doggie, impeccable in dark
+purple. Nothing clouded the centuries-old serenity of the place. Yet
+they asked the question that was asked on every quiet lawn, every
+little scrap of shaded garden throughout the land that day: Would
+England go to war?
+
+And if she came in, as come in she must, what would be the result? All
+had premonitions of strange shifting of destinies. As it was yesterday
+so it was to-day in that gracious shrine of immutability. But every
+one knew in his heart that as it was to-day so would it not be
+to-morrow. The very word "war" seemed as out of place as the
+suggestion of Hell in Paradise. Yet the throb of the War Drum came
+over the broad land of France and over the sea and half over England,
+and its echo fell upon the Deanery garden, flung by the flying
+buttresses and piers and towers of the grey cathedral.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the morning of Wednesday, the 5th of August, it thundered all over
+the Close. The ultimatum to Germany as to Belgium had expired the
+night before. We were at war.
+
+"Thank God," said the Dean at breakfast, "we needn't cast down our
+eyes and slink by when we meet a Frenchman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The first thing that brought the seriousness of the war home to Doggie
+was a letter from John Fox. John Fox, a major in a Territorial
+regiment, was mobilized. He regretted that he could not give his
+personal attention to the proposed alterations at Denby Hall. Should
+the plans be proceeded with in his absence from the office, or would
+Mr. Trevor care to wait till the end of the war, which, from the
+nature of things, could not last very long? Doggie trotted off to
+Peggy. She was greatly annoyed.
+
+"What awful rot!" she cried. "Fox, a major of artillery! I'd just as
+soon trust you with a gun. Why doesn't he stick to his architecture?"
+
+"He'd be shot or something if he refused to go," said Doggie. "But why
+can't we turn it over to Sir Owen Julius?"
+
+"That old archæological fossil?"
+
+Peggy, womanlike, forgot that they had approached him in the first
+place.
+
+"He'd never begin to understand what we want. Fox hinted as much. Now
+Fox is modern and up to date and sympathetic. If I can't have Fox, I
+won't have Sir Owen. Why, he's older than Dad! He's decrepit. Can't we
+get another architect?"
+
+"Do you think, dear," said Doggie, "that, in the circumstances, it
+would be a nice thing to do?"
+
+She flashed a glance at him. She had woven no young girl's romantic
+illusions around Marmaduke. Should necessity have arisen, she could
+have furnished you with a merciless analysis of his character. But in
+that analysis she would have frankly included a very fine sense of
+honour. If he said a thing wasn't quite nice--well, it wasn't quite
+nice.
+
+"I suppose it wouldn't," she admitted. "We shall have to wait. But
+it's a rotten nuisance all the same."
+
+Hundreds of thousands of not very intelligent, but at the same time by
+no means unpatriotic, people, like Peggy, at the beginning of the war
+thought trivial disappointments rotten nuisances. We had all waxed too
+fat during the opening years of the twentieth century, and, not having
+a spiritual ideal in God's universe, we were in danger of perishing
+from Fatty Degeneration of the Soul. As it was, it took a year or more
+of war to cure us.
+
+It took Peggy quite a month to appreciate the meaning of the
+mobilization of Major Fox, R.F.A. A brigade of Territorial artillery
+flowed over Durdlebury, and the sacred and sleepy meadows became a
+mass of guns and horse-lines and men in khaki, and waggons and dingy
+canvas tents--and the old quiet streets were thick with unaccustomed
+soldiery. The Dean called on the Colonel and officers, and soon the
+house was full of eager young men holding the King's commission.
+Doggie admired their patriotism, but disliked their whole-hearted
+embodiment of the military spirit. They seemed to have no ideas beyond
+their new trade. The way they clanked about in their great boots and
+spurs got on his nerves. He dreaded also lest Peggy should be affected
+by the meretricious attraction of a uniform. There were fine hefty
+fellows among the visitors at the Deanery, on whom Peggy looked with
+natural admiration. Doggie bitterly confided to Goliath that it was
+the "glamour of brawn." It never entered his head during those early
+days that all the brawn of all the manhood of the nation would be
+needed. We had our well-organized Army and Navy, composed of
+peculiarly constituted men whose duty it was to fight; just as we had
+our well-organized National Church, also composed of peculiarly
+constituted men whose duty it was to preach. He regarded himself as
+remote from one as from the other.
+
+Oliver, who had made a sort of peace with Doggie and remained at the
+Deanery, very quickly grew restless.
+
+One day, walking with Peggy and Marmaduke in the garden, he said: "I
+wish I could get hold of that confounded fellow, Chipmunk!"
+
+Partly through deference to the good Dean's delicately hinted distaste
+for that upsetter of decorous households, and partly to allow his
+follower to attend to his own domestic affairs, he had left Chipmunk
+in London. Fifteen years ago Chipmunk had parted from a wife somewhere
+in the neighbourhood of the East India Docks. Both being illiterate,
+neither had since communicated with the other. As he had left her
+earning good money in a factory, his fifteen years' separation had
+been relieved from anxiety as to her material welfare. A prudent,
+although a beer-loving man, he had amassed considerable savings, and
+it was the dual motive of sharing these with his wife and of
+protecting his patron from the ever-lurking perils of London, that had
+brought him across the seas. When Oliver had set him free in town, he
+was going in quest of his wife. But as he had forgotten the name of
+the street near the East India Docks where his wife lived, and the
+name of the factory in which she worked, the successful issue of the
+quest, in Oliver's opinion, seemed problematical. The simple Chipmunk,
+however, was quite sanguine. He would run into her all right. As soon
+as he had found her he would let the Captain know. Up to the present
+he had not communicated with the Captain. He could give the Captain no
+definite address, so the Captain could not communicate with him.
+Chipmunk had disappeared into the unknown.
+
+"Isn't he quite capable of taking care of himself?" asked Peggy.
+
+"I'm not so sure," replied Oliver. "Besides, he's hanging me up. I'm
+kind of responsible for him, and I've got sixty pounds of his money.
+It's all I could do to persuade him not to stow the lot in his pocket,
+so as to divide it with Mrs. Chipmunk as soon as he saw her. I must
+find out what has become of the beggar before I move."
+
+"I suppose," said Doggie, "you're anxious now to get back to the South
+Seas?"
+
+Oliver stared at him. "No, sonny, not till the war's over."
+
+"Why, you wouldn't be in any great danger out there, would you?"
+
+Oliver laughed. "You're the funniest duck that ever was, Doggie. I'll
+never get to the end of you." And he strolled away.
+
+"What does he mean?" asked the bewildered Doggie.
+
+"I think," replied Peggy, smiling, "that he means he's going to
+fight."
+
+"Oh," said Doggie. Then after a pause he added, "He's just the sort of
+chap for a soldier, isn't he?"
+
+The next day Oliver's anxiety as to Chipmunk was relieved by the
+appearance of the man himself, incredibly dirty and dusty and thirsty.
+Having found no trace of his wife, and having been robbed of the money
+he carried about him, he had tramped to Durdlebury, where he reported
+himself to his master as if nothing out of the way had happened.
+
+"You silly blighter," said Oliver. "Suppose I had let you go with your
+other sixty pounds, you would have been pretty well in the soup,
+wouldn't you?"
+
+"Yes, Cap'en," said Chipmunk.
+
+"And you're not going on any blethering idiot wild-goose chases after
+wives and such-like truck again, are you?"
+
+"No, Cap'en," said Chipmunk.
+
+This was in the stable-yard, after Chipmunk had shaken some of the
+dust out of his hair and clothes and had eaten and drunk voraciously.
+He was now sitting on an upturned bucket and smoking his clay pipe
+with an air of solid content. Oliver, lean and supple, his hands in
+his pockets, looked humorously down upon him.
+
+"And you've got to stick to me for the future, like a roseate leech."
+
+"Yes, Cap'en."
+
+"You're going to ride a horse."
+
+"A wot?" roared Chipmunk.
+
+"A thing on four legs, that kicks like hell."
+
+"Wotever for? I ain't never ridden no 'osses."
+
+"You're going to learn, you unmilitary-looking, worm-eaten scab.
+You've got to be a ruddy soldier."
+
+"Gorblime!" said Chipmunk, "that's the first I 'eard of it. A 'oss
+soldier? You're not kiddin', are you, Cap'en?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Gorblime! Who would ha' thought it?" Then he spat lustily and sucked
+at his pipe.
+
+"You've nothing to say against it, have you?"
+
+"No, Cap'en."
+
+"All right. And look here, when we're in the army you must chuck
+calling me Cap'en."
+
+"What shall I have to call yer? Gineral?" Chipmunk asked simply.
+
+"Mate, Bill, Joe--any old name."
+
+"Ker-ist!" said Chipmunk.
+
+"Do you know why we're going to enlist?"
+
+"Can't say as 'ow I does, Cap'en."
+
+"You chuckle-headed swab! Don't you know we're at war?"
+
+"I did 'ear some talk about it in a pub one night," Chipmunk admitted.
+"'Oo are we fighting? Dutchmen or Dagoes?"
+
+"Dutchmen."
+
+Chipmunk spat in his horny hands, rubbed them together and smiled. As
+each individual hair on his face seemed to enter into the smile, the
+result was sinister.
+
+"Do you remember that Dutchman at Samoa, Cap'en?"
+
+Oliver smiled back. He remembered the hulking, truculent German
+merchant whom Chipmunk, having half strangled, threw into the sea. He
+also remembered the amount of accomplished lying he had to practise in
+order to save Chipmunk from the clutches of the law and get away with
+the schooner.
+
+"We leave here to-morrow," said Oliver. "In the meanwhile you'll have
+to shave your ugly face."
+
+For the first time Chipmunk was really staggered. He gaped at Oliver's
+retiring figure. Even his limited and time-worn vocabulary failed him.
+The desperate meaning of the war has flashed suddenly on millions of
+men in millions of different ways. This is the way in which it flashed
+on Chipmunk.
+
+He sat on his bucket pondering over the awfulness of it and sucking
+his pipe long after it had been smoked out. The Dean's car drove into
+the yard and the chauffeur, stripping off his coat, prepared to clean
+it down.
+
+"Say, guv'nor," said Chipmunk hoarsely, "what do you think of this
+'ere war?"
+
+"Same as most people," replied the chauffeur tersely. He shared in the
+general disapproval of Chipmunk.
+
+"But see 'ere. Cap'en he tells me I must shave me face and be a 'oss
+soldier. I never shaved me face in me life, and I dunno 'ow to do it,
+just as I dunno 'ow to ride a 'oss. I'm a sailorman, I am, and
+sailormen don't shave their faces and ride 'osses. That's why I arsked
+yer what yer thought of this 'ere war."
+
+The chauffeur struggled into his jeans and adjusted them before
+replying.
+
+"If you're a sailor, the place for you is the navy," he remarked in a
+superior manner. "As for the cavalry, the Cap'en, as you call him,
+ought to have more sense----"
+
+Chipmunk rose and swung his long arms threateningly.
+
+"Look 'ere, young feller, do you want to have your blinkin' 'ead
+knocked orf? Where the Cap'en goes, I goes, and don't you make any
+mistake about it!"
+
+"I didn't say anything," the chauffeur expostulated.
+
+"Then don't say it. See? Keep your blinkin' 'ead shut and mind your
+own business."
+
+And, scowling fiercely and thrusting his empty pipe into his trousers
+pocket, Chipmunk rolled away.
+
+A few hours later Oliver, entering his room to dress for dinner, found
+him standing in the light of the window laboriously fitting studs into
+a shirt. The devoted fellow having gone to report to his master, had
+found Burford engaged in his accustomed task of laying out his
+master's evening clothes--Oliver during his stay in London had
+provided himself with these necessaries. A jealous snarl had sent
+Burford flying. So intent was he on his work, that he did not hear
+Oliver enter. Oliver stood and watched him. Chipmunk was swearing
+wholesomely under his breath. Oliver saw him take up the tail of the
+shirt, spit on it and begin to rub something.
+
+"Ker-ist!" said Chipmunk.
+
+"What in the thundering blazes are you doing there?" cried Oliver.
+
+Chipmunk turned.
+
+"Oh, my God!" said Oliver.
+
+Then he sank on a chair and laughed and laughed, and the more he
+looked at Chipmunk the more he laughed. And Chipmunk stood stolid,
+holding the shirt of the awful, wet, thumb-marked front. But it was
+not at the shirt that Oliver laughed.
+
+"Good God!" he cried, "were you born like that?"
+
+For Chipmunk, having gone to the barber's, was clean-shaven, and
+revealed himself as one of the most comically ugly of the sons of men.
+
+"Never mind," said Oliver, after a while, "you've made the sacrifice
+for your country."
+
+"And wot if I get the face-ache?"
+
+"I'd get something that looked like a face before I'd talk of it,"
+grinned Oliver.
+
+At the family dinner-table, Doggie being present, he announced his
+intentions. It was the duty of every able-bodied man to fight for the
+Empire. Had not half a million just been called for? We should want a
+jolly sight more than that before we got through with it. Anyway, he
+was off to-morrow.
+
+"To-morrow?" echoed the Dean.
+
+Burford, who was handing him potatoes, arched his eyebrows in alarm.
+He was fond of Oliver.
+
+"With Chipmunk."
+
+Burford uttered an unheard sigh of relief.
+
+"We're going to enlist in King Edward's Horse. They're our kind.
+Overseas men. Lots of 'em what you dear good people would call bad
+eggs. There you make the mistake. Perhaps they mayn't be fresh enough
+raw for a dainty palate--but for cooking, good hard cooking, by gosh!
+nothing can touch 'em."
+
+"You talk of enlisting, dear," said Mrs. Conover. "Does that mean as a
+private soldier?"
+
+"Yes--a trooper. Why not?"
+
+"You're a gentleman, dear. And gentlemen in the Army are officers."
+
+"Not now, my dear Sophia," said the Dean. "Gentlemen are crowding into
+the ranks. They are setting a noble example."
+
+They argued it out in their gentle old-fashioned way. The Dean quoted
+examples of sons of family who had served as privates in the South
+African War.
+
+"And that to this," said he, "is but an eddy to a maelstrom."
+
+"Come and join us, James Marmaduke," said Oliver across the table.
+"Chipmunk and me. Three 'sworn brothers to France.'"
+
+Doggie smiled easily. "I'm afraid I can't undertake to swear a
+fraternal affection for Chipmunk. He and I would have neither habits
+nor ideals in common."
+
+Oliver turned to Peggy. "I wish," said he, with rare restraint, "he
+wouldn't talk like a book on deportment."
+
+"Marmaduke talks the language of civilization," laughed Peggy. "He's
+not a savage like you."
+
+"Don't you jolly well wish he was!" said Oliver.
+
+Peggy flushed. "No, I don't!" she declared.
+
+The Dean being called away on business immediately after dinner, the
+young men were left alone in the dining-room when the ladies had
+departed. Oliver poured himself out a glass of port and filled his
+pipe--an inelegant proceeding of which Doggie disapproved. A pipe
+alone was barbaric, a pipe with old port was criminal. He held his
+peace however.
+
+"James Marmaduke," said Oliver, after a while, "what are you going to
+do?" Much as Marmaduke disliked the name of "Doggie," he winced under
+the irony of the new appellation.
+
+"I don't see that I'm called upon to do anything," he replied.
+
+Oliver smoked and sipped his port. "I don't want to hurt your feelings
+any more," said he gravely, "though sometimes I'd like to scrag you--I
+suppose because you're so different from me. It was so when we were
+children together. Now I've grown very fond of Peggy. Put on the right
+track, she might turn into a very fine woman."
+
+"I don't think we need discuss Peggy, Oliver," said Marmaduke.
+
+"I do. She is sticking to you very loyally." Oliver was a bit of an
+idealist. "The time may come when she'll be up the devil's own tree.
+She'll develop a patriotic conscience. If she sticks to you while you
+do nothing she'll be miserable. If she chucks you, as she probably
+will, she'll be no happier. It's all up to you, James Doggie
+Marmaduke, old son. You'll have to gird up your loins and take sword
+and buckler and march away like the rest. I don't want Peggy to be
+unhappy. I want her to marry a man. That's why I proposed to take you
+out with me to Huaheine and try to make you one. But that's over. Now,
+here's the real chance. Better take it sooner than later. You'll have
+to be a soldier, Doggie."
+
+His pipe not drawing, he was preparing to dig it with the point of a
+dessert-knife, when Doggie interposed hurriedly.
+
+"For goodness' sake, don't do that! It makes cold shivers run down my
+back!"
+
+Oliver looked at him oddly, put the extinct pipe in his dinner-jacket
+pocket and rose.
+
+"A flaw in the dainty and divine ordering of things makes you shiver
+now, old Doggie. What will you do when you see a fellow digging out
+another fellow's intestines with the point of a bayonet? A bigger flaw
+there somehow!"
+
+"Don't talk like that. You make me sick," said Doggie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+During the next few months there happened terrible and marvellous
+things, which are all set down in the myriad chronicles of the time;
+which shook the world and brought the unknown phenomenon of change
+into the Close of Durdlebury. Folks of strange habit and speech walked
+in it, and, gazing at the Gothic splendour of the place, saw through
+the mist of autumn and the mist of tears not Durdlebury but Louvain.
+More than one of those grey houses flanking the cathedral and sharing
+with it the continuity of its venerable life, was a house of mourning;
+not for loss in the inevitable and not unkindly way of human destiny
+as understood and accepted with long disciplined resignation--but for
+loss sudden, awful, devastating; for the gallant lad who had left it
+but a few weeks before, with a smile on his lips, and a new and
+dancing light of manhood in his eyes, now with those eyes unclosed and
+glazed staring at the pitiless Flanders sky. Not one of those houses
+but was linked with a battlefield. Beyond the memory of man the reader
+of the Litany had droned the accustomed invocation on behalf of the
+Sovereign and the Royal Family, the Bishops, Priests and Deacons, the
+Lords of the Council and all prisoners and captives, and the
+congregation had lumped them all together in their responses with an
+undifferentiating convention of fervour. What had prisoners and
+captives, any more than the Lords of the Council, to do with their
+lives, their hearts, their personal emotions? But now--Durdlebury men
+were known to be prisoners in German hands, and after "all prisoners
+and captives" there was a long and pregnant silence, in which was felt
+the reverberation of war against pier and vaulted arch and groined
+roof of the cathedral, which was broken too, now and then, by the
+stifled sob of a woman, before the choir came in with the response so
+new and significant in its appeal--"We beseech thee to hear us, O
+Lord!"
+
+And in every home the knitting-needles of women clicked, as they did
+throughout the length and breadth of the land. And the young men left
+shop and trade and counting-house. And young parsons fretted, and some
+obtained the Bishop's permission to become Army chaplains, and others,
+snapping their fingers (figuratively) under the Bishop's nose, threw
+their cassocks to the nettles and put on the full (though in modern
+times not very splendiferous) panoply of war. And in course of time
+the brigade of artillery rolled away and new troops took their place;
+and Marmaduke Trevor, Esquire, of Denby Hall, was called upon to
+billet a couple of officers and twenty men.
+
+Doggie was both patriotic and polite. Having a fragment of the British
+Army in his house, he did his best to make them comfortable. By
+January he had no doubt that the Empire was in peril, that it was
+every man's duty to do his bit. He welcomed the new-comers with open
+arms, having unconsciously abandoned his attitude of superiority over
+mere brawn. Doggie saw the necessity of brawn. The more the better. It
+was every patriotic Englishman's duty to encourage brawn. If the two
+officers had allowed him, he would have fed his billeted men every two
+hours on prime beefsteaks and burgundy. He threw himself heart and
+soul into the reorganization of his household. Officers and men found
+themselves in clover. The officers had champagne every night for
+dinner. They thought Doggie a capital fellow.
+
+"My dear chap," they would say, "you're spoiling us. I don't say we
+don't like it and aren't grateful. We jolly well are. But we're
+supposed to rough it--to lead the simple life--what? You're doing us
+too well."
+
+"Impossible!" Doggie would reply, filling up the speaker's glass.
+"Don't I know what we owe to you fellows? In what other way can a
+helpless, delicate crock like myself show his gratitude and in some
+sort of little way serve his country?"
+
+When the sympathetic and wine-filled guest would ask what was the
+nature of his malady, he would tap his chest vaguely and reply:
+
+"Constitutional. I've never been able to do things like other fellows.
+The least thing bowls me out."
+
+"Dam hard lines--especially just now."
+
+"Yes, isn't it?" Doggie would answer. And once he found himself
+adding, "I'm fed up with doing nothing."
+
+Here can be noted a distinct stage in Doggie's development. He
+realized the brutality of fact. When great German guns were yawning
+open-mouthed at you, it was no use saying, "Take the nasty, horrid
+things away, I don't like them." They wouldn't go unless you took
+other big guns and fired at them. And more guns were required than
+could be manned by the peculiarly constituted fellows who made up the
+artillery of the original British Army. New fellows not at all
+warlike, peaceful citizens who had never killed a cat in anger, were
+being driven by patriotism and by conscience to man them. Against
+Blood and Iron now supreme, the superior, æsthetic and artistic being
+was of no avail. You might lament the fall in relative values of
+collections of wall-papers and little china dogs, as much as you
+liked; but you could not deny the fall; they had gone down with
+something of an ignoble "wallop." Doggie began to set a high value on
+guns and rifles and such-like deadly engines, and to inquire
+petulantly why the Government were not providing them at greater
+numbers and at greater speed. On his periodic visits to London he
+wandered round by Trafalgar Square and Whitehall, to see for himself
+how the recruiting was going on. At the Deanery he joined in ardent
+discussions of the campaign in Flanders. On the walls of his peacock
+and ivory room were maps stuck all over with little pins. When he told
+the young officer that he was wearied of inaction, he spoke the truth.
+He began to feel mightily aggrieved against Providence for keeping him
+outside this tremendous national league of youth. He never questioned
+his physical incapacity. It was as real a fact as the German guns. He
+went about pitying himself and seeking pity.
+
+The months passed. The regiment moved away from Durdlebury, and Doggie
+was left alone in Denby Hall.
+
+He felt solitary and restless. News came from Oliver that he had been
+offered and had accepted an infantry commission, and that Chipmunk,
+having none of the special qualities of a "'oss soldier," had, by
+certain skilful wire-pullings, been transferred to his regiment, and
+had once more become his devoted servant. "A month of this sort of
+thing," he wrote, "would make our dear old Doggie sit up." Doggie
+sighed. If only he had been blessed with Oliver's constitution!
+
+One morning Briggins, his chauffeur, announced that he could stick it
+no longer and was going to join up. Then Doggie remembered a talk he
+had had with one of the young officers who had expressed astonishment
+at his not being able to drive a car. "I shouldn't have the nerve," he
+had replied. "My nerves are all wrong--and I shouldn't have the
+strength to change tyres and things."... If his chauffeur went, he
+would find it very difficult to get another. Who would drive the
+Rolls-Royce?
+
+"Why not learn to drive yourself, sir?" said Briggins. "Not the
+Rolls-Royce. I would put it up or get rid of it, if I were you. If you
+engage a second-rate man, as you'll have to, who isn't used to this
+make of car, he'll do it in for you pretty quick. Get a smaller one in
+its place and drive it yourself. I'll undertake to teach you enough
+before I go."
+
+So Doggie, following Briggins' advice, took lessons and, to his
+amazement, found that he did not die of nervous collapse when a dog
+crossed the road in front of the car and that the fitting of
+detachable wheels did not require the strength of a Hercules. The
+first time he took Peggy out in the two-seater he swelled with pride.
+
+"I'm so glad to see you can do something!" she said.
+
+Although she was kind and as mildly affectionate as ever, he had
+noticed of late a curious reserve in her manner. Conversation did not
+flow easily. There seemed to be something at the back of her mind. She
+had fits of abstraction from which, when rallied, she roused herself
+with an effort.
+
+"It's the war," she would declare. "It's affecting everybody that
+way."
+
+Gradually Doggie began to realize that she spoke truly. Most people of
+his acquaintance, when he was by, seemed to be thus afflicted. The
+lack of interest they manifested in his delicacy of constitution was
+almost impolite. At last he received an anonymous letter, "For little
+Doggie Trevor, from the girls of Durdlebury," enclosing a white
+feather.
+
+The cruelty of it broke Doggie down. He sat in his peacock and ivory
+room and nearly wept. Then he plucked up courage and went to Peggy.
+She was rather white about the lips as she listened.
+
+"I'm sorry," she said, "but I expected something of the sort to
+happen."
+
+"It's brutal and unjust."
+
+"Yes, it's brutal," she admitted coldly.
+
+"I thought you, at any rate, would sympathize with me," he cried.
+
+She turned on him. "And what about me? Who sympathizes with me? Do you
+ever give a moment's thought to what I've had to go through the last
+few months?"
+
+"I don't quite know what you mean," he stammered.
+
+"I should have thought it was obvious. You can't be such an innocent
+babe as to suppose people don't talk about you. They don't talk to you
+because they don't like to be rude. They send you white feathers
+instead. But they talk to me. 'Why isn't Marmaduke in khaki?' 'Why
+isn't Doggie fighting?' 'I wonder how you can allow him to slack about
+like that!'--I've had a pretty rough time fighting your battles, I can
+tell you, and I deserve some credit. I want sympathy just as much as
+you do."
+
+"My dear," said Doggie, feeling very much humiliated, "I never knew. I
+never thought. I do see now the unpleasant position you've been in.
+People are brutes. But," he added eagerly, "you told them the real
+reason?"
+
+"What's that?" she asked, looking at him with cold eyes.
+
+Then Doggie knew that the wide world was against him. "I'm not fit.
+I've no constitution. I'm an impossibility."
+
+"You thought you had nerves until you learned to drive the car. Then
+you discovered that you hadn't. You fancy you've a weak heart. Perhaps
+if you learned to walk thirty miles a day you would discover you
+hadn't that either. And so with the rest of it."
+
+"This is very painful," he said, going to the window and staring out.
+"Very painful. You are of the same opinion as the young women who sent
+me that abominable thing."
+
+She had been on the strain for a long while and something inside her
+had snapped. At his woebegone attitude she relented however, and came
+up and touched his shoulder.
+
+"A girl wants to feel some pride in the man she's going to marry. It's
+horrible to have to be always defending him--especially when she's not
+sure she's telling the truth in his defence."
+
+He swung round horrified. "Do you think I'm shamming, so as to get out
+of serving in the Army?"
+
+"Not consciously. Unconsciously, I think you are. What does your
+doctor say?"
+
+Doggie was taken aback. He had no doctor. He had not consulted one for
+years, having no cause for medical advice. The old family physician
+who had attended his mother in her last illness and had prescribed
+Gregory powders for him as a child, had retired from Durdlebury long
+ago. There was only one person living familiar with his constitution,
+and that was himself. He made confession of the surprising fact. Peggy
+made a little gesture.
+
+"That proves it. I don't believe you have anything wrong with you. The
+nerves business made me sceptical. This is straight talking. It's
+horrid, I know. But it's best to get through with it once and for
+all."
+
+Some men would have taken deep offence and, consigning Peggy to the
+devil, have walked out of the room. But Doggie, a conscientious, even
+though a futile human being, was gnawed for the first time by the
+suspicion that Peggy might possibly be right. He desired to act
+honourably.
+
+"I'll do," said he, "whatever you think proper."
+
+Peggy was swift to smite the malleable iron. To use the conventional
+phrase might give an incorrect impression of red-hot martial ardour on
+the part of Doggie.
+
+"Good," she said, with the first smile of the day. "I'll hold you to
+it. But it will be an honourable bargain. Get Dr. Murdoch to overhaul
+you thoroughly, with a view to the Army. If he passes you, take a
+commission. Dad says he can easily get you one through his old friend
+General Gadsby at the War Office. If he doesn't, and you're unfit,
+I'll stick to you through thick and thin, and make the young women of
+Durdlebury wish they'd never been born."
+
+She put out her hand. Doggie took it.
+
+"Very well," said he, "I agree."
+
+She laughed, and ran to the door.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"To the telephone--to ring up Dr. Murdoch for an appointment."
+
+"You're flabby," said Dr. Murdoch the next morning to an anxious
+Doggie in pink pyjamas; "but that's merely a matter of unused muscles.
+Physical training will set it right in no time. Otherwise, my dear
+Trevor, you're in splendid health. I was afraid your family history
+might be against you--the child of elderly parents, and so forth. But
+nothing of the sort. Not only are you a first-class life for an
+insurance company, but you're a first-class life for the Army--and
+that's saying a good deal. There's not a flaw in your whole
+constitution."
+
+He put away his stethoscope and smiled at Doggie, who regarded him
+blankly as the pronouncer of a doom. He went on to prescribe a course
+of physical exercises, so many miles a day walking, such and such
+back-breaking and contortional performances in his bathroom; if
+possible, a skilfully graduated career in a gymnasium, but his words
+fell on the ears of a Doggie in a dream; and when he had ended, Doggie
+said:
+
+"I'm afraid, Doctor, you'll have to write all that out for me."
+
+"With pleasure," smiled the doctor, and gripped him by the hand. And
+seeing Doggie wince, he said heartily: "Ah! I'll soon set that right
+for you. I'll get you something--an india-rubber contrivance to
+practise with for half an hour a day, and you'll develop a hand like a
+gorilla's."
+
+Dr. Murdoch grinned his way, in his little car, to his next patient.
+Here was this young slacker, coddled from birth, absolutely
+horse-strong and utterly confounded at being told so. He grinned and
+chuckled so much that he nearly killed his most valuable old lady
+patient, who was crossing the High Street.
+
+But Doggie crept out of bed and put on a violet dressing-gown that
+clashed horribly with his pink pyjamas, and wandered like a man in a
+nightmare to his breakfast. But he could not eat. He swallowed a cup
+of coffee and sought refuge in his own room. He was frightened.
+Horribly frightened, caught in a net from which there was no
+escape--not the tiniest break of a mesh. He had given his word--and in
+justice to Doggie, be it said that he held his word sacred--he had
+given his word to join the Army if he should be passed by Murdoch. He
+had been passed--more than passed. He would have to join. He would
+have to fight. He would have to live in a muddy trench, sleep in mud,
+eat in mud, plough through mud, in the midst of falling shells and
+other instruments of death. And he would be an officer, with all kinds
+of strange and vulgar men under him, men like Chipmunk, for instance,
+whom he would never understand. He was almost physically sick with
+apprehension. He realized that he had never commanded a man in his
+life. He had been mortally afraid of Briggins, his late chauffeur. He
+had heard that men at the front lived on some solid horror called
+bully-beef dug out of tins, and some liquid horror called cocoa, also
+drunk out of tins; that men kept on their clothes, even their boots,
+for weeks at a time; that rats ran over them while they tried to
+sleep; that lice, hitherto associated in his mind with the most
+revolting type of tramp, out there made no distinction of persons.
+They were the common lot of the lowest Tommy and the finest gentleman.
+And then the fighting. The noise of the horrid guns. The disgusting
+sights of men shattered to bloody bits. The horrible stench. The
+terror of having one's face shot half away and being an object of
+revolt and horror to all beholders for the rest of life. Death.
+Feverishly he ruffled his comely hair. Death. He was surprised that
+the contemplation of it did not freeze the blood in his veins. Yes. He
+put it clearly before him. He had given his word to Peggy that he
+would go and expose himself to Death. Death. What did it mean? He had
+been brought up in orthodox Church of England Christianity. His
+flaccid mind had never questioned the truth of its dogmas. He
+believed, in a general sort of way, that good people went to Heaven
+and bad people went to Hell. His conscience was clear. He had never
+done any harm to anybody. As far as he knew, he had broken none of the
+Ten Commandments. In a technical sense he was a miserable sinner, and
+so proclaimed himself once a week. But though, perhaps, he had done
+nothing in his life to merit eternal bliss in Paradise, yet, on the
+other hand, he had committed no action which would justify a kindly
+and just Creator in consigning him to the eternal flames of Hell.
+Somehow the thought of Death did not worry him. It faded from his
+mind, being far less terrible than life under prospective conditions.
+Discomfort, hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue, pain; above all the terror
+of his fellows--these were the soul-racking anticipations of this new
+life into which it was a matter of honour for him to plunge. And to an
+essential gentleman like Doggie a matter of honour was a matter of
+life. And so, dressed in his pink pyjamas and violet dressing-gown,
+amid the peacock-blue and ivory hangings of his boudoir room, and
+stared at by the countless unsympathetic eyes of his little china
+dogs, Doggie Trevor passed through his first Gethsemane.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His decision was greeted with joy at the Deanery. Peggy threw her arms
+round his neck and gave him the very first real kiss he had ever
+received. It revived him considerably. His Aunt Sophia also embraced
+him. The Dean shook him warmly by the hand, and talked eloquent
+patriotism. Doggie already felt a hero. He left the house in a glow,
+but the drive home in the two-seater was cold and the pitch-dark night
+presaged other nights of mercilessness in the future; and when Doggie
+sat alone by his fire, sipping the hot milk which Peddle presented him
+on a silver tray, the doubts and fears of the morning racked him
+again. An ignoble possibility occurred to him. Murdoch might be wrong.
+Murdoch might be prejudiced by local gossip. Would it not be better to
+go up to London and obtain the opinion of a first-class man to whom he
+was unknown? There was also another alternative. Flight. He might go
+to America, and do nothing. To the South of France, and help in some
+sort of way with hospitals for French wounded. He caught himself up
+short as these thoughts passed through his mind, and he shuddered. He
+took up the glass of hot milk and put it down again. Milk? He needed
+something stronger. A glance in a mirror showed him his sleek hair
+tousled into an upstanding wig. In a kind of horror of himself he went
+to the dining-room and for the first time in his life drank a stiff
+whisky and soda for the sake of the stimulant. Reaction came. He felt
+a man once more. Rather suicide at once than such damnable dishonour.
+According to the directions which the Dean, a man of affairs, had
+given him, he sat down and wrote his application to the War Office for
+a commission. Then--unique adventure!--he stole out of the barred and
+bolted house, without thought of hat and overcoat (let the traducers
+of alcohol mark it well), ran down the drive and posted the letter in
+the box some few yards beyond his entrance gates.
+
+The Dean had already posted his letter to his old friend General
+Gadsby at the War Office.
+
+So the die was cast. The Rubicon was crossed. The bridges were burnt.
+The irrevocable step was taken. Dr. Murdoch turned up the next morning
+with his prescription for physical training. And then Doggie trained
+assiduously, monotonously, wearily. He grew appalled by the
+senselessness of this apparently unnecessary exertion. Now and then
+Peggy accompanied him on his prescribed walks; but the charm of her
+company was discounted by the glaring superiority of her powers of
+endurance. While he ached with fatigue, she pressed along as fresh as
+Atalanta at the beginning of her race. When they parted by the Deanery
+door, she would stand flushed, radiant in her youth and health, and
+say:
+
+"We've had a topping walk, old dear. Now isn't it a glorious thing to
+feel oneself alive?"
+
+But poor Doggie of the flabby muscles felt half dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fateful letter burdening Doggie with the King's commission arrived
+a few weeks later: a second lieutenancy in a Fusilier battalion of the
+New Army. Dates and instructions were given. The impress of the Royal
+Arms at the head of the paper, with its grotesque perky lion and
+unicorn, conveyed to Doggie a sense of the grip of some uncanny power.
+The typewritten words scarcely mattered. The impress fascinated him.
+There was no getting away from it. Those two pawing beasts held him in
+their clutch. They headed a Death Warrant, from which there was no
+appeal.
+
+Doggie put his house in order, dismissed with bounty those of his
+servants who would be no longer needed, and kept the Peddles, husband
+and wife, to look after his interests. On his last night at home he
+went wistfully through the familiar place, the drawing-room sacred to
+his mother's memory, the dining-room so solid in its half-century of
+comfort, his own peacock and ivory room so intensely himself, so
+expressive of his every taste, every mood, every emotion. Those
+strange old-world musical instruments--he could play them all with the
+touch or breath of a master and a lover. The old Italian theorbo. He
+took it up. How few to-day knew its melodious secret! He looked
+around. All these daintinesses and prettinesses had a meaning. They
+signified the magical little beauties of life--things which asserted a
+range of spiritual truths, none the less real and consolatory because
+vice and crime and ugliness and misery and war co-existed in ghastly
+fact on other facets of the planet Earth. The sweetness here expressed
+was as essential to the world's spiritual life as the sweet elements
+of foodstuffs to its physical life. To the getting together of all
+these articles of beauty he had devoted the years of his youth....
+And--another point of view--was he not the guardian by inheritance--in
+other words, by Divine Providence--of this beautiful English home, the
+trustee of English comfort, of the sacred traditions of sweet English
+life that had made England the only country, the only country, he
+thought, that could call itself a Country and not a Compromise, in the
+world?
+
+And he was going to leave it all. All that it meant in beauty and
+dignity and ease of life. For what?
+
+For horror and filthiness and ugliness, for everything against which
+his beautiful peacock and ivory room protested. Doggie's last night at
+Denby Hall was a troubled one.
+
+Aunt Sophia and Peggy accompanied him to London and stayed with him at
+his stuffy little hotel off Bond Street, while Doggie got his kit
+together. They bought everything in every West End shop that any
+salesman assured them was essential for active service. Swords,
+revolvers, field-glasses, pocket-knives (for gigantic pockets),
+compasses, mess-tins, cooking-batteries, sleeping-bags, waterproofs,
+boots innumerable, toilet accessories, drinking-cups, thermos flasks,
+field stationery cases, periscopes, tinted glasses, Gieve waistcoats,
+cholera belts, portable medicine cases, earplugs, tin-openers,
+corkscrews, notebooks, pencils, luminous watches, electric torches,
+pins, housewives, patent seat walking-sticks--everything that the man
+of commercial instincts had devised for the prosecution of the war.
+
+The amount of warlike equipment with which Doggie, with the aid of his
+Aunt Sophia and Peggy, encumbered the narrow little passages of
+Sturrocks's Hotel, must have weighed about a ton.
+
+At last Doggie's uniforms--several suits--came home. He had devoted
+enormous care to their fit. Attired in one he looked beautiful. Peggy
+decreed a dinner at the Carlton. She and Doggie alone. Her mother
+could get some stuffy old relation to spend the evening with her at
+Sturrocks's. She wanted Doggie all to herself, so as to realize the
+dream of many disgusting and humiliating months. And as she swept
+through the palm court and up the broad stairs and wound through the
+crowded tables of the restaurant with the khaki-clad Doggie by her
+side, she felt proud and uplifted. Here was her soldier whom she had
+made. Her very own man in khaki.
+
+"Dear old thing," she whispered, pressing his arm as they trekked to
+their table. "Don't you feel glorious? Don't you feel as if you could
+face the universe?"
+
+Peggy drank one glass of the quart of champagne. Doggie drank the
+rest.
+
+On getting into bed he wondered why this unprecedented quantity of
+wine had not affected his sobriety. Its only effect had been to stifle
+thought. He went to bed and slept happily, for Peggy's parting kiss
+had been such as would conduce to any young man's felicity.
+
+The next morning Aunt Sophia and Peggy saw him off to his depot, with
+his ton of luggage. He leaned out of the carriage window and exchanged
+hand kisses with Peggy until the curve of the line cut her off. Then
+he settled down in his corner with the _Morning Post_. But he could
+not concentrate his attention on the morning news. This strange
+costume in which he was clothed seemed unreal, monstrous; no longer
+the natty dress in which he had been proud to prink the night before,
+but a nightmare, Nessus-like investiture, signifying some abominable
+burning doom.
+
+The train swept him into a world that was upside down.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Those were proud days for Peggy. She went about Durdlebury with her
+head in the air, and her step was as martial as though she herself
+wore the King's uniform, and she regarded the other girls of the town
+with a defiant eye. If only she could discover, she thought, the
+sender of the abominable feather! In Timpany's drapery establishment
+she raked the girls at the counter with a searching glance. At the
+cathedral services she studied the demure faces of her contemporaries.
+Now that Doggie was a soldier she held the anonymous exploit to be
+cowardly and brutal. What did people know of the thousand and one
+reasons that kept eligible young men out of the Army? What had they
+known of Marmaduke? As soon as the illusion of his life had been
+dispelled, he had marched away with as gallant a tread as anybody; and
+though Doggie had kept to himself his shrinkings and his terrors, she
+knew that what to the average hardily bred young man was a gay
+adventure, was to him an ordeal of considerable difficulty. She longed
+for his first leave, so that she could parade him before the town, in
+the event of there being a lurking sceptic who still refused to
+believe that he had joined the Army.
+
+Conspicuous in the drawing-room, framed in silver, stood a large
+full-length photograph of Doggie in his new uniform.
+
+She wrote to him daily, chronicling the little doings of the town, at
+times reviling it for its dullness. Dad, on numberless committees, was
+scarcely ever in the house, except for hurried meals. Most of the
+pleasant young clergy had gone. Many of the girls had gone too:
+Dorothy Bruce to be a probationer in a V.A.D. hospital. If Durdlebury
+were not such a rotten out-of-the-world place, the infirmary would be
+full of wounded soldiers, and she could do her turn at nursing. As
+things were, she could only knit socks for Tommies and a silk khaki
+tie for her own boy. But when everybody was doing their bit, these
+occupations were not enough to prevent her feeling a little slacker.
+He would have to do the patriotic work for both of them, tell her all
+about himself, and let her share everything with him in imagination.
+She also expressed her affection for him in shy and slangy terms.
+
+Doggie wrote regularly. His letters were as shy and conveyed less
+information. The work was hard, the hours long, his accommodation
+Spartan. They were in huts on Salisbury Plain. Sometimes he confessed
+himself too tired to write more than a few lines. He had a bad cold in
+the head. He was better. They had inoculated him against typhoid and
+had allowed him two or three slack days. The first time he had
+unaccountably fainted; but he had seen some of the men do the same,
+and the doctor had assured him that it had nothing to do with
+cowardice. He had gone for a route march and had returned a dusty lump
+of fatigue. But after having shaken the dust out of his
+moustache--Doggie had a playful turn of phrase now and then--and drunk
+a quart of shandy-gaff, he had felt refreshed. Then it rained hard,
+and they were all but washed out of the huts. It was a very strange
+life--one which he never dreamed could have existed. "Fancy me," he
+wrote, "glad to sleep on a drenched bed!" There was the riding-school.
+Why hadn't he learned to ride as a boy? He had been told that the
+horse was a noble animal and the friend of man. He was afraid he would
+return to his dear Peggy with many of his young illusions shattered.
+The horse was the most ignoble, malevolent beast that ever walked,
+except the sergeant-major in the riding-school. Peggy was filled with
+admiration for his philosophic endurance of hardships. It was real
+courage. His letters contained simple statements of fact, but not a
+word of complaint. On the other hand, they were not ebullient with
+joy; but then, Peggy reflected, there was not much to be joyous about
+in a ramshackle hut on Salisbury Plain. "Dear old thing," she would
+write, "although you don't grouse, I know you must be having a pretty
+thin time. But you're bucking up splendidly, and when you get your
+leave I'll do a girl's very d----dest (don't be shocked; but I'm sure
+you're learning far worse language in the Army) to make it up to you."
+Her heart was very full of him.
+
+Then there came a time when his letters grew rarer and shorter. At
+last they ceased altogether. After a week's waiting she sent an
+anxious telegram. The answer came back. "Quite well. Will write soon."
+She waited. He did not write. One evening an unstamped envelope,
+addressed to her in a feminine hand, which she recognized as that of
+Marmaduke's anonymous correspondent, was found in the Deanery
+letter-box. The envelope enclosed a copy of a cutting from the
+"Gazette" of the morning paper, and a sentence was underlined and
+adorned with exclamation marks at the sides.
+
+    "R. Fusiliers. Tempy. 2nd Lieutenant J. Trevor resigns his
+    commission."
+
+The Colonel dealt with him as gently as he could in that final
+interview. He put his hand in a fatherly way on Doggie's shoulder and
+bade him not take it too much to heart. He had done his best; but he
+was not cut out for an officer. These were merciless times. In matters
+of life and death we could not afford weak links in the chain.
+Soldiers in high command, with great reputations, had already been
+scrapped. In Doggie's case there was no personal discredit. He had
+always conducted himself like a gentleman and a man of honour, but he
+had not the qualities necessary for the commanding of men. He must
+send in his resignation.
+
+"But what can I do, sir?" asked Doggie in a choking voice. "I am
+disgraced for ever."
+
+The Colonel reflected for a moment. He knew that Doggie's life had
+been a little hell on earth from the first day he had joined. He was
+very sorry for the poor little toy Pom in his pack of hounds. It was
+scarcely the toy Pom's fault that he had failed. But the Great Hunt
+could have no use for toy Poms. At last he took a sheet of regimental
+notepaper and wrote:
+
+    "DEAR TREVOR,--
+
+    "I am full of admiration for the plucky way in which you have
+    striven to overcome your physical disabilities, and I am only
+    too sorry that they should have compelled the resignation of
+    your commission and your severance from the regiment.
+
+                                                 "Yours sincerely,
+                                                     "L. G. CAIRD,
+                                                         "Lt-Col."
+
+He handed it to Doggie.
+
+"That's all I can do for you, my poor boy," said he.
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Doggie.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doggie took a room at the Savoy Hotel, and sat there most of the day,
+the pulp of a man. He had gone to the Savoy, not daring to show his
+face at the familiar Sturrocks's. At the Savoy he was but a number
+unknown, unquestioned. He wore civilian clothes. Such of his uniforms
+and martial paraphernalia as he had been allowed to retain in
+camp--for one can't house a ton of kit in a hut--he had given to his
+batman. His one desire now was to escape from the eyes of his
+fellow-men. He felt that he bore upon him the stigma of his disgrace,
+obvious to any casual glance. He was the man who had been turned out
+of the army as a hopeless incompetent. Even worse than the
+slacker--for the slacker might have latent the qualities that he
+lacked. Even at the best and brightest, he could only be mistaken for
+a slacker, once more the likely recipient of white feathers from any
+damsel patriotically indiscreet. The Colonel's letter brought him
+little consolation. It is true that he carried it about with him in
+his pocket-book; but the gibing eyes of observers had not the X-ray
+power to read it there. And he could not pin it on his hat. Besides,
+he knew that the kindly Colonel had stretched a point of veracity. No
+longer could he take refuge in his cherished delicacy of constitution.
+It would be a lie.
+
+Peggy, in her softest and most pitying mood, never guessed the nature
+of Doggie's ordeal. Those letters so brave, sometimes so playful, had
+been written with shaky hand, misty eyes, throbbing head, despairing
+heart. Looking back, it seemed to him one blurred dream of pain. His
+brother officers were no worse than those in any other Kitchener
+regiment. Indeed, the Colonel was immensely proud of them and sang
+their praises to any fellow-dugout who would listen to him at the
+Naval and Military Club. But how were a crowd of young men, trained in
+the rough and tumble of public schools, universities and sport, and
+now throbbing under the stress of the new deadly game, to understand
+poor Doggie Trevor? They had no time to take him seriously, save to
+curse him when he did wrong, and in their leisure time he became
+naturally a butt for their amusement.
+
+"Surely I don't have to sleep in there?" he asked the subaltern who
+was taking him round on the day of his arrival in camp, and showed him
+his squalid little cubby-hole of a hut with its dirty boards, its
+cheap table and chair, its narrow sleep-dispelling little bedstead.
+
+"Yes, it's a beastly hole, isn't it? Until last month we were under
+canvas."
+
+"Sleeping on the bare ground?"
+
+"Wallowing in the mud like pigs. Not one of us without a cold. Never
+had a such filthy time in my life."
+
+Doggie looked about him helplessly, while the comforter smiled grimly.
+Already his disconsolate attitude towards the dingy hutments of the
+camp and the layer of thick mud on his beautiful new boots had
+diverted his companion.
+
+"Couldn't I have this furnished at my own expense? A carpet and a
+proper bed, and a few pictures----"
+
+"I wouldn't try."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Some of it might get broken--not quite accidentally."
+
+"But surely," gasped Doggie, "the soldiers would not be allowed to
+come in here and touch my furniture?"
+
+"It seems," said the subaltern, after a bewildered stare, "that you
+have quite a lot to learn."
+
+Doggie had. The subaltern reported a new kind of animal to the mess.
+The mess saw to it that Doggie should be crammed with information--but
+information wholly incorrect and misleading, which added to his many
+difficulties. When his ton of kit arrived he held an unwilling
+reception in the hut and found himself obliged to explain to gravely
+curious men the use for which the various articles were designed.
+
+"This, I suppose, is a new type of gas-mask?"
+
+No. It was a patent cooker. Doggie politely showed how it worked. He
+also demonstrated that a sleeping-bag was not a kit-sack of a size
+unauthorized by the regulations, and that a huge steel-pointed
+walking-stick had nothing to do with agriculture.
+
+He was very weary of his visitors by the time they had gone. The next
+day the Adjutant advised him to scrap the lot. So sorrowfully he sent
+back most of his purchases to London.
+
+Then the Imp of Mischance brought as a visitor to the mess, a
+subaltern from another regiment who belonged to Doggie's part of the
+country.
+
+"Why--I'm blowed if it isn't Doggie Trevor!" he exclaimed carelessly.
+"How d'ye do, Doggie?"
+
+So thenceforward he was known in the regiment by the hated name.
+
+There were rags in which, as he was often the victim, he was forced to
+join. His fastidiousness loathed the coarse personal contact of arms
+and legs and bodies. His undeveloped strength could not cope with the
+muscle of his young brother barbarians. Aching with the day's fatigue,
+he would plead, to no avail, to be left alone. Compared with these
+feared and detested scraps, he considered, in after-times, battles to
+be agreeable recreations.
+
+Had he been otherwise competent, he might have won through the teasing
+and the ragging of the mess. No one disliked him. He was
+pleasant-mannered, good-natured, and appeared to bear no malice. True,
+his ignorance not only of the ways of the army but of the ways of
+their old hearty world, was colossal, his mode of expression rather
+that of a precise old church dignitary than of a subaltern in a
+regiment of Fusiliers, his habits, including a nervous shrinking from
+untidiness and dirt, those of a dear old maid; but the mess thought,
+honestly, that he could be knocked into their own social shape, and in
+the process of knocking carried out their own traditions. They might
+have succeeded if Doggie had discovered any reserve source of pride
+from which to draw. But Doggie was hopeless at his work. The mechanism
+of a rifle filled him with dismay. He could not help shutting his eyes
+before he pulled the trigger. Inured all his life to lethargic action,
+he found the smart crisp movements of drill almost impossible to
+attain. The riding-school was a terror and a torture. Every second he
+deemed himself in imminent peril of death. Said the sergeant-major:
+
+"Now, Mr. Trevor, you're sitting on a 'orse and not a 'olly-bush."
+
+And Doggie would wish the horse and the sergeant-major in hell.
+
+Again, what notion could poor Doggie have of command? He had never
+raised his mild tenor voice to damn anybody in his life. At first the
+tone in which the officers ordered the men about shocked him. So
+rough, so unmannerly, so unkind. He could not understand the cheery
+lack of resentment with which the men obeyed. He could not get into
+the way of military directness, could never check the polite "Do you
+mind" that came instinctively to his lips. Now if you ask a private
+soldier whether he minds doing a thing instead of telling him to do
+it, his brain begins to get confused. As one defaulter, whose
+confusion of brain had led him into trouble, observed to his mates:
+"What can you do with a blighter who's a cross between a blinking
+Archbishop and a ruddy dicky-bird?" What else, save show in divers and
+ingenious ways that you mocked at his authority? Doggie had the
+nervous dread of the men that he had anticipated. During his training
+on parade, words of command stuck in his throat. When forced out, they
+grotesquely mixed themselves together.
+
+The Adjutant gave advice.
+
+"Speak out, man. Bawl. You're dealing with soldiers at drill, not
+saying sweet nothings to old ladies in a drawing-room."
+
+And Doggie tried. Doggie tried very hard. He was mortified by his own
+stupidity. Little points of drill and duty that the others of his own
+standing seemed to pick up at once, almost by instinct, he could only
+grasp after long and tedious toil. No one realized that his brain was
+stupefied by the awful and unaccustomed physical fatigue.
+
+And then came the inevitable end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So Doggie crept into the Savoy Hotel and hid himself there, wishing he
+were dead. It was some time before he could write the terrible letter
+to Peggy. He did so on the day when he saw that his resignation was
+gazetted. He wrote after many anguished attempts:
+
+    "DEAR PEGGY,--
+
+    "I haven't written before about the dreadful thing that has
+    happened, because I simply couldn't. I have resigned my
+    commission. Not of my own free will, for, believe me, I would
+    have gone through anything for your sake, to say nothing of the
+    country and my own self-respect. To put it brutally, I have been
+    thrown out for sheer incompetence.
+
+    "I neither hope nor expect nor want you to continue your
+    engagement to a disgraced man. I release you from every
+    obligation your pity and generosity may think binding. I want
+    you to forget me and marry a man who can do the work of this new
+    world.
+
+    "What I shall do I don't know. I have scarcely yet been able to
+    think. Possibly I shall go abroad. At any rate I shan't return
+    to Durdlebury. If women sent me white feathers before I joined,
+    what would they send me now? It will always be my consolation to
+    know that you once gave me your love, in spite of the pain of
+    realizing that I have forfeited it by my unworthiness.
+
+    "Please tell Uncle Edward that I feel keenly his position, for
+    he was responsible for getting me the commission through General
+    Gadsby. Give my love to my Aunt, if she will have it.
+
+                                     "Yours always affectionately,
+                                             J. MARMADUKE TREVOR."
+
+By return of post came the answer:
+
+    "DEAREST,--
+
+    "We are all desperately disappointed. Perhaps we hurried on
+    things too quickly and tried you too high all at once. I ought
+    to have known. Oh, my poor dear boy, you must have had a
+    dreadful time. Why didn't you tell me? The news in the 'Gazette'
+    came upon me like a thunderbolt. I didn't know what to think.
+    I'm afraid I thought the worst, the very horrid worst--that you
+    had got tired of it and resigned of your own accord. How was one
+    to know? Your letter was almost a relief.
+
+    "In offering to release me from my engagement you are acting
+    like the honourable gentleman you are. Of course, I can
+    understand your feelings. But I should be a little beast to
+    accept right away like that. If there are any feathers about, I
+    should deserve to have them stuck on to me with tar. Don't think
+    of going abroad or doing anything foolish, dear, like that, till
+    you have seen me--that is to say, us, for Dad is bringing Mother
+    and me up to town by the first train to-morrow. Dad feels sure
+    that everything is not lost. He'll dig out General Gadsby and
+    fix up something for you. In the meantime, get us rooms at the
+    Savoy, though Mother is worried as to whether it's a respectable
+    place for Deans to stay at. But I know you wouldn't like to meet
+    us at Sturrocks's--otherwise you would have been there yourself.
+    Meet our train. All love from
+
+                                                          "PEGGY."
+
+Doggie engaged the rooms, but he did not meet the train. He did not
+even stay in the hotel to meet his relations. He could not meet them.
+He could not meet the pity in their eyes. He read in Peggy's note a
+desire to pet and soothe him and call him "Poor little Doggie," and he
+writhed. He could not even take up an heroic attitude, and say to
+Peggy: "When I have retrieved the past and can bring you an unsullied
+reputation, I will return and claim you. Till then farewell." There
+was no retrieving the past. Other men might fail at first, and then
+make good; but he was not like them. His was the fall of Humpty
+Dumpty. Final--irretrievable.
+
+He packed up his things in a fright and, leaving no address at the
+Savoy, drove to the Russell Hotel in Bloomsbury. But he wrote Peggy a
+letter "to await arrival." If time had permitted he would have sent a
+telegram, stating that he was off for Tobolsk or Tierra del Fuego, and
+thereby prevented their useless journey; but they had already started
+when he received Peggy's message.
+
+Nothing could be done, he wrote, in effect, to her, nothing in the way
+of redemption. He would not put her father to the risk of any other
+such humiliation. He had learned, by the most bitter experience, that
+the men who counted now in the world's respect and in woman's love
+were men of a type to which, with all the goodwill in the world, he
+could not make himself belong--he did not say to which he wished he
+could belong with all the agony and yearning of his soul. Peggy must
+forget him. The only thing he could do was to act up to her generous
+estimate of him as an honourable gentleman. As such it was his duty to
+withdraw for ever from her life. His exact words, however, were: "You
+know how I have always hated slang, how it has jarred upon me, often
+to your amusement, when you have used it. But I have learned in the
+past months how expressive it may be. Through slang I've learned what
+I am. I am a born 'rotter.' A girl like you can't possibly love and
+marry a rotter. So the rotter, having a lingering sense of decency,
+makes his bow and exits--God knows where."
+
+Peggy, red-eyed, adrift, rudderless on a frightening sea, called her
+father into her bedroom at the Savoy and showed him the letter. He
+drew out and adjusted his round tortoise-shell-rimmed reading-glasses
+and read it.
+
+"That's a miraculously new Doggie," said he.
+
+Peggy clutched the edges of his coat.
+
+"I've never heard you call him that before."
+
+"It has never been worth while," said the Dean.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+At the Savoy, during the first stupefaction of his misery, Doggie had
+not noticed particularly the prevalence of khaki. At the Russell it
+dwelt insistent, like the mud on Salisbury Plain. Men that might have
+been the twin brethren of his late brother officers were everywhere,
+free, careless, efficient. The sight of them added the gnaw of envy to
+his heartache. Even in his bedroom he could hear the jingle of their
+spurs and their cheery voices as they clanked along the corridor. On
+the third day after his migration he took a bold step and moved into
+lodgings in Woburn Place. Here at least he could find quiet,
+untroubled by heart-rending sights and sounds. He spent most of his
+time in dull reading and dispirited walking. For he could walk now--so
+much had his training done for him--and walk for many miles without
+fatigue. For all the enjoyment he got out of it, he might as well have
+marched round a prison yard. Indeed there were some who tramped the
+prison yards with keener zest. They were buoyed up with the hope of
+freedom, they could look forward to the ever-approaching day when they
+should be thrown once more into the glad whirl of life. But the
+miraculously new Doggie had no hope. He felt for ever imprisoned in
+his shame. His failure preyed on his mind.
+
+He dallied with thoughts of suicide. Why hadn't he salved, at any
+rate, his service revolver? Then he remembered the ugly habits of the
+unmanageable thing--how it always kicked its muzzle up in the air.
+Would he have been able even to shoot himself with it? And he smiled
+in self-derision. Drowning was not so difficult. Any fool could throw
+himself into the water. With a view to the inspection of a suitable
+spot, Doggie wandered, idly, in the dusk of one evening, to Waterloo
+Bridge, and turning his back to the ceaseless traffic, leaned his
+elbows on the parapet and stared in front of him. A few lights already
+gleamed from Somerset House and the more dimly seen buildings of the
+Temple. The dome of St. Paul's loomed a dark shadow through the mist.
+The river stretched below very peaceful, very inviting. The parapet
+would be easy to climb. He did not know whether he could dive in the
+approved manner--hands joined over head. He had never learned to swim,
+let alone dive. At any rate, he could fall off. In that art the
+riding-school had proved him a past master. But the spot had its
+disadvantages. It was too public. Perhaps other bridges might afford
+more privacy. He would inspect them all. It would be something to do.
+There was no hurry. As he was not wanted in this world, so he had no
+assurance of being welcome in the next. He had a morbid vision of
+avatar after avatar being kicked from sphere to sphere.
+
+At this point of his reflections he became aware of a presence by his
+side. He turned his head and found a soldier, an ordinary private,
+very close to him, also leaning on the parapet.
+
+"I thought I wasn't mistaken in Mr. Marmaduke Trevor."
+
+Doggie started away, on the point of flight, dreading the possible
+insolence of one of the men of his late regiment. But the voice of the
+speaker rang in his ears with a strange familiarity, and the great
+fleshy nose, the high cheek-bones, and the little grey eyes in the
+weather-beaten face suggested vaguely some one of the long ago. His
+dawning recognition amused the soldier.
+
+"Yes, laddie. Ye're right. It's your old Phineas--Phineas McPhail,
+Esq., M.A., defunct. Now 33702 Private P. McPhail redivivus."
+
+He warmly wrung the hand of the semi-bewildered Doggie, who murmured:
+"Very glad to meet you, I'm sure."
+
+Phineas, gaunt and bony, took his arm.
+
+"Would it not just be possible," he said, in his old half-pedantic,
+half-ironic intonation, "to find a locality less exposed to the roar
+of traffic and the rude jostling of pedestrians and the inclemency of
+the elements, in which we can enjoy the amenities of a little refined
+conversation?"
+
+It was like a breath from the past. Doggie smiled.
+
+"Which way are you going?"
+
+"Your way, my dear Marmaduke, was ever mine, until I was swept, I
+thought for ever, out of your path by a torrential spate of whisky."
+
+He laughed, as though it had been a playful freak of destiny. Doggie
+laughed, too. But for the words he had addressed to hotel and
+lodging-house folk, he had spoken to no one for over a fortnight. The
+instinctive craving for companionship made Phineas suddenly welcome.
+
+"Yes. Let us have a talk," said he. "Come to my rooms, if you have the
+time. There'll be some dinner."
+
+"Will I come? Will I have dinner? Will I re-enter once more the
+paradise of the affluent? Laddie, I will."
+
+In the Strand they hailed a taxi and drove to Bloomsbury. On the way
+Phineas asked:
+
+"You mentioned your rooms. Are you residing permanently in London?"
+
+"Yes," said Doggie.
+
+"And Durdlebury?"
+
+"I'm not going back."
+
+"London's a place full of temptations for those without experience,"
+Phineas observed sagely.
+
+"I've not noticed any," Doggie replied. On which Phineas laughed and
+slapped him on the knee.
+
+"Man," said he, "when I first saw you I thought you had changed into a
+disillusioned misanthropist. But I'm wrong. You haven't changed a
+bit."
+
+A few minutes later they reached Woburn Place. Doggie showed him into
+the sitting-room on the drawing-room floor. A fire was burning in the
+grate, for though it was only early autumn, the evening was cold. The
+table was set for Doggie's dinner. Phineas looked round him in
+surprise. The heterogeneous and tasteless furniture, the dreadful
+Mid-Victorian prints on the walls--one was the "Return of the Guards
+from the Crimea," representing the landing from the troop-ship,
+repellent in its smug unreality, the coarse glass and well-used plate
+on the table, the crumpled napkin in a ring (for Marmaduke who in his
+mother's house had never been taught to dream that a napkin could
+possibly be used for two consecutive meals!), the general air of
+slipshod Philistinism--all came as a shock to Phineas, who had
+expected to find in Marmaduke's "rooms" a replica of the fastidious
+prettiness of the peacock and ivory room at Denby Hall. He scratched
+his head, covered with a thick brown thatch.
+
+"Laddie," said he gravely, "you must excuse me if I take a liberty;
+but I canna fit you into this environment."
+
+Doggie looked about him also. "Seems funny, doesn't it?"
+
+"It cannot be that you've come down in the world?"
+
+"To bed-rock," said Doggie.
+
+"No?" said Phineas, with an air of concern. "Man, I'm awful sorry. I
+know what the coming down feels like. And I, finding it not abhorrent
+to a sophisticated and well-trained conscience, and thinking you could
+well afford it, extracted a thousand pounds from your fortune. My dear
+lad, if Phineas McPhail could return the money----"
+
+Doggie broke in with a laugh. "Pray don't distress yourself, Phineas.
+It's not a question of money. I've as much as ever I had. The last
+thing in the world I've had to think of has been money."
+
+"Then what in the holy names of Thunder and Beauty," cried Phineas,
+throwing out one hand to an ancient saddle-bag sofa whose ends were
+covered by flimsy rags, and the other to the decayed ormolu clock on
+the mantelpiece, "what in the name of common sense are you doing in
+this awful inelegant lodging-house?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Doggie. "It's a fact," he continued after a
+pause. "The scheme of decoration is revolting to every æsthetic sense
+which I've spent my life in cultivating. Its futile pretentiousness is
+the rasping irritation of every hour. Yet here I am. Quite
+comfortable. And here I propose to stay."
+
+Phineas McPhail, M.A., late of Glasgow and Cambridge, looked at Doggie
+with his keen little grey eyes beneath bent and bristling eyebrows. In
+the language of 33702 Private McPhail, he asked:
+
+"What the blazes is it all about?"
+
+"That's a long story," said Doggie, looking at his watch. "In the
+meantime, I had better give some orders about dinner. And you would
+like to wash."
+
+He threw open a wing of the folding-doors, once in Georgian times
+separating drawing-room from withdrawing-room, and now separating
+living-room from bedroom, and switching on the light, invited McPhail
+to follow.
+
+"I think you'll find everything you want," said he.
+
+Phineas McPhail, left alone to his ablutions, again looked round, and
+he had more reason than ever to ask what it was all about. Marmaduke's
+bedroom at Denby Hall had been a dream of satinwood and dull blue
+silk. The furniture and hangings had been Mrs. Trevor's present to
+Marmaduke on his sixteenth birthday. He remembered how he had been
+bored to death by that stupendous ass of an old woman--for so he had
+characterized her--during the process of selection and installation.
+The present room, although far more luxurious than any that Phineas
+McPhail had slept in for years, formed a striking contrast with that
+remembered nest of effeminacy.
+
+"I'll have to give it up," he said to himself. But just as he had put
+the finishing touches to his hair an idea occurred to him. He flung
+open the door.
+
+"Laddie, I've got it. It's a woman."
+
+But Doggie laughed and shook his head, and leaving McPhail, took his
+turn in the bedroom. For the first time since his return to civil life
+he ceased for a few moments to brood over his troubles. McPhail's
+mystification amused him. McPhail's personality and address, viewed in
+the light of the past, were full of interest. Obviously he was a man
+who lived unashamed on low levels. Doggie wondered how he could have
+regarded him for years with a respect almost amounting to veneration.
+In a curious unformulated way Doggie felt that he had authority over
+this man so much older than himself, who had once been his master. It
+tickled into some kind of life his deadened self-esteem. Here at last
+was a man with whom he could converse on sure ground. The khaki
+uniform caused him no envy.
+
+"The poet is not altogether incorrect," said McPhail, when they sat
+down to dinner, "in pointing out the sweet uses of adversity. If it
+had not been for the adversity of a wee bit operation, I should not
+now be on sick furlough. And if I had not been on furlough I shouldn't
+have the pleasure of this agreeable reconciliation. Here's to you,
+laddie, and to our lasting friendship." He sipped his claret. "It's
+not like the Lafitte in the old cellar--_Eheu fugaces anni et_--what
+the plague is the Latin for vintages? But 'twill serve." He drank
+again and smacked his lips. "It will even serve very satisfactorily.
+Good wine at a perfect temperature is not the daily drink of the
+British soldier."
+
+"By the way," said Doggie, "you haven't told me why you became a
+soldier."
+
+"A series of vicissitudes dating from the hour I left your house,"
+said Phineas, "vicissitudes the recital of which would wring your
+heart, laddie, and make angels weep if their lachrymal glands were not
+too busily engaged by the horrors of war, culminated four months ago
+in an attack of fervid and penniless patriotism. No one seemed to want
+me except my country. She clamoured for me on every hoarding and every
+omnibus. A recruiting-sergeant in Trafalgar Square tapped me on the
+arm, and said: 'Young man, your country wants you.' Said I with my
+Scottish caution, 'Can you take your affidavit that you got the
+information straight from the War Office?' 'I can,' said he. Then I
+threw myself on his bosom and bade him take me to her. That's how I
+became 33702 Private Phineas McPhail, A Company, 10th Wessex Rangers,
+at the remuneration of one shilling and twopence per diem."
+
+"Do you like it?" asked Doggie.
+
+Phineas rubbed the side of his thick nose thoughtfully.
+
+"There you come to the metaphysical conception of human happiness," he
+replied. "In itself it is a vile life. To a man of thirty-five----"
+
+"Good lord!" cried Doggie, "I always thought you were about fifty!"
+
+"Your mother caught me young, laddie. To a man of thirty-five, a
+graduate of ancient and honourable universities and a whilom candidate
+for holy orders, it is a life that would seem to have no attraction
+whatever. The hours are absurd, the work distasteful, and the mode of
+living repulsive. But strange to say, it fully contents me. The secret
+of happiness lies in the supple adaptability to conditions. When I
+found that it was necessary to perform ridiculous antics with my legs
+and arms, I entered into the comicality of the idea and performed them
+with an indulgent zest which soon won me the precious encomiums of my
+superiors in rank. When I found that the language of the canteen was
+not that of the pulpit or the drawing-room, I quickly acquired the new
+vocabulary and won the pleasant esteem of my equals. By means of this
+faculty of adaptability I can suck enjoyment out of everything. But,
+at the same time, mind you, keeping in reserve a little secret fount
+of pleasure."
+
+"What do you call a little secret fount of pleasure?" asked Doggie.
+
+"I'll give you an illustration--and, if you're the man I consider you
+to be, you'll take a humorous view of my frankness. At present I adapt
+myself to a rough atmosphere of coarseness and lustiness, in which
+nothing coarse or lusty I could do would produce the slightest ripple
+of a convulsion: but I have my store of a cultivated mind and cheap
+editions of the classics, my little secret fount of Castaly to drink
+from whenever I so please. On the other hand, when I had the honour of
+being responsible for your education, I adapted myself to a hot-house
+atmosphere in which Respectability and the concomitant virtues of
+Supineness and Sloth were cultivated like rare orchids; but in my
+bedroom I kept a secret fount which had its source in some good Scots
+distillery."
+
+Whereupon he attacked his plateful of chicken with vehement gusto.
+
+"You're a hedonist, Phineas," said Doggie, after a thoughtful pause.
+
+"Man," said Phineas, laying down his knife and fork, "you've just hit
+it. I am. I'm an accomplished hedonist. An early recognition of the
+fact saved me from the Church."
+
+"And the Church from you," said Doggie quietly.
+
+Phineas shot a swift glance at him beneath his shaggy brown eyebrows.
+
+"Ay," said he. "Though, mark you, if I had followed my original
+vocation, the Bench of Bishops could not have surpassed me in the
+unction in which I would have wallowed. If I had been born a bee in a
+desert, laddie, I would have sucked honey out of a dead camel."
+
+With easy and picturesque cynicism, and in a Glasgow accent which had
+curiously broadened since his spell of Oriental ease at Denby Hall, he
+developed his philosophy, illustrating it by incidents more or less
+reputable in his later career. At first, possessor of the ill-gotten
+thousand pounds and of considerable savings from a substantial salary,
+he had enjoyed the short wild riot of the Prodigal's life. Paris saw
+most of his money--the Paris which, under his auspices, Doggie never
+knew. Plentiful claret set his tongue wagging in Rabelaisian
+reminiscence. After Paris came husks. Not bad husks if you knew how to
+cook them. Borrowed salt and pepper and a little stolen butter worked
+wonders. But they were irritating to the stomach. He lay on the floor,
+said he, and yelled for fatted calf; but there was no soft-headed
+parent to supply it. Phineas McPhail must be a slave again and work
+for his living. Then came private coaching, freelance journalism,
+hunting for secretaryships: the commonplace story humorously told of
+the wastrel's decline; then a gorgeous efflorescence in light green
+and gold as the man outside a picture palace in Camberwell--and
+lastly, the penniless patriot throwing himself into the arms of his
+desirous country.
+
+"Have you any whisky in the house, laddie?" he asked, after the dinner
+things had been taken away.
+
+"No," said Doggie, "but I could easily get you some."
+
+"Pray don't," said McPhail. "If you had, I was going to ask you to be
+kind enough not to let your excellent landlord, whom I recognize as a
+butler of the old school, produce it. Butlers of the old school are
+apt, like Peddle, to bring in a maddening tray of decanters, syphons,
+and glasses. You may not believe me, but I haven't touched a drop of
+whisky since I joined the army."
+
+"Why?" asked Doggie.
+
+McPhail looked at the long carefully preserved ash of one of Doggie's
+excellent cigars.
+
+"It's all a part of the doctrine of adaptability. In order to attain
+happiness in the army, the first step is to avoid differences of
+opinion with the civil and military police and non-commissioned
+officers, and such-like sycophantic myrmidons of authority. Being a
+man of academic education, it is with difficulty that I agree with
+them when I'm sober. If I were drunk, my bonnie laddie"--he waved a
+hand--"well--I don't get drunk. And as I have no use for whisky, as
+merely an agreeable beverage, I have struck whisky out of my
+hedonistic scheme of existence. But if you have any more of that
+pleasant claret----"
+
+Doggie rang the bell and gave the order. The landlord brought in
+bottle and glasses.
+
+"And now, my dear Marmaduke," said Phineas after an appreciative sip,
+"now that I have told you the story of my life, may I, without
+impertinent curiosity, again ask you what you meant when you said you
+had come down to bed-rock?"
+
+The sight of the man, smug, cynical, shameless, sprawling luxuriously
+on the sofa, with his tunic unbuttoned, filled him with sudden fury:
+such fury as Oliver's insult had aroused, such as had impelled him
+during a vicious rag in the mess to clutch a man's hair and almost
+pull it out by the roots.
+
+"Yes, you may; and I'll tell you," he cried, starting to his feet.
+"I've reached the bed-rock of myself--the bed-rock of humiliation and
+disgrace. And it's all your fault. Instead of training me to be a man,
+you pandered to my poor mother's weaknesses and brought me up like a
+little toy dog--the infernal name still sticks to me wherever I go.
+You made a helpless fool of me, and let me go out a helpless fool into
+the world. And when you came across me I was thinking whether it
+wouldn't be best to throw myself over the parapet. A month ago you
+would have saluted me in the street and stood before me at attention
+when I spoke to you----"
+
+"Eh? What's that, laddie?" interrupted Phineas, sitting up. "You've
+held a commission in the army?"
+
+"Yes," said Doggie fiercely, "and I've been chucked. I've been thrown
+out as a hopeless rotter. And who is most to blame--you or I? It's
+you. You've brought me to this infernal place. I'm here in
+hiding--hiding from my family and the decent folk I'm ashamed to meet.
+And it's all your fault, and now you have it!"
+
+"Laddie, laddie," said Phineas reproachfully, "the facts of my being a
+guest beneath your roof and my humble military rank, render it
+difficult for me to make an appropriate reply."
+
+Doggie's rage had spent itself. These rare fits were short-lived and
+left him somewhat unnerved.
+
+"I'm sorry, Phineas. As you say, you're my guest. And as to your
+uniform, God knows I honour every man who wears it."
+
+"That's taking things in the right spirit," Phineas conceded graciously,
+helping himself to another glass of wine. "And the right spirit is a
+great healer of differences. I'll not go so far as to deny that there
+is an element of justice in your apportionment of blame. There may, on
+various occasions, have been some small dereliction of duty. But
+you'll have been observing that in the recent exposition of my
+philosophy I have not laboured the point of duty to disproportionate
+exaggeration."
+
+Doggie lit a cigarette. His fingers were still shaking. "I'm glad you
+own up. It's a sign of grace."
+
+"Ay," said Phineas, "no man is altogether bad. In spite of everything,
+I've always entertained a warm affection for you, laddie, and when I
+saw you staring at bogies round about the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral
+my heart went out to you. You didn't look over-happy."
+
+Doggie, always responsive to human kindness, was touched. He felt a
+note of sincerity in McPhail's tone. Perhaps he had judged him
+harshly, overlooking the plea in extenuation which Phineas had set
+up--that in every man there must be some saving remnant of goodness.
+
+"I wasn't happy, Phineas," he said; "I was as miserable an outcast as
+could be found in London, and when a fellow's down and out, you must
+forgive him for speaking more bitterly than he ought."
+
+"Don't I know, laddie? Don't I know?" said Phineas sympathetically. He
+reached for the cigar-box. "Do you mind if I take another? Perhaps
+two--one to smoke afterwards, in memory of this meeting. It is a long
+time since my lips touched a thing so gracious as a real Havana."
+
+"Take a lot," said Doggie generously, "I don't really like cigars. I
+only bought them because I thought they might be stronger than
+cigarettes."
+
+Phineas filled his pockets. "You can pay no greater compliment to a
+man's honesty of purpose," said he, "than by taking him at his word.
+And now," he continued, when he had carefully lit the cigar he had
+first chosen, "let us review the entire situation. What about our good
+friends at Durdlebury? What about your uncle, the Very Reverend the
+Dean, against whom I bear no ill-will, though I do not say that his
+ultimate treatment of me was not over-hasty--what about him? If you
+call upon me to put my almost fantastically variegated experience of
+life at your disposal, and advise you in this crisis, so I must ask
+you to let me know the exact conditions in which you find yourself."
+
+Doggie smiled once again, finding something diverting and yet
+stimulating in the calm assurance of Private McPhail.
+
+"I'm not aware that I've asked you for advice, Phineas."
+
+"The fact that you're not aware of many things that you do is no proof
+that you don't do them--and do them in a manner perfectly obvious to
+another party," replied Phineas sententiously. "You're asking for
+advice and consolation from any friendly human creature to whom you're
+not ashamed to speak. You've had an awful sorrowful time, laddie."
+
+Doggie roamed about the room, with McPhail's little grey eyes fixed on
+him. Yes, Phineas was right. He would have given most of his
+possessions to be able, these later days, to pour out his tortured
+soul into sympathetic ears. But shame had kept him, still kept him,
+would always keep him, from the ears of those he loved. Yes, Phineas
+had said the diabolically right thing. He could not be ashamed to
+speak to Phineas. And there was something good in Phineas which he had
+noticed with surprise. How easy for him, in response to bitter
+accusation, to cast the blame on his mother? He himself had given the
+opening. How easy for him to point to his predecessor's short tenure
+of office and plead the alternative of carrying out Mrs. Trevor's
+theory of education or of resigning his position in favour of some
+sycophant even more time-serving? But he had kept silent.... Doggie
+stopped short and looked at Phineas with eyes dumbly questioning and
+quivering lips.
+
+Phineas rose and put his hands on the boy's shoulders, and said very
+gently:
+
+"Tell me all about it, laddie."
+
+Then Doggie broke down, and with a gush of unminded tears found
+expression for his stony despair. His story took a long time in the
+telling; and Phineas interjecting an occasional sympathetic "Ay, ay,"
+and a delicately hinted question, extracted from Doggie all there was
+to tell, from the outbreak of war to their meeting on Waterloo Bridge.
+
+"And now," cried he at last, a dismally tragic figure, his young face
+distorted and reddened, his sleek hair ruffled from the back into
+unsightly perpendicularities (an invariable sign of distracted
+emotion) and his hands appealingly outstretched--"what the hell am I
+going to do?"
+
+"Laddie," said Phineas, standing on the hearthrug, his hands on his
+hips, "if you had posed the question in the polite language of the
+precincts of Durdlebury Cathedral, I might have been at a loss to
+reply. But the manly invocation of hell shows me that your foot is
+already on the upward path. If you had prefaced it by the adjective
+that gives colour to all the aspirations of the British Army, it would
+have been better. But I'm not reproaching you, laddie. _Poco à poco._
+It is enough. It shows me you are not going to run away to a neutral
+country and present the unedifying spectacle of a mangy little British
+lion at the mercy of a menagerie of healthy hyenas and such-like
+inferior though truculent beasties."
+
+"My God!" cried Doggie, "haven't I thought of it till I'm half mad? It
+would be just as you say--unendurable." He began to pace the room
+again. "And I can't go to France. It would be just the same as
+England. Every one would be looking white feathers at me. The only
+thing I can do is to go out of the world. I'm not fit for it. Oh, I
+don't mean suicide. I've not enough pluck. That's off. But I could go
+and bury myself in the wilderness somewhere where no one would ever
+find me."
+
+"Laddie," said McPhail, "I misdoubt that you're going to settle down
+in any wilderness. You haven't the faculty of adaptability of which I
+have spoken to-night at some length. And your heart is young and not
+coated with the holy varnish of callousness, which is a secret
+preparation known only to those who have served a long apprenticeship
+in a severe school of egotism."
+
+"That's all very well," cried Doggie, "but what the----"
+
+Phineas waved an interrupting hand. "You've got to go back, laddie.
+You've got to whip all the moral courage in you and go back to
+Durdlebury. The Dean, with his influence, and the letter you have
+shown me from your Colonel, can easily get you some honourable
+employment in either Service not so exacting as the one which you have
+recently found yourself unable to perform."
+
+Doggie threw a newly-lighted cigarette into the fire and turned
+passionately on McPhail.
+
+"I won't. You're talking drivelling rot. I can't. I'd sooner die than
+go back there with my tail between my legs. I'd sooner enlist as a
+private soldier."
+
+"Enlist?" said Phineas, and he drew himself up straight and gaunt.
+"Well, why not?"
+
+"Enlist?" echoed Doggie in a dull tone.
+
+"Have you never contemplated such a possibility?"
+
+"Good God, no!" said Doggie.
+
+"I have enlisted. And I am a man of ancient lineage as honourable, so
+as not to enter into unproductive argument, as yours. And I am a
+Master of Arts of the two Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. Yet I
+fail to find anything dishonourable in my present estate as 33702
+Private Phineas McPhail in the British Army."
+
+Doggie seemed not to hear him. He stared at him wildly.
+
+"Enlist?" he repeated. "As a Tommy?"
+
+"Even as a Tommy," said Phineas. He glanced at the ormolu clock. "It
+is past one. The respectable widow woman near the Elephant and Castle
+who has let me a bedroom will be worn by anxiety as to my non-return.
+Marmaduke, my dear, dear laddie, I must leave you. If you will be
+lunching here twelve hours hence, nothing will give me greater
+pleasure than to join you. Laddie, do you think you could manage a
+fried sole and a sweetbread?"
+
+"Enlist?" said Doggie, following him out to the front door in a dream.
+
+He opened the door. Phineas shook hands.
+
+"Fried sole and a sweetbread at one-thirty?"
+
+"Of course, with pleasure," said Doggie.
+
+Phineas fumbled in his pockets.
+
+"It's a long cry at this time of night from Bloomsbury to the Elephant
+and Castle. You haven't the price of a taxi fare about you,
+laddie--two or three pounds----?"
+
+Doggie drew from his patent note-case a sheaf of one-pound and
+ten-shilling treasury notes and handed them over to McPhail's vulture
+clutch.
+
+"Good night, laddie!"
+
+"Good night!"
+
+Phineas strode away into the blackness. Doggie shut the front door and
+put up the chain and went back into his sitting-room. He wound his
+fingers in his hair.
+
+"Enlist? My God!"
+
+He lit a cigarette and after a few puffs flung it into the grate. He
+stared at the alternatives.
+
+Flight, which was craven--a lifetime of self-contempt. Durdlebury,
+which was impossible. Enlistment----?
+
+Yet what was a man incapable yet able-bodied, honourable though
+disgraced, to do?
+
+His landlord found him at seven o'clock in the morning asleep in an
+arm-chair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+After a bath and a change and breakfast, Doggie went out for one of
+his solitary walks. At Durdlebury such a night as the last would have
+kept him in bed in a darkened room for most of the following day. But
+he had spent many far, far worse on Salisbury Plain, and the
+inexorable reveille had dragged him out into the raw dreadful morning,
+heedless of his headache and yearning for slumber, until at last the
+process of hardening had begun. To-day Doggie was as unfatigued a
+young man as walked the streets of London, a fact which his mind was
+too confusedly occupied to appreciate. Once more was he beset less by
+the perplexities of the future than by a sense of certain impending
+doom. For to Phineas McPhail's "Why not?" he had been able to give no
+answer. He could give no answer now, as he marched with swinging step,
+automatically, down Oxford Street and the Bayswater Road in the
+direction of Kensington Gardens. He could give no answer as he stood
+sightlessly staring at the Peter Pan statue.
+
+A one-armed man in a khaki cap and hospital blue came and stood by his
+side and looked in a pleased yet puzzled way at the exquisite poem in
+marble. At last he spoke--in a rich Irish accent.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, but could you be telling me the meaning of
+it, at all?"
+
+Doggie awoke and smiled.
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"I do," said the soldier.
+
+"It is about Peter Pan. A kind of Fairy Tale. You can see the 'little
+people' peeping out--I think you call them so in Ireland."
+
+"We do that," said the soldier.
+
+So Doggie sketched the outline of the immortal story of the Boy Who
+Will Never Grow Old, and the Irishman listened with deep interest.
+
+"Indeed," said he after a time, "it is good to come back to the true
+things after the things out there." He waved his one arm in the vague
+direction of the war.
+
+"Why do you call them true things?" Doggie asked quickly.
+
+They turned away, and Doggie found himself sitting on a bench by the
+man's side.
+
+"It's not me that can tell you that," said he, "and my wife and
+children in Galway."
+
+"Were you there at the outbreak of war?"
+
+He was. A reservist called back to the colours after some years of
+retirement from the army. He had served in India and South Africa, a
+hard-bitten soldier, proud of the traditions of his old regiment.
+There were scarcely any of them left--and that was all that was left
+of him. He smiled cheerily. Doggie condoled with him on the loss of
+his arm.
+
+"Ah sure," he replied, "and it might keep me out of a fight when I go
+into Ballinasloe."
+
+"Who would you want to fight?" asked Doggie.
+
+"The dirty Sinn Feiners that do be always shouting 'Freedom for
+Ireland and to hell with freedom for the rest of the world.' If I
+haven't lost my arm in a glorious cause, what have I lost it for? Can
+you tell me that?"
+
+Doggie agreed that he had fought for the greater freedom of humanity
+and gave him a cigarette, and they went on talking. The Irishman had
+been in the retreat from Mons, the first battle of Ypres, and he had
+lost his arm in no battle at all; just a stray shell over the road as
+they were marching back to billets. They discussed the war, the ethics
+of it. Doggie still wanted to know why the realities of blood and mud
+and destruction were not the true things. Gradually he found that the
+Irishman meant that the true things were the spiritual, undying
+things; that the grim realities would pass away; that from these dead
+realities would arise the noble ideals of the future, which would be
+symbolized in song and marble; that all he had endured and sacrificed
+was but a part of the Great Sacrifice we were making for the Freedom
+of the World. Being a man roughly educated on a Galway farm and in an
+infantry regiment, he had great difficulty in co-ordinating his ideas;
+but he had a curious power of vision that enabled him to pierce to the
+heart of things, which he interpreted according to his untrained sense
+of beauty.
+
+They parted with expressions of mutual esteem. Doggie struck across
+the Gardens with a view to returning home by Knightsbridge, Piccadilly
+and Shaftesbury Avenue. He strode along, his thoughts filled with the
+Irish soldier. Here was a man, maimed for life and quite content that
+it should be so, who had reckoned all the horrors through which he had
+passed as externals unworthy of the consideration of his unconquerable
+soul; a man simple, unassuming, expansive only through his Celtic
+temperament, which allowed him to talk easily to a stranger before
+whom his English or Scotch comrade would have been dumb and gaping as
+an oyster; obviously brave, sincere and loyal. Perhaps something even
+higher. Perhaps, in essence, the very highest. The Poet-Warrior. The
+term struck Doggie's brain with a thud, like the explosive fusion of
+two elements.
+
+During his walk to Kensington Gardens a poisonous current had run at
+the back of his mind. Drifting on it, might he not escape? Was he not
+of too fine a porcelain to mingle with the coarse and common pottery
+of the ranks? Was it necessary to go into the thick of the coarse clay
+vessels, just to be shattered? It was easy for Phineas to proclaim
+that he found no derogation to his dignity as a man of birth and a
+university graduate in identifying himself with his fellow privates.
+Phineas had systematically brutalized himself into fitness for the
+position. He had armed himself in brass--_æs triplex_. He smiled at
+his own wit. But he, James Marmaduke Trevor, who had lived his life as
+a clean gentleman, was in a category apart.
+
+Now, he found that his talk with the Irishman had been an antidote to
+the poison. He felt ashamed. Did he dare set himself up to be finer
+clay than that common soldier? Spiritually, was he even of clay as
+fine? In a Great Judgment of Souls which of the twain would be among
+the Elect? The ultra-refined Mr. Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall, or
+the ignorant poet-warrior of Ballinasloe? "Not Doggie Trevor," he said
+between his teeth. And he went home in a chastened spirit.
+
+Phineas McPhail appeared punctually at half-past one, and feasted
+succulently on fried sole and sweetbread.
+
+"Laddie," said he, "the man that can provide such viands is a Thing of
+Beauty which, as the poet says, is a Joy for Ever. The light in his
+window is a beacon to the hungry Tommy dragging himself through the
+viscous wilderness of regulation stew."
+
+"I'm afraid it won't be a beacon for very long," said Doggie.
+
+"Eh?" queried Phineas sharply. "You'd surely not be thinking of
+refusing an old friend a stray meal?"
+
+Doggie coloured at the coarseness of the misunderstanding.
+
+"How could I be such a brute? There won't be a light in the window
+because I shan't be there. I'm going to enlist."
+
+Phineas put his elbows on the table and regarded him earnestly.
+
+"I would not take too seriously words spoken in the heat of midnight
+revelry, even though the revel was conducted on the genteelest
+principles. Have you thought of the matter in the cool and sober hours
+of the morning?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's an unco' hard life, laddie."
+
+"The one I'm leading is a harder," said Doggie. "I've made up my
+mind."
+
+"Then I've one piece of advice to give you," said McPhail. "Sink the
+name of Marmaduke, which would only stimulate the ignorant ribaldry of
+the canteen, and adopt the name of James, which your godfathers and
+godmothers, with miraculous foresight, considering their limitations
+in the matter of common sense, have given you."
+
+"That's a good idea," said Doggie.
+
+"Also it would tend to the obliteration of class prejudices if you
+gave up smoking Turkish cigarettes at ten shillings a hundred and
+arrived in your platoon as an amateur of 'fags.'"
+
+"I can't stand 'fags,'" said Doggie.
+
+"You can. The human organism is so constituted that it can stand the
+sweepings of the elephants' house in the Zoological Gardens. Try. This
+time it's only 'fags.'"
+
+Doggie took one from the crumpled paper packet which was handed to
+him, and lit it. He made a wry face, never before having smoked
+American tobacco.
+
+"How do you like the flavour?" asked Phineas.
+
+"I think I'd prefer the elephants' house," said Doggie, eyeing the
+thing with disgust.
+
+"You'll find it the flavour of the whole British Army," said McPhail.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few days later the Dean received a letter bearing the pencilled
+address of a camp on the south coast, and written by 35792 Pvte. James
+M. Trevor, A Company, 2-10th Wessex Rangers. It ran:
+
+    "I hope you won't think me heartless for having left you so long
+    without news of me; but until lately I had the same reasons for
+    remaining in seclusion as when I last wrote. Even now I'm not
+    asking for sympathy or reconsideration of my failure or desire
+    in any way to take advantage of the generosity of you all.
+
+    "I have enlisted in the 10th Wessex. Phineas McPhail, whom I met
+    in London and whose character for good or evil I can better
+    gauge now than formerly, is a private in the same battalion. I
+    don't pretend to enjoy the life any more than I could enjoy
+    living in a kraal of savages in Central Africa. But that is a
+    matter of no account. I don't propose to return to Durdlebury
+    till the end of the war. I left it as an officer and I'm not
+    coming back as a private soldier. I enclose a cheque for £500.
+    Perhaps Aunt Sophia will be so kind as to use the money--it
+    ought to last some time--for the general upkeep, wages, etc., of
+    Denby Hall. I feel sure she will not refuse me this favour. Give
+    Peggy my love and tell her I hope she will accept the two-seater
+    as a parting gift. It will make me happier to know that she is
+    driving it.
+
+    "I am keeping on as a _pied à terre_ in London the Bloomsbury
+    rooms in which I have been living, and I've written to Peddle to
+    see about making them more comfortable. Please ask anybody who
+    might care to write to address me as 'James M.' and not as
+    'Marmaduke.'"
+
+The Dean read the letter--the family were at breakfast; then he took
+off his tortoise-shell spectacles and wiped them.
+
+"It's from Marmaduke at last," said he. "He has carried out my
+prophecy and enlisted."
+
+Peggy caught at her breath and shot out her hand for the letter, which
+she read eagerly and then passed over to her mother. Mrs. Conover
+began to cry.
+
+"Oh, the poor boy! It will be worse than ever for him."
+
+"It will," said Peggy. "But I think it splendid of him to try. How did
+he bring himself to do it?"
+
+"Breed tells," said the Dean. "That's what every one seems to have
+forgotten. He's a thoroughbred Doggie. There's the old French proverb:
+_Bon chien chasse de race._"
+
+Peggy looked at him gratefully. "You're very comforting," she said.
+
+"We must knit him some socks," observed Mrs. Conover. "I hear those
+supplied to the army are very rough and ready."
+
+"My dear," smiled the Dean, "Marmaduke's considerable income does not
+cease because his pay in the army is one and twopence a day; and I
+should think he would have the sense to provide himself with adequate
+underclothing. Also, judging from the account of your shopping orgy in
+London, he has already laid in a stock that would last out several
+Antarctic winters."
+
+The Dean tapped his egg gently.
+
+"Then what can we do for the poor boy?" asked his wife.
+
+The Dean scooped the top of his egg off with a vicious thrust.
+
+"We can cut out slanderous tongues," said he.
+
+There had been much calumniating cackle in the little town; nay, more:
+cackle is of geese; there had been venom of the snakiest kind. The
+Deanery, father and mother and daughter, each in their several ways,
+had suffered greatly. It is hard to stand up against poisoned
+ridicule.
+
+"My dear," continued the Dean, "it will be our business to smite the
+Philistines, hip and thigh. The reasons which guided Marmaduke in the
+resignation of his commission are the concern of nobody. The fact
+remains that Mr. Marmaduke Trevor resigned his commission in order
+to----"
+
+Peggy interrupted with a smile. "'In order to'--isn't that a bit
+Jesuitical, daddy?"
+
+"I have a great respect for the Jesuits, my dear," said the Dean,
+holding out an impressive egg-spoon. "The fact remains, in the eyes of
+the world, as I remarked, that Mr. Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall, a
+man of fortune and high position in the county, resigned his
+commission in order, for reasons best known to himself, to serve his
+country more effectively in the humbler ranks of the army, and--my
+dear, this egg is far too full for war time"--with a hazardous plunge
+of his spoon he had made a yellow yelky horror of the egg-shell--"and
+I'm going to proclaim the fact far and wide, and--indeed--rub it in."
+
+"That'll be jolly decent of you, daddy," said his daughter. "It will
+help a lot."
+
+In the failure of Marmaduke to retain his commission the family honour
+had not been concerned. The boy had done his best. They blamed not him
+but the disastrous training that had unfitted him for the command of
+men. They reproached themselves for their haste in throwing him
+headlong into the fiercest element of the national struggle towards
+efficiency. They could have found an easier school, in which he could
+have learned to do his share creditably in the national work. Many
+young men of their acquaintance, far more capable than Marmaduke, were
+wearing the uniform of a less strenuous branch of the service. It had
+been a blunder, a failure, but without loss of honour. But when
+slanderous tongues attacked poor Doggie for running away with a yelp
+from a little hardship; when a story or two of Doggie's career in the
+regiment arrived in Durdlebury, highly flavoured in transit and more
+and more poisoned as it went from mouth to mouth; when a legend was
+spread abroad that he had bolted from Salisbury Plain and was run to
+earth in a Turkish Bath in London, and was only saved from
+court-martial by family influence, then the family honour of the
+Conovers was wounded to its proud English depths. And they could say
+nothing. They had only Doggie's word to go upon; they accepted it
+unquestioningly, but they knew no details. Doggie had disappeared.
+Naturally, they contradicted these evil rumours. The good folks of
+Durdlebury expected them to do so, and listened with well-bred
+incredulity. To the question, "Where is he now and what is he going to
+do?" they could only answer, "We don't know." They were helpless.
+
+Peggy had a bitter quarrel with one of her intimates, Nancy Murdoch,
+daughter of the doctor who had proclaimed the soundness of Marmaduke's
+constitution.
+
+"He may have told you so, dear," said Nancy, "but how do you know?"
+
+"Because whatever else he may be, he's not a liar," retorted Peggy.
+
+Nancy gave the most delicate suspicion of a shrug to her pretty
+shoulders.
+
+That was the beginning of it. Peggy, naturally combative, armed for
+the fight and defended Marmaduke.
+
+"You talk as though you were still engaged to him," said Nancy.
+
+"So I am," declared Peggy rashly.
+
+"Then where's your engagement ring?"
+
+"Where I choose to keep it."
+
+The retort lacked originality and conviction.
+
+"You can't send it back to him, because you don't know where he is.
+And what did Mrs. Conover mean by telling mother that Mr. Trevor had
+broken off the engagement?"
+
+"She never told her any such thing," cried Peggy mendaciously. For
+Mrs. Conover had committed the indiscretion under assurance of
+silence.
+
+"Pardon me," said Nancy, much on her dignity. "Of course I understand
+your denying it. It isn't pleasant to be thrown over by any man--but
+by a man like Doggie Trevor----"
+
+"You're a spiteful beast, Nancy, and I'll never speak to you again.
+You've neither womanly decency nor Christian feeling." And Peggy
+marched out of the doctor's house.
+
+As a result of the quarrel, however, she resumed the wearing of the
+ring, which she flaunted defiantly with left hand deliberately
+ungloved. Hitherto she had not been certain of the continuance of the
+engagement. Marmaduke's repudiation was definite enough; but it had
+been dictated by his sensitive honour. It lay with her to agree or
+decline. She had passed through wearisome days of doubt. A physically
+sound fighting man sent about his business as being unfit for war does
+not appear a romantic figure in a girl's eyes. She was bitterly
+disappointed with Doggie for the sudden withering of her hopes. Had he
+fulfilled them she could have loved him wholeheartedly, after the
+simple way of women; for her sex, exhilarated by the barbaric
+convulsion of the land, clamoured for something heroic, something at
+least intensely masculine, in which she could find feminine
+exultation. She also felt resentment at his flight from the Savoy, his
+silence and practical disappearance. Although not blaming him
+unjustly, she failed to realize the spiritual piteousness of his
+plight. If the war has done anything in this country, it has saved the
+young women of the gentler classes, at any rate, from the abyss of
+sordid and cynical materialism. Hesitating to announce the rupture of
+the engagement, she allowed it to remain in a state of suspended
+animation, and as a symbolic act, ceased to wear the ring. Nancy's
+taunts had goaded her to a more heroic attitude. The first person to
+whom she showed the newly-ringed hand was her mother.
+
+"The engagement isn't off until I declare it's off. I'm going to play
+the game."
+
+"You know best, dear," said the gentle Mrs. Conover. "But it's all
+very upsetting."
+
+Then Doggie's letter brought comfort and gladness to the Deanery. It
+reassured them as to his fate. It healed the wounded family honour. It
+justified Peggy in playing the game.
+
+She took the letter round to Dr. Murdoch's and thrust it into the hand
+of an astonished Nancy, with whom since the quarrel she had not been
+on speaking terms.
+
+"This is in Marmaduke's handwriting. You recognize it. Just read the
+top line when I've folded it. 'I have enlisted in the 10th Wessex.'
+See?" She withdrew the letter. "Now, what could a man, let alone an
+honourable gentleman, do more? Say you're sorry for having said
+beastly things about him."
+
+Nancy, who had regretted the loss of a lifelong friendship, professed
+her sorrow.
+
+"The least you can do then, is to go round and spread the news, and
+say you've seen the letter with your own eyes."
+
+To several others, on a triumphant round of visits, did she show the
+vindicating sentence. Any soft young fool, she asserted, with the
+directness and not unattractive truculence of her generation, can get
+a commission and muddle through, but it took a man to enlist as a
+private soldier.
+
+"Everybody recognizes now, darling," said the reconciled Nancy a few
+days later, "that Doggie is a top-hole, splendid chap. But I think I
+ought to tell you that you're boring Durdlebury stiff."
+
+Peggy laughed. It was good to be engaged to a man no longer under a
+cloud.
+
+"It will all come right, dear old thing," she wrote to Doggie. "It's a
+cinch, as the Americans say. You'll soon get used to it--especially if
+you can realize what it means to me. 'Saving face' has been an awful
+business. Now it's all over. Of course, I'll accept the two-seater.
+I've had lessons in driving since you went away--I had thoughts of
+going out to France to drive Y.M.C.A. cars, but that's off for the
+present. I'll love the two-seater. Swank won't be the word. But 'a
+parting gift' is all rot. The engagement stands and all Durdlebury
+knows it..." and so on, and so on. She set herself out, honestly,
+loyally, to be the kindest girl in the world to Doggie. Mrs. Conover
+happened to come into the drawing-room just as she was licking the
+stamp. She thumped it on the envelope with her palm and, looking round
+from the writing-desk against the wall, showed her mother a flushed
+and smiling face.
+
+"If anybody says I'm not good--the goodest thing the cathedral has
+turned out for half a dozen centuries--I'll tear her horrid eyes out
+from their sockets!"
+
+"My dear!" cried her horrified mother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doggie kept the letter unopened in his tunic pocket until he could
+find solitude in which to read it. After morning parade he wandered to
+the deserted trench at the end of the camp, where the stuffed sacks,
+representing German defenders, were hung for bayonet practice. It was
+a noon of grey mist through which the alignments of huts and tents
+were barely visible. Instinctively avoiding the wet earth of the
+parados, he went round, and, tired after the recent spell of physical
+drill, sat down on the equally wet sandbags of the model parapet, a
+pathetic, lonely little khaki figure isolated for the moment by the
+kindly mist from an uncomprehending world.
+
+He read Peggy's letter several times. He recognized her goodness, her
+loyalty. The grateful tears even came to his eyes and he brushed them
+away hurriedly with a swift look round. But his heart beat none the
+faster. A long-faded memory of childhood came back to him in regained
+colour. Some quarrel with Peggy. What it was all about he had entirely
+forgotten; but he remembered her little flushed face and her angry
+words: "Well, I'm a sport and you ain't!" He remembered also rebuking
+her priggishly for unintelligible language and mincing away. He read
+the letter again in the light of this flash of memory. The only
+difference between it and the childish speech lay in the fact that
+instead of a declaration of contrasts, she now uttered a declaration
+of similitudes. They were both "sports." There she was wrong. Doggie
+shook his head. In her sense of the word he was not a "sport." A sport
+takes chances, plays the game with a smile on his lips. There was no
+smile on his. He loathed the game with a sickening, shivering
+loathing. He was engaged in it because a conglomeration of
+irresistible forces had driven him into the _mêlée_. It never
+occurred to Doggie that he was under orders of his own soul. This
+simple yet stupendous fact never occurred to Peggy.
+
+He sat on the wet sandbags and thought and thought. Though he
+reproached himself for base ingratitude, the letter did not satisfy
+him. It left his heart cold. What he sought in it he did not know. It
+was something he could not find, something that was not there. The
+sea-mist thickened around him. Peggy seemed very far away.... He was
+still engaged to her--for it would be monstrous to persist in his
+withdrawal. He must accept the situation which she decreed. He owed
+that to her loyalty. But how to continue the correspondence? It was
+hard enough to write from Salisbury Plain; from here it was well-nigh
+impossible.
+
+Thus was Doggie brought up against a New Problem. He struggled
+desperately to defer its solution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The regiments of the new armies have gathered into their rank and file
+a mixed crowd transcending the dreams of Democracy. At one end of the
+social scale are men of refined minds and gentle nurture, at the other
+creatures from the slums, with slum minds and morals, and between them
+the whole social gamut is run. Experience seems to show that neither
+of the extreme elements tend, in the one case to elevate, or in the
+other to debase the battalion. Leading the common life, sharing the
+common hardships, striving towards common ideals, they inevitably,
+irresistibly tend to merge themselves in the average. The highest in
+the scale sink, the lowest rise. The process, as far as the change of
+soul state is concerned, is infinitely more to the amelioration of the
+lowest than to the degradation of the highest. The one, also, is more
+real, the other more apparent. In the one case, it is merely the
+shuffling-off of manners, of habits, of prejudices, and the assuming
+of others horribly distasteful or humorously accepted, according to
+temperament; in the other case, it is an enforced education. And all
+the congeries of human atoms that make up the battalion, learn new and
+precious lessons and acquire new virtues--patience, obedience,
+courage, endurance.... But from the point of view of a decorous
+tea-party in a cathedral town, the tone--or the standard of manners,
+or whatever you would like by way of definition of that vague and
+comforting word--the tone of the average is deplorably low. The
+hooligan may be kicked for excessive foulness; but the rider of the
+high horse is brutally dragged down into the mire. The curious part of
+it all is that, the gutter element being eliminated altogether, the
+corporate standard of the remaining majority is lower than the
+standard of each individual.
+
+By developing a philosophical disquisition on some such lines did
+Phineas McPhail seek to initiate Doggie into the weird mysteries of
+the new social life. Doggie heard with his ears, but thought in terms
+of Durdlebury tea-parties. Nowhere in the mass could he find the
+spiritual outlook of his Irish poet-warrior. The individuals that may
+have had it kept it preciously to themselves. The outlook, as conveyed
+in speech, was grossly materialistic. From the language of the canteen
+he recoiled in disgust. He could not reconcile it with the nobler
+attributes of the users. It was in vain for Phineas to plead that he
+must accept the _lingua franca_ of the British Army like all other
+things appertaining thereto. Doggie's stomach revolted against most of
+the other things. The disregard (from his point of view) of personal
+cleanliness universal in the ranks, filled him with dismay. Even on
+Salisbury Plain he had managed to get a little hot water for his
+morning tub. Here, save in the officers' quarters--curiously remote,
+inaccessible paradise!--there was not such a thing as a tub in the
+place, let alone hot water to fill it. The men never dreamed of such a
+thing as a tub. As a matter of fact, they were scrupulously clean
+according to the lights of the British Tommy; but the lights were not
+those of Marmaduke Trevor. He had learned the supreme wisdom of
+keeping lips closed on such matters and did not complain, but all his
+fastidiousness rebelled. He hated the sluice of head and shoulders
+with water from a bucket in the raw open air. His hands swelled,
+blistered and cracked; and his nails, once so beautifully manicured,
+grew rich black rims, and all the icy water in the buckets would not
+remove the grime.
+
+Now and then he went into the town and had a hot bath; but very few of
+the others ever seemed to think of such a thing. The habit of the
+British Army of going to bed in its day-shirt was peculiarly
+repellent. Yet Doggie knew that to vary from the sacred ways of his
+fellow-men was to bring disaster on his head.
+
+Some of the men slept under canvas still. But Doggie, fortunately as
+he reckoned (for he had begun to appreciate fine shades in misery),
+was put with a dozen others in a ramshackle hut of which the woodwork
+had warped and let in the breezes above, below, and all round the sides.
+Doggie, though dismally cold, welcomed the air for obvious reasons.
+They were fortunate, too, in having straw palliasses--recently
+provided when it was discovered that sleeping on badly boarded floors
+with fierce draughts blowing upwards along human spines was strangely
+fatal to human bodies--but Doggie found his bed very hard lying. And
+it smelt sour and sickly. For nights, in spite of fatigue, he could
+not sleep. His mates sang and talked and bandied jests and sarcasms of
+esoteric meaning. Some of the recruits from factories or farms
+satirized their officers for peculiarities common to their social
+caste and gave grotesque imitations of their mode of speech. Doggie
+wondered, but held his peace. The deadly stupidity and weariness of it
+all! And when the talk stopped and they settled to sleep, the snorings
+and mutterings and coughings began and kept poor Doggie awake most of
+the night. The irremediable, intimate propinquity with coarse humanity
+oppressed him. He would have given worlds to go out, even into the
+pouring rain, and walk about the camp or sleep under a hedge, so long
+as he could be alone. And he would think longingly of his satinwood
+bedroom, with its luxurious bed and lavender-scented sheets, and of
+his beloved peacock and ivory room and its pictures and exquisite
+furniture and the great fire roaring up the chimney, and devise
+intricate tortures for the Kaiser who had dragged him down to this
+squalor.
+
+The meals--the rough cooking, the primitive service--the table manners
+of his companions, offended his delicate senses. He missed napkins.
+Never could he bring himself to wipe his mouth with the back of his
+hand and the back of his hand on the seat of his trousers. Nor could
+he watch with equanimity an honest soul pick his teeth with his little
+finger. But Doggie knew that acquiescence was the way of happiness and
+protest the way of woe.
+
+At first he made few acquaintances beyond those with whom he was
+intimately associated. It seemed more politic to obey his instincts
+and remain unobtrusive in company and drift away inoffensively when
+the chance occurred. One of the men with whom he talked occasionally
+was a red-headed little cockney by the name of Shendish. For some
+reason or the other--perhaps because his name conveyed a perfectly
+wrong suggestion of the Hebraic--he was always called "Mo" Shendish.
+
+"Don't yer wish yer was back, mate?" he asked one day, having waited
+to speak till Doggie had addressed and stamped a letter which he was
+writing at the end of the canteen table.
+
+"Where?" said Doggie.
+
+"'Ome, sweet 'ome. In the family castle, where gilded footmen 'ands
+sausage and mash about on trays and quarts of beer all day long. I
+do."
+
+"You're a lucky chap to have a castle," said Doggie.
+
+Mo Shendish grinned. He showed little yellow teeth beneath a little
+red moustache.
+
+"I ain't 'alf got one," said he. "It's in Mare Street, Hackney. I wish
+I was there now."
+
+He sighed, and in an abstracted way he took a half-smoked cigarette
+from behind his ear and relit it.
+
+"What were yer before yer joined? Yer look like a clerk." He
+pronounced it as if it were spelt with a "u."
+
+"Something of the sort," replied Doggie cautiously.
+
+"One can always tell you eddicated blokes. Making your five quid a
+week easy, I suppose?"
+
+"About that," said Doggie. "What were you?"
+
+"I was making my thirty bob a week regular. I was in the fish
+business, I was. And now I'm serving my ruddy country at one and
+twopence a day. Funny life, ain't it?"
+
+"I can't say it's very enjoyable," said Doggie.
+
+"Not the same as sitting in a snug orfis all day with a pen in your
+lily-white 'and, and going 'ome to your 'igh tea in a top 'at. What
+made you join up?"
+
+"The force of circumstances," said Doggie.
+
+"Same 'ere," said Mo; "only I couldn't put it into such fancy
+language. First my pals went out one after the other. Then the gels
+began to look saucy at me, and at last one particular bit of skirt
+what I'd been walking out with took to promenading with a blighter in
+khaki. It'd have been silly of me to go and knock his 'ead off, so I
+enlisted. And it's all right now."
+
+"Just the same sort of thing in my case," replied Doggie. "I'm glad
+things are right with the young lady."
+
+"First class. She's straight, she is, and no mistake abaht it. She's
+a----"
+
+He paused for a word to express the inexpressive she.
+
+"--A paragon--a peach?"--Doggie corrected himself. Then, as the sudden
+frown of perplexed suspicion was swiftly replaced by a grin of
+content, he was struck by a bright idea.
+
+"What's her name?"
+
+"Aggie. What's yours?"
+
+"Gladys," replied Doggie with miraculous readiness of invention.
+
+"I've got her photograph," Shendish confided in a whisper, and laid
+his hand on his tunic pocket. Then he looked round at the half-filled
+canteen to see that he was unobserved. "You won't give me away if I
+show it yer, will yer?"
+
+Doggie swore secrecy. The photograph of Aggie, an angular,
+square-browed damsel, who looked as though she could guide the most
+recalcitrant of fishmongers into the paths of duty, was produced and
+thrust into Doggie's hand. He inspected it with polite appreciation,
+while his red-headed friend regarded him with fatuous anxiety.
+
+"Charming! charming!" said Doggie in his pleasantest way. "What's her
+colouring?"
+
+"Fair hair and blue eyes," said Shendish.
+
+The kindly question, half idle yet unconsciously tactful, was one of
+those human things which cost so little but are worth so much. It gave
+Doggie a devoted friend.
+
+"Mo," said he, a day or two later, "you're such a decent chap. Why do
+you use such abominable language?"
+
+"Gawd knows," smiled Mo, unabashed. "I suppose it's friendly like." He
+wrinkled his brow in thought for an instant. "That's where I think
+you're making a mistake, old pal, if you don't mind my mentioning it.
+I know what yer are, but the others don't. You're not friendly enough.
+See what I mean? Supposin' you say as you would in a city restoorang
+when you're 'aving yer lunch, 'Will yer kindly pass me the
+salt?'--well, that's standoffish--they say 'Come off it! 'But if you
+look about and say, 'Where's the b----y salt?' that's friendly. They
+understand. They chuck it at you."
+
+Said Doggie, "It's very--I mean b----y--difficult."
+
+So he tried to be friendly; and if he met with no great positive
+success, he at least escaped animosity. In his spare time he mooned
+about by himself, shy, disgusted, and miserable. Once, when a group of
+men were kicking a football about, the ball rolled his way. Instead of
+kicking it back to the expectant players, he picked it up and advanced
+to the nearest and handed it to him politely.
+
+"Thanks, mate," said the astonished man, "but why didn't you kick it?"
+
+He turned away without waiting for a reply. Doggie had not kicked it
+because he had never kicked a football in his life and shrank from an
+exhibition of incompetence.
+
+At drill things were easier than on Salisbury Plain, his actions being
+veiled in the obscurity of squad or platoon or company. Many others
+besides himself were cursed by sergeants and rated by subalterns and
+drastically entreated by captains. He had the consolation of community
+in suffering. As a trembling officer he had been the only one, the
+only one marked and labelled as a freak apart, the only one stuck in
+the eternal pillory. Here were fools and incapables even more dull and
+ineffective than he. A plough-boy fellow-recruit from Dorsetshire,
+Pugsley by name, did not know right from left, and having mastered the
+art of forming fours, could not get into his brain the reverse process
+of forming front. He wept under the lash of the corporal's tongue; and
+to Doggie these tears were healing dews of Heaven's distillation. By
+degrees he learned the many arts of war as taught to the private
+soldier in England. He could refrain from shutting his eyes when he
+pressed the trigger of his rifle, but to the end of his career his
+shooting was erratic. He could perform with the weapon the other
+tricks of precision. Unencumbered he could march with the best. The
+torture of the heavy pack nearly killed him; but in time, as his
+muscles developed, he was able to slog along under the burden. He even
+learned to dig. That was the worst and most back-breaking art of all.
+
+Now and then Phineas McPhail and himself would get together and walk
+into the little seaside town. It was out of the season and there was
+little to look at save the deserted shops and the squall-fretted pier
+and the maidens of the place who usually were in company with lads in
+khaki. Sometimes a girl alone would give Doggie a glance of shy
+invitation, for Doggie in his short slight way was not a bad-looking
+fellow, carrying himself well and wearing his uniform with instinctive
+grace. But the damsel ogled in vain.
+
+On one such occasion Phineas burst into a guffaw.
+
+"Why don't you talk to the poor body? She's a respectable girl enough.
+Where's the harm?"
+
+"Go 'square-pushing'?" said Doggie contemptuously, using the soldiers'
+slang for walking about with a young woman. "No, thank you."
+
+"And why not? I'm not counselling you, laddie, to plunge into a course
+of sensual debauchery. But a wee bit gossip with a pretty innocent
+girl----"
+
+"My dear good chap," Doggie interrupted, "what on earth should I have
+in common with her?"
+
+"Youth."
+
+"I feel as old as hell," said Doggie bitterly.
+
+"You'll be feeling older soon," replied Phineas, "and able to look
+down on hell with feelings of superiority."
+
+Doggie walked on in silence for a few paces. Then he said:
+
+"A thing I can't understand is this mania for picking up girls--just
+to walk about the streets with them. It's so inane. It's a disease."
+
+"Did you ever consider," said Phineas, "how in a station less exalted
+than that which you used to adorn, the young of opposite sexes manage
+to meet, select and marry? Man, the British Army's going to be a grand
+education for you in sociology."
+
+"Well, at any rate, you don't suppose I'm going to select and marry
+out of the street?"
+
+"You might do worse," said Phineas. Then, after a slight pause, he
+asked: "Have you any news lately from Durdlebury?"
+
+"Confound Durdlebury!" said Doggie.
+
+Phineas checked him with one hand and waved the other towards a
+hostelry on the other side of the street. "If you will give me the
+money in advance, so as to evade the ungenerous spirit of the
+no-treating law, you can stand me a quart of ale at the Crown and
+Sceptre and join me in drinking to its confusion."
+
+So they entered the saloon bar of the public-house. Doggie drank a
+glass of beer while Phineas swallowed a couple of pints. Two or three
+other soldiers were there, in whose artless talk McPhail joined
+lustily. Doggie, unobtrusive at the end of the bar, maintained a
+desultory and uncomfortable conversation with the barmaid, who was of
+the florid and hearty type, about the weather.
+
+Some days later, McPhail again made allusion to Durdlebury. Doggie
+again confounded it.
+
+"I don't want to hear of it or think of it," he exclaimed, in his
+nervous way, "until this filthy horror is over. They want me to get
+leave and go down and stay. They're making my life miserable with
+kindness. I wish they'd let me alone. They don't understand a little
+bit. I want to get through this thing alone, all by myself."
+
+"I'm sorry I persuaded you to join a regiment in which you were
+inflicted with the disadvantage of my society," said Phineas.
+
+Doggie threw out an impatient arm. "Oh, you don't count," said he.
+
+A few minutes afterwards, repenting his brusqueness, he tried to
+explain to Phineas why he did not count. The others knew nothing about
+him. Phineas knew everything.
+
+"And you know everything about Phineas," said McPhail grimly. "Ay, ay,
+laddie," he sighed, "I ken it all. When you're in Tophet, a
+sympathetic Tophetuan with a wee drop of the milk of human kindness is
+more comfort than a radiant angel who showers down upon you, from the
+celestial Fortnum and Mason's, potted shrimps and caviare."
+
+The sombreness cleared for a moment from Doggie's young brow.
+
+"I never can make up my mind, Phineas," said he, "whether you're a
+very wise man or an awful fraud."
+
+"Give me the benefit of the doubt, laddie," replied McPhail. "It's the
+grand theological principle of Christianity."
+
+Time went on. The regiment was moved to the East Coast. On the journey
+a Zeppelin raid paralysed the railway service. Doggie spent the night
+under the lee of the bookstall at Waterloo Station. Men huddled up
+near him, their heads on their kit-bags, slept and snored. Doggie
+almost wept with pain and cold and hatred of the Kaiser. On the East
+Coast much the same life as on the South, save that the wind, as if
+Hun-sent, found its way more savagely to the skin.
+
+Then suddenly came the news of a large draft for France, which
+included both McPhail and Shendish. They went away on leave. The
+gladness with which he welcomed their return showed Doggie how great a
+part they played in his new life. In a day or two they would depart
+God knew whither, and he would be left in dreadful loneliness. Through
+him the two men, the sentimental Cockney fishmonger and the wastrel
+Cambridge graduate, had become friends. He spent with them all his
+leisure time.
+
+Then one of the silly tragi-comedies of life occurred. McPhail got
+drunk in the crowded bar of a little public-house in the village. It
+was the last possible drink together of the draft and their pals. The
+draft was to entrain before daybreak on the morrow. It was a foolish,
+singing, shouting khaki throng. McPhail, who had borrowed ten pounds
+from Doggie, in order to see him through the hardships of the Front,
+established himself close by the bar and was drinking whisky. He was
+also distributing surreptitious sixpences and shillings into eager
+hands, which would convert them into alcohol for eager throats.
+Doggie, anxious, stood by his side. The spirit from which McPhail had
+for so long abstained, mounted to his unaccustomed brain. He began to
+hector, and, master of picturesque speech, he compelled an admiring
+audience. Doggie did not realize the extent of his drunkenness until,
+vaunting himself as a Scot and therefore the salt of the army, he
+picked a quarrel with a stolid Hampshire giant, who professed to have
+no use for Phineas's fellow-countrymen. The men closed. Suddenly some
+one shouted from the doorway:
+
+"Be quiet, you fools! The A.P.M.'s coming down the road."
+
+Now the Assistant Provost Marshal, if he heard hell's delight going on
+in a tavern, would naturally make an inquisitorial appearance. The
+combatants were separated. McPhail threw a shilling on the bar counter
+and demanded another whisky. He was about to lift the glass to his
+lips when Doggie, terrified as to what might happen, knocked the glass
+out of his hand.
+
+"Don't be an ass," he cried.
+
+Phineas was very drunk. He gazed at his old pupil, took off his cap,
+and, stretching over the bar, hung it on the handle of a beer-pull.
+Then, staggering back, he pointed an accusing finger.
+
+"He has the audacity to call me an ass. Little blinking Marmaduke
+Doggie Trevor. Little Doggie Trevor, whom I trained up from infancy in
+the way he shouldn't go----"
+
+"Why Doggie Trevor?" some one shouted in inquiry.
+
+"Never mind," replied Phineas with drunken impressiveness. "My old
+friend Marmaduke has spilled my whisky and called me an ass. I call
+him Doggie, little Doggie Trevor. You all bear witness he knocked the
+drink out of my mouth. I'll never forgive him. He doesn't like being
+called Doggie--and I've no--no pred'lex'n to be called an ass. I'll be
+thinking I'm going just to strangle him."
+
+He struck out his bony claws towards the shrinking Doggie; but stout
+arms closed round him and a horny hand was clamped over his mouth, and
+they got him through the bar and the back parlour into the yard, where
+they pumped water on his head. And when the A.P.M. and his satellites
+passed by, the quiet of The Whip in Hand was the holy peace of a
+nunnery.
+
+Doggie and Mo Shendish and a few other staunch souls got McPhail back
+to quarters without much trouble. On parting, the delinquent,
+semi-sobered, shook Doggie by the hand and smiled with an air of great
+affection.
+
+"I've been verra drunk, laddie. And I've been angry with you for the
+first time in my life. But when you knocked the glass out of my hand I
+thought you were in danger of losing your good manners in the army.
+We'll have many a pow-wow together when you join me out there."
+
+The matter would have drifted out of Doggie's mind as one of no
+importance had not the detested appellation by which Phineas hailed
+him struck the imagination of his comrades. It filled a long-felt
+want, no nickname for Private J. M. Trevor having yet been invented.
+Doggie Trevor he was and Doggie Trevor he remained for the rest of his
+period of service. He resigned himself to the inevitable. The sting
+had gone out of the name through his comrades' ignorance of its
+origin. But he loathed it as much as ever; it sounded in his ears an
+everlasting reproach.
+
+In spite of the ill turn done in drunkenness, Doggie missed McPhail.
+He missed Mo Shendish, his more constant companion, even more. Their
+place was in some degree taken, or rather usurped, for it was without
+Doggie's volition, by "Taffy" Jones, once clerk to a firm of outside
+bookmakers. As Doggie had never seen a racecourse, had never made a
+bet, and was entirely ignorant of the names even of famous Derby
+winners, Taffy regarded him as an astonishing freak worth the
+attention of a student of human nature. He began to cultivate Doggie's
+virgin mind by aid of reminiscence, and of such racing news as was to
+be found in the _Sportsman_. He was a garrulous person and Doggie a
+good listener. To please him Doggie backed horses, through the old
+firm, for small sums. The fact of his being a man of large independent
+means both he and Phineas (to his credit) had kept a close secret, his
+clerkly origin divined and promulgated by Mo Shendish being
+unquestioningly accepted, so the bets proposed by Taffy were of a
+modest nature. Once he brought off a forty to one chance. Taffy rushed
+to him with the news, dancing with excitement. Doggie's stoical
+indifference to the winning of twenty pounds, a year's army pay, gave
+him cause for great wonder. As Doggie showed similar equanimity when
+he lost, Taffy put him down as a born sportsman. He began to admire
+him tremendously.
+
+This friendship with Taffy is worth special record, for it was
+indirectly the cause of a little revolution in Doggie's regimental
+life. Taffy was an earnest though indifferent performer on the penny
+whistle. It was his constant companion, the solace of his leisure
+moments and one of the minor tortures of Doggie's existence. His
+version of the _Marseillaise_ was peculiarly excruciating.
+
+One day, when Taffy was playing it with dreadful variations of his own
+to an admiring group in the Y.M.C.A. hut, Doggie, his nerves rasped to
+the raw by the false notes and maddening intervals, snatched it out of
+his hand and began to play himself. Hitherto, shrinking morbidly from
+any form of notoriety, he had shown no sign of musical accomplishment.
+But to-day the musician's impulse was irresistible. He played the
+_Marseillaise_ as no one there had heard it on penny whistle before.
+The hut recognized a master's touch, for Doggie was a fine executant
+musician. When he stopped there was a roar: "Go on!" Doggie went on.
+They kept him whistling till the hut was crowded.
+
+Thenceforward he was penny-whistler, by excellence, to the battalion.
+He whistled himself into quite a useful popularity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+"We're all very proud of you, Marmaduke," said the Dean.
+
+"I think you're just splendid," said Peggy.
+
+They were sitting in Doggie's rooms in Woburn Place, Doggie having
+been given his three days' leave before going to France. Once again
+Durdlebury had come to Doggie and not Doggie to Durdlebury. Aunt
+Sophia, however, somewhat ailing, had stayed at home.
+
+Doggie stood awkwardly before them, conscious of swollen hands and
+broken nails, shapeless ammunition boots and ill-fitting slacks;
+morbidly conscious, too, of his original failure.
+
+"You're about ten inches more round the chest than you were," said the
+Dean admiringly.
+
+"And the picture of health," cried Peggy.
+
+"For anyone who has a sound constitution," answered Doggie, "it is
+quite a healthy life."
+
+"Now that you've got into the way, I'm sure you must really love it,"
+said Peggy with an encouraging smile.
+
+"It isn't so bad," he replied.
+
+"What none of us can quite understand, my dear fellow," said the Dean,
+"is your shying at Durdlebury. As we have written you, everybody's
+singing your praises. Not a soul but would have given you a hearty
+welcome."
+
+"Besides," Peggy chimed in, "you needn't have made an exhibition of
+yourself in the town if you didn't want to. The poor Peddles are
+woefully disappointed."
+
+"There's a war going on. They must bear up--like lots of other
+people," replied Doggie.
+
+"He's becoming quite cynical," Peggy laughed. "But, apart from the
+Peddles, there's your own beautiful house waiting for you. It seems so
+funny not to go to it, instead of moping in these fusty lodgings."
+
+"Perhaps," said Doggie quietly, "if I went there I should never want
+to come back."
+
+"There's something to be said from that point of view," the Dean
+admitted. "A solution of continuity is never quite without its
+dangers. Even Oliver confessed as much."
+
+"Oliver?"
+
+"Yes, didn't Peggy tell you?"
+
+"I didn't think Marmaduke would be interested," said Peggy quickly.
+"He and Oliver have never been what you might call bosom friends."
+
+"I shouldn't have minded about hearing of him," said Doggie. "Why
+should I? What's he doing?"
+
+The Dean gave information. Oliver, now a captain, had come home on
+leave a month ago, and had spent some of it at the Deanery. He had
+seen a good deal of fighting, and had one or two narrow escapes.
+
+"Was he keen to get back?" asked Doggie.
+
+The Dean smiled. "I instanced his case in my remark as to the dangers
+of the solution of continuity."
+
+"Oh, rubbish, daddy," cried his daughter, with a flush, "Oliver is as
+keen as mustard." The Dean made a little gesture of submission. She
+continued. "He doesn't like the beastliness out there for its own
+sake, any more than Marmaduke will. But he simply loves his job. He
+has improved tremendously. Once he thought he was the only man in the
+country who had seen Life stark naked, and he put on frills
+accordingly Now that he's just one of a million who have been up
+against Life stripped to its skeleton, he's a bit subdued."
+
+"I'm glad of that," said Doggie.
+
+The Dean, urbanely indulgent, joined his fingertips together and
+smiled. "Peggy is right," said he, "although I don't wholly approve of
+her modern lack of reticence in metaphor. Oliver is coming out true
+gold from the fire. He's a capital fellow. And he spoke of you, my
+dear Marmaduke, in the kindest way in the world. He has a tremendous
+admiration for your pluck."
+
+"That's very good of him, I'm sure," said Doggie.
+
+Presently the Dean--good, tactful man--discovered that he must go out
+and have a prescription made up at a chemist's. That arch-Hun enemy,
+the gout, against which he must never be unprepared. He would be back
+in time for dinner. The engaged couple were left alone.
+
+"Well?" said Peggy.
+
+"Well, dear?" said Doggie.
+
+Her lips invited. He responded. She drew him to the saddle-bag sofa,
+and they sat down side by side.
+
+"I quite understand, dear old thing," she said. "I know the
+resignation and the rest of it hurt you awfully. It hurt me. But it's
+no use grousing over spilt milk. You've already mopped it all up. It's
+no disgrace to be a private. It's an honour. There are thousands of
+gentlemen in the ranks. Besides--you'll work your way up and they'll
+offer you another commission in no time."
+
+"You're very good and sweet, dear," said Doggie, "to have such faith
+in me. But I've had a year----"
+
+"A year!" cried Peggy. "Good lord! so it is." She counted on her
+fingers. "Not quite. But eleven months. It's eleven months since I've
+seen you. Do you realize that? The war has put a stop to time. It is
+just one endless day."
+
+"One awful, endless day," Doggie acquiesced with a smile. "But I was
+saying--I've had a year, or an endless day of eleven months, in which
+to learn myself. And what I don't know about myself isn't knowledge."
+
+Peggy interrupted with a laugh. "You must be a wonder. Dad's always
+preaching about self-knowledge. Tell me all about it."
+
+Doggie shook his head, at the same time passing his hand over it in a
+familiar gesture.
+
+Then Peggy cried:
+
+"I knew there was something wrong with you. Why didn't you tell me?
+You've had your hair cut--cut quite differently."
+
+It was McPhail, careful godfather, who had taken him as a recruit to
+the regimental barber and prescribed a transformation from the sleek
+long hair brushed back over the head to a conventional military crop
+with a rudiment of a side parting. On the crown a few bristles stood
+up as if uncertain which way to go.
+
+"It's advisable," Doggie replied, "for a Tommy's hair to be cut as
+short as possible. The Germans are sheared like convicts."
+
+Peggy regarded him open-eyed and puzzle-browed. He enlightened her no
+further, but pursued the main proposition.
+
+"I wouldn't take a commission," said he, "if the War Office went mad
+and sank on its knees and beat its head in the dust before me."
+
+"In Heaven's name, why not?"
+
+"I've learned my place in the world," said Doggie.
+
+Peggy shook him by the shoulder and turned on him her young eager
+face.
+
+"Your place in the world is that of a cultivated gentleman of old
+family, Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall."
+
+"That was the funny old world," said he, "that stood on its legs--legs
+wide apart with its hands beneath the tails of its dress-coat, in
+front of the drawing-room fire. The present world's standing on its
+head. Everything's upside-down. It has no sort of use for Marmaduke
+Trevor of Denby Hall. No more use than for Goliath. By the way, how is
+the poor little beast getting on?"
+
+Peggy laughed. "Oh, Goliath is perfectly assured of his position. He
+has got it rammed into his mind that he drives the two-seater." She
+returned to the attack. "Do you intend always to remain a private?"
+
+"I do," said he. "Not even a corporal. You see, I've learned to be a
+private of sorts, and that satisfies my ambition."
+
+"Well, I give it up," said Peggy. "Though why you wouldn't let dad get
+you a nice cushy job is a thing I can't understand. For the life of me
+I can't."
+
+"I've made my bed, and I must lie on it," he said quietly.
+
+"I don't believe you've got such a thing as a bed."
+
+Doggie smiled. "Oh yes, a bed of a sort." Then noting her puzzled
+face, he said consolingly: "It'll all come right when the war's over."
+
+"But when will that be? And who knows, my dear man, what may happen to
+you?"
+
+"If I'm knocked out, I'm knocked out, and there's an end of it,"
+replied Doggie philosophically.
+
+She put her hand on his. "But what's to become of me?"
+
+"We needn't cry over my corpse yet," said Doggie.
+
+The Dean, after awhile, returned with his bottle of medicine, which he
+displayed with conscientious ostentation. They dined. Peggy again went
+over the ground of the possible commission.
+
+"I'm afraid she has set her heart on it, my boy," said the Dean.
+
+Peggy cried a little on parting. This time Doggie was going, not to
+the fringe, but to the heart of the Great Adventure. Into the thick of
+the carnage. A year ago, she said, through her tears, she would have
+thought herself much more fitted for it than Marmaduke.
+
+"Perhaps you are still, dear," said Doggie, with his patient smile.
+
+He saw them to the taxi which was to take them to the familiar
+Sturrocks's. Before getting in, Peggy embraced him.
+
+"Keep out of the way of shells and bullets as much as you can."
+
+The Dean blew his nose, God-blessed him, and murmured something
+incoherent about fighting for the glory of old England.
+
+"Good luck," cried Peggy from the window.
+
+She blew him a kiss. The taxi drove off, and Doggie went back into the
+house with leaden feet. The meeting, which he had morbidly dreaded,
+had brought him no comfort. It had not removed the invisible barrier
+between Peggy and himself. But Peggy seemed so unconscious of it that
+he began to wonder whether it only existed in his diseased
+imagination. Though by his silences and reserves he had given her
+cause for resentment and reproach, her attitude was nothing less than
+angelic. He sat down moodily in an arm-chair, his hands deep in his
+trousers pockets and his legs stretched out. The fault lay in himself,
+he argued. What was the matter with him? He seemed to have lost all
+human feeling, like the man with the stone heart in the old legend.
+Otherwise, why had he felt no prick of jealousy at Peggy's admiring
+comprehension of Oliver? Of course he loved her. Of course he wanted
+to marry her when this nightmare was over. That went without saying.
+But why couldn't he look to the glowing future? A poet had called a
+lover's mistress "the lode-star of his one desire." That to him Peggy
+ought to be. Lode-star. One desire. The words confused him. He had no
+lode-star. His one desire was to be left alone. Without doubt he was
+suffering from some process of moral petrifaction.
+
+Doggie was no psychologist. He had never acquired the habit of turning
+himself inside-out and gloating over the horrid spectacle. All his
+life he had been a simple soul with simple motives and a simple though
+possibly selfish standard to measure them. But now his soul was
+knocked into a chaotic state of complexity, and his poor little
+standards were no manner of use. He saw himself as in a glass darkly,
+mystified by unknown change.
+
+He rose, sighed, shook himself.
+
+"I give it up," said he, and went to bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doggie went to France; a France hitherto undreamed of, either by him
+or by any young Englishman; a France clean swept and garnished for
+war; a France, save for the ubiquitous English soldiery, of silent
+towns and empty villages and deserted roads; a France of smiling
+fields and sorrowful faces of women and drawn patient faces of old
+men--and even then the women and old men were rarely met by day, for
+they were at work on the land, solitary figures on the landscape, with
+vast spaces between them. In the quiet townships, English street signs
+and placards conflicted with the sense of being in friendly provincial
+France, and gave the impression of foreign domination. For beyond that
+long grim line of eternal thunder, away over there in the distance,
+which was called the Front, street signs and placards in yet another
+alien tongue also outraged the serene genius of French urban life. Yet
+our signs were a symbol of a mighty Empire's brotherhood, and the
+dimmed eyes that beheld the _Place de la Fontaine_ transformed into
+"Holborn Circus," and the _Grande Rue_ into "Piccadilly," smiled, and
+the owners, with eager courtesy, directed the stray Tommy to "Regent
+Street," which they had known all their life as the _Rue
+Feuillemaisnil_--a word which Tommy could not pronounce, still less
+remember. It was as much as Tommy could do to get hold of an
+approximation to the name of the town. And besides these renamings,
+other inscriptions flamed about the streets; alphabetical hieroglyphs,
+in which the mystic letters H.Q. most often appeared; "This way to the
+Y.M.C.A. hut"; in many humble windows the startling announcement,
+"Washing done here." British motor-lorries and ambulances crowding the
+little _place_ and aligned along the avenues. British faces, British
+voices, everywhere. The blue uniform and blue helmet of a French
+soldier seemed as incongruous though as welcome as in London.
+
+And the straight endless roads, so French with their infinite border
+of poplars, their patient little stones marking every hundred metres
+until the tenth rose into the proud kilometre stone proclaiming the
+distance to the next stately town, rang too with the sound of British
+voices, and the tramp of British feet, and the clatter of British
+transport, and the screech and whir of cars, revealing as they passed
+the flash of red and gold of the British staff. Yet the finely
+cultivated land remained to show that it was France; and the little
+whitewashed villages; the curé, in shovel-hat and rusty cassock; the
+children in blue or black blouses, who stared as the British troops
+went by; the patient, elderly French Territorials in their old pre-war
+uniforms, guarding unthreatened culverts or repairing the roads; the
+helpful signs set up in happier days by the Touring Club of France.
+
+Into this strange anomaly of a land came Doggie with his draft, still
+half stupefied by the remorselessness of the stupendous machine in
+which he had been caught, in spite of his many months of training in
+England. He had loathed the East Coast camp. When he landed at
+Boulogne in the dark and the pouring rain and hunched his pack with
+the others who went off singing to the rest camp, he regretted East
+Anglia.
+
+"Give us a turn on the whistle, Doggie," said a corporal.
+
+"I was sea-sick into it and threw it overboard," he growled, stumbling
+over the rails of the quay.
+
+"Oh, you holy young liar!" said the man next him.
+
+But Doggie did not trouble to reply, his neighbour being only a
+private like himself.
+
+Then the draft joined its unit. In his youth Doggie had often wondered
+at the meaning of the familiar inscription on every goods van in
+France: "40 Hommes. 8 Chevaux." Now he ceased to wonder. He was one of
+the forty men.... At the rail-head he began to march, and at last
+joined the remnant of his battalion. They had been through hard
+fighting, and were now in billets. Until he joined them he had not
+realized the drain there had been on the reserves at home. Very many
+familiar faces of officers were missing. New men had taken their
+place. And very many of his old comrades had gone, some to Blighty,
+some West of that Island of Desire; and those who remained had the
+eyes of children who had passed through the Valley of the Shadow of
+Death.
+
+McPhail and Mo Shendish had passed through unscathed. In the
+reconstruction of the regiment chance willed that the three of them
+found themselves in the same platoon of A Company. Doggie almost
+embraced them when they met.
+
+"Laddie," said McPhail to him, as he was drinking a mahogany-coloured
+liquid that was known by the name of tea, out of a tin mug, and eating
+a hunk of bread and jam, "I don't know whether or not I'm pleased to
+see you. You were safer in England. Once I misspent many months of my
+life in shielding you from the dangers of France. But France is a much
+more dangerous place nowadays, and I can't help you. You've come right
+into the thick of it. Just listen to the hell's delight that's going
+on over yonder."
+
+The easterly wind brought them the roar streaked with stridence of the
+artillery duel in progress on the nearest sector of the Front.
+
+They were sitting in the cellar entrance to a house in a little town
+which had already been somewhat mauled. Just opposite was a shuttered
+house on the ground floor of which had been a hatter and hosier's
+shop, and there still swung bravely on an iron rod the red brim of
+what once had been a monstrous red hat. Next door, the façade of the
+upper stories had been shelled away and the naked interiors gave the
+impression of a pathetic doll's house. Women's garments still hung on
+pegs. A cottage piano lurched forward drunkenly on three legs, with
+the keyboard ripped open, the treble notes on the ground, the bass
+incongruously in the air. In the attic, ironically secure, hung a
+cheap German print of blowsy children feeding a pig. The wide
+flagstoned street smelt sour. At various cavern doors sat groups of
+the billeted soldiers. Now and then squads marched up and down,
+monotonously clad in khaki and dun-coloured helmets. Officers, some
+only recognizable by the Sam Browne belt, others spruce and
+point-device, passed by. Here and there a shop was open, and the
+elderly proprietor and his wife stood by the doorway to get the
+afternoon air. Women and children straggled rarely through the
+streets. The Boche had left the little town alone for some time; they
+had other things to do with their heavy guns; and all the French
+population, save those whose homes were reduced to nothingness, had
+remained. They took no notice of the distant bombardment. It had grown
+to be a phenomenon of nature like the wind and the rain.
+
+But to Doggie it was new--just as the sight of the wrecked house
+opposite, with its sturdy crownless hat-brim of a sign, was new. He
+listened, as McPhail had bidden him, to the artillery duel with an odd
+little spasm of his heart.
+
+"What do you think of that, now?" asked McPhail grandly, as if it was
+The Greatest Show on Earth run by him, the Proprietor.
+
+"It's rather noisy," said Doggie, with a little ironical twist of his
+lips that was growing habitual. "Do they keep it up at night?"
+
+"They do."
+
+"I don't think it's fair to interfere with one's sleep like that,"
+said Doggie.
+
+"You've got to adapt yourself to it," said McPhail sagely. "No doubt
+you'll be remembering my theory of adaptability. Through that I've
+made myself into a very brave man. When I wanted to run away--a very
+natural desire, considering the scrupulous attention I've always paid
+to my bodily well-being--I reflected on the preposterous obstacles put
+in the way of flight by a bowelless military system, and adapted
+myself to the static and dynamic conditions of the trenches."
+
+"Gorblime!" said Mo Shendish, stretched out by his side, "just listen
+to him!"
+
+"I suppose you'll say you sucked honey out of the shells," remarked
+Doggie.
+
+"I'm no great hand at mixing metaphors----"
+
+"What about drinks?" asked Mo.
+
+"Nor drinks either," replied McPhail. "Both are bad for the brain. But
+as to what you were saying, laddie, I'll not deny that I've derived
+considerable interest and amusement from a bombardment. Yet it has its
+sad aspect." He paused for a moment or two. "Man," he continued, "what
+an awful waste of money!"
+
+"I don't know what old Mac is jawing about," said Mo Shendish, "but
+you can take it from me he's a holy terror with the bayonet. One
+moment he's talking to a Boche through his hat and the next the Boche
+is wriggling like a worm on a bent pin."
+
+Mo winked at Phineas. The temptation to "tell the tale" to the
+new-comer was too strong.
+
+Doggie grew very serious. "You've been killing men--like that?"
+
+"Thousands, laddie," replied Phineas, the picture of unboastful
+veracity. "And so has Mo."
+
+Mo Shendish, helmeted, browned, dried, toughened, a very different Mo
+from the pallid ferret whom Aggie had driven into the ranks of war,
+hunched himself up, his hands clasping his knees.
+
+"I don't mind doing it, when you're so excited you don't know where
+you are," said he, "but I don't like thinking of it afterwards."
+
+As a matter of fact, he had only once got home with the bayonet and
+the memory was unpleasant.
+
+"But you've just thought of it," said Phineas.
+
+"It was you, not me," said Mo. "That makes all the difference."
+
+"It's astonishing," Phineas remarked sententiously, "how many people
+not only refuse to catch pleasure as it flies, but spurn it when it
+sits up and begs at them. Laddie," he turned to Doggie, "the more one
+wallows in hedonism, the more one realizes its unplumbed depths."
+
+A little girl of ten, neatly pigtailed but piteously shod, came near
+and cast a child's envious eye on Doggie's bread and jam.
+
+"Approach, my little one," Phineas cried in French words but with the
+accent of Sauchiehall Street. "If I gave you a franc, what would you
+do with it?"
+
+"I should buy nourishment (_de la nourriture_) for _maman_."
+
+"Lend me a franc, laddie," said McPhail, and when Doggie had slipped
+the coin into his palm, he addressed the child in unintelligible
+grandiloquence and sent her on her way mystified but rejoicing. _Ces
+bons drôles d'Anglais!_
+
+"Ah, laddie!" cried Phineas, stretching himself out comfortably by the
+jamb of the door, "you've got to learn to savour the exquisite
+pleasure of a genuinely kindly act."
+
+"Hold on!" cried Mo. "It was Doggie's money you were flinging about."
+
+McPhail withered him with a glance.
+
+"You're an unphilosophical ignoramus," said he.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Perhaps one of the greatest influences which transformed Doggie into a
+fairly efficient though undistinguished infantryman was a morbid
+social terror of his officers. It saved him from many a guard-room,
+and from many a heart-to-heart talk wherein the zealous lieutenant
+gets to know his men. He lived in dread lest military delinquency or
+civil accomplishment should be the means of revealing the disgrace
+which bit like an acid into his soul. His undisguisable air of
+superior breeding could not fail to attract notice. Often his officers
+asked him what he was in civil life. His reply, "A clerk, sir," had to
+satisfy them. He had developed a curious self-protective faculty of
+shutting himself up like a hedgehog at the approach of danger. Once a
+breezy subaltern had selected him as his batman; but Doggie's
+agonized, "It would be awfully good of you, sir, if you wouldn't mind
+not thinking of it," and the appeal in his eyes, established the
+freemasonry of caste and saved him from dreaded intimate relations.
+
+"All right, if you'd rather not, Trevor," said the subaltern. "But why
+doesn't a chap like you try for a commission?"
+
+"I'm much happier as I am, sir," replied Doggie, and that was the end
+of the matter.
+
+But Phineas, when he heard of it--it was on the East Coast--began: "If
+you still consider yourself too fine to clean another man's boots----"
+
+Doggie, in one of his quick fits of anger, interrupted: "If you think
+I'm just a dirty little snob, if you don't understand why I begged to
+be let off, you're the thickest-headed fool in creation!"
+
+"I'm nae that, laddie," replied Phineas, with his usual ironic
+submissiveness. "Haven't I kept your secret all this time?"
+
+Thus it was Doggie's fixed idea to lose himself in the locust swarm,
+to be prominent neither for good nor evil, even in the little clot of
+fifty, outwardly, almost identical locusts that formed his platoon. It
+braced him to the performance of hideous tasks; it restrained him from
+display of superior intellectual power or artistic capability. The
+world upheaval had thrown him from his peacock and ivory room, with
+its finest collection on earth of little china dogs, into a horrible
+fetid hole in the ground in Northern France. It had thrown not the
+average young Englishman of comfortable position, who had toyed with
+æsthetic superficialities as an amusement, but a poor little
+by-product of cloistered life who had been brought up from babyhood to
+regard these things as the nervous texture of his very existence. He
+was wrapped from head to heel in fine net, to every tiny mesh of which
+he was acutely sensitive.
+
+A hole in the ground in Northern France. The regiment, after its rest,
+moved on and took its turn in the trenches. Four days on; four days
+off. Four days on of misery inconceivable. Four days on, during which
+the officers watched the men with the unwavering vigilance of kindly
+cats:
+
+"How are you getting along, Trevor?"
+
+"Nicely, thank you, sir."
+
+"Feet all right?"
+
+"Yes, thank you, sir."
+
+"Sure? If you want to grouse, grouse away. That's what I'm talking to
+you for."
+
+"I'm perfectly happy, sir."
+
+"Darn sight more than I am!" laughed the subaltern, and with a cheery
+nod in acknowledgment of Doggie's salute, splashed down the muddy
+trench.
+
+But Doggie was chilled to the bone, and he had no feeling in his feet,
+which were under six inches of water, and his woollen gloves being wet
+through were useless, and prevented his numbed hands from feeling the
+sandbags with which he and the rest of the platoon were repairing the
+parapet; for the Germans had just consecrated an hour's general hate
+to the vicinity of the trench, and its exquisite symmetry, the pride
+of the platoon commander, had been disturbed. There had also been a
+few ghastly casualties. A shell had fallen and burst in the traverse
+at the far end of the trench. Something that looked like half a man's
+head and a bit of shoulder had dropped just in front of the dug-out
+where Doggie and his section was sheltering. Doggie staring at it was
+violently sick. In a stupefied way he found himself mingling with
+others who were engaged in clearing up the horror. A murmur reached
+him that it was Taffy Jones who had thus been dismembered.... The
+bombardment over, he had taken his place with the rest in the
+reparation of the parapet; and as he happened to be at an end of the
+line, the officer had spoken to him. If he had been suffering tortures
+unknown to Attila, and unimagined by his successors, he would have
+answered just the same.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But he lamented Taffy's death to Phineas, who listened
+sympathetically. Such a cheery comrade, such a smart soldier, such a
+kindly soul.
+
+"Not a black spot in him," said Doggie.
+
+"A year ago, laddie," said McPhail, "what would have been your opinion
+of a bookmaker's clerk?"
+
+"I know," replied Doggie. "But this isn't a year ago. Just look
+round."
+
+He laughed somewhat hysterically, for the fate of Taffy had unstrung
+him for the time. Phineas contemplated the length of deep narrow
+ditch, with its planks half swimming on filthy liquid, its wire
+revetment holding up the oozing sides, the dingy parapet above which
+it was death to put one's head, the grey free sky, the only thing free
+along that awful row of parallel ditches that stretched from the
+Belgian coast to Switzerland, the clay-covered, shapeless figures of
+men, their fellows, almost undistinguishable even by features from
+themselves.
+
+"It has been borne upon me lately," said Phineas, "that patriotism is
+an amazing virtue."
+
+Doggie drew a foot out of the mud so as to find a less precarious
+purchase higher up the slope.
+
+"And I've been thinking, Phineas, whether it's really patriotism that
+has brought you and me into this--what can we call it? Dante's Inferno
+is child's play to it."
+
+"Dante had no more imagination," said Phineas, "than a Free Kirk
+precentor in Kirkcudbright."
+
+"But is it patriotism?" Doggie persisted. "If I thought it was, I
+should be happier. If we had orders to go over the top and attack and
+I could shout 'England for ever!' and lose myself just in the thick of
+it----"
+
+"There's a brass hat coming down the trench," said Phineas, "and brass
+hats have no use for rhapsodical privates."
+
+They stood to attention as the staff officer passed by. Then Doggie
+broke in impatiently:
+
+"I wish to goodness you could understand what I'm trying to get at."
+
+A smile illuminated the gaunt, unshaven, mud-caked face of Phineas
+McPhail.
+
+"Laddie," said he, "let England, as an abstraction, fend for itself.
+But you've a bonny English soul within you, and for that you are
+fighting. And so had poor Taffy Jones. And I have a bonny Scottish
+thirst, the poignancy of which both of you have been happily spared. I
+will leave you, laddie, to seek in slumber a surcease from martyrdom."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doggie had been out a long time. He had seen many places, much
+fighting and endured manifold miseries. After one of the spells in the
+trenches, the worst he had experienced, A Company was marched into new
+billets some miles behind the lines, in the once prosperous village of
+Frélus. They had slouched along dead tired, drooping under their
+packs, sodden with mud and sleeplessness, silent, with not a note of a
+song among them--but at the entrance to the village, quickened by a
+word or two of exhortation from officers and sergeants, they pulled
+themselves together and marched in, heads up, forward, in faultless
+step. The C.O. was jealous of the honour of his men. He assumed that
+his predecessors in the village had been a "rotten lot," and was
+determined to show the inhabitants of Frélus what a crack English
+regiment was really like. Frélus was an unimportant, unheard-of
+village; but the opinion of a thousand Fréluses made up France's
+opinion of the British Army. Doggie, although half stupefied with
+fatigue, responded to the sentiment, like the rest. He was conscious
+of making part of a gallant show. It was only when they halted and
+stood easy that he lost count of things. The wide main street of the
+village swam characterless before his eyes. He followed, not
+directions, but directed men, with a sheep-like instinct, and found
+himself stumbling through an archway down a narrow path. He had a dim
+consciousness of lurching sideways and confusedly apologizing to a
+woman who supported him back to equilibrium. Then the next thing he
+saw was a barn full of fresh straw, and when somebody pointed to a
+vacant strip, he fell down, with many others, and went to sleep.
+
+The réveillé sounded a minute afterwards, though a whole night had
+passed; and there was the blessed clean water to wash in--he had long
+since ceased to be fastidious in his ablutions--and there was
+breakfast, sizzling bacon and bread and jam. And there in front of the
+kitchen, aiding with the hot water for the tea, moved a slim girl,
+with dark, and as Doggie thought, tragic eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kit inspection, feet inspection, all the duties of the day and dinner
+were over. Most of the men returned to their billets to sleep. Some,
+including Doggie, wandered about the village, taking the air, and
+visiting the little modest cafés and talking with indifferent
+success, so far as the interchange of articulate ideas was concerned,
+with shy children. McPhail and Mo Shendish being among the sleepers,
+Doggie mooned about by himself in his usual self-effacing way. There
+was little to interest him in the long straggling village. He had
+passed through a hundred such. Low whitewashed houses, interspersed
+with perky balconied buildings given over to little shops on the
+ground floor, with here and there a discreet iron gate shutting off
+the doctor's or the attorney's villa, and bearing the oval plate
+indicating the name and pursuit of the tenant; here and there, too,
+long whitewashed walls enclosing a dairy or a timber-yard stretched on
+each side of the great high road, and the village gradually dwindled
+away at each end into the gently undulating country. There were just a
+by-lane or two, one leading up to the little grey church and
+presbytery and another to the little cemetery with its trim paths and
+black and white wooden crosses and wirework pious offerings. At open
+doors the British soldiers lounged at ease, and in the dim interiors
+behind them the forms of the women of the house, blue-aproned, moved
+to and fro. The early afternoon was warm, a westerly breeze deadened
+the sound of the distant bombardment to an unheeded drone, and a holy
+peace settled over the place.
+
+Doggie, clean, refreshed, comfortably drowsy, having explored the
+village, returned to his billet, and looking at it from the opposite
+side of the way, for the first time realized its nature. The lane,
+into which he had stumbled the night before, ran under an archway
+supporting some kind of overhead chamber, and separated the
+dwelling-house from a warehouse wall on which vast letters proclaimed
+the fact that Veuve Morin et Fils carried on therein the business of
+hay and corn dealers. Hence, Doggie reflected, the fresh, deep straw
+on which he and his fortunate comrades had wallowed. The double gate
+under the archway was held back by iron stanchions. The two-storied
+house looked fairly large and comfortable. The front door stood wide
+open, giving the view of a neat, stiff little hall or living-room. An
+article of furniture caught his idle eye. He crossed the road in order
+to have a nearer view. It was a huge polished mahogany cask standing
+about three feet high and bound with shining brass bands, such as he
+remembered having seen once in Brittany. He advanced still closer, and
+suddenly the slim, dark girl appeared and stood in the doorway, and
+looked frankly and somewhat rebukingly into his inquisitive eyes.
+Doggie flushed as one caught in an unmannerly act. A crying fault of
+the British Army is that it prescribes for the rank and file no form
+of polite recognition of the existence of civilians. It is contrary to
+Army Orders to salute or to take off their caps. They can only jerk
+their heads and grin, an inelegant proceeding, which places them at a
+disadvantage with the fair sex. Doggie, therefore, sketched a vague
+salutation half-way between a salute and a bow, and began a profuse
+apology. Mademoiselle must pardon his curiosity, but as a lover of old
+things he had been struck by the beautiful _tonneau_.
+
+An amused light came into her sombre eyes and a smile flickered round
+her lips. Doggie noted instantly how pale she was, and how tiny, faint
+little lines persisted at the corners of those lips in spite of the
+smile.
+
+"There is no reason for excuses, monsieur," she said. "The door was
+open to the view of everybody."
+
+"_Pourtant_," said Doggie, "_c'était un peu mal élevé_."
+
+She laughed. "Pardon. But it's droll. First to find an English soldier
+apologizing for looking into a house, and then to find him talking
+French like a _poilu_."
+
+Doggie said, with a little touch of national jealousy and a reversion
+to Durdlebury punctilio: "I hope, mademoiselle, you have always found
+the English soldier conduct himself like a gentleman."
+
+"_Mais oui, mais oui!_" she cried, "they are all charming. _Ils sont
+doux comme des moutons._ But this is a question of delicacy--somewhat
+exaggerated."
+
+"It's good of you, mademoiselle, to forgive me," said Doggie.
+
+By all the rules of polite intercourse, either Doggie should have made
+his bow and exit, or the maiden, exercising her prerogative, should
+have given him the opportunity of a graceful withdrawal. But they
+remained where they were, the girl framed by the doorway, the lithe
+little figure in khaki and lichen-coloured helmet looking up at her
+from the foot of the two front steps.
+
+At last he said in some embarrassment: "That's a very beautiful cask
+of yours."
+
+She wavered for a few seconds. Then she said:
+
+"You can enter, monsieur, and examine it, if you like."
+
+Mademoiselle was very amiable, said Doggie. Mademoiselle moved aside
+and Doggie entered, taking off his helmet and holding it under his arm
+like an opera-hat. There was nothing much to see in the little
+vestibule-parlour: a stiff tasselled chair or two, a great old
+linen-press taking up most of one side of a wall, a cheap table
+covered with a chenille tablecloth, and the resplendent old cask,
+about which he lingered. He mentioned Brittany. Her tragic face
+lighted up again. Monsieur was right. Her aunt, Madame Morin, was
+Breton, and had brought the cask with her as part of her dowry,
+together with the press and other furniture. Doggie alluded to the
+vastly lettered inscription, "Veuve Morin et Fils." Madame Morin was,
+in a sense, his hostess. And the sons?
+
+"One is in Madagascar, and the other--alas, monsieur!"
+
+And Doggie knew what that "alas!" meant.
+
+"The Argonne," she said.
+
+"And madame your aunt?"
+
+She shrugged her thin though shapely shoulders. "It nearly killed her.
+She is old and an invalid. She has been in bed for the last three
+weeks."
+
+"Then what becomes of the business?"
+
+"It is I, monsieur, who am the business. And I know nothing about it."
+She sighed. Then with her blue apron--otherwise she was dressed in
+unrelieved black--she rubbed an imaginary speck from the brass banding
+of the cask. "This, I suppose you know, was for the best brandy,
+monsieur."
+
+"And now?" he asked.
+
+"A memory. A sentiment. A thing of beauty."
+
+In a feminine way, which he understood, she herded him to the door, by
+way of dismissal. Durdlebury helped him. A tiny French village has as
+many slanderous tongues as an English cathedral city. He was preparing
+to take polite leave, when she looked swiftly at him and made the
+faintest gesture of a detaining hand.
+
+"Now I remember. It was you who nearly fell into me last night, when
+you were entering through the gate."
+
+The dim recollection came back--the firm woman's arm round him for the
+few tottering seconds.
+
+"It seems I am always bound to be impolite, for I don't think I
+thanked you," smiled Doggie.
+
+"You were at the end of your tether." Then very gently, "_Pauvre
+garçon!_"
+
+"The _sales Boches_ had kept us awake for four nights," said Doggie.
+"That was why."
+
+"And you are rested now?"
+
+He laughed. "Almost."
+
+They were at the door. He looked out and drew back. A knot of men were
+gathered by the gate of the yard. Apparently she had seen them too,
+for a flush rose to her pale cheeks.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Doggie, "I should like to creep back to the barn
+and sleep. If I pass my comrades they'll want to detain me."
+
+"That would be a pity," she said demurely. "Come this way, monsieur."
+
+She led him through a room and a passage to the kitchen. They shared a
+pleasurable sense of adventure and secrecy. At the kitchen door she
+paused and spoke to an old woman chopping up vegetables.
+
+"Toinette, let monsieur pass." To Doggie she said: "Au revoir,
+monsieur!" and disappeared.
+
+The old woman looked at him at first with disfavour. She did not hold
+with Tommies needlessly tramping over the clean flags of her kitchen.
+But Doggie's polite apology for disturbing her and a youthful grace of
+manner--he still held his tin hat under his arm--caused her features
+to relax.
+
+"You are English?"
+
+With a smile, he indicated his uniform. "Why, yes, madame."
+
+"How comes it, then, that you speak French?"
+
+"Because I have always loved your beautiful France, madame."
+
+"France--_ah! la pauvre France_!" She sighed, drew a wisp of what had
+been a cornet of snuff from her pocket, opened it, dipped in a
+tentative finger and thumb and, finding it empty, gazed at it with
+disappointment, sighed again and, with the methodical hopelessness of
+age, folded it up into the neatest of little squares and thrust it
+back in her pocket. Then she went on with her vegetables.
+
+Doggie took his leave and emerged into the yard.
+
+He dozed pleasantly on the straw of the barn, but it was not the dead
+sleep of the night. Bits of his recent little adventure fitted into
+the semi-conscious intervals. He heard the girl's voice saying so
+gently: "_Pauvre garçon!_" and it was very comforting.
+
+He was finally aroused by Phineas and Mo Shendish, who, having slept
+like tired dogs some distance off down the barn, now desired his
+company for a stroll round the village. Doggie good-naturedly
+assented. As they passed the house door he cast a quick glance. It was
+open, but the slim figure in black with the blue apron was not visible
+within. The shining cask, however, seemed to smile a friendly
+greeting.
+
+"If you believed the London papers," said Phineas, "you'd think that
+the war-worn soldier coming from the trenches is met behind the lines
+with luxurious Turkish baths, comfortable warm canteens, picture
+palaces and theatrical entertainments. Can you perceive here any of
+those amenities of modern warfare?"
+
+They looked around them, and admitted they could not.
+
+"Apparently," said Phineas, "the Colonel, good but limited man, has
+missed all the proper places and dumps us in localities unrecognized
+by the London Press."
+
+"Put me on the pier at Brighton," sang Mo Shendish. "But I'd sooner
+have Margit or Yarmouth any day. Brighton's too toffish for whelks.
+My! and cockles! I wonder whether we shall ever eat 'em again." A
+far-away, dreamy look crept into his eyes.
+
+"Does your young lady like cockles?" Doggie asked sympathetically.
+
+"Aggie? Funny thing, I was just thinking of her. She fair dotes on
+'em. We had a day at Southend just before the war----"
+
+He launched into anecdote. His companions listened, Phineas ironically
+carrying out his theory of adaptability, Doggie with finer instinct.
+It appeared there had been an altercation over right of choice with an
+itinerant vendor in which, to Aggie's admiration, Mo had come off
+triumphant.
+
+"You see," he explained, "being in the fish trade myself, I could spot
+the winners."
+
+James Marmaduke Trevor, of Denby Hall, laughed and slapped him on the
+back, and said indulgently: "Good old Mo!"
+
+At the little school-house they stopped to gossip with some of their
+friends who were billeted there, and they sang the praises of the
+Veuve Morin's barn.
+
+"I wonder you don't have the house full of orficers, if it's so
+wonderful," said some one.
+
+An omniscient corporal in the confidence of the quartermaster
+explained that the landlady being ill in bed, and the place run by a
+young girl, the house had been purposely missed. Doggie drew a breath
+of relief at the news and attributed Madame Morin's malady to the
+intervention of a kindly providence. Somehow he did not fancy officers
+having the run of the house.
+
+They strolled on and came to a forlorn little _Débit de Tabac_,
+showing in its small window some clay pipes and a few fly-blown
+picture post-cards. Now Doggie, in spite of his training in adversity,
+had never resigned himself to "Woodbines," and other such brands
+supplied to the British Army, and Egyptian and Turkish being beyond
+his social pale, he had taken to smoking French Régie tobacco, of
+which he laid in a stock whenever he had the chance. So now he entered
+the shop, leaving Phineas and Mo outside. As they looked on French
+cigarettes with sturdy British contempt, they were not interested in
+Doggie's purchases. A wan girl of thirteen rose from behind the
+counter.
+
+"_Vous désirez, monsieur?_"
+
+Doggie stated his desire. The girl was calculating the price of the
+packets before wrapping them up, when his eyes fell upon a neat little
+pile of cornets in a pigeon-hole at the back. They directly suggested
+to him one of the great luminous ideas of his life. It was only
+afterwards that he realized its effulgence. For the moment he was
+merely concerned with the needs of a poor old woman who had sighed
+lamentably over an empty paper of comfort.
+
+"Do you sell snuff?"
+
+"But yes, monsieur."
+
+"Give me some of the best quality."
+
+"How much does monsieur desire?"
+
+"A lot," said Doggie.
+
+And he bought a great package, enough to set the whole village
+sneezing to the end of the war, and peering round the tiny shop and
+espying in the recesses of a glass case a little olive-wood box
+ornamented on the top with pansies and forget-me-nots, purchased that
+also. He had just paid when his companions put their heads in the
+doorway. Mo, pointing waggishly to Doggie, warned the little girl
+against his depravity.
+
+"Mauvy, mauvy!" said he.
+
+"_Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?_" asked the child.
+
+"He's the idiot of the regiment, whom I have to look after and feed
+with pap," said Doggie, "and, being hungry, he is begging you not to
+detain me."
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_" cried the child.
+
+Doggie, always courteous, went out with a "_Bon soir, mademoiselle_,"
+and joined his friends.
+
+"What were you jabbering to her about?" Mo asked suspiciously.
+
+Doggie gave him the literal translation of his speech. Phineas burst
+into loud laughter.
+
+"Laddie," said he, "I've never heard you make a joke before. The idiot
+of the regiment, and you're his keeper! Man, that's fine. What has
+come over you to-day?"
+
+"If he'd said a thing like that in Mare Street, Hackney, I'd have
+knocked his blinking 'ead orf," declared Mo Shendish.
+
+Doggie stopped and put his parcel-filled hands behind his back.
+
+"Have a try now, Mo."
+
+But Mo bade him fry his ugly face, and thus established harmony.
+
+It was late that evening before Doggie could find an opportunity of
+slipping, unobserved, through the open door into the house kitchen
+dimly illuminated by an oil lamp.
+
+"Madame," said he to Toinette, "I observed to-day that you had come to
+the end of your snuff. Will you permit a little English soldier to
+give you some? Also a little box to keep it in."
+
+The old woman, spare, myriad-wrinkled beneath her peasant's _coiffe_,
+yet looking as if carved out of weather-beaten oak, glanced from the
+gift to the donor and from the donor to the gift.
+
+"But, monsieur--monsieur--why?" she began quaveringly.
+
+"You surely have some one--_là bas_--over yonder?" said Doggie with
+a sweep of his hand.
+
+"_Mais oui?_ How did you know? My grandson. _Mon petiot_----"
+
+"It is he, my comrade, who sends the snuff to the _grand'mére_." And
+Doggie bolted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+At breakfast next morning Doggie searched the courtyard in vain for
+the slim figure of the girl. Yesterday she had stood just outside the
+kitchen door. To-day her office was usurped by a hefty cook with the
+sleeves of his grey shirt rolled up and his collar open and vast and
+tight-hitched braces unromantically strapped all over him. Doggie felt
+a pang of disappointment and abused the tea. Mo Shendish stared, and
+asked what was wrong with it.
+
+"Rotten," said Doggie.
+
+"You can't expect yer slap-up City A.B.C. shops in France," said Mo.
+
+Doggie, who was beginning to acquire a sense of rueful humour, smiled
+and was appeased.
+
+It was only in the afternoon that he saw the girl again. She was
+standing in the doorway of the house, with her hand on her bosom, as
+though she had just come out to breathe fresh air, when Doggie and his
+two friends emerged from the yard. As their eyes met, she greeted him
+with her sad little smile. Emboldened, he stepped forward.
+
+"_Bon jour, mademoiselle._"
+
+"_Bon jour, monsieur._"
+
+"I hope madame your aunt is better to-day."
+
+She seemed to derive some dry amusement from his solicitude.
+
+"Alas, no, monsieur."
+
+"Was that why I had not the pleasure of seeing you this morning?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Yesterday you filled our tea-kettles."
+
+"But, monsieur," she replied primly, "I am not the _vivandière_ of
+the regiment."
+
+"That's a pity," laughed Doggie.
+
+Then he became aware of the adjacent forms and staring eyes of Phineas
+and Mo, who for the first time in their military career beheld him on
+easy terms with a strange and prepossessing young woman. After a
+second's thought he came to a diplomatic decision.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said he, in his best Durdlebury manner, "may I dare to
+present my two comrades, my best friends in the battalion, Monsieur
+McPhail, Monsieur Shendish?"
+
+She made them each a little formal bow, and then, somewhat
+maliciously, addressing McPhail, as the bigger and the elder of the
+two:
+
+"I don't yet know the name of your friend."
+
+Phineas put his great hand on Doggie's shoulder.
+
+"James Marmaduke Trevor."
+
+"Otherwise called Doggie, miss," said Mo.
+
+She made a little graceful gesture of non-comprehension.
+
+"_Non compree?_" asked Mo.
+
+"No, monsieur."
+
+Phineas explained, in his rasping and consciously translated French:
+
+"It is a nickname of the regiment. Doggie."
+
+The flushed and embarrassed subject of the discussion saw her lips
+move silently to the word.
+
+"But his name is Trevor. Monsieur Trevor," said Phineas.
+
+She smiled again. And the strange thing about her smile was that it
+was a matter of her lips and rarely of her eyes, which always
+maintained the haunting sadness of their tragic depths.
+
+"Monsieur Trevor," she repeated imitatively. "And yours, monsieur?"
+
+"McPhail."
+
+"Mac-Fêle; _c'est assez difficile_. And yours?"
+
+Mo guessed. "Shendish," said he.
+
+She repeated that also, whereat Mo grinned fatuously, showing his
+little yellow teeth beneath his scrubby red moustache.
+
+"My friends call me Mo," said he.
+
+She grasped his meaning. "Mo," she said; and she said it so funnily
+and softly, and with ever so little a touch of quizzicality, that the
+sentimental warrior roared with delight.
+
+"You've got it right fust time, miss."
+
+From her two steps' height of vantage, she looked down on the three
+upturned British faces--and her eyes went calmly from one to the
+other.
+
+She turned to Doggie. "One would say, monsieur, that you were the
+Three Musketeers."
+
+"Possibly, mademoiselle," laughed Doggie. He had not felt so
+light-hearted for many months. "But we lack a d'Artagnan."
+
+"When you find him, bring him to me," said the girl.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Phineas gallantly, "we would not be such
+imbeciles."
+
+At that moment the voice of Toinette came from within.
+
+"Ma'amselle Jeanne! Ma'amselle Jeanne!"
+
+"_Oui, oui, j'y viens_," she cried. "_Bon soir, messieurs_," and she
+was gone.
+
+Doggie looked into the empty vestibule and smiled at the friendly
+brandy cask. Provided it is pronounced correctly, so as to rhyme with
+the English "Anne," it is a very pretty name. Doggie thought she
+looked like Jeanne--a Jeanne d'Arc of this modern war.
+
+"Yon's a very fascinating lassie," Phineas remarked soberly, as they
+started on their stroll. "Did you happen to observe that all the time
+she was talking so prettily she was looking at ghosts behind us?"
+
+"Do you think so?" asked Doggie, startled.
+
+"Man, I know it," replied Phineas.
+
+"Ghosts be blowed!" cried Mo Shendish. "She's a bit of orl right, she is.
+What I call class. Doesn't chuck 'erself at yer 'ead, like some of 'em,
+and, on the other 'and, has none of yer blooming stand-orfishness. See
+what I mean?" He clutched them each by an arm--he was between them.
+"Look 'ere. How do you think I could pick up this blinking
+lingo--quick?"
+
+"Make violent love to Toinette and ask her to teach you. There's
+nothing like it," said Doggie.
+
+"Who's Toinette?"
+
+"The nice old lady in the kitchen."
+
+Mo flung his arm away. "Oh, go and boil yourself!" said he.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the making of love to the old woman in the kitchen led to
+possibilities of which Mo Shendish never dreamed. They never dawned on
+Doggie until he found himself at it that evening.
+
+It was dusk. The men were lounging and smoking about the courtyard.
+Doggie, who had long since exchanged poor Taffy Jones's imperfect
+penny whistle for a scientific musical instrument ordered from Bond
+Street, was playing, with his sensitive skill, the airs they loved. He
+had just finished "Annie Laurie"--"Man," Phineas used to declare,
+"when Doggie Trevor plays 'Annie Laurie,' he has the power to take
+your heart by the strings and drag it out through your eyes"--he had
+just come to the end of this popular and gizzard-piercing tune and
+received his meed of applause, when Toinette came out of the kitchen,
+two great zinc crocks in her hands, and crossed to the pump in the
+corner of the yard. Three or four would-be pumpers, among them Doggie,
+went to her aid.
+
+"All right, mother, we'll see to it," said one of them.
+
+So they pumped and filled the crocks, and one man got hold of one and
+Doggie got hold of another, and they carried them to the kitchen
+steps.
+
+"_Merci, monsieur_," said Toinette to the first; and he went away with
+a friendly nod. But to Doggie she said, "_Entrez, monsieur_." And
+monsieur carried the two crocks over the threshold and Toinette shut
+the door behind him. And there, sitting over some needlework in a
+corner of the kitchen by a lamp, sat Jeanne.
+
+She looked up rather startled, frowned for the brief part of a second,
+and regarded him inquiringly.
+
+"I brought in monsieur to show him the photograph of _mon petiot_, the
+comrade who sent me the snuff," explained Toinette, rummaging in a
+cupboard.
+
+"May I stay and look at it?" asked Doggie, buttoning up his tunic.
+
+"_Mais parfaitement, monsieur_," said Jeanne. "It is Toinette's
+kitchen."
+
+"_Bien sûr_," said the old woman, turning with the photograph, that
+of a solid young infantryman. Doggie made polite remarks. Toinette put
+on a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles and scanned the picture. Then
+she handed it to Jeanne.
+
+"Don't you think there is a great deal of resemblance?"
+
+Jeanne directed a comparing glance at Doggie and smiled.
+
+"Like two little soldiers in a pod," she said.
+
+Toinette talked of her _petiot_ who was at St. Mihiel. It was far
+away, very far. She sighed as though he were fighting remote in the
+Caucasus.
+
+Presently came the sharp ring of a bell. Jeanne put aside her work and
+rose.
+
+"It is my aunt who has awakened."
+
+But Toinette was already at the door. "I will go up, Ma'amselle
+Jeanne. Do not derange yourself."
+
+She bustled away. Once more the pair found themselves alone together.
+
+"If you don't continue your sewing, mademoiselle," said Doggie, "I
+shall think that I am disturbing you, and must bid you good night."
+
+Jeanne sat down and resumed her work. A sensation, more like laughter
+than anything else, fluttered round Doggie's heart.
+
+"_Voulez-vous vous asseoir, Monsieur--Trevor?_"
+
+"_Vous êtes bien aimable, Mademoiselle Jeanne_," said Doggie, sitting
+down on a straight-backed chair by the oilcloth-covered kitchen table
+which was between them.
+
+"May I move the lamp slightly?" he asked, for it hid her from his
+view.
+
+He moved it somewhat to her left. It threw shadows over her features,
+accentuating their appealing sadness. He watched her, and thought of
+McPhail's words about the ghosts. He noted too, as the needle went in
+and out of the fabric, that her hands, though roughened by coarse
+work, were finely made, with long fingers and delicate wrists. He
+broke a silence that grew embarrassing.
+
+"You seem to have suffered greatly, Mademoiselle Jeanne," he said
+softly.
+
+Her lips quivered. "_Mais oui, monsieur._"
+
+"Monsieur Trevor," he said.
+
+She put her hands and needlework in her lap and looked at him full.
+
+"And you too have suffered?"
+
+"I? Oh no."
+
+"But, yes. I have seen too much of it not to know. I see in the eyes.
+Your two comrades to-day--they are good fellows--but they have not
+suffered. You are different."
+
+"Not a bit," he declared. "We're just little indistinguishable bits of
+the conglomerate Tommy."
+
+"And I, monsieur, have the honour to say that you are different."
+
+This was very flattering. More--it was sweet unction, grateful to many
+a bruise.
+
+"How?" said he.
+
+"You do not belong to their world. Your Tommies are wonderful in their
+kindness and chivalry--until I met them I had never seen an Englishman
+in my life--I had imbecile ideas--I thought they would be without
+manners--_un peu insultants_. I found I could walk among them, without
+fear, as if I were a princess. It is true."
+
+"It is because you have the air of a princess," said Doggie; "a sad
+little disguised princess of a fairy-tale, who is recognized by all
+the wild boars and rabbits in the wood."
+
+She glanced aside. "There isn't a woman in Frélus who is differently
+treated. I am only an ignorant girl, half bourgeoise, half peasant,
+monsieur, but I have my woman's knowledge--and I know there is a
+difference between you and the others. You are a son of good family.
+It is evident. You have a delicacy of mind and of feeling. You were
+not born to be a soldier."
+
+"Mademoiselle Jeanne," cried Doggie, "do I appear as bad as that? Do
+you take me for an _embusqué manqué_?"
+
+Now an _embusqué_ is a slacker who lies in the safe ambush of a soft
+job. And an _embusqué manqué_ is a slacker who fortuitously has
+failed to win the fungus wreath of slackerdom.
+
+She flushed deep red.
+
+"_Je ne suis pas malhonnête, monsieur._"
+
+Doggie spread himself elbow-wise over the table. The girl's visible
+register of moods was fascinating.
+
+"Pardon, Mademoiselle Jeanne. You are quite right. But it's not a
+question of what I was born to be--but what I was trained to be. I
+wasn't trained to be a soldier. But I do my best."
+
+She looked at him waveringly.
+
+"Forgive me, mademoiselle."
+
+"But you flash out on the point of honour."
+
+Doggie laughed. "Which shows that I have the essential of the
+soldier."
+
+Doggie's manner was not without charm. She relented.
+
+"You know very well what I mean," she said rebukingly. "And you don't
+deserve that I should tell it to you. It was my intention to say that
+you have sacrificed many things to make yourself a simple soldier."
+
+"Only a few idle habits," said Doggie.
+
+"You joined, like the rest, as a volunteer."
+
+"Of course."
+
+"You abandoned everything to fight for your country?"
+
+Under the spell of her dark eyes Doggie spoke according to Phineas
+after the going West of Taffy Jones, "I think, Mademoiselle Jeanne, it
+was rather to fight for my soul."
+
+She resumed her sewing. "That's what I meant long ago," she remarked
+with the first draw of the needle. "No one could fight for his soul
+without passing through suffering." She went on sewing. Doggie,
+shrinking from a reply that might have sounded fatuous, remained
+silent; but he realized a wonderful faculty of comprehension in
+Jeanne.
+
+After awhile he said: "Where did you learn all your wisdom,
+Mademoiselle Jeanne?"
+
+"At the convent, I suppose. My father gave me a good education."
+
+"An English poet has said, 'Knowledge comes, but Wisdom
+lingers'"--Doggie had rather a fight to express the meaning exactly in
+French--"You don't gather wisdom in convents."
+
+"It is true. Since then I have seen many things."
+
+She stared across the room, not at Doggie, and he thought again of the
+ghosts.
+
+"Tell me some of them, Mademoiselle Jeanne," he said in a low voice.
+
+She shot a swift glance at him and met his honest brown eyes.
+
+"I saw my father murdered in front of me," she said in a harsh voice.
+
+"My God!" said Doggie.
+
+"It was on the Retreat. We lived in Cambrai, my father and mother and
+I. He was a lawyer. When we heard the Germans were coming, my father,
+somewhat of an invalid, decided to fly. He had heard of what they had
+already done in Belgium. We tried to go by train. _Pas moyen._ We took
+to the road, with many others. We could not get a horse--we had
+postponed our flight till too late. Only a handcart, with a few
+necessaries and precious things. And we walked until we nearly died of
+heat and dust and grief. For our hearts were very heavy, monsieur. The
+roads, too, were full of the English in retreat. I shall not tell you
+what I saw of the wounded by the roadside. I sometimes see them now in
+my dreams. And we were helpless. We thought we would leave the main
+roads, and at last we got lost and found ourselves in a little wood.
+We sat down to rest and to eat. It was cool and pleasant, and I
+laughed, to cheer my parents, for they knew how I loved to eat under
+the freshness of the trees." She shivered. "I hope I shall never have
+to eat a meal in a wood again. We had scarcely begun when a body of
+cavalry, with strange pointed helmets, rode along the path and, seeing
+us, halted. My mother, half dead with terror, cried out, '_Mon Dieu,
+ce sont des Uhlans!_' The leader, I suppose an officer, called out
+something in German. My father replied. I do not understand German, so
+I did not know and shall never know what they said. But my father
+protested in anger and stood in front of the horse making gestures.
+And then the officer took out his revolver and shot him through the
+heart, and he fell dead. And the murderer turned his horse's head
+round and he laughed. He laughed, monsieur."
+
+"Damn him!" said Doggie, in English. "Damn him!"
+
+He gazed deep into Jeanne's dark tearless eyes. She continued in the
+same even voice:
+
+"My mother became mad. She was a peasant, a Bretonne, where the blood
+is fierce, and she screamed and clung to the bridle of the horse. And
+he rode her down and the horse trampled on her. Then he pointed at me,
+who was supporting the body of my father, and three men dismounted.
+But suddenly he heard something, gave an order, and the men mounted
+again, and they all rode away laughing and jeering, and the last man,
+in bad French, shouted at me a foul insult. And I was there, Monsieur
+Trevor, with my father dead and my mother stunned and bruised and
+bleeding."
+
+Doggie, sensitive, quivered to the girl's tragedy: he said, with tense
+face:
+
+"God give me strength to kill every German I see!"
+
+She nodded slowly. "No German is a human being. If I were God, I would
+exterminate the accursed race like wolves."
+
+"You are right," said Doggie. A short silence fell. He asked: "What
+happened then?"
+
+"_Mon Dieu_, I almost forget. I was overwhelmed with grief and horror.
+Some hours afterwards a small body of English infantry came--many of
+them had bloodstained bandages. An officer who spoke a little French
+questioned me. I told him what had happened. He spoke with another
+officer, and because I recognized the word 'Uhlans,' I knew they were
+anxious about the patrol. They asked me the way to some place--I
+forget where. But I was lost. They looked at a map. Meanwhile my
+mother had recovered consciousness. I gave her a little wine from the
+bottle we had opened for our repast. I happened to look at the officer
+and saw him pass his tongue over his cracked lips. All the men had
+thrown themselves down by the side of the road. I handed him the
+bottle and the little tin cup. To my surprise, he did not drink. He
+said: 'Mademoiselle, this is war, and we are all in very great peril.
+My men are dying of thirst, and if you have any more of the wine, give
+it to them and they will do their utmost to conduct your mother and
+yourself to a place of safety.' Alas! there were only three bottles in
+our little basket of provisions. Naturally I gave it all--together
+with the food. He called a sergeant, who took the provisions and
+distributed them, while I was tending my mother. But I noticed that
+the two officers took neither bite nor sup. It was only afterwards,
+Monsieur Trevor, that I realized I had seen your great English
+gentlemen.... Then they dug a little grave, for my father.... It was
+soon finished ... the danger was grave ... and some soldiers took a
+rope and pulled the handcart, with my mother lying on top of our
+little possessions, and I walked with them, until the whole of my life
+was blotted out with fatigue. We got on to the Route Nationale again
+and mingled again with the Retreat. And in the night, as we were still
+marching, there was a halt. I went to my mother. She was cold,
+monsieur, cold and stiff. She was dead."
+
+She paused tragically. After a few moments she continued:
+
+"I fainted. I do not know what happened till I recovered consciousness
+at dawn. I found myself wrapped in one of our blankets, lying under
+the handcart. It was the market-square of a little town. And there
+were many--old men and women and children, refugees like me. I rose
+and found a paper--a leaf torn from a notebook--fixed to the handcart.
+It was from the officer, bidding me farewell. Military necessity
+forced him to go on with his men--but he had kept his word, and
+brought me to a place of safety.... That is how I first met the
+English, Monsieur Trevor. They had carried me, I suppose, on the
+handcart, all night, they who were broken with weariness. I owe them
+my life and my reason."
+
+"And your mother?"
+
+"How should I know? _Elle est restée là-bas_," she replied simply.
+
+She went on with her sewing. Doggie wondered how her hand could be so
+steady. There was a long silence. What words, save vain imprecations
+on the accursed race, were adequate? Presently her glance rested for a
+second or two on his sensitive face.
+
+"Why do you not smoke, Monsieur Trevor?"
+
+"May I?"
+
+"Of course. It calms the nerves. I ought not to have saddened you with
+my griefs."
+
+Doggie took out his pink packet and lit a cigarette.
+
+"You are very understanding, Mademoiselle Jeanne. But it does a
+selfish man like me good to be saddened by a story like yours. I have
+not had much opportunity in my life of feeling for another's
+suffering. And since the war--I am _abruti_."
+
+"You? Do you think if I had not found you just the reverse, I should
+have told you all this?"
+
+"You have paid me a great compliment, Mademoiselle Jeanne." Then,
+after awhile, he asked, "From the market-square of the little town you
+found means to come here?"
+
+"Alas, no!" she said, putting her work in her lap again. "I made my
+way, with my handcart--it was easy--to our original destination, a
+little farm belonging to the eldest brother of my father. The Farm of
+La Folette. He lived there alone, a widower, with his farm-servants.
+He had no children. We thought we were safe. Alas! news came that the
+Germans were always advancing. We had time to fly. All the farm-hands
+fled, except Père Grigou, who loved him. But my uncle was obstinate.
+To a Frenchman, the soil he possesses is his flesh and his blood. He
+would die rather than leave it. And my uncle had the murder of my
+father and mother on his brain. He told Père Grigou to take me away,
+but I stayed with him. It was Père Grigou who forced us to hide. That
+lasted two days. There was a well in the farm, and one night Père
+Grigou tied up my money and my mother's jewellery and my father's
+papers, _enfin_, all the precious things we had, in a packet of
+waterproof and sank it with a long string down the well, so that the
+Germans could not find it. It was foolish, but he insisted. One day my
+uncle and Père Grigou went out of the little copse where we had been
+hiding, in order to reconnoitre, for he thought the Germans might be
+going away; and my uncle, who would not listen to me, took his gun.
+Presently I heard a shot--and then another. You can guess what it
+meant. And soon Père Grigou came, white and shaking with terror. '_Il
+en a tué un, et on l'a tué!_'"
+
+"My God!" said Doggie again.
+
+"It was terrible," she said. "But they were in their right."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"We lay hidden until it was dark--how they did not find us I don't
+know--and then we escaped across country. I thought of coming here to
+my Aunt Morin, which is not far from La Folette, but I reflected that
+soon the Boches would be here also. And we went on. We got to a high
+road--and once more I was among troops and refugees. I met some kind
+folks in a carriage, a Monsieur and Madame Tarride, and they took me
+in. And so I got to Paris, where I had the hospitality of a friend of
+the Convent who was married."
+
+"And Père Grigou?"
+
+"He insisted on going back to bury my uncle. Nothing could move him.
+He had not parted from him all his life. They were foster-brothers.
+Where he is now, who knows?" She paused, looked again at her ghosts,
+and continued: "That is all, Monsieur Trevor. The Germans passed
+through here and repassed on their retreat, and, as soon as it was
+safe, I came to help my aunt, who was _souffrante_, and had lost her
+son. Also because I could not live on charity on my friend, for,
+_voyez-vous_, I was without a sou--all my money having been hidden in
+the well by Père Grigou."
+
+Doggie leant his elbows on the table.
+
+"And you have come through all that, Mademoiselle Jeanne, just as you
+are----?"
+
+"How, just as I am?"
+
+"So gentle and kind and comprehending?"
+
+Her cheek flushed. "I am not the only Frenchwoman who has passed
+through such things and kept herself proud. But the struggle has been
+very hard."
+
+Doggie rose and clenched his fists and rubbed his head from front to
+back in his old indecisive way, and began to swear incoherently in
+English. She smiled sadly.
+
+"_Ah, mon pauvre ami!_"
+
+He wheeled round: "Why do you call me '_mon pauvre ami_'?"
+
+"Because I see that you would like to help me and you can't."
+
+"Jeanne," cried Doggie, bending half over the table which was between
+them.
+
+She rose too, startled, on quick defensive. He said, in reply to her
+glance:
+
+"Why shouldn't I call you Jeanne?"
+
+"You haven't the right."
+
+"What if I gain it?"
+
+"How?"
+
+"I don't know," said Doggie.
+
+The door burst suddenly open and the anxious face of Mo Shendish
+appeared.
+
+"'Ere, you silly cuckoo, don't yer know you're on guard to-night?
+You've just got about thirty seconds."
+
+"Good lord!" cried Doggie, "I forgot. _Bon soir, mademoiselle. Service
+militaire_," and he rushed out.
+
+Mo lingered, with a grin, and jerked a backward thumb.
+
+"If it weren't for old Mo, miss, I don't know what would happen to our
+friend Doggie. I got to look after him like a baby, I 'ave. He's on to
+relieve guard, and if old Mac--that's McPhail"--she nodded recognition
+of the name--"and I hadn't remembered, miss, he'd 'ave been in what
+yer might call a 'ole. Compree?"
+
+"_Oui._ Yes," she said. "_Garde. Sentinelle._"
+
+"Sentinel. Sentry. Right."
+
+"He--was--late," she said, picking out her few English words from
+memory.
+
+"Yuss," grinned Mo.
+
+"He--guard--house?"
+
+"Bless you, miss, you talk English as well as I do," cried the
+admiring Mo. "Yuss. When his turn comes, up and down in the street, by
+the gate." He saw her puzzled look. "Roo. Port," said he.
+
+"_Ah! oui, je comprends_," smiled Jeanne. "_Merci, monsieur, et bon
+soir._"
+
+"Good night, miss," said Mo.
+
+Some time later he disturbed Phineas, by whose side he slept, from his
+initial preparation for slumber.
+
+"Mac! Is there any book I could learn this blinking lingo from?"
+
+"Try Ovid--'Art of Love,'" replied Phineas sleepily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The spell of night sentry duty had always been Doggie's black hour. To
+most of the other military routine he had grown hardened or deadened.
+In the depths of his heart he hated the life as much as ever. He had
+schooled himself to go through it with the dull fatalism of a convict.
+It was no use railing at inexorable laws, irremediable conditions. The
+only alternative to the acceptance of his position was military
+punishment, which was far worse--to say nothing of the outrage to his
+pride. It was pride that kept the little ironical smile on his lips
+while his nerves were almost breaking with strain. The first time he
+came under fire he was physically sick--not from fear, for he stood it
+better than most, keeping an eye on his captain, whose function it was
+to show an unconcerned face--but from sheer nervous reaction against
+the hideous noise, the stench, the ghastly upheaval of the earth, the
+sight of mangled men. When the bombardment was over, if he had been
+alone, he would have sat down and cried. Never had he grown accustomed
+to the foulness of the trenches. The sounder his physical condition,
+the more did his delicately trained senses revolt. It was only when
+fierce animal cravings dulled these senses that he could throw himself
+down anywhere and sleep, that he could swallow anything in the way of
+food or drink. The rats nearly drove him crazy.... Yet, what had once
+been to him a torture, the indecent, nerve-rasping publicity of the
+soldier's life, had now become a compensation. It was not so much in
+companionship, like his friendly intercourse with Phineas and Mo, that
+he found an anodyne, but in the consciousness of being magnetically
+affected by the crowd of his fellows. They offered him protection
+against himself. Whatever pangs of self-pity he felt, whatever wan
+little pleadings for the bit of fine porcelain compelled to a rough
+usage which vessels of coarser clay could disregard came lingeringly
+into his mind, he dared not express them to a living soul around. On
+the contrary, he set himself assiduously to cultivate the earthenware
+habit of spirit; not to feel, not to think, only to endure. To a
+humorously incredulous Jeanne he proclaimed himself _abruti_. Finally,
+the ceaseless grind of the military machine left him little time to
+think.
+
+But in the solitary sleepless hours of sentry duty there was nothing
+to do but think; nothing wherewith to while away the time but an orgy
+of introspection. First came the almost paralysing sense of
+responsibility. He must keep, not only awake, but alert to the
+slightest sound, the slightest movement. Lives of men depended on his
+vigilance. A man can't screw himself up to this beautifully emotional
+pitch for very long and be an efficient sentry. If he did, he would
+challenge mice and shoot at cloud-shadows and bring the deuce of a
+commotion about his ears. And this Doggie, who did not lack ordinary
+intelligence, realized. So he strove to think of other things. And the
+other things all focussed down upon his Doggie self. And he never knew
+what to make of his Doggie self at all. For he would curse the things
+that he once loved as being the cause of his inexpiable shame, and at
+the same time yearn for them with an agony of longing.
+
+And he would force himself to think of Peggy and her unswerving
+loyalty. Of her weekly parcel of dainty food, which had arrived that
+morning. Of the joy of Phineas and the disappointment of the
+unsophisticated Mo over the _pâté de foie gras_. But his mind
+wandered back to his Doggie self and its humiliations and its needs
+and its yearnings. He welcomed enemy flares and star-shells and
+excursions and alarms. They kept him from thinking, enabled him to
+pass the time. But in the dead, lonely, silent dark, the hours were
+like centuries. He dreaded them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To-night they fled like minutes. It was a pitch-black night, spitting
+fine rain. It was one of Doggie's private grievances that it
+invariably rained when he was on sentry duty. One of Heaven's little
+ways of strafing him for Doggieism. But to-night he did not heed it.
+Often the passage of transport had been a distraction for which he had
+longed and which, when it came, was warmly welcome. But to-night,
+during his spell, the roadway of the village was as still as death,
+and he loved the stillness and the blackness. Once he had welcomed
+familiar approaching steps. Now he resented them.
+
+"Who goes there?"
+
+"Rounds."
+
+And the officer, recognized, flashing an electric torch, passed on.
+The diminuendo of his footsteps was agreeable to Doggie's ear. The
+rain dripped monotonously off his helmet on to his sodden shoulders,
+but Doggie did not mind. Now and then he strained an eye upwards to
+that part of the living-house that was above the gateway. Little
+streaks of light came downwards through the shutter slats. Now it
+required no great intellectual effort to surmise that the light
+proceeded, not from the bedroom of the invalid Madame Morin, who would
+naturally have the best bedroom situated in the comfortable main block
+of the house, but from that of somebody else. Madame Morin was
+therefore ruled out. So was Toinette--ridiculous to think of her
+keeping all night vigil. There remained only Jeanne.
+
+It was supremely silly of him to march with super-martiality of tread
+up the pavement; but then, it is often the way of young men to do
+supremely silly things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day was fuss and bustle, from the private soldier's point of
+view. They were marching back to the trenches that night, and a crack
+company must take over with flawless equipment and in flawless bodily
+health. In the afternoon Doggie had a breathing spell of leisure. He
+walked boldly into the kitchen.
+
+"Madame," said he to Toinette, "I suppose you know that we are leaving
+to-night?"
+
+The old woman sighed. "It is always like that. They come, they make
+friends, they go, and they never return."
+
+"You mustn't make the little soldier weep, _grand'mère_," said
+Doggie.
+
+"No. It is the _grand'mères_ who weep," replied Toinette.
+
+"I'll come back all right," said he. "Where is Mademoiselle Jeanne?"
+
+"She is upstairs, monsieur."
+
+"If she had gone out, I should have been disappointed," smiled Doggie.
+
+"You desire to see her, monsieur?"
+
+"To thank her before I go for her kindness to me."
+
+The old face wrinkled into a smile.
+
+"It was not then for the _beaux yeux_ of the _grand'mère_ that you
+entered?"
+
+"_Si, si!_ Of course it was," he protested. "But one, nevertheless,
+must be polite to mademoiselle."
+
+"_Aïe! aïe!_" said the old woman, bustling out: "I'll call her."
+
+Presently Jeanne came in alone, calm, cool, and in her plain black
+dress, looking like a sweet Fate. From the top of her dark brown hair
+to her trim, stout shoes, she gave the impression of being exquisitely
+ordered, bodily and spiritually.
+
+"It was good of you to come," he cried, and they shook hands
+instinctively, scarcely realizing it was for the first time. But he
+was sensitive to the frank grip of her long and slender fingers.
+
+"Toinette said you wished to see me."
+
+"We are going to-night. I had to come and bid you _au revoir_!"
+
+"Is the company returning?"
+
+"So I hear the quartermaster says. Are you glad?"
+
+"Yes, I am glad. One doesn't like to lose friends."
+
+"You regard me as a friend, Jeanne?"
+
+"_Pour sûr_," she replied simply.
+
+"Then you don't mind my calling you Jeanne?" said he.
+
+"What does it matter? There are graver questions at stake in the
+world."
+
+She crossed the kitchen and opened the yard door which Doggie had
+closed behind him. Meeting a query in his glance, she said:
+
+"I like the fresh air, and I don't like secrecy."
+
+She leaned against the edge of the table and Doggie, emboldened,
+seated himself on the corner by her side, and they looked out into the
+little flagged courtyard in which the men, some in grey shirt-sleeves,
+some in tunics, were lounging about among the little piles of
+accoutrements and packs. Here and there a man was shaving by the aid
+of a bit of mirror supported on a handcart. Jests and laughter were
+flung in the quiet afternoon air. A little group were feeding pigeons
+which, at the sight of crumbs, had swarmed iridescent from the tall
+_colombier_ in the far corner near the gabled barn. As Jeanne did not
+speak, at last Doggie bent forward and, looking into her eyes, found
+them moist with tears.
+
+"What is the matter, Jeanne?" he asked in a low voice.
+
+"The war, _mon ami_," she replied, turning her face towards him, "the
+haunting tragedy of the war. I don't know how to express what I mean.
+If all those brave fellows there went about with serious faces, I
+should not be affected. _Mais, voyez-vous, leur gaieté fait peur._"
+
+_Their laughter frightened her._ Doggie, with his quick
+responsiveness, understood. She had put into a phrase the haunting
+tragedy of the war. The eternal laughter of youth quenched in a gurgle
+of the throat.
+
+He said admiringly: "You are a wonderful woman, Jeanne."
+
+Her delicate shoulders moved, ever so little. "A woman? I suppose I
+am. The day before we fled from Cambrai it was my _jour de fête_. I
+was eighteen."
+
+Doggie drew in his breath with a little gasp. He had thought she was
+older than he.
+
+"I am twenty-seven," he said.
+
+She looked at him calmly and critically. "Yes. Now I see. Until now I
+should have given you more. But the war ages people. Isn't it true?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Doggie. Then he had a brilliant idea. "But when
+the war is over, we'll remain the same age for ever and ever."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I'm sure of it. We'll still both be in our twenties. Let us suppose
+the war puts ten years of experience and suffering, and what not, on
+to our lives. We'll only then be in our thirties--and nothing possibly
+can happen to make us grow any older. At seventy we shall still be
+thirty."
+
+"You are consoling," she admitted. "But what if the war had added
+thirty years to one's life? What if I felt now an old woman of fifty?
+But yes, it is quite true. I have the feelings and the disregard of
+convention of a woman of fifty. If there had been no war, do you think
+I could have gone among an English army--_sans gêne_--like an old
+matron? Do you think a _jeune fille française bien élevée_ could
+have talked to you alone as I have done the past two days? Absurd. The
+explanation is the war."
+
+Doggie laughed. "_Vive la guerre!_" said he.
+
+"_Mais non!_ Be serious. We must come to an understanding."
+
+In her preoccupation she forgot the rules laid down for the guidance
+of _jeunes filles bien élevées_, and unthinkingly perched herself
+full on the kitchen table on the corner of which Doggie sat in a
+one-legged way. Doggie gasped again. All her assumed age fell from her
+like a garment. Youth proclaimed itself in her attitude and the supple
+lines of her figure. She was but a girl after all, a girl with a
+steadfast soul that had been tried in unutterable fires; but a girl
+appealing, desirable. He felt mighty protective.
+
+"An understanding? All right," said he.
+
+"I don't want you to go away and think ill of me--that I am one of
+those women--_les affranchies_ I think they call them--who think
+themselves above social laws. I am not. I am _bourgeoise_ to my
+finger-tips, and I reverence all the old maxims and prejudices in
+which I was born. But conditions are different. It is just like the
+priests who have been called into the ranks. To look at them from the
+outside, you would never dream they were priests--but their hearts and
+their souls are untouched."
+
+She was so earnest, in her pathetic youthfulness, to put herself right
+with him, so unlike the English girls of his acquaintance, who would
+have taken this chance companionship as a matter of course, that his
+face lost the smile and became grave, and he met her sad eyes.
+
+"That was very bravely said, Jeanne. To me you will be always the most
+wonderful woman I have ever known."
+
+"What caused you to speak to me the first day?" she asked, after a
+pause.
+
+"I explained to you--to apologize for staring rudely into your house."
+
+"It was not because you said to yourself, 'Here is a pretty girl
+looking at me. I'll go and talk to her'?"
+
+Doggie threw his leg over the corner of the table and stood on
+indignant feet.
+
+"Jeanne! How could you----?" he cried.
+
+She leaned back, her open palms on the table. The rare light came into
+her eyes.
+
+"That's what I wanted to know. Now we understand each other, Monsieur
+Trevor."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't call me Monsieur Trevor," said he.
+
+"What else can I call you? I know no other name."
+
+Now he had in his pocket a letter from Peggy, received that morning,
+beginning "My dearest Marmaduke." Peggy seemed far away, and the name
+still farther. He was deliberating whether he should say "_Appelez-moi
+James_" or "_Appelez-moi Jacques_," and inclining to the latter as
+being more picturesque and intimate, when she went on:
+
+"_Tenez_, what is it your comrades call you? 'Doggie'?"
+
+"Say that again."
+
+"Dog-gie."
+
+He had never dreamed that the hated appellation could sound so
+adorable. Well--no one except his officers called him by any other
+name, and it came with a visible charm from her lips. It brought about
+the most fascinating flash of the tips of her white teeth. He laughed.
+
+"_A la guerre comme à la guerre._ If you call me that, you belong to
+the regiment. And I promise you, it is a fine regiment."
+
+"_Eh bien_, Monsieur Dog-gie----"
+
+"There's no monsieur about it," he declared, very happily. "Tommies
+are not _messieurs_."
+
+"I know one who is," said Jeanne.
+
+So they talked in a young and foolish way, and Jeanne for a while
+forgot the tragedies that had gone and the tragedies that might come;
+and Doggie forgot both the peacock and ivory room and the fetid hole
+into which he would have to creep when the night's march was over.
+They talked of simple things. Of Toinette, who had been with Aunt
+Morin ever since she could remember.
+
+"You have won her heart with your snuff."
+
+"She has won mine with her discretion."
+
+"Oh-h!" said Jeanne, shocked.
+
+And so on and so forth, as they sat side by side on the kitchen table,
+swinging their feet. After a while they drifted to graver questions.
+
+"What will happen to you, Jeanne, if your aunt dies?"
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_" said Jeanne----
+
+"But you will inherit the property, and the business?"
+
+By no means. Aunt Morin had still a son, who was already very old. He
+must be forty-six. He had expatriated himself many years ago and was
+in Madagascar. The son who was killed was her Benjamin, the child of
+her old age. But all her little fortune would go to the colonial
+Gaspard, whom Jeanne had never seen.
+
+But the Farm of La Folette?
+
+"It has been taken and retaken by Germans and French and English, _mon
+pauvre ami_, until there is no farm left. You ought to understand
+that."
+
+It was a thing that Doggie most perfectly understood: a patch of
+hideous wilderness, of poisoned, shell-scarred, ditch-defiled, barren,
+loathsome earth.
+
+And her other relations? Only an uncle, her father's youngest brother,
+a curé in Douai in enemy occupation. She had not heard of him since
+the flight from Cambrai.
+
+"But what is going to become of you?"
+
+"So long as one keeps a brave heart what, does it matter? I am strong.
+I have a good enough education. I can earn my living. Oh, don't make
+any mistake. I have no pity for myself. Those who waste efforts in
+pitying themselves are not of the stuff to make France victorious."
+
+"I am afraid I have done a lot of self-pitying, Jeanne."
+
+"Don't do it any more," she said gently.
+
+"I won't," said he.
+
+"If you keep to the soul you have gained, you can't," said Jeanne.
+
+"_Toujours la sagesse._"
+
+"You are laughing at me."
+
+"God forbid," said Doggie.
+
+Phineas and Mo came strolling towards the kitchen door.
+
+"My two friends, to pay their visit of adieu," said he.
+
+Jeanne slid from the table and welcomed the newcomers in her calm,
+dignified way. Once more Doggie found himself regarding her as his
+senior in age and wisdom and conduct of life. The pathetic girlishness
+which she had revealed to him had gone. The age-investing ghosts had
+returned.
+
+Mo grinned, interjected a British Army French word now and then, and
+manifested delight when Jeanne understood. Phineas talked laboriously,
+endeavouring to expound his responsibility for Doggie's welfare. He
+had been his tutor. He used the word "_tuteur_."
+
+"That's a guardian, you silly ass," cried Doggie. "He means
+'_instituteur_.' Go on. Or, rather, don't go on. The lady isn't
+interested."
+
+"_Mais si_," said Jeanne, catching at the last English word. "It
+interests me greatly."
+
+"_Merci, mademoiselle_," said Phineas grandly. "I only wish to explain
+to you that while I live you need have no fear for Doggie. I will
+protect him with my body from shells and promise to bring him safe
+back to you. And so will Monsieur Shendish."
+
+"What's that?" asked Mo.
+
+Phineas translated.
+
+"_Oui, oui, oui!_" said Mo, nodding vigorously.
+
+A spot of colour burned on Jeanne's pale cheek, and Doggie grew red
+under his tanned skin. He cursed Phineas below his breath, and
+exchanged a significant glance with Mo. Jeanne said, in her even
+voice:
+
+"I hope all the Three Musketeers will come back safe."
+
+Mo extended a grimy hand. "Well, good-bye, miss! McPhail here and I
+must be going."
+
+She shook hands with both, wishing them _bonne chance_, and they
+strolled away. Doggie lingered.
+
+"You mustn't mind what McPhail says. He's only an old imbecile."
+
+"You have two comrades who love you. That is the principal thing."
+
+"I think they do, each in his way. As for Mo----"
+
+"Mo?" She laughed. "He is delicious."
+
+"Well----" said he reluctantly, after a pause, "good-bye, Jeanne."
+
+"_Au revoir_--Dog-gie."
+
+"If I shouldn't come back--I mean if we were billeted somewhere
+else--I should like to write to you."
+
+"Well--Mademoiselle Bossière, chez Madame Morin, Frélus. That is the
+address."
+
+"And will you write too?"
+
+Without waiting for a reply, he scribbled what was necessary on a
+sheet torn from a notebook and gave it to her. Their hands met.
+
+"_Au revoir_, Jeanne."
+
+"_Au revoir_, Dog-gie. But I shall see you again to-night."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"It is my secret. _Bonne chance._"
+
+She smiled and turned to leave the kitchen. Doggie clattered into the
+yard.
+
+"Been doin' a fine bit o' coartin', Doggie," said Private Appleyard
+from Taunton, who was sitting on a box near by and writing a letter on
+his knees.
+
+"Not so much of your courting, Spud," replied Doggie cheerfully. "Who
+are you writing to? Your best girl?"
+
+"I be writin' to my own lawful mizzus," replied Spud Appleyard.
+
+"Then give her my love. Doggie Trevor's love," said Doggie, and
+marched away through the groups of men.
+
+At the entrance to the barn he fell in with Phineas and Mo.
+
+"Laddie," said the former, "although I meant it at the time as a
+testimony of my affection, I've been thinking that what I said to the
+young leddy may not have been over-tactful."
+
+"It was taking it too much for granted," explained Mo, "that you and
+her were sort of keeping company."
+
+"You're a pair of idiots," said Doggie, sitting down between them, and
+taking out his pink packet of Caporal. "Have a cigarette?"
+
+"Not if I wos dying of----Look 'ere," said Mo, with the light on his
+face of the earnest seeker after Truth. "If a chap ain't got no food,
+he's dying of 'unger. If he ain't got no drink, he's dying of thirst.
+What the 'ell is he dying of if he ain't got no tobakker?"
+
+"Army Service Corps," said Phineas, pulling out his pipe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was dark when A Company marched away. Doggie had seen nothing more
+of Jeanne. He was just a little disappointed; for she had promised. He
+could not associate her with light words. Yet perhaps she had kept her
+promise. She had said "_Je vous verrai._" She had not undertaken to
+exhibit herself to him. He derived comfort from the thought. There
+was, indeed, something delicate and subtle and enchanting in the
+notion. As on the previous day, the fine weather had changed with the
+night and a fine rain was falling. Doggie, an indistinguishable
+pack-laden ant in the middle of the four-abreast ribbon of similar
+pack-laden ants, tramped on in silence, thinking his own thoughts. A
+regiment going back to the trenches in the night is, from the point of
+view of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, a very lugubrious
+procession. The sight of it would have hurt an old-time poet. An
+experienced regiment has no lovely illusions. It knows what it is
+going to, and the knowledge makes it serious. It would much rather be
+in bed or on snug straw than plodding through the rain to four days
+and nights of eternal mud and stinking high-explosive shell. It sets
+its teeth and is a very stern, silent, ugly conglomeration of men.
+
+"---- (_the adjective_) night," growled Doggie's right-hand neighbour.
+
+"---- (_the adjective_)" Doggie responded mechanically.
+
+But to Doggie it was less "----" (_adjective as before_) than usual.
+Jeanne's denunciation of self-pity had struck deep. Compared with her
+calamities, half of which would have been the stock-in-trade of a
+Greek dramatist wherewith to wring tears from mankind for a couple of
+thousand years, what were his own piffling grievances? As for the
+"----" night, instead of a drizzle he would have welcomed a
+waterspout. Something that really mattered.... Let the heavens or the
+Hun rain molten lead. Something that would put him on an equality with
+Jeanne.... Jeanne, with her dark haunting eyes and mobile lips, and
+her slim young figure and her splendid courage. A girl apart from the
+girls he had known, apart from the women he had known, the women whom
+he had imagined--and he had not imagined many--his training had
+atrophied such imaginings of youth. Jeanne. Again her name conjured up
+visions of the Great Jeanne of Domrémy. If only he could have seen
+her once again!
+
+At the north end of the village the road took a sharp twist, skirting
+a bit of rising ground. There was just a glimmer of a warning light
+which streamed athwart the turning ribbon of laden ants. And as Doggie
+wheeled through the dim ray he heard a voice that rang out clear:
+
+"_Bonne chance!_"
+
+He looked up swiftly. Caught the shadow of a shadow. But it was
+enough. It was Jeanne. She had kept her promise. The men responded
+incoherently, waving their hands, and Doggie's shout of "_Merci!_" was
+lost. But though he knew, with a wonderful throbbing knowledge, that
+Jeanne's cry was meant for him alone, he was thrilled by his comrades'
+instant response to Jeanne's voice. Not a man but he knew that it was
+Jeanne. But no matter. The company paid homage to Jeanne. Jeanne who
+had come out in the rain and the wind and the dark, and had waited,
+waited, to redeem her promise. "_C'est mon secret._"
+
+He ploughed on. Left, right! Thud, thud! Left, right! Jeanne, Jeanne!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+In the village of Frélus life went on as before. The same men, though
+a different regiment, filled its streets and its houses; for by what
+signs could the inhabitants distinguish one horde of English
+infantrymen from another? Once a Highland battalion had been billeted
+on them, and for the first day or so they derived some excitement from
+the novelty of the costume; the historic Franco-Scottish tradition
+still lingered, and they welcomed the old allies of France with
+especial kindliness; but they found that the habits and customs of the
+men in kilts were identical, in their French eyes, with those of the
+men in trousers. It is true the Scotch had bagpipes. The village
+turned out to listen to them in whole-eyed and whole-eared wonder. And
+the memory of the skirling music remained indelible. Otherwise there
+was little difference. And when a Midland regiment succeeded a South
+Coast regiment, where was the difference at all? They might be the
+same men.
+
+Jeanne, standing by the kitchen door, watching the familiar scene in
+the courtyard, could scarcely believe there had been a change. Now and
+again she caught herself wondering why she could not pick out any one
+of her Three Musketeers. There were two or three soldiers, as usual,
+helping Toinette with her crocks at the well. There she was, herself,
+moving among them, as courteously treated as though she were a
+princess. Perhaps these men, whom she heard had come from
+manufacturing centres, were a trifle rougher in their manners than her
+late guests; but the intention of civility and rude chivalry was no
+less sincere. They came and asked for odds and ends very politely. To
+all intents and purposes they were the same set of men. Why was not
+Doggie among them? It seemed very strange.
+
+After a while she made some sort of an acquaintance with a sergeant
+who had a few words of French and appeared anxious to improve his
+knowledge of the language. He explained that he had been a teacher in
+what corresponded to the French _Ecoles Normales_. He came from
+Birmingham, which he gave her to understand was a glorified Lille. She
+found him very earnest, very self-centred in his worship of
+efficiency. As he had striven for his class of boys, so now was he
+striving for his platoon of men. In a dogmatic way he expounded to her
+ideals severely practical. In their few casual conversations he
+interested her. The English, from the first terrible day of their
+association with her, had commanded her deep admiration. But until
+lately--in the most recent past--her sex, her national aloofness and
+her ignorance of English, had restrained her from familiar talk with
+the British Army. But now she keenly desired to understand this
+strange, imperturbable, kindly race. She put many questions to the
+sergeant--always at the kitchen door, in full view of the courtyard,
+for she never thought of admitting him into the house--and his
+answers, even when he managed to make himself intelligible, puzzled
+her exceedingly. One of his remarks led her to ask for what he was
+fighting, beyond his apparently fixed idea of the efficiency of the
+men under his control. What was the spiritual idea at the back of him?
+
+"The democratization of the world and the universal brotherhood of
+mankind."
+
+"When the British Lion shall lie down with the German Lamb?"
+
+He flashed a suspicious glance. Strenuous schoolmasters in primary
+schools have little time for the cultivation of a sense of humour.
+
+"Something of the sort must be the ultimate result of the war."
+
+"But in the meantime you have got to change the German wolf into the
+_petit mouton_. How are you going to do it?"
+
+"By British efficiency. By proving to him that we are superior to him
+in every way. We'll teach him that it doesn't pay to be a wolf."
+
+"And do you think he will like being transformed into a lamb, while
+you remain a lion?"
+
+"I don't suppose so, but we'll give him his chance to try to become a
+lion too."
+
+Jeanne shook her head. "No, monsieur, wolf he is and wolf he will
+remain. A wolf with venomous teeth. The civilized world must see that
+the teeth are always drawn."
+
+"I'm speaking of fifty years hence," said the sergeant.
+
+"And I of three hundred years hence."
+
+"You're mistaken, mademoiselle."
+
+Jeanne shook her head. "No. I'm not mistaken. Tell me. Why do you want
+to become brother to the Boche?"
+
+"I'm not going to be his brother till the war's over," said the
+sergeant stolidly. "At present I am devoting all my faculties to
+killing as many of him as I can."
+
+She smiled. "Sufficient for the day is the good thereof. Go on killing
+them, monsieur. The more you kill the fewer there will be for your
+children and your grandchildren to lie down with."
+
+She left him and tried to puzzle out his philosophy. For the ordinary
+French philosophy of the war is very simple. They have no
+high-falutin, altruistic ideas of improving the Boche. They don't care
+a tinker's curse what happens to the unholy brood beyond the Rhine, so
+long as they are beaten, humiliated, subjected: so long as there is no
+chance of their ever deflowering again with their brutality the sacred
+soil of France. The French mind cannot conceive the idea of this
+beautiful brotherhood; but, on the contrary, rejects it as something
+loathsome, something bordering on spiritual defilement....
+
+No; Jeanne could not accept the theory that we were waging war for the
+ultimate chastening and beatification of Germany. She preferred
+Doggie's reason for fighting. For his soul. There was something which
+she could grip. And having gripped it, it was something around which
+her imagination could weave a web of noble fancy. After all, when she
+came to think of it, every one of the Allies must be fighting for his
+soul. For his soul's sake had not her father died? Although she knew
+no word of German, it was obvious that the Uhlan officer had murdered
+him because he had refused to betray his country. And her uncle. To
+fight for his soul, had he not gone out with his heroic but futile
+sporting gun? And this pragmatical sergeant? What else had led him
+from his schoolroom to the battlefield? Why couldn't he be honest
+about it, like Doggie?
+
+She missed Doggie. He ought to be there, as she had often seen him
+unobserved, talking with his friends or going about his military
+duties, or playing the flageolet with the magical touch of the
+musician. She knew far more of Doggie than he was aware of ... And at
+night she prayed for the little English soldier who was facing Death.
+
+She had much time to think of him during the hours when she sat by the
+bedside of Aunt Morin, who talked incessantly of François-Marie who
+was killed on the Argonne, and Gaspard who, as a _territorial_, was no
+doubt defending Madagascar from invasion. And it was pleasant to think
+of him, because he was a new distraction from tragical memories. He
+seemed to lay the ghosts ... He was different from all the Englishmen
+she had met. The young officers who had helped her in her flight, had
+very much the same charm of breeding, very much the same intonation of
+voice; instinctively she knew him to be of the same social caste; but
+they, and the officers whom she saw about the street and in the
+courtyard, when duty called them there, had the military air of
+command. And this her little English soldier had not. Of course, he
+was only a private, and privates are trained to obedience. She knew
+that perfectly well. But why was he not commanding instead of obeying?
+There was a reason for it. She had seen it in his eyes. She wished she
+had made him talk more about himself. Perhaps she had been
+unsympathetic and selfish. He assumed, she reflected, a certain
+_crânerie_ with his fellows--and _crânerie_ is "swagger" bereft of
+vulgarity--we have no word to connote its conception in a French
+mind--and she admired it; but her swift intuition pierced the
+assumption. She divined a world of hesitancies behind the Musketeer
+swing of the shoulders. He was so gentle, so sensitive, so quick to
+understand. And yet so proud. And yet again so unconfessedly
+dependent. Her woman's protective instinct responded to a mute appeal.
+
+"But, Ma'amselle Jeanne, you are wet through, you are perished with
+cold. What folly have you been committing?" Toinette scolded, when she
+returned after wishing Doggie the last "_bonne chance_."
+
+"The folly of putting my Frenchwoman's heart (_mon coeur de
+Française_) into the hands of a brave little soldier to fight with
+him in the trenches."
+
+"_Mon Dieu, ma'amselle_, you had better go straight to bed, and I will
+bring you a _bon tilleul_, which will calm your nerves and produce a
+good perspiration."
+
+So Toinette put Jeanne to bed and administered the infallible infusion
+of lime leaves, and Jeanne was never the worse for her adventure. But
+the next day she wondered a little why she had undertaken it. She had
+a vague idea that it paid a little debt of sympathy.
+
+An evening or two afterwards Jeanne was sewing in the kitchen when
+Toinette, sitting in the arm-chair by the extinct fire, fished out of
+her pocket the little olive-wood box with the pansies and
+forget-me-nots on the lid, and took a long pinch of snuff. She did it
+with somewhat of an air which caused Jeanne to smile.
+
+"_Dites donc_, Toinette, you are insupportable with your snuff-box.
+One would say a marquise of the old school."
+
+"Ah, Ma'amselle Jeanne," said the old woman, "you must not laugh at
+me. I was just thinking that, if anything happened to the _petit
+monsieur_, I couldn't have the heart to go on putting his snuff up my
+old nose."
+
+"Nothing will happen to him," said Jeanne.
+
+The old woman sighed and re-engulfed the snuff-box. "Who knows? From
+one minute to another who knows whether the little ones who are dear
+to us are alive or dead?"
+
+"And this _petit monsieur_ is dear to you, Toinette?" Jeanne asked, in
+her even voice, without looking up from her sewing.
+
+"Since he resembles my _petiot_."
+
+"He will come back," said Jeanne.
+
+"I hope so," said the old woman mournfully.
+
+In spite of manifold duties, Jeanne found the days curiously long. She
+slept badly. The tramp of the sentry below her window over the archway
+brought her no sense of comfort, as it had done for months before the
+coming of Doggie. All the less did it produce the queer little thrill
+of happiness which was hers when, looking down through the shutter
+slats she had identified in the darkness, on a change of guard, the
+little English soldier to whom she had spoken so intimately. And when
+he had challenged the rounds, she had recognized his voice.... If she
+had obeyed an imbecile and unmaidenly impulse, she would have drawn
+open the shutter and revealed herself. But apart from maidenly
+shrinkings, familiarity with war had made her realize the sacred
+duties of a sentry, and she had remained in discreet seclusion, awake
+until his spell was over. But now the rhythmical beat of the heavy
+boots kept her from sleeping and would have irritated her nerves
+intolerably had not her sound common sense told her that the stout
+fellow who wore them was protecting her from the Hun, together with a
+million or so of his fellow-countrymen.
+
+She found herself counting the days to Doggie's return.
+
+"At last, it is to-morrow!" she said to Toinette.
+
+"What is it to-morrow?" asked the old woman.
+
+"The return of our regiment," replied Jeanne.
+
+"That is good. We have a regiment now," said Toinette ironically.
+
+The Midland company marched away--as so many had marched away before;
+but Jeanne did not go to the little embankment at the turn of the road
+to wish anyone good luck. She stood at the house door, as she had
+always done, to watch them pass in the darkness; for there is always
+something in the sight of men going into battle which gives you a lump
+in the throat. For Jeanne it had almost grown into a religious
+practice.
+
+The sergeant had told her that the new-comers would arrive at dawn.
+She slept a little; awoke with a start as day began to break; dressed
+swiftly, and went downstairs to wait. And then her ear caught the
+rumble and the tramp of the approaching battalion. Presently transport
+rolled by, and squads of men, haggard in the grey light, bending
+double under their packs, staggered along to their billets. And then
+came a rusty crew, among whom she recognized McPhail's tall gaunt
+figure. She stood by the gateway, bareheaded, in her black dress and
+blue apron, defying the sharp morning air, and watched them pass
+through. She saw Mo Shendish, his eyes on the heels of the man in
+front. She recognized nearly all. But the man she looked for was not
+there.
+
+He could not have passed without her seeing him; but as soon as the
+gateway was clear, she ran into the courtyard and fled across it to
+cut off the men. There was no Doggie. Blank disappointment was
+succeeded by sudden terror.
+
+Phineas saw her coming. He stumbled up to her, dropped his pack at her
+feet, and spread out both his hands. She lost sight of the horde of
+weary clay-covered men around her. She cried:
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"He is dead?"
+
+"No one knows."
+
+"But you must know, you!" cried Jeanne, with a new fear in her eyes
+which Phineas could not bear to meet. "You promised to bring him
+back."
+
+"It was not my fault," said Phineas. "He was out last night--no, the
+night before, this is morning--repairing barbed wire. I was not with
+him."
+
+"_Mais, mon Dieu_, why not?"
+
+"Because the duties of soldiers are arranged for them by their
+officers, mademoiselle."
+
+"It is true. Pardon. But continue."
+
+"A party went out to repair wire. It was quite dark. Suddenly a German
+rifle-shot gave the alarm. The enemy threw up star-shells and the
+front trenches on each side opened fire. The wiring party, of course,
+lay flat on the ground. One of them was wounded. When it was all
+over--it didn't last long--our men got back, bringing the wounded
+man."
+
+"He is severely wounded? Speak," cried Jeanne.
+
+"The wounded man was not Doggie. Doggie went out with the party, but
+he did not come back. That's why I said no one knows where he is."
+
+She stiffened. "He is lying out there. He is dead."
+
+"Shendish and I and Corporal Wilson over there, who was with the
+party, got permission to go out and search. We searched all round
+where the repair had been going on. But we could not find him."
+
+"_Merci!_ I ought not to have reproached you," she said steadily.
+"_C'est un grand malheur._"
+
+"You are right. Life for me is no longer of much value."
+
+She looked at him in her penetrating way.
+
+"I believe you," she said. "For the moment, _au revoir_. You must be
+worn out with fatigue."
+
+She left him and walked through the straggling men, who made
+respectful way for her. All knew of her friendship with Doggie Trevor
+and all realized the nature of this interview. They liked Doggie
+because he was good-natured and plucky, and never complained and would
+play the whistle on march as long as breath enough remained in his
+body. As his uncle, the Dean, had said, breed told. In a curious,
+half-grudging way they recognized the fact. They laughed at his
+singular inefficiency in the multitudinous arts of the handy-man,
+proficiency in which is expected from the modern private, but they
+knew that he would go on till he dropped. And knowing that, they saved
+him from many a reprimand which his absurd efforts in the arts
+aforesaid would have brought upon him. And now that Doggie was gone,
+they deplored his loss. But so many had gone. So many had been
+deplored. Human nature is only capable of a certain amount of
+deploring while retaining its sanity. The men let the pale French
+girl, who was Doggie Trevor's friend, pass by in respectful
+silence--and that, for them, was their final tribute to Doggie Trevor.
+
+Jeanne passed into the kitchen. Toinette drew a sharp breath at the
+sight of her face.
+
+"_Quoi? Il n'est pas là?_"
+
+"No," said Jeanne. "He is wounded." It was impossible to explain to
+Toinette.
+
+"Badly?"
+
+"They don't know."
+
+"_Oh, là, là!_" sighed Toinette. "That always happens. That is what
+I told you."
+
+"We have no time to think of such things," said Jeanne.
+
+The regimental cooks came up for the hot water, and soon the hungry,
+weary, nerve-racked men were served with the morning meal. And Jeanne
+stood in the courtyard in front of the kitchen door and helped with
+the filling of the tea-kettles, as though no little English soldier
+called "Dog-gie" had ever existed in the regiment.
+
+The first pale shaft of sunlight fell upon the kitchen side of the
+courtyard, and in it Jeanne stood illuminated. It touched the shades
+of gold in her dark brown hair, and lit up her pale face and great
+unsmiling eyes. But her lips smiled valiantly.
+
+"What do yer think, Mac," said Mo Shendish, squatting on the
+flagstones, "do you think she was really sweet on him?"
+
+"Man," replied Phineas, similarly engaged, "all I know is that she has
+added him to her collection of ghosts. It's not an over-braw company
+for a lassie to live with."
+
+And then, soon afterwards, the trench-broken men stumbled into the
+barn to sleep, and all was quiet again, and Jeanne went about her
+daily tasks with the familiar hand of death once more closing icily
+around her heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The sick-room was very hot, and Aunt Morin very querulous. Jeanne
+opened a window, but Aunt Morin complained of currents of air. Did
+Jeanne want to kill her? So Jeanne closed the window. The internal
+malady from which Aunt Morin suffered, and from which it was unlikely
+that she would recover, caused her considerable pain from time to
+time; and on these occasions she grew fractious and hard to bear with.
+The retired septuagenarian village doctor who had taken the modest
+practice of his son, now far away with the Army, advised an operation.
+But Aunt Morin, with her peasant's prejudice, declined flatly. She
+knew what happened in those hospitals where they cut people up just
+for the pleasure of looking at their insides. She was not going to let
+a lot of butchers amuse themselves with her old carcass. _Oh non!_
+When it pleased the _bon Dieu_ to take her, she was ready: the _bon
+Dieu_ required no assistance from _ces messieurs_. And even if she had
+consented, how to take her to Paris, and once there, how to get the
+operation performed, with all the hospitals full and all the surgeons
+at the Front? The old doctor shrugged his shoulders and kept life in
+her as best he might.
+
+To-day, in the close room, she told a long story of the doctor's
+neglect. The medicine he gave her was water and nothing else--water
+with nothing in it. And to ask people to pay for that! She would not
+pay. What would Jeanne advise?
+
+"_Oui, ma tante_," said Jeanne.
+
+"_Oui, ma tante?_ But you are not listening to what I say. At the
+least one can be polite."
+
+"I am listening, _ma tante_."
+
+"You should be grateful to those who lodge and nourish you."
+
+"I am grateful, _ma tante_," said Jeanne patiently.
+
+Aunt Morin complained of being robbed on all sides. The doctor,
+Toinette, Jeanne, the English soldiers--the last the worst of all.
+Besides not paying sufficiently for what they had, they were so
+wasteful in the things they took for nothing. If they begged for a few
+faggots to make a fire, they walked away with the whole woodstack. She
+knew them. But all soldiers were the same. They thought that in time
+of war civilians had no rights. One of these days she would get up and
+come downstairs and see for herself the robbery that was going on.
+
+The windows were tightly sealed. The sunlight hurting Aunt Morin's
+eyes, the outside shutters were half closed. The room felt like a
+stuffy, overheated, overcrowded sepulchre. An enormous oak press, part
+of her Breton dowry, took up most of the side of one wall. This, and a
+great handsome chest, a couple of tables, a stiff arm-chair, were all
+too big for the moderately sized apartment. Coloured prints of sacred
+subjects, tilted at violent angles, seemed eager to occupy as much
+air-space as possible. And in the middle of the floor sprawled the
+vast oaken bed, with its heavy green brocade curtains falling tentwise
+from a great tarnished gilt crown in the ceiling.
+
+Jeanne said nothing. What was the good? She shifted the invalid's hot
+pillow and gave her a drink of tisane, moving about the
+over-furnished, airless room in her calm and efficient way. Her face
+showed no sign of trouble, but an iron band clamped her forehead above
+her burning eyes. She could perform her nurse's duties, but it was
+beyond her power to concentrate her mind on the sick woman's unending
+litany of grievances. Far away beyond that darkened room, beyond that
+fretful voice, she saw vividly a hot waste, hideous with holes and
+rusted wire and shapes of horror; and in the middle of it lay huddled
+up a little khaki-clad figure with the sun blazing fiercely in his
+unblinking eyes. And his very body was beyond the reach of man, even
+of the most lion-hearted.
+
+"_Mais qu'as-tu, ma fille?_" asked Aunt Morin. "You do not speak. When
+people are ill they need to be amused."
+
+"I am sorry, _ma tante_, but I am not feeling very well to-day. It
+will pass."
+
+"I hope so. Young people have no business not to feel well. Otherwise
+what is the good of youth?"
+
+"It is true," Jeanne assented.
+
+But what, she thought, was indeed the good of youth, in these terrible
+days of war? Her own was but a panorama of death.... And now one more
+figure, this time one of youth too, had joined it.
+
+Toinette came in.
+
+"Ma'amselle Jeanne, there are two English officers downstairs who wish
+to speak to you."
+
+"What do they want?" Jeanne asked wearily.
+
+"They do not say. They just ask for Ma'amselle Bossière."
+
+"They never leave one in peace, _ces gens-là_," grumbled Aunt Morin.
+"If they want more concessions in price, do not let them frighten you.
+Go to Monsieur le Maire to have it arranged with justice. These people
+would eat the skin off your back. Remember, Jeanne."
+
+"_Bien, ma tante_," said Jeanne.
+
+She went downstairs, conscious of gripping herself in order to discuss
+with the officers whatever business of billeting was in hand. For she
+had dealt with all such matters since her arrival in Frélus. She
+reached the front door and saw a dusty car with a military chauffeur
+at the wheel and two officers, standing on the pavement at the foot of
+the steps. One she recognized as the commander of the company to which
+her billeted men belonged. The other was a stranger, a lieutenant,
+with a different badge on his cap. They were talking and laughing
+together, like old friends newly met, which by one of the myriad
+coincidences of the war was really the case. On the appearance of
+Jeanne they drew themselves up and saluted politely.
+
+"Mademoiselle Bossière?"
+
+"_Oui, monsieur._" Then, "Will you enter, messieurs?"
+
+They entered the vestibule where the great cask gleamed in its
+polished mahogany and brass. She bade them be seated.
+
+"Mademoiselle, Captain Willoughby tells me that you had billeted here
+last week a soldier by the name of Trevor," said the stranger, in
+excellent French, taking out notebook and pencil.
+
+Jeanne's lips grew white. She had not suspected their errand.
+
+"_Oui, monsieur._"
+
+"Did you have much talk with him?"
+
+"Much, monsieur."
+
+"Pardon my indiscretion, mademoiselle--it is military service, and I
+am an Intelligence officer--but did you tell him about your private
+affairs?"
+
+"Very intimately," said Jeanne.
+
+The Intelligence officer made a note or two and smiled pleasantly--but
+Jeanne could have struck him for daring to smile. "You had every
+reason for thinking him a man of honour?"
+
+"What's the good of asking her that, Smithers?" Captain Willoughby
+interrupted in English. "Haven't I given you my word? The man's a
+mysterious little devil, but any fool can see that he's a gentleman."
+
+"What do you say?" Jeanne asked tensely.
+
+"_Je parle français très peu_," replied Captain Willoughby with an
+air of regret.
+
+Smithers explained. "Monsieur le Capitaine says that he guarantees the
+honesty of the soldier, Trevor."
+
+Jeanne flashed, rigid. "Who could doubt it, monsieur? He was a
+gentleman, a _fils de famille_, of the English aristocracy."
+
+"Excuse me for a moment," said Smithers.
+
+He went out. Jeanne, uncomprehending, sat silent. Captain Willoughby,
+cursing an idiot education, composed in his head a polite French
+sentence concerning the weather, but before he had finished Smithers
+reappeared with a strange twisted packet in his hand. He held it out
+to Jeanne.
+
+"Mademoiselle, do you recognize this?"
+
+She looked at it dully for a moment; then suddenly sprang to her feet
+and clenched her hands and stared open-mouthed. She nodded. She could
+not speak. Her brain swam. They had come to her about Doggie, who was
+dead, and they showed her Père Grigou's packet. What was the
+connection between the two?
+
+Willoughby rose impulsively. "For God's sake, Smithers, let her down
+easy. She'll be fainting all over the place in a minute."
+
+"If this is your property, mademoiselle," said Smithers, laying the
+packet on the chenille-covered table, "you have to thank your friend
+Trevor for restoring it to you."
+
+She put up both hands to her reeling head.
+
+"But he is dead, monsieur!"
+
+"Not a bit of it. He's just as much alive as you or I."
+
+Jeanne swayed, tried to laugh, threw herself half on a chair, half
+over the great cask, and broke down in a passion of tears.
+
+The two men looked at each other uncomfortably.
+
+"For exquisite tact," said Willoughby, "commend me to an Intelligence
+officer."
+
+"But how the deuce was I to know?" Smithers muttered with an injured
+air. "My instructions were to find out the truth of a cock-and-bull
+story--for that's what it seemed to come to. And a girl in
+billets--well--how was I to know what she was like?"
+
+"Anyhow, here we've got hysterics," said Willoughby.
+
+"But who told her the fellow was dead?"
+
+"Why, his pals. I thought so myself. When a man's missing where's one
+to suppose him to be--having supper at the Savoy?"
+
+"Well, I give women up," said Smithers. "I thought she'd be glad."
+
+"I believe you're a married man?"
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"Well, I ain't," said Willoughby, and in a couple of strides he stood
+close to Jeanne. He laid a gentle hand on her heaving shoulders.
+
+"_Pas tué! Soolmong blessé_," he shouted.
+
+She sprang, as it were, to attention, like a frightened recruit.
+
+"He is wounded?"
+
+"Not very seriously, mademoiselle." Smithers, casting an indignant
+glance at his superior officer's complacent smile, reassumed mastery
+of the situation. "A Boche sniper got him in the leg. It will put him
+out of service for a month or two. But there is no danger."
+
+"_Grâce à  Dieu!_" said Jeanne.
+
+She leaned for a while against the cask, her hands behind her, looking
+away from the two men. And the two young men stood, somewhat
+embarrassed, looking away from her and from each other. At last she
+said, with an obvious striving for the even note in her voice:
+
+"I ask your pardon, messieurs, but sometimes sudden happiness is more
+overwhelming than misfortune. I am now quite at your service."
+
+"My God! she's a wonder," murmured Willoughby, who was fair,
+unmarried, and impressionable. "Go on with your dirty work."
+
+Smithers, conscious of linguistic superiority--in civil life he had
+been concerned with the wine trade in Bordeaux--proceeded to carry out
+his instructions. He turned over a leaf in his notebook and poised a
+ready pencil.
+
+"I must ask you, mademoiselle, some formal questions."
+
+"Perfectly, monsieur," said Jeanne.
+
+"Where was this packet when last you saw it?"
+
+She made her statement, calmly.
+
+"Can you tell me its contents?"
+
+"Not all, monsieur. I, as a young girl, was not in the full confidence
+of my parents. But I remember my uncle saying there were about twenty
+thousand francs in notes, some gold--I know not how much--some
+jewellery of my mother's--oh, a big handful!--rings--one a hoop of
+emeralds and diamonds--a brooch with a black pearl belonging to my
+great-grandmother----"
+
+"It is enough, mademoiselle," said Smithers, jotting down notes.
+"Anything else besides money and jewellery?"
+
+"There were papers of my father, share certificates, bonds--_que
+sais-je, moi_?"
+
+Smithers opened the packet, which had already been examined.
+
+"You're a witness, sir, to the identification of the property."
+
+"No," said Willoughby, "I'm just a baby captain of infantry, and
+wonder why the brainy Intelligence department doesn't hand the girl
+her belongings and decently clear out."
+
+"I've got to make my report, sir," said Smithers stiffly.
+
+So the schedule was produced and the notes were solemnly counted,
+twenty-one thousand five hundred francs, and the gold four hundred
+francs, and the jewels were identified, and the bonds, of which Jeanne
+knew nothing, were checked by a list in her father's handwriting, and
+Jeanne signed a paper with Smithers's fountain-pen, and Willoughby
+witnessed her signature, and thus she entered into possession of her
+heritage.
+
+The officers were about to depart, but Jeanne detained them.
+
+"Messieurs, you must pardon me, but I am quite bewildered. As far as I
+can understand, Monsieur Trevor rescued the packet from the well at my
+uncle's farm of La Folette, and got wounded in doing so."
+
+"That is quite so," said Smithers.
+
+"But, monsieur, they tell me he was with a party in front of his
+trench mending wire. How did he reach the well of La Folette? I don't
+comprehend at all."
+
+Smithers turned to Willoughby.
+
+"Yes. How the dickens did he know the exact spot to go for?"
+
+"We had taken over a new sector, and I was getting the topography
+right with a map. Trevor was near by doing nothing, and as he's a man
+of education, I asked him to help me. There was the site of the farm
+marked by name, and the ruined well away over to the left in No Man's
+Land. I remember the beggar calling out 'La Folette!' in a startled
+voice, and when I asked him what was the matter, he said 'Nothing,
+sir!'"
+
+Smithers translated, and continued: "You see, mademoiselle, this is
+what happened, as far as I am concerned. I belong to the Lancashire
+Fusiliers. Our battalion is in the trenches farther up the line than
+our friends. Well, just before dawn yesterday morning a man rolled
+over the parapet into our trench, and promptly fainted. He had been
+wounded in the leg, and was half dead from loss of blood. Under his
+tunic was this package. We identified him and his regiment, and fixed
+him up and took him to the dressing-station. But things looked very
+suspicious. Here was a man who didn't belong to us with a little
+fortune in loot on his person. As soon as he was fit to be
+interrogated, the C.O. took him in hand. He told the C.O. about you
+and your story. He regarded the nearness of the well as something to
+do with Destiny, and resolved to get you back your property--if it was
+still there. The opportunity occurred when the wiring party was
+alarmed. He crept out to the ruins by the well, fished out the packet,
+and a sniper got him. He managed to get back to our lines, having lost
+his way a bit, and tumbled into our trench."
+
+"But he was in danger of death all the time," said Jeanne, losing the
+steadiness of her voice.
+
+"He was. Every second. It was one of the most dare-devil,
+scatter-brained things I've ever heard of. And I've heard of many,
+mademoiselle. The only pity is that instead of being rewarded, he will
+be punished."
+
+"Punished?" cried Jeanne.
+
+"Not very severely," laughed Smithers. "Captain Willoughby will see to
+that. But reflect, mademoiselle. His military duty was to remain with
+his comrades, not to go and risk his life to get your property.
+Anyhow, it is clear that he was not out for loot.... Of course, they
+sent me here as Intelligence officer, to get corroboration of his
+story." He paused for a moment. Then he added: "Mademoiselle, I must
+congratulate you on the restoration of your fortune and the possession
+of a very brave friend."
+
+For the first time the red spots burned on Jeanne's pale face.
+
+"_Je vous remercie infiniment, monsieur._"
+
+"_Il sera_ all right," said Willoughby.
+
+The officers saluted and went their ways. Jeanne took up her packet
+and mounted to her little room in a dream. Then she sat down on her
+bed, the unopened packet by her side, and strove to realize it all.
+But the only articulate thought came to her in the words which she
+repeated over and over again:
+
+"_Il a fait cela pour moi! Il a fait cela pour moi!_"
+
+He had done that for her. It was incredible, fantastic, thrillingly
+true, like the fairy-tales of her childhood. The little sensitive
+English soldier, whom his comrades protected, whom she herself in a
+feminine way longed to protect, had done this for her. In a shy,
+almost reverent way, she opened out the waterproof covering, as though
+to reassure herself of the reality of things. For the first time since
+she left Cambrai a smile came into her eyes, together with grateful
+tears.
+
+"_Il a fait cela pour moi! Il a fait cela pour moi!_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A while later she relieved Toinette's guard in the sick-room.
+
+"_Eh bien?_ And the two officers?" queried Aunt Morin, after Toinette
+had gone. "They have stayed a long time. What did they want?"
+
+Jeanne was young. She had eaten the bread of dependence, which Aunt
+Morin, by reason of racial instinct and the stress of sorrow and
+infirmity, had contrived to render very bitter. She could not repress
+an exultant note in her voice. Doggie, too, accounted for something;
+for much.
+
+"They came to bring good news, _ma tante_. The English have found all
+the money and the jewels and the share certificates that Père Grigou
+hid in the well of La Folette."
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_ It is true?"
+
+"_Oui, ma tante._"
+
+"And they have restored them to you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It is extraordinary. It is truly extraordinary. At last these English
+seem to be good for something. And they found that and gave it to you
+without taking anything?"
+
+"Without taking anything," said Jeanne.
+
+Aunt Morin reflected for a few moments, then she stretched out a thin
+hand.
+
+"_Ma petite Jeanne chérie_, you are rich now."
+
+"I don't know exactly," replied Jeanne, with a mingling of truth and
+caution. "I have enough for the present."
+
+"How did it all happen?"
+
+"It was part of a military operation," said Jeanne.
+
+Perhaps later she might tell Aunt Morin about Doggie. But now the
+thing was too sacred. Aunt Morin would question, question maddeningly,
+until the rainbow of her fairy-tale was unwoven. The salient fact of
+the recovery of her fortune should be enough for Aunt Morin. It was.
+The old woman of the pain-pinched features looked at her wistfully
+from sunken grey eyes.
+
+"And now that you are rich, my little Jeanne, you will not leave your
+poor old aunt, who loves you so much, to die alone?"
+
+"_Ah, mais non! mais non! mais non!_" cried Jeanne indignantly. "What
+do you think I am made of?"
+
+"Ah!" breathed Aunt Morin, comforted.
+
+"Also," said Jeanne, in the matter-of-fact French way, "_Si tu veux_,
+I will henceforward pay for my lodging and nourishment."
+
+"You are very good, my little Jeanne," said Aunt Morin. "That will be
+a great help, for, _vois-tu_, we are very poor."
+
+"_Oui, ma tante._ It is the war."
+
+"Ah, the war, the war; this awful war! One has nothing left."
+
+Jeanne smiled. Aunt Morin had a very comfortably invested fortune
+left, for the late Monsieur Morin, corn, hay and seed merchant, had
+been a very astute person. It would make little difference to the
+comfort of Aunt Morin, or to the prospects of Cousin Gaspard in
+Madagascar, whether the present business of Veuve Morin et Fils went
+on or not. Of this Aunt Morin, in lighter moods, had boasted many
+times.
+
+"Every one must do what they can," said Jeanne.
+
+"Perfectly," said Aunt Morin. "You are a young girl who well
+understands things. And now--it is not good for young people to stay
+in a sick-room--one needs the fresh air. _Va te distraire, ma petite._
+I am quite comfortable."
+
+So Jeanne went out to distract a self already distraught with great
+wonder, great pride and great fear.
+
+He had done that for her. The wonder of it bewildered her, the pride
+of it thrilled her. But he was wounded. Fear smothered her joy. They
+had said there was no danger. But soldiers always made light of
+wounds. It was their way in this horrible war, in the intimate midst
+of which she had her being. If a man was not dead, he was alive, and
+thereby accounted lucky. In their gay optimism they had given him a
+month or two of absence from the regiment. But even in a month or
+two--where would the regiment be? Far, far away from Frélus. Would
+she ever see Doggie again?
+
+To distract herself she went down the village street, bareheaded, and
+up the lane that led to the little church. The church was empty, cool,
+and smelt of the hill-side. Before the tinsel-crowned, mild-faced
+image of the Virgin were spread the poor votive offerings of the
+village. And Jeanne sank on her knees, and bowed her head, and,
+without special prayer or formula of devotion, gave herself into the
+hands of the Mother of Sorrows.
+
+She walked back comforted, vaguely conscious of a strengthening of
+soul. In the vast cataclysm of things her own hopes and fears and
+destiny mattered very little. If she never saw Doggie again, if Doggie
+recovered and returned to the war and was killed, her own grief
+mattered very little. She was but a stray straw, and mattered very
+little. But what mattered infinitely, what shone with an immortal
+flame, though it were never so tiny, was the Wonderful Spiritual
+Something that had guided Doggie through the jaws of death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening she had a long talk in the kitchen with Phineas. The news
+of Doggie's safety had been given out by Willoughby, without any
+details. Mo Shendish had leaped about her like a fox-terrier, and she
+had laughed, with difficulty restraining her tears. But to Phineas
+alone she told her whole story. He listened in bewilderment. And the
+greater the bewilderment, the worse his crude translations of English
+into French. She wound up a long, eager speech by saying:
+
+"He has done this for me. Why?"
+
+"Love," replied Phineas bluntly.
+
+"It is more than love," said Jeanne, thinking of the Wonderful
+Spiritual Something.
+
+"If you could understand English," said Phineas, "I would enter into
+the metaphysics of the subject with pleasure, but in French it is
+beyond me."
+
+Jeanne smiled, and turned to the matter-of-fact.
+
+"He will go to England now that he is wounded?"
+
+"He's on the way now," said Phineas.
+
+"Has he many friends there? I ask, because he talks so little of
+himself. He is so modest."
+
+"Oh, many friends. You see, mademoiselle," said Phineas, with a view
+to setting her mind at rest, "Doggie's an important person in his part
+of the country. He was brought up in luxury. I know, because I lived
+with him as his tutor for seven years. His father and mother are dead,
+and he could go on living in luxury now, if he liked."
+
+"He is then, rich--Doggie?"
+
+"He has a fine house of his own in the country, with many servants and
+automobiles, and--wait"--he made a swift arithmetical calculation--"and
+an income of eighty thousand francs a year."
+
+"_Comment?_" cried Jeanne sharply, with a little frown.
+
+Phineas McPhail was enjoying himself, basking in the sunshine of
+Doggie's wealth. Also, when conversation in French resolved itself
+into the statement of simple facts, he could get along famously. So
+the temptation of the glib phrase outran his discretion.
+
+"Doggie has a fortune of about two million francs."
+
+"_Il doit faire un beau mariage_," said Jeanne, with stony calm.
+
+Phineas suddenly became aware of pitfalls and summoned his craft and
+astuteness and knowledge of affairs. He smiled, as he thought,
+encouragingly.
+
+"The only fine marriage is with the person one loves."
+
+"Not always, monsieur," said Jeanne, who had watched the gathering of
+the sagacities with her deep eyes. "In any case"--she rose and held
+out her hand--"our friend will be well looked after in England."
+
+"Like a prince," said Phineas.
+
+He strode away greatly pleased with himself, and went and found Mo
+Shendish.
+
+"Man," said he, "have you ever reflected that the dispensing of
+happiness is the cheapest form of human diversion?"
+
+"What've you been doin' now?" asked Mo.
+
+"I've just left a lassie tottering over with blissful dreams."
+
+"Gorblime!" said Mo, "and to think that if I could sling the lingo, I
+might've done the same!"
+
+But Phineas had knocked all the dreams out of Jeanne. The British
+happy-go-lucky ways of marriage are not those of the French
+_bourgeoisie_, and Jeanne had no notion of British happy-go-lucky
+ways. Phineas had knocked the dream out of Jeanne by kicking Doggie
+out of her sphere. And there was a girl in England in Doggie's sphere
+whom he was to marry. She knew it. A man does not gather his
+sagacities in order to answer crookedly a direct challenge, unless
+there is some necessity.
+
+Well. She would never see Doggie again. He would pass out of her life.
+His destiny called him, if he survived the slaughter of the war, to
+the shadowy girl in England. Yet he had done _that_ for her. For no
+other woman could he ever in this life do _that_ again. It was past
+love. Her brain boggled at an elusive spiritual idea. She was very
+young, flung cleanly trained from the convent into the war's terrific
+tragedy, wherein maiden romantic fancies were scorched in the tender
+bud. Only her honest traditions of marriage remained. Of love she knew
+nothing. She leaped beyond it, seeking, seeking. She would never see
+him again. There she met the Absolute. But he had done _that_ for
+her--that which, she knew not why, but she knew--he would do for no
+other woman. The Splendour of it would be her everlasting possession.
+
+She undressed that night, proud, dry-eyed, heroical, and went to bed,
+and listened to the rhythmic tramp of the sentry across the gateway
+below her window, and suddenly a lump rose in her throat and she fell
+to crying miserably.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+"How are you feeling, Trevor?"
+
+"Nicely, thank you, Sister."
+
+"Glad to be in Blighty again?"
+
+Doggie smiled.
+
+"Good old Blighty!"
+
+"Leg hurting you?"
+
+"A bit, Sister," he replied with a little grimace.
+
+"It's bound to be stiff after the long journey, but we'll soon fix it
+up for you."
+
+"I'm sure you will," he said politely.
+
+The nurse moved on. Doggie drew the cool clean sheet around his
+shoulders and gave himself up to the luxury of bed--real bed. The
+morning sunlight poured through the open windows, attended by a
+delicious odour which after a while he recognized as the scent of the
+sea. Where he was he had no notion. He had absorbed so much of Tommy's
+philosophy as not to care. He had arrived with a convoy the night
+before, after much travel in ambulances by land and sea. If he had
+been a walking case, he might have taken more interest in things; but
+the sniper's bullet in his thigh had touched the bone, and in spite of
+being carried most tenderly about like a baby, he had suffered great
+pain and longed for nothing and thought of nothing but a permanent
+resting-place. Now, apparently, he had found one, and looking about
+him he felt peculiarly content. He seemed to have seen no cleaner,
+whiter, brighter place in the world than this airy ward, swept by the
+sea-breeze. He counted seven beds besides his own. On a table running
+down the ward stood a vase of sweet-peas and a bowl of roses. He
+thought there was never in the world so clean and cool a figure as the
+grey-clad nurse in her spotless white apron, cuffs and cap.
+
+When she passed near him again, he summoned her. She came to his
+bedside.
+
+"What do you call this particular region of fairyland?"
+
+She stared at him for a moment, adjusting things in her mind; for his
+name and style were 35792 Private Trevor, J. M., but his voice and
+phrase were those of her own social class. Then she smiled, and told
+him. The corner of fairyland was a private auxiliary hospital in a
+Lancashire seaside town.
+
+"Lancashire," said Doggie, knitting his brow in a puzzled way, "but
+why have they sent me to Lancashire? I belong to a West Country
+regiment, and all my friends are in the South."
+
+"What's he grousing about, Sister?" suddenly asked the occupant of the
+next bed. "He's the sort of chap that doesn't know when he's in luck
+and when he isn't. I'm in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, I am,
+and when I was hit before, they sent me to a military hospital in
+Inverness. That'd teach you, my lad. This for me every time. You ought
+to have something to grouse at."
+
+"I'm not grousing, you idiot!" said Doggie.
+
+"'Ere--who's he calling an idjit?" cried the Duke of Cornwall's Light
+Infantryman, raising himself on his elbow.
+
+The nurse intervened; explained that no one could be said to grumble
+at a hospital when he called it fairyland. Trevor's question was that
+of one in search of information. He did not realize that in assigning
+men to the various hospitals in the United Kingdom, the authorities
+could not possibly take into account an individual man's local
+association.
+
+"Oh well, if it's only his blooming ignorance----"
+
+"That's just it, mate," smiled Doggie, "my blooming ignorance."
+
+"That's all right," said the nurse. "Now you're friends."
+
+"He had no right to call me an idjit," said the Duke of Cornwall's
+Light Infantryman. He was an aggressive, red-visaged man with bristly
+black hair and stubbly black moustache.
+
+"If you'll agree that he wasn't grousing, Penworthy, I'm sure Trevor
+will apologize for calling you an idiot."
+
+And into the nurse's eyes crept the queer smile of the woman learned
+in the ways of children.
+
+"Didn't I say he wasn't grousing? It was only his ignorance?"
+
+Doggie responded. "I meant no offence, mate, in what I said."
+
+The other growled an acceptance, whereupon the nurse smiled an ironic
+benediction and moved away.
+
+"Where did you get it?" asked Penworthy.
+
+Doggie gave the information and, in his turn, made the polite
+counter-inquiry.
+
+Penworthy's bit of shrapnel, which had broken a rib or two, had been
+acquired just north of Albert. When he left, he said, we were putting
+it over in great quantities.
+
+"That's where the great push is going to be in a few days."
+
+"Aren't you sorry you're out of it?"
+
+"Me?" The Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantryman shook his head. "I take
+things as I finds 'em, and I finds this quite good enough."
+
+So they chatted and, in the soldier's way, became friends. Later, the
+surgeon arrived and probed Doggie's wound and hurt him exquisitely, so
+that the perspiration stood out on his forehead, and his jaws ached
+afterwards from his clenching of them. While his leg was being dressed
+he reflected that, a couple of years ago, if anyone had inflicted a
+twentieth part of such torture on him he would have yelled the house
+down. He remembered, with an inward grin, the anguished precautions on
+which he had insisted whenever he sat down in the chair of his
+expensive London dentist.
+
+"It must have hurt like fun," said the nurse, busily engaged with the
+gauze dressing.
+
+"It's all in the day's work," replied Doggie.
+
+The nurse pinned the bandage and settled him comfortably in bed.
+
+"No one will worry you till dinner-time. You'd better try to have a
+sleep."
+
+So Doggie nodded and smiled and curled up as best he could and slept
+the heavy sleep of the tired young animal. It was only when he awoke,
+physically rested and comparatively free from pain, that his mind,
+hitherto confused, began to work clearly, to straighten out the three
+days' tangle. Yes, just three days. A fact almost impossible to
+realize. Till now it had seemed an eternity.
+
+He lay with his arms crossed under his head and stared at the blue
+sky--a soft, comforting English sky. The ward was silent. Only two
+beds were occupied, one by a man asleep, the other by a man reading a
+novel. His other room-mates, including his neighbour Penworthy, were
+so far convalescent as to be up and away, presumably by the
+life-giving sea, whose rhythmic murmur he could hear. For the first
+time since he awoke to find himself bandaged up in a strange dug-out,
+and surrounded by strange faces, did the chaos of his ideas resolve
+itself into anything like definite memories. Yet many of them were
+still vague.
+
+He had been out there, with the wiring party, in the dark. He had been
+glad, he remembered, to escape from the prison of the trench into the
+open air. He was having some difficulty with a recalcitrant bit of
+wire that refused to come straight and jabbed him diabolically in
+unexpected places, when a shot rang out and German flares went up and
+everybody lay flat on the ground, while bullets spat about them. As he
+lay on his stomach, a flare lit up the ruined well of the farm of La
+Folette. And the well and his nose and his heels were in a bee-line.
+The realization of the fact was the inception of a fascinating idea.
+He remembered that quite clearly. Of course his discovery, two days
+before, of the spot where Jeanne's fortune lay hidden, when Captain
+Willoughby, with map and periscope, had called him into consultation,
+had set his heart beating and his imagination working. But not till
+that moment of stark opportunity had he dreamed of the mad adventure
+which he undertook. There in front of him, at the very farthest three
+hundred yards away, in bee-line with nose and heels--that was the
+peculiar and particular arresting fact--lay Jeanne's fortune. In
+thinking of it he lost count of shots and star-shells, and heard no
+orders and saw no dim forms creeping back to the safety of the trench.
+And then all was darkness and silence.
+
+Doggie lay on his back and stared at the English sky and wondered how
+he did it. His attitude was that of a man who cannot reconcile his
+sober self with the idiot hero of a drunken freak. And yet, at the
+time, the journey to the ruined well seemed the simplest thing in the
+world. The thought of Jeanne's delight shone uppermost in his mind....
+Oh! he was forgetting the star, which hung low beneath a canopy of
+cloud, the extreme point of the famous feet, nose and well bee-line.
+He made for it, now and then walking low, now and then crawling. He
+did not mind his clothes and hands being torn by the unseen refuse of
+No Man's Land. His chief sensation was one of utter loneliness,
+mingled with exultance at freedom. He did not remember feeling afraid:
+which was odd, because when the star-shells had gone up and the German
+trenches had opened fire on the wiring party, his blood had turned to
+water and his heart had sunk into his boots and he had been deucedly
+frightened.
+
+Heaven must have guided him straight to the well. He had known all
+along that he merely would have to stick his hand down to find the
+rope ... and he felt no surprise when the rope actually came in
+contact with his groping fingers; no surprise when he pulled and
+pulled and fished up the packet. It had all been preordained. That was
+the funny part of the business which Doggie now could not understand.
+But he remembered that when he had buttoned his tunic over the
+precious packet, he had been possessed of an insane desire to sing and
+dance. He repressed his desire to sing, but he leaped about and
+started to run. Then the star in which he trusted must have betrayed
+him. It must have shed upon him a ray just strong enough to make him a
+visible object; for, suddenly, _ping!_ something hit him violently on
+the leg and bowled him over like a rabbit into a providential
+shell-hole. And there he lay quaking for a long time, while the lunacy
+of his adventure coarsely and unsentimentally revealed itself.
+
+As to the rest, he was in a state of befogged memory. Only one
+incident in that endless, cruel crawl home remained as a landmark in
+his mind. He had paused to take breath, almost ready to give up the
+impossible flight--it seemed as though he were dragging behind him a
+ton of red-hot iron--when he became conscious of a stench violent in
+his nostrils. He put out a hand. It encountered a horrible, once human
+face, and his fingers touched a round recognizable cap. Horror drove
+him away from the dead German and inspired him with the strength of
+despair.... Then all was fog and dark again until he recovered
+consciousness in the strange dug-out.
+
+There the doctor had said to him: "You must have a cast-iron
+constitution, my lad."
+
+The memory caused a flicker round his lips. It wasn't everybody who
+could crawl on his belly for nearly a quarter of a mile with a bullet
+through his leg, and come up smiling at the end of it. A cast-iron
+constitution! If he had only known it fifteen, even ten years ago,
+what a different life he might have led. The great disgrace would
+never have come upon him.
+
+And Jeanne? What of Jeanne? After he had told his story, they had
+given him to understand that an officer would be sent to Frélus to
+corroborate it, and, if he found it true, that Jeanne would enter into
+possession of her packet. And that was all he knew, for they had
+bundled him out of the front trenches as quickly as possible; and once
+out he had become a case, a stretcher case, and although he had been
+treated, as a case, with almost superhuman tenderness, not a soul
+regarded him as a human being with a personality or a history--not
+even with a military history. And this same military history had
+vaguely worried him all the time, and now that he could think clearly,
+worried him with a very definite worry. In leaving his firing-party he
+had been guilty of a crime. Every misdemeanour in the Army is termed a
+crime--from murder to appearing buttonless on parade. Was it
+desertion? If so, he might be shot. He had not thought of that when he
+started on his quest. It had seemed so simple to account for half an
+hour's absence by saying that he had lost his way in the dark. But
+now, that plausible excuse was invalid....
+
+Doggie thought terribly hard that quiet, sea-scented morning. After
+all, it did not very much matter what they did to him. Sticking him up
+against a wall and shooting him was a remote possibility; he was in
+the British and not the German Army. Field punishments of unpleasant
+kinds were only inflicted on people convicted of unpleasant
+delinquencies. If he were a sergeant or a corporal, he doubtless would
+be broken. But such is the fortunate position of a private, that he
+cannot be degraded to an inferior rank. At the worst they might give
+him cells when he recovered. Well, he could stick it. It didn't
+matter. What really mattered was Jeanne. Was she in undisputed
+possession of her packet? When it was a question of practical warfare,
+Doggie had blind faith in his officers--a faith perhaps even more
+childlike than that of his fellow-privates, for officers were the men
+who had come through the ordeal in which he had so lamentably failed;
+but when it came to administrative affairs, he was more critical. He
+had suffered during his military career from more than one subaltern
+on whose arid consciousness the brain-wave never beat. He had never
+met even a field officer before whom, in the realm of intellect, he
+had stood in awe. If any one of those dimly envisaged and still more
+dimly remembered officers of the Lancashire Fusiliers had ordered him
+to stand on his head on top of the parapet, he would have obeyed in
+cheerful confidence; but he was not at all certain that, in the effort
+to deliver the packet to Jeanne, they would not make an unholy mess of
+things. He saw stacks of dirty yellowish bits of paper, with A.F. No.
+something or the other, floating between Frélus and the Lancashire
+Battalion H.Q. and the Brigade H.Q. and the Divisional H.Q., and so on
+through the majesty of G.H.Q. to the awful War Office itself. In
+pessimistic mood he thought that if Jeanne recovered her property
+within a year, she would be lucky.
+
+What a wonderful creature was Jeanne! He shut his eyes to the blue sky
+and pictured her as she stood in the light, on the ragged escarpment,
+with her garments beaten by wind and rain. And he remembered the weary
+thud, thud of railway and steamer, which had resolved itself, like the
+rhythmic tramp of feet that night, into the ceaseless refrain: "Jeanne!
+Jeanne!"
+
+He opened his eyes again and frowned at the blue English sky. It had
+no business to proclaim simple serenity when his mind was in such a
+state of complex tangle. It was all very well to think of
+Jeanne--Jeanne, whom it was unlikely that Fate would ever allow him to
+see again, even supposing the war ended during his lifetime; but there
+was Peggy--Peggy, his future wife, who had stuck to him loyally
+through good and evil repute. Yes, there was Peggy--not the faintest
+shadow of doubt about it. Doggie kept on frowning at the blue sky.
+Blighty was a very desirable country, but in it you were compelled to
+think. And enforced thought was an infernal nuisance. The beastly
+trenches had their good points after all. There you were not called
+upon to think of anything; the less you thought, the better for your
+job; you just ate your bully-beef and drank your tea and cursed
+whizz-bangs and killed a rat or two, and thanked God you were alive.
+
+Now that he came to look at it in proper perspective, it wasn't at all
+a bad life. When had he been worried to death, as he was now? And
+there were his friends: the humorous, genial, deboshed, yet
+ever-kindly Phineas; dear old Mo Shendish, whose material feet were
+hankering after the vulgar pavement of Mare Street, Hackney, but whose
+spiritual tread rang on golden floors dimly imagined by the Seer of
+Patmos; Barrett, the D. C. M., the miniature Hercules, who, according
+to legend, though, modestly, he would never own to it, seized two
+Boches by the neck and knocked their heads together till they died,
+and who, musically inclined, would sit at his, Doggie's, feet while he
+played on his penny whistle all the sentimental tunes he had ever
+heard of; Sergeant Ballinghall, a tower of a man, a champion amateur
+heavy-weight boxer, with a voice compared with which a megaphone
+sounded like a maiden's prayer, and a Bardolphian nose and an eagle
+eye and the heart of a broody hen, who had not only given him boxing
+lessons, but had pulled him through difficult places innumerable ...
+and scores of others. He wondered what they were doing. He also was
+foolish enough to wonder whether they missed him, forgetting for the
+moment that if a regiment took seriously to missing their comrades
+sent to Kingdom Come or Blighty, they would be more like weeping
+willows than destroyers of Huns.
+
+All the same, he knew that he would always live in the hearts of two
+or three of them, and the knowledge brought him considerable comfort.
+It was strange to realize how the tentacles of his being stretched out
+gropingly towards these (from the old Durdlebury point of view)
+impossible friends. They had grafted themselves on to his life. Or was
+that a correct way of putting it? Had they not, rather, all grafted
+themselves on to a common stock of life, so that the one common sap
+ran through all their veins?
+
+It took him a long time to get this idea formulated, fixed and
+accepted. But Doggie was not one to boggle at the truth, as he saw it.
+And this was the truth. He, James Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall, was
+a Tommy of the Tommies. He had lived the Tommy life intensely. He was
+living it now. And the extraordinary part of it was that he didn't
+want to be anything else but a Tommy. From the social or gregarious
+point of view his life for the past year had been one of unclouded
+happiness. The realization of it, now that he was clearly sizing up
+the ramshackle thing which he called his existence, hit him like the
+butt-end of a rifle. Hardship, cold, hunger, fatigue, stench, rats,
+the dread of inefficiency--all these had been factors of misery which
+he could never eliminate from his soldier's equation; but such free,
+joyous, intimate companionship with real human beings he had never
+enjoyed since he was born. He longed to be back among them, doing the
+same old weary, dreary, things, eating the same old Robinson Crusoe
+kind of food, crouching with them in the same old beastly hole in the
+ground, while the Boche let loose hell on the trench. Mo Shendish's
+grin and his "'Ere, get in aht of the rain," and his grip on his
+shoulder, dragging him a few inches farther into shelter, were a
+spiritual compensation transcending physical discomfitures and perils.
+
+"It's all dam funny," he said half aloud.
+
+But this was England, and although he was hedged about, protected and
+restricted by War Office Regulation Red Tape twisted round to the
+strength of steel cables, yet he was in command of telegraphs, of
+telephones, and, in a secondary degree, of the railway system of the
+United Kingdom.
+
+He found himself deprecating the compulsory facilities of
+communication in the civilized world. The Deanery must be informed of
+his home-coming.
+
+As soon as he could secure the services of a nurse he wrote out three
+telegrams: one addressed "Conover, The Deanery, Durdlebury"; one to
+Peddle at Denby Hall, and one to Jeanne. The one to Jeanne was the
+longest, and was "Reply paid."
+
+"This is going to cost a small fortune, young man," said the nurse.
+
+Doggie smiled as he drew out a £1 treasury note from his soldier's
+pocket-book, the pathetic object containing a form of Will on the
+right-hand flap and on the left the directions for the making of the
+Will, concluding with the world-famous typical signature of Thomas
+Atkins.
+
+"It's a bust, Sister," said he. "I've been saving up for it for
+months."
+
+Then, duty accomplished, he reconciled himself to the corner of
+fairyland in which he had awoke that morning. Things must take their
+course, and while they were taking it, why worry? So long as they
+didn't commit the outrage of giving him bully-beef for dinner, the
+present coolness and comfort sufficed for his happiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+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!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+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
+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:
+
+    "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
+    _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 BOSSIÈRE."
+
+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 piquée?_) 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 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!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+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._"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The X-rays showed the tiniest splinter of bone in Doggie's thigh. The
+surgeon fished it up and the clean wound healed rapidly. The gloomy
+Penworthy's prognostication had not come true. Doggie would not stump
+about at ease on a wooden leg; but in all probability would soon find
+himself back in the firing line--a prospect which brought great cheer
+to Penworthy. Also to Doggie. For, in spite of the charm of the pretty
+hospital, the health-giving sea air, the long rest for body and
+nerves, life seemed flat and unprofitable.
+
+He had written a gay, irreproachable letter to Jeanne, to which
+Jeanne, doubtless thinking it the last word of the episode, had not
+replied. Loyalty to Peggy forbade further thought of Jeanne. He must
+henceforward think of Peggy and her sturdy faithfulness as hard as he
+could. But the more he thought, the more remote did Peggy seem. Of
+course the publicity of the interview had invested it with a certain
+constraint, knocked out of it any approach to sentimentality or
+romance. They had not even kissed. They had spent most of the time
+arguing from different points of view. They had been near to
+quarrelling. It was outrageous of him to criticize her; yet how could
+he help it? The mere fact of striving to exalt her was a criticism.
+
+Indeed they were far apart. Into the sensitive soul of Doggie the war
+in all its meaning had paused. The soul of Peggy had remained
+untouched. To her, in her sheltered corner of England, it was a
+ghastly accident, like a railway collision blocking the traffic on her
+favourite line. For the men of her own class who took part in it, it
+was a brave adventure; for the common soldier a sad but patriotic
+necessity. If circumstances had allowed her to go forth into the
+war-world as nurse or canteen helper at a London terminus, or motor
+driver in France, her horizon would have broadened. But the contact
+with realities into which her dilettante little war activities brought
+her was too slight to make the deep impression. In her heart, as far
+as she revealed herself to Doggie, she resented the war because it
+interfered with her own definitely marked out scheme of existence. The
+war over, she would regard it politely as a thing that had never been,
+and would forthwith set to work upon her aforesaid interrupted plan.
+And towards a comprehension of this apparent serenity the perplexed
+mind of Doggie groped with ill-success. All his old values had been
+kicked into higgledy-piggledy confusion. All hers remained steadfast.
+
+So Doggie reflected with some grimness that there are rougher roads
+than those which lead to the trenches.
+
+A letter from Phineas did not restore equanimity. It ran:
+
+    "MY DEAR LADDIE,--
+
+    "Our unsophisticated friend, Mo, and myself are writing this
+    letter together and he bids me begin it by saying that he hopes
+    it finds you as it leaves us at present, in a muck of dust and
+    perspiration. Where we are now I must not tell, for (in the
+    opinion of the Censor) you would reveal it to the very Reverend
+    the Dean of Durdlebury, who would naturally telegraph the
+    information to the Kaiser. But the Division is far, far from the
+    idyllic land of your dreams, and there is bloody fighting ahead
+    of us. And though the hearts of Mo and me go out to you, laddie,
+    and though we miss you sore, yet Mo says he's blistering glad
+    you're out of it and safe in your perishing bed with a Blighty
+    one. And such, in more academic phraseology, are the sentiments
+    of your old friend Phineas.
+
+    "Ah, laddie! it was a bad day when we marched from the old
+    billets; for the word had gone round that we weren't going back.
+    I had taken the liberty of telling the lassie ye ken of
+    something about your private position and your worldly affairs,
+    of which it seems you had left her entirely ignorant. Of course,
+    with my native Scottish caution, and my knowledge of human
+    nature gained in the academies of prosperity and the ragged
+    schools of adversity, I did not touch on certain matters of a
+    delicate nature. That is no business of mine. If there is
+    discretion in this world in which you can trust blindly, it is
+    that of Phineas McPhail. I just told her of Denby Hall and your
+    fortune, which I fairly accurately computed at a couple of
+    million francs. For I thought it was right she should know that
+    you weren't just a scallywag private soldier like the rest of
+    us. And I am bound to say that the lassie was considerably
+    impressed. In further conversation I told her something of your
+    early life, and, though not over desirous of blackening my
+    character in her bonnie eyes, I let her know what kind of an
+    injudicious upbringing you had been compelled to undergo. '_Il a
+    été élevé_,' said I, '_dans_----' What the blazes was the
+    French for cotton-wool? The war has a pernicious effect on one's
+    memory--I sometimes even forget the elementary sensations of
+    inebriety. '_Dans la ouate_,' she said. And I remembered the
+    word. '_Oui, dans la ouate_,' said I. And she looked at me,
+    laddie, or, rather, through me, out of her great dark eyes--you
+    mind the way she treats your substance as a shadow and looks
+    through it at the shadows that to her are substances--and she
+    said below her breath--I don't think she meant me to hear
+    it--'_Et c'est lui qui a fait cela pour moi_.'
+
+    "Mo, in his materialistic way, is clamorous that I should tell
+    you about the chicken; the which, being symbolical, I proceed to
+    do. It was our last day. She invited us to lunch in the kitchen
+    and shut the door so that none of the hungry varlets of the
+    company should stick in their unmannerly noses and whine for
+    scraps. And there, laddie, was an omelette and cutlets and a
+    chicken and a _fromage à la crême_ such as in the days of my
+    vanity I have never eaten, cooked by the old body whose soul you
+    won with a pinch of snuff. The poor lassie could scarcely eat;
+    but Mo saw that there was nothing left. The bones on his plate
+    looked as if a dog had been at them for a week. And there was
+    vintage Haut Sauterne which ran down one's throat like scented
+    gold. 'Man,' said I to Mo, 'if you lap it up like that you'll be
+    as drunk as Noah.' So he cast a frightened glance at
+    mademoiselle and sipped like a young lady at a christening
+    party. Then she brings out cherries and plums and peaches and
+    opens a half-bottle of champagne and fills all our glasses, and
+    Toinette had a glass; and she rises in the pale, dignified,
+    Greek tragedy way she has, and she makes a wee bit speech.
+    '_Messieurs_,' she said, 'perhaps you may wonder why I have
+    invited you. But I think you understand. It is the only way I
+    had of sharing with Doggie's friends the fortune that he had so
+    heroically brought me. It is but a little tribute of my
+    gratitude to Doggie. You are his friends and I wish well that
+    you would be mine--_très franchement, très loyalement_.' She
+    put out her hand and we shook it. And old Mo said, 'Miss, I'd go
+    to hell for you!' Whereupon the little red spot you may have
+    seen for yourself, came into her pale cheek, and a soft look
+    like a flitting moonbeam crept into her eyes. Laddie, if I'm
+    waxing too poetical, just consider that Mademoiselle Jeanne
+    Bossière is not the ordinary woman the British private soldier
+    is in the habit of consorting with. Then she took up her glass.
+    '_Je vais porter un toast--Vive l'Angleterre!_' And although a
+    Scotsman, I drank it as if it applied to me. And then she cried,
+    '_Vive la France!_' And old Toinette cried, '_Vive la France!_'
+
+    "And they looked transfigured, and I fairly itched to sing the
+    Marseillaise, though I knew I couldn't. Then she chinked glasses
+    with us.
+
+    "'_Bonne chance, mes amis!_'
+
+    "And then she made a sign to the auld wife, who added the few
+    remaining drops to our glasses. 'To Doggie!' said mademoiselle.
+    We drank the toast, laddie. Old Mo began in his cracked voice,
+    'For he's a jolly good fellow.' I kicked him and told him to
+    shut up. But mademoiselle said:
+
+    "'I've heard of that. It is a ceremony. I like it. Continue.'
+
+    "So Mo and I held up our glasses and, in indifferent song,
+    proclaimed you what the Army, developing certain rudimentary
+    germs, has made you, and mademoiselle too held up her glass and
+    threw back her head and joined us in the hip, hip, hoorays. It
+    would have done your heart good, laddie, to have been there to
+    see. But we did you proud.
+
+    "When we emerged from the festival, the prettiest which, in the
+    course of a variegated career, I have ever attended, Mo says:
+
+    "'If I hadn't a gel at home----'
+
+    "'If you hadn't got a girl at home,' said I, 'you'd be the next
+    damnedest fool in the army to Phineas McPhail!'
+
+    "We marched out just before dusk, and there she was by the front
+    door; and though she stood proud and upright, and smiled with
+    her lips and blew us kisses with both hands, to which the boys
+    all responded with a cheer, there were tears streaming down her
+    cheeks--and the tears, laddie, were not for Mo, or me, or any
+    one of us ugly beggars that passed her by.
+
+    "I also have good news for you, in that I hear from the
+    thunderous, though excellent, Sergeant Ballinghall, there is a
+    probability that when you rejoin, the C.O. will be afflicted
+    with a grievous lapse of memory and that he will be persuaded
+    that you received your wound during the attack on the wiring
+    party.
+
+    "As I said before, laddie, we're all like the Scots wha' hae wi'
+    Wallace bled and are going to our gory bed or to victory.
+    Possibly both. But I will remain steadfast to my philosophy, and
+    if I am condemned to the said sanguinolent couch, I will do my
+    best to derive from it the utmost enjoyment possible. All kinds
+    of poets and such-like lusty loons have shed their last drop of
+    ink in the effort to describe the pleasures of life--but it will
+    be reserved for the disembodied spirit of Phineas McPhail to
+    write the great Philosophic poem of the world's history, which
+    will be entitled 'The Pleasures of Death.' While you're doing
+    nothing, laddie, you might bestir yourself and find an
+    enlightened publisher who would be willing to give me an
+    ante-mortem advance, in respect of royalties accruing to my
+    ghost.
+
+    "Mo, to whom I have read the last paragraph, says he always knew
+    that eddication affected the brain. With which incontrovertible
+    proposition and our joint love, I now conclude this epistle.
+
+                                                 "Yours, PHINEAS."
+
+"Of all the blazing imbeciles!" Doggie cried aloud. Why the
+unprintable unprintableness couldn't Phineas mind his own business?
+Why had he given his silly accident of fortune away in this childish
+manner? Why had he told Jeanne of his cotton-wool upbringing? His
+feet, even that of his wounded leg, tingled to kick Phineas. Of course
+Jeanne, knowing him now to be such a gilded ass, would have nothing
+more to do with him. It explained her letter. He damned Phineas to all
+eternity, in terms compared with which the curse of Saint Ernulphus
+enunciated by the late Mr. Shandy was a fantastic benediction. "If I
+had a dog," quoth my Uncle Toby, "I would not curse him so." But if
+Uncle Toby had heard Doggie of the Twentieth Century Armies who also
+swore terribly in Flanders, for dog he would have substituted
+rattlesnake or German officer.
+
+Yet such is the quiddity of the English Tommy, that through this
+devastating anathema ran a streak of love which at the end turned the
+whole thing into forlorn derision. And as soon as he could laugh, he
+saw things in a clear light. Both of his two friends were, in their
+respective ways, in love with his wonderful Jeanne. Both of them were
+steel-true to him. It was just part of their loyalty to foment this
+impossible romance between Jeanne and himself. If the three of them
+were now at Frélus, the two idiots would be playing gooseberry with
+the smirking conscientiousness of a pair of schoolgirls. So Doggie
+forgave the indiscretion. After all, what did it matter?
+
+It mattered, however, to this extent, that he read the letter over and
+over again until he knew it by heart and could picture to himself
+every phase of the banquet and every fleeting look on Jeanne's face.
+
+"All this," he declared at last, "is utterly ridiculous." And he tore
+up Phineas's letter and, during his convalescence, devoted himself to
+the study of European politics, a subject which he had scandalously
+neglected during his elegantly leisured youth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day of his discharge came in due course. A suit of khaki took the
+place of the hospital blue. He received his papers, the seven days'
+sick furlough and his railway warrant, shook hands with nurses and
+comrades and sped to Durdlebury in the third-class carriage of the
+Tommy.
+
+Peggy, in the two-seater, was waiting for him in the station yard. He
+exchanged greetings from afar, grinned, waved a hand and jumped in
+beside her.
+
+"How jolly of you to meet me!"
+
+"Where's your luggage?"
+
+"Luggage?"
+
+It seemed to be a new word. He had not heard it for many months. He
+laughed.
+
+"Haven't got any, thank God! If you knew what it was to hunch a
+horrible canvas sausage of kit about, you'd appreciate feeling free."
+
+"It's a mercy you've got Peddle," said Peggy. "He has been at the
+Deanery fixing things up for you for the last two days."
+
+"I wonder if I shall be able to live up to Peddle," said Doggie.
+
+"Who's going to start the car?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, lord!" he cried, and bolted out and turned the crank. "I'm
+awfully sorry," he added, when, the engine running, he resumed his
+place. "I had forgotten all about these pretty things. Out there a car
+is a sacred chariot set apart for gods in brass hats, and the ordinary
+Tommy looks on them with awe and reverence."
+
+"Can't you forget you're a Tommy for a few days?" she said, as soon as
+the car had cleared the station gates and was safely under way.
+
+He noted a touch of irritation. "All right, Peggy dear," said he.
+"I'll do what I can."
+
+"Oliver's here, with his man Chipmunk," she remarked, her eyes on the
+road.
+
+"Oliver? On leave again? How has he managed it?"
+
+"You'd better ask him," she replied tartly. "All I know is that he
+turned up yesterday, and he's staying with us. That's why I don't want
+you to ram the fact of your being a Tommy down everybody's throat."
+
+He laughed at the queer little social problem that seemed to be
+worrying her. "I think you'll find blood is thicker than military
+etiquette. After all, Oliver's my first cousin. If he can't get on
+with me, he can get out." To change the conversation, he added after a
+pause: "The little car's running splendidly."
+
+They swept through the familiar old-world streets, which, now that the
+early frenzy of mobilizing Territorials and training of new armies was
+over, had resumed more or less their pre-war appearance. The sleepy
+meadows by the river, once ground into black slush by guns and
+ammunition waggons and horses, were now green again and idle, and the
+troops once billeted on the citizens had marched heaven knows
+whither--many to heaven itself--or whatever Paradise is reserved for
+the great-hearted English fighting man who has given his life for
+England. Only here and there a stray soldier on leave, or one of the
+convalescents from the cottage hospital, struck an incongruous note of
+war. They drew up at the door of the Deanery under the shadow of the
+great cathedral.
+
+"Thank God that is out of reach of the Boche," said Doggie, regarding
+it with a new sense of its beauty and spiritual significance. "To
+think of it like Rheims or Arras--I've seen Arras--seen a shell burst
+among the still standing ruins. Oh, Peggy"--he gripped her arm--"you
+dear people haven't the remotest conception of what it all is--what
+France has suffered. Imagine this mass of wonder all one horrible
+stone pie, without a trace of what it once had been."
+
+"I suppose we're jolly lucky," she replied.
+
+The door was opened by the old butler, who had been on the alert for
+the arrival.
+
+"You run in," said Peggy, "I'll take the car round to the yard."
+
+So Doggie, with a smile and a word of greeting, entered the Deanery.
+His uncle appeared in the hall, florid, white-haired, benevolent, and
+extended both hands to the home-come warrior.
+
+"My dear boy, how glad I am to see you. Welcome back. And how's the
+wound? We've thought night and day of you. If I could have spared the
+time, I should have run up north, but I've not a minute to call my
+own. We're doing our share of war work here, my boy. Come into the
+drawing-room."
+
+He put his hand affectionately on Doggie's arm and, opening the
+drawing-room door, pushed him in and stood, in his kind, courtly way,
+until the young man had passed the threshold. Mrs. Conover, feeble
+from illness, rose and kissed him, and gave him much the same greeting
+as her husband. Then a tall, lean figure in uniform, who had remained
+in the background by the fireplace, advanced with outstretched hand.
+
+"Hello, old chap!"
+
+Doggie took the hand in an honest grip.
+
+"Hello, Oliver!"
+
+"How goes it?"
+
+"Splendid," said Doggie. "You all right?"
+
+"Top-hole," said Oliver. He clapped his cousin on the shoulder. "My
+hat! you do look fit." He turned to the Dean. "Uncle Edward, isn't he
+a hundred times the man he was?"
+
+"I told you, my boy, you would see a difference," said the Dean.
+
+Peggy ran in, having delivered the two-seater to the care of
+myrmidons.
+
+"Now that the affecting meeting is over, let us have tea. Oliver, ring
+the bell."
+
+The tea came. It appeared to Doggie, handing round the three-tiered
+silver cake-stand, that he had returned to some forgotten former
+incarnation. The delicate china cup in his hand seemed too frail for
+the material usages of life and he feared lest he should break it with
+rough handling. Old habit, however, prevailed, and no one noticed his
+sense of awkwardness. The talk lay chiefly between Oliver and himself.
+They exchanged experiences as to dates and localities. They bandied
+about the names of places which will be inscribed in letters of blood
+in history for all time, as though they were popular golf-courses.
+Both had known Ypres and Plug Street, and the famous wall at Arras,
+where the British and German trenches were but five yards apart.
+Oliver's division had gone down to the Somme in July for the great
+push.
+
+"I ought to be there now," said Oliver. "I feel a hulking slacker and
+fraud, being home on sick leave. But the M.O. said I had just escaped
+shell-shock by the skin of my nerves, and they packed me home for a
+fortnight to rest up--while the regiment, what there's left of it,
+went into reserve."
+
+"Did you get badly cut up?" asked Doggie.
+
+"Rather. We broke through all right. Then machine guns which we had
+overlooked got us in the back."
+
+"My lot's down there now," said Doggie.
+
+"You're well out of it, old chap," laughed Oliver.
+
+For the first time in his life Doggie began really to like Oliver. The
+old-time swashbuckling swagger had gone--the swagger of one who would
+say: "I am the only live man in this comatose crowd. I am the
+dare-devil buccaneer who defies the thunder and sleeps on boards while
+the rest of you are lying soft in feather-beds." His direct, cavalier
+way he still retained; but the army, with the omnipotent might of its
+inherited traditions, had moulded him to its pattern; even as it had
+moulded Doggie. And Doggie, who had learned many of the lessons in
+human psychology which the army teaches, knew that Oliver's genial,
+familiar talk was not all due to his appreciation of their social
+equality in the bosom of their own family, but that he would have
+treated much the same any Tommy into whose companionship he had been
+casually thrown. The Tommy would have said "sir" very scrupulously,
+which on Doggie's part would have been an idiotic thing to do; but
+they would have got on famously together, bound by the freemasonry of
+fighting men who had cursed the same foe for the same reasons. So
+Oliver stood out before Doggie's eyes in a new light, that of the
+typical officer trusted and beloved by his men, and his heart went out
+to him.
+
+"I've brought Chipmunk over," said Oliver. "You remember the freak?
+The poor devil hasn't had a day's leave for a couple of years. Didn't
+want it. Why should he go and waste money in a country where he didn't
+know a human being? But this time I've fixed it up for him and his
+leave is coterminous with mine. He has been my servant all through. If
+they took him away from me, he'd be quite capable of strangling the
+C.O. He's a funny beggar."
+
+"And what kind of a soldier?" the Dean asked politely.
+
+"There's not a finer one in all the armies of the earth," said Oliver.
+
+After much further talk the dressing-gong boomed softly through the
+house.
+
+"You've got the green room, Marmaduke," said Peggy. "The one with the
+Chippendale stuff you used to covet so much."
+
+"I haven't got much to change into," laughed Doggie.
+
+"You'll find Peddle up there waiting for you," she replied.
+
+And when Doggie entered the green room there he found Peddle, who
+welcomed him with tears of joy and a display of all the finikin
+luxuries of the toilet and adornment which he had left behind at Denby
+Hall. There were pots of pomade and face-cream, and nail-polish;
+bottles of hair-wash and tooth-wash; little boxes and brushes for the
+moustache, half a dozen gleaming razors, an array of brushes and combs
+and manicure-set in tortoise-shell with his crest in silver, bottles
+of scent with spray attachments; the onyx bowl of bath salts beside
+the hip-bath ready to be filled from the ewers of hot and cold
+water--the Deanery, old-fashioned house, had but one family bath-room;
+the deep purple silk dressing-gown over the foot-rail of the bed, the
+silk pyjamas in a lighter shade spread out over the pillow, the silk
+underwear and soft-fronted shirt fitted with his ruby and diamond
+sleeve-links, hung up before the fire to air; the dinner jacket suit
+laid out on the glass-topped Chippendale table, with black tie and
+delicate handkerchief; the silk socks carefully tucked inside out, the
+glossy pumps with the silver shoe-horn laid across them.
+
+"My God! Peddle," cried Doggie, scratching his closely cropped head.
+"What the devil's all this?"
+
+Peddle, grey, bent, uncomprehending, regarded him blankly.
+
+"All what, sir?"
+
+"I only want to wash my hands," said Doggie.
+
+"But aren't you going to dress for dinner, sir?"
+
+"A private soldier's not allowed to wear mufti, Peddle. They'd dock me
+of a week's pay if they found out."
+
+"Who's to find out, sir?"
+
+"There's Mr. Oliver--he's a Major."
+
+"Lord, Mr. Marmaduke, I don't think he'd mind. Miss Peggy gave me my
+orders, sir, and I think you can leave things to her."
+
+"All right, Peddle," he laughed. "If it's Miss Peggy's decree, I'll
+change. I've got all I want."
+
+"Are you sure you can manage, sir?" Peddle asked anxiously, for time
+was when Doggie couldn't stick his legs into his trousers unless
+Peddle held them out for him.
+
+"Quite," said Doggie.
+
+"It seems rather roughing it here, Mr. Marmaduke, after what you've
+been accustomed to at the Hall."
+
+"That's so," said Doggie. "And it's martyrdom compared with what it is
+in the trenches. There we always have a major-general to lace up our
+boots, and a field-marshal's always hovering round to light our
+cigarettes."
+
+Peddle, who had never known him to jest, or his father before him,
+went out in a muddled frame of mind, leaving Doggie to struggle into
+his dress trousers as best he might.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+When Doggie, in dinner suit, went downstairs, he found Peggy alone in
+the drawing-room. She gave him the kiss of one accustomed to kiss him
+from childhood, and sat down again on the fender-stool.
+
+"Now you look more like a Christian gentleman," she laughed. "Confess.
+It's much more comfortable than your wretched private's uniform."
+
+"I'm not quite so sure," he said, somewhat ruefully, indicating his
+dinner jacket tightly constricted beneath the arms. "Already I've had
+to slit my waistcoat down the back. Poor old Peddle will have an
+apoplectic fit when he sees it. I've grown a bit since these elegant
+rags were made for me."
+
+"_Il faut souffrir pour être beau_," said Peggy.
+
+"If my being _beau_ pleases you, Peggy, I'll suffer gladly. I've been
+in tighter places." He threw himself down in the corner of the sofa
+and joggled up and down like a child. "After all," he said, "it's
+jolly to sit on something squashy again, and to see a pretty girl in a
+pretty frock."
+
+"I'm glad you like this frock."
+
+"New?"
+
+She nodded. "Dad said it was too much of a Vanity Fair of a vanity for
+war-time. You don't think so, do you?"
+
+"It's charming," said Doggie. "A treat for tired eyes."
+
+"That's just what I told dad. What's the good of women dressing in
+sacks tied round the middle with a bit of string? When men come home
+from the Front they want to see their womenfolk looking pretty and
+dainty. That's what they've come over for. It's part of the cure. It's
+the first time you've been a real dear, Marmaduke. 'A treat for tired
+eyes.' I'll rub it into dad hard."
+
+Oliver came in--in khaki. Doggie jumped up and pointed to him.
+
+"Look here, Peggy. It's the guard-room for me."
+
+Oliver laughed. "Where the dinner kit I bought when I came home is
+now, God only can tell." He turned to Peggy. "I did change, you know."
+
+"That's the pull of being a beastly Major," said Doggie. "They have
+heaps of suits. On the march, there are motor-lorries full of them.
+It's the scandal of the army. The wretched Tommy has but one suit to
+his name. That's why, sir, I've taken the liberty of appearing before
+you in outgrown mufti."
+
+"All right, my man," said Oliver. "We'll hush it up and say no more
+about it."
+
+Then the Dean and Mrs. Conover entered and soon they went in to
+dinner. It was for Doggie the most pleasant of meals. He had the
+superbly healthy man's whole-hearted or whole-stomached appreciation
+of unaccustomed good food and drink: so much so, that when the Dean,
+after agonies of thwarted mastication, said gently to his wife: "My
+dear, don't you think you might speak a word in season to Peck"--Peck
+being the butcher--"and forbid him, under the Defence of the Realm
+Act, if you like, to deliver to us in the evening as lamb that which
+was in the morning a lusty sheep?" he stared at the good old man as
+though he were Vitellius in person. Tough? It was like milk-fatted
+baby. He was already devouring, like Oliver, his second helping. Then
+the Dean, pledging him and Oliver in champagne, apologized: "I'm
+sorry, my dear boys, the 1904 has run out and there's no more to be
+got. But the 1906, though not having the quality, is quite drinkable."
+
+Drinkable! It was laughing, dancing joy that went down his throat.
+
+So much for gross delights. There were others--finer. The charm to the
+eye of the table with its exquisite napery and china and glass and
+silver and flowers. The almost intoxicating atmosphere of peace and
+gentle living. The full, loving welcome shining from the eyes of the
+kind old Dean, his uncle by marriage, and of the faded, delicate lady,
+his own flesh and blood, his mother's sister. And Peggy, pretty,
+flushed, bright-eyed, radiant in her new dress. And there was
+Oliver....
+
+Most of all he appreciated Oliver's comrade-like attitude. It was a
+recognition of him as a man and a soldier. In the course of dinner
+talk Oliver said:
+
+"J.M.T. and I have looked Death in the face many a time--and really
+he's a poor raw-head and bloody-bones sort of Bogey; don't you think
+so, old chap?"
+
+"It all depends on whether you've got a funk-hole handy," he replied.
+
+But that was mere lightness of speech. Oliver's inclusion of him in
+his remark shook him to the depths of his sensitive nature. The man
+who despises the petty feelings and frailties of mankind is doomed to
+remain in awful ignorance of that which there is of beauty and pathos
+in the lives of his fellow-creatures. After all, what did it matter
+what Oliver thought of him? Who was Oliver? His cousin--accident of
+birth--the black sheep of the family; now a major in a different
+regiment and a different division. What was Oliver to him or he to
+Oliver? He had "made good" in the eyes of one whose judgment had been
+forged keen and absolute by heroic sorrows. What did anyone else
+matter? But to Doggie the supreme joy of the evening was the knowledge
+that he had made good in the eyes of Oliver. Oliver wore on his tunic
+the white mauve and white ribbon of the Military Cross. Honour where
+honour was due. But he, Doggie, had been wounded (no matter how) and
+Oliver frankly put them both on the same plane of achievement, thus
+wiping away, with generous hand, all hated memories of the past.
+
+When the ladies had left the room, history repeated itself, in that
+the Dean was called away on business and the cousins were left alone
+together over their wine. Said Doggie:
+
+"Do you remember the last time we sat at this table?"
+
+"Perfectly," replied Oliver, holding up a glass of the old Deanery
+port to the light. "You were horrified at my attempting to clean out
+my pipe with a dessert knife."
+
+Doggie laughed. "After all, it was a filthy thing to do."
+
+"I quite agree with you. Since then I've learned manners."
+
+"You also made me squirm at the idea of scooping out Boches' insides
+with bayonets."
+
+"And you've learned not to squirm, so we're quits."
+
+"You thought me a rotten ass in those days, didn't you?"
+
+Oliver looked at him squarely.
+
+"I don't think it would hurt you now if I said that I did." He
+laughed, stretched himself on his chair, thrusting both hands into his
+trouser pockets. "In many ways, it's a jolly good old war, you
+know--for those that pull through. It has taught us both a lot,
+Marmaduke."
+
+Doggie wrinkled his forehead in his half-humorous way.
+
+"I wish it would teach people not to call me by that silly name."
+
+"I have always abominated it, as you may have observed," said Oliver.
+"But in our present polite relations, old chap, what else is there?"
+
+"You ought to know----"
+
+Oliver stared at him. "You don't mean----?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"But you used to loathe it and I went on calling you 'Doggie' because
+I knew you loathed it. I never dreamed of using it now."
+
+"I can't help it," replied Doggie. "The name got into the army and has
+stuck to me right through, and now those I love and trust most in the
+world, and who love and trust me, call me 'Doggie,' and I don't seem
+to be able to answer to any other name. So, although I'm only a Tommy
+and you're a devil of a swell of a second-in-command, yet if you want
+to be friendly--well----"
+
+Oliver leaned forward quickly. "Of course I want to be friends,
+Doggie, old chap. As for major and private--when you pass me in the
+street you've dam well got to salute me, and that's all there is to
+it--but otherwise it's all rot. And now we've got to the
+heart-to-heart stage, don't you think you're a bit of a fool?"
+
+"I know it," said Doggie cheerfully. "The army has drummed that into
+me, at any rate."
+
+"I mean in staying in the ranks. Why don't you apply for the Cadet
+Corps and so get through to a commission again?"
+
+Doggie's brow grew dark. "I had all that out with Peggy long ago--when
+things were perhaps somewhat different with me. I was sore all over. I
+dare say you can understand. But now there are other reasons, much
+stronger reasons. The only real happiness I've had in my life has been
+as a Tommy. I'm not talking through my hat. The only real friends I've
+ever made in my life are Tommies. I've found real things as a Tommy
+and I'm not going to start all over again to find them in another
+capacity."
+
+"You wouldn't have to start all over again," Oliver objected.
+
+"Oh yes, I should. Don't run away with the idea that I've been turned
+by a miracle into a brawny hero. I'm not anything of the sort. To have
+to lead men into action would be a holy terror. The old dread of
+seeking new paths still acts, you see. I'm the same Doggie that
+wouldn't go out to Huaheine with you. Only now I'm a private and I'm
+used to it. I love it and I'm not going to change to the end of the
+whole gory business. Of course Peggy doesn't like it," he added after
+a sip of wine. "But I can't help that. It's a matter of temperament
+and conscience--in a way, a matter of honour."
+
+"What has honour got to do with it?" asked Oliver.
+
+"I'll try to explain. It's somehow this way. When I came to my senses
+after being chucked for incompetence--that was the worst hell I ever
+went through in my life--and I enlisted, I swore that I would stick it
+as a Tommy without anybody's sympathy, least of all that of the folks
+here. And then I swore I'd make good to myself as a Tommy. I was just
+beginning to feel happier when that infernal Boche sniper knocked me
+out for a time. So, Peggy or no Peggy, I'm going through with it. I
+suppose I'm telling you all this because I should like you to know."
+
+He passed his hand, in the familiar gesture, from back to front of his
+short-cropped hair. Oliver smiled at the reminiscence of the old
+disturbed Doggie; but he said very gravely:
+
+"I'm glad you've told me, old man. I appreciate it very much. I've
+been through the ranks myself and know what it is--the bad and the
+good. Many a man has found his soul that way----"
+
+"Good God!" cried Doggie, starting to his feet. "Do you say that too?"
+
+"Who else said it?"
+
+The quick question caused the blood to rush to Doggie's face. Oliver's
+keen, half-mocking gaze held him. He cursed himself for an impulsive
+idiot. The true answer to the question would be a confession of
+Jeanne. The scene in the kitchen of Frélus swam before his eyes. He
+dropped into his chair again with a laugh.
+
+"Oh, some one out there--in another heart-to-heart talk. As a matter
+of fact, I think I said it myself. It's odd you should have used the
+same words. Anyhow, you're the only other person who has hit on the
+truth as far as I'm concerned. Finding one's soul is a bit
+high-falutin--but that's about the size of it."
+
+"Peggy hasn't hit on the truth, then?" Oliver asked, with curious
+earnestness, the shade of mockery gone.
+
+"The war has scarcely touched her yet, you see," said Doggie. He rose,
+shrinking from discussion. "Shall we go in?"
+
+In the drawing-room they played bridge till the ladies' bedtime. The
+Dean coming in, played the last rubber.
+
+"I hope you'll be able to sleep in a common or garden bed, Marmaduke,"
+said Peggy, and kissed him a perfunctory good night.
+
+"I have heard," remarked the Dean, "that it takes quite a time to grow
+accustomed to the little amenities of civilization."
+
+"That's quite true, Uncle Edward," laughed Doggie. "I'm terrified at
+the thought of the silk pyjamas Peddle has prescribed for me."
+
+"Why?" Peggy asked bluntly.
+
+Oliver interposed laughing, his hand on Doggie's shoulder.
+
+"Tommy's accustomed to go to bed in his day-shirt."
+
+"How perfectly disgusting!" cried Peggy, and swept from the room.
+
+Oliver dropped his hand and looked somewhat abashed.
+
+"I'm afraid I've been and gone and done it. I'm sorry. I'm still a
+barbarian South Sea Islander."
+
+"I wish I were a young man," said the Dean, moving from the door and
+inviting them to sit, "and could take part in these strange hardships.
+This question of night attire, for instance, has never struck me
+before. The whole thing is of amazing interest. Ah! what it is to be
+old! If I were young, I should be with you, cloth or no cloth, in the
+trenches. I hope both of you know that I vehemently dissent from those
+bishops who prohibit the younger clergy from taking their place in the
+fighting line. If God's archangels and angels themselves took up the
+sword against the Powers of Darkness, surely a stalwart young curate
+of the Church of England would find his vocation in warring with rifle
+and bayonet against the proclaimed enemies of God and mankind?"
+
+"The influence of the twenty thousand or so of priests fighting in the
+French Army is said to be enormous," Oliver remarked.
+
+The Dean sighed. "I'm afraid we're losing a big chance."
+
+"Why don't you take up the Fiery Cross, Uncle Edward, and run a new
+Crusade?"
+
+The Dean sighed. Five-and-thirty years ago, when he had set all
+Durdlebury by the ears, he might have preached glorious heresy and
+heroic schism; but now the immutability of the great grey fabric had
+become part of his being.
+
+"I've done my best, my boy," he replied, "with the result that I am
+held in high disfavour."
+
+"But that doesn't matter a little bit."
+
+"Not a little bit," said the Dean. "A man can only do his duty
+according to the dictates of his conscience. I have publicly deplored
+the attitude of the Church of England. I have written to _The Times_.
+I have published a pamphlet--I sent you each a copy--which has brought
+a hornets' nest about my ears. I have warned those in high places that
+what they are doing is not in the best interests of the Church. But
+they won't listen."
+
+Oliver lit a pipe. "I'm afraid, Uncle Edward," he said, "that though I
+come of a clerical family, I know no more of religion than a Hun
+bishop; but it has always struck me that the Church's job is to look
+after the people, whereas, as far as I can make out, the Church is now
+squealing because the people won't look after the Church."
+
+The Dean rose. "I won't go as far as that," said he with a smile. "But
+there is, I fear, some justification for such a criticism from the
+laity. As soon as the war began the Church should have gathered the
+people together and said, 'Onward, Christian soldiers. Go and fight
+like--er----'"
+
+"Like hell," suggested Oliver, greatly daring.
+
+"Or words to that effect," smiled the old Dean. He looked at his
+watch. "Dear, dear! past eleven. I wish I could sit up talking to you
+boys. But I start my day's work at eight o'clock. If you want
+anything, you've only got to ring. Good night. It is one of the
+proudest days of my life to have you both here together."
+
+His courtly charm seemed to linger in the room after he had left.
+
+"He's a dear old chap," said Oliver.
+
+"One of the best," said Doggie.
+
+"It's rather pathetic," said Oliver. "In his heart he would like to
+play the devil with the bishops and kick every able-bodied parson into
+the trenches--and there are thousands of them that don't need any
+kicking and, on the contrary, have been kicked back; but he has become
+half-petrified in the atmosphere of this place. It's lovely to come to
+as a sort of funk-hole of peace--but my holy aunt!--What the blazes
+are you laughing at?"
+
+"I'm only thinking of a beast of a boy here who used to say that,"
+replied Doggie.
+
+"Oh!" said Oliver, and he grinned. "Anyway, I was only going to remark
+that if I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life here, I'd
+paint the town vermilion for a week and then cut my throat."
+
+"I quite agree with you," said Doggie.
+
+"What are you going to do when the war's over?"
+
+"Who knows what he's going to do? What are you going to do? Fly back
+to your little Robinson Crusoe Durdlebury of a Pacific Island? I don't
+think so."
+
+Oliver stuck his pipe on the mantelpiece and his hands on his hips and
+made a stride towards Doggie.
+
+"Damn you, Doggie! Damn you to little bits! How the Hades did you
+guess what I've scarcely told myself, much less another human being?"
+
+"You yourself said it was a good old war and it has taught us a lot of
+things."
+
+"It has," said Oliver. "But I never expected to hear Huaheine called
+Durdlebury by you, Doggie. Oh, Lord! I must have another drink.
+Where's your glass? Say when?"
+
+They parted for the night the best of friends.
+
+Doggie, in spite of the silk pyjamas and the soft bed and the blazing
+fire in his room--he stripped back the light-excluding curtains
+forgetful of Defence of the Realm Acts, and opened all the windows
+wide, to the horror of Peddle in the morning--slept like an
+unperturbed dormouse. When Peddle woke him, he lay drowsily while the
+old butler filled his bath and fiddled about with drawers. At last
+aroused, he cried out:
+
+"What the dickens are you doing?"
+
+Peddle turned with an injured air. "I am matching your ties and socks
+for your bottle-green suit, sir."
+
+Doggie leaped out of bed. "You dear old idiot, I can't go about the
+streets in bottle-green suits. I've got to wear my uniform." He looked
+around the room. "Where the devil is it?"
+
+Peddle's injured air deepened almost into resentment.
+
+"Where the devil----!" Never had Mr. Marmaduke, or his father, the
+Canon, used such language. He drew himself up.
+
+"I have given orders, sir, for the uniform suit you wore yesterday to
+be sent to the cleaners."
+
+"Oh, hell!" said Doggie. And Peddle, unaccustomed to the vernacular of
+the British Army, paled with horror. "Oh, hell!" said Doggie. "Look
+here, Peddle, just you get on a bicycle, or a motor-car, or an express
+train at once and retrieve that uniform. Don't you understand? I'm a
+private soldier. I've got to wear uniform all the time, and I'll have
+to stay in this beastly bed until you get it for me."
+
+Peddle fled. The picture that he left on Doggie's mind was that of the
+faithful steward with dismayed, uplifted hands, retiring from the room
+in one of the great scenes of Hogarth's "Rake's Progress." The
+similitude made him laugh--for Doggie always had a saving sense of
+humour--but he was very angry with Peddle, while he stamped around the
+room in his silk pyjamas. What the deuce was he going to do? Even if
+he committed the military crime (and there was a far more serious
+crime already against him) of appearing in public in mufti, did that
+old ass think he was going to swagger about Durdlebury in bottle-green
+suits, as though he were ashamed of the King's uniform? He dipped his
+shaving-brush into the hot water. Then he threw it, anyhow, across the
+room. Instead of shaving, he would be gloating over the idea of
+cutting that old fool, Peddle's, throat, and therefore would slash his
+own face to bits.
+
+Things, however, were not done at lightning speed in the Deanery of
+Durdlebury. The first steps had not even been taken to send the
+uniform to the cleaners, and soon Peddle reappeared carrying it over
+his arm and the heavy pair of munition boots in his hand.
+
+"These too, sir?" he asked, exhibiting the latter resignedly and
+casting a sad glance at the neat pair of brown shoes exquisitely
+polished and beautifully treed which he had put out for his master's
+wear.
+
+"These too," said Doggie. "And where's my grey flannel shirt?"
+
+This time Peddle triumphed. "I've given that away, sir, to the
+gardener's boy."
+
+"Well, you can just go and buy me half a dozen more like it," said
+Doggie.
+
+He dismissed the old man, dressed and went downstairs. The Dean had
+breakfasted at seven. Peggy and Oliver were not yet down for the nine
+o'clock meal. Doggie strolled about the garden and sauntered round to
+the stable-yard. There he encountered Chipmunk in his shirt-sleeves,
+sitting on a packing case and polishing Oliver's leggings. He raised
+an ugly, clean-shaven mug and scowled beneath his bushy eyebrows at
+the new-comer.
+
+"Morning, mate!" said Doggie pleasantly.
+
+"Morning," said Chipmunk, resuming his work.
+
+Doggie turned over a stable bucket and sat down on it and lit a
+cigarette.
+
+"Glad to be back?"
+
+Chipmunk poised the cloth on which he had poured some brown dressing.
+"Not if I has to be worried with private soljers," he replied. "I came
+'ere to get away from 'em."
+
+"What's wrong with private soldiers? They're good enough for you,
+aren't they?" asked Doggie with a laugh.
+
+"Naow," snarled Chipmunk. "Especially when they ought to be orficers.
+Go to 'ell!"
+
+Doggie, who had suffered much in the army, but had never before been
+taunted with being a dilettante gentleman private, still less been
+consigned to hell on that account, leapt to his feet shaken by one of
+his rare sudden gusts of anger.
+
+"If you don't say I'm as good a private soldier as any in your rotten,
+mangy regiment, I'll knock your blinking head off!"
+
+An insult to a soldier's regiment can only be wiped out in blood.
+Chipmunk threw cloth and legging to the winds and, springing from his
+seat like a monkey, went for Doggie.
+
+"You just try."
+
+Doggie tried, and had not Chipmunk's head been very firmly secured to
+his shoulders, he would have succeeded. Chipmunk went down as if he
+had been bombed. It was his unguarded and unscientific rush that did
+it. Doggie regarded his prostrate figure in gratified surprise.
+
+"What's all this about?" cried a sharp, imperious voice.
+
+Doggie instinctively stood at attention and saluted, and Chipmunk,
+picking himself up in a dazed sort of way, did likewise.
+
+"You two men shake hands and make friends at once," Oliver commanded.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Doggie. He extended his hand, and Chipmunk, with the
+nautical shamble, which in moments of stress defied a couple of years'
+military discipline, advanced and shook it. Oliver strode hurriedly
+away.
+
+"I'm sorry I said that about the regiment, mate. I didn't mean it,"
+said Doggie.
+
+Chipmunk looked uncertainly into Doggie's eyes for what Doggie felt to
+be a very long time. Chipmunk's dull brain was slowly realizing the
+situation. The man opposite to him was his master's cousin. When he
+had last seen him, he had no title to be called a man at all. His
+vocabulary volcanically rich, but otherwise limited, had not been able
+to express him in adequate terms of contempt and derision. Now behold
+him masquerading as a private. Wounded. But any fool could get
+wounded. Behold him further coming down from the social heights
+whereon his master dwelt, to take a rise out of him, Chipmunk. In
+self-defence he had taken the obvious course. He had told him to go to
+hell. Then the important things had happened. Not the effeminate
+gentleman but some one very much like the common Tommy of his
+acquaintance had responded. And he had further responded with the
+familiar vigour but unwonted science of the rank and file. He had also
+stood at attention and saluted and obeyed like any common Tommy, when
+the Major appeared. The last fact appealed to him, perhaps, as much as
+the one more invested in violence.
+
+"'Ere," said he at last, jerking his head and rubbing his jaw, "how
+the 'ell did you do it?"
+
+"We'll get some gloves and I'll show you," said Doggie.
+
+So peace and firm friendship were made. Doggie went into the house and
+in the dining-room found Oliver in convulsive laughter.
+
+"Oh, my holy aunt! You'll be the death of me, Doggie. 'Yes, sir!'" He
+mimicked him. "The perfect Tommy. After doing in old Chipmunk.
+Chipmunk with the strength of a gorilla and the courage of a lion. I
+just happened round to see him go down. How the blazes did you manage
+it, Doggie?"
+
+"That's what Chipmunk's just asked me," Doggie replied. "I belong to a
+regiment where boxing is taught. Really a good regiment," he grinned.
+"There's a sergeant-instructor, a chap called Ballinghall----"
+
+"Not Joe Ballinghall, the well-known amateur heavy-weight?"
+
+"That's him right enough," said Doggie.
+
+"My dear old chap," said Oliver, "this is the funniest war that ever
+was."
+
+Peggy sailed in full of apologies and began to pour out coffee.
+
+"Do help yourselves. I'm so sorry to have kept you poor hungry things
+waiting."
+
+"We've filled up the time amazingly," cried Oliver, waving a silver
+dish-cover. "What do you think? Doggie's had a fight with Chipmunk and
+knocked him out."
+
+Peggy splashed the milk over the brim of Doggie's cup and into the
+saucer. There came a sudden flush on her cheek and a sudden hard look
+into her eyes.
+
+"Fighting? Do you mean to say you've been fighting with a common man
+like Chipmunk?"
+
+"We're the best of friends now," said Doggie. "We understand each
+other."
+
+"I can't quite see the necessity," said Peggy.
+
+"I'm afraid it's rather hard to explain," he replied with a rueful
+knitting of the brows, for he realized her disgust at the vulgar
+brawl.
+
+"I think the less said the better," she remarked acidly.
+
+The meal proceeded in ominous gloom, and as soon as Peggy had finished
+she left the room.
+
+"It seems, old chap, that I can never do right," said Oliver. "Long
+ago, when I used to crab you, she gave it to me in the neck; and now
+when I try to boost you, you seem to get it."
+
+"I'm afraid I've got on Peggy's nerves," said Doggie. "You see, we've
+only met once before during the last two years, and I suppose I've
+changed."
+
+"There's no doubt about that, old son," said Oliver. "But all the
+same, Peggy has stood by you like a brick, hasn't she?"
+
+"That's the devil of it," replied Doggie, rubbing up his hair.
+
+"Why the devil of it?" Oliver asked quickly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," replied Doggie. "As you have once or twice
+observed, it's a funny old war."
+
+He rose, went to the door.
+
+"Where are you off to?" asked Oliver.
+
+"I'm going to Denby Hall to take a look round."
+
+"Like me to come with you? We can borrow the two-seater."
+
+Doggie advanced a pace. "You're an awfully good sort, Oliver," he
+said, touched, "but would you mind--I feel rather a beast----"
+
+"All right, you silly old ass," cried Oliver cheerily. "You want, of
+course, to root about there by yourself. Go ahead."
+
+"If you'll take a spin with me this afternoon, or to-morrow----" said
+Doggie in his sensitive way.
+
+"Oh, clear out!" laughed Oliver.
+
+And Doggie cleared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+"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 æsthetically 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 Sèvres 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."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Doggie, the lightest-hearted private in the British Army, danced, in a
+metaphorical sense, back to London, where he stayed for the rest of
+his leave at his rooms in Woburn Place; took his wholesome fill of
+theatres and music-halls, going to those parts of the house where
+Tommies congregate; and bought an old Crown Derby dinner service as a
+wedding present for Peggy and Oliver, a tortoise-shell-fitted
+dressing-case for Peggy, and for Oliver a magnificent gold watch that
+was an encyclopædia of current information. He had never felt so
+happy in his life, so enchanted with the grimly smiling old world.
+Were it not for the Boche, it could hold its own as a brave place with
+any planet going. He blessed Oliver, who, in turn, had blessed him as
+though he had displayed heroic magnanimity. He blessed Peggy, who,
+flushed with love and happiness and gratitude, had shown him, for the
+first time, what a really adorable young woman she could be. He
+thanked Heaven for making three people happy, instead of three people
+miserable.
+
+He marched along the wet pavements with a new light in his eyes, with
+a new exhilarating breath in his nostrils. He was free. The war over,
+he could do exactly what he liked. An untrammelled future lay before
+him. During the war he could hop about trenches and shell-holes with
+the freedom of a bird....
+
+Those awful duty letters to Peggy! Only now he fully realized their
+never-ending strain. Now he could write to her spontaneously, whenever
+the mood suited, write to her from his heart: "Dear old Peggy, I'm so
+glad you're happy. Oliver's a splendid chap. Et cetera, et cetera, et
+cetera." He had lost a dreaded bride; but he had found a dear and
+devoted friend. Nay, more: he had found two devoted friends. When he
+drew up his account with humanity, he found himself passing rich in
+love.
+
+His furlough expired, he reported at his depot, and was put on light
+duty. He went about it the cheeriest soul alive, and laughed at the
+memory of his former miseries as a recruit. This camp life in England,
+after the mud and blood of France--like the African gentleman in Mr.
+Addison's "Cato," he blessed his stars and thought it luxury. He was
+not sorry that the exigencies of service prevented him from being
+present at the wedding of Oliver and Peggy. For it was the most sudden
+of phenomena, like the fight of two rams, as Shakespeare hath it. In
+war-time people marry in haste; and often, dear God, they have not the
+leisure to repent. Since the beginning of the war there are many, many
+women twice widowed.... But that is by the way. Doggie was grateful to
+an ungrateful military system. If he had attended--in the capacity of
+best man, so please you--so violent and unreasoning had Oliver's
+affection become, Durdlebury would have gaped and whispered behind its
+hand and made things uncomfortable for everybody. Doggie from the
+security of his regiment wished them joy by letter and telegram, and
+sent them the wedding presents aforesaid.
+
+Then for a season there were three happy people, at least, in this
+war-wilderness of suffering. The newly wedded pair went off for a
+honeymoon, whose promise of indefinite length was eventually cut short
+by an unromantic War Office. Oliver returned to his regiment in France
+and Peggy to the Deanery, where she sat among her wedding presents and
+her hopes for the future.
+
+"I never realized, my dear," said the Dean to his wife, "what a
+remarkably pretty girl Peggy has grown into."
+
+"It's because she has got the man she loves," said Mrs. Conover.
+
+"Do you think that's the reason?"
+
+"I've known the plainest of women become quite good-looking. In the
+early days of our married life"--she smiled--"even I was not quite
+unattractive."
+
+The old Dean bent down--she was sitting and he standing--and lifted
+her chin with his forefinger.
+
+"You, my dear, have always been by far the most beautiful woman of my
+acquaintance."
+
+"We're talking of Peggy," smiled Mrs. Conover.
+
+"Ah!" said the Dean. "So we were. I was saying that the child's
+happiness was reflected in her face----"
+
+"I rather thought I said it, dear," replied Mrs. Conover.
+
+"It doesn't matter," said her husband, who was first a man and then a
+dean. He waved a hand in benign dismissal of the argument. "It's a
+great mercy," said he, "that she has married the man she loves instead
+of--well ... Marmaduke has turned out a capital fellow, and a credit
+to the family--but I never was quite easy in my mind over the
+engagement.... And yet," he continued, after a turn or two about the
+room, "I'm rather conscience-stricken about Marmaduke, poor chap. He
+has taken it like a brick. Yes, my dear, like a brick. Like a
+gentleman. But all the same, no man likes to see another fellow walk
+off with his sweetheart."
+
+"I don't think Marmaduke was ever so bucked in his life," said Mrs.
+Conover placidly.
+
+"So----?"
+
+The Dean gasped. His wife's smile playing ironically among her
+wrinkles was rather beautiful.
+
+"Peggy's word, Edward, not mine. The modern vocabulary. It means----"
+
+"Oh, I know what the hideous word means. It was your using it that
+caused a shiver down my spine. But why bucked?"
+
+"It appears there's a girl in France."
+
+"Oho!" said the Dean. "Who is she?"
+
+"That's what Peggy, even now, would give a good deal to find out."
+
+For Doggie had told Peggy nothing more about the girl in France.
+Jeanne was his own precious secret. That it was shared by Phineas and
+Mo didn't matter. To discuss her with Peggy, besides being irrelevant,
+in the circumstances, was quite another affair. Indeed, when he had
+avowed the girl in France, it was not so much a confession as a
+gallant desire to help Peggy out of her predicament. For, after all,
+what was Jeanne but a beloved war-wraith that had passed through his
+life and disappeared?
+
+"The development of Marmaduke," said the Dean, "is not the least
+extraordinary phenomenon of the war."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now that Doggie had gained his freedom, Jeanne ceased to be a wraith.
+She became once again a wonderful thing of flesh and blood towards
+whom all his young, fresh instinct yearned tremendously. One day it
+struck his ingenuous mind that, if Jeanne were willing, there could be
+no possible reason why he should not marry her. Who was to say him
+nay? Convention? He had put all the conventions of his life under the
+auctioneer's hammer. The family? He pictured a meeting between Jeanne
+and the kind and courteous old Dean. It could not be other than an
+episode of beauty. All he had to do was to seek out Jeanne and begin
+his wooing in earnest. The simplest adventure in the world for a
+well-to-do and unattached young man--if only that young man had not
+been a private soldier on active service.
+
+That was the rub. Doggie passed his hand over his hair ruefully. How
+on earth could he get to Frélus again? Not till the end of the war,
+at any rate, which might be years hence. There was nothing for it but
+a resumption of intimacy by letter. So he wrote to Jeanne the letter
+which loyalty to Peggy had made him destroy weeks ago. But no answer
+came. Then he wrote another, telling her of Peggy and his freedom, and
+his love and his hopes, and to that there came no reply.
+
+A prepaid telegram produced no result.
+
+Doggie began to despair. What had happened to Jeanne? Why did she
+persist in ruling him out of her existence? Was it because, in spite
+of her gratitude, she wanted none of his love? He sat on the railing
+on the sea front of the south coast town where he was quartered, and
+looked across the Channel in dismayed apprehension. He was a fool.
+What could there possibly be in little Doggie Trevor to inspire a
+romantic passion in any woman's heart? Take Peggy's case. As soon as a
+real, genuine fellow like Oliver came along, Peggy's heart flew out to
+him like needle to magnet. Even had he been of Oliver's Paladin mould,
+what right had he to expect Jeanne to give him all the wonder of
+herself after a four days' acquaintance? Being what he was, just
+little Doggie Trevor, the assumption was an impertinence. She had
+sheltered herself from it behind a barrier of silence.
+
+A girl, a thing of low-cut blouse, truncated skirts and cheap silk
+stockings, who had been leaning unnoticed for some time on the rails
+by his side, spoke.
+
+"You seem to be pretty lonely."
+
+Doggie swerved round. "Yes, I am, darned lonely."
+
+"Come for a walk, or take me to the pictures."
+
+"And then?" asked Doggie, swinging to his feet.
+
+"If we get on all right, we can fix up something for to-morrow."
+
+She was pretty, with a fair, frizzy, insolent prettiness. She might
+have been any age from fourteen to four-and-twenty.
+
+Doggie smiled, tempted to while away a dark hour. But he said,
+honestly:
+
+"I'm afraid I should be a dull companion."
+
+"What's the matter?" she laughed. "Lost your best girl?"
+
+"Something like it." He waved a hand across the sea. "Over there."
+
+"French? Oh!" She drew herself up. "Aren't English girls good enough
+for you?"
+
+"When they're sympathetic, they're delightful," said he.
+
+"Oh, you make me tired! Good-bye," she snapped, and stalked away.
+
+After a few yards she glanced over her shoulder to see whether he was
+following. But Doggie remained by the railings.
+
+Presently he shrugged his shoulders and went off to a picture palace
+by himself and thought wistfully of Jeanne.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And Jeanne? Well, Jeanne was no longer at Frélus; for there came a
+morning when Aunt Morin was found dead in her bed. The old doctor came
+and spread out his thin hands and said "_Eh bien_" and "_Que
+voulez-vous?_" and "It was bound to happen sooner or later," and
+murmured learned words. The old curé came and a neighbour or two, and
+candles were put round the coffin and the _pompes funèbres_ draped
+the front steps and entrance and vestibule in heavy black. And as soon
+as was possible Aunt Morin was laid to rest in the little cemetery
+adjoining the church, and Jeanne went back to the house with Toinette,
+alone in the wide world. And because there had been a death in the
+place the billeted soldiers went about the courtyard very quietly.
+
+Since Phineas and Mo and Doggie's regiment had gone away, she had
+devoted, with a new passionate zeal, all the time she could spare from
+the sick woman to the comforts of the men. No longer restrained by the
+tightly drawn purse-strings of Aunt Morin, but with money of her own
+to spend--and money restored to her by these men's dear and heroic
+comrade--she could give them unexpected treats of rich coffee and
+milk, fresh eggs, fruit.... She mended and darned for them and
+suborned old women to help her. She conspired with the Town Major to
+render the granary more habitable; and the Town Major, who had not to
+issue a return for a centime's expense, received all her suggestions
+with courteous enthusiasm. Toinette taking good care to impress upon
+every British soldier who could understand her, the fact that to
+mademoiselle personally and individually he was indebted for all these
+luxuries, the fame of Jeanne began to spread through that sector of
+the front behind which lay Frélus. Concurrently spread the story of
+Doggie Trevor's exploit. Jeanne became a legendary figure, save to
+those thrice fortunate who were billeted on _Veuve Morin et Fils,
+Marchands des Foins en Gros et Détail_, and these, according to their
+several stolid British ways, bowed down and worshipped before the slim
+French girl with the tragic eyes, and when they departed, confirmed
+the legend and made things nasty for the sceptically superior private.
+
+So, on the day of the funeral of Aunt Morin, the whole of the billet
+sent in a wreath to the house, and the whole of the billet attended
+the service in the little church, and they marched back and drew up by
+the front door--a guard of honour extending a little distance down the
+road. The other men billeted in the village hung around, together with
+the remnant of the inhabitants, old men, women and children, but kept
+quite clear of the guarded path through which Jeanne was to pass. One
+or two officers looked on curiously. But they stood in the background.
+It was none of their business. If the men, in their free time, chose
+to put themselves on parade, without arms, of course, so much the
+better for the army.
+
+Then Jeanne and the old curé, in his time-scarred shovel-hat and his
+rusty soutane, followed by Toinette, turned round the corner of the
+lane and emerged into the main street. A sergeant gave a word of
+command. The guard stood at attention. Jeanne and her companions
+proceeded up the street, unaware of the unusual, until they entered
+between the first two files. Then for the first time the tears welled
+into Jeanne's eyes. She could only stretch out her hands and cry
+somewhat wildly to the bronzed statues on each side of her, "_Merci,
+mes amis, merci, merci_," and flee into the house.
+
+The next day Maître Pépineau, the notary, summoned her to his
+_cabinet_. Maître Pépineau was very old. His partner had gone off to
+the war. "One of the necessities of the present situation," he would
+say, "is that I should go on living in spite of myself; for if I died,
+the whole of the affairs of Frélus would be in the soup." Now, a
+fortnight back, Maître Pépineau and four neighbours--the four
+witnesses required by French law when there is only one notary to draw
+up the _instrument public_--had visited Aunt Morin; so Jeanne knew
+that she had made a fresh will.
+
+"_Mon enfant_," said the old man, unfolding the document, "in a
+previous will your aunt had left you a little heritage out of the half
+of her fortune which she was free to dispose of by the code. You
+having come into possession of your own money, she has revoked that
+will and left everything to her only surviving son, Gaspard Morin, in
+Madagascar."
+
+"It is only just and right," said Jeanne.
+
+"The unfortunate part of the matter," said Maître Pépineau, "is that
+Madame Morin has appointed official trustees to carry on the estate
+until Monsieur Gaspard Morin can make his own arrangements. The result
+is that you have no _locus standi_ as a resident in the house. I
+pointed this out to her. But you know, in spite of her good qualities,
+she was obstinate.... It pains me greatly, my dear child, to have to
+state your position."
+
+"I am then," said Jeanne, "_sans-asile_--homeless?"
+
+"As far as the house of Monsieur Gaspard Morin is concerned--yes."
+
+"And my English soldiers?" asked Jeanne.
+
+"Alas, my child," replied the old man, "you will find them
+everywhere."
+
+Which was cold consolation. For however much inspired by patriotic
+gratitude a French girl may be, she cannot settle down in a strange
+place where British troops are billeted and proceed straightway to
+minister to their comfort. Misunderstandings are apt to arise even in
+the best regulated British regiments. In the house of Aunt Morin, in
+Frélus, her position was unassailable. Anywhere else ...
+
+"So, my good Toinette," said Jeanne, after having explained the
+situation to the indignant old woman, "I can only go back to my friend
+in Paris and reconstitute my life. If you will accompany me----?"
+
+But no. Toinette had the peasant's awful dread of Paris. She had heard
+about Paris: there were thieves, ruffians that they called _apaches_,
+who murdered you if you went outside your door.
+
+"The _apaches_," laughed Jeanne, "were swept away into the army on the
+outbreak of war, and they've nearly all been killed, fighting like
+heroes."
+
+"There are the old ones left, who are worse than the young," retorted
+Toinette.
+
+No. Mademoiselle could teach her nothing about Paris. You could not
+even cross a street without risk of life, so many were the omnibuses
+and automobiles. In every shop you were a stranger to be robbed. There
+was no air in Paris. You could not sleep for the noise. And then--to
+live in a city of a hundred million people and not know a living soul!
+It was a mad-house matter. Again no. It grieved her to part from
+mademoiselle, but she had made her little economies--a difficult
+achievement, considering how regardful of her pence Madame had
+been--and she would return to her Breton town, which forty years ago
+she had left to enter the service of Madame Morin.
+
+"But after forty years, Toinette, who in Paimpol will remember you?"
+
+"It is I who remember Paimpol," said Toinette. She remained for a few
+moments in thought. Then she said: "_C'est drôle, tout de même._ I
+haven't seen the sea for forty years, and now I can't sleep of nights
+thinking of it. The first man I loved was a fisherman of Paimpol. We
+were to be married after he returned from an Iceland voyage, with a
+_gros bénéfice_. When the time came for his return, I would stand on
+the shore and watch and watch the sea. But he never came. The sea
+swallowed him up. And then--you can understand quite well--the child
+was born dead. And I thought I would never want to look at the sea
+again. So I came here to your Aunt Morin, the daughter of Doctor
+Kersadec, your grandfather, and I married Jules Dagnant, the foreman
+of the carters of the hay ... and he died a long time ago ... and now
+I have forgotten him and I want to go and look at the sea where my man
+was drowned."
+
+"But your grandson, who is fighting in the Argonne?"
+
+"What difference can it make to him whether I am in Frélus or
+Paimpol?"
+
+"That's true," said Jeanne.
+
+Toinette bustled about the kitchen. Folks had to eat, whatever
+happened. But she went on talking, Madame Morin. One must not speak
+evil of the dead. They have their work cut out to extricate themselves
+from Purgatory. But all the same--after forty years' faithful
+service--and not to mention in the will--_même pour une Bretonne,
+c'était raide_. Jeanne agreed. She had no reason to love her Aunt
+Morin. Her father's people came from Agen on the confines of Gascony;
+he had been a man of great gestures and vehement speech; her mother,
+gentle, reserved, _un pen dévote_. Jeanne drew her character from
+both sources; but her sympathies were rather southern than northern.
+For some reason or the other, perhaps for his expansive ways--who
+knows?--Aunt Morin had held the late Monsieur Bossière in
+detestation. She had no love for Jeanne, and Jeanne, who before her
+good fortune had expected nothing from Aunt Morin, regarded the will
+with feelings of indifference. Except as far as it concerned Toinette.
+Forty years' faithful service deserved recognition. But what was the
+use of talking about it?
+
+"So we must separate, Toinette?"
+
+"Alas, yes, mademoiselle--unless mademoiselle would come with me to
+Paimpol."
+
+Jeanne laughed. What should she do in Paimpol? There wasn't even a
+fisherman left there to fall in love with.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Toinette later, "do you think you will meet the
+little English soldier, Monsieur Trevor, in Paris?"
+
+"_Dans la guerre on ne se revoit jamais_," said Jeanne.
+
+But there was more of personal decision than of fatalism in her tone.
+
+So Jeanne waited for a day or two until the regiment marched away, and
+then, with heavy heart, set out for Paris. She wrote, indeed, to
+Phineas, and weeks afterwards Phineas, who was in the thick of the
+Somme fighting, wrote to Doggie telling him of her departure from
+Frélus; but regretted that as he had lost her letter he could not
+give him her Paris address.
+
+And in the meantime the house of Gaspard Morin was shuttered and
+locked and sealed; and the bureaucratically minded old Postmaster of
+Frélus, who had received no instructions from Jeanne to forward her
+correspondence, handed Doggie's letters and telegrams to the aged
+postman, a superannuated herdsman, who stuck them into the letter-box
+of the deserted house and went away conscious of duty perfectly
+accomplished.
+
+Then, at last, Doggie, fit again for active service, went out with a
+draft to France, and joined Phineas and Mo, almost the only survivors
+of the cheery, familiar crowd that he had loved, and the grimness of
+battles such as he had never conceived possible took him in its
+inexorable grip, and he lost sense of everything save that he was the
+least important thing on God's earth struggling desperately for animal
+existence.
+
+Yet there were rare times of relief from stress, when he could
+gropingly string together the facts of a pre-Somme existence. And then
+he would curse Phineas lustily for losing the precious letter.
+
+"Man," Phineas once replied, "don't you see that you're breaking a
+heart which, in spite of its apparent rugosity and callosity, is as
+tender as a new-made mother's? Tell me to do it, and I'll desert and
+make my way to Paris and----"
+
+"And the military police will see that you make your way to hell via a
+stone wall. And serve you right. Don't be a blithering fool," said
+Doggie.
+
+"Then I don't know what I can do for you, laddie, except die of
+remorse at your feet."
+
+"We're all going to die of rheumatic fever," said Doggie, shivering in
+his sodden uniform. "Blast this rain!"
+
+Phineas thrust his hand beneath his clothing and produced a long,
+amorphous and repulsive substance, like a painted tallow candle
+overcome by intense heat, from which he gravely bit an inch or two.
+
+"What's that?" asked Doggie.
+
+"It's a stick of peppermint," said Phineas. "I've still an aunt in
+Galashiels who remembers my existence."
+
+Doggie stuck out his hand like a monkey in the Zoo.
+
+"You selfish beast!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+The fighting went on and, to Doggie, the inhabitants of the outside
+world became almost as phantasmagorical as Phineas's providential aunt
+in Galashiels. Immediate existence held him. In an historic battle Mo
+Shendish fell with a machine bullet through his heart. Doggie,
+staggering with the rest of the company to the attack over the muddy,
+shell-torn ground, saw him go down a few yards away. It was not till
+later that he knew he had gone West with many other great souls.
+Doggie and Phineas mourned for him as a brother. Without him France
+was a muddier and a bloodier place and the outside world more unreal
+than ever.
+
+Then to Doggie came a heart-broken letter from the Dean. Oliver had
+gone the same road as Mo. Peggy was frantic with grief. Vividly Doggie
+saw the peaceful deanery on which all the calamity of all the war had
+crashed with sudden violence.
+
+"Why I should thank God we parted as friends, I don't quite know,"
+said Doggie, "but I do."
+
+"I suppose, laddie," said Phineas, "it's good to feel that smiling
+eyes and hearty hands will greet us when we too pass over the Border.
+My God, man," he added reflectively, after a pause, "have you ever
+considered what a goodly company it will be? When you come to look at
+it that way, it makes Death quite a trivial affair."
+
+"I suppose it does to us while we're here," said Doggie. "We've seen
+such a lot of it. But to those who haven't--my poor Peggy--it's the
+end of her universe."
+
+Yes, it was all very well to take death philosophically, or
+fatalistically, or callously, or whatever you liked to call it, out
+there, where such an attitude was the only stand against raving
+madness; but at home, beneath the grey mass of the cathedral, folks
+met Death as a strange and cruel horror. The new glory of life that
+Peggy had found, he had blackened out in an instant. Doggie looked
+again at the old man's letter--his handwriting was growing shaky--and
+forgot for a while the familiar things around him, and lived with
+Peggy in her sorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, as far as Doggie's sorely tried division was affected, came the
+end of the great autumn fighting. He found himself well behind the
+lines in reserve, and so continued during the cold dreary winter months.
+And the more the weeks that crept by and the more remote seemed
+Jeanne, the more Doggie hungered for the sight of her. But all this
+period of his life was but a dun-coloured monotony, with but few
+happenings to distinguish week from week. Most of the company that had
+marched with him into Frélus were dead or wounded. Nearly all the
+officers had gone. Captain Willoughby, who had interrogated Jeanne with
+regard to the restored packet, and, on Doggie's return, had informed
+him with a friendly smile that they were a damned sight too busy then
+to worry about defaulters of the likes of him, but that he was going
+to be court-martialled and shot as soon as peace was declared, when
+they would have time to think of serious matters--Captain Willoughby
+had gone to Blighty with a leg so mauled that never would he command
+again a company in the field. Sergeant Ballinghall, who had taught
+Doggie to use his fists, had retired, minus a hand, into civil life. A
+scientific and sporting helper at Roehampton, he informed Doggie by
+letter, was busily engaged on the invention of a boxing-glove which
+would enable him to carry on his pugilistic career. "So, in future
+times," said he, "if any of your friends among the nobility and gentry
+want lessons in the noble art, don't forget your old friend
+Ballinghall." Whereat--incidentally--Doggie wondered. Never, for a
+fraction of a second, during their common military association, had
+Ballinghall given him to understand that he regarded him otherwise
+than as a mere Tommy without any pretensions to gentility. There had
+been times when Ballinghall had cursed him--perhaps justifiably and
+perhaps lovingly--as though he had been the scum of the earth. Doggie
+would no more have dared address him in terms of familiarity than he
+would have dared slap the Brigadier-General on the back. And now the
+honest warrior sought Doggie's patronage. Of the original crowd in
+England who had transformed Doggie's military existence by making him
+penny-whistler to the company, only Phineas and himself were left.
+There were others, of course, good and gallant fellows, with whom he
+became bound in the rough intimacy of the army; but the first friends,
+those under whose protecting kindliness his manhood had developed,
+were the dearest. And their ghosts remained dear.
+
+At last the division was moved up and there was more fighting.
+
+One day, after a successful raid, Doggie tumbled back with the rest of
+the men into the trench and, looking about, missed Phineas. Presently
+the word went round that "Mac" had been hit, and later the rumour was
+confirmed by the passage down the trench of Phineas on a stretcher,
+his weather-battered face a ghastly ivory.
+
+"I'm alive all right, laddie," he gasped, contorting his lips into a
+smile. "I've got it clean through the chest like a gentleman. But it
+gars me greet I canna look after you any longer."
+
+He made an attempt at waving a hand, and the stretcher-bearers carried
+him away out of the army for ever.
+
+Thereafter Doggie felt the loneliest thing on earth, like Wordsworth's
+cloud, or the Last Man in Tom Hood's grim poem. For was he not the
+last man of the original company, as he had joined it, hundreds of
+years ago, in England? It was only then that he realized fully the
+merits of the wastrel Phineas McPhail. Not once or twice, but a
+thousand times had the man's vigilant affection, veiled under cynical
+humour, saved him from despair. Not once but a thousand times had the
+gaunt, tireless Scotchman saved him from physical exhaustion. At every
+turn of his career, since his enlistment, Phineas had been there,
+watchful, helpful, devoted. There he had been, always ready and
+willing to be cursed. To curse him had been the great comfort of
+Doggie's life. Whom could he curse now? Not a soul--no one, at any
+rate, against whom he could launch an anathema with any real heart in
+it. Than curse vainly and superficially, far better not to curse at
+all. He missed Phineas beyond all his conception of the blankness of
+bereavement. Like himself, Phineas had found salvation in the army.
+Doggie realized how he had striven in his own queer way to redeem the
+villainy of his tutorship. No woman could have been more gentle, more
+unselfish.
+
+"What the devil am I going to do?" said Doggie.
+
+Meanwhile Phineas, lying in a London hospital with a bullet through
+his body, thought much and earnestly of his friend, and one morning
+Peggy got a letter.
+
+    "DEAR MADAM,--
+
+    "Time was when I could not have addressed you without incurring
+    your not unjustifiable disapproval. But I take the liberty of
+    doing so now, trusting to your generous acquiescence in the
+    proposition that the war has purged many offences. If this has
+    not happened, to some extent, in my case, I do not see how it
+    has been possible for me to have regained and retained the trust
+    and friendship of so sensitive and honourable a gentleman as Mr.
+    Marmaduke Trevor.
+
+    "If I ask you to come and see me here, where I am lying severely
+    wounded, it is not with an intention to solicit a favour for
+    myself personally--although I'll not deny that the sight of a
+    kind and familiar face would be a boon to a lonely and
+    friendless man--but with a deep desire to advance Mr. Trevor's
+    happiness. Lest you may imagine I am committing an unpardonable
+    impertinence and thereby totally misunderstand me, I may say
+    that this happiness can only be achieved by the aid of powerful
+    friends both in London and Paris.
+
+    "It is only because the lad is the one thing dear to me left in
+    the world, that I venture to intrude on your privacy at such a
+    time.
+
+                                                "I am, dear Madam,
+                                           "Yours very faithfully,
+                                                "PHINEAS MCPHAIL."
+
+Peggy came down to breakfast, and having dutifully kissed her parents,
+announced her intention of going to London by the eleven o'clock
+train.
+
+"Why, how can you, my dear?" asked Mrs. Conover.
+
+"I've nothing particular to do here for the next few days."
+
+"But your father and I have. Neither of us can start off to London at
+a moment's notice."
+
+Peggy replied with a wan smile: "But, dearest mother, you forget. I'm
+an old, old married woman."
+
+"Besides, my dear," said the Dean, "Peggy has often gone away by
+herself."
+
+"But never to London," said Mrs. Conover.
+
+"Anyhow, I've got to go." Peggy turned to the old butler. "Ring up
+Sturrocks's and tell them I'm coming."
+
+"Yes, miss," said Burford.
+
+"He's as bad as you are, mother," said Peggy.
+
+So she went up to London and stayed the night at Sturrocks's alone,
+for the first time in her life. She half ate a lonely, execrable war
+dinner in the stuffy, old-fashioned dining-room, served ceremoniously
+by the ancient head waiter, the friend of her childhood, who, in view
+of her recent widowhood, addressed her in the muffled tones of the
+sympathetic undertaker. Peggy nearly cried. She wished she had chosen
+another hotel. But where else could she have gone? She had stayed at
+few hotels in London: once at the Savoy; once at Claridge's; every
+other time at Sturrocks's. The Savoy? Its vastness had frightened her.
+And Claridge's? No; that was sanctified for ever. Oliver in his lordly
+way had snapped his fingers at Sturrocks's. Only the best was good
+enough for Peggy. Now only Sturrocks's remained.
+
+She sought her room immediately after the dreary meal and sat before
+the fire--it was a damp, chill February night--and thought miserable
+and aching thoughts. It happened to be the same room which she had
+occupied, oh--thousands of years ago--on the night when Doggie,
+point-device in new Savile Row uniform, had taken her to dinner at the
+Carlton. And she had sat, in the same imitation Charles the Second
+brocaded chair, looking into the same generous, old-fashioned fire,
+thinking--thinking. And she remembered clenching her fist and
+apostrophizing the fire and crying out aloud: "Oh, my God! if only he
+makes good!"
+
+Oceans of years lay between then and now. Doggie had made good; every
+man who came home wounded must have made good. Poor old Doggie. But
+how in the name of all that was meant by the word Love she could ever
+have contemplated--as she had contemplated, with an obstinate,
+virginal loyalty--marriage with Doggie, she could not understand.
+
+She undressed, brought the straight-backed chair close to the fire,
+and, in her dainty nightgown, part of her trousseau, sat elbow on
+knee, face in thin, clutching hands, slippered feet on fender,
+thinking, thinking once again. Thinking now of the gates of Paradise
+that had opened to her for a few brief weeks. Of the man who never had
+to make good, being the wonder of wonders of men, the delicious
+companion, the incomparable lover, the all-compelling revealer, the
+great, gay, scarcely, to her woman's limited power of vision,
+comprehended heroic soldier. Of the terrifying meaninglessness of
+life, now that her God of Very God, in human form, had been swept, in
+an instant, off the earth into the Unknown.
+
+Yet was life meaningless after all? There must be some significance,
+some inner truth veiled in mystery, behind even the casually accepted
+and never probed religion to which she had been born and in which she
+had found poor refuge. For, like many of her thoughtless,
+unquestioning class, she had looked at Christ through stained-glass
+windows, and now the windows were darkened.... For the first time in
+her life, her soul groped intensely towards eternal verities. The fire
+burned low and she shivered. She became again the bit of human flotsam
+cruelly buffeted by the waves, forgotten of God. Yet, after she had
+risen and crept into bed and while she was staring into the darkness,
+her heart became filled with a vast pity for the thousands and
+thousands of women, her sisters, who at that moment were staring,
+hopeless, like her, into the unrelenting night.
+
+She did not fall asleep till early morning. She rose late. About
+half-past eleven as she was preparing to walk abroad on a dreary
+shopping excursion--the hospital visiting hour was in the afternoon--a
+telegram arrived from the Dean.
+
+    "Just heard that Marmaduke is severely wounded."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She scarcely recognized the young private tutor of Denby Hall in the
+elderly man with the deeply furrowed face, who smiled as she
+approached his bed. She had brought him flowers, cigarettes of the
+exquisite kind that Doggie used to smoke, chocolates....
+
+She sat down by his bedside.
+
+"All this is more than gracious, Mrs. Manningtree," said Phineas. "To
+a _vieux routier_ like me, it is a wee bit overwhelming."
+
+"It's very little to do for Doggie's best friend."
+
+Phineas's eyes twinkled. "If you call him Doggie, like that, maybe it
+won't be so difficult for me to talk to you."
+
+"Why should it be difficult at all?" she asked. "We both love him."
+
+"Ay," said Phineas. "He's a lovable lad, and it is because others
+besides you and me find him lovable, that I took the liberty of
+writing to you."
+
+"The girl in France?"
+
+"Eh?" He put out a bony hand, and regarded her in some disappointment.
+"Has he told you? Perhaps you know all about it."
+
+"I know nothing except that--'a girl in France,' was all he told me.
+But--first about yourself. How badly are you wounded--and what can we
+do for you?"
+
+She dragged from a reluctant Phineas the history of his wound and
+obtained confirmation of his statement from a nurse who happened to
+pass up the gangway of the pleasant ward and lingered by the bedside.
+McPhail was doing splendidly. Of course, a man with a hole through his
+body must be expected to go back to the regime of babyhood. So long as
+he behaved himself like a well-conducted baby all would be well. Peggy
+drew the nurse a few yards away.
+
+"I've just heard that his dearest friend out there, a boy whom he
+loves dearly and has been through the whole thing with him in the same
+company--it's odd, but he was his private tutor years ago--both
+gentlemen, you know--in fact, I'm here just to talk about the boy----"
+Peggy grew somewhat incoherent. "Well--I've just heard that the boy
+has been seriously wounded. Shall I tell him?"
+
+"I think it would be better to wait for a few days. Any shock like
+that sends up their temperatures. We hate temperatures, and we're
+getting his down so nicely."
+
+"All right," said Peggy, and she went back smiling to Phineas. "She
+says you're getting on amazingly, Mr. McPhail."
+
+Said Phineas: "I'm grateful to you, Mrs. Manningtree, for concerning
+yourself about my entirely unimportant carcass. Now, as Virgil says,
+'_paullo majora canemus_.'"
+
+"You have me there, Mr. McPhail," said Peggy.
+
+"Let us sing of somewhat greater things. That is the bald translation.
+Let us talk of Doggie--if so be it is agreeable to you."
+
+"Carry on," said Peggy.
+
+"Well," said Phineas, "to begin at the beginning, we marched into a
+place called Frélus----"
+
+In his pedantic way he began to tell her the story of Jeanne, so far
+as he knew it. He told her of the girl standing in the night wind and
+rain on the bluff by the turning of the road. He told her of Doggie's
+insane adventure across No Man's Land to the farm of La Folette. Tears
+rolled down Peggy's cheeks. She cried, incredulous:
+
+"Doggie did that? Doggie?"
+
+"It was child's play to what he had to do at Guedecourt."
+
+But Peggy waved away the vague heroism of Guedecourt.
+
+"Doggie did that? For a woman?"
+
+The whole elaborate structure of her conception of Doggie tumbled down
+like a house of cards.
+
+"Ay," said Phineas.
+
+"He did that"--Phineas had given an imaginative and picturesque
+account of the episode--"for this girl Jeanne?"
+
+"It is a strange coincidence, Mrs. Manningtree," replied Phineas, with
+a flicker of his lips elusively suggestive of unctuousness, "that
+almost those identical words were used by Mademoiselle Bossière in my
+presence. '_Il a fait cela pour moi!_' But--you will pardon me for
+saying it--with a difference of intonation, which, as a woman, no
+doubt you will be able to divine and appreciate."
+
+"I know," said Peggy. She bent forward and picked with finger and
+thumb at the fluff of the blanket. Then she said, intent on the fluff:
+"If a man had done a thing like that for me, I should have crawled
+after him to the ends of the earth." Presently she looked up with a
+flash of the eyes. "Why isn't this girl doing it?"
+
+"You must listen to the end of the story," said Phineas. "I may tell
+you that I always regarded myself, with my Scots caution, as a model
+of tact and discretion; but after many conversations with Doggie, I'm
+beginning to have my doubts. I also imagined that I was very careful
+of my personal belongings; but facts have convicted me of criminal
+laxity."
+
+Peggy smiled. "That sounds like a confession, Mr. McPhail."
+
+"Maybe it's in the nature of one," he assented. "But by your leave,
+Mrs. Manningtree, I'll resume my narrative."
+
+He continued the story of Jeanne: how she had learned through him of
+Doggie's wealth and position and early upbringing; of the memorable
+dinner-party with poor Mo; of Doggie's sensitive interpretation of her
+French _bourgeoise_ attitude; and finally the loss of the letter
+containing her address in Paris.
+
+After he had finished, Peggy sat for a long while thinking. This
+romance in Doggie's life had moved her as she thought she could never
+be moved since the death of Oliver. Her thoughts winged themselves
+back to an afternoon, remote almost as her socked and sashed
+childhood, when Doggie, immaculately attired in grey and pearl
+harmonies, had declared, with his little effeminate drawl, that tennis
+made one so terribly hot. The scene in the Deanery garden flashed
+before her. It was succeeded by a scene in the Deanery drawing-room
+when, to herself indignant, he had pleaded his delicacy of
+constitution. And the same Doggie, besides braving death a thousand
+times in the ordinary execution of his soldier's duties, had performed
+this queer deed of heroism for a girl. Then his return to
+Durdlebury----
+
+"I'm afraid," she said suddenly, "I was dreadfully unkind to him when
+he came home the last time. I didn't understand. Did he tell you?"
+
+Phineas stretched out a hand and with the tips of his fingers touched
+her sleeve.
+
+"Mrs. Manningtree," he said softly, "don't you know that Doggie's a
+very wonderful gentleman?"
+
+Again her eyes grew moist. "Yes. I know. Of course he never would have
+mentioned it.... I thought, Mr. McPhail, he had deteriorated--God
+forgive me! I thought he had coarsened and got into the ways of an
+ordinary Tommy--and I was snobbish and uncomprehending and horrible.
+It seems as if I am making a confession now."
+
+"Ay. Why not? If it were not for the soul's health, the ancient Church
+wouldn't have instituted the practice."
+
+She regarded him shrewdly for a second. "You've changed too."
+
+"Maybe," said Phineas. "It's an ill war that blows nobody good. And
+I'm not complaining of this one. But you were talking of your
+miscomprehension of Doggie."
+
+"I behaved very badly to him," she said, picking again at the
+blanket. "I misjudged him altogether--because I was ignorant of
+everything--everything that matters in life. But I've learned better
+since then."
+
+"Ay," remarked Phineas gravely.
+
+"Mr. McPhail," she said, after a pause, "it wasn't those rotten ideas
+that prevented me from marrying him----"
+
+"I know, my dear little lady," said Phineas, grasping the plucking
+hand. "You just loved the other man as you never could have loved
+Doggie, and there's an end to't. Love just happens. It's the holiest
+thing in the world."
+
+She turned her hand, so as to meet his in a mutual clasp, and withdrew
+it.
+
+"You're very kind--and sympathetic--and understanding----" Her voice
+broke. "I seem to have been going about misjudging everybody and
+everything. I'm beginning to see a little bit--a little bit farther--I
+can't express myself----"
+
+"Never mind, Mrs. Manningtree," said Phineas soothingly, "if you
+cannot express yourself in words. Leave that to the politicians and
+the philosophers and the theologians, and other such windy expositors
+of the useless. But you can express yourself in deeds."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Find Jeanne for Doggie."
+
+Peggy bent forward with a queer light in her eyes.
+
+"Does she love him--really love him as he deserves to be loved?"
+
+"It is not often, Mrs. Manningtree, that I commit myself to a definite
+statement. But, to my certain knowledge, these two are breaking their
+hearts for each other. Couldn't you find her, before the poor laddie
+is killed?"
+
+"He's not killed yet, thank God!" said Peggy, with an odd thrill in
+her voice.
+
+He was alive. Only severely wounded. He would be coming home soon,
+carried, according to convoy, to any unfriendly hospital
+dumping-ground in the United Kingdom. If only she could bring this
+French girl to him! She yearned to make reparation for the past, to
+act according to the new knowledge that love and sorrow had brought
+her.
+
+"But how can I find her--just a girl--an unknown Mademoiselle
+Bossière--among the millions of Paris?"
+
+"I've been racking my brains all the morning," replied Phineas, "to
+recall the address, and out of the darkness there emerges just two
+words, _Port Royal_. If you know Paris, does that help you at all?"
+
+"I don't know Paris," replied Peggy humbly. "I don't know anything.
+I'm utterly ignorant."
+
+"I beg entirely to differ from you, Mrs. Manningtree," said Phineas.
+"You have come through much heavy travail to a correct appreciation of
+the meaning of human love between man and woman, and so you have in
+you the wisdom of all the ages."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Peggy, becoming practical. "But _Port Royal_?"
+
+"The clue to the labyrinth," replied Phineas.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+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 Bossière, 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 Bossière 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. Frélus, 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 Bossière, late of Frélus, 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 Vévey
+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 Vévey 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 Vendôme, 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 Bossière?"
+
+"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 dû 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 émue_ ..." 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 Frélus."
+
+"He wrote many letters and telegraphed to Frélus, 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 Frélus; and, after all,
+Frélus 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 _fiancés_."
+
+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 êtes 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 héros 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.
+
+
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Rough Road, by William John Locke</title>
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+<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Rough Road, by William John Locke</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Rough Road</p>
+<p>Author: William John Locke</p>
+<p>Release Date: January 12, 2009  [eBook #27786]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROUGH ROAD***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3 class="pg">E-text prepared by David Clarke, Barbara Tozier,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div id="title_page"><a class="pagenum disguise" id="page1" title="1"> </a>
+	<h1>THE ROUGH ROAD</h1>
+
+	<p id="author"><em>by</em><br />
+	WILLIAM J. LOCKE</p>
+
+	<p id="edition">First Edition <span style="padding:0em 2em;">.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</span> September 1918</p>
+
+	<p id="publisher">JOHN LANE <br />
+	THE BODLEY HEAD LTD</p>
+</div>
+<div id="dedication_page"><a class="pagenum disguise" id="page2" title="2"> </a>
+	<p id="dedicatee">TO <br />
+	SHEILA</p>
+
+	<p>THIS LITTLE TALE OF <br />
+	THE GREAT WAR <br />
+	AS A MEMORY FOR AFTER YEARS</p>
+</div>
+<p id="internal_title"><a class="pagenum" id="page3" title="3"> </a>THE ROUGH ROAD</p>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_I">
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">This</span> is the story of Doggie Trevor. It tells of
+	his doings and of a girl in England and a girl
+	in France. Chiefly it is concerned with the influences
+	that enabled him to win through the war. Doggie
+	Trevor did not get the Victoria Cross. He got no
+	cross or distinction whatever. He did not even attain
+	the sorrowful glory of a little white cross above his
+	grave on the Western Front. Doggie was no hero of
+	romance, ancient or modern. But he went through
+	with it and is alive to tell the tale.</p>
+
+	<p>The brutal of his acquaintance gave him the name
+	of “Doggie� years before the war was ever thought
+	of, because he had been brought up from babyhood
+	like a toy Pom. The almost freak offspring of elderly
+	parents, he had the rough world against him from
+	birth. His father died before he had cut a tooth.
+	His mother was old enough to be his grandmother.
+	She had the intense maternal instinct and the brain,
+	such as it is, of an earwig. She wrapped Doggie—his
+	real name was James Marmaduke—in cotton-wool,
+	and kept him so until he was almost a grown
+	man. Doggie had never a chance. She brought him
+	up like a toy Pom until he was twenty-one—and then
+	she died. Doggie being comfortably off, continued
+	the maternal tradition and kept on bringing himself
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page4" title="4"> </a>up like a toy Pom. He did not know what else to
+	do. Then, when he was five-and-twenty, he found
+	himself at the edge of the world gazing in timorous
+	starkness down into the abyss of the Great War.
+	Something kicked him over the brink and sent him
+	sprawling into the thick of it.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">That the world knows little of its greatest men
+	is a commonplace among silly aphorisms. With far
+	more justice it may be stated that of its least men the
+	world knows nothing and cares less. Yet the Doggies
+	of the War, who on the cry of “Havoc!� have been
+	let loose, much to their own and everybody else’s
+	stupefaction, deserve the passing tribute sometimes,
+	poor fellows, of a sigh, sometimes of a smile, often
+	of a cheer. Very few of them—very few, at any
+	rate, of the English Doggies—have tucked their little
+	tails between their legs and run away. Once a brawny
+	humorist wrote to Doggie Trevor “<em lang="la" xml:lang="la">Sursum cauda.</em>�
+	Doggie happened to be at the time in a water-logged
+	front trench in Flanders and the writer basking in the
+	mild sunshine of Simla with his Territorial regiment.
+	Doggie, bidden by the Hedonist of circumstance to
+	up with his tail, felt like a scorpion.</p>
+
+	<p>Such feelings, however, will be more adequately
+	dealt with hereafter. For the moment, it is only
+	essential to obtain a general view of the type to which
+	Trevor belonged.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">If there is one spot in England where the present
+	is the past, where the future is still more of the past,
+	where the past wraps you and enfolds you in the
+	dreamy mist of Gothic beauty, where the lazy meadows
+	sloping riverward deny the passage of the centuries,
+	where the very clouds are secular, it is the cathedral
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page5" title="5"> </a>town of Durdlebury. No factory chimneys defile with
+	their smoke its calm air, or defy its august and heaven-searching
+	spires. No rabble of factory hands shocks
+	its few and sedate streets. Divine Providence, according
+	to the devout, and the crass stupidity of the local
+	authorities seventy years ago, according to progressive
+	minds, turned the main line of railway twenty miles
+	from the sacred spot. So that to this year of grace it
+	is the very devil of a business to find out, from Bradshaw,
+	how to get to Durdlebury, and, having found,
+	to get there. As for getting away, God help you!
+	But whoever wanted to get away from Durdlebury,
+	except the Bishop? In pre-motor days he used to
+	grumble tremendously and threaten the House of
+	Lords with Railway Bills and try to blackmail the
+	Government with dark hints of resignation, and so he
+	lived and threatened and made his wearisome diocesan
+	round of visits and died. But now he has his episcopal
+	motor-car, which has deprived him of his grievances.</p>
+
+	<p>In the Close of Durdlebury, greenswarded, silent,
+	sentinelled by immemorial elms that guard the dignified
+	Gothic dwellings of the cathedral dignitaries, was
+	James Marmaduke Trevor born. His father, a man
+	of private fortune, was Canon of Durdlebury. For
+	many years he lived in the most commodious canonical
+	house in the Close with his sisters Sophia and Sarah.
+	In the course of time a new Dean, Dr. Conover,
+	was appointed to Durdlebury, and, restless innovator
+	that he was, underpinned the North Transept and
+	split up Canon Trevor’s home by marrying Sophia.
+	Then Sarah, bitten by the madness, committed abrupt
+	matrimony with the Rev. Vernon Manningtree, Rector
+	of Durdlebury. Canon Trevor, many years older
+	than his sisters, remained for some months in bewildered
+	loneliness, until one day he found himself standing
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page6" title="6"> </a>in front of the cathedral altar with Miss Mathilda
+	Jessup, while the Bishop pronounced over them words
+	diabolically strange yet ecclesiastically familiar. Miss
+	Jessup, thus transformed into Mrs. Trevor, was a
+	mature and comfortable maiden lady of ample means,
+	the only and orphan daughter of a late Bishop of Durdlebury.
+	Never had there been such a marrying and
+	giving in marriage in the cathedral circle. Children
+	were born in Decanal, Rectorial and Canonical homes.
+	First a son to the Manningtrees, whom they named
+	Oliver. Then a daughter to the Conovers. Then
+	a son, named James Marmaduke, after the late Bishop
+	Jessup, was born to the Trevors. The profane say
+	that Canon Trevor, a profound patristic theologian
+	and an enthusiastic palæontologist, couldn’t make head
+	or tail of it all, and, unable to decide whether James
+	Marmaduke should be attributed to Tertullian or the
+	Neolithic period, expired in an agony of dubiety. At
+	any rate, the poor man died. The widow, of necessity,
+	moved from the Close, in order to make way for the
+	new Canon, and betook herself with her babe to
+	Denby Hall, the comfortable house on the outskirts of
+	the town in which she had dwelt before her marriage.</p>
+
+	<p>The saturated essence of Durdlebury ran in Marmaduke’s
+	blood: an honourable essence, a proud essence;
+	an essence of all that is statically beautiful and dignified
+	in English life; but an essence which, without
+	admixture of wilder and more fluid elements, is apt
+	to run thick and clog the arteries. Marmaduke was
+	coddled from his birth. The Dean, then a breezy,
+	energetic man, protested. Sarah Manningtree protested.
+	But when the Dean’s eldest born died of
+	diphtheria, Mrs. Trevor, in her heart, set down the
+	death as a judgment on Sophia for criminal carelessness;
+	and when young Oliver Manningtree grew up
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page7" title="7"> </a>to be an intolerable young Turk and savage, she looked
+	on Marmaduke and, thanking heaven that he was
+	not as other boys were, enfolded him more than ever
+	beneath her motherly wing. When Oliver went to
+	school in the town and tore his clothes, and rolled in
+	mud and punched other boys’ heads, Marmaduke
+	remained at home under the educational charge of a
+	governess. Oliver, lean and lanky and swift-eyed,
+	swaggered through the streets unattended from the
+	first day they sent him to a neighbouring kindergarten.
+	As the months and years of his childish life
+	passed, he grew more and more independent and vagabond.
+	He swore blood brotherhood with a butcher-boy
+	and, unknown to his pious parents, became the
+	leader of a ferocious gang of pirates. Marmaduke,
+	on the other hand, was never allowed to cross the
+	road without feminine escort. Oliver had the profoundest
+	contempt for Marmaduke. Being two years
+	older, he kicked him whenever he had a chance.
+	Marmaduke loathed him. Marmaduke shrank into
+	Miss Gunter, the governess’s, skirts whenever he saw
+	him. Mrs. Trevor therefore regarded Oliver as the
+	youthful incarnation of Beelzebub, and quarrelled
+	bitterly with her sister-in-law.</p>
+
+	<p>One day, Oliver, with three or four of his piratical
+	friends, met Marmaduke and Miss Gunter and a little
+	toy terrier in the High Street. The toy terrier was
+	attached by a lead to Miss Gunter on the one side,
+	Marmaduke by a hand on the other. Oliver straddled
+	rudely across the path.</p>
+
+	<p>“Hallo! Look at thet two little doggies!� he
+	cried. He snapped his fingers at the terrier. “Come
+	along, Tiny!� The terrier yapped. Oliver grinned
+	and turned to Marmaduke. “Come along, Fido,
+	dear little doggie.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page8" title="8"> </a>“You’re a nasty, rude, horrid boy, and I shall tell
+	your mother,� declared Miss Gunter indignantly.</p>
+
+	<p>But Oliver and his pirates laughed with the truculence
+	befitting their vocation, and bowing with ironical
+	politeness, let their victim depart to the parody of a
+	popular song: “Good-bye, Doggie, we shall miss
+	you.�</p>
+
+	<p>From that day onwards Marmaduke was known
+	as “Doggie� throughout all Durdlebury, save to his
+	mother and Miss Gunter. The Dean himself grew
+	to think of him as “Doggie.� People to this day
+	call him Doggie, without any notion of the origin of
+	the name.</p>
+
+	<p>To preserve him from persecution, Mrs. Trevor
+	jealously guarded him from association with other boys.
+	He neither learned nor played any boyish games. In
+	defiance of the doctor, whom she regarded as a member
+	of the brutal anti-Marmaduke League, Mrs. Trevor
+	proclaimed Marmaduke’s delicacy of constitution. He
+	must not go out into the rain, lest he should get damp,
+	nor into the hot sunshine, lest he should perspire.
+	She kept him like a precious plant in a carefully warmed
+	conservatory. Doggie, used to it from birth, looked
+	on it as his natural environment. Under feminine
+	guidance and tuition he embroidered and painted
+	screens and played the piano and the mandolin, and
+	read Miss Charlotte Yonge and learned history from
+	the late Mrs. Markham. Without doubt his life was
+	a happy one. All that he asked for was sequestration
+	from Oliver and his associates.</p>
+
+	<p>Now and then the cousins were forced to meet—at
+	occasional children’s parties, for instance. A little
+	daughter, Peggy, had been born in the Deanery, replacing
+	the lost firstborn, and festivals—to which came
+	the extreme youth of Durdlebury—were given in her
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page9" title="9"> </a>honour. She liked Marmaduke, who was five years
+	her senior, because he was gentle and clean and wore
+	such beautiful clothes and brushed his hair so nicely;
+	whereas she detested Oliver, who, even at an afternoon
+	party, looked as if he had just come out of a
+	rabbit-hole. Besides, Marmaduke danced beautifully;
+	Oliver couldn’t and wouldn’t, disdaining such effeminate
+	sports. His great joy was to put out a sly leg
+	and send Doggie and his partner sprawling. Once the
+	Dean caught him at it, and called him a horrid little
+	beast, and threatened him with neck and crop expulsion
+	if he ever did it again. Doggie, who had picked
+	himself up and listened to the rebuke, said:</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m very glad to hear you talk to him like that,
+	Uncle. I think his behaviour is perfectly detestable.�</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean’s lips twitched and he turned away
+	abruptly. Oliver glared at Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, my holy aunt!� he whispered hoarsely.
+	“Just you wait till I get you alone!�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver got him alone, an hour later, in a passage,
+	having lain in ambush for him, and after a few busy
+	moments, contemplated a bruised and bleeding Doggie
+	blubbering in a corner.</p>
+
+	<p>“Do you think my behaviour is detestable now?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes,� whimpered Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve a good mind to go on licking you until you
+	say ‘no,’� said Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re a great big bully,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver reflected. He did not like to be called a
+	bully. “Look here,� said he, “I’ll stick my right
+	arm down inside the back of my trousers and fight
+	you with my left.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t want to fight. I can’t fight,� cried
+	Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver put his hands in his pockets.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page10" title="10"> </a>“Will you come and play Kiss-in-the-Ring, then?�
+	he asked sarcastically.</p>
+
+	<p>“No,� replied Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Well, don’t say I haven’t made you generous
+	offers,� said Oliver, and stalked away.</p>
+
+	<p>It was all very well for the Rev. Vernon Manningtree,
+	when discussing this incident with the Dean,
+	to dismiss Doggie with a contemptuous shrug and
+	call him a little worm without any spirit. The unfortunate
+	Doggie remained a human soul with a human
+	destiny before him. As to his lack of spirit——</p>
+
+	<p>“Where,� said the Dean, a man of wider sympathies,
+	“do you suppose he could get any from? Look at
+	his parentage. Look at his upbringing by that idiot
+	woman.�</p>
+
+	<p>“If he belonged to me, I’d drown him,� said the
+	Rector.</p>
+
+	<p>“If I had my way with Oliver,� said the Dean,
+	“I’d skin him alive.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m afraid he’s a young devil,� said the Rector,
+	not without paternal pride. “But he has the makings
+	of a man.�</p>
+
+	<p>“So has Marmaduke,� replied the Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>“Bosh!� said Mr. Manningtree.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">When Oliver went to Rugby, happier days than
+	ever dawned for Marmaduke. There were only the
+	holidays to fear. But as time went on, the haughty
+	contempt of Oliver, the public-school boy, for the
+	home-bred Doggie, forbade him to notice the little
+	creature’s existence; so that even the holidays lost
+	their gloomy menace and became like the normal
+	halcyontide. Meanwhile Doggie grew up. When
+	he reached the age of fourteen, the Dean, by strenuous
+	endeavour, rescued him from the unavailing tuition
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page11" title="11"> </a>of Miss Gunter. But school for Marmaduke Mrs.
+	Trevor would not hear of. It was brutal of Edward—the
+	Dean—to suggest such a thing. Marmaduke—so
+	sensitive and delicate—school would kill him.
+	It would undo all the results of her unceasing care.
+	It would make him coarse and vulgar, like other horrid
+	boys. She would sooner see him dead at her feet
+	than at a public school. It was true that he ought
+	to have the education of a gentleman. She did not
+	need Edward to point out her duty. She would
+	engage a private tutor.</p>
+
+	<p>“All right. I’ll get you one,� said the Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>The Master of his old college at Cambridge sent
+	him an excellent youth, who had just taken his degree—a
+	second class in the Classical Tripos—an all-round
+	athlete and a gentleman. The first thing he did
+	was to take Marmaduke on the lazy river that flowed
+	through the Durdlebury meadows, thereby endangering
+	his life, woefully blistering his hands, and making
+	him ache all over his poor little body. After a quarter
+	of an hour’s interview with Mrs. Trevor, the indignant
+	young man threw up his post and departed.</p>
+
+	<p>Mrs. Trevor determined to select a tutor herself.
+	A scholastic agency sent her a dozen candidates. She
+	went to London and interviewed them all. A woman,
+	even of the most limited intelligence, invariably knows
+	what she wants, and invariably gets it. Mrs. Trevor
+	got Phineas McPhail, M.A. Glasgow, B.A. Cambridge
+	(Third Class Mathematical Greats), reading for Holy
+	Orders.</p>
+
+	<p>“I was training for the ministry in the Free Kirk
+	of Scotland,� said he, “when I gradually became aware
+	of the error of my ways, and saw that there could only
+	be salvation in the episcopal form of Church government.
+	As the daughter of a bishop, Mrs. Trevor,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page12" title="12"> </a>you will appreciate my conscientious position. An
+	open scholarship and the remainder of my little patrimony
+	enabled me to get my Oxford degree. You
+	would have no objection to my continuing my theological
+	studies while I undertake the education of
+	your son?�</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas McPhail pleased Mrs. Trevor. He had
+	what she called a rugged, honest Scotch face, with a
+	very big nose in the middle of it, and little grey eyes
+	overhung by brown and shaggy eyebrows. He spoke
+	with the mere captivating suggestion of an accent.
+	The son of decayed, proud, and now extinct gentlefolk,
+	he presented personal testimonials of an unexceptionable
+	quality.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas McPhail took to Doggie and Durdlebury
+	as a duck to water. He read for Holy Orders for
+	seven years. When the question of his ordination
+	arose, he would declare impressively that his sacred
+	duty was the making of Marmaduke into a scholar
+	and a Christian. That duty accomplished, he would
+	begin to think of himself. Mrs. Trevor accounted
+	him the most devoted and selfless friend that woman
+	ever had. He saw eye to eye with her in every detail
+	of Marmaduke’s upbringing. He certainly taught the
+	boy, who was naturally intelligent, a great deal, and
+	repaired the terrible gaps in Miss Gunter’s system of
+	education. McPhail had started life with many eager
+	curiosities, under the impulse of which he had amassed
+	considerable knowledge of a superficial kind which,
+	lolling in an arm-chair, with a pipe in his mouth,
+	he found easy to impart. To the credit side of Mrs.
+	Trevor’s queer account it may be put that she did not
+	object to smoking. The late Canon smoked incessantly.
+	Perhaps the odour of tobacco was the only
+	keen memory of her honeymoon and brief married life.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page13" title="13"> </a>During his seven years of soft living, Phineas McPhail
+	scientifically developed an original taste for whisky.
+	He seethed himself in it as the ancients seethed a kid
+	in its mother’s milk. He had the art to do himself
+	to perfection. Mrs. Trevor beheld in him the mellowest
+	and blandest of men. Never had she the slightest
+	suspicion of evil courses. To such a pitch of cunning
+	in the observance of the proprieties had he arrived,
+	that the very servants knew not of his doings. It
+	was only later—after Mrs. Trevor’s death—when a
+	surveyor was called in by Marmaduke to put the old
+	house in order, that a disused well at the back of the
+	house was found to be half filled with hundreds of
+	whisky bottles secretly thrown in by Phineas McPhail.</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean and Mr. Manningtree, although ignorant
+	of McPhail’s habits, agreed in calling him a lazy
+	hound and a parasite on their fond sister-in-law. And
+	they were right. But Mrs. Trevor turned a deaf
+	ear to their slanders. They were unworthy to be
+	called Christian men, let alone ministers of the Gospel.
+	Were it not for the sacred associations of her father
+	and her husband, she would never enter the cathedral
+	again. Mr. McPhail was exactly the kind of tutor
+	that Marmaduke needed. Mr. McPhail did not
+	encourage him to play rough games, or take long
+	walks, or row on the river, because he appreciated his
+	constitutional delicacy. He was the only man in the
+	world during her unhappy widowhood who understood
+	Marmaduke. He was a treasure beyond price.</p>
+
+	<p>When Doggie was sixteen, fate, fortune, chance, or
+	whatever you like to call it, did him a good turn. It
+	made his mother ill, and sent him away with her to
+	foreign health resorts. Doggie and McPhail travelled
+	luxuriously, lived in luxurious hotels and visited in
+	luxurious ease various picture galleries and monuments
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page14" title="14"> </a>of historic or æsthetic interest. The boy, artistically
+	inclined and guided by the idle yet well-informed
+	Phineas, profited greatly. Phineas sought profit to
+	them both in other ways.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mrs. Trevor,� said he, “don’t you think it a
+	sinful shame for Marmaduke to waste his time over
+	Latin and mathematics, and such things as he can
+	learn at home, instead of taking advantage of his
+	residence in a foreign country to perfect himself in
+	the idiomatic and conversational use of the language?�</p>
+
+	<p>Mrs. Trevor, as usual, agreed. So thenceforward,
+	whenever they were abroad, which was for three or
+	four months of each year, Phineas revelled in sheer
+	idleness, nicotine, and the skilful consumption of
+	alcohol, while highly paid professors taught Marmaduke—and,
+	incidentally, himself—French and Italian.</p>
+
+	<p>Of the world, however, and of the facts, grim or
+	seductive, of life, Doggie learned little. Whether by
+	force of some streak of honesty, whether through
+	sheer laziness, whether through canny self-interest,
+	Phineas McPhail conspired with Mrs. Trevor to keep
+	Doggie in darkest ignorance. His reading was selected
+	like that of a young girl in a convent: he was taken
+	only to the most innocent of plays: foreign theatres,
+	casinos, and such-like wells of delectable depravity,
+	existed almost beyond his ken. Until he was twenty
+	it never occurred to him to sit up after his mother had
+	gone to bed. Of strange goddesses he knew nothing.
+	His mother saw to that. He had a mild affection
+	for his cousin Peggy, which his mother encouraged.
+	She allowed him to smoke cigarettes, drink fine claret,
+	the remains of the cellar of her father, the bishop, a
+	connoisseur, and <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">crème de menthe</em>. And, until she
+	died, that was all poor Doggie knew of the lustiness
+	of life.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page15" title="15"> </a>Mrs. Trevor died, and Doggie, as soon as he had
+	recovered from the intensity of his grief, looked out
+	upon a lonely world. Phineas, like Mrs. Micawber,
+	swore he would never desert him. In the perils of
+	Polar exploration or the comforts of Denby Hall, he
+	would find Phineas McPhail ever by his side. The
+	first half-dozen or so of these declarations consoled
+	Doggie tremendously. He dreaded the Church
+	swallowing up his only protector and leaving him
+	defenceless. Conscientiously, however, he said:</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t want your affection for me to stand in
+	your way, sir.�</p>
+
+	<p>“‘Sir’?� cried Phineas, “is it not practicable for
+	us to do away with the old relations of master and pupil,
+	and become as brothers? You are now a man, and
+	independent. Let us be Pylades and Orestes. Let
+	us share and share alike. Let us be Marmaduke and
+	Phineas.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie was touched by such devotion. “But your
+	ambitions to take Holy Orders, which you have sacrificed
+	for my sake?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I think it may be argued,� said Phineas, “that
+	the really beautiful life is delight in continued sacrifice.
+	Besides, my dear boy, I am not quite so sure
+	as I was when I was young, that by confining
+	oneself within the narrow limits of a sacerdotal
+	profession, one can retain all one’s wider sympathies
+	both with human infirmity and the gladder things of
+	existence.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re a true friend, Phineas,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“I am,� replied Phineas.</p>
+
+	<p>It was just after this that Doggie wrote him a
+	cheque for a thousand pounds on account of a vaguely
+	indicated year’s salary.</p>
+
+	<p>If Phineas had maintained the wily caution which
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page16" title="16"> </a>he had exercised for the past seven years, all might
+	have been well. But there came a time when unneedfully
+	he declared once more that he would never
+	desert Marmaduke, and declaring it, hiccoughed so
+	horribly and stared so glassily, that Doggie feared he
+	might be ill. He had just lurched into Doggie’s own
+	peacock-blue and ivory sitting-room when he was
+	mournfully playing the piano.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re unwell, Phineas. Let me get you something.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re right, laddie,� Phineas agreed, his legs
+	giving way alarmingly, so that he collapsed on a
+	brocade-covered couch. “It’s a touch of the sun,
+	which I would give you to understand,� he continued
+	with a self-preservatory flash, for it was an overcast
+	day in June, “is often magnified in power when it
+	is behind a cloud. A wee drop of whisky is what I
+	require for a complete recovery.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie ran into the dining-room and returned with
+	a decanter of whisky, glass and siphon—an adjunct
+	to the sideboard since Mrs. Trevor’s death. Phineas
+	filled half the tumbler with spirit, tossed it off, smiled
+	fantastically, tried to rise, and rolled upon the carpet.
+	Doggie, frightened, rang the bell. Peddle, the old
+	butler, appeared.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mr. McPhail is ill. I can’t think what can be
+	the matter with him.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peddle looked at the happy Phineas with the eyes
+	of experience.</p>
+
+	<p>“If you will allow me to say so, sir,� said he, “the
+	gentleman is dead drunk.�</p>
+
+	<p>And that was the beginning of the end of Phineas.
+	He lost grip of himself. He became the scarlet scandal
+	of Durdlebury and the terror of Doggie’s life. The
+	Dean came to the rescue of a grateful nephew. A
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page17" title="17"> </a>swift attack of delirium tremens crowned and ended
+	Phineas McPhail’s Durdlebury career.</p>
+
+	<p>“My boy,� said the Dean on the day of Phineas’s
+	expulsion, “I don’t want to rub it in unduly, but I’ve
+	warned your poor mother for years, and you for months,
+	against this bone-idle, worthless fellow. Neither of
+	you would listen to me. But you see that I was right.
+	Perhaps now you may be more inclined to take my
+	advice.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, Uncle,� replied Doggie submissively.</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean, a comfortable florid man in the early
+	sixties, took up his parable and expounded it for three-quarters
+	of an hour. If ever young man heard that
+	which was earnestly meant for his welfare, Doggie
+	heard it from his Very Reverend Uncle’s lips.</p>
+
+	<p>“And now, my dear boy,� said the Dean by way
+	of peroration, “you cannot but understand that it is
+	your bounden duty to apply yourself to some serious
+	purpose in life.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I do,� said Doggie. “I’ve been thinking over
+	it for a long time. I’m going to gather material for
+	a history of wall-papers.�</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_II"><a class="pagenum" id="page18" title="18"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">Thenceforward</span> Doggie, like the late Mr.
+	Matthew Arnold’s fellow-millions, lived alone.
+	He did not complain. There was little to complain
+	about. He owned a pleasant old house set in fifteen
+	acres of grounds. He had an income of three thousand
+	pounds a year. Old Peddle, the butler, and his wife,
+	the housekeeper, saved him from domestic cares.
+	Rising late and retiring early, like the good King of
+	Yvetot, he cheated the hours that might have proved
+	weary. His meals, his toilet, his music, his wall-papers,
+	his drawing and embroidering—specimens of the last
+	he exhibited with great success at various shows held
+	by Arts and Crafts Guilds, and such-like high and
+	artistic fellowships—his sweet-peas, his chrysanthemums,
+	his postage stamps, his dilettante reading and
+	his mild social engagements, filled most satisfyingly
+	the hours not claimed by slumber. Now and then
+	appointments with his tailor summoned him to London.
+	He stayed at the same mildewed old family hotel in
+	the neighbourhood of Bond Street at which his mother
+	and his grandfather, the bishop, had stayed for uncountable
+	years. There he would lunch and dine
+	stodgily in musty state. In the evenings he would
+	go to the plays discussed in the less giddy of Durdlebury
+	ecclesiastical circles. The play over, it never
+	occurred to him to do otherwise than drive decorously
+	back to Sturrocks’s Hotel. Suppers at the Carlton
+	or the Savoy were outside his sphere of thought or
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page19" title="19"> </a>opportunity. His only acquaintance in London were
+	vague elderly female friends of his mother, who invited
+	him to chilly semi-suburban teas and entertained him
+	with tepid reminiscence and criticism of their divers
+	places of worship. The days in London thus passed
+	drearily, and Doggie was always glad to get home
+	again.</p>
+
+	<p>In Durdlebury he began to feel himself appreciated.
+	The sleepy society of the place accepted him as a young
+	man of unquestionable birth and irreproachable morals.
+	He could play the piano, the harp, the viola, the flute,
+	and the clarinet, and sing a very true mild tenor. As
+	secretary of the Durdlebury Musical Association, he
+	filled an important position in the town. Dr. Flint—Joshua
+	Flint, Mus. Doc.—organist of the cathedral,
+	scattered broadcast golden opinions of Doggie. There
+	was once a concert of old English music, which the
+	dramatic critics of the great newspapers attended—and
+	one of them mentioned Doggie—“Mr. Marmaduke
+	Trevor, who played the viol da gamba as to the manner
+	born.� Doggie cut out the notice, framed it, and
+	stuck it up in his peacock and ivory sitting-room.</p>
+
+	<p>Besides music, Doggie had other social accomplishments.
+	He could dance. He could escort young
+	ladies home of nights. Not a dragon in Durdlebury
+	would not have trusted Doggie with untold daughters.
+	With women, old and young, he had no shynesses. He
+	had been bred among them, understood their purely
+	feminine interests, and instinctively took their point of
+	view. On his visits to London, he could be entrusted
+	with commissions. He could choose the exact shade
+	of silk for a drawing-room sofa cushion, and had an
+	unerring taste in the selection of wedding presents.
+	Young men, other than budding ecclesiastical dignitaries,
+	were rare in Durdlebury, and Doggie had little to
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page20" title="20"> </a>fear from the competition of coarser masculine natures.
+	In a word, Doggie was popular.</p>
+
+	<p>Although of no mean or revengeful nature, he
+	was human enough to feel a little malicious satisfaction
+	when it was proved to Durdlebury that Oliver had
+	gone to the devil. His Aunt Sarah, Mrs. Manningtree,
+	had died midway in the Phineas McPhail period;
+	Mr. Manningtree a year or so later had accepted a
+	living in the North of England, and died when Doggie
+	was about four-and-twenty. Meanwhile Oliver, who
+	had been withdrawn young from Rugby, where he
+	had been a thorn in the side of the authorities, and
+	had been pinned like a cockchafer to a desk in a family
+	counting-house in Lothbury, E.C., had broken loose,
+	quarrelled with his father, gone off with paternal
+	malediction and a maternal heritage of a thousand
+	pounds to California, and was lost to the family ken.
+	When a man does not write to his family, what explanation
+	can there be save that he is ashamed to do so?
+	Oliver was ashamed of himself. He had taken to
+	desperate courses. He was an outlaw. He had gone
+	to the devil. His name was rarely mentioned in
+	Durdlebury—to Marmaduke Trevor’s very great and
+	catlike satisfaction. Only to the Dean’s ripe and
+	kindly wisdom was his name not utterly anathema.</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear,� said he once to his wife, who was
+	deploring her nephew’s character and fate—“I have
+	hopes of Oliver even yet. A man must have something
+	of the devil in him if he wants to drive the devil out.�</p>
+
+	<p>Mrs. Conover was shocked. “My dear Edward!�
+	she cried.</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear Sophia,� said he, with a twinkle in his
+	mild blue eyes that had puzzled her from the day
+	when he first put a decorous arm round her waist.
+	“My dear Sophia, if you knew what a ding-dong scrap
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page21" title="21"> </a>of fiends went on inside me before I could bring myself
+	to vow to be a virtuous milk-and-water parson, your
+	hair, which is as long and beautiful as ever, would
+	stand up straight on end.�</p>
+
+	<p>Mrs. Conover sighed.</p>
+
+	<p>“I give you up.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s too late,� said the Dean.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">The Manningtrees, father and mother and son,
+	were gone. Doggie bore the triple loss with equanimity.
+	Then Peggy Conover, hitherto under the
+	eclipse of boarding-schools, finishing schools and foreign
+	travel, swam, at the age of twenty, within his orbit.
+	When first they met, after a year’s absence, she very
+	gracefully withered the symptoms of the cousinly kiss,
+	to which they had been accustomed all their lives,
+	by stretching out a long, frank, and defensive arm.
+	Perhaps if she had allowed the salute, there would have
+	been an end of the matter. But there came the
+	phenomenon which, unless she was a minx of craft
+	and subtlety, she did not anticipate; for the first
+	time in his life he was possessed of a crazy desire to
+	kiss her. Doggie fell in love. It was not a wild
+	consuming passion. He slept well, he ate well, and
+	he played the flute without a sigh causing him to
+	blow discordantly into the holes of the instrument.
+	Peggy vowing that she would not marry a parson, he
+	had no rivals. He knew not even the pinpricks of
+	jealousy. Peggy liked him. At first she delighted
+	in him as in a new and animated toy. She could pull
+	strings and the figure worked amazingly and amusingly.
+	He proved himself to be a useful toy, too.
+	He was at her beck all day long. He ran on errands,
+	he fetched and carried. Peggy realized blissfully that
+	she owned him. He haunted the Deanery.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page22" title="22"> </a>One evening after dinner the Dean said:</p>
+
+	<p>“I am going to play the heavy father. How are
+	things between you and Peggy?�</p>
+
+	<p>Marmaduke, taken unawares, reddened violently.
+	He murmured that he didn’t know.</p>
+
+	<p>“You ought to,� said the Dean. “When a young
+	man converts himself into a girl’s shadow, even although
+	he is her cousin and has been brought up with
+	her from childhood, people begin to gossip. They
+	gossip even within the august precincts of a stately
+	cathedral.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m very sorry,� said Marmaduke. “I’ve had
+	the very best intentions.�</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean smiled.</p>
+
+	<p>“What were they?�</p>
+
+	<p>“To make her like me a little,� replied Marmaduke.
+	Then, feeling that the Dean was kindly disposed, he
+	blurted out awkwardly: “I hoped that one day I
+	might ask her to marry me.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s what I wanted to know,� said the Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>“You haven’t done it yet?�</p>
+
+	<p>“No,� said Marmaduke.</p>
+
+	<p>“Why don’t you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It seems taking such a liberty,� replied Marmaduke.</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean laughed. “Well, I’m not going to do
+	it for you. My chief desire is to regularize the present
+	situation. I can’t have you two running about together
+	all day and every day. If you like to ask
+	Peggy, you have my permission and her mother’s.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Thank you, Uncle Edward,� said Marmaduke.</p>
+
+	<p>“Let us join the ladies,� said the Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>In the drawing-room the Dean exchanged glances
+	with his wife. She saw that he had done as he had
+	been bidden. Marmaduke was not an ideal husband
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page23" title="23"> </a>for a brisk, pleasure-loving modern young woman.
+	But where was another husband to come from?
+	Peggy had banned the Church. Marmaduke was
+	wealthy, sound in health and free from vice. It was
+	obvious to maternal eyes that he was in love with
+	Peggy. According to the Dean, if he wasn’t, he
+	oughtn’t to be for ever at her heels. The young
+	woman herself seemed to take considerable pleasure
+	in his company. If she cared nothing for him, she
+	was acting in a reprehensible manner. So the Dean
+	had been deputed to sound Marmaduke.</p>
+
+	<p>Half an hour later the young people were left alone.
+	First the Dean went to his study. Then Mrs. Conover
+	departed to write letters. Marmaduke advancing
+	across the room from the door which he had opened,
+	met Peggy’s mocking eyes as she stood on the hearthrug
+	with her hands behind her back. Doggie felt
+	very uncomfortable. Never had he said a word to
+	her in betrayal of his feelings. He had a vague idea
+	that propriety required a young man to get through
+	some wooing before asking a girl to marry him. To
+	ask first and woo afterwards seemed putting the cart
+	before the horse. But how to woo that remarkably
+	cool and collected young person standing there, passed
+	his wit.</p>
+
+	<p>“Well,� she said, “the dear old birds seem very
+	fussy to-night. What’s the matter?� And as he
+	said nothing, but stood confused with his hands in his
+	pockets, she went on. “You, too, seem rather ruffled.
+	Look at your hair.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie, turning to a mirror, perceived that an
+	agitated hand had disturbed the symmetry of his sleek
+	black hair, brushed without a parting away from the
+	forehead over his head. Hastily he smoothed down
+	the cockatoo-like crest.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page24" title="24"> </a>“I’ve been talking to your father, Peggy.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Have you really?� she said with a laugh.</p>
+
+	<p>Marmaduke summoned his courage.</p>
+
+	<p>“He told me I might ask you to marry me,� he
+	said.</p>
+
+	<p>“Do you want to?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Of course I do,� he declared.</p>
+
+	<p>“Then why not do it?�</p>
+
+	<p>But before he could answer, she clapped her hands
+	on his shoulders, and shook him, and laughed out loud.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, you dear silly old thing! What a way to
+	propose to a girl!�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve never done such a thing before,� said Doggie,
+	as soon as he was released.</p>
+
+	<p>She resumed her attitude on the hearthrug.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m in no great hurry to be married. Are you?�</p>
+
+	<p>He said: “I don’t know. I’ve never thought of
+	it. Just whenever you like.�</p>
+
+	<p>“All right,� she returned calmly. “Let it be a
+	year hence. Meanwhile, we can be engaged. It’ll
+	please the dear old birds. I know all the tabbies in
+	the town have been mewing about us. Now they
+	can mew about somebody else.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s awfully good of you, Peggy,� said Marmaduke.
+	“I’ll go up to town to-morrow and get you
+	the jolliest ring you ever saw.�</p>
+
+	<p>She sketched him a curtsy. “That’s one thing,
+	at any rate, I can trust you in—your taste in jewellery.�</p>
+
+	<p>He moved nearer to her. “I suppose you know,
+	Peggy dear, I’ve been awfully fond of you for quite a
+	long time.�</p>
+
+	<p>“The feeling is more or less reciprocated,� she
+	replied lightly. Then, “You can kiss me if you
+	like. I assure you it’s quite usual.�</p>
+
+	<p>He kissed her somewhat shyly on the lips.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page25" title="25"> </a>She whispered: “I do think I care for you, old
+	thing.� Marmaduke replied sententiously: “You
+	have made me a very happy man.� Then they sat
+	down side by side on the sofa, and for all Peggy’s
+	mocking audacity, they could find nothing in particular
+	to say to each other.</p>
+
+	<p>“Let us play patience,� she said at last.</p>
+
+	<p>And when Mrs. Conover appeared awhile later,
+	she found them poring over the cards in a state of
+	unruffled calm. Peggy looked up, smiled, and nodded.</p>
+
+	<p>“We’ve fixed it up, Mummy; but we’re not
+	going to be married for a year.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie went home that evening in a tepid glow.
+	It contented him. He thought himself the luckiest
+	of mortals. A young man with more passion or
+	imagination might have deplored the lack of romance
+	in the betrothal. He might have desired on the part
+	of the maiden either more shyness, delicacy, and elusiveness,
+	or more resonant emotion. The finer tendrils
+	of his being might have shivered, ready to shrivel, as
+	at a touch of frost, in the cool ironical atmosphere
+	which the girl had created around her. But Doggie
+	was not such a young man. Such passions as heredity
+	had endowed him with had been drugged by training.
+	No tales of immortal love had ever fired his blood.
+	Once, somewhere abroad, the unprincipled McPhail
+	found him reading <em>Manon Lescaut</em>—he had bought
+	a cheap copy haphazard—and taking the delectable
+	volume out of his hands, asked him what he thought
+	of it.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s like reading about a lunatic,� replied the
+	bewildered Doggie. “Do such people as Des Grieux
+	exist?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Ay, laddie,� replied McPhail, greatly relieved.
+	“Your acumen has pierced to the root of the matter.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page26" title="26"> </a>They do exist, but nowadays we put them into asylums.
+	We must excuse the author for living in the psychological
+	obscurity of the eighteenth century. It’s just
+	a silly, rotten book.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m glad you’re of the same opinion as myself,�
+	said Doggie, and thought no more of the absurd but
+	deathless pair of lovers. The unprincipled McPhail,
+	not without pawky humour, immediately gave him
+	<em>Paul et Virginie</em>, which Doggie, after reading it,
+	thought the truest and most beautiful story in the
+	world. Even in later years, when his intelligence
+	had ripened and his sphere of reading expanded, he
+	looked upon the passion of a Romeo or an Othello
+	as a conventional peg on which the poet hung his
+	imagery, but having no more relation to real life as
+	it is lived by human beings than the blood-lust of the
+	half-man, half-bull Minotaur, or the uncomfortable
+	riding conversation of the Valkyrie.</p>
+
+	<p>So Doggie Trevor went home perfectly contented
+	with himself, with Peggy Conover, with his Uncle
+	and Aunt, of whom hitherto he had been just a little
+	bit afraid, with Fortune, with Fate, with his house,
+	with his peacock and ivory room, with a great clump
+	of typescript and a mass of coloured proof-prints,
+	which represented a third of his projected history of
+	wall-papers, with his feather-bed, with Goliath, his
+	almost microscopic Belgian griffon, with a set of
+	Nile-green silk underwear that had just come from
+	his outfitters in London, with his new Rolls-Royce
+	car and his new chauffeur Briggins (parenthetically
+	it may be remarked that a seven-hour excursion in
+	this vehicle, youth in the back seat and Briggins at the
+	helm, all ordained by Peggy, had been the final cause
+	of the evening’s explanations), with the starry heavens
+	above, with the well-ordered earth beneath them,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page27" title="27"> </a>and with all human beings on the earth, including
+	Germans, Turks, Infidels, and Hereticks—all save
+	one: and that, as he learned from a letter delivered
+	by the last post, was a callous, heartless London manicurist
+	who, giving no reasons, regretted that she would
+	be unable to pay her usual weekly visit to Durdlebury
+	on the morrow. Of all days in the year: just when it
+	was essential that he should look his best!</p>
+
+	<p>“What the deuce am I going to do?� he cried,
+	pitching the letter into the waste-paper basket.</p>
+
+	<p>He sat down to the piano in the peacock and ivory
+	room and tried to play the nasty crumpled rose-leaf
+	of a manicurist out of his mind.</p>
+
+	<p>Suddenly he remembered, with a kind of shock,
+	that he had pledged himself to go up to London the
+	next day to buy an engagement-ring. So after all
+	the manicurist’s defection did not matter. All was
+	again well with the world.</p>
+
+	<p>Then he went to bed and slept the sleep of the just
+	and perfect man living the just and perfect life in a
+	just and perfect universe.</p>
+
+	<p>And the date of this happening was the fifteenth
+	day of July in the year of grace one thousand nine
+	hundred and fourteen.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_III"><a class="pagenum" id="page28" title="28"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> shadow cast by the great apse of the cathedral
+	slanted over the end of the Deanery
+	garden, leaving the house in the blaze of the afternoon
+	sun, and divided the old red-brick wall into a vivid
+	contrast of tones. The peace of centuries brooded
+	over the place. No outside convulsions could ever
+	cause a flutter of her calm wings. As it was thirty
+	years ago, when the Dean first came to Durdlebury,
+	as it was three hundred, six hundred years ago, so it
+	was now; and so it would be hundreds of years
+	hence as long as that majestic pile housing the Spirit
+	of God should last.</p>
+
+	<p>Thus thought, thus, in some such words, proclaimed
+	the Dean, sitting in the shade, with his hands clasped
+	behind his head. Tea was over. Mrs. Conover,
+	thin and faded, still sat by the little table, wondering
+	whether she might now blow out the lamp beneath
+	the silver kettle. Sir Archibald Bruce, a neighbouring
+	landowner, and his wife had come, bringing their
+	daughter Dorothy to play tennis. The game had
+	already started on the court some little distance off—the
+	players being Dorothy, Peggy and a couple of
+	athletic, flannel-clad parsons. Marmaduke Trevor
+	reposed on a chair under the lee of Lady Bruce.
+	He looked very cool and spick and span in a grey
+	cashmere suit, grey shirt, socks and tie, and grey
+	<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">suède</em> shoes. He had a weak, good-looking little
+	face and a little black moustache turned up at the
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page29" title="29"> </a>ends. He was discoursing to his neighbour on
+	Palestrina.</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean’s proclamation had been elicited by some
+	remark of Sir Archibald.</p>
+
+	<p>“I wonder how you have stuck it for so long,�
+	said the latter. He had been a soldier in his youth
+	and an explorer, and had shot big game.</p>
+
+	<p>“I haven’t your genius, my dear Bruce, for making
+	myself uncomfortable,� replied the Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>“You were energetic enough when you first came
+	here,� said Sir Archibald. “We all thought you a
+	desperate fellow who was going to rebuild the cathedral,
+	turn the Close into industrial dwellings, and
+	generally play the deuce.�</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean sighed pleasantly. He had snowy
+	hair and a genial, florid, clean-shaven face.</p>
+
+	<p>“I was appointed very young—six-and-thirty—and
+	I thought I could fight against the centuries.
+	As the years went on I found I couldn’t. The
+	grey changelessness of things got hold of me, incorporated
+	me into them. When I die—for I hope
+	I shan’t have to resign through doddering senility—my
+	body will be buried there�—he jerked his head
+	slightly towards the cathedral—“and my dust will
+	become part and parcel of the fabric—like that of many
+	of my predecessors.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s all very well,� said Sir Archibald, “but
+	they ought to have caught you before this petrification
+	set in, and made you a bishop.�</p>
+
+	<p>It was somewhat of an old argument, for the two
+	were intimates. The Dean smiled and shook his head.</p>
+
+	<p>“You know I declined——�</p>
+
+	<p>“After you had become petrified.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Perhaps so. It is not a place where ambitions
+	can attain a riotous growth.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page30" title="30"> </a>“I call it a rotten place,� said the elderly worldling.
+	“I wouldn’t live in it myself for twenty thousand a year.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Lots like you said the same in crusading times—Sir
+	Guy de Chevenix, for instance, who was the
+	Lord, perhaps, of your very Manor, and an amazing
+	fire-eater—but—see the gentle irony of it—there his
+	bones lie, at peace for ever, in the rotten place, with
+	his effigy over them cross-legged and his dog at his
+	feet, and his wife by his side. I think he must sometimes
+	look out of Heaven’s gate down on the cathedral
+	and feel glad, grateful—perhaps a bit wistful—if the
+	attribution of wistfulness, which implies regret, to a
+	spirit in Paradise doesn’t savour of heresy——�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m going to be cremated,� interrupted Sir
+	Archibald, twirling his white moustache.</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean smiled and did not take up the cue.
+	The talk died. It was a drowsy day. The Dean
+	went off into a little reverie. Perhaps his old friend’s
+	reproach was just. Dean of a great cathedral at
+	thirty-six, he had the world of dioceses at his feet.
+	Had he used to the full the brilliant talents with
+	which he started? He had been a good Dean,
+	a capable, business-like Dean. There was not a
+	stone of the cathedral that he did not know and cherish.
+	Under his care the stability of every part of the precious
+	fabric had been assured for a hundred years. Its
+	financial position, desperate on his appointment,
+	was now sound. He had come into a scene of petty
+	discords and jealousies; for many years there had
+	been a no more united chapter in any cathedral close
+	in England. As an administrator he had been a
+	success. The devotion of his life to the cathedral
+	had its roots deep in spiritual things. For the greater
+	glory of God had the vast edifice been erected, and
+	for the greater glory of God had he, its guardian,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page31" title="31"> </a>reverently seen to its preservation and perfect appointment.
+	Would he have served God better by pursuing
+	the ambitions of youth? He could have had his
+	bishopric; but he knew that the choice lay between
+	him and Chanways, a flaming spirit, eager for power,
+	who hadn’t the sacred charge of a cathedral, and he
+	declined. And now Chanways was a force in the
+	Church and the country, and was making things hum.
+	If he, Conover, after fifteen years of Durdlebury,
+	had accepted, he would have lost the power to make
+	things hum. He would have made a very ordinary,
+	painstaking bishop, and his successor at Durdlebury
+	might possibly have regarded that time-worn wonder
+	of spiritual beauty merely as a stepping-stone to higher
+	sacerdotal things. Such a man, he considered, having
+	once come under the holy glamour of the cathedral,
+	would have been guilty of the Unforgivable Sin.
+	He had therefore saved two unfortunate situations.</p>
+
+	<p>“You are quite an intelligent man, Bruce,� he
+	said, with a sudden whimsicality, “but I don’t think
+	you would ever understand.�</p>
+
+	<p>The set of tennis being over, Peggy, flushed and
+	triumphant, rushed into the party in the shade.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mr. Petherbridge and I have won—six—three,�
+	she announced. The old gentlemen smiled and
+	murmured their congratulations. She swung to
+	the tea-table some paces away, and plucked Marmaduke
+	by the sleeve, interrupting him in the middle
+	of an argument. He rose politely.</p>
+
+	<p>“Come and play.�</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear,� he said, “I’m such a duffer at games.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Never mind; you’ll learn in time.�</p>
+
+	<p>He drew out a grey silk handkerchief as if ready
+	to perspire at the first thought of it. “Tennis makes
+	one so dreadfully hot,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page32" title="32"> </a>Peggy tapped the point of her foot irritably, but
+	she laughed as she turned to Lady Bruce.</p>
+
+	<p>“What’s the good of being engaged to a man if
+	he can’t play tennis with you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“There are other things in life besides tennis,
+	my dear,� replied Lady Bruce.</p>
+
+	<p>The girl flushed, but being aware that a pert answer
+	turneth away pleasant invitations, said nothing. She
+	nodded and went off to her game, and informing Mr.
+	Petherbridge that Lady Bruce was a platitudinous
+	old tabby, flirted with him up to the nice limits of
+	his parsonical dignity. But Marmaduke did not mind.</p>
+
+	<p>“Games are childish and somewhat barbaric.
+	Don’t you think so, Lady Bruce?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Most young people seem fond of them,� replied
+	the lady. “Exercise keeps them in health.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It all depends,� he argued. “Often they get
+	exceedingly hot, then they sit about and catch their
+	death of cold.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s very true,� said Lady Bruce. “It’s
+	what I’m always telling Sir Archibald about golf.
+	Only last week he caught a severe chill in that very
+	way. I had to rub his chest with camphorated oil.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Just as my poor dear mother used to do to me,�
+	said Marmaduke.</p>
+
+	<p>There followed a conversation on ailments and
+	their treatment, in which Mrs. Conover joined.
+	Marmaduke was quite happy. He knew that the
+	two elderly ladies admired the soundness of his views
+	and talked to him as to one of themselves.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m sure, my dear Marmaduke, you’re very wise
+	to take care of yourself,� said Lady Bruce, “especially
+	now, when you have the responsibilities of married
+	life before you.�</p>
+
+	<p>Marmaduke curled himself up comfortably in his
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page33" title="33"> </a>chair. If he had been a cat, he would have purred.
+	The old butler, grown as grey in the service of the
+	Deanery as the cathedral itself—he had been page
+	and footman to Dr. Conover’s predecessor—removed
+	the tea-things and brought out a tray of glasses and
+	lemonade with ice clinking refreshingly against the
+	sides of the jug. When the game was over, the players
+	came and drank and sat about the lawn. The shadow
+	of the apse had spread over the garden to the steps
+	of the porch. Anyone looking over the garden wall
+	would have beheld a scene typical of the heart of
+	England—a scene of peace, ease and perfectly ordered
+	comfort. The two well-built young men, one a
+	minor canon, the other a curate, lounging in their
+	flannels, clever-faced, honest-eyed, could have been
+	bred nowhere but in English public schools and at
+	Oxford or Cambridge. The two elderly ladies were
+	of the fine flower of provincial England; the two old
+	men, so different outwardly, one burly, florid, exquisitely
+	ecclesiastical, the other thin, nervous, soldierly,
+	each was an expression of high English tradition.
+	The two young girls, unerringly correct and dainty,
+	for all their modern abandonment of attitude, pretty,
+	flushed of cheek, frank of glance, were two of a
+	hundred thousand flowers of girlhood that could have
+	been picked that afternoon in lazy English gardens.
+	And Marmaduke’s impeccable grey costume struck a
+	harmonizing English note of Bond Street and the
+	Burlington Arcade. The scent of the roses massed in
+	delicate splendour against the wall, and breathing now
+	that the cool shade had fallen on them, crept through
+	the still air to the flying buttresses and the window
+	mullions and traceries and the pinnacles of the great
+	English cathedral. And in the midst of the shaven
+	lawn gleamed the old cut-glass jug on its silver tray.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page34" title="34"> </a>Some one did look over the wall and survey the
+	scene: a man, apparently supporting himself with
+	tense, straightened arms on the coping; a man with
+	a lean, bronzed, clean-shaven face, wearing an old
+	soft felt hat at a swaggering angle; a man with a smile
+	on his face and a humorous twinkle in his eyes. By
+	chance he had leisure to survey the scene for some time
+	unobserved. At last he shouted:</p>
+
+	<p>“Hello! Have none of you ever moved for the
+	last ten years?�</p>
+
+	<p>At the summons every one was startled. The
+	young men scrambled to their feet. The Dean rose
+	and glared at the intruder, who sprang over the wall,
+	recklessly broke through the rose-bushes and advanced
+	with outstretched hand to meet him.</p>
+
+	<p>“Hello, Uncle Edward!�</p>
+
+	<p>“Goodness gracious me!� cried the Dean. “It’s
+	Oliver!�</p>
+
+	<p>“Right first time,� said the young man, gripping
+	him by the hand. “You’re not looking a day older.
+	And Aunt Sophia——� He strode up to Mrs. Conover
+	and kissed her. “Do you know,� he went on,
+	holding her at arm’s length and looking round at
+	the astonished company, “the last time I saw you
+	all you were doing just the same! I peeped over the
+	wall just before I went away, just such a summer
+	afternoon as this, and you were all sitting round
+	drinking the same old lemonade out of the same
+	old jug—and, Lady Bruce, you were here, and you,
+	Sir Archibald�—he shook hands with them rapidly.
+	“You haven’t changed a bit. And you—good Lord!
+	Is this Peggy?� He put his hand on the Dean’s
+	shoulder and pointed at the girl.</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s Peggy,� said the Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re the only thing that’s grown. I used to
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page35" title="35"> </a>gallop with you on my shoulders all round the lawn.
+	I suppose you remember? How do you do?�</p>
+
+	<p>And without waiting for an answer he kissed her
+	soundly. It was all done with whirlwind suddenness.
+	The tempestuous young man had scattered every one’s
+	wits. All stared at him. Releasing Peggy——</p>
+
+	<p>“My holy aunt!� he cried, “there’s another of
+	’em. It’s Doggie! You were in the old picture,
+	and I’m blessed if you weren’t wearing the same
+	beautiful grey suit. How do, Doggie?�</p>
+
+	<p>He gripped Doggie’s hand. Doggie’s lips grew
+	white.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m glad to welcome you back, Oliver,� he said.
+	“But I would have you to know that my name is
+	Marmaduke.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Sooner be called Doggie myself, old chap,� said
+	Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>He stepped back, smiling at them all—a handsome
+	devil-may-care fellow, tall, tough and supple, his hands
+	in the pockets of a sun-stained double-breasted blue
+	jacket.</p>
+
+	<p>“We’re indeed glad to see you, my dear boy,�
+	said the Dean, recovering equanimity; “but what
+	have you been doing all this time? And where on
+	earth have you come from?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve just come from the South Seas. Arrived in
+	London last evening. This morning I thought I’d
+	come and look you up.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But if you had let us know you were coming,
+	we should have met you at the station with the car.
+	Where’s your luggage?�</p>
+
+	<p>He jerked a hand. “In the road. My man’s
+	sitting on it. Oh, don’t worry about him,� he cried
+	airily to the protesting Dean. “He’s well trained.
+	He’ll go on sitting on it all night.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page36" title="36"> </a>“You’ve brought a man—a valet?� asked Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“It seems so.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Then you must be getting on.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t think he turns you out very well,� said
+	Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“You must really let one of the servants see about
+	your things, Oliver,� said Mrs. Conover, moving
+	towards the porch. “What will people say?�</p>
+
+	<p>He strode after her, and kissed her. “Oh, you
+	dear old Durdlebury Aunt! Now I know I’m in
+	England again. I haven’t heard those words for
+	years!�</p>
+
+	<p>Mrs. Conover’s hospitable intentions were anticipated
+	by the old butler, who advanced to meet them
+	with the news that Sir Archibald’s car had been brought
+	round. As soon as he recognized Oliver he started
+	back, mouth agape.</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, it’s me all right, Burford,� laughed Oliver.
+	“How did I get here? I dropped from the moon.�</p>
+
+	<p>He shook hands with Burford, of whose life he
+	had been the plague during his childhood, proclaimed
+	him as hardy and unchanging as a gargoyle, and
+	instructed him where to find man and luggage.</p>
+
+	<p>The Bruces and the two clerical tennis players
+	departed. Marmaduke was for taking his leave too.
+	All his old loathing of Oliver had suddenly returned.
+	His cousin stood for everything he detested—swagger,
+	arrogance, self-assurance. He hated the shabby
+	rakishness of his attire, the self-assertive aquiline beak
+	of a nose which he had inherited from his father, the
+	Rector. He dreaded his aggressive masculinity. He
+	had come back with the same insulting speech on his
+	lips. His finger-nails were dreadful. Marmaduke
+	desired as little as possible of his odious company.
+	But his Aunt Sophia cried out:</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page37" title="37"> </a>“You’ll surely dine with us to-night, Marmaduke,
+	to celebrate Oliver’s return?�</p>
+
+	<p>And Oliver chimed in, “Do! And don’t worry
+	about changing,� as Doggie began to murmur excuses,
+	“I can’t. I’ve no evening togs. My old ones
+	fell to bits when I was trying to put them on, on
+	board the steamer, and I had to chuck ’em overboard.
+	They turned up a shark, who went for
+	’em. So don’t you worry, Doggie, old chap. You
+	look as pretty as paint as you are. Doesn’t he,
+	Peggy?�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy, with a slight flush on her cheek, came to the
+	rescue and linked her arm in Marmaduke’s.</p>
+
+	<p>“You haven’t had time to learn everything yet,
+	Oliver; but I think you ought to know that we are
+	engaged.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Holy Gee! Is that so? My compliments.�
+	He swept them a low bow. “God bless you, my
+	children!�</p>
+
+	<p>“Of course he’ll stay to dinner,� said Peggy; and
+	she looked at Oliver as who should say, “Touch him
+	at your peril: he belongs to me.�</p>
+
+	<p>So Doggie had to yield. Mrs. Conover went into
+	the house to arrange for Oliver’s comfort, and the others
+	strolled round the garden.</p>
+
+	<p>“Well, my boy,� said the Dean, “so you’re back
+	in the old country?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Turned up again like a bad penny.�</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean’s kindly face clouded. “I hope you’ll
+	soon be able to find something to do.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s money I want, not work,� said Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>“Ah!� said the Dean, in a tone so thoughtful
+	as just to suggest a lack of sympathy.</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver looked over his shoulder—the Dean and
+	himself were preceding Marmaduke and Peggy on the
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page38" title="38"> </a>trim gravel path. “Do you care to lend me a few
+	thousands, Doggie?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Certainly not,� replied Marmaduke.</p>
+
+	<p>“There’s family affection for you, Uncle Edward!
+	I’ve come half-way round the earth to see him, and—say,
+	will you lend me a fiver?�</p>
+
+	<p>“If you need it,� said Marmaduke in a dignified
+	way, “I shall be very happy to advance you five
+	pounds.�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver brought the little party to a halt and burst
+	into laughter.</p>
+
+	<p>“I believe you good people think I’ve come back
+	broke to the world. The black sheep returned like
+	a wolf to the fold. Only Peggy drew a correct inference
+	from the valet—wait till you see him! As
+	Peggy said, I’ve been getting on.� He laid a light
+	hand on the Dean’s shoulder. “While all you
+	folks in Durdlebury, especially my dear Doggie, for
+	the last ten years have been durdling, I’ve been doing.
+	I’ve not come all this way to tap relations for five-pound
+	notes. I’m swaggering into the City of London
+	for Capital—with a great big C.�</p>
+
+	<p>Marmaduke twirled his little moustache. “You’ve
+	taken to company promoting,� he remarked acidly.</p>
+
+	<p>“I have. And a damn—I beg your pardon, Uncle
+	Edward—we poor Pacific Islanders lisp in damns
+	for want of deans to hold us up—and a jolly good
+	company too. We—that’s I and another man—that’s
+	all the company as yet—two’s company, you
+	know—own a trading fleet.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You own ships?� cried Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“Rather. Own ’em, sail ’em, navigate ’em,
+	stoke ’em, clean out the boilers, sit on the safety valves
+	when we want to make speed, do every old thing——�</p>
+
+	<p>“And what do you trade in?� asked the Dean.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page39" title="39"> </a>“Copra, bêche-de-mer, mother-of-pearl——�</p>
+
+	<p>“Mother-of-pearl! How awfully romantic!�
+	cried Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“We’ve got a fishery. At any rate, the concession.
+	To work it properly we require capital. That’s
+	why I’m here—to turn the concern into a limited
+	company.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And where is this wonderful place?� asked the
+	Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>“Huaheine.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What a beautiful word!�</p>
+
+	<p>“Isn’t it?� said Oliver. “Like the sigh of a
+	girl in her sleep.�</p>
+
+	<p>The old Dean shot a swift glance at his nephew;
+	then took his arm and walked on, and looked at the
+	vast mass of the cathedral and at the quiet English
+	garden in its evening shadow.</p>
+
+	<p>“Copra, bêche-de-mer, mother-of-pearl, Huaheine,�
+	he murmured. “And these strange foreign
+	things are the commonplaces of your life!�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy and Marmaduke lagged behind a little. She
+	pressed his arm.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m so glad you’re staying for dinner. I shouldn’t
+	like to think you were running away from him.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I was only afraid of losing my temper and making
+	a scene,� replied Doggie with dignity.</p>
+
+	<p>“His manners are odious,� said Peggy. “You
+	leave him to me.�</p>
+
+	<p>Suddenly the Dean, taking a turn that brought him
+	into view of the porch, stopped short.</p>
+
+	<p>“Goodness gracious!� he cried. “Who in the
+	world is that?�</p>
+
+	<p>He pointed to a curious object slouching across the
+	lawn; a short hirsute man wearing a sailor’s jersey
+	and smoking a stump of a blackened pipe. His
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page40" title="40"> </a>tousled head was bare; he had very long arms and
+	great powerful hands protruded at the end of long
+	sinewy wrists from inadequate sleeves. A pair of bright
+	eyes shone out of his dark shaggy face, like a Dandy
+	Dinmont’s. His nose was large and red. He rolled as
+	he walked. Such a sight had never been seen before
+	in the Deanery garden.</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s my man. Peggy’s valet,� said Oliver
+	airily. “His name is Chipmunk. A beauty, isn’t
+	he?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Like master, like man,� murmured Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver’s quick ears caught the words intended
+	only for Peggy. He smiled brightly.</p>
+
+	<p>“If you knew what a compliment you were paying
+	me, Doggie, you wouldn’t have said such a thing.�</p>
+
+	<p>The man seeing the company stare at him, halted,
+	took his pipe out of his mouth, and scratched his head.</p>
+
+	<p>“But—er—forgive me, my dear Oliver,� said the
+	Dean. “No doubt he is an excellent fellow—but
+	don’t you think he might smoke his pipe somewhere
+	else?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Of course he might,� said Oliver. “And he
+	jolly well shall.� He put his hand to his mouth, sea-fashion—they
+	were about thirty yards apart—and
+	shouted: “Here, you! What the eternal blazes
+	are you doing here?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Please don’t hurt the poor man’s feelings,� said
+	the kindly Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver turned a blank look on his Uncle. “His
+	what? Ain’t got any. Not that kind of feelings.�
+	He proceeded: “Now then, look lively! Clear out!
+	Skidoo!�</p>
+
+	<p>The valet touched his forehead in salute, and—“Where
+	am I to go to, Cap’en?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Go to——�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page41" title="41"> </a>Oliver checked himself in time, and turned to the
+	Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>“Where shall I tell him to go?� he asked sweetly.</p>
+
+	<p>“The kitchen garden would be the best place,�
+	replied the Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>“I think I’d better go and fix him up myself,�
+	said Oliver. “A little conversation in his own language
+	might be beneficial.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But isn’t he English?� asked Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“Born and bred in Wapping,� said Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>He marched off across the lawn; and, could they
+	have heard it, the friendly talk that he had with Chipmunk
+	would have made the Saint and the Divines,
+	and even the Crusader, Sir Guy de Chevenix, who
+	were buried in the cathedral, turn in their tombs.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie, watching the disappearing Chipmunk,
+	Oliver’s knuckles in his neck, said:</p>
+
+	<p>“I think it monstrous of Oliver to bring such a
+	disreputable creature down here.�</p>
+
+	<p>Said the Dean: “At any rate, it brings a certain
+	excitement into our quiet surroundings.�</p>
+
+	<p>“They must be having the time of their lives in
+	the Servants’ Hall,� said Peggy.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_IV"><a class="pagenum" id="page42" title="42"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">After</span> breakfast the next morning Doggie,
+	attired in a green shot-silk dressing-gown,
+	entered his own particular room and sat down to think.
+	In its way it was a very beautiful room—high, spacious,
+	well-proportioned, facing south-east. The wall-paper,
+	which he had designed himself, was ivory-white with
+	veinings of peacock-blue. Into the ivory-silk curtains
+	were woven peacocks in full pride. The cushions
+	were ivory and peacock-blue. The chairs, the
+	writing-table, the couch, the bookcases, were pure
+	Sheraton and Hepplewhite. Vellum-bound books
+	filled the cases—Doggie was very particular about his
+	bindings. Delicate water-colours alone adorned the
+	walls. On his neatly arranged writing-table lay an
+	ivory set—inkstand, pen-tray, blotter and calendar.
+	Bits of old embroidery harmonizing with the peacock
+	shades were spread here and there. A pretty collection
+	of eighteenth-century Italian ivory statuettes were
+	grouped about the room. A spinet, inlaid with ebony
+	and ivory, formed a centre for the arrangement of
+	many other musical instruments—a viol, mandolins
+	gay with ribbons, a theorbo, flutes and clarinets.
+	Through the curtains, draped across an alcove, could
+	be guessed the modern monstrosity of a grand piano.
+	One tall closed cabinet was devoted to his collection
+	of wall-papers. Another, open, to a collection of little
+	dogs in china, porcelain, faïence; thousands of them;
+	he got them through dealers from all over the world.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page43" title="43"> </a>He had the finest collection in existence, and maintained
+	a friendly and learned correspondence with the other
+	collector—an elderly, disillusioned Russian prince, who
+	lived somewhere near Nijni-Novgorod. On the
+	spinet and on the writing-table were great bowls of
+	golden <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">rayon d’or</em> roses.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie sat down to think. An unwonted frown
+	creased his brow. Several problems distracted him.
+	The morning sun streaming into the room disclosed,
+	beyond doubt, discolorations, stains and streaks on the
+	wall-paper. It would have to be renewed. Already
+	he had decided to design something to take its place.
+	But last night Peggy had declared her intention to
+	turn this abode of bachelor comfort into the drawing-room,
+	and to hand over to his personal use some other
+	apartment, possibly the present drawing-room, which
+	received all the blaze and glare of the afternoon sun.
+	What should he do? Live in the sordidness of discoloured
+	wall-paper for another year, or go through
+	the anxiety of artistic effort and manufacturers’ stupidity
+	and delay, to say nothing of the expense, only
+	to have the whole thing scrapped before the wedding?
+	Doggie had a foretaste of the dilemmas of matrimony.
+	He had a gnawing suspicion that the trim and perfect
+	life was difficult of attainment.</p>
+
+	<p>Then, meandering through this wilderness of
+	dubiety, ran thoughts of Oliver. Every one seemed
+	to have gone crazy over him. Uncle Edward and
+	Aunt Sophia had hung on his lips while he lied unblushingly
+	about his adventures. Even Peggy had listened
+	open-eyed and open-mouthed when he had told a tale
+	of shipwreck in the South Seas: how the schooner
+	had been caught in some beastly wind and the masts
+	had been torn out and the rudder carried away, and how
+	it had struck a reef, and how something had hit him
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page44" title="44"> </a>on the head, and he knew no more till he woke up
+	on a beach and found that the unspeakable Chipmunk
+	had swum with him for a week—or whatever the time
+	was—until they got to land. If hulking, brainless
+	dolts like Oliver, thought Doggie, like to fool around
+	in schooners and typhoons, they must take the consequences.
+	There was nothing to brag about. The
+	higher man was the intellectual, the æsthetic, the artistic
+	being. What did Oliver know of Lydian modes or
+	Louis Treize decoration or Astec clay dogs? Nothing.
+	He couldn’t even keep his socks from slopping about
+	over his shoes. And there was Peggy all over the
+	fellow, although before dinner she had said she couldn’t
+	bear the sight of him. Doggie was perturbed. On
+	bidding him good night, she had kissed him in the
+	most perfunctory manner—merely the cousinly peck of
+	a dozen years ago—and had given no thought to the
+	fact that he was driving home in an open car without
+	an overcoat. He had felt distinctly chilly on his
+	arrival, and had taken a dose of ammoniated quinine.
+	Was Peggy’s indifference a sign that she had ceased
+	to care for him? That she was attracted by the
+	buccaneering Oliver?</p>
+
+	<p>Now suppose the engagement was broken off, he
+	would be free to do as he chose with the redecoration
+	of the room. But suppose, as he sincerely and devoutly
+	hoped, it wasn’t? Dilemma on dilemma. Added
+	to all this, Goliath, the miniature Belgian griffon,
+	having probably overeaten himself, had complicated
+	pains inside, and the callous vet. could or would not
+	come round till the evening. In the meantime,
+	Goliath might die.</p>
+
+	<p>He was at this point of his reflections, when to his
+	horror he heard a familiar voice outside the door.</p>
+
+	<p>“All right, Peddle. Don’t worry. I’ll show
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page45" title="45"> </a>myself in. Look after that man of mine. Quite
+	easy. Give him some beer in a bucket and leave him
+	to it.�</p>
+
+	<p>Then the door burst open and Oliver, pipe in
+	mouth and hat on one side, came into the room.</p>
+
+	<p>“Hallo, Doggie! Thought I’d look you up.
+	Hope I’m not disturbing you.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not at all,� said Doggie. “Do sit down.�</p>
+
+	<p>But Oliver walked about and looked at things.</p>
+
+	<p>“I like your water-colours. Did you collect
+	them yourself?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I congratulate you on your taste. This is a
+	beauty. Who is it by?�</p>
+
+	<p>The appreciation brought Doggie at once to his side.
+	Oliver, the connoisseur, was showing himself in a new
+	and agreeable light. Doggie took him delightedly
+	round the pictures, expounding their merits and their
+	little histories. He found that Oliver, although
+	unlearned, had a true sense of light and colour and
+	tone. He was just beginning to like him, when the
+	tactless fellow, stopping before the collection of little
+	dogs, spoiled everything.</p>
+
+	<p>“My holy aunt!� he cried—an objurgation which
+	Doggie had abhorred from boyhood—and he doubled
+	with laughter in his horrid schoolboy fashion—“My
+	dear Doggie—is that your family? How many
+	litters?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s the finest collection of the kind in the world,�
+	replied Doggie stiffly, “and is worth several thousand
+	pounds.�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver heaved himself into a chair—that was
+	Doggie’s impression of his method of sitting down—a
+	Sheraton chair with delicate arms and legs.</p>
+
+	<p>“Forgive me,� he said, “but you’re such a funny
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page46" title="46"> </a>devil.�—Doggie gaped. The conception of himself
+	as a funny devil was new.—“Pictures and music I
+	can understand. But what the deuce is the point of
+	these dam little dogs?�</p>
+
+	<p>But Doggie was hurt. “It would be useless to
+	try to explain,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver took off his hat and sent it skimming on to
+	the couch.</p>
+
+	<p>“Look here, old chap,� he said, “I seem to have
+	put my foot into it again. I didn’t mean to, really.
+	Peggy gave me hell this morning for not treating
+	you as a man and a brother, and I came round to try
+	to put things right.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s very considerate of Peggy, I’m sure,� said
+	Marmaduke.</p>
+
+	<p>“Now look here, old Doggie——�</p>
+
+	<p>“I told you when we first met yesterday that I
+	vehemently object to being called Doggie.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But why?� asked Oliver. “I’ve made inquiries,
+	and find that all your pals——�</p>
+
+	<p>“I haven’t any pals, as you call them.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Well, all our male contemporaries in the place
+	who have the honour of your acquaintance—they all
+	call you Doggie, and you don’t seem to mind.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I do mind,� replied Marmaduke angrily, “but
+	as I avoid their company as much as possible, it doesn’t
+	very much matter.�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver stretched out his legs and put his hands
+	behind his back—then wriggled to his feet. “What
+	a beast of a chair! Anyhow,� he went on, puffing
+	at his pipe, “don’t let us quarrel. I’ll call you Marmaduke,
+	if you like, when I can remember—it’s a
+	beast of a name—like the chair. I’m a rough sort of
+	chap. I’ve had ten years’ pretty rough training. I’ve
+	slept on boards. I’ve slept in the open without a cent
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page47" title="47"> </a>to hire a board. I’ve gone cold and I’ve gone hungry,
+	and men have knocked me about and I’ve knocked
+	men about—and I’ve lost the Durdlebury sense of
+	social values. In the wilds if a man once gets the
+	name, say, of Duck-Eyed Joe, it sticks to him, and he
+	accepts it and answers to it, and signs ‘Duck-Eyed
+	Joe’ on an IOU and honours the signature.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But I’m not in the wilds,� said Marmaduke,
+	“and haven’t the slightest intention of ever leading
+	the unnatural and frightful life you describe. So
+	what you say doesn’t apply to me.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Quite so,� replied Oliver. “That wasn’t the
+	moral of my discourse. The habit of mind engendered
+	in the wilds applies to me. Just as I could never think
+	of Duck-Eyed Joe as George Wilkinson, so you,
+	James Marmaduke Trevor, will live imperishably in
+	my mind as Doggie. I was making a sort of apology,
+	old chap, for my habit of mind.�</p>
+
+	<p>“If it is an apology——� said Marmaduke.</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver, laughing, clapped him boisterously on the
+	shoulder. “Oh, you solemn comic cuss!� He
+	strode to a rose-bowl and knocked the ashes of his
+	pipe into the water—Doggie trembled lest he might
+	next squirt tobacco juice over the ivory curtains.
+	“You don’t give a fellow a chance. Look here, tell
+	me, as man to man, what are you going to do with
+	your life? I don’t mean it in the high-brow sense
+	of people who live in unsuccessful plays and garden
+	cities, but in the ordinary common-sense way of the
+	world. Here you are, young, strong, educated,
+	intelligent——�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m not strong,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, shucks! A month’s exercise would make
+	you as strong as a mule. Here you are—what the
+	blazes are you going to do with yourself?�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page48" title="48"> </a>“I don’t admit that you have any right to question
+	me,� said Doggie, lighting a cigarette.</p>
+
+	<p>“Peggy has given it to me. We had a heart to
+	heart talk this morning, I assure you. She called me
+	a swaggering, hectoring barbarian. So I told her
+	what I’d do. I said I’d come here and squeak like a
+	little mouse and eat out of your hand. I also said I’d
+	take you out with me to the Islands and give you a
+	taste for fresh air and salt water and exercise. I’ll
+	teach you how to sail a schooner and how to go about
+	barefoot and swab decks. It’s a life for a man out there,
+	I tell you. If you’ve nothing better to do than living
+	here snug like a flea on a dog’s back, until you get
+	married, you’d better come.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie smiled pityingly, but said politely:</p>
+
+	<p>“Your offer is very kind, Oliver; but I don’t
+	think that kind of life would suit me.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh yes it would,� said Oliver. “It would make
+	you healthy, wealthy—if you took a fancy to put
+	some money into the pearl fishery—and wise. I’d
+	show you the world, make a man of you, for Peggy’s
+	sake, and teach you how men talk to one another in
+	a gale of wind.�</p>
+
+	<p>The door opened and Peddle appeared.</p>
+
+	<p>“I beg your pardon, Mr. Oliver—but your
+	man——�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes? What about him? Is he misbehaving
+	himself? Kissing the maids?�</p>
+
+	<p>“No, sir,� said Peddle—“but none of them can
+	get on with their work. He has drunk two quart
+	jugs of beer and wants a third.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Well, give it to him.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I shouldn’t like to see the man intoxicated, sir,�
+	said Peddle.</p>
+
+	<p>“You couldn’t. No one has or ever will.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page49" title="49"> </a>“He is also standing on his head, sir, in the middle
+	of the kitchen table.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s his great parlour-trick. You just try to do
+	it, Peddle—especially after two quarts of beer. He’s
+	showing his gratitude, poor chap—just like the juggler
+	of Notre-Dame in the story. And I’m sure everybody’s
+	enjoying themselves?�</p>
+
+	<p>“The maids are nearly in hysterics, sir.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But they’re quite happy?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Too happy, sir.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Lord!� cried Oliver, “what a lot of stuffy owls
+	you are! What do you want me to do? What
+	would you like me to do, Doggie? It’s your house.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t know,� said Doggie. “I’ve had nothing
+	to do with such people. Perhaps you might go and
+	speak to him.�</p>
+
+	<p>“No, I won’t do that. I tell you what, Peddle,�
+	said Oliver brightly. “You lure him out into the
+	stable yard with a great hunk of pie—he adores pie—and
+	tell him to sit there and eat it till I come. Tell
+	him I said so.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ll see what can be done, sir,� said Peddle.</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t mean to be inhospitable,� said Doggie,
+	after the butler had gone, “but why do you take
+	this extraordinary person about with you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I wanted him to see Durdlebury and Durdlebury
+	to see him. Do it good,� replied Oliver. “Now,
+	what about my proposition? Out there of course
+	you’ll be my guest. Put yourself in charge of Chipmunk
+	and me for eight months, and you’ll never
+	regret it. What Chipmunk doesn’t know about ships
+	and drink and hard living isn’t knowledge. We’ll
+	let you down easy—treat you kindly—word of
+	honour.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie being a man of intelligence realized that
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page50" title="50"> </a>Oliver’s offer arose from a genuine desire to do him
+	some kind of service. But if a friendly bull out of the
+	fullness of its affection invited you to accompany
+	him to the meadow and eat grass, what could you do
+	but courteously decline the invitation? This is what
+	Doggie did. After a further attempt at persuasion,
+	Oliver grew impatient, and picking up his hat stuck it
+	on the side of his head. He was a simple-natured,
+	impulsive man. Peggy’s spirited attack had caused him
+	to realize that he had treated Doggie with unprovoked
+	rudeness; but then, Doggie was such a little worm.
+	Suddenly the great scheme for Doggie’s regeneration
+	had entered his head, and generously he had rushed to
+	begin to put it into execution. The pair were his
+	blood relations after all. He saw his way to doing
+	them a good turn. Peggy, with all her go—exemplified
+	by the manner in which she had gone for him—was
+	worth the trouble he proposed to take with Doggie.
+	It really was a handsome offer. Most fellows would
+	have jumped at the prospect of being shown round
+	the Islands with an old hand who knew the whole
+	thing backwards, from company promoting to beach-combing.
+	He had not expected such a point-blank,
+	bland refusal. It made him angry.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m really most obliged to you, Oliver,� said Doggie
+	finally. “But our ideals are so entirely different.
+	You’re primitive, you know. You seem to find your
+	happiness in defying the elements, whereas I find mine
+	in adopting the resources of civilization to circumvent
+	them.�</p>
+
+	<p>He smiled, pleased with his little epigram.</p>
+
+	<p>“Which means,� said Oliver, “that you’re afraid
+	to roughen your hands and spoil your complexion.�</p>
+
+	<p>“If you like to put it that way—symbolically.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Symbolically be hanged!� cried Oliver, losing
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page51" title="51"> </a>his temper. “You’re an effeminate little rotter, and
+	I’m through with you. Go on and wag your tail and
+	sit up and beg for biscuits——�</p>
+
+	<p>“Stop!� shouted Doggie, white with sudden
+	anger which shook him from head to foot. He
+	marched to the door, his green silk dressing-gown
+	flapping round his legs, and threw it wide open.
+	“This is my house. I’m sorry to have to ask you
+	to get out of it.�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver looked intently for a few seconds into the
+	flaming little dark eyes. Then he said gravely:</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m a beast to have said that. I take it all back.
+	Good-bye!�</p>
+
+	<p>“Good day to you,� said Doggie; and when the
+	door was shut he went and threw himself, shaken,
+	on the couch, hating Oliver and all his works more
+	than ever. Go about barefoot and swab decks!
+	It was Bedlam madness. Besides being dangerous
+	to health, it would be excruciating discomfort. And
+	to be insulted for not grasping at such martyrdom. It
+	was intolerable.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie stayed away from the Deanery all that day.
+	On the morrow he heard, to his relief, that Oliver
+	had returned to London with the unedifying Chipmunk.
+	He took Peggy for a drive in the Rolls-Royce,
+	and told her of Oliver’s high-handed methods. She
+	sympathized. She said, however:</p>
+
+	<p>“Oliver’s a rough diamond.�</p>
+
+	<p>“He’s one of Nature’s non-gentlemen,� said
+	Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>She laughed and patted his arm. “Clever lad!�
+	she said.</p>
+
+	<p>So Doggie’s wounded vanity was healed. He confided
+	to her some of his difficulties as to the peacock and
+	ivory room.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page52" title="52"> </a>“Bear with the old paper for my sake,� she said.
+	“It’s something you can do for me. In the meanwhile,
+	you and I can put our heads together and design
+	a topping scheme of decoration. It’s not too early
+	to start in right now, for it’ll take months and months
+	to get the house just as we want.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re the best girl in the world,� said Doggie;
+	“and the way you understand me is simply wonderful.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Dear old thing,� smiled Peggy; “you’re no
+	great conundrum.�</p>
+
+	<p>Happiness once more settled on Doggie Trevor.
+	For the next two or three days he and Peggy tackled the
+	serious problem of the reorganization of Denby Hall.
+	Peggy had the large ideas of a limited though acute
+	brain, stimulated by social ambitions. When she became
+	mistress of Denby Hall, she intended to reverse
+	the invisible boundary that included it in Durdlebury
+	and excluded it from the County. It was to be
+	County—of the fine inner Arcanum of County—and
+	only Durdlebury by the grace of Peggy Trevor.
+	No “durdling,� as Oliver called it, for her. Denby
+	Hall was going to be the very latest thing of September,
+	1915, when she proposed, the honeymoon concluded,
+	to take smart and startling possession. Lots
+	of Mrs. Trevor’s rotten old stuffy furniture would
+	have to go. Marmaduke would have to revolutionize
+	his habits. As she would have all kinds of jolly
+	people down to stay, additions must be made to the
+	house. Within a week after her engagement she had
+	devised all the improvements. Marmaduke’s room,
+	with a great bay thrown out, would be the drawing-room.
+	The present drawing-room, nucleus of a new
+	wing, would be a dancing-room, with parquet flooring;
+	when not used for tangos and the fashionable negroid
+	dances, it would be called the morning-room; beyond
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page53" title="53"> </a>that there would be a billiard-room. Above this first
+	floor there could easily be built a series of guest chambers.
+	As for Marmaduke’s library, or study, or den,
+	any old room would do. There were a couple of
+	bedrooms overlooking the stable yard which thrown
+	into one would do beautifully.</p>
+
+	<p>With feminine tact she dangled these splendours
+	before Doggie’s infatuated eyes, instinctively choosing
+	the opportunity of his gratitude for soothing treatment.
+	Doggie telegraphed for Sir Owen Julius, R.A., Surveyor
+	to the Cathedral, the only architect of his acquaintance.
+	The great man sent his partner, plain John Fox,
+	who undertook to prepare a design.</p>
+
+	<p>Mr. Fox came down to Durdlebury on the 28th
+	of July. There had been a lot of silly talk in the
+	newspapers about Austria and Serbia, to which Doggie
+	had given little heed. There was always trouble in
+	the Balkan States. Recently they had gone to war.
+	It had left Doggie quite cold. They were all “Merry
+	Widow,� irresponsible people. They dressed in
+	queer uniforms and picturesque costumes, and thought
+	themselves tremendously important, and were always
+	squabbling among themselves and would go on doing
+	it till the day of Doom. Now there was more fuss.
+	He had read in the <cite>Morning Post</cite> that Sir Edward
+	Grey had proposed a Conference of the Great Powers.
+	Only sensible thing to do, thought Doggie. He
+	dismissed the trivial matter from his mind. On
+	the morning of the 29th he learned that Austria had
+	declared war on Serbia. Still, what did it matter?</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie had held aloof from politics. He regarded
+	them as somewhat vulgar. Conservative by caste,
+	he had once, when the opportunity was almost forced
+	on him, voted for the Conservative candidate of the
+	constituency. European politics on the grand scale
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page54" title="54"> </a>did not arouse his interest at all. England, save as
+	the wise Mentor, had nothing to do with them. Still,
+	if Russia fought, France would have to join her ally.
+	It was not till he went to the Deanery that he began
+	to contemplate the possibility of a general European
+	war. For the next day or two he read his newspapers
+	very carefully.</p>
+
+	<p>On Saturday, the 1st of August, Oliver suddenly
+	reappeared, proposing to stay over the Bank Holiday.
+	He brought news and rumours of war from the great
+	city. He had found money very tight, Capital with
+	a big C impossible to obtain. Every one told him to
+	come back when the present European cloud had
+	blown over. In the opinion of the judicious, it would
+	not blow over. There was going to be war, and
+	England could not stay out of it. The Sunday morning
+	papers confirmed all he said. Germany had declared
+	war on Russia. France was involved. Would Great
+	Britain come in, or for ever lose her honour?</p>
+
+	<p>That warm beautiful Sunday afternoon they sat
+	on the peaceful lawn under the shadow of the great
+	cathedral. Burford brought out the tea-tray and
+	Mrs. Conover poured out tea. Sir Archibald and
+	Lady Bruce and their daughter Dorothy were there.
+	Doggie, impeccable in dark purple. Nothing clouded
+	the centuries-old serenity of the place. Yet they asked
+	the question that was asked on every quiet lawn,
+	every little scrap of shaded garden throughout the land
+	that day: Would England go to war?</p>
+
+	<p>And if she came in, as come in she must, what
+	would be the result? All had premonitions of strange
+	shifting of destinies. As it was yesterday so it was
+	to-day in that gracious shrine of immutability. But
+	every one knew in his heart that as it was to-day so
+	would it not be to-morrow. The very word “war�
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page55" title="55"> </a>seemed as out of place as the suggestion of Hell in
+	Paradise. Yet the throb of the War Drum came
+	over the broad land of France and over the sea and half
+	over England, and its echo fell upon the Deanery
+	garden, flung by the flying buttresses and piers and
+	towers of the grey cathedral.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">On the morning of Wednesday, the 5th of August,
+	it thundered all over the Close. The ultimatum to
+	Germany as to Belgium had expired the night before.
+	We were at war.</p>
+
+	<p>“Thank God,� said the Dean at breakfast, “we
+	needn’t cast down our eyes and slink by when we meet
+	a Frenchman.�</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_V"><a class="pagenum" id="page56" title="56"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> first thing that brought the seriousness of the
+	war home to Doggie was a letter from John
+	Fox. John Fox, a major in a Territorial regiment,
+	was mobilized. He regretted that he could not give
+	his personal attention to the proposed alterations at
+	Denby Hall. Should the plans be proceeded with in
+	his absence from the office, or would Mr. Trevor
+	care to wait till the end of the war, which, from the
+	nature of things, could not last very long? Doggie
+	trotted off to Peggy. She was greatly annoyed.</p>
+
+	<p>“What awful rot!� she cried. “Fox, a major of
+	artillery! I’d just as soon trust you with a gun.
+	Why doesn’t he stick to his architecture?�</p>
+
+	<p>“He’d be shot or something if he refused to go,�
+	said Doggie. “But why can’t we turn it over to Sir
+	Owen Julius?�</p>
+
+	<p>“That old archæological fossil?�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy, womanlike, forgot that they had approached
+	him in the first place.</p>
+
+	<p>“He’d never begin to understand what we want.
+	Fox hinted as much. Now Fox is modern and up to
+	date and sympathetic. If I can’t have Fox, I won’t
+	have Sir Owen. Why, he’s older than Dad! He’s
+	decrepit. Can’t we get another architect?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Do you think, dear,� said Doggie, “that, in the
+	circumstances, it would be a nice thing to do?�</p>
+
+	<p>She flashed a glance at him. She had woven no
+	young girl’s romantic illusions around Marmaduke.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page57" title="57"> </a>Should necessity have arisen, she could have furnished
+	you with a merciless analysis of his character. But
+	in that analysis she would have frankly included a very
+	fine sense of honour. If he said a thing wasn’t quite
+	nice—well, it wasn’t quite nice.</p>
+
+	<p>“I suppose it wouldn’t,� she admitted. “We
+	shall have to wait. But it’s a rotten nuisance all the
+	same.�</p>
+
+	<p>Hundreds of thousands of not very intelligent,
+	but at the same time by no means unpatriotic, people,
+	like Peggy, at the beginning of the war thought trivial
+	disappointments rotten nuisances. We had all waxed
+	too fat during the opening years of the twentieth century,
+	and, not having a spiritual ideal in God’s universe,
+	we were in danger of perishing from Fatty Degeneration
+	of the Soul. As it was, it took a year or more of
+	war to cure us.</p>
+
+	<p>It took Peggy quite a month to appreciate the
+	meaning of the mobilization of Major Fox, R.F.A.
+	A brigade of Territorial artillery flowed over Durdlebury,
+	and the sacred and sleepy meadows became a
+	mass of guns and horse-lines and men in khaki, and
+	waggons and dingy canvas tents—and the old quiet
+	streets were thick with unaccustomed soldiery. The
+	Dean called on the Colonel and officers, and soon the
+	house was full of eager young men holding the King’s
+	commission. Doggie admired their patriotism, but
+	disliked their whole-hearted embodiment of the
+	military spirit. They seemed to have no ideas beyond
+	their new trade. The way they clanked about in
+	their great boots and spurs got on his nerves. He
+	dreaded also lest Peggy should be affected by the
+	meretricious attraction of a uniform. There were
+	fine hefty fellows among the visitors at the Deanery,
+	on whom Peggy looked with natural admiration.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page58" title="58"> </a>Doggie bitterly confided to Goliath that it was the
+	“glamour of brawn.� It never entered his head
+	during those early days that all the brawn of all the
+	manhood of the nation would be needed. We had our
+	well-organized Army and Navy, composed of peculiarly
+	constituted men whose duty it was to fight;
+	just as we had our well-organized National Church,
+	also composed of peculiarly constituted men whose
+	duty it was to preach. He regarded himself as remote
+	from one as from the other.</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver, who had made a sort of peace with Doggie
+	and remained at the Deanery, very quickly grew
+	restless.</p>
+
+	<p>One day, walking with Peggy and Marmaduke
+	in the garden, he said: “I wish I could get hold of
+	that confounded fellow, Chipmunk!�</p>
+
+	<p>Partly through deference to the good Dean’s delicately
+	hinted distaste for that upsetter of decorous
+	households, and partly to allow his follower to attend
+	to his own domestic affairs, he had left Chipmunk in
+	London. Fifteen years ago Chipmunk had parted
+	from a wife somewhere in the neighbourhood of the
+	East India Docks. Both being illiterate, neither had
+	since communicated with the other. As he had left
+	her earning good money in a factory, his fifteen years’
+	separation had been relieved from anxiety as to her
+	material welfare. A prudent, although a beer-loving
+	man, he had amassed considerable savings, and it was
+	the dual motive of sharing these with his wife and of
+	protecting his patron from the ever-lurking perils
+	of London, that had brought him across the seas.
+	When Oliver had set him free in town, he was going
+	in quest of his wife. But as he had forgotten the name
+	of the street near the East India Docks where his
+	wife lived, and the name of the factory in which she
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page59" title="59"> </a>worked, the successful issue of the quest, in Oliver’s
+	opinion, seemed problematical. The simple Chipmunk,
+	however, was quite sanguine. He would run
+	into her all right. As soon as he had found her he
+	would let the Captain know. Up to the present he
+	had not communicated with the Captain. He could
+	give the Captain no definite address, so the Captain
+	could not communicate with him. Chipmunk had
+	disappeared into the unknown.</p>
+
+	<p>“Isn’t he quite capable of taking care of himself?�
+	asked Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m not so sure,� replied Oliver. “Besides,
+	he’s hanging me up. I’m kind of responsible for him,
+	and I’ve got sixty pounds of his money. It’s all I
+	could do to persuade him not to stow the lot in his
+	pocket, so as to divide it with Mrs. Chipmunk as soon
+	as he saw her. I must find out what has become of
+	the beggar before I move.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I suppose,� said Doggie, “you’re anxious now
+	to get back to the South Seas?�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver stared at him. “No, sonny, not till the
+	war’s over.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Why, you wouldn’t be in any great danger out
+	there, would you?�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver laughed. “You’re the funniest duck that
+	ever was, Doggie. I’ll never get to the end of you.�
+	And he strolled away.</p>
+
+	<p>“What does he mean?� asked the bewildered
+	Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“I think,� replied Peggy, smiling, “that he means
+	he’s going to fight.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh,� said Doggie. Then after a pause he added,
+	“He’s just the sort of chap for a soldier, isn’t he?�</p>
+
+	<p>The next day Oliver’s anxiety as to Chipmunk was
+	relieved by the appearance of the man himself, incredibly
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page60" title="60"> </a>dirty and dusty and thirsty. Having found no
+	trace of his wife, and having been robbed of the money
+	he carried about him, he had tramped to Durdlebury,
+	where he reported himself to his master as if nothing
+	out of the way had happened.</p>
+
+	<p>“You silly blighter,� said Oliver. “Suppose I
+	had let you go with your other sixty pounds, you would
+	have been pretty well in the soup, wouldn’t you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, Cap’en,� said Chipmunk.</p>
+
+	<p>“And you’re not going on any blethering idiot wild-goose
+	chases after wives and such-like truck again, are
+	you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“No, Cap’en,� said Chipmunk.</p>
+
+	<p>This was in the stable-yard, after Chipmunk had
+	shaken some of the dust out of his hair and clothes
+	and had eaten and drunk voraciously. He was now
+	sitting on an upturned bucket and smoking his clay
+	pipe with an air of solid content. Oliver, lean and
+	supple, his hands in his pockets, looked humorously
+	down upon him.</p>
+
+	<p>“And you’ve got to stick to me for the future,
+	like a roseate leech.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, Cap’en.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re going to ride a horse.�</p>
+
+	<p>“A wot?� roared Chipmunk.</p>
+
+	<p>“A thing on four legs, that kicks like hell.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Wotever for? I ain’t never ridden no ’osses.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re going to learn, you unmilitary-looking,
+	worm-eaten scab. You’ve got to be a ruddy soldier.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Gorblime!� said Chipmunk, “that’s the first I
+	’eard of it. A ’oss soldier? You’re not kiddin’,
+	are you, Cap’en?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Certainly not.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Gorblime! Who would ha’ thought it?�
+	Then he spat lustily and sucked at his pipe.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page61" title="61"> </a>“You’ve nothing to say against it, have you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“No, Cap’en.�</p>
+
+	<p>“All right. And look here, when we’re in the
+	army you must chuck calling me Cap’en.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What shall I have to call yer? Gineral?�
+	Chipmunk asked simply.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mate, Bill, Joe—any old name.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Ker-ist!� said Chipmunk.</p>
+
+	<p>“Do you know why we’re going to enlist?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Can’t say as ’ow I does, Cap’en.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You chuckle-headed swab! Don’t you know
+	we’re at war?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I did ’ear some talk about it in a pub one night,�
+	Chipmunk admitted. “’Oo are we fighting? Dutchmen
+	or Dagoes?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Dutchmen.�</p>
+
+	<p>Chipmunk spat in his horny hands, rubbed them
+	together and smiled. As each individual hair on his face
+	seemed to enter into the smile, the result was sinister.</p>
+
+	<p>“Do you remember that Dutchman at Samoa,
+	Cap’en?�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver smiled back. He remembered the hulking,
+	truculent German merchant whom Chipmunk, having
+	half strangled, threw into the sea. He also remembered
+	the amount of accomplished lying he had to
+	practise in order to save Chipmunk from the clutches
+	of the law and get away with the schooner.</p>
+
+	<p>“We leave here to-morrow,� said Oliver. “In
+	the meanwhile you’ll have to shave your ugly face.�</p>
+
+	<p>For the first time Chipmunk was really staggered.
+	He gaped at Oliver’s retiring figure. Even his limited
+	and time-worn vocabulary failed him. The desperate
+	meaning of the war has flashed suddenly on millions
+	of men in millions of different ways. This is the
+	way in which it flashed on Chipmunk.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page62" title="62"> </a>He sat on his bucket pondering over the awfulness
+	of it and sucking his pipe long after it had been smoked
+	out. The Dean’s car drove into the yard and the
+	chauffeur, stripping off his coat, prepared to clean it
+	down.</p>
+
+	<p>“Say, guv’nor,� said Chipmunk hoarsely, “what
+	do you think of this ’ere war?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Same as most people,� replied the chauffeur tersely.
+	He shared in the general disapproval of Chipmunk.</p>
+
+	<p>“But see ’ere. Cap’en he tells me I must shave me
+	face and be a ’oss soldier. I never shaved me face in
+	me life, and I dunno ’ow to do it, just as I dunno ’ow
+	to ride a ’oss. I’m a sailorman, I am, and sailormen
+	don’t shave their faces and ride ’osses. That’s why I
+	arsked yer what yer thought of this ’ere war.�</p>
+
+	<p>The chauffeur struggled into his jeans and adjusted
+	them before replying.</p>
+
+	<p>“If you’re a sailor, the place for you is the navy,�
+	he remarked in a superior manner. “As for the
+	cavalry, the Cap’en, as you call him, ought to have
+	more sense——�</p>
+
+	<p>Chipmunk rose and swung his long arms threateningly.</p>
+
+	<p>“Look ’ere, young feller, do you want to have your
+	blinkin’ ’ead knocked orf? Where the Cap’en goes,
+	I goes, and don’t you make any mistake about it!�</p>
+
+	<p>“I didn’t say anything,� the chauffeur expostulated.</p>
+
+	<p>“Then don’t say it. See? Keep your blinkin’ ’ead
+	shut and mind your own business.�</p>
+
+	<p>And, scowling fiercely and thrusting his empty
+	pipe into his trousers pocket, Chipmunk rolled away.</p>
+
+	<p>A few hours later Oliver, entering his room to dress
+	for dinner, found him standing in the light of the
+	window laboriously fitting studs into a shirt. The
+	devoted fellow having gone to report to his master,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page63" title="63"> </a>had found Burford engaged in his accustomed task of
+	laying out his master’s evening clothes—Oliver during
+	his stay in London had provided himself with these
+	necessaries. A jealous snarl had sent Burford flying.
+	So intent was he on his work, that he did not hear
+	Oliver enter. Oliver stood and watched him. Chipmunk
+	was swearing wholesomely under his breath.
+	Oliver saw him take up the tail of the shirt, spit on it
+	and begin to rub something.</p>
+
+	<p>“Ker-ist!� said Chipmunk.</p>
+
+	<p>“What in the thundering blazes are you doing
+	there?� cried Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>Chipmunk turned.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, my God!� said Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>Then he sank on a chair and laughed and laughed,
+	and the more he looked at Chipmunk the more he
+	laughed. And Chipmunk stood stolid, holding the
+	shirt of the awful, wet, thumb-marked front. But
+	it was not at the shirt that Oliver laughed.</p>
+
+	<p>“Good God!� he cried, “were you born like
+	that?�</p>
+
+	<p>For Chipmunk, having gone to the barber’s, was
+	clean-shaven, and revealed himself as one of the
+	most comically ugly of the sons of men.</p>
+
+	<p>“Never mind,� said Oliver, after a while, “you’ve
+	made the sacrifice for your country.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And wot if I get the face-ache?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’d get something that looked like a face before
+	I’d talk of it,� grinned Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>At the family dinner-table, Doggie being present,
+	he announced his intentions. It was the duty of
+	every able-bodied man to fight for the Empire. Had
+	not half a million just been called for? We should
+	want a jolly sight more than that before we got through
+	with it. Anyway, he was off to-morrow.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page64" title="64"> </a>“To-morrow?� echoed the Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>Burford, who was handing him potatoes, arched
+	his eyebrows in alarm. He was fond of Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>“With Chipmunk.�</p>
+
+	<p>Burford uttered an unheard sigh of relief.</p>
+
+	<p>“We’re going to enlist in King Edward’s Horse.
+	They’re our kind. Overseas men. Lots of ’em what
+	you dear good people would call bad eggs. There you
+	make the mistake. Perhaps they mayn’t be fresh
+	enough raw for a dainty palate—but for cooking,
+	good hard cooking, by gosh! nothing can touch
+	’em.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You talk of enlisting, dear,� said Mrs. Conover.
+	“Does that mean as a private soldier?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes—a trooper. Why not?�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re a gentleman, dear. And gentlemen in
+	the Army are officers.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not now, my dear Sophia,� said the Dean.
+	“Gentlemen are crowding into the ranks. They are
+	setting a noble example.�</p>
+
+	<p>They argued it out in their gentle old-fashioned way.
+	The Dean quoted examples of sons of family who had
+	served as privates in the South African War.</p>
+
+	<p>“And that to this,� said he, “is but an eddy to a
+	maelstrom.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Come and join us, James Marmaduke,� said
+	Oliver across the table. “Chipmunk and me.
+	Three ‘sworn brothers to France.’�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie smiled easily. “I’m afraid I can’t undertake
+	to swear a fraternal affection for Chipmunk.
+	He and I would have neither habits nor ideals in
+	common.�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver turned to Peggy. “I wish,� said he, with
+	rare restraint, “he wouldn’t talk like a book on
+	deportment.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page65" title="65"> </a>“Marmaduke talks the language of civilization,�
+	laughed Peggy. “He’s not a savage like you.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Don’t you jolly well wish he was!� said Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy flushed. “No, I don’t!� she declared.</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean being called away on business immediately
+	after dinner, the young men were left alone in
+	the dining-room when the ladies had departed. Oliver
+	poured himself out a glass of port and filled his pipe—an
+	inelegant proceeding of which Doggie disapproved.
+	A pipe alone was barbaric, a pipe with
+	old port was criminal. He held his peace however.</p>
+
+	<p>“James Marmaduke,� said Oliver, after a while,
+	“what are you going to do?� Much as Marmaduke
+	disliked the name of “Doggie,� he winced under the
+	irony of the new appellation.</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t see that I’m called upon to do anything,�
+	he replied.</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver smoked and sipped his port. “I don’t want
+	to hurt your feelings any more,� said he gravely,
+	“though sometimes I’d like to scrag you—I suppose
+	because you’re so different from me. It was so when
+	we were children together. Now I’ve grown very
+	fond of Peggy. Put on the right track, she might
+	turn into a very fine woman.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t think we need discuss Peggy, Oliver,�
+	said Marmaduke.</p>
+
+	<p>“I do. She is sticking to you very loyally.�
+	Oliver was a bit of an idealist. “The time may come
+	when she’ll be up the devil’s own tree. She’ll develop
+	a patriotic conscience. If she sticks to you while you
+	do nothing she’ll be miserable. If she chucks you,
+	as she probably will, she’ll be no happier. It’s all up
+	to you, James Doggie Marmaduke, old son. You’ll
+	have to gird up your loins and take sword and buckler
+	and march away like the rest. I don’t want Peggy
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page66" title="66"> </a>to be unhappy. I want her to marry a man. That’s
+	why I proposed to take you out with me to Huaheine
+	and try to make you one. But that’s over. Now,
+	here’s the real chance. Better take it sooner than
+	later. You’ll have to be a soldier, Doggie.�</p>
+
+	<p>His pipe not drawing, he was preparing to dig it
+	with the point of a dessert-knife, when Doggie interposed
+	hurriedly.</p>
+
+	<p>“For goodness’ sake, don’t do that! It makes
+	cold shivers run down my back!�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver looked at him oddly, put the extinct pipe
+	in his dinner-jacket pocket and rose.</p>
+
+	<p>“A flaw in the dainty and divine ordering of things
+	makes you shiver now, old Doggie. What will you
+	do when you see a fellow digging out another fellow’s
+	intestines with the point of a bayonet? A bigger
+	flaw there somehow!�</p>
+
+	<p>“Don’t talk like that. You make me sick,� said
+	Doggie.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_VI"><a class="pagenum" id="page67" title="67"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">During</span> the next few months there happened
+	terrible and marvellous things, which are all
+	set down in the myriad chronicles of the time; which
+	shook the world and brought the unknown phenomenon
+	of change into the Close of Durdlebury. Folks
+	of strange habit and speech walked in it, and, gazing
+	at the Gothic splendour of the place, saw through the
+	mist of autumn and the mist of tears not Durdlebury
+	but Louvain. More than one of those grey houses
+	flanking the cathedral and sharing with it the continuity
+	of its venerable life, was a house of mourning; not
+	for loss in the inevitable and not unkindly way of
+	human destiny as understood and accepted with long
+	disciplined resignation—but for loss sudden, awful,
+	devastating; for the gallant lad who had left it but
+	a few weeks before, with a smile on his lips, and a
+	new and dancing light of manhood in his eyes, now
+	with those eyes unclosed and glazed staring at the pitiless
+	Flanders sky. Not one of those houses but was linked
+	with a battlefield. Beyond the memory of man the
+	reader of the Litany had droned the accustomed invocation
+	on behalf of the Sovereign and the Royal
+	Family, the Bishops, Priests and Deacons, the Lords
+	of the Council and all prisoners and captives, and the
+	congregation had lumped them all together in their
+	responses with an undifferentiating convention of
+	fervour. What had prisoners and captives, any more
+	than the Lords of the Council, to do with their lives,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page68" title="68"> </a>their hearts, their personal emotions? But now—Durdlebury
+	men were known to be prisoners in German
+	hands, and after “all prisoners and captives�
+	there was a long and pregnant silence, in which was
+	felt the reverberation of war against pier and vaulted
+	arch and groined roof of the cathedral, which was
+	broken too, now and then, by the stifled sob of a
+	woman, before the choir came in with the response
+	so new and significant in its appeal—“We beseech
+	thee to hear us, O Lord!�</p>
+
+	<p>And in every home the knitting-needles of women
+	clicked, as they did throughout the length and breadth
+	of the land. And the young men left shop and trade
+	and counting-house. And young parsons fretted, and
+	some obtained the Bishop’s permission to become Army
+	chaplains, and others, snapping their fingers (figuratively)
+	under the Bishop’s nose, threw their cassocks
+	to the nettles and put on the full (though in modern
+	times not very splendiferous) panoply of war. And
+	in course of time the brigade of artillery rolled away
+	and new troops took their place; and Marmaduke
+	Trevor, Esquire, of Denby Hall, was called upon to
+	billet a couple of officers and twenty men.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie was both patriotic and polite. Having a
+	fragment of the British Army in his house, he did
+	his best to make them comfortable. By January he
+	had no doubt that the Empire was in peril, that it
+	was every man’s duty to do his bit. He welcomed
+	the new-comers with open arms, having unconsciously
+	abandoned his attitude of superiority over mere brawn.
+	Doggie saw the necessity of brawn. The more the
+	better. It was every patriotic Englishman’s duty to
+	encourage brawn. If the two officers had allowed
+	him, he would have fed his billeted men every two
+	hours on prime beefsteaks and burgundy. He threw
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page69" title="69"> </a>himself heart and soul into the reorganization of his
+	household. Officers and men found themselves in
+	clover. The officers had champagne every night for
+	dinner. They thought Doggie a capital fellow.</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear chap,� they would say, “you’re spoiling
+	us. I don’t say we don’t like it and aren’t grateful.
+	We jolly well are. But we’re supposed to rough it—to
+	lead the simple life—what? You’re doing us
+	too well.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Impossible!� Doggie would reply, filling up the
+	speaker’s glass. “Don’t I know what we owe to you
+	fellows? In what other way can a helpless, delicate
+	crock like myself show his gratitude and in some sort
+	of little way serve his country?�</p>
+
+	<p>When the sympathetic and wine-filled guest would
+	ask what was the nature of his malady, he would tap
+	his chest vaguely and reply:</p>
+
+	<p>“Constitutional. I’ve never been able to do things
+	like other fellows. The least thing bowls me out.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Dam hard lines—especially just now.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, isn’t it?� Doggie would answer. And once
+	he found himself adding, “I’m fed up with doing
+	nothing.�</p>
+
+	<p>Here can be noted a distinct stage in Doggie’s
+	development. He realized the brutality of fact.
+	When great German guns were yawning open-mouthed
+	at you, it was no use saying, “Take the nasty, horrid
+	things away, I don’t like them.� They wouldn’t
+	go unless you took other big guns and fired at them.
+	And more guns were required than could be manned
+	by the peculiarly constituted fellows who made up
+	the artillery of the original British Army. New
+	fellows not at all warlike, peaceful citizens who had
+	never killed a cat in anger, were being driven by
+	patriotism and by conscience to man them. Against
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page70" title="70"> </a>Blood and Iron now supreme, the superior, æsthetic
+	and artistic being was of no avail. You might lament
+	the fall in relative values of collections of wall-papers
+	and little china dogs, as much as you liked; but you
+	could not deny the fall; they had gone down with
+	something of an ignoble “wallop.� Doggie began
+	to set a high value on guns and rifles and such-like
+	deadly engines, and to inquire petulantly why the
+	Government were not providing them at greater
+	numbers and at greater speed. On his periodic visits
+	to London he wandered round by Trafalgar Square
+	and Whitehall, to see for himself how the recruiting
+	was going on. At the Deanery he joined in ardent
+	discussions of the campaign in Flanders. On the
+	walls of his peacock and ivory room were maps stuck
+	all over with little pins. When he told the young
+	officer that he was wearied of inaction, he spoke the
+	truth. He began to feel mightily aggrieved against
+	Providence for keeping him outside this tremendous
+	national league of youth. He never questioned his
+	physical incapacity. It was as real a fact as the
+	German guns. He went about pitying himself and
+	seeking pity.</p>
+
+	<p>The months passed. The regiment moved away
+	from Durdlebury, and Doggie was left alone in Denby
+	Hall.</p>
+
+	<p>He felt solitary and restless. News came from
+	Oliver that he had been offered and had accepted an
+	infantry commission, and that Chipmunk, having none
+	of the special qualities of a “’oss soldier,� had, by certain
+	skilful wire-pullings, been transferred to his regiment,
+	and had once more become his devoted servant.
+	“A month of this sort of thing,� he wrote, “would
+	make our dear old Doggie sit up.� Doggie sighed.
+	If only he had been blessed with Oliver’s constitution!</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page71" title="71"> </a>One morning Briggins, his chauffeur, announced
+	that he could stick it no longer and was going to join
+	up. Then Doggie remembered a talk he had had
+	with one of the young officers who had expressed
+	astonishment at his not being able to drive a car. “I
+	shouldn’t have the nerve,� he had replied. “My
+	nerves are all wrong—and I shouldn’t have the
+	strength to change tyres and things.�… If his
+	chauffeur went, he would find it very difficult to get
+	another. Who would drive the Rolls-Royce?</p>
+
+	<p>“Why not learn to drive yourself, sir?� said
+	Briggins. “Not the Rolls-Royce. I would put it
+	up or get rid of it, if I were you. If you engage a
+	second-rate man, as you’ll have to, who isn’t used to
+	this make of car, he’ll do it in for you pretty quick.
+	Get a smaller one in its place and drive it yourself.
+	I’ll undertake to teach you enough before I go.�</p>
+
+	<p>So Doggie, following Briggins’ advice, took lessons
+	and, to his amazement, found that he did not die of
+	nervous collapse when a dog crossed the road in front
+	of the car and that the fitting of detachable wheels
+	did not require the strength of a Hercules. The first
+	time he took Peggy out in the two-seater he swelled
+	with pride.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m so glad to see you can do something!� she
+	said.</p>
+
+	<p>Although she was kind and as mildly affectionate
+	as ever, he had noticed of late a curious reserve in her
+	manner. Conversation did not flow easily. There
+	seemed to be something at the back of her mind.
+	She had fits of abstraction from which, when rallied,
+	she roused herself with an effort.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s the war,� she would declare. “It’s affecting
+	everybody that way.�</p>
+
+	<p>Gradually Doggie began to realize that she spoke
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page72" title="72"> </a>truly. Most people of his acquaintance, when he
+	was by, seemed to be thus afflicted. The lack of
+	interest they manifested in his delicacy of constitution
+	was almost impolite. At last he received an anonymous
+	letter, “For little Doggie Trevor, from the
+	girls of Durdlebury,� enclosing a white feather.</p>
+
+	<p>The cruelty of it broke Doggie down. He sat in
+	his peacock and ivory room and nearly wept. Then
+	he plucked up courage and went to Peggy. She was
+	rather white about the lips as she listened.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m sorry,� she said, “but I expected something
+	of the sort to happen.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s brutal and unjust.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, it’s brutal,� she admitted coldly.</p>
+
+	<p>“I thought you, at any rate, would sympathize
+	with me,� he cried.</p>
+
+	<p>She turned on him. “And what about me? Who
+	sympathizes with me? Do you ever give a moment’s
+	thought to what I’ve had to go through the last few
+	months?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t quite know what you mean,� he stammered.</p>
+
+	<p>“I should have thought it was obvious. You can’t
+	be such an innocent babe as to suppose people don’t
+	talk about you. They don’t talk to you because they
+	don’t like to be rude. They send you white feathers
+	instead. But they talk to me. ‘Why isn’t Marmaduke
+	in khaki?’ ‘Why isn’t Doggie fighting?’
+	‘I wonder how you can allow him to slack about like
+	that!’—I’ve had a pretty rough time fighting your
+	battles, I can tell you, and I deserve some credit. I
+	want sympathy just as much as you do.�</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear,� said Doggie, feeling very much humiliated,
+	“I never knew. I never thought. I do see
+	now the unpleasant position you’ve been in. People
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page73" title="73"> </a>are brutes. But,� he added eagerly, “you told them
+	the real reason?�</p>
+
+	<p>“What’s that?� she asked, looking at him with
+	cold eyes.</p>
+
+	<p>Then Doggie knew that the wide world was against
+	him. “I’m not fit. I’ve no constitution. I’m an
+	impossibility.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You thought you had nerves until you learned to
+	drive the car. Then you discovered that you hadn’t.
+	You fancy you’ve a weak heart. Perhaps if you
+	learned to walk thirty miles a day you would discover
+	you hadn’t that either. And so with the rest of it.�</p>
+
+	<p>“This is very painful,� he said, going to the window
+	and staring out. “Very painful. You are of the
+	same opinion as the young women who sent me that
+	abominable thing.�</p>
+
+	<p>She had been on the strain for a long while and
+	something inside her had snapped. At his woebegone
+	attitude she relented however, and came up and
+	touched his shoulder.</p>
+
+	<p>“A girl wants to feel some pride in the man she’s
+	going to marry. It’s horrible to have to be always
+	defending him—especially when she’s not sure she’s
+	telling the truth in his defence.�</p>
+
+	<p>He swung round horrified. “Do you think I’m
+	shamming, so as to get out of serving in the Army?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not consciously. Unconsciously, I think you
+	are. What does your doctor say?�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie was taken aback. He had no doctor. He
+	had not consulted one for years, having no cause for
+	medical advice. The old family physician who had
+	attended his mother in her last illness and had prescribed
+	Gregory powders for him as a child, had retired
+	from Durdlebury long ago. There was only one
+	person living familiar with his constitution, and that
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page74" title="74"> </a>was himself. He made confession of the surprising
+	fact. Peggy made a little gesture.</p>
+
+	<p>“That proves it. I don’t believe you have anything
+	wrong with you. The nerves business made
+	me sceptical. This is straight talking. It’s horrid,
+	I know. But it’s best to get through with it once
+	and for all.�</p>
+
+	<p>Some men would have taken deep offence and,
+	consigning Peggy to the devil, have walked out of the
+	room. But Doggie, a conscientious, even though a
+	futile human being, was gnawed for the first time by
+	the suspicion that Peggy might possibly be right. He
+	desired to act honourably.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ll do,� said he, “whatever you think proper.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy was swift to smite the malleable iron. To
+	use the conventional phrase might give an incorrect
+	impression of red-hot martial ardour on the part of
+	Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Good,� she said, with the first smile of the day.
+	“I’ll hold you to it. But it will be an honourable
+	bargain. Get Dr. Murdoch to overhaul you thoroughly,
+	with a view to the Army. If he passes you,
+	take a commission. Dad says he can easily get you
+	one through his old friend General Gadsby at the
+	War Office. If he doesn’t, and you’re unfit, I’ll
+	stick to you through thick and thin, and make the
+	young women of Durdlebury wish they’d never been
+	born.�</p>
+
+	<p>She put out her hand. Doggie took it.</p>
+
+	<p>“Very well,� said he, “I agree.�</p>
+
+	<p>She laughed, and ran to the door.</p>
+
+	<p>“Where are you going?�</p>
+
+	<p>“To the telephone—to ring up Dr. Murdoch for
+	an appointment.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re flabby,� said Dr. Murdoch the next
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page75" title="75"> </a>morning to an anxious Doggie in pink pyjamas; “but
+	that’s merely a matter of unused muscles. Physical
+	training will set it right in no time. Otherwise, my
+	dear Trevor, you’re in splendid health. I was afraid
+	your family history might be against you—the child
+	of elderly parents, and so forth. But nothing of the
+	sort. Not only are you a first-class life for an insurance
+	company, but you’re a first-class life for the Army—and
+	that’s saying a good deal. There’s not a flaw
+	in your whole constitution.�</p>
+
+	<p>He put away his stethoscope and smiled at Doggie,
+	who regarded him blankly as the pronouncer of a
+	doom. He went on to prescribe a course of physical
+	exercises, so many miles a day walking, such and
+	such back-breaking and contortional performances in
+	his bathroom; if possible, a skilfully graduated career
+	in a gymnasium, but his words fell on the ears of a
+	Doggie in a dream; and when he had ended, Doggie
+	said:</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m afraid, Doctor, you’ll have to write all that
+	out for me.�</p>
+
+	<p>“With pleasure,� smiled the doctor, and gripped
+	him by the hand. And seeing Doggie wince, he
+	said heartily: “Ah! I’ll soon set that right for you.
+	I’ll get you something—an india-rubber contrivance
+	to practise with for half an hour a day, and you’ll
+	develop a hand like a gorilla’s.�</p>
+
+	<p>Dr. Murdoch grinned his way, in his little car, to
+	his next patient. Here was this young slacker, coddled
+	from birth, absolutely horse-strong and utterly confounded
+	at being told so. He grinned and chuckled
+	so much that he nearly killed his most valuable old
+	lady patient, who was crossing the High Street.</p>
+
+	<p>But Doggie crept out of bed and put on a violet
+	dressing-gown that clashed horribly with his pink
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page76" title="76"> </a>pyjamas, and wandered like a man in a nightmare
+	to his breakfast. But he could not eat. He swallowed
+	a cup of coffee and sought refuge in his own room.
+	He was frightened. Horribly frightened, caught in
+	a net from which there was no escape—not the tiniest
+	break of a mesh. He had given his word—and in
+	justice to Doggie, be it said that he held his word
+	sacred—he had given his word to join the Army if
+	he should be passed by Murdoch. He had been
+	passed—more than passed. He would have to join.
+	He would have to fight. He would have to live in
+	a muddy trench, sleep in mud, eat in mud, plough
+	through mud, in the midst of falling shells and other
+	instruments of death. And he would be an officer,
+	with all kinds of strange and vulgar men under him,
+	men like Chipmunk, for instance, whom he would
+	never understand. He was almost physically sick with
+	apprehension. He realized that he had never commanded
+	a man in his life. He had been mortally
+	afraid of Briggins, his late chauffeur. He had heard
+	that men at the front lived on some solid horror called
+	bully-beef dug out of tins, and some liquid horror
+	called cocoa, also drunk out of tins; that men kept
+	on their clothes, even their boots, for weeks at a time;
+	that rats ran over them while they tried to sleep;
+	that lice, hitherto associated in his mind with the most
+	revolting type of tramp, out there made no distinction
+	of persons. They were the common lot of the lowest
+	Tommy and the finest gentleman. And then the
+	fighting. The noise of the horrid guns. The disgusting
+	sights of men shattered to bloody bits. The
+	horrible stench. The terror of having one’s face shot
+	half away and being an object of revolt and horror
+	to all beholders for the rest of life. Death. Feverishly
+	he ruffled his comely hair. Death. He was surprised
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page77" title="77"> </a>that the contemplation of it did not freeze the
+	blood in his veins. Yes. He put it clearly before
+	him. He had given his word to Peggy that he would
+	go and expose himself to Death. Death. What did
+	it mean? He had been brought up in orthodox
+	Church of England Christianity. His flaccid mind
+	had never questioned the truth of its dogmas. He
+	believed, in a general sort of way, that good people
+	went to Heaven and bad people went to Hell. His
+	conscience was clear. He had never done any harm
+	to anybody. As far as he knew, he had broken none
+	of the Ten Commandments. In a technical sense
+	he was a miserable sinner, and so proclaimed himself
+	once a week. But though, perhaps, he had done
+	nothing in his life to merit eternal bliss in Paradise,
+	yet, on the other hand, he had committed no action
+	which would justify a kindly and just Creator in
+	consigning him to the eternal flames of Hell. Somehow
+	the thought of Death did not worry him. It
+	faded from his mind, being far less terrible than life
+	under prospective conditions. Discomfort, hunger,
+	thirst, cold, fatigue, pain; above all the terror of his
+	fellows—these were the soul-racking anticipations of
+	this new life into which it was a matter of honour for
+	him to plunge. And to an essential gentleman like
+	Doggie a matter of honour was a matter of life. And
+	so, dressed in his pink pyjamas and violet dressing-gown,
+	amid the peacock-blue and ivory hangings of
+	his boudoir room, and stared at by the countless unsympathetic
+	eyes of his little china dogs, Doggie Trevor
+	passed through his first Gethsemane.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">His decision was greeted with joy at the Deanery.
+	Peggy threw her arms round his neck and gave him
+	the very first real kiss he had ever received. It revived
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page78" title="78"> </a>him considerably. His Aunt Sophia also embraced
+	him. The Dean shook him warmly by the hand,
+	and talked eloquent patriotism. Doggie already felt
+	a hero. He left the house in a glow, but the drive
+	home in the two-seater was cold and the pitch-dark
+	night presaged other nights of mercilessness in the
+	future; and when Doggie sat alone by his fire, sipping
+	the hot milk which Peddle presented him on a silver
+	tray, the doubts and fears of the morning racked him
+	again. An ignoble possibility occurred to him.
+	Murdoch might be wrong. Murdoch might be prejudiced
+	by local gossip. Would it not be better to
+	go up to London and obtain the opinion of a first-class
+	man to whom he was unknown? There was
+	also another alternative. Flight. He might go to
+	America, and do nothing. To the South of France,
+	and help in some sort of way with hospitals for French
+	wounded. He caught himself up short as these
+	thoughts passed through his mind, and he shuddered.
+	He took up the glass of hot milk and put it down
+	again. Milk? He needed something stronger. A
+	glance in a mirror showed him his sleek hair tousled
+	into an upstanding wig. In a kind of horror of himself
+	he went to the dining-room and for the first time in
+	his life drank a stiff whisky and soda for the sake of
+	the stimulant. Reaction came. He felt a man once
+	more. Rather suicide at once than such damnable
+	dishonour. According to the directions which the
+	Dean, a man of affairs, had given him, he sat down
+	and wrote his application to the War Office for a
+	commission. Then—unique adventure!—he stole
+	out of the barred and bolted house, without thought
+	of hat and overcoat (let the traducers of alcohol mark
+	it well), ran down the drive and posted the letter in
+	the box some few yards beyond his entrance gates.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page79" title="79"> </a>The Dean had already posted his letter to his old
+	friend General Gadsby at the War Office.</p>
+
+	<p>So the die was cast. The Rubicon was crossed.
+	The bridges were burnt. The irrevocable step was
+	taken. Dr. Murdoch turned up the next morning
+	with his prescription for physical training. And then
+	Doggie trained assiduously, monotonously, wearily.
+	He grew appalled by the senselessness of this apparently
+	unnecessary exertion. Now and then Peggy accompanied
+	him on his prescribed walks; but the charm
+	of her company was discounted by the glaring superiority
+	of her powers of endurance. While he ached with
+	fatigue, she pressed along as fresh as Atalanta at the
+	beginning of her race. When they parted by the
+	Deanery door, she would stand flushed, radiant in
+	her youth and health, and say:</p>
+
+	<p>“We’ve had a topping walk, old dear. Now isn’t
+	it a glorious thing to feel oneself alive?�</p>
+
+	<p>But poor Doggie of the flabby muscles felt half
+	dead.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">The fateful letter burdening Doggie with the King’s
+	commission arrived a few weeks later: a second
+	lieutenancy in a Fusilier battalion of the New Army.
+	Dates and instructions were given. The impress of
+	the Royal Arms at the head of the paper, with its
+	grotesque perky lion and unicorn, conveyed to Doggie
+	a sense of the grip of some uncanny power. The typewritten
+	words scarcely mattered. The impress fascinated
+	him. There was no getting away from it.
+	Those two pawing beasts held him in their clutch.
+	They headed a Death Warrant, from which there
+	was no appeal.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie put his house in order, dismissed with bounty
+	those of his servants who would be no longer needed,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page80" title="80"> </a>and kept the Peddles, husband and wife, to look after
+	his interests. On his last night at home he went
+	wistfully through the familiar place, the drawing-room
+	sacred to his mother’s memory, the dining-room
+	so solid in its half-century of comfort, his own peacock
+	and ivory room so intensely himself, so expressive of
+	his every taste, every mood, every emotion. Those
+	strange old-world musical instruments—he could play
+	them all with the touch or breath of a master and a
+	lover. The old Italian theorbo. He took it up.
+	How few to-day knew its melodious secret! He
+	looked around. All these daintinesses and prettinesses
+	had a meaning. They signified the magical
+	little beauties of life—things which asserted a range
+	of spiritual truths, none the less real and consolatory
+	because vice and crime and ugliness and misery and
+	war co-existed in ghastly fact on other facets of the
+	planet Earth. The sweetness here expressed was as
+	essential to the world’s spiritual life as the sweet
+	elements of foodstuffs to its physical life. To the
+	getting together of all these articles of beauty he had
+	devoted the years of his youth…. And—another
+	point of view—was he not the guardian by inheritance—in
+	other words, by Divine Providence—of this
+	beautiful English home, the trustee of English comfort,
+	of the sacred traditions of sweet English life that
+	had made England the only country, the only country,
+	he thought, that could call itself a Country and not a
+	Compromise, in the world?</p>
+
+	<p>And he was going to leave it all. All that it meant
+	in beauty and dignity and ease of life. For what?</p>
+
+	<p>For horror and filthiness and ugliness, for everything
+	against which his beautiful peacock and ivory
+	room protested. Doggie’s last night at Denby Hall
+	was a troubled one.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page81" title="81"> </a>Aunt Sophia and Peggy accompanied him to London
+	and stayed with him at his stuffy little hotel off Bond
+	Street, while Doggie got his kit together. They
+	bought everything in every West End shop that any
+	salesman assured them was essential for active service.
+	Swords, revolvers, field-glasses, pocket-knives (for
+	gigantic pockets), compasses, mess-tins, cooking-batteries,
+	sleeping-bags, waterproofs, boots innumerable,
+	toilet accessories, drinking-cups, thermos flasks,
+	field stationery cases, periscopes, tinted glasses, Gieve
+	waistcoats, cholera belts, portable medicine cases, earplugs,
+	tin-openers, corkscrews, notebooks, pencils,
+	luminous watches, electric torches, pins, housewives,
+	patent seat walking-sticks—everything that the man
+	of commercial instincts had devised for the prosecution
+	of the war.</p>
+
+	<p>The amount of warlike equipment with which
+	Doggie, with the aid of his Aunt Sophia and Peggy,
+	encumbered the narrow little passages of Sturrocks’s
+	Hotel, must have weighed about a ton.</p>
+
+	<p>At last Doggie’s uniforms—several suits—came
+	home. He had devoted enormous care to their fit.
+	Attired in one he looked beautiful. Peggy decreed a
+	dinner at the Carlton. She and Doggie alone. Her
+	mother could get some stuffy old relation to spend the
+	evening with her at Sturrocks’s. She wanted Doggie
+	all to herself, so as to realize the dream of many
+	disgusting and humiliating months. And as she swept
+	through the palm court and up the broad stairs and
+	wound through the crowded tables of the restaurant
+	with the khaki-clad Doggie by her side, she felt proud
+	and uplifted. Here was her soldier whom she had
+	made. Her very own man in khaki.</p>
+
+	<p>“Dear old thing,� she whispered, pressing his arm
+	as they trekked to their table. “Don’t you feel
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page82" title="82"> </a>glorious? Don’t you feel as if you could face the
+	universe?�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy drank one glass of the quart of champagne.
+	Doggie drank the rest.</p>
+
+	<p>On getting into bed he wondered why this unprecedented
+	quantity of wine had not affected his
+	sobriety. Its only effect had been to stifle thought.
+	He went to bed and slept happily, for Peggy’s parting
+	kiss had been such as would conduce to any young
+	man’s felicity.</p>
+
+	<p>The next morning Aunt Sophia and Peggy saw
+	him off to his depot, with his ton of luggage. He
+	leaned out of the carriage window and exchanged
+	hand kisses with Peggy until the curve of the line cut
+	her off. Then he settled down in his corner with the
+	<cite>Morning Post</cite>. But he could not concentrate his
+	attention on the morning news. This strange costume
+	in which he was clothed seemed unreal, monstrous;
+	no longer the natty dress in which he had been proud
+	to prink the night before, but a nightmare, Nessus-like
+	investiture, signifying some abominable burning
+	doom.</p>
+
+	<p>The train swept him into a world that was upside
+	down.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_VII"><a class="pagenum" id="page83" title="83"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">Those</span> were proud days for Peggy. She went
+	about Durdlebury with her head in the air,
+	and her step was as martial as though she herself wore
+	the King’s uniform, and she regarded the other girls
+	of the town with a defiant eye. If only she could
+	discover, she thought, the sender of the abominable
+	feather! In Timpany’s drapery establishment she
+	raked the girls at the counter with a searching glance.
+	At the cathedral services she studied the demure faces
+	of her contemporaries. Now that Doggie was a
+	soldier she held the anonymous exploit to be cowardly
+	and brutal. What did people know of the thousand
+	and one reasons that kept eligible young men out of
+	the Army? What had they known of Marmaduke?
+	As soon as the illusion of his life had been dispelled, he
+	had marched away with as gallant a tread as anybody;
+	and though Doggie had kept to himself his shrinkings
+	and his terrors, she knew that what to the average
+	hardily bred young man was a gay adventure, was to
+	him an ordeal of considerable difficulty. She longed for
+	his first leave, so that she could parade him before the
+	town, in the event of there being a lurking sceptic who
+	still refused to believe that he had joined the Army.</p>
+
+	<p>Conspicuous in the drawing-room, framed in silver,
+	stood a large full-length photograph of Doggie in his
+	new uniform.</p>
+
+	<p>She wrote to him daily, chronicling the little doings
+	of the town, at times reviling it for its dullness. Dad,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page84" title="84"> </a>on numberless committees, was scarcely ever in the
+	house, except for hurried meals. Most of the pleasant
+	young clergy had gone. Many of the girls had gone
+	too: Dorothy Bruce to be a probationer in a V.A.D.
+	hospital. If Durdlebury were not such a rotten out-of-the-world
+	place, the infirmary would be full of
+	wounded soldiers, and she could do her turn at nursing.
+	As things were, she could only knit socks for Tommies
+	and a silk khaki tie for her own boy. But when
+	everybody was doing their bit, these occupations were
+	not enough to prevent her feeling a little slacker.
+	He would have to do the patriotic work for both of
+	them, tell her all about himself, and let her share
+	everything with him in imagination. She also expressed
+	her affection for him in shy and slangy terms.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie wrote regularly. His letters were as shy
+	and conveyed less information. The work was hard,
+	the hours long, his accommodation Spartan. They
+	were in huts on Salisbury Plain. Sometimes he
+	confessed himself too tired to write more than a few
+	lines. He had a bad cold in the head. He was
+	better. They had inoculated him against typhoid and
+	had allowed him two or three slack days. The first
+	time he had unaccountably fainted; but he had seen
+	some of the men do the same, and the doctor had
+	assured him that it had nothing to do with cowardice.
+	He had gone for a route march and had returned a
+	dusty lump of fatigue. But after having shaken the
+	dust out of his moustache—Doggie had a playful
+	turn of phrase now and then—and drunk a quart
+	of shandy-gaff, he had felt refreshed. Then it rained
+	hard, and they were all but washed out of the huts.
+	It was a very strange life—one which he never dreamed
+	could have existed. “Fancy me,� he wrote, “glad
+	to sleep on a drenched bed!� There was the riding-school.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page85" title="85"> </a>Why hadn’t he learned to ride as a boy?
+	He had been told that the horse was a noble animal
+	and the friend of man. He was afraid he would
+	return to his dear Peggy with many of his young
+	illusions shattered. The horse was the most ignoble,
+	malevolent beast that ever walked, except the sergeant-major
+	in the riding-school. Peggy was filled with
+	admiration for his philosophic endurance of hardships.
+	It was real courage. His letters contained simple
+	statements of fact, but not a word of complaint. On
+	the other hand, they were not ebullient with joy;
+	but then, Peggy reflected, there was not much to be
+	joyous about in a ramshackle hut on Salisbury Plain.
+	“Dear old thing,� she would write, “although you
+	don’t grouse, I know you must be having a pretty
+	thin time. But you’re bucking up splendidly, and
+	when you get your leave I’ll do a girl’s very d——dest
+	(don’t be shocked; but I’m sure you’re learning far
+	worse language in the Army) to make it up to you.�
+	Her heart was very full of him.</p>
+
+	<p>Then there came a time when his letters grew
+	rarer and shorter. At last they ceased altogether.
+	After a week’s waiting she sent an anxious telegram.
+	The answer came back. “Quite well. Will write
+	soon.� She waited. He did not write. One evening
+	an unstamped envelope, addressed to her in a
+	feminine hand, which she recognized as that of Marmaduke’s
+	anonymous correspondent, was found in the
+	Deanery letter-box. The envelope enclosed a copy
+	of a cutting from the “Gazette� of the morning
+	paper, and a sentence was underlined and adorned
+	with exclamation marks at the sides.</p>
+
+	<blockquote>
+	    <p>“R. Fusiliers. Tempy. 2nd Lieutenant J.
+	    Trevor resigns his commission.�</p>
+	</blockquote>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page86" title="86"> </a>The Colonel dealt with him as gently as he could
+	in that final interview. He put his hand in a fatherly
+	way on Doggie’s shoulder and bade him not take it
+	too much to heart. He had done his best; but he
+	was not cut out for an officer. These were merciless
+	times. In matters of life and death we could not
+	afford weak links in the chain. Soldiers in high
+	command, with great reputations, had already been
+	scrapped. In Doggie’s case there was no personal
+	discredit. He had always conducted himself like a
+	gentleman and a man of honour, but he had not the
+	qualities necessary for the commanding of men. He
+	must send in his resignation.</p>
+
+	<p>“But what can I do, sir?� asked Doggie in a
+	choking voice. “I am disgraced for ever.�</p>
+
+	<p>The Colonel reflected for a moment. He knew
+	that Doggie’s life had been a little hell on earth from
+	the first day he had joined. He was very sorry for
+	the poor little toy Pom in his pack of hounds. It
+	was scarcely the toy Pom’s fault that he had failed.
+	But the Great Hunt could have no use for toy Poms.
+	At last he took a sheet of regimental notepaper and
+	wrote:</p>
+
+	<blockquote>
+		<p class="salutation">“Dear Trevor,—</p>
+
+		<p>“I am full of admiration for the plucky way in
+		which you have striven to overcome your physical
+		disabilities, and I am only too sorry that they should
+		have compelled the resignation of your commission
+		and your severance from the regiment.</p>
+
+		<p class="signature">“Yours sincerely,<br />
+		“<span class="name">L. G. Caird</span>,<br />
+		“Lt-Col.�</p>
+
+	</blockquote>
+
+	<p>He handed it to Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page87" title="87"> </a>“That’s all I can do for you, my poor boy,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>“Thank you, sir,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">Doggie took a room at the Savoy Hotel, and sat
+	there most of the day, the pulp of a man. He had
+	gone to the Savoy, not daring to show his face at the
+	familiar Sturrocks’s. At the Savoy he was but a
+	number unknown, unquestioned. He wore civilian
+	clothes. Such of his uniforms and martial paraphernalia
+	as he had been allowed to retain in camp—for
+	one can’t house a ton of kit in a hut—he had given to
+	his batman. His one desire now was to escape from
+	the eyes of his fellow-men. He felt that he bore
+	upon him the stigma of his disgrace, obvious to any
+	casual glance. He was the man who had been turned
+	out of the army as a hopeless incompetent. Even
+	worse than the slacker—for the slacker might have
+	latent the qualities that he lacked. Even at the best
+	and brightest, he could only be mistaken for a slacker,
+	once more the likely recipient of white feathers from
+	any damsel patriotically indiscreet. The Colonel’s
+	letter brought him little consolation. It is true that
+	he carried it about with him in his pocket-book;
+	but the gibing eyes of observers had not the X-ray
+	power to read it there. And he could not pin it on
+	his hat. Besides, he knew that the kindly Colonel
+	had stretched a point of veracity. No longer could
+	he take refuge in his cherished delicacy of constitution.
+	It would be a lie.</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy, in her softest and most pitying mood, never
+	guessed the nature of Doggie’s ordeal. Those letters
+	so brave, sometimes so playful, had been written with
+	shaky hand, misty eyes, throbbing head, despairing
+	heart. Looking back, it seemed to him one blurred
+	dream of pain. His brother officers were no worse
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page88" title="88"> </a>than those in any other Kitchener regiment. Indeed,
+	the Colonel was immensely proud of them and sang
+	their praises to any fellow-dugout who would listen
+	to him at the Naval and Military Club. But how
+	were a crowd of young men, trained in the rough and
+	tumble of public schools, universities and sport, and
+	now throbbing under the stress of the new deadly
+	game, to understand poor Doggie Trevor? They
+	had no time to take him seriously, save to curse him
+	when he did wrong, and in their leisure time he became
+	naturally a butt for their amusement.</p>
+
+	<p>“Surely I don’t have to sleep in there?� he asked
+	the subaltern who was taking him round on the day
+	of his arrival in camp, and showed him his squalid
+	little cubby-hole of a hut with its dirty boards, its
+	cheap table and chair, its narrow sleep-dispelling little
+	bedstead.</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, it’s a beastly hole, isn’t it? Until last month
+	we were under canvas.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Sleeping on the bare ground?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Wallowing in the mud like pigs. Not one of us
+	without a cold. Never had a such filthy time in my
+	life.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie looked about him helplessly, while the
+	comforter smiled grimly. Already his disconsolate
+	attitude towards the dingy hutments of the camp and
+	the layer of thick mud on his beautiful new boots
+	had diverted his companion.</p>
+
+	<p>“Couldn’t I have this furnished at my own
+	expense? A carpet and a proper bed, and a few
+	pictures——�</p>
+
+	<p>“I wouldn’t try.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Why not?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Some of it might get broken—not quite accidentally.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page89" title="89"> </a>“But surely,� gasped Doggie, “the soldiers would
+	not be allowed to come in here and touch my furniture?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It seems,� said the subaltern, after a bewildered
+	stare, “that you have quite a lot to learn.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie had. The subaltern reported a new kind
+	of animal to the mess. The mess saw to it that Doggie
+	should be crammed with information—but information
+	wholly incorrect and misleading, which added to
+	his many difficulties. When his ton of kit arrived
+	he held an unwilling reception in the hut and found
+	himself obliged to explain to gravely curious men the
+	use for which the various articles were designed.</p>
+
+	<p>“This, I suppose, is a new type of gas-mask?�</p>
+
+	<p>No. It was a patent cooker. Doggie politely
+	showed how it worked. He also demonstrated that a
+	sleeping-bag was not a kit-sack of a size unauthorized
+	by the regulations, and that a huge steel-pointed walking-stick
+	had nothing to do with agriculture.</p>
+
+	<p>He was very weary of his visitors by the time they
+	had gone. The next day the Adjutant advised him
+	to scrap the lot. So sorrowfully he sent back most
+	of his purchases to London.</p>
+
+	<p>Then the Imp of Mischance brought as a visitor
+	to the mess, a subaltern from another regiment who
+	belonged to Doggie’s part of the country.</p>
+
+	<p>“Why—I’m blowed if it isn’t Doggie Trevor!�
+	he exclaimed carelessly. “How d’ye do, Doggie?�</p>
+
+	<p>So thenceforward he was known in the regiment
+	by the hated name.</p>
+
+	<p>There were rags in which, as he was often the
+	victim, he was forced to join. His fastidiousness
+	loathed the coarse personal contact of arms and legs
+	and bodies. His undeveloped strength could not cope
+	with the muscle of his young brother barbarians.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page90" title="90"> </a>Aching with the day’s fatigue, he would plead, to
+	no avail, to be left alone. Compared with these feared
+	and detested scraps, he considered, in after-times,
+	battles to be agreeable recreations.</p>
+
+	<p>Had he been otherwise competent, he might have
+	won through the teasing and the ragging of the mess.
+	No one disliked him. He was pleasant-mannered,
+	good-natured, and appeared to bear no malice. True,
+	his ignorance not only of the ways of the army but
+	of the ways of their old hearty world, was colossal,
+	his mode of expression rather that of a precise old
+	church dignitary than of a subaltern in a regiment
+	of Fusiliers, his habits, including a nervous shrinking
+	from untidiness and dirt, those of a dear old maid;
+	but the mess thought, honestly, that he could be
+	knocked into their own social shape, and in the process
+	of knocking carried out their own traditions. They
+	might have succeeded if Doggie had discovered any
+	reserve source of pride from which to draw. But
+	Doggie was hopeless at his work. The mechanism
+	of a rifle filled him with dismay. He could not help
+	shutting his eyes before he pulled the trigger. Inured
+	all his life to lethargic action, he found the smart crisp
+	movements of drill almost impossible to attain. The
+	riding-school was a terror and a torture. Every
+	second he deemed himself in imminent peril of death.
+	Said the sergeant-major:</p>
+
+	<p>“Now, Mr. Trevor, you’re sitting on a ’orse and
+	not a ’olly-bush.�</p>
+
+	<p>And Doggie would wish the horse and the sergeant-major
+	in hell.</p>
+
+	<p>Again, what notion could poor Doggie have of
+	command? He had never raised his mild tenor voice
+	to damn anybody in his life. At first the tone in
+	which the officers ordered the men about shocked
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page91" title="91"> </a>him. So rough, so unmannerly, so unkind. He
+	could not understand the cheery lack of resentment
+	with which the men obeyed. He could not get into
+	the way of military directness, could never check the
+	polite “Do you mind� that came instinctively to his
+	lips. Now if you ask a private soldier whether he
+	minds doing a thing instead of telling him to do it,
+	his brain begins to get confused. As one defaulter,
+	whose confusion of brain had led him into trouble,
+	observed to his mates: “What can you do with a
+	blighter who’s a cross between a blinking Archbishop
+	and a ruddy dicky-bird?� What else, save show in
+	divers and ingenious ways that you mocked at his
+	authority? Doggie had the nervous dread of the
+	men that he had anticipated. During his training
+	on parade, words of command stuck in his throat.
+	When forced out, they grotesquely mixed themselves
+	together.</p>
+
+	<p>The Adjutant gave advice.</p>
+
+	<p>“Speak out, man. Bawl. You’re dealing with
+	soldiers at drill, not saying sweet nothings to old
+	ladies in a drawing-room.�</p>
+
+	<p>And Doggie tried. Doggie tried very hard. He
+	was mortified by his own stupidity. Little points of
+	drill and duty that the others of his own standing
+	seemed to pick up at once, almost by instinct, he could
+	only grasp after long and tedious toil. No one realized
+	that his brain was stupefied by the awful and unaccustomed
+	physical fatigue.</p>
+
+	<p>And then came the inevitable end.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">So Doggie crept into the Savoy Hotel and hid
+	himself there, wishing he were dead. It was some
+	time before he could write the terrible letter to Peggy.
+	He did so on the day when he saw that his resignation
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page92" title="92"> </a>was gazetted. He wrote after many anguished
+	attempts:</p>
+
+	<blockquote>
+		<p class="salutation">“Dear Peggy,—</p>
+
+		<p>“I haven’t written before about the dreadful
+		thing that has happened, because I simply couldn’t.
+		I have resigned my commission. Not of my own free
+		will, for, believe me, I would have gone through
+		anything for your sake, to say nothing of the country
+		and my own self-respect. To put it brutally, I have
+		been thrown out for sheer incompetence.</p>
+
+		<p>“I neither hope nor expect nor want you to continue
+		your engagement to a disgraced man. I release
+		you from every obligation your pity and generosity
+		may think binding. I want you to forget me and
+		marry a man who can do the work of this new world.</p>
+
+		<p>“What I shall do I don’t know. I have scarcely
+		yet been able to think. Possibly I shall go abroad.
+		At any rate I shan’t return to Durdlebury. If women
+		sent me white feathers before I joined, what would
+		they send me now? It will always be my consolation
+		to know that you once gave me your love, in spite
+		of the pain of realizing that I have forfeited it by
+		my unworthiness.</p>
+
+		<p>“Please tell Uncle Edward that I feel keenly his
+		position, for he was responsible for getting me the
+		commission through General Gadsby. Give my love
+		to my Aunt, if she will have it.</p>
+
+		<p class="signature">“Yours always affectionately,<br />
+		<span class="name">J. Marmaduke Trevor</span>.�</p>
+	</blockquote>
+
+	<p>By return of post came the answer:</p>
+
+	<blockquote>
+		<p class="salutation">“Dearest,—</p>
+
+		<p>“We are all desperately disappointed. Perhaps
+		we hurried on things too quickly and tried you too
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page93" title="93"> </a>high all at once. I ought to have known. Oh, my
+		poor dear boy, you must have had a dreadful time.
+		Why didn’t you tell me? The news in the ‘Gazette’
+		came upon me like a thunderbolt. I didn’t know
+		what to think. I’m afraid I thought the worst, the
+		very horrid worst—that you had got tired of it and
+		resigned of your own accord. How was one to know?
+		Your letter was almost a relief.</p>
+
+		<p>“In offering to release me from my engagement
+		you are acting like the honourable gentleman you are.
+		Of course, I can understand your feelings. But I
+		should be a little beast to accept right away like that.
+		If there are any feathers about, I should deserve to
+		have them stuck on to me with tar. Don’t think of
+		going abroad or doing anything foolish, dear, like that,
+		till you have seen me—that is to say, us, for Dad is
+		bringing Mother and me up to town by the first train
+		to-morrow. Dad feels sure that everything is not
+		lost. He’ll dig out General Gadsby and fix up something
+		for you. In the meantime, get us rooms at the
+		Savoy, though Mother is worried as to whether it’s
+		a respectable place for Deans to stay at. But I know
+		you wouldn’t like to meet us at Sturrocks’s—otherwise
+		you would have been there yourself. Meet our train.
+		All love from</p>
+
+		<p class="signature">“<span class="name">Peggy</span>.�</p>
+	</blockquote>
+
+	<p>Doggie engaged the rooms, but he did not meet the
+	train. He did not even stay in the hotel to meet his
+	relations. He could not meet them. He could not
+	meet the pity in their eyes. He read in Peggy’s note
+	a desire to pet and soothe him and call him “Poor
+	little Doggie,� and he writhed. He could not even
+	take up an heroic attitude, and say to Peggy: “When
+	I have retrieved the past and can bring you an unsullied
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page94" title="94"> </a>reputation, I will return and claim you. Till then
+	farewell.� There was no retrieving the past. Other
+	men might fail at first, and then make good; but he
+	was not like them. His was the fall of Humpty
+	Dumpty. Final—irretrievable.</p>
+
+	<p>He packed up his things in a fright and, leaving no
+	address at the Savoy, drove to the Russell Hotel in
+	Bloomsbury. But he wrote Peggy a letter “to await
+	arrival.� If time had permitted he would have sent
+	a telegram, stating that he was off for Tobolsk or
+	Tierra del Fuego, and thereby prevented their useless
+	journey; but they had already started when he
+	received Peggy’s message.</p>
+
+	<p>Nothing could be done, he wrote, in effect, to her,
+	nothing in the way of redemption. He would not
+	put her father to the risk of any other such humiliation.
+	He had learned, by the most bitter experience, that
+	the men who counted now in the world’s respect and
+	in woman’s love were men of a type to which, with
+	all the goodwill in the world, he could not make
+	himself belong—he did not say to which he wished
+	he could belong with all the agony and yearning of
+	his soul. Peggy must forget him. The only thing
+	he could do was to act up to her generous estimate
+	of him as an honourable gentleman. As such it was
+	his duty to withdraw for ever from her life. His
+	exact words, however, were: “You know how I
+	have always hated slang, how it has jarred upon me,
+	often to your amusement, when you have used it.
+	But I have learned in the past months how expressive
+	it may be. Through slang I’ve learned what I am.
+	I am a born ‘rotter.’ A girl like you can’t possibly
+	love and marry a rotter. So the rotter, having a
+	lingering sense of decency, makes his bow and exits—God
+	knows where.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page95" title="95"> </a>Peggy, red-eyed, adrift, rudderless on a frightening
+	sea, called her father into her bedroom at the Savoy
+	and showed him the letter. He drew out and adjusted
+	his round tortoise-shell-rimmed reading-glasses and
+	read it.</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s a miraculously new Doggie,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy clutched the edges of his coat.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve never heard you call him that before.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It has never been worth while,� said the Dean.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_VIII"><a class="pagenum" id="page96" title="96"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">At</span> the Savoy, during the first stupefaction of his
+	misery, Doggie had not noticed particularly
+	the prevalence of khaki. At the Russell it dwelt
+	insistent, like the mud on Salisbury Plain. Men that
+	might have been the twin brethren of his late brother
+	officers were everywhere, free, careless, efficient. The
+	sight of them added the gnaw of envy to his heartache.
+	Even in his bedroom he could hear the jingle of their
+	spurs and their cheery voices as they clanked along
+	the corridor. On the third day after his migration
+	he took a bold step and moved into lodgings in Woburn
+	Place. Here at least he could find quiet, untroubled
+	by heart-rending sights and sounds. He spent most
+	of his time in dull reading and dispirited walking.
+	For he could walk now—so much had his training
+	done for him—and walk for many miles without
+	fatigue. For all the enjoyment he got out of it, he
+	might as well have marched round a prison yard.
+	Indeed there were some who tramped the prison
+	yards with keener zest. They were buoyed up with
+	the hope of freedom, they could look forward to the
+	ever-approaching day when they should be thrown
+	once more into the glad whirl of life. But the miraculously
+	new Doggie had no hope. He felt for ever
+	imprisoned in his shame. His failure preyed on his
+	mind.</p>
+
+	<p>He dallied with thoughts of suicide. Why hadn’t
+	he salved, at any rate, his service revolver? Then he
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page97" title="97"> </a>remembered the ugly habits of the unmanageable thing—how
+	it always kicked its muzzle up in the air.
+	Would he have been able even to shoot himself with
+	it? And he smiled in self-derision. Drowning was
+	not so difficult. Any fool could throw himself into
+	the water. With a view to the inspection of a suitable
+	spot, Doggie wandered, idly, in the dusk of one evening,
+	to Waterloo Bridge, and turning his back to the ceaseless
+	traffic, leaned his elbows on the parapet and stared
+	in front of him. A few lights already gleamed from
+	Somerset House and the more dimly seen buildings
+	of the Temple. The dome of St. Paul’s loomed a
+	dark shadow through the mist. The river stretched
+	below very peaceful, very inviting. The parapet
+	would be easy to climb. He did not know whether
+	he could dive in the approved manner—hands joined
+	over head. He had never learned to swim, let alone
+	dive. At any rate, he could fall off. In that art
+	the riding-school had proved him a past master. But
+	the spot had its disadvantages. It was too public.
+	Perhaps other bridges might afford more privacy. He
+	would inspect them all. It would be something to
+	do. There was no hurry. As he was not wanted in
+	this world, so he had no assurance of being welcome
+	in the next. He had a morbid vision of avatar after
+	avatar being kicked from sphere to sphere.</p>
+
+	<p>At this point of his reflections he became aware of
+	a presence by his side. He turned his head and found
+	a soldier, an ordinary private, very close to him, also
+	leaning on the parapet.</p>
+
+	<p>“I thought I wasn’t mistaken in Mr. Marmaduke
+	Trevor.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie started away, on the point of flight, dreading
+	the possible insolence of one of the men of his late
+	regiment. But the voice of the speaker rang in his
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page98" title="98"> </a>ears with a strange familiarity, and the great fleshy
+	nose, the high cheek-bones, and the little grey eyes in
+	the weather-beaten face suggested vaguely some one
+	of the long ago. His dawning recognition amused
+	the soldier.</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, laddie. Ye’re right. It’s your old Phineas—Phineas
+	McPhail, Esq., M.A., defunct. Now 33702
+	Private P. McPhail redivivus.�</p>
+
+	<p>He warmly wrung the hand of the semi-bewildered
+	Doggie, who murmured: “Very glad to meet you,
+	I’m sure.�</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas, gaunt and bony, took his arm.</p>
+
+	<p>“Would it not just be possible,� he said, in his old
+	half-pedantic, half-ironic intonation, “to find a locality
+	less exposed to the roar of traffic and the rude jostling
+	of pedestrians and the inclemency of the elements,
+	in which we can enjoy the amenities of a little refined
+	conversation?�</p>
+
+	<p>It was like a breath from the past. Doggie smiled.</p>
+
+	<p>“Which way are you going?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Your way, my dear Marmaduke, was ever mine,
+	until I was swept, I thought for ever, out of your path
+	by a torrential spate of whisky.�</p>
+
+	<p>He laughed, as though it had been a playful freak
+	of destiny. Doggie laughed, too. But for the words
+	he had addressed to hotel and lodging-house folk, he
+	had spoken to no one for over a fortnight. The
+	instinctive craving for companionship made Phineas
+	suddenly welcome.</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes. Let us have a talk,� said he. “Come to
+	my rooms, if you have the time. There’ll be some
+	dinner.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Will I come? Will I have dinner? Will I
+	re-enter once more the paradise of the affluent?
+	Laddie, I will.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page99" title="99"> </a>In the Strand they hailed a taxi and drove to Bloomsbury.
+	On the way Phineas asked:</p>
+
+	<p>“You mentioned your rooms. Are you residing
+	permanently in London?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“And Durdlebury?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m not going back.�</p>
+
+	<p>“London’s a place full of temptations for those
+	without experience,� Phineas observed sagely.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve not noticed any,� Doggie replied. On which
+	Phineas laughed and slapped him on the knee.</p>
+
+	<p>“Man,� said he, “when I first saw you I thought
+	you had changed into a disillusioned misanthropist.
+	But I’m wrong. You haven’t changed a bit.�</p>
+
+	<p>A few minutes later they reached Woburn Place.
+	Doggie showed him into the sitting-room on the
+	drawing-room floor. A fire was burning in the grate,
+	for though it was only early autumn, the evening was
+	cold. The table was set for Doggie’s dinner. Phineas
+	looked round him in surprise. The heterogeneous
+	and tasteless furniture, the dreadful Mid-Victorian
+	prints on the walls—one was the “Return of the
+	Guards from the Crimea,� representing the landing
+	from the troop-ship, repellent in its smug unreality,
+	the coarse glass and well-used plate on the table, the
+	crumpled napkin in a ring (for Marmaduke who in
+	his mother’s house had never been taught to dream that
+	a napkin could possibly be used for two consecutive
+	meals!), the general air of slipshod Philistinism—all
+	came as a shock to Phineas, who had expected to find
+	in Marmaduke’s “rooms� a replica of the fastidious
+	prettiness of the peacock and ivory room at Denby
+	Hall. He scratched his head, covered with a thick
+	brown thatch.</p>
+
+	<p>“Laddie,� said he gravely, “you must excuse me
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page100" title="100"> </a>if I take a liberty; but I canna fit you into this
+	environment.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie looked about him also. “Seems funny,
+	doesn’t it?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It cannot be that you’ve come down in the
+	world?�</p>
+
+	<p>“To bed-rock,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“No?� said Phineas, with an air of concern.
+	“Man, I’m awful sorry. I know what the coming
+	down feels like. And I, finding it not abhorrent to
+	a sophisticated and well-trained conscience, and thinking
+	you could well afford it, extracted a thousand pounds
+	from your fortune. My dear lad, if Phineas McPhail
+	could return the money——�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie broke in with a laugh. “Pray don’t distress
+	yourself, Phineas. It’s not a question of money. I’ve
+	as much as ever I had. The last thing in the world
+	I’ve had to think of has been money.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Then what in the holy names of Thunder and
+	Beauty,� cried Phineas, throwing out one hand to an
+	ancient saddle-bag sofa whose ends were covered by
+	flimsy rags, and the other to the decayed ormolu clock
+	on the mantelpiece, “what in the name of common
+	sense are you doing in this awful inelegant lodging-house?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t know,� replied Doggie. “It’s a fact,�
+	he continued after a pause. “The scheme of decoration
+	is revolting to every æsthetic sense which I’ve
+	spent my life in cultivating. Its futile pretentiousness
+	is the rasping irritation of every hour. Yet here I am.
+	Quite comfortable. And here I propose to stay.�</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas McPhail, M.A., late of Glasgow and Cambridge,
+	looked at Doggie with his keen little grey eyes
+	beneath bent and bristling eyebrows. In the language
+	of 33702 Private McPhail, he asked:</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page101" title="101"> </a>“What the blazes is it all about?�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s a long story,� said Doggie, looking at
+	his watch. “In the meantime, I had better give
+	some orders about dinner. And you would like to
+	wash.�</p>
+
+	<p>He threw open a wing of the folding-doors, once
+	in Georgian times separating drawing-room from withdrawing-room,
+	and now separating living-room from
+	bedroom, and switching on the light, invited McPhail
+	to follow.</p>
+
+	<p>“I think you’ll find everything you want,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas McPhail, left alone to his ablutions, again
+	looked round, and he had more reason than ever to
+	ask what it was all about. Marmaduke’s bedroom
+	at Denby Hall had been a dream of satinwood and
+	dull blue silk. The furniture and hangings had been
+	Mrs. Trevor’s present to Marmaduke on his sixteenth
+	birthday. He remembered how he had been bored
+	to death by that stupendous ass of an old woman—for
+	so he had characterized her—during the process of
+	selection and installation. The present room, although
+	far more luxurious than any that Phineas McPhail
+	had slept in for years, formed a striking contrast with
+	that remembered nest of effeminacy.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ll have to give it up,� he said to himself. But
+	just as he had put the finishing touches to his hair an
+	idea occurred to him. He flung open the door.</p>
+
+	<p>“Laddie, I’ve got it. It’s a woman.�</p>
+
+	<p>But Doggie laughed and shook his head, and leaving
+	McPhail, took his turn in the bedroom. For the
+	first time since his return to civil life he ceased for a
+	few moments to brood over his troubles. McPhail’s
+	mystification amused him. McPhail’s personality and
+	address, viewed in the light of the past, were full of
+	interest. Obviously he was a man who lived unashamed
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page102" title="102"> </a>on low levels. Doggie wondered how he
+	could have regarded him for years with a respect
+	almost amounting to veneration. In a curious
+	unformulated way Doggie felt that he had authority
+	over this man so much older than himself, who had
+	once been his master. It tickled into some kind of
+	life his deadened self-esteem. Here at last was a
+	man with whom he could converse on sure ground.
+	The khaki uniform caused him no envy.</p>
+
+	<p>“The poet is not altogether incorrect,� said McPhail,
+	when they sat down to dinner, “in pointing out
+	the sweet uses of adversity. If it had not been for the
+	adversity of a wee bit operation, I should not now be
+	on sick furlough. And if I had not been on furlough
+	I shouldn’t have the pleasure of this agreeable reconciliation.
+	Here’s to you, laddie, and to our lasting
+	friendship.� He sipped his claret. “It’s not like
+	the Lafitte in the old cellar—<em lang="la" xml:lang="la">Eheu fugaces anni et</em>—what
+	the plague is the Latin for vintages? But
+	’twill serve.� He drank again and smacked his
+	lips. “It will even serve very satisfactorily. Good
+	wine at a perfect temperature is not the daily drink
+	of the British soldier.�</p>
+
+	<p>“By the way,� said Doggie, “you haven’t told
+	me why you became a soldier.�</p>
+
+	<p>“A series of vicissitudes dating from the hour I
+	left your house,� said Phineas, “vicissitudes the recital
+	of which would wring your heart, laddie, and make
+	angels weep if their lachrymal glands were not too
+	busily engaged by the horrors of war, culminated
+	four months ago in an attack of fervid and penniless
+	patriotism. No one seemed to want me except my
+	country. She clamoured for me on every hoarding
+	and every omnibus. A recruiting-sergeant in Trafalgar
+	Square tapped me on the arm, and said: ‘Young
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page103" title="103"> </a>man, your country wants you.’ Said I with my
+	Scottish caution, ‘Can you take your affidavit that
+	you got the information straight from the War Office?’
+	‘I can,’ said he. Then I threw myself on his bosom
+	and bade him take me to her. That’s how I became
+	33702 Private Phineas McPhail, A Company, 10th
+	Wessex Rangers, at the remuneration of one shilling
+	and twopence per diem.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Do you like it?� asked Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas rubbed the side of his thick nose thoughtfully.</p>
+
+	<p>“There you come to the metaphysical conception
+	of human happiness,� he replied. “In itself it is a
+	vile life. To a man of thirty-five——�</p>
+
+	<p>“Good lord!� cried Doggie, “I always thought
+	you were about fifty!�</p>
+
+	<p>“Your mother caught me young, laddie. To a
+	man of thirty-five, a graduate of ancient and honourable
+	universities and a whilom candidate for holy
+	orders, it is a life that would seem to have no attraction
+	whatever. The hours are absurd, the work distasteful,
+	and the mode of living repulsive. But strange to say,
+	it fully contents me. The secret of happiness lies in
+	the supple adaptability to conditions. When I found
+	that it was necessary to perform ridiculous antics with
+	my legs and arms, I entered into the comicality of the
+	idea and performed them with an indulgent zest which
+	soon won me the precious encomiums of my superiors
+	in rank. When I found that the language of the
+	canteen was not that of the pulpit or the drawing-room,
+	I quickly acquired the new vocabulary and won the
+	pleasant esteem of my equals. By means of this faculty
+	of adaptability I can suck enjoyment out of everything.
+	But, at the same time, mind you, keeping in reserve a
+	little secret fount of pleasure.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page104" title="104"> </a>“What do you call a little secret fount of pleasure?�
+	asked Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ll give you an illustration—and, if you’re the
+	man I consider you to be, you’ll take a humorous view
+	of my frankness. At present I adapt myself to a rough
+	atmosphere of coarseness and lustiness, in which
+	nothing coarse or lusty I could do would produce
+	the slightest ripple of a convulsion: but I have my
+	store of a cultivated mind and cheap editions of the
+	classics, my little secret fount of Castaly to drink from
+	whenever I so please. On the other hand, when I
+	had the honour of being responsible for your education,
+	I adapted myself to a hot-house atmosphere in which
+	Respectability and the concomitant virtues of Supineness
+	and Sloth were cultivated like rare orchids; but
+	in my bedroom I kept a secret fount which had its
+	source in some good Scots distillery.�</p>
+
+	<p>Whereupon he attacked his plateful of chicken
+	with vehement gusto.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re a hedonist, Phineas,� said Doggie, after
+	a thoughtful pause.</p>
+
+	<p>“Man,� said Phineas, laying down his knife and
+	fork, “you’ve just hit it. I am. I’m an accomplished
+	hedonist. An early recognition of the fact
+	saved me from the Church.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And the Church from you,� said Doggie quietly.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas shot a swift glance at him beneath his
+	shaggy brown eyebrows.</p>
+
+	<p>“Ay,� said he. “Though, mark you, if I had
+	followed my original vocation, the Bench of Bishops
+	could not have surpassed me in the unction in which
+	I would have wallowed. If I had been born a bee in
+	a desert, laddie, I would have sucked honey out of a
+	dead camel.�</p>
+
+	<p>With easy and picturesque cynicism, and in a Glasgow
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page105" title="105"> </a>accent which had curiously broadened since his
+	spell of Oriental ease at Denby Hall, he developed his
+	philosophy, illustrating it by incidents more or less
+	reputable in his later career. At first, possessor of the
+	ill-gotten thousand pounds and of considerable savings
+	from a substantial salary, he had enjoyed the short
+	wild riot of the Prodigal’s life. Paris saw most of his
+	money—the Paris which, under his auspices, Doggie
+	never knew. Plentiful claret set his tongue wagging
+	in Rabelaisian reminiscence. After Paris came husks.
+	Not bad husks if you knew how to cook them. Borrowed
+	salt and pepper and a little stolen butter worked
+	wonders. But they were irritating to the stomach.
+	He lay on the floor, said he, and yelled for fatted
+	calf; but there was no soft-headed parent to supply
+	it. Phineas McPhail must be a slave again and work
+	for his living. Then came private coaching, freelance
+	journalism, hunting for secretaryships: the commonplace
+	story humorously told of the wastrel’s
+	decline; then a gorgeous efflorescence in light green
+	and gold as the man outside a picture palace in Camberwell—and
+	lastly, the penniless patriot throwing himself
+	into the arms of his desirous country.</p>
+
+	<p>“Have you any whisky in the house, laddie?�
+	he asked, after the dinner things had been taken away.</p>
+
+	<p>“No,� said Doggie, “but I could easily get you
+	some.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Pray don’t,� said McPhail. “If you had, I
+	was going to ask you to be kind enough not to let
+	your excellent landlord, whom I recognize as a butler
+	of the old school, produce it. Butlers of the old school
+	are apt, like Peddle, to bring in a maddening tray of
+	decanters, syphons, and glasses. You may not believe
+	me, but I haven’t touched a drop of whisky since I
+	joined the army.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page106" title="106"> </a>“Why?� asked Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>McPhail looked at the long carefully preserved
+	ash of one of Doggie’s excellent cigars.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s all a part of the doctrine of adaptability. In
+	order to attain happiness in the army, the first step is to
+	avoid differences of opinion with the civil and military
+	police and non-commissioned officers, and such-like
+	sycophantic myrmidons of authority. Being a man of
+	academic education, it is with difficulty that I agree
+	with them when I’m sober. If I were drunk, my
+	bonnie laddie�—he waved a hand—“well—I don’t
+	get drunk. And as I have no use for whisky, as merely
+	an agreeable beverage, I have struck whisky out of my
+	hedonistic scheme of existence. But if you have any
+	more of that pleasant claret——�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie rang the bell and gave the order. The
+	landlord brought in bottle and glasses.</p>
+
+	<p>“And now, my dear Marmaduke,� said Phineas
+	after an appreciative sip, “now that I have told you
+	the story of my life, may I, without impertinent
+	curiosity, again ask you what you meant when you
+	said you had come down to bed-rock?�</p>
+
+	<p>The sight of the man, smug, cynical, shameless,
+	sprawling luxuriously on the sofa, with his tunic
+	unbuttoned, filled him with sudden fury: such fury
+	as Oliver’s insult had aroused, such as had impelled
+	him during a vicious rag in the mess to clutch a man’s
+	hair and almost pull it out by the roots.</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, you may; and I’ll tell you,� he cried, starting
+	to his feet. “I’ve reached the bed-rock of myself—the
+	bed-rock of humiliation and disgrace. And it’s
+	all your fault. Instead of training me to be a man,
+	you pandered to my poor mother’s weaknesses and
+	brought me up like a little toy dog—the infernal name
+	still sticks to me wherever I go. You made a helpless
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page107" title="107"> </a>fool of me, and let me go out a helpless fool into the
+	world. And when you came across me I was thinking
+	whether it wouldn’t be best to throw myself over the
+	parapet. A month ago you would have saluted me
+	in the street and stood before me at attention when I
+	spoke to you——�</p>
+
+	<p>“Eh? What’s that, laddie?� interrupted Phineas,
+	sitting up. “You’ve held a commission in the
+	army?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes,� said Doggie fiercely, “and I’ve been
+	chucked. I’ve been thrown out as a hopeless rotter.
+	And who is most to blame—you or I? It’s you.
+	You’ve brought me to this infernal place. I’m here
+	in hiding—hiding from my family and the decent
+	folk I’m ashamed to meet. And it’s all your fault,
+	and now you have it!�</p>
+
+	<p>“Laddie, laddie,� said Phineas reproachfully, “the
+	facts of my being a guest beneath your roof and my
+	humble military rank, render it difficult for me to make
+	an appropriate reply.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie’s rage had spent itself. These rare fits were
+	short-lived and left him somewhat unnerved.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m sorry, Phineas. As you say, you’re my
+	guest. And as to your uniform, God knows I honour
+	every man who wears it.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s taking things in the right spirit,� Phineas
+	conceded graciously, helping himself to another glass
+	of wine. “And the right spirit is a great healer of
+	differences. I’ll not go so far as to deny that there is
+	an element of justice in your apportionment of blame.
+	There may, on various occasions, have been some small
+	dereliction of duty. But you’ll have been observing
+	that in the recent exposition of my philosophy I have
+	not laboured the point of duty to disproportionate
+	exaggeration.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page108" title="108"> </a>Doggie lit a cigarette. His fingers were still
+	shaking. “I’m glad you own up. It’s a sign of
+	grace.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Ay,� said Phineas, “no man is altogether bad.
+	In spite of everything, I’ve always entertained a warm
+	affection for you, laddie, and when I saw you staring
+	at bogies round about the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral
+	my heart went out to you. You didn’t look over-happy.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie, always responsive to human kindness,
+	was touched. He felt a note of sincerity in McPhail’s
+	tone. Perhaps he had judged him harshly, overlooking
+	the plea in extenuation which Phineas had set
+	up—that in every man there must be some saving
+	remnant of goodness.</p>
+
+	<p>“I wasn’t happy, Phineas,� he said; “I was as
+	miserable an outcast as could be found in London,
+	and when a fellow’s down and out, you must forgive
+	him for speaking more bitterly than he ought.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Don’t I know, laddie? Don’t I know?� said
+	Phineas sympathetically. He reached for the cigar-box.
+	“Do you mind if I take another? Perhaps
+	two—one to smoke afterwards, in memory of this
+	meeting. It is a long time since my lips touched a
+	thing so gracious as a real Havana.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Take a lot,� said Doggie generously, “I don’t
+	really like cigars. I only bought them because I
+	thought they might be stronger than cigarettes.�</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas filled his pockets. “You can pay no greater
+	compliment to a man’s honesty of purpose,� said he,
+	“than by taking him at his word. And now,� he
+	continued, when he had carefully lit the cigar he had
+	first chosen, “let us review the entire situation. What
+	about our good friends at Durdlebury? What about
+	your uncle, the Very Reverend the Dean, against
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page109" title="109"> </a>whom I bear no ill-will, though I do not say that his
+	ultimate treatment of me was not over-hasty—what
+	about him? If you call upon me to put my almost
+	fantastically variegated experience of life at your
+	disposal, and advise you in this crisis, so I must ask you
+	to let me know the exact conditions in which you find
+	yourself.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie smiled once again, finding something diverting
+	and yet stimulating in the calm assurance of Private
+	McPhail.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m not aware that I’ve asked you for advice,
+	Phineas.�</p>
+
+	<p>“The fact that you’re not aware of many things
+	that you do is no proof that you don’t do them—and
+	do them in a manner perfectly obvious to another
+	party,� replied Phineas sententiously. “You’re asking
+	for advice and consolation from any friendly human
+	creature to whom you’re not ashamed to speak. You’ve
+	had an awful sorrowful time, laddie.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie roamed about the room, with McPhail’s
+	little grey eyes fixed on him. Yes, Phineas was
+	right. He would have given most of his possessions
+	to be able, these later days, to pour out his tortured
+	soul into sympathetic ears. But shame had kept him,
+	still kept him, would always keep him, from the ears of
+	those he loved. Yes, Phineas had said the diabolically
+	right thing. He could not be ashamed to speak to
+	Phineas. And there was something good in Phineas
+	which he had noticed with surprise. How easy for
+	him, in response to bitter accusation, to cast the blame
+	on his mother? He himself had given the opening.
+	How easy for him to point to his predecessor’s short
+	tenure of office and plead the alternative of carrying
+	out Mrs. Trevor’s theory of education or of resigning
+	his position in favour of some sycophant even more
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page110" title="110"> </a>time-serving? But he had kept silent…. Doggie
+	stopped short and looked at Phineas with eyes dumbly
+	questioning and quivering lips.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas rose and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders,
+	and said very gently:</p>
+
+	<p>“Tell me all about it, laddie.�</p>
+
+	<p>Then Doggie broke down, and with a gush of
+	unminded tears found expression for his stony despair.
+	His story took a long time in the telling; and Phineas
+	interjecting an occasional sympathetic “Ay, ay,�
+	and a delicately hinted question, extracted from Doggie
+	all there was to tell, from the outbreak of war to their
+	meeting on Waterloo Bridge.</p>
+
+	<p>“And now,� cried he at last, a dismally tragic
+	figure, his young face distorted and reddened, his sleek
+	hair ruffled from the back into unsightly perpendicularities
+	(an invariable sign of distracted emotion)
+	and his hands appealingly outstretched—“what the
+	hell am I going to do?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Laddie,� said Phineas, standing on the hearthrug,
+	his hands on his hips, “if you had posed the question
+	in the polite language of the precincts of Durdlebury
+	Cathedral, I might have been at a loss to reply. But
+	the manly invocation of hell shows me that your foot
+	is already on the upward path. If you had prefaced
+	it by the adjective that gives colour to all the aspirations
+	of the British Army, it would have been better. But
+	I’m not reproaching you, laddie. <em lang="it" xml:lang="it">Poco à poco.</em> It
+	is enough. It shows me you are not going to run away
+	to a neutral country and present the unedifying spectacle
+	of a mangy little British lion at the mercy
+	of a menagerie of healthy hyenas and such-like
+	inferior though truculent beasties.�</p>
+
+	<p>“My God!� cried Doggie, “haven’t I thought
+	of it till I’m half mad? It would be just as you say—unendurable.�
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page111" title="111"> </a>He began to pace the room again.
+	“And I can’t go to France. It would be just the
+	same as England. Every one would be looking white
+	feathers at me. The only thing I can do is to go out
+	of the world. I’m not fit for it. Oh, I don’t mean
+	suicide. I’ve not enough pluck. That’s off. But
+	I could go and bury myself in the wilderness somewhere
+	where no one would ever find me.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Laddie,� said McPhail, “I misdoubt that you’re
+	going to settle down in any wilderness. You haven’t
+	the faculty of adaptability of which I have spoken
+	to-night at some length. And your heart is young
+	and not coated with the holy varnish of callousness,
+	which is a secret preparation known only to those
+	who have served a long apprenticeship in a severe
+	school of egotism.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s all very well,� cried Doggie, “but what
+	the——�</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas waved an interrupting hand. “You’ve
+	got to go back, laddie. You’ve got to whip all the
+	moral courage in you and go back to Durdlebury.
+	The Dean, with his influence, and the letter you
+	have shown me from your Colonel, can easily get you
+	some honourable employment in either Service not so
+	exacting as the one which you have recently found yourself
+	unable to perform.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie threw a newly-lighted cigarette into the
+	fire and turned passionately on McPhail.</p>
+
+	<p>“I won’t. You’re talking drivelling rot. I
+	can’t. I’d sooner die than go back there with my
+	tail between my legs. I’d sooner enlist as a private
+	soldier.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Enlist?� said Phineas, and he drew himself up
+	straight and gaunt. “Well, why not?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Enlist?� echoed Doggie in a dull tone.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page112" title="112"> </a>“Have you never contemplated such a possibility?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Good God, no!� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“I have enlisted. And I am a man of ancient
+	lineage as honourable, so as not to enter into unproductive
+	argument, as yours. And I am a Master of Arts
+	of the two Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge.
+	Yet I fail to find anything dishonourable in my present
+	estate as 33702 Private Phineas McPhail in the British
+	Army.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie seemed not to hear him. He stared at him
+	wildly.</p>
+
+	<p>“Enlist?� he repeated. “As a Tommy?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Even as a Tommy,� said Phineas. He glanced
+	at the ormolu clock. “It is past one. The respectable
+	widow woman near the Elephant and Castle
+	who has let me a bedroom will be worn by anxiety
+	as to my non-return. Marmaduke, my dear, dear
+	laddie, I must leave you. If you will be lunching
+	here twelve hours hence, nothing will give me greater
+	pleasure than to join you. Laddie, do you think you
+	could manage a fried sole and a sweetbread?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Enlist?� said Doggie, following him out to the
+	front door in a dream.</p>
+
+	<p>He opened the door. Phineas shook hands.</p>
+
+	<p>“Fried sole and a sweetbread at one-thirty?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Of course, with pleasure,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas fumbled in his pockets.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s a long cry at this time of night from Bloomsbury
+	to the Elephant and Castle. You haven’t the
+	price of a taxi fare about you, laddie—two or three
+	pounds——?�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie drew from his patent note-case a sheaf of one-pound
+	and ten-shilling treasury notes and handed them
+	over to McPhail’s vulture clutch.</p>
+
+	<p>“Good night, laddie!�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page113" title="113"> </a>“Good night!�</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas strode away into the blackness. Doggie
+	shut the front door and put up the chain and went
+	back into his sitting-room. He wound his fingers
+	in his hair.</p>
+
+	<p>“Enlist? My God!�</p>
+
+	<p>He lit a cigarette and after a few puffs flung it into
+	the grate. He stared at the alternatives.</p>
+
+	<p>Flight, which was craven—a lifetime of self-contempt.
+	Durdlebury, which was impossible.
+	Enlistment——?</p>
+
+	<p>Yet what was a man incapable yet able-bodied,
+	honourable though disgraced, to do?</p>
+
+	<p>His landlord found him at seven o’clock in the
+	morning asleep in an arm-chair.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_IX"><a class="pagenum" id="page114" title="114"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">After</span> a bath and a change and breakfast,
+	Doggie went out for one of his solitary walks.
+	At Durdlebury such a night as the last would have
+	kept him in bed in a darkened room for most of the
+	following day. But he had spent many far, far worse
+	on Salisbury Plain, and the inexorable reveille had
+	dragged him out into the raw dreadful morning,
+	heedless of his headache and yearning for slumber,
+	until at last the process of hardening had begun.
+	To-day Doggie was as unfatigued a young man as
+	walked the streets of London, a fact which his mind
+	was too confusedly occupied to appreciate. Once
+	more was he beset less by the perplexities of the future
+	than by a sense of certain impending doom. For to
+	Phineas McPhail’s “Why not?� he had been able
+	to give no answer. He could give no answer now, as
+	he marched with swinging step, automatically, down
+	Oxford Street and the Bayswater Road in the direction
+	of Kensington Gardens. He could give no
+	answer as he stood sightlessly staring at the Peter
+	Pan statue.</p>
+
+	<p>A one-armed man in a khaki cap and hospital blue
+	came and stood by his side and looked in a pleased
+	yet puzzled way at the exquisite poem in marble.
+	At last he spoke—in a rich Irish accent.</p>
+
+	<p>“I beg your pardon, sir, but could you be telling
+	me the meaning of it, at all?�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie awoke and smiled.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page115" title="115"> </a>“Do you like it?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I do,� said the soldier.</p>
+
+	<p>“It is about Peter Pan. A kind of Fairy Tale.
+	You can see the ‘little people’ peeping out—I think
+	you call them so in Ireland.�</p>
+
+	<p>“We do that,� said the soldier.</p>
+
+	<p>So Doggie sketched the outline of the immortal
+	story of the Boy Who Will Never Grow Old, and the
+	Irishman listened with deep interest.</p>
+
+	<p>“Indeed,� said he after a time, “it is good to come
+	back to the true things after the things out there.�
+	He waved his one arm in the vague direction of the
+	war.</p>
+
+	<p>“Why do you call them true things?� Doggie
+	asked quickly.</p>
+
+	<p>They turned away, and Doggie found himself
+	sitting on a bench by the man’s side.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s not me that can tell you that,� said he, “and
+	my wife and children in Galway.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Were you there at the outbreak of war?�</p>
+
+	<p>He was. A reservist called back to the colours
+	after some years of retirement from the army. He
+	had served in India and South Africa, a hard-bitten
+	soldier, proud of the traditions of his old regiment.
+	There were scarcely any of them left—and that was
+	all that was left of him. He smiled cheerily. Doggie
+	condoled with him on the loss of his arm.</p>
+
+	<p>“Ah sure,� he replied, “and it might keep me out
+	of a fight when I go into Ballinasloe.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Who would you want to fight?� asked Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“The dirty Sinn Feiners that do be always shouting
+	‘Freedom for Ireland and to hell with freedom
+	for the rest of the world.’ If I haven’t lost my arm
+	in a glorious cause, what have I lost it for? Can you
+	tell me that?�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page116" title="116"> </a>Doggie agreed that he had fought for the greater
+	freedom of humanity and gave him a cigarette, and
+	they went on talking. The Irishman had been in
+	the retreat from Mons, the first battle of Ypres, and
+	he had lost his arm in no battle at all; just a stray
+	shell over the road as they were marching back to
+	billets. They discussed the war, the ethics of it.
+	Doggie still wanted to know why the realities of
+	blood and mud and destruction were not the true
+	things. Gradually he found that the Irishman meant
+	that the true things were the spiritual, undying things;
+	that the grim realities would pass away; that from
+	these dead realities would arise the noble ideals of
+	the future, which would be symbolized in song and
+	marble; that all he had endured and sacrificed was
+	but a part of the Great Sacrifice we were making
+	for the Freedom of the World. Being a man roughly
+	educated on a Galway farm and in an infantry regiment,
+	he had great difficulty in co-ordinating his ideas;
+	but he had a curious power of vision that enabled him
+	to pierce to the heart of things, which he interpreted
+	according to his untrained sense of beauty.</p>
+
+	<p>They parted with expressions of mutual esteem.
+	Doggie struck across the Gardens with a view to
+	returning home by Knightsbridge, Piccadilly and
+	Shaftesbury Avenue. He strode along, his thoughts
+	filled with the Irish soldier. Here was a man,
+	maimed for life and quite content that it should be so,
+	who had reckoned all the horrors through which he
+	had passed as externals unworthy of the consideration
+	of his unconquerable soul; a man simple, unassuming,
+	expansive only through his Celtic temperament,
+	which allowed him to talk easily to a stranger
+	before whom his English or Scotch comrade would
+	have been dumb and gaping as an oyster; obviously
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page117" title="117"> </a>brave, sincere and loyal. Perhaps something even
+	higher. Perhaps, in essence, the very highest. The
+	Poet-Warrior. The term struck Doggie’s brain with
+	a thud, like the explosive fusion of two elements.</p>
+
+	<p>During his walk to Kensington Gardens a poisonous
+	current had run at the back of his mind. Drifting
+	on it, might he not escape? Was he not of too fine
+	a porcelain to mingle with the coarse and common
+	pottery of the ranks? Was it necessary to go into the
+	thick of the coarse clay vessels, just to be shattered?
+	It was easy for Phineas to proclaim that he found no
+	derogation to his dignity as a man of birth and a
+	university graduate in identifying himself with his
+	fellow privates. Phineas had systematically brutalized
+	himself into fitness for the position. He had armed
+	himself in brass—<em lang="la" xml:lang="la">æs triplex</em>. He smiled at his own
+	wit. But he, James Marmaduke Trevor, who had
+	lived his life as a clean gentleman, was in a category
+	apart.</p>
+
+	<p>Now, he found that his talk with the Irishman had
+	been an antidote to the poison. He felt ashamed.
+	Did he dare set himself up to be finer clay than that
+	common soldier? Spiritually, was he even of clay as
+	fine? In a Great Judgment of Souls which of the
+	twain would be among the Elect? The ultra-refined
+	Mr. Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall, or the ignorant
+	poet-warrior of Ballinasloe? “Not Doggie
+	Trevor,� he said between his teeth. And he went
+	home in a chastened spirit.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas McPhail appeared punctually at half-past
+	one, and feasted succulently on fried sole and sweetbread.</p>
+
+	<p>“Laddie,� said he, “the man that can provide
+	such viands is a Thing of Beauty which, as the poet
+	says, is a Joy for Ever. The light in his window is
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page118" title="118"> </a>a beacon to the hungry Tommy dragging himself
+	through the viscous wilderness of regulation stew.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m afraid it won’t be a beacon for very long,�
+	said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Eh?� queried Phineas sharply. “You’d surely
+	not be thinking of refusing an old friend a stray meal?�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie coloured at the coarseness of the misunderstanding.</p>
+
+	<p>“How could I be such a brute? There won’t
+	be a light in the window because I shan’t be there.
+	I’m going to enlist.�</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas put his elbows on the table and regarded
+	him earnestly.</p>
+
+	<p>“I would not take too seriously words spoken in
+	the heat of midnight revelry, even though the revel
+	was conducted on the genteelest principles. Have
+	you thought of the matter in the cool and sober hours
+	of the morning?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s an unco’ hard life, laddie.�</p>
+
+	<p>“The one I’m leading is a harder,� said Doggie.
+	“I’ve made up my mind.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Then I’ve one piece of advice to give you,� said
+	McPhail. “Sink the name of Marmaduke, which
+	would only stimulate the ignorant ribaldry of the canteen,
+	and adopt the name of James, which your godfathers
+	and godmothers, with miraculous foresight,
+	considering their limitations in the matter of common
+	sense, have given you.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s a good idea,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Also it would tend to the obliteration of class
+	prejudices if you gave up smoking Turkish cigarettes
+	at ten shillings a hundred and arrived in your platoon
+	as an amateur of ‘fags.’�</p>
+
+	<p>“I can’t stand ‘fags,’� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page119" title="119"> </a>“You can. The human organism is so constituted
+	that it can stand the sweepings of the elephants’ house
+	in the Zoological Gardens. Try. This time it’s only
+	‘fags.’�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie took one from the crumpled paper packet
+	which was handed to him, and lit it. He made a
+	wry face, never before having smoked American
+	tobacco.</p>
+
+	<p>“How do you like the flavour?� asked Phineas.</p>
+
+	<p>“I think I’d prefer the elephants’ house,� said
+	Doggie, eyeing the thing with disgust.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’ll find it the flavour of the whole British
+	Army,� said McPhail.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">A few days later the Dean received a letter bearing
+	the pencilled address of a camp on the south coast, and
+	written by 35792 Pvte. James M. Trevor, A Company,
+	2-10th Wessex Rangers. It ran:</p>
+
+	<blockquote>
+		<p>“I hope you won’t think me heartless for having
+		left you so long without news of me; but until lately
+		I had the same reasons for remaining in seclusion as
+		when I last wrote. Even now I’m not asking for
+		sympathy or reconsideration of my failure or desire
+		in any way to take advantage of the generosity of you
+		all.</p>
+
+		<p>“I have enlisted in the 10th Wessex. Phineas
+		McPhail, whom I met in London and whose character
+		for good or evil I can better gauge now than formerly,
+		is a private in the same battalion. I don’t pretend
+		to enjoy the life any more than I could enjoy living in
+		a kraal of savages in Central Africa. But that is a
+		matter of no account. I don’t propose to return to
+		Durdlebury till the end of the war. I left it as an
+		officer and I’m not coming back as a private soldier. I
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page120" title="120"> </a>enclose a cheque for £500. Perhaps Aunt Sophia
+		will be so kind as to use the money—it ought to last
+		some time—for the general upkeep, wages, etc., of
+		Denby Hall. I feel sure she will not refuse me this
+		favour. Give Peggy my love and tell her I hope
+		she will accept the two-seater as a parting gift. It
+		will make me happier to know that she is driving it.</p>
+
+		<p>“I am keeping on as a <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">pied à terre</em> in London the
+		Bloomsbury rooms in which I have been living,
+		and I’ve written to Peddle to see about making them
+		more comfortable. Please ask anybody who might
+		care to write to address me as ‘James M.’ and not
+		as ‘Marmaduke.’�</p>
+	</blockquote>
+
+	<p>The Dean read the letter—the family were at
+	breakfast; then he took off his tortoise-shell spectacles
+	and wiped them.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s from Marmaduke at last,� said he. “He has
+	carried out my prophecy and enlisted.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy caught at her breath and shot out her hand
+	for the letter, which she read eagerly and then passed
+	over to her mother. Mrs. Conover began to cry.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, the poor boy! It will be worse than ever
+	for him.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It will,� said Peggy. “But I think it splendid
+	of him to try. How did he bring himself to do it?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Breed tells,� said the Dean. “That’s what
+	every one seems to have forgotten. He’s a thoroughbred
+	Doggie. There’s the old French proverb:
+	<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Bon chien chasse de race.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy looked at him gratefully. “You’re very
+	comforting,� she said.</p>
+
+	<p>“We must knit him some socks,� observed Mrs.
+	Conover. “I hear those supplied to the army are
+	very rough and ready.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page121" title="121"> </a>“My dear,� smiled the Dean, “Marmaduke’s
+	considerable income does not cease because his pay in
+	the army is one and twopence a day; and I should
+	think he would have the sense to provide himself
+	with adequate underclothing. Also, judging from the
+	account of your shopping orgy in London, he has
+	already laid in a stock that would last out several
+	Antarctic winters.�</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean tapped his egg gently.</p>
+
+	<p>“Then what can we do for the poor boy?� asked
+	his wife.</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean scooped the top of his egg off with a
+	vicious thrust.</p>
+
+	<p>“We can cut out slanderous tongues,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>There had been much calumniating cackle in the
+	little town; nay, more: cackle is of geese; there
+	had been venom of the snakiest kind. The Deanery,
+	father and mother and daughter, each in their several
+	ways, had suffered greatly. It is hard to stand up against
+	poisoned ridicule.</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear,� continued the Dean, “it will be our
+	business to smite the Philistines, hip and thigh. The
+	reasons which guided Marmaduke in the resignation
+	of his commission are the concern of nobody. The
+	fact remains that Mr. Marmaduke Trevor resigned
+	his commission in order to——�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy interrupted with a smile. “‘In order to’—isn’t
+	that a bit Jesuitical, daddy?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I have a great respect for the Jesuits, my dear,�
+	said the Dean, holding out an impressive egg-spoon.
+	“The fact remains, in the eyes of the world, as I
+	remarked, that Mr. Marmaduke Trevor of Denby
+	Hall, a man of fortune and high position in the county,
+	resigned his commission in order, for reasons best
+	known to himself, to serve his country more effectively
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page122" title="122"> </a>in the humbler ranks of the army, and—my dear,
+	this egg is far too full for war time�—with a hazardous
+	plunge of his spoon he had made a yellow yelky
+	horror of the egg-shell—“and I’m going to proclaim
+	the fact far and wide, and—indeed—rub it in.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’ll be jolly decent of you, daddy,� said his
+	daughter. “It will help a lot.�</p>
+
+	<p>In the failure of Marmaduke to retain his commission
+	the family honour had not been concerned.
+	The boy had done his best. They blamed not him
+	but the disastrous training that had unfitted him for
+	the command of men. They reproached themselves
+	for their haste in throwing him headlong into the
+	fiercest element of the national struggle towards
+	efficiency. They could have found an easier school,
+	in which he could have learned to do his share creditably
+	in the national work. Many young men of their
+	acquaintance, far more capable than Marmaduke,
+	were wearing the uniform of a less strenuous branch
+	of the service. It had been a blunder, a failure, but
+	without loss of honour. But when slanderous tongues
+	attacked poor Doggie for running away with a yelp
+	from a little hardship; when a story or two of Doggie’s
+	career in the regiment arrived in Durdlebury, highly
+	flavoured in transit and more and more poisoned as
+	it went from mouth to mouth; when a legend was
+	spread abroad that he had bolted from Salisbury
+	Plain and was run to earth in a Turkish Bath in
+	London, and was only saved from court-martial
+	by family influence, then the family honour of the
+	Conovers was wounded to its proud English depths.
+	And they could say nothing. They had only Doggie’s
+	word to go upon; they accepted it unquestioningly,
+	but they knew no details. Doggie had disappeared.
+	Naturally, they contradicted these evil rumours.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page123" title="123"> </a>The good folks of Durdlebury expected them to do
+	so, and listened with well-bred incredulity. To the
+	question, “Where is he now and what is he going
+	to do?� they could only answer, “We don’t know.�
+	They were helpless.</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy had a bitter quarrel with one of her intimates,
+	Nancy Murdoch, daughter of the doctor who had
+	proclaimed the soundness of Marmaduke’s constitution.</p>
+
+	<p>“He may have told you so, dear,� said Nancy,
+	“but how do you know?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Because whatever else he may be, he’s not a
+	liar,� retorted Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>Nancy gave the most delicate suspicion of a shrug
+	to her pretty shoulders.</p>
+
+	<p>That was the beginning of it. Peggy, naturally
+	combative, armed for the fight and defended Marmaduke.</p>
+
+	<p>“You talk as though you were still engaged to
+	him,� said Nancy.</p>
+
+	<p>“So I am,� declared Peggy rashly.</p>
+
+	<p>“Then where’s your engagement ring?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Where I choose to keep it.�</p>
+
+	<p>The retort lacked originality and conviction.</p>
+
+	<p>“You can’t send it back to him, because you don’t
+	know where he is. And what did Mrs. Conover
+	mean by telling mother that Mr. Trevor had broken
+	off the engagement?�</p>
+
+	<p>“She never told her any such thing,� cried Peggy
+	mendaciously. For Mrs. Conover had committed
+	the indiscretion under assurance of silence.</p>
+
+	<p>“Pardon me,� said Nancy, much on her dignity.
+	“Of course I understand your denying it. It isn’t
+	pleasant to be thrown over by any man—but by a
+	man like Doggie Trevor——�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re a spiteful beast, Nancy, and I’ll never
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page124" title="124"> </a>speak to you again. You’ve neither womanly decency
+	nor Christian feeling.� And Peggy marched out
+	of the doctor’s house.</p>
+
+	<p>As a result of the quarrel, however, she resumed
+	the wearing of the ring, which she flaunted defiantly
+	with left hand deliberately ungloved. Hitherto she
+	had not been certain of the continuance of the engagement.
+	Marmaduke’s repudiation was definite enough;
+	but it had been dictated by his sensitive honour.
+	It lay with her to agree or decline. She had passed
+	through wearisome days of doubt. A physically
+	sound fighting man sent about his business as being
+	unfit for war does not appear a romantic figure in a
+	girl’s eyes. She was bitterly disappointed with Doggie
+	for the sudden withering of her hopes. Had he
+	fulfilled them she could have loved him wholeheartedly,
+	after the simple way of women; for her
+	sex, exhilarated by the barbaric convulsion of the
+	land, clamoured for something heroic, something
+	at least intensely masculine, in which she could find
+	feminine exultation. She also felt resentment at his
+	flight from the Savoy, his silence and practical disappearance.
+	Although not blaming him unjustly,
+	she failed to realize the spiritual piteousness of his
+	plight. If the war has done anything in this country,
+	it has saved the young women of the gentler classes,
+	at any rate, from the abyss of sordid and cynical
+	materialism. Hesitating to announce the rupture
+	of the engagement, she allowed it to remain in a state
+	of suspended animation, and as a symbolic act, ceased
+	to wear the ring. Nancy’s taunts had goaded her to
+	a more heroic attitude. The first person to whom
+	she showed the newly-ringed hand was her mother.</p>
+
+	<p>“The engagement isn’t off until I declare it’s off.
+	I’m going to play the game.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page125" title="125"> </a>“You know best, dear,� said the gentle Mrs.
+	Conover. “But it’s all very upsetting.�</p>
+
+	<p>Then Doggie’s letter brought comfort and gladness
+	to the Deanery. It reassured them as to his fate.
+	It healed the wounded family honour. It justified
+	Peggy in playing the game.</p>
+
+	<p>She took the letter round to Dr. Murdoch’s and
+	thrust it into the hand of an astonished Nancy, with
+	whom since the quarrel she had not been on speaking
+	terms.</p>
+
+	<p>“This is in Marmaduke’s handwriting. You
+	recognize it. Just read the top line when I’ve folded
+	it. ‘I have enlisted in the 10th Wessex.’ See?�
+	She withdrew the letter. “Now, what could a man,
+	let alone an honourable gentleman, do more? Say
+	you’re sorry for having said beastly things about him.�</p>
+
+	<p>Nancy, who had regretted the loss of a lifelong
+	friendship, professed her sorrow.</p>
+
+	<p>“The least you can do then, is to go round and
+	spread the news, and say you’ve seen the letter with
+	your own eyes.�</p>
+
+	<p>To several others, on a triumphant round of visits,
+	did she show the vindicating sentence. Any soft
+	young fool, she asserted, with the directness and not
+	unattractive truculence of her generation, can get a
+	commission and muddle through, but it took a man to
+	enlist as a private soldier.</p>
+
+	<p>“Everybody recognizes now, darling,� said the
+	reconciled Nancy a few days later, “that Doggie
+	is a top-hole, splendid chap. But I think I ought
+	to tell you that you’re boring Durdlebury stiff.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy laughed. It was good to be engaged to a
+	man no longer under a cloud.</p>
+
+	<p>“It will all come right, dear old thing,� she wrote
+	to Doggie. “It’s a cinch, as the Americans say.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page126" title="126"> </a>You’ll soon get used to it—especially if you can
+	realize what it means to me. ‘Saving face’ has been
+	an awful business. Now it’s all over. Of course,
+	I’ll accept the two-seater. I’ve had lessons in driving
+	since you went away—I had thoughts of going out
+	to France to drive Y.M.C.A. cars, but that’s off for
+	the present. I’ll love the two-seater. Swank won’t
+	be the word. But ‘a parting gift’ is all rot. The
+	engagement stands and all Durdlebury knows it…�
+	and so on, and so on. She set herself out, honestly,
+	loyally, to be the kindest girl in the world to Doggie.
+	Mrs. Conover happened to come into the drawing-room
+	just as she was licking the stamp. She thumped
+	it on the envelope with her palm and, looking round
+	from the writing-desk against the wall, showed her
+	mother a flushed and smiling face.</p>
+
+	<p>“If anybody says I’m not good—the goodest
+	thing the cathedral has turned out for half a dozen
+	centuries—I’ll tear her horrid eyes out from their
+	sockets!�</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear!� cried her horrified mother.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">Doggie kept the letter unopened in his tunic pocket
+	until he could find solitude in which to read it. After
+	morning parade he wandered to the deserted trench
+	at the end of the camp, where the stuffed sacks, representing
+	German defenders, were hung for bayonet
+	practice. It was a noon of grey mist through which
+	the alignments of huts and tents were barely visible.
+	Instinctively avoiding the wet earth of the parados,
+	he went round, and, tired after the recent spell of
+	physical drill, sat down on the equally wet sandbags
+	of the model parapet, a pathetic, lonely little khaki
+	figure isolated for the moment by the kindly mist from
+	an uncomprehending world.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page127" title="127"> </a>He read Peggy’s letter several times. He recognized
+	her goodness, her loyalty. The grateful tears
+	even came to his eyes and he brushed them away hurriedly
+	with a swift look round. But his heart beat
+	none the faster. A long-faded memory of childhood
+	came back to him in regained colour. Some quarrel
+	with Peggy. What it was all about he had entirely
+	forgotten; but he remembered her little flushed face
+	and her angry words: “Well, I’m a sport and you
+	ain’t!� He remembered also rebuking her priggishly
+	for unintelligible language and mincing away.
+	He read the letter again in the light of this flash of
+	memory. The only difference between it and the
+	childish speech lay in the fact that instead of a declaration
+	of contrasts, she now uttered a declaration of
+	similitudes. They were both “sports.� There she
+	was wrong. Doggie shook his head. In her sense
+	of the word he was not a “sport.� A sport takes
+	chances, plays the game with a smile on his lips.
+	There was no smile on his. He loathed the game with
+	a sickening, shivering loathing. He was engaged in
+	it because a conglomeration of irresistible forces had
+	driven him into the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mêlée</em>. It never occurred to
+	Doggie that he was under orders of his own soul.
+	This simple yet stupendous fact never occurred to
+	Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>He sat on the wet sandbags and thought and thought.
+	Though he reproached himself for base ingratitude,
+	the letter did not satisfy him. It left his heart cold.
+	What he sought in it he did not know. It was something
+	he could not find, something that was not
+	there. The sea-mist thickened around him. Peggy
+	seemed very far away…. He was still engaged
+	to her—for it would be monstrous to persist in his
+	withdrawal. He must accept the situation which
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page128" title="128"> </a>she decreed. He owed that to her loyalty. But
+	how to continue the correspondence? It was hard
+	enough to write from Salisbury Plain; from here it
+	was well-nigh impossible.</p>
+
+	<p>Thus was Doggie brought up against a New Problem.
+	He struggled desperately to defer its solution.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_X"><a class="pagenum" id="page129" title="129"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> regiments of the new armies have gathered
+	into their rank and file a mixed crowd transcending
+	the dreams of Democracy. At one end of
+	the social scale are men of refined minds and gentle
+	nurture, at the other creatures from the slums, with
+	slum minds and morals, and between them the whole
+	social gamut is run. Experience seems to show that
+	neither of the extreme elements tend, in the one case
+	to elevate, or in the other to debase the battalion.
+	Leading the common life, sharing the common hardships,
+	striving towards common ideals, they inevitably,
+	irresistibly tend to merge themselves in the average.
+	The highest in the scale sink, the lowest rise. The
+	process, as far as the change of soul state is concerned,
+	is infinitely more to the amelioration of the lowest
+	than to the degradation of the highest. The one, also,
+	is more real, the other more apparent. In the one
+	case, it is merely the shuffling-off of manners, of habits,
+	of prejudices, and the assuming of others horribly distasteful
+	or humorously accepted, according to temperament;
+	in the other case, it is an enforced education.
+	And all the congeries of human atoms that make up
+	the battalion, learn new and precious lessons and
+	acquire new virtues—patience, obedience, courage,
+	endurance…. But from the point of view of a
+	decorous tea-party in a cathedral town, the tone—or
+	the standard of manners, or whatever you would like
+	by way of definition of that vague and comforting
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page130" title="130"> </a>word—the tone of the average is deplorably low. The
+	hooligan may be kicked for excessive foulness; but
+	the rider of the high horse is brutally dragged down
+	into the mire. The curious part of it all is that, the
+	gutter element being eliminated altogether, the corporate
+	standard of the remaining majority is lower
+	than the standard of each individual.</p>
+
+	<p>By developing a philosophical disquisition on some
+	such lines did Phineas McPhail seek to initiate Doggie
+	into the weird mysteries of the new social life. Doggie
+	heard with his ears, but thought in terms of Durdlebury
+	tea-parties. Nowhere in the mass could he find
+	the spiritual outlook of his Irish poet-warrior. The
+	individuals that may have had it kept it preciously to
+	themselves. The outlook, as conveyed in speech, was
+	grossly materialistic. From the language of the canteen
+	he recoiled in disgust. He could not reconcile it
+	with the nobler attributes of the users. It was in vain
+	for Phineas to plead that he must accept the <em lang="la" xml:lang="la">lingua
+	franca</em> of the British Army like all other things appertaining
+	thereto. Doggie’s stomach revolted against
+	most of the other things. The disregard (from his
+	point of view) of personal cleanliness universal in the
+	ranks, filled him with dismay. Even on Salisbury
+	Plain he had managed to get a little hot water for his
+	morning tub. Here, save in the officers’ quarters—curiously
+	remote, inaccessible paradise!—there was not
+	such a thing as a tub in the place, let alone hot water
+	to fill it. The men never dreamed of such a thing
+	as a tub. As a matter of fact, they were scrupulously
+	clean according to the lights of the British Tommy;
+	but the lights were not those of Marmaduke Trevor.
+	He had learned the supreme wisdom of keeping lips
+	closed on such matters and did not complain, but all
+	his fastidiousness rebelled. He hated the sluice of head
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page131" title="131"> </a>and shoulders with water from a bucket in the raw
+	open air. His hands swelled, blistered and cracked;
+	and his nails, once so beautifully manicured, grew
+	rich black rims, and all the icy water in the buckets
+	would not remove the grime.</p>
+
+	<p>Now and then he went into the town and had a hot
+	bath; but very few of the others ever seemed to think
+	of such a thing. The habit of the British Army of
+	going to bed in its day-shirt was peculiarly repellent.
+	Yet Doggie knew that to vary from the sacred ways
+	of his fellow-men was to bring disaster on his head.</p>
+
+	<p>Some of the men slept under canvas still. But
+	Doggie, fortunately as he reckoned (for he had begun
+	to appreciate fine shades in misery), was put with a
+	dozen others in a ramshackle hut of which the woodwork
+	had warped and let in the breezes above, below,
+	and all round the sides. Doggie, though dismally cold,
+	welcomed the air for obvious reasons. They were
+	fortunate, too, in having straw palliasses—recently provided
+	when it was discovered that sleeping on badly
+	boarded floors with fierce draughts blowing upwards
+	along human spines was strangely fatal to human
+	bodies—but Doggie found his bed very hard lying.
+	And it smelt sour and sickly. For nights, in spite
+	of fatigue, he could not sleep. His mates sang and
+	talked and bandied jests and sarcasms of esoteric meaning.
+	Some of the recruits from factories or farms
+	satirized their officers for peculiarities common to
+	their social caste and gave grotesque imitations of their
+	mode of speech. Doggie wondered, but held his peace.
+	The deadly stupidity and weariness of it all! And
+	when the talk stopped and they settled to sleep, the
+	snorings and mutterings and coughings began and kept
+	poor Doggie awake most of the night. The irremediable,
+	intimate propinquity with coarse humanity
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page132" title="132"> </a>oppressed him. He would have given worlds to go
+	out, even into the pouring rain, and walk about the
+	camp or sleep under a hedge, so long as he could be
+	alone. And he would think longingly of his satinwood
+	bedroom, with its luxurious bed and lavender-scented
+	sheets, and of his beloved peacock and ivory
+	room and its pictures and exquisite furniture and
+	the great fire roaring up the chimney, and devise
+	intricate tortures for the Kaiser who had dragged
+	him down to this squalor.</p>
+
+	<p>The meals—the rough cooking, the primitive
+	service—the table manners of his companions, offended
+	his delicate senses. He missed napkins. Never could
+	he bring himself to wipe his mouth with the back of
+	his hand and the back of his hand on the seat of his
+	trousers. Nor could he watch with equanimity an
+	honest soul pick his teeth with his little finger. But
+	Doggie knew that acquiescence was the way of happiness
+	and protest the way of woe.</p>
+
+	<p>At first he made few acquaintances beyond those
+	with whom he was intimately associated. It seemed
+	more politic to obey his instincts and remain unobtrusive
+	in company and drift away inoffensively when
+	the chance occurred. One of the men with whom
+	he talked occasionally was a red-headed little cockney
+	by the name of Shendish. For some reason or the
+	other—perhaps because his name conveyed a perfectly
+	wrong suggestion of the Hebraic—he was always
+	called “Mo� Shendish.</p>
+
+	<p>“Don’t yer wish yer was back, mate?� he asked
+	one day, having waited to speak till Doggie had
+	addressed and stamped a letter which he was writing
+	at the end of the canteen table.</p>
+
+	<p>“Where?� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“’Ome, sweet ’ome. In the family castle, where
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page133" title="133"> </a>gilded footmen ’ands sausage and mash about on trays
+	and quarts of beer all day long. I do.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re a lucky chap to have a castle,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Mo Shendish grinned. He showed little yellow
+	teeth beneath a little red moustache.</p>
+
+	<p>“I ain’t ’alf got one,� said he. “It’s in Mare
+	Street, Hackney. I wish I was there now.�</p>
+
+	<p>He sighed, and in an abstracted way he took a half-smoked
+	cigarette from behind his ear and relit it.</p>
+
+	<p>“What were yer before yer joined? Yer look like a
+	clerk.� He pronounced it as if it were spelt with a “u.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Something of the sort,� replied Doggie cautiously.</p>
+
+	<p>“One can always tell you eddicated blokes. Making
+	your five quid a week easy, I suppose?�</p>
+
+	<p>“About that,� said Doggie. “What were you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I was making my thirty bob a week regular. I
+	was in the fish business, I was. And now I’m
+	serving my ruddy country at one and twopence a day.
+	Funny life, ain’t it?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I can’t say it’s very enjoyable,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Not the same as sitting in a snug orfis all day with
+	a pen in your lily-white ’and, and going ’ome to your
+	’igh tea in a top ’at. What made you join up?�</p>
+
+	<p>“The force of circumstances,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Same ’ere,� said Mo; “only I couldn’t put it
+	into such fancy language. First my pals went out
+	one after the other. Then the gels began to look
+	saucy at me, and at last one particular bit of skirt
+	what I’d been walking out with took to promenading
+	with a blighter in khaki. It’d have been silly of me
+	to go and knock his ’ead off, so I enlisted. And it’s
+	all right now.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Just the same sort of thing in my case,� replied
+	Doggie. “I’m glad things are right with the young
+	lady.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page134" title="134"> </a>“First class. She’s straight, she is, and no mistake
+	abaht it. She’s a——�</p>
+
+	<p>He paused for a word to express the inexpressive
+	she.</p>
+
+	<p>“—A paragon—a peach?�—Doggie corrected
+	himself. Then, as the sudden frown of perplexed
+	suspicion was swiftly replaced by a grin of content,
+	he was struck by a bright idea.</p>
+
+	<p>“What’s her name?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Aggie. What’s yours?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Gladys,� replied Doggie with miraculous readiness
+	of invention.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve got her photograph,� Shendish confided in
+	a whisper, and laid his hand on his tunic pocket.
+	Then he looked round at the half-filled canteen to
+	see that he was unobserved. “You won’t give me
+	away if I show it yer, will yer?�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie swore secrecy. The photograph of Aggie,
+	an angular, square-browed damsel, who looked as
+	though she could guide the most recalcitrant of fishmongers
+	into the paths of duty, was produced and
+	thrust into Doggie’s hand. He inspected it with
+	polite appreciation, while his red-headed friend regarded
+	him with fatuous anxiety.</p>
+
+	<p>“Charming! charming!� said Doggie in his
+	pleasantest way. “What’s her colouring?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Fair hair and blue eyes,� said Shendish.</p>
+
+	<p>The kindly question, half idle yet unconsciously
+	tactful, was one of those human things which cost
+	so little but are worth so much. It gave Doggie a
+	devoted friend.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mo,� said he, a day or two later, “you’re such
+	a decent chap. Why do you use such abominable
+	language?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Gawd knows,� smiled Mo, unabashed. “I
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page135" title="135"> </a>suppose it’s friendly like.� He wrinkled his brow in
+	thought for an instant. “That’s where I think
+	you’re making a mistake, old pal, if you don’t mind
+	my mentioning it. I know what yer are, but the
+	others don’t. You’re not friendly enough. See
+	what I mean? Supposin’ you say as you would in
+	a city restoorang when you’re ’aving yer lunch, ‘Will
+	yer kindly pass me the salt?’—well, that’s standoffish—they
+	say ‘Come off it! ‘But if you look about
+	and say, ‘Where’s the b——y salt?’ that’s friendly.
+	They understand. They chuck it at you.�</p>
+
+	<p>Said Doggie, “It’s very—I mean b——y—difficult.�</p>
+
+	<p>So he tried to be friendly; and if he met with no
+	great positive success, he at least escaped animosity.
+	In his spare time he mooned about by himself, shy,
+	disgusted, and miserable. Once, when a group of
+	men were kicking a football about, the ball rolled his
+	way. Instead of kicking it back to the expectant
+	players, he picked it up and advanced to the nearest
+	and handed it to him politely.</p>
+
+	<p>“Thanks, mate,� said the astonished man, “but
+	why didn’t you kick it?�</p>
+
+	<p>He turned away without waiting for a reply.
+	Doggie had not kicked it because he had never kicked
+	a football in his life and shrank from an exhibition of
+	incompetence.</p>
+
+	<p>At drill things were easier than on Salisbury Plain,
+	his actions being veiled in the obscurity of squad or
+	platoon or company. Many others besides himself
+	were cursed by sergeants and rated by subalterns and
+	drastically entreated by captains. He had the consolation
+	of community in suffering. As a trembling
+	officer he had been the only one, the only one marked
+	and labelled as a freak apart, the only one stuck in the
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page136" title="136"> </a>eternal pillory. Here were fools and incapables even
+	more dull and ineffective than he. A plough-boy
+	fellow-recruit from Dorsetshire, Pugsley by name,
+	did not know right from left, and having mastered the
+	art of forming fours, could not get into his brain the
+	reverse process of forming front. He wept under the
+	lash of the corporal’s tongue; and to Doggie these
+	tears were healing dews of Heaven’s distillation.
+	By degrees he learned the many arts of war as taught
+	to the private soldier in England. He could refrain
+	from shutting his eyes when he pressed the trigger
+	of his rifle, but to the end of his career his shooting
+	was erratic. He could perform with the weapon
+	the other tricks of precision. Unencumbered he
+	could march with the best. The torture of the
+	heavy pack nearly killed him; but in time, as his
+	muscles developed, he was able to slog along under the
+	burden. He even learned to dig. That was the
+	worst and most back-breaking art of all.</p>
+
+	<p>Now and then Phineas McPhail and himself would
+	get together and walk into the little seaside town. It
+	was out of the season and there was little to look
+	at save the deserted shops and the squall-fretted pier
+	and the maidens of the place who usually were in
+	company with lads in khaki. Sometimes a girl alone
+	would give Doggie a glance of shy invitation, for Doggie
+	in his short slight way was not a bad-looking
+	fellow, carrying himself well and wearing his uniform
+	with instinctive grace. But the damsel ogled in vain.</p>
+
+	<p>On one such occasion Phineas burst into a guffaw.</p>
+
+	<p>“Why don’t you talk to the poor body? She’s a
+	respectable girl enough. Where’s the harm?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Go ‘square-pushing’?� said Doggie contemptuously,
+	using the soldiers’ slang for walking about with
+	a young woman. “No, thank you.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page137" title="137"> </a>“And why not? I’m not counselling you, laddie,
+	to plunge into a course of sensual debauchery. But
+	a wee bit gossip with a pretty innocent girl——�</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear good chap,� Doggie interrupted, “what
+	on earth should I have in common with her?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Youth.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I feel as old as hell,� said Doggie bitterly.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’ll be feeling older soon,� replied Phineas,
+	“and able to look down on hell with feelings of
+	superiority.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie walked on in silence for a few paces. Then
+	he said:</p>
+
+	<p>“A thing I can’t understand is this mania for
+	picking up girls—just to walk about the streets with
+	them. It’s so inane. It’s a disease.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Did you ever consider,� said Phineas, “how in
+	a station less exalted than that which you used to
+	adorn, the young of opposite sexes manage to meet,
+	select and marry? Man, the British Army’s going
+	to be a grand education for you in sociology.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Well, at any rate, you don’t suppose I’m going
+	to select and marry out of the street?�</p>
+
+	<p>“You might do worse,� said Phineas. Then,
+	after a slight pause, he asked: “Have you any news
+	lately from Durdlebury?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Confound Durdlebury!� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas checked him with one hand and waved
+	the other towards a hostelry on the other side of the
+	street. “If you will give me the money in advance,
+	so as to evade the ungenerous spirit of the no-treating
+	law, you can stand me a quart of ale at the Crown and
+	Sceptre and join me in drinking to its confusion.�</p>
+
+	<p>So they entered the saloon bar of the public-house.
+	Doggie drank a glass of beer while Phineas swallowed
+	a couple of pints. Two or three other soldiers were
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page138" title="138"> </a>there, in whose artless talk McPhail joined lustily.
+	Doggie, unobtrusive at the end of the bar, maintained
+	a desultory and uncomfortable conversation with the
+	barmaid, who was of the florid and hearty type, about
+	the weather.</p>
+
+	<p>Some days later, McPhail again made allusion to
+	Durdlebury. Doggie again confounded it.</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t want to hear of it or think of it,� he
+	exclaimed, in his nervous way, “until this filthy
+	horror is over. They want me to get leave and go
+	down and stay. They’re making my life miserable
+	with kindness. I wish they’d let me alone. They
+	don’t understand a little bit. I want to get through
+	this thing alone, all by myself.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m sorry I persuaded you to join a regiment in
+	which you were inflicted with the disadvantage of my
+	society,� said Phineas.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie threw out an impatient arm. “Oh, you
+	don’t count,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>A few minutes afterwards, repenting his brusqueness,
+	he tried to explain to Phineas why he did not
+	count. The others knew nothing about him. Phineas
+	knew everything.</p>
+
+	<p>“And you know everything about Phineas,� said
+	McPhail grimly. “Ay, ay, laddie,� he sighed,
+	“I ken it all. When you’re in Tophet, a sympathetic
+	Tophetuan with a wee drop of the milk of human
+	kindness is more comfort than a radiant angel who
+	showers down upon you, from the celestial Fortnum
+	and Mason’s, potted shrimps and caviare.�</p>
+
+	<p>The sombreness cleared for a moment from Doggie’s
+	young brow.</p>
+
+	<p>“I never can make up my mind, Phineas,� said he,
+	“whether you’re a very wise man or an awful fraud.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Give me the benefit of the doubt, laddie,� replied
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page139" title="139"> </a>McPhail. “It’s the grand theological principle of
+	Christianity.�</p>
+
+	<p>Time went on. The regiment was moved to the East
+	Coast. On the journey a Zeppelin raid paralysed
+	the railway service. Doggie spent the night under the
+	lee of the bookstall at Waterloo Station. Men huddled
+	up near him, their heads on their kit-bags, slept and
+	snored. Doggie almost wept with pain and cold and
+	hatred of the Kaiser. On the East Coast much the
+	same life as on the South, save that the wind, as if
+	Hun-sent, found its way more savagely to the skin.</p>
+
+	<p>Then suddenly came the news of a large draft for
+	France, which included both McPhail and Shendish.
+	They went away on leave. The gladness with which
+	he welcomed their return showed Doggie how great
+	a part they played in his new life. In a day or two
+	they would depart God knew whither, and he would
+	be left in dreadful loneliness. Through him the two
+	men, the sentimental Cockney fishmonger and the
+	wastrel Cambridge graduate, had become friends.
+	He spent with them all his leisure time.</p>
+
+	<p>Then one of the silly tragi-comedies of life occurred.
+	McPhail got drunk in the crowded bar of a little
+	public-house in the village. It was the last possible
+	drink together of the draft and their pals. The draft
+	was to entrain before daybreak on the morrow. It
+	was a foolish, singing, shouting khaki throng. McPhail,
+	who had borrowed ten pounds from Doggie,
+	in order to see him through the hardships of the Front,
+	established himself close by the bar and was drinking
+	whisky. He was also distributing surreptitious sixpences
+	and shillings into eager hands, which would
+	convert them into alcohol for eager throats. Doggie,
+	anxious, stood by his side. The spirit from which
+	McPhail had for so long abstained, mounted to his
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page140" title="140"> </a>unaccustomed brain. He began to hector, and, master
+	of picturesque speech, he compelled an admiring
+	audience. Doggie did not realize the extent of his
+	drunkenness until, vaunting himself as a Scot and
+	therefore the salt of the army, he picked a quarrel
+	with a stolid Hampshire giant, who professed to have
+	no use for Phineas’s fellow-countrymen. The men
+	closed. Suddenly some one shouted from the doorway:</p>
+
+	<p>“Be quiet, you fools! The A.P.M.’s coming
+	down the road.�</p>
+
+	<p>Now the Assistant Provost Marshal, if he heard
+	hell’s delight going on in a tavern, would naturally
+	make an inquisitorial appearance. The combatants
+	were separated. McPhail threw a shilling on the
+	bar counter and demanded another whisky. He was
+	about to lift the glass to his lips when Doggie, terrified
+	as to what might happen, knocked the glass out of his
+	hand.</p>
+
+	<p>“Don’t be an ass,� he cried.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas was very drunk. He gazed at his old
+	pupil, took off his cap, and, stretching over the bar,
+	hung it on the handle of a beer-pull. Then, staggering
+	back, he pointed an accusing finger.</p>
+
+	<p>“He has the audacity to call me an ass. Little
+	blinking Marmaduke Doggie Trevor. Little Doggie
+	Trevor, whom I trained up from infancy in the way
+	he shouldn’t go——�</p>
+
+	<p>“Why Doggie Trevor?� some one shouted in
+	inquiry.</p>
+
+	<p>“Never mind,� replied Phineas with drunken
+	impressiveness. “My old friend Marmaduke has
+	spilled my whisky and called me an ass. I call him
+	Doggie, little Doggie Trevor. You all bear witness
+	he knocked the drink out of my mouth. I’ll never
+	forgive him. He doesn’t like being called Doggie—and
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page141" title="141"> </a>I’ve no—no pred’lex’n to be called an ass. I’ll
+	be thinking I’m going just to strangle him.�</p>
+
+	<p>He struck out his bony claws towards the shrinking
+	Doggie; but stout arms closed round him and
+	a horny hand was clamped over his mouth, and they
+	got him through the bar and the back parlour into
+	the yard, where they pumped water on his head.
+	And when the A.P.M. and his satellites passed by,
+	the quiet of The Whip in Hand was the holy peace
+	of a nunnery.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie and Mo Shendish and a few other staunch
+	souls got McPhail back to quarters without much
+	trouble. On parting, the delinquent, semi-sobered,
+	shook Doggie by the hand and smiled with an air of
+	great affection.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve been verra drunk, laddie. And I’ve been
+	angry with you for the first time in my life. But
+	when you knocked the glass out of my hand I thought
+	you were in danger of losing your good manners in
+	the army. We’ll have many a pow-wow together
+	when you join me out there.�</p>
+
+	<p>The matter would have drifted out of Doggie’s
+	mind as one of no importance had not the detested
+	appellation by which Phineas hailed him struck the
+	imagination of his comrades. It filled a long-felt
+	want, no nickname for Private J. M. Trevor having
+	yet been invented. Doggie Trevor he was and Doggie
+	Trevor he remained for the rest of his period of service.
+	He resigned himself to the inevitable. The sting had
+	gone out of the name through his comrades’ ignorance
+	of its origin. But he loathed it as much as ever; it
+	sounded in his ears an everlasting reproach.</p>
+
+	<p>In spite of the ill turn done in drunkenness, Doggie
+	missed McPhail. He missed Mo Shendish, his more
+	constant companion, even more. Their place was in
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page142" title="142"> </a>some degree taken, or rather usurped, for it was without
+	Doggie’s volition, by “Taffy� Jones, once clerk to
+	a firm of outside bookmakers. As Doggie had never
+	seen a racecourse, had never made a bet, and was
+	entirely ignorant of the names even of famous Derby
+	winners, Taffy regarded him as an astonishing freak
+	worth the attention of a student of human nature.
+	He began to cultivate Doggie’s virgin mind by aid of
+	reminiscence, and of such racing news as was to
+	be found in the <cite>Sportsman</cite>. He was a garrulous
+	person and Doggie a good listener. To please him
+	Doggie backed horses, through the old firm, for small
+	sums. The fact of his being a man of large independent
+	means both he and Phineas (to his credit) had kept
+	a close secret, his clerkly origin divined and promulgated
+	by Mo Shendish being unquestioningly accepted, so
+	the bets proposed by Taffy were of a modest nature.
+	Once he brought off a forty to one chance. Taffy
+	rushed to him with the news, dancing with excitement.
+	Doggie’s stoical indifference to the winning of twenty
+	pounds, a year’s army pay, gave him cause for great
+	wonder. As Doggie showed similar equanimity when
+	he lost, Taffy put him down as a born sportsman.
+	He began to admire him tremendously.</p>
+
+	<p>This friendship with Taffy is worth special record,
+	for it was indirectly the cause of a little revolution in
+	Doggie’s regimental life. Taffy was an earnest though
+	indifferent performer on the penny whistle. It was
+	his constant companion, the solace of his leisure moments
+	and one of the minor tortures of Doggie’s
+	existence. His version of the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Marseillaise</em> was
+	peculiarly excruciating.</p>
+
+	<p>One day, when Taffy was playing it with dreadful
+	variations of his own to an admiring group in the
+	Y.M.C.A. hut, Doggie, his nerves rasped to the raw
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page143" title="143"> </a>by the false notes and maddening intervals, snatched
+	it out of his hand and began to play himself. Hitherto,
+	shrinking morbidly from any form of notoriety, he
+	had shown no sign of musical accomplishment. But
+	to-day the musician’s impulse was irresistible. He
+	played the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Marseillaise</em> as no one there had heard it
+	on penny whistle before. The hut recognized a
+	master’s touch, for Doggie was a fine executant
+	musician. When he stopped there was a roar: “Go
+	on!� Doggie went on. They kept him whistling
+	till the hut was crowded.</p>
+
+	<p>Thenceforward he was penny-whistler, by excellence,
+	to the battalion. He whistled himself into
+	quite a useful popularity.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XI"><a class="pagenum" id="page144" title="144"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">“We’re</span> all very proud of you, Marmaduke,�
+	said the Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>“I think you’re just splendid,� said Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>They were sitting in Doggie’s rooms in Woburn
+	Place, Doggie having been given his three days’ leave
+	before going to France. Once again Durdlebury had
+	come to Doggie and not Doggie to Durdlebury.
+	Aunt Sophia, however, somewhat ailing, had stayed
+	at home.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie stood awkwardly before them, conscious of
+	swollen hands and broken nails, shapeless ammunition
+	boots and ill-fitting slacks; morbidly conscious, too,
+	of his original failure.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re about ten inches more round the chest
+	than you were,� said the Dean admiringly.</p>
+
+	<p>“And the picture of health,� cried Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“For anyone who has a sound constitution,�
+	answered Doggie, “it is quite a healthy life.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Now that you’ve got into the way, I’m sure you
+	must really love it,� said Peggy with an encouraging
+	smile.</p>
+
+	<p>“It isn’t so bad,� he replied.</p>
+
+	<p>“What none of us can quite understand, my dear
+	fellow,� said the Dean, “is your shying at Durdlebury.
+	As we have written you, everybody’s singing your
+	praises. Not a soul but would have given you a
+	hearty welcome.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Besides,� Peggy chimed in, “you needn’t have
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page145" title="145"> </a>made an exhibition of yourself in the town if you didn’t
+	want to. The poor Peddles are woefully disappointed.�</p>
+
+	<p>“There’s a war going on. They must bear up—like
+	lots of other people,� replied Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“He’s becoming quite cynical,� Peggy laughed.
+	“But, apart from the Peddles, there’s your own
+	beautiful house waiting for you. It seems so funny
+	not to go to it, instead of moping in these fusty lodgings.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Perhaps,� said Doggie quietly, “if I went there
+	I should never want to come back.�</p>
+
+	<p>“There’s something to be said from that point of
+	view,� the Dean admitted. “A solution of continuity
+	is never quite without its dangers. Even Oliver
+	confessed as much.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Oliver?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, didn’t Peggy tell you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I didn’t think Marmaduke would be interested,�
+	said Peggy quickly. “He and Oliver have never
+	been what you might call bosom friends.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I shouldn’t have minded about hearing of him,�
+	said Doggie. “Why should I? What’s he doing?�</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean gave information. Oliver, now a captain,
+	had come home on leave a month ago, and had
+	spent some of it at the Deanery. He had seen a good
+	deal of fighting, and had one or two narrow escapes.</p>
+
+	<p>“Was he keen to get back?� asked Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean smiled. “I instanced his case in my
+	remark as to the dangers of the solution of
+	continuity.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, rubbish, daddy,� cried his daughter, with a
+	flush, “Oliver is as keen as mustard.� The Dean
+	made a little gesture of submission. She continued.
+	“He doesn’t like the beastliness out there for its own
+	sake, any more than Marmaduke will. But he simply
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page146" title="146"> </a>loves his job. He has improved tremendously. Once
+	he thought he was the only man in the country who
+	had seen Life stark naked, and he put on frills accordingly
+	Now that he’s just one of a million who have
+	been up against Life stripped to its skeleton, he’s a bit
+	subdued.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m glad of that,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean, urbanely indulgent, joined his fingertips
+	together and smiled. “Peggy is right,� said he,
+	“although I don’t wholly approve of her modern
+	lack of reticence in metaphor. Oliver is coming out
+	true gold from the fire. He’s a capital fellow. And
+	he spoke of you, my dear Marmaduke, in the kindest
+	way in the world. He has a tremendous admiration
+	for your pluck.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s very good of him, I’m sure,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Presently the Dean—good, tactful man—discovered
+	that he must go out and have a prescription made up
+	at a chemist’s. That arch-Hun enemy, the gout,
+	against which he must never be unprepared. He
+	would be back in time for dinner. The engaged
+	couple were left alone.</p>
+
+	<p>“Well?� said Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“Well, dear?� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Her lips invited. He responded. She drew him
+	to the saddle-bag sofa, and they sat down side by side.</p>
+
+	<p>“I quite understand, dear old thing,� she said. “I
+	know the resignation and the rest of it hurt you
+	awfully. It hurt me. But it’s no use grousing over
+	spilt milk. You’ve already mopped it all up. It’s
+	no disgrace to be a private. It’s an honour. There
+	are thousands of gentlemen in the ranks. Besides—you’ll
+	work your way up and they’ll offer you another
+	commission in no time.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re very good and sweet, dear,� said Doggie,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page147" title="147"> </a>“to have such faith in me. But I’ve had a year——�</p>
+
+	<p>“A year!� cried Peggy. “Good lord! so it is.�
+	She counted on her fingers. “Not quite. But eleven
+	months. It’s eleven months since I’ve seen you. Do
+	you realize that? The war has put a stop to time.
+	It is just one endless day.�</p>
+
+	<p>“One awful, endless day,� Doggie acquiesced with
+	a smile. “But I was saying—I’ve had a year, or an
+	endless day of eleven months, in which to learn myself.
+	And what I don’t know about myself isn’t knowledge.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy interrupted with a laugh. “You must be
+	a wonder. Dad’s always preaching about self-knowledge.
+	Tell me all about it.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie shook his head, at the same time passing
+	his hand over it in a familiar gesture.</p>
+
+	<p>Then Peggy cried:</p>
+
+	<p>“I knew there was something wrong with you.
+	Why didn’t you tell me? You’ve had your hair cut—cut
+	quite differently.�</p>
+
+	<p>It was McPhail, careful godfather, who had taken
+	him as a recruit to the regimental barber and prescribed
+	a transformation from the sleek long hair brushed
+	back over the head to a conventional military crop
+	with a rudiment of a side parting. On the crown a
+	few bristles stood up as if uncertain which way to go.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s advisable,� Doggie replied, “for a Tommy’s
+	hair to be cut as short as possible. The Germans are
+	sheared like convicts.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy regarded him open-eyed and puzzle-browed.
+	He enlightened her no further, but pursued the main
+	proposition.</p>
+
+	<p>“I wouldn’t take a commission,� said he, “if the
+	War Office went mad and sank on its knees and beat
+	its head in the dust before me.�</p>
+
+	<p>“In Heaven’s name, why not?�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page148" title="148"> </a>“I’ve learned my place in the world,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy shook him by the shoulder and turned on
+	him her young eager face.</p>
+
+	<p>“Your place in the world is that of a cultivated
+	gentleman of old family, Marmaduke Trevor of Denby
+	Hall.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That was the funny old world,� said he, “that
+	stood on its legs—legs wide apart with its hands beneath
+	the tails of its dress-coat, in front of the drawing-room
+	fire. The present world’s standing on its head.
+	Everything’s upside-down. It has no sort of use for
+	Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall. No more use
+	than for Goliath. By the way, how is the poor
+	little beast getting on?�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy laughed. “Oh, Goliath is perfectly assured
+	of his position. He has got it rammed into his mind
+	that he drives the two-seater.� She returned to the
+	attack. “Do you intend always to remain a private?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I do,� said he. “Not even a corporal. You
+	see, I’ve learned to be a private of sorts, and that
+	satisfies my ambition.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Well, I give it up,� said Peggy. “Though why
+	you wouldn’t let dad get you a nice cushy job is
+	a thing I can’t understand. For the life of me I
+	can’t.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve made my bed, and I must lie on it,� he said
+	quietly.</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t believe you’ve got such a thing as a bed.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie smiled. “Oh yes, a bed of a sort.� Then
+	noting her puzzled face, he said consolingly: “It’ll
+	all come right when the war’s over.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But when will that be? And who knows, my
+	dear man, what may happen to you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“If I’m knocked out, I’m knocked out, and there’s
+	an end of it,� replied Doggie philosophically.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page149" title="149"> </a>She put her hand on his. “But what’s to become
+	of me?�</p>
+
+	<p>“We needn’t cry over my corpse yet,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean, after awhile, returned with his bottle
+	of medicine, which he displayed with conscientious
+	ostentation. They dined. Peggy again went over
+	the ground of the possible commission.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m afraid she has set her heart on it, my boy,�
+	said the Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy cried a little on parting. This time Doggie
+	was going, not to the fringe, but to the heart of the
+	Great Adventure. Into the thick of the carnage. A
+	year ago, she said, through her tears, she would have
+	thought herself much more fitted for it than Marmaduke.</p>
+
+	<p>“Perhaps you are still, dear,� said Doggie, with
+	his patient smile.</p>
+
+	<p>He saw them to the taxi which was to take them
+	to the familiar Sturrocks’s. Before getting in, Peggy
+	embraced him.</p>
+
+	<p>“Keep out of the way of shells and bullets as much
+	as you can.�</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean blew his nose, God-blessed him, and
+	murmured something incoherent about fighting for the
+	glory of old England.</p>
+
+	<p>“Good luck,� cried Peggy from the window.</p>
+
+	<p>She blew him a kiss. The taxi drove off, and Doggie
+	went back into the house with leaden feet. The
+	meeting, which he had morbidly dreaded, had brought
+	him no comfort. It had not removed the invisible
+	barrier between Peggy and himself. But Peggy
+	seemed so unconscious of it that he began to wonder
+	whether it only existed in his diseased imagination.
+	Though by his silences and reserves he had given her
+	cause for resentment and reproach, her attitude was
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page150" title="150"> </a>nothing less than angelic. He sat down moodily in
+	an arm-chair, his hands deep in his trousers pockets and
+	his legs stretched out. The fault lay in himself, he
+	argued. What was the matter with him? He seemed
+	to have lost all human feeling, like the man with the
+	stone heart in the old legend. Otherwise, why had
+	he felt no prick of jealousy at Peggy’s admiring comprehension
+	of Oliver? Of course he loved her. Of
+	course he wanted to marry her when this nightmare
+	was over. That went without saying. But why
+	couldn’t he look to the glowing future? A poet had
+	called a lover’s mistress “the lode-star of his one
+	desire.� That to him Peggy ought to be. Lode-star.
+	One desire. The words confused him. He
+	had no lode-star. His one desire was to be left alone.
+	Without doubt he was suffering from some process
+	of moral petrifaction.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie was no psychologist. He had never acquired
+	the habit of turning himself inside-out and gloating
+	over the horrid spectacle. All his life he had been
+	a simple soul with simple motives and a simple though
+	possibly selfish standard to measure them. But now
+	his soul was knocked into a chaotic state of complexity,
+	and his poor little standards were no manner of use.
+	He saw himself as in a glass darkly, mystified by
+	unknown change.</p>
+
+	<p>He rose, sighed, shook himself.</p>
+
+	<p>“I give it up,� said he, and went to bed.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">Doggie went to France; a France hitherto undreamed
+	of, either by him or by any young Englishman;
+	a France clean swept and garnished for war;
+	a France, save for the ubiquitous English soldiery, of
+	silent towns and empty villages and deserted roads;
+	a France of smiling fields and sorrowful faces of
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page151" title="151"> </a>women and drawn patient faces of old men—and even
+	then the women and old men were rarely met by
+	day, for they were at work on the land, solitary figures
+	on the landscape, with vast spaces between them. In
+	the quiet townships, English street signs and placards
+	conflicted with the sense of being in friendly provincial
+	France, and gave the impression of foreign domination.
+	For beyond that long grim line of eternal thunder,
+	away over there in the distance, which was called
+	the Front, street signs and placards in yet another alien
+	tongue also outraged the serene genius of French urban
+	life. Yet our signs were a symbol of a mighty Empire’s
+	brotherhood, and the dimmed eyes that beheld the
+	<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Place de la Fontaine</em> transformed into “Holborn
+	Circus,� and the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Grande Rue</em> into “Piccadilly,� smiled,
+	and the owners, with eager courtesy, directed the
+	stray Tommy to “Regent Street,� which they had
+	known all their life as the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Rue Feuillemaisnil</em>—a word
+	which Tommy could not pronounce, still less remember.
+	It was as much as Tommy could do to
+	get hold of an approximation to the name of the town.
+	And besides these renamings, other inscriptions flamed
+	about the streets; alphabetical hieroglyphs, in which
+	the mystic letters H.Q. most often appeared; “This
+	way to the Y.M.C.A. hut�; in many humble
+	windows the startling announcement, “Washing done
+	here.� British motor-lorries and ambulances crowding
+	the little <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">place</em> and aligned along the avenues.
+	British faces, British voices, everywhere. The blue
+	uniform and blue helmet of a French soldier seemed
+	as incongruous though as welcome as in London.</p>
+
+	<p>And the straight endless roads, so French with
+	their infinite border of poplars, their patient little
+	stones marking every hundred metres until the tenth
+	rose into the proud kilometre stone proclaiming the
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page152" title="152"> </a>distance to the next stately town, rang too with the
+	sound of British voices, and the tramp of British feet,
+	and the clatter of British transport, and the screech
+	and whir of cars, revealing as they passed the flash of
+	red and gold of the British staff. Yet the finely
+	cultivated land remained to show that it was France;
+	and the little whitewashed villages; the curé, in
+	shovel-hat and rusty cassock; the children in blue or
+	black blouses, who stared as the British troops went
+	by; the patient, elderly French Territorials in their
+	old pre-war uniforms, guarding unthreatened culverts
+	or repairing the roads; the helpful signs set up in
+	happier days by the Touring Club of France.</p>
+
+	<p>Into this strange anomaly of a land came Doggie
+	with his draft, still half stupefied by the remorselessness
+	of the stupendous machine in which he had been
+	caught, in spite of his many months of training in
+	England. He had loathed the East Coast camp.
+	When he landed at Boulogne in the dark and the pouring
+	rain and hunched his pack with the others who
+	went off singing to the rest camp, he regretted East
+	Anglia.</p>
+
+	<p>“Give us a turn on the whistle, Doggie,� said a
+	corporal.</p>
+
+	<p>“I was sea-sick into it and threw it overboard,�
+	he growled, stumbling over the rails of the quay.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, you holy young liar!� said the man next
+	him.</p>
+
+	<p>But Doggie did not trouble to reply, his neighbour
+	being only a private like himself.</p>
+
+	<p>Then the draft joined its unit. In his youth Doggie
+	had often wondered at the meaning of the familiar
+	inscription on every goods van in France: “40
+	Hommes. 8 Chevaux.� Now he ceased to wonder.
+	He was one of the forty men…. At the rail-head
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page153" title="153"> </a>he began to march, and at last joined the remnant
+	of his battalion. They had been through hard fighting,
+	and were now in billets. Until he joined them
+	he had not realized the drain there had been on the
+	reserves at home. Very many familiar faces of officers
+	were missing. New men had taken their place. And
+	very many of his old comrades had gone, some to
+	Blighty, some West of that Island of Desire; and
+	those who remained had the eyes of children who
+	had passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.</p>
+
+	<p>McPhail and Mo Shendish had passed through
+	unscathed. In the reconstruction of the regiment
+	chance willed that the three of them found themselves
+	in the same platoon of A Company. Doggie almost
+	embraced them when they met.</p>
+
+	<p>“Laddie,� said McPhail to him, as he was drinking
+	a mahogany-coloured liquid that was known by
+	the name of tea, out of a tin mug, and eating a hunk
+	of bread and jam, “I don’t know whether or not
+	I’m pleased to see you. You were safer in England.
+	Once I misspent many months of my life in shielding
+	you from the dangers of France. But France
+	is a much more dangerous place nowadays, and I
+	can’t help you. You’ve come right into the thick
+	of it. Just listen to the hell’s delight that’s going
+	on over yonder.�</p>
+
+	<p>The easterly wind brought them the roar streaked
+	with stridence of the artillery duel in progress on
+	the nearest sector of the Front.</p>
+
+	<p>They were sitting in the cellar entrance to a house
+	in a little town which had already been somewhat
+	mauled. Just opposite was a shuttered house on the
+	ground floor of which had been a hatter and hosier’s
+	shop, and there still swung bravely on an iron rod
+	the red brim of what once had been a monstrous red
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page154" title="154"> </a>hat. Next door, the façade of the upper stories had
+	been shelled away and the naked interiors gave the
+	impression of a pathetic doll’s house. Women’s
+	garments still hung on pegs. A cottage piano lurched
+	forward drunkenly on three legs, with the keyboard
+	ripped open, the treble notes on the ground, the bass
+	incongruously in the air. In the attic, ironically
+	secure, hung a cheap German print of blowsy children
+	feeding a pig. The wide flagstoned street smelt sour.
+	At various cavern doors sat groups of the billeted
+	soldiers. Now and then squads marched up and down,
+	monotonously clad in khaki and dun-coloured helmets.
+	Officers, some only recognizable by the Sam Browne
+	belt, others spruce and point-device, passed by. Here
+	and there a shop was open, and the elderly proprietor
+	and his wife stood by the doorway to get the afternoon
+	air. Women and children straggled rarely through
+	the streets. The Boche had left the little town alone
+	for some time; they had other things to do with their
+	heavy guns; and all the French population, save those
+	whose homes were reduced to nothingness, had remained.
+	They took no notice of the distant bombardment.
+	It had grown to be a phenomenon of
+	nature like the wind and the rain.</p>
+
+	<p>But to Doggie it was new—just as the sight of the
+	wrecked house opposite, with its sturdy crownless
+	hat-brim of a sign, was new. He listened, as McPhail
+	had bidden him, to the artillery duel with an odd little
+	spasm of his heart.</p>
+
+	<p>“What do you think of that, now?� asked McPhail
+	grandly, as if it was The Greatest Show on Earth
+	run by him, the Proprietor.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s rather noisy,� said Doggie, with a little
+	ironical twist of his lips that was growing habitual.
+	“Do they keep it up at night?�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page155" title="155"> </a>“They do.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t think it’s fair to interfere with one’s sleep
+	like that,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’ve got to adapt yourself to it,� said McPhail
+	sagely. “No doubt you’ll be remembering my theory
+	of adaptability. Through that I’ve made myself
+	into a very brave man. When I wanted to run
+	away—a very natural desire, considering the scrupulous
+	attention I’ve always paid to my bodily well-being—I
+	reflected on the preposterous obstacles put in the
+	way of flight by a bowelless military system, and
+	adapted myself to the static and dynamic conditions
+	of the trenches.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Gorblime!� said Mo Shendish, stretched out by
+	his side, “just listen to him!�</p>
+
+	<p>“I suppose you’ll say you sucked honey out of the
+	shells,� remarked Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m no great hand at mixing metaphors——�</p>
+
+	<p>“What about drinks?� asked Mo.</p>
+
+	<p>“Nor drinks either,� replied McPhail. “Both
+	are bad for the brain. But as to what you were
+	saying, laddie, I’ll not deny that I’ve derived considerable
+	interest and amusement from a bombardment.
+	Yet it has its sad aspect.� He paused for a moment
+	or two. “Man,� he continued, “what an awful
+	waste of money!�</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t know what old Mac is jawing about,�
+	said Mo Shendish, “but you can take it from me he’s
+	a holy terror with the bayonet. One moment he’s
+	talking to a Boche through his hat and the next the
+	Boche is wriggling like a worm on a bent pin.�</p>
+
+	<p>Mo winked at Phineas. The temptation to “tell
+	the tale� to the new-comer was too strong.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie grew very serious. “You’ve been killing
+	men—like that?�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page156" title="156"> </a>“Thousands, laddie,� replied Phineas, the picture
+	of unboastful veracity. “And so has Mo.�</p>
+
+	<p>Mo Shendish, helmeted, browned, dried, toughened,
+	a very different Mo from the pallid ferret whom Aggie
+	had driven into the ranks of war, hunched himself
+	up, his hands clasping his knees.</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t mind doing it, when you’re so excited you
+	don’t know where you are,� said he, “but I don’t
+	like thinking of it afterwards.�</p>
+
+	<p>As a matter of fact, he had only once got home
+	with the bayonet and the memory was unpleasant.</p>
+
+	<p>“But you’ve just thought of it,� said Phineas.</p>
+
+	<p>“It was you, not me,� said Mo. “That makes
+	all the difference.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s astonishing,� Phineas remarked sententiously,
+	“how many people not only refuse to catch pleasure
+	as it flies, but spurn it when it sits up and begs at them.
+	Laddie,� he turned to Doggie, “the more one wallows
+	in hedonism, the more one realizes its unplumbed
+	depths.�</p>
+
+	<p>A little girl of ten, neatly pigtailed but piteously
+	shod, came near and cast a child’s envious eye on
+	Doggie’s bread and jam.</p>
+
+	<p>“Approach, my little one,� Phineas cried in French
+	words but with the accent of Sauchiehall Street. “If
+	I gave you a franc, what would you do with it?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I should buy nourishment (<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">de la nourriture</em>) for
+	<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">maman</em>.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Lend me a franc, laddie,� said McPhail, and
+	when Doggie had slipped the coin into his palm, he
+	addressed the child in unintelligible grandiloquence
+	and sent her on her way mystified but rejoicing.
+	<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ces bons drôles d’Anglais!</em></p>
+
+	<p>“Ah, laddie!� cried Phineas, stretching himself
+	out comfortably by the jamb of the door, “you’ve got
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page157" title="157"> </a>to learn to savour the exquisite pleasure of a genuinely
+	kindly act.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Hold on!� cried Mo. “It was Doggie’s money
+	you were flinging about.�</p>
+
+	<p>McPhail withered him with a glance.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re an unphilosophical ignoramus,� said he.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XII"><a class="pagenum" id="page158" title="158"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">Perhaps</span> one of the greatest influences which
+	transformed Doggie into a fairly efficient though
+	undistinguished infantryman was a morbid social
+	terror of his officers. It saved him from many a
+	guard-room, and from many a heart-to-heart talk
+	wherein the zealous lieutenant gets to know his men.
+	He lived in dread lest military delinquency or civil
+	accomplishment should be the means of revealing the
+	disgrace which bit like an acid into his soul. His
+	undisguisable air of superior breeding could not fail to
+	attract notice. Often his officers asked him what he
+	was in civil life. His reply, “A clerk, sir,� had to
+	satisfy them. He had developed a curious self-protective
+	faculty of shutting himself up like a hedgehog
+	at the approach of danger. Once a breezy
+	subaltern had selected him as his batman; but Doggie’s
+	agonized, “It would be awfully good of you, sir,
+	if you wouldn’t mind not thinking of it,� and the
+	appeal in his eyes, established the freemasonry of
+	caste and saved him from dreaded intimate relations.</p>
+
+	<p>“All right, if you’d rather not, Trevor,� said the
+	subaltern. “But why doesn’t a chap like you try
+	for a commission?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m much happier as I am, sir,� replied Doggie,
+	and that was the end of the matter.</p>
+
+	<p>But Phineas, when he heard of it—it was on the
+	East Coast—began: “If you still consider yourself
+	too fine to clean another man’s boots——�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page159" title="159"> </a>Doggie, in one of his quick fits of anger, interrupted:
+	“If you think I’m just a dirty little snob, if
+	you don’t understand why I begged to be let off,
+	you’re the thickest-headed fool in creation!�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m nae that, laddie,� replied Phineas, with his
+	usual ironic submissiveness. “Haven’t I kept your
+	secret all this time?�</p>
+
+	<p>Thus it was Doggie’s fixed idea to lose himself in
+	the locust swarm, to be prominent neither for good
+	nor evil, even in the little clot of fifty, outwardly,
+	almost identical locusts that formed his platoon. It
+	braced him to the performance of hideous tasks; it
+	restrained him from display of superior intellectual
+	power or artistic capability. The world upheaval had
+	thrown him from his peacock and ivory room, with
+	its finest collection on earth of little china dogs, into
+	a horrible fetid hole in the ground in Northern France.
+	It had thrown not the average young Englishman of
+	comfortable position, who had toyed with æsthetic
+	superficialities as an amusement, but a poor little
+	by-product of cloistered life who had been brought
+	up from babyhood to regard these things as the nervous
+	texture of his very existence. He was wrapped from
+	head to heel in fine net, to every tiny mesh of which
+	he was acutely sensitive.</p>
+
+	<p>A hole in the ground in Northern France. The
+	regiment, after its rest, moved on and took its turn
+	in the trenches. Four days on; four days off.
+	Four days on of misery inconceivable. Four days
+	on, during which the officers watched the men with
+	the unwavering vigilance of kindly cats:</p>
+
+	<p>“How are you getting along, Trevor?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Nicely, thank you, sir.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Feet all right?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, thank you, sir.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page160" title="160"> </a>“Sure? If you want to grouse, grouse away.
+	That’s what I’m talking to you for.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m perfectly happy, sir.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Darn sight more than I am!� laughed the
+	subaltern, and with a cheery nod in acknowledgment
+	of Doggie’s salute, splashed down the muddy trench.</p>
+
+	<p>But Doggie was chilled to the bone, and he had
+	no feeling in his feet, which were under six inches of
+	water, and his woollen gloves being wet through were
+	useless, and prevented his numbed hands from feeling
+	the sandbags with which he and the rest of the platoon
+	were repairing the parapet; for the Germans had
+	just consecrated an hour’s general hate to the vicinity
+	of the trench, and its exquisite symmetry, the pride of
+	the platoon commander, had been disturbed. There
+	had also been a few ghastly casualties. A shell had
+	fallen and burst in the traverse at the far end of the
+	trench. Something that looked like half a man’s
+	head and a bit of shoulder had dropped just in front
+	of the dug-out where Doggie and his section was
+	sheltering. Doggie staring at it was violently sick.
+	In a stupefied way he found himself mingling with
+	others who were engaged in clearing up the horror.
+	A murmur reached him that it was Taffy Jones who
+	had thus been dismembered…. The bombardment
+	over, he had taken his place with the rest in
+	the reparation of the parapet; and as he happened
+	to be at an end of the line, the officer had spoken to him.
+	If he had been suffering tortures unknown to Attila,
+	and unimagined by his successors, he would have
+	answered just the same.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">But he lamented Taffy’s death to Phineas, who
+	listened sympathetically. Such a cheery comrade,
+	such a smart soldier, such a kindly soul.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page161" title="161"> </a>“Not a black spot in him,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“A year ago, laddie,� said McPhail, “what
+	would have been your opinion of a bookmaker’s
+	clerk?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I know,� replied Doggie. “But this isn’t a
+	year ago. Just look round.�</p>
+
+	<p>He laughed somewhat hysterically, for the fate of
+	Taffy had unstrung him for the time. Phineas contemplated
+	the length of deep narrow ditch, with its
+	planks half swimming on filthy liquid, its wire revetment
+	holding up the oozing sides, the dingy parapet
+	above which it was death to put one’s head, the grey
+	free sky, the only thing free along that awful row of
+	parallel ditches that stretched from the Belgian coast
+	to Switzerland, the clay-covered, shapeless figures of
+	men, their fellows, almost undistinguishable even by
+	features from themselves.</p>
+
+	<p>“It has been borne upon me lately,� said Phineas,
+	“that patriotism is an amazing virtue.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie drew a foot out of the mud so as to find a
+	less precarious purchase higher up the slope.</p>
+
+	<p>“And I’ve been thinking, Phineas, whether it’s
+	really patriotism that has brought you and me into
+	this—what can we call it? Dante’s Inferno is child’s
+	play to it.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Dante had no more imagination,� said Phineas,
+	“than a Free Kirk precentor in Kirkcudbright.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But is it patriotism?� Doggie persisted. “If I
+	thought it was, I should be happier. If we had orders
+	to go over the top and attack and I could shout ‘England
+	for ever!’ and lose myself just in the thick of
+	it——�</p>
+
+	<p>“There’s a brass hat coming down the trench,�
+	said Phineas, “and brass hats have no use for rhapsodical
+	privates.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page162" title="162"> </a>They stood to attention as the staff officer passed
+	by. Then Doggie broke in impatiently:</p>
+
+	<p>“I wish to goodness you could understand what
+	I’m trying to get at.�</p>
+
+	<p>A smile illuminated the gaunt, unshaven, mud-caked
+	face of Phineas McPhail.</p>
+
+	<p>“Laddie,� said he, “let England, as an abstraction,
+	fend for itself. But you’ve a bonny English soul
+	within you, and for that you are fighting. And so
+	had poor Taffy Jones. And I have a bonny Scottish
+	thirst, the poignancy of which both of you have been
+	happily spared. I will leave you, laddie, to seek in
+	slumber a surcease from martyrdom.�</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">Doggie had been out a long time. He had seen
+	many places, much fighting and endured manifold
+	miseries. After one of the spells in the trenches,
+	the worst he had experienced, A Company was
+	marched into new billets some miles behind the lines,
+	in the once prosperous village of Frélus. They had
+	slouched along dead tired, drooping under their packs,
+	sodden with mud and sleeplessness, silent, with not
+	a note of a song among them—but at the entrance to
+	the village, quickened by a word or two of exhortation
+	from officers and sergeants, they pulled themselves
+	together and marched in, heads up, forward, in faultless
+	step. The C.O. was jealous of the honour of
+	his men. He assumed that his predecessors in the
+	village had been a “rotten lot,� and was determined
+	to show the inhabitants of Frélus what a crack English
+	regiment was really like. Frélus was an unimportant,
+	unheard-of village; but the opinion of a thousand
+	Fréluses made up France’s opinion of the British
+	Army. Doggie, although half stupefied with fatigue,
+	responded to the sentiment, like the rest. He was
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page163" title="163"> </a>conscious of making part of a gallant show. It was
+	only when they halted and stood easy that he lost
+	count of things. The wide main street of the village
+	swam characterless before his eyes. He followed, not
+	directions, but directed men, with a sheep-like instinct,
+	and found himself stumbling through an archway down
+	a narrow path. He had a dim consciousness of lurching
+	sideways and confusedly apologizing to a woman
+	who supported him back to equilibrium. Then the
+	next thing he saw was a barn full of fresh straw, and
+	when somebody pointed to a vacant strip, he fell down,
+	with many others, and went to sleep.</p>
+
+	<p>The réveillé sounded a minute afterwards, though
+	a whole night had passed; and there was the blessed
+	clean water to wash in—he had long since ceased to
+	be fastidious in his ablutions—and there was breakfast,
+	sizzling bacon and bread and jam. And there
+	in front of the kitchen, aiding with the hot water
+	for the tea, moved a slim girl, with dark, and as Doggie
+	thought, tragic eyes.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">Kit inspection, feet inspection, all the duties of the
+	day and dinner were over. Most of the men returned
+	to their billets to sleep. Some, including Doggie,
+	wandered about the village, taking the air, and
+	visiting the little modest cafés and talking with indifferent
+	success, so far as the interchange of articulate
+	ideas was concerned, with shy children. McPhail
+	and Mo Shendish being among the sleepers, Doggie
+	mooned about by himself in his usual self-effacing
+	way. There was little to interest him in the long
+	straggling village. He had passed through a hundred
+	such. Low whitewashed houses, interspersed with
+	perky balconied buildings given over to little shops
+	on the ground floor, with here and there a discreet
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page164" title="164"> </a>iron gate shutting off the doctor’s or the attorney’s
+	villa, and bearing the oval plate indicating the name
+	and pursuit of the tenant; here and there, too, long
+	whitewashed walls enclosing a dairy or a timber-yard
+	stretched on each side of the great high road,
+	and the village gradually dwindled away at each end
+	into the gently undulating country. There were just
+	a by-lane or two, one leading up to the little grey
+	church and presbytery and another to the little cemetery
+	with its trim paths and black and white wooden
+	crosses and wirework pious offerings. At open doors
+	the British soldiers lounged at ease, and in the dim
+	interiors behind them the forms of the women of
+	the house, blue-aproned, moved to and fro. The
+	early afternoon was warm, a westerly breeze deadened
+	the sound of the distant bombardment to an unheeded
+	drone, and a holy peace settled over the place.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie, clean, refreshed, comfortably drowsy,
+	having explored the village, returned to his billet,
+	and looking at it from the opposite side of the way,
+	for the first time realized its nature. The lane,
+	into which he had stumbled the night before, ran
+	under an archway supporting some kind of overhead
+	chamber, and separated the dwelling-house from a
+	warehouse wall on which vast letters proclaimed the
+	fact that Veuve Morin et Fils carried on therein the
+	business of hay and corn dealers. Hence, Doggie
+	reflected, the fresh, deep straw on which he and his
+	fortunate comrades had wallowed. The double gate
+	under the archway was held back by iron stanchions.
+	The two-storied house looked fairly large and comfortable.
+	The front door stood wide open, giving
+	the view of a neat, stiff little hall or living-room.
+	An article of furniture caught his idle eye. He
+	crossed the road in order to have a nearer view. It
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page165" title="165"> </a>was a huge polished mahogany cask standing about
+	three feet high and bound with shining brass bands,
+	such as he remembered having seen once in Brittany.
+	He advanced still closer, and suddenly the slim, dark
+	girl appeared and stood in the doorway, and looked
+	frankly and somewhat rebukingly into his inquisitive
+	eyes. Doggie flushed as one caught in an unmannerly
+	act. A crying fault of the British Army is that it
+	prescribes for the rank and file no form of polite
+	recognition of the existence of civilians. It is contrary
+	to Army Orders to salute or to take off their caps.
+	They can only jerk their heads and grin, an inelegant
+	proceeding, which places them at a disadvantage with
+	the fair sex. Doggie, therefore, sketched a vague
+	salutation half-way between a salute and a bow, and
+	began a profuse apology. Mademoiselle must pardon
+	his curiosity, but as a lover of old things he had been
+	struck by the beautiful <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tonneau</em>.</p>
+
+	<p>An amused light came into her sombre eyes and
+	a smile flickered round her lips. Doggie noted instantly
+	how pale she was, and how tiny, faint little lines
+	persisted at the corners of those lips in spite of the smile.</p>
+
+	<p>“There is no reason for excuses, monsieur,� she
+	said. “The door was open to the view of everybody.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pourtant</em>,� said Doggie, “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">c’était un peu mal élevé</em>.�</p>
+
+	<p>She laughed. “Pardon. But it’s droll. First to
+	find an English soldier apologizing for looking into
+	a house, and then to find him talking French like a
+	<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">poilu</em>.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie said, with a little touch of national jealousy
+	and a reversion to Durdlebury punctilio: “I hope,
+	mademoiselle, you have always found the English
+	soldier conduct himself like a gentleman.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mais oui, mais oui!</em>� she cried, “they are all
+	charming. <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ils sont doux comme des moutons.</em> But
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page166" title="166"> </a>this is a question of delicacy—somewhat exaggerated.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s good of you, mademoiselle, to forgive me,�
+	said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>By all the rules of polite intercourse, either Doggie
+	should have made his bow and exit, or the maiden,
+	exercising her prerogative, should have given him
+	the opportunity of a graceful withdrawal. But they
+	remained where they were, the girl framed by the
+	doorway, the lithe little figure in khaki and lichen-coloured
+	helmet looking up at her from the foot of
+	the two front steps.</p>
+
+	<p>At last he said in some embarrassment: “That’s
+	a very beautiful cask of yours.�</p>
+
+	<p>She wavered for a few seconds. Then she said:</p>
+
+	<p>“You can enter, monsieur, and examine it, if you
+	like.�</p>
+
+	<p>Mademoiselle was very amiable, said Doggie.
+	Mademoiselle moved aside and Doggie entered, taking
+	off his helmet and holding it under his arm like
+	an opera-hat. There was nothing much to see in
+	the little vestibule-parlour: a stiff tasselled chair or
+	two, a great old linen-press taking up most of one side
+	of a wall, a cheap table covered with a chenille tablecloth,
+	and the resplendent old cask, about which he
+	lingered. He mentioned Brittany. Her tragic face
+	lighted up again. Monsieur was right. Her aunt,
+	Madame Morin, was Breton, and had brought the cask
+	with her as part of her dowry, together with the press
+	and other furniture. Doggie alluded to the vastly
+	lettered inscription, “Veuve Morin et Fils.� Madame
+	Morin was, in a sense, his hostess. And the sons?</p>
+
+	<p>“One is in Madagascar, and the other—alas,
+	monsieur!�</p>
+
+	<p>And Doggie knew what that “alas!� meant.</p>
+
+	<p>“The Argonne,� she said.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page167" title="167"> </a>“And madame your aunt?�</p>
+
+	<p>She shrugged her thin though shapely shoulders.
+	“It nearly killed her. She is old and an invalid.
+	She has been in bed for the last three weeks.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Then what becomes of the business?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It is I, monsieur, who am the business. And I
+	know nothing about it.� She sighed. Then with
+	her blue apron—otherwise she was dressed in unrelieved
+	black—she rubbed an imaginary speck from
+	the brass banding of the cask. “This, I suppose
+	you know, was for the best brandy, monsieur.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And now?� he asked.</p>
+
+	<p>“A memory. A sentiment. A thing of beauty.�</p>
+
+	<p>In a feminine way, which he understood, she
+	herded him to the door, by way of dismissal. Durdlebury
+	helped him. A tiny French village has as many
+	slanderous tongues as an English cathedral city. He
+	was preparing to take polite leave, when she looked
+	swiftly at him and made the faintest gesture of a
+	detaining hand.</p>
+
+	<p>“Now I remember. It was you who nearly fell
+	into me last night, when you were entering through
+	the gate.�</p>
+
+	<p>The dim recollection came back—the firm woman’s
+	arm round him for the few tottering seconds.</p>
+
+	<p>“It seems I am always bound to be impolite, for
+	I don’t think I thanked you,� smiled Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“You were at the end of your tether.� Then
+	very gently, “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pauvre garçon!</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>“The <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">sales Boches</em> had kept us awake for four
+	nights,� said Doggie. “That was why.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And you are rested now?�</p>
+
+	<p>He laughed. “Almost.�</p>
+
+	<p>They were at the door. He looked out and drew
+	back. A knot of men were gathered by the gate
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page168" title="168"> </a>of the yard. Apparently she had seen them too, for
+	a flush rose to her pale cheeks.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mademoiselle,� said Doggie, “I should like to
+	creep back to the barn and sleep. If I pass my comrades
+	they’ll want to detain me.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That would be a pity,� she said demurely.
+	“Come this way, monsieur.�</p>
+
+	<p>She led him through a room and a passage to the
+	kitchen. They shared a pleasurable sense of adventure
+	and secrecy. At the kitchen door she paused and
+	spoke to an old woman chopping up vegetables.</p>
+
+	<p>“Toinette, let monsieur pass.� To Doggie she
+	said: “Au revoir, monsieur!� and disappeared.</p>
+
+	<p>The old woman looked at him at first with disfavour.
+	She did not hold with Tommies needlessly
+	tramping over the clean flags of her kitchen. But
+	Doggie’s polite apology for disturbing her and a youthful
+	grace of manner—he still held his tin hat under
+	his arm—caused her features to relax.</p>
+
+	<p>“You are English?�</p>
+
+	<p>With a smile, he indicated his uniform. “Why,
+	yes, madame.�</p>
+
+	<p>“How comes it, then, that you speak French?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Because I have always loved your beautiful
+	France, madame.�</p>
+
+	<p>“France—<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ah! la pauvre France</em>!� She sighed,
+	drew a wisp of what had been a cornet of snuff from
+	her pocket, opened it, dipped in a tentative finger
+	and thumb and, finding it empty, gazed at it with
+	disappointment, sighed again and, with the methodical
+	hopelessness of age, folded it up into the neatest of
+	little squares and thrust it back in her pocket. Then
+	she went on with her vegetables.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie took his leave and emerged into the yard.</p>
+
+	<p>He dozed pleasantly on the straw of the barn, but
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page169" title="169"> </a>it was not the dead sleep of the night. Bits of his
+	recent little adventure fitted into the semi-conscious
+	intervals. He heard the girl’s voice saying so gently:
+	“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pauvre garçon!</em>� and it was very comforting.</p>
+
+	<p>He was finally aroused by Phineas and Mo Shendish,
+	who, having slept like tired dogs some distance off
+	down the barn, now desired his company for a stroll
+	round the village. Doggie good-naturedly assented.
+	As they passed the house door he cast a quick glance.
+	It was open, but the slim figure in black with the blue
+	apron was not visible within. The shining cask, however,
+	seemed to smile a friendly greeting.</p>
+
+	<p>“If you believed the London papers,� said Phineas,
+	“you’d think that the war-worn soldier coming from
+	the trenches is met behind the lines with luxurious
+	Turkish baths, comfortable warm canteens, picture
+	palaces and theatrical entertainments. Can you perceive
+	here any of those amenities of modern warfare?�</p>
+
+	<p>They looked around them, and admitted they
+	could not.</p>
+
+	<p>“Apparently,� said Phineas, “the Colonel, good but
+	limited man, has missed all the proper places and dumps
+	us in localities unrecognized by the London Press.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Put me on the pier at Brighton,� sang Mo
+	Shendish. “But I’d sooner have Margit or Yarmouth
+	any day. Brighton’s too toffish for whelks.
+	My! and cockles! I wonder whether we shall ever
+	eat ’em again.� A far-away, dreamy look crept into
+	his eyes.</p>
+
+	<p>“Does your young lady like cockles?� Doggie
+	asked sympathetically.</p>
+
+	<p>“Aggie? Funny thing, I was just thinking of
+	her. She fair dotes on ’em. We had a day at Southend
+	just before the war——�</p>
+
+	<p>He launched into anecdote. His companions
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page170" title="170"> </a>listened, Phineas ironically carrying out his theory of
+	adaptability, Doggie with finer instinct. It appeared
+	there had been an altercation over right of choice
+	with an itinerant vendor in which, to Aggie’s admiration,
+	Mo had come off triumphant.</p>
+
+	<p>“You see,� he explained, “being in the fish trade
+	myself, I could spot the winners.�</p>
+
+	<p>James Marmaduke Trevor, of Denby Hall, laughed
+	and slapped him on the back, and said indulgently:
+	“Good old Mo!�</p>
+
+	<p>At the little school-house they stopped to gossip
+	with some of their friends who were billeted there,
+	and they sang the praises of the Veuve Morin’s barn.</p>
+
+	<p>“I wonder you don’t have the house full of orficers,
+	if it’s so wonderful,� said some one.</p>
+
+	<p>An omniscient corporal in the confidence of the
+	quartermaster explained that the landlady being ill in
+	bed, and the place run by a young girl, the house
+	had been purposely missed. Doggie drew a breath of
+	relief at the news and attributed Madame Morin’s
+	malady to the intervention of a kindly providence.
+	Somehow he did not fancy officers having the run of
+	the house.</p>
+
+	<p>They strolled on and came to a forlorn little <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Débit
+	de Tabac</em>, showing in its small window some clay
+	pipes and a few fly-blown picture post-cards. Now
+	Doggie, in spite of his training in adversity, had never
+	resigned himself to “Woodbines,� and other such
+	brands supplied to the British Army, and Egyptian
+	and Turkish being beyond his social pale, he had taken
+	to smoking French Régie tobacco, of which he laid
+	in a stock whenever he had the chance. So now he
+	entered the shop, leaving Phineas and Mo outside.
+	As they looked on French cigarettes with sturdy
+	British contempt, they were not interested in Doggie’s
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page171" title="171"> </a>purchases. A wan girl of thirteen rose from behind
+	the counter.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Vous désirez, monsieur?</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie stated his desire. The girl was calculating
+	the price of the packets before wrapping them up,
+	when his eyes fell upon a neat little pile of cornets
+	in a pigeon-hole at the back. They directly suggested
+	to him one of the great luminous ideas of his life.
+	It was only afterwards that he realized its effulgence.
+	For the moment he was merely concerned with the
+	needs of a poor old woman who had sighed lamentably
+	over an empty paper of comfort.</p>
+
+	<p>“Do you sell snuff?�</p>
+
+	<p>“But yes, monsieur.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Give me some of the best quality.�</p>
+
+	<p>“How much does monsieur desire?�</p>
+
+	<p>“A lot,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>And he bought a great package, enough to set the
+	whole village sneezing to the end of the war, and peering
+	round the tiny shop and espying in the recesses
+	of a glass case a little olive-wood box ornamented
+	on the top with pansies and forget-me-nots, purchased
+	that also. He had just paid when his companions put
+	their heads in the doorway. Mo, pointing waggishly
+	to Doggie, warned the little girl against his depravity.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mauvy, mauvy!� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Qu’est-ce qu’il dit?</em>� asked the child.</p>
+
+	<p>“He’s the idiot of the regiment, whom I have to
+	look after and feed with pap,� said Doggie, “and,
+	being hungry, he is begging you not to detain me.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mon Dieu!</em>� cried the child.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie, always courteous, went out with a “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Bon
+	soir, mademoiselle</em>,� and joined his friends.</p>
+
+	<p>“What were you jabbering to her about?� Mo
+	asked suspiciously.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page172" title="172"> </a>Doggie gave him the literal translation of his speech.
+	Phineas burst into loud laughter.</p>
+
+	<p>“Laddie,� said he, “I’ve never heard you make
+	a joke before. The idiot of the regiment, and you’re
+	his keeper! Man, that’s fine. What has come over
+	you to-day?�</p>
+
+	<p>“If he’d said a thing like that in Mare Street,
+	Hackney, I’d have knocked his blinking ’ead orf,�
+	declared Mo Shendish.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie stopped and put his parcel-filled hands
+	behind his back.</p>
+
+	<p>“Have a try now, Mo.�</p>
+
+	<p>But Mo bade him fry his ugly face, and thus established
+	harmony.</p>
+
+	<p>It was late that evening before Doggie could find
+	an opportunity of slipping, unobserved, through the
+	open door into the house kitchen dimly illuminated
+	by an oil lamp.</p>
+
+	<p>“Madame,� said he to Toinette, “I observed to-day
+	that you had come to the end of your snuff. Will
+	you permit a little English soldier to give you some?
+	Also a little box to keep it in.�</p>
+
+	<p>The old woman, spare, myriad-wrinkled beneath
+	her peasant’s <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">coiffe</em>, yet looking as if carved out of
+	weather-beaten oak, glanced from the gift to the
+	donor and from the donor to the gift.</p>
+
+	<p>“But, monsieur—monsieur—why?� she began
+	quaveringly.</p>
+
+	<p>“You surely have some one—<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">là bas</em>—over yonder?�
+	said Doggie with a sweep of his hand.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mais oui?</em> How did you know? My grandson.
+	<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mon petiot</em>——�</p>
+
+	<p>“It is he, my comrade, who sends the snuff to
+	the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">grand’mére</em>.� And Doggie bolted.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XIII"><a class="pagenum" id="page173" title="173"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">At</span> breakfast next morning Doggie searched the
+	courtyard in vain for the slim figure of the
+	girl. Yesterday she had stood just outside the kitchen
+	door. To-day her office was usurped by a hefty
+	cook with the sleeves of his grey shirt rolled up and
+	his collar open and vast and tight-hitched braces
+	unromantically strapped all over him. Doggie
+	felt a pang of disappointment and abused the tea.
+	Mo Shendish stared, and asked what was wrong
+	with it.</p>
+
+	<p>“Rotten,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“You can’t expect yer slap-up City A.B.C. shops
+	in France,� said Mo.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie, who was beginning to acquire a sense of
+	rueful humour, smiled and was appeased.</p>
+
+	<p>It was only in the afternoon that he saw the girl
+	again. She was standing in the doorway of the house,
+	with her hand on her bosom, as though she had just
+	come out to breathe fresh air, when Doggie and his
+	two friends emerged from the yard. As their eyes
+	met, she greeted him with her sad little smile. Emboldened,
+	he stepped forward.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Bon jour, mademoiselle.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Bon jour, monsieur.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>“I hope madame your aunt is better to-day.�</p>
+
+	<p>She seemed to derive some dry amusement from
+	his solicitude.</p>
+
+	<p>“Alas, no, monsieur.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page174" title="174"> </a>“Was that why I had not the pleasure of seeing
+	you this morning?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Where?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yesterday you filled our tea-kettles.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But, monsieur,� she replied primly, “I am not
+	the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vivandière</em> of the regiment.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s a pity,� laughed Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Then he became aware of the adjacent forms and
+	staring eyes of Phineas and Mo, who for the first
+	time in their military career beheld him on easy terms
+	with a strange and prepossessing young woman. After
+	a second’s thought he came to a diplomatic decision.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mademoiselle,� said he, in his best Durdlebury
+	manner, “may I dare to present my two comrades,
+	my best friends in the battalion, Monsieur McPhail,
+	Monsieur Shendish?�</p>
+
+	<p>She made them each a little formal bow, and then,
+	somewhat maliciously, addressing McPhail, as the
+	bigger and the elder of the two:</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t yet know the name of your friend.�</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas put his great hand on Doggie’s shoulder.</p>
+
+	<p>“James Marmaduke Trevor.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Otherwise called Doggie, miss,� said Mo.</p>
+
+	<p>She made a little graceful gesture of non-comprehension.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Non compree?</em>� asked Mo.</p>
+
+	<p>“No, monsieur.�</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas explained, in his rasping and consciously
+	translated French:</p>
+
+	<p>“It is a nickname of the regiment. Doggie.�</p>
+
+	<p>The flushed and embarrassed subject of the discussion
+	saw her lips move silently to the word.</p>
+
+	<p>“But his name is Trevor. Monsieur Trevor,�
+	said Phineas.</p>
+
+	<p>She smiled again. And the strange thing about
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page175" title="175"> </a>her smile was that it was a matter of her lips and rarely
+	of her eyes, which always maintained the haunting
+	sadness of their tragic depths.</p>
+
+	<p>“Monsieur Trevor,� she repeated imitatively.
+	“And yours, monsieur?�</p>
+
+	<p>“McPhail.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Mac-Fêle; <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">c’est assez difficile</em>. And yours?�</p>
+
+	<p>Mo guessed. “Shendish,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>She repeated that also, whereat Mo grinned fatuously,
+	showing his little yellow teeth beneath his scrubby
+	red moustache.</p>
+
+	<p>“My friends call me Mo,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>She grasped his meaning. “Mo,� she said; and
+	she said it so funnily and softly, and with ever so
+	little a touch of quizzicality, that the sentimental
+	warrior roared with delight.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’ve got it right fust time, miss.�</p>
+
+	<p>From her two steps’ height of vantage, she looked
+	down on the three upturned British faces—and her
+	eyes went calmly from one to the other.</p>
+
+	<p>She turned to Doggie. “One would say, monsieur,
+	that you were the Three Musketeers.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Possibly, mademoiselle,� laughed Doggie. He
+	had not felt so light-hearted for many months. “But
+	we lack a d’Artagnan.�</p>
+
+	<p>“When you find him, bring him to me,� said the
+	girl.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mademoiselle,� said Phineas gallantly, “we
+	would not be such imbeciles.�</p>
+
+	<p>At that moment the voice of Toinette came from
+	within.</p>
+
+	<p>“Ma’amselle Jeanne!  Ma’amselle Jeanne!�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Oui, oui, j’y viens</em>,� she cried. “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Bon soir, messieurs</em>,�
+	and she was gone.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie looked into the empty vestibule and smiled
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page176" title="176"> </a>at the friendly brandy cask. Provided it is pronounced
+	correctly, so as to rhyme with the English “Anne,�
+	it is a very pretty name. Doggie thought she
+	looked like Jeanne—a Jeanne d’Arc of this modern
+	war.</p>
+
+	<p>“Yon’s a very fascinating lassie,� Phineas remarked
+	soberly, as they started on their stroll. “Did you
+	happen to observe that all the time she was talking so
+	prettily she was looking at ghosts behind us?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Do you think so?� asked Doggie, startled.</p>
+
+	<p>“Man, I know it,� replied Phineas.</p>
+
+	<p>“Ghosts be blowed!� cried Mo Shendish. “She’s
+	a bit of orl right, she is. What I call class. Doesn’t
+	chuck ’erself at yer ’ead, like some of ’em, and, on
+	the other ’and, has none of yer blooming stand-orfishness.
+	See what I mean?� He clutched them
+	each by an arm—he was between them. “Look
+	’ere. How do you think I could pick up this blinking
+	lingo—quick?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Make violent love to Toinette and ask her to
+	teach you. There’s nothing like it,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Who’s Toinette?�</p>
+
+	<p>“The nice old lady in the kitchen.�</p>
+
+	<p>Mo flung his arm away. “Oh, go and boil
+	yourself!� said he.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">But the making of love to the old woman in the
+	kitchen led to possibilities of which Mo Shendish
+	never dreamed. They never dawned on Doggie
+	until he found himself at it that evening.</p>
+
+	<p>It was dusk. The men were lounging and smoking
+	about the courtyard. Doggie, who had long since
+	exchanged poor Taffy Jones’s imperfect penny whistle
+	for a scientific musical instrument ordered from
+	Bond Street, was playing, with his sensitive skill, the
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page177" title="177"> </a>airs they loved. He had just finished “Annie Laurie�—“Man,�
+	Phineas used to declare, “when Doggie
+	Trevor plays ‘Annie Laurie,’ he has the power to
+	take your heart by the strings and drag it out through
+	your eyes�—he had just come to the end of this
+	popular and gizzard-piercing tune and received his
+	meed of applause, when Toinette came out of the
+	kitchen, two great zinc crocks in her hands, and
+	crossed to the pump in the corner of the yard. Three
+	or four would-be pumpers, among them Doggie, went
+	to her aid.</p>
+
+	<p>“All right, mother, we’ll see to it,� said one of
+	them.</p>
+
+	<p>So they pumped and filled the crocks, and one
+	man got hold of one and Doggie got hold of another,
+	and they carried them to the kitchen steps.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Merci, monsieur</em>,� said Toinette to the first; and
+	he went away with a friendly nod. But to Doggie
+	she said, “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Entrez, monsieur</em>.� And monsieur carried
+	the two crocks over the threshold and Toinette shut
+	the door behind him. And there, sitting over some
+	needlework in a corner of the kitchen by a lamp, sat
+	Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>She looked up rather startled, frowned for the
+	brief part of a second, and regarded him inquiringly.</p>
+
+	<p>“I brought in monsieur to show him the photograph
+	of <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mon petiot</em>, the comrade who sent me the snuff,�
+	explained Toinette, rummaging in a cupboard.</p>
+
+	<p>“May I stay and look at it?� asked Doggie,
+	buttoning up his tunic.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mais parfaitement, monsieur</em>,� said Jeanne. “It
+	is Toinette’s kitchen.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Bien sûr</em>,� said the old woman, turning with the
+	photograph, that of a solid young infantryman. Doggie
+	made polite remarks. Toinette put on a pair of
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page178" title="178"> </a>silver-rimmed spectacles and scanned the picture.
+	Then she handed it to Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>“Don’t you think there is a great deal of resemblance?�</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne directed a comparing glance at Doggie
+	and smiled.</p>
+
+	<p>“Like two little soldiers in a pod,� she said.</p>
+
+	<p>Toinette talked of her <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">petiot</em> who was at St. Mihiel.
+	It was far away, very far. She sighed as though he
+	were fighting remote in the Caucasus.</p>
+
+	<p>Presently came the sharp ring of a bell. Jeanne
+	put aside her work and rose.</p>
+
+	<p>“It is my aunt who has awakened.�</p>
+
+	<p>But Toinette was already at the door. “I will go
+	up, Ma’amselle Jeanne. Do not derange yourself.�</p>
+
+	<p>She bustled away. Once more the pair found
+	themselves alone together.</p>
+
+	<p>“If you don’t continue your sewing, mademoiselle,�
+	said Doggie, “I shall think that I am disturbing you,
+	and must bid you good night.�</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne sat down and resumed her work. A
+	sensation, more like laughter than anything else,
+	fluttered round Doggie’s heart.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Voulez-vous vous asseoir, Monsieur—Trevor?</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Vous êtes bien aimable, Mademoiselle Jeanne</em>,�
+	said Doggie, sitting down on a straight-backed chair
+	by the oilcloth-covered kitchen table which was
+	between them.</p>
+
+	<p>“May I move the lamp slightly?� he asked,
+	for it hid her from his view.</p>
+
+	<p>He moved it somewhat to her left. It threw
+	shadows over her features, accentuating their appealing
+	sadness. He watched her, and thought of McPhail’s
+	words about the ghosts. He noted too, as the needle
+	went in and out of the fabric, that her hands, though
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page179" title="179"> </a>roughened by coarse work, were finely made, with
+	long fingers and delicate wrists. He broke a silence
+	that grew embarrassing.</p>
+
+	<p>“You seem to have suffered greatly, Mademoiselle
+	Jeanne,� he said softly.</p>
+
+	<p>Her lips quivered. “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mais oui, monsieur.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>“Monsieur Trevor,� he said.</p>
+
+	<p>She put her hands and needlework in her lap and
+	looked at him full.</p>
+
+	<p>“And you too have suffered?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I? Oh no.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But, yes. I have seen too much of it not to know.
+	I see in the eyes. Your two comrades to-day—they
+	are good fellows—but they have not suffered.
+	You are different.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not a bit,� he declared. “We’re just little
+	indistinguishable bits of the conglomerate Tommy.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And I, monsieur, have the honour to say that you
+	are different.�</p>
+
+	<p>This was very flattering. More—it was sweet
+	unction, grateful to many a bruise.</p>
+
+	<p>“How?� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>“You do not belong to their world. Your Tommies
+	are wonderful in their kindness and chivalry—until
+	I met them I had never seen an Englishman in
+	my life—I had imbecile ideas—I thought they would
+	be without manners—<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">un peu insultants</em>. I found I
+	could walk among them, without fear, as if I were a
+	princess. It is true.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It is because you have the air of a princess,�
+	said Doggie; “a sad little disguised princess of a
+	fairy-tale, who is recognized by all the wild boars
+	and rabbits in the wood.�</p>
+
+	<p>She glanced aside. “There isn’t a woman in
+	Frélus who is differently treated. I am only an
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page180" title="180"> </a>ignorant girl, half bourgeoise, half peasant, monsieur,
+	but I have my woman’s knowledge—and I know
+	there is a difference between you and the others.
+	You are a son of good family. It is evident. You
+	have a delicacy of mind and of feeling. You were
+	not born to be a soldier.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Mademoiselle Jeanne,� cried Doggie, “do I
+	appear as bad as that? Do you take me for an
+	<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">embusqué manqué</em>?�</p>
+
+	<p>Now an <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">embusqué</em> is a slacker who lies in the safe
+	ambush of a soft job. And an <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">embusqué manqué</em> is a
+	slacker who fortuitously has failed to win the fungus
+	wreath of slackerdom.</p>
+
+	<p>She flushed deep red.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Je ne suis pas malhonnête, monsieur.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie spread himself elbow-wise over the table.
+	The girl’s visible register of moods was fascinating.</p>
+
+	<p>“Pardon, Mademoiselle Jeanne. You are quite
+	right. But it’s not a question of what I was born
+	to be—but what I was trained to be. I wasn’t
+	trained to be a soldier. But I do my best.�</p>
+
+	<p>She looked at him waveringly.</p>
+
+	<p>“Forgive me, mademoiselle.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But you flash out on the point of honour.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie laughed. “Which shows that I have the
+	essential of the soldier.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie’s manner was not without charm. She
+	relented.</p>
+
+	<p>“You know very well what I mean,� she said
+	rebukingly. “And you don’t deserve that I should
+	tell it to you. It was my intention to say that you
+	have sacrificed many things to make yourself a simple
+	soldier.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Only a few idle habits,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“You joined, like the rest, as a volunteer.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page181" title="181"> </a>“Of course.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You abandoned everything to fight for your
+	country?�</p>
+
+	<p>Under the spell of her dark eyes Doggie spoke
+	according to Phineas after the going West of Taffy
+	Jones, “I think, Mademoiselle Jeanne, it was rather
+	to fight for my soul.�</p>
+
+	<p>She resumed her sewing. “That’s what I meant
+	long ago,� she remarked with the first draw of the
+	needle. “No one could fight for his soul without
+	passing through suffering.� She went on sewing.
+	Doggie, shrinking from a reply that might have sounded
+	fatuous, remained silent; but he realized a wonderful
+	faculty of comprehension in Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>After awhile he said: “Where did you learn all
+	your wisdom, Mademoiselle Jeanne?�</p>
+
+	<p>“At the convent, I suppose. My father gave me
+	a good education.�</p>
+
+	<p>“An English poet has said, ‘Knowledge comes,
+	but Wisdom lingers’�—Doggie had rather a fight to
+	express the meaning exactly in French—“You don’t
+	gather wisdom in convents.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It is true. Since then I have seen many things.�</p>
+
+	<p>She stared across the room, not at Doggie, and he
+	thought again of the ghosts.</p>
+
+	<p>“Tell me some of them, Mademoiselle Jeanne,�
+	he said in a low voice.</p>
+
+	<p>She shot a swift glance at him and met his honest
+	brown eyes.</p>
+
+	<p>“I saw my father murdered in front of me,� she said
+	in a harsh voice.</p>
+
+	<p>“My God!� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“It was on the Retreat. We lived in Cambrai,
+	my father and mother and I. He was a lawyer.
+	When we heard the Germans were coming, my
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page182" title="182"> </a>father, somewhat of an invalid, decided to fly. He
+	had heard of what they had already done in Belgium.
+	We tried to go by train. <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pas moyen.</em> We took to
+	the road, with many others. We could not get a
+	horse—we had postponed our flight till too late.
+	Only a handcart, with a few necessaries and precious
+	things. And we walked until we nearly died of
+	heat and dust and grief. For our hearts were very
+	heavy, monsieur. The roads, too, were full of the
+	English in retreat. I shall not tell you what I saw
+	of the wounded by the roadside. I sometimes see
+	them now in my dreams. And we were helpless.
+	We thought we would leave the main roads, and at
+	last we got lost and found ourselves in a little wood.
+	We sat down to rest and to eat. It was cool and
+	pleasant, and I laughed, to cheer my parents, for they
+	knew how I loved to eat under the freshness of the
+	trees.� She shivered. “I hope I shall never have to
+	eat a meal in a wood again. We had scarcely begun
+	when a body of cavalry, with strange pointed helmets,
+	rode along the path and, seeing us, halted. My
+	mother, half dead with terror, cried out, ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mon Dieu,
+	ce sont des Uhlans!</em>’ The leader, I suppose an officer,
+	called out something in German. My father replied.
+	I do not understand German, so I did not know and
+	shall never know what they said. But my father
+	protested in anger and stood in front of the horse
+	making gestures. And then the officer took out his
+	revolver and shot him through the heart, and he fell
+	dead. And the murderer turned his horse’s head
+	round and he laughed. He laughed, monsieur.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Damn him!� said Doggie, in English. “Damn
+	him!�</p>
+
+	<p>He gazed deep into Jeanne’s dark tearless eyes.
+	She continued in the same even voice:</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page183" title="183"> </a>“My mother became mad. She was a peasant, a
+	Bretonne, where the blood is fierce, and she screamed
+	and clung to the bridle of the horse. And he rode
+	her down and the horse trampled on her. Then he
+	pointed at me, who was supporting the body of my
+	father, and three men dismounted. But suddenly
+	he heard something, gave an order, and the men
+	mounted again, and they all rode away laughing and
+	jeering, and the last man, in bad French, shouted at
+	me a foul insult. And I was there, Monsieur Trevor,
+	with my father dead and my mother stunned and
+	bruised and bleeding.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie, sensitive, quivered to the girl’s tragedy:
+	he said, with tense face:</p>
+
+	<p>“God give me strength to kill every German I
+	see!�</p>
+
+	<p>She nodded slowly. “No German is a human
+	being. If I were God, I would exterminate the
+	accursed race like wolves.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You are right,� said Doggie. A short silence
+	fell. He asked: “What happened then?�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mon Dieu</em>, I almost forget. I was overwhelmed
+	with grief and horror. Some hours afterwards a
+	small body of English infantry came—many of them
+	had bloodstained bandages. An officer who spoke
+	a little French questioned me. I told him what had
+	happened. He spoke with another officer, and
+	because I recognized the word ‘Uhlans,’ I knew they
+	were anxious about the patrol. They asked me the
+	way to some place—I forget where. But I was
+	lost. They looked at a map. Meanwhile my
+	mother had recovered consciousness. I gave her a
+	little wine from the bottle we had opened for our
+	repast. I happened to look at the officer and saw
+	him pass his tongue over his cracked lips. All the
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page184" title="184"> </a>men had thrown themselves down by the side of the
+	road. I handed him the bottle and the little tin
+	cup. To my surprise, he did not drink. He said:
+	‘Mademoiselle, this is war, and we are all in very
+	great peril. My men are dying of thirst, and if you
+	have any more of the wine, give it to them and they
+	will do their utmost to conduct your mother and yourself
+	to a place of safety.’ Alas! there were only
+	three bottles in our little basket of provisions. Naturally
+	I gave it all—together with the food. He called
+	a sergeant, who took the provisions and distributed
+	them, while I was tending my mother. But I noticed
+	that the two officers took neither bite nor sup. It was
+	only afterwards, Monsieur Trevor, that I realized I
+	had seen your great English gentlemen…. Then
+	they dug a little grave, for my father…. It was
+	soon finished … the danger was grave … and
+	some soldiers took a rope and pulled the handcart,
+	with my mother lying on top of our little possessions,
+	and I walked with them, until the whole of my life
+	was blotted out with fatigue. We got on to the
+	Route Nationale again and mingled again with the
+	Retreat. And in the night, as we were still marching,
+	there was a halt. I went to my mother. She was
+	cold, monsieur, cold and stiff. She was dead.�</p>
+
+	<p>She paused tragically. After a few moments she
+	continued:</p>
+
+	<p>“I fainted. I do not know what happened till
+	I recovered consciousness at dawn. I found myself
+	wrapped in one of our blankets, lying under the
+	handcart. It was the market-square of a little town.
+	And there were many—old men and women and
+	children, refugees like me. I rose and found a paper—a
+	leaf torn from a notebook—fixed to the handcart.
+	It was from the officer, bidding me farewell. Military
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page185" title="185"> </a>necessity forced him to go on with his men—but
+	he had kept his word, and brought me to a place of
+	safety…. That is how I first met the English,
+	Monsieur Trevor. They had carried me, I suppose,
+	on the handcart, all night, they who were broken
+	with weariness. I owe them my life and my reason.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And your mother?�</p>
+
+	<p>“How should I know? <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Elle est restée là-bas</em>,�
+	she replied simply.</p>
+
+	<p>She went on with her sewing. Doggie wondered
+	how her hand could be so steady. There was a
+	long silence. What words, save vain imprecations
+	on the accursed race, were adequate? Presently her
+	glance rested for a second or two on his sensitive face.</p>
+
+	<p>“Why do you not smoke, Monsieur Trevor?�</p>
+
+	<p>“May I?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Of course. It calms the nerves. I ought not
+	to have saddened you with my griefs.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie took out his pink packet and lit a cigarette.</p>
+
+	<p>“You are very understanding, Mademoiselle
+	Jeanne. But it does a selfish man like me good to
+	be saddened by a story like yours. I have not had
+	much opportunity in my life of feeling for another’s
+	suffering. And since the war—I am <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">abruti</em>.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You? Do you think if I had not found you
+	just the reverse, I should have told you all this?�</p>
+
+	<p>“You have paid me a great compliment, Mademoiselle
+	Jeanne.� Then, after awhile, he asked,
+	“From the market-square of the little town you found
+	means to come here?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Alas, no!� she said, putting her work in her
+	lap again. “I made my way, with my handcart—it
+	was easy—to our original destination, a little farm
+	belonging to the eldest brother of my father. The
+	Farm of La Folette. He lived there alone, a widower,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page186" title="186"> </a>with his farm-servants. He had no children. We
+	thought we were safe. Alas! news came that the
+	Germans were always advancing. We had time to
+	fly. All the farm-hands fled, except Père Grigou,
+	who loved him. But my uncle was obstinate. To
+	a Frenchman, the soil he possesses is his flesh and his
+	blood. He would die rather than leave it. And my
+	uncle had the murder of my father and mother on his
+	brain. He told Père Grigou to take me away, but
+	I stayed with him. It was Père Grigou who forced
+	us to hide. That lasted two days. There was a
+	well in the farm, and one night Père Grigou tied up
+	my money and my mother’s jewellery and my father’s
+	papers, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">enfin</em>, all the precious things we had, in a packet
+	of waterproof and sank it with a long string down the
+	well, so that the Germans could not find it. It was
+	foolish, but he insisted. One day my uncle and
+	Père Grigou went out of the little copse where we
+	had been hiding, in order to reconnoitre, for he thought
+	the Germans might be going away; and my uncle,
+	who would not listen to me, took his gun. Presently
+	I heard a shot—and then another. You can guess
+	what it meant. And soon Père Grigou came, white
+	and shaking with terror. ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Il en a tué un, et on l’a
+	tué!</em>’�</p>
+
+	<p>“My God!� said Doggie again.</p>
+
+	<p>“It was terrible,� she said. “But they were in
+	their right.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And then?�</p>
+
+	<p>“We lay hidden until it was dark—how they did
+	not find us I don’t know—and then we escaped across
+	country. I thought of coming here to my Aunt
+	Morin, which is not far from La Folette, but I reflected
+	that soon the Boches would be here also. And we
+	went on. We got to a high road—and once more
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page187" title="187"> </a>I was among troops and refugees. I met some kind
+	folks in a carriage, a Monsieur and Madame Tarride,
+	and they took me in. And so I got to Paris, where I
+	had the hospitality of a friend of the Convent who was
+	married.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And Père Grigou?�</p>
+
+	<p>“He insisted on going back to bury my uncle.
+	Nothing could move him. He had not parted from
+	him all his life. They were foster-brothers. Where
+	he is now, who knows?� She paused, looked again
+	at her ghosts, and continued: “That is all, Monsieur
+	Trevor. The Germans passed through here and
+	repassed on their retreat, and, as soon as it was safe, I
+	came to help my aunt, who was <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">souffrante</em>, and had lost
+	her son. Also because I could not live on charity
+	on my friend, for, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">voyez-vous</em>, I was without a sou—all
+	my money having been hidden in the well by
+	Père Grigou.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie leant his elbows on the table.</p>
+
+	<p>“And you have come through all that, Mademoiselle
+	Jeanne, just as you are——?�</p>
+
+	<p>“How, just as I am?�</p>
+
+	<p>“So gentle and kind and comprehending?�</p>
+
+	<p>Her cheek flushed. “I am not the only Frenchwoman
+	who has passed through such things and kept
+	herself proud. But the struggle has been very hard.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie rose and clenched his fists and rubbed his
+	head from front to back in his old indecisive way, and
+	began to swear incoherently in English. She smiled
+	sadly.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ah, mon pauvre ami!</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>He wheeled round: “Why do you call me ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mon
+	pauvre ami</em>’?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Because I see that you would like to help me and
+	you can’t.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page188" title="188"> </a>“Jeanne,� cried Doggie, bending half over the
+	table which was between them.</p>
+
+	<p>She rose too, startled, on quick defensive. He said,
+	in reply to her glance:</p>
+
+	<p>“Why shouldn’t I call you Jeanne?�</p>
+
+	<p>“You haven’t the right.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What if I gain it?�</p>
+
+	<p>“How?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t know,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>The door burst suddenly open and the anxious face
+	of Mo Shendish appeared.</p>
+
+	<p>“’Ere, you silly cuckoo, don’t yer know you’re
+	on guard to-night? You’ve just got about thirty
+	seconds.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Good lord!� cried Doggie, “I forgot. <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Bon
+	soir, mademoiselle. Service militaire</em>,� and he rushed
+	out.</p>
+
+	<p>Mo lingered, with a grin, and jerked a backward
+	thumb.</p>
+
+	<p>“If it weren’t for old Mo, miss, I don’t know
+	what would happen to our friend Doggie. I got to
+	look after him like a baby, I ’ave. He’s on to relieve
+	guard, and if old Mac—that’s McPhail�—she nodded
+	recognition of the name—“and I hadn’t remembered,
+	miss, he’d ’ave been in what yer might call a ’ole.
+	Compree?�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Oui.</em> Yes,� she said. “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Garde. Sentinelle.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>“Sentinel. Sentry. Right.�</p>
+
+	<p>“He—was—late,� she said, picking out her few
+	English words from memory.</p>
+
+	<p>“Yuss,� grinned Mo.</p>
+
+	<p>“He—guard—house?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Bless you, miss, you talk English as well as I
+	do,� cried the admiring Mo. “Yuss. When his
+	turn comes, up and down in the street, by the
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page189" title="189"> </a>gate.� He saw her puzzled look. “Roo. Port,�
+	said he.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ah! oui, je comprends</em>,� smiled Jeanne. “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Merci,
+	monsieur, et bon soir.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>“Good night, miss,� said Mo.</p>
+
+	<p>Some time later he disturbed Phineas, by whose side
+	he slept, from his initial preparation for slumber.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mac! Is there any book I could learn this
+	blinking lingo from?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Try Ovid—‘Art of Love,’� replied Phineas
+	sleepily.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XIV"><a class="pagenum" id="page190" title="190"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> spell of night sentry duty had always been
+	Doggie’s black hour. To most of the other
+	military routine he had grown hardened or deadened.
+	In the depths of his heart he hated the life as much as
+	ever. He had schooled himself to go through it
+	with the dull fatalism of a convict. It was no use
+	railing at inexorable laws, irremediable conditions.
+	The only alternative to the acceptance of his position
+	was military punishment, which was far worse—to
+	say nothing of the outrage to his pride. It was pride
+	that kept the little ironical smile on his lips while his
+	nerves were almost breaking with strain. The first
+	time he came under fire he was physically sick—not
+	from fear, for he stood it better than most, keeping an
+	eye on his captain, whose function it was to show an
+	unconcerned face—but from sheer nervous reaction
+	against the hideous noise, the stench, the ghastly upheaval
+	of the earth, the sight of mangled men. When
+	the bombardment was over, if he had been alone, he
+	would have sat down and cried. Never had he grown
+	accustomed to the foulness of the trenches. The
+	sounder his physical condition, the more did his
+	delicately trained senses revolt. It was only when
+	fierce animal cravings dulled these senses that he could
+	throw himself down anywhere and sleep, that he could
+	swallow anything in the way of food or drink. The
+	rats nearly drove him crazy…. Yet, what had
+	once been to him a torture, the indecent, nerve-rasping
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page191" title="191"> </a>publicity of the soldier’s life, had now become a
+	compensation. It was not so much in companionship,
+	like his friendly intercourse with Phineas and Mo,
+	that he found an anodyne, but in the consciousness of
+	being magnetically affected by the crowd of his fellows.
+	They offered him protection against himself. Whatever
+	pangs of self-pity he felt, whatever wan little
+	pleadings for the bit of fine porcelain compelled to a
+	rough usage which vessels of coarser clay could disregard
+	came lingeringly into his mind, he dared not
+	express them to a living soul around. On the contrary,
+	he set himself assiduously to cultivate the earthenware
+	habit of spirit; not to feel, not to think, only
+	to endure. To a humorously incredulous Jeanne he
+	proclaimed himself <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">abruti</em>. Finally, the ceaseless grind
+	of the military machine left him little time to think.</p>
+
+	<p>But in the solitary sleepless hours of sentry duty
+	there was nothing to do but think; nothing wherewith
+	to while away the time but an orgy of introspection.
+	First came the almost paralysing sense of responsibility.
+	He must keep, not only awake, but alert to the slightest
+	sound, the slightest movement. Lives of men depended
+	on his vigilance. A man can’t screw himself up to
+	this beautifully emotional pitch for very long and be
+	an efficient sentry. If he did, he would challenge
+	mice and shoot at cloud-shadows and bring the deuce
+	of a commotion about his ears. And this Doggie,
+	who did not lack ordinary intelligence, realized. So
+	he strove to think of other things. And the other
+	things all focussed down upon his Doggie self. And
+	he never knew what to make of his Doggie self at all.
+	For he would curse the things that he once loved as
+	being the cause of his inexpiable shame, and at the same
+	time yearn for them with an agony of longing.</p>
+
+	<p>And he would force himself to think of Peggy and
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page192" title="192"> </a>her unswerving loyalty. Of her weekly parcel of
+	dainty food, which had arrived that morning. Of
+	the joy of Phineas and the disappointment of the
+	unsophisticated Mo over the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">pâté de foie gras</em>. But
+	his mind wandered back to his Doggie self and its
+	humiliations and its needs and its yearnings. He
+	welcomed enemy flares and star-shells and excursions
+	and alarms. They kept him from thinking, enabled
+	him to pass the time. But in the dead, lonely, silent
+	dark, the hours were like centuries. He dreaded them.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">To-night they fled like minutes. It was a pitch-black
+	night, spitting fine rain. It was one of Doggie’s
+	private grievances that it invariably rained when he
+	was on sentry duty. One of Heaven’s little ways of
+	strafing him for Doggieism. But to-night he did not
+	heed it. Often the passage of transport had been a
+	distraction for which he had longed and which, when
+	it came, was warmly welcome. But to-night, during
+	his spell, the roadway of the village was as still as death,
+	and he loved the stillness and the blackness. Once he
+	had welcomed familiar approaching steps. Now he
+	resented them.</p>
+
+	<p>“Who goes there?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Rounds.�</p>
+
+	<p>And the officer, recognized, flashing an electric
+	torch, passed on. The diminuendo of his footsteps
+	was agreeable to Doggie’s ear. The rain dripped
+	monotonously off his helmet on to his sodden shoulders,
+	but Doggie did not mind. Now and then he strained
+	an eye upwards to that part of the living-house that was
+	above the gateway. Little streaks of light came downwards
+	through the shutter slats. Now it required
+	no great intellectual effort to surmise that the light
+	proceeded, not from the bedroom of the invalid
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page193" title="193"> </a>Madame Morin, who would naturally have the best
+	bedroom situated in the comfortable main block of
+	the house, but from that of somebody else. Madame
+	Morin was therefore ruled out. So was Toinette—ridiculous
+	to think of her keeping all night vigil.
+	There remained only Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>It was supremely silly of him to march with super-martiality
+	of tread up the pavement; but then, it is often
+	the way of young men to do supremely silly things.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">The next day was fuss and bustle, from the private
+	soldier’s point of view. They were marching back to the
+	trenches that night, and a crack company must take
+	over with flawless equipment and in flawless bodily
+	health. In the afternoon Doggie had a breathing spell
+	of leisure. He walked boldly into the kitchen.</p>
+
+	<p>“Madame,� said he to Toinette, “I suppose you
+	know that we are leaving to-night?�</p>
+
+	<p>The old woman sighed. “It is always like that.
+	They come, they make friends, they go, and they
+	never return.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You mustn’t make the little soldier weep, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">grand’mère</em>,�
+	said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“No. It is the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">grand’mères</em> who weep,� replied
+	Toinette.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ll come back all right,� said he. “Where is
+	Mademoiselle Jeanne?�</p>
+
+	<p>“She is upstairs, monsieur.�</p>
+
+	<p>“If she had gone out, I should have been disappointed,�
+	smiled Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“You desire to see her, monsieur?�</p>
+
+	<p>“To thank her before I go for her kindness to me.�</p>
+
+	<p>The old face wrinkled into a smile.</p>
+
+	<p>“It was not then for the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">beaux yeux</em> of the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">grand’mère</em>
+	that you entered?�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page194" title="194"> </a>�<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Si, si!</em> Of course it was,� he protested. “But
+	one, nevertheless, must be polite to mademoiselle.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em>Aïe! aïe!</em>� said the old woman, bustling out:
+	“I’ll call her.�</p>
+
+	<p>Presently Jeanne came in alone, calm, cool, and in
+	her plain black dress, looking like a sweet Fate. From
+	the top of her dark brown hair to her trim, stout shoes,
+	she gave the impression of being exquisitely ordered,
+	bodily and spiritually.</p>
+
+	<p>“It was good of you to come,� he cried, and they
+	shook hands instinctively, scarcely realizing it was
+	for the first time. But he was sensitive to the frank
+	grip of her long and slender fingers.</p>
+
+	<p>“Toinette said you wished to see me.�</p>
+
+	<p>“We are going to-night. I had to come and bid
+	you <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">au revoir</em>!�</p>
+
+	<p>“Is the company returning?�</p>
+
+	<p>“So I hear the quartermaster says. Are you glad?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, I am glad. One doesn’t like to lose friends.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You regard me as a friend, Jeanne?�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pour sûr</em>,� she replied simply.</p>
+
+	<p>“Then you don’t mind my calling you Jeanne?�
+	said he.</p>
+
+	<p>“What does it matter? There are graver questions
+	at stake in the world.�</p>
+
+	<p>She crossed the kitchen and opened the yard door
+	which Doggie had closed behind him. Meeting a
+	query in his glance, she said:</p>
+
+	<p>“I like the fresh air, and I don’t like secrecy.�</p>
+
+	<p>She leaned against the edge of the table and Doggie,
+	emboldened, seated himself on the corner by her
+	side, and they looked out into the little flagged courtyard
+	in which the men, some in grey shirt-sleeves, some
+	in tunics, were lounging about among the little piles of
+	accoutrements and packs. Here and there a man was
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page195" title="195"> </a>shaving by the aid of a bit of mirror supported on a
+	handcart. Jests and laughter were flung in the quiet
+	afternoon air. A little group were feeding pigeons
+	which, at the sight of crumbs, had swarmed iridescent
+	from the tall <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">colombier</em> in the far corner near the
+	gabled barn. As Jeanne did not speak, at last Doggie
+	bent forward and, looking into her eyes, found them
+	moist with tears.</p>
+
+	<p>“What is the matter, Jeanne?� he asked in a low
+	voice.</p>
+
+	<p>“The war, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mon ami</em>,� she replied, turning her face
+	towards him, “the haunting tragedy of the war.
+	I don’t know how to express what I mean. If all
+	those brave fellows there went about with serious
+	faces, I should not be affected. <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mais, voyez-vous,
+	leur gaieté fait peur.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p><em>Their laughter frightened her.</em> Doggie, with his
+	quick responsiveness, understood. She had put into
+	a phrase the haunting tragedy of the war. The
+	eternal laughter of youth quenched in a gurgle of the
+	throat.</p>
+
+	<p>He said admiringly: “You are a wonderful woman,
+	Jeanne.�</p>
+
+	<p>Her delicate shoulders moved, ever so little. “A
+	woman? I suppose I am. The day before we fled
+	from Cambrai it was my <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">jour de fête</em>. I was eighteen.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie drew in his breath with a little gasp. He
+	had thought she was older than he.</p>
+
+	<p>“I am twenty-seven,� he said.</p>
+
+	<p>She looked at him calmly and critically. “Yes.
+	Now I see. Until now I should have given you more.
+	But the war ages people. Isn’t it true?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I suppose so,� said Doggie. Then he had a
+	brilliant idea. “But when the war is over, we’ll
+	remain the same age for ever and ever.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page196" title="196"> </a>“Do you think so?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m sure of it. We’ll still both be in our twenties.
+	Let us suppose the war puts ten years of experience and
+	suffering, and what not, on to our lives. We’ll only
+	then be in our thirties—and nothing possibly can
+	happen to make us grow any older. At seventy we
+	shall still be thirty.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You are consoling,� she admitted. “But what
+	if the war had added thirty years to one’s life? What
+	if I felt now an old woman of fifty? But yes, it is
+	quite true. I have the feelings and the disregard
+	of convention of a woman of fifty. If there had been
+	no war, do you think I could have gone among
+	an English army—<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">sans gêne</em>—like an old matron?
+	Do you think a <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">jeune fille française bien élevée</em> could
+	have talked to you alone as I have done the past two
+	days? Absurd. The explanation is the war.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie laughed. “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Vive la guerre!</em>� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mais non!</em> Be serious. We must come to an
+	understanding.�</p>
+
+	<p>In her preoccupation she forgot the rules laid down
+	for the guidance of <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">jeunes filles bien élevées</em>, and unthinkingly
+	perched herself full on the kitchen table on the
+	corner of which Doggie sat in a one-legged way.
+	Doggie gasped again. All her assumed age fell from
+	her like a garment. Youth proclaimed itself in her
+	attitude and the supple lines of her figure. She was
+	but a girl after all, a girl with a steadfast soul that had
+	been tried in unutterable fires; but a girl appealing,
+	desirable. He felt mighty protective.</p>
+
+	<p>“An understanding? All right,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t want you to go away and think ill of me—that
+	I am one of those women—<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">les affranchies</em> I think
+	they call them—who think themselves above social
+	laws. I am not. I am <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bourgeoise</em> to my finger-tips,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page197" title="197"> </a>and I reverence all the old maxims and prejudices in
+	which I was born. But conditions are different.
+	It is just like the priests who have been called into the
+	ranks. To look at them from the outside, you would
+	never dream they were priests—but their hearts and
+	their souls are untouched.�</p>
+
+	<p>She was so earnest, in her pathetic youthfulness, to
+	put herself right with him, so unlike the English girls of
+	his acquaintance, who would have taken this chance
+	companionship as a matter of course, that his face lost
+	the smile and became grave, and he met her sad eyes.</p>
+
+	<p>“That was very bravely said, Jeanne. To me
+	you will be always the most wonderful woman I have
+	ever known.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What caused you to speak to me the first day?�
+	she asked, after a pause.</p>
+
+	<p>“I explained to you—to apologize for staring
+	rudely into your house.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It was not because you said to yourself, ‘Here
+	is a pretty girl looking at me. I’ll go and talk to
+	her’?�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie threw his leg over the corner of the table
+	and stood on indignant feet.</p>
+
+	<p>“Jeanne! How could you——?� he cried.</p>
+
+	<p>She leaned back, her open palms on the table. The
+	rare light came into her eyes.</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s what I wanted to know. Now we understand
+	each other, Monsieur Trevor.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I wish you wouldn’t call me Monsieur Trevor,�
+	said he.</p>
+
+	<p>“What else can I call you? I know no other
+	name.�</p>
+
+	<p>Now he had in his pocket a letter from Peggy,
+	received that morning, beginning “My dearest
+	Marmaduke.� Peggy seemed far away, and the name
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page198" title="198"> </a>still farther. He was deliberating whether he should
+	say “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Appelez-moi James</em>� or “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Appelez-moi Jacques</em>,�
+	and inclining to the latter as being more picturesque
+	and intimate, when she went on:</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Tenez</em>, what is it your comrades call you? ‘Doggie’?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Say that again.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Dog-gie.�</p>
+
+	<p>He had never dreamed that the hated appellation
+	could sound so adorable. Well—no one except his
+	officers called him by any other name, and it came
+	with a visible charm from her lips. It brought about
+	the most fascinating flash of the tips of her white
+	teeth. He laughed.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">A la guerre comme à la guerre.</em> If you call me
+	that, you belong to the regiment. And I promise you,
+	it is a fine regiment.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Eh bien</em>, Monsieur Dog-gie——�</p>
+
+	<p>“There’s no monsieur about it,� he declared,
+	very happily. “Tommies are not <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">messieurs</em>.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I know one who is,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>So they talked in a young and foolish way, and
+	Jeanne for a while forgot the tragedies that had gone
+	and the tragedies that might come; and Doggie
+	forgot both the peacock and ivory room and the fetid
+	hole into which he would have to creep when the night’s
+	march was over. They talked of simple things.
+	Of Toinette, who had been with Aunt Morin ever
+	since she could remember.</p>
+
+	<p>“You have won her heart with your snuff.�</p>
+
+	<p>“She has won mine with her discretion.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh-h!� said Jeanne, shocked.</p>
+
+	<p>And so on and so forth, as they sat side by side on
+	the kitchen table, swinging their feet. After a while
+	they drifted to graver questions.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page199" title="199"> </a>“What will happen to you, Jeanne, if your aunt
+	dies?�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mon Dieu!</em>� said Jeanne——</p>
+
+	<p>“But you will inherit the property, and the business?�</p>
+
+	<p>By no means. Aunt Morin had still a son, who was
+	already very old. He must be forty-six. He had
+	expatriated himself many years ago and was in Madagascar.
+	The son who was killed was her Benjamin,
+	the child of her old age. But all her little fortune
+	would go to the colonial Gaspard, whom Jeanne had
+	never seen.</p>
+
+	<p>But the Farm of La Folette?</p>
+
+	<p>“It has been taken and retaken by Germans and
+	French and English, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mon pauvre ami</em>, until there is no
+	farm left. You ought to understand that.�</p>
+
+	<p>It was a thing that Doggie most perfectly understood:
+	a patch of hideous wilderness, of poisoned,
+	shell-scarred, ditch-defiled, barren, loathsome earth.</p>
+
+	<p>And her other relations? Only an uncle, her
+	father’s youngest brother, a curé in Douai in enemy
+	occupation. She had not heard of him since the
+	flight from Cambrai.</p>
+
+	<p>“But what is going to become of you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“So long as one keeps a brave heart what, does
+	it matter? I am strong. I have a good enough
+	education. I can earn my living. Oh, don’t make
+	any mistake. I have no pity for myself. Those who
+	waste efforts in pitying themselves are not of the stuff
+	to make France victorious.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I am afraid I have done a lot of self-pitying, Jeanne.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Don’t do it any more,� she said gently.</p>
+
+	<p>“I won’t,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>“If you keep to the soul you have gained, you
+	can’t,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page200" title="200"> </a>�<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Toujours la sagesse.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>“You are laughing at me.�</p>
+
+	<p>“God forbid,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas and Mo came strolling towards the kitchen
+	door.</p>
+
+	<p>“My two friends, to pay their visit of adieu,� said
+	he.</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne slid from the table and welcomed the newcomers
+	in her calm, dignified way. Once more
+	Doggie found himself regarding her as his senior in
+	age and wisdom and conduct of life. The pathetic
+	girlishness which she had revealed to him had gone.
+	The age-investing ghosts had returned.</p>
+
+	<p>Mo grinned, interjected a British Army French
+	word now and then, and manifested delight when
+	Jeanne understood. Phineas talked laboriously, endeavouring
+	to expound his responsibility for Doggie’s
+	welfare. He had been his tutor. He used the word
+	“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tuteur</em>.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s a guardian, you silly ass,� cried Doggie.
+	“He means ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">instituteur</em>.’ Go on. Or, rather, don’t
+	go on. The lady isn’t interested.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mais si</em>,� said Jeanne, catching at the last English
+	word. “It interests me greatly.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Merci, mademoiselle</em>,� said Phineas grandly. “I
+	only wish to explain to you that while I live you
+	need have no fear for Doggie. I will protect him
+	with my body from shells and promise to bring him
+	safe back to you. And so will Monsieur Shendish.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What’s that?� asked Mo.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas translated.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Oui, oui, oui!</em>� said Mo, nodding vigorously.</p>
+
+	<p>A spot of colour burned on Jeanne’s pale cheek,
+	and Doggie grew red under his tanned skin. He
+	cursed Phineas below his breath, and exchanged a
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page201" title="201"> </a>significant glance with Mo. Jeanne said, in her even
+	voice:</p>
+
+	<p>“I hope all the Three Musketeers will come back
+	safe.�</p>
+
+	<p>Mo extended a grimy hand. “Well, good-bye,
+	miss! McPhail here and I must be going.�</p>
+
+	<p>She shook hands with both, wishing them <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bonne
+	chance</em>, and they strolled away. Doggie lingered.</p>
+
+	<p>“You mustn’t mind what McPhail says. He’s
+	only an old imbecile.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You have two comrades who love you. That
+	is the principal thing.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I think they do, each in his way. As for
+	Mo——�</p>
+
+	<p>“Mo?� She laughed. “He is delicious.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Well——� said he reluctantly, after a pause,
+	“good-bye, Jeanne.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Au revoir</em>—Dog-gie.�</p>
+
+	<p>“If I shouldn’t come back—I mean if we were
+	billeted somewhere else—I should like to write to
+	you.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Well—Mademoiselle Bossière, chez Madame
+	Morin, Frélus. That is the address.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And will you write too?�</p>
+
+	<p>Without waiting for a reply, he scribbled what was
+	necessary on a sheet torn from a notebook and gave
+	it to her. Their hands met.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Au revoir</em>, Jeanne.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Au revoir</em>, Dog-gie. But I shall see you again
+	to-night.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Where?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It is my secret. <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Bonne chance.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>She smiled and turned to leave the kitchen. Doggie
+	clattered into the yard.</p>
+
+	<p>“Been doin’ a fine bit o’ coartin’, Doggie,� said
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page202" title="202"> </a>Private Appleyard from Taunton, who was sitting on a
+	box near by and writing a letter on his knees.</p>
+
+	<p>“Not so much of your courting, Spud,� replied
+	Doggie cheerfully. “Who are you writing to?
+	Your best girl?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I be writin’ to my own lawful mizzus,� replied
+	Spud Appleyard.</p>
+
+	<p>“Then give her my love. Doggie Trevor’s love,�
+	said Doggie, and marched away through the groups of
+	men.</p>
+
+	<p>At the entrance to the barn he fell in with Phineas
+	and Mo.</p>
+
+	<p>“Laddie,� said the former, “although I meant
+	it at the time as a testimony of my affection, I’ve
+	been thinking that what I said to the young leddy
+	may not have been over-tactful.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It was taking it too much for granted,� explained
+	Mo, “that you and her were sort of keeping company.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re a pair of idiots,� said Doggie, sitting
+	down between them, and taking out his pink packet
+	of Caporal. “Have a cigarette?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not if I wos dying of——Look ’ere,� said Mo,
+	with the light on his face of the earnest seeker after
+	Truth. “If a chap ain’t got no food, he’s dying
+	of ’unger. If he ain’t got no drink, he’s dying of
+	thirst. What the ’ell is he dying of if he ain’t got no
+	tobakker?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Army Service Corps,� said Phineas, pulling out
+	his pipe.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">It was dark when A Company marched away.
+	Doggie had seen nothing more of Jeanne. He was
+	just a little disappointed; for she had promised. He
+	could not associate her with light words. Yet perhaps
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page203" title="203"> </a>she had kept her promise. She had said “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Je vous
+	verrai.</em>� She had not undertaken to exhibit herself
+	to him. He derived comfort from the thought.
+	There was, indeed, something delicate and subtle and
+	enchanting in the notion. As on the previous day, the
+	fine weather had changed with the night and a fine rain
+	was falling. Doggie, an indistinguishable pack-laden
+	ant in the middle of the four-abreast ribbon of similar
+	pack-laden ants, tramped on in silence, thinking his
+	own thoughts. A regiment going back to the trenches
+	in the night is, from the point of view of the pomp
+	and circumstance of glorious war, a very lugubrious
+	procession. The sight of it would have hurt an old-time
+	poet. An experienced regiment has no lovely
+	illusions. It knows what it is going to, and the knowledge
+	makes it serious. It would much rather be
+	in bed or on snug straw than plodding through the
+	rain to four days and nights of eternal mud and stinking
+	high-explosive shell. It sets its teeth and is a very
+	stern, silent, ugly conglomeration of men.</p>
+
+	<p>“—— (<em>the adjective</em>) night,� growled Doggie’s
+	right-hand neighbour.</p>
+
+	<p>“—— (<em>the adjective</em>)� Doggie responded mechanically.</p>
+
+	<p>But to Doggie it was less “——� (<em>adjective as
+	before</em>) than usual. Jeanne’s denunciation of self-pity
+	had struck deep. Compared with her calamities,
+	half of which would have been the stock-in-trade of
+	a Greek dramatist wherewith to wring tears from
+	mankind for a couple of thousand years, what were his
+	own piffling grievances? As for the “——� night,
+	instead of a drizzle he would have welcomed a waterspout.
+	Something that really mattered…. Let
+	the heavens or the Hun rain molten lead. Something
+	that would put him on an equality with Jeanne….
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page204" title="204"> </a>Jeanne, with her dark haunting eyes and mobile lips,
+	and her slim young figure and her splendid courage.
+	A girl apart from the girls he had known, apart from
+	the women he had known, the women whom he had
+	imagined—and he had not imagined many—his training
+	had atrophied such imaginings of youth. Jeanne.
+	Again her name conjured up visions of the Great Jeanne
+	of Domrémy. If only he could have seen her once
+	again!</p>
+
+	<p>At the north end of the village the road took a sharp
+	twist, skirting a bit of rising ground. There was just
+	a glimmer of a warning light which streamed athwart
+	the turning ribbon of laden ants. And as Doggie
+	wheeled through the dim ray he heard a voice that rang
+	out clear:</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Bonne chance!</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>He looked up swiftly. Caught the shadow of a
+	shadow. But it was enough. It was Jeanne. She
+	had kept her promise. The men responded incoherently,
+	waving their hands, and Doggie’s shout of
+	“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Merci!</em>� was lost. But though he knew, with a
+	wonderful throbbing knowledge, that Jeanne’s cry
+	was meant for him alone, he was thrilled by his
+	comrades’ instant response to Jeanne’s voice. Not a
+	man but he knew that it was Jeanne. But no matter.
+	The company paid homage to Jeanne. Jeanne who
+	had come out in the rain and the wind and the dark,
+	and had waited, waited, to redeem her promise.
+	“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">C’est mon secret.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>He ploughed on. Left, right! Thud, thud!
+	Left, right! Jeanne, Jeanne!</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XV"><a class="pagenum" id="page205" title="205"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">In</span> the village of Frélus life went on as before.
+	The same men, though a different regiment,
+	filled its streets and its houses; for by what signs could
+	the inhabitants distinguish one horde of English infantrymen
+	from another? Once a Highland battalion
+	had been billeted on them, and for the first day or so
+	they derived some excitement from the novelty of the
+	costume; the historic Franco-Scottish tradition still
+	lingered, and they welcomed the old allies of France
+	with especial kindliness; but they found that the habits
+	and customs of the men in kilts were identical, in their
+	French eyes, with those of the men in trousers. It
+	is true the Scotch had bagpipes. The village turned
+	out to listen to them in whole-eyed and whole-eared
+	wonder. And the memory of the skirling music
+	remained indelible. Otherwise there was little difference.
+	And when a Midland regiment succeeded a
+	South Coast regiment, where was the difference at all?
+	They might be the same men.</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne, standing by the kitchen door, watching
+	the familiar scene in the courtyard, could scarcely
+	believe there had been a change. Now and again she
+	caught herself wondering why she could not pick
+	out any one of her Three Musketeers. There were
+	two or three soldiers, as usual, helping Toinette with
+	her crocks at the well. There she was, herself,
+	moving among them, as courteously treated as though
+	she were a princess. Perhaps these men, whom she
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page206" title="206"> </a>heard had come from manufacturing centres, were a
+	trifle rougher in their manners than her late guests;
+	but the intention of civility and rude chivalry was no
+	less sincere. They came and asked for odds and
+	ends very politely. To all intents and purposes they
+	were the same set of men. Why was not Doggie
+	among them? It seemed very strange.</p>
+
+	<p>After a while she made some sort of an acquaintance
+	with a sergeant who had a few words of French
+	and appeared anxious to improve his knowledge of
+	the language. He explained that he had been a
+	teacher in what corresponded to the French <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ecoles
+	Normales</em>. He came from Birmingham, which he
+	gave her to understand was a glorified Lille. She
+	found him very earnest, very self-centred in his worship
+	of efficiency. As he had striven for his class of boys,
+	so now was he striving for his platoon of men. In a
+	dogmatic way he expounded to her ideals severely
+	practical. In their few casual conversations he
+	interested her. The English, from the first terrible
+	day of their association with her, had commanded
+	her deep admiration. But until lately—in the most
+	recent past—her sex, her national aloofness and her
+	ignorance of English, had restrained her from familiar
+	talk with the British Army. But now she keenly desired
+	to understand this strange, imperturbable, kindly race.
+	She put many questions to the sergeant—always at
+	the kitchen door, in full view of the courtyard, for she
+	never thought of admitting him into the house—and
+	his answers, even when he managed to make himself
+	intelligible, puzzled her exceedingly. One of his
+	remarks led her to ask for what he was fighting,
+	beyond his apparently fixed idea of the efficiency of
+	the men under his control. What was the spiritual
+	idea at the back of him?</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page207" title="207"> </a>“The democratization of the world and the universal
+	brotherhood of mankind.�</p>
+
+	<p>“When the British Lion shall lie down with the
+	German Lamb?�</p>
+
+	<p>He flashed a suspicious glance. Strenuous schoolmasters
+	in primary schools have little time for the
+	cultivation of a sense of humour.</p>
+
+	<p>“Something of the sort must be the ultimate result
+	of the war.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But in the meantime you have got to change the
+	German wolf into the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">petit mouton</em>. How are you
+	going to do it?�</p>
+
+	<p>“By British efficiency. By proving to him that
+	we are superior to him in every way. We’ll teach
+	him that it doesn’t pay to be a wolf.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And do you think he will like being transformed
+	into a lamb, while you remain a lion?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t suppose so, but we’ll give him his chance
+	to try to become a lion too.�</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne shook her head. “No, monsieur, wolf he
+	is and wolf he will remain. A wolf with venomous
+	teeth. The civilized world must see that the teeth
+	are always drawn.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m speaking of fifty years hence,� said the sergeant.</p>
+
+	<p>“And I of three hundred years hence.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re mistaken, mademoiselle.�</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne shook her head. “No. I’m not mistaken.
+	Tell me. Why do you want to become brother to
+	the Boche?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m not going to be his brother till the war’s
+	over,� said the sergeant stolidly. “At present I am
+	devoting all my faculties to killing as many of him
+	as I can.�</p>
+
+	<p>She smiled. “Sufficient for the day is the good
+	thereof. Go on killing them, monsieur. The more
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page208" title="208"> </a>you kill the fewer there will be for your children and
+	your grandchildren to lie down with.�</p>
+
+	<p>She left him and tried to puzzle out his philosophy.
+	For the ordinary French philosophy of the war is very
+	simple. They have no high-falutin, altruistic ideas
+	of improving the Boche. They don’t care a tinker’s
+	curse what happens to the unholy brood beyond the
+	Rhine, so long as they are beaten, humiliated, subjected:
+	so long as there is no chance of their ever deflowering
+	again with their brutality the sacred soil of France.
+	The French mind cannot conceive the idea of this
+	beautiful brotherhood; but, on the contrary, rejects
+	it as something loathsome, something bordering on
+	spiritual defilement….</p>
+
+	<p>No; Jeanne could not accept the theory that we
+	were waging war for the ultimate chastening and
+	beatification of Germany. She preferred Doggie’s
+	reason for fighting. For his soul. There was something
+	which she could grip. And having gripped
+	it, it was something around which her imagination
+	could weave a web of noble fancy. After all, when she
+	came to think of it, every one of the Allies must be
+	fighting for his soul. For his soul’s sake had not her
+	father died? Although she knew no word of German,
+	it was obvious that the Uhlan officer had murdered
+	him because he had refused to betray his country.
+	And her uncle. To fight for his soul, had he not gone
+	out with his heroic but futile sporting gun? And this
+	pragmatical sergeant? What else had led him from
+	his schoolroom to the battlefield? Why couldn’t he be
+	honest about it, like Doggie?</p>
+
+	<p>She missed Doggie. He ought to be there, as she
+	had often seen him unobserved, talking with his
+	friends or going about his military duties, or playing
+	the flageolet with the magical touch of the musician.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page209" title="209"> </a>She knew far more of Doggie than he was aware
+	of … And at night she prayed for the little English
+	soldier who was facing Death.</p>
+
+	<p>She had much time to think of him during the
+	hours when she sat by the bedside of Aunt Morin,
+	who talked incessantly of François-Marie who was
+	killed on the Argonne, and Gaspard who, as a <em>territorial</em>,
+	was no doubt defending Madagascar from invasion.
+	And it was pleasant to think of him, because he was a
+	new distraction from tragical memories. He seemed
+	to lay the ghosts … He was different from all the
+	Englishmen she had met. The young officers who
+	had helped her in her flight, had very much the same
+	charm of breeding, very much the same intonation
+	of voice; instinctively she knew him to be of the
+	same social caste; but they, and the officers whom
+	she saw about the street and in the courtyard, when
+	duty called them there, had the military air of command.
+	And this her little English soldier had not.
+	Of course, he was only a private, and privates are
+	trained to obedience. She knew that perfectly well.
+	But why was he not commanding instead of obeying?
+	There was a reason for it. She had seen it in his eyes.
+	She wished she had made him talk more about himself.
+	Perhaps she had been unsympathetic and selfish. He
+	assumed, she reflected, a certain <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">crânerie</em> with his
+	fellows—and <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">crânerie</em> is “swagger� bereft of vulgarity—we
+	have no word to connote its conception
+	in a French mind—and she admired it; but her swift
+	intuition pierced the assumption. She divined a
+	world of hesitancies behind the Musketeer swing of
+	the shoulders. He was so gentle, so sensitive, so
+	quick to understand. And yet so proud. And yet
+	again so unconfessedly dependent. Her woman’s
+	protective instinct responded to a mute appeal.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page210" title="210"> </a>“But, Ma’amselle Jeanne, you are wet through,
+	you are perished with cold. What folly have you
+	been committing?� Toinette scolded, when she
+	returned after wishing Doggie the last “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bonne chance</em>.�</p>
+
+	<p>“The folly of putting my Frenchwoman’s heart
+	(<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mon cœur de Française</em>) into the hands of a brave little
+	soldier to fight with him in the trenches.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mon Dieu, ma’amselle</em>, you had better go straight
+	to bed, and I will bring you a <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bon tilleul</em>, which will calm
+	your nerves and produce a good perspiration.�</p>
+
+	<p>So Toinette put Jeanne to bed and administered
+	the infallible infusion of lime leaves, and Jeanne was
+	never the worse for her adventure. But the next day
+	she wondered a little why she had undertaken it. She
+	had a vague idea that it paid a little debt of sympathy.</p>
+
+	<p>An evening or two afterwards Jeanne was sewing in
+	the kitchen when Toinette, sitting in the arm-chair
+	by the extinct fire, fished out of her pocket the little
+	olive-wood box with the pansies and forget-me-nots
+	on the lid, and took a long pinch of snuff. She did
+	it with somewhat of an air which caused Jeanne to
+	smile.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Dites donc</em>, Toinette, you are insupportable with
+	your snuff-box. One would say a marquise of the
+	old school.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Ah, Ma’amselle Jeanne,� said the old woman,
+	“you must not laugh at me. I was just thinking
+	that, if anything happened to the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">petit monsieur</em>, I
+	couldn’t have the heart to go on putting his snuff
+	up my old nose.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Nothing will happen to him,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>The old woman sighed and re-engulfed the snuff-box.
+	“Who knows? From one minute to another
+	who knows whether the little ones who are dear to
+	us are alive or dead?�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page211" title="211"> </a>“And this <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">petit monsieur</em> is dear to you, Toinette?�
+	Jeanne asked, in her even voice, without looking
+	up from her sewing.</p>
+
+	<p>“Since he resembles my <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">petiot</em>.�</p>
+
+	<p>“He will come back,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>“I hope so,� said the old woman mournfully.</p>
+
+	<p>In spite of manifold duties, Jeanne found the days
+	curiously long. She slept badly. The tramp of the
+	sentry below her window over the archway brought her
+	no sense of comfort, as it had done for months before
+	the coming of Doggie. All the less did it produce the
+	queer little thrill of happiness which was hers when,
+	looking down through the shutter slats she had identified
+	in the darkness, on a change of guard, the little
+	English soldier to whom she had spoken so intimately.
+	And when he had challenged the rounds, she had
+	recognized his voice…. If she had obeyed an
+	imbecile and unmaidenly impulse, she would have
+	drawn open the shutter and revealed herself. But
+	apart from maidenly shrinkings, familiarity with war
+	had made her realize the sacred duties of a sentry,
+	and she had remained in discreet seclusion, awake
+	until his spell was over. But now the rhythmical
+	beat of the heavy boots kept her from sleeping and
+	would have irritated her nerves intolerably had not
+	her sound common sense told her that the stout fellow
+	who wore them was protecting her from the Hun,
+	together with a million or so of his fellow-countrymen.</p>
+
+	<p>She found herself counting the days to Doggie’s
+	return.</p>
+
+	<p>“At last, it is to-morrow!� she said to Toinette.</p>
+
+	<p>“What is it to-morrow?� asked the old woman.</p>
+
+	<p>“The return of our regiment,� replied Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>“That is good. We have a regiment now,� said
+	Toinette ironically.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page212" title="212"> </a>The Midland company marched away—as so many
+	had marched away before; but Jeanne did not go
+	to the little embankment at the turn of the road to
+	wish anyone good luck. She stood at the house
+	door, as she had always done, to watch them pass
+	in the darkness; for there is always something in the
+	sight of men going into battle which gives you a lump
+	in the throat. For Jeanne it had almost grown into
+	a religious practice.</p>
+
+	<p>The sergeant had told her that the new-comers
+	would arrive at dawn. She slept a little; awoke with
+	a start as day began to break; dressed swiftly, and
+	went downstairs to wait. And then her ear caught the
+	rumble and the tramp of the approaching battalion.
+	Presently transport rolled by, and squads of men,
+	haggard in the grey light, bending double under their
+	packs, staggered along to their billets. And then
+	came a rusty crew, among whom she recognized
+	McPhail’s tall gaunt figure. She stood by the gateway,
+	bareheaded, in her black dress and blue apron,
+	defying the sharp morning air, and watched them pass
+	through. She saw Mo Shendish, his eyes on the heels
+	of the man in front. She recognized nearly all.
+	But the man she looked for was not there.</p>
+
+	<p>He could not have passed without her seeing him;
+	but as soon as the gateway was clear, she ran into the
+	courtyard and fled across it to cut off the men. There
+	was no Doggie. Blank disappointment was succeeded
+	by sudden terror.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas saw her coming. He stumbled up to her,
+	dropped his pack at her feet, and spread out both his
+	hands. She lost sight of the horde of weary clay-covered
+	men around her. She cried:</p>
+
+	<p>“Where is he?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t know.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page213" title="213"> </a>“He is dead?�</p>
+
+	<p>“No one knows.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But you must know, you!� cried Jeanne, with a
+	new fear in her eyes which Phineas could not bear
+	to meet. “You promised to bring him back.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It was not my fault,� said Phineas. “He was
+	out last night—no, the night before, this is morning—repairing
+	barbed wire. I was not with him.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mais, mon Dieu</em>, why not?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Because the duties of soldiers are arranged for
+	them by their officers, mademoiselle.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It is true. Pardon. But continue.�</p>
+
+	<p>“A party went out to repair wire. It was quite
+	dark. Suddenly a German rifle-shot gave the alarm.
+	The enemy threw up star-shells and the front trenches
+	on each side opened fire. The wiring party, of course,
+	lay flat on the ground. One of them was wounded.
+	When it was all over—it didn’t last long—our men
+	got back, bringing the wounded man.�</p>
+
+	<p>“He is severely wounded? Speak,� cried Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>“The wounded man was not Doggie. Doggie
+	went out with the party, but he did not come back.
+	That’s why I said no one knows where he is.�</p>
+
+	<p>She stiffened. “He is lying out there. He is dead.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Shendish and I and Corporal Wilson over there,
+	who was with the party, got permission to go out and
+	search. We searched all round where the repair
+	had been going on. But we could not find him.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Merci!</em> I ought not to have reproached you,�
+	she said steadily. “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">C’est un grand malheur.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>“You are right. Life for me is no longer of much
+	value.�</p>
+
+	<p>She looked at him in her penetrating way.</p>
+
+	<p>“I believe you,� she said. “For the moment,
+	<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">au revoir</em>. You must be worn out with fatigue.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page214" title="214"> </a>She left him and walked through the straggling men,
+	who made respectful way for her. All knew of her
+	friendship with Doggie Trevor and all realized the
+	nature of this interview. They liked Doggie because
+	he was good-natured and plucky, and never complained
+	and would play the whistle on march as long as breath
+	enough remained in his body. As his uncle, the
+	Dean, had said, breed told. In a curious, half-grudging
+	way they recognized the fact. They laughed at his
+	singular inefficiency in the multitudinous arts of the
+	handy-man, proficiency in which is expected from the
+	modern private, but they knew that he would go on
+	till he dropped. And knowing that, they saved him
+	from many a reprimand which his absurd efforts in
+	the arts aforesaid would have brought upon him.
+	And now that Doggie was gone, they deplored his
+	loss. But so many had gone. So many had been
+	deplored. Human nature is only capable of a certain
+	amount of deploring while retaining its sanity. The
+	men let the pale French girl, who was Doggie Trevor’s
+	friend, pass by in respectful silence—and that, for
+	them, was their final tribute to Doggie Trevor.</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne passed into the kitchen. Toinette drew a
+	sharp breath at the sight of her face.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Quoi? Il n’est pas là?</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>“No,� said Jeanne. “He is wounded.� It was
+	impossible to explain to Toinette.</p>
+
+	<p>“Badly?�</p>
+
+	<p>“They don’t know.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Oh, là, là!</em>� sighed Toinette. “That always
+	happens. That is what I told you.�</p>
+
+	<p>“We have no time to think of such things,� said
+	Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>The regimental cooks came up for the hot water,
+	and soon the hungry, weary, nerve-racked men were
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page215" title="215"> </a>served with the morning meal. And Jeanne stood in the
+	courtyard in front of the kitchen door and helped with
+	the filling of the tea-kettles, as though no little English
+	soldier called “Dog-gie� had ever existed in the
+	regiment.</p>
+
+	<p>The first pale shaft of sunlight fell upon the kitchen
+	side of the courtyard, and in it Jeanne stood illuminated.
+	It touched the shades of gold in her dark brown hair,
+	and lit up her pale face and great unsmiling eyes.
+	But her lips smiled valiantly.</p>
+
+	<p>“What do yer think, Mac,� said Mo Shendish,
+	squatting on the flagstones, “do you think she was
+	really sweet on him?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Man,� replied Phineas, similarly engaged, “all I
+	know is that she has added him to her collection of
+	ghosts. It’s not an over-braw company for a lassie
+	to live with.�</p>
+
+	<p>And then, soon afterwards, the trench-broken men
+	stumbled into the barn to sleep, and all was quiet
+	again, and Jeanne went about her daily tasks with
+	the familiar hand of death once more closing icily
+	around her heart.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XVI"><a class="pagenum" id="page216" title="216"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> sick-room was very hot, and Aunt Morin
+	very querulous. Jeanne opened a window,
+	but Aunt Morin complained of currents of air. Did
+	Jeanne want to kill her? So Jeanne closed the window.
+	The internal malady from which Aunt Morin suffered,
+	and from which it was unlikely that she would recover,
+	caused her considerable pain from time to
+	time; and on these occasions she grew fractious and
+	hard to bear with. The retired septuagenarian village
+	doctor who had taken the modest practice of his son,
+	now far away with the Army, advised an operation.
+	But Aunt Morin, with her peasant’s prejudice, declined
+	flatly. She knew what happened in those hospitals
+	where they cut people up just for the pleasure of
+	looking at their insides. She was not going to let a
+	lot of butchers amuse themselves with her old carcass.
+	<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Oh non!</em> When it pleased the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bon Dieu</em> to take her,
+	she was ready: the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bon Dieu</em> required no assistance
+	from <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ces messieurs</em>. And even if she had consented,
+	how to take her to Paris, and once there, how to get
+	the operation performed, with all the hospitals full and
+	all the surgeons at the Front? The old doctor shrugged
+	his shoulders and kept life in her as best he might.</p>
+
+	<p>To-day, in the close room, she told a long story of
+	the doctor’s neglect. The medicine he gave her was
+	water and nothing else—water with nothing in it.
+	And to ask people to pay for that! She would not
+	pay. What would Jeanne advise?</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page217" title="217"> </a>�<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Oui, ma tante</em>,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Oui, ma tante?</em> But you are not listening to
+	what I say. At the least one can be polite.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I am listening, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ma tante</em>.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You should be grateful to those who lodge and
+	nourish you.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I am grateful, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ma tante</em>,� said Jeanne patiently.</p>
+
+	<p>Aunt Morin complained of being robbed on all
+	sides. The doctor, Toinette, Jeanne, the English
+	soldiers—the last the worst of all. Besides not paying
+	sufficiently for what they had, they were so wasteful
+	in the things they took for nothing. If they begged
+	for a few faggots to make a fire, they walked away
+	with the whole woodstack. She knew them. But
+	all soldiers were the same. They thought that in
+	time of war civilians had no rights. One of these
+	days she would get up and come downstairs and see
+	for herself the robbery that was going on.</p>
+
+	<p>The windows were tightly sealed. The sunlight
+	hurting Aunt Morin’s eyes, the outside shutters were
+	half closed. The room felt like a stuffy, overheated,
+	overcrowded sepulchre. An enormous oak press, part
+	of her Breton dowry, took up most of the side of one
+	wall. This, and a great handsome chest, a couple
+	of tables, a stiff arm-chair, were all too big for the
+	moderately sized apartment. Coloured prints of sacred
+	subjects, tilted at violent angles, seemed eager to occupy
+	as much air-space as possible. And in the middle of
+	the floor sprawled the vast oaken bed, with its heavy
+	green brocade curtains falling tentwise from a great
+	tarnished gilt crown in the ceiling.</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne said nothing. What was the good? She
+	shifted the invalid’s hot pillow and gave her a drink
+	of tisane, moving about the over-furnished, airless
+	room in her calm and efficient way. Her face showed
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page218" title="218"> </a>no sign of trouble, but an iron band clamped her
+	forehead above her burning eyes. She could perform
+	her nurse’s duties, but it was beyond her power to
+	concentrate her mind on the sick woman’s unending
+	litany of grievances. Far away beyond that darkened
+	room, beyond that fretful voice, she saw vividly a
+	hot waste, hideous with holes and rusted wire and
+	shapes of horror; and in the middle of it lay huddled
+	up a little khaki-clad figure with the sun blazing fiercely
+	in his unblinking eyes. And his very body was
+	beyond the reach of man, even of the most lion-hearted.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mais qu’as-tu, ma fille?</em>� asked Aunt Morin.
+	“You do not speak. When people are ill they need
+	to be amused.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I am sorry, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ma tante</em>, but I am not feeling very
+	well to-day. It will pass.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I hope so. Young people have no business not
+	to feel well. Otherwise what is the good of youth?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It is true,� Jeanne assented.</p>
+
+	<p>But what, she thought, was indeed the good of
+	youth, in these terrible days of war? Her own was
+	but a panorama of death…. And now one more
+	figure, this time one of youth too, had joined it.</p>
+
+	<p>Toinette came in.</p>
+
+	<p>“Ma’amselle Jeanne, there are two English officers
+	downstairs who wish to speak to you.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What do they want?� Jeanne asked wearily.</p>
+
+	<p>“They do not say. They just ask for Ma’amselle
+	Bossière.�</p>
+
+	<p>“They never leave one in peace, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ces gens-là</em>,�
+	grumbled Aunt Morin. “If they want more concessions
+	in price, do not let them frighten you. Go
+	to Monsieur le Maire to have it arranged with justice.
+	These people would eat the skin off your back. Remember,
+	Jeanne.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page219" title="219"> </a>�<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Bien, ma tante</em>,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>She went downstairs, conscious of gripping herself
+	in order to discuss with the officers whatever business
+	of billeting was in hand. For she had dealt with all
+	such matters since her arrival in Frélus. She reached
+	the front door and saw a dusty car with a military
+	chauffeur at the wheel and two officers, standing on
+	the pavement at the foot of the steps. One she recognized
+	as the commander of the company to which
+	her billeted men belonged. The other was a stranger,
+	a lieutenant, with a different badge on his cap. They
+	were talking and laughing together, like old friends
+	newly met, which by one of the myriad coincidences
+	of the war was really the case. On the appearance
+	of Jeanne they drew themselves up and saluted politely.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mademoiselle Bossière?�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Oui, monsieur.</em>� Then, “Will you enter, messieurs?�</p>
+
+	<p>They entered the vestibule where the great cask
+	gleamed in its polished mahogany and brass. She
+	bade them be seated.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mademoiselle, Captain Willoughby tells me that
+	you had billeted here last week a soldier by the name
+	of Trevor,� said the stranger, in excellent French,
+	taking out notebook and pencil.</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne’s lips grew white. She had not suspected
+	their errand.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Oui, monsieur.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>“Did you have much talk with him?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Much, monsieur.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Pardon my indiscretion, mademoiselle—it is
+	military service, and I am an Intelligence officer—but
+	did you tell him about your private affairs?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Very intimately,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>The Intelligence officer made a note or two and
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page220" title="220"> </a>smiled pleasantly—but Jeanne could have struck him
+	for daring to smile. “You had every reason for
+	thinking him a man of honour?�</p>
+
+	<p>“What’s the good of asking her that, Smithers?�
+	Captain Willoughby interrupted in English.
+	“Haven’t I given you my word? The man’s a
+	mysterious little devil, but any fool can see that he’s
+	a gentleman.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What do you say?� Jeanne asked tensely.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Je parle français très peu</em>,� replied Captain
+	Willoughby with an air of regret.</p>
+
+	<p>Smithers explained. “Monsieur le Capitaine says
+	that he guarantees the honesty of the soldier, Trevor.�</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne flashed, rigid. “Who could doubt it,
+	monsieur? He was a gentleman, a <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fils de famille</em>,
+	of the English aristocracy.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Excuse me for a moment,� said Smithers.</p>
+
+	<p>He went out. Jeanne, uncomprehending, sat silent.
+	Captain Willoughby, cursing an idiot education, composed
+	in his head a polite French sentence concerning
+	the weather, but before he had finished Smithers
+	reappeared with a strange twisted packet in his hand.
+	He held it out to Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mademoiselle, do you recognize this?�</p>
+
+	<p>She looked at it dully for a moment; then suddenly
+	sprang to her feet and clenched her hands and stared
+	open-mouthed. She nodded. She could not speak.
+	Her brain swam. They had come to her about
+	Doggie, who was dead, and they showed her Père
+	Grigou’s packet. What was the connection between
+	the two?</p>
+
+	<p>Willoughby rose impulsively. “For God’s sake,
+	Smithers, let her down easy. She’ll be fainting all
+	over the place in a minute.�</p>
+
+	<p>“If this is your property, mademoiselle,� said
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page221" title="221"> </a>Smithers, laying the packet on the chenille-covered
+	table, “you have to thank your friend Trevor for
+	restoring it to you.�</p>
+
+	<p>She put up both hands to her reeling head.</p>
+
+	<p>“But he is dead, monsieur!�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not a bit of it. He’s just as much alive as you
+	or I.�</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne swayed, tried to laugh, threw herself half
+	on a chair, half over the great cask, and broke down
+	in a passion of tears.</p>
+
+	<p>The two men looked at each other uncomfortably.</p>
+
+	<p>“For exquisite tact,� said Willoughby, “commend
+	me to an Intelligence officer.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But how the deuce was I to know?� Smithers
+	muttered with an injured air. “My instructions were
+	to find out the truth of a cock-and-bull story—for
+	that’s what it seemed to come to. And a girl in
+	billets—well—how was I to know what she was
+	like?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Anyhow, here we’ve got hysterics,� said Willoughby.</p>
+
+	<p>“But who told her the fellow was dead?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Why, his pals. I thought so myself. When a
+	man’s missing where’s one to suppose him to be—having
+	supper at the Savoy?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Well, I give women up,� said Smithers. “I
+	thought she’d be glad.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I believe you’re a married man?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, of course.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Well, I ain’t,� said Willoughby, and in a couple
+	of strides he stood close to Jeanne. He laid a gentle
+	hand on her heaving shoulders.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pas tué! Soolmong blessé</em>,� he shouted.</p>
+
+	<p>She sprang, as it were, to attention, like a frightened
+	recruit.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page222" title="222"> </a>“He is wounded?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not very seriously, mademoiselle.� Smithers,
+	casting an indignant glance at his superior officer’s
+	complacent smile, reassumed mastery of the situation.
+	“A Boche sniper got him in the leg. It will put
+	him out of service for a month or two. But there
+	is no danger.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Grâce à  Dieu!</em>� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>She leaned for a while against the cask, her hands
+	behind her, looking away from the two men. And
+	the two young men stood, somewhat embarrassed,
+	looking away from her and from each other. At last
+	she said, with an obvious striving for the even note
+	in her voice:</p>
+
+	<p>“I ask your pardon, messieurs, but sometimes sudden
+	happiness is more overwhelming than misfortune. I
+	am now quite at your service.�</p>
+
+	<p>“My God! she’s a wonder,� murmured Willoughby,
+	who was fair, unmarried, and impressionable.
+	“Go on with your dirty work.�</p>
+
+	<p>Smithers, conscious of linguistic superiority—in civil
+	life he had been concerned with the wine trade in
+	Bordeaux—proceeded to carry out his instructions.
+	He turned over a leaf in his notebook and poised a
+	ready pencil.</p>
+
+	<p>“I must ask you, mademoiselle, some formal
+	questions.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Perfectly, monsieur,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>“Where was this packet when last you saw it?�</p>
+
+	<p>She made her statement, calmly.</p>
+
+	<p>“Can you tell me its contents?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not all, monsieur. I, as a young girl, was not
+	in the full confidence of my parents. But I remember
+	my uncle saying there were about twenty thousand
+	francs in notes, some gold—I know not how much—some
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page223" title="223"> </a>jewellery of my mother’s—oh, a big handful!—rings—one
+	a hoop of emeralds and diamonds—a
+	brooch with a black pearl belonging to my great-grandmother——�</p>
+
+	<p>“It is enough, mademoiselle,� said Smithers, jotting
+	down notes. “Anything else besides money and
+	jewellery?�</p>
+
+	<p>“There were papers of my father, share certificates,
+	bonds—<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">que sais-je, moi</em>?�</p>
+
+	<p>Smithers opened the packet, which had already
+	been examined.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re a witness, sir, to the identification of the
+	property.�</p>
+
+	<p>“No,� said Willoughby, “I’m just a baby captain
+	of infantry, and wonder why the brainy Intelligence
+	department doesn’t hand the girl her belongings and
+	decently clear out.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve got to make my report, sir,� said Smithers
+	stiffly.</p>
+
+	<p>So the schedule was produced and the notes were
+	solemnly counted, twenty-one thousand five hundred
+	francs, and the gold four hundred francs, and the
+	jewels were identified, and the bonds, of which Jeanne
+	knew nothing, were checked by a list in her father’s
+	handwriting, and Jeanne signed a paper with Smithers’s
+	fountain-pen, and Willoughby witnessed her signature,
+	and thus she entered into possession of her heritage.</p>
+
+	<p>The officers were about to depart, but Jeanne
+	detained them.</p>
+
+	<p>“Messieurs, you must pardon me, but I am quite
+	bewildered. As far as I can understand, Monsieur
+	Trevor rescued the packet from the well at my uncle’s
+	farm of La Folette, and got wounded in doing so.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That is quite so,� said Smithers.</p>
+
+	<p>“But, monsieur, they tell me he was with a party in
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page224" title="224"> </a>front of his trench mending wire. How did he reach
+	the well of La Folette? I don’t comprehend at all.�</p>
+
+	<p>Smithers turned to Willoughby.</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes. How the dickens did he know the exact
+	spot to go for?�</p>
+
+	<p>“We had taken over a new sector, and I was
+	getting the topography right with a map. Trevor
+	was near by doing nothing, and as he’s a man of
+	education, I asked him to help me. There was the
+	site of the farm marked by name, and the ruined
+	well away over to the left in No Man’s Land. I
+	remember the beggar calling out ‘La Folette!’ in a
+	startled voice, and when I asked him what was the
+	matter, he said ‘Nothing, sir!’�</p>
+
+	<p>Smithers translated, and continued: “You see,
+	mademoiselle, this is what happened, as far as I am
+	concerned. I belong to the Lancashire Fusiliers.
+	Our battalion is in the trenches farther up the line
+	than our friends. Well, just before dawn yesterday
+	morning a man rolled over the parapet into our trench,
+	and promptly fainted. He had been wounded in the
+	leg, and was half dead from loss of blood. Under
+	his tunic was this package. We identified him and
+	his regiment, and fixed him up and took him to the
+	dressing-station. But things looked very suspicious.
+	Here was a man who didn’t belong to us with a little
+	fortune in loot on his person. As soon as he was fit
+	to be interrogated, the C.O. took him in hand. He
+	told the C.O. about you and your story. He regarded
+	the nearness of the well as something to do with
+	Destiny, and resolved to get you back your property—if
+	it was still there. The opportunity occurred
+	when the wiring party was alarmed. He crept out
+	to the ruins by the well, fished out the packet, and a
+	sniper got him. He managed to get back to our
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page225" title="225"> </a>lines, having lost his way a bit, and tumbled into our
+	trench.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But he was in danger of death all the time,�
+	said Jeanne, losing the steadiness of her voice.</p>
+
+	<p>“He was. Every second. It was one of the most
+	dare-devil, scatter-brained things I’ve ever heard of.
+	And I’ve heard of many, mademoiselle. The only
+	pity is that instead of being rewarded, he will be
+	punished.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Punished?� cried Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>“Not very severely,� laughed Smithers. “Captain
+	Willoughby will see to that. But reflect, mademoiselle.
+	His military duty was to remain with his
+	comrades, not to go and risk his life to get your property.
+	Anyhow, it is clear that he was not out for loot….
+	Of course, they sent me here as Intelligence officer,
+	to get corroboration of his story.� He paused for a
+	moment. Then he added: “Mademoiselle, I must
+	congratulate you on the restoration of your fortune
+	and the possession of a very brave friend.�</p>
+
+	<p>For the first time the red spots burned on Jeanne’s
+	pale face.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Je vous remercie infiniment, monsieur.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Il sera</em> all right,� said Willoughby.</p>
+
+	<p>The officers saluted and went their ways. Jeanne
+	took up her packet and mounted to her little room
+	in a dream. Then she sat down on her bed, the
+	unopened packet by her side, and strove to realize it
+	all. But the only articulate thought came to her in
+	the words which she repeated over and over again:</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Il a fait cela pour moi! Il a fait cela pour moi!</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>He had done that for her. It was incredible,
+	fantastic, thrillingly true, like the fairy-tales of her
+	childhood. The little sensitive English soldier, whom
+	his comrades protected, whom she herself in a feminine
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page226" title="226"> </a>way longed to protect, had done this for her. In a
+	shy, almost reverent way, she opened out the waterproof
+	covering, as though to reassure herself of the
+	reality of things. For the first time since she left
+	Cambrai a smile came into her eyes, together with
+	grateful tears.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Il a fait cela pour moi! Il a fait cela pour moi!</em>�</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">A while later she relieved Toinette’s guard in the
+	sick-room.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Eh bien?</em> And the two officers?� queried Aunt
+	Morin, after Toinette had gone. “They have stayed
+	a long time. What did they want?�</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne was young. She had eaten the bread of
+	dependence, which Aunt Morin, by reason of racial
+	instinct and the stress of sorrow and infirmity, had
+	contrived to render very bitter. She could not repress
+	an exultant note in her voice. Doggie, too, accounted
+	for something; for much.</p>
+
+	<p>“They came to bring good news, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ma tante</em>. The
+	English have found all the money and the jewels and
+	the share certificates that Père Grigou hid in the
+	well of La Folette.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mon Dieu!</em> It is true?�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Oui, ma tante.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>“And they have restored them to you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It is extraordinary. It is truly extraordinary.
+	At last these English seem to be good for something.
+	And they found that and gave it to you without
+	taking anything?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Without taking anything,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>Aunt Morin reflected for a few moments, then
+	she stretched out a thin hand.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ma petite Jeanne chérie</em>, you are rich now.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page227" title="227"> </a>“I don’t know exactly,� replied Jeanne, with a
+	mingling of truth and caution. “I have enough for
+	the present.�</p>
+
+	<p>“How did it all happen?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It was part of a military operation,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>Perhaps later she might tell Aunt Morin about
+	Doggie. But now the thing was too sacred. Aunt
+	Morin would question, question maddeningly, until
+	the rainbow of her fairy-tale was unwoven. The
+	salient fact of the recovery of her fortune should be
+	enough for Aunt Morin. It was. The old woman
+	of the pain-pinched features looked at her wistfully
+	from sunken grey eyes.</p>
+
+	<p>“And now that you are rich, my little Jeanne,
+	you will not leave your poor old aunt, who loves you
+	so much, to die alone?�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ah, mais non! mais non! mais non!</em>� cried
+	Jeanne indignantly. “What do you think I am made
+	of?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Ah!� breathed Aunt Morin, comforted.</p>
+
+	<p>“Also,� said Jeanne, in the matter-of-fact French
+	way, “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Si tu veux</em>, I will henceforward pay for my
+	lodging and nourishment.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You are very good, my little Jeanne,� said Aunt
+	Morin. “That will be a great help, for, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vois-tu</em>,
+	we are very poor.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Oui, ma tante.</em> It is the war.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Ah, the war, the war; this awful war! One
+	has nothing left.�</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne smiled. Aunt Morin had a very comfortably
+	invested fortune left, for the late Monsieur Morin,
+	corn, hay and seed merchant, had been a very astute
+	person. It would make little difference to the comfort
+	of Aunt Morin, or to the prospects of Cousin Gaspard
+	in Madagascar, whether the present business of Veuve
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page228" title="228"> </a>Morin et Fils went on or not. Of this Aunt Morin,
+	in lighter moods, had boasted many times.</p>
+
+	<p>“Every one must do what they can,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>“Perfectly,� said Aunt Morin. “You are a young
+	girl who well understands things. And now—it is
+	not good for young people to stay in a sick-room—one
+	needs the fresh air. <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Va te distraire, ma petite.</em>
+	I am quite comfortable.�</p>
+
+	<p>So Jeanne went out to distract a self already distraught
+	with great wonder, great pride and great fear.</p>
+
+	<p>He had done that for her. The wonder of it
+	bewildered her, the pride of it thrilled her. But he
+	was wounded. Fear smothered her joy. They had
+	said there was no danger. But soldiers always made
+	light of wounds. It was their way in this horrible
+	war, in the intimate midst of which she had her being.
+	If a man was not dead, he was alive, and thereby
+	accounted lucky. In their gay optimism they had
+	given him a month or two of absence from the regiment.
+	But even in a month or two—where would
+	the regiment be? Far, far away from Frélus.
+	Would she ever see Doggie again?</p>
+
+	<p>To distract herself she went down the village street,
+	bareheaded, and up the lane that led to the little
+	church. The church was empty, cool, and smelt of
+	the hill-side. Before the tinsel-crowned, mild-faced
+	image of the Virgin were spread the poor votive
+	offerings of the village. And Jeanne sank on her
+	knees, and bowed her head, and, without special
+	prayer or formula of devotion, gave herself into the
+	hands of the Mother of Sorrows.</p>
+
+	<p>She walked back comforted, vaguely conscious of
+	a strengthening of soul. In the vast cataclysm of
+	things her own hopes and fears and destiny mattered
+	very little. If she never saw Doggie again, if Doggie
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page229" title="229"> </a>recovered and returned to the war and was killed,
+	her own grief mattered very little. She was but a
+	stray straw, and mattered very little. But what
+	mattered infinitely, what shone with an immortal
+	flame, though it were never so tiny, was the Wonderful
+	Spiritual Something that had guided Doggie through
+	the jaws of death.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">That evening she had a long talk in the kitchen
+	with Phineas. The news of Doggie’s safety had
+	been given out by Willoughby, without any details.
+	Mo Shendish had leaped about her like a fox-terrier,
+	and she had laughed, with difficulty restraining her
+	tears. But to Phineas alone she told her whole story.
+	He listened in bewilderment. And the greater the
+	bewilderment, the worse his crude translations of English
+	into French. She wound up a long, eager speech
+	by saying:</p>
+
+	<p>“He has done this for me. Why?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Love,� replied Phineas bluntly.</p>
+
+	<p>“It is more than love,� said Jeanne, thinking of
+	the Wonderful Spiritual Something.</p>
+
+	<p>“If you could understand English,� said Phineas,
+	“I would enter into the metaphysics of the subject
+	with pleasure, but in French it is beyond me.�</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne smiled, and turned to the matter-of-fact.</p>
+
+	<p>“He will go to England now that he is wounded?�</p>
+
+	<p>“He’s on the way now,� said Phineas.</p>
+
+	<p>“Has he many friends there? I ask, because he
+	talks so little of himself. He is so modest.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, many friends. You see, mademoiselle,� said
+	Phineas, with a view to setting her mind at rest,
+	“Doggie’s an important person in his part of the
+	country. He was brought up in luxury. I know,
+	because I lived with him as his tutor for seven years.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page230" title="230"> </a>His father and mother are dead, and he could go on
+	living in luxury now, if he liked.�</p>
+
+	<p>“He is then, rich—Doggie?�</p>
+
+	<p>“He has a fine house of his own in the country,
+	with many servants and automobiles, and—wait�—he
+	made a swift arithmetical calculation—“and an
+	income of eighty thousand francs a year.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Comment?</em>� cried Jeanne sharply, with a little
+	frown.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas McPhail was enjoying himself, basking in
+	the sunshine of Doggie’s wealth. Also, when conversation
+	in French resolved itself into the statement of
+	simple facts, he could get along famously. So the
+	temptation of the glib phrase outran his discretion.</p>
+
+	<p>“Doggie has a fortune of about two million francs.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Il doit faire un beau mariage</em>,� said Jeanne, with
+	stony calm.</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas suddenly became aware of pitfalls and
+	summoned his craft and astuteness and knowledge
+	of affairs. He smiled, as he thought, encouragingly.</p>
+
+	<p>“The only fine marriage is with the person one
+	loves.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not always, monsieur,� said Jeanne, who had
+	watched the gathering of the sagacities with her deep
+	eyes. “In any case�—she rose and held out her hand—“our
+	friend will be well looked after in England.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Like a prince,� said Phineas.</p>
+
+	<p>He strode away greatly pleased with himself, and
+	went and found Mo Shendish.</p>
+
+	<p>“Man,� said he, “have you ever reflected that the
+	dispensing of happiness is the cheapest form of human
+	diversion?�</p>
+
+	<p>“What’ve you been doin’ now?� asked Mo.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve just left a lassie tottering over with blissful
+	dreams.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page231" title="231"> </a>“Gorblime!� said Mo, “and to think that if I
+	could sling the lingo, I might’ve done the same!�</p>
+
+	<p>But Phineas had knocked all the dreams out of
+	Jeanne. The British happy-go-lucky ways of marriage
+	are not those of the French <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bourgeoisie</em>, and Jeanne
+	had no notion of British happy-go-lucky ways.
+	Phineas had knocked the dream out of Jeanne by
+	kicking Doggie out of her sphere. And there was
+	a girl in England in Doggie’s sphere whom he was
+	to marry. She knew it. A man does not gather
+	his sagacities in order to answer crookedly a direct
+	challenge, unless there is some necessity.</p>
+
+	<p>Well. She would never see Doggie again. He
+	would pass out of her life. His destiny called him, if
+	he survived the slaughter of the war, to the shadowy
+	girl in England. Yet he had done <em>that</em> for her.
+	For no other woman could he ever in this life do
+	<em>that</em> again. It was past love. Her brain boggled
+	at an elusive spiritual idea. She was very young,
+	flung cleanly trained from the convent into the war’s
+	terrific tragedy, wherein maiden romantic fancies
+	were scorched in the tender bud. Only her honest
+	traditions of marriage remained. Of love she knew
+	nothing. She leaped beyond it, seeking, seeking.
+	She would never see him again. There she met the
+	Absolute. But he had done <em>that</em> for her—that which,
+	she knew not why, but she knew—he would do for
+	no other woman. The Splendour of it would be her
+	everlasting possession.</p>
+
+	<p>She undressed that night, proud, dry-eyed, heroical,
+	and went to bed, and listened to the rhythmic tramp
+	of the sentry across the gateway below her window,
+	and suddenly a lump rose in her throat and she fell
+	to crying miserably.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XVII"><a class="pagenum" id="page232" title="232"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">“How</span> are you feeling, Trevor?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Nicely, thank you, Sister.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Glad to be in Blighty again?�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie smiled.</p>
+
+	<p>“Good old Blighty!�</p>
+
+	<p>“Leg hurting you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“A bit, Sister,� he replied with a little grimace.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s bound to be stiff after the long journey, but
+	we’ll soon fix it up for you.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m sure you will,� he said politely.</p>
+
+	<p>The nurse moved on. Doggie drew the cool clean
+	sheet around his shoulders and gave himself up to
+	the luxury of bed—real bed. The morning sunlight
+	poured through the open windows, attended by a
+	delicious odour which after a while he recognized as
+	the scent of the sea. Where he was he had no notion.
+	He had absorbed so much of Tommy’s philosophy
+	as not to care. He had arrived with a convoy the
+	night before, after much travel in ambulances by land
+	and sea. If he had been a walking case, he might
+	have taken more interest in things; but the sniper’s
+	bullet in his thigh had touched the bone, and in spite
+	of being carried most tenderly about like a baby, he
+	had suffered great pain and longed for nothing and
+	thought of nothing but a permanent resting-place.
+	Now, apparently, he had found one, and looking about
+	him he felt peculiarly content. He seemed to have
+	seen no cleaner, whiter, brighter place in the world
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page233" title="233"> </a>than this airy ward, swept by the sea-breeze. He
+	counted seven beds besides his own. On a table
+	running down the ward stood a vase of sweet-peas
+	and a bowl of roses. He thought there was never
+	in the world so clean and cool a figure as the grey-clad
+	nurse in her spotless white apron, cuffs and cap.</p>
+
+	<p>When she passed near him again, he summoned
+	her. She came to his bedside.</p>
+
+	<p>“What do you call this particular region of fairyland?�</p>
+
+	<p>She stared at him for a moment, adjusting things
+	in her mind; for his name and style were 35792
+	Private Trevor, J. M., but his voice and phrase were
+	those of her own social class. Then she smiled, and
+	told him. The corner of fairyland was a private
+	auxiliary hospital in a Lancashire seaside town.</p>
+
+	<p>“Lancashire,� said Doggie, knitting his brow in a
+	puzzled way, “but why have they sent me to Lancashire?
+	I belong to a West Country regiment, and
+	all my friends are in the South.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What’s he grousing about, Sister?� suddenly asked
+	the occupant of the next bed. “He’s the sort of
+	chap that doesn’t know when he’s in luck and when
+	he isn’t. I’m in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light
+	Infantry, I am, and when I was hit before, they sent
+	me to a military hospital in Inverness. That’d teach
+	you, my lad. This for me every time. You ought
+	to have something to grouse at.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m not grousing, you idiot!� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“’Ere—who’s he calling an idjit?� cried the Duke
+	of Cornwall’s Light Infantryman, raising himself on
+	his elbow.</p>
+
+	<p>The nurse intervened; explained that no one
+	could be said to grumble at a hospital when he called
+	it fairyland. Trevor’s question was that of one in
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page234" title="234"> </a>search of information. He did not realize that in
+	assigning men to the various hospitals in the United
+	Kingdom, the authorities could not possibly take into
+	account an individual man’s local association.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh well, if it’s only his blooming ignorance——�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s just it, mate,� smiled Doggie, “my
+	blooming ignorance.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s all right,� said the nurse. “Now you’re
+	friends.�</p>
+
+	<p>“He had no right to call me an idjit,� said the
+	Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantryman. He was an
+	aggressive, red-visaged man with bristly black hair
+	and stubbly black moustache.</p>
+
+	<p>“If you’ll agree that he wasn’t grousing, Penworthy,
+	I’m sure Trevor will apologize for calling
+	you an idiot.�</p>
+
+	<p>And into the nurse’s eyes crept the queer smile of
+	the woman learned in the ways of children.</p>
+
+	<p>“Didn’t I say he wasn’t grousing? It was only
+	his ignorance?�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie responded. “I meant no offence, mate,
+	in what I said.�</p>
+
+	<p>The other growled an acceptance, whereupon the
+	nurse smiled an ironic benediction and moved away.</p>
+
+	<p>“Where did you get it?� asked Penworthy.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie gave the information and, in his turn, made
+	the polite counter-inquiry.</p>
+
+	<p>Penworthy’s bit of shrapnel, which had broken a
+	rib or two, had been acquired just north of Albert.
+	When he left, he said, we were putting it over in
+	great quantities.</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s where the great push is going to be in a
+	few days.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Aren’t you sorry you’re out of it?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Me?� The Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantryman
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page235" title="235"> </a>shook his head. “I take things as I finds
+	’em, and I finds this quite good enough.�</p>
+
+	<p>So they chatted and, in the soldier’s way, became
+	friends. Later, the surgeon arrived and probed
+	Doggie’s wound and hurt him exquisitely, so that the
+	perspiration stood out on his forehead, and his jaws
+	ached afterwards from his clenching of them. While
+	his leg was being dressed he reflected that, a couple
+	of years ago, if anyone had inflicted a twentieth part
+	of such torture on him he would have yelled the house
+	down. He remembered, with an inward grin, the
+	anguished precautions on which he had insisted whenever
+	he sat down in the chair of his expensive London
+	dentist.</p>
+
+	<p>“It must have hurt like fun,� said the nurse, busily
+	engaged with the gauze dressing.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s all in the day’s work,� replied Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>The nurse pinned the bandage and settled him
+	comfortably in bed.</p>
+
+	<p>“No one will worry you till dinner-time. You’d
+	better try to have a sleep.�</p>
+
+	<p>So Doggie nodded and smiled and curled up as
+	best he could and slept the heavy sleep of the tired
+	young animal. It was only when he awoke, physically
+	rested and comparatively free from pain, that his
+	mind, hitherto confused, began to work clearly, to
+	straighten out the three days’ tangle. Yes, just three
+	days. A fact almost impossible to realize. Till now
+	it had seemed an eternity.</p>
+
+	<p>He lay with his arms crossed under his head and
+	stared at the blue sky—a soft, comforting English
+	sky. The ward was silent. Only two beds were
+	occupied, one by a man asleep, the other by a man
+	reading a novel. His other room-mates, including
+	his neighbour Penworthy, were so far convalescent
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page236" title="236"> </a>as to be up and away, presumably by the life-giving
+	sea, whose rhythmic murmur he could hear. For
+	the first time since he awoke to find himself bandaged
+	up in a strange dug-out, and surrounded by strange
+	faces, did the chaos of his ideas resolve itself into
+	anything like definite memories. Yet many of them
+	were still vague.</p>
+
+	<p>He had been out there, with the wiring party, in
+	the dark. He had been glad, he remembered, to
+	escape from the prison of the trench into the open
+	air. He was having some difficulty with a recalcitrant
+	bit of wire that refused to come straight and jabbed
+	him diabolically in unexpected places, when a shot
+	rang out and German flares went up and everybody
+	lay flat on the ground, while bullets spat about them.
+	As he lay on his stomach, a flare lit up the ruined
+	well of the farm of La Folette. And the well and
+	his nose and his heels were in a bee-line. The
+	realization of the fact was the inception of a fascinating
+	idea. He remembered that quite clearly. Of course
+	his discovery, two days before, of the spot where
+	Jeanne’s fortune lay hidden, when Captain Willoughby,
+	with map and periscope, had called him into consultation,
+	had set his heart beating and his imagination
+	working. But not till that moment of stark opportunity
+	had he dreamed of the mad adventure which
+	he undertook. There in front of him, at the very
+	farthest three hundred yards away, in bee-line with
+	nose and heels—that was the peculiar and particular
+	arresting fact—lay Jeanne’s fortune. In thinking of
+	it he lost count of shots and star-shells, and heard no
+	orders and saw no dim forms creeping back to the
+	safety of the trench. And then all was darkness and
+	silence.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie lay on his back and stared at the English
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page237" title="237"> </a>sky and wondered how he did it. His attitude was
+	that of a man who cannot reconcile his sober self
+	with the idiot hero of a drunken freak. And yet, at
+	the time, the journey to the ruined well seemed the
+	simplest thing in the world. The thought of Jeanne’s
+	delight shone uppermost in his mind…. Oh! he
+	was forgetting the star, which hung low beneath a
+	canopy of cloud, the extreme point of the famous
+	feet, nose and well bee-line. He made for it, now
+	and then walking low, now and then crawling. He
+	did not mind his clothes and hands being torn by the
+	unseen refuse of No Man’s Land. His chief sensation
+	was one of utter loneliness, mingled with exultance
+	at freedom. He did not remember feeling afraid:
+	which was odd, because when the star-shells had gone
+	up and the German trenches had opened fire on the
+	wiring party, his blood had turned to water and his
+	heart had sunk into his boots and he had been deucedly
+	frightened.</p>
+
+	<p>Heaven must have guided him straight to the well.
+	He had known all along that he merely would have
+	to stick his hand down to find the rope … and he
+	felt no surprise when the rope actually came in contact
+	with his groping fingers; no surprise when he
+	pulled and pulled and fished up the packet. It had
+	all been preordained. That was the funny part of
+	the business which Doggie now could not understand.
+	But he remembered that when he had buttoned his
+	tunic over the precious packet, he had been possessed
+	of an insane desire to sing and dance. He repressed
+	his desire to sing, but he leaped about and started to
+	run. Then the star in which he trusted must have
+	betrayed him. It must have shed upon him a ray
+	just strong enough to make him a visible object;
+	for, suddenly, <em>ping!</em> something hit him violently on
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page238" title="238"> </a>the leg and bowled him over like a rabbit into a providential
+	shell-hole. And there he lay quaking for a
+	long time, while the lunacy of his adventure coarsely
+	and unsentimentally revealed itself.</p>
+
+	<p>As to the rest, he was in a state of befogged memory.
+	Only one incident in that endless, cruel crawl home
+	remained as a landmark in his mind. He had paused
+	to take breath, almost ready to give up the impossible
+	flight—it seemed as though he were dragging behind
+	him a ton of red-hot iron—when he became conscious
+	of a stench violent in his nostrils. He put out a
+	hand. It encountered a horrible, once human face,
+	and his fingers touched a round recognizable cap.
+	Horror drove him away from the dead German and
+	inspired him with the strength of despair…. Then
+	all was fog and dark again until he recovered consciousness
+	in the strange dug-out.</p>
+
+	<p>There the doctor had said to him: “You must
+	have a cast-iron constitution, my lad.�</p>
+
+	<p>The memory caused a flicker round his lips. It
+	wasn’t everybody who could crawl on his belly for
+	nearly a quarter of a mile with a bullet through his
+	leg, and come up smiling at the end of it. A cast-iron
+	constitution! If he had only known it fifteen, even
+	ten years ago, what a different life he might have led.
+	The great disgrace would never have come upon him.</p>
+
+	<p>And Jeanne? What of Jeanne? After he had
+	told his story, they had given him to understand that
+	an officer would be sent to Frélus to corroborate it,
+	and, if he found it true, that Jeanne would enter
+	into possession of her packet. And that was all he
+	knew, for they had bundled him out of the front
+	trenches as quickly as possible; and once out he had
+	become a case, a stretcher case, and although he had
+	been treated, as a case, with almost superhuman tenderness,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page239" title="239"> </a>not a soul regarded him as a human being with
+	a personality or a history—not even with a military
+	history. And this same military history had vaguely
+	worried him all the time, and now that he could
+	think clearly, worried him with a very definite worry.
+	In leaving his firing-party he had been guilty of a
+	crime. Every misdemeanour in the Army is termed
+	a crime—from murder to appearing buttonless on
+	parade. Was it desertion? If so, he might be shot.
+	He had not thought of that when he started on his quest.
+	It had seemed so simple to account for half an hour’s
+	absence by saying that he had lost his way in the dark.
+	But now, that plausible excuse was invalid….</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie thought terribly hard that quiet, sea-scented
+	morning. After all, it did not very much matter
+	what they did to him. Sticking him up against a
+	wall and shooting him was a remote possibility; he
+	was in the British and not the German Army. Field
+	punishments of unpleasant kinds were only inflicted
+	on people convicted of unpleasant delinquencies. If
+	he were a sergeant or a corporal, he doubtless would
+	be broken. But such is the fortunate position of a
+	private, that he cannot be degraded to an inferior
+	rank. At the worst they might give him cells when
+	he recovered. Well, he could stick it. It didn’t
+	matter. What really mattered was Jeanne. Was
+	she in undisputed possession of her packet? When
+	it was a question of practical warfare, Doggie had
+	blind faith in his officers—a faith perhaps even more
+	childlike than that of his fellow-privates, for officers
+	were the men who had come through the ordeal in
+	which he had so lamentably failed; but when it
+	came to administrative affairs, he was more critical.
+	He had suffered during his military career from more
+	than one subaltern on whose arid consciousness the
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page240" title="240"> </a>brain-wave never beat. He had never met even a
+	field officer before whom, in the realm of intellect,
+	he had stood in awe. If any one of those dimly
+	envisaged and still more dimly remembered officers
+	of the Lancashire Fusiliers had ordered him to stand
+	on his head on top of the parapet, he would have
+	obeyed in cheerful confidence; but he was not at
+	all certain that, in the effort to deliver the packet to
+	Jeanne, they would not make an unholy mess of
+	things. He saw stacks of dirty yellowish bits of
+	paper, with A.F. No. something or the other, floating
+	between Frélus and the Lancashire Battalion H.Q.
+	and the Brigade H.Q. and the Divisional H.Q., and
+	so on through the majesty of G.H.Q. to the awful
+	War Office itself. In pessimistic mood he thought
+	that if Jeanne recovered her property within a year,
+	she would be lucky.</p>
+
+	<p>What a wonderful creature was Jeanne! He shut
+	his eyes to the blue sky and pictured her as she stood in
+	the light, on the ragged escarpment, with her garments
+	beaten by wind and rain. And he remembered the
+	weary thud, thud of railway and steamer, which had
+	resolved itself, like the rhythmic tramp of feet that
+	night, into the ceaseless refrain: “Jeanne! Jeanne!�</p>
+
+	<p>He opened his eyes again and frowned at the blue
+	English sky. It had no business to proclaim simple
+	serenity when his mind was in such a state of complex
+	tangle. It was all very well to think of Jeanne—Jeanne,
+	whom it was unlikely that Fate would ever
+	allow him to see again, even supposing the war ended
+	during his lifetime; but there was Peggy—Peggy, his
+	future wife, who had stuck to him loyally through good
+	and evil repute. Yes, there was Peggy—not the
+	faintest shadow of doubt about it. Doggie kept on
+	frowning at the blue sky. Blighty was a very desirable
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page241" title="241"> </a>country, but in it you were compelled to think. And
+	enforced thought was an infernal nuisance. The
+	beastly trenches had their good points after all. There
+	you were not called upon to think of anything; the
+	less you thought, the better for your job; you just
+	ate your bully-beef and drank your tea and cursed
+	whizz-bangs and killed a rat or two, and thanked
+	God you were alive.</p>
+
+	<p>Now that he came to look at it in proper perspective,
+	it wasn’t at all a bad life. When had he been worried
+	to death, as he was now? And there were his friends:
+	the humorous, genial, deboshed, yet ever-kindly
+	Phineas; dear old Mo Shendish, whose material feet
+	were hankering after the vulgar pavement of Mare
+	Street, Hackney, but whose spiritual tread rang on
+	golden floors dimly imagined by the Seer of Patmos;
+	Barrett, the D. C. M., the miniature Hercules, who,
+	according to legend, though, modestly, he would never
+	own to it, seized two Boches by the neck and knocked
+	their heads together till they died, and who, musically
+	inclined, would sit at his, Doggie’s, feet while he played
+	on his penny whistle all the sentimental tunes he had
+	ever heard of; Sergeant Ballinghall, a tower of a
+	man, a champion amateur heavy-weight boxer, with
+	a voice compared with which a megaphone sounded
+	like a maiden’s prayer, and a Bardolphian nose and
+	an eagle eye and the heart of a broody hen, who had
+	not only given him boxing lessons, but had pulled
+	him through difficult places innumerable … and
+	scores of others. He wondered what they were doing.
+	He also was foolish enough to wonder whether they
+	missed him, forgetting for the moment that if a regiment
+	took seriously to missing their comrades sent
+	to Kingdom Come or Blighty, they would be more
+	like weeping willows than destroyers of Huns.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page242" title="242"> </a>All the same, he knew that he would always live
+	in the hearts of two or three of them, and the knowledge
+	brought him considerable comfort. It was
+	strange to realize how the tentacles of his being
+	stretched out gropingly towards these (from the old
+	Durdlebury point of view) impossible friends. They
+	had grafted themselves on to his life. Or was that
+	a correct way of putting it? Had they not, rather,
+	all grafted themselves on to a common stock of life,
+	so that the one common sap ran through all their
+	veins?</p>
+
+	<p>It took him a long time to get this idea formulated,
+	fixed and accepted. But Doggie was not one to
+	boggle at the truth, as he saw it. And this was the
+	truth. He, James Marmaduke Trevor of Denby
+	Hall, was a Tommy of the Tommies. He had lived
+	the Tommy life intensely. He was living it now.
+	And the extraordinary part of it was that he didn’t
+	want to be anything else but a Tommy. From the
+	social or gregarious point of view his life for the past
+	year had been one of unclouded happiness. The
+	realization of it, now that he was clearly sizing up
+	the ramshackle thing which he called his existence,
+	hit him like the butt-end of a rifle. Hardship, cold,
+	hunger, fatigue, stench, rats, the dread of inefficiency—all
+	these had been factors of misery which he could
+	never eliminate from his soldier’s equation; but such
+	free, joyous, intimate companionship with real human
+	beings he had never enjoyed since he was born. He
+	longed to be back among them, doing the same old
+	weary, dreary, things, eating the same old Robinson
+	Crusoe kind of food, crouching with them in the same
+	old beastly hole in the ground, while the Boche let
+	loose hell on the trench. Mo Shendish’s grin and
+	his “’Ere, get in aht of the rain,� and his grip on his
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page243" title="243"> </a>shoulder, dragging him a few inches farther into
+	shelter, were a spiritual compensation transcending
+	physical discomfitures and perils.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s all dam funny,� he said half aloud.</p>
+
+	<p>But this was England, and although he was hedged
+	about, protected and restricted by War Office Regulation
+	Red Tape twisted round to the strength of steel
+	cables, yet he was in command of telegraphs, of telephones,
+	and, in a secondary degree, of the railway
+	system of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+	<p>He found himself deprecating the compulsory facilities
+	of communication in the civilized world. The
+	Deanery must be informed of his home-coming.</p>
+
+	<p>As soon as he could secure the services of a nurse
+	he wrote out three telegrams: one addressed “Conover,
+	The Deanery, Durdlebury�; one to Peddle
+	at Denby Hall, and one to Jeanne. The one to
+	Jeanne was the longest, and was “Reply paid.�</p>
+
+	<p>“This is going to cost a small fortune, young man,�
+	said the nurse.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie smiled as he drew out a £1 treasury note
+	from his soldier’s pocket-book, the pathetic object
+	containing a form of Will on the right-hand flap and
+	on the left the directions for the making of the Will,
+	concluding with the world-famous typical signature
+	of Thomas Atkins.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s a bust, Sister,� said he. “I’ve been saving
+	up for it for months.�</p>
+
+	<p>Then, duty accomplished, he reconciled himself
+	to the corner of fairyland in which he had awoke
+	that morning. Things must take their course, and
+	while they were taking it, why worry? So long as
+	they didn’t commit the outrage of giving him bully-beef
+	for dinner, the present coolness and comfort
+	sufficed for his happiness.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XVIII"><a class="pagenum" id="page244" title="244"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> 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: “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Paquet reçu. Mille
+	remerciements.</em>� 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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page245" title="245"> </a>Doggie was a simple soul and went through a great
+	many elementary emotions, just as Monsieur Jourdain
+	spoke prose, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">sans le savoir</em>. 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….</p>
+
+	<p>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!</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_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?</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page246" title="246"> </a>idea struck Doggie at the moment of “lights out,�
+	and he laughed aloud.</p>
+
+	<p>“It doesn’t take much to amuse some people,�
+	growled his neighbour, Penworthy.</p>
+
+	<p>“Sign of a happy disposition,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“What’ve you got to be happy about?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I was thinking how alive we are, and how dead
+	you and I might be,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“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?�</p>
+
+	<p>“All right, mate,� said Doggie. “Good night.�</p>
+
+	<p>Penworthy made no immediate reply; but presently
+	he broke out:</p>
+
+	<p>“What d’you mean by talking like that? I’d
+	hate being dead.�</p>
+
+	<p>A voice from the far end of the room luridly requested
+	that the conversation should cease. Silence
+	reigned.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_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.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Cher Monsieur</em>�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page247" title="247"> </a><em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Cher Monsieur</em> from Jeanne—Jeanne who had
+	called him “Dog-gie� in accents that had rendered
+	adorable the once execrated syllables. <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Cher Monsieur!</em></p>
+
+	<p>And the following, in formal French—it might
+	have been a convent exercise in composition—is what
+	she said:</p>
+
+	<blockquote>
+		<p>“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
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page248" title="248"> </a>that we shall meet again. One of the few English
+		novels I have tried to read, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">à coups de dictionnaire</em>,
+		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.</p>
+
+		<p>“I ask you to accept again the expression of my
+		imperishable gratitude. Adieu.</p>
+
+		<p class="signature">“<span class="name">Jeanne Bossière.</span>�</p>
+	</blockquote>
+
+	<p>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 <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">adieu</em>
+	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?</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page249" title="249"> </a>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?</p>
+
+	<p>At once Doggie called for pad and pencil, and
+	began to write:</p>
+
+	<blockquote>
+		<p class="salutation">“My dear Jeanne,—</p>
+
+		<p>“I don’t understand. What fly has stung you?
+		(<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Quelle mouche vous a piquée?</em>) Of course we shall
+		meet again. Do you suppose I am going to let you
+		go out of my life?�</p>
+	</blockquote>
+
+	<p>(He sucked his pencil. Jeanne must be spoken to
+	severely.)</p>
+
+	<blockquote>
+		<p>“What rubbish are you talking about my social
+		position? My father was an English parson (<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">pasteur
+		anglais</em>) 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 ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Cher Monsieur</em>,’
+		but your ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Cher Dog-gie</em>,’ and——�</p>
+	</blockquote>
+
+	<p>“Here is a letter for you, brought by hand,� said
+	the nurse, bustling to his bedside.</p>
+
+	<p>It was from Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, lord!� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page250" title="250"> </a>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“The lady, I believe, is waiting for an answer,�
+	said the nurse.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, my hat!� said Doggie below his breath.</p>
+
+	<p>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?</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>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 class="pagenum" id="page251" title="251"> </a>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 <em>vale</em> 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.</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page252" title="252"> </a>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.</p>
+
+	<p>It had to be final. Was not Peggy coming at
+	three o’clock?</p>
+
+	<p>Again Doggie thought, somewhat wistfully, of the
+	old care-free, full physical life, and again he murmured:</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s all dam funny!�</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_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.</p>
+
+	<p>“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 <em>fut</em> and can’t travel, and Dad’s running all the
+	parsons’ shows in the district. Otherwise one of
+	them would have come too.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s awfully good of you, Peggy,� he said, with
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page253" title="253"> </a>a smile, for fair and flushed she was pleasant to look
+	upon. “But it must have been a fiendish journey.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Rotten!� said Peggy. “But that’s a trifle.
+	You’re the all-important thing. Tell me straight.
+	You’re not badly hurt, are you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Sure? They’re not going to cut off your leg
+	or do anything horrid?�</p>
+
+	<p>He laughed. “Sure,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s all right.�</p>
+
+	<p>There was a pause. Now that they had met they
+	seemed to have little to say. She looked around.
+	Presently she remarked:</p>
+
+	<p>“Everything looks quite fresh and clean.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s perfect.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Rather public, though,� said Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“Publicity is the paradoxical condition of the
+	private’s life,� laughed Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Another pause.</p>
+
+	<p>“Well, how are you feeling?�</p>
+
+	<p>“First-rate,� said Doggie. “It’s nothing to fuss
+	over. I hope to be out again in a month or two.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Out where?�</p>
+
+	<p>“In France—with the regiment.�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“Do you mean to say you <em>want</em> to go back to the
+	trenches?�</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page254" title="254"> </a>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Tommies?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Of course—Tommies.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You mean gentlemen in the ranks?�</p>
+
+	<p>“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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page255" title="255"> </a>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?�</p>
+
+	<p>“How horrid!� cried Peggy, with a little shiver.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy pricked up her ears. “Worries? What
+	kind of worries?�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie became conscious of indiscretion. He
+	temporized.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>Instinctively he stretched out his hand for a cigarette.
+	She bent forward, gripped a matchbox, and lit the
+	cigarette for him.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“I can’t understand your wanting to go back at
+	all. Surely you’ve done your bit,� she said.</p>
+
+	<p>“No one has done his bit who’s alive and able to
+	carry on,� replied Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy reflected. Yes. There was some truth in
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page256" title="256"> </a>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Any man who is wounded in the defence of his
+	country is a hero,� said Peggy defiantly.</p>
+
+	<p>“Rot!� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“And all this time you haven’t told me how you
+	got it. How did you?�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie squirmed. The inevitable and dreaded
+	question had come at last.</p>
+
+	<p>“I just got sniped when I was out, at night, with
+	a wiring party,� he said hurriedly.</p>
+
+	<p>“But that’s no description at all,� she objected.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>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.�</p>
+
+	<p>It was on Doggie’s agitated lips to shout a true
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page257" title="257"> </a>“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.</p>
+
+	<p>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.�</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page258" title="258"> </a>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:</p>
+
+	<p>“All right. Have it so if it pleases you, my dear.
+	But it was an idiot fluke all the same.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I wonder if you know how you’ve changed,�
+	she said, after a while.</p>
+
+	<p>“For better or worse?�</p>
+
+	<p>“The obvious thing to say would be ‘for the
+	better.’ But I wonder. Do you mind if I’m
+	frank?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not a bit.�</p>
+
+	<p>“There’s something hard about you, Marmaduke.�</p>
+
+	<p>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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I suppose that’s it,� Peggy said thoughtfully.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s a dud sort of place, Durdlebury,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>“Dud?�</p>
+
+	<p>He laughed. “It never goes off.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You used to say, in your letters, that you longed
+	for it.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Perhaps I do now—in a way. I don’t know.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I bet you’ll settle down there after the war,
+	just as though nothing had happened.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I wonder,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That doesn’t mean that we need curl ourselves
+	up there for ever like caterpillars in a cabbage.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page259" title="259"> </a>She arched her eyebrows. “What would you like
+	to do?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I think I’ll want to go round and round the world
+	till I’m dizzy.�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“Don’t you think the war will change things—if
+	it hasn’t changed them already?�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page260" title="260"> </a>“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?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Of course not,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Well, how are people like ourselves going to
+	feel any difference in what you call social conditions?�</p>
+
+	<p>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:</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page261" title="261"> </a>“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?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I think I’m pretty cheerful,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Have you met many men who say that?� he
+	asked.</p>
+
+	<p>“Heaps. Oliver was only talking about it the
+	other day.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Oliver?�</p>
+
+	<p>At his quick challenge he could not help noticing
+	a little cloud, as of vexation, pass over her face.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You saw a lot of him, I suppose?� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>A flush rose on Peggy’s cheek. “Of course. He
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page262" title="262"> </a>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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“So you did,� said Doggie. “I remember.� He
+	smiled. “Your description made me laugh. Oliver’s
+	a major now, isn’t he?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes. And just before he got his majority they
+	gave him the Military Cross.�</p>
+
+	<p>“He must be an awful swell,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>She replied with some heat. “He hasn’t changed
+	the least little bit in the world.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie shook his head. “No one can go through
+	it, really go through it, and come back the same.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You don’t insinuate that Oliver hasn’t really gone
+	through it?�</p>
+
+	<p>“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 <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">panache</em>——�</p>
+
+	<p>“What’s <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">panache</em>?�</p>
+
+	<p>“The real heroic swagger—something spiritual
+	about it. Oliver’s not going to let you notice the
+	change in him.�</p>
+
+	<p>“We went to the Alhambra, and he laughed as
+	if such a thing as war had never been heard of.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Naturally,� said Doggie. “All that’s part of
+	the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">panache</em>.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re talking through your hat, Marmaduke,�
+	she exclaimed with some irritation. “Oliver’s a
+	straight, clean, English soldier.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve been doing my best to tell you so,� said
+	Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“But you seem to be criticizing him because he’s
+	concealing something behind what you call his <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">panache</em>.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page263" title="263"> </a>“Not criticizing, dear. Only stating. I think I’m
+	more Oliverian than you.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m glad to hear you say so,� cried Peggy, with
+	a flash of the eyes. “I hope it’s true.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m sorry; but I don’t see it,� said Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie again wrinkled his brow and looked at her,
+	and she returned his glance stonily.</p>
+
+	<p>“You think I’m mulish.�</p>
+
+	<p>She had interpreted Doggie’s thought, but he raised
+	a hand in protest.</p>
+
+	<p>“No, no.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page264" title="264"> </a>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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Did you learn all this horrible, rank socialism
+	in France?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Perhaps, but it seems so obvious.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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——�</p>
+
+	<p>“In Durdlebury?�</p>
+
+	<p>She flashed rebellion. “Yes. In Durdlebury.
+	Why not?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m afraid, Peggy dear,� he said, with his patient,
+	pleasant smile, “you are rather sheltered from the
+	war in Durdlebury.�</p>
+
+	<p>She cried out indignantly.</p>
+
+	<p>“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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page265" title="265"> </a>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.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie in some perplexity scratched his head, a
+	thing which he would never have done at Durdlebury.
+	With humorous intent he asked:</p>
+
+	<p>“Do you know as much as Oliver?�</p>
+
+	<p>“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?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Forgive me, Peggy,� he said penitently; “I
+	appreciate your coming more than I can say.�</p>
+
+	<p>She was not appeased. “And yet you don’t give
+	me credit for playing the game.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What game?� he asked with a smile.</p>
+
+	<p>“Surely you ought to know.�</p>
+
+	<p>He reached out his hand and took hers. “Am I
+	worth it, Peggy?�</p>
+
+	<p>Her lips twitched and tears stood in her eyes.</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t know what you mean?�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page266" title="266"> </a>“That’s nothing to be ashamed of,� she declared
+	stoutly.</p>
+
+	<p>“Of course not. But it makes one see all sorts
+	of things in a different light.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, I’ll come this time,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“And in the meanwhile,� she remarked, “try to
+	get these morbid ideas out of your silly old head.�</p>
+
+	<p>Time came for parting. She rose and shook hands.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>She kissed her hand to him at the door, and was
+	gone.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Leur gaieté fait peur.</em>�</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XIX"><a class="pagenum" id="page267" title="267"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> X-rays showed the tiniest splinter of bone
+	in Doggie’s thigh. The surgeon fished it up
+	and the clean wound healed rapidly. The gloomy
+	Penworthy’s prognostication had not come true.
+	Doggie would not stump about at ease on a wooden
+	leg; but in all probability would soon find himself
+	back in the firing line—a prospect which brought
+	great cheer to Penworthy. Also to Doggie. For,
+	in spite of the charm of the pretty hospital, the health-giving
+	sea air, the long rest for body and nerves, life
+	seemed flat and unprofitable.</p>
+
+	<p>He had written a gay, irreproachable letter to
+	Jeanne, to which Jeanne, doubtless thinking it the
+	last word of the episode, had not replied. Loyalty
+	to Peggy forbade further thought of Jeanne. He
+	must henceforward think of Peggy and her sturdy
+	faithfulness as hard as he could. But the more he
+	thought, the more remote did Peggy seem. Of course
+	the publicity of the interview had invested it with a
+	certain constraint, knocked out of it any approach
+	to sentimentality or romance. They had not even
+	kissed. They had spent most of the time arguing
+	from different points of view. They had been near
+	to quarrelling. It was outrageous of him to criticize
+	her; yet how could he help it? The mere fact of
+	striving to exalt her was a criticism.</p>
+
+	<p>Indeed they were far apart. Into the sensitive
+	soul of Doggie the war in all its meaning had paused.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page268" title="268"> </a>The soul of Peggy had remained untouched. To her,
+	in her sheltered corner of England, it was a ghastly
+	accident, like a railway collision blocking the traffic
+	on her favourite line. For the men of her own class
+	who took part in it, it was a brave adventure; for
+	the common soldier a sad but patriotic necessity. If
+	circumstances had allowed her to go forth into the
+	war-world as nurse or canteen helper at a London
+	terminus, or motor driver in France, her horizon would
+	have broadened. But the contact with realities into
+	which her dilettante little war activities brought her
+	was too slight to make the deep impression. In her
+	heart, as far as she revealed herself to Doggie, she
+	resented the war because it interfered with her own
+	definitely marked out scheme of existence. The war
+	over, she would regard it politely as a thing that had
+	never been, and would forthwith set to work upon
+	her aforesaid interrupted plan. And towards a comprehension
+	of this apparent serenity the perplexed
+	mind of Doggie groped with ill-success. All his old
+	values had been kicked into higgledy-piggledy confusion.
+	All hers remained steadfast.</p>
+
+	<p>So Doggie reflected with some grimness that there
+	are rougher roads than those which lead to the trenches.</p>
+
+	<p>A letter from Phineas did not restore equanimity.
+	It ran:</p>
+
+	<blockquote>
+		<p class="salutation">“My dear Laddie,—</p>
+
+		<p>“Our unsophisticated friend, Mo, and myself
+		are writing this letter together and he bids me begin
+		it by saying that he hopes it finds you as it leaves us
+		at present, in a muck of dust and perspiration. Where
+		we are now I must not tell, for (in the opinion of the
+		Censor) you would reveal it to the very Reverend
+		the Dean of Durdlebury, who would naturally telegraph
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page269" title="269"> </a>the information to the Kaiser. But the Division
+		is far, far from the idyllic land of your dreams, and
+		there is bloody fighting ahead of us. And though
+		the hearts of Mo and me go out to you, laddie, and
+		though we miss you sore, yet Mo says he’s blistering
+		glad you’re out of it and safe in your perishing bed
+		with a Blighty one. And such, in more academic
+		phraseology, are the sentiments of your old friend
+		Phineas.</p>
+
+		<p>“Ah, laddie! it was a bad day when we marched
+		from the old billets; for the word had gone round
+		that we weren’t going back. I had taken the liberty
+		of telling the lassie ye ken of something about your
+		private position and your worldly affairs, of which it
+		seems you had left her entirely ignorant. Of course,
+		with my native Scottish caution, and my knowledge
+		of human nature gained in the academies of prosperity
+		and the ragged schools of adversity, I did not touch
+		on certain matters of a delicate nature. That is no
+		business of mine. If there is discretion in this world
+		in which you can trust blindly, it is that of Phineas
+		McPhail. I just told her of Denby Hall and your
+		fortune, which I fairly accurately computed at a
+		couple of million francs. For I thought it was right
+		she should know that you weren’t just a scallywag
+		private soldier like the rest of us. And I am bound
+		to say that the lassie was considerably impressed. In
+		further conversation I told her something of your
+		early life, and, though not over desirous of blackening
+		my character in her bonnie eyes, I let her know what
+		kind of an injudicious upbringing you had been compelled
+		to undergo. ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Il a été élevé</em>,’ said I, ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">dans</em>——’
+		What the blazes was the French for cotton-wool?
+		The war has a pernicious effect on one’s memory—I
+		sometimes even forget the elementary sensations of
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page270" title="270"> </a>inebriety. ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Dans la ouate</em>,’ she said. And I remembered
+		the word. ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Oui, dans la ouate</em>,’ said I.
+		And she looked at me, laddie, or, rather, through me,
+		out of her great dark eyes—you mind the way she
+		treats your substance as a shadow and looks through
+		it at the shadows that to her are substances—and
+		she said below her breath—I don’t think she meant
+		me to hear it—‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Et c’est lui qui a fait cela pour
+		moi</em>.’</p>
+
+		<p>“Mo, in his materialistic way, is clamorous that
+		I should tell you about the chicken; the which,
+		being symbolical, I proceed to do. It was our last
+		day. She invited us to lunch in the kitchen and shut
+		the door so that none of the hungry varlets of the
+		company should stick in their unmannerly noses and
+		whine for scraps. And there, laddie, was an omelette
+		and cutlets and a chicken and a <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fromage à la crême</em>
+		such as in the days of my vanity I have never eaten,
+		cooked by the old body whose soul you won with a
+		pinch of snuff. The poor lassie could scarcely eat;
+		but Mo saw that there was nothing left. The bones
+		on his plate looked as if a dog had been at them for
+		a week. And there was vintage Haut Sauterne which
+		ran down one’s throat like scented gold. ‘Man,’
+		said I to Mo, ‘if you lap it up like that you’ll be as
+		drunk as Noah.’ So he cast a frightened glance at
+		mademoiselle and sipped like a young lady at a christening
+		party. Then she brings out cherries and plums
+		and peaches and opens a half-bottle of champagne
+		and fills all our glasses, and Toinette had a glass; and
+		she rises in the pale, dignified, Greek tragedy way she
+		has, and she makes a wee bit speech. ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Messieurs</em>,’
+		she said, ‘perhaps you may wonder why I have invited
+		you. But I think you understand. It is the only
+		way I had of sharing with Doggie’s friends the fortune
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page271" title="271"> </a>that he had so heroically brought me. It is but a little
+		tribute of my gratitude to Doggie. You are his friends
+		and I wish well that you would be mine—<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">très franchement,
+		très loyalement</em>.’ She put out her hand and we
+		shook it. And old Mo said, ‘Miss, I’d go to hell
+		for you!’ Whereupon the little red spot you may
+		have seen for yourself, came into her pale cheek,
+		and a soft look like a flitting moonbeam crept into
+		her eyes. Laddie, if I’m waxing too poetical, just
+		consider that Mademoiselle Jeanne Bossière is not the
+		ordinary woman the British private soldier is in the
+		habit of consorting with. Then she took up her
+		glass. ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Je vais porter un toast—Vive l’Angleterre!</em>’
+		And although a Scotsman, I drank it as if it applied
+		to me. And then she cried, ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Vive la France!</em>’ And
+		old Toinette cried, ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Vive la France!</em>’</p>
+
+		<p>“And they looked transfigured, and I fairly itched
+		to sing the Marseillaise, though I knew I couldn’t.
+		Then she chinked glasses with us.</p>
+
+		<p>“‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Bonne chance, mes amis!</em>’</p>
+
+		<p>“And then she made a sign to the auld wife, who
+		added the few remaining drops to our glasses. ‘To
+		Doggie!’ said mademoiselle. We drank the toast,
+		laddie. Old Mo began in his cracked voice, ‘For
+		he’s a jolly good fellow.’ I kicked him and told him
+		to shut up. But mademoiselle said:</p>
+
+		<p>“‘I’ve heard of that. It is a ceremony. I like
+		it. Continue.’</p>
+
+		<p>“So Mo and I held up our glasses and, in indifferent
+		song, proclaimed you what the Army, developing
+		certain rudimentary germs, has made you, and mademoiselle
+		too held up her glass and threw back her head
+		and joined us in the hip, hip, hoorays. It would
+		have done your heart good, laddie, to have been there
+		to see. But we did you proud.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page272" title="272"> </a>“When we emerged from the festival, the prettiest
+		which, in the course of a variegated career, I have
+		ever attended, Mo says:</p>
+
+		<p>“‘If I hadn’t a gel at home——’</p>
+
+		<p>“‘If you hadn’t got a girl at home,’ said I, ‘you’d
+		be the next damnedest fool in the army to Phineas
+		McPhail!’</p>
+
+		<p>“We marched out just before dusk, and there she
+		was by the front door; and though she stood proud
+		and upright, and smiled with her lips and blew us
+		kisses with both hands, to which the boys all responded
+		with a cheer, there were tears streaming down her
+		cheeks—and the tears, laddie, were not for Mo, or
+		me, or any one of us ugly beggars that passed her by.</p>
+
+		<p>“I also have good news for you, in that I hear
+		from the thunderous, though excellent, Sergeant
+		Ballinghall, there is a probability that when you rejoin,
+		the C.O. will be afflicted with a grievous lapse of
+		memory and that he will be persuaded that you
+		received your wound during the attack on the wiring
+		party.</p>
+
+		<p>“As I said before, laddie, we’re all like the Scots
+		wha’ hae wi’ Wallace bled and are going to our gory
+		bed or to victory. Possibly both. But I will remain
+		steadfast to my philosophy, and if I am condemned to
+		the said sanguinolent couch, I will do my best to derive
+		from it the utmost enjoyment possible. All kinds of
+		poets and such-like lusty loons have shed their last
+		drop of ink in the effort to describe the pleasures of
+		life—but it will be reserved for the disembodied spirit
+		of Phineas McPhail to write the great Philosophic
+		poem of the world’s history, which will be entitled
+		‘The Pleasures of Death.’ While you’re doing
+		nothing, laddie, you might bestir yourself and find
+		an enlightened publisher who would be willing to
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page273" title="273"> </a>give me an ante-mortem advance, in respect of royalties
+		accruing to my ghost.</p>
+
+		<p>“Mo, to whom I have read the last paragraph, says
+		he always knew that eddication affected the brain.
+		With which incontrovertible proposition and our joint
+		love, I now conclude this epistle.</p>
+
+		<p class="signature">“Yours, <span class="name">Phineas</span>.�</p>
+	</blockquote>
+
+	<p>“Of all the blazing imbeciles!� Doggie cried
+	aloud. Why the unprintable unprintableness couldn’t
+	Phineas mind his own business? Why had he given
+	his silly accident of fortune away in this childish
+	manner? Why had he told Jeanne of his cotton-wool
+	upbringing? His feet, even that of his wounded
+	leg, tingled to kick Phineas. Of course Jeanne,
+	knowing him now to be such a gilded ass, would have
+	nothing more to do with him. It explained her letter.
+	He damned Phineas to all eternity, in terms compared
+	with which the curse of Saint Ernulphus enunciated
+	by the late Mr. Shandy was a fantastic benediction.
+	“If I had a dog,� quoth my Uncle Toby, “I would
+	not curse him so.� But if Uncle Toby had heard
+	Doggie of the Twentieth Century Armies who also
+	swore terribly in Flanders, for dog he would have
+	substituted rattlesnake or German officer.</p>
+
+	<p>Yet such is the quiddity of the English Tommy,
+	that through this devastating anathema ran a streak
+	of love which at the end turned the whole thing into
+	forlorn derision. And as soon as he could laugh, he
+	saw things in a clear light. Both of his two friends
+	were, in their respective ways, in love with his wonderful
+	Jeanne. Both of them were steel-true to him.
+	It was just part of their loyalty to foment this impossible
+	romance between Jeanne and himself. If the three
+	of them were now at Frélus, the two idiots would
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page274" title="274"> </a>be playing gooseberry with the smirking conscientiousness
+	of a pair of schoolgirls. So Doggie forgave the
+	indiscretion. After all, what did it matter?</p>
+
+	<p>It mattered, however, to this extent, that he read
+	the letter over and over again until he knew it by
+	heart and could picture to himself every phase of the
+	banquet and every fleeting look on Jeanne’s face.</p>
+
+	<p>“All this,� he declared at last, “is utterly ridiculous.�
+	And he tore up Phineas’s letter and, during
+	his convalescence, devoted himself to the study of
+	European politics, a subject which he had scandalously
+	neglected during his elegantly leisured youth.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">The day of his discharge came in due course. A
+	suit of khaki took the place of the hospital blue. He
+	received his papers, the seven days’ sick furlough and
+	his railway warrant, shook hands with nurses and
+	comrades and sped to Durdlebury in the third-class
+	carriage of the Tommy.</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy, in the two-seater, was waiting for him in
+	the station yard. He exchanged greetings from afar,
+	grinned, waved a hand and jumped in beside her.</p>
+
+	<p>“How jolly of you to meet me!�</p>
+
+	<p>“Where’s your luggage?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Luggage?�</p>
+
+	<p>It seemed to be a new word. He had not heard it
+	for many months. He laughed.</p>
+
+	<p>“Haven’t got any, thank God! If you knew
+	what it was to hunch a horrible canvas sausage of
+	kit about, you’d appreciate feeling free.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s a mercy you’ve got Peddle,� said Peggy.
+	“He has been at the Deanery fixing things up for
+	you for the last two days.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I wonder if I shall be able to live up to Peddle,�
+	said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page275" title="275"> </a>“Who’s going to start the car?� she asked.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, lord!� he cried, and bolted out and turned
+	the crank. “I’m awfully sorry,� he added, when,
+	the engine running, he resumed his place. “I had
+	forgotten all about these pretty things. Out there a
+	car is a sacred chariot set apart for gods in brass hats,
+	and the ordinary Tommy looks on them with awe
+	and reverence.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Can’t you forget you’re a Tommy for a few
+	days?� she said, as soon as the car had cleared the
+	station gates and was safely under way.</p>
+
+	<p>He noted a touch of irritation. “All right, Peggy
+	dear,� said he. “I’ll do what I can.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Oliver’s here, with his man Chipmunk,� she
+	remarked, her eyes on the road.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oliver? On leave again? How has he managed
+	it?�</p>
+
+	<p>“You’d better ask him,� she replied tartly. “All
+	I know is that he turned up yesterday, and he’s staying
+	with us. That’s why I don’t want you to ram
+	the fact of your being a Tommy down everybody’s
+	throat.�</p>
+
+	<p>He laughed at the queer little social problem that
+	seemed to be worrying her. “I think you’ll find
+	blood is thicker than military etiquette. After all,
+	Oliver’s my first cousin. If he can’t get on with
+	me, he can get out.� To change the conversation,
+	he added after a pause: “The little car’s running
+	splendidly.�</p>
+
+	<p>They swept through the familiar old-world streets,
+	which, now that the early frenzy of mobilizing Territorials
+	and training of new armies was over, had
+	resumed more or less their pre-war appearance. The
+	sleepy meadows by the river, once ground into black
+	slush by guns and ammunition waggons and horses,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page276" title="276"> </a>were now green again and idle, and the troops once
+	billeted on the citizens had marched heaven knows
+	whither—many to heaven itself—or whatever Paradise
+	is reserved for the great-hearted English fighting man
+	who has given his life for England. Only here and
+	there a stray soldier on leave, or one of the convalescents
+	from the cottage hospital, struck an incongruous note
+	of war. They drew up at the door of the Deanery
+	under the shadow of the great cathedral.</p>
+
+	<p>“Thank God that is out of reach of the Boche,�
+	said Doggie, regarding it with a new sense of its
+	beauty and spiritual significance. “To think of it
+	like Rheims or Arras—I’ve seen Arras—seen a shell
+	burst among the still standing ruins. Oh, Peggy�—he
+	gripped her arm—“you dear people haven’t the
+	remotest conception of what it all is—what France
+	has suffered. Imagine this mass of wonder all one
+	horrible stone pie, without a trace of what it once
+	had been.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I suppose we’re jolly lucky,� she replied.</p>
+
+	<p>The door was opened by the old butler, who had
+	been on the alert for the arrival.</p>
+
+	<p>“You run in,� said Peggy, “I’ll take the car round
+	to the yard.�</p>
+
+	<p>So Doggie, with a smile and a word of greeting,
+	entered the Deanery. His uncle appeared in the hall,
+	florid, white-haired, benevolent, and extended both
+	hands to the home-come warrior.</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear boy, how glad I am to see you. Welcome
+	back. And how’s the wound? We’ve thought
+	night and day of you. If I could have spared the
+	time, I should have run up north, but I’ve not a
+	minute to call my own. We’re doing our share of
+	war work here, my boy. Come into the drawing-room.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page277" title="277"> </a>He put his hand affectionately on Doggie’s arm and,
+	opening the drawing-room door, pushed him in and
+	stood, in his kind, courtly way, until the young man
+	had passed the threshold. Mrs. Conover, feeble from
+	illness, rose and kissed him, and gave him much the
+	same greeting as her husband. Then a tall, lean
+	figure in uniform, who had remained in the background
+	by the fireplace, advanced with outstretched hand.</p>
+
+	<p>“Hello, old chap!�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie took the hand in an honest grip.</p>
+
+	<p>“Hello, Oliver!�</p>
+
+	<p>“How goes it?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Splendid,� said Doggie. “You all right?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Top-hole,� said Oliver. He clapped his cousin
+	on the shoulder. “My hat! you do look fit.� He
+	turned to the Dean. “Uncle Edward, isn’t he a
+	hundred times the man he was?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I told you, my boy, you would see a difference,�
+	said the Dean.</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy ran in, having delivered the two-seater to
+	the care of myrmidons.</p>
+
+	<p>“Now that the affecting meeting is over, let us
+	have tea. Oliver, ring the bell.�</p>
+
+	<p>The tea came. It appeared to Doggie, handing
+	round the three-tiered silver cake-stand, that he had
+	returned to some forgotten former incarnation. The
+	delicate china cup in his hand seemed too frail for the
+	material usages of life and he feared lest he should
+	break it with rough handling. Old habit, however,
+	prevailed, and no one noticed his sense of awkwardness.
+	The talk lay chiefly between Oliver and himself.
+	They exchanged experiences as to dates and localities.
+	They bandied about the names of places which will
+	be inscribed in letters of blood in history for all time,
+	as though they were popular golf-courses. Both had
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page278" title="278"> </a>known Ypres and Plug Street, and the famous wall
+	at Arras, where the British and German trenches
+	were but five yards apart. Oliver’s division had gone
+	down to the Somme in July for the great push.</p>
+
+	<p>“I ought to be there now,� said Oliver. “I feel
+	a hulking slacker and fraud, being home on sick leave.
+	But the M.O. said I had just escaped shell-shock by
+	the skin of my nerves, and they packed me home for
+	a fortnight to rest up—while the regiment, what there’s
+	left of it, went into reserve.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Did you get badly cut up?� asked Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Rather. We broke through all right. Then
+	machine guns which we had overlooked got us in
+	the back.�</p>
+
+	<p>“My lot’s down there now,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re well out of it, old chap,� laughed Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>For the first time in his life Doggie began really to
+	like Oliver. The old-time swashbuckling swagger
+	had gone—the swagger of one who would say: “I
+	am the only live man in this comatose crowd. I
+	am the dare-devil buccaneer who defies the thunder
+	and sleeps on boards while the rest of you are lying
+	soft in feather-beds.� His direct, cavalier way he
+	still retained; but the army, with the omnipotent
+	might of its inherited traditions, had moulded him
+	to its pattern; even as it had moulded Doggie. And
+	Doggie, who had learned many of the lessons in human
+	psychology which the army teaches, knew that Oliver’s
+	genial, familiar talk was not all due to his appreciation
+	of their social equality in the bosom of their own
+	family, but that he would have treated much the
+	same any Tommy into whose companionship he had
+	been casually thrown. The Tommy would have
+	said “sir� very scrupulously, which on Doggie’s part
+	would have been an idiotic thing to do; but they
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page279" title="279"> </a>would have got on famously together, bound by the
+	freemasonry of fighting men who had cursed the same
+	foe for the same reasons. So Oliver stood out before
+	Doggie’s eyes in a new light, that of the typical officer
+	trusted and beloved by his men, and his heart went
+	out to him.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve brought Chipmunk over,� said Oliver.
+	“You remember the freak? The poor devil hasn’t
+	had a day’s leave for a couple of years. Didn’t want
+	it. Why should he go and waste money in a country
+	where he didn’t know a human being? But this
+	time I’ve fixed it up for him and his leave is coterminous
+	with mine. He has been my servant all
+	through. If they took him away from me, he’d be
+	quite capable of strangling the C.O. He’s a funny
+	beggar.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And what kind of a soldier?� the Dean asked
+	politely.</p>
+
+	<p>“There’s not a finer one in all the armies of the
+	earth,� said Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>After much further talk the dressing-gong boomed
+	softly through the house.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’ve got the green room, Marmaduke,� said
+	Peggy. “The one with the Chippendale stuff you
+	used to covet so much.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I haven’t got much to change into,� laughed
+	Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’ll find Peddle up there waiting for you,�
+	she replied.</p>
+
+	<p>And when Doggie entered the green room there
+	he found Peddle, who welcomed him with tears of
+	joy and a display of all the finikin luxuries of the toilet
+	and adornment which he had left behind at Denby
+	Hall. There were pots of pomade and face-cream,
+	and nail-polish; bottles of hair-wash and tooth-wash;
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page280" title="280"> </a>little boxes and brushes for the moustache, half a dozen
+	gleaming razors, an array of brushes and combs and
+	manicure-set in tortoise-shell with his crest in silver,
+	bottles of scent with spray attachments; the onyx
+	bowl of bath salts beside the hip-bath ready to be filled
+	from the ewers of hot and cold water—the Deanery,
+	old-fashioned house, had but one family bath-room;
+	the deep purple silk dressing-gown over the foot-rail
+	of the bed, the silk pyjamas in a lighter shade spread
+	out over the pillow, the silk underwear and soft-fronted
+	shirt fitted with his ruby and diamond sleeve-links,
+	hung up before the fire to air; the dinner jacket suit
+	laid out on the glass-topped Chippendale table, with
+	black tie and delicate handkerchief; the silk socks
+	carefully tucked inside out, the glossy pumps with
+	the silver shoe-horn laid across them.</p>
+
+	<p>“My God! Peddle,� cried Doggie, scratching his
+	closely cropped head. “What the devil’s all this?�</p>
+
+	<p>Peddle, grey, bent, uncomprehending, regarded him
+	blankly.</p>
+
+	<p>“All what, sir?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I only want to wash my hands,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“But aren’t you going to dress for dinner, sir?�</p>
+
+	<p>“A private soldier’s not allowed to wear mufti,
+	Peddle. They’d dock me of a week’s pay if they
+	found out.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Who’s to find out, sir?�</p>
+
+	<p>“There’s Mr. Oliver—he’s a Major.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Lord, Mr. Marmaduke, I don’t think he’d mind.
+	Miss Peggy gave me my orders, sir, and I think you
+	can leave things to her.�</p>
+
+	<p>“All right, Peddle,� he laughed. “If it’s Miss
+	Peggy’s decree, I’ll change. I’ve got all I want.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Are you sure you can manage, sir?� Peddle
+	asked anxiously, for time was when Doggie couldn’t
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page281" title="281"> </a>stick his legs into his trousers unless Peddle held them
+	out for him.</p>
+
+	<p>“Quite,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“It seems rather roughing it here, Mr. Marmaduke,
+	after what you’ve been accustomed to at the Hall.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s so,� said Doggie. “And it’s martyrdom
+	compared with what it is in the trenches. There we
+	always have a major-general to lace up our boots, and
+	a field-marshal’s always hovering round to light our
+	cigarettes.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peddle, who had never known him to jest, or his
+	father before him, went out in a muddled frame of
+	mind, leaving Doggie to struggle into his dress trousers
+	as best he might.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XX"><a class="pagenum" id="page282" title="282"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">When</span> Doggie, in dinner suit, went downstairs,
+	he found Peggy alone in the drawing-room.
+	She gave him the kiss of one accustomed to
+	kiss him from childhood, and sat down again on the
+	fender-stool.</p>
+
+	<p>“Now you look more like a Christian gentleman,�
+	she laughed. “Confess. It’s much more comfortable
+	than your wretched private’s uniform.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m not quite so sure,� he said, somewhat ruefully,
+	indicating his dinner jacket tightly constricted beneath
+	the arms. “Already I’ve had to slit my waistcoat
+	down the back. Poor old Peddle will have an apoplectic
+	fit when he sees it. I’ve grown a bit since
+	these elegant rags were made for me.�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Il faut souffrir pour être beau</em>,� said Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“If my being <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">beau</em> pleases you, Peggy, I’ll suffer
+	gladly. I’ve been in tighter places.� He threw
+	himself down in the corner of the sofa and joggled
+	up and down like a child. “After all,� he said,
+	“it’s jolly to sit on something squashy again, and to
+	see a pretty girl in a pretty frock.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m glad you like this frock.�</p>
+
+	<p>“New?�</p>
+
+	<p>She nodded. “Dad said it was too much of a
+	Vanity Fair of a vanity for war-time. You don’t
+	think so, do you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s charming,� said Doggie. “A treat for tired
+	eyes.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page283" title="283"> </a>“That’s just what I told dad. What’s the good
+	of women dressing in sacks tied round the middle with
+	a bit of string? When men come home from the
+	Front they want to see their womenfolk looking pretty
+	and dainty. That’s what they’ve come over for.
+	It’s part of the cure. It’s the first time you’ve been
+	a real dear, Marmaduke. ‘A treat for tired eyes.’
+	I’ll rub it into dad hard.�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver came in—in khaki. Doggie jumped up
+	and pointed to him.</p>
+
+	<p>“Look here, Peggy. It’s the guard-room for me.�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver laughed. “Where the dinner kit I bought
+	when I came home is now, God only can tell.� He
+	turned to Peggy. “I did change, you know.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s the pull of being a beastly Major,� said
+	Doggie. “They have heaps of suits. On the march,
+	there are motor-lorries full of them. It’s the scandal
+	of the army. The wretched Tommy has but one
+	suit to his name. That’s why, sir, I’ve taken the
+	liberty of appearing before you in outgrown mufti.�</p>
+
+	<p>“All right, my man,� said Oliver. “We’ll hush
+	it up and say no more about it.�</p>
+
+	<p>Then the Dean and Mrs. Conover entered and
+	soon they went in to dinner. It was for Doggie the
+	most pleasant of meals. He had the superbly
+	healthy man’s whole-hearted or whole-stomached
+	appreciation of unaccustomed good food and drink:
+	so much so, that when the Dean, after agonies of
+	thwarted mastication, said gently to his wife: “My
+	dear, don’t you think you might speak a word in
+	season to Peck�—Peck being the butcher—“and
+	forbid him, under the Defence of the Realm Act, if
+	you like, to deliver to us in the evening as lamb that
+	which was in the morning a lusty sheep?� he stared
+	at the good old man as though he were Vitellius in
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page284" title="284"> </a>person. Tough? It was like milk-fatted baby. He
+	was already devouring, like Oliver, his second helping.
+	Then the Dean, pledging him and Oliver in
+	champagne, apologized: “I’m sorry, my dear boys,
+	the 1904 has run out and there’s no more to be got.
+	But the 1906, though not having the quality, is
+	quite drinkable.�</p>
+
+	<p>Drinkable! It was laughing, dancing joy that
+	went down his throat.</p>
+
+	<p>So much for gross delights. There were others—finer.
+	The charm to the eye of the table with its
+	exquisite napery and china and glass and silver and
+	flowers. The almost intoxicating atmosphere of peace
+	and gentle living. The full, loving welcome shining
+	from the eyes of the kind old Dean, his uncle by
+	marriage, and of the faded, delicate lady, his own flesh
+	and blood, his mother’s sister. And Peggy, pretty,
+	flushed, bright-eyed, radiant in her new dress. And
+	there was Oliver….</p>
+
+	<p>Most of all he appreciated Oliver’s comrade-like
+	attitude. It was a recognition of him as a man and
+	a soldier. In the course of dinner talk Oliver said:</p>
+
+	<p>“J.M.T. and I have looked Death in the face many
+	a time—and really he’s a poor raw-head and bloody-bones
+	sort of Bogey; don’t you think so, old chap?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It all depends on whether you’ve got a funk-hole
+	handy,� he replied.</p>
+
+	<p>But that was mere lightness of speech. Oliver’s
+	inclusion of him in his remark shook him to the depths
+	of his sensitive nature. The man who despises the
+	petty feelings and frailties of mankind is doomed to
+	remain in awful ignorance of that which there is of
+	beauty and pathos in the lives of his fellow-creatures.
+	After all, what did it matter what Oliver thought of
+	him? Who was Oliver? His cousin—accident of
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page285" title="285"> </a>birth—the black sheep of the family; now a major
+	in a different regiment and a different division. What
+	was Oliver to him or he to Oliver? He had “made
+	good� in the eyes of one whose judgment had been
+	forged keen and absolute by heroic sorrows. What
+	did anyone else matter? But to Doggie the supreme
+	joy of the evening was the knowledge that he had
+	made good in the eyes of Oliver. Oliver wore on
+	his tunic the white mauve and white ribbon of the
+	Military Cross. Honour where honour was due.
+	But he, Doggie, had been wounded (no matter how)
+	and Oliver frankly put them both on the same plane
+	of achievement, thus wiping away, with generous hand,
+	all hated memories of the past.</p>
+
+	<p>When the ladies had left the room, history repeated
+	itself, in that the Dean was called away on business
+	and the cousins were left alone together over their
+	wine. Said Doggie:</p>
+
+	<p>“Do you remember the last time we sat at this
+	table?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Perfectly,� replied Oliver, holding up a glass of
+	the old Deanery port to the light. “You were
+	horrified at my attempting to clean out my pipe with
+	a dessert knife.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie laughed. “After all, it was a filthy thing
+	to do.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I quite agree with you. Since then I’ve learned
+	manners.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You also made me squirm at the idea of scooping
+	out Boches’ insides with bayonets.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And you’ve learned not to squirm, so we’re quits.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You thought me a rotten ass in those days, didn’t
+	you?�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver looked at him squarely.</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t think it would hurt you now if I said
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page286" title="286"> </a>that I did.� He laughed, stretched himself on his
+	chair, thrusting both hands into his trouser pockets.
+	“In many ways, it’s a jolly good old war, you know—for
+	those that pull through. It has taught us both
+	a lot, Marmaduke.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie wrinkled his forehead in his half-humorous
+	way.</p>
+
+	<p>“I wish it would teach people not to call me by
+	that silly name.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I have always abominated it, as you may have
+	observed,� said Oliver. “But in our present polite
+	relations, old chap, what else is there?�</p>
+
+	<p>“You ought to know——�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver stared at him. “You don’t mean——?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, I do.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But you used to loathe it and I went on calling
+	you ‘Doggie’ because I knew you loathed it. I
+	never dreamed of using it now.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I can’t help it,� replied Doggie. “The name
+	got into the army and has stuck to me right through,
+	and now those I love and trust most in the world,
+	and who love and trust me, call me ‘Doggie,’ and I
+	don’t seem to be able to answer to any other name.
+	So, although I’m only a Tommy and you’re a devil
+	of a swell of a second-in-command, yet if you want to
+	be friendly—well——�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver leaned forward quickly. “Of course I
+	want to be friends, Doggie, old chap. As for major
+	and private—when you pass me in the street you’ve
+	dam well got to salute me, and that’s all there is to
+	it—but otherwise it’s all rot. And now we’ve got
+	to the heart-to-heart stage, don’t you think you’re a
+	bit of a fool?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I know it,� said Doggie cheerfully. “The army
+	has drummed that into me, at any rate.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page287" title="287"> </a>“I mean in staying in the ranks. Why don’t
+	you apply for the Cadet Corps and so get through to
+	a commission again?�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie’s brow grew dark. “I had all that out
+	with Peggy long ago—when things were perhaps
+	somewhat different with me. I was sore all over.
+	I dare say you can understand. But now there are
+	other reasons, much stronger reasons. The only
+	real happiness I’ve had in my life has been as a Tommy.
+	I’m not talking through my hat. The only real
+	friends I’ve ever made in my life are Tommies. I’ve
+	found real things as a Tommy and I’m not going to
+	start all over again to find them in another capacity.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You wouldn’t have to start all over again,�
+	Oliver objected.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh yes, I should. Don’t run away with the idea
+	that I’ve been turned by a miracle into a brawny
+	hero. I’m not anything of the sort. To have to
+	lead men into action would be a holy terror. The old
+	dread of seeking new paths still acts, you see. I’m
+	the same Doggie that wouldn’t go out to Huaheine
+	with you. Only now I’m a private and I’m used to
+	it. I love it and I’m not going to change to the end
+	of the whole gory business. Of course Peggy doesn’t
+	like it,� he added after a sip of wine. “But I can’t
+	help that. It’s a matter of temperament and conscience—in
+	a way, a matter of honour.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What has honour got to do with it?� asked Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ll try to explain. It’s somehow this way.
+	When I came to my senses after being chucked for
+	incompetence—that was the worst hell I ever went
+	through in my life—and I enlisted, I swore that I
+	would stick it as a Tommy without anybody’s sympathy,
+	least of all that of the folks here. And then
+	I swore I’d make good to myself as a Tommy. I
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page288" title="288"> </a>was just beginning to feel happier when that infernal
+	Boche sniper knocked me out for a time. So, Peggy
+	or no Peggy, I’m going through with it. I suppose
+	I’m telling you all this because I should like you to
+	know.�</p>
+
+	<p>He passed his hand, in the familiar gesture, from back
+	to front of his short-cropped hair. Oliver smiled
+	at the reminiscence of the old disturbed Doggie;
+	but he said very gravely:</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m glad you’ve told me, old man. I appreciate
+	it very much. I’ve been through the ranks myself
+	and know what it is—the bad and the good. Many a
+	man has found his soul that way——�</p>
+
+	<p>“Good God!� cried Doggie, starting to his feet.
+	“Do you say that too?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Who else said it?�</p>
+
+	<p>The quick question caused the blood to rush to
+	Doggie’s face. Oliver’s keen, half-mocking gaze
+	held him. He cursed himself for an impulsive idiot.
+	The true answer to the question would be a confession
+	of Jeanne. The scene in the kitchen of Frélus swam
+	before his eyes. He dropped into his chair again
+	with a laugh.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, some one out there—in another heart-to-heart
+	talk. As a matter of fact, I think I said it
+	myself. It’s odd you should have used the same words.
+	Anyhow, you’re the only other person who has hit on
+	the truth as far as I’m concerned. Finding one’s soul
+	is a bit high-falutin—but that’s about the size of it.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Peggy hasn’t hit on the truth, then?� Oliver
+	asked, with curious earnestness, the shade of mockery
+	gone.</p>
+
+	<p>“The war has scarcely touched her yet, you see,�
+	said Doggie. He rose, shrinking from discussion.
+	“Shall we go in?�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page289" title="289"> </a>In the drawing-room they played bridge till the
+	ladies’ bedtime. The Dean coming in, played the
+	last rubber.</p>
+
+	<p>“I hope you’ll be able to sleep in a common or
+	garden bed, Marmaduke,� said Peggy, and kissed him
+	a perfunctory good night.</p>
+
+	<p>“I have heard,� remarked the Dean, “that it takes
+	quite a time to grow accustomed to the little amenities
+	of civilization.�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s quite true, Uncle Edward,� laughed
+	Doggie. “I’m terrified at the thought of the silk
+	pyjamas Peddle has prescribed for me.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Why?� Peggy asked bluntly.</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver interposed laughing, his hand on Doggie’s
+	shoulder.</p>
+
+	<p>“Tommy’s accustomed to go to bed in his day-shirt.�</p>
+
+	<p>“How perfectly disgusting!� cried Peggy, and
+	swept from the room.</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver dropped his hand and looked somewhat
+	abashed.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m afraid I’ve been and gone and done it. I’m
+	sorry. I’m still a barbarian South Sea Islander.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I wish I were a young man,� said the Dean,
+	moving from the door and inviting them to sit, “and
+	could take part in these strange hardships. This
+	question of night attire, for instance, has never struck
+	me before. The whole thing is of amazing interest.
+	Ah! what it is to be old! If I were young, I should
+	be with you, cloth or no cloth, in the trenches. I
+	hope both of you know that I vehemently dissent from
+	those bishops who prohibit the younger clergy from
+	taking their place in the fighting line. If God’s
+	archangels and angels themselves took up the sword
+	against the Powers of Darkness, surely a stalwart
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page290" title="290"> </a>young curate of the Church of England would find
+	his vocation in warring with rifle and bayonet against
+	the proclaimed enemies of God and mankind?�</p>
+
+	<p>“The influence of the twenty thousand or so of
+	priests fighting in the French Army is said to be
+	enormous,� Oliver remarked.</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean sighed. “I’m afraid we’re losing a
+	big chance.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Why don’t you take up the Fiery Cross, Uncle
+	Edward, and run a new Crusade?�</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean sighed. Five-and-thirty years ago,
+	when he had set all Durdlebury by the ears, he might
+	have preached glorious heresy and heroic schism;
+	but now the immutability of the great grey fabric
+	had become part of his being.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve done my best, my boy,� he replied, “with the
+	result that I am held in high disfavour.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But that doesn’t matter a little bit.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not a little bit,� said the Dean. “A man can
+	only do his duty according to the dictates of his conscience.
+	I have publicly deplored the attitude of the
+	Church of England. I have written to <cite>The Times</cite>.
+	I have published a pamphlet—I sent you each a copy—which
+	has brought a hornets’ nest about my ears.
+	I have warned those in high places that what they are
+	doing is not in the best interests of the Church. But
+	they won’t listen.�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver lit a pipe. “I’m afraid, Uncle Edward,�
+	he said, “that though I come of a clerical family, I
+	know no more of religion than a Hun bishop; but
+	it has always struck me that the Church’s job is to
+	look after the people, whereas, as far as I can make
+	out, the Church is now squealing because the people
+	won’t look after the Church.�</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean rose. “I won’t go as far as that,� said
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page291" title="291"> </a>he with a smile. “But there is, I fear, some justification
+	for such a criticism from the laity. As soon
+	as the war began the Church should have gathered the
+	people together and said, ‘Onward, Christian soldiers.
+	Go and fight like—er——’�</p>
+
+	<p>“Like hell,� suggested Oliver, greatly daring.</p>
+
+	<p>“Or words to that effect,� smiled the old Dean.
+	He looked at his watch. “Dear, dear! past eleven.
+	I wish I could sit up talking to you boys. But I
+	start my day’s work at eight o’clock. If you want
+	anything, you’ve only got to ring. Good night.
+	It is one of the proudest days of my life to have you
+	both here together.�</p>
+
+	<p>His courtly charm seemed to linger in the room
+	after he had left.</p>
+
+	<p>“He’s a dear old chap,� said Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>“One of the best,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s rather pathetic,� said Oliver. “In his heart
+	he would like to play the devil with the bishops and
+	kick every able-bodied parson into the trenches—and
+	there are thousands of them that don’t need any
+	kicking and, on the contrary, have been kicked back;
+	but he has become half-petrified in the atmosphere of
+	this place. It’s lovely to come to as a sort of funk-hole
+	of peace—but my holy aunt!—What the blazes
+	are you laughing at?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m only thinking of a beast of a boy here who
+	used to say that,� replied Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh!� said Oliver, and he grinned. “Anyway,
+	I was only going to remark that if I thought I was
+	going to spend the rest of my life here, I’d paint
+	the town vermilion for a week and then cut my
+	throat.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I quite agree with you,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“What are you going to do when the war’s over?�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page292" title="292"> </a>“Who knows what he’s going to do? What are
+	you going to do? Fly back to your little Robinson
+	Crusoe Durdlebury of a Pacific Island? I don’t
+	think so.�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver stuck his pipe on the mantelpiece and his
+	hands on his hips and made a stride towards Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Damn you, Doggie! Damn you to little bits!
+	How the Hades did you guess what I’ve scarcely
+	told myself, much less another human being?�</p>
+
+	<p>“You yourself said it was a good old war and it has
+	taught us a lot of things.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It has,� said Oliver. “But I never expected to
+	hear Huaheine called Durdlebury by you, Doggie.
+	Oh, Lord! I must have another drink. Where’s
+	your glass? Say when?�</p>
+
+	<p>They parted for the night the best of friends.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie, in spite of the silk pyjamas and the soft bed
+	and the blazing fire in his room—he stripped back the
+	light-excluding curtains forgetful of Defence of the
+	Realm Acts, and opened all the windows wide, to the
+	horror of Peddle in the morning—slept like an unperturbed
+	dormouse. When Peddle woke him, he lay
+	drowsily while the old butler filled his bath and fiddled
+	about with drawers. At last aroused, he cried out:</p>
+
+	<p>“What the dickens are you doing?�</p>
+
+	<p>Peddle turned with an injured air. “I am matching
+	your ties and socks for your bottle-green suit, sir.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie leaped out of bed. “You dear old idiot, I
+	can’t go about the streets in bottle-green suits. I’ve
+	got to wear my uniform.� He looked around the
+	room. “Where the devil is it?�</p>
+
+	<p>Peddle’s injured air deepened almost into resentment.</p>
+
+	<p>“Where the devil——!� Never had Mr. Marmaduke,
+	or his father, the Canon, used such language.
+	He drew himself up.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page293" title="293"> </a>“I have given orders, sir, for the uniform suit you
+	wore yesterday to be sent to the cleaners.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, hell!� said Doggie. And Peddle, unaccustomed
+	to the vernacular of the British Army,
+	paled with horror. “Oh, hell!� said Doggie.
+	“Look here, Peddle, just you get on a bicycle, or a
+	motor-car, or an express train at once and retrieve
+	that uniform. Don’t you understand? I’m a private
+	soldier. I’ve got to wear uniform all the time, and
+	I’ll have to stay in this beastly bed until you get it
+	for me.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peddle fled. The picture that he left on Doggie’s
+	mind was that of the faithful steward with dismayed,
+	uplifted hands, retiring from the room in one of the
+	great scenes of Hogarth’s “Rake’s Progress.� The
+	similitude made him laugh—for Doggie always had
+	a saving sense of humour—but he was very angry
+	with Peddle, while he stamped around the room in his
+	silk pyjamas. What the deuce was he going to do?
+	Even if he committed the military crime (and there
+	was a far more serious crime already against him)
+	of appearing in public in mufti, did that old ass think
+	he was going to swagger about Durdlebury in bottle-green
+	suits, as though he were ashamed of the King’s
+	uniform? He dipped his shaving-brush into the
+	hot water. Then he threw it, anyhow, across the
+	room. Instead of shaving, he would be gloating
+	over the idea of cutting that old fool, Peddle’s, throat,
+	and therefore would slash his own face to bits.</p>
+
+	<p>Things, however, were not done at lightning speed
+	in the Deanery of Durdlebury. The first steps had
+	not even been taken to send the uniform to the cleaners,
+	and soon Peddle reappeared carrying it over his arm
+	and the heavy pair of munition boots in his hand.</p>
+
+	<p>“These too, sir?� he asked, exhibiting the latter
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page294" title="294"> </a>resignedly and casting a sad glance at the neat pair
+	of brown shoes exquisitely polished and beautifully
+	treed which he had put out for his master’s wear.</p>
+
+	<p>“These too,� said Doggie. “And where’s my
+	grey flannel shirt?�</p>
+
+	<p>This time Peddle triumphed. “I’ve given that
+	away, sir, to the gardener’s boy.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Well, you can just go and buy me half a dozen
+	more like it,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>He dismissed the old man, dressed and went downstairs.
+	The Dean had breakfasted at seven. Peggy
+	and Oliver were not yet down for the nine o’clock
+	meal. Doggie strolled about the garden and sauntered
+	round to the stable-yard. There he encountered
+	Chipmunk in his shirt-sleeves, sitting on a packing
+	case and polishing Oliver’s leggings. He raised an
+	ugly, clean-shaven mug and scowled beneath his
+	bushy eyebrows at the new-comer.</p>
+
+	<p>“Morning, mate!� said Doggie pleasantly.</p>
+
+	<p>“Morning,� said Chipmunk, resuming his work.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie turned over a stable bucket and sat down on
+	it and lit a cigarette.</p>
+
+	<p>“Glad to be back?�</p>
+
+	<p>Chipmunk poised the cloth on which he had poured
+	some brown dressing. “Not if I has to be worried
+	with private soljers,� he replied. “I came ’ere to
+	get away from ’em.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What’s wrong with private soldiers? They’re
+	good enough for you, aren’t they?� asked Doggie
+	with a laugh.</p>
+
+	<p>“Naow,� snarled Chipmunk. “Especially when
+	they ought to be orficers. Go to ’ell!�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie, who had suffered much in the army, but
+	had never before been taunted with being a dilettante
+	gentleman private, still less been consigned to hell on
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page295" title="295"> </a>that account, leapt to his feet shaken by one of his
+	rare sudden gusts of anger.</p>
+
+	<p>“If you don’t say I’m as good a private soldier as
+	any in your rotten, mangy regiment, I’ll knock your
+	blinking head off!�</p>
+
+	<p>An insult to a soldier’s regiment can only be wiped
+	out in blood. Chipmunk threw cloth and legging to
+	the winds and, springing from his seat like a monkey,
+	went for Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“You just try.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie tried, and had not Chipmunk’s head been
+	very firmly secured to his shoulders, he would have
+	succeeded. Chipmunk went down as if he had been
+	bombed. It was his unguarded and unscientific rush
+	that did it. Doggie regarded his prostrate figure in
+	gratified surprise.</p>
+
+	<p>“What’s all this about?� cried a sharp, imperious
+	voice.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie instinctively stood at attention and saluted,
+	and Chipmunk, picking himself up in a dazed sort of
+	way, did likewise.</p>
+
+	<p>“You two men shake hands and make friends at
+	once,� Oliver commanded.</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, sir,� said Doggie. He extended his hand,
+	and Chipmunk, with the nautical shamble, which in
+	moments of stress defied a couple of years’ military
+	discipline, advanced and shook it. Oliver strode
+	hurriedly away.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m sorry I said that about the regiment, mate.
+	I didn’t mean it,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>Chipmunk looked uncertainly into Doggie’s eyes
+	for what Doggie felt to be a very long time. Chipmunk’s
+	dull brain was slowly realizing the situation.
+	The man opposite to him was his master’s cousin.
+	When he had last seen him, he had no title to be called
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page296" title="296"> </a>a man at all. His vocabulary volcanically rich, but
+	otherwise limited, had not been able to express him
+	in adequate terms of contempt and derision. Now
+	behold him masquerading as a private. Wounded.
+	But any fool could get wounded. Behold him further
+	coming down from the social heights whereon his
+	master dwelt, to take a rise out of him, Chipmunk.
+	In self-defence he had taken the obvious course. He
+	had told him to go to hell. Then the important things
+	had happened. Not the effeminate gentleman but
+	some one very much like the common Tommy of his
+	acquaintance had responded. And he had further
+	responded with the familiar vigour but unwonted
+	science of the rank and file. He had also stood at
+	attention and saluted and obeyed like any common
+	Tommy, when the Major appeared. The last fact
+	appealed to him, perhaps, as much as the one more
+	invested in violence.</p>
+
+	<p>“’Ere,� said he at last, jerking his head and rubbing
+	his jaw, “how the ’ell did you do it?�</p>
+
+	<p>“We’ll get some gloves and I’ll show you,� said
+	Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>So peace and firm friendship were made. Doggie
+	went into the house and in the dining-room found
+	Oliver in convulsive laughter.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, my holy aunt! You’ll be the death of me,
+	Doggie. ‘Yes, sir!’� He mimicked him. “The
+	perfect Tommy. After doing in old Chipmunk.
+	Chipmunk with the strength of a gorilla and the
+	courage of a lion. I just happened round to see
+	him go down. How the blazes did you manage it,
+	Doggie?�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s what Chipmunk’s just asked me,� Doggie
+	replied. “I belong to a regiment where boxing is
+	taught. Really a good regiment,� he grinned.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page297" title="297"> </a>“There’s a sergeant-instructor, a chap called Ballinghall——�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not Joe Ballinghall, the well-known amateur
+	heavy-weight?�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s him right enough,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear old chap,� said Oliver, “this is the funniest
+	war that ever was.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy sailed in full of apologies and began to pour
+	out coffee.</p>
+
+	<p>“Do help yourselves. I’m so sorry to have kept
+	you poor hungry things waiting.�</p>
+
+	<p>“We’ve filled up the time amazingly,� cried Oliver,
+	waving a silver dish-cover. “What do you think?
+	Doggie’s had a fight with Chipmunk and knocked
+	him out.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy splashed the milk over the brim of Doggie’s
+	cup and into the saucer. There came a sudden
+	flush on her cheek and a sudden hard look into her
+	eyes.</p>
+
+	<p>“Fighting? Do you mean to say you’ve been
+	fighting with a common man like Chipmunk?�</p>
+
+	<p>“We’re the best of friends now,� said Doggie.
+	“We understand each other.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I can’t quite see the necessity,� said Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m afraid it’s rather hard to explain,� he replied
+	with a rueful knitting of the brows, for he realized
+	her disgust at the vulgar brawl.</p>
+
+	<p>“I think the less said the better,� she remarked
+	acidly.</p>
+
+	<p>The meal proceeded in ominous gloom, and as soon
+	as Peggy had finished she left the room.</p>
+
+	<p>“It seems, old chap, that I can never do right,�
+	said Oliver. “Long ago, when I used to crab you,
+	she gave it to me in the neck; and now when I try
+	to boost you, you seem to get it.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page298" title="298"> </a>“I’m afraid I’ve got on Peggy’s nerves,� said
+	Doggie. “You see, we’ve only met once before
+	during the last two years, and I suppose I’ve changed.�</p>
+
+	<p>“There’s no doubt about that, old son,� said Oliver.
+	“But all the same, Peggy has stood by you like a brick,
+	hasn’t she?�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s the devil of it,� replied Doggie, rubbing
+	up his hair.</p>
+
+	<p>“Why the devil of it?� Oliver asked quickly.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, I don’t know,� replied Doggie. “As you
+	have once or twice observed, it’s a funny old war.�</p>
+
+	<p>He rose, went to the door.</p>
+
+	<p>“Where are you off to?� asked Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m going to Denby Hall to take a look round.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Like me to come with you? We can borrow
+	the two-seater.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie advanced a pace. “You’re an awfully
+	good sort, Oliver,� he said, touched, “but would you
+	mind—I feel rather a beast——�</p>
+
+	<p>“All right, you silly old ass,� cried Oliver cheerily.
+	“You want, of course, to root about there by yourself.
+	Go ahead.�</p>
+
+	<p>“If you’ll take a spin with me this afternoon, or
+	to-morrow——� said Doggie in his sensitive way.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, clear out!� laughed Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>And Doggie cleared.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XXI"><a class="pagenum" id="page299" title="299"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">“All</span> right, Peddle, I can find my way about,�
+	said Doggie, dismissing the old butler and
+	his wife after a little colloquy in the hall.</p>
+
+	<p>“Everything’s in perfect order, sir, just as it was
+	when you left; and there are the keys,� said Mrs.
+	Peddle.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page300" title="300"> </a>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. <cite>The Times</cite> and the <cite>Morning Post</cite> were laid out
+	on the little table by his accustomed chair near the
+	massive marble mantelpiece.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	æsthetically 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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page301" title="301"> </a>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.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>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 Sèvres
+	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
+	<em lang="la" xml:lang="la">canis futilis</em> 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.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page302" title="302"> </a>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page303" title="303"> </a>chair. He would never live in this House of Dishonour
+	again. Never. He would sell it.</p>
+
+	<p>“By God!� he cried, starting to his feet, as the
+	inspiration came.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page304" title="304"> </a>the town. At the mention of his name, Mr. Spooner,
+	the senior partner, came to the telephone.</p>
+
+	<p>“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?�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“He bought it pretty cheap, didn’t he, somewhere
+	in the ’seventies?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I forget the price he paid for it, but I could look
+	it up. Of course we were the agents.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page305" title="305"> </a>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It would be presumptuous of me to say anything
+	more,� answered the old-fashioned country auctioneer.</p>
+
+	<p>“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?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Of course, Mr. Trevor.�</p>
+
+	<p>Mr. Spooner drove away in his little car, a much
+	dazed man.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“If Miss Conover thinks she has got hold of a
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page306" title="306"> </a>pretty monkey in that young man, she is very much
+	mistaken,� replied Mr. Spooner.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>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 <em>his</em>! So deeply are squatters’ rights
+	implanted in the human instinct.</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page307" title="307"> </a>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.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“If she’ll only understand,� said he, “that I
+	can’t go back to those blasted little dogs, all will be
+	well.�</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page308" title="308"> </a>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 <em>men</em>, these comrades of his,
+	swift with all that there can be of divine glory in
+	men.</p>
+
+	<p>And when they came home and the high gods
+	sounded the false trumpet of peace?</p>
+
+	<p>There would be men’s work in England for all
+	the Doggies in England to do.</p>
+
+	<p>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——</p>
+
+	<p>“Everything will be in the soup,� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page309" title="309"> </a>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.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“Lord Almighty,� he whispered, “here’s Doggie!�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“I beg your pardon,� he said with imperturbable
+	irony, and turned.</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver rushed across the room.</p>
+
+	<p>“Stop, you silly fool!�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy, red-eyed, pale-cheeked, stood a little way
+	back, silent, on the defensive. Doggie, looking from
+	one to the other, said quietly:</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page310" title="310"> </a>“A triangular explanation is scarcely decent.
+	Perhaps you might let me have a word or two with
+	Peggy.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes. It would be best,� she whispered.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ll be in the dining-room if you want me,�
+	said Oliver, and went out.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie took her hand and, very gently, led her
+	to a chair.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy, humiliated, did not look at him. She
+	nodded.</p>
+
+	<p>“All right.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I made up my mind this morning to sell Denby
+	Hall and its contents. I’ve given old Spooner instructions.�</p>
+
+	<p>She glanced at him involuntarily. “Sell Denby
+	Hall?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, dear. You see, I have made up my mind
+	definitely, if I’m spared, not to live in Durdlebury
+	after the war.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What were you thinking of doing?� she asked,
+	in a low voice.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What do you mean by something very serious?�</p>
+
+	<p>“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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page311" title="311"> </a>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.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy twisted a rag of handkerchief and wavered
+	for a moment. Then she broke out, with fresh tears
+	on her cheek.</p>
+
+	<p>“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 <em>did</em> try to play the game.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You did, Peggy dear. You’ve been wonderful.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie smiled—he had risen—and taking her
+	hands, kissed them.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“No, you haven’t,� she decided stoutly.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page312" title="312"> </a>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“All that may be so,� she said, meeting his eyes
+	bravely. “But if the unfamiliar Doggie still cares
+	for me, it doesn’t matter.�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“I take it,� said Peggy incisively, after a while,
+	“that you don’t care for me any longer.�</p>
+
+	<p>He turned and halted at the challenge. He snapped
+	his fingers. What was the good of all this beating
+	of the bush?</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page313" title="313"> </a>“Oh?� said Peggy, with a swift change to coolness.
+	“There’s a girl in France, is there? How
+	long has this been going on?�</p>
+
+	<p>“The last four days in billets before I got wounded,�
+	said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“What is she like?�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>Presently he returned, dragging with him the
+	disconsolate Major.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy, shaken by the rude grip and the kiss, flashed
+	and cried rebelliously:</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m not quite so sure that I want to fix it up with
+	Oliver.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh yes, you do,� cried Oliver.</p>
+
+	<p>He snatched up Doggie’s cap and jammed it on
+	Doggie’s head and cried:</p>
+
+	<p>“Doggie, you’re the best and truest and finest of
+	dear old chaps in the whole wide world.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie settled his cap, grinned, and moved to the
+	door.</p>
+
+	<p>“Anything else, sir?�</p>
+
+	<p>Oliver roared, delighted: “No, Private Trevor,
+	you can go.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Very good, sir.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie saluted smartly and went out. He passed
+	through the French window of the dining-room into
+	the mellow autumn sunshine. Found himself standing
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page314" title="314"> </a>in front of Chipmunk, who still smoked the pipe
+	of elegant leisure by the door of the garage.</p>
+
+	<p>“This is a dam good old world all the same. Isn’t
+	it?� said he.</p>
+
+	<p>“If it was always like this, it would have its points,�
+	replied the unworried Chipmunk.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie had an inspiration. He looked at his
+	watch. It was nearly one o’clock.</p>
+
+	<p>“Hungry?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Always ’ungry. Specially about dinner-time.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Come along of me to the Downshire Arms and
+	have a bite of dinner.�</p>
+
+	<p>Chipmunk rose slowly to his feet, and put his pipe
+	into his tunic pocket, and jerked a slow thumb backwards.</p>
+
+	<p>“Ain’t yer having yer meals ’ere?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Only now and then, as sort of treats,� said Doggie.
+	“Come along.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Ker-ist!� said Chipmunk. “Can yer wait a bit
+	until I’ve cleaned me buttons?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, bust your old buttons!� laughed Doggie.
+	“I’m hungry.�</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page315" title="315"> </a>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You see,� said Doggie modestly, “I don’t think
+	he ever really loved anyone who fed him before.�</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XXII"><a class="pagenum" id="page316" title="316"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">Doggie,</span> the lightest-hearted private in the
+	British Army, danced, in a metaphorical
+	sense, back to London, where he stayed for the rest
+	of his leave at his rooms in Woburn Place; took his
+	wholesome fill of theatres and music-halls, going to
+	those parts of the house where Tommies congregate;
+	and bought an old Crown Derby dinner service as a
+	wedding present for Peggy and Oliver, a tortoise-shell-fitted
+	dressing-case for Peggy, and for Oliver
+	a magnificent gold watch that was an encyclopædia
+	of current information. He had never felt so happy
+	in his life, so enchanted with the grimly smiling old
+	world. Were it not for the Boche, it could hold its
+	own as a brave place with any planet going. He
+	blessed Oliver, who, in turn, had blessed him as though
+	he had displayed heroic magnanimity. He blessed
+	Peggy, who, flushed with love and happiness and
+	gratitude, had shown him, for the first time, what a
+	really adorable young woman she could be. He
+	thanked Heaven for making three people happy,
+	instead of three people miserable.</p>
+
+	<p>He marched along the wet pavements with a new
+	light in his eyes, with a new exhilarating breath in
+	his nostrils. He was free. The war over, he could
+	do exactly what he liked. An untrammelled future
+	lay before him. During the war he could hop about
+	trenches and shell-holes with the freedom of a bird….</p>
+
+	<p>Those awful duty letters to Peggy! Only now
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page317" title="317"> </a>he fully realized their never-ending strain. Now
+	he could write to her spontaneously, whenever the
+	mood suited, write to her from his heart: “Dear
+	old Peggy, I’m so glad you’re happy. Oliver’s a
+	splendid chap. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.� He
+	had lost a dreaded bride; but he had found a dear
+	and devoted friend. Nay, more: he had found
+	two devoted friends. When he drew up his account
+	with humanity, he found himself passing rich in love.</p>
+
+	<p>His furlough expired, he reported at his depot, and
+	was put on light duty. He went about it the cheeriest
+	soul alive, and laughed at the memory of his former
+	miseries as a recruit. This camp life in England,
+	after the mud and blood of France—like the African
+	gentleman in Mr. Addison’s “Cato,� he blessed his
+	stars and thought it luxury. He was not sorry that
+	the exigencies of service prevented him from being
+	present at the wedding of Oliver and Peggy. For it
+	was the most sudden of phenomena, like the fight of
+	two rams, as Shakespeare hath it. In war-time people
+	marry in haste; and often, dear God, they have not
+	the leisure to repent. Since the beginning of the war
+	there are many, many women twice widowed….
+	But that is by the way. Doggie was grateful to an
+	ungrateful military system. If he had attended—in
+	the capacity of best man, so please you—so violent
+	and unreasoning had Oliver’s affection become,
+	Durdlebury would have gaped and whispered behind
+	its hand and made things uncomfortable for everybody.
+	Doggie from the security of his regiment wished
+	them joy by letter and telegram, and sent them the
+	wedding presents aforesaid.</p>
+
+	<p>Then for a season there were three happy people,
+	at least, in this war-wilderness of suffering. The
+	newly wedded pair went off for a honeymoon, whose
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page318" title="318"> </a>promise of indefinite length was eventually cut short
+	by an unromantic War Office. Oliver returned to
+	his regiment in France and Peggy to the Deanery,
+	where she sat among her wedding presents and her
+	hopes for the future.</p>
+
+	<p>“I never realized, my dear,� said the Dean to his
+	wife, “what a remarkably pretty girl Peggy has
+	grown into.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s because she has got the man she loves,� said
+	Mrs. Conover.</p>
+
+	<p>“Do you think that’s the reason?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve known the plainest of women become quite
+	good-looking. In the early days of our married
+	life�—she smiled—“even I was not quite unattractive.�</p>
+
+	<p>The old Dean bent down—she was sitting and he
+	standing—and lifted her chin with his forefinger.</p>
+
+	<p>“You, my dear, have always been by far the most
+	beautiful woman of my acquaintance.�</p>
+
+	<p>“We’re talking of Peggy,� smiled Mrs. Conover.</p>
+
+	<p>“Ah!� said the Dean. “So we were. I was
+	saying that the child’s happiness was reflected in her
+	face——�</p>
+
+	<p>“I rather thought I said it, dear,� replied Mrs.
+	Conover.</p>
+
+	<p>“It doesn’t matter,� said her husband, who was
+	first a man and then a dean. He waved a hand in
+	benign dismissal of the argument. “It’s a great
+	mercy,� said he, “that she has married the man she
+	loves instead of—well … Marmaduke has turned
+	out a capital fellow, and a credit to the family—but
+	I never was quite easy in my mind over the engagement….
+	And yet,� he continued, after a turn or
+	two about the room, “I’m rather conscience-stricken
+	about Marmaduke, poor chap. He has taken it like
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page319" title="319"> </a>a brick. Yes, my dear, like a brick. Like a gentleman.
+	But all the same, no man likes to see another
+	fellow walk off with his sweetheart.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t think Marmaduke was ever so bucked
+	in his life,� said Mrs. Conover placidly.</p>
+
+	<p>“So——?�</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean gasped. His wife’s smile playing
+	ironically among her wrinkles was rather beautiful.</p>
+
+	<p>“Peggy’s word, Edward, not mine. The modern
+	vocabulary. It means——�</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, I know what the hideous word means. It
+	was your using it that caused a shiver down my spine.
+	But why bucked?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It appears there’s a girl in France.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Oho!� said the Dean. “Who is she?�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s what Peggy, even now, would give a
+	good deal to find out.�</p>
+
+	<p>For Doggie had told Peggy nothing more about
+	the girl in France. Jeanne was his own precious
+	secret. That it was shared by Phineas and Mo
+	didn’t matter. To discuss her with Peggy, besides
+	being irrelevant, in the circumstances, was quite
+	another affair. Indeed, when he had avowed the girl
+	in France, it was not so much a confession as a gallant
+	desire to help Peggy out of her predicament. For,
+	after all, what was Jeanne but a beloved war-wraith
+	that had passed through his life and disappeared?</p>
+
+	<p>“The development of Marmaduke,� said the
+	Dean, “is not the least extraordinary phenomenon
+	of the war.�</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">Now that Doggie had gained his freedom, Jeanne
+	ceased to be a wraith. She became once again a
+	wonderful thing of flesh and blood towards whom
+	all his young, fresh instinct yearned tremendously.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page320" title="320"> </a>One day it struck his ingenuous mind that, if Jeanne
+	were willing, there could be no possible reason why
+	he should not marry her. Who was to say him nay?
+	Convention? He had put all the conventions of his
+	life under the auctioneer’s hammer. The family?
+	He pictured a meeting between Jeanne and the kind
+	and courteous old Dean. It could not be other than
+	an episode of beauty. All he had to do was to seek
+	out Jeanne and begin his wooing in earnest. The
+	simplest adventure in the world for a well-to-do and
+	unattached young man—if only that young man had
+	not been a private soldier on active service.</p>
+
+	<p>That was the rub. Doggie passed his hand over
+	his hair ruefully. How on earth could he get to
+	Frélus again? Not till the end of the war, at any
+	rate, which might be years hence. There was nothing
+	for it but a resumption of intimacy by letter. So he
+	wrote to Jeanne the letter which loyalty to Peggy
+	had made him destroy weeks ago. But no answer
+	came. Then he wrote another, telling her of Peggy
+	and his freedom, and his love and his hopes, and to
+	that there came no reply.</p>
+
+	<p>A prepaid telegram produced no result.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie began to despair. What had happened to
+	Jeanne? Why did she persist in ruling him out of
+	her existence? Was it because, in spite of her gratitude,
+	she wanted none of his love? He sat on the
+	railing on the sea front of the south coast town where
+	he was quartered, and looked across the Channel in
+	dismayed apprehension. He was a fool. What could
+	there possibly be in little Doggie Trevor to inspire
+	a romantic passion in any woman’s heart? Take
+	Peggy’s case. As soon as a real, genuine fellow like
+	Oliver came along, Peggy’s heart flew out to him like
+	needle to magnet. Even had he been of Oliver’s
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page321" title="321"> </a>Paladin mould, what right had he to expect Jeanne
+	to give him all the wonder of herself after a four days’
+	acquaintance? Being what he was, just little Doggie
+	Trevor, the assumption was an impertinence. She
+	had sheltered herself from it behind a barrier of
+	silence.</p>
+
+	<p>A girl, a thing of low-cut blouse, truncated skirts
+	and cheap silk stockings, who had been leaning unnoticed
+	for some time on the rails by his side, spoke.</p>
+
+	<p>“You seem to be pretty lonely.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie swerved round. “Yes, I am, darned
+	lonely.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Come for a walk, or take me to the pictures.�</p>
+
+	<p>“And then?� asked Doggie, swinging to his feet.</p>
+
+	<p>“If we get on all right, we can fix up something
+	for to-morrow.�</p>
+
+	<p>She was pretty, with a fair, frizzy, insolent prettiness.
+	She might have been any age from fourteen to four-and-twenty.</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie smiled, tempted to while away a dark hour.
+	But he said, honestly:</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m afraid I should be a dull companion.�</p>
+
+	<p>“What’s the matter?� she laughed. “Lost
+	your best girl?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Something like it.� He waved a hand across the
+	sea. “Over there.�</p>
+
+	<p>“French? Oh!� She drew herself up.
+	“Aren’t English girls good enough for you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“When they’re sympathetic, they’re delightful,�
+	said he.</p>
+
+	<p>“Oh, you make me tired! Good-bye,� she
+	snapped, and stalked away.</p>
+
+	<p>After a few yards she glanced over her shoulder to
+	see whether he was following. But Doggie remained
+	by the railings.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page322" title="322"> </a>Presently he shrugged his shoulders and went off
+	to a picture palace by himself and thought wistfully
+	of Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">And Jeanne? Well, Jeanne was no longer at
+	Frélus; for there came a morning when Aunt Morin
+	was found dead in her bed. The old doctor came and
+	spread out his thin hands and said “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Eh bien</em>� and
+	“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Que voulez-vous?</em>� and “It was bound to happen
+	sooner or later,� and murmured learned words. The
+	old curé came and a neighbour or two, and candles
+	were put round the coffin and the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">pompes funèbres</em>
+	draped the front steps and entrance and vestibule in
+	heavy black. And as soon as was possible Aunt Morin
+	was laid to rest in the little cemetery adjoining the
+	church, and Jeanne went back to the house with
+	Toinette, alone in the wide world. And because
+	there had been a death in the place the billeted soldiers
+	went about the courtyard very quietly.</p>
+
+	<p>Since Phineas and Mo and Doggie’s regiment had
+	gone away, she had devoted, with a new passionate
+	zeal, all the time she could spare from the sick woman
+	to the comforts of the men. No longer restrained by
+	the tightly drawn purse-strings of Aunt Morin, but
+	with money of her own to spend—and money restored
+	to her by these men’s dear and heroic comrade—she
+	could give them unexpected treats of rich coffee and
+	milk, fresh eggs, fruit…. She mended and darned
+	for them and suborned old women to help her. She
+	conspired with the Town Major to render the granary
+	more habitable; and the Town Major, who had not
+	to issue a return for a centime’s expense, received all
+	her suggestions with courteous enthusiasm. Toinette
+	taking good care to impress upon every British soldier
+	who could understand her, the fact that to mademoiselle
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page323" title="323"> </a>personally and individually he was indebted for all
+	these luxuries, the fame of Jeanne began to spread
+	through that sector of the front behind which lay
+	Frélus. Concurrently spread the story of Doggie
+	Trevor’s exploit. Jeanne became a legendary figure,
+	save to those thrice fortunate who were billeted on
+	<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Veuve Morin et Fils, Marchands des Foins en Gros et
+	Détail</em>, and these, according to their several stolid
+	British ways, bowed down and worshipped before
+	the slim French girl with the tragic eyes, and when
+	they departed, confirmed the legend and made things
+	nasty for the sceptically superior private.</p>
+
+	<p>So, on the day of the funeral of Aunt Morin, the
+	whole of the billet sent in a wreath to the house, and
+	the whole of the billet attended the service in the little
+	church, and they marched back and drew up by the
+	front door—a guard of honour extending a little distance
+	down the road. The other men billeted in
+	the village hung around, together with the remnant
+	of the inhabitants, old men, women and children,
+	but kept quite clear of the guarded path through
+	which Jeanne was to pass. One or two officers looked
+	on curiously. But they stood in the background. It
+	was none of their business. If the men, in their
+	free time, chose to put themselves on parade, without
+	arms, of course, so much the better for the army.</p>
+
+	<p>Then Jeanne and the old curé, in his time-scarred
+	shovel-hat and his rusty soutane, followed by Toinette,
+	turned round the corner of the lane and emerged
+	into the main street. A sergeant gave a word of
+	command. The guard stood at attention. Jeanne
+	and her companions proceeded up the street, unaware of
+	the unusual, until they entered between the first two
+	files. Then for the first time the tears welled into
+	Jeanne’s eyes. She could only stretch out her hands
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page324" title="324"> </a>and cry somewhat wildly to the bronzed statues on
+	each side of her, “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Merci, mes amis, merci, merci</em>,�
+	and flee into the house.</p>
+
+	<p>The next day Maître Pépineau, the notary, summoned
+	her to his <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">cabinet</em>. Maître Pépineau was very
+	old. His partner had gone off to the war. “One
+	of the necessities of the present situation,� he would
+	say, “is that I should go on living in spite of myself;
+	for if I died, the whole of the affairs of Frélus would
+	be in the soup.� Now, a fortnight back, Maître
+	Pépineau and four neighbours—the four witnesses
+	required by French law when there is only one notary
+	to draw up the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">instrument public</em>—had visited Aunt
+	Morin; so Jeanne knew that she had made a fresh will.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mon enfant</em>,� said the old man, unfolding the
+	document, “in a previous will your aunt had left you
+	a little heritage out of the half of her fortune which
+	she was free to dispose of by the code. You having
+	come into possession of your own money, she has
+	revoked that will and left everything to her only
+	surviving son, Gaspard Morin, in Madagascar.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It is only just and right,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>“The unfortunate part of the matter,� said Maître
+	Pépineau, “is that Madame Morin has appointed
+	official trustees to carry on the estate until Monsieur
+	Gaspard Morin can make his own arrangements. The
+	result is that you have no <em lang="la" xml:lang="la">locus standi</em> as a resident in
+	the house. I pointed this out to her. But you know,
+	in spite of her good qualities, she was obstinate….
+	It pains me greatly, my dear child, to have to state
+	your position.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I am then,� said Jeanne, “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">sans-asile</em>—homeless?�</p>
+
+	<p>“As far as the house of Monsieur Gaspard Morin
+	is concerned—yes.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page325" title="325"> </a>“And my English soldiers?� asked Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>“Alas, my child,� replied the old man, “you will
+	find them everywhere.�</p>
+
+	<p>Which was cold consolation. For however much
+	inspired by patriotic gratitude a French girl may be,
+	she cannot settle down in a strange place where British
+	troops are billeted and proceed straightway to minister
+	to their comfort. Misunderstandings are apt to arise
+	even in the best regulated British regiments. In the
+	house of Aunt Morin, in Frélus, her position was
+	unassailable. Anywhere else …</p>
+
+	<p>“So, my good Toinette,� said Jeanne, after having
+	explained the situation to the indignant old woman,
+	“I can only go back to my friend in Paris and reconstitute
+	my life. If you will accompany me——?�</p>
+
+	<p>But no. Toinette had the peasant’s awful dread
+	of Paris. She had heard about Paris: there were
+	thieves, ruffians that they called <em>apaches</em>, who murdered
+	you if you went outside your door.</p>
+
+	<p>“The <em>apaches</em>,� laughed Jeanne, “were swept away
+	into the army on the outbreak of war, and they’ve
+	nearly all been killed, fighting like heroes.�</p>
+
+	<p>“There are the old ones left, who are worse than
+	the young,� retorted Toinette.</p>
+
+	<p>No. Mademoiselle could teach her nothing about
+	Paris. You could not even cross a street without
+	risk of life, so many were the omnibuses and automobiles.
+	In every shop you were a stranger to be
+	robbed. There was no air in Paris. You could not
+	sleep for the noise. And then—to live in a city of
+	a hundred million people and not know a living soul!
+	It was a mad-house matter. Again no. It grieved
+	her to part from mademoiselle, but she had made her
+	little economies—a difficult achievement, considering
+	how regardful of her pence Madame had been—and
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page326" title="326"> </a>she would return to her Breton town, which forty
+	years ago she had left to enter the service of Madame
+	Morin.</p>
+
+	<p>“But after forty years, Toinette, who in Paimpol
+	will remember you?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It is I who remember Paimpol,� said Toinette.
+	She remained for a few moments in thought. Then
+	she said: “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">C’est drôle, tout de même.</em> I haven’t seen
+	the sea for forty years, and now I can’t sleep of nights
+	thinking of it. The first man I loved was a fisherman
+	of Paimpol. We were to be married after he returned
+	from an Iceland voyage, with a <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">gros bénéfice</em>. When
+	the time came for his return, I would stand on the
+	shore and watch and watch the sea. But he never
+	came. The sea swallowed him up. And then—you
+	can understand quite well—the child was born
+	dead. And I thought I would never want to look
+	at the sea again. So I came here to your Aunt
+	Morin, the daughter of Doctor Kersadec, your grandfather,
+	and I married Jules Dagnant, the foreman of
+	the carters of the hay … and he died a long time
+	ago … and now I have forgotten him and I want
+	to go and look at the sea where my man was drowned.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But your grandson, who is fighting in the
+	Argonne?�</p>
+
+	<p>“What difference can it make to him whether I
+	am in Frélus or Paimpol?�</p>
+
+	<p>“That’s true,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>Toinette bustled about the kitchen. Folks had to
+	eat, whatever happened. But she went on talking,
+	Madame Morin. One must not speak evil of the
+	dead. They have their work cut out to extricate
+	themselves from Purgatory. But all the same—after
+	forty years’ faithful service—and not to mention in
+	the will—<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">même pour une Bretonne, c’était raide</em>.
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page327" title="327"> </a>Jeanne agreed. She had no reason to love her Aunt
+	Morin. Her father’s people came from Agen on the
+	confines of Gascony; he had been a man of great
+	gestures and vehement speech; her mother, gentle,
+	reserved, <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">un pen dévote</em>. Jeanne drew her character
+	from both sources; but her sympathies were rather
+	southern than northern. For some reason or the
+	other, perhaps for his expansive ways—who knows?—Aunt
+	Morin had held the late Monsieur Bossière in
+	detestation. She had no love for Jeanne, and Jeanne,
+	who before her good fortune had expected nothing
+	from Aunt Morin, regarded the will with feelings of
+	indifference. Except as far as it concerned Toinette.
+	Forty years’ faithful service deserved recognition. But
+	what was the use of talking about it?</p>
+
+	<p>“So we must separate, Toinette?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Alas, yes, mademoiselle—unless mademoiselle
+	would come with me to Paimpol.�</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne laughed. What should she do in Paimpol?
+	There wasn’t even a fisherman left there to fall in
+	love with.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mademoiselle,� said Toinette later, “do you
+	think you will meet the little English soldier, Monsieur
+	Trevor, in Paris?�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Dans la guerre on ne se revoit jamais</em>,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>But there was more of personal decision than of
+	fatalism in her tone.</p>
+
+	<p>So Jeanne waited for a day or two until the regiment
+	marched away, and then, with heavy heart, set
+	out for Paris. She wrote, indeed, to Phineas, and
+	weeks afterwards Phineas, who was in the thick of
+	the Somme fighting, wrote to Doggie telling him of
+	her departure from Frélus; but regretted that as he
+	had lost her letter he could not give him her Paris
+	address.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page328" title="328"> </a>And in the meantime the house of Gaspard Morin
+	was shuttered and locked and sealed; and the bureaucratically
+	minded old Postmaster of Frélus, who had
+	received no instructions from Jeanne to forward her
+	correspondence, handed Doggie’s letters and telegrams
+	to the aged postman, a superannuated herdsman, who
+	stuck them into the letter-box of the deserted house
+	and went away conscious of duty perfectly accomplished.</p>
+
+	<p>Then, at last, Doggie, fit again for active service,
+	went out with a draft to France, and joined Phineas
+	and Mo, almost the only survivors of the cheery,
+	familiar crowd that he had loved, and the grimness
+	of battles such as he had never conceived possible took
+	him in its inexorable grip, and he lost sense of everything
+	save that he was the least important thing on
+	God’s earth struggling desperately for animal existence.</p>
+
+	<p>Yet there were rare times of relief from stress,
+	when he could gropingly string together the facts of
+	a pre-Somme existence. And then he would curse
+	Phineas lustily for losing the precious letter.</p>
+
+	<p>“Man,� Phineas once replied, “don’t you see that
+	you’re breaking a heart which, in spite of its apparent
+	rugosity and callosity, is as tender as a new-made
+	mother’s? Tell me to do it, and I’ll desert and make
+	my way to Paris and——�</p>
+
+	<p>“And the military police will see that you make
+	your way to hell via a stone wall. And serve you
+	right. Don’t be a blithering fool,� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Then I don’t know what I can do for you,
+	laddie, except die of remorse at your feet.�</p>
+
+	<p>“We’re all going to die of rheumatic fever,� said
+	Doggie, shivering in his sodden uniform. “Blast this
+	rain!�</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas thrust his hand beneath his clothing and
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page329" title="329"> </a>produced a long, amorphous and repulsive substance,
+	like a painted tallow candle overcome by intense heat,
+	from which he gravely bit an inch or two.</p>
+
+	<p>“What’s that?� asked Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s a stick of peppermint,� said Phineas. “I’ve
+	still an aunt in Galashiels who remembers my
+	existence.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie stuck out his hand like a monkey in the
+	Zoo.</p>
+
+	<p>“You selfish beast!� he said.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XXIII"><a class="pagenum" id="page330" title="330"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> fighting went on and, to Doggie, the inhabitants
+	of the outside world became almost
+	as phantasmagorical as Phineas’s providential aunt in
+	Galashiels. Immediate existence held him. In an
+	historic battle Mo Shendish fell with a machine bullet
+	through his heart. Doggie, staggering with the rest
+	of the company to the attack over the muddy, shell-torn
+	ground, saw him go down a few yards away. It
+	was not till later that he knew he had gone West
+	with many other great souls. Doggie and Phineas
+	mourned for him as a brother. Without him France
+	was a muddier and a bloodier place and the outside
+	world more unreal than ever.</p>
+
+	<p>Then to Doggie came a heart-broken letter from the
+	Dean. Oliver had gone the same road as Mo. Peggy
+	was frantic with grief. Vividly Doggie saw the peaceful
+	deanery on which all the calamity of all the war had
+	crashed with sudden violence.</p>
+
+	<p>“Why I should thank God we parted as friends,
+	I don’t quite know,� said Doggie, “but I do.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I suppose, laddie,� said Phineas, “it’s good to feel
+	that smiling eyes and hearty hands will greet us when
+	we too pass over the Border. My God, man,� he added
+	reflectively, after a pause, “have you ever considered
+	what a goodly company it will be?  When you come to
+	look at it that way, it makes Death quite a trivial affair.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I suppose it does to us while we’re here,� said Doggie.
+	“We’ve seen such a lot of it. But to those who
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page331" title="331"> </a>haven’t—my poor Peggy—it’s the end of her universe.�</p>
+
+	<p>Yes, it was all very well to take death philosophically,
+	or fatalistically, or callously, or whatever you liked to
+	call it, out there, where such an attitude was the only
+	stand against raving madness; but at home, beneath
+	the grey mass of the cathedral, folks met Death as a
+	strange and cruel horror. The new glory of life that
+	Peggy had found, he had blackened out in an instant.
+	Doggie looked again at the old man’s letter—his handwriting
+	was growing shaky—and forgot for a while
+	the familiar things around him, and lived with Peggy
+	in her sorrow.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">Then, as far as Doggie’s sorely tried division was
+	affected, came the end of the great autumn fighting.
+	He found himself well behind the lines in reserve,
+	and so continued during the cold dreary winter months.
+	And the more the weeks that crept by and the more
+	remote seemed Jeanne, the more Doggie hungered
+	for the sight of her. But all this period of his life
+	was but a dun-coloured monotony, with but few
+	happenings to distinguish week from week. Most
+	of the company that had marched with him into
+	Frélus were dead or wounded. Nearly all the officers
+	had gone. Captain Willoughby, who had interrogated
+	Jeanne with regard to the restored packet, and, on
+	Doggie’s return, had informed him with a friendly
+	smile that they were a damned sight too busy then to
+	worry about defaulters of the likes of him, but that
+	he was going to be court-martialled and shot as soon
+	as peace was declared, when they would have time
+	to think of serious matters—Captain Willoughby had
+	gone to Blighty with a leg so mauled that never would
+	he command again a company in the field. Sergeant
+	Ballinghall, who had taught Doggie to use his fists,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page332" title="332"> </a>had retired, minus a hand, into civil life. A scientific
+	and sporting helper at Roehampton, he informed
+	Doggie by letter, was busily engaged on the invention
+	of a boxing-glove which would enable him to carry
+	on his pugilistic career. “So, in future times,� said
+	he, “if any of your friends among the nobility and
+	gentry want lessons in the noble art, don’t forget
+	your old friend Ballinghall.� Whereat—incidentally—Doggie
+	wondered. Never, for a fraction of a second,
+	during their common military association, had Ballinghall
+	given him to understand that he regarded him
+	otherwise than as a mere Tommy without any pretensions
+	to gentility. There had been times when
+	Ballinghall had cursed him—perhaps justifiably and
+	perhaps lovingly—as though he had been the scum of
+	the earth. Doggie would no more have dared address
+	him in terms of familiarity than he would have dared
+	slap the Brigadier-General on the back. And now
+	the honest warrior sought Doggie’s patronage. Of
+	the original crowd in England who had transformed
+	Doggie’s military existence by making him penny-whistler
+	to the company, only Phineas and himself
+	were left. There were others, of course, good and
+	gallant fellows, with whom he became bound in the
+	rough intimacy of the army; but the first friends,
+	those under whose protecting kindliness his manhood
+	had developed, were the dearest. And their ghosts
+	remained dear.</p>
+
+	<p>At last the division was moved up and there was
+	more fighting.</p>
+
+	<p>One day, after a successful raid, Doggie tumbled
+	back with the rest of the men into the trench and,
+	looking about, missed Phineas. Presently the word
+	went round that “Mac� had been hit, and later the
+	rumour was confirmed by the passage down the trench
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page333" title="333"> </a>of Phineas on a stretcher, his weather-battered face
+	a ghastly ivory.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m alive all right, laddie,� he gasped, contorting
+	his lips into a smile. “I’ve got it clean through the
+	chest like a gentleman. But it gars me greet I canna
+	look after you any longer.�</p>
+
+	<p>He made an attempt at waving a hand, and the
+	stretcher-bearers carried him away out of the army for
+	ever.</p>
+
+	<p>Thereafter Doggie felt the loneliest thing on earth,
+	like Wordsworth’s cloud, or the Last Man in
+	Tom Hood’s grim poem. For was he not the last
+	man of the original company, as he had joined it,
+	hundreds of years ago, in England? It was only
+	then that he realized fully the merits of the wastrel
+	Phineas McPhail. Not once or twice, but a thousand
+	times had the man’s vigilant affection, veiled under
+	cynical humour, saved him from despair. Not once
+	but a thousand times had the gaunt, tireless Scotchman
+	saved him from physical exhaustion. At every turn
+	of his career, since his enlistment, Phineas had been
+	there, watchful, helpful, devoted. There he had
+	been, always ready and willing to be cursed. To
+	curse him had been the great comfort of Doggie’s
+	life. Whom could he curse now? Not a soul—no
+	one, at any rate, against whom he could launch
+	an anathema with any real heart in it. Than curse
+	vainly and superficially, far better not to curse at all.
+	He missed Phineas beyond all his conception of the
+	blankness of bereavement. Like himself, Phineas had
+	found salvation in the army. Doggie realized how
+	he had striven in his own queer way to redeem the
+	villainy of his tutorship. No woman could have been
+	more gentle, more unselfish.</p>
+
+	<p>“What the devil am I going to do?� said Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page334" title="334"> </a>Meanwhile Phineas, lying in a London hospital
+	with a bullet through his body, thought much and
+	earnestly of his friend, and one morning Peggy got a
+	letter.</p>
+
+	<blockquote>
+		<p class="salutation">“Dear Madam,—</p>
+
+		<p>“Time was when I could not have addressed
+		you without incurring your not unjustifiable disapproval.
+		But I take the liberty of doing so now,
+		trusting to your generous acquiescence in the proposition
+		that the war has purged many offences. If this
+		has not happened, to some extent, in my case, I do
+		not see how it has been possible for me to have regained
+		and retained the trust and friendship of so sensitive
+		and honourable a gentleman as Mr. Marmaduke
+		Trevor.</p>
+
+		<p>“If I ask you to come and see me here, where I
+		am lying severely wounded, it is not with an intention
+		to solicit a favour for myself personally—although I’ll
+		not deny that the sight of a kind and familiar face
+		would be a boon to a lonely and friendless man—but
+		with a deep desire to advance Mr. Trevor’s happiness.
+		Lest you may imagine I am committing an unpardonable
+		impertinence and thereby totally misunderstand
+		me, I may say that this happiness can only be achieved
+		by the aid of powerful friends both in London and
+		Paris.</p>
+
+		<p>“It is only because the lad is the one thing dear
+		to me left in the world, that I venture to intrude on
+		your privacy at such a time.</p>
+
+		<p class="signature">“I am, dear Madam,<br />
+		“Yours very faithfully,<br />
+		“<span class="name">Phineas McPhail.</span>�</p>
+	</blockquote>
+
+	<p>Peggy came down to breakfast, and having dutifully
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page335" title="335"> </a>kissed her parents, announced her intention of going
+	to London by the eleven o’clock train.</p>
+
+	<p>“Why, how can you, my dear?� asked Mrs.
+	Conover.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve nothing particular to do here for the next
+	few days.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But your father and I have. Neither of us can
+	start off to London at a moment’s notice.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy replied with a wan smile: “But, dearest
+	mother, you forget. I’m an old, old married woman.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Besides, my dear,� said the Dean, “Peggy has
+	often gone away by herself.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But never to London,� said Mrs. Conover.</p>
+
+	<p>“Anyhow, I’ve got to go.� Peggy turned to the
+	old butler. “Ring up Sturrocks’s and tell them I’m
+	coming.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, miss,� said Burford.</p>
+
+	<p>“He’s as bad as you are, mother,� said Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>So she went up to London and stayed the night
+	at Sturrocks’s alone, for the first time in her life.
+	She half ate a lonely, execrable war dinner in the stuffy,
+	old-fashioned dining-room, served ceremoniously by
+	the ancient head waiter, the friend of her childhood,
+	who, in view of her recent widowhood, addressed her
+	in the muffled tones of the sympathetic undertaker.
+	Peggy nearly cried. She wished she had chosen another
+	hotel. But where else could she have gone?
+	She had stayed at few hotels in London: once at
+	the Savoy; once at Claridge’s; every other time at
+	Sturrocks’s. The Savoy? Its vastness had frightened
+	her. And Claridge’s? No; that was sanctified
+	for ever. Oliver in his lordly way had snapped his
+	fingers at Sturrocks’s. Only the best was good enough
+	for Peggy. Now only Sturrocks’s remained.</p>
+
+	<p>She sought her room immediately after the dreary
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page336" title="336"> </a>meal and sat before the fire—it was a damp, chill
+	February night—and thought miserable and aching
+	thoughts. It happened to be the same room which
+	she had occupied, oh—thousands of years ago—on
+	the night when Doggie, point-device in new Savile
+	Row uniform, had taken her to dinner at the Carlton.
+	And she had sat, in the same imitation Charles the
+	Second brocaded chair, looking into the same generous,
+	old-fashioned fire, thinking—thinking. And she remembered
+	clenching her fist and apostrophizing the
+	fire and crying out aloud: “Oh, my God! if only
+	he makes good!�</p>
+
+	<p>Oceans of years lay between then and now. Doggie
+	had made good; every man who came home wounded
+	must have made good. Poor old Doggie. But how
+	in the name of all that was meant by the word Love
+	she could ever have contemplated—as she had contemplated,
+	with an obstinate, virginal loyalty—marriage
+	with Doggie, she could not understand.</p>
+
+	<p>She undressed, brought the straight-backed chair
+	close to the fire, and, in her dainty nightgown, part
+	of her trousseau, sat elbow on knee, face in thin,
+	clutching hands, slippered feet on fender, thinking,
+	thinking once again. Thinking now of the gates of
+	Paradise that had opened to her for a few brief weeks.
+	Of the man who never had to make good, being the
+	wonder of wonders of men, the delicious companion,
+	the incomparable lover, the all-compelling revealer,
+	the great, gay, scarcely, to her woman’s limited power
+	of vision, comprehended heroic soldier. Of the terrifying
+	meaninglessness of life, now that her God of
+	Very God, in human form, had been swept, in an
+	instant, off the earth into the Unknown.</p>
+
+	<p>Yet was life meaningless after all? There must be
+	some significance, some inner truth veiled in mystery,
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page337" title="337"> </a>behind even the casually accepted and never probed
+	religion to which she had been born and in which
+	she had found poor refuge. For, like many of her
+	thoughtless, unquestioning class, she had looked at
+	Christ through stained-glass windows, and now the
+	windows were darkened…. For the first time in
+	her life, her soul groped intensely towards eternal
+	verities. The fire burned low and she shivered. She
+	became again the bit of human flotsam cruelly buffeted
+	by the waves, forgotten of God. Yet, after she had
+	risen and crept into bed and while she was staring
+	into the darkness, her heart became filled with a vast
+	pity for the thousands and thousands of women, her
+	sisters, who at that moment were staring, hopeless,
+	like her, into the unrelenting night.</p>
+
+	<p>She did not fall asleep till early morning. She
+	rose late. About half-past eleven as she was preparing
+	to walk abroad on a dreary shopping excursion—the
+	hospital visiting hour was in the afternoon—a telegram
+	arrived from the Dean.</p>
+
+	<blockquote>
+		<p>“Just heard that Marmaduke is severely wounded.�</p>
+	</blockquote>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">She scarcely recognized the young private tutor
+	of Denby Hall in the elderly man with the deeply
+	furrowed face, who smiled as she approached his bed.
+	She had brought him flowers, cigarettes of the exquisite
+	kind that Doggie used to smoke, chocolates….</p>
+
+	<p>She sat down by his bedside.</p>
+
+	<p>“All this is more than gracious, Mrs. Manningtree,�
+	said Phineas. “To a <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vieux routier</em> like me,
+	it is a wee bit overwhelming.�</p>
+
+	<p>“It’s very little to do for Doggie’s best friend.�</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas’s eyes twinkled. “If you call him Doggie,
+	like that, maybe it won’t be so difficult for me to
+	talk to you.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page338" title="338"> </a>“Why should it be difficult at all?� she asked.
+	“We both love him.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Ay,� said Phineas. “He’s a lovable lad, and it is
+	because others besides you and me find him lovable,
+	that I took the liberty of writing to you.�</p>
+
+	<p>“The girl in France?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Eh?� He put out a bony hand, and regarded
+	her in some disappointment. “Has he told you?
+	Perhaps you know all about it.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I know nothing except that—‘a girl in France,’
+	was all he told me. But—first about yourself. How
+	badly are you wounded—and what can we do for
+	you?�</p>
+
+	<p>She dragged from a reluctant Phineas the history
+	of his wound and obtained confirmation of his statement
+	from a nurse who happened to pass up the gangway
+	of the pleasant ward and lingered by the bedside.
+	McPhail was doing splendidly. Of course, a man
+	with a hole through his body must be expected to go
+	back to the regime of babyhood. So long as he behaved
+	himself like a well-conducted baby all would
+	be well. Peggy drew the nurse a few yards away.</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve just heard that his dearest friend out there,
+	a boy whom he loves dearly and has been through
+	the whole thing with him in the same company—it’s
+	odd, but he was his private tutor years ago—both
+	gentlemen, you know—in fact, I’m here just to talk
+	about the boy——� Peggy grew somewhat incoherent.
+	“Well—I’ve just heard that the boy has
+	been seriously wounded. Shall I tell him?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I think it would be better to wait for a few days.
+	Any shock like that sends up their temperatures.
+	We hate temperatures, and we’re getting his down
+	so nicely.�</p>
+
+	<p>“All right,� said Peggy, and she went back smiling
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page339" title="339"> </a>to Phineas. “She says you’re getting on amazingly,
+	Mr. McPhail.�</p>
+
+	<p>Said Phineas: “I’m grateful to you, Mrs. Manningtree,
+	for concerning yourself about my entirely
+	unimportant carcass. Now, as Virgil says, ‘<em lang="la" xml:lang="la">paullo
+	majora canemus</em>.’�</p>
+
+	<p>“You have me there, Mr. McPhail,� said Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“Let us sing of somewhat greater things. That
+	is the bald translation. Let us talk of Doggie—if
+	so be it is agreeable to you.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Carry on,� said Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“Well,� said Phineas, “to begin at the beginning,
+	we marched into a place called Frélus——�</p>
+
+	<p>In his pedantic way he began to tell her the story
+	of Jeanne, so far as he knew it. He told her of the
+	girl standing in the night wind and rain on the bluff
+	by the turning of the road. He told her of Doggie’s
+	insane adventure across No Man’s Land to the farm
+	of La Folette. Tears rolled down Peggy’s cheeks.
+	She cried, incredulous:</p>
+
+	<p>“Doggie did that? Doggie?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It was child’s play to what he had to do at Guedecourt.�</p>
+
+	<p>But Peggy waved away the vague heroism of Guedecourt.</p>
+
+	<p>“Doggie did that? For a woman?�</p>
+
+	<p>The whole elaborate structure of her conception of
+	Doggie tumbled down like a house of cards.</p>
+
+	<p>“Ay,� said Phineas.</p>
+
+	<p>“He did that�—Phineas had given an imaginative
+	and picturesque account of the episode—“for
+	this girl Jeanne?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It is a strange coincidence, Mrs. Manningtree,�
+	replied Phineas, with a flicker of his lips elusively
+	suggestive of unctuousness, “that almost those identical
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page340" title="340"> </a>words were used by Mademoiselle Bossière in my
+	presence. ‘<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Il a fait cela pour moi!</em>’ But—you will
+	pardon me for saying it—with a difference of intonation,
+	which, as a woman, no doubt you will be able
+	to divine and appreciate.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I know,� said Peggy. She bent forward and
+	picked with finger and thumb at the fluff of the
+	blanket. Then she said, intent on the fluff: “If a
+	man had done a thing like that for me, I should have
+	crawled after him to the ends of the earth.� Presently
+	she looked up with a flash of the eyes. “Why isn’t
+	this girl doing it?�</p>
+
+	<p>“You must listen to the end of the story,� said
+	Phineas. “I may tell you that I always regarded
+	myself, with my Scots caution, as a model of tact and
+	discretion; but after many conversations with Doggie,
+	I’m beginning to have my doubts. I also imagined
+	that I was very careful of my personal belongings;
+	but facts have convicted me of criminal laxity.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy smiled. “That sounds like a confession,
+	Mr. McPhail.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Maybe it’s in the nature of one,� he assented.
+	“But by your leave, Mrs. Manningtree, I’ll resume
+	my narrative.�</p>
+
+	<p>He continued the story of Jeanne: how she had
+	learned through him of Doggie’s wealth and position
+	and early upbringing; of the memorable dinner-party
+	with poor Mo; of Doggie’s sensitive interpretation
+	of her French <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bourgeoise</em> attitude; and finally the loss
+	of the letter containing her address in Paris.</p>
+
+	<p>After he had finished, Peggy sat for a long while
+	thinking. This romance in Doggie’s life had moved
+	her as she thought she could never be moved since
+	the death of Oliver. Her thoughts winged themselves
+	back to an afternoon, remote almost as her socked
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page341" title="341"> </a>and sashed childhood, when Doggie, immaculately
+	attired in grey and pearl harmonies, had declared,
+	with his little effeminate drawl, that tennis made one
+	so terribly hot. The scene in the Deanery garden
+	flashed before her. It was succeeded by a scene in
+	the Deanery drawing-room when, to herself indignant,
+	he had pleaded his delicacy of constitution. And the
+	same Doggie, besides braving death a thousand times
+	in the ordinary execution of his soldier’s duties, had
+	performed this queer deed of heroism for a girl. Then
+	his return to Durdlebury——</p>
+
+	<p>“I’m afraid,� she said suddenly, “I was dreadfully
+	unkind to him when he came home the last time. I
+	didn’t understand. Did he tell you?�</p>
+
+	<p>Phineas stretched out a hand and with the tips of
+	his fingers touched her sleeve.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mrs. Manningtree,� he said softly, “don’t you
+	know that Doggie’s a very wonderful gentleman?�</p>
+
+	<p>Again her eyes grew moist. “Yes. I know. Of
+	course he never would have mentioned it…. I
+	thought, Mr. McPhail, he had deteriorated—God
+	forgive me! I thought he had coarsened and got into
+	the ways of an ordinary Tommy—and I was snobbish
+	and uncomprehending and horrible. It seems as if
+	I am making a confession now.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Ay. Why not? If it were not for the soul’s
+	health, the ancient Church wouldn’t have instituted
+	the practice.�</p>
+
+	<p>She regarded him shrewdly for a second. “You’ve
+	changed too.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Maybe,� said Phineas. “It’s an ill war that
+	blows nobody good. And I’m not complaining of
+	this one. But you were talking of your miscomprehension
+	of Doggie.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I behaved very badly to him,� she said, picking
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page342" title="342"> </a>again at the blanket. “I misjudged him altogether—because
+	I was ignorant of everything—everything
+	that matters in life. But I’ve learned better since then.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Ay,� remarked Phineas gravely.</p>
+
+	<p>“Mr. McPhail,� she said, after a pause, “it wasn’t
+	those rotten ideas that prevented me from marrying
+	him——�</p>
+
+	<p>“I know, my dear little lady,� said Phineas, grasping
+	the plucking hand. “You just loved the other man
+	as you never could have loved Doggie, and there’s
+	an end to’t. Love just happens. It’s the holiest
+	thing in the world.�</p>
+
+	<p>She turned her hand, so as to meet his in a mutual
+	clasp, and withdrew it.</p>
+
+	<p>“You’re very kind—and sympathetic—and understanding——�
+	Her voice broke. “I seem to have
+	been going about misjudging everybody and everything.
+	I’m beginning to see a little bit—a little bit farther—I
+	can’t express myself——�</p>
+
+	<p>“Never mind, Mrs. Manningtree,� said Phineas
+	soothingly, “if you cannot express yourself in
+	words. Leave that to the politicians and the philosophers
+	and the theologians, and other such windy
+	expositors of the useless. But you can express yourself
+	in deeds.�</p>
+
+	<p>“How?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Find Jeanne for Doggie.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy bent forward with a queer light in her eyes.</p>
+
+	<p>“Does she love him—really love him as he deserves
+	to be loved?�</p>
+
+	<p>“It is not often, Mrs. Manningtree, that I commit
+	myself to a definite statement. But, to my certain
+	knowledge, these two are breaking their hearts for
+	each other. Couldn’t you find her, before the poor
+	laddie is killed?�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page343" title="343"> </a>“He’s not killed yet, thank God!� said Peggy,
+	with an odd thrill in her voice.</p>
+
+	<p>He was alive. Only severely wounded. He would
+	be coming home soon, carried, according to convoy,
+	to any unfriendly hospital dumping-ground in the
+	United Kingdom. If only she could bring this French
+	girl to him! She yearned to make reparation for
+	the past, to act according to the new knowledge that
+	love and sorrow had brought her.</p>
+
+	<p>“But how can I find her—just a girl—an unknown
+	Mademoiselle Bossière—among the millions
+	of Paris?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I’ve been racking my brains all the morning,�
+	replied Phineas, “to recall the address, and out of
+	the darkness there emerges just two words, <em>Port Royal</em>.
+	If you know Paris, does that help you at all?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I don’t know Paris,� replied Peggy humbly. “I
+	don’t know anything. I’m utterly ignorant.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I beg entirely to differ from you, Mrs. Manningtree,�
+	said Phineas. “You have come through much
+	heavy travail to a correct appreciation of the meaning
+	of human love between man and woman, and so
+	you have in you the wisdom of all the ages.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, yes,� said Peggy, becoming practical. “But
+	<em>Port Royal</em>?�</p>
+
+	<p>“The clue to the labyrinth,� replied Phineas.</p>
+
+</div>
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_XXIV"><a class="pagenum" id="page344" title="344"> </a>
+	<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+	<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> Dean of an English cathedral is a personage.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear Field-Marshal, could you do me a little
+	favour…?�</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear Ambassador, my daughter, etc., etc….�</p>
+
+	<p>Deans, discreet, dignified gentlemen, who would
+	not demand the impossible, can generally get what
+	they ask for.</p>
+
+	<p>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:</p>
+
+	<p>“Let me understand clearly what you want to do.
+	You want to go to Paris by yourself, discover a girl
+	called Jeanne Bossière, 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——�</p>
+
+	<p>“Then we’ve found her,� cried Peggy. “We
+	only want the number.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page345" title="345"> </a>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>“If you like to put it that way,� said Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“Are you quite certain you would be acting wisely?
+	From Marmaduke’s point of view——�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.’�</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear,� smiled the Dean, and quoted:
+	“‘What’s in a name? A rose——’�</p>
+
+	<p>“Would be unendurable if it were called a bug-squash.
+	The poetry would be knocked out of it.�</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean said indulgently: “So the name Doggie
+	connotes something poetic and romantic?�</p>
+
+	<p>“You ask the girl Jeanne.�</p>
+
+	<p>The Dean tapped the back of his daughter’s hand
+	that rested on his knee.</p>
+
+	<p>“There’s no fool like an old fool, my dear. Do you
+	know why?�</p>
+
+	<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+	<p>“Because the old fool has learned to understand
+	the young fool, whereas the young fool doesn’t understand
+	anybody.�</p>
+
+	<p>She laughed and threw herself on her knees by
+	his side.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page346" title="346"> </a>“Daddy, you’re immense!�</p>
+
+	<p>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?�</p>
+
+	<p>“As sure as I’m sitting here,� said Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“Then, my dear,� said he, “I’ll do what I can.�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“I think, my dear,� said he at last, “I’ve arranged
+	everything for you.�</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">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.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">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:</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Merci, merci. Adieu!</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>He turned to her.</p>
+
+	<p>“A representative from the Prefecture of Police
+	will wait on you at your hotel at ten o’clock to-morrow
+	morning.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page347" title="347"> </a>The official called, took notes, and confidently
+	assured her that he would obtain the address of Mademoiselle
+	Jeanne Bossière within twelve hours.</p>
+
+	<p>“But how, monsieur, are you going to do it?�
+	asked Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“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. Frélus, I think, is the name of the place she
+	started from?�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“Madame,� said he, “I have the pleasure to inform
+	you that Mademoiselle Jeanne Bossière, late of Frélus,
+	is living in Paris at 743<sup>bis</sup> Boulevard Port Royal, and
+	spends all her days at the succursale of the French
+	Red Cross in the Rue Vaugirard.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Have you seen her and told her?�</p>
+
+	<p>“No, madame, that did not come within my
+	instructions.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I am infinitely grateful to you,� said Peggy.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Il n’y a pas de quoi</em>, madame. I perform the tasks
+	assigned to me and am only too happy, in this case,
+	to have been successful.�</p>
+
+	<p>“But, monsieur,� said Peggy, feeling desperately
+	lonely in Paris, and pathetically eager to talk to a
+	human being, even in her rusty Vévey school French,
+	“haven’t you wondered why I’ve been so anxious to
+	find this young lady?�</p>
+
+	<p>“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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page348" title="348"> </a>need of me in the matter, I am always at your
+	service.�</p>
+
+	<p>He bowed profoundly and left her.</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy stayed at the Ritz because, long ago, when
+	her parents had fetched her from Vévey 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.</p>
+
+	<p>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 Vendôme, with
+	its memorable column, just opposite her bedroom
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page349" title="349"> </a>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.</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">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.</p>
+
+	<p>When, one day, the old concierge, bemedalled from
+	the war of 1870, appeared to her in the packing-room,
+	with the announcement that a <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">dame anglaise</em> 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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page350" title="350"> </a>the sight of the young Englishwoman in black, with
+	a crape hat and little white band beneath the veil, it
+	nearly stopped altogether.</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy advanced with outstretched hand.</p>
+
+	<p>“You are Mademoiselle Jeanne Bossière?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, madame.�</p>
+
+	<p>“I am a cousin of Monsieur Trevor——�</p>
+
+	<p>“Ah, madame�—Jeanne pointed to the mourning—“you
+	do not come to tell me he is dead?�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy smiled. “No. I hope not.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Ah!� Jeanne sighed in relief, “I thought——�</p>
+
+	<p>“This is for my husband,� said Peggy quietly.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Ah, madame! je demande bien pardon. J’ai dû
+	vous faire de la peine. Je n’y pensais pas</em>——�</p>
+
+	<p>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?�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Pardon, madame, c’est que je suis un peu émue</em> …�
+	said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page351" title="351"> </a>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.</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne broke the tiny spell of embarrassed silence.</p>
+
+	<p>“I am at your disposal, madame.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy plunged at once into facts.</p>
+
+	<p>“It may seem strange, my coming to you; but
+	the fact is that my cousin, Monsieur Trevor, is severely
+	wounded….�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mon Dieu!</em>� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>“And his friend, Mr. McPhail, who is also
+	wounded, thinks that if you—well——�</p>
+
+	<p>Her French failed her—to carry off a very delicate
+	situation one must have command of language—she
+	could only blurt out—“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Il faut comprendre, mademoiselle.
+	Il a fait beaucoup pour vous.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>She met Jeanne’s dark eyes. Jeanne said:</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Oui, madame, vous avez raison. Il a beaucoup fait
+	pour moi.</em>�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy flushed at the unconscious correction—“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">beaucoup
+	fait</em>� for “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fait beaucoup</em>.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page352" title="352"> </a>“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?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Accompany me back to London. I had a telegram
+	this morning to say that he had arrived at a
+	hospital there.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Then you have not seen him?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not yet.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Then how, madame, do you know that he desires
+	my presence?�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy glanced at the girl’s hands clasped on her
+	lap, and saw that the knuckles were white.</p>
+
+	<p>“I am sure of it.�</p>
+
+	<p>“He would have written, madame. I only received
+	one letter from him, and that was while I still lived
+	at Frélus.�</p>
+
+	<p>“He wrote many letters and telegraphed to Frélus,
+	and received no answers.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Madame,� cried Jeanne, “I implore you to
+	believe what I say: but not one of those letters have
+	ever reached me.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Not one?�</p>
+
+	<p>At first Peggy was incredulous. Phineas McPhail
+	had told her of Doggie’s despair at the lack of response
+	from Frélus; and, after all, Frélus 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 …</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Je le jure</em>, madame,� said Jeanne.</p>
+
+	<p>And Peggy believed her.</p>
+
+	<p>“But I wrote to Monsieur McPhail, giving him
+	my address in Paris.�</p>
+
+	<p>“He lost the letter before he saw Doggie again�—the
+	name slipped out—“and forgot the address.�</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page353" title="353"> </a>“But how did you find me?�</p>
+
+	<p>“I had a lot of difficulty. The British Embassy—the
+	Prefecture of Police——�</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mon Dieu!</em>� cried Jeanne again. “Did you do
+	all that for me?�</p>
+
+	<p>“For my cousin.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You called him Doggie. That is how I know
+	him and think of him.�</p>
+
+	<p>“All right,� smiled Peggy. “For Doggie then.�</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne’s brain for a moment or two was in a whirl—Embassies
+	and Prefectures of Police!</p>
+
+	<p>“Madame, to do this, you must love him very
+	much.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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
+	<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fiancés</em>.�</p>
+
+	<p>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.�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear,� she said. “<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Vous êtes digne de toute
+	dame anglaise!</em>�—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
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page354" title="354"> </a>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—<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">aimais
+	d’amour</em>, 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.�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>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——�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy raised a beautifully gloved hand.</p>
+
+	<p>“Protect him?� she interrupted. “Why, hasn’t
+	he shown himself to be a hero?�</p>
+
+	<p>Jeanne leant forward and grasped the protesting
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page355" title="355"> </a>hand by the wrist; and there was a wonderful light
+	behind her eyes and a curious vibration in her voice.</p>
+
+	<p>“It is only <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">les petits héros tout faits</em>—the little
+	ready-made heroes—ready made by the <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bon Dieu</em>—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 <em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bon Dieu</em>, from little
+	dogs of no account (<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">des petits chiens de rien du tout</em>)
+	to what Doggie is at the moment. The woman then
+	takes her place. She fixes things for ever. She alone
+	can understand.�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“But what would you protect him from?�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy put out her hand and touched Jeanne’s wrist.</p>
+
+	<p>“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?�</p>
+
+	<p>A faint smile crept into Jeanne’s eyes.</p>
+
+	<p>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mais oui, madame.</em>�</p>
+
+	<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
+
+	<p class="post_thoughtbreak">Doggie lay in the long, pleasant ward of the great
+	<a class="pagenum" id="page356" title="356"> </a>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.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>“My dear old Doggie!� She bent down and
+	kissed him. “Those rotten people wouldn’t let me
+	come before.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>She unpinned the violets and thrust them towards
+	his face.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page357" title="357"> </a>“From home. I’ve brought ’em for you.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Quite fit.�</p>
+
+	<p>There was a span of silence. Then he stretched
+	out his hand and she gave him hers and he gripped it
+	tight.</p>
+
+	<p>“Poor old Peggy dear!�</p>
+
+	<p>“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——?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Getting on splendidly. I say, Peggy, what kind
+	of people are the Pullingers who have taken Denby
+	Hall?�</p>
+
+	<p>“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!�</p>
+
+	<p>“I wasn’t.�</p>
+
+	<p>“You were.�</p>
+
+	<p>Doggie laughed. “If you’ve come here to argue
+	with me, I shall cry, and then you’ll be turned out
+	neck and crop.�</p>
+
+	<p>Peggy looked at him shrewdly. “You seem to
+	be going pretty strong.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Never stronger in my life,� lied Doggie.</p>
+
+	<p>“Would you like to see somebody you are very
+	fond of?�</p>
+
+	<p>“Somebody I’m fond of? Uncle Edward?�</p>
+
+	<p>“No, no.� She waved the Very Reverend the
+	Dean to the empyrean.</p>
+
+	<p><a class="pagenum" id="page358" title="358"> </a>“Dear old Phineas? Has he come through? I’ve
+	not had time to ask whether you’ve heard anything
+	about him.�</p>
+
+	<p>“Yes, he’s flourishing. He wrote to me. I’ve
+	seen him.�</p>
+
+	<p>“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.�</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>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.</p>
+
+	<p>He raised himself, forgetful of exquisite pain, on
+	his right elbow, and stared in a thrill of amazement.</p>
+
+	<p>And Jeanne came to him, and there were no longer
+	ghosts behind her eyes, for they shone like stars.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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@@ -0,0 +1,12408 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Rough Road, by William John Locke
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Rough Road
+
+
+Author: William John Locke
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 12, 2009  [eBook #27786]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROUGH ROAD***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Clarke, Barbara Tozier, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE ROUGH ROAD
+
+by
+
+WILLIAM J. LOCKE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+First Edition ... September 1918
+
+John Lane
+The Bodley Head Ltd
+
+
+
+
+TO
+SHEILA
+
+THIS LITTLE TALE OF
+THE GREAT WAR
+AS A MEMORY FOR AFTER YEARS
+
+
+
+
+THE ROUGH ROAD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+This is the story of Doggie Trevor. It tells of his doings and of a
+girl in England and a girl in France. Chiefly it is concerned with the
+influences that enabled him to win through the war. Doggie Trevor did
+not get the Victoria Cross. He got no cross or distinction whatever.
+He did not even attain the sorrowful glory of a little white cross
+above his grave on the Western Front. Doggie was no hero of romance,
+ancient or modern. But he went through with it and is alive to tell
+the tale.
+
+The brutal of his acquaintance gave him the name of "Doggie" years
+before the war was ever thought of, because he had been brought up
+from babyhood like a toy Pom. The almost freak offspring of elderly
+parents, he had the rough world against him from birth. His father
+died before he had cut a tooth. His mother was old enough to be his
+grandmother. She had the intense maternal instinct and the brain, such
+as it is, of an earwig. She wrapped Doggie--his real name was James
+Marmaduke--in cotton-wool, and kept him so until he was almost a grown
+man. Doggie had never a chance. She brought him up like a toy Pom
+until he was twenty-one--and then she died. Doggie being comfortably
+off, continued the maternal tradition and kept on bringing himself up
+like a toy Pom. He did not know what else to do. Then, when he was
+five-and-twenty, he found himself at the edge of the world gazing in
+timorous starkness down into the abyss of the Great War. Something
+kicked him over the brink and sent him sprawling into the thick of it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That the world knows little of its greatest men is a commonplace among
+silly aphorisms. With far more justice it may be stated that of its
+least men the world knows nothing and cares less. Yet the Doggies of
+the War, who on the cry of "Havoc!" have been let loose, much to their
+own and everybody else's stupefaction, deserve the passing tribute
+sometimes, poor fellows, of a sigh, sometimes of a smile, often of a
+cheer. Very few of them--very few, at any rate, of the English
+Doggies--have tucked their little tails between their legs and run
+away. Once a brawny humorist wrote to Doggie Trevor "_Sursum cauda._"
+Doggie happened to be at the time in a water-logged front trench in
+Flanders and the writer basking in the mild sunshine of Simla with his
+Territorial regiment. Doggie, bidden by the Hedonist of circumstance
+to up with his tail, felt like a scorpion.
+
+Such feelings, however, will be more adequately dealt with hereafter.
+For the moment, it is only essential to obtain a general view of the
+type to which Trevor belonged.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If there is one spot in England where the present is the past, where
+the future is still more of the past, where the past wraps you and
+enfolds you in the dreamy mist of Gothic beauty, where the lazy
+meadows sloping riverward deny the passage of the centuries, where the
+very clouds are secular, it is the cathedral town of Durdlebury. No
+factory chimneys defile with their smoke its calm air, or defy its
+august and heaven-searching spires. No rabble of factory hands shocks
+its few and sedate streets. Divine Providence, according to the
+devout, and the crass stupidity of the local authorities seventy years
+ago, according to progressive minds, turned the main line of railway
+twenty miles from the sacred spot. So that to this year of grace it is
+the very devil of a business to find out, from Bradshaw, how to get to
+Durdlebury, and, having found, to get there. As for getting away, God
+help you! But whoever wanted to get away from Durdlebury, except the
+Bishop? In pre-motor days he used to grumble tremendously and threaten
+the House of Lords with Railway Bills and try to blackmail the
+Government with dark hints of resignation, and so he lived and
+threatened and made his wearisome diocesan round of visits and died.
+But now he has his episcopal motor-car, which has deprived him of his
+grievances.
+
+In the Close of Durdlebury, greenswarded, silent, sentinelled by
+immemorial elms that guard the dignified Gothic dwellings of the
+cathedral dignitaries, was James Marmaduke Trevor born. His father, a
+man of private fortune, was Canon of Durdlebury. For many years he
+lived in the most commodious canonical house in the Close with his
+sisters Sophia and Sarah. In the course of time a new Dean, Dr.
+Conover, was appointed to Durdlebury, and, restless innovator that he
+was, underpinned the North Transept and split up Canon Trevor's home
+by marrying Sophia. Then Sarah, bitten by the madness, committed
+abrupt matrimony with the Rev. Vernon Manningtree, Rector of
+Durdlebury. Canon Trevor, many years older than his sisters, remained
+for some months in bewildered loneliness, until one day he found
+himself standing in front of the cathedral altar with Miss Mathilda
+Jessup, while the Bishop pronounced over them words diabolically
+strange yet ecclesiastically familiar. Miss Jessup, thus transformed
+into Mrs. Trevor, was a mature and comfortable maiden lady of ample
+means, the only and orphan daughter of a late Bishop of Durdlebury.
+Never had there been such a marrying and giving in marriage in the
+cathedral circle. Children were born in Decanal, Rectorial and
+Canonical homes. First a son to the Manningtrees, whom they named
+Oliver. Then a daughter to the Conovers. Then a son, named James
+Marmaduke, after the late Bishop Jessup, was born to the Trevors. The
+profane say that Canon Trevor, a profound patristic theologian and an
+enthusiastic palaeontologist, couldn't make head or tail of it all,
+and, unable to decide whether James Marmaduke should be attributed to
+Tertullian or the Neolithic period, expired in an agony of dubiety. At
+any rate, the poor man died. The widow, of necessity, moved from the
+Close, in order to make way for the new Canon, and betook herself with
+her babe to Denby Hall, the comfortable house on the outskirts of the
+town in which she had dwelt before her marriage.
+
+The saturated essence of Durdlebury ran in Marmaduke's blood: an
+honourable essence, a proud essence; an essence of all that is
+statically beautiful and dignified in English life; but an essence
+which, without admixture of wilder and more fluid elements, is apt to
+run thick and clog the arteries. Marmaduke was coddled from his birth.
+The Dean, then a breezy, energetic man, protested. Sarah Manningtree
+protested. But when the Dean's eldest born died of diphtheria, Mrs.
+Trevor, in her heart, set down the death as a judgment on Sophia for
+criminal carelessness; and when young Oliver Manningtree grew up to be
+an intolerable young Turk and savage, she looked on Marmaduke and,
+thanking heaven that he was not as other boys were, enfolded him more
+than ever beneath her motherly wing. When Oliver went to school in the
+town and tore his clothes, and rolled in mud and punched other boys'
+heads, Marmaduke remained at home under the educational charge of a
+governess. Oliver, lean and lanky and swift-eyed, swaggered through
+the streets unattended from the first day they sent him to a
+neighbouring kindergarten. As the months and years of his childish
+life passed, he grew more and more independent and vagabond. He swore
+blood brotherhood with a butcher-boy and, unknown to his pious
+parents, became the leader of a ferocious gang of pirates. Marmaduke,
+on the other hand, was never allowed to cross the road without
+feminine escort. Oliver had the profoundest contempt for Marmaduke.
+Being two years older, he kicked him whenever he had a chance.
+Marmaduke loathed him. Marmaduke shrank into Miss Gunter, the
+governess's, skirts whenever he saw him. Mrs. Trevor therefore
+regarded Oliver as the youthful incarnation of Beelzebub, and
+quarrelled bitterly with her sister-in-law.
+
+One day, Oliver, with three or four of his piratical friends, met
+Marmaduke and Miss Gunter and a little toy terrier in the High Street.
+The toy terrier was attached by a lead to Miss Gunter on the one side,
+Marmaduke by a hand on the other. Oliver straddled rudely across the
+path.
+
+"Hallo! Look at thet two little doggies!" he cried. He snapped his
+fingers at the terrier. "Come along, Tiny!" The terrier yapped. Oliver
+grinned and turned to Marmaduke. "Come along, Fido, dear little
+doggie."
+
+"You're a nasty, rude, horrid boy, and I shall tell your mother,"
+declared Miss Gunter indignantly.
+
+But Oliver and his pirates laughed with the truculence befitting their
+vocation, and bowing with ironical politeness, let their victim depart
+to the parody of a popular song: "Good-bye, Doggie, we shall miss
+you."
+
+From that day onwards Marmaduke was known as "Doggie" throughout all
+Durdlebury, save to his mother and Miss Gunter. The Dean himself grew
+to think of him as "Doggie." People to this day call him Doggie,
+without any notion of the origin of the name.
+
+To preserve him from persecution, Mrs. Trevor jealously guarded him
+from association with other boys. He neither learned nor played any
+boyish games. In defiance of the doctor, whom she regarded as a member
+of the brutal anti-Marmaduke League, Mrs. Trevor proclaimed
+Marmaduke's delicacy of constitution. He must not go out into the
+rain, lest he should get damp, nor into the hot sunshine, lest he
+should perspire. She kept him like a precious plant in a carefully
+warmed conservatory. Doggie, used to it from birth, looked on it as
+his natural environment. Under feminine guidance and tuition he
+embroidered and painted screens and played the piano and the mandolin,
+and read Miss Charlotte Yonge and learned history from the late Mrs.
+Markham. Without doubt his life was a happy one. All that he asked for
+was sequestration from Oliver and his associates.
+
+Now and then the cousins were forced to meet--at occasional children's
+parties, for instance. A little daughter, Peggy, had been born in the
+Deanery, replacing the lost firstborn, and festivals--to which came
+the extreme youth of Durdlebury--were given in her honour. She liked
+Marmaduke, who was five years her senior, because he was gentle and
+clean and wore such beautiful clothes and brushed his hair so nicely;
+whereas she detested Oliver, who, even at an afternoon party, looked
+as if he had just come out of a rabbit-hole. Besides, Marmaduke danced
+beautifully; Oliver couldn't and wouldn't, disdaining such effeminate
+sports. His great joy was to put out a sly leg and send Doggie and his
+partner sprawling. Once the Dean caught him at it, and called him a
+horrid little beast, and threatened him with neck and crop expulsion
+if he ever did it again. Doggie, who had picked himself up and
+listened to the rebuke, said:
+
+"I'm very glad to hear you talk to him like that, Uncle. I think his
+behaviour is perfectly detestable."
+
+The Dean's lips twitched and he turned away abruptly. Oliver glared at
+Doggie.
+
+"Oh, my holy aunt!" he whispered hoarsely. "Just you wait till I get
+you alone!"
+
+Oliver got him alone, an hour later, in a passage, having lain in
+ambush for him, and after a few busy moments, contemplated a bruised
+and bleeding Doggie blubbering in a corner.
+
+"Do you think my behaviour is detestable now?"
+
+"Yes," whimpered Doggie.
+
+"I've a good mind to go on licking you until you say 'no,'" said
+Oliver.
+
+"You're a great big bully," said Doggie.
+
+Oliver reflected. He did not like to be called a bully. "Look here,"
+said he, "I'll stick my right arm down inside the back of my trousers
+and fight you with my left."
+
+"I don't want to fight. I can't fight," cried Doggie.
+
+Oliver put his hands in his pockets.
+
+"Will you come and play Kiss-in-the-Ring, then?" he asked
+sarcastically.
+
+"No," replied Doggie.
+
+"Well, don't say I haven't made you generous offers," said Oliver, and
+stalked away.
+
+It was all very well for the Rev. Vernon Manningtree, when discussing
+this incident with the Dean, to dismiss Doggie with a contemptuous
+shrug and call him a little worm without any spirit. The unfortunate
+Doggie remained a human soul with a human destiny before him. As to
+his lack of spirit----
+
+"Where," said the Dean, a man of wider sympathies, "do you suppose he
+could get any from? Look at his parentage. Look at his upbringing by
+that idiot woman."
+
+"If he belonged to me, I'd drown him," said the Rector.
+
+"If I had my way with Oliver," said the Dean, "I'd skin him alive."
+
+"I'm afraid he's a young devil," said the Rector, not without paternal
+pride. "But he has the makings of a man."
+
+"So has Marmaduke," replied the Dean.
+
+"Bosh!" said Mr. Manningtree.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Oliver went to Rugby, happier days than ever dawned for
+Marmaduke. There were only the holidays to fear. But as time went on,
+the haughty contempt of Oliver, the public-school boy, for the
+home-bred Doggie, forbade him to notice the little creature's
+existence; so that even the holidays lost their gloomy menace and
+became like the normal halcyontide. Meanwhile Doggie grew up. When he
+reached the age of fourteen, the Dean, by strenuous endeavour, rescued
+him from the unavailing tuition of Miss Gunter. But school for
+Marmaduke Mrs. Trevor would not hear of. It was brutal of Edward--the
+Dean--to suggest such a thing. Marmaduke--so sensitive and
+delicate--school would kill him. It would undo all the results of her
+unceasing care. It would make him coarse and vulgar, like other horrid
+boys. She would sooner see him dead at her feet than at a public
+school. It was true that he ought to have the education of a
+gentleman. She did not need Edward to point out her duty. She would
+engage a private tutor.
+
+"All right. I'll get you one," said the Dean.
+
+The Master of his old college at Cambridge sent him an excellent
+youth, who had just taken his degree--a second class in the Classical
+Tripos--an all-round athlete and a gentleman. The first thing he did
+was to take Marmaduke on the lazy river that flowed through the
+Durdlebury meadows, thereby endangering his life, woefully blistering
+his hands, and making him ache all over his poor little body. After a
+quarter of an hour's interview with Mrs. Trevor, the indignant young
+man threw up his post and departed.
+
+Mrs. Trevor determined to select a tutor herself. A scholastic agency
+sent her a dozen candidates. She went to London and interviewed them
+all. A woman, even of the most limited intelligence, invariably knows
+what she wants, and invariably gets it. Mrs. Trevor got Phineas
+McPhail, M.A. Glasgow, B.A. Cambridge (Third Class Mathematical
+Greats), reading for Holy Orders.
+
+"I was training for the ministry in the Free Kirk of Scotland," said
+he, "when I gradually became aware of the error of my ways, and saw
+that there could only be salvation in the episcopal form of Church
+government. As the daughter of a bishop, Mrs. Trevor, you will
+appreciate my conscientious position. An open scholarship and the
+remainder of my little patrimony enabled me to get my Oxford degree.
+You would have no objection to my continuing my theological studies
+while I undertake the education of your son?"
+
+Phineas McPhail pleased Mrs. Trevor. He had what she called a rugged,
+honest Scotch face, with a very big nose in the middle of it, and
+little grey eyes overhung by brown and shaggy eyebrows. He spoke with
+the mere captivating suggestion of an accent. The son of decayed,
+proud, and now extinct gentlefolk, he presented personal testimonials
+of an unexceptionable quality.
+
+Phineas McPhail took to Doggie and Durdlebury as a duck to water. He
+read for Holy Orders for seven years. When the question of his
+ordination arose, he would declare impressively that his sacred duty
+was the making of Marmaduke into a scholar and a Christian. That duty
+accomplished, he would begin to think of himself. Mrs. Trevor
+accounted him the most devoted and selfless friend that woman ever
+had. He saw eye to eye with her in every detail of Marmaduke's
+upbringing. He certainly taught the boy, who was naturally
+intelligent, a great deal, and repaired the terrible gaps in Miss
+Gunter's system of education. McPhail had started life with many eager
+curiosities, under the impulse of which he had amassed considerable
+knowledge of a superficial kind which, lolling in an arm-chair, with a
+pipe in his mouth, he found easy to impart. To the credit side of Mrs.
+Trevor's queer account it may be put that she did not object to
+smoking. The late Canon smoked incessantly. Perhaps the odour of
+tobacco was the only keen memory of her honeymoon and brief married
+life.
+
+During his seven years of soft living, Phineas McPhail scientifically
+developed an original taste for whisky. He seethed himself in it as
+the ancients seethed a kid in its mother's milk. He had the art to do
+himself to perfection. Mrs. Trevor beheld in him the mellowest and
+blandest of men. Never had she the slightest suspicion of evil
+courses. To such a pitch of cunning in the observance of the
+proprieties had he arrived, that the very servants knew not of his
+doings. It was only later--after Mrs. Trevor's death--when a surveyor
+was called in by Marmaduke to put the old house in order, that a
+disused well at the back of the house was found to be half filled with
+hundreds of whisky bottles secretly thrown in by Phineas McPhail.
+
+The Dean and Mr. Manningtree, although ignorant of McPhail's habits,
+agreed in calling him a lazy hound and a parasite on their fond
+sister-in-law. And they were right. But Mrs. Trevor turned a deaf ear
+to their slanders. They were unworthy to be called Christian men, let
+alone ministers of the Gospel. Were it not for the sacred associations
+of her father and her husband, she would never enter the cathedral
+again. Mr. McPhail was exactly the kind of tutor that Marmaduke
+needed. Mr. McPhail did not encourage him to play rough games, or take
+long walks, or row on the river, because he appreciated his
+constitutional delicacy. He was the only man in the world during her
+unhappy widowhood who understood Marmaduke. He was a treasure beyond
+price.
+
+When Doggie was sixteen, fate, fortune, chance, or whatever you like
+to call it, did him a good turn. It made his mother ill, and sent him
+away with her to foreign health resorts. Doggie and McPhail travelled
+luxuriously, lived in luxurious hotels and visited in luxurious ease
+various picture galleries and monuments of historic or aesthetic
+interest. The boy, artistically inclined and guided by the idle yet
+well-informed Phineas, profited greatly. Phineas sought profit to them
+both in other ways.
+
+"Mrs. Trevor," said he, "don't you think it a sinful shame for
+Marmaduke to waste his time over Latin and mathematics, and such
+things as he can learn at home, instead of taking advantage of his
+residence in a foreign country to perfect himself in the idiomatic and
+conversational use of the language?"
+
+Mrs. Trevor, as usual, agreed. So thenceforward, whenever they were
+abroad, which was for three or four months of each year, Phineas
+revelled in sheer idleness, nicotine, and the skilful consumption of
+alcohol, while highly paid professors taught Marmaduke--and,
+incidentally, himself--French and Italian.
+
+Of the world, however, and of the facts, grim or seductive, of life,
+Doggie learned little. Whether by force of some streak of honesty,
+whether through sheer laziness, whether through canny self-interest,
+Phineas McPhail conspired with Mrs. Trevor to keep Doggie in darkest
+ignorance. His reading was selected like that of a young girl in a
+convent: he was taken only to the most innocent of plays: foreign
+theatres, casinos, and such-like wells of delectable depravity,
+existed almost beyond his ken. Until he was twenty it never occurred
+to him to sit up after his mother had gone to bed. Of strange
+goddesses he knew nothing. His mother saw to that. He had a mild
+affection for his cousin Peggy, which his mother encouraged. She
+allowed him to smoke cigarettes, drink fine claret, the remains of the
+cellar of her father, the bishop, a connoisseur, and _creme de
+menthe_. And, until she died, that was all poor Doggie knew of the
+lustiness of life.
+
+Mrs. Trevor died, and Doggie, as soon as he had recovered from the
+intensity of his grief, looked out upon a lonely world. Phineas, like
+Mrs. Micawber, swore he would never desert him. In the perils of Polar
+exploration or the comforts of Denby Hall, he would find Phineas
+McPhail ever by his side. The first half-dozen or so of these
+declarations consoled Doggie tremendously. He dreaded the Church
+swallowing up his only protector and leaving him defenceless.
+Conscientiously, however, he said:
+
+"I don't want your affection for me to stand in your way, sir."
+
+"'Sir'?" cried Phineas, "is it not practicable for us to do away with
+the old relations of master and pupil, and become as brothers? You are
+now a man, and independent. Let us be Pylades and Orestes. Let us
+share and share alike. Let us be Marmaduke and Phineas."
+
+Doggie was touched by such devotion. "But your ambitions to take Holy
+Orders, which you have sacrificed for my sake?"
+
+"I think it may be argued," said Phineas, "that the really beautiful
+life is delight in continued sacrifice. Besides, my dear boy, I am not
+quite so sure as I was when I was young, that by confining oneself
+within the narrow limits of a sacerdotal profession, one can retain
+all one's wider sympathies both with human infirmity and the gladder
+things of existence."
+
+"You're a true friend, Phineas," said Doggie.
+
+"I am," replied Phineas.
+
+It was just after this that Doggie wrote him a cheque for a thousand
+pounds on account of a vaguely indicated year's salary.
+
+If Phineas had maintained the wily caution which he had exercised for
+the past seven years, all might have been well. But there came a time
+when unneedfully he declared once more that he would never desert
+Marmaduke, and declaring it, hiccoughed so horribly and stared so
+glassily, that Doggie feared he might be ill. He had just lurched into
+Doggie's own peacock-blue and ivory sitting-room when he was
+mournfully playing the piano.
+
+"You're unwell, Phineas. Let me get you something."
+
+"You're right, laddie," Phineas agreed, his legs giving way
+alarmingly, so that he collapsed on a brocade-covered couch. "It's a
+touch of the sun, which I would give you to understand," he continued
+with a self-preservatory flash, for it was an overcast day in June,
+"is often magnified in power when it is behind a cloud. A wee drop of
+whisky is what I require for a complete recovery."
+
+Doggie ran into the dining-room and returned with a decanter of
+whisky, glass and siphon--an adjunct to the sideboard since Mrs.
+Trevor's death. Phineas filled half the tumbler with spirit, tossed it
+off, smiled fantastically, tried to rise, and rolled upon the carpet.
+Doggie, frightened, rang the bell. Peddle, the old butler, appeared.
+
+"Mr. McPhail is ill. I can't think what can be the matter with him."
+
+Peddle looked at the happy Phineas with the eyes of experience.
+
+"If you will allow me to say so, sir," said he, "the gentleman is dead
+drunk."
+
+And that was the beginning of the end of Phineas. He lost grip of
+himself. He became the scarlet scandal of Durdlebury and the terror of
+Doggie's life. The Dean came to the rescue of a grateful nephew. A
+swift attack of delirium tremens crowned and ended Phineas McPhail's
+Durdlebury career.
+
+"My boy," said the Dean on the day of Phineas's expulsion, "I don't
+want to rub it in unduly, but I've warned your poor mother for years,
+and you for months, against this bone-idle, worthless fellow. Neither
+of you would listen to me. But you see that I was right. Perhaps now
+you may be more inclined to take my advice."
+
+"Yes, Uncle," replied Doggie submissively.
+
+The Dean, a comfortable florid man in the early sixties, took up his
+parable and expounded it for three-quarters of an hour. If ever young
+man heard that which was earnestly meant for his welfare, Doggie heard
+it from his Very Reverend Uncle's lips.
+
+"And now, my dear boy," said the Dean by way of peroration, "you
+cannot but understand that it is your bounden duty to apply yourself
+to some serious purpose in life."
+
+"I do," said Doggie. "I've been thinking over it for a long time. I'm
+going to gather material for a history of wall-papers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER  II
+
+
+Thenceforward Doggie, like the late Mr. Matthew Arnold's
+fellow-millions, lived alone. He did not complain. There was little to
+complain about. He owned a pleasant old house set in fifteen acres of
+grounds. He had an income of three thousand pounds a year. Old Peddle,
+the butler, and his wife, the housekeeper, saved him from domestic
+cares. Rising late and retiring early, like the good King of Yvetot, he
+cheated the hours that might have proved weary. His meals, his toilet,
+his music, his wall-papers, his drawing and embroidering--specimens of
+the last he exhibited with great success at various shows held by Arts
+and Crafts Guilds, and such-like high and artistic fellowships--his
+sweet-peas, his chrysanthemums, his postage stamps, his dilettante
+reading and his mild social engagements, filled most satisfyingly the
+hours not claimed by slumber. Now and then appointments with his
+tailor summoned him to London. He stayed at the same mildewed old
+family hotel in the neighbourhood of Bond Street at which his mother
+and his grandfather, the bishop, had stayed for uncountable years.
+There he would lunch and dine stodgily in musty state. In the evenings
+he would go to the plays discussed in the less giddy of Durdlebury
+ecclesiastical circles. The play over, it never occurred to him to do
+otherwise than drive decorously back to Sturrocks's Hotel. Suppers at
+the Carlton or the Savoy were outside his sphere of thought or
+opportunity. His only acquaintance in London were vague elderly female
+friends of his mother, who invited him to chilly semi-suburban teas
+and entertained him with tepid reminiscence and criticism of their
+divers places of worship. The days in London thus passed drearily, and
+Doggie was always glad to get home again.
+
+In Durdlebury he began to feel himself appreciated. The sleepy society
+of the place accepted him as a young man of unquestionable birth and
+irreproachable morals. He could play the piano, the harp, the viola,
+the flute, and the clarinet, and sing a very true mild tenor. As
+secretary of the Durdlebury Musical Association, he filled an
+important position in the town. Dr. Flint--Joshua Flint, Mus.
+Doc.--organist of the cathedral, scattered broadcast golden opinions
+of Doggie. There was once a concert of old English music, which the
+dramatic critics of the great newspapers attended--and one of them
+mentioned Doggie--"Mr. Marmaduke Trevor, who played the viol da gamba
+as to the manner born." Doggie cut out the notice, framed it, and
+stuck it up in his peacock and ivory sitting-room.
+
+Besides music, Doggie had other social accomplishments. He could
+dance. He could escort young ladies home of nights. Not a dragon in
+Durdlebury would not have trusted Doggie with untold daughters. With
+women, old and young, he had no shynesses. He had been bred among
+them, understood their purely feminine interests, and instinctively
+took their point of view. On his visits to London, he could be
+entrusted with commissions. He could choose the exact shade of silk
+for a drawing-room sofa cushion, and had an unerring taste in the
+selection of wedding presents. Young men, other than budding
+ecclesiastical dignitaries, were rare in Durdlebury, and Doggie had
+little to fear from the competition of coarser masculine natures. In a
+word, Doggie was popular.
+
+Although of no mean or revengeful nature, he was human enough to feel
+a little malicious satisfaction when it was proved to Durdlebury that
+Oliver had gone to the devil. His Aunt Sarah, Mrs. Manningtree, had
+died midway in the Phineas McPhail period; Mr. Manningtree a year or
+so later had accepted a living in the North of England, and died when
+Doggie was about four-and-twenty. Meanwhile Oliver, who had been
+withdrawn young from Rugby, where he had been a thorn in the side of
+the authorities, and had been pinned like a cockchafer to a desk in a
+family counting-house in Lothbury, E.C., had broken loose, quarrelled
+with his father, gone off with paternal malediction and a maternal
+heritage of a thousand pounds to California, and was lost to the
+family ken. When a man does not write to his family, what explanation
+can there be save that he is ashamed to do so? Oliver was ashamed of
+himself. He had taken to desperate courses. He was an outlaw. He had
+gone to the devil. His name was rarely mentioned in Durdlebury--to
+Marmaduke Trevor's very great and catlike satisfaction. Only to the
+Dean's ripe and kindly wisdom was his name not utterly anathema.
+
+"My dear," said he once to his wife, who was deploring her nephew's
+character and fate--"I have hopes of Oliver even yet. A man must have
+something of the devil in him if he wants to drive the devil out."
+
+Mrs. Conover was shocked. "My dear Edward!" she cried.
+
+"My dear Sophia," said he, with a twinkle in his mild blue eyes that
+had puzzled her from the day when he first put a decorous arm round
+her waist. "My dear Sophia, if you knew what a ding-dong scrap of
+fiends went on inside me before I could bring myself to vow to be a
+virtuous milk-and-water parson, your hair, which is as long and
+beautiful as ever, would stand up straight on end."
+
+Mrs. Conover sighed.
+
+"I give you up."
+
+"It's too late," said the Dean.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Manningtrees, father and mother and son, were gone. Doggie bore
+the triple loss with equanimity. Then Peggy Conover, hitherto under
+the eclipse of boarding-schools, finishing schools and foreign travel,
+swam, at the age of twenty, within his orbit. When first they met,
+after a year's absence, she very gracefully withered the symptoms of
+the cousinly kiss, to which they had been accustomed all their lives,
+by stretching out a long, frank, and defensive arm. Perhaps if she had
+allowed the salute, there would have been an end of the matter. But
+there came the phenomenon which, unless she was a minx of craft and
+subtlety, she did not anticipate; for the first time in his life he
+was possessed of a crazy desire to kiss her. Doggie fell in love. It
+was not a wild consuming passion. He slept well, he ate well, and he
+played the flute without a sigh causing him to blow discordantly into
+the holes of the instrument. Peggy vowing that she would not marry a
+parson, he had no rivals. He knew not even the pinpricks of jealousy.
+Peggy liked him. At first she delighted in him as in a new and
+animated toy. She could pull strings and the figure worked amazingly
+and amusingly. He proved himself to be a useful toy, too. He was at
+her beck all day long. He ran on errands, he fetched and carried.
+Peggy realized blissfully that she owned him. He haunted the Deanery.
+
+One evening after dinner the Dean said:
+
+"I am going to play the heavy father. How are things between you and
+Peggy?"
+
+Marmaduke, taken unawares, reddened violently. He murmured that he
+didn't know.
+
+"You ought to," said the Dean. "When a young man converts himself into
+a girl's shadow, even although he is her cousin and has been brought
+up with her from childhood, people begin to gossip. They gossip even
+within the august precincts of a stately cathedral."
+
+"I'm very sorry," said Marmaduke. "I've had the very best intentions."
+
+The Dean smiled.
+
+"What were they?"
+
+"To make her like me a little," replied Marmaduke. Then, feeling that
+the Dean was kindly disposed, he blurted out awkwardly: "I hoped that
+one day I might ask her to marry me."
+
+"That's what I wanted to know," said the Dean.
+
+"You haven't done it yet?"
+
+"No," said Marmaduke.
+
+"Why don't you?"
+
+"It seems taking such a liberty," replied Marmaduke.
+
+The Dean laughed. "Well, I'm not going to do it for you. My chief
+desire is to regularize the present situation. I can't have you two
+running about together all day and every day. If you like to ask
+Peggy, you have my permission and her mother's."
+
+"Thank you, Uncle Edward," said Marmaduke.
+
+"Let us join the ladies," said the Dean.
+
+In the drawing-room the Dean exchanged glances with his wife. She saw
+that he had done as he had been bidden. Marmaduke was not an ideal
+husband for a brisk, pleasure-loving modern young woman. But where was
+another husband to come from? Peggy had banned the Church. Marmaduke
+was wealthy, sound in health and free from vice. It was obvious to
+maternal eyes that he was in love with Peggy. According to the Dean,
+if he wasn't, he oughtn't to be for ever at her heels. The young woman
+herself seemed to take considerable pleasure in his company. If she
+cared nothing for him, she was acting in a reprehensible manner. So
+the Dean had been deputed to sound Marmaduke.
+
+Half an hour later the young people were left alone. First the Dean
+went to his study. Then Mrs. Conover departed to write letters.
+Marmaduke advancing across the room from the door which he had opened,
+met Peggy's mocking eyes as she stood on the hearthrug with her hands
+behind her back. Doggie felt very uncomfortable. Never had he said a
+word to her in betrayal of his feelings. He had a vague idea that
+propriety required a young man to get through some wooing before
+asking a girl to marry him. To ask first and woo afterwards seemed
+putting the cart before the horse. But how to woo that remarkably cool
+and collected young person standing there, passed his wit.
+
+"Well," she said, "the dear old birds seem very fussy to-night. What's
+the matter?" And as he said nothing, but stood confused with his hands
+in his pockets, she went on. "You, too, seem rather ruffled. Look at
+your hair."
+
+Doggie, turning to a mirror, perceived that an agitated hand had
+disturbed the symmetry of his sleek black hair, brushed without a
+parting away from the forehead over his head. Hastily he smoothed down
+the cockatoo-like crest.
+
+"I've been talking to your father, Peggy."
+
+"Have you really?" she said with a laugh.
+
+Marmaduke summoned his courage.
+
+"He told me I might ask you to marry me," he said.
+
+"Do you want to?"
+
+"Of course I do," he declared.
+
+"Then why not do it?"
+
+But before he could answer, she clapped her hands on his shoulders,
+and shook him, and laughed out loud.
+
+"Oh, you dear silly old thing! What a way to propose to a girl!"
+
+"I've never done such a thing before," said Doggie, as soon as he was
+released.
+
+She resumed her attitude on the hearthrug.
+
+"I'm in no great hurry to be married. Are you?"
+
+He said: "I don't know. I've never thought of it. Just whenever you
+like."
+
+"All right," she returned calmly. "Let it be a year hence. Meanwhile,
+we can be engaged. It'll please the dear old birds. I know all the
+tabbies in the town have been mewing about us. Now they can mew about
+somebody else."
+
+"That's awfully good of you, Peggy," said Marmaduke. "I'll go up to
+town to-morrow and get you the jolliest ring you ever saw."
+
+She sketched him a curtsy. "That's one thing, at any rate, I can trust
+you in--your taste in jewellery."
+
+He moved nearer to her. "I suppose you know, Peggy dear, I've been
+awfully fond of you for quite a long time."
+
+"The feeling is more or less reciprocated," she replied lightly. Then,
+"You can kiss me if you like. I assure you it's quite usual."
+
+He kissed her somewhat shyly on the lips.
+
+She whispered: "I do think I care for you, old thing." Marmaduke
+replied sententiously: "You have made me a very happy man." Then they
+sat down side by side on the sofa, and for all Peggy's mocking
+audacity, they could find nothing in particular to say to each other.
+
+"Let us play patience," she said at last.
+
+And when Mrs. Conover appeared awhile later, she found them poring
+over the cards in a state of unruffled calm. Peggy looked up, smiled,
+and nodded.
+
+"We've fixed it up, Mummy; but we're not going to be married for a
+year."
+
+Doggie went home that evening in a tepid glow. It contented him. He
+thought himself the luckiest of mortals. A young man with more passion
+or imagination might have deplored the lack of romance in the
+betrothal. He might have desired on the part of the maiden either more
+shyness, delicacy, and elusiveness, or more resonant emotion. The
+finer tendrils of his being might have shivered, ready to shrivel, as
+at a touch of frost, in the cool ironical atmosphere which the girl
+had created around her. But Doggie was not such a young man. Such
+passions as heredity had endowed him with had been drugged by
+training. No tales of immortal love had ever fired his blood. Once,
+somewhere abroad, the unprincipled McPhail found him reading _Manon
+Lescaut_--he had bought a cheap copy haphazard--and taking the
+delectable volume out of his hands, asked him what he thought of it.
+
+"It's like reading about a lunatic," replied the bewildered Doggie.
+"Do such people as Des Grieux exist?"
+
+"Ay, laddie," replied McPhail, greatly relieved. "Your acumen has
+pierced to the root of the matter. They do exist, but nowadays we put
+them into asylums. We must excuse the author for living in the
+psychological obscurity of the eighteenth century. It's just a silly,
+rotten book."
+
+"I'm glad you're of the same opinion as myself," said Doggie, and
+thought no more of the absurd but deathless pair of lovers. The
+unprincipled McPhail, not without pawky humour, immediately gave him
+_Paul et Virginie_, which Doggie, after reading it, thought the truest
+and most beautiful story in the world. Even in later years, when his
+intelligence had ripened and his sphere of reading expanded, he looked
+upon the passion of a Romeo or an Othello as a conventional peg on
+which the poet hung his imagery, but having no more relation to real
+life as it is lived by human beings than the blood-lust of the
+half-man, half-bull Minotaur, or the uncomfortable riding conversation
+of the Valkyrie.
+
+So Doggie Trevor went home perfectly contented with himself, with
+Peggy Conover, with his Uncle and Aunt, of whom hitherto he had been
+just a little bit afraid, with Fortune, with Fate, with his house,
+with his peacock and ivory room, with a great clump of typescript and
+a mass of coloured proof-prints, which represented a third of his
+projected history of wall-papers, with his feather-bed, with Goliath,
+his almost microscopic Belgian griffon, with a set of Nile-green silk
+underwear that had just come from his outfitters in London, with his
+new Rolls-Royce car and his new chauffeur Briggins (parenthetically it
+may be remarked that a seven-hour excursion in this vehicle, youth in
+the back seat and Briggins at the helm, all ordained by Peggy, had
+been the final cause of the evening's explanations), with the starry
+heavens above, with the well-ordered earth beneath them, and with all
+human beings on the earth, including Germans, Turks, Infidels, and
+Hereticks--all save one: and that, as he learned from a letter
+delivered by the last post, was a callous, heartless London manicurist
+who, giving no reasons, regretted that she would be unable to pay her
+usual weekly visit to Durdlebury on the morrow. Of all days in the
+year: just when it was essential that he should look his best!
+
+"What the deuce am I going to do?" he cried, pitching the letter into
+the waste-paper basket.
+
+He sat down to the piano in the peacock and ivory room and tried to
+play the nasty crumpled rose-leaf of a manicurist out of his mind.
+
+Suddenly he remembered, with a kind of shock, that he had pledged
+himself to go up to London the next day to buy an engagement-ring. So
+after all the manicurist's defection did not matter. All was again
+well with the world.
+
+Then he went to bed and slept the sleep of the just and perfect man
+living the just and perfect life in a just and perfect universe.
+
+And the date of this happening was the fifteenth day of July in the
+year of grace one thousand nine hundred and fourteen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The shadow cast by the great apse of the cathedral slanted over the
+end of the Deanery garden, leaving the house in the blaze of the
+afternoon sun, and divided the old red-brick wall into a vivid
+contrast of tones. The peace of centuries brooded over the place. No
+outside convulsions could ever cause a flutter of her calm wings. As
+it was thirty years ago, when the Dean first came to Durdlebury, as it
+was three hundred, six hundred years ago, so it was now; and so it
+would be hundreds of years hence as long as that majestic pile housing
+the Spirit of God should last.
+
+Thus thought, thus, in some such words, proclaimed the Dean, sitting
+in the shade, with his hands clasped behind his head. Tea was over.
+Mrs. Conover, thin and faded, still sat by the little table, wondering
+whether she might now blow out the lamp beneath the silver kettle. Sir
+Archibald Bruce, a neighbouring landowner, and his wife had come,
+bringing their daughter Dorothy to play tennis. The game had already
+started on the court some little distance off--the players being
+Dorothy, Peggy and a couple of athletic, flannel-clad parsons.
+Marmaduke Trevor reposed on a chair under the lee of Lady Bruce. He
+looked very cool and spick and span in a grey cashmere suit, grey
+shirt, socks and tie, and grey _suede_ shoes. He had a weak,
+good-looking little face and a little black moustache turned up at the
+ends. He was discoursing to his neighbour on Palestrina.
+
+The Dean's proclamation had been elicited by some remark of Sir
+Archibald.
+
+"I wonder how you have stuck it for so long," said the latter. He had
+been a soldier in his youth and an explorer, and had shot big game.
+
+"I haven't your genius, my dear Bruce, for making myself
+uncomfortable," replied the Dean.
+
+"You were energetic enough when you first came here," said Sir
+Archibald. "We all thought you a desperate fellow who was going to
+rebuild the cathedral, turn the Close into industrial dwellings, and
+generally play the deuce."
+
+The Dean sighed pleasantly. He had snowy hair and a genial, florid,
+clean-shaven face.
+
+"I was appointed very young--six-and-thirty--and I thought I could
+fight against the centuries. As the years went on I found I couldn't.
+The grey changelessness of things got hold of me, incorporated me into
+them. When I die--for I hope I shan't have to resign through doddering
+senility--my body will be buried there"--he jerked his head slightly
+towards the cathedral--"and my dust will become part and parcel of the
+fabric--like that of many of my predecessors."
+
+"That's all very well," said Sir Archibald, "but they ought to have
+caught you before this petrification set in, and made you a bishop."
+
+It was somewhat of an old argument, for the two were intimates. The
+Dean smiled and shook his head.
+
+"You know I declined----"
+
+"After you had become petrified."
+
+"Perhaps so. It is not a place where ambitions can attain a riotous
+growth."
+
+"I call it a rotten place," said the elderly worldling. "I wouldn't
+live in it myself for twenty thousand a year."
+
+"Lots like you said the same in crusading times--Sir Guy de Chevenix,
+for instance, who was the Lord, perhaps, of your very Manor, and an
+amazing fire-eater--but--see the gentle irony of it--there his bones
+lie, at peace for ever, in the rotten place, with his effigy over them
+cross-legged and his dog at his feet, and his wife by his side. I
+think he must sometimes look out of Heaven's gate down on the
+cathedral and feel glad, grateful--perhaps a bit wistful--if the
+attribution of wistfulness, which implies regret, to a spirit in
+Paradise doesn't savour of heresy----"
+
+"I'm going to be cremated," interrupted Sir Archibald, twirling his
+white moustache.
+
+The Dean smiled and did not take up the cue. The talk died. It was a
+drowsy day. The Dean went off into a little reverie. Perhaps his old
+friend's reproach was just. Dean of a great cathedral at thirty-six,
+he had the world of dioceses at his feet. Had he used to the full the
+brilliant talents with which he started? He had been a good Dean, a
+capable, business-like Dean. There was not a stone of the cathedral
+that he did not know and cherish. Under his care the stability of
+every part of the precious fabric had been assured for a hundred
+years. Its financial position, desperate on his appointment, was now
+sound. He had come into a scene of petty discords and jealousies; for
+many years there had been a no more united chapter in any cathedral
+close in England. As an administrator he had been a success. The
+devotion of his life to the cathedral had its roots deep in spiritual
+things. For the greater glory of God had the vast edifice been
+erected, and for the greater glory of God had he, its guardian,
+reverently seen to its preservation and perfect appointment. Would he
+have served God better by pursuing the ambitions of youth? He could
+have had his bishopric; but he knew that the choice lay between him
+and Chanways, a flaming spirit, eager for power, who hadn't the sacred
+charge of a cathedral, and he declined. And now Chanways was a force
+in the Church and the country, and was making things hum. If he,
+Conover, after fifteen years of Durdlebury, had accepted, he would
+have lost the power to make things hum. He would have made a very
+ordinary, painstaking bishop, and his successor at Durdlebury might
+possibly have regarded that time-worn wonder of spiritual beauty
+merely as a stepping-stone to higher sacerdotal things. Such a man, he
+considered, having once come under the holy glamour of the cathedral,
+would have been guilty of the Unforgivable Sin. He had therefore saved
+two unfortunate situations.
+
+"You are quite an intelligent man, Bruce," he said, with a sudden
+whimsicality, "but I don't think you would ever understand."
+
+The set of tennis being over, Peggy, flushed and triumphant, rushed
+into the party in the shade.
+
+"Mr. Petherbridge and I have won--six--three," she announced. The old
+gentlemen smiled and murmured their congratulations. She swung to the
+tea-table some paces away, and plucked Marmaduke by the sleeve,
+interrupting him in the middle of an argument. He rose politely.
+
+"Come and play."
+
+"My dear," he said, "I'm such a duffer at games."
+
+"Never mind; you'll learn in time."
+
+He drew out a grey silk handkerchief as if ready to perspire at the
+first thought of it. "Tennis makes one so dreadfully hot," said he.
+
+Peggy tapped the point of her foot irritably, but she laughed as she
+turned to Lady Bruce.
+
+"What's the good of being engaged to a man if he can't play tennis
+with you?"
+
+"There are other things in life besides tennis, my dear," replied Lady
+Bruce.
+
+The girl flushed, but being aware that a pert answer turneth away
+pleasant invitations, said nothing. She nodded and went off to her
+game, and informing Mr. Petherbridge that Lady Bruce was a
+platitudinous old tabby, flirted with him up to the nice limits of his
+parsonical dignity. But Marmaduke did not mind.
+
+"Games are childish and somewhat barbaric. Don't you think so, Lady
+Bruce?"
+
+"Most young people seem fond of them," replied the lady. "Exercise
+keeps them in health."
+
+"It all depends," he argued. "Often they get exceedingly hot, then
+they sit about and catch their death of cold."
+
+"That's very true," said Lady Bruce. "It's what I'm always telling Sir
+Archibald about golf. Only last week he caught a severe chill in that
+very way. I had to rub his chest with camphorated oil."
+
+"Just as my poor dear mother used to do to me," said Marmaduke.
+
+There followed a conversation on ailments and their treatment, in
+which Mrs. Conover joined. Marmaduke was quite happy. He knew that the
+two elderly ladies admired the soundness of his views and talked to
+him as to one of themselves.
+
+"I'm sure, my dear Marmaduke, you're very wise to take care of
+yourself," said Lady Bruce, "especially now, when you have the
+responsibilities of married life before you."
+
+Marmaduke curled himself up comfortably in his chair. If he had been a
+cat, he would have purred. The old butler, grown as grey in the
+service of the Deanery as the cathedral itself--he had been page and
+footman to Dr. Conover's predecessor--removed the tea-things and
+brought out a tray of glasses and lemonade with ice clinking
+refreshingly against the sides of the jug. When the game was over, the
+players came and drank and sat about the lawn. The shadow of the apse
+had spread over the garden to the steps of the porch. Anyone looking
+over the garden wall would have beheld a scene typical of the heart of
+England--a scene of peace, ease and perfectly ordered comfort. The two
+well-built young men, one a minor canon, the other a curate, lounging
+in their flannels, clever-faced, honest-eyed, could have been bred
+nowhere but in English public schools and at Oxford or Cambridge. The
+two elderly ladies were of the fine flower of provincial England; the
+two old men, so different outwardly, one burly, florid, exquisitely
+ecclesiastical, the other thin, nervous, soldierly, each was an
+expression of high English tradition. The two young girls, unerringly
+correct and dainty, for all their modern abandonment of attitude,
+pretty, flushed of cheek, frank of glance, were two of a hundred
+thousand flowers of girlhood that could have been picked that
+afternoon in lazy English gardens. And Marmaduke's impeccable grey
+costume struck a harmonizing English note of Bond Street and the
+Burlington Arcade. The scent of the roses massed in delicate splendour
+against the wall, and breathing now that the cool shade had fallen on
+them, crept through the still air to the flying buttresses and the
+window mullions and traceries and the pinnacles of the great English
+cathedral. And in the midst of the shaven lawn gleamed the old
+cut-glass jug on its silver tray.
+
+Some one did look over the wall and survey the scene: a man,
+apparently supporting himself with tense, straightened arms on the
+coping; a man with a lean, bronzed, clean-shaven face, wearing an old
+soft felt hat at a swaggering angle; a man with a smile on his face
+and a humorous twinkle in his eyes. By chance he had leisure to survey
+the scene for some time unobserved. At last he shouted:
+
+"Hello! Have none of you ever moved for the last ten years?"
+
+At the summons every one was startled. The young men scrambled to
+their feet. The Dean rose and glared at the intruder, who sprang over
+the wall, recklessly broke through the rose-bushes and advanced with
+outstretched hand to meet him.
+
+"Hello, Uncle Edward!"
+
+"Goodness gracious me!" cried the Dean. "It's Oliver!"
+
+"Right first time," said the young man, gripping him by the hand.
+"You're not looking a day older. And Aunt Sophia----" He strode up to
+Mrs. Conover and kissed her. "Do you know," he went on, holding her at
+arm's length and looking round at the astonished company, "the last
+time I saw you all you were doing just the same! I peeped over the
+wall just before I went away, just such a summer afternoon as this,
+and you were all sitting round drinking the same old lemonade out of
+the same old jug--and, Lady Bruce, you were here, and you, Sir
+Archibald"--he shook hands with them rapidly. "You haven't changed a
+bit. And you--good Lord! Is this Peggy?" He put his hand on the Dean's
+shoulder and pointed at the girl.
+
+"That's Peggy," said the Dean.
+
+"You're the only thing that's grown. I used to gallop with you on my
+shoulders all round the lawn. I suppose you remember? How do you do?"
+
+And without waiting for an answer he kissed her soundly. It was all
+done with whirlwind suddenness. The tempestuous young man had
+scattered every one's wits. All stared at him. Releasing Peggy----
+
+"My holy aunt!" he cried, "there's another of 'em. It's Doggie! You
+were in the old picture, and I'm blessed if you weren't wearing the
+same beautiful grey suit. How do, Doggie?"
+
+He gripped Doggie's hand. Doggie's lips grew white.
+
+"I'm glad to welcome you back, Oliver," he said. "But I would have you
+to know that my name is Marmaduke."
+
+"Sooner be called Doggie myself, old chap," said Oliver.
+
+He stepped back, smiling at them all--a handsome devil-may-care
+fellow, tall, tough and supple, his hands in the pockets of a
+sun-stained double-breasted blue jacket.
+
+"We're indeed glad to see you, my dear boy," said the Dean, recovering
+equanimity; "but what have you been doing all this time? And where on
+earth have you come from?"
+
+"I've just come from the South Seas. Arrived in London last evening.
+This morning I thought I'd come and look you up."
+
+"But if you had let us know you were coming, we should have met you at
+the station with the car. Where's your luggage?"
+
+He jerked a hand. "In the road. My man's sitting on it. Oh, don't
+worry about him," he cried airily to the protesting Dean. "He's well
+trained. He'll go on sitting on it all night."
+
+"You've brought a man--a valet?" asked Peggy.
+
+"It seems so."
+
+"Then you must be getting on."
+
+"I don't think he turns you out very well," said Doggie.
+
+"You must really let one of the servants see about your things,
+Oliver," said Mrs. Conover, moving towards the porch. "What will
+people say?"
+
+He strode after her, and kissed her. "Oh, you dear old Durdlebury
+Aunt! Now I know I'm in England again. I haven't heard those words for
+years!"
+
+Mrs. Conover's hospitable intentions were anticipated by the old
+butler, who advanced to meet them with the news that Sir Archibald's
+car had been brought round. As soon as he recognized Oliver he started
+back, mouth agape.
+
+"Yes, it's me all right, Burford," laughed Oliver. "How did I get
+here? I dropped from the moon."
+
+He shook hands with Burford, of whose life he had been the plague
+during his childhood, proclaimed him as hardy and unchanging as a
+gargoyle, and instructed him where to find man and luggage.
+
+The Bruces and the two clerical tennis players departed. Marmaduke was
+for taking his leave too. All his old loathing of Oliver had suddenly
+returned. His cousin stood for everything he detested--swagger,
+arrogance, self-assurance. He hated the shabby rakishness of his
+attire, the self-assertive aquiline beak of a nose which he had
+inherited from his father, the Rector. He dreaded his aggressive
+masculinity. He had come back with the same insulting speech on his
+lips. His finger-nails were dreadful. Marmaduke desired as little as
+possible of his odious company. But his Aunt Sophia cried out:
+
+"You'll surely dine with us to-night, Marmaduke, to celebrate Oliver's
+return?"
+
+And Oliver chimed in, "Do! And don't worry about changing," as Doggie
+began to murmur excuses, "I can't. I've no evening togs. My old ones
+fell to bits when I was trying to put them on, on board the steamer,
+and I had to chuck 'em overboard. They turned up a shark, who went for
+'em. So don't you worry, Doggie, old chap. You look as pretty as paint
+as you are. Doesn't he, Peggy?"
+
+Peggy, with a slight flush on her cheek, came to the rescue and linked
+her arm in Marmaduke's.
+
+"You haven't had time to learn everything yet, Oliver; but I think you
+ought to know that we are engaged."
+
+"Holy Gee! Is that so? My compliments." He swept them a low bow. "God
+bless you, my children!"
+
+"Of course he'll stay to dinner," said Peggy; and she looked at Oliver
+as who should say, "Touch him at your peril: he belongs to me."
+
+So Doggie had to yield. Mrs. Conover went into the house to arrange
+for Oliver's comfort, and the others strolled round the garden.
+
+"Well, my boy," said the Dean, "so you're back in the old country?"
+
+"Turned up again like a bad penny."
+
+The Dean's kindly face clouded. "I hope you'll soon be able to find
+something to do."
+
+"It's money I want, not work," said Oliver.
+
+"Ah!" said the Dean, in a tone so thoughtful as just to suggest a lack
+of sympathy.
+
+Oliver looked over his shoulder--the Dean and himself were preceding
+Marmaduke and Peggy on the trim gravel path. "Do you care to lend me a
+few thousands, Doggie?"
+
+"Certainly not," replied Marmaduke.
+
+"There's family affection for you, Uncle Edward! I've come half-way
+round the earth to see him, and--say, will you lend me a fiver?"
+
+"If you need it," said Marmaduke in a dignified way, "I shall be very
+happy to advance you five pounds."
+
+Oliver brought the little party to a halt and burst into laughter.
+
+"I believe you good people think I've come back broke to the world.
+The black sheep returned like a wolf to the fold. Only Peggy drew a
+correct inference from the valet--wait till you see him! As Peggy
+said, I've been getting on." He laid a light hand on the Dean's
+shoulder. "While all you folks in Durdlebury, especially my dear
+Doggie, for the last ten years have been durdling, I've been doing.
+I've not come all this way to tap relations for five-pound notes. I'm
+swaggering into the City of London for Capital--with a great big C."
+
+Marmaduke twirled his little moustache. "You've taken to company
+promoting," he remarked acidly.
+
+"I have. And a damn--I beg your pardon, Uncle Edward--we poor Pacific
+Islanders lisp in damns for want of deans to hold us up--and a jolly
+good company too. We--that's I and another man--that's all the company
+as yet--two's company, you know--own a trading fleet."
+
+"You own ships?" cried Peggy.
+
+"Rather. Own 'em, sail 'em, navigate 'em, stoke 'em, clean out the
+boilers, sit on the safety valves when we want to make speed, do every
+old thing----"
+
+"And what do you trade in?" asked the Dean.
+
+"Copra, beche-de-mer, mother-of-pearl----"
+
+"Mother-of-pearl! How awfully romantic!" cried Peggy.
+
+"We've got a fishery. At any rate, the concession. To work it properly
+we require capital. That's why I'm here--to turn the concern into a
+limited company."
+
+"And where is this wonderful place?" asked the Dean.
+
+"Huaheine."
+
+"What a beautiful word!"
+
+"Isn't it?" said Oliver. "Like the sigh of a girl in her sleep."
+
+The old Dean shot a swift glance at his nephew; then took his arm and
+walked on, and looked at the vast mass of the cathedral and at the
+quiet English garden in its evening shadow.
+
+"Copra, beche-de-mer, mother-of-pearl, Huaheine," he murmured. "And
+these strange foreign things are the commonplaces of your life!"
+
+Peggy and Marmaduke lagged behind a little. She pressed his arm.
+
+"I'm so glad you're staying for dinner. I shouldn't like to think you
+were running away from him."
+
+"I was only afraid of losing my temper and making a scene," replied
+Doggie with dignity.
+
+"His manners are odious," said Peggy. "You leave him to me."
+
+Suddenly the Dean, taking a turn that brought him into view of the
+porch, stopped short.
+
+"Goodness gracious!" he cried. "Who in the world is that?"
+
+He pointed to a curious object slouching across the lawn; a short
+hirsute man wearing a sailor's jersey and smoking a stump of a
+blackened pipe. His tousled head was bare; he had very long arms and
+great powerful hands protruded at the end of long sinewy wrists from
+inadequate sleeves. A pair of bright eyes shone out of his dark shaggy
+face, like a Dandy Dinmont's. His nose was large and red. He rolled as
+he walked. Such a sight had never been seen before in the Deanery
+garden.
+
+"That's my man. Peggy's valet," said Oliver airily. "His name is
+Chipmunk. A beauty, isn't he?"
+
+"Like master, like man," murmured Doggie.
+
+Oliver's quick ears caught the words intended only for Peggy. He
+smiled brightly.
+
+"If you knew what a compliment you were paying me, Doggie, you
+wouldn't have said such a thing."
+
+The man seeing the company stare at him, halted, took his pipe out of
+his mouth, and scratched his head.
+
+"But--er--forgive me, my dear Oliver," said the Dean. "No doubt he is
+an excellent fellow--but don't you think he might smoke his pipe
+somewhere else?"
+
+"Of course he might," said Oliver. "And he jolly well shall." He put
+his hand to his mouth, sea-fashion--they were about thirty yards
+apart--and shouted: "Here, you! What the eternal blazes are you doing
+here?"
+
+"Please don't hurt the poor man's feelings," said the kindly Dean.
+
+Oliver turned a blank look on his Uncle. "His what? Ain't got any. Not
+that kind of feelings." He proceeded: "Now then, look lively! Clear
+out! Skidoo!"
+
+The valet touched his forehead in salute, and--"Where am I to go to,
+Cap'en?"
+
+"Go to----"
+
+Oliver checked himself in time, and turned to the Dean.
+
+"Where shall I tell him to go?" he asked sweetly.
+
+"The kitchen garden would be the best place," replied the Dean.
+
+"I think I'd better go and fix him up myself," said Oliver. "A little
+conversation in his own language might be beneficial."
+
+"But isn't he English?" asked Peggy.
+
+"Born and bred in Wapping," said Oliver.
+
+He marched off across the lawn; and, could they have heard it, the
+friendly talk that he had with Chipmunk would have made the Saint and
+the Divines, and even the Crusader, Sir Guy de Chevenix, who were
+buried in the cathedral, turn in their tombs.
+
+Doggie, watching the disappearing Chipmunk, Oliver's knuckles in his
+neck, said:
+
+"I think it monstrous of Oliver to bring such a disreputable creature
+down here."
+
+Said the Dean: "At any rate, it brings a certain excitement into our
+quiet surroundings."
+
+"They must be having the time of their lives in the Servants' Hall,"
+said Peggy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+After breakfast the next morning Doggie, attired in a green shot-silk
+dressing-gown, entered his own particular room and sat down to think.
+In its way it was a very beautiful room--high, spacious,
+well-proportioned, facing south-east. The wall-paper, which he had
+designed himself, was ivory-white with veinings of peacock-blue. Into
+the ivory-silk curtains were woven peacocks in full pride. The
+cushions were ivory and peacock-blue. The chairs, the writing-table,
+the couch, the bookcases, were pure Sheraton and Hepplewhite.
+Vellum-bound books filled the cases--Doggie was very particular about
+his bindings. Delicate water-colours alone adorned the walls. On his
+neatly arranged writing-table lay an ivory set--inkstand, pen-tray,
+blotter and calendar. Bits of old embroidery harmonizing with the
+peacock shades were spread here and there. A pretty collection of
+eighteenth-century Italian ivory statuettes were grouped about the
+room. A spinet, inlaid with ebony and ivory, formed a centre for the
+arrangement of many other musical instruments--a viol, mandolins gay
+with ribbons, a theorbo, flutes and clarinets. Through the curtains,
+draped across an alcove, could be guessed the modern monstrosity of a
+grand piano. One tall closed cabinet was devoted to his collection of
+wall-papers. Another, open, to a collection of little dogs in china,
+porcelain, faience; thousands of them; he got them through dealers
+from all over the world. He had the finest collection in existence,
+and maintained a friendly and learned correspondence with the other
+collector--an elderly, disillusioned Russian prince, who lived
+somewhere near Nijni-Novgorod. On the spinet and on the writing-table
+were great bowls of golden _rayon d'or_ roses.
+
+Doggie sat down to think. An unwonted frown creased his brow. Several
+problems distracted him. The morning sun streaming into the room
+disclosed, beyond doubt, discolorations, stains and streaks on the
+wall-paper. It would have to be renewed. Already he had decided to
+design something to take its place. But last night Peggy had declared
+her intention to turn this abode of bachelor comfort into the
+drawing-room, and to hand over to his personal use some other
+apartment, possibly the present drawing-room, which received all the
+blaze and glare of the afternoon sun. What should he do? Live in the
+sordidness of discoloured wall-paper for another year, or go through
+the anxiety of artistic effort and manufacturers' stupidity and delay,
+to say nothing of the expense, only to have the whole thing scrapped
+before the wedding? Doggie had a foretaste of the dilemmas of
+matrimony. He had a gnawing suspicion that the trim and perfect life
+was difficult of attainment.
+
+Then, meandering through this wilderness of dubiety, ran thoughts of
+Oliver. Every one seemed to have gone crazy over him. Uncle Edward and
+Aunt Sophia had hung on his lips while he lied unblushingly about his
+adventures. Even Peggy had listened open-eyed and open-mouthed when he
+had told a tale of shipwreck in the South Seas: how the schooner had
+been caught in some beastly wind and the masts had been torn out and
+the rudder carried away, and how it had struck a reef, and how
+something had hit him on the head, and he knew no more till he woke up
+on a beach and found that the unspeakable Chipmunk had swum with him
+for a week--or whatever the time was--until they got to land. If
+hulking, brainless dolts like Oliver, thought Doggie, like to fool
+around in schooners and typhoons, they must take the consequences.
+There was nothing to brag about. The higher man was the intellectual,
+the aesthetic, the artistic being. What did Oliver know of Lydian modes
+or Louis Treize decoration or Astec clay dogs? Nothing. He couldn't
+even keep his socks from slopping about over his shoes. And there was
+Peggy all over the fellow, although before dinner she had said she
+couldn't bear the sight of him. Doggie was perturbed. On bidding him
+good night, she had kissed him in the most perfunctory manner--merely
+the cousinly peck of a dozen years ago--and had given no thought to
+the fact that he was driving home in an open car without an overcoat.
+He had felt distinctly chilly on his arrival, and had taken a dose of
+ammoniated quinine. Was Peggy's indifference a sign that she had
+ceased to care for him? That she was attracted by the buccaneering
+Oliver?
+
+Now suppose the engagement was broken off, he would be free to do as
+he chose with the redecoration of the room. But suppose, as he
+sincerely and devoutly hoped, it wasn't? Dilemma on dilemma. Added to
+all this, Goliath, the miniature Belgian griffon, having probably
+overeaten himself, had complicated pains inside, and the callous vet.
+could or would not come round till the evening. In the meantime,
+Goliath might die.
+
+He was at this point of his reflections, when to his horror he
+heard a familiar voice outside the door.
+
+"All right, Peddle. Don't worry. I'll show myself in. Look after that
+man of mine. Quite easy. Give him some beer in a bucket and leave him
+to it."
+
+Then the door burst open and Oliver, pipe in mouth and hat on one
+side, came into the room.
+
+"Hallo, Doggie! Thought I'd look you up. Hope I'm not disturbing you."
+
+"Not at all," said Doggie. "Do sit down."
+
+But Oliver walked about and looked at things.
+
+"I like your water-colours. Did you collect them yourself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I congratulate you on your taste. This is a beauty. Who is it by?"
+
+The appreciation brought Doggie at once to his side. Oliver, the
+connoisseur, was showing himself in a new and agreeable light. Doggie
+took him delightedly round the pictures, expounding their merits and
+their little histories. He found that Oliver, although unlearned, had
+a true sense of light and colour and tone. He was just beginning to
+like him, when the tactless fellow, stopping before the collection of
+little dogs, spoiled everything.
+
+"My holy aunt!" he cried--an objurgation which Doggie had abhorred
+from boyhood--and he doubled with laughter in his horrid schoolboy
+fashion--"My dear Doggie--is that your family? How many litters?"
+
+"It's the finest collection of the kind in the world," replied Doggie
+stiffly, "and is worth several thousand pounds."
+
+Oliver heaved himself into a chair--that was Doggie's impression of
+his method of sitting down--a Sheraton chair with delicate arms and
+legs.
+
+"Forgive me," he said, "but you're such a funny devil."--Doggie gaped.
+The conception of himself as a funny devil was new.--"Pictures and
+music I can understand. But what the deuce is the point of these dam
+little dogs?"
+
+But Doggie was hurt. "It would be useless to try to explain," said he.
+
+Oliver took off his hat and sent it skimming on to the couch.
+
+"Look here, old chap," he said, "I seem to have put my foot into it
+again. I didn't mean to, really. Peggy gave me hell this morning for
+not treating you as a man and a brother, and I came round to try to
+put things right."
+
+"It's very considerate of Peggy, I'm sure," said Marmaduke.
+
+"Now look here, old Doggie----"
+
+"I told you when we first met yesterday that I vehemently object to
+being called Doggie."
+
+"But why?" asked Oliver. "I've made inquiries, and find that all your
+pals----"
+
+"I haven't any pals, as you call them."
+
+"Well, all our male contemporaries in the place who have the honour of
+your acquaintance--they all call you Doggie, and you don't seem to
+mind."
+
+"I do mind," replied Marmaduke angrily, "but as I avoid their company
+as much as possible, it doesn't very much matter."
+
+Oliver stretched out his legs and put his hands behind his back--then
+wriggled to his feet. "What a beast of a chair! Anyhow," he went on,
+puffing at his pipe, "don't let us quarrel. I'll call you Marmaduke,
+if you like, when I can remember--it's a beast of a name--like the
+chair. I'm a rough sort of chap. I've had ten years' pretty rough
+training. I've slept on boards. I've slept in the open without a cent
+to hire a board. I've gone cold and I've gone hungry, and men have
+knocked me about and I've knocked men about--and I've lost the
+Durdlebury sense of social values. In the wilds if a man once gets the
+name, say, of Duck-Eyed Joe, it sticks to him, and he accepts it and
+answers to it, and signs 'Duck-Eyed Joe' on an IOU and honours the
+signature."
+
+"But I'm not in the wilds," said Marmaduke, "and haven't the slightest
+intention of ever leading the unnatural and frightful life you
+describe. So what you say doesn't apply to me."
+
+"Quite so," replied Oliver. "That wasn't the moral of my discourse.
+The habit of mind engendered in the wilds applies to me. Just as I
+could never think of Duck-Eyed Joe as George Wilkinson, so you, James
+Marmaduke Trevor, will live imperishably in my mind as Doggie. I was
+making a sort of apology, old chap, for my habit of mind."
+
+"If it is an apology----" said Marmaduke.
+
+Oliver, laughing, clapped him boisterously on the shoulder. "Oh, you
+solemn comic cuss!" He strode to a rose-bowl and knocked the ashes of
+his pipe into the water--Doggie trembled lest he might next squirt
+tobacco juice over the ivory curtains. "You don't give a fellow a
+chance. Look here, tell me, as man to man, what are you going to do
+with your life? I don't mean it in the high-brow sense of people who
+live in unsuccessful plays and garden cities, but in the ordinary
+common-sense way of the world. Here you are, young, strong, educated,
+intelligent----"
+
+"I'm not strong," said Doggie.
+
+"Oh, shucks! A month's exercise would make you as strong as a mule.
+Here you are--what the blazes are you going to do with yourself?"
+
+"I don't admit that you have any right to question me," said Doggie,
+lighting a cigarette.
+
+"Peggy has given it to me. We had a heart to heart talk this morning,
+I assure you. She called me a swaggering, hectoring barbarian. So I
+told her what I'd do. I said I'd come here and squeak like a little
+mouse and eat out of your hand. I also said I'd take you out with me
+to the Islands and give you a taste for fresh air and salt water and
+exercise. I'll teach you how to sail a schooner and how to go about
+barefoot and swab decks. It's a life for a man out there, I tell you.
+If you've nothing better to do than living here snug like a flea on a
+dog's back, until you get married, you'd better come."
+
+Doggie smiled pityingly, but said politely:
+
+"Your offer is very kind, Oliver; but I don't think that kind of life
+would suit me."
+
+"Oh yes it would," said Oliver. "It would make you healthy,
+wealthy--if you took a fancy to put some money into the pearl
+fishery--and wise. I'd show you the world, make a man of you, for
+Peggy's sake, and teach you how men talk to one another in a gale of
+wind."
+
+The door opened and Peddle appeared.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Oliver--but your man----"
+
+"Yes? What about him? Is he misbehaving himself? Kissing the maids?"
+
+"No, sir," said Peddle--"but none of them can get on with their work.
+He has drunk two quart jugs of beer and wants a third."
+
+"Well, give it to him."
+
+"I shouldn't like to see the man intoxicated, sir," said Peddle.
+
+"You couldn't. No one has or ever will."
+
+"He is also standing on his head, sir, in the middle of the kitchen
+table."
+
+"It's his great parlour-trick. You just try to do it,
+Peddle--especially after two quarts of beer. He's showing his
+gratitude, poor chap--just like the juggler of Notre-Dame in the
+story. And I'm sure everybody's enjoying themselves?"
+
+"The maids are nearly in hysterics, sir."
+
+"But they're quite happy?"
+
+"Too happy, sir."
+
+"Lord!" cried Oliver, "what a lot of stuffy owls you are! What do you
+want me to do? What would you like me to do, Doggie? It's your house."
+
+"I don't know," said Doggie. "I've had nothing to do with such people.
+Perhaps you might go and speak to him."
+
+"No, I won't do that. I tell you what, Peddle," said Oliver brightly.
+"You lure him out into the stable yard with a great hunk of pie--he
+adores pie--and tell him to sit there and eat it till I come. Tell him
+I said so."
+
+"I'll see what can be done, sir," said Peddle.
+
+"I don't mean to be inhospitable," said Doggie, after the butler had
+gone, "but why do you take this extraordinary person about with you?"
+
+"I wanted him to see Durdlebury and Durdlebury to see him. Do it
+good," replied Oliver. "Now, what about my proposition? Out there of
+course you'll be my guest. Put yourself in charge of Chipmunk and me
+for eight months, and you'll never regret it. What Chipmunk doesn't
+know about ships and drink and hard living isn't knowledge. We'll let
+you down easy--treat you kindly--word of honour."
+
+Doggie being a man of intelligence realized that Oliver's offer arose
+from a genuine desire to do him some kind of service. But if a
+friendly bull out of the fullness of its affection invited you to
+accompany him to the meadow and eat grass, what could you do but
+courteously decline the invitation? This is what Doggie did. After a
+further attempt at persuasion, Oliver grew impatient, and picking up
+his hat stuck it on the side of his head. He was a simple-natured,
+impulsive man. Peggy's spirited attack had caused him to realize that
+he had treated Doggie with unprovoked rudeness; but then, Doggie was
+such a little worm. Suddenly the great scheme for Doggie's
+regeneration had entered his head, and generously he had rushed to
+begin to put it into execution. The pair were his blood relations
+after all. He saw his way to doing them a good turn. Peggy, with all
+her go--exemplified by the manner in which she had gone for him--was
+worth the trouble he proposed to take with Doggie. It really was a
+handsome offer. Most fellows would have jumped at the prospect of
+being shown round the Islands with an old hand who knew the whole
+thing backwards, from company promoting to beach-combing. He had not
+expected such a point-blank, bland refusal. It made him angry.
+
+"I'm really most obliged to you, Oliver," said Doggie finally. "But
+our ideals are so entirely different. You're primitive, you know. You
+seem to find your happiness in defying the elements, whereas I find
+mine in adopting the resources of civilization to circumvent them."
+
+He smiled, pleased with his little epigram.
+
+"Which means," said Oliver, "that you're afraid to roughen your hands
+and spoil your complexion."
+
+"If you like to put it that way--symbolically."
+
+"Symbolically be hanged!" cried Oliver, losing his temper. "You're an
+effeminate little rotter, and I'm through with you. Go on and wag your
+tail and sit up and beg for biscuits----"
+
+"Stop!" shouted Doggie, white with sudden anger which shook him from
+head to foot. He marched to the door, his green silk dressing-gown
+flapping round his legs, and threw it wide open. "This is my house.
+I'm sorry to have to ask you to get out of it."
+
+Oliver looked intently for a few seconds into the flaming little dark
+eyes. Then he said gravely:
+
+"I'm a beast to have said that. I take it all back. Good-bye!"
+
+"Good day to you," said Doggie; and when the door was shut he went and
+threw himself, shaken, on the couch, hating Oliver and all his works
+more than ever. Go about barefoot and swab decks! It was Bedlam
+madness. Besides being dangerous to health, it would be excruciating
+discomfort. And to be insulted for not grasping at such martyrdom. It
+was intolerable.
+
+Doggie stayed away from the Deanery all that day. On the morrow he
+heard, to his relief, that Oliver had returned to London with the
+unedifying Chipmunk. He took Peggy for a drive in the Rolls-Royce, and
+told her of Oliver's high-handed methods. She sympathized. She said,
+however:
+
+"Oliver's a rough diamond."
+
+"He's one of Nature's non-gentlemen," said Doggie.
+
+She laughed and patted his arm. "Clever lad!" she said.
+
+So Doggie's wounded vanity was healed. He confided to her some of his
+difficulties as to the peacock and ivory room.
+
+"Bear with the old paper for my sake," she said. "It's something you
+can do for me. In the meanwhile, you and I can put our heads together
+and design a topping scheme of decoration. It's not too early to start
+in right now, for it'll take months and months to get the house just
+as we want."
+
+"You're the best girl in the world," said Doggie; "and the way you
+understand me is simply wonderful."
+
+"Dear old thing," smiled Peggy; "you're no great conundrum."
+
+Happiness once more settled on Doggie Trevor. For the next two or
+three days he and Peggy tackled the serious problem of the
+reorganization of Denby Hall. Peggy had the large ideas of a limited
+though acute brain, stimulated by social ambitions. When she became
+mistress of Denby Hall, she intended to reverse the invisible boundary
+that included it in Durdlebury and excluded it from the County. It was
+to be County--of the fine inner Arcanum of County--and only Durdlebury
+by the grace of Peggy Trevor. No "durdling," as Oliver called it, for
+her. Denby Hall was going to be the very latest thing of September,
+1915, when she proposed, the honeymoon concluded, to take smart and
+startling possession. Lots of Mrs. Trevor's rotten old stuffy
+furniture would have to go. Marmaduke would have to revolutionize his
+habits. As she would have all kinds of jolly people down to stay,
+additions must be made to the house. Within a week after her
+engagement she had devised all the improvements. Marmaduke's room,
+with a great bay thrown out, would be the drawing-room. The present
+drawing-room, nucleus of a new wing, would be a dancing-room, with
+parquet flooring; when not used for tangos and the fashionable negroid
+dances, it would be called the morning-room; beyond that there would
+be a billiard-room. Above this first floor there could easily be built
+a series of guest chambers. As for Marmaduke's library, or study, or
+den, any old room would do. There were a couple of bedrooms
+overlooking the stable yard which thrown into one would do
+beautifully.
+
+With feminine tact she dangled these splendours before Doggie's
+infatuated eyes, instinctively choosing the opportunity of his
+gratitude for soothing treatment. Doggie telegraphed for Sir Owen
+Julius, R.A., Surveyor to the Cathedral, the only architect of his
+acquaintance. The great man sent his partner, plain John Fox, who
+undertook to prepare a design.
+
+Mr. Fox came down to Durdlebury on the 28th of July. There had been a
+lot of silly talk in the newspapers about Austria and Serbia, to which
+Doggie had given little heed. There was always trouble in the Balkan
+States. Recently they had gone to war. It had left Doggie quite cold.
+They were all "Merry Widow," irresponsible people. They dressed in
+queer uniforms and picturesque costumes, and thought themselves
+tremendously important, and were always squabbling among themselves
+and would go on doing it till the day of Doom. Now there was more
+fuss. He had read in the _Morning Post_ that Sir Edward Grey had
+proposed a Conference of the Great Powers. Only sensible thing to do,
+thought Doggie. He dismissed the trivial matter from his mind. On the
+morning of the 29th he learned that Austria had declared war on
+Serbia. Still, what did it matter?
+
+Doggie had held aloof from politics. He regarded them as somewhat
+vulgar. Conservative by caste, he had once, when the opportunity was
+almost forced on him, voted for the Conservative candidate of the
+constituency. European politics on the grand scale did not arouse his
+interest at all. England, save as the wise Mentor, had nothing to do
+with them. Still, if Russia fought, France would have to join her
+ally. It was not till he went to the Deanery that he began to
+contemplate the possibility of a general European war. For the next
+day or two he read his newspapers very carefully.
+
+On Saturday, the 1st of August, Oliver suddenly reappeared, proposing
+to stay over the Bank Holiday. He brought news and rumours of war from
+the great city. He had found money very tight, Capital with a big C
+impossible to obtain. Every one told him to come back when the present
+European cloud had blown over. In the opinion of the judicious, it
+would not blow over. There was going to be war, and England could not
+stay out of it. The Sunday morning papers confirmed all he said.
+Germany had declared war on Russia. France was involved. Would Great
+Britain come in, or for ever lose her honour?
+
+That warm beautiful Sunday afternoon they sat on the peaceful lawn
+under the shadow of the great cathedral. Burford brought out the
+tea-tray and Mrs. Conover poured out tea. Sir Archibald and Lady Bruce
+and their daughter Dorothy were there. Doggie, impeccable in dark
+purple. Nothing clouded the centuries-old serenity of the place. Yet
+they asked the question that was asked on every quiet lawn, every
+little scrap of shaded garden throughout the land that day: Would
+England go to war?
+
+And if she came in, as come in she must, what would be the result? All
+had premonitions of strange shifting of destinies. As it was yesterday
+so it was to-day in that gracious shrine of immutability. But every
+one knew in his heart that as it was to-day so would it not be
+to-morrow. The very word "war" seemed as out of place as the
+suggestion of Hell in Paradise. Yet the throb of the War Drum came
+over the broad land of France and over the sea and half over England,
+and its echo fell upon the Deanery garden, flung by the flying
+buttresses and piers and towers of the grey cathedral.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the morning of Wednesday, the 5th of August, it thundered all over
+the Close. The ultimatum to Germany as to Belgium had expired the
+night before. We were at war.
+
+"Thank God," said the Dean at breakfast, "we needn't cast down our
+eyes and slink by when we meet a Frenchman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The first thing that brought the seriousness of the war home to Doggie
+was a letter from John Fox. John Fox, a major in a Territorial
+regiment, was mobilized. He regretted that he could not give his
+personal attention to the proposed alterations at Denby Hall. Should
+the plans be proceeded with in his absence from the office, or would
+Mr. Trevor care to wait till the end of the war, which, from the
+nature of things, could not last very long? Doggie trotted off to
+Peggy. She was greatly annoyed.
+
+"What awful rot!" she cried. "Fox, a major of artillery! I'd just as
+soon trust you with a gun. Why doesn't he stick to his architecture?"
+
+"He'd be shot or something if he refused to go," said Doggie. "But why
+can't we turn it over to Sir Owen Julius?"
+
+"That old archaeological fossil?"
+
+Peggy, womanlike, forgot that they had approached him in the first
+place.
+
+"He'd never begin to understand what we want. Fox hinted as much. Now
+Fox is modern and up to date and sympathetic. If I can't have Fox, I
+won't have Sir Owen. Why, he's older than Dad! He's decrepit. Can't we
+get another architect?"
+
+"Do you think, dear," said Doggie, "that, in the circumstances, it
+would be a nice thing to do?"
+
+She flashed a glance at him. She had woven no young girl's romantic
+illusions around Marmaduke. Should necessity have arisen, she could
+have furnished you with a merciless analysis of his character. But in
+that analysis she would have frankly included a very fine sense of
+honour. If he said a thing wasn't quite nice--well, it wasn't quite
+nice.
+
+"I suppose it wouldn't," she admitted. "We shall have to wait. But
+it's a rotten nuisance all the same."
+
+Hundreds of thousands of not very intelligent, but at the same time by
+no means unpatriotic, people, like Peggy, at the beginning of the war
+thought trivial disappointments rotten nuisances. We had all waxed too
+fat during the opening years of the twentieth century, and, not having
+a spiritual ideal in God's universe, we were in danger of perishing
+from Fatty Degeneration of the Soul. As it was, it took a year or more
+of war to cure us.
+
+It took Peggy quite a month to appreciate the meaning of the
+mobilization of Major Fox, R.F.A. A brigade of Territorial artillery
+flowed over Durdlebury, and the sacred and sleepy meadows became a
+mass of guns and horse-lines and men in khaki, and waggons and dingy
+canvas tents--and the old quiet streets were thick with unaccustomed
+soldiery. The Dean called on the Colonel and officers, and soon the
+house was full of eager young men holding the King's commission.
+Doggie admired their patriotism, but disliked their whole-hearted
+embodiment of the military spirit. They seemed to have no ideas beyond
+their new trade. The way they clanked about in their great boots and
+spurs got on his nerves. He dreaded also lest Peggy should be affected
+by the meretricious attraction of a uniform. There were fine hefty
+fellows among the visitors at the Deanery, on whom Peggy looked with
+natural admiration. Doggie bitterly confided to Goliath that it was
+the "glamour of brawn." It never entered his head during those early
+days that all the brawn of all the manhood of the nation would be
+needed. We had our well-organized Army and Navy, composed of
+peculiarly constituted men whose duty it was to fight; just as we had
+our well-organized National Church, also composed of peculiarly
+constituted men whose duty it was to preach. He regarded himself as
+remote from one as from the other.
+
+Oliver, who had made a sort of peace with Doggie and remained at the
+Deanery, very quickly grew restless.
+
+One day, walking with Peggy and Marmaduke in the garden, he said: "I
+wish I could get hold of that confounded fellow, Chipmunk!"
+
+Partly through deference to the good Dean's delicately hinted distaste
+for that upsetter of decorous households, and partly to allow his
+follower to attend to his own domestic affairs, he had left Chipmunk
+in London. Fifteen years ago Chipmunk had parted from a wife somewhere
+in the neighbourhood of the East India Docks. Both being illiterate,
+neither had since communicated with the other. As he had left her
+earning good money in a factory, his fifteen years' separation had
+been relieved from anxiety as to her material welfare. A prudent,
+although a beer-loving man, he had amassed considerable savings, and
+it was the dual motive of sharing these with his wife and of
+protecting his patron from the ever-lurking perils of London, that had
+brought him across the seas. When Oliver had set him free in town, he
+was going in quest of his wife. But as he had forgotten the name of
+the street near the East India Docks where his wife lived, and the
+name of the factory in which she worked, the successful issue of the
+quest, in Oliver's opinion, seemed problematical. The simple Chipmunk,
+however, was quite sanguine. He would run into her all right. As soon
+as he had found her he would let the Captain know. Up to the present
+he had not communicated with the Captain. He could give the Captain no
+definite address, so the Captain could not communicate with him.
+Chipmunk had disappeared into the unknown.
+
+"Isn't he quite capable of taking care of himself?" asked Peggy.
+
+"I'm not so sure," replied Oliver. "Besides, he's hanging me up. I'm
+kind of responsible for him, and I've got sixty pounds of his money.
+It's all I could do to persuade him not to stow the lot in his pocket,
+so as to divide it with Mrs. Chipmunk as soon as he saw her. I must
+find out what has become of the beggar before I move."
+
+"I suppose," said Doggie, "you're anxious now to get back to the South
+Seas?"
+
+Oliver stared at him. "No, sonny, not till the war's over."
+
+"Why, you wouldn't be in any great danger out there, would you?"
+
+Oliver laughed. "You're the funniest duck that ever was, Doggie. I'll
+never get to the end of you." And he strolled away.
+
+"What does he mean?" asked the bewildered Doggie.
+
+"I think," replied Peggy, smiling, "that he means he's going to
+fight."
+
+"Oh," said Doggie. Then after a pause he added, "He's just the sort of
+chap for a soldier, isn't he?"
+
+The next day Oliver's anxiety as to Chipmunk was relieved by the
+appearance of the man himself, incredibly dirty and dusty and thirsty.
+Having found no trace of his wife, and having been robbed of the money
+he carried about him, he had tramped to Durdlebury, where he reported
+himself to his master as if nothing out of the way had happened.
+
+"You silly blighter," said Oliver. "Suppose I had let you go with your
+other sixty pounds, you would have been pretty well in the soup,
+wouldn't you?"
+
+"Yes, Cap'en," said Chipmunk.
+
+"And you're not going on any blethering idiot wild-goose chases after
+wives and such-like truck again, are you?"
+
+"No, Cap'en," said Chipmunk.
+
+This was in the stable-yard, after Chipmunk had shaken some of the
+dust out of his hair and clothes and had eaten and drunk voraciously.
+He was now sitting on an upturned bucket and smoking his clay pipe
+with an air of solid content. Oliver, lean and supple, his hands in
+his pockets, looked humorously down upon him.
+
+"And you've got to stick to me for the future, like a roseate leech."
+
+"Yes, Cap'en."
+
+"You're going to ride a horse."
+
+"A wot?" roared Chipmunk.
+
+"A thing on four legs, that kicks like hell."
+
+"Wotever for? I ain't never ridden no 'osses."
+
+"You're going to learn, you unmilitary-looking, worm-eaten scab.
+You've got to be a ruddy soldier."
+
+"Gorblime!" said Chipmunk, "that's the first I 'eard of it. A 'oss
+soldier? You're not kiddin', are you, Cap'en?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Gorblime! Who would ha' thought it?" Then he spat lustily and sucked
+at his pipe.
+
+"You've nothing to say against it, have you?"
+
+"No, Cap'en."
+
+"All right. And look here, when we're in the army you must chuck
+calling me Cap'en."
+
+"What shall I have to call yer? Gineral?" Chipmunk asked simply.
+
+"Mate, Bill, Joe--any old name."
+
+"Ker-ist!" said Chipmunk.
+
+"Do you know why we're going to enlist?"
+
+"Can't say as 'ow I does, Cap'en."
+
+"You chuckle-headed swab! Don't you know we're at war?"
+
+"I did 'ear some talk about it in a pub one night," Chipmunk admitted.
+"'Oo are we fighting? Dutchmen or Dagoes?"
+
+"Dutchmen."
+
+Chipmunk spat in his horny hands, rubbed them together and smiled. As
+each individual hair on his face seemed to enter into the smile, the
+result was sinister.
+
+"Do you remember that Dutchman at Samoa, Cap'en?"
+
+Oliver smiled back. He remembered the hulking, truculent German
+merchant whom Chipmunk, having half strangled, threw into the sea. He
+also remembered the amount of accomplished lying he had to practise in
+order to save Chipmunk from the clutches of the law and get away with
+the schooner.
+
+"We leave here to-morrow," said Oliver. "In the meanwhile you'll have
+to shave your ugly face."
+
+For the first time Chipmunk was really staggered. He gaped at Oliver's
+retiring figure. Even his limited and time-worn vocabulary failed him.
+The desperate meaning of the war has flashed suddenly on millions of
+men in millions of different ways. This is the way in which it flashed
+on Chipmunk.
+
+He sat on his bucket pondering over the awfulness of it and sucking
+his pipe long after it had been smoked out. The Dean's car drove into
+the yard and the chauffeur, stripping off his coat, prepared to clean
+it down.
+
+"Say, guv'nor," said Chipmunk hoarsely, "what do you think of this
+'ere war?"
+
+"Same as most people," replied the chauffeur tersely. He shared in the
+general disapproval of Chipmunk.
+
+"But see 'ere. Cap'en he tells me I must shave me face and be a 'oss
+soldier. I never shaved me face in me life, and I dunno 'ow to do it,
+just as I dunno 'ow to ride a 'oss. I'm a sailorman, I am, and
+sailormen don't shave their faces and ride 'osses. That's why I arsked
+yer what yer thought of this 'ere war."
+
+The chauffeur struggled into his jeans and adjusted them before
+replying.
+
+"If you're a sailor, the place for you is the navy," he remarked in a
+superior manner. "As for the cavalry, the Cap'en, as you call him,
+ought to have more sense----"
+
+Chipmunk rose and swung his long arms threateningly.
+
+"Look 'ere, young feller, do you want to have your blinkin' 'ead
+knocked orf? Where the Cap'en goes, I goes, and don't you make any
+mistake about it!"
+
+"I didn't say anything," the chauffeur expostulated.
+
+"Then don't say it. See? Keep your blinkin' 'ead shut and mind your
+own business."
+
+And, scowling fiercely and thrusting his empty pipe into his trousers
+pocket, Chipmunk rolled away.
+
+A few hours later Oliver, entering his room to dress for dinner, found
+him standing in the light of the window laboriously fitting studs into
+a shirt. The devoted fellow having gone to report to his master, had
+found Burford engaged in his accustomed task of laying out his
+master's evening clothes--Oliver during his stay in London had
+provided himself with these necessaries. A jealous snarl had sent
+Burford flying. So intent was he on his work, that he did not hear
+Oliver enter. Oliver stood and watched him. Chipmunk was swearing
+wholesomely under his breath. Oliver saw him take up the tail of the
+shirt, spit on it and begin to rub something.
+
+"Ker-ist!" said Chipmunk.
+
+"What in the thundering blazes are you doing there?" cried Oliver.
+
+Chipmunk turned.
+
+"Oh, my God!" said Oliver.
+
+Then he sank on a chair and laughed and laughed, and the more he
+looked at Chipmunk the more he laughed. And Chipmunk stood stolid,
+holding the shirt of the awful, wet, thumb-marked front. But it was
+not at the shirt that Oliver laughed.
+
+"Good God!" he cried, "were you born like that?"
+
+For Chipmunk, having gone to the barber's, was clean-shaven, and
+revealed himself as one of the most comically ugly of the sons of men.
+
+"Never mind," said Oliver, after a while, "you've made the sacrifice
+for your country."
+
+"And wot if I get the face-ache?"
+
+"I'd get something that looked like a face before I'd talk of it,"
+grinned Oliver.
+
+At the family dinner-table, Doggie being present, he announced his
+intentions. It was the duty of every able-bodied man to fight for the
+Empire. Had not half a million just been called for? We should want a
+jolly sight more than that before we got through with it. Anyway, he
+was off to-morrow.
+
+"To-morrow?" echoed the Dean.
+
+Burford, who was handing him potatoes, arched his eyebrows in alarm.
+He was fond of Oliver.
+
+"With Chipmunk."
+
+Burford uttered an unheard sigh of relief.
+
+"We're going to enlist in King Edward's Horse. They're our kind.
+Overseas men. Lots of 'em what you dear good people would call bad
+eggs. There you make the mistake. Perhaps they mayn't be fresh enough
+raw for a dainty palate--but for cooking, good hard cooking, by gosh!
+nothing can touch 'em."
+
+"You talk of enlisting, dear," said Mrs. Conover. "Does that mean as a
+private soldier?"
+
+"Yes--a trooper. Why not?"
+
+"You're a gentleman, dear. And gentlemen in the Army are officers."
+
+"Not now, my dear Sophia," said the Dean. "Gentlemen are crowding into
+the ranks. They are setting a noble example."
+
+They argued it out in their gentle old-fashioned way. The Dean quoted
+examples of sons of family who had served as privates in the South
+African War.
+
+"And that to this," said he, "is but an eddy to a maelstrom."
+
+"Come and join us, James Marmaduke," said Oliver across the table.
+"Chipmunk and me. Three 'sworn brothers to France.'"
+
+Doggie smiled easily. "I'm afraid I can't undertake to swear a
+fraternal affection for Chipmunk. He and I would have neither habits
+nor ideals in common."
+
+Oliver turned to Peggy. "I wish," said he, with rare restraint, "he
+wouldn't talk like a book on deportment."
+
+"Marmaduke talks the language of civilization," laughed Peggy. "He's
+not a savage like you."
+
+"Don't you jolly well wish he was!" said Oliver.
+
+Peggy flushed. "No, I don't!" she declared.
+
+The Dean being called away on business immediately after dinner, the
+young men were left alone in the dining-room when the ladies had
+departed. Oliver poured himself out a glass of port and filled his
+pipe--an inelegant proceeding of which Doggie disapproved. A pipe
+alone was barbaric, a pipe with old port was criminal. He held his
+peace however.
+
+"James Marmaduke," said Oliver, after a while, "what are you going to
+do?" Much as Marmaduke disliked the name of "Doggie," he winced under
+the irony of the new appellation.
+
+"I don't see that I'm called upon to do anything," he replied.
+
+Oliver smoked and sipped his port. "I don't want to hurt your feelings
+any more," said he gravely, "though sometimes I'd like to scrag you--I
+suppose because you're so different from me. It was so when we were
+children together. Now I've grown very fond of Peggy. Put on the right
+track, she might turn into a very fine woman."
+
+"I don't think we need discuss Peggy, Oliver," said Marmaduke.
+
+"I do. She is sticking to you very loyally." Oliver was a bit of an
+idealist. "The time may come when she'll be up the devil's own tree.
+She'll develop a patriotic conscience. If she sticks to you while you
+do nothing she'll be miserable. If she chucks you, as she probably
+will, she'll be no happier. It's all up to you, James Doggie
+Marmaduke, old son. You'll have to gird up your loins and take sword
+and buckler and march away like the rest. I don't want Peggy to be
+unhappy. I want her to marry a man. That's why I proposed to take you
+out with me to Huaheine and try to make you one. But that's over. Now,
+here's the real chance. Better take it sooner than later. You'll have
+to be a soldier, Doggie."
+
+His pipe not drawing, he was preparing to dig it with the point of a
+dessert-knife, when Doggie interposed hurriedly.
+
+"For goodness' sake, don't do that! It makes cold shivers run down my
+back!"
+
+Oliver looked at him oddly, put the extinct pipe in his dinner-jacket
+pocket and rose.
+
+"A flaw in the dainty and divine ordering of things makes you shiver
+now, old Doggie. What will you do when you see a fellow digging out
+another fellow's intestines with the point of a bayonet? A bigger flaw
+there somehow!"
+
+"Don't talk like that. You make me sick," said Doggie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+During the next few months there happened terrible and marvellous
+things, which are all set down in the myriad chronicles of the time;
+which shook the world and brought the unknown phenomenon of change
+into the Close of Durdlebury. Folks of strange habit and speech walked
+in it, and, gazing at the Gothic splendour of the place, saw through
+the mist of autumn and the mist of tears not Durdlebury but Louvain.
+More than one of those grey houses flanking the cathedral and sharing
+with it the continuity of its venerable life, was a house of mourning;
+not for loss in the inevitable and not unkindly way of human destiny
+as understood and accepted with long disciplined resignation--but for
+loss sudden, awful, devastating; for the gallant lad who had left it
+but a few weeks before, with a smile on his lips, and a new and
+dancing light of manhood in his eyes, now with those eyes unclosed and
+glazed staring at the pitiless Flanders sky. Not one of those houses
+but was linked with a battlefield. Beyond the memory of man the reader
+of the Litany had droned the accustomed invocation on behalf of the
+Sovereign and the Royal Family, the Bishops, Priests and Deacons, the
+Lords of the Council and all prisoners and captives, and the
+congregation had lumped them all together in their responses with an
+undifferentiating convention of fervour. What had prisoners and
+captives, any more than the Lords of the Council, to do with their
+lives, their hearts, their personal emotions? But now--Durdlebury men
+were known to be prisoners in German hands, and after "all prisoners
+and captives" there was a long and pregnant silence, in which was felt
+the reverberation of war against pier and vaulted arch and groined
+roof of the cathedral, which was broken too, now and then, by the
+stifled sob of a woman, before the choir came in with the response so
+new and significant in its appeal--"We beseech thee to hear us, O
+Lord!"
+
+And in every home the knitting-needles of women clicked, as they did
+throughout the length and breadth of the land. And the young men left
+shop and trade and counting-house. And young parsons fretted, and some
+obtained the Bishop's permission to become Army chaplains, and others,
+snapping their fingers (figuratively) under the Bishop's nose, threw
+their cassocks to the nettles and put on the full (though in modern
+times not very splendiferous) panoply of war. And in course of time
+the brigade of artillery rolled away and new troops took their place;
+and Marmaduke Trevor, Esquire, of Denby Hall, was called upon to
+billet a couple of officers and twenty men.
+
+Doggie was both patriotic and polite. Having a fragment of the British
+Army in his house, he did his best to make them comfortable. By
+January he had no doubt that the Empire was in peril, that it was
+every man's duty to do his bit. He welcomed the new-comers with open
+arms, having unconsciously abandoned his attitude of superiority over
+mere brawn. Doggie saw the necessity of brawn. The more the better. It
+was every patriotic Englishman's duty to encourage brawn. If the two
+officers had allowed him, he would have fed his billeted men every two
+hours on prime beefsteaks and burgundy. He threw himself heart and
+soul into the reorganization of his household. Officers and men found
+themselves in clover. The officers had champagne every night for
+dinner. They thought Doggie a capital fellow.
+
+"My dear chap," they would say, "you're spoiling us. I don't say we
+don't like it and aren't grateful. We jolly well are. But we're
+supposed to rough it--to lead the simple life--what? You're doing us
+too well."
+
+"Impossible!" Doggie would reply, filling up the speaker's glass.
+"Don't I know what we owe to you fellows? In what other way can a
+helpless, delicate crock like myself show his gratitude and in some
+sort of little way serve his country?"
+
+When the sympathetic and wine-filled guest would ask what was the
+nature of his malady, he would tap his chest vaguely and reply:
+
+"Constitutional. I've never been able to do things like other fellows.
+The least thing bowls me out."
+
+"Dam hard lines--especially just now."
+
+"Yes, isn't it?" Doggie would answer. And once he found himself
+adding, "I'm fed up with doing nothing."
+
+Here can be noted a distinct stage in Doggie's development. He
+realized the brutality of fact. When great German guns were yawning
+open-mouthed at you, it was no use saying, "Take the nasty, horrid
+things away, I don't like them." They wouldn't go unless you took
+other big guns and fired at them. And more guns were required than
+could be manned by the peculiarly constituted fellows who made up the
+artillery of the original British Army. New fellows not at all
+warlike, peaceful citizens who had never killed a cat in anger, were
+being driven by patriotism and by conscience to man them. Against
+Blood and Iron now supreme, the superior, aesthetic and artistic being
+was of no avail. You might lament the fall in relative values of
+collections of wall-papers and little china dogs, as much as you
+liked; but you could not deny the fall; they had gone down with
+something of an ignoble "wallop." Doggie began to set a high value on
+guns and rifles and such-like deadly engines, and to inquire
+petulantly why the Government were not providing them at greater
+numbers and at greater speed. On his periodic visits to London he
+wandered round by Trafalgar Square and Whitehall, to see for himself
+how the recruiting was going on. At the Deanery he joined in ardent
+discussions of the campaign in Flanders. On the walls of his peacock
+and ivory room were maps stuck all over with little pins. When he told
+the young officer that he was wearied of inaction, he spoke the truth.
+He began to feel mightily aggrieved against Providence for keeping him
+outside this tremendous national league of youth. He never questioned
+his physical incapacity. It was as real a fact as the German guns. He
+went about pitying himself and seeking pity.
+
+The months passed. The regiment moved away from Durdlebury, and Doggie
+was left alone in Denby Hall.
+
+He felt solitary and restless. News came from Oliver that he had been
+offered and had accepted an infantry commission, and that Chipmunk,
+having none of the special qualities of a "'oss soldier," had, by
+certain skilful wire-pullings, been transferred to his regiment, and
+had once more become his devoted servant. "A month of this sort of
+thing," he wrote, "would make our dear old Doggie sit up." Doggie
+sighed. If only he had been blessed with Oliver's constitution!
+
+One morning Briggins, his chauffeur, announced that he could stick it
+no longer and was going to join up. Then Doggie remembered a talk he
+had had with one of the young officers who had expressed astonishment
+at his not being able to drive a car. "I shouldn't have the nerve," he
+had replied. "My nerves are all wrong--and I shouldn't have the
+strength to change tyres and things."... If his chauffeur went, he
+would find it very difficult to get another. Who would drive the
+Rolls-Royce?
+
+"Why not learn to drive yourself, sir?" said Briggins. "Not the
+Rolls-Royce. I would put it up or get rid of it, if I were you. If you
+engage a second-rate man, as you'll have to, who isn't used to this
+make of car, he'll do it in for you pretty quick. Get a smaller one in
+its place and drive it yourself. I'll undertake to teach you enough
+before I go."
+
+So Doggie, following Briggins' advice, took lessons and, to his
+amazement, found that he did not die of nervous collapse when a dog
+crossed the road in front of the car and that the fitting of
+detachable wheels did not require the strength of a Hercules. The
+first time he took Peggy out in the two-seater he swelled with pride.
+
+"I'm so glad to see you can do something!" she said.
+
+Although she was kind and as mildly affectionate as ever, he had
+noticed of late a curious reserve in her manner. Conversation did not
+flow easily. There seemed to be something at the back of her mind. She
+had fits of abstraction from which, when rallied, she roused herself
+with an effort.
+
+"It's the war," she would declare. "It's affecting everybody that
+way."
+
+Gradually Doggie began to realize that she spoke truly. Most people of
+his acquaintance, when he was by, seemed to be thus afflicted. The
+lack of interest they manifested in his delicacy of constitution was
+almost impolite. At last he received an anonymous letter, "For little
+Doggie Trevor, from the girls of Durdlebury," enclosing a white
+feather.
+
+The cruelty of it broke Doggie down. He sat in his peacock and ivory
+room and nearly wept. Then he plucked up courage and went to Peggy.
+She was rather white about the lips as she listened.
+
+"I'm sorry," she said, "but I expected something of the sort to
+happen."
+
+"It's brutal and unjust."
+
+"Yes, it's brutal," she admitted coldly.
+
+"I thought you, at any rate, would sympathize with me," he cried.
+
+She turned on him. "And what about me? Who sympathizes with me? Do you
+ever give a moment's thought to what I've had to go through the last
+few months?"
+
+"I don't quite know what you mean," he stammered.
+
+"I should have thought it was obvious. You can't be such an innocent
+babe as to suppose people don't talk about you. They don't talk to you
+because they don't like to be rude. They send you white feathers
+instead. But they talk to me. 'Why isn't Marmaduke in khaki?' 'Why
+isn't Doggie fighting?' 'I wonder how you can allow him to slack about
+like that!'--I've had a pretty rough time fighting your battles, I can
+tell you, and I deserve some credit. I want sympathy just as much as
+you do."
+
+"My dear," said Doggie, feeling very much humiliated, "I never knew. I
+never thought. I do see now the unpleasant position you've been in.
+People are brutes. But," he added eagerly, "you told them the real
+reason?"
+
+"What's that?" she asked, looking at him with cold eyes.
+
+Then Doggie knew that the wide world was against him. "I'm not fit.
+I've no constitution. I'm an impossibility."
+
+"You thought you had nerves until you learned to drive the car. Then
+you discovered that you hadn't. You fancy you've a weak heart. Perhaps
+if you learned to walk thirty miles a day you would discover you
+hadn't that either. And so with the rest of it."
+
+"This is very painful," he said, going to the window and staring out.
+"Very painful. You are of the same opinion as the young women who sent
+me that abominable thing."
+
+She had been on the strain for a long while and something inside her
+had snapped. At his woebegone attitude she relented however, and came
+up and touched his shoulder.
+
+"A girl wants to feel some pride in the man she's going to marry. It's
+horrible to have to be always defending him--especially when she's not
+sure she's telling the truth in his defence."
+
+He swung round horrified. "Do you think I'm shamming, so as to get out
+of serving in the Army?"
+
+"Not consciously. Unconsciously, I think you are. What does your
+doctor say?"
+
+Doggie was taken aback. He had no doctor. He had not consulted one for
+years, having no cause for medical advice. The old family physician
+who had attended his mother in her last illness and had prescribed
+Gregory powders for him as a child, had retired from Durdlebury long
+ago. There was only one person living familiar with his constitution,
+and that was himself. He made confession of the surprising fact. Peggy
+made a little gesture.
+
+"That proves it. I don't believe you have anything wrong with you. The
+nerves business made me sceptical. This is straight talking. It's
+horrid, I know. But it's best to get through with it once and for
+all."
+
+Some men would have taken deep offence and, consigning Peggy to the
+devil, have walked out of the room. But Doggie, a conscientious, even
+though a futile human being, was gnawed for the first time by the
+suspicion that Peggy might possibly be right. He desired to act
+honourably.
+
+"I'll do," said he, "whatever you think proper."
+
+Peggy was swift to smite the malleable iron. To use the conventional
+phrase might give an incorrect impression of red-hot martial ardour on
+the part of Doggie.
+
+"Good," she said, with the first smile of the day. "I'll hold you to
+it. But it will be an honourable bargain. Get Dr. Murdoch to overhaul
+you thoroughly, with a view to the Army. If he passes you, take a
+commission. Dad says he can easily get you one through his old friend
+General Gadsby at the War Office. If he doesn't, and you're unfit,
+I'll stick to you through thick and thin, and make the young women of
+Durdlebury wish they'd never been born."
+
+She put out her hand. Doggie took it.
+
+"Very well," said he, "I agree."
+
+She laughed, and ran to the door.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"To the telephone--to ring up Dr. Murdoch for an appointment."
+
+"You're flabby," said Dr. Murdoch the next morning to an anxious
+Doggie in pink pyjamas; "but that's merely a matter of unused muscles.
+Physical training will set it right in no time. Otherwise, my dear
+Trevor, you're in splendid health. I was afraid your family history
+might be against you--the child of elderly parents, and so forth. But
+nothing of the sort. Not only are you a first-class life for an
+insurance company, but you're a first-class life for the Army--and
+that's saying a good deal. There's not a flaw in your whole
+constitution."
+
+He put away his stethoscope and smiled at Doggie, who regarded him
+blankly as the pronouncer of a doom. He went on to prescribe a course
+of physical exercises, so many miles a day walking, such and such
+back-breaking and contortional performances in his bathroom; if
+possible, a skilfully graduated career in a gymnasium, but his words
+fell on the ears of a Doggie in a dream; and when he had ended, Doggie
+said:
+
+"I'm afraid, Doctor, you'll have to write all that out for me."
+
+"With pleasure," smiled the doctor, and gripped him by the hand. And
+seeing Doggie wince, he said heartily: "Ah! I'll soon set that right
+for you. I'll get you something--an india-rubber contrivance to
+practise with for half an hour a day, and you'll develop a hand like a
+gorilla's."
+
+Dr. Murdoch grinned his way, in his little car, to his next patient.
+Here was this young slacker, coddled from birth, absolutely
+horse-strong and utterly confounded at being told so. He grinned and
+chuckled so much that he nearly killed his most valuable old lady
+patient, who was crossing the High Street.
+
+But Doggie crept out of bed and put on a violet dressing-gown that
+clashed horribly with his pink pyjamas, and wandered like a man in a
+nightmare to his breakfast. But he could not eat. He swallowed a cup
+of coffee and sought refuge in his own room. He was frightened.
+Horribly frightened, caught in a net from which there was no
+escape--not the tiniest break of a mesh. He had given his word--and in
+justice to Doggie, be it said that he held his word sacred--he had
+given his word to join the Army if he should be passed by Murdoch. He
+had been passed--more than passed. He would have to join. He would
+have to fight. He would have to live in a muddy trench, sleep in mud,
+eat in mud, plough through mud, in the midst of falling shells and
+other instruments of death. And he would be an officer, with all kinds
+of strange and vulgar men under him, men like Chipmunk, for instance,
+whom he would never understand. He was almost physically sick with
+apprehension. He realized that he had never commanded a man in his
+life. He had been mortally afraid of Briggins, his late chauffeur. He
+had heard that men at the front lived on some solid horror called
+bully-beef dug out of tins, and some liquid horror called cocoa, also
+drunk out of tins; that men kept on their clothes, even their boots,
+for weeks at a time; that rats ran over them while they tried to
+sleep; that lice, hitherto associated in his mind with the most
+revolting type of tramp, out there made no distinction of persons.
+They were the common lot of the lowest Tommy and the finest gentleman.
+And then the fighting. The noise of the horrid guns. The disgusting
+sights of men shattered to bloody bits. The horrible stench. The
+terror of having one's face shot half away and being an object of
+revolt and horror to all beholders for the rest of life. Death.
+Feverishly he ruffled his comely hair. Death. He was surprised that
+the contemplation of it did not freeze the blood in his veins. Yes. He
+put it clearly before him. He had given his word to Peggy that he
+would go and expose himself to Death. Death. What did it mean? He had
+been brought up in orthodox Church of England Christianity. His
+flaccid mind had never questioned the truth of its dogmas. He
+believed, in a general sort of way, that good people went to Heaven
+and bad people went to Hell. His conscience was clear. He had never
+done any harm to anybody. As far as he knew, he had broken none of the
+Ten Commandments. In a technical sense he was a miserable sinner, and
+so proclaimed himself once a week. But though, perhaps, he had done
+nothing in his life to merit eternal bliss in Paradise, yet, on the
+other hand, he had committed no action which would justify a kindly
+and just Creator in consigning him to the eternal flames of Hell.
+Somehow the thought of Death did not worry him. It faded from his
+mind, being far less terrible than life under prospective conditions.
+Discomfort, hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue, pain; above all the terror
+of his fellows--these were the soul-racking anticipations of this new
+life into which it was a matter of honour for him to plunge. And to an
+essential gentleman like Doggie a matter of honour was a matter of
+life. And so, dressed in his pink pyjamas and violet dressing-gown,
+amid the peacock-blue and ivory hangings of his boudoir room, and
+stared at by the countless unsympathetic eyes of his little china
+dogs, Doggie Trevor passed through his first Gethsemane.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His decision was greeted with joy at the Deanery. Peggy threw her arms
+round his neck and gave him the very first real kiss he had ever
+received. It revived him considerably. His Aunt Sophia also embraced
+him. The Dean shook him warmly by the hand, and talked eloquent
+patriotism. Doggie already felt a hero. He left the house in a glow,
+but the drive home in the two-seater was cold and the pitch-dark night
+presaged other nights of mercilessness in the future; and when Doggie
+sat alone by his fire, sipping the hot milk which Peddle presented him
+on a silver tray, the doubts and fears of the morning racked him
+again. An ignoble possibility occurred to him. Murdoch might be wrong.
+Murdoch might be prejudiced by local gossip. Would it not be better to
+go up to London and obtain the opinion of a first-class man to whom he
+was unknown? There was also another alternative. Flight. He might go
+to America, and do nothing. To the South of France, and help in some
+sort of way with hospitals for French wounded. He caught himself up
+short as these thoughts passed through his mind, and he shuddered. He
+took up the glass of hot milk and put it down again. Milk? He needed
+something stronger. A glance in a mirror showed him his sleek hair
+tousled into an upstanding wig. In a kind of horror of himself he went
+to the dining-room and for the first time in his life drank a stiff
+whisky and soda for the sake of the stimulant. Reaction came. He felt
+a man once more. Rather suicide at once than such damnable dishonour.
+According to the directions which the Dean, a man of affairs, had
+given him, he sat down and wrote his application to the War Office for
+a commission. Then--unique adventure!--he stole out of the barred and
+bolted house, without thought of hat and overcoat (let the traducers
+of alcohol mark it well), ran down the drive and posted the letter in
+the box some few yards beyond his entrance gates.
+
+The Dean had already posted his letter to his old friend General
+Gadsby at the War Office.
+
+So the die was cast. The Rubicon was crossed. The bridges were burnt.
+The irrevocable step was taken. Dr. Murdoch turned up the next morning
+with his prescription for physical training. And then Doggie trained
+assiduously, monotonously, wearily. He grew appalled by the
+senselessness of this apparently unnecessary exertion. Now and then
+Peggy accompanied him on his prescribed walks; but the charm of her
+company was discounted by the glaring superiority of her powers of
+endurance. While he ached with fatigue, she pressed along as fresh as
+Atalanta at the beginning of her race. When they parted by the Deanery
+door, she would stand flushed, radiant in her youth and health, and
+say:
+
+"We've had a topping walk, old dear. Now isn't it a glorious thing to
+feel oneself alive?"
+
+But poor Doggie of the flabby muscles felt half dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fateful letter burdening Doggie with the King's commission arrived
+a few weeks later: a second lieutenancy in a Fusilier battalion of the
+New Army. Dates and instructions were given. The impress of the Royal
+Arms at the head of the paper, with its grotesque perky lion and
+unicorn, conveyed to Doggie a sense of the grip of some uncanny power.
+The typewritten words scarcely mattered. The impress fascinated him.
+There was no getting away from it. Those two pawing beasts held him in
+their clutch. They headed a Death Warrant, from which there was no
+appeal.
+
+Doggie put his house in order, dismissed with bounty those of his
+servants who would be no longer needed, and kept the Peddles, husband
+and wife, to look after his interests. On his last night at home he
+went wistfully through the familiar place, the drawing-room sacred to
+his mother's memory, the dining-room so solid in its half-century of
+comfort, his own peacock and ivory room so intensely himself, so
+expressive of his every taste, every mood, every emotion. Those
+strange old-world musical instruments--he could play them all with the
+touch or breath of a master and a lover. The old Italian theorbo. He
+took it up. How few to-day knew its melodious secret! He looked
+around. All these daintinesses and prettinesses had a meaning. They
+signified the magical little beauties of life--things which asserted a
+range of spiritual truths, none the less real and consolatory because
+vice and crime and ugliness and misery and war co-existed in ghastly
+fact on other facets of the planet Earth. The sweetness here expressed
+was as essential to the world's spiritual life as the sweet elements
+of foodstuffs to its physical life. To the getting together of all
+these articles of beauty he had devoted the years of his youth....
+And--another point of view--was he not the guardian by inheritance--in
+other words, by Divine Providence--of this beautiful English home, the
+trustee of English comfort, of the sacred traditions of sweet English
+life that had made England the only country, the only country, he
+thought, that could call itself a Country and not a Compromise, in the
+world?
+
+And he was going to leave it all. All that it meant in beauty and
+dignity and ease of life. For what?
+
+For horror and filthiness and ugliness, for everything against which
+his beautiful peacock and ivory room protested. Doggie's last night at
+Denby Hall was a troubled one.
+
+Aunt Sophia and Peggy accompanied him to London and stayed with him at
+his stuffy little hotel off Bond Street, while Doggie got his kit
+together. They bought everything in every West End shop that any
+salesman assured them was essential for active service. Swords,
+revolvers, field-glasses, pocket-knives (for gigantic pockets),
+compasses, mess-tins, cooking-batteries, sleeping-bags, waterproofs,
+boots innumerable, toilet accessories, drinking-cups, thermos flasks,
+field stationery cases, periscopes, tinted glasses, Gieve waistcoats,
+cholera belts, portable medicine cases, earplugs, tin-openers,
+corkscrews, notebooks, pencils, luminous watches, electric torches,
+pins, housewives, patent seat walking-sticks--everything that the man
+of commercial instincts had devised for the prosecution of the war.
+
+The amount of warlike equipment with which Doggie, with the aid of his
+Aunt Sophia and Peggy, encumbered the narrow little passages of
+Sturrocks's Hotel, must have weighed about a ton.
+
+At last Doggie's uniforms--several suits--came home. He had devoted
+enormous care to their fit. Attired in one he looked beautiful. Peggy
+decreed a dinner at the Carlton. She and Doggie alone. Her mother
+could get some stuffy old relation to spend the evening with her at
+Sturrocks's. She wanted Doggie all to herself, so as to realize the
+dream of many disgusting and humiliating months. And as she swept
+through the palm court and up the broad stairs and wound through the
+crowded tables of the restaurant with the khaki-clad Doggie by her
+side, she felt proud and uplifted. Here was her soldier whom she had
+made. Her very own man in khaki.
+
+"Dear old thing," she whispered, pressing his arm as they trekked to
+their table. "Don't you feel glorious? Don't you feel as if you could
+face the universe?"
+
+Peggy drank one glass of the quart of champagne. Doggie drank the
+rest.
+
+On getting into bed he wondered why this unprecedented quantity of
+wine had not affected his sobriety. Its only effect had been to stifle
+thought. He went to bed and slept happily, for Peggy's parting kiss
+had been such as would conduce to any young man's felicity.
+
+The next morning Aunt Sophia and Peggy saw him off to his depot, with
+his ton of luggage. He leaned out of the carriage window and exchanged
+hand kisses with Peggy until the curve of the line cut her off. Then
+he settled down in his corner with the _Morning Post_. But he could
+not concentrate his attention on the morning news. This strange
+costume in which he was clothed seemed unreal, monstrous; no longer
+the natty dress in which he had been proud to prink the night before,
+but a nightmare, Nessus-like investiture, signifying some abominable
+burning doom.
+
+The train swept him into a world that was upside down.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Those were proud days for Peggy. She went about Durdlebury with her
+head in the air, and her step was as martial as though she herself
+wore the King's uniform, and she regarded the other girls of the town
+with a defiant eye. If only she could discover, she thought, the
+sender of the abominable feather! In Timpany's drapery establishment
+she raked the girls at the counter with a searching glance. At the
+cathedral services she studied the demure faces of her contemporaries.
+Now that Doggie was a soldier she held the anonymous exploit to be
+cowardly and brutal. What did people know of the thousand and one
+reasons that kept eligible young men out of the Army? What had they
+known of Marmaduke? As soon as the illusion of his life had been
+dispelled, he had marched away with as gallant a tread as anybody; and
+though Doggie had kept to himself his shrinkings and his terrors, she
+knew that what to the average hardily bred young man was a gay
+adventure, was to him an ordeal of considerable difficulty. She longed
+for his first leave, so that she could parade him before the town, in
+the event of there being a lurking sceptic who still refused to
+believe that he had joined the Army.
+
+Conspicuous in the drawing-room, framed in silver, stood a large
+full-length photograph of Doggie in his new uniform.
+
+She wrote to him daily, chronicling the little doings of the town, at
+times reviling it for its dullness. Dad, on numberless committees, was
+scarcely ever in the house, except for hurried meals. Most of the
+pleasant young clergy had gone. Many of the girls had gone too:
+Dorothy Bruce to be a probationer in a V.A.D. hospital. If Durdlebury
+were not such a rotten out-of-the-world place, the infirmary would be
+full of wounded soldiers, and she could do her turn at nursing. As
+things were, she could only knit socks for Tommies and a silk khaki
+tie for her own boy. But when everybody was doing their bit, these
+occupations were not enough to prevent her feeling a little slacker.
+He would have to do the patriotic work for both of them, tell her all
+about himself, and let her share everything with him in imagination.
+She also expressed her affection for him in shy and slangy terms.
+
+Doggie wrote regularly. His letters were as shy and conveyed less
+information. The work was hard, the hours long, his accommodation
+Spartan. They were in huts on Salisbury Plain. Sometimes he confessed
+himself too tired to write more than a few lines. He had a bad cold in
+the head. He was better. They had inoculated him against typhoid and
+had allowed him two or three slack days. The first time he had
+unaccountably fainted; but he had seen some of the men do the same,
+and the doctor had assured him that it had nothing to do with
+cowardice. He had gone for a route march and had returned a dusty lump
+of fatigue. But after having shaken the dust out of his
+moustache--Doggie had a playful turn of phrase now and then--and drunk
+a quart of shandy-gaff, he had felt refreshed. Then it rained hard,
+and they were all but washed out of the huts. It was a very strange
+life--one which he never dreamed could have existed. "Fancy me," he
+wrote, "glad to sleep on a drenched bed!" There was the riding-school.
+Why hadn't he learned to ride as a boy? He had been told that the
+horse was a noble animal and the friend of man. He was afraid he would
+return to his dear Peggy with many of his young illusions shattered.
+The horse was the most ignoble, malevolent beast that ever walked,
+except the sergeant-major in the riding-school. Peggy was filled with
+admiration for his philosophic endurance of hardships. It was real
+courage. His letters contained simple statements of fact, but not a
+word of complaint. On the other hand, they were not ebullient with
+joy; but then, Peggy reflected, there was not much to be joyous about
+in a ramshackle hut on Salisbury Plain. "Dear old thing," she would
+write, "although you don't grouse, I know you must be having a pretty
+thin time. But you're bucking up splendidly, and when you get your
+leave I'll do a girl's very d----dest (don't be shocked; but I'm sure
+you're learning far worse language in the Army) to make it up to you."
+Her heart was very full of him.
+
+Then there came a time when his letters grew rarer and shorter. At
+last they ceased altogether. After a week's waiting she sent an
+anxious telegram. The answer came back. "Quite well. Will write soon."
+She waited. He did not write. One evening an unstamped envelope,
+addressed to her in a feminine hand, which she recognized as that of
+Marmaduke's anonymous correspondent, was found in the Deanery
+letter-box. The envelope enclosed a copy of a cutting from the
+"Gazette" of the morning paper, and a sentence was underlined and
+adorned with exclamation marks at the sides.
+
+    "R. Fusiliers. Tempy. 2nd Lieutenant J. Trevor resigns his
+    commission."
+
+The Colonel dealt with him as gently as he could in that final
+interview. He put his hand in a fatherly way on Doggie's shoulder and
+bade him not take it too much to heart. He had done his best; but he
+was not cut out for an officer. These were merciless times. In matters
+of life and death we could not afford weak links in the chain.
+Soldiers in high command, with great reputations, had already been
+scrapped. In Doggie's case there was no personal discredit. He had
+always conducted himself like a gentleman and a man of honour, but he
+had not the qualities necessary for the commanding of men. He must
+send in his resignation.
+
+"But what can I do, sir?" asked Doggie in a choking voice. "I am
+disgraced for ever."
+
+The Colonel reflected for a moment. He knew that Doggie's life had
+been a little hell on earth from the first day he had joined. He was
+very sorry for the poor little toy Pom in his pack of hounds. It was
+scarcely the toy Pom's fault that he had failed. But the Great Hunt
+could have no use for toy Poms. At last he took a sheet of regimental
+notepaper and wrote:
+
+    "DEAR TREVOR,--
+
+    "I am full of admiration for the plucky way in which you have
+    striven to overcome your physical disabilities, and I am only
+    too sorry that they should have compelled the resignation of
+    your commission and your severance from the regiment.
+
+                                                 "Yours sincerely,
+                                                     "L. G. CAIRD,
+                                                         "Lt-Col."
+
+He handed it to Doggie.
+
+"That's all I can do for you, my poor boy," said he.
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Doggie.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doggie took a room at the Savoy Hotel, and sat there most of the day,
+the pulp of a man. He had gone to the Savoy, not daring to show his
+face at the familiar Sturrocks's. At the Savoy he was but a number
+unknown, unquestioned. He wore civilian clothes. Such of his uniforms
+and martial paraphernalia as he had been allowed to retain in
+camp--for one can't house a ton of kit in a hut--he had given to his
+batman. His one desire now was to escape from the eyes of his
+fellow-men. He felt that he bore upon him the stigma of his disgrace,
+obvious to any casual glance. He was the man who had been turned out
+of the army as a hopeless incompetent. Even worse than the
+slacker--for the slacker might have latent the qualities that he
+lacked. Even at the best and brightest, he could only be mistaken for
+a slacker, once more the likely recipient of white feathers from any
+damsel patriotically indiscreet. The Colonel's letter brought him
+little consolation. It is true that he carried it about with him in
+his pocket-book; but the gibing eyes of observers had not the X-ray
+power to read it there. And he could not pin it on his hat. Besides,
+he knew that the kindly Colonel had stretched a point of veracity. No
+longer could he take refuge in his cherished delicacy of constitution.
+It would be a lie.
+
+Peggy, in her softest and most pitying mood, never guessed the nature
+of Doggie's ordeal. Those letters so brave, sometimes so playful, had
+been written with shaky hand, misty eyes, throbbing head, despairing
+heart. Looking back, it seemed to him one blurred dream of pain. His
+brother officers were no worse than those in any other Kitchener
+regiment. Indeed, the Colonel was immensely proud of them and sang
+their praises to any fellow-dugout who would listen to him at the
+Naval and Military Club. But how were a crowd of young men, trained in
+the rough and tumble of public schools, universities and sport, and
+now throbbing under the stress of the new deadly game, to understand
+poor Doggie Trevor? They had no time to take him seriously, save to
+curse him when he did wrong, and in their leisure time he became
+naturally a butt for their amusement.
+
+"Surely I don't have to sleep in there?" he asked the subaltern who
+was taking him round on the day of his arrival in camp, and showed him
+his squalid little cubby-hole of a hut with its dirty boards, its
+cheap table and chair, its narrow sleep-dispelling little bedstead.
+
+"Yes, it's a beastly hole, isn't it? Until last month we were under
+canvas."
+
+"Sleeping on the bare ground?"
+
+"Wallowing in the mud like pigs. Not one of us without a cold. Never
+had a such filthy time in my life."
+
+Doggie looked about him helplessly, while the comforter smiled grimly.
+Already his disconsolate attitude towards the dingy hutments of the
+camp and the layer of thick mud on his beautiful new boots had
+diverted his companion.
+
+"Couldn't I have this furnished at my own expense? A carpet and a
+proper bed, and a few pictures----"
+
+"I wouldn't try."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Some of it might get broken--not quite accidentally."
+
+"But surely," gasped Doggie, "the soldiers would not be allowed to
+come in here and touch my furniture?"
+
+"It seems," said the subaltern, after a bewildered stare, "that you
+have quite a lot to learn."
+
+Doggie had. The subaltern reported a new kind of animal to the mess.
+The mess saw to it that Doggie should be crammed with information--but
+information wholly incorrect and misleading, which added to his many
+difficulties. When his ton of kit arrived he held an unwilling
+reception in the hut and found himself obliged to explain to gravely
+curious men the use for which the various articles were designed.
+
+"This, I suppose, is a new type of gas-mask?"
+
+No. It was a patent cooker. Doggie politely showed how it worked. He
+also demonstrated that a sleeping-bag was not a kit-sack of a size
+unauthorized by the regulations, and that a huge steel-pointed
+walking-stick had nothing to do with agriculture.
+
+He was very weary of his visitors by the time they had gone. The next
+day the Adjutant advised him to scrap the lot. So sorrowfully he sent
+back most of his purchases to London.
+
+Then the Imp of Mischance brought as a visitor to the mess, a
+subaltern from another regiment who belonged to Doggie's part of the
+country.
+
+"Why--I'm blowed if it isn't Doggie Trevor!" he exclaimed carelessly.
+"How d'ye do, Doggie?"
+
+So thenceforward he was known in the regiment by the hated name.
+
+There were rags in which, as he was often the victim, he was forced to
+join. His fastidiousness loathed the coarse personal contact of arms
+and legs and bodies. His undeveloped strength could not cope with the
+muscle of his young brother barbarians. Aching with the day's fatigue,
+he would plead, to no avail, to be left alone. Compared with these
+feared and detested scraps, he considered, in after-times, battles to
+be agreeable recreations.
+
+Had he been otherwise competent, he might have won through the teasing
+and the ragging of the mess. No one disliked him. He was
+pleasant-mannered, good-natured, and appeared to bear no malice. True,
+his ignorance not only of the ways of the army but of the ways of
+their old hearty world, was colossal, his mode of expression rather
+that of a precise old church dignitary than of a subaltern in a
+regiment of Fusiliers, his habits, including a nervous shrinking from
+untidiness and dirt, those of a dear old maid; but the mess thought,
+honestly, that he could be knocked into their own social shape, and in
+the process of knocking carried out their own traditions. They might
+have succeeded if Doggie had discovered any reserve source of pride
+from which to draw. But Doggie was hopeless at his work. The mechanism
+of a rifle filled him with dismay. He could not help shutting his eyes
+before he pulled the trigger. Inured all his life to lethargic action,
+he found the smart crisp movements of drill almost impossible to
+attain. The riding-school was a terror and a torture. Every second he
+deemed himself in imminent peril of death. Said the sergeant-major:
+
+"Now, Mr. Trevor, you're sitting on a 'orse and not a 'olly-bush."
+
+And Doggie would wish the horse and the sergeant-major in hell.
+
+Again, what notion could poor Doggie have of command? He had never
+raised his mild tenor voice to damn anybody in his life. At first the
+tone in which the officers ordered the men about shocked him. So
+rough, so unmannerly, so unkind. He could not understand the cheery
+lack of resentment with which the men obeyed. He could not get into
+the way of military directness, could never check the polite "Do you
+mind" that came instinctively to his lips. Now if you ask a private
+soldier whether he minds doing a thing instead of telling him to do
+it, his brain begins to get confused. As one defaulter, whose
+confusion of brain had led him into trouble, observed to his mates:
+"What can you do with a blighter who's a cross between a blinking
+Archbishop and a ruddy dicky-bird?" What else, save show in divers and
+ingenious ways that you mocked at his authority? Doggie had the
+nervous dread of the men that he had anticipated. During his training
+on parade, words of command stuck in his throat. When forced out, they
+grotesquely mixed themselves together.
+
+The Adjutant gave advice.
+
+"Speak out, man. Bawl. You're dealing with soldiers at drill, not
+saying sweet nothings to old ladies in a drawing-room."
+
+And Doggie tried. Doggie tried very hard. He was mortified by his own
+stupidity. Little points of drill and duty that the others of his own
+standing seemed to pick up at once, almost by instinct, he could only
+grasp after long and tedious toil. No one realized that his brain was
+stupefied by the awful and unaccustomed physical fatigue.
+
+And then came the inevitable end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So Doggie crept into the Savoy Hotel and hid himself there, wishing he
+were dead. It was some time before he could write the terrible letter
+to Peggy. He did so on the day when he saw that his resignation was
+gazetted. He wrote after many anguished attempts:
+
+    "DEAR PEGGY,--
+
+    "I haven't written before about the dreadful thing that has
+    happened, because I simply couldn't. I have resigned my
+    commission. Not of my own free will, for, believe me, I would
+    have gone through anything for your sake, to say nothing of the
+    country and my own self-respect. To put it brutally, I have been
+    thrown out for sheer incompetence.
+
+    "I neither hope nor expect nor want you to continue your
+    engagement to a disgraced man. I release you from every
+    obligation your pity and generosity may think binding. I want
+    you to forget me and marry a man who can do the work of this new
+    world.
+
+    "What I shall do I don't know. I have scarcely yet been able to
+    think. Possibly I shall go abroad. At any rate I shan't return
+    to Durdlebury. If women sent me white feathers before I joined,
+    what would they send me now? It will always be my consolation to
+    know that you once gave me your love, in spite of the pain of
+    realizing that I have forfeited it by my unworthiness.
+
+    "Please tell Uncle Edward that I feel keenly his position, for
+    he was responsible for getting me the commission through General
+    Gadsby. Give my love to my Aunt, if she will have it.
+
+                                     "Yours always affectionately,
+                                             J. MARMADUKE TREVOR."
+
+By return of post came the answer:
+
+    "DEAREST,--
+
+    "We are all desperately disappointed. Perhaps we hurried on
+    things too quickly and tried you too high all at once. I ought
+    to have known. Oh, my poor dear boy, you must have had a
+    dreadful time. Why didn't you tell me? The news in the 'Gazette'
+    came upon me like a thunderbolt. I didn't know what to think.
+    I'm afraid I thought the worst, the very horrid worst--that you
+    had got tired of it and resigned of your own accord. How was one
+    to know? Your letter was almost a relief.
+
+    "In offering to release me from my engagement you are acting
+    like the honourable gentleman you are. Of course, I can
+    understand your feelings. But I should be a little beast to
+    accept right away like that. If there are any feathers about, I
+    should deserve to have them stuck on to me with tar. Don't think
+    of going abroad or doing anything foolish, dear, like that, till
+    you have seen me--that is to say, us, for Dad is bringing Mother
+    and me up to town by the first train to-morrow. Dad feels sure
+    that everything is not lost. He'll dig out General Gadsby and
+    fix up something for you. In the meantime, get us rooms at the
+    Savoy, though Mother is worried as to whether it's a respectable
+    place for Deans to stay at. But I know you wouldn't like to meet
+    us at Sturrocks's--otherwise you would have been there yourself.
+    Meet our train. All love from
+
+                                                          "PEGGY."
+
+Doggie engaged the rooms, but he did not meet the train. He did not
+even stay in the hotel to meet his relations. He could not meet them.
+He could not meet the pity in their eyes. He read in Peggy's note a
+desire to pet and soothe him and call him "Poor little Doggie," and he
+writhed. He could not even take up an heroic attitude, and say to
+Peggy: "When I have retrieved the past and can bring you an unsullied
+reputation, I will return and claim you. Till then farewell." There
+was no retrieving the past. Other men might fail at first, and then
+make good; but he was not like them. His was the fall of Humpty
+Dumpty. Final--irretrievable.
+
+He packed up his things in a fright and, leaving no address at the
+Savoy, drove to the Russell Hotel in Bloomsbury. But he wrote Peggy a
+letter "to await arrival." If time had permitted he would have sent a
+telegram, stating that he was off for Tobolsk or Tierra del Fuego, and
+thereby prevented their useless journey; but they had already started
+when he received Peggy's message.
+
+Nothing could be done, he wrote, in effect, to her, nothing in the way
+of redemption. He would not put her father to the risk of any other
+such humiliation. He had learned, by the most bitter experience, that
+the men who counted now in the world's respect and in woman's love
+were men of a type to which, with all the goodwill in the world, he
+could not make himself belong--he did not say to which he wished he
+could belong with all the agony and yearning of his soul. Peggy must
+forget him. The only thing he could do was to act up to her generous
+estimate of him as an honourable gentleman. As such it was his duty to
+withdraw for ever from her life. His exact words, however, were: "You
+know how I have always hated slang, how it has jarred upon me, often
+to your amusement, when you have used it. But I have learned in the
+past months how expressive it may be. Through slang I've learned what
+I am. I am a born 'rotter.' A girl like you can't possibly love and
+marry a rotter. So the rotter, having a lingering sense of decency,
+makes his bow and exits--God knows where."
+
+Peggy, red-eyed, adrift, rudderless on a frightening sea, called her
+father into her bedroom at the Savoy and showed him the letter. He
+drew out and adjusted his round tortoise-shell-rimmed reading-glasses
+and read it.
+
+"That's a miraculously new Doggie," said he.
+
+Peggy clutched the edges of his coat.
+
+"I've never heard you call him that before."
+
+"It has never been worth while," said the Dean.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+At the Savoy, during the first stupefaction of his misery, Doggie had
+not noticed particularly the prevalence of khaki. At the Russell it
+dwelt insistent, like the mud on Salisbury Plain. Men that might have
+been the twin brethren of his late brother officers were everywhere,
+free, careless, efficient. The sight of them added the gnaw of envy to
+his heartache. Even in his bedroom he could hear the jingle of their
+spurs and their cheery voices as they clanked along the corridor. On
+the third day after his migration he took a bold step and moved into
+lodgings in Woburn Place. Here at least he could find quiet,
+untroubled by heart-rending sights and sounds. He spent most of his
+time in dull reading and dispirited walking. For he could walk now--so
+much had his training done for him--and walk for many miles without
+fatigue. For all the enjoyment he got out of it, he might as well have
+marched round a prison yard. Indeed there were some who tramped the
+prison yards with keener zest. They were buoyed up with the hope of
+freedom, they could look forward to the ever-approaching day when they
+should be thrown once more into the glad whirl of life. But the
+miraculously new Doggie had no hope. He felt for ever imprisoned in
+his shame. His failure preyed on his mind.
+
+He dallied with thoughts of suicide. Why hadn't he salved, at any
+rate, his service revolver? Then he remembered the ugly habits of the
+unmanageable thing--how it always kicked its muzzle up in the air.
+Would he have been able even to shoot himself with it? And he smiled
+in self-derision. Drowning was not so difficult. Any fool could throw
+himself into the water. With a view to the inspection of a suitable
+spot, Doggie wandered, idly, in the dusk of one evening, to Waterloo
+Bridge, and turning his back to the ceaseless traffic, leaned his
+elbows on the parapet and stared in front of him. A few lights already
+gleamed from Somerset House and the more dimly seen buildings of the
+Temple. The dome of St. Paul's loomed a dark shadow through the mist.
+The river stretched below very peaceful, very inviting. The parapet
+would be easy to climb. He did not know whether he could dive in the
+approved manner--hands joined over head. He had never learned to swim,
+let alone dive. At any rate, he could fall off. In that art the
+riding-school had proved him a past master. But the spot had its
+disadvantages. It was too public. Perhaps other bridges might afford
+more privacy. He would inspect them all. It would be something to do.
+There was no hurry. As he was not wanted in this world, so he had no
+assurance of being welcome in the next. He had a morbid vision of
+avatar after avatar being kicked from sphere to sphere.
+
+At this point of his reflections he became aware of a presence by his
+side. He turned his head and found a soldier, an ordinary private,
+very close to him, also leaning on the parapet.
+
+"I thought I wasn't mistaken in Mr. Marmaduke Trevor."
+
+Doggie started away, on the point of flight, dreading the possible
+insolence of one of the men of his late regiment. But the voice of the
+speaker rang in his ears with a strange familiarity, and the great
+fleshy nose, the high cheek-bones, and the little grey eyes in the
+weather-beaten face suggested vaguely some one of the long ago. His
+dawning recognition amused the soldier.
+
+"Yes, laddie. Ye're right. It's your old Phineas--Phineas McPhail,
+Esq., M.A., defunct. Now 33702 Private P. McPhail redivivus."
+
+He warmly wrung the hand of the semi-bewildered Doggie, who murmured:
+"Very glad to meet you, I'm sure."
+
+Phineas, gaunt and bony, took his arm.
+
+"Would it not just be possible," he said, in his old half-pedantic,
+half-ironic intonation, "to find a locality less exposed to the roar
+of traffic and the rude jostling of pedestrians and the inclemency of
+the elements, in which we can enjoy the amenities of a little refined
+conversation?"
+
+It was like a breath from the past. Doggie smiled.
+
+"Which way are you going?"
+
+"Your way, my dear Marmaduke, was ever mine, until I was swept, I
+thought for ever, out of your path by a torrential spate of whisky."
+
+He laughed, as though it had been a playful freak of destiny. Doggie
+laughed, too. But for the words he had addressed to hotel and
+lodging-house folk, he had spoken to no one for over a fortnight. The
+instinctive craving for companionship made Phineas suddenly welcome.
+
+"Yes. Let us have a talk," said he. "Come to my rooms, if you have the
+time. There'll be some dinner."
+
+"Will I come? Will I have dinner? Will I re-enter once more the
+paradise of the affluent? Laddie, I will."
+
+In the Strand they hailed a taxi and drove to Bloomsbury. On the way
+Phineas asked:
+
+"You mentioned your rooms. Are you residing permanently in London?"
+
+"Yes," said Doggie.
+
+"And Durdlebury?"
+
+"I'm not going back."
+
+"London's a place full of temptations for those without experience,"
+Phineas observed sagely.
+
+"I've not noticed any," Doggie replied. On which Phineas laughed and
+slapped him on the knee.
+
+"Man," said he, "when I first saw you I thought you had changed into a
+disillusioned misanthropist. But I'm wrong. You haven't changed a
+bit."
+
+A few minutes later they reached Woburn Place. Doggie showed him into
+the sitting-room on the drawing-room floor. A fire was burning in the
+grate, for though it was only early autumn, the evening was cold. The
+table was set for Doggie's dinner. Phineas looked round him in
+surprise. The heterogeneous and tasteless furniture, the dreadful
+Mid-Victorian prints on the walls--one was the "Return of the Guards
+from the Crimea," representing the landing from the troop-ship,
+repellent in its smug unreality, the coarse glass and well-used plate
+on the table, the crumpled napkin in a ring (for Marmaduke who in his
+mother's house had never been taught to dream that a napkin could
+possibly be used for two consecutive meals!), the general air of
+slipshod Philistinism--all came as a shock to Phineas, who had
+expected to find in Marmaduke's "rooms" a replica of the fastidious
+prettiness of the peacock and ivory room at Denby Hall. He scratched
+his head, covered with a thick brown thatch.
+
+"Laddie," said he gravely, "you must excuse me if I take a liberty;
+but I canna fit you into this environment."
+
+Doggie looked about him also. "Seems funny, doesn't it?"
+
+"It cannot be that you've come down in the world?"
+
+"To bed-rock," said Doggie.
+
+"No?" said Phineas, with an air of concern. "Man, I'm awful sorry. I
+know what the coming down feels like. And I, finding it not abhorrent
+to a sophisticated and well-trained conscience, and thinking you could
+well afford it, extracted a thousand pounds from your fortune. My dear
+lad, if Phineas McPhail could return the money----"
+
+Doggie broke in with a laugh. "Pray don't distress yourself, Phineas.
+It's not a question of money. I've as much as ever I had. The last
+thing in the world I've had to think of has been money."
+
+"Then what in the holy names of Thunder and Beauty," cried Phineas,
+throwing out one hand to an ancient saddle-bag sofa whose ends were
+covered by flimsy rags, and the other to the decayed ormolu clock on
+the mantelpiece, "what in the name of common sense are you doing in
+this awful inelegant lodging-house?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Doggie. "It's a fact," he continued after a
+pause. "The scheme of decoration is revolting to every aesthetic sense
+which I've spent my life in cultivating. Its futile pretentiousness is
+the rasping irritation of every hour. Yet here I am. Quite
+comfortable. And here I propose to stay."
+
+Phineas McPhail, M.A., late of Glasgow and Cambridge, looked at Doggie
+with his keen little grey eyes beneath bent and bristling eyebrows. In
+the language of 33702 Private McPhail, he asked:
+
+"What the blazes is it all about?"
+
+"That's a long story," said Doggie, looking at his watch. "In the
+meantime, I had better give some orders about dinner. And you would
+like to wash."
+
+He threw open a wing of the folding-doors, once in Georgian times
+separating drawing-room from withdrawing-room, and now separating
+living-room from bedroom, and switching on the light, invited McPhail
+to follow.
+
+"I think you'll find everything you want," said he.
+
+Phineas McPhail, left alone to his ablutions, again looked round, and
+he had more reason than ever to ask what it was all about. Marmaduke's
+bedroom at Denby Hall had been a dream of satinwood and dull blue
+silk. The furniture and hangings had been Mrs. Trevor's present to
+Marmaduke on his sixteenth birthday. He remembered how he had been
+bored to death by that stupendous ass of an old woman--for so he had
+characterized her--during the process of selection and installation.
+The present room, although far more luxurious than any that Phineas
+McPhail had slept in for years, formed a striking contrast with that
+remembered nest of effeminacy.
+
+"I'll have to give it up," he said to himself. But just as he had put
+the finishing touches to his hair an idea occurred to him. He flung
+open the door.
+
+"Laddie, I've got it. It's a woman."
+
+But Doggie laughed and shook his head, and leaving McPhail, took his
+turn in the bedroom. For the first time since his return to civil life
+he ceased for a few moments to brood over his troubles. McPhail's
+mystification amused him. McPhail's personality and address, viewed in
+the light of the past, were full of interest. Obviously he was a man
+who lived unashamed on low levels. Doggie wondered how he could have
+regarded him for years with a respect almost amounting to veneration.
+In a curious unformulated way Doggie felt that he had authority over
+this man so much older than himself, who had once been his master. It
+tickled into some kind of life his deadened self-esteem. Here at last
+was a man with whom he could converse on sure ground. The khaki
+uniform caused him no envy.
+
+"The poet is not altogether incorrect," said McPhail, when they sat
+down to dinner, "in pointing out the sweet uses of adversity. If it
+had not been for the adversity of a wee bit operation, I should not
+now be on sick furlough. And if I had not been on furlough I shouldn't
+have the pleasure of this agreeable reconciliation. Here's to you,
+laddie, and to our lasting friendship." He sipped his claret. "It's
+not like the Lafitte in the old cellar--_Eheu fugaces anni et_--what
+the plague is the Latin for vintages? But 'twill serve." He drank
+again and smacked his lips. "It will even serve very satisfactorily.
+Good wine at a perfect temperature is not the daily drink of the
+British soldier."
+
+"By the way," said Doggie, "you haven't told me why you became a
+soldier."
+
+"A series of vicissitudes dating from the hour I left your house,"
+said Phineas, "vicissitudes the recital of which would wring your
+heart, laddie, and make angels weep if their lachrymal glands were not
+too busily engaged by the horrors of war, culminated four months ago
+in an attack of fervid and penniless patriotism. No one seemed to want
+me except my country. She clamoured for me on every hoarding and every
+omnibus. A recruiting-sergeant in Trafalgar Square tapped me on the
+arm, and said: 'Young man, your country wants you.' Said I with my
+Scottish caution, 'Can you take your affidavit that you got the
+information straight from the War Office?' 'I can,' said he. Then I
+threw myself on his bosom and bade him take me to her. That's how I
+became 33702 Private Phineas McPhail, A Company, 10th Wessex Rangers,
+at the remuneration of one shilling and twopence per diem."
+
+"Do you like it?" asked Doggie.
+
+Phineas rubbed the side of his thick nose thoughtfully.
+
+"There you come to the metaphysical conception of human happiness," he
+replied. "In itself it is a vile life. To a man of thirty-five----"
+
+"Good lord!" cried Doggie, "I always thought you were about fifty!"
+
+"Your mother caught me young, laddie. To a man of thirty-five, a
+graduate of ancient and honourable universities and a whilom candidate
+for holy orders, it is a life that would seem to have no attraction
+whatever. The hours are absurd, the work distasteful, and the mode of
+living repulsive. But strange to say, it fully contents me. The secret
+of happiness lies in the supple adaptability to conditions. When I
+found that it was necessary to perform ridiculous antics with my legs
+and arms, I entered into the comicality of the idea and performed them
+with an indulgent zest which soon won me the precious encomiums of my
+superiors in rank. When I found that the language of the canteen was
+not that of the pulpit or the drawing-room, I quickly acquired the new
+vocabulary and won the pleasant esteem of my equals. By means of this
+faculty of adaptability I can suck enjoyment out of everything. But,
+at the same time, mind you, keeping in reserve a little secret fount
+of pleasure."
+
+"What do you call a little secret fount of pleasure?" asked Doggie.
+
+"I'll give you an illustration--and, if you're the man I consider you
+to be, you'll take a humorous view of my frankness. At present I adapt
+myself to a rough atmosphere of coarseness and lustiness, in which
+nothing coarse or lusty I could do would produce the slightest ripple
+of a convulsion: but I have my store of a cultivated mind and cheap
+editions of the classics, my little secret fount of Castaly to drink
+from whenever I so please. On the other hand, when I had the honour of
+being responsible for your education, I adapted myself to a hot-house
+atmosphere in which Respectability and the concomitant virtues of
+Supineness and Sloth were cultivated like rare orchids; but in my
+bedroom I kept a secret fount which had its source in some good Scots
+distillery."
+
+Whereupon he attacked his plateful of chicken with vehement gusto.
+
+"You're a hedonist, Phineas," said Doggie, after a thoughtful pause.
+
+"Man," said Phineas, laying down his knife and fork, "you've just hit
+it. I am. I'm an accomplished hedonist. An early recognition of the
+fact saved me from the Church."
+
+"And the Church from you," said Doggie quietly.
+
+Phineas shot a swift glance at him beneath his shaggy brown eyebrows.
+
+"Ay," said he. "Though, mark you, if I had followed my original
+vocation, the Bench of Bishops could not have surpassed me in the
+unction in which I would have wallowed. If I had been born a bee in a
+desert, laddie, I would have sucked honey out of a dead camel."
+
+With easy and picturesque cynicism, and in a Glasgow accent which had
+curiously broadened since his spell of Oriental ease at Denby Hall, he
+developed his philosophy, illustrating it by incidents more or less
+reputable in his later career. At first, possessor of the ill-gotten
+thousand pounds and of considerable savings from a substantial salary,
+he had enjoyed the short wild riot of the Prodigal's life. Paris saw
+most of his money--the Paris which, under his auspices, Doggie never
+knew. Plentiful claret set his tongue wagging in Rabelaisian
+reminiscence. After Paris came husks. Not bad husks if you knew how to
+cook them. Borrowed salt and pepper and a little stolen butter worked
+wonders. But they were irritating to the stomach. He lay on the floor,
+said he, and yelled for fatted calf; but there was no soft-headed
+parent to supply it. Phineas McPhail must be a slave again and work
+for his living. Then came private coaching, freelance journalism,
+hunting for secretaryships: the commonplace story humorously told of
+the wastrel's decline; then a gorgeous efflorescence in light green
+and gold as the man outside a picture palace in Camberwell--and
+lastly, the penniless patriot throwing himself into the arms of his
+desirous country.
+
+"Have you any whisky in the house, laddie?" he asked, after the dinner
+things had been taken away.
+
+"No," said Doggie, "but I could easily get you some."
+
+"Pray don't," said McPhail. "If you had, I was going to ask you to be
+kind enough not to let your excellent landlord, whom I recognize as a
+butler of the old school, produce it. Butlers of the old school are
+apt, like Peddle, to bring in a maddening tray of decanters, syphons,
+and glasses. You may not believe me, but I haven't touched a drop of
+whisky since I joined the army."
+
+"Why?" asked Doggie.
+
+McPhail looked at the long carefully preserved ash of one of Doggie's
+excellent cigars.
+
+"It's all a part of the doctrine of adaptability. In order to attain
+happiness in the army, the first step is to avoid differences of
+opinion with the civil and military police and non-commissioned
+officers, and such-like sycophantic myrmidons of authority. Being a
+man of academic education, it is with difficulty that I agree with
+them when I'm sober. If I were drunk, my bonnie laddie"--he waved a
+hand--"well--I don't get drunk. And as I have no use for whisky, as
+merely an agreeable beverage, I have struck whisky out of my
+hedonistic scheme of existence. But if you have any more of that
+pleasant claret----"
+
+Doggie rang the bell and gave the order. The landlord brought in
+bottle and glasses.
+
+"And now, my dear Marmaduke," said Phineas after an appreciative sip,
+"now that I have told you the story of my life, may I, without
+impertinent curiosity, again ask you what you meant when you said you
+had come down to bed-rock?"
+
+The sight of the man, smug, cynical, shameless, sprawling luxuriously
+on the sofa, with his tunic unbuttoned, filled him with sudden fury:
+such fury as Oliver's insult had aroused, such as had impelled him
+during a vicious rag in the mess to clutch a man's hair and almost
+pull it out by the roots.
+
+"Yes, you may; and I'll tell you," he cried, starting to his feet.
+"I've reached the bed-rock of myself--the bed-rock of humiliation and
+disgrace. And it's all your fault. Instead of training me to be a man,
+you pandered to my poor mother's weaknesses and brought me up like a
+little toy dog--the infernal name still sticks to me wherever I go.
+You made a helpless fool of me, and let me go out a helpless fool into
+the world. And when you came across me I was thinking whether it
+wouldn't be best to throw myself over the parapet. A month ago you
+would have saluted me in the street and stood before me at attention
+when I spoke to you----"
+
+"Eh? What's that, laddie?" interrupted Phineas, sitting up. "You've
+held a commission in the army?"
+
+"Yes," said Doggie fiercely, "and I've been chucked. I've been thrown
+out as a hopeless rotter. And who is most to blame--you or I? It's
+you. You've brought me to this infernal place. I'm here in
+hiding--hiding from my family and the decent folk I'm ashamed to meet.
+And it's all your fault, and now you have it!"
+
+"Laddie, laddie," said Phineas reproachfully, "the facts of my being a
+guest beneath your roof and my humble military rank, render it
+difficult for me to make an appropriate reply."
+
+Doggie's rage had spent itself. These rare fits were short-lived and
+left him somewhat unnerved.
+
+"I'm sorry, Phineas. As you say, you're my guest. And as to your
+uniform, God knows I honour every man who wears it."
+
+"That's taking things in the right spirit," Phineas conceded graciously,
+helping himself to another glass of wine. "And the right spirit is a
+great healer of differences. I'll not go so far as to deny that there
+is an element of justice in your apportionment of blame. There may, on
+various occasions, have been some small dereliction of duty. But
+you'll have been observing that in the recent exposition of my
+philosophy I have not laboured the point of duty to disproportionate
+exaggeration."
+
+Doggie lit a cigarette. His fingers were still shaking. "I'm glad you
+own up. It's a sign of grace."
+
+"Ay," said Phineas, "no man is altogether bad. In spite of everything,
+I've always entertained a warm affection for you, laddie, and when I
+saw you staring at bogies round about the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral
+my heart went out to you. You didn't look over-happy."
+
+Doggie, always responsive to human kindness, was touched. He felt a
+note of sincerity in McPhail's tone. Perhaps he had judged him
+harshly, overlooking the plea in extenuation which Phineas had set
+up--that in every man there must be some saving remnant of goodness.
+
+"I wasn't happy, Phineas," he said; "I was as miserable an outcast as
+could be found in London, and when a fellow's down and out, you must
+forgive him for speaking more bitterly than he ought."
+
+"Don't I know, laddie? Don't I know?" said Phineas sympathetically. He
+reached for the cigar-box. "Do you mind if I take another? Perhaps
+two--one to smoke afterwards, in memory of this meeting. It is a long
+time since my lips touched a thing so gracious as a real Havana."
+
+"Take a lot," said Doggie generously, "I don't really like cigars. I
+only bought them because I thought they might be stronger than
+cigarettes."
+
+Phineas filled his pockets. "You can pay no greater compliment to a
+man's honesty of purpose," said he, "than by taking him at his word.
+And now," he continued, when he had carefully lit the cigar he had
+first chosen, "let us review the entire situation. What about our good
+friends at Durdlebury? What about your uncle, the Very Reverend the
+Dean, against whom I bear no ill-will, though I do not say that his
+ultimate treatment of me was not over-hasty--what about him? If you
+call upon me to put my almost fantastically variegated experience of
+life at your disposal, and advise you in this crisis, so I must ask
+you to let me know the exact conditions in which you find yourself."
+
+Doggie smiled once again, finding something diverting and yet
+stimulating in the calm assurance of Private McPhail.
+
+"I'm not aware that I've asked you for advice, Phineas."
+
+"The fact that you're not aware of many things that you do is no proof
+that you don't do them--and do them in a manner perfectly obvious to
+another party," replied Phineas sententiously. "You're asking for
+advice and consolation from any friendly human creature to whom you're
+not ashamed to speak. You've had an awful sorrowful time, laddie."
+
+Doggie roamed about the room, with McPhail's little grey eyes fixed on
+him. Yes, Phineas was right. He would have given most of his
+possessions to be able, these later days, to pour out his tortured
+soul into sympathetic ears. But shame had kept him, still kept him,
+would always keep him, from the ears of those he loved. Yes, Phineas
+had said the diabolically right thing. He could not be ashamed to
+speak to Phineas. And there was something good in Phineas which he had
+noticed with surprise. How easy for him, in response to bitter
+accusation, to cast the blame on his mother? He himself had given the
+opening. How easy for him to point to his predecessor's short tenure
+of office and plead the alternative of carrying out Mrs. Trevor's
+theory of education or of resigning his position in favour of some
+sycophant even more time-serving? But he had kept silent.... Doggie
+stopped short and looked at Phineas with eyes dumbly questioning and
+quivering lips.
+
+Phineas rose and put his hands on the boy's shoulders, and said very
+gently:
+
+"Tell me all about it, laddie."
+
+Then Doggie broke down, and with a gush of unminded tears found
+expression for his stony despair. His story took a long time in the
+telling; and Phineas interjecting an occasional sympathetic "Ay, ay,"
+and a delicately hinted question, extracted from Doggie all there was
+to tell, from the outbreak of war to their meeting on Waterloo Bridge.
+
+"And now," cried he at last, a dismally tragic figure, his young face
+distorted and reddened, his sleek hair ruffled from the back into
+unsightly perpendicularities (an invariable sign of distracted
+emotion) and his hands appealingly outstretched--"what the hell am I
+going to do?"
+
+"Laddie," said Phineas, standing on the hearthrug, his hands on his
+hips, "if you had posed the question in the polite language of the
+precincts of Durdlebury Cathedral, I might have been at a loss to
+reply. But the manly invocation of hell shows me that your foot is
+already on the upward path. If you had prefaced it by the adjective
+that gives colour to all the aspirations of the British Army, it would
+have been better. But I'm not reproaching you, laddie. _Poco a poco._
+It is enough. It shows me you are not going to run away to a neutral
+country and present the unedifying spectacle of a mangy little British
+lion at the mercy of a menagerie of healthy hyenas and such-like
+inferior though truculent beasties."
+
+"My God!" cried Doggie, "haven't I thought of it till I'm half mad? It
+would be just as you say--unendurable." He began to pace the room
+again. "And I can't go to France. It would be just the same as
+England. Every one would be looking white feathers at me. The only
+thing I can do is to go out of the world. I'm not fit for it. Oh, I
+don't mean suicide. I've not enough pluck. That's off. But I could go
+and bury myself in the wilderness somewhere where no one would ever
+find me."
+
+"Laddie," said McPhail, "I misdoubt that you're going to settle down
+in any wilderness. You haven't the faculty of adaptability of which I
+have spoken to-night at some length. And your heart is young and not
+coated with the holy varnish of callousness, which is a secret
+preparation known only to those who have served a long apprenticeship
+in a severe school of egotism."
+
+"That's all very well," cried Doggie, "but what the----"
+
+Phineas waved an interrupting hand. "You've got to go back, laddie.
+You've got to whip all the moral courage in you and go back to
+Durdlebury. The Dean, with his influence, and the letter you have
+shown me from your Colonel, can easily get you some honourable
+employment in either Service not so exacting as the one which you have
+recently found yourself unable to perform."
+
+Doggie threw a newly-lighted cigarette into the fire and turned
+passionately on McPhail.
+
+"I won't. You're talking drivelling rot. I can't. I'd sooner die than
+go back there with my tail between my legs. I'd sooner enlist as a
+private soldier."
+
+"Enlist?" said Phineas, and he drew himself up straight and gaunt.
+"Well, why not?"
+
+"Enlist?" echoed Doggie in a dull tone.
+
+"Have you never contemplated such a possibility?"
+
+"Good God, no!" said Doggie.
+
+"I have enlisted. And I am a man of ancient lineage as honourable, so
+as not to enter into unproductive argument, as yours. And I am a
+Master of Arts of the two Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. Yet I
+fail to find anything dishonourable in my present estate as 33702
+Private Phineas McPhail in the British Army."
+
+Doggie seemed not to hear him. He stared at him wildly.
+
+"Enlist?" he repeated. "As a Tommy?"
+
+"Even as a Tommy," said Phineas. He glanced at the ormolu clock. "It
+is past one. The respectable widow woman near the Elephant and Castle
+who has let me a bedroom will be worn by anxiety as to my non-return.
+Marmaduke, my dear, dear laddie, I must leave you. If you will be
+lunching here twelve hours hence, nothing will give me greater
+pleasure than to join you. Laddie, do you think you could manage a
+fried sole and a sweetbread?"
+
+"Enlist?" said Doggie, following him out to the front door in a dream.
+
+He opened the door. Phineas shook hands.
+
+"Fried sole and a sweetbread at one-thirty?"
+
+"Of course, with pleasure," said Doggie.
+
+Phineas fumbled in his pockets.
+
+"It's a long cry at this time of night from Bloomsbury to the Elephant
+and Castle. You haven't the price of a taxi fare about you,
+laddie--two or three pounds----?"
+
+Doggie drew from his patent note-case a sheaf of one-pound and
+ten-shilling treasury notes and handed them over to McPhail's vulture
+clutch.
+
+"Good night, laddie!"
+
+"Good night!"
+
+Phineas strode away into the blackness. Doggie shut the front door and
+put up the chain and went back into his sitting-room. He wound his
+fingers in his hair.
+
+"Enlist? My God!"
+
+He lit a cigarette and after a few puffs flung it into the grate. He
+stared at the alternatives.
+
+Flight, which was craven--a lifetime of self-contempt. Durdlebury,
+which was impossible. Enlistment----?
+
+Yet what was a man incapable yet able-bodied, honourable though
+disgraced, to do?
+
+His landlord found him at seven o'clock in the morning asleep in an
+arm-chair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+After a bath and a change and breakfast, Doggie went out for one of
+his solitary walks. At Durdlebury such a night as the last would have
+kept him in bed in a darkened room for most of the following day. But
+he had spent many far, far worse on Salisbury Plain, and the
+inexorable reveille had dragged him out into the raw dreadful morning,
+heedless of his headache and yearning for slumber, until at last the
+process of hardening had begun. To-day Doggie was as unfatigued a
+young man as walked the streets of London, a fact which his mind was
+too confusedly occupied to appreciate. Once more was he beset less by
+the perplexities of the future than by a sense of certain impending
+doom. For to Phineas McPhail's "Why not?" he had been able to give no
+answer. He could give no answer now, as he marched with swinging step,
+automatically, down Oxford Street and the Bayswater Road in the
+direction of Kensington Gardens. He could give no answer as he stood
+sightlessly staring at the Peter Pan statue.
+
+A one-armed man in a khaki cap and hospital blue came and stood by his
+side and looked in a pleased yet puzzled way at the exquisite poem in
+marble. At last he spoke--in a rich Irish accent.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, but could you be telling me the meaning of
+it, at all?"
+
+Doggie awoke and smiled.
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"I do," said the soldier.
+
+"It is about Peter Pan. A kind of Fairy Tale. You can see the 'little
+people' peeping out--I think you call them so in Ireland."
+
+"We do that," said the soldier.
+
+So Doggie sketched the outline of the immortal story of the Boy Who
+Will Never Grow Old, and the Irishman listened with deep interest.
+
+"Indeed," said he after a time, "it is good to come back to the true
+things after the things out there." He waved his one arm in the vague
+direction of the war.
+
+"Why do you call them true things?" Doggie asked quickly.
+
+They turned away, and Doggie found himself sitting on a bench by the
+man's side.
+
+"It's not me that can tell you that," said he, "and my wife and
+children in Galway."
+
+"Were you there at the outbreak of war?"
+
+He was. A reservist called back to the colours after some years of
+retirement from the army. He had served in India and South Africa, a
+hard-bitten soldier, proud of the traditions of his old regiment.
+There were scarcely any of them left--and that was all that was left
+of him. He smiled cheerily. Doggie condoled with him on the loss of
+his arm.
+
+"Ah sure," he replied, "and it might keep me out of a fight when I go
+into Ballinasloe."
+
+"Who would you want to fight?" asked Doggie.
+
+"The dirty Sinn Feiners that do be always shouting 'Freedom for
+Ireland and to hell with freedom for the rest of the world.' If I
+haven't lost my arm in a glorious cause, what have I lost it for? Can
+you tell me that?"
+
+Doggie agreed that he had fought for the greater freedom of humanity
+and gave him a cigarette, and they went on talking. The Irishman had
+been in the retreat from Mons, the first battle of Ypres, and he had
+lost his arm in no battle at all; just a stray shell over the road as
+they were marching back to billets. They discussed the war, the ethics
+of it. Doggie still wanted to know why the realities of blood and mud
+and destruction were not the true things. Gradually he found that the
+Irishman meant that the true things were the spiritual, undying
+things; that the grim realities would pass away; that from these dead
+realities would arise the noble ideals of the future, which would be
+symbolized in song and marble; that all he had endured and sacrificed
+was but a part of the Great Sacrifice we were making for the Freedom
+of the World. Being a man roughly educated on a Galway farm and in an
+infantry regiment, he had great difficulty in co-ordinating his ideas;
+but he had a curious power of vision that enabled him to pierce to the
+heart of things, which he interpreted according to his untrained sense
+of beauty.
+
+They parted with expressions of mutual esteem. Doggie struck across
+the Gardens with a view to returning home by Knightsbridge, Piccadilly
+and Shaftesbury Avenue. He strode along, his thoughts filled with the
+Irish soldier. Here was a man, maimed for life and quite content that
+it should be so, who had reckoned all the horrors through which he had
+passed as externals unworthy of the consideration of his unconquerable
+soul; a man simple, unassuming, expansive only through his Celtic
+temperament, which allowed him to talk easily to a stranger before
+whom his English or Scotch comrade would have been dumb and gaping as
+an oyster; obviously brave, sincere and loyal. Perhaps something even
+higher. Perhaps, in essence, the very highest. The Poet-Warrior. The
+term struck Doggie's brain with a thud, like the explosive fusion of
+two elements.
+
+During his walk to Kensington Gardens a poisonous current had run at
+the back of his mind. Drifting on it, might he not escape? Was he not
+of too fine a porcelain to mingle with the coarse and common pottery
+of the ranks? Was it necessary to go into the thick of the coarse clay
+vessels, just to be shattered? It was easy for Phineas to proclaim
+that he found no derogation to his dignity as a man of birth and a
+university graduate in identifying himself with his fellow privates.
+Phineas had systematically brutalized himself into fitness for the
+position. He had armed himself in brass--_aes triplex_. He smiled at
+his own wit. But he, James Marmaduke Trevor, who had lived his life as
+a clean gentleman, was in a category apart.
+
+Now, he found that his talk with the Irishman had been an antidote to
+the poison. He felt ashamed. Did he dare set himself up to be finer
+clay than that common soldier? Spiritually, was he even of clay as
+fine? In a Great Judgment of Souls which of the twain would be among
+the Elect? The ultra-refined Mr. Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall, or
+the ignorant poet-warrior of Ballinasloe? "Not Doggie Trevor," he said
+between his teeth. And he went home in a chastened spirit.
+
+Phineas McPhail appeared punctually at half-past one, and feasted
+succulently on fried sole and sweetbread.
+
+"Laddie," said he, "the man that can provide such viands is a Thing of
+Beauty which, as the poet says, is a Joy for Ever. The light in his
+window is a beacon to the hungry Tommy dragging himself through the
+viscous wilderness of regulation stew."
+
+"I'm afraid it won't be a beacon for very long," said Doggie.
+
+"Eh?" queried Phineas sharply. "You'd surely not be thinking of
+refusing an old friend a stray meal?"
+
+Doggie coloured at the coarseness of the misunderstanding.
+
+"How could I be such a brute? There won't be a light in the window
+because I shan't be there. I'm going to enlist."
+
+Phineas put his elbows on the table and regarded him earnestly.
+
+"I would not take too seriously words spoken in the heat of midnight
+revelry, even though the revel was conducted on the genteelest
+principles. Have you thought of the matter in the cool and sober hours
+of the morning?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's an unco' hard life, laddie."
+
+"The one I'm leading is a harder," said Doggie. "I've made up my
+mind."
+
+"Then I've one piece of advice to give you," said McPhail. "Sink the
+name of Marmaduke, which would only stimulate the ignorant ribaldry of
+the canteen, and adopt the name of James, which your godfathers and
+godmothers, with miraculous foresight, considering their limitations
+in the matter of common sense, have given you."
+
+"That's a good idea," said Doggie.
+
+"Also it would tend to the obliteration of class prejudices if you
+gave up smoking Turkish cigarettes at ten shillings a hundred and
+arrived in your platoon as an amateur of 'fags.'"
+
+"I can't stand 'fags,'" said Doggie.
+
+"You can. The human organism is so constituted that it can stand the
+sweepings of the elephants' house in the Zoological Gardens. Try. This
+time it's only 'fags.'"
+
+Doggie took one from the crumpled paper packet which was handed to
+him, and lit it. He made a wry face, never before having smoked
+American tobacco.
+
+"How do you like the flavour?" asked Phineas.
+
+"I think I'd prefer the elephants' house," said Doggie, eyeing the
+thing with disgust.
+
+"You'll find it the flavour of the whole British Army," said McPhail.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few days later the Dean received a letter bearing the pencilled
+address of a camp on the south coast, and written by 35792 Pvte. James
+M. Trevor, A Company, 2-10th Wessex Rangers. It ran:
+
+    "I hope you won't think me heartless for having left you so long
+    without news of me; but until lately I had the same reasons for
+    remaining in seclusion as when I last wrote. Even now I'm not
+    asking for sympathy or reconsideration of my failure or desire
+    in any way to take advantage of the generosity of you all.
+
+    "I have enlisted in the 10th Wessex. Phineas McPhail, whom I met
+    in London and whose character for good or evil I can better
+    gauge now than formerly, is a private in the same battalion. I
+    don't pretend to enjoy the life any more than I could enjoy
+    living in a kraal of savages in Central Africa. But that is a
+    matter of no account. I don't propose to return to Durdlebury
+    till the end of the war. I left it as an officer and I'm not
+    coming back as a private soldier. I enclose a cheque for L500.
+    Perhaps Aunt Sophia will be so kind as to use the money--it
+    ought to last some time--for the general upkeep, wages, etc., of
+    Denby Hall. I feel sure she will not refuse me this favour. Give
+    Peggy my love and tell her I hope she will accept the two-seater
+    as a parting gift. It will make me happier to know that she is
+    driving it.
+
+    "I am keeping on as a _pied a terre_ in London the Bloomsbury
+    rooms in which I have been living, and I've written to Peddle to
+    see about making them more comfortable. Please ask anybody who
+    might care to write to address me as 'James M.' and not as
+    'Marmaduke.'"
+
+The Dean read the letter--the family were at breakfast; then he took
+off his tortoise-shell spectacles and wiped them.
+
+"It's from Marmaduke at last," said he. "He has carried out my
+prophecy and enlisted."
+
+Peggy caught at her breath and shot out her hand for the letter, which
+she read eagerly and then passed over to her mother. Mrs. Conover
+began to cry.
+
+"Oh, the poor boy! It will be worse than ever for him."
+
+"It will," said Peggy. "But I think it splendid of him to try. How did
+he bring himself to do it?"
+
+"Breed tells," said the Dean. "That's what every one seems to have
+forgotten. He's a thoroughbred Doggie. There's the old French proverb:
+_Bon chien chasse de race._"
+
+Peggy looked at him gratefully. "You're very comforting," she said.
+
+"We must knit him some socks," observed Mrs. Conover. "I hear those
+supplied to the army are very rough and ready."
+
+"My dear," smiled the Dean, "Marmaduke's considerable income does not
+cease because his pay in the army is one and twopence a day; and I
+should think he would have the sense to provide himself with adequate
+underclothing. Also, judging from the account of your shopping orgy in
+London, he has already laid in a stock that would last out several
+Antarctic winters."
+
+The Dean tapped his egg gently.
+
+"Then what can we do for the poor boy?" asked his wife.
+
+The Dean scooped the top of his egg off with a vicious thrust.
+
+"We can cut out slanderous tongues," said he.
+
+There had been much calumniating cackle in the little town; nay, more:
+cackle is of geese; there had been venom of the snakiest kind. The
+Deanery, father and mother and daughter, each in their several ways,
+had suffered greatly. It is hard to stand up against poisoned
+ridicule.
+
+"My dear," continued the Dean, "it will be our business to smite the
+Philistines, hip and thigh. The reasons which guided Marmaduke in the
+resignation of his commission are the concern of nobody. The fact
+remains that Mr. Marmaduke Trevor resigned his commission in order
+to----"
+
+Peggy interrupted with a smile. "'In order to'--isn't that a bit
+Jesuitical, daddy?"
+
+"I have a great respect for the Jesuits, my dear," said the Dean,
+holding out an impressive egg-spoon. "The fact remains, in the eyes of
+the world, as I remarked, that Mr. Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall, a
+man of fortune and high position in the county, resigned his
+commission in order, for reasons best known to himself, to serve his
+country more effectively in the humbler ranks of the army, and--my
+dear, this egg is far too full for war time"--with a hazardous plunge
+of his spoon he had made a yellow yelky horror of the egg-shell--"and
+I'm going to proclaim the fact far and wide, and--indeed--rub it in."
+
+"That'll be jolly decent of you, daddy," said his daughter. "It will
+help a lot."
+
+In the failure of Marmaduke to retain his commission the family honour
+had not been concerned. The boy had done his best. They blamed not him
+but the disastrous training that had unfitted him for the command of
+men. They reproached themselves for their haste in throwing him
+headlong into the fiercest element of the national struggle towards
+efficiency. They could have found an easier school, in which he could
+have learned to do his share creditably in the national work. Many
+young men of their acquaintance, far more capable than Marmaduke, were
+wearing the uniform of a less strenuous branch of the service. It had
+been a blunder, a failure, but without loss of honour. But when
+slanderous tongues attacked poor Doggie for running away with a yelp
+from a little hardship; when a story or two of Doggie's career in the
+regiment arrived in Durdlebury, highly flavoured in transit and more
+and more poisoned as it went from mouth to mouth; when a legend was
+spread abroad that he had bolted from Salisbury Plain and was run to
+earth in a Turkish Bath in London, and was only saved from
+court-martial by family influence, then the family honour of the
+Conovers was wounded to its proud English depths. And they could say
+nothing. They had only Doggie's word to go upon; they accepted it
+unquestioningly, but they knew no details. Doggie had disappeared.
+Naturally, they contradicted these evil rumours. The good folks of
+Durdlebury expected them to do so, and listened with well-bred
+incredulity. To the question, "Where is he now and what is he going to
+do?" they could only answer, "We don't know." They were helpless.
+
+Peggy had a bitter quarrel with one of her intimates, Nancy Murdoch,
+daughter of the doctor who had proclaimed the soundness of Marmaduke's
+constitution.
+
+"He may have told you so, dear," said Nancy, "but how do you know?"
+
+"Because whatever else he may be, he's not a liar," retorted Peggy.
+
+Nancy gave the most delicate suspicion of a shrug to her pretty
+shoulders.
+
+That was the beginning of it. Peggy, naturally combative, armed for
+the fight and defended Marmaduke.
+
+"You talk as though you were still engaged to him," said Nancy.
+
+"So I am," declared Peggy rashly.
+
+"Then where's your engagement ring?"
+
+"Where I choose to keep it."
+
+The retort lacked originality and conviction.
+
+"You can't send it back to him, because you don't know where he is.
+And what did Mrs. Conover mean by telling mother that Mr. Trevor had
+broken off the engagement?"
+
+"She never told her any such thing," cried Peggy mendaciously. For
+Mrs. Conover had committed the indiscretion under assurance of
+silence.
+
+"Pardon me," said Nancy, much on her dignity. "Of course I understand
+your denying it. It isn't pleasant to be thrown over by any man--but
+by a man like Doggie Trevor----"
+
+"You're a spiteful beast, Nancy, and I'll never speak to you again.
+You've neither womanly decency nor Christian feeling." And Peggy
+marched out of the doctor's house.
+
+As a result of the quarrel, however, she resumed the wearing of the
+ring, which she flaunted defiantly with left hand deliberately
+ungloved. Hitherto she had not been certain of the continuance of the
+engagement. Marmaduke's repudiation was definite enough; but it had
+been dictated by his sensitive honour. It lay with her to agree or
+decline. She had passed through wearisome days of doubt. A physically
+sound fighting man sent about his business as being unfit for war does
+not appear a romantic figure in a girl's eyes. She was bitterly
+disappointed with Doggie for the sudden withering of her hopes. Had he
+fulfilled them she could have loved him wholeheartedly, after the
+simple way of women; for her sex, exhilarated by the barbaric
+convulsion of the land, clamoured for something heroic, something at
+least intensely masculine, in which she could find feminine
+exultation. She also felt resentment at his flight from the Savoy, his
+silence and practical disappearance. Although not blaming him
+unjustly, she failed to realize the spiritual piteousness of his
+plight. If the war has done anything in this country, it has saved the
+young women of the gentler classes, at any rate, from the abyss of
+sordid and cynical materialism. Hesitating to announce the rupture of
+the engagement, she allowed it to remain in a state of suspended
+animation, and as a symbolic act, ceased to wear the ring. Nancy's
+taunts had goaded her to a more heroic attitude. The first person to
+whom she showed the newly-ringed hand was her mother.
+
+"The engagement isn't off until I declare it's off. I'm going to play
+the game."
+
+"You know best, dear," said the gentle Mrs. Conover. "But it's all
+very upsetting."
+
+Then Doggie's letter brought comfort and gladness to the Deanery. It
+reassured them as to his fate. It healed the wounded family honour. It
+justified Peggy in playing the game.
+
+She took the letter round to Dr. Murdoch's and thrust it into the hand
+of an astonished Nancy, with whom since the quarrel she had not been
+on speaking terms.
+
+"This is in Marmaduke's handwriting. You recognize it. Just read the
+top line when I've folded it. 'I have enlisted in the 10th Wessex.'
+See?" She withdrew the letter. "Now, what could a man, let alone an
+honourable gentleman, do more? Say you're sorry for having said
+beastly things about him."
+
+Nancy, who had regretted the loss of a lifelong friendship, professed
+her sorrow.
+
+"The least you can do then, is to go round and spread the news, and
+say you've seen the letter with your own eyes."
+
+To several others, on a triumphant round of visits, did she show the
+vindicating sentence. Any soft young fool, she asserted, with the
+directness and not unattractive truculence of her generation, can get
+a commission and muddle through, but it took a man to enlist as a
+private soldier.
+
+"Everybody recognizes now, darling," said the reconciled Nancy a few
+days later, "that Doggie is a top-hole, splendid chap. But I think I
+ought to tell you that you're boring Durdlebury stiff."
+
+Peggy laughed. It was good to be engaged to a man no longer under a
+cloud.
+
+"It will all come right, dear old thing," she wrote to Doggie. "It's a
+cinch, as the Americans say. You'll soon get used to it--especially if
+you can realize what it means to me. 'Saving face' has been an awful
+business. Now it's all over. Of course, I'll accept the two-seater.
+I've had lessons in driving since you went away--I had thoughts of
+going out to France to drive Y.M.C.A. cars, but that's off for the
+present. I'll love the two-seater. Swank won't be the word. But 'a
+parting gift' is all rot. The engagement stands and all Durdlebury
+knows it..." and so on, and so on. She set herself out, honestly,
+loyally, to be the kindest girl in the world to Doggie. Mrs. Conover
+happened to come into the drawing-room just as she was licking the
+stamp. She thumped it on the envelope with her palm and, looking round
+from the writing-desk against the wall, showed her mother a flushed
+and smiling face.
+
+"If anybody says I'm not good--the goodest thing the cathedral has
+turned out for half a dozen centuries--I'll tear her horrid eyes out
+from their sockets!"
+
+"My dear!" cried her horrified mother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doggie kept the letter unopened in his tunic pocket until he could
+find solitude in which to read it. After morning parade he wandered to
+the deserted trench at the end of the camp, where the stuffed sacks,
+representing German defenders, were hung for bayonet practice. It was
+a noon of grey mist through which the alignments of huts and tents
+were barely visible. Instinctively avoiding the wet earth of the
+parados, he went round, and, tired after the recent spell of physical
+drill, sat down on the equally wet sandbags of the model parapet, a
+pathetic, lonely little khaki figure isolated for the moment by the
+kindly mist from an uncomprehending world.
+
+He read Peggy's letter several times. He recognized her goodness, her
+loyalty. The grateful tears even came to his eyes and he brushed them
+away hurriedly with a swift look round. But his heart beat none the
+faster. A long-faded memory of childhood came back to him in regained
+colour. Some quarrel with Peggy. What it was all about he had entirely
+forgotten; but he remembered her little flushed face and her angry
+words: "Well, I'm a sport and you ain't!" He remembered also rebuking
+her priggishly for unintelligible language and mincing away. He read
+the letter again in the light of this flash of memory. The only
+difference between it and the childish speech lay in the fact that
+instead of a declaration of contrasts, she now uttered a declaration
+of similitudes. They were both "sports." There she was wrong. Doggie
+shook his head. In her sense of the word he was not a "sport." A sport
+takes chances, plays the game with a smile on his lips. There was no
+smile on his. He loathed the game with a sickening, shivering
+loathing. He was engaged in it because a conglomeration of
+irresistible forces had driven him into the _melee_. It never
+occurred to Doggie that he was under orders of his own soul. This
+simple yet stupendous fact never occurred to Peggy.
+
+He sat on the wet sandbags and thought and thought. Though he
+reproached himself for base ingratitude, the letter did not satisfy
+him. It left his heart cold. What he sought in it he did not know. It
+was something he could not find, something that was not there. The
+sea-mist thickened around him. Peggy seemed very far away.... He was
+still engaged to her--for it would be monstrous to persist in his
+withdrawal. He must accept the situation which she decreed. He owed
+that to her loyalty. But how to continue the correspondence? It was
+hard enough to write from Salisbury Plain; from here it was well-nigh
+impossible.
+
+Thus was Doggie brought up against a New Problem. He struggled
+desperately to defer its solution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The regiments of the new armies have gathered into their rank and file
+a mixed crowd transcending the dreams of Democracy. At one end of the
+social scale are men of refined minds and gentle nurture, at the other
+creatures from the slums, with slum minds and morals, and between them
+the whole social gamut is run. Experience seems to show that neither
+of the extreme elements tend, in the one case to elevate, or in the
+other to debase the battalion. Leading the common life, sharing the
+common hardships, striving towards common ideals, they inevitably,
+irresistibly tend to merge themselves in the average. The highest in
+the scale sink, the lowest rise. The process, as far as the change of
+soul state is concerned, is infinitely more to the amelioration of the
+lowest than to the degradation of the highest. The one, also, is more
+real, the other more apparent. In the one case, it is merely the
+shuffling-off of manners, of habits, of prejudices, and the assuming
+of others horribly distasteful or humorously accepted, according to
+temperament; in the other case, it is an enforced education. And all
+the congeries of human atoms that make up the battalion, learn new and
+precious lessons and acquire new virtues--patience, obedience,
+courage, endurance.... But from the point of view of a decorous
+tea-party in a cathedral town, the tone--or the standard of manners,
+or whatever you would like by way of definition of that vague and
+comforting word--the tone of the average is deplorably low. The
+hooligan may be kicked for excessive foulness; but the rider of the
+high horse is brutally dragged down into the mire. The curious part of
+it all is that, the gutter element being eliminated altogether, the
+corporate standard of the remaining majority is lower than the
+standard of each individual.
+
+By developing a philosophical disquisition on some such lines did
+Phineas McPhail seek to initiate Doggie into the weird mysteries of
+the new social life. Doggie heard with his ears, but thought in terms
+of Durdlebury tea-parties. Nowhere in the mass could he find the
+spiritual outlook of his Irish poet-warrior. The individuals that may
+have had it kept it preciously to themselves. The outlook, as conveyed
+in speech, was grossly materialistic. From the language of the canteen
+he recoiled in disgust. He could not reconcile it with the nobler
+attributes of the users. It was in vain for Phineas to plead that he
+must accept the _lingua franca_ of the British Army like all other
+things appertaining thereto. Doggie's stomach revolted against most of
+the other things. The disregard (from his point of view) of personal
+cleanliness universal in the ranks, filled him with dismay. Even on
+Salisbury Plain he had managed to get a little hot water for his
+morning tub. Here, save in the officers' quarters--curiously remote,
+inaccessible paradise!--there was not such a thing as a tub in the
+place, let alone hot water to fill it. The men never dreamed of such a
+thing as a tub. As a matter of fact, they were scrupulously clean
+according to the lights of the British Tommy; but the lights were not
+those of Marmaduke Trevor. He had learned the supreme wisdom of
+keeping lips closed on such matters and did not complain, but all his
+fastidiousness rebelled. He hated the sluice of head and shoulders
+with water from a bucket in the raw open air. His hands swelled,
+blistered and cracked; and his nails, once so beautifully manicured,
+grew rich black rims, and all the icy water in the buckets would not
+remove the grime.
+
+Now and then he went into the town and had a hot bath; but very few of
+the others ever seemed to think of such a thing. The habit of the
+British Army of going to bed in its day-shirt was peculiarly
+repellent. Yet Doggie knew that to vary from the sacred ways of his
+fellow-men was to bring disaster on his head.
+
+Some of the men slept under canvas still. But Doggie, fortunately as
+he reckoned (for he had begun to appreciate fine shades in misery),
+was put with a dozen others in a ramshackle hut of which the woodwork
+had warped and let in the breezes above, below, and all round the sides.
+Doggie, though dismally cold, welcomed the air for obvious reasons.
+They were fortunate, too, in having straw palliasses--recently
+provided when it was discovered that sleeping on badly boarded floors
+with fierce draughts blowing upwards along human spines was strangely
+fatal to human bodies--but Doggie found his bed very hard lying. And
+it smelt sour and sickly. For nights, in spite of fatigue, he could
+not sleep. His mates sang and talked and bandied jests and sarcasms of
+esoteric meaning. Some of the recruits from factories or farms
+satirized their officers for peculiarities common to their social
+caste and gave grotesque imitations of their mode of speech. Doggie
+wondered, but held his peace. The deadly stupidity and weariness of it
+all! And when the talk stopped and they settled to sleep, the snorings
+and mutterings and coughings began and kept poor Doggie awake most of
+the night. The irremediable, intimate propinquity with coarse humanity
+oppressed him. He would have given worlds to go out, even into the
+pouring rain, and walk about the camp or sleep under a hedge, so long
+as he could be alone. And he would think longingly of his satinwood
+bedroom, with its luxurious bed and lavender-scented sheets, and of
+his beloved peacock and ivory room and its pictures and exquisite
+furniture and the great fire roaring up the chimney, and devise
+intricate tortures for the Kaiser who had dragged him down to this
+squalor.
+
+The meals--the rough cooking, the primitive service--the table manners
+of his companions, offended his delicate senses. He missed napkins.
+Never could he bring himself to wipe his mouth with the back of his
+hand and the back of his hand on the seat of his trousers. Nor could
+he watch with equanimity an honest soul pick his teeth with his little
+finger. But Doggie knew that acquiescence was the way of happiness and
+protest the way of woe.
+
+At first he made few acquaintances beyond those with whom he was
+intimately associated. It seemed more politic to obey his instincts
+and remain unobtrusive in company and drift away inoffensively when
+the chance occurred. One of the men with whom he talked occasionally
+was a red-headed little cockney by the name of Shendish. For some
+reason or the other--perhaps because his name conveyed a perfectly
+wrong suggestion of the Hebraic--he was always called "Mo" Shendish.
+
+"Don't yer wish yer was back, mate?" he asked one day, having waited
+to speak till Doggie had addressed and stamped a letter which he was
+writing at the end of the canteen table.
+
+"Where?" said Doggie.
+
+"'Ome, sweet 'ome. In the family castle, where gilded footmen 'ands
+sausage and mash about on trays and quarts of beer all day long. I
+do."
+
+"You're a lucky chap to have a castle," said Doggie.
+
+Mo Shendish grinned. He showed little yellow teeth beneath a little
+red moustache.
+
+"I ain't 'alf got one," said he. "It's in Mare Street, Hackney. I wish
+I was there now."
+
+He sighed, and in an abstracted way he took a half-smoked cigarette
+from behind his ear and relit it.
+
+"What were yer before yer joined? Yer look like a clerk." He
+pronounced it as if it were spelt with a "u."
+
+"Something of the sort," replied Doggie cautiously.
+
+"One can always tell you eddicated blokes. Making your five quid a
+week easy, I suppose?"
+
+"About that," said Doggie. "What were you?"
+
+"I was making my thirty bob a week regular. I was in the fish
+business, I was. And now I'm serving my ruddy country at one and
+twopence a day. Funny life, ain't it?"
+
+"I can't say it's very enjoyable," said Doggie.
+
+"Not the same as sitting in a snug orfis all day with a pen in your
+lily-white 'and, and going 'ome to your 'igh tea in a top 'at. What
+made you join up?"
+
+"The force of circumstances," said Doggie.
+
+"Same 'ere," said Mo; "only I couldn't put it into such fancy
+language. First my pals went out one after the other. Then the gels
+began to look saucy at me, and at last one particular bit of skirt
+what I'd been walking out with took to promenading with a blighter in
+khaki. It'd have been silly of me to go and knock his 'ead off, so I
+enlisted. And it's all right now."
+
+"Just the same sort of thing in my case," replied Doggie. "I'm glad
+things are right with the young lady."
+
+"First class. She's straight, she is, and no mistake abaht it. She's
+a----"
+
+He paused for a word to express the inexpressive she.
+
+"--A paragon--a peach?"--Doggie corrected himself. Then, as the sudden
+frown of perplexed suspicion was swiftly replaced by a grin of
+content, he was struck by a bright idea.
+
+"What's her name?"
+
+"Aggie. What's yours?"
+
+"Gladys," replied Doggie with miraculous readiness of invention.
+
+"I've got her photograph," Shendish confided in a whisper, and laid
+his hand on his tunic pocket. Then he looked round at the half-filled
+canteen to see that he was unobserved. "You won't give me away if I
+show it yer, will yer?"
+
+Doggie swore secrecy. The photograph of Aggie, an angular,
+square-browed damsel, who looked as though she could guide the most
+recalcitrant of fishmongers into the paths of duty, was produced and
+thrust into Doggie's hand. He inspected it with polite appreciation,
+while his red-headed friend regarded him with fatuous anxiety.
+
+"Charming! charming!" said Doggie in his pleasantest way. "What's her
+colouring?"
+
+"Fair hair and blue eyes," said Shendish.
+
+The kindly question, half idle yet unconsciously tactful, was one of
+those human things which cost so little but are worth so much. It gave
+Doggie a devoted friend.
+
+"Mo," said he, a day or two later, "you're such a decent chap. Why do
+you use such abominable language?"
+
+"Gawd knows," smiled Mo, unabashed. "I suppose it's friendly like." He
+wrinkled his brow in thought for an instant. "That's where I think
+you're making a mistake, old pal, if you don't mind my mentioning it.
+I know what yer are, but the others don't. You're not friendly enough.
+See what I mean? Supposin' you say as you would in a city restoorang
+when you're 'aving yer lunch, 'Will yer kindly pass me the
+salt?'--well, that's standoffish--they say 'Come off it! 'But if you
+look about and say, 'Where's the b----y salt?' that's friendly. They
+understand. They chuck it at you."
+
+Said Doggie, "It's very--I mean b----y--difficult."
+
+So he tried to be friendly; and if he met with no great positive
+success, he at least escaped animosity. In his spare time he mooned
+about by himself, shy, disgusted, and miserable. Once, when a group of
+men were kicking a football about, the ball rolled his way. Instead of
+kicking it back to the expectant players, he picked it up and advanced
+to the nearest and handed it to him politely.
+
+"Thanks, mate," said the astonished man, "but why didn't you kick it?"
+
+He turned away without waiting for a reply. Doggie had not kicked it
+because he had never kicked a football in his life and shrank from an
+exhibition of incompetence.
+
+At drill things were easier than on Salisbury Plain, his actions being
+veiled in the obscurity of squad or platoon or company. Many others
+besides himself were cursed by sergeants and rated by subalterns and
+drastically entreated by captains. He had the consolation of community
+in suffering. As a trembling officer he had been the only one, the
+only one marked and labelled as a freak apart, the only one stuck in
+the eternal pillory. Here were fools and incapables even more dull and
+ineffective than he. A plough-boy fellow-recruit from Dorsetshire,
+Pugsley by name, did not know right from left, and having mastered the
+art of forming fours, could not get into his brain the reverse process
+of forming front. He wept under the lash of the corporal's tongue; and
+to Doggie these tears were healing dews of Heaven's distillation. By
+degrees he learned the many arts of war as taught to the private
+soldier in England. He could refrain from shutting his eyes when he
+pressed the trigger of his rifle, but to the end of his career his
+shooting was erratic. He could perform with the weapon the other
+tricks of precision. Unencumbered he could march with the best. The
+torture of the heavy pack nearly killed him; but in time, as his
+muscles developed, he was able to slog along under the burden. He even
+learned to dig. That was the worst and most back-breaking art of all.
+
+Now and then Phineas McPhail and himself would get together and walk
+into the little seaside town. It was out of the season and there was
+little to look at save the deserted shops and the squall-fretted pier
+and the maidens of the place who usually were in company with lads in
+khaki. Sometimes a girl alone would give Doggie a glance of shy
+invitation, for Doggie in his short slight way was not a bad-looking
+fellow, carrying himself well and wearing his uniform with instinctive
+grace. But the damsel ogled in vain.
+
+On one such occasion Phineas burst into a guffaw.
+
+"Why don't you talk to the poor body? She's a respectable girl enough.
+Where's the harm?"
+
+"Go 'square-pushing'?" said Doggie contemptuously, using the soldiers'
+slang for walking about with a young woman. "No, thank you."
+
+"And why not? I'm not counselling you, laddie, to plunge into a course
+of sensual debauchery. But a wee bit gossip with a pretty innocent
+girl----"
+
+"My dear good chap," Doggie interrupted, "what on earth should I have
+in common with her?"
+
+"Youth."
+
+"I feel as old as hell," said Doggie bitterly.
+
+"You'll be feeling older soon," replied Phineas, "and able to look
+down on hell with feelings of superiority."
+
+Doggie walked on in silence for a few paces. Then he said:
+
+"A thing I can't understand is this mania for picking up girls--just
+to walk about the streets with them. It's so inane. It's a disease."
+
+"Did you ever consider," said Phineas, "how in a station less exalted
+than that which you used to adorn, the young of opposite sexes manage
+to meet, select and marry? Man, the British Army's going to be a grand
+education for you in sociology."
+
+"Well, at any rate, you don't suppose I'm going to select and marry
+out of the street?"
+
+"You might do worse," said Phineas. Then, after a slight pause, he
+asked: "Have you any news lately from Durdlebury?"
+
+"Confound Durdlebury!" said Doggie.
+
+Phineas checked him with one hand and waved the other towards a
+hostelry on the other side of the street. "If you will give me the
+money in advance, so as to evade the ungenerous spirit of the
+no-treating law, you can stand me a quart of ale at the Crown and
+Sceptre and join me in drinking to its confusion."
+
+So they entered the saloon bar of the public-house. Doggie drank a
+glass of beer while Phineas swallowed a couple of pints. Two or three
+other soldiers were there, in whose artless talk McPhail joined
+lustily. Doggie, unobtrusive at the end of the bar, maintained a
+desultory and uncomfortable conversation with the barmaid, who was of
+the florid and hearty type, about the weather.
+
+Some days later, McPhail again made allusion to Durdlebury. Doggie
+again confounded it.
+
+"I don't want to hear of it or think of it," he exclaimed, in his
+nervous way, "until this filthy horror is over. They want me to get
+leave and go down and stay. They're making my life miserable with
+kindness. I wish they'd let me alone. They don't understand a little
+bit. I want to get through this thing alone, all by myself."
+
+"I'm sorry I persuaded you to join a regiment in which you were
+inflicted with the disadvantage of my society," said Phineas.
+
+Doggie threw out an impatient arm. "Oh, you don't count," said he.
+
+A few minutes afterwards, repenting his brusqueness, he tried to
+explain to Phineas why he did not count. The others knew nothing about
+him. Phineas knew everything.
+
+"And you know everything about Phineas," said McPhail grimly. "Ay, ay,
+laddie," he sighed, "I ken it all. When you're in Tophet, a
+sympathetic Tophetuan with a wee drop of the milk of human kindness is
+more comfort than a radiant angel who showers down upon you, from the
+celestial Fortnum and Mason's, potted shrimps and caviare."
+
+The sombreness cleared for a moment from Doggie's young brow.
+
+"I never can make up my mind, Phineas," said he, "whether you're a
+very wise man or an awful fraud."
+
+"Give me the benefit of the doubt, laddie," replied McPhail. "It's the
+grand theological principle of Christianity."
+
+Time went on. The regiment was moved to the East Coast. On the journey
+a Zeppelin raid paralysed the railway service. Doggie spent the night
+under the lee of the bookstall at Waterloo Station. Men huddled up
+near him, their heads on their kit-bags, slept and snored. Doggie
+almost wept with pain and cold and hatred of the Kaiser. On the East
+Coast much the same life as on the South, save that the wind, as if
+Hun-sent, found its way more savagely to the skin.
+
+Then suddenly came the news of a large draft for France, which
+included both McPhail and Shendish. They went away on leave. The
+gladness with which he welcomed their return showed Doggie how great a
+part they played in his new life. In a day or two they would depart
+God knew whither, and he would be left in dreadful loneliness. Through
+him the two men, the sentimental Cockney fishmonger and the wastrel
+Cambridge graduate, had become friends. He spent with them all his
+leisure time.
+
+Then one of the silly tragi-comedies of life occurred. McPhail got
+drunk in the crowded bar of a little public-house in the village. It
+was the last possible drink together of the draft and their pals. The
+draft was to entrain before daybreak on the morrow. It was a foolish,
+singing, shouting khaki throng. McPhail, who had borrowed ten pounds
+from Doggie, in order to see him through the hardships of the Front,
+established himself close by the bar and was drinking whisky. He was
+also distributing surreptitious sixpences and shillings into eager
+hands, which would convert them into alcohol for eager throats.
+Doggie, anxious, stood by his side. The spirit from which McPhail had
+for so long abstained, mounted to his unaccustomed brain. He began to
+hector, and, master of picturesque speech, he compelled an admiring
+audience. Doggie did not realize the extent of his drunkenness until,
+vaunting himself as a Scot and therefore the salt of the army, he
+picked a quarrel with a stolid Hampshire giant, who professed to have
+no use for Phineas's fellow-countrymen. The men closed. Suddenly some
+one shouted from the doorway:
+
+"Be quiet, you fools! The A.P.M.'s coming down the road."
+
+Now the Assistant Provost Marshal, if he heard hell's delight going on
+in a tavern, would naturally make an inquisitorial appearance. The
+combatants were separated. McPhail threw a shilling on the bar counter
+and demanded another whisky. He was about to lift the glass to his
+lips when Doggie, terrified as to what might happen, knocked the glass
+out of his hand.
+
+"Don't be an ass," he cried.
+
+Phineas was very drunk. He gazed at his old pupil, took off his cap,
+and, stretching over the bar, hung it on the handle of a beer-pull.
+Then, staggering back, he pointed an accusing finger.
+
+"He has the audacity to call me an ass. Little blinking Marmaduke
+Doggie Trevor. Little Doggie Trevor, whom I trained up from infancy in
+the way he shouldn't go----"
+
+"Why Doggie Trevor?" some one shouted in inquiry.
+
+"Never mind," replied Phineas with drunken impressiveness. "My old
+friend Marmaduke has spilled my whisky and called me an ass. I call
+him Doggie, little Doggie Trevor. You all bear witness he knocked the
+drink out of my mouth. I'll never forgive him. He doesn't like being
+called Doggie--and I've no--no pred'lex'n to be called an ass. I'll be
+thinking I'm going just to strangle him."
+
+He struck out his bony claws towards the shrinking Doggie; but stout
+arms closed round him and a horny hand was clamped over his mouth, and
+they got him through the bar and the back parlour into the yard, where
+they pumped water on his head. And when the A.P.M. and his satellites
+passed by, the quiet of The Whip in Hand was the holy peace of a
+nunnery.
+
+Doggie and Mo Shendish and a few other staunch souls got McPhail back
+to quarters without much trouble. On parting, the delinquent,
+semi-sobered, shook Doggie by the hand and smiled with an air of great
+affection.
+
+"I've been verra drunk, laddie. And I've been angry with you for the
+first time in my life. But when you knocked the glass out of my hand I
+thought you were in danger of losing your good manners in the army.
+We'll have many a pow-wow together when you join me out there."
+
+The matter would have drifted out of Doggie's mind as one of no
+importance had not the detested appellation by which Phineas hailed
+him struck the imagination of his comrades. It filled a long-felt
+want, no nickname for Private J. M. Trevor having yet been invented.
+Doggie Trevor he was and Doggie Trevor he remained for the rest of his
+period of service. He resigned himself to the inevitable. The sting
+had gone out of the name through his comrades' ignorance of its
+origin. But he loathed it as much as ever; it sounded in his ears an
+everlasting reproach.
+
+In spite of the ill turn done in drunkenness, Doggie missed McPhail.
+He missed Mo Shendish, his more constant companion, even more. Their
+place was in some degree taken, or rather usurped, for it was without
+Doggie's volition, by "Taffy" Jones, once clerk to a firm of outside
+bookmakers. As Doggie had never seen a racecourse, had never made a
+bet, and was entirely ignorant of the names even of famous Derby
+winners, Taffy regarded him as an astonishing freak worth the
+attention of a student of human nature. He began to cultivate Doggie's
+virgin mind by aid of reminiscence, and of such racing news as was to
+be found in the _Sportsman_. He was a garrulous person and Doggie a
+good listener. To please him Doggie backed horses, through the old
+firm, for small sums. The fact of his being a man of large independent
+means both he and Phineas (to his credit) had kept a close secret, his
+clerkly origin divined and promulgated by Mo Shendish being
+unquestioningly accepted, so the bets proposed by Taffy were of a
+modest nature. Once he brought off a forty to one chance. Taffy rushed
+to him with the news, dancing with excitement. Doggie's stoical
+indifference to the winning of twenty pounds, a year's army pay, gave
+him cause for great wonder. As Doggie showed similar equanimity when
+he lost, Taffy put him down as a born sportsman. He began to admire
+him tremendously.
+
+This friendship with Taffy is worth special record, for it was
+indirectly the cause of a little revolution in Doggie's regimental
+life. Taffy was an earnest though indifferent performer on the penny
+whistle. It was his constant companion, the solace of his leisure
+moments and one of the minor tortures of Doggie's existence. His
+version of the _Marseillaise_ was peculiarly excruciating.
+
+One day, when Taffy was playing it with dreadful variations of his own
+to an admiring group in the Y.M.C.A. hut, Doggie, his nerves rasped to
+the raw by the false notes and maddening intervals, snatched it out of
+his hand and began to play himself. Hitherto, shrinking morbidly from
+any form of notoriety, he had shown no sign of musical accomplishment.
+But to-day the musician's impulse was irresistible. He played the
+_Marseillaise_ as no one there had heard it on penny whistle before.
+The hut recognized a master's touch, for Doggie was a fine executant
+musician. When he stopped there was a roar: "Go on!" Doggie went on.
+They kept him whistling till the hut was crowded.
+
+Thenceforward he was penny-whistler, by excellence, to the battalion.
+He whistled himself into quite a useful popularity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+"We're all very proud of you, Marmaduke," said the Dean.
+
+"I think you're just splendid," said Peggy.
+
+They were sitting in Doggie's rooms in Woburn Place, Doggie having
+been given his three days' leave before going to France. Once again
+Durdlebury had come to Doggie and not Doggie to Durdlebury. Aunt
+Sophia, however, somewhat ailing, had stayed at home.
+
+Doggie stood awkwardly before them, conscious of swollen hands and
+broken nails, shapeless ammunition boots and ill-fitting slacks;
+morbidly conscious, too, of his original failure.
+
+"You're about ten inches more round the chest than you were," said the
+Dean admiringly.
+
+"And the picture of health," cried Peggy.
+
+"For anyone who has a sound constitution," answered Doggie, "it is
+quite a healthy life."
+
+"Now that you've got into the way, I'm sure you must really love it,"
+said Peggy with an encouraging smile.
+
+"It isn't so bad," he replied.
+
+"What none of us can quite understand, my dear fellow," said the Dean,
+"is your shying at Durdlebury. As we have written you, everybody's
+singing your praises. Not a soul but would have given you a hearty
+welcome."
+
+"Besides," Peggy chimed in, "you needn't have made an exhibition of
+yourself in the town if you didn't want to. The poor Peddles are
+woefully disappointed."
+
+"There's a war going on. They must bear up--like lots of other
+people," replied Doggie.
+
+"He's becoming quite cynical," Peggy laughed. "But, apart from the
+Peddles, there's your own beautiful house waiting for you. It seems so
+funny not to go to it, instead of moping in these fusty lodgings."
+
+"Perhaps," said Doggie quietly, "if I went there I should never want
+to come back."
+
+"There's something to be said from that point of view," the Dean
+admitted. "A solution of continuity is never quite without its
+dangers. Even Oliver confessed as much."
+
+"Oliver?"
+
+"Yes, didn't Peggy tell you?"
+
+"I didn't think Marmaduke would be interested," said Peggy quickly.
+"He and Oliver have never been what you might call bosom friends."
+
+"I shouldn't have minded about hearing of him," said Doggie. "Why
+should I? What's he doing?"
+
+The Dean gave information. Oliver, now a captain, had come home on
+leave a month ago, and had spent some of it at the Deanery. He had
+seen a good deal of fighting, and had one or two narrow escapes.
+
+"Was he keen to get back?" asked Doggie.
+
+The Dean smiled. "I instanced his case in my remark as to the dangers
+of the solution of continuity."
+
+"Oh, rubbish, daddy," cried his daughter, with a flush, "Oliver is as
+keen as mustard." The Dean made a little gesture of submission. She
+continued. "He doesn't like the beastliness out there for its own
+sake, any more than Marmaduke will. But he simply loves his job. He
+has improved tremendously. Once he thought he was the only man in the
+country who had seen Life stark naked, and he put on frills
+accordingly Now that he's just one of a million who have been up
+against Life stripped to its skeleton, he's a bit subdued."
+
+"I'm glad of that," said Doggie.
+
+The Dean, urbanely indulgent, joined his fingertips together and
+smiled. "Peggy is right," said he, "although I don't wholly approve of
+her modern lack of reticence in metaphor. Oliver is coming out true
+gold from the fire. He's a capital fellow. And he spoke of you, my
+dear Marmaduke, in the kindest way in the world. He has a tremendous
+admiration for your pluck."
+
+"That's very good of him, I'm sure," said Doggie.
+
+Presently the Dean--good, tactful man--discovered that he must go out
+and have a prescription made up at a chemist's. That arch-Hun enemy,
+the gout, against which he must never be unprepared. He would be back
+in time for dinner. The engaged couple were left alone.
+
+"Well?" said Peggy.
+
+"Well, dear?" said Doggie.
+
+Her lips invited. He responded. She drew him to the saddle-bag sofa,
+and they sat down side by side.
+
+"I quite understand, dear old thing," she said. "I know the
+resignation and the rest of it hurt you awfully. It hurt me. But it's
+no use grousing over spilt milk. You've already mopped it all up. It's
+no disgrace to be a private. It's an honour. There are thousands of
+gentlemen in the ranks. Besides--you'll work your way up and they'll
+offer you another commission in no time."
+
+"You're very good and sweet, dear," said Doggie, "to have such faith
+in me. But I've had a year----"
+
+"A year!" cried Peggy. "Good lord! so it is." She counted on her
+fingers. "Not quite. But eleven months. It's eleven months since I've
+seen you. Do you realize that? The war has put a stop to time. It is
+just one endless day."
+
+"One awful, endless day," Doggie acquiesced with a smile. "But I was
+saying--I've had a year, or an endless day of eleven months, in which
+to learn myself. And what I don't know about myself isn't knowledge."
+
+Peggy interrupted with a laugh. "You must be a wonder. Dad's always
+preaching about self-knowledge. Tell me all about it."
+
+Doggie shook his head, at the same time passing his hand over it in a
+familiar gesture.
+
+Then Peggy cried:
+
+"I knew there was something wrong with you. Why didn't you tell me?
+You've had your hair cut--cut quite differently."
+
+It was McPhail, careful godfather, who had taken him as a recruit to
+the regimental barber and prescribed a transformation from the sleek
+long hair brushed back over the head to a conventional military crop
+with a rudiment of a side parting. On the crown a few bristles stood
+up as if uncertain which way to go.
+
+"It's advisable," Doggie replied, "for a Tommy's hair to be cut as
+short as possible. The Germans are sheared like convicts."
+
+Peggy regarded him open-eyed and puzzle-browed. He enlightened her no
+further, but pursued the main proposition.
+
+"I wouldn't take a commission," said he, "if the War Office went mad
+and sank on its knees and beat its head in the dust before me."
+
+"In Heaven's name, why not?"
+
+"I've learned my place in the world," said Doggie.
+
+Peggy shook him by the shoulder and turned on him her young eager
+face.
+
+"Your place in the world is that of a cultivated gentleman of old
+family, Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall."
+
+"That was the funny old world," said he, "that stood on its legs--legs
+wide apart with its hands beneath the tails of its dress-coat, in
+front of the drawing-room fire. The present world's standing on its
+head. Everything's upside-down. It has no sort of use for Marmaduke
+Trevor of Denby Hall. No more use than for Goliath. By the way, how is
+the poor little beast getting on?"
+
+Peggy laughed. "Oh, Goliath is perfectly assured of his position. He
+has got it rammed into his mind that he drives the two-seater." She
+returned to the attack. "Do you intend always to remain a private?"
+
+"I do," said he. "Not even a corporal. You see, I've learned to be a
+private of sorts, and that satisfies my ambition."
+
+"Well, I give it up," said Peggy. "Though why you wouldn't let dad get
+you a nice cushy job is a thing I can't understand. For the life of me
+I can't."
+
+"I've made my bed, and I must lie on it," he said quietly.
+
+"I don't believe you've got such a thing as a bed."
+
+Doggie smiled. "Oh yes, a bed of a sort." Then noting her puzzled
+face, he said consolingly: "It'll all come right when the war's over."
+
+"But when will that be? And who knows, my dear man, what may happen to
+you?"
+
+"If I'm knocked out, I'm knocked out, and there's an end of it,"
+replied Doggie philosophically.
+
+She put her hand on his. "But what's to become of me?"
+
+"We needn't cry over my corpse yet," said Doggie.
+
+The Dean, after awhile, returned with his bottle of medicine, which he
+displayed with conscientious ostentation. They dined. Peggy again went
+over the ground of the possible commission.
+
+"I'm afraid she has set her heart on it, my boy," said the Dean.
+
+Peggy cried a little on parting. This time Doggie was going, not to
+the fringe, but to the heart of the Great Adventure. Into the thick of
+the carnage. A year ago, she said, through her tears, she would have
+thought herself much more fitted for it than Marmaduke.
+
+"Perhaps you are still, dear," said Doggie, with his patient smile.
+
+He saw them to the taxi which was to take them to the familiar
+Sturrocks's. Before getting in, Peggy embraced him.
+
+"Keep out of the way of shells and bullets as much as you can."
+
+The Dean blew his nose, God-blessed him, and murmured something
+incoherent about fighting for the glory of old England.
+
+"Good luck," cried Peggy from the window.
+
+She blew him a kiss. The taxi drove off, and Doggie went back into the
+house with leaden feet. The meeting, which he had morbidly dreaded,
+had brought him no comfort. It had not removed the invisible barrier
+between Peggy and himself. But Peggy seemed so unconscious of it that
+he began to wonder whether it only existed in his diseased
+imagination. Though by his silences and reserves he had given her
+cause for resentment and reproach, her attitude was nothing less than
+angelic. He sat down moodily in an arm-chair, his hands deep in his
+trousers pockets and his legs stretched out. The fault lay in himself,
+he argued. What was the matter with him? He seemed to have lost all
+human feeling, like the man with the stone heart in the old legend.
+Otherwise, why had he felt no prick of jealousy at Peggy's admiring
+comprehension of Oliver? Of course he loved her. Of course he wanted
+to marry her when this nightmare was over. That went without saying.
+But why couldn't he look to the glowing future? A poet had called a
+lover's mistress "the lode-star of his one desire." That to him Peggy
+ought to be. Lode-star. One desire. The words confused him. He had no
+lode-star. His one desire was to be left alone. Without doubt he was
+suffering from some process of moral petrifaction.
+
+Doggie was no psychologist. He had never acquired the habit of turning
+himself inside-out and gloating over the horrid spectacle. All his
+life he had been a simple soul with simple motives and a simple though
+possibly selfish standard to measure them. But now his soul was
+knocked into a chaotic state of complexity, and his poor little
+standards were no manner of use. He saw himself as in a glass darkly,
+mystified by unknown change.
+
+He rose, sighed, shook himself.
+
+"I give it up," said he, and went to bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doggie went to France; a France hitherto undreamed of, either by him
+or by any young Englishman; a France clean swept and garnished for
+war; a France, save for the ubiquitous English soldiery, of silent
+towns and empty villages and deserted roads; a France of smiling
+fields and sorrowful faces of women and drawn patient faces of old
+men--and even then the women and old men were rarely met by day, for
+they were at work on the land, solitary figures on the landscape, with
+vast spaces between them. In the quiet townships, English street signs
+and placards conflicted with the sense of being in friendly provincial
+France, and gave the impression of foreign domination. For beyond that
+long grim line of eternal thunder, away over there in the distance,
+which was called the Front, street signs and placards in yet another
+alien tongue also outraged the serene genius of French urban life. Yet
+our signs were a symbol of a mighty Empire's brotherhood, and the
+dimmed eyes that beheld the _Place de la Fontaine_ transformed into
+"Holborn Circus," and the _Grande Rue_ into "Piccadilly," smiled, and
+the owners, with eager courtesy, directed the stray Tommy to "Regent
+Street," which they had known all their life as the _Rue
+Feuillemaisnil_--a word which Tommy could not pronounce, still less
+remember. It was as much as Tommy could do to get hold of an
+approximation to the name of the town. And besides these renamings,
+other inscriptions flamed about the streets; alphabetical hieroglyphs,
+in which the mystic letters H.Q. most often appeared; "This way to the
+Y.M.C.A. hut"; in many humble windows the startling announcement,
+"Washing done here." British motor-lorries and ambulances crowding the
+little _place_ and aligned along the avenues. British faces, British
+voices, everywhere. The blue uniform and blue helmet of a French
+soldier seemed as incongruous though as welcome as in London.
+
+And the straight endless roads, so French with their infinite border
+of poplars, their patient little stones marking every hundred metres
+until the tenth rose into the proud kilometre stone proclaiming the
+distance to the next stately town, rang too with the sound of British
+voices, and the tramp of British feet, and the clatter of British
+transport, and the screech and whir of cars, revealing as they passed
+the flash of red and gold of the British staff. Yet the finely
+cultivated land remained to show that it was France; and the little
+whitewashed villages; the cure, in shovel-hat and rusty cassock; the
+children in blue or black blouses, who stared as the British troops
+went by; the patient, elderly French Territorials in their old pre-war
+uniforms, guarding unthreatened culverts or repairing the roads; the
+helpful signs set up in happier days by the Touring Club of France.
+
+Into this strange anomaly of a land came Doggie with his draft, still
+half stupefied by the remorselessness of the stupendous machine in
+which he had been caught, in spite of his many months of training in
+England. He had loathed the East Coast camp. When he landed at
+Boulogne in the dark and the pouring rain and hunched his pack with
+the others who went off singing to the rest camp, he regretted East
+Anglia.
+
+"Give us a turn on the whistle, Doggie," said a corporal.
+
+"I was sea-sick into it and threw it overboard," he growled, stumbling
+over the rails of the quay.
+
+"Oh, you holy young liar!" said the man next him.
+
+But Doggie did not trouble to reply, his neighbour being only a
+private like himself.
+
+Then the draft joined its unit. In his youth Doggie had often wondered
+at the meaning of the familiar inscription on every goods van in
+France: "40 Hommes. 8 Chevaux." Now he ceased to wonder. He was one of
+the forty men.... At the rail-head he began to march, and at last
+joined the remnant of his battalion. They had been through hard
+fighting, and were now in billets. Until he joined them he had not
+realized the drain there had been on the reserves at home. Very many
+familiar faces of officers were missing. New men had taken their
+place. And very many of his old comrades had gone, some to Blighty,
+some West of that Island of Desire; and those who remained had the
+eyes of children who had passed through the Valley of the Shadow of
+Death.
+
+McPhail and Mo Shendish had passed through unscathed. In the
+reconstruction of the regiment chance willed that the three of them
+found themselves in the same platoon of A Company. Doggie almost
+embraced them when they met.
+
+"Laddie," said McPhail to him, as he was drinking a mahogany-coloured
+liquid that was known by the name of tea, out of a tin mug, and eating
+a hunk of bread and jam, "I don't know whether or not I'm pleased to
+see you. You were safer in England. Once I misspent many months of my
+life in shielding you from the dangers of France. But France is a much
+more dangerous place nowadays, and I can't help you. You've come right
+into the thick of it. Just listen to the hell's delight that's going
+on over yonder."
+
+The easterly wind brought them the roar streaked with stridence of the
+artillery duel in progress on the nearest sector of the Front.
+
+They were sitting in the cellar entrance to a house in a little town
+which had already been somewhat mauled. Just opposite was a shuttered
+house on the ground floor of which had been a hatter and hosier's
+shop, and there still swung bravely on an iron rod the red brim of
+what once had been a monstrous red hat. Next door, the facade of the
+upper stories had been shelled away and the naked interiors gave the
+impression of a pathetic doll's house. Women's garments still hung on
+pegs. A cottage piano lurched forward drunkenly on three legs, with
+the keyboard ripped open, the treble notes on the ground, the bass
+incongruously in the air. In the attic, ironically secure, hung a
+cheap German print of blowsy children feeding a pig. The wide
+flagstoned street smelt sour. At various cavern doors sat groups of
+the billeted soldiers. Now and then squads marched up and down,
+monotonously clad in khaki and dun-coloured helmets. Officers, some
+only recognizable by the Sam Browne belt, others spruce and
+point-device, passed by. Here and there a shop was open, and the
+elderly proprietor and his wife stood by the doorway to get the
+afternoon air. Women and children straggled rarely through the
+streets. The Boche had left the little town alone for some time; they
+had other things to do with their heavy guns; and all the French
+population, save those whose homes were reduced to nothingness, had
+remained. They took no notice of the distant bombardment. It had grown
+to be a phenomenon of nature like the wind and the rain.
+
+But to Doggie it was new--just as the sight of the wrecked house
+opposite, with its sturdy crownless hat-brim of a sign, was new. He
+listened, as McPhail had bidden him, to the artillery duel with an odd
+little spasm of his heart.
+
+"What do you think of that, now?" asked McPhail grandly, as if it was
+The Greatest Show on Earth run by him, the Proprietor.
+
+"It's rather noisy," said Doggie, with a little ironical twist of his
+lips that was growing habitual. "Do they keep it up at night?"
+
+"They do."
+
+"I don't think it's fair to interfere with one's sleep like that,"
+said Doggie.
+
+"You've got to adapt yourself to it," said McPhail sagely. "No doubt
+you'll be remembering my theory of adaptability. Through that I've
+made myself into a very brave man. When I wanted to run away--a very
+natural desire, considering the scrupulous attention I've always paid
+to my bodily well-being--I reflected on the preposterous obstacles put
+in the way of flight by a bowelless military system, and adapted
+myself to the static and dynamic conditions of the trenches."
+
+"Gorblime!" said Mo Shendish, stretched out by his side, "just listen
+to him!"
+
+"I suppose you'll say you sucked honey out of the shells," remarked
+Doggie.
+
+"I'm no great hand at mixing metaphors----"
+
+"What about drinks?" asked Mo.
+
+"Nor drinks either," replied McPhail. "Both are bad for the brain. But
+as to what you were saying, laddie, I'll not deny that I've derived
+considerable interest and amusement from a bombardment. Yet it has its
+sad aspect." He paused for a moment or two. "Man," he continued, "what
+an awful waste of money!"
+
+"I don't know what old Mac is jawing about," said Mo Shendish, "but
+you can take it from me he's a holy terror with the bayonet. One
+moment he's talking to a Boche through his hat and the next the Boche
+is wriggling like a worm on a bent pin."
+
+Mo winked at Phineas. The temptation to "tell the tale" to the
+new-comer was too strong.
+
+Doggie grew very serious. "You've been killing men--like that?"
+
+"Thousands, laddie," replied Phineas, the picture of unboastful
+veracity. "And so has Mo."
+
+Mo Shendish, helmeted, browned, dried, toughened, a very different Mo
+from the pallid ferret whom Aggie had driven into the ranks of war,
+hunched himself up, his hands clasping his knees.
+
+"I don't mind doing it, when you're so excited you don't know where
+you are," said he, "but I don't like thinking of it afterwards."
+
+As a matter of fact, he had only once got home with the bayonet and
+the memory was unpleasant.
+
+"But you've just thought of it," said Phineas.
+
+"It was you, not me," said Mo. "That makes all the difference."
+
+"It's astonishing," Phineas remarked sententiously, "how many people
+not only refuse to catch pleasure as it flies, but spurn it when it
+sits up and begs at them. Laddie," he turned to Doggie, "the more one
+wallows in hedonism, the more one realizes its unplumbed depths."
+
+A little girl of ten, neatly pigtailed but piteously shod, came near
+and cast a child's envious eye on Doggie's bread and jam.
+
+"Approach, my little one," Phineas cried in French words but with the
+accent of Sauchiehall Street. "If I gave you a franc, what would you
+do with it?"
+
+"I should buy nourishment (_de la nourriture_) for _maman_."
+
+"Lend me a franc, laddie," said McPhail, and when Doggie had slipped
+the coin into his palm, he addressed the child in unintelligible
+grandiloquence and sent her on her way mystified but rejoicing. _Ces
+bons droles d'Anglais!_
+
+"Ah, laddie!" cried Phineas, stretching himself out comfortably by the
+jamb of the door, "you've got to learn to savour the exquisite
+pleasure of a genuinely kindly act."
+
+"Hold on!" cried Mo. "It was Doggie's money you were flinging about."
+
+McPhail withered him with a glance.
+
+"You're an unphilosophical ignoramus," said he.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Perhaps one of the greatest influences which transformed Doggie into a
+fairly efficient though undistinguished infantryman was a morbid
+social terror of his officers. It saved him from many a guard-room,
+and from many a heart-to-heart talk wherein the zealous lieutenant
+gets to know his men. He lived in dread lest military delinquency or
+civil accomplishment should be the means of revealing the disgrace
+which bit like an acid into his soul. His undisguisable air of
+superior breeding could not fail to attract notice. Often his officers
+asked him what he was in civil life. His reply, "A clerk, sir," had to
+satisfy them. He had developed a curious self-protective faculty of
+shutting himself up like a hedgehog at the approach of danger. Once a
+breezy subaltern had selected him as his batman; but Doggie's
+agonized, "It would be awfully good of you, sir, if you wouldn't mind
+not thinking of it," and the appeal in his eyes, established the
+freemasonry of caste and saved him from dreaded intimate relations.
+
+"All right, if you'd rather not, Trevor," said the subaltern. "But why
+doesn't a chap like you try for a commission?"
+
+"I'm much happier as I am, sir," replied Doggie, and that was the end
+of the matter.
+
+But Phineas, when he heard of it--it was on the East Coast--began: "If
+you still consider yourself too fine to clean another man's boots----"
+
+Doggie, in one of his quick fits of anger, interrupted: "If you think
+I'm just a dirty little snob, if you don't understand why I begged to
+be let off, you're the thickest-headed fool in creation!"
+
+"I'm nae that, laddie," replied Phineas, with his usual ironic
+submissiveness. "Haven't I kept your secret all this time?"
+
+Thus it was Doggie's fixed idea to lose himself in the locust swarm,
+to be prominent neither for good nor evil, even in the little clot of
+fifty, outwardly, almost identical locusts that formed his platoon. It
+braced him to the performance of hideous tasks; it restrained him from
+display of superior intellectual power or artistic capability. The
+world upheaval had thrown him from his peacock and ivory room, with
+its finest collection on earth of little china dogs, into a horrible
+fetid hole in the ground in Northern France. It had thrown not the
+average young Englishman of comfortable position, who had toyed with
+aesthetic superficialities as an amusement, but a poor little
+by-product of cloistered life who had been brought up from babyhood to
+regard these things as the nervous texture of his very existence. He
+was wrapped from head to heel in fine net, to every tiny mesh of which
+he was acutely sensitive.
+
+A hole in the ground in Northern France. The regiment, after its rest,
+moved on and took its turn in the trenches. Four days on; four days
+off. Four days on of misery inconceivable. Four days on, during which
+the officers watched the men with the unwavering vigilance of kindly
+cats:
+
+"How are you getting along, Trevor?"
+
+"Nicely, thank you, sir."
+
+"Feet all right?"
+
+"Yes, thank you, sir."
+
+"Sure? If you want to grouse, grouse away. That's what I'm talking to
+you for."
+
+"I'm perfectly happy, sir."
+
+"Darn sight more than I am!" laughed the subaltern, and with a cheery
+nod in acknowledgment of Doggie's salute, splashed down the muddy
+trench.
+
+But Doggie was chilled to the bone, and he had no feeling in his feet,
+which were under six inches of water, and his woollen gloves being wet
+through were useless, and prevented his numbed hands from feeling the
+sandbags with which he and the rest of the platoon were repairing the
+parapet; for the Germans had just consecrated an hour's general hate
+to the vicinity of the trench, and its exquisite symmetry, the pride
+of the platoon commander, had been disturbed. There had also been a
+few ghastly casualties. A shell had fallen and burst in the traverse
+at the far end of the trench. Something that looked like half a man's
+head and a bit of shoulder had dropped just in front of the dug-out
+where Doggie and his section was sheltering. Doggie staring at it was
+violently sick. In a stupefied way he found himself mingling with
+others who were engaged in clearing up the horror. A murmur reached
+him that it was Taffy Jones who had thus been dismembered.... The
+bombardment over, he had taken his place with the rest in the
+reparation of the parapet; and as he happened to be at an end of the
+line, the officer had spoken to him. If he had been suffering tortures
+unknown to Attila, and unimagined by his successors, he would have
+answered just the same.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But he lamented Taffy's death to Phineas, who listened
+sympathetically. Such a cheery comrade, such a smart soldier, such a
+kindly soul.
+
+"Not a black spot in him," said Doggie.
+
+"A year ago, laddie," said McPhail, "what would have been your opinion
+of a bookmaker's clerk?"
+
+"I know," replied Doggie. "But this isn't a year ago. Just look
+round."
+
+He laughed somewhat hysterically, for the fate of Taffy had unstrung
+him for the time. Phineas contemplated the length of deep narrow
+ditch, with its planks half swimming on filthy liquid, its wire
+revetment holding up the oozing sides, the dingy parapet above which
+it was death to put one's head, the grey free sky, the only thing free
+along that awful row of parallel ditches that stretched from the
+Belgian coast to Switzerland, the clay-covered, shapeless figures of
+men, their fellows, almost undistinguishable even by features from
+themselves.
+
+"It has been borne upon me lately," said Phineas, "that patriotism is
+an amazing virtue."
+
+Doggie drew a foot out of the mud so as to find a less precarious
+purchase higher up the slope.
+
+"And I've been thinking, Phineas, whether it's really patriotism that
+has brought you and me into this--what can we call it? Dante's Inferno
+is child's play to it."
+
+"Dante had no more imagination," said Phineas, "than a Free Kirk
+precentor in Kirkcudbright."
+
+"But is it patriotism?" Doggie persisted. "If I thought it was, I
+should be happier. If we had orders to go over the top and attack and
+I could shout 'England for ever!' and lose myself just in the thick of
+it----"
+
+"There's a brass hat coming down the trench," said Phineas, "and brass
+hats have no use for rhapsodical privates."
+
+They stood to attention as the staff officer passed by. Then Doggie
+broke in impatiently:
+
+"I wish to goodness you could understand what I'm trying to get at."
+
+A smile illuminated the gaunt, unshaven, mud-caked face of Phineas
+McPhail.
+
+"Laddie," said he, "let England, as an abstraction, fend for itself.
+But you've a bonny English soul within you, and for that you are
+fighting. And so had poor Taffy Jones. And I have a bonny Scottish
+thirst, the poignancy of which both of you have been happily spared. I
+will leave you, laddie, to seek in slumber a surcease from martyrdom."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doggie had been out a long time. He had seen many places, much
+fighting and endured manifold miseries. After one of the spells in the
+trenches, the worst he had experienced, A Company was marched into new
+billets some miles behind the lines, in the once prosperous village of
+Frelus. They had slouched along dead tired, drooping under their
+packs, sodden with mud and sleeplessness, silent, with not a note of a
+song among them--but at the entrance to the village, quickened by a
+word or two of exhortation from officers and sergeants, they pulled
+themselves together and marched in, heads up, forward, in faultless
+step. The C.O. was jealous of the honour of his men. He assumed that
+his predecessors in the village had been a "rotten lot," and was
+determined to show the inhabitants of Frelus what a crack English
+regiment was really like. Frelus was an unimportant, unheard-of
+village; but the opinion of a thousand Freluses made up France's
+opinion of the British Army. Doggie, although half stupefied with
+fatigue, responded to the sentiment, like the rest. He was conscious
+of making part of a gallant show. It was only when they halted and
+stood easy that he lost count of things. The wide main street of the
+village swam characterless before his eyes. He followed, not
+directions, but directed men, with a sheep-like instinct, and found
+himself stumbling through an archway down a narrow path. He had a dim
+consciousness of lurching sideways and confusedly apologizing to a
+woman who supported him back to equilibrium. Then the next thing he
+saw was a barn full of fresh straw, and when somebody pointed to a
+vacant strip, he fell down, with many others, and went to sleep.
+
+The reveille sounded a minute afterwards, though a whole night had
+passed; and there was the blessed clean water to wash in--he had long
+since ceased to be fastidious in his ablutions--and there was
+breakfast, sizzling bacon and bread and jam. And there in front of the
+kitchen, aiding with the hot water for the tea, moved a slim girl,
+with dark, and as Doggie thought, tragic eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kit inspection, feet inspection, all the duties of the day and dinner
+were over. Most of the men returned to their billets to sleep. Some,
+including Doggie, wandered about the village, taking the air, and
+visiting the little modest cafes and talking with indifferent
+success, so far as the interchange of articulate ideas was concerned,
+with shy children. McPhail and Mo Shendish being among the sleepers,
+Doggie mooned about by himself in his usual self-effacing way. There
+was little to interest him in the long straggling village. He had
+passed through a hundred such. Low whitewashed houses, interspersed
+with perky balconied buildings given over to little shops on the
+ground floor, with here and there a discreet iron gate shutting off
+the doctor's or the attorney's villa, and bearing the oval plate
+indicating the name and pursuit of the tenant; here and there, too,
+long whitewashed walls enclosing a dairy or a timber-yard stretched on
+each side of the great high road, and the village gradually dwindled
+away at each end into the gently undulating country. There were just a
+by-lane or two, one leading up to the little grey church and
+presbytery and another to the little cemetery with its trim paths and
+black and white wooden crosses and wirework pious offerings. At open
+doors the British soldiers lounged at ease, and in the dim interiors
+behind them the forms of the women of the house, blue-aproned, moved
+to and fro. The early afternoon was warm, a westerly breeze deadened
+the sound of the distant bombardment to an unheeded drone, and a holy
+peace settled over the place.
+
+Doggie, clean, refreshed, comfortably drowsy, having explored the
+village, returned to his billet, and looking at it from the opposite
+side of the way, for the first time realized its nature. The lane,
+into which he had stumbled the night before, ran under an archway
+supporting some kind of overhead chamber, and separated the
+dwelling-house from a warehouse wall on which vast letters proclaimed
+the fact that Veuve Morin et Fils carried on therein the business of
+hay and corn dealers. Hence, Doggie reflected, the fresh, deep straw
+on which he and his fortunate comrades had wallowed. The double gate
+under the archway was held back by iron stanchions. The two-storied
+house looked fairly large and comfortable. The front door stood wide
+open, giving the view of a neat, stiff little hall or living-room. An
+article of furniture caught his idle eye. He crossed the road in order
+to have a nearer view. It was a huge polished mahogany cask standing
+about three feet high and bound with shining brass bands, such as he
+remembered having seen once in Brittany. He advanced still closer, and
+suddenly the slim, dark girl appeared and stood in the doorway, and
+looked frankly and somewhat rebukingly into his inquisitive eyes.
+Doggie flushed as one caught in an unmannerly act. A crying fault of
+the British Army is that it prescribes for the rank and file no form
+of polite recognition of the existence of civilians. It is contrary to
+Army Orders to salute or to take off their caps. They can only jerk
+their heads and grin, an inelegant proceeding, which places them at a
+disadvantage with the fair sex. Doggie, therefore, sketched a vague
+salutation half-way between a salute and a bow, and began a profuse
+apology. Mademoiselle must pardon his curiosity, but as a lover of old
+things he had been struck by the beautiful _tonneau_.
+
+An amused light came into her sombre eyes and a smile flickered round
+her lips. Doggie noted instantly how pale she was, and how tiny, faint
+little lines persisted at the corners of those lips in spite of the
+smile.
+
+"There is no reason for excuses, monsieur," she said. "The door was
+open to the view of everybody."
+
+"_Pourtant_," said Doggie, "_c'etait un peu mal eleve_."
+
+She laughed. "Pardon. But it's droll. First to find an English soldier
+apologizing for looking into a house, and then to find him talking
+French like a _poilu_."
+
+Doggie said, with a little touch of national jealousy and a reversion
+to Durdlebury punctilio: "I hope, mademoiselle, you have always found
+the English soldier conduct himself like a gentleman."
+
+"_Mais oui, mais oui!_" she cried, "they are all charming. _Ils sont
+doux comme des moutons._ But this is a question of delicacy--somewhat
+exaggerated."
+
+"It's good of you, mademoiselle, to forgive me," said Doggie.
+
+By all the rules of polite intercourse, either Doggie should have made
+his bow and exit, or the maiden, exercising her prerogative, should
+have given him the opportunity of a graceful withdrawal. But they
+remained where they were, the girl framed by the doorway, the lithe
+little figure in khaki and lichen-coloured helmet looking up at her
+from the foot of the two front steps.
+
+At last he said in some embarrassment: "That's a very beautiful cask
+of yours."
+
+She wavered for a few seconds. Then she said:
+
+"You can enter, monsieur, and examine it, if you like."
+
+Mademoiselle was very amiable, said Doggie. Mademoiselle moved aside
+and Doggie entered, taking off his helmet and holding it under his arm
+like an opera-hat. There was nothing much to see in the little
+vestibule-parlour: a stiff tasselled chair or two, a great old
+linen-press taking up most of one side of a wall, a cheap table
+covered with a chenille tablecloth, and the resplendent old cask,
+about which he lingered. He mentioned Brittany. Her tragic face
+lighted up again. Monsieur was right. Her aunt, Madame Morin, was
+Breton, and had brought the cask with her as part of her dowry,
+together with the press and other furniture. Doggie alluded to the
+vastly lettered inscription, "Veuve Morin et Fils." Madame Morin was,
+in a sense, his hostess. And the sons?
+
+"One is in Madagascar, and the other--alas, monsieur!"
+
+And Doggie knew what that "alas!" meant.
+
+"The Argonne," she said.
+
+"And madame your aunt?"
+
+She shrugged her thin though shapely shoulders. "It nearly killed her.
+She is old and an invalid. She has been in bed for the last three
+weeks."
+
+"Then what becomes of the business?"
+
+"It is I, monsieur, who am the business. And I know nothing about it."
+She sighed. Then with her blue apron--otherwise she was dressed in
+unrelieved black--she rubbed an imaginary speck from the brass banding
+of the cask. "This, I suppose you know, was for the best brandy,
+monsieur."
+
+"And now?" he asked.
+
+"A memory. A sentiment. A thing of beauty."
+
+In a feminine way, which he understood, she herded him to the door, by
+way of dismissal. Durdlebury helped him. A tiny French village has as
+many slanderous tongues as an English cathedral city. He was preparing
+to take polite leave, when she looked swiftly at him and made the
+faintest gesture of a detaining hand.
+
+"Now I remember. It was you who nearly fell into me last night, when
+you were entering through the gate."
+
+The dim recollection came back--the firm woman's arm round him for the
+few tottering seconds.
+
+"It seems I am always bound to be impolite, for I don't think I
+thanked you," smiled Doggie.
+
+"You were at the end of your tether." Then very gently, "_Pauvre
+garcon!_"
+
+"The _sales Boches_ had kept us awake for four nights," said Doggie.
+"That was why."
+
+"And you are rested now?"
+
+He laughed. "Almost."
+
+They were at the door. He looked out and drew back. A knot of men were
+gathered by the gate of the yard. Apparently she had seen them too,
+for a flush rose to her pale cheeks.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Doggie, "I should like to creep back to the barn
+and sleep. If I pass my comrades they'll want to detain me."
+
+"That would be a pity," she said demurely. "Come this way, monsieur."
+
+She led him through a room and a passage to the kitchen. They shared a
+pleasurable sense of adventure and secrecy. At the kitchen door she
+paused and spoke to an old woman chopping up vegetables.
+
+"Toinette, let monsieur pass." To Doggie she said: "Au revoir,
+monsieur!" and disappeared.
+
+The old woman looked at him at first with disfavour. She did not hold
+with Tommies needlessly tramping over the clean flags of her kitchen.
+But Doggie's polite apology for disturbing her and a youthful grace of
+manner--he still held his tin hat under his arm--caused her features
+to relax.
+
+"You are English?"
+
+With a smile, he indicated his uniform. "Why, yes, madame."
+
+"How comes it, then, that you speak French?"
+
+"Because I have always loved your beautiful France, madame."
+
+"France--_ah! la pauvre France_!" She sighed, drew a wisp of what had
+been a cornet of snuff from her pocket, opened it, dipped in a
+tentative finger and thumb and, finding it empty, gazed at it with
+disappointment, sighed again and, with the methodical hopelessness of
+age, folded it up into the neatest of little squares and thrust it
+back in her pocket. Then she went on with her vegetables.
+
+Doggie took his leave and emerged into the yard.
+
+He dozed pleasantly on the straw of the barn, but it was not the dead
+sleep of the night. Bits of his recent little adventure fitted into
+the semi-conscious intervals. He heard the girl's voice saying so
+gently: "_Pauvre garcon!_" and it was very comforting.
+
+He was finally aroused by Phineas and Mo Shendish, who, having slept
+like tired dogs some distance off down the barn, now desired his
+company for a stroll round the village. Doggie good-naturedly
+assented. As they passed the house door he cast a quick glance. It was
+open, but the slim figure in black with the blue apron was not visible
+within. The shining cask, however, seemed to smile a friendly
+greeting.
+
+"If you believed the London papers," said Phineas, "you'd think that
+the war-worn soldier coming from the trenches is met behind the lines
+with luxurious Turkish baths, comfortable warm canteens, picture
+palaces and theatrical entertainments. Can you perceive here any of
+those amenities of modern warfare?"
+
+They looked around them, and admitted they could not.
+
+"Apparently," said Phineas, "the Colonel, good but limited man, has
+missed all the proper places and dumps us in localities unrecognized
+by the London Press."
+
+"Put me on the pier at Brighton," sang Mo Shendish. "But I'd sooner
+have Margit or Yarmouth any day. Brighton's too toffish for whelks.
+My! and cockles! I wonder whether we shall ever eat 'em again." A
+far-away, dreamy look crept into his eyes.
+
+"Does your young lady like cockles?" Doggie asked sympathetically.
+
+"Aggie? Funny thing, I was just thinking of her. She fair dotes on
+'em. We had a day at Southend just before the war----"
+
+He launched into anecdote. His companions listened, Phineas ironically
+carrying out his theory of adaptability, Doggie with finer instinct.
+It appeared there had been an altercation over right of choice with an
+itinerant vendor in which, to Aggie's admiration, Mo had come off
+triumphant.
+
+"You see," he explained, "being in the fish trade myself, I could spot
+the winners."
+
+James Marmaduke Trevor, of Denby Hall, laughed and slapped him on the
+back, and said indulgently: "Good old Mo!"
+
+At the little school-house they stopped to gossip with some of their
+friends who were billeted there, and they sang the praises of the
+Veuve Morin's barn.
+
+"I wonder you don't have the house full of orficers, if it's so
+wonderful," said some one.
+
+An omniscient corporal in the confidence of the quartermaster
+explained that the landlady being ill in bed, and the place run by a
+young girl, the house had been purposely missed. Doggie drew a breath
+of relief at the news and attributed Madame Morin's malady to the
+intervention of a kindly providence. Somehow he did not fancy officers
+having the run of the house.
+
+They strolled on and came to a forlorn little _Debit de Tabac_,
+showing in its small window some clay pipes and a few fly-blown
+picture post-cards. Now Doggie, in spite of his training in adversity,
+had never resigned himself to "Woodbines," and other such brands
+supplied to the British Army, and Egyptian and Turkish being beyond
+his social pale, he had taken to smoking French Regie tobacco, of
+which he laid in a stock whenever he had the chance. So now he entered
+the shop, leaving Phineas and Mo outside. As they looked on French
+cigarettes with sturdy British contempt, they were not interested in
+Doggie's purchases. A wan girl of thirteen rose from behind the
+counter.
+
+"_Vous desirez, monsieur?_"
+
+Doggie stated his desire. The girl was calculating the price of the
+packets before wrapping them up, when his eyes fell upon a neat little
+pile of cornets in a pigeon-hole at the back. They directly suggested
+to him one of the great luminous ideas of his life. It was only
+afterwards that he realized its effulgence. For the moment he was
+merely concerned with the needs of a poor old woman who had sighed
+lamentably over an empty paper of comfort.
+
+"Do you sell snuff?"
+
+"But yes, monsieur."
+
+"Give me some of the best quality."
+
+"How much does monsieur desire?"
+
+"A lot," said Doggie.
+
+And he bought a great package, enough to set the whole village
+sneezing to the end of the war, and peering round the tiny shop and
+espying in the recesses of a glass case a little olive-wood box
+ornamented on the top with pansies and forget-me-nots, purchased that
+also. He had just paid when his companions put their heads in the
+doorway. Mo, pointing waggishly to Doggie, warned the little girl
+against his depravity.
+
+"Mauvy, mauvy!" said he.
+
+"_Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?_" asked the child.
+
+"He's the idiot of the regiment, whom I have to look after and feed
+with pap," said Doggie, "and, being hungry, he is begging you not to
+detain me."
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_" cried the child.
+
+Doggie, always courteous, went out with a "_Bon soir, mademoiselle_,"
+and joined his friends.
+
+"What were you jabbering to her about?" Mo asked suspiciously.
+
+Doggie gave him the literal translation of his speech. Phineas burst
+into loud laughter.
+
+"Laddie," said he, "I've never heard you make a joke before. The idiot
+of the regiment, and you're his keeper! Man, that's fine. What has
+come over you to-day?"
+
+"If he'd said a thing like that in Mare Street, Hackney, I'd have
+knocked his blinking 'ead orf," declared Mo Shendish.
+
+Doggie stopped and put his parcel-filled hands behind his back.
+
+"Have a try now, Mo."
+
+But Mo bade him fry his ugly face, and thus established harmony.
+
+It was late that evening before Doggie could find an opportunity of
+slipping, unobserved, through the open door into the house kitchen
+dimly illuminated by an oil lamp.
+
+"Madame," said he to Toinette, "I observed to-day that you had come to
+the end of your snuff. Will you permit a little English soldier to
+give you some? Also a little box to keep it in."
+
+The old woman, spare, myriad-wrinkled beneath her peasant's _coiffe_,
+yet looking as if carved out of weather-beaten oak, glanced from the
+gift to the donor and from the donor to the gift.
+
+"But, monsieur--monsieur--why?" she began quaveringly.
+
+"You surely have some one--_la bas_--over yonder?" said Doggie with
+a sweep of his hand.
+
+"_Mais oui?_ How did you know? My grandson. _Mon petiot_----"
+
+"It is he, my comrade, who sends the snuff to the _grand'mere_." And
+Doggie bolted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+At breakfast next morning Doggie searched the courtyard in vain for
+the slim figure of the girl. Yesterday she had stood just outside the
+kitchen door. To-day her office was usurped by a hefty cook with the
+sleeves of his grey shirt rolled up and his collar open and vast and
+tight-hitched braces unromantically strapped all over him. Doggie felt
+a pang of disappointment and abused the tea. Mo Shendish stared, and
+asked what was wrong with it.
+
+"Rotten," said Doggie.
+
+"You can't expect yer slap-up City A.B.C. shops in France," said Mo.
+
+Doggie, who was beginning to acquire a sense of rueful humour, smiled
+and was appeased.
+
+It was only in the afternoon that he saw the girl again. She was
+standing in the doorway of the house, with her hand on her bosom, as
+though she had just come out to breathe fresh air, when Doggie and his
+two friends emerged from the yard. As their eyes met, she greeted him
+with her sad little smile. Emboldened, he stepped forward.
+
+"_Bon jour, mademoiselle._"
+
+"_Bon jour, monsieur._"
+
+"I hope madame your aunt is better to-day."
+
+She seemed to derive some dry amusement from his solicitude.
+
+"Alas, no, monsieur."
+
+"Was that why I had not the pleasure of seeing you this morning?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Yesterday you filled our tea-kettles."
+
+"But, monsieur," she replied primly, "I am not the _vivandiere_ of
+the regiment."
+
+"That's a pity," laughed Doggie.
+
+Then he became aware of the adjacent forms and staring eyes of Phineas
+and Mo, who for the first time in their military career beheld him on
+easy terms with a strange and prepossessing young woman. After a
+second's thought he came to a diplomatic decision.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said he, in his best Durdlebury manner, "may I dare to
+present my two comrades, my best friends in the battalion, Monsieur
+McPhail, Monsieur Shendish?"
+
+She made them each a little formal bow, and then, somewhat
+maliciously, addressing McPhail, as the bigger and the elder of the
+two:
+
+"I don't yet know the name of your friend."
+
+Phineas put his great hand on Doggie's shoulder.
+
+"James Marmaduke Trevor."
+
+"Otherwise called Doggie, miss," said Mo.
+
+She made a little graceful gesture of non-comprehension.
+
+"_Non compree?_" asked Mo.
+
+"No, monsieur."
+
+Phineas explained, in his rasping and consciously translated French:
+
+"It is a nickname of the regiment. Doggie."
+
+The flushed and embarrassed subject of the discussion saw her lips
+move silently to the word.
+
+"But his name is Trevor. Monsieur Trevor," said Phineas.
+
+She smiled again. And the strange thing about her smile was that it
+was a matter of her lips and rarely of her eyes, which always
+maintained the haunting sadness of their tragic depths.
+
+"Monsieur Trevor," she repeated imitatively. "And yours, monsieur?"
+
+"McPhail."
+
+"Mac-Fele; _c'est assez difficile_. And yours?"
+
+Mo guessed. "Shendish," said he.
+
+She repeated that also, whereat Mo grinned fatuously, showing his
+little yellow teeth beneath his scrubby red moustache.
+
+"My friends call me Mo," said he.
+
+She grasped his meaning. "Mo," she said; and she said it so funnily
+and softly, and with ever so little a touch of quizzicality, that the
+sentimental warrior roared with delight.
+
+"You've got it right fust time, miss."
+
+From her two steps' height of vantage, she looked down on the three
+upturned British faces--and her eyes went calmly from one to the
+other.
+
+She turned to Doggie. "One would say, monsieur, that you were the
+Three Musketeers."
+
+"Possibly, mademoiselle," laughed Doggie. He had not felt so
+light-hearted for many months. "But we lack a d'Artagnan."
+
+"When you find him, bring him to me," said the girl.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Phineas gallantly, "we would not be such
+imbeciles."
+
+At that moment the voice of Toinette came from within.
+
+"Ma'amselle Jeanne! Ma'amselle Jeanne!"
+
+"_Oui, oui, j'y viens_," she cried. "_Bon soir, messieurs_," and she
+was gone.
+
+Doggie looked into the empty vestibule and smiled at the friendly
+brandy cask. Provided it is pronounced correctly, so as to rhyme with
+the English "Anne," it is a very pretty name. Doggie thought she
+looked like Jeanne--a Jeanne d'Arc of this modern war.
+
+"Yon's a very fascinating lassie," Phineas remarked soberly, as they
+started on their stroll. "Did you happen to observe that all the time
+she was talking so prettily she was looking at ghosts behind us?"
+
+"Do you think so?" asked Doggie, startled.
+
+"Man, I know it," replied Phineas.
+
+"Ghosts be blowed!" cried Mo Shendish. "She's a bit of orl right, she is.
+What I call class. Doesn't chuck 'erself at yer 'ead, like some of 'em,
+and, on the other 'and, has none of yer blooming stand-orfishness. See
+what I mean?" He clutched them each by an arm--he was between them.
+"Look 'ere. How do you think I could pick up this blinking
+lingo--quick?"
+
+"Make violent love to Toinette and ask her to teach you. There's
+nothing like it," said Doggie.
+
+"Who's Toinette?"
+
+"The nice old lady in the kitchen."
+
+Mo flung his arm away. "Oh, go and boil yourself!" said he.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the making of love to the old woman in the kitchen led to
+possibilities of which Mo Shendish never dreamed. They never dawned on
+Doggie until he found himself at it that evening.
+
+It was dusk. The men were lounging and smoking about the courtyard.
+Doggie, who had long since exchanged poor Taffy Jones's imperfect
+penny whistle for a scientific musical instrument ordered from Bond
+Street, was playing, with his sensitive skill, the airs they loved. He
+had just finished "Annie Laurie"--"Man," Phineas used to declare,
+"when Doggie Trevor plays 'Annie Laurie,' he has the power to take
+your heart by the strings and drag it out through your eyes"--he had
+just come to the end of this popular and gizzard-piercing tune and
+received his meed of applause, when Toinette came out of the kitchen,
+two great zinc crocks in her hands, and crossed to the pump in the
+corner of the yard. Three or four would-be pumpers, among them Doggie,
+went to her aid.
+
+"All right, mother, we'll see to it," said one of them.
+
+So they pumped and filled the crocks, and one man got hold of one and
+Doggie got hold of another, and they carried them to the kitchen
+steps.
+
+"_Merci, monsieur_," said Toinette to the first; and he went away with
+a friendly nod. But to Doggie she said, "_Entrez, monsieur_." And
+monsieur carried the two crocks over the threshold and Toinette shut
+the door behind him. And there, sitting over some needlework in a
+corner of the kitchen by a lamp, sat Jeanne.
+
+She looked up rather startled, frowned for the brief part of a second,
+and regarded him inquiringly.
+
+"I brought in monsieur to show him the photograph of _mon petiot_, the
+comrade who sent me the snuff," explained Toinette, rummaging in a
+cupboard.
+
+"May I stay and look at it?" asked Doggie, buttoning up his tunic.
+
+"_Mais parfaitement, monsieur_," said Jeanne. "It is Toinette's
+kitchen."
+
+"_Bien sur_," said the old woman, turning with the photograph, that
+of a solid young infantryman. Doggie made polite remarks. Toinette put
+on a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles and scanned the picture. Then
+she handed it to Jeanne.
+
+"Don't you think there is a great deal of resemblance?"
+
+Jeanne directed a comparing glance at Doggie and smiled.
+
+"Like two little soldiers in a pod," she said.
+
+Toinette talked of her _petiot_ who was at St. Mihiel. It was far
+away, very far. She sighed as though he were fighting remote in the
+Caucasus.
+
+Presently came the sharp ring of a bell. Jeanne put aside her work and
+rose.
+
+"It is my aunt who has awakened."
+
+But Toinette was already at the door. "I will go up, Ma'amselle
+Jeanne. Do not derange yourself."
+
+She bustled away. Once more the pair found themselves alone together.
+
+"If you don't continue your sewing, mademoiselle," said Doggie, "I
+shall think that I am disturbing you, and must bid you good night."
+
+Jeanne sat down and resumed her work. A sensation, more like laughter
+than anything else, fluttered round Doggie's heart.
+
+"_Voulez-vous vous asseoir, Monsieur--Trevor?_"
+
+"_Vous etes bien aimable, Mademoiselle Jeanne_," said Doggie, sitting
+down on a straight-backed chair by the oilcloth-covered kitchen table
+which was between them.
+
+"May I move the lamp slightly?" he asked, for it hid her from his
+view.
+
+He moved it somewhat to her left. It threw shadows over her features,
+accentuating their appealing sadness. He watched her, and thought of
+McPhail's words about the ghosts. He noted too, as the needle went in
+and out of the fabric, that her hands, though roughened by coarse
+work, were finely made, with long fingers and delicate wrists. He
+broke a silence that grew embarrassing.
+
+"You seem to have suffered greatly, Mademoiselle Jeanne," he said
+softly.
+
+Her lips quivered. "_Mais oui, monsieur._"
+
+"Monsieur Trevor," he said.
+
+She put her hands and needlework in her lap and looked at him full.
+
+"And you too have suffered?"
+
+"I? Oh no."
+
+"But, yes. I have seen too much of it not to know. I see in the eyes.
+Your two comrades to-day--they are good fellows--but they have not
+suffered. You are different."
+
+"Not a bit," he declared. "We're just little indistinguishable bits of
+the conglomerate Tommy."
+
+"And I, monsieur, have the honour to say that you are different."
+
+This was very flattering. More--it was sweet unction, grateful to many
+a bruise.
+
+"How?" said he.
+
+"You do not belong to their world. Your Tommies are wonderful in their
+kindness and chivalry--until I met them I had never seen an Englishman
+in my life--I had imbecile ideas--I thought they would be without
+manners--_un peu insultants_. I found I could walk among them, without
+fear, as if I were a princess. It is true."
+
+"It is because you have the air of a princess," said Doggie; "a sad
+little disguised princess of a fairy-tale, who is recognized by all
+the wild boars and rabbits in the wood."
+
+She glanced aside. "There isn't a woman in Frelus who is differently
+treated. I am only an ignorant girl, half bourgeoise, half peasant,
+monsieur, but I have my woman's knowledge--and I know there is a
+difference between you and the others. You are a son of good family.
+It is evident. You have a delicacy of mind and of feeling. You were
+not born to be a soldier."
+
+"Mademoiselle Jeanne," cried Doggie, "do I appear as bad as that? Do
+you take me for an _embusque manque_?"
+
+Now an _embusque_ is a slacker who lies in the safe ambush of a soft
+job. And an _embusque manque_ is a slacker who fortuitously has
+failed to win the fungus wreath of slackerdom.
+
+She flushed deep red.
+
+"_Je ne suis pas malhonnete, monsieur._"
+
+Doggie spread himself elbow-wise over the table. The girl's visible
+register of moods was fascinating.
+
+"Pardon, Mademoiselle Jeanne. You are quite right. But it's not a
+question of what I was born to be--but what I was trained to be. I
+wasn't trained to be a soldier. But I do my best."
+
+She looked at him waveringly.
+
+"Forgive me, mademoiselle."
+
+"But you flash out on the point of honour."
+
+Doggie laughed. "Which shows that I have the essential of the
+soldier."
+
+Doggie's manner was not without charm. She relented.
+
+"You know very well what I mean," she said rebukingly. "And you don't
+deserve that I should tell it to you. It was my intention to say that
+you have sacrificed many things to make yourself a simple soldier."
+
+"Only a few idle habits," said Doggie.
+
+"You joined, like the rest, as a volunteer."
+
+"Of course."
+
+"You abandoned everything to fight for your country?"
+
+Under the spell of her dark eyes Doggie spoke according to Phineas
+after the going West of Taffy Jones, "I think, Mademoiselle Jeanne, it
+was rather to fight for my soul."
+
+She resumed her sewing. "That's what I meant long ago," she remarked
+with the first draw of the needle. "No one could fight for his soul
+without passing through suffering." She went on sewing. Doggie,
+shrinking from a reply that might have sounded fatuous, remained
+silent; but he realized a wonderful faculty of comprehension in
+Jeanne.
+
+After awhile he said: "Where did you learn all your wisdom,
+Mademoiselle Jeanne?"
+
+"At the convent, I suppose. My father gave me a good education."
+
+"An English poet has said, 'Knowledge comes, but Wisdom
+lingers'"--Doggie had rather a fight to express the meaning exactly in
+French--"You don't gather wisdom in convents."
+
+"It is true. Since then I have seen many things."
+
+She stared across the room, not at Doggie, and he thought again of the
+ghosts.
+
+"Tell me some of them, Mademoiselle Jeanne," he said in a low voice.
+
+She shot a swift glance at him and met his honest brown eyes.
+
+"I saw my father murdered in front of me," she said in a harsh voice.
+
+"My God!" said Doggie.
+
+"It was on the Retreat. We lived in Cambrai, my father and mother and
+I. He was a lawyer. When we heard the Germans were coming, my father,
+somewhat of an invalid, decided to fly. He had heard of what they had
+already done in Belgium. We tried to go by train. _Pas moyen._ We took
+to the road, with many others. We could not get a horse--we had
+postponed our flight till too late. Only a handcart, with a few
+necessaries and precious things. And we walked until we nearly died of
+heat and dust and grief. For our hearts were very heavy, monsieur. The
+roads, too, were full of the English in retreat. I shall not tell you
+what I saw of the wounded by the roadside. I sometimes see them now in
+my dreams. And we were helpless. We thought we would leave the main
+roads, and at last we got lost and found ourselves in a little wood.
+We sat down to rest and to eat. It was cool and pleasant, and I
+laughed, to cheer my parents, for they knew how I loved to eat under
+the freshness of the trees." She shivered. "I hope I shall never have
+to eat a meal in a wood again. We had scarcely begun when a body of
+cavalry, with strange pointed helmets, rode along the path and, seeing
+us, halted. My mother, half dead with terror, cried out, '_Mon Dieu,
+ce sont des Uhlans!_' The leader, I suppose an officer, called out
+something in German. My father replied. I do not understand German, so
+I did not know and shall never know what they said. But my father
+protested in anger and stood in front of the horse making gestures.
+And then the officer took out his revolver and shot him through the
+heart, and he fell dead. And the murderer turned his horse's head
+round and he laughed. He laughed, monsieur."
+
+"Damn him!" said Doggie, in English. "Damn him!"
+
+He gazed deep into Jeanne's dark tearless eyes. She continued in the
+same even voice:
+
+"My mother became mad. She was a peasant, a Bretonne, where the blood
+is fierce, and she screamed and clung to the bridle of the horse. And
+he rode her down and the horse trampled on her. Then he pointed at me,
+who was supporting the body of my father, and three men dismounted.
+But suddenly he heard something, gave an order, and the men mounted
+again, and they all rode away laughing and jeering, and the last man,
+in bad French, shouted at me a foul insult. And I was there, Monsieur
+Trevor, with my father dead and my mother stunned and bruised and
+bleeding."
+
+Doggie, sensitive, quivered to the girl's tragedy: he said, with tense
+face:
+
+"God give me strength to kill every German I see!"
+
+She nodded slowly. "No German is a human being. If I were God, I would
+exterminate the accursed race like wolves."
+
+"You are right," said Doggie. A short silence fell. He asked: "What
+happened then?"
+
+"_Mon Dieu_, I almost forget. I was overwhelmed with grief and horror.
+Some hours afterwards a small body of English infantry came--many of
+them had bloodstained bandages. An officer who spoke a little French
+questioned me. I told him what had happened. He spoke with another
+officer, and because I recognized the word 'Uhlans,' I knew they were
+anxious about the patrol. They asked me the way to some place--I
+forget where. But I was lost. They looked at a map. Meanwhile my
+mother had recovered consciousness. I gave her a little wine from the
+bottle we had opened for our repast. I happened to look at the officer
+and saw him pass his tongue over his cracked lips. All the men had
+thrown themselves down by the side of the road. I handed him the
+bottle and the little tin cup. To my surprise, he did not drink. He
+said: 'Mademoiselle, this is war, and we are all in very great peril.
+My men are dying of thirst, and if you have any more of the wine, give
+it to them and they will do their utmost to conduct your mother and
+yourself to a place of safety.' Alas! there were only three bottles in
+our little basket of provisions. Naturally I gave it all--together
+with the food. He called a sergeant, who took the provisions and
+distributed them, while I was tending my mother. But I noticed that
+the two officers took neither bite nor sup. It was only afterwards,
+Monsieur Trevor, that I realized I had seen your great English
+gentlemen.... Then they dug a little grave, for my father.... It was
+soon finished ... the danger was grave ... and some soldiers took a
+rope and pulled the handcart, with my mother lying on top of our
+little possessions, and I walked with them, until the whole of my life
+was blotted out with fatigue. We got on to the Route Nationale again
+and mingled again with the Retreat. And in the night, as we were still
+marching, there was a halt. I went to my mother. She was cold,
+monsieur, cold and stiff. She was dead."
+
+She paused tragically. After a few moments she continued:
+
+"I fainted. I do not know what happened till I recovered consciousness
+at dawn. I found myself wrapped in one of our blankets, lying under
+the handcart. It was the market-square of a little town. And there
+were many--old men and women and children, refugees like me. I rose
+and found a paper--a leaf torn from a notebook--fixed to the handcart.
+It was from the officer, bidding me farewell. Military necessity
+forced him to go on with his men--but he had kept his word, and
+brought me to a place of safety.... That is how I first met the
+English, Monsieur Trevor. They had carried me, I suppose, on the
+handcart, all night, they who were broken with weariness. I owe them
+my life and my reason."
+
+"And your mother?"
+
+"How should I know? _Elle est restee la-bas_," she replied simply.
+
+She went on with her sewing. Doggie wondered how her hand could be so
+steady. There was a long silence. What words, save vain imprecations
+on the accursed race, were adequate? Presently her glance rested for a
+second or two on his sensitive face.
+
+"Why do you not smoke, Monsieur Trevor?"
+
+"May I?"
+
+"Of course. It calms the nerves. I ought not to have saddened you with
+my griefs."
+
+Doggie took out his pink packet and lit a cigarette.
+
+"You are very understanding, Mademoiselle Jeanne. But it does a
+selfish man like me good to be saddened by a story like yours. I have
+not had much opportunity in my life of feeling for another's
+suffering. And since the war--I am _abruti_."
+
+"You? Do you think if I had not found you just the reverse, I should
+have told you all this?"
+
+"You have paid me a great compliment, Mademoiselle Jeanne." Then,
+after awhile, he asked, "From the market-square of the little town you
+found means to come here?"
+
+"Alas, no!" she said, putting her work in her lap again. "I made my
+way, with my handcart--it was easy--to our original destination, a
+little farm belonging to the eldest brother of my father. The Farm of
+La Folette. He lived there alone, a widower, with his farm-servants.
+He had no children. We thought we were safe. Alas! news came that the
+Germans were always advancing. We had time to fly. All the farm-hands
+fled, except Pere Grigou, who loved him. But my uncle was obstinate.
+To a Frenchman, the soil he possesses is his flesh and his blood. He
+would die rather than leave it. And my uncle had the murder of my
+father and mother on his brain. He told Pere Grigou to take me away,
+but I stayed with him. It was Pere Grigou who forced us to hide. That
+lasted two days. There was a well in the farm, and one night Pere
+Grigou tied up my money and my mother's jewellery and my father's
+papers, _enfin_, all the precious things we had, in a packet of
+waterproof and sank it with a long string down the well, so that the
+Germans could not find it. It was foolish, but he insisted. One day my
+uncle and Pere Grigou went out of the little copse where we had been
+hiding, in order to reconnoitre, for he thought the Germans might be
+going away; and my uncle, who would not listen to me, took his gun.
+Presently I heard a shot--and then another. You can guess what it
+meant. And soon Pere Grigou came, white and shaking with terror. '_Il
+en a tue un, et on l'a tue!_'"
+
+"My God!" said Doggie again.
+
+"It was terrible," she said. "But they were in their right."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"We lay hidden until it was dark--how they did not find us I don't
+know--and then we escaped across country. I thought of coming here to
+my Aunt Morin, which is not far from La Folette, but I reflected that
+soon the Boches would be here also. And we went on. We got to a high
+road--and once more I was among troops and refugees. I met some kind
+folks in a carriage, a Monsieur and Madame Tarride, and they took me
+in. And so I got to Paris, where I had the hospitality of a friend of
+the Convent who was married."
+
+"And Pere Grigou?"
+
+"He insisted on going back to bury my uncle. Nothing could move him.
+He had not parted from him all his life. They were foster-brothers.
+Where he is now, who knows?" She paused, looked again at her ghosts,
+and continued: "That is all, Monsieur Trevor. The Germans passed
+through here and repassed on their retreat, and, as soon as it was
+safe, I came to help my aunt, who was _souffrante_, and had lost her
+son. Also because I could not live on charity on my friend, for,
+_voyez-vous_, I was without a sou--all my money having been hidden in
+the well by Pere Grigou."
+
+Doggie leant his elbows on the table.
+
+"And you have come through all that, Mademoiselle Jeanne, just as you
+are----?"
+
+"How, just as I am?"
+
+"So gentle and kind and comprehending?"
+
+Her cheek flushed. "I am not the only Frenchwoman who has passed
+through such things and kept herself proud. But the struggle has been
+very hard."
+
+Doggie rose and clenched his fists and rubbed his head from front to
+back in his old indecisive way, and began to swear incoherently in
+English. She smiled sadly.
+
+"_Ah, mon pauvre ami!_"
+
+He wheeled round: "Why do you call me '_mon pauvre ami_'?"
+
+"Because I see that you would like to help me and you can't."
+
+"Jeanne," cried Doggie, bending half over the table which was between
+them.
+
+She rose too, startled, on quick defensive. He said, in reply to her
+glance:
+
+"Why shouldn't I call you Jeanne?"
+
+"You haven't the right."
+
+"What if I gain it?"
+
+"How?"
+
+"I don't know," said Doggie.
+
+The door burst suddenly open and the anxious face of Mo Shendish
+appeared.
+
+"'Ere, you silly cuckoo, don't yer know you're on guard to-night?
+You've just got about thirty seconds."
+
+"Good lord!" cried Doggie, "I forgot. _Bon soir, mademoiselle. Service
+militaire_," and he rushed out.
+
+Mo lingered, with a grin, and jerked a backward thumb.
+
+"If it weren't for old Mo, miss, I don't know what would happen to our
+friend Doggie. I got to look after him like a baby, I 'ave. He's on to
+relieve guard, and if old Mac--that's McPhail"--she nodded recognition
+of the name--"and I hadn't remembered, miss, he'd 'ave been in what
+yer might call a 'ole. Compree?"
+
+"_Oui._ Yes," she said. "_Garde. Sentinelle._"
+
+"Sentinel. Sentry. Right."
+
+"He--was--late," she said, picking out her few English words from
+memory.
+
+"Yuss," grinned Mo.
+
+"He--guard--house?"
+
+"Bless you, miss, you talk English as well as I do," cried the
+admiring Mo. "Yuss. When his turn comes, up and down in the street, by
+the gate." He saw her puzzled look. "Roo. Port," said he.
+
+"_Ah! oui, je comprends_," smiled Jeanne. "_Merci, monsieur, et bon
+soir._"
+
+"Good night, miss," said Mo.
+
+Some time later he disturbed Phineas, by whose side he slept, from his
+initial preparation for slumber.
+
+"Mac! Is there any book I could learn this blinking lingo from?"
+
+"Try Ovid--'Art of Love,'" replied Phineas sleepily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The spell of night sentry duty had always been Doggie's black hour. To
+most of the other military routine he had grown hardened or deadened.
+In the depths of his heart he hated the life as much as ever. He had
+schooled himself to go through it with the dull fatalism of a convict.
+It was no use railing at inexorable laws, irremediable conditions. The
+only alternative to the acceptance of his position was military
+punishment, which was far worse--to say nothing of the outrage to his
+pride. It was pride that kept the little ironical smile on his lips
+while his nerves were almost breaking with strain. The first time he
+came under fire he was physically sick--not from fear, for he stood it
+better than most, keeping an eye on his captain, whose function it was
+to show an unconcerned face--but from sheer nervous reaction against
+the hideous noise, the stench, the ghastly upheaval of the earth, the
+sight of mangled men. When the bombardment was over, if he had been
+alone, he would have sat down and cried. Never had he grown accustomed
+to the foulness of the trenches. The sounder his physical condition,
+the more did his delicately trained senses revolt. It was only when
+fierce animal cravings dulled these senses that he could throw himself
+down anywhere and sleep, that he could swallow anything in the way of
+food or drink. The rats nearly drove him crazy.... Yet, what had once
+been to him a torture, the indecent, nerve-rasping publicity of the
+soldier's life, had now become a compensation. It was not so much in
+companionship, like his friendly intercourse with Phineas and Mo, that
+he found an anodyne, but in the consciousness of being magnetically
+affected by the crowd of his fellows. They offered him protection
+against himself. Whatever pangs of self-pity he felt, whatever wan
+little pleadings for the bit of fine porcelain compelled to a rough
+usage which vessels of coarser clay could disregard came lingeringly
+into his mind, he dared not express them to a living soul around. On
+the contrary, he set himself assiduously to cultivate the earthenware
+habit of spirit; not to feel, not to think, only to endure. To a
+humorously incredulous Jeanne he proclaimed himself _abruti_. Finally,
+the ceaseless grind of the military machine left him little time to
+think.
+
+But in the solitary sleepless hours of sentry duty there was nothing
+to do but think; nothing wherewith to while away the time but an orgy
+of introspection. First came the almost paralysing sense of
+responsibility. He must keep, not only awake, but alert to the
+slightest sound, the slightest movement. Lives of men depended on his
+vigilance. A man can't screw himself up to this beautifully emotional
+pitch for very long and be an efficient sentry. If he did, he would
+challenge mice and shoot at cloud-shadows and bring the deuce of a
+commotion about his ears. And this Doggie, who did not lack ordinary
+intelligence, realized. So he strove to think of other things. And the
+other things all focussed down upon his Doggie self. And he never knew
+what to make of his Doggie self at all. For he would curse the things
+that he once loved as being the cause of his inexpiable shame, and at
+the same time yearn for them with an agony of longing.
+
+And he would force himself to think of Peggy and her unswerving
+loyalty. Of her weekly parcel of dainty food, which had arrived that
+morning. Of the joy of Phineas and the disappointment of the
+unsophisticated Mo over the _pate de foie gras_. But his mind
+wandered back to his Doggie self and its humiliations and its needs
+and its yearnings. He welcomed enemy flares and star-shells and
+excursions and alarms. They kept him from thinking, enabled him to
+pass the time. But in the dead, lonely, silent dark, the hours were
+like centuries. He dreaded them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To-night they fled like minutes. It was a pitch-black night, spitting
+fine rain. It was one of Doggie's private grievances that it
+invariably rained when he was on sentry duty. One of Heaven's little
+ways of strafing him for Doggieism. But to-night he did not heed it.
+Often the passage of transport had been a distraction for which he had
+longed and which, when it came, was warmly welcome. But to-night,
+during his spell, the roadway of the village was as still as death,
+and he loved the stillness and the blackness. Once he had welcomed
+familiar approaching steps. Now he resented them.
+
+"Who goes there?"
+
+"Rounds."
+
+And the officer, recognized, flashing an electric torch, passed on.
+The diminuendo of his footsteps was agreeable to Doggie's ear. The
+rain dripped monotonously off his helmet on to his sodden shoulders,
+but Doggie did not mind. Now and then he strained an eye upwards to
+that part of the living-house that was above the gateway. Little
+streaks of light came downwards through the shutter slats. Now it
+required no great intellectual effort to surmise that the light
+proceeded, not from the bedroom of the invalid Madame Morin, who would
+naturally have the best bedroom situated in the comfortable main block
+of the house, but from that of somebody else. Madame Morin was
+therefore ruled out. So was Toinette--ridiculous to think of her
+keeping all night vigil. There remained only Jeanne.
+
+It was supremely silly of him to march with super-martiality of tread
+up the pavement; but then, it is often the way of young men to do
+supremely silly things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day was fuss and bustle, from the private soldier's point of
+view. They were marching back to the trenches that night, and a crack
+company must take over with flawless equipment and in flawless bodily
+health. In the afternoon Doggie had a breathing spell of leisure. He
+walked boldly into the kitchen.
+
+"Madame," said he to Toinette, "I suppose you know that we are leaving
+to-night?"
+
+The old woman sighed. "It is always like that. They come, they make
+friends, they go, and they never return."
+
+"You mustn't make the little soldier weep, _grand'mere_," said
+Doggie.
+
+"No. It is the _grand'meres_ who weep," replied Toinette.
+
+"I'll come back all right," said he. "Where is Mademoiselle Jeanne?"
+
+"She is upstairs, monsieur."
+
+"If she had gone out, I should have been disappointed," smiled Doggie.
+
+"You desire to see her, monsieur?"
+
+"To thank her before I go for her kindness to me."
+
+The old face wrinkled into a smile.
+
+"It was not then for the _beaux yeux_ of the _grand'mere_ that you
+entered?"
+
+"_Si, si!_ Of course it was," he protested. "But one, nevertheless,
+must be polite to mademoiselle."
+
+"_Aie! aie!_" said the old woman, bustling out: "I'll call her."
+
+Presently Jeanne came in alone, calm, cool, and in her plain black
+dress, looking like a sweet Fate. From the top of her dark brown hair
+to her trim, stout shoes, she gave the impression of being exquisitely
+ordered, bodily and spiritually.
+
+"It was good of you to come," he cried, and they shook hands
+instinctively, scarcely realizing it was for the first time. But he
+was sensitive to the frank grip of her long and slender fingers.
+
+"Toinette said you wished to see me."
+
+"We are going to-night. I had to come and bid you _au revoir_!"
+
+"Is the company returning?"
+
+"So I hear the quartermaster says. Are you glad?"
+
+"Yes, I am glad. One doesn't like to lose friends."
+
+"You regard me as a friend, Jeanne?"
+
+"_Pour sur_," she replied simply.
+
+"Then you don't mind my calling you Jeanne?" said he.
+
+"What does it matter? There are graver questions at stake in the
+world."
+
+She crossed the kitchen and opened the yard door which Doggie had
+closed behind him. Meeting a query in his glance, she said:
+
+"I like the fresh air, and I don't like secrecy."
+
+She leaned against the edge of the table and Doggie, emboldened,
+seated himself on the corner by her side, and they looked out into the
+little flagged courtyard in which the men, some in grey shirt-sleeves,
+some in tunics, were lounging about among the little piles of
+accoutrements and packs. Here and there a man was shaving by the aid
+of a bit of mirror supported on a handcart. Jests and laughter were
+flung in the quiet afternoon air. A little group were feeding pigeons
+which, at the sight of crumbs, had swarmed iridescent from the tall
+_colombier_ in the far corner near the gabled barn. As Jeanne did not
+speak, at last Doggie bent forward and, looking into her eyes, found
+them moist with tears.
+
+"What is the matter, Jeanne?" he asked in a low voice.
+
+"The war, _mon ami_," she replied, turning her face towards him, "the
+haunting tragedy of the war. I don't know how to express what I mean.
+If all those brave fellows there went about with serious faces, I
+should not be affected. _Mais, voyez-vous, leur gaiete fait peur._"
+
+_Their laughter frightened her._ Doggie, with his quick
+responsiveness, understood. She had put into a phrase the haunting
+tragedy of the war. The eternal laughter of youth quenched in a gurgle
+of the throat.
+
+He said admiringly: "You are a wonderful woman, Jeanne."
+
+Her delicate shoulders moved, ever so little. "A woman? I suppose I
+am. The day before we fled from Cambrai it was my _jour de fete_. I
+was eighteen."
+
+Doggie drew in his breath with a little gasp. He had thought she was
+older than he.
+
+"I am twenty-seven," he said.
+
+She looked at him calmly and critically. "Yes. Now I see. Until now I
+should have given you more. But the war ages people. Isn't it true?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Doggie. Then he had a brilliant idea. "But when
+the war is over, we'll remain the same age for ever and ever."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I'm sure of it. We'll still both be in our twenties. Let us suppose
+the war puts ten years of experience and suffering, and what not, on
+to our lives. We'll only then be in our thirties--and nothing possibly
+can happen to make us grow any older. At seventy we shall still be
+thirty."
+
+"You are consoling," she admitted. "But what if the war had added
+thirty years to one's life? What if I felt now an old woman of fifty?
+But yes, it is quite true. I have the feelings and the disregard of
+convention of a woman of fifty. If there had been no war, do you think
+I could have gone among an English army--_sans gene_--like an old
+matron? Do you think a _jeune fille francaise bien elevee_ could
+have talked to you alone as I have done the past two days? Absurd. The
+explanation is the war."
+
+Doggie laughed. "_Vive la guerre!_" said he.
+
+"_Mais non!_ Be serious. We must come to an understanding."
+
+In her preoccupation she forgot the rules laid down for the guidance
+of _jeunes filles bien elevees_, and unthinkingly perched herself
+full on the kitchen table on the corner of which Doggie sat in a
+one-legged way. Doggie gasped again. All her assumed age fell from her
+like a garment. Youth proclaimed itself in her attitude and the supple
+lines of her figure. She was but a girl after all, a girl with a
+steadfast soul that had been tried in unutterable fires; but a girl
+appealing, desirable. He felt mighty protective.
+
+"An understanding? All right," said he.
+
+"I don't want you to go away and think ill of me--that I am one of
+those women--_les affranchies_ I think they call them--who think
+themselves above social laws. I am not. I am _bourgeoise_ to my
+finger-tips, and I reverence all the old maxims and prejudices in
+which I was born. But conditions are different. It is just like the
+priests who have been called into the ranks. To look at them from the
+outside, you would never dream they were priests--but their hearts and
+their souls are untouched."
+
+She was so earnest, in her pathetic youthfulness, to put herself right
+with him, so unlike the English girls of his acquaintance, who would
+have taken this chance companionship as a matter of course, that his
+face lost the smile and became grave, and he met her sad eyes.
+
+"That was very bravely said, Jeanne. To me you will be always the most
+wonderful woman I have ever known."
+
+"What caused you to speak to me the first day?" she asked, after a
+pause.
+
+"I explained to you--to apologize for staring rudely into your house."
+
+"It was not because you said to yourself, 'Here is a pretty girl
+looking at me. I'll go and talk to her'?"
+
+Doggie threw his leg over the corner of the table and stood on
+indignant feet.
+
+"Jeanne! How could you----?" he cried.
+
+She leaned back, her open palms on the table. The rare light came into
+her eyes.
+
+"That's what I wanted to know. Now we understand each other, Monsieur
+Trevor."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't call me Monsieur Trevor," said he.
+
+"What else can I call you? I know no other name."
+
+Now he had in his pocket a letter from Peggy, received that morning,
+beginning "My dearest Marmaduke." Peggy seemed far away, and the name
+still farther. He was deliberating whether he should say "_Appelez-moi
+James_" or "_Appelez-moi Jacques_," and inclining to the latter as
+being more picturesque and intimate, when she went on:
+
+"_Tenez_, what is it your comrades call you? 'Doggie'?"
+
+"Say that again."
+
+"Dog-gie."
+
+He had never dreamed that the hated appellation could sound so
+adorable. Well--no one except his officers called him by any other
+name, and it came with a visible charm from her lips. It brought about
+the most fascinating flash of the tips of her white teeth. He laughed.
+
+"_A la guerre comme a la guerre._ If you call me that, you belong to
+the regiment. And I promise you, it is a fine regiment."
+
+"_Eh bien_, Monsieur Dog-gie----"
+
+"There's no monsieur about it," he declared, very happily. "Tommies
+are not _messieurs_."
+
+"I know one who is," said Jeanne.
+
+So they talked in a young and foolish way, and Jeanne for a while
+forgot the tragedies that had gone and the tragedies that might come;
+and Doggie forgot both the peacock and ivory room and the fetid hole
+into which he would have to creep when the night's march was over.
+They talked of simple things. Of Toinette, who had been with Aunt
+Morin ever since she could remember.
+
+"You have won her heart with your snuff."
+
+"She has won mine with her discretion."
+
+"Oh-h!" said Jeanne, shocked.
+
+And so on and so forth, as they sat side by side on the kitchen table,
+swinging their feet. After a while they drifted to graver questions.
+
+"What will happen to you, Jeanne, if your aunt dies?"
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_" said Jeanne----
+
+"But you will inherit the property, and the business?"
+
+By no means. Aunt Morin had still a son, who was already very old. He
+must be forty-six. He had expatriated himself many years ago and was
+in Madagascar. The son who was killed was her Benjamin, the child of
+her old age. But all her little fortune would go to the colonial
+Gaspard, whom Jeanne had never seen.
+
+But the Farm of La Folette?
+
+"It has been taken and retaken by Germans and French and English, _mon
+pauvre ami_, until there is no farm left. You ought to understand
+that."
+
+It was a thing that Doggie most perfectly understood: a patch of
+hideous wilderness, of poisoned, shell-scarred, ditch-defiled, barren,
+loathsome earth.
+
+And her other relations? Only an uncle, her father's youngest brother,
+a cure in Douai in enemy occupation. She had not heard of him since
+the flight from Cambrai.
+
+"But what is going to become of you?"
+
+"So long as one keeps a brave heart what, does it matter? I am strong.
+I have a good enough education. I can earn my living. Oh, don't make
+any mistake. I have no pity for myself. Those who waste efforts in
+pitying themselves are not of the stuff to make France victorious."
+
+"I am afraid I have done a lot of self-pitying, Jeanne."
+
+"Don't do it any more," she said gently.
+
+"I won't," said he.
+
+"If you keep to the soul you have gained, you can't," said Jeanne.
+
+"_Toujours la sagesse._"
+
+"You are laughing at me."
+
+"God forbid," said Doggie.
+
+Phineas and Mo came strolling towards the kitchen door.
+
+"My two friends, to pay their visit of adieu," said he.
+
+Jeanne slid from the table and welcomed the newcomers in her calm,
+dignified way. Once more Doggie found himself regarding her as his
+senior in age and wisdom and conduct of life. The pathetic girlishness
+which she had revealed to him had gone. The age-investing ghosts had
+returned.
+
+Mo grinned, interjected a British Army French word now and then, and
+manifested delight when Jeanne understood. Phineas talked laboriously,
+endeavouring to expound his responsibility for Doggie's welfare. He
+had been his tutor. He used the word "_tuteur_."
+
+"That's a guardian, you silly ass," cried Doggie. "He means
+'_instituteur_.' Go on. Or, rather, don't go on. The lady isn't
+interested."
+
+"_Mais si_," said Jeanne, catching at the last English word. "It
+interests me greatly."
+
+"_Merci, mademoiselle_," said Phineas grandly. "I only wish to explain
+to you that while I live you need have no fear for Doggie. I will
+protect him with my body from shells and promise to bring him safe
+back to you. And so will Monsieur Shendish."
+
+"What's that?" asked Mo.
+
+Phineas translated.
+
+"_Oui, oui, oui!_" said Mo, nodding vigorously.
+
+A spot of colour burned on Jeanne's pale cheek, and Doggie grew red
+under his tanned skin. He cursed Phineas below his breath, and
+exchanged a significant glance with Mo. Jeanne said, in her even
+voice:
+
+"I hope all the Three Musketeers will come back safe."
+
+Mo extended a grimy hand. "Well, good-bye, miss! McPhail here and I
+must be going."
+
+She shook hands with both, wishing them _bonne chance_, and they
+strolled away. Doggie lingered.
+
+"You mustn't mind what McPhail says. He's only an old imbecile."
+
+"You have two comrades who love you. That is the principal thing."
+
+"I think they do, each in his way. As for Mo----"
+
+"Mo?" She laughed. "He is delicious."
+
+"Well----" said he reluctantly, after a pause, "good-bye, Jeanne."
+
+"_Au revoir_--Dog-gie."
+
+"If I shouldn't come back--I mean if we were billeted somewhere
+else--I should like to write to you."
+
+"Well--Mademoiselle Bossiere, chez Madame Morin, Frelus. That is the
+address."
+
+"And will you write too?"
+
+Without waiting for a reply, he scribbled what was necessary on a
+sheet torn from a notebook and gave it to her. Their hands met.
+
+"_Au revoir_, Jeanne."
+
+"_Au revoir_, Dog-gie. But I shall see you again to-night."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"It is my secret. _Bonne chance._"
+
+She smiled and turned to leave the kitchen. Doggie clattered into the
+yard.
+
+"Been doin' a fine bit o' coartin', Doggie," said Private Appleyard
+from Taunton, who was sitting on a box near by and writing a letter on
+his knees.
+
+"Not so much of your courting, Spud," replied Doggie cheerfully. "Who
+are you writing to? Your best girl?"
+
+"I be writin' to my own lawful mizzus," replied Spud Appleyard.
+
+"Then give her my love. Doggie Trevor's love," said Doggie, and
+marched away through the groups of men.
+
+At the entrance to the barn he fell in with Phineas and Mo.
+
+"Laddie," said the former, "although I meant it at the time as a
+testimony of my affection, I've been thinking that what I said to the
+young leddy may not have been over-tactful."
+
+"It was taking it too much for granted," explained Mo, "that you and
+her were sort of keeping company."
+
+"You're a pair of idiots," said Doggie, sitting down between them, and
+taking out his pink packet of Caporal. "Have a cigarette?"
+
+"Not if I wos dying of----Look 'ere," said Mo, with the light on his
+face of the earnest seeker after Truth. "If a chap ain't got no food,
+he's dying of 'unger. If he ain't got no drink, he's dying of thirst.
+What the 'ell is he dying of if he ain't got no tobakker?"
+
+"Army Service Corps," said Phineas, pulling out his pipe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was dark when A Company marched away. Doggie had seen nothing more
+of Jeanne. He was just a little disappointed; for she had promised. He
+could not associate her with light words. Yet perhaps she had kept her
+promise. She had said "_Je vous verrai._" She had not undertaken to
+exhibit herself to him. He derived comfort from the thought. There
+was, indeed, something delicate and subtle and enchanting in the
+notion. As on the previous day, the fine weather had changed with the
+night and a fine rain was falling. Doggie, an indistinguishable
+pack-laden ant in the middle of the four-abreast ribbon of similar
+pack-laden ants, tramped on in silence, thinking his own thoughts. A
+regiment going back to the trenches in the night is, from the point of
+view of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, a very lugubrious
+procession. The sight of it would have hurt an old-time poet. An
+experienced regiment has no lovely illusions. It knows what it is
+going to, and the knowledge makes it serious. It would much rather be
+in bed or on snug straw than plodding through the rain to four days
+and nights of eternal mud and stinking high-explosive shell. It sets
+its teeth and is a very stern, silent, ugly conglomeration of men.
+
+"---- (_the adjective_) night," growled Doggie's right-hand neighbour.
+
+"---- (_the adjective_)" Doggie responded mechanically.
+
+But to Doggie it was less "----" (_adjective as before_) than usual.
+Jeanne's denunciation of self-pity had struck deep. Compared with her
+calamities, half of which would have been the stock-in-trade of a
+Greek dramatist wherewith to wring tears from mankind for a couple of
+thousand years, what were his own piffling grievances? As for the
+"----" night, instead of a drizzle he would have welcomed a
+waterspout. Something that really mattered.... Let the heavens or the
+Hun rain molten lead. Something that would put him on an equality with
+Jeanne.... Jeanne, with her dark haunting eyes and mobile lips, and
+her slim young figure and her splendid courage. A girl apart from the
+girls he had known, apart from the women he had known, the women whom
+he had imagined--and he had not imagined many--his training had
+atrophied such imaginings of youth. Jeanne. Again her name conjured up
+visions of the Great Jeanne of Domremy. If only he could have seen
+her once again!
+
+At the north end of the village the road took a sharp twist, skirting
+a bit of rising ground. There was just a glimmer of a warning light
+which streamed athwart the turning ribbon of laden ants. And as Doggie
+wheeled through the dim ray he heard a voice that rang out clear:
+
+"_Bonne chance!_"
+
+He looked up swiftly. Caught the shadow of a shadow. But it was
+enough. It was Jeanne. She had kept her promise. The men responded
+incoherently, waving their hands, and Doggie's shout of "_Merci!_" was
+lost. But though he knew, with a wonderful throbbing knowledge, that
+Jeanne's cry was meant for him alone, he was thrilled by his comrades'
+instant response to Jeanne's voice. Not a man but he knew that it was
+Jeanne. But no matter. The company paid homage to Jeanne. Jeanne who
+had come out in the rain and the wind and the dark, and had waited,
+waited, to redeem her promise. "_C'est mon secret._"
+
+He ploughed on. Left, right! Thud, thud! Left, right! Jeanne, Jeanne!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+In the village of Frelus life went on as before. The same men, though
+a different regiment, filled its streets and its houses; for by what
+signs could the inhabitants distinguish one horde of English
+infantrymen from another? Once a Highland battalion had been billeted
+on them, and for the first day or so they derived some excitement from
+the novelty of the costume; the historic Franco-Scottish tradition
+still lingered, and they welcomed the old allies of France with
+especial kindliness; but they found that the habits and customs of the
+men in kilts were identical, in their French eyes, with those of the
+men in trousers. It is true the Scotch had bagpipes. The village
+turned out to listen to them in whole-eyed and whole-eared wonder. And
+the memory of the skirling music remained indelible. Otherwise there
+was little difference. And when a Midland regiment succeeded a South
+Coast regiment, where was the difference at all? They might be the
+same men.
+
+Jeanne, standing by the kitchen door, watching the familiar scene in
+the courtyard, could scarcely believe there had been a change. Now and
+again she caught herself wondering why she could not pick out any one
+of her Three Musketeers. There were two or three soldiers, as usual,
+helping Toinette with her crocks at the well. There she was, herself,
+moving among them, as courteously treated as though she were a
+princess. Perhaps these men, whom she heard had come from
+manufacturing centres, were a trifle rougher in their manners than her
+late guests; but the intention of civility and rude chivalry was no
+less sincere. They came and asked for odds and ends very politely. To
+all intents and purposes they were the same set of men. Why was not
+Doggie among them? It seemed very strange.
+
+After a while she made some sort of an acquaintance with a sergeant
+who had a few words of French and appeared anxious to improve his
+knowledge of the language. He explained that he had been a teacher in
+what corresponded to the French _Ecoles Normales_. He came from
+Birmingham, which he gave her to understand was a glorified Lille. She
+found him very earnest, very self-centred in his worship of
+efficiency. As he had striven for his class of boys, so now was he
+striving for his platoon of men. In a dogmatic way he expounded to her
+ideals severely practical. In their few casual conversations he
+interested her. The English, from the first terrible day of their
+association with her, had commanded her deep admiration. But until
+lately--in the most recent past--her sex, her national aloofness and
+her ignorance of English, had restrained her from familiar talk with
+the British Army. But now she keenly desired to understand this
+strange, imperturbable, kindly race. She put many questions to the
+sergeant--always at the kitchen door, in full view of the courtyard,
+for she never thought of admitting him into the house--and his
+answers, even when he managed to make himself intelligible, puzzled
+her exceedingly. One of his remarks led her to ask for what he was
+fighting, beyond his apparently fixed idea of the efficiency of the
+men under his control. What was the spiritual idea at the back of him?
+
+"The democratization of the world and the universal brotherhood of
+mankind."
+
+"When the British Lion shall lie down with the German Lamb?"
+
+He flashed a suspicious glance. Strenuous schoolmasters in primary
+schools have little time for the cultivation of a sense of humour.
+
+"Something of the sort must be the ultimate result of the war."
+
+"But in the meantime you have got to change the German wolf into the
+_petit mouton_. How are you going to do it?"
+
+"By British efficiency. By proving to him that we are superior to him
+in every way. We'll teach him that it doesn't pay to be a wolf."
+
+"And do you think he will like being transformed into a lamb, while
+you remain a lion?"
+
+"I don't suppose so, but we'll give him his chance to try to become a
+lion too."
+
+Jeanne shook her head. "No, monsieur, wolf he is and wolf he will
+remain. A wolf with venomous teeth. The civilized world must see that
+the teeth are always drawn."
+
+"I'm speaking of fifty years hence," said the sergeant.
+
+"And I of three hundred years hence."
+
+"You're mistaken, mademoiselle."
+
+Jeanne shook her head. "No. I'm not mistaken. Tell me. Why do you want
+to become brother to the Boche?"
+
+"I'm not going to be his brother till the war's over," said the
+sergeant stolidly. "At present I am devoting all my faculties to
+killing as many of him as I can."
+
+She smiled. "Sufficient for the day is the good thereof. Go on killing
+them, monsieur. The more you kill the fewer there will be for your
+children and your grandchildren to lie down with."
+
+She left him and tried to puzzle out his philosophy. For the ordinary
+French philosophy of the war is very simple. They have no
+high-falutin, altruistic ideas of improving the Boche. They don't care
+a tinker's curse what happens to the unholy brood beyond the Rhine, so
+long as they are beaten, humiliated, subjected: so long as there is no
+chance of their ever deflowering again with their brutality the sacred
+soil of France. The French mind cannot conceive the idea of this
+beautiful brotherhood; but, on the contrary, rejects it as something
+loathsome, something bordering on spiritual defilement....
+
+No; Jeanne could not accept the theory that we were waging war for the
+ultimate chastening and beatification of Germany. She preferred
+Doggie's reason for fighting. For his soul. There was something which
+she could grip. And having gripped it, it was something around which
+her imagination could weave a web of noble fancy. After all, when she
+came to think of it, every one of the Allies must be fighting for his
+soul. For his soul's sake had not her father died? Although she knew
+no word of German, it was obvious that the Uhlan officer had murdered
+him because he had refused to betray his country. And her uncle. To
+fight for his soul, had he not gone out with his heroic but futile
+sporting gun? And this pragmatical sergeant? What else had led him
+from his schoolroom to the battlefield? Why couldn't he be honest
+about it, like Doggie?
+
+She missed Doggie. He ought to be there, as she had often seen him
+unobserved, talking with his friends or going about his military
+duties, or playing the flageolet with the magical touch of the
+musician. She knew far more of Doggie than he was aware of ... And at
+night she prayed for the little English soldier who was facing Death.
+
+She had much time to think of him during the hours when she sat by the
+bedside of Aunt Morin, who talked incessantly of Francois-Marie who
+was killed on the Argonne, and Gaspard who, as a _territorial_, was no
+doubt defending Madagascar from invasion. And it was pleasant to think
+of him, because he was a new distraction from tragical memories. He
+seemed to lay the ghosts ... He was different from all the Englishmen
+she had met. The young officers who had helped her in her flight, had
+very much the same charm of breeding, very much the same intonation of
+voice; instinctively she knew him to be of the same social caste; but
+they, and the officers whom she saw about the street and in the
+courtyard, when duty called them there, had the military air of
+command. And this her little English soldier had not. Of course, he
+was only a private, and privates are trained to obedience. She knew
+that perfectly well. But why was he not commanding instead of obeying?
+There was a reason for it. She had seen it in his eyes. She wished she
+had made him talk more about himself. Perhaps she had been
+unsympathetic and selfish. He assumed, she reflected, a certain
+_cranerie_ with his fellows--and _cranerie_ is "swagger" bereft of
+vulgarity--we have no word to connote its conception in a French
+mind--and she admired it; but her swift intuition pierced the
+assumption. She divined a world of hesitancies behind the Musketeer
+swing of the shoulders. He was so gentle, so sensitive, so quick to
+understand. And yet so proud. And yet again so unconfessedly
+dependent. Her woman's protective instinct responded to a mute appeal.
+
+"But, Ma'amselle Jeanne, you are wet through, you are perished with
+cold. What folly have you been committing?" Toinette scolded, when she
+returned after wishing Doggie the last "_bonne chance_."
+
+"The folly of putting my Frenchwoman's heart (_mon coeur de
+Francaise_) into the hands of a brave little soldier to fight with
+him in the trenches."
+
+"_Mon Dieu, ma'amselle_, you had better go straight to bed, and I will
+bring you a _bon tilleul_, which will calm your nerves and produce a
+good perspiration."
+
+So Toinette put Jeanne to bed and administered the infallible infusion
+of lime leaves, and Jeanne was never the worse for her adventure. But
+the next day she wondered a little why she had undertaken it. She had
+a vague idea that it paid a little debt of sympathy.
+
+An evening or two afterwards Jeanne was sewing in the kitchen when
+Toinette, sitting in the arm-chair by the extinct fire, fished out of
+her pocket the little olive-wood box with the pansies and
+forget-me-nots on the lid, and took a long pinch of snuff. She did it
+with somewhat of an air which caused Jeanne to smile.
+
+"_Dites donc_, Toinette, you are insupportable with your snuff-box.
+One would say a marquise of the old school."
+
+"Ah, Ma'amselle Jeanne," said the old woman, "you must not laugh at
+me. I was just thinking that, if anything happened to the _petit
+monsieur_, I couldn't have the heart to go on putting his snuff up my
+old nose."
+
+"Nothing will happen to him," said Jeanne.
+
+The old woman sighed and re-engulfed the snuff-box. "Who knows? From
+one minute to another who knows whether the little ones who are dear
+to us are alive or dead?"
+
+"And this _petit monsieur_ is dear to you, Toinette?" Jeanne asked, in
+her even voice, without looking up from her sewing.
+
+"Since he resembles my _petiot_."
+
+"He will come back," said Jeanne.
+
+"I hope so," said the old woman mournfully.
+
+In spite of manifold duties, Jeanne found the days curiously long. She
+slept badly. The tramp of the sentry below her window over the archway
+brought her no sense of comfort, as it had done for months before the
+coming of Doggie. All the less did it produce the queer little thrill
+of happiness which was hers when, looking down through the shutter
+slats she had identified in the darkness, on a change of guard, the
+little English soldier to whom she had spoken so intimately. And when
+he had challenged the rounds, she had recognized his voice.... If she
+had obeyed an imbecile and unmaidenly impulse, she would have drawn
+open the shutter and revealed herself. But apart from maidenly
+shrinkings, familiarity with war had made her realize the sacred
+duties of a sentry, and she had remained in discreet seclusion, awake
+until his spell was over. But now the rhythmical beat of the heavy
+boots kept her from sleeping and would have irritated her nerves
+intolerably had not her sound common sense told her that the stout
+fellow who wore them was protecting her from the Hun, together with a
+million or so of his fellow-countrymen.
+
+She found herself counting the days to Doggie's return.
+
+"At last, it is to-morrow!" she said to Toinette.
+
+"What is it to-morrow?" asked the old woman.
+
+"The return of our regiment," replied Jeanne.
+
+"That is good. We have a regiment now," said Toinette ironically.
+
+The Midland company marched away--as so many had marched away before;
+but Jeanne did not go to the little embankment at the turn of the road
+to wish anyone good luck. She stood at the house door, as she had
+always done, to watch them pass in the darkness; for there is always
+something in the sight of men going into battle which gives you a lump
+in the throat. For Jeanne it had almost grown into a religious
+practice.
+
+The sergeant had told her that the new-comers would arrive at dawn.
+She slept a little; awoke with a start as day began to break; dressed
+swiftly, and went downstairs to wait. And then her ear caught the
+rumble and the tramp of the approaching battalion. Presently transport
+rolled by, and squads of men, haggard in the grey light, bending
+double under their packs, staggered along to their billets. And then
+came a rusty crew, among whom she recognized McPhail's tall gaunt
+figure. She stood by the gateway, bareheaded, in her black dress and
+blue apron, defying the sharp morning air, and watched them pass
+through. She saw Mo Shendish, his eyes on the heels of the man in
+front. She recognized nearly all. But the man she looked for was not
+there.
+
+He could not have passed without her seeing him; but as soon as the
+gateway was clear, she ran into the courtyard and fled across it to
+cut off the men. There was no Doggie. Blank disappointment was
+succeeded by sudden terror.
+
+Phineas saw her coming. He stumbled up to her, dropped his pack at her
+feet, and spread out both his hands. She lost sight of the horde of
+weary clay-covered men around her. She cried:
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"He is dead?"
+
+"No one knows."
+
+"But you must know, you!" cried Jeanne, with a new fear in her eyes
+which Phineas could not bear to meet. "You promised to bring him
+back."
+
+"It was not my fault," said Phineas. "He was out last night--no, the
+night before, this is morning--repairing barbed wire. I was not with
+him."
+
+"_Mais, mon Dieu_, why not?"
+
+"Because the duties of soldiers are arranged for them by their
+officers, mademoiselle."
+
+"It is true. Pardon. But continue."
+
+"A party went out to repair wire. It was quite dark. Suddenly a German
+rifle-shot gave the alarm. The enemy threw up star-shells and the
+front trenches on each side opened fire. The wiring party, of course,
+lay flat on the ground. One of them was wounded. When it was all
+over--it didn't last long--our men got back, bringing the wounded
+man."
+
+"He is severely wounded? Speak," cried Jeanne.
+
+"The wounded man was not Doggie. Doggie went out with the party, but
+he did not come back. That's why I said no one knows where he is."
+
+She stiffened. "He is lying out there. He is dead."
+
+"Shendish and I and Corporal Wilson over there, who was with the
+party, got permission to go out and search. We searched all round
+where the repair had been going on. But we could not find him."
+
+"_Merci!_ I ought not to have reproached you," she said steadily.
+"_C'est un grand malheur._"
+
+"You are right. Life for me is no longer of much value."
+
+She looked at him in her penetrating way.
+
+"I believe you," she said. "For the moment, _au revoir_. You must be
+worn out with fatigue."
+
+She left him and walked through the straggling men, who made
+respectful way for her. All knew of her friendship with Doggie Trevor
+and all realized the nature of this interview. They liked Doggie
+because he was good-natured and plucky, and never complained and would
+play the whistle on march as long as breath enough remained in his
+body. As his uncle, the Dean, had said, breed told. In a curious,
+half-grudging way they recognized the fact. They laughed at his
+singular inefficiency in the multitudinous arts of the handy-man,
+proficiency in which is expected from the modern private, but they
+knew that he would go on till he dropped. And knowing that, they saved
+him from many a reprimand which his absurd efforts in the arts
+aforesaid would have brought upon him. And now that Doggie was gone,
+they deplored his loss. But so many had gone. So many had been
+deplored. Human nature is only capable of a certain amount of
+deploring while retaining its sanity. The men let the pale French
+girl, who was Doggie Trevor's friend, pass by in respectful
+silence--and that, for them, was their final tribute to Doggie Trevor.
+
+Jeanne passed into the kitchen. Toinette drew a sharp breath at the
+sight of her face.
+
+"_Quoi? Il n'est pas la?_"
+
+"No," said Jeanne. "He is wounded." It was impossible to explain to
+Toinette.
+
+"Badly?"
+
+"They don't know."
+
+"_Oh, la, la!_" sighed Toinette. "That always happens. That is what
+I told you."
+
+"We have no time to think of such things," said Jeanne.
+
+The regimental cooks came up for the hot water, and soon the hungry,
+weary, nerve-racked men were served with the morning meal. And Jeanne
+stood in the courtyard in front of the kitchen door and helped with
+the filling of the tea-kettles, as though no little English soldier
+called "Dog-gie" had ever existed in the regiment.
+
+The first pale shaft of sunlight fell upon the kitchen side of the
+courtyard, and in it Jeanne stood illuminated. It touched the shades
+of gold in her dark brown hair, and lit up her pale face and great
+unsmiling eyes. But her lips smiled valiantly.
+
+"What do yer think, Mac," said Mo Shendish, squatting on the
+flagstones, "do you think she was really sweet on him?"
+
+"Man," replied Phineas, similarly engaged, "all I know is that she has
+added him to her collection of ghosts. It's not an over-braw company
+for a lassie to live with."
+
+And then, soon afterwards, the trench-broken men stumbled into the
+barn to sleep, and all was quiet again, and Jeanne went about her
+daily tasks with the familiar hand of death once more closing icily
+around her heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The sick-room was very hot, and Aunt Morin very querulous. Jeanne
+opened a window, but Aunt Morin complained of currents of air. Did
+Jeanne want to kill her? So Jeanne closed the window. The internal
+malady from which Aunt Morin suffered, and from which it was unlikely
+that she would recover, caused her considerable pain from time to
+time; and on these occasions she grew fractious and hard to bear with.
+The retired septuagenarian village doctor who had taken the modest
+practice of his son, now far away with the Army, advised an operation.
+But Aunt Morin, with her peasant's prejudice, declined flatly. She
+knew what happened in those hospitals where they cut people up just
+for the pleasure of looking at their insides. She was not going to let
+a lot of butchers amuse themselves with her old carcass. _Oh non!_
+When it pleased the _bon Dieu_ to take her, she was ready: the _bon
+Dieu_ required no assistance from _ces messieurs_. And even if she had
+consented, how to take her to Paris, and once there, how to get the
+operation performed, with all the hospitals full and all the surgeons
+at the Front? The old doctor shrugged his shoulders and kept life in
+her as best he might.
+
+To-day, in the close room, she told a long story of the doctor's
+neglect. The medicine he gave her was water and nothing else--water
+with nothing in it. And to ask people to pay for that! She would not
+pay. What would Jeanne advise?
+
+"_Oui, ma tante_," said Jeanne.
+
+"_Oui, ma tante?_ But you are not listening to what I say. At the
+least one can be polite."
+
+"I am listening, _ma tante_."
+
+"You should be grateful to those who lodge and nourish you."
+
+"I am grateful, _ma tante_," said Jeanne patiently.
+
+Aunt Morin complained of being robbed on all sides. The doctor,
+Toinette, Jeanne, the English soldiers--the last the worst of all.
+Besides not paying sufficiently for what they had, they were so
+wasteful in the things they took for nothing. If they begged for a few
+faggots to make a fire, they walked away with the whole woodstack. She
+knew them. But all soldiers were the same. They thought that in time
+of war civilians had no rights. One of these days she would get up and
+come downstairs and see for herself the robbery that was going on.
+
+The windows were tightly sealed. The sunlight hurting Aunt Morin's
+eyes, the outside shutters were half closed. The room felt like a
+stuffy, overheated, overcrowded sepulchre. An enormous oak press, part
+of her Breton dowry, took up most of the side of one wall. This, and a
+great handsome chest, a couple of tables, a stiff arm-chair, were all
+too big for the moderately sized apartment. Coloured prints of sacred
+subjects, tilted at violent angles, seemed eager to occupy as much
+air-space as possible. And in the middle of the floor sprawled the
+vast oaken bed, with its heavy green brocade curtains falling tentwise
+from a great tarnished gilt crown in the ceiling.
+
+Jeanne said nothing. What was the good? She shifted the invalid's hot
+pillow and gave her a drink of tisane, moving about the
+over-furnished, airless room in her calm and efficient way. Her face
+showed no sign of trouble, but an iron band clamped her forehead above
+her burning eyes. She could perform her nurse's duties, but it was
+beyond her power to concentrate her mind on the sick woman's unending
+litany of grievances. Far away beyond that darkened room, beyond that
+fretful voice, she saw vividly a hot waste, hideous with holes and
+rusted wire and shapes of horror; and in the middle of it lay huddled
+up a little khaki-clad figure with the sun blazing fiercely in his
+unblinking eyes. And his very body was beyond the reach of man, even
+of the most lion-hearted.
+
+"_Mais qu'as-tu, ma fille?_" asked Aunt Morin. "You do not speak. When
+people are ill they need to be amused."
+
+"I am sorry, _ma tante_, but I am not feeling very well to-day. It
+will pass."
+
+"I hope so. Young people have no business not to feel well. Otherwise
+what is the good of youth?"
+
+"It is true," Jeanne assented.
+
+But what, she thought, was indeed the good of youth, in these terrible
+days of war? Her own was but a panorama of death.... And now one more
+figure, this time one of youth too, had joined it.
+
+Toinette came in.
+
+"Ma'amselle Jeanne, there are two English officers downstairs who wish
+to speak to you."
+
+"What do they want?" Jeanne asked wearily.
+
+"They do not say. They just ask for Ma'amselle Bossiere."
+
+"They never leave one in peace, _ces gens-la_," grumbled Aunt Morin.
+"If they want more concessions in price, do not let them frighten you.
+Go to Monsieur le Maire to have it arranged with justice. These people
+would eat the skin off your back. Remember, Jeanne."
+
+"_Bien, ma tante_," said Jeanne.
+
+She went downstairs, conscious of gripping herself in order to discuss
+with the officers whatever business of billeting was in hand. For she
+had dealt with all such matters since her arrival in Frelus. She
+reached the front door and saw a dusty car with a military chauffeur
+at the wheel and two officers, standing on the pavement at the foot of
+the steps. One she recognized as the commander of the company to which
+her billeted men belonged. The other was a stranger, a lieutenant,
+with a different badge on his cap. They were talking and laughing
+together, like old friends newly met, which by one of the myriad
+coincidences of the war was really the case. On the appearance of
+Jeanne they drew themselves up and saluted politely.
+
+"Mademoiselle Bossiere?"
+
+"_Oui, monsieur._" Then, "Will you enter, messieurs?"
+
+They entered the vestibule where the great cask gleamed in its
+polished mahogany and brass. She bade them be seated.
+
+"Mademoiselle, Captain Willoughby tells me that you had billeted here
+last week a soldier by the name of Trevor," said the stranger, in
+excellent French, taking out notebook and pencil.
+
+Jeanne's lips grew white. She had not suspected their errand.
+
+"_Oui, monsieur._"
+
+"Did you have much talk with him?"
+
+"Much, monsieur."
+
+"Pardon my indiscretion, mademoiselle--it is military service, and I
+am an Intelligence officer--but did you tell him about your private
+affairs?"
+
+"Very intimately," said Jeanne.
+
+The Intelligence officer made a note or two and smiled pleasantly--but
+Jeanne could have struck him for daring to smile. "You had every
+reason for thinking him a man of honour?"
+
+"What's the good of asking her that, Smithers?" Captain Willoughby
+interrupted in English. "Haven't I given you my word? The man's a
+mysterious little devil, but any fool can see that he's a gentleman."
+
+"What do you say?" Jeanne asked tensely.
+
+"_Je parle francais tres peu_," replied Captain Willoughby with an
+air of regret.
+
+Smithers explained. "Monsieur le Capitaine says that he guarantees the
+honesty of the soldier, Trevor."
+
+Jeanne flashed, rigid. "Who could doubt it, monsieur? He was a
+gentleman, a _fils de famille_, of the English aristocracy."
+
+"Excuse me for a moment," said Smithers.
+
+He went out. Jeanne, uncomprehending, sat silent. Captain Willoughby,
+cursing an idiot education, composed in his head a polite French
+sentence concerning the weather, but before he had finished Smithers
+reappeared with a strange twisted packet in his hand. He held it out
+to Jeanne.
+
+"Mademoiselle, do you recognize this?"
+
+She looked at it dully for a moment; then suddenly sprang to her feet
+and clenched her hands and stared open-mouthed. She nodded. She could
+not speak. Her brain swam. They had come to her about Doggie, who was
+dead, and they showed her Pere Grigou's packet. What was the
+connection between the two?
+
+Willoughby rose impulsively. "For God's sake, Smithers, let her down
+easy. She'll be fainting all over the place in a minute."
+
+"If this is your property, mademoiselle," said Smithers, laying the
+packet on the chenille-covered table, "you have to thank your friend
+Trevor for restoring it to you."
+
+She put up both hands to her reeling head.
+
+"But he is dead, monsieur!"
+
+"Not a bit of it. He's just as much alive as you or I."
+
+Jeanne swayed, tried to laugh, threw herself half on a chair, half
+over the great cask, and broke down in a passion of tears.
+
+The two men looked at each other uncomfortably.
+
+"For exquisite tact," said Willoughby, "commend me to an Intelligence
+officer."
+
+"But how the deuce was I to know?" Smithers muttered with an injured
+air. "My instructions were to find out the truth of a cock-and-bull
+story--for that's what it seemed to come to. And a girl in
+billets--well--how was I to know what she was like?"
+
+"Anyhow, here we've got hysterics," said Willoughby.
+
+"But who told her the fellow was dead?"
+
+"Why, his pals. I thought so myself. When a man's missing where's one
+to suppose him to be--having supper at the Savoy?"
+
+"Well, I give women up," said Smithers. "I thought she'd be glad."
+
+"I believe you're a married man?"
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"Well, I ain't," said Willoughby, and in a couple of strides he stood
+close to Jeanne. He laid a gentle hand on her heaving shoulders.
+
+"_Pas tue! Soolmong blesse_," he shouted.
+
+She sprang, as it were, to attention, like a frightened recruit.
+
+"He is wounded?"
+
+"Not very seriously, mademoiselle." Smithers, casting an indignant
+glance at his superior officer's complacent smile, reassumed mastery
+of the situation. "A Boche sniper got him in the leg. It will put him
+out of service for a month or two. But there is no danger."
+
+"_Grace a  Dieu!_" said Jeanne.
+
+She leaned for a while against the cask, her hands behind her, looking
+away from the two men. And the two young men stood, somewhat
+embarrassed, looking away from her and from each other. At last she
+said, with an obvious striving for the even note in her voice:
+
+"I ask your pardon, messieurs, but sometimes sudden happiness is more
+overwhelming than misfortune. I am now quite at your service."
+
+"My God! she's a wonder," murmured Willoughby, who was fair,
+unmarried, and impressionable. "Go on with your dirty work."
+
+Smithers, conscious of linguistic superiority--in civil life he had
+been concerned with the wine trade in Bordeaux--proceeded to carry out
+his instructions. He turned over a leaf in his notebook and poised a
+ready pencil.
+
+"I must ask you, mademoiselle, some formal questions."
+
+"Perfectly, monsieur," said Jeanne.
+
+"Where was this packet when last you saw it?"
+
+She made her statement, calmly.
+
+"Can you tell me its contents?"
+
+"Not all, monsieur. I, as a young girl, was not in the full confidence
+of my parents. But I remember my uncle saying there were about twenty
+thousand francs in notes, some gold--I know not how much--some
+jewellery of my mother's--oh, a big handful!--rings--one a hoop of
+emeralds and diamonds--a brooch with a black pearl belonging to my
+great-grandmother----"
+
+"It is enough, mademoiselle," said Smithers, jotting down notes.
+"Anything else besides money and jewellery?"
+
+"There were papers of my father, share certificates, bonds--_que
+sais-je, moi_?"
+
+Smithers opened the packet, which had already been examined.
+
+"You're a witness, sir, to the identification of the property."
+
+"No," said Willoughby, "I'm just a baby captain of infantry, and
+wonder why the brainy Intelligence department doesn't hand the girl
+her belongings and decently clear out."
+
+"I've got to make my report, sir," said Smithers stiffly.
+
+So the schedule was produced and the notes were solemnly counted,
+twenty-one thousand five hundred francs, and the gold four hundred
+francs, and the jewels were identified, and the bonds, of which Jeanne
+knew nothing, were checked by a list in her father's handwriting, and
+Jeanne signed a paper with Smithers's fountain-pen, and Willoughby
+witnessed her signature, and thus she entered into possession of her
+heritage.
+
+The officers were about to depart, but Jeanne detained them.
+
+"Messieurs, you must pardon me, but I am quite bewildered. As far as I
+can understand, Monsieur Trevor rescued the packet from the well at my
+uncle's farm of La Folette, and got wounded in doing so."
+
+"That is quite so," said Smithers.
+
+"But, monsieur, they tell me he was with a party in front of his
+trench mending wire. How did he reach the well of La Folette? I don't
+comprehend at all."
+
+Smithers turned to Willoughby.
+
+"Yes. How the dickens did he know the exact spot to go for?"
+
+"We had taken over a new sector, and I was getting the topography
+right with a map. Trevor was near by doing nothing, and as he's a man
+of education, I asked him to help me. There was the site of the farm
+marked by name, and the ruined well away over to the left in No Man's
+Land. I remember the beggar calling out 'La Folette!' in a startled
+voice, and when I asked him what was the matter, he said 'Nothing,
+sir!'"
+
+Smithers translated, and continued: "You see, mademoiselle, this is
+what happened, as far as I am concerned. I belong to the Lancashire
+Fusiliers. Our battalion is in the trenches farther up the line than
+our friends. Well, just before dawn yesterday morning a man rolled
+over the parapet into our trench, and promptly fainted. He had been
+wounded in the leg, and was half dead from loss of blood. Under his
+tunic was this package. We identified him and his regiment, and fixed
+him up and took him to the dressing-station. But things looked very
+suspicious. Here was a man who didn't belong to us with a little
+fortune in loot on his person. As soon as he was fit to be
+interrogated, the C.O. took him in hand. He told the C.O. about you
+and your story. He regarded the nearness of the well as something to
+do with Destiny, and resolved to get you back your property--if it was
+still there. The opportunity occurred when the wiring party was
+alarmed. He crept out to the ruins by the well, fished out the packet,
+and a sniper got him. He managed to get back to our lines, having lost
+his way a bit, and tumbled into our trench."
+
+"But he was in danger of death all the time," said Jeanne, losing the
+steadiness of her voice.
+
+"He was. Every second. It was one of the most dare-devil,
+scatter-brained things I've ever heard of. And I've heard of many,
+mademoiselle. The only pity is that instead of being rewarded, he will
+be punished."
+
+"Punished?" cried Jeanne.
+
+"Not very severely," laughed Smithers. "Captain Willoughby will see to
+that. But reflect, mademoiselle. His military duty was to remain with
+his comrades, not to go and risk his life to get your property.
+Anyhow, it is clear that he was not out for loot.... Of course, they
+sent me here as Intelligence officer, to get corroboration of his
+story." He paused for a moment. Then he added: "Mademoiselle, I must
+congratulate you on the restoration of your fortune and the possession
+of a very brave friend."
+
+For the first time the red spots burned on Jeanne's pale face.
+
+"_Je vous remercie infiniment, monsieur._"
+
+"_Il sera_ all right," said Willoughby.
+
+The officers saluted and went their ways. Jeanne took up her packet
+and mounted to her little room in a dream. Then she sat down on her
+bed, the unopened packet by her side, and strove to realize it all.
+But the only articulate thought came to her in the words which she
+repeated over and over again:
+
+"_Il a fait cela pour moi! Il a fait cela pour moi!_"
+
+He had done that for her. It was incredible, fantastic, thrillingly
+true, like the fairy-tales of her childhood. The little sensitive
+English soldier, whom his comrades protected, whom she herself in a
+feminine way longed to protect, had done this for her. In a shy,
+almost reverent way, she opened out the waterproof covering, as though
+to reassure herself of the reality of things. For the first time since
+she left Cambrai a smile came into her eyes, together with grateful
+tears.
+
+"_Il a fait cela pour moi! Il a fait cela pour moi!_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A while later she relieved Toinette's guard in the sick-room.
+
+"_Eh bien?_ And the two officers?" queried Aunt Morin, after Toinette
+had gone. "They have stayed a long time. What did they want?"
+
+Jeanne was young. She had eaten the bread of dependence, which Aunt
+Morin, by reason of racial instinct and the stress of sorrow and
+infirmity, had contrived to render very bitter. She could not repress
+an exultant note in her voice. Doggie, too, accounted for something;
+for much.
+
+"They came to bring good news, _ma tante_. The English have found all
+the money and the jewels and the share certificates that Pere Grigou
+hid in the well of La Folette."
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_ It is true?"
+
+"_Oui, ma tante._"
+
+"And they have restored them to you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It is extraordinary. It is truly extraordinary. At last these English
+seem to be good for something. And they found that and gave it to you
+without taking anything?"
+
+"Without taking anything," said Jeanne.
+
+Aunt Morin reflected for a few moments, then she stretched out a thin
+hand.
+
+"_Ma petite Jeanne cherie_, you are rich now."
+
+"I don't know exactly," replied Jeanne, with a mingling of truth and
+caution. "I have enough for the present."
+
+"How did it all happen?"
+
+"It was part of a military operation," said Jeanne.
+
+Perhaps later she might tell Aunt Morin about Doggie. But now the
+thing was too sacred. Aunt Morin would question, question maddeningly,
+until the rainbow of her fairy-tale was unwoven. The salient fact of
+the recovery of her fortune should be enough for Aunt Morin. It was.
+The old woman of the pain-pinched features looked at her wistfully
+from sunken grey eyes.
+
+"And now that you are rich, my little Jeanne, you will not leave your
+poor old aunt, who loves you so much, to die alone?"
+
+"_Ah, mais non! mais non! mais non!_" cried Jeanne indignantly. "What
+do you think I am made of?"
+
+"Ah!" breathed Aunt Morin, comforted.
+
+"Also," said Jeanne, in the matter-of-fact French way, "_Si tu veux_,
+I will henceforward pay for my lodging and nourishment."
+
+"You are very good, my little Jeanne," said Aunt Morin. "That will be
+a great help, for, _vois-tu_, we are very poor."
+
+"_Oui, ma tante._ It is the war."
+
+"Ah, the war, the war; this awful war! One has nothing left."
+
+Jeanne smiled. Aunt Morin had a very comfortably invested fortune
+left, for the late Monsieur Morin, corn, hay and seed merchant, had
+been a very astute person. It would make little difference to the
+comfort of Aunt Morin, or to the prospects of Cousin Gaspard in
+Madagascar, whether the present business of Veuve Morin et Fils went
+on or not. Of this Aunt Morin, in lighter moods, had boasted many
+times.
+
+"Every one must do what they can," said Jeanne.
+
+"Perfectly," said Aunt Morin. "You are a young girl who well
+understands things. And now--it is not good for young people to stay
+in a sick-room--one needs the fresh air. _Va te distraire, ma petite._
+I am quite comfortable."
+
+So Jeanne went out to distract a self already distraught with great
+wonder, great pride and great fear.
+
+He had done that for her. The wonder of it bewildered her, the pride
+of it thrilled her. But he was wounded. Fear smothered her joy. They
+had said there was no danger. But soldiers always made light of
+wounds. It was their way in this horrible war, in the intimate midst
+of which she had her being. If a man was not dead, he was alive, and
+thereby accounted lucky. In their gay optimism they had given him a
+month or two of absence from the regiment. But even in a month or
+two--where would the regiment be? Far, far away from Frelus. Would
+she ever see Doggie again?
+
+To distract herself she went down the village street, bareheaded, and
+up the lane that led to the little church. The church was empty, cool,
+and smelt of the hill-side. Before the tinsel-crowned, mild-faced
+image of the Virgin were spread the poor votive offerings of the
+village. And Jeanne sank on her knees, and bowed her head, and,
+without special prayer or formula of devotion, gave herself into the
+hands of the Mother of Sorrows.
+
+She walked back comforted, vaguely conscious of a strengthening of
+soul. In the vast cataclysm of things her own hopes and fears and
+destiny mattered very little. If she never saw Doggie again, if Doggie
+recovered and returned to the war and was killed, her own grief
+mattered very little. She was but a stray straw, and mattered very
+little. But what mattered infinitely, what shone with an immortal
+flame, though it were never so tiny, was the Wonderful Spiritual
+Something that had guided Doggie through the jaws of death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening she had a long talk in the kitchen with Phineas. The news
+of Doggie's safety had been given out by Willoughby, without any
+details. Mo Shendish had leaped about her like a fox-terrier, and she
+had laughed, with difficulty restraining her tears. But to Phineas
+alone she told her whole story. He listened in bewilderment. And the
+greater the bewilderment, the worse his crude translations of English
+into French. She wound up a long, eager speech by saying:
+
+"He has done this for me. Why?"
+
+"Love," replied Phineas bluntly.
+
+"It is more than love," said Jeanne, thinking of the Wonderful
+Spiritual Something.
+
+"If you could understand English," said Phineas, "I would enter into
+the metaphysics of the subject with pleasure, but in French it is
+beyond me."
+
+Jeanne smiled, and turned to the matter-of-fact.
+
+"He will go to England now that he is wounded?"
+
+"He's on the way now," said Phineas.
+
+"Has he many friends there? I ask, because he talks so little of
+himself. He is so modest."
+
+"Oh, many friends. You see, mademoiselle," said Phineas, with a view
+to setting her mind at rest, "Doggie's an important person in his part
+of the country. He was brought up in luxury. I know, because I lived
+with him as his tutor for seven years. His father and mother are dead,
+and he could go on living in luxury now, if he liked."
+
+"He is then, rich--Doggie?"
+
+"He has a fine house of his own in the country, with many servants and
+automobiles, and--wait"--he made a swift arithmetical calculation--"and
+an income of eighty thousand francs a year."
+
+"_Comment?_" cried Jeanne sharply, with a little frown.
+
+Phineas McPhail was enjoying himself, basking in the sunshine of
+Doggie's wealth. Also, when conversation in French resolved itself
+into the statement of simple facts, he could get along famously. So
+the temptation of the glib phrase outran his discretion.
+
+"Doggie has a fortune of about two million francs."
+
+"_Il doit faire un beau mariage_," said Jeanne, with stony calm.
+
+Phineas suddenly became aware of pitfalls and summoned his craft and
+astuteness and knowledge of affairs. He smiled, as he thought,
+encouragingly.
+
+"The only fine marriage is with the person one loves."
+
+"Not always, monsieur," said Jeanne, who had watched the gathering of
+the sagacities with her deep eyes. "In any case"--she rose and held
+out her hand--"our friend will be well looked after in England."
+
+"Like a prince," said Phineas.
+
+He strode away greatly pleased with himself, and went and found Mo
+Shendish.
+
+"Man," said he, "have you ever reflected that the dispensing of
+happiness is the cheapest form of human diversion?"
+
+"What've you been doin' now?" asked Mo.
+
+"I've just left a lassie tottering over with blissful dreams."
+
+"Gorblime!" said Mo, "and to think that if I could sling the lingo, I
+might've done the same!"
+
+But Phineas had knocked all the dreams out of Jeanne. The British
+happy-go-lucky ways of marriage are not those of the French
+_bourgeoisie_, and Jeanne had no notion of British happy-go-lucky
+ways. Phineas had knocked the dream out of Jeanne by kicking Doggie
+out of her sphere. And there was a girl in England in Doggie's sphere
+whom he was to marry. She knew it. A man does not gather his
+sagacities in order to answer crookedly a direct challenge, unless
+there is some necessity.
+
+Well. She would never see Doggie again. He would pass out of her life.
+His destiny called him, if he survived the slaughter of the war, to
+the shadowy girl in England. Yet he had done _that_ for her. For no
+other woman could he ever in this life do _that_ again. It was past
+love. Her brain boggled at an elusive spiritual idea. She was very
+young, flung cleanly trained from the convent into the war's terrific
+tragedy, wherein maiden romantic fancies were scorched in the tender
+bud. Only her honest traditions of marriage remained. Of love she knew
+nothing. She leaped beyond it, seeking, seeking. She would never see
+him again. There she met the Absolute. But he had done _that_ for
+her--that which, she knew not why, but she knew--he would do for no
+other woman. The Splendour of it would be her everlasting possession.
+
+She undressed that night, proud, dry-eyed, heroical, and went to bed,
+and listened to the rhythmic tramp of the sentry across the gateway
+below her window, and suddenly a lump rose in her throat and she fell
+to crying miserably.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+"How are you feeling, Trevor?"
+
+"Nicely, thank you, Sister."
+
+"Glad to be in Blighty again?"
+
+Doggie smiled.
+
+"Good old Blighty!"
+
+"Leg hurting you?"
+
+"A bit, Sister," he replied with a little grimace.
+
+"It's bound to be stiff after the long journey, but we'll soon fix it
+up for you."
+
+"I'm sure you will," he said politely.
+
+The nurse moved on. Doggie drew the cool clean sheet around his
+shoulders and gave himself up to the luxury of bed--real bed. The
+morning sunlight poured through the open windows, attended by a
+delicious odour which after a while he recognized as the scent of the
+sea. Where he was he had no notion. He had absorbed so much of Tommy's
+philosophy as not to care. He had arrived with a convoy the night
+before, after much travel in ambulances by land and sea. If he had
+been a walking case, he might have taken more interest in things; but
+the sniper's bullet in his thigh had touched the bone, and in spite of
+being carried most tenderly about like a baby, he had suffered great
+pain and longed for nothing and thought of nothing but a permanent
+resting-place. Now, apparently, he had found one, and looking about
+him he felt peculiarly content. He seemed to have seen no cleaner,
+whiter, brighter place in the world than this airy ward, swept by the
+sea-breeze. He counted seven beds besides his own. On a table running
+down the ward stood a vase of sweet-peas and a bowl of roses. He
+thought there was never in the world so clean and cool a figure as the
+grey-clad nurse in her spotless white apron, cuffs and cap.
+
+When she passed near him again, he summoned her. She came to his
+bedside.
+
+"What do you call this particular region of fairyland?"
+
+She stared at him for a moment, adjusting things in her mind; for his
+name and style were 35792 Private Trevor, J. M., but his voice and
+phrase were those of her own social class. Then she smiled, and told
+him. The corner of fairyland was a private auxiliary hospital in a
+Lancashire seaside town.
+
+"Lancashire," said Doggie, knitting his brow in a puzzled way, "but
+why have they sent me to Lancashire? I belong to a West Country
+regiment, and all my friends are in the South."
+
+"What's he grousing about, Sister?" suddenly asked the occupant of the
+next bed. "He's the sort of chap that doesn't know when he's in luck
+and when he isn't. I'm in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, I am,
+and when I was hit before, they sent me to a military hospital in
+Inverness. That'd teach you, my lad. This for me every time. You ought
+to have something to grouse at."
+
+"I'm not grousing, you idiot!" said Doggie.
+
+"'Ere--who's he calling an idjit?" cried the Duke of Cornwall's Light
+Infantryman, raising himself on his elbow.
+
+The nurse intervened; explained that no one could be said to grumble
+at a hospital when he called it fairyland. Trevor's question was that
+of one in search of information. He did not realize that in assigning
+men to the various hospitals in the United Kingdom, the authorities
+could not possibly take into account an individual man's local
+association.
+
+"Oh well, if it's only his blooming ignorance----"
+
+"That's just it, mate," smiled Doggie, "my blooming ignorance."
+
+"That's all right," said the nurse. "Now you're friends."
+
+"He had no right to call me an idjit," said the Duke of Cornwall's
+Light Infantryman. He was an aggressive, red-visaged man with bristly
+black hair and stubbly black moustache.
+
+"If you'll agree that he wasn't grousing, Penworthy, I'm sure Trevor
+will apologize for calling you an idiot."
+
+And into the nurse's eyes crept the queer smile of the woman learned
+in the ways of children.
+
+"Didn't I say he wasn't grousing? It was only his ignorance?"
+
+Doggie responded. "I meant no offence, mate, in what I said."
+
+The other growled an acceptance, whereupon the nurse smiled an ironic
+benediction and moved away.
+
+"Where did you get it?" asked Penworthy.
+
+Doggie gave the information and, in his turn, made the polite
+counter-inquiry.
+
+Penworthy's bit of shrapnel, which had broken a rib or two, had been
+acquired just north of Albert. When he left, he said, we were putting
+it over in great quantities.
+
+"That's where the great push is going to be in a few days."
+
+"Aren't you sorry you're out of it?"
+
+"Me?" The Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantryman shook his head. "I take
+things as I finds 'em, and I finds this quite good enough."
+
+So they chatted and, in the soldier's way, became friends. Later, the
+surgeon arrived and probed Doggie's wound and hurt him exquisitely, so
+that the perspiration stood out on his forehead, and his jaws ached
+afterwards from his clenching of them. While his leg was being dressed
+he reflected that, a couple of years ago, if anyone had inflicted a
+twentieth part of such torture on him he would have yelled the house
+down. He remembered, with an inward grin, the anguished precautions on
+which he had insisted whenever he sat down in the chair of his
+expensive London dentist.
+
+"It must have hurt like fun," said the nurse, busily engaged with the
+gauze dressing.
+
+"It's all in the day's work," replied Doggie.
+
+The nurse pinned the bandage and settled him comfortably in bed.
+
+"No one will worry you till dinner-time. You'd better try to have a
+sleep."
+
+So Doggie nodded and smiled and curled up as best he could and slept
+the heavy sleep of the tired young animal. It was only when he awoke,
+physically rested and comparatively free from pain, that his mind,
+hitherto confused, began to work clearly, to straighten out the three
+days' tangle. Yes, just three days. A fact almost impossible to
+realize. Till now it had seemed an eternity.
+
+He lay with his arms crossed under his head and stared at the blue
+sky--a soft, comforting English sky. The ward was silent. Only two
+beds were occupied, one by a man asleep, the other by a man reading a
+novel. His other room-mates, including his neighbour Penworthy, were
+so far convalescent as to be up and away, presumably by the
+life-giving sea, whose rhythmic murmur he could hear. For the first
+time since he awoke to find himself bandaged up in a strange dug-out,
+and surrounded by strange faces, did the chaos of his ideas resolve
+itself into anything like definite memories. Yet many of them were
+still vague.
+
+He had been out there, with the wiring party, in the dark. He had been
+glad, he remembered, to escape from the prison of the trench into the
+open air. He was having some difficulty with a recalcitrant bit of
+wire that refused to come straight and jabbed him diabolically in
+unexpected places, when a shot rang out and German flares went up and
+everybody lay flat on the ground, while bullets spat about them. As he
+lay on his stomach, a flare lit up the ruined well of the farm of La
+Folette. And the well and his nose and his heels were in a bee-line.
+The realization of the fact was the inception of a fascinating idea.
+He remembered that quite clearly. Of course his discovery, two days
+before, of the spot where Jeanne's fortune lay hidden, when Captain
+Willoughby, with map and periscope, had called him into consultation,
+had set his heart beating and his imagination working. But not till
+that moment of stark opportunity had he dreamed of the mad adventure
+which he undertook. There in front of him, at the very farthest three
+hundred yards away, in bee-line with nose and heels--that was the
+peculiar and particular arresting fact--lay Jeanne's fortune. In
+thinking of it he lost count of shots and star-shells, and heard no
+orders and saw no dim forms creeping back to the safety of the trench.
+And then all was darkness and silence.
+
+Doggie lay on his back and stared at the English sky and wondered how
+he did it. His attitude was that of a man who cannot reconcile his
+sober self with the idiot hero of a drunken freak. And yet, at the
+time, the journey to the ruined well seemed the simplest thing in the
+world. The thought of Jeanne's delight shone uppermost in his mind....
+Oh! he was forgetting the star, which hung low beneath a canopy of
+cloud, the extreme point of the famous feet, nose and well bee-line.
+He made for it, now and then walking low, now and then crawling. He
+did not mind his clothes and hands being torn by the unseen refuse of
+No Man's Land. His chief sensation was one of utter loneliness,
+mingled with exultance at freedom. He did not remember feeling afraid:
+which was odd, because when the star-shells had gone up and the German
+trenches had opened fire on the wiring party, his blood had turned to
+water and his heart had sunk into his boots and he had been deucedly
+frightened.
+
+Heaven must have guided him straight to the well. He had known all
+along that he merely would have to stick his hand down to find the
+rope ... and he felt no surprise when the rope actually came in
+contact with his groping fingers; no surprise when he pulled and
+pulled and fished up the packet. It had all been preordained. That was
+the funny part of the business which Doggie now could not understand.
+But he remembered that when he had buttoned his tunic over the
+precious packet, he had been possessed of an insane desire to sing and
+dance. He repressed his desire to sing, but he leaped about and
+started to run. Then the star in which he trusted must have betrayed
+him. It must have shed upon him a ray just strong enough to make him a
+visible object; for, suddenly, _ping!_ something hit him violently on
+the leg and bowled him over like a rabbit into a providential
+shell-hole. And there he lay quaking for a long time, while the lunacy
+of his adventure coarsely and unsentimentally revealed itself.
+
+As to the rest, he was in a state of befogged memory. Only one
+incident in that endless, cruel crawl home remained as a landmark in
+his mind. He had paused to take breath, almost ready to give up the
+impossible flight--it seemed as though he were dragging behind him a
+ton of red-hot iron--when he became conscious of a stench violent in
+his nostrils. He put out a hand. It encountered a horrible, once human
+face, and his fingers touched a round recognizable cap. Horror drove
+him away from the dead German and inspired him with the strength of
+despair.... Then all was fog and dark again until he recovered
+consciousness in the strange dug-out.
+
+There the doctor had said to him: "You must have a cast-iron
+constitution, my lad."
+
+The memory caused a flicker round his lips. It wasn't everybody who
+could crawl on his belly for nearly a quarter of a mile with a bullet
+through his leg, and come up smiling at the end of it. A cast-iron
+constitution! If he had only known it fifteen, even ten years ago,
+what a different life he might have led. The great disgrace would
+never have come upon him.
+
+And Jeanne? What of Jeanne? After he had told his story, they had
+given him to understand that an officer would be sent to Frelus to
+corroborate it, and, if he found it true, that Jeanne would enter into
+possession of her packet. And that was all he knew, for they had
+bundled him out of the front trenches as quickly as possible; and once
+out he had become a case, a stretcher case, and although he had been
+treated, as a case, with almost superhuman tenderness, not a soul
+regarded him as a human being with a personality or a history--not
+even with a military history. And this same military history had
+vaguely worried him all the time, and now that he could think clearly,
+worried him with a very definite worry. In leaving his firing-party he
+had been guilty of a crime. Every misdemeanour in the Army is termed a
+crime--from murder to appearing buttonless on parade. Was it
+desertion? If so, he might be shot. He had not thought of that when he
+started on his quest. It had seemed so simple to account for half an
+hour's absence by saying that he had lost his way in the dark. But
+now, that plausible excuse was invalid....
+
+Doggie thought terribly hard that quiet, sea-scented morning. After
+all, it did not very much matter what they did to him. Sticking him up
+against a wall and shooting him was a remote possibility; he was in
+the British and not the German Army. Field punishments of unpleasant
+kinds were only inflicted on people convicted of unpleasant
+delinquencies. If he were a sergeant or a corporal, he doubtless would
+be broken. But such is the fortunate position of a private, that he
+cannot be degraded to an inferior rank. At the worst they might give
+him cells when he recovered. Well, he could stick it. It didn't
+matter. What really mattered was Jeanne. Was she in undisputed
+possession of her packet? When it was a question of practical warfare,
+Doggie had blind faith in his officers--a faith perhaps even more
+childlike than that of his fellow-privates, for officers were the men
+who had come through the ordeal in which he had so lamentably failed;
+but when it came to administrative affairs, he was more critical. He
+had suffered during his military career from more than one subaltern
+on whose arid consciousness the brain-wave never beat. He had never
+met even a field officer before whom, in the realm of intellect, he
+had stood in awe. If any one of those dimly envisaged and still more
+dimly remembered officers of the Lancashire Fusiliers had ordered him
+to stand on his head on top of the parapet, he would have obeyed in
+cheerful confidence; but he was not at all certain that, in the effort
+to deliver the packet to Jeanne, they would not make an unholy mess of
+things. He saw stacks of dirty yellowish bits of paper, with A.F. No.
+something or the other, floating between Frelus and the Lancashire
+Battalion H.Q. and the Brigade H.Q. and the Divisional H.Q., and so on
+through the majesty of G.H.Q. to the awful War Office itself. In
+pessimistic mood he thought that if Jeanne recovered her property
+within a year, she would be lucky.
+
+What a wonderful creature was Jeanne! He shut his eyes to the blue sky
+and pictured her as she stood in the light, on the ragged escarpment,
+with her garments beaten by wind and rain. And he remembered the weary
+thud, thud of railway and steamer, which had resolved itself, like the
+rhythmic tramp of feet that night, into the ceaseless refrain: "Jeanne!
+Jeanne!"
+
+He opened his eyes again and frowned at the blue English sky. It had
+no business to proclaim simple serenity when his mind was in such a
+state of complex tangle. It was all very well to think of
+Jeanne--Jeanne, whom it was unlikely that Fate would ever allow him to
+see again, even supposing the war ended during his lifetime; but there
+was Peggy--Peggy, his future wife, who had stuck to him loyally
+through good and evil repute. Yes, there was Peggy--not the faintest
+shadow of doubt about it. Doggie kept on frowning at the blue sky.
+Blighty was a very desirable country, but in it you were compelled to
+think. And enforced thought was an infernal nuisance. The beastly
+trenches had their good points after all. There you were not called
+upon to think of anything; the less you thought, the better for your
+job; you just ate your bully-beef and drank your tea and cursed
+whizz-bangs and killed a rat or two, and thanked God you were alive.
+
+Now that he came to look at it in proper perspective, it wasn't at all
+a bad life. When had he been worried to death, as he was now? And
+there were his friends: the humorous, genial, deboshed, yet
+ever-kindly Phineas; dear old Mo Shendish, whose material feet were
+hankering after the vulgar pavement of Mare Street, Hackney, but whose
+spiritual tread rang on golden floors dimly imagined by the Seer of
+Patmos; Barrett, the D. C. M., the miniature Hercules, who, according
+to legend, though, modestly, he would never own to it, seized two
+Boches by the neck and knocked their heads together till they died,
+and who, musically inclined, would sit at his, Doggie's, feet while he
+played on his penny whistle all the sentimental tunes he had ever
+heard of; Sergeant Ballinghall, a tower of a man, a champion amateur
+heavy-weight boxer, with a voice compared with which a megaphone
+sounded like a maiden's prayer, and a Bardolphian nose and an eagle
+eye and the heart of a broody hen, who had not only given him boxing
+lessons, but had pulled him through difficult places innumerable ...
+and scores of others. He wondered what they were doing. He also was
+foolish enough to wonder whether they missed him, forgetting for the
+moment that if a regiment took seriously to missing their comrades
+sent to Kingdom Come or Blighty, they would be more like weeping
+willows than destroyers of Huns.
+
+All the same, he knew that he would always live in the hearts of two
+or three of them, and the knowledge brought him considerable comfort.
+It was strange to realize how the tentacles of his being stretched out
+gropingly towards these (from the old Durdlebury point of view)
+impossible friends. They had grafted themselves on to his life. Or was
+that a correct way of putting it? Had they not, rather, all grafted
+themselves on to a common stock of life, so that the one common sap
+ran through all their veins?
+
+It took him a long time to get this idea formulated, fixed and
+accepted. But Doggie was not one to boggle at the truth, as he saw it.
+And this was the truth. He, James Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall, was
+a Tommy of the Tommies. He had lived the Tommy life intensely. He was
+living it now. And the extraordinary part of it was that he didn't
+want to be anything else but a Tommy. From the social or gregarious
+point of view his life for the past year had been one of unclouded
+happiness. The realization of it, now that he was clearly sizing up
+the ramshackle thing which he called his existence, hit him like the
+butt-end of a rifle. Hardship, cold, hunger, fatigue, stench, rats,
+the dread of inefficiency--all these had been factors of misery which
+he could never eliminate from his soldier's equation; but such free,
+joyous, intimate companionship with real human beings he had never
+enjoyed since he was born. He longed to be back among them, doing the
+same old weary, dreary, things, eating the same old Robinson Crusoe
+kind of food, crouching with them in the same old beastly hole in the
+ground, while the Boche let loose hell on the trench. Mo Shendish's
+grin and his "'Ere, get in aht of the rain," and his grip on his
+shoulder, dragging him a few inches farther into shelter, were a
+spiritual compensation transcending physical discomfitures and perils.
+
+"It's all dam funny," he said half aloud.
+
+But this was England, and although he was hedged about, protected and
+restricted by War Office Regulation Red Tape twisted round to the
+strength of steel cables, yet he was in command of telegraphs, of
+telephones, and, in a secondary degree, of the railway system of the
+United Kingdom.
+
+He found himself deprecating the compulsory facilities of
+communication in the civilized world. The Deanery must be informed of
+his home-coming.
+
+As soon as he could secure the services of a nurse he wrote out three
+telegrams: one addressed "Conover, The Deanery, Durdlebury"; one to
+Peddle at Denby Hall, and one to Jeanne. The one to Jeanne was the
+longest, and was "Reply paid."
+
+"This is going to cost a small fortune, young man," said the nurse.
+
+Doggie smiled as he drew out a L1 treasury note from his soldier's
+pocket-book, the pathetic object containing a form of Will on the
+right-hand flap and on the left the directions for the making of the
+Will, concluding with the world-famous typical signature of Thomas
+Atkins.
+
+"It's a bust, Sister," said he. "I've been saving up for it for
+months."
+
+Then, duty accomplished, he reconciled himself to the corner of
+fairyland in which he had awoke that morning. Things must take their
+course, and while they were taking it, why worry? So long as they
+didn't commit the outrage of giving him bully-beef for dinner, the
+present coolness and comfort sufficed for his happiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+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._"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The X-rays showed the tiniest splinter of bone in Doggie's thigh. The
+surgeon fished it up and the clean wound healed rapidly. The gloomy
+Penworthy's prognostication had not come true. Doggie would not stump
+about at ease on a wooden leg; but in all probability would soon find
+himself back in the firing line--a prospect which brought great cheer
+to Penworthy. Also to Doggie. For, in spite of the charm of the pretty
+hospital, the health-giving sea air, the long rest for body and
+nerves, life seemed flat and unprofitable.
+
+He had written a gay, irreproachable letter to Jeanne, to which
+Jeanne, doubtless thinking it the last word of the episode, had not
+replied. Loyalty to Peggy forbade further thought of Jeanne. He must
+henceforward think of Peggy and her sturdy faithfulness as hard as he
+could. But the more he thought, the more remote did Peggy seem. Of
+course the publicity of the interview had invested it with a certain
+constraint, knocked out of it any approach to sentimentality or
+romance. They had not even kissed. They had spent most of the time
+arguing from different points of view. They had been near to
+quarrelling. It was outrageous of him to criticize her; yet how could
+he help it? The mere fact of striving to exalt her was a criticism.
+
+Indeed they were far apart. Into the sensitive soul of Doggie the war
+in all its meaning had paused. The soul of Peggy had remained
+untouched. To her, in her sheltered corner of England, it was a
+ghastly accident, like a railway collision blocking the traffic on her
+favourite line. For the men of her own class who took part in it, it
+was a brave adventure; for the common soldier a sad but patriotic
+necessity. If circumstances had allowed her to go forth into the
+war-world as nurse or canteen helper at a London terminus, or motor
+driver in France, her horizon would have broadened. But the contact
+with realities into which her dilettante little war activities brought
+her was too slight to make the deep impression. In her heart, as far
+as she revealed herself to Doggie, she resented the war because it
+interfered with her own definitely marked out scheme of existence. The
+war over, she would regard it politely as a thing that had never been,
+and would forthwith set to work upon her aforesaid interrupted plan.
+And towards a comprehension of this apparent serenity the perplexed
+mind of Doggie groped with ill-success. All his old values had been
+kicked into higgledy-piggledy confusion. All hers remained steadfast.
+
+So Doggie reflected with some grimness that there are rougher roads
+than those which lead to the trenches.
+
+A letter from Phineas did not restore equanimity. It ran:
+
+    "MY DEAR LADDIE,--
+
+    "Our unsophisticated friend, Mo, and myself are writing this
+    letter together and he bids me begin it by saying that he hopes
+    it finds you as it leaves us at present, in a muck of dust and
+    perspiration. Where we are now I must not tell, for (in the
+    opinion of the Censor) you would reveal it to the very Reverend
+    the Dean of Durdlebury, who would naturally telegraph the
+    information to the Kaiser. But the Division is far, far from the
+    idyllic land of your dreams, and there is bloody fighting ahead
+    of us. And though the hearts of Mo and me go out to you, laddie,
+    and though we miss you sore, yet Mo says he's blistering glad
+    you're out of it and safe in your perishing bed with a Blighty
+    one. And such, in more academic phraseology, are the sentiments
+    of your old friend Phineas.
+
+    "Ah, laddie! it was a bad day when we marched from the old
+    billets; for the word had gone round that we weren't going back.
+    I had taken the liberty of telling the lassie ye ken of
+    something about your private position and your worldly affairs,
+    of which it seems you had left her entirely ignorant. Of course,
+    with my native Scottish caution, and my knowledge of human
+    nature gained in the academies of prosperity and the ragged
+    schools of adversity, I did not touch on certain matters of a
+    delicate nature. That is no business of mine. If there is
+    discretion in this world in which you can trust blindly, it is
+    that of Phineas McPhail. I just told her of Denby Hall and your
+    fortune, which I fairly accurately computed at a couple of
+    million francs. For I thought it was right she should know that
+    you weren't just a scallywag private soldier like the rest of
+    us. And I am bound to say that the lassie was considerably
+    impressed. In further conversation I told her something of your
+    early life, and, though not over desirous of blackening my
+    character in her bonnie eyes, I let her know what kind of an
+    injudicious upbringing you had been compelled to undergo. '_Il a
+    ete eleve_,' said I, '_dans_----' What the blazes was the
+    French for cotton-wool? The war has a pernicious effect on one's
+    memory--I sometimes even forget the elementary sensations of
+    inebriety. '_Dans la ouate_,' she said. And I remembered the
+    word. '_Oui, dans la ouate_,' said I. And she looked at me,
+    laddie, or, rather, through me, out of her great dark eyes--you
+    mind the way she treats your substance as a shadow and looks
+    through it at the shadows that to her are substances--and she
+    said below her breath--I don't think she meant me to hear
+    it--'_Et c'est lui qui a fait cela pour moi_.'
+
+    "Mo, in his materialistic way, is clamorous that I should tell
+    you about the chicken; the which, being symbolical, I proceed to
+    do. It was our last day. She invited us to lunch in the kitchen
+    and shut the door so that none of the hungry varlets of the
+    company should stick in their unmannerly noses and whine for
+    scraps. And there, laddie, was an omelette and cutlets and a
+    chicken and a _fromage a la creme_ such as in the days of my
+    vanity I have never eaten, cooked by the old body whose soul you
+    won with a pinch of snuff. The poor lassie could scarcely eat;
+    but Mo saw that there was nothing left. The bones on his plate
+    looked as if a dog had been at them for a week. And there was
+    vintage Haut Sauterne which ran down one's throat like scented
+    gold. 'Man,' said I to Mo, 'if you lap it up like that you'll be
+    as drunk as Noah.' So he cast a frightened glance at
+    mademoiselle and sipped like a young lady at a christening
+    party. Then she brings out cherries and plums and peaches and
+    opens a half-bottle of champagne and fills all our glasses, and
+    Toinette had a glass; and she rises in the pale, dignified,
+    Greek tragedy way she has, and she makes a wee bit speech.
+    '_Messieurs_,' she said, 'perhaps you may wonder why I have
+    invited you. But I think you understand. It is the only way I
+    had of sharing with Doggie's friends the fortune that he had so
+    heroically brought me. It is but a little tribute of my
+    gratitude to Doggie. You are his friends and I wish well that
+    you would be mine--_tres franchement, tres loyalement_.' She
+    put out her hand and we shook it. And old Mo said, 'Miss, I'd go
+    to hell for you!' Whereupon the little red spot you may have
+    seen for yourself, came into her pale cheek, and a soft look
+    like a flitting moonbeam crept into her eyes. Laddie, if I'm
+    waxing too poetical, just consider that Mademoiselle Jeanne
+    Bossiere is not the ordinary woman the British private soldier
+    is in the habit of consorting with. Then she took up her glass.
+    '_Je vais porter un toast--Vive l'Angleterre!_' And although a
+    Scotsman, I drank it as if it applied to me. And then she cried,
+    '_Vive la France!_' And old Toinette cried, '_Vive la France!_'
+
+    "And they looked transfigured, and I fairly itched to sing the
+    Marseillaise, though I knew I couldn't. Then she chinked glasses
+    with us.
+
+    "'_Bonne chance, mes amis!_'
+
+    "And then she made a sign to the auld wife, who added the few
+    remaining drops to our glasses. 'To Doggie!' said mademoiselle.
+    We drank the toast, laddie. Old Mo began in his cracked voice,
+    'For he's a jolly good fellow.' I kicked him and told him to
+    shut up. But mademoiselle said:
+
+    "'I've heard of that. It is a ceremony. I like it. Continue.'
+
+    "So Mo and I held up our glasses and, in indifferent song,
+    proclaimed you what the Army, developing certain rudimentary
+    germs, has made you, and mademoiselle too held up her glass and
+    threw back her head and joined us in the hip, hip, hoorays. It
+    would have done your heart good, laddie, to have been there to
+    see. But we did you proud.
+
+    "When we emerged from the festival, the prettiest which, in the
+    course of a variegated career, I have ever attended, Mo says:
+
+    "'If I hadn't a gel at home----'
+
+    "'If you hadn't got a girl at home,' said I, 'you'd be the next
+    damnedest fool in the army to Phineas McPhail!'
+
+    "We marched out just before dusk, and there she was by the front
+    door; and though she stood proud and upright, and smiled with
+    her lips and blew us kisses with both hands, to which the boys
+    all responded with a cheer, there were tears streaming down her
+    cheeks--and the tears, laddie, were not for Mo, or me, or any
+    one of us ugly beggars that passed her by.
+
+    "I also have good news for you, in that I hear from the
+    thunderous, though excellent, Sergeant Ballinghall, there is a
+    probability that when you rejoin, the C.O. will be afflicted
+    with a grievous lapse of memory and that he will be persuaded
+    that you received your wound during the attack on the wiring
+    party.
+
+    "As I said before, laddie, we're all like the Scots wha' hae wi'
+    Wallace bled and are going to our gory bed or to victory.
+    Possibly both. But I will remain steadfast to my philosophy, and
+    if I am condemned to the said sanguinolent couch, I will do my
+    best to derive from it the utmost enjoyment possible. All kinds
+    of poets and such-like lusty loons have shed their last drop of
+    ink in the effort to describe the pleasures of life--but it will
+    be reserved for the disembodied spirit of Phineas McPhail to
+    write the great Philosophic poem of the world's history, which
+    will be entitled 'The Pleasures of Death.' While you're doing
+    nothing, laddie, you might bestir yourself and find an
+    enlightened publisher who would be willing to give me an
+    ante-mortem advance, in respect of royalties accruing to my
+    ghost.
+
+    "Mo, to whom I have read the last paragraph, says he always knew
+    that eddication affected the brain. With which incontrovertible
+    proposition and our joint love, I now conclude this epistle.
+
+                                                 "Yours, PHINEAS."
+
+"Of all the blazing imbeciles!" Doggie cried aloud. Why the
+unprintable unprintableness couldn't Phineas mind his own business?
+Why had he given his silly accident of fortune away in this childish
+manner? Why had he told Jeanne of his cotton-wool upbringing? His
+feet, even that of his wounded leg, tingled to kick Phineas. Of course
+Jeanne, knowing him now to be such a gilded ass, would have nothing
+more to do with him. It explained her letter. He damned Phineas to all
+eternity, in terms compared with which the curse of Saint Ernulphus
+enunciated by the late Mr. Shandy was a fantastic benediction. "If I
+had a dog," quoth my Uncle Toby, "I would not curse him so." But if
+Uncle Toby had heard Doggie of the Twentieth Century Armies who also
+swore terribly in Flanders, for dog he would have substituted
+rattlesnake or German officer.
+
+Yet such is the quiddity of the English Tommy, that through this
+devastating anathema ran a streak of love which at the end turned the
+whole thing into forlorn derision. And as soon as he could laugh, he
+saw things in a clear light. Both of his two friends were, in their
+respective ways, in love with his wonderful Jeanne. Both of them were
+steel-true to him. It was just part of their loyalty to foment this
+impossible romance between Jeanne and himself. If the three of them
+were now at Frelus, the two idiots would be playing gooseberry with
+the smirking conscientiousness of a pair of schoolgirls. So Doggie
+forgave the indiscretion. After all, what did it matter?
+
+It mattered, however, to this extent, that he read the letter over and
+over again until he knew it by heart and could picture to himself
+every phase of the banquet and every fleeting look on Jeanne's face.
+
+"All this," he declared at last, "is utterly ridiculous." And he tore
+up Phineas's letter and, during his convalescence, devoted himself to
+the study of European politics, a subject which he had scandalously
+neglected during his elegantly leisured youth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day of his discharge came in due course. A suit of khaki took the
+place of the hospital blue. He received his papers, the seven days'
+sick furlough and his railway warrant, shook hands with nurses and
+comrades and sped to Durdlebury in the third-class carriage of the
+Tommy.
+
+Peggy, in the two-seater, was waiting for him in the station yard. He
+exchanged greetings from afar, grinned, waved a hand and jumped in
+beside her.
+
+"How jolly of you to meet me!"
+
+"Where's your luggage?"
+
+"Luggage?"
+
+It seemed to be a new word. He had not heard it for many months. He
+laughed.
+
+"Haven't got any, thank God! If you knew what it was to hunch a
+horrible canvas sausage of kit about, you'd appreciate feeling free."
+
+"It's a mercy you've got Peddle," said Peggy. "He has been at the
+Deanery fixing things up for you for the last two days."
+
+"I wonder if I shall be able to live up to Peddle," said Doggie.
+
+"Who's going to start the car?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, lord!" he cried, and bolted out and turned the crank. "I'm
+awfully sorry," he added, when, the engine running, he resumed his
+place. "I had forgotten all about these pretty things. Out there a car
+is a sacred chariot set apart for gods in brass hats, and the ordinary
+Tommy looks on them with awe and reverence."
+
+"Can't you forget you're a Tommy for a few days?" she said, as soon as
+the car had cleared the station gates and was safely under way.
+
+He noted a touch of irritation. "All right, Peggy dear," said he.
+"I'll do what I can."
+
+"Oliver's here, with his man Chipmunk," she remarked, her eyes on the
+road.
+
+"Oliver? On leave again? How has he managed it?"
+
+"You'd better ask him," she replied tartly. "All I know is that he
+turned up yesterday, and he's staying with us. That's why I don't want
+you to ram the fact of your being a Tommy down everybody's throat."
+
+He laughed at the queer little social problem that seemed to be
+worrying her. "I think you'll find blood is thicker than military
+etiquette. After all, Oliver's my first cousin. If he can't get on
+with me, he can get out." To change the conversation, he added after a
+pause: "The little car's running splendidly."
+
+They swept through the familiar old-world streets, which, now that the
+early frenzy of mobilizing Territorials and training of new armies was
+over, had resumed more or less their pre-war appearance. The sleepy
+meadows by the river, once ground into black slush by guns and
+ammunition waggons and horses, were now green again and idle, and the
+troops once billeted on the citizens had marched heaven knows
+whither--many to heaven itself--or whatever Paradise is reserved for
+the great-hearted English fighting man who has given his life for
+England. Only here and there a stray soldier on leave, or one of the
+convalescents from the cottage hospital, struck an incongruous note of
+war. They drew up at the door of the Deanery under the shadow of the
+great cathedral.
+
+"Thank God that is out of reach of the Boche," said Doggie, regarding
+it with a new sense of its beauty and spiritual significance. "To
+think of it like Rheims or Arras--I've seen Arras--seen a shell burst
+among the still standing ruins. Oh, Peggy"--he gripped her arm--"you
+dear people haven't the remotest conception of what it all is--what
+France has suffered. Imagine this mass of wonder all one horrible
+stone pie, without a trace of what it once had been."
+
+"I suppose we're jolly lucky," she replied.
+
+The door was opened by the old butler, who had been on the alert for
+the arrival.
+
+"You run in," said Peggy, "I'll take the car round to the yard."
+
+So Doggie, with a smile and a word of greeting, entered the Deanery.
+His uncle appeared in the hall, florid, white-haired, benevolent, and
+extended both hands to the home-come warrior.
+
+"My dear boy, how glad I am to see you. Welcome back. And how's the
+wound? We've thought night and day of you. If I could have spared the
+time, I should have run up north, but I've not a minute to call my
+own. We're doing our share of war work here, my boy. Come into the
+drawing-room."
+
+He put his hand affectionately on Doggie's arm and, opening the
+drawing-room door, pushed him in and stood, in his kind, courtly way,
+until the young man had passed the threshold. Mrs. Conover, feeble
+from illness, rose and kissed him, and gave him much the same greeting
+as her husband. Then a tall, lean figure in uniform, who had remained
+in the background by the fireplace, advanced with outstretched hand.
+
+"Hello, old chap!"
+
+Doggie took the hand in an honest grip.
+
+"Hello, Oliver!"
+
+"How goes it?"
+
+"Splendid," said Doggie. "You all right?"
+
+"Top-hole," said Oliver. He clapped his cousin on the shoulder. "My
+hat! you do look fit." He turned to the Dean. "Uncle Edward, isn't he
+a hundred times the man he was?"
+
+"I told you, my boy, you would see a difference," said the Dean.
+
+Peggy ran in, having delivered the two-seater to the care of
+myrmidons.
+
+"Now that the affecting meeting is over, let us have tea. Oliver, ring
+the bell."
+
+The tea came. It appeared to Doggie, handing round the three-tiered
+silver cake-stand, that he had returned to some forgotten former
+incarnation. The delicate china cup in his hand seemed too frail for
+the material usages of life and he feared lest he should break it with
+rough handling. Old habit, however, prevailed, and no one noticed his
+sense of awkwardness. The talk lay chiefly between Oliver and himself.
+They exchanged experiences as to dates and localities. They bandied
+about the names of places which will be inscribed in letters of blood
+in history for all time, as though they were popular golf-courses.
+Both had known Ypres and Plug Street, and the famous wall at Arras,
+where the British and German trenches were but five yards apart.
+Oliver's division had gone down to the Somme in July for the great
+push.
+
+"I ought to be there now," said Oliver. "I feel a hulking slacker and
+fraud, being home on sick leave. But the M.O. said I had just escaped
+shell-shock by the skin of my nerves, and they packed me home for a
+fortnight to rest up--while the regiment, what there's left of it,
+went into reserve."
+
+"Did you get badly cut up?" asked Doggie.
+
+"Rather. We broke through all right. Then machine guns which we had
+overlooked got us in the back."
+
+"My lot's down there now," said Doggie.
+
+"You're well out of it, old chap," laughed Oliver.
+
+For the first time in his life Doggie began really to like Oliver. The
+old-time swashbuckling swagger had gone--the swagger of one who would
+say: "I am the only live man in this comatose crowd. I am the
+dare-devil buccaneer who defies the thunder and sleeps on boards while
+the rest of you are lying soft in feather-beds." His direct, cavalier
+way he still retained; but the army, with the omnipotent might of its
+inherited traditions, had moulded him to its pattern; even as it had
+moulded Doggie. And Doggie, who had learned many of the lessons in
+human psychology which the army teaches, knew that Oliver's genial,
+familiar talk was not all due to his appreciation of their social
+equality in the bosom of their own family, but that he would have
+treated much the same any Tommy into whose companionship he had been
+casually thrown. The Tommy would have said "sir" very scrupulously,
+which on Doggie's part would have been an idiotic thing to do; but
+they would have got on famously together, bound by the freemasonry of
+fighting men who had cursed the same foe for the same reasons. So
+Oliver stood out before Doggie's eyes in a new light, that of the
+typical officer trusted and beloved by his men, and his heart went out
+to him.
+
+"I've brought Chipmunk over," said Oliver. "You remember the freak?
+The poor devil hasn't had a day's leave for a couple of years. Didn't
+want it. Why should he go and waste money in a country where he didn't
+know a human being? But this time I've fixed it up for him and his
+leave is coterminous with mine. He has been my servant all through. If
+they took him away from me, he'd be quite capable of strangling the
+C.O. He's a funny beggar."
+
+"And what kind of a soldier?" the Dean asked politely.
+
+"There's not a finer one in all the armies of the earth," said Oliver.
+
+After much further talk the dressing-gong boomed softly through the
+house.
+
+"You've got the green room, Marmaduke," said Peggy. "The one with the
+Chippendale stuff you used to covet so much."
+
+"I haven't got much to change into," laughed Doggie.
+
+"You'll find Peddle up there waiting for you," she replied.
+
+And when Doggie entered the green room there he found Peddle, who
+welcomed him with tears of joy and a display of all the finikin
+luxuries of the toilet and adornment which he had left behind at Denby
+Hall. There were pots of pomade and face-cream, and nail-polish;
+bottles of hair-wash and tooth-wash; little boxes and brushes for the
+moustache, half a dozen gleaming razors, an array of brushes and combs
+and manicure-set in tortoise-shell with his crest in silver, bottles
+of scent with spray attachments; the onyx bowl of bath salts beside
+the hip-bath ready to be filled from the ewers of hot and cold
+water--the Deanery, old-fashioned house, had but one family bath-room;
+the deep purple silk dressing-gown over the foot-rail of the bed, the
+silk pyjamas in a lighter shade spread out over the pillow, the silk
+underwear and soft-fronted shirt fitted with his ruby and diamond
+sleeve-links, hung up before the fire to air; the dinner jacket suit
+laid out on the glass-topped Chippendale table, with black tie and
+delicate handkerchief; the silk socks carefully tucked inside out, the
+glossy pumps with the silver shoe-horn laid across them.
+
+"My God! Peddle," cried Doggie, scratching his closely cropped head.
+"What the devil's all this?"
+
+Peddle, grey, bent, uncomprehending, regarded him blankly.
+
+"All what, sir?"
+
+"I only want to wash my hands," said Doggie.
+
+"But aren't you going to dress for dinner, sir?"
+
+"A private soldier's not allowed to wear mufti, Peddle. They'd dock me
+of a week's pay if they found out."
+
+"Who's to find out, sir?"
+
+"There's Mr. Oliver--he's a Major."
+
+"Lord, Mr. Marmaduke, I don't think he'd mind. Miss Peggy gave me my
+orders, sir, and I think you can leave things to her."
+
+"All right, Peddle," he laughed. "If it's Miss Peggy's decree, I'll
+change. I've got all I want."
+
+"Are you sure you can manage, sir?" Peddle asked anxiously, for time
+was when Doggie couldn't stick his legs into his trousers unless
+Peddle held them out for him.
+
+"Quite," said Doggie.
+
+"It seems rather roughing it here, Mr. Marmaduke, after what you've
+been accustomed to at the Hall."
+
+"That's so," said Doggie. "And it's martyrdom compared with what it is
+in the trenches. There we always have a major-general to lace up our
+boots, and a field-marshal's always hovering round to light our
+cigarettes."
+
+Peddle, who had never known him to jest, or his father before him,
+went out in a muddled frame of mind, leaving Doggie to struggle into
+his dress trousers as best he might.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+When Doggie, in dinner suit, went downstairs, he found Peggy alone in
+the drawing-room. She gave him the kiss of one accustomed to kiss him
+from childhood, and sat down again on the fender-stool.
+
+"Now you look more like a Christian gentleman," she laughed. "Confess.
+It's much more comfortable than your wretched private's uniform."
+
+"I'm not quite so sure," he said, somewhat ruefully, indicating his
+dinner jacket tightly constricted beneath the arms. "Already I've had
+to slit my waistcoat down the back. Poor old Peddle will have an
+apoplectic fit when he sees it. I've grown a bit since these elegant
+rags were made for me."
+
+"_Il faut souffrir pour etre beau_," said Peggy.
+
+"If my being _beau_ pleases you, Peggy, I'll suffer gladly. I've been
+in tighter places." He threw himself down in the corner of the sofa
+and joggled up and down like a child. "After all," he said, "it's
+jolly to sit on something squashy again, and to see a pretty girl in a
+pretty frock."
+
+"I'm glad you like this frock."
+
+"New?"
+
+She nodded. "Dad said it was too much of a Vanity Fair of a vanity for
+war-time. You don't think so, do you?"
+
+"It's charming," said Doggie. "A treat for tired eyes."
+
+"That's just what I told dad. What's the good of women dressing in
+sacks tied round the middle with a bit of string? When men come home
+from the Front they want to see their womenfolk looking pretty and
+dainty. That's what they've come over for. It's part of the cure. It's
+the first time you've been a real dear, Marmaduke. 'A treat for tired
+eyes.' I'll rub it into dad hard."
+
+Oliver came in--in khaki. Doggie jumped up and pointed to him.
+
+"Look here, Peggy. It's the guard-room for me."
+
+Oliver laughed. "Where the dinner kit I bought when I came home is
+now, God only can tell." He turned to Peggy. "I did change, you know."
+
+"That's the pull of being a beastly Major," said Doggie. "They have
+heaps of suits. On the march, there are motor-lorries full of them.
+It's the scandal of the army. The wretched Tommy has but one suit to
+his name. That's why, sir, I've taken the liberty of appearing before
+you in outgrown mufti."
+
+"All right, my man," said Oliver. "We'll hush it up and say no more
+about it."
+
+Then the Dean and Mrs. Conover entered and soon they went in to
+dinner. It was for Doggie the most pleasant of meals. He had the
+superbly healthy man's whole-hearted or whole-stomached appreciation
+of unaccustomed good food and drink: so much so, that when the Dean,
+after agonies of thwarted mastication, said gently to his wife: "My
+dear, don't you think you might speak a word in season to Peck"--Peck
+being the butcher--"and forbid him, under the Defence of the Realm
+Act, if you like, to deliver to us in the evening as lamb that which
+was in the morning a lusty sheep?" he stared at the good old man as
+though he were Vitellius in person. Tough? It was like milk-fatted
+baby. He was already devouring, like Oliver, his second helping. Then
+the Dean, pledging him and Oliver in champagne, apologized: "I'm
+sorry, my dear boys, the 1904 has run out and there's no more to be
+got. But the 1906, though not having the quality, is quite drinkable."
+
+Drinkable! It was laughing, dancing joy that went down his throat.
+
+So much for gross delights. There were others--finer. The charm to the
+eye of the table with its exquisite napery and china and glass and
+silver and flowers. The almost intoxicating atmosphere of peace and
+gentle living. The full, loving welcome shining from the eyes of the
+kind old Dean, his uncle by marriage, and of the faded, delicate lady,
+his own flesh and blood, his mother's sister. And Peggy, pretty,
+flushed, bright-eyed, radiant in her new dress. And there was
+Oliver....
+
+Most of all he appreciated Oliver's comrade-like attitude. It was a
+recognition of him as a man and a soldier. In the course of dinner
+talk Oliver said:
+
+"J.M.T. and I have looked Death in the face many a time--and really
+he's a poor raw-head and bloody-bones sort of Bogey; don't you think
+so, old chap?"
+
+"It all depends on whether you've got a funk-hole handy," he replied.
+
+But that was mere lightness of speech. Oliver's inclusion of him in
+his remark shook him to the depths of his sensitive nature. The man
+who despises the petty feelings and frailties of mankind is doomed to
+remain in awful ignorance of that which there is of beauty and pathos
+in the lives of his fellow-creatures. After all, what did it matter
+what Oliver thought of him? Who was Oliver? His cousin--accident of
+birth--the black sheep of the family; now a major in a different
+regiment and a different division. What was Oliver to him or he to
+Oliver? He had "made good" in the eyes of one whose judgment had been
+forged keen and absolute by heroic sorrows. What did anyone else
+matter? But to Doggie the supreme joy of the evening was the knowledge
+that he had made good in the eyes of Oliver. Oliver wore on his tunic
+the white mauve and white ribbon of the Military Cross. Honour where
+honour was due. But he, Doggie, had been wounded (no matter how) and
+Oliver frankly put them both on the same plane of achievement, thus
+wiping away, with generous hand, all hated memories of the past.
+
+When the ladies had left the room, history repeated itself, in that
+the Dean was called away on business and the cousins were left alone
+together over their wine. Said Doggie:
+
+"Do you remember the last time we sat at this table?"
+
+"Perfectly," replied Oliver, holding up a glass of the old Deanery
+port to the light. "You were horrified at my attempting to clean out
+my pipe with a dessert knife."
+
+Doggie laughed. "After all, it was a filthy thing to do."
+
+"I quite agree with you. Since then I've learned manners."
+
+"You also made me squirm at the idea of scooping out Boches' insides
+with bayonets."
+
+"And you've learned not to squirm, so we're quits."
+
+"You thought me a rotten ass in those days, didn't you?"
+
+Oliver looked at him squarely.
+
+"I don't think it would hurt you now if I said that I did." He
+laughed, stretched himself on his chair, thrusting both hands into his
+trouser pockets. "In many ways, it's a jolly good old war, you
+know--for those that pull through. It has taught us both a lot,
+Marmaduke."
+
+Doggie wrinkled his forehead in his half-humorous way.
+
+"I wish it would teach people not to call me by that silly name."
+
+"I have always abominated it, as you may have observed," said Oliver.
+"But in our present polite relations, old chap, what else is there?"
+
+"You ought to know----"
+
+Oliver stared at him. "You don't mean----?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"But you used to loathe it and I went on calling you 'Doggie' because
+I knew you loathed it. I never dreamed of using it now."
+
+"I can't help it," replied Doggie. "The name got into the army and has
+stuck to me right through, and now those I love and trust most in the
+world, and who love and trust me, call me 'Doggie,' and I don't seem
+to be able to answer to any other name. So, although I'm only a Tommy
+and you're a devil of a swell of a second-in-command, yet if you want
+to be friendly--well----"
+
+Oliver leaned forward quickly. "Of course I want to be friends,
+Doggie, old chap. As for major and private--when you pass me in the
+street you've dam well got to salute me, and that's all there is to
+it--but otherwise it's all rot. And now we've got to the
+heart-to-heart stage, don't you think you're a bit of a fool?"
+
+"I know it," said Doggie cheerfully. "The army has drummed that into
+me, at any rate."
+
+"I mean in staying in the ranks. Why don't you apply for the Cadet
+Corps and so get through to a commission again?"
+
+Doggie's brow grew dark. "I had all that out with Peggy long ago--when
+things were perhaps somewhat different with me. I was sore all over. I
+dare say you can understand. But now there are other reasons, much
+stronger reasons. The only real happiness I've had in my life has been
+as a Tommy. I'm not talking through my hat. The only real friends I've
+ever made in my life are Tommies. I've found real things as a Tommy
+and I'm not going to start all over again to find them in another
+capacity."
+
+"You wouldn't have to start all over again," Oliver objected.
+
+"Oh yes, I should. Don't run away with the idea that I've been turned
+by a miracle into a brawny hero. I'm not anything of the sort. To have
+to lead men into action would be a holy terror. The old dread of
+seeking new paths still acts, you see. I'm the same Doggie that
+wouldn't go out to Huaheine with you. Only now I'm a private and I'm
+used to it. I love it and I'm not going to change to the end of the
+whole gory business. Of course Peggy doesn't like it," he added after
+a sip of wine. "But I can't help that. It's a matter of temperament
+and conscience--in a way, a matter of honour."
+
+"What has honour got to do with it?" asked Oliver.
+
+"I'll try to explain. It's somehow this way. When I came to my senses
+after being chucked for incompetence--that was the worst hell I ever
+went through in my life--and I enlisted, I swore that I would stick it
+as a Tommy without anybody's sympathy, least of all that of the folks
+here. And then I swore I'd make good to myself as a Tommy. I was just
+beginning to feel happier when that infernal Boche sniper knocked me
+out for a time. So, Peggy or no Peggy, I'm going through with it. I
+suppose I'm telling you all this because I should like you to know."
+
+He passed his hand, in the familiar gesture, from back to front of his
+short-cropped hair. Oliver smiled at the reminiscence of the old
+disturbed Doggie; but he said very gravely:
+
+"I'm glad you've told me, old man. I appreciate it very much. I've
+been through the ranks myself and know what it is--the bad and the
+good. Many a man has found his soul that way----"
+
+"Good God!" cried Doggie, starting to his feet. "Do you say that too?"
+
+"Who else said it?"
+
+The quick question caused the blood to rush to Doggie's face. Oliver's
+keen, half-mocking gaze held him. He cursed himself for an impulsive
+idiot. The true answer to the question would be a confession of
+Jeanne. The scene in the kitchen of Frelus swam before his eyes. He
+dropped into his chair again with a laugh.
+
+"Oh, some one out there--in another heart-to-heart talk. As a matter
+of fact, I think I said it myself. It's odd you should have used the
+same words. Anyhow, you're the only other person who has hit on the
+truth as far as I'm concerned. Finding one's soul is a bit
+high-falutin--but that's about the size of it."
+
+"Peggy hasn't hit on the truth, then?" Oliver asked, with curious
+earnestness, the shade of mockery gone.
+
+"The war has scarcely touched her yet, you see," said Doggie. He rose,
+shrinking from discussion. "Shall we go in?"
+
+In the drawing-room they played bridge till the ladies' bedtime. The
+Dean coming in, played the last rubber.
+
+"I hope you'll be able to sleep in a common or garden bed, Marmaduke,"
+said Peggy, and kissed him a perfunctory good night.
+
+"I have heard," remarked the Dean, "that it takes quite a time to grow
+accustomed to the little amenities of civilization."
+
+"That's quite true, Uncle Edward," laughed Doggie. "I'm terrified at
+the thought of the silk pyjamas Peddle has prescribed for me."
+
+"Why?" Peggy asked bluntly.
+
+Oliver interposed laughing, his hand on Doggie's shoulder.
+
+"Tommy's accustomed to go to bed in his day-shirt."
+
+"How perfectly disgusting!" cried Peggy, and swept from the room.
+
+Oliver dropped his hand and looked somewhat abashed.
+
+"I'm afraid I've been and gone and done it. I'm sorry. I'm still a
+barbarian South Sea Islander."
+
+"I wish I were a young man," said the Dean, moving from the door and
+inviting them to sit, "and could take part in these strange hardships.
+This question of night attire, for instance, has never struck me
+before. The whole thing is of amazing interest. Ah! what it is to be
+old! If I were young, I should be with you, cloth or no cloth, in the
+trenches. I hope both of you know that I vehemently dissent from those
+bishops who prohibit the younger clergy from taking their place in the
+fighting line. If God's archangels and angels themselves took up the
+sword against the Powers of Darkness, surely a stalwart young curate
+of the Church of England would find his vocation in warring with rifle
+and bayonet against the proclaimed enemies of God and mankind?"
+
+"The influence of the twenty thousand or so of priests fighting in the
+French Army is said to be enormous," Oliver remarked.
+
+The Dean sighed. "I'm afraid we're losing a big chance."
+
+"Why don't you take up the Fiery Cross, Uncle Edward, and run a new
+Crusade?"
+
+The Dean sighed. Five-and-thirty years ago, when he had set all
+Durdlebury by the ears, he might have preached glorious heresy and
+heroic schism; but now the immutability of the great grey fabric had
+become part of his being.
+
+"I've done my best, my boy," he replied, "with the result that I am
+held in high disfavour."
+
+"But that doesn't matter a little bit."
+
+"Not a little bit," said the Dean. "A man can only do his duty
+according to the dictates of his conscience. I have publicly deplored
+the attitude of the Church of England. I have written to _The Times_.
+I have published a pamphlet--I sent you each a copy--which has brought
+a hornets' nest about my ears. I have warned those in high places that
+what they are doing is not in the best interests of the Church. But
+they won't listen."
+
+Oliver lit a pipe. "I'm afraid, Uncle Edward," he said, "that though I
+come of a clerical family, I know no more of religion than a Hun
+bishop; but it has always struck me that the Church's job is to look
+after the people, whereas, as far as I can make out, the Church is now
+squealing because the people won't look after the Church."
+
+The Dean rose. "I won't go as far as that," said he with a smile. "But
+there is, I fear, some justification for such a criticism from the
+laity. As soon as the war began the Church should have gathered the
+people together and said, 'Onward, Christian soldiers. Go and fight
+like--er----'"
+
+"Like hell," suggested Oliver, greatly daring.
+
+"Or words to that effect," smiled the old Dean. He looked at his
+watch. "Dear, dear! past eleven. I wish I could sit up talking to you
+boys. But I start my day's work at eight o'clock. If you want
+anything, you've only got to ring. Good night. It is one of the
+proudest days of my life to have you both here together."
+
+His courtly charm seemed to linger in the room after he had left.
+
+"He's a dear old chap," said Oliver.
+
+"One of the best," said Doggie.
+
+"It's rather pathetic," said Oliver. "In his heart he would like to
+play the devil with the bishops and kick every able-bodied parson into
+the trenches--and there are thousands of them that don't need any
+kicking and, on the contrary, have been kicked back; but he has become
+half-petrified in the atmosphere of this place. It's lovely to come to
+as a sort of funk-hole of peace--but my holy aunt!--What the blazes
+are you laughing at?"
+
+"I'm only thinking of a beast of a boy here who used to say that,"
+replied Doggie.
+
+"Oh!" said Oliver, and he grinned. "Anyway, I was only going to remark
+that if I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life here, I'd
+paint the town vermilion for a week and then cut my throat."
+
+"I quite agree with you," said Doggie.
+
+"What are you going to do when the war's over?"
+
+"Who knows what he's going to do? What are you going to do? Fly back
+to your little Robinson Crusoe Durdlebury of a Pacific Island? I don't
+think so."
+
+Oliver stuck his pipe on the mantelpiece and his hands on his hips and
+made a stride towards Doggie.
+
+"Damn you, Doggie! Damn you to little bits! How the Hades did you
+guess what I've scarcely told myself, much less another human being?"
+
+"You yourself said it was a good old war and it has taught us a lot of
+things."
+
+"It has," said Oliver. "But I never expected to hear Huaheine called
+Durdlebury by you, Doggie. Oh, Lord! I must have another drink.
+Where's your glass? Say when?"
+
+They parted for the night the best of friends.
+
+Doggie, in spite of the silk pyjamas and the soft bed and the blazing
+fire in his room--he stripped back the light-excluding curtains
+forgetful of Defence of the Realm Acts, and opened all the windows
+wide, to the horror of Peddle in the morning--slept like an
+unperturbed dormouse. When Peddle woke him, he lay drowsily while the
+old butler filled his bath and fiddled about with drawers. At last
+aroused, he cried out:
+
+"What the dickens are you doing?"
+
+Peddle turned with an injured air. "I am matching your ties and socks
+for your bottle-green suit, sir."
+
+Doggie leaped out of bed. "You dear old idiot, I can't go about the
+streets in bottle-green suits. I've got to wear my uniform." He looked
+around the room. "Where the devil is it?"
+
+Peddle's injured air deepened almost into resentment.
+
+"Where the devil----!" Never had Mr. Marmaduke, or his father, the
+Canon, used such language. He drew himself up.
+
+"I have given orders, sir, for the uniform suit you wore yesterday to
+be sent to the cleaners."
+
+"Oh, hell!" said Doggie. And Peddle, unaccustomed to the vernacular of
+the British Army, paled with horror. "Oh, hell!" said Doggie. "Look
+here, Peddle, just you get on a bicycle, or a motor-car, or an express
+train at once and retrieve that uniform. Don't you understand? I'm a
+private soldier. I've got to wear uniform all the time, and I'll have
+to stay in this beastly bed until you get it for me."
+
+Peddle fled. The picture that he left on Doggie's mind was that of the
+faithful steward with dismayed, uplifted hands, retiring from the room
+in one of the great scenes of Hogarth's "Rake's Progress." The
+similitude made him laugh--for Doggie always had a saving sense of
+humour--but he was very angry with Peddle, while he stamped around the
+room in his silk pyjamas. What the deuce was he going to do? Even if
+he committed the military crime (and there was a far more serious
+crime already against him) of appearing in public in mufti, did that
+old ass think he was going to swagger about Durdlebury in bottle-green
+suits, as though he were ashamed of the King's uniform? He dipped his
+shaving-brush into the hot water. Then he threw it, anyhow, across the
+room. Instead of shaving, he would be gloating over the idea of
+cutting that old fool, Peddle's, throat, and therefore would slash his
+own face to bits.
+
+Things, however, were not done at lightning speed in the Deanery of
+Durdlebury. The first steps had not even been taken to send the
+uniform to the cleaners, and soon Peddle reappeared carrying it over
+his arm and the heavy pair of munition boots in his hand.
+
+"These too, sir?" he asked, exhibiting the latter resignedly and
+casting a sad glance at the neat pair of brown shoes exquisitely
+polished and beautifully treed which he had put out for his master's
+wear.
+
+"These too," said Doggie. "And where's my grey flannel shirt?"
+
+This time Peddle triumphed. "I've given that away, sir, to the
+gardener's boy."
+
+"Well, you can just go and buy me half a dozen more like it," said
+Doggie.
+
+He dismissed the old man, dressed and went downstairs. The Dean had
+breakfasted at seven. Peggy and Oliver were not yet down for the nine
+o'clock meal. Doggie strolled about the garden and sauntered round to
+the stable-yard. There he encountered Chipmunk in his shirt-sleeves,
+sitting on a packing case and polishing Oliver's leggings. He raised
+an ugly, clean-shaven mug and scowled beneath his bushy eyebrows at
+the new-comer.
+
+"Morning, mate!" said Doggie pleasantly.
+
+"Morning," said Chipmunk, resuming his work.
+
+Doggie turned over a stable bucket and sat down on it and lit a
+cigarette.
+
+"Glad to be back?"
+
+Chipmunk poised the cloth on which he had poured some brown dressing.
+"Not if I has to be worried with private soljers," he replied. "I came
+'ere to get away from 'em."
+
+"What's wrong with private soldiers? They're good enough for you,
+aren't they?" asked Doggie with a laugh.
+
+"Naow," snarled Chipmunk. "Especially when they ought to be orficers.
+Go to 'ell!"
+
+Doggie, who had suffered much in the army, but had never before been
+taunted with being a dilettante gentleman private, still less been
+consigned to hell on that account, leapt to his feet shaken by one of
+his rare sudden gusts of anger.
+
+"If you don't say I'm as good a private soldier as any in your rotten,
+mangy regiment, I'll knock your blinking head off!"
+
+An insult to a soldier's regiment can only be wiped out in blood.
+Chipmunk threw cloth and legging to the winds and, springing from his
+seat like a monkey, went for Doggie.
+
+"You just try."
+
+Doggie tried, and had not Chipmunk's head been very firmly secured to
+his shoulders, he would have succeeded. Chipmunk went down as if he
+had been bombed. It was his unguarded and unscientific rush that did
+it. Doggie regarded his prostrate figure in gratified surprise.
+
+"What's all this about?" cried a sharp, imperious voice.
+
+Doggie instinctively stood at attention and saluted, and Chipmunk,
+picking himself up in a dazed sort of way, did likewise.
+
+"You two men shake hands and make friends at once," Oliver commanded.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Doggie. He extended his hand, and Chipmunk, with the
+nautical shamble, which in moments of stress defied a couple of years'
+military discipline, advanced and shook it. Oliver strode hurriedly
+away.
+
+"I'm sorry I said that about the regiment, mate. I didn't mean it,"
+said Doggie.
+
+Chipmunk looked uncertainly into Doggie's eyes for what Doggie felt to
+be a very long time. Chipmunk's dull brain was slowly realizing the
+situation. The man opposite to him was his master's cousin. When he
+had last seen him, he had no title to be called a man at all. His
+vocabulary volcanically rich, but otherwise limited, had not been able
+to express him in adequate terms of contempt and derision. Now behold
+him masquerading as a private. Wounded. But any fool could get
+wounded. Behold him further coming down from the social heights
+whereon his master dwelt, to take a rise out of him, Chipmunk. In
+self-defence he had taken the obvious course. He had told him to go to
+hell. Then the important things had happened. Not the effeminate
+gentleman but some one very much like the common Tommy of his
+acquaintance had responded. And he had further responded with the
+familiar vigour but unwonted science of the rank and file. He had also
+stood at attention and saluted and obeyed like any common Tommy, when
+the Major appeared. The last fact appealed to him, perhaps, as much as
+the one more invested in violence.
+
+"'Ere," said he at last, jerking his head and rubbing his jaw, "how
+the 'ell did you do it?"
+
+"We'll get some gloves and I'll show you," said Doggie.
+
+So peace and firm friendship were made. Doggie went into the house and
+in the dining-room found Oliver in convulsive laughter.
+
+"Oh, my holy aunt! You'll be the death of me, Doggie. 'Yes, sir!'" He
+mimicked him. "The perfect Tommy. After doing in old Chipmunk.
+Chipmunk with the strength of a gorilla and the courage of a lion. I
+just happened round to see him go down. How the blazes did you manage
+it, Doggie?"
+
+"That's what Chipmunk's just asked me," Doggie replied. "I belong to a
+regiment where boxing is taught. Really a good regiment," he grinned.
+"There's a sergeant-instructor, a chap called Ballinghall----"
+
+"Not Joe Ballinghall, the well-known amateur heavy-weight?"
+
+"That's him right enough," said Doggie.
+
+"My dear old chap," said Oliver, "this is the funniest war that ever
+was."
+
+Peggy sailed in full of apologies and began to pour out coffee.
+
+"Do help yourselves. I'm so sorry to have kept you poor hungry things
+waiting."
+
+"We've filled up the time amazingly," cried Oliver, waving a silver
+dish-cover. "What do you think? Doggie's had a fight with Chipmunk and
+knocked him out."
+
+Peggy splashed the milk over the brim of Doggie's cup and into the
+saucer. There came a sudden flush on her cheek and a sudden hard look
+into her eyes.
+
+"Fighting? Do you mean to say you've been fighting with a common man
+like Chipmunk?"
+
+"We're the best of friends now," said Doggie. "We understand each
+other."
+
+"I can't quite see the necessity," said Peggy.
+
+"I'm afraid it's rather hard to explain," he replied with a rueful
+knitting of the brows, for he realized her disgust at the vulgar
+brawl.
+
+"I think the less said the better," she remarked acidly.
+
+The meal proceeded in ominous gloom, and as soon as Peggy had finished
+she left the room.
+
+"It seems, old chap, that I can never do right," said Oliver. "Long
+ago, when I used to crab you, she gave it to me in the neck; and now
+when I try to boost you, you seem to get it."
+
+"I'm afraid I've got on Peggy's nerves," said Doggie. "You see, we've
+only met once before during the last two years, and I suppose I've
+changed."
+
+"There's no doubt about that, old son," said Oliver. "But all the
+same, Peggy has stood by you like a brick, hasn't she?"
+
+"That's the devil of it," replied Doggie, rubbing up his hair.
+
+"Why the devil of it?" Oliver asked quickly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," replied Doggie. "As you have once or twice
+observed, it's a funny old war."
+
+He rose, went to the door.
+
+"Where are you off to?" asked Oliver.
+
+"I'm going to Denby Hall to take a look round."
+
+"Like me to come with you? We can borrow the two-seater."
+
+Doggie advanced a pace. "You're an awfully good sort, Oliver," he
+said, touched, "but would you mind--I feel rather a beast----"
+
+"All right, you silly old ass," cried Oliver cheerily. "You want, of
+course, to root about there by yourself. Go ahead."
+
+"If you'll take a spin with me this afternoon, or to-morrow----" said
+Doggie in his sensitive way.
+
+"Oh, clear out!" laughed Oliver.
+
+And Doggie cleared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+"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."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Doggie, the lightest-hearted private in the British Army, danced, in a
+metaphorical sense, back to London, where he stayed for the rest of
+his leave at his rooms in Woburn Place; took his wholesome fill of
+theatres and music-halls, going to those parts of the house where
+Tommies congregate; and bought an old Crown Derby dinner service as a
+wedding present for Peggy and Oliver, a tortoise-shell-fitted
+dressing-case for Peggy, and for Oliver a magnificent gold watch that
+was an encyclopaedia of current information. He had never felt so
+happy in his life, so enchanted with the grimly smiling old world.
+Were it not for the Boche, it could hold its own as a brave place with
+any planet going. He blessed Oliver, who, in turn, had blessed him as
+though he had displayed heroic magnanimity. He blessed Peggy, who,
+flushed with love and happiness and gratitude, had shown him, for the
+first time, what a really adorable young woman she could be. He
+thanked Heaven for making three people happy, instead of three people
+miserable.
+
+He marched along the wet pavements with a new light in his eyes, with
+a new exhilarating breath in his nostrils. He was free. The war over,
+he could do exactly what he liked. An untrammelled future lay before
+him. During the war he could hop about trenches and shell-holes with
+the freedom of a bird....
+
+Those awful duty letters to Peggy! Only now he fully realized their
+never-ending strain. Now he could write to her spontaneously, whenever
+the mood suited, write to her from his heart: "Dear old Peggy, I'm so
+glad you're happy. Oliver's a splendid chap. Et cetera, et cetera, et
+cetera." He had lost a dreaded bride; but he had found a dear and
+devoted friend. Nay, more: he had found two devoted friends. When he
+drew up his account with humanity, he found himself passing rich in
+love.
+
+His furlough expired, he reported at his depot, and was put on light
+duty. He went about it the cheeriest soul alive, and laughed at the
+memory of his former miseries as a recruit. This camp life in England,
+after the mud and blood of France--like the African gentleman in Mr.
+Addison's "Cato," he blessed his stars and thought it luxury. He was
+not sorry that the exigencies of service prevented him from being
+present at the wedding of Oliver and Peggy. For it was the most sudden
+of phenomena, like the fight of two rams, as Shakespeare hath it. In
+war-time people marry in haste; and often, dear God, they have not the
+leisure to repent. Since the beginning of the war there are many, many
+women twice widowed.... But that is by the way. Doggie was grateful to
+an ungrateful military system. If he had attended--in the capacity of
+best man, so please you--so violent and unreasoning had Oliver's
+affection become, Durdlebury would have gaped and whispered behind its
+hand and made things uncomfortable for everybody. Doggie from the
+security of his regiment wished them joy by letter and telegram, and
+sent them the wedding presents aforesaid.
+
+Then for a season there were three happy people, at least, in this
+war-wilderness of suffering. The newly wedded pair went off for a
+honeymoon, whose promise of indefinite length was eventually cut short
+by an unromantic War Office. Oliver returned to his regiment in France
+and Peggy to the Deanery, where she sat among her wedding presents and
+her hopes for the future.
+
+"I never realized, my dear," said the Dean to his wife, "what a
+remarkably pretty girl Peggy has grown into."
+
+"It's because she has got the man she loves," said Mrs. Conover.
+
+"Do you think that's the reason?"
+
+"I've known the plainest of women become quite good-looking. In the
+early days of our married life"--she smiled--"even I was not quite
+unattractive."
+
+The old Dean bent down--she was sitting and he standing--and lifted
+her chin with his forefinger.
+
+"You, my dear, have always been by far the most beautiful woman of my
+acquaintance."
+
+"We're talking of Peggy," smiled Mrs. Conover.
+
+"Ah!" said the Dean. "So we were. I was saying that the child's
+happiness was reflected in her face----"
+
+"I rather thought I said it, dear," replied Mrs. Conover.
+
+"It doesn't matter," said her husband, who was first a man and then a
+dean. He waved a hand in benign dismissal of the argument. "It's a
+great mercy," said he, "that she has married the man she loves instead
+of--well ... Marmaduke has turned out a capital fellow, and a credit
+to the family--but I never was quite easy in my mind over the
+engagement.... And yet," he continued, after a turn or two about the
+room, "I'm rather conscience-stricken about Marmaduke, poor chap. He
+has taken it like a brick. Yes, my dear, like a brick. Like a
+gentleman. But all the same, no man likes to see another fellow walk
+off with his sweetheart."
+
+"I don't think Marmaduke was ever so bucked in his life," said Mrs.
+Conover placidly.
+
+"So----?"
+
+The Dean gasped. His wife's smile playing ironically among her
+wrinkles was rather beautiful.
+
+"Peggy's word, Edward, not mine. The modern vocabulary. It means----"
+
+"Oh, I know what the hideous word means. It was your using it that
+caused a shiver down my spine. But why bucked?"
+
+"It appears there's a girl in France."
+
+"Oho!" said the Dean. "Who is she?"
+
+"That's what Peggy, even now, would give a good deal to find out."
+
+For Doggie had told Peggy nothing more about the girl in France.
+Jeanne was his own precious secret. That it was shared by Phineas and
+Mo didn't matter. To discuss her with Peggy, besides being irrelevant,
+in the circumstances, was quite another affair. Indeed, when he had
+avowed the girl in France, it was not so much a confession as a
+gallant desire to help Peggy out of her predicament. For, after all,
+what was Jeanne but a beloved war-wraith that had passed through his
+life and disappeared?
+
+"The development of Marmaduke," said the Dean, "is not the least
+extraordinary phenomenon of the war."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now that Doggie had gained his freedom, Jeanne ceased to be a wraith.
+She became once again a wonderful thing of flesh and blood towards
+whom all his young, fresh instinct yearned tremendously. One day it
+struck his ingenuous mind that, if Jeanne were willing, there could be
+no possible reason why he should not marry her. Who was to say him
+nay? Convention? He had put all the conventions of his life under the
+auctioneer's hammer. The family? He pictured a meeting between Jeanne
+and the kind and courteous old Dean. It could not be other than an
+episode of beauty. All he had to do was to seek out Jeanne and begin
+his wooing in earnest. The simplest adventure in the world for a
+well-to-do and unattached young man--if only that young man had not
+been a private soldier on active service.
+
+That was the rub. Doggie passed his hand over his hair ruefully. How
+on earth could he get to Frelus again? Not till the end of the war,
+at any rate, which might be years hence. There was nothing for it but
+a resumption of intimacy by letter. So he wrote to Jeanne the letter
+which loyalty to Peggy had made him destroy weeks ago. But no answer
+came. Then he wrote another, telling her of Peggy and his freedom, and
+his love and his hopes, and to that there came no reply.
+
+A prepaid telegram produced no result.
+
+Doggie began to despair. What had happened to Jeanne? Why did she
+persist in ruling him out of her existence? Was it because, in spite
+of her gratitude, she wanted none of his love? He sat on the railing
+on the sea front of the south coast town where he was quartered, and
+looked across the Channel in dismayed apprehension. He was a fool.
+What could there possibly be in little Doggie Trevor to inspire a
+romantic passion in any woman's heart? Take Peggy's case. As soon as a
+real, genuine fellow like Oliver came along, Peggy's heart flew out to
+him like needle to magnet. Even had he been of Oliver's Paladin mould,
+what right had he to expect Jeanne to give him all the wonder of
+herself after a four days' acquaintance? Being what he was, just
+little Doggie Trevor, the assumption was an impertinence. She had
+sheltered herself from it behind a barrier of silence.
+
+A girl, a thing of low-cut blouse, truncated skirts and cheap silk
+stockings, who had been leaning unnoticed for some time on the rails
+by his side, spoke.
+
+"You seem to be pretty lonely."
+
+Doggie swerved round. "Yes, I am, darned lonely."
+
+"Come for a walk, or take me to the pictures."
+
+"And then?" asked Doggie, swinging to his feet.
+
+"If we get on all right, we can fix up something for to-morrow."
+
+She was pretty, with a fair, frizzy, insolent prettiness. She might
+have been any age from fourteen to four-and-twenty.
+
+Doggie smiled, tempted to while away a dark hour. But he said,
+honestly:
+
+"I'm afraid I should be a dull companion."
+
+"What's the matter?" she laughed. "Lost your best girl?"
+
+"Something like it." He waved a hand across the sea. "Over there."
+
+"French? Oh!" She drew herself up. "Aren't English girls good enough
+for you?"
+
+"When they're sympathetic, they're delightful," said he.
+
+"Oh, you make me tired! Good-bye," she snapped, and stalked away.
+
+After a few yards she glanced over her shoulder to see whether he was
+following. But Doggie remained by the railings.
+
+Presently he shrugged his shoulders and went off to a picture palace
+by himself and thought wistfully of Jeanne.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And Jeanne? Well, Jeanne was no longer at Frelus; for there came a
+morning when Aunt Morin was found dead in her bed. The old doctor came
+and spread out his thin hands and said "_Eh bien_" and "_Que
+voulez-vous?_" and "It was bound to happen sooner or later," and
+murmured learned words. The old cure came and a neighbour or two, and
+candles were put round the coffin and the _pompes funebres_ draped
+the front steps and entrance and vestibule in heavy black. And as soon
+as was possible Aunt Morin was laid to rest in the little cemetery
+adjoining the church, and Jeanne went back to the house with Toinette,
+alone in the wide world. And because there had been a death in the
+place the billeted soldiers went about the courtyard very quietly.
+
+Since Phineas and Mo and Doggie's regiment had gone away, she had
+devoted, with a new passionate zeal, all the time she could spare from
+the sick woman to the comforts of the men. No longer restrained by the
+tightly drawn purse-strings of Aunt Morin, but with money of her own
+to spend--and money restored to her by these men's dear and heroic
+comrade--she could give them unexpected treats of rich coffee and
+milk, fresh eggs, fruit.... She mended and darned for them and
+suborned old women to help her. She conspired with the Town Major to
+render the granary more habitable; and the Town Major, who had not to
+issue a return for a centime's expense, received all her suggestions
+with courteous enthusiasm. Toinette taking good care to impress upon
+every British soldier who could understand her, the fact that to
+mademoiselle personally and individually he was indebted for all these
+luxuries, the fame of Jeanne began to spread through that sector of
+the front behind which lay Frelus. Concurrently spread the story of
+Doggie Trevor's exploit. Jeanne became a legendary figure, save to
+those thrice fortunate who were billeted on _Veuve Morin et Fils,
+Marchands des Foins en Gros et Detail_, and these, according to their
+several stolid British ways, bowed down and worshipped before the slim
+French girl with the tragic eyes, and when they departed, confirmed
+the legend and made things nasty for the sceptically superior private.
+
+So, on the day of the funeral of Aunt Morin, the whole of the billet
+sent in a wreath to the house, and the whole of the billet attended
+the service in the little church, and they marched back and drew up by
+the front door--a guard of honour extending a little distance down the
+road. The other men billeted in the village hung around, together with
+the remnant of the inhabitants, old men, women and children, but kept
+quite clear of the guarded path through which Jeanne was to pass. One
+or two officers looked on curiously. But they stood in the background.
+It was none of their business. If the men, in their free time, chose
+to put themselves on parade, without arms, of course, so much the
+better for the army.
+
+Then Jeanne and the old cure, in his time-scarred shovel-hat and his
+rusty soutane, followed by Toinette, turned round the corner of the
+lane and emerged into the main street. A sergeant gave a word of
+command. The guard stood at attention. Jeanne and her companions
+proceeded up the street, unaware of the unusual, until they entered
+between the first two files. Then for the first time the tears welled
+into Jeanne's eyes. She could only stretch out her hands and cry
+somewhat wildly to the bronzed statues on each side of her, "_Merci,
+mes amis, merci, merci_," and flee into the house.
+
+The next day Maitre Pepineau, the notary, summoned her to his
+_cabinet_. Maitre Pepineau was very old. His partner had gone off to
+the war. "One of the necessities of the present situation," he would
+say, "is that I should go on living in spite of myself; for if I died,
+the whole of the affairs of Frelus would be in the soup." Now, a
+fortnight back, Maitre Pepineau and four neighbours--the four
+witnesses required by French law when there is only one notary to draw
+up the _instrument public_--had visited Aunt Morin; so Jeanne knew
+that she had made a fresh will.
+
+"_Mon enfant_," said the old man, unfolding the document, "in a
+previous will your aunt had left you a little heritage out of the half
+of her fortune which she was free to dispose of by the code. You
+having come into possession of your own money, she has revoked that
+will and left everything to her only surviving son, Gaspard Morin, in
+Madagascar."
+
+"It is only just and right," said Jeanne.
+
+"The unfortunate part of the matter," said Maitre Pepineau, "is that
+Madame Morin has appointed official trustees to carry on the estate
+until Monsieur Gaspard Morin can make his own arrangements. The result
+is that you have no _locus standi_ as a resident in the house. I
+pointed this out to her. But you know, in spite of her good qualities,
+she was obstinate.... It pains me greatly, my dear child, to have to
+state your position."
+
+"I am then," said Jeanne, "_sans-asile_--homeless?"
+
+"As far as the house of Monsieur Gaspard Morin is concerned--yes."
+
+"And my English soldiers?" asked Jeanne.
+
+"Alas, my child," replied the old man, "you will find them
+everywhere."
+
+Which was cold consolation. For however much inspired by patriotic
+gratitude a French girl may be, she cannot settle down in a strange
+place where British troops are billeted and proceed straightway to
+minister to their comfort. Misunderstandings are apt to arise even in
+the best regulated British regiments. In the house of Aunt Morin, in
+Frelus, her position was unassailable. Anywhere else ...
+
+"So, my good Toinette," said Jeanne, after having explained the
+situation to the indignant old woman, "I can only go back to my friend
+in Paris and reconstitute my life. If you will accompany me----?"
+
+But no. Toinette had the peasant's awful dread of Paris. She had heard
+about Paris: there were thieves, ruffians that they called _apaches_,
+who murdered you if you went outside your door.
+
+"The _apaches_," laughed Jeanne, "were swept away into the army on the
+outbreak of war, and they've nearly all been killed, fighting like
+heroes."
+
+"There are the old ones left, who are worse than the young," retorted
+Toinette.
+
+No. Mademoiselle could teach her nothing about Paris. You could not
+even cross a street without risk of life, so many were the omnibuses
+and automobiles. In every shop you were a stranger to be robbed. There
+was no air in Paris. You could not sleep for the noise. And then--to
+live in a city of a hundred million people and not know a living soul!
+It was a mad-house matter. Again no. It grieved her to part from
+mademoiselle, but she had made her little economies--a difficult
+achievement, considering how regardful of her pence Madame had
+been--and she would return to her Breton town, which forty years ago
+she had left to enter the service of Madame Morin.
+
+"But after forty years, Toinette, who in Paimpol will remember you?"
+
+"It is I who remember Paimpol," said Toinette. She remained for a few
+moments in thought. Then she said: "_C'est drole, tout de meme._ I
+haven't seen the sea for forty years, and now I can't sleep of nights
+thinking of it. The first man I loved was a fisherman of Paimpol. We
+were to be married after he returned from an Iceland voyage, with a
+_gros benefice_. When the time came for his return, I would stand on
+the shore and watch and watch the sea. But he never came. The sea
+swallowed him up. And then--you can understand quite well--the child
+was born dead. And I thought I would never want to look at the sea
+again. So I came here to your Aunt Morin, the daughter of Doctor
+Kersadec, your grandfather, and I married Jules Dagnant, the foreman
+of the carters of the hay ... and he died a long time ago ... and now
+I have forgotten him and I want to go and look at the sea where my man
+was drowned."
+
+"But your grandson, who is fighting in the Argonne?"
+
+"What difference can it make to him whether I am in Frelus or
+Paimpol?"
+
+"That's true," said Jeanne.
+
+Toinette bustled about the kitchen. Folks had to eat, whatever
+happened. But she went on talking, Madame Morin. One must not speak
+evil of the dead. They have their work cut out to extricate themselves
+from Purgatory. But all the same--after forty years' faithful
+service--and not to mention in the will--_meme pour une Bretonne,
+c'etait raide_. Jeanne agreed. She had no reason to love her Aunt
+Morin. Her father's people came from Agen on the confines of Gascony;
+he had been a man of great gestures and vehement speech; her mother,
+gentle, reserved, _un pen devote_. Jeanne drew her character from
+both sources; but her sympathies were rather southern than northern.
+For some reason or the other, perhaps for his expansive ways--who
+knows?--Aunt Morin had held the late Monsieur Bossiere in
+detestation. She had no love for Jeanne, and Jeanne, who before her
+good fortune had expected nothing from Aunt Morin, regarded the will
+with feelings of indifference. Except as far as it concerned Toinette.
+Forty years' faithful service deserved recognition. But what was the
+use of talking about it?
+
+"So we must separate, Toinette?"
+
+"Alas, yes, mademoiselle--unless mademoiselle would come with me to
+Paimpol."
+
+Jeanne laughed. What should she do in Paimpol? There wasn't even a
+fisherman left there to fall in love with.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Toinette later, "do you think you will meet the
+little English soldier, Monsieur Trevor, in Paris?"
+
+"_Dans la guerre on ne se revoit jamais_," said Jeanne.
+
+But there was more of personal decision than of fatalism in her tone.
+
+So Jeanne waited for a day or two until the regiment marched away, and
+then, with heavy heart, set out for Paris. She wrote, indeed, to
+Phineas, and weeks afterwards Phineas, who was in the thick of the
+Somme fighting, wrote to Doggie telling him of her departure from
+Frelus; but regretted that as he had lost her letter he could not
+give him her Paris address.
+
+And in the meantime the house of Gaspard Morin was shuttered and
+locked and sealed; and the bureaucratically minded old Postmaster of
+Frelus, who had received no instructions from Jeanne to forward her
+correspondence, handed Doggie's letters and telegrams to the aged
+postman, a superannuated herdsman, who stuck them into the letter-box
+of the deserted house and went away conscious of duty perfectly
+accomplished.
+
+Then, at last, Doggie, fit again for active service, went out with a
+draft to France, and joined Phineas and Mo, almost the only survivors
+of the cheery, familiar crowd that he had loved, and the grimness of
+battles such as he had never conceived possible took him in its
+inexorable grip, and he lost sense of everything save that he was the
+least important thing on God's earth struggling desperately for animal
+existence.
+
+Yet there were rare times of relief from stress, when he could
+gropingly string together the facts of a pre-Somme existence. And then
+he would curse Phineas lustily for losing the precious letter.
+
+"Man," Phineas once replied, "don't you see that you're breaking a
+heart which, in spite of its apparent rugosity and callosity, is as
+tender as a new-made mother's? Tell me to do it, and I'll desert and
+make my way to Paris and----"
+
+"And the military police will see that you make your way to hell via a
+stone wall. And serve you right. Don't be a blithering fool," said
+Doggie.
+
+"Then I don't know what I can do for you, laddie, except die of
+remorse at your feet."
+
+"We're all going to die of rheumatic fever," said Doggie, shivering in
+his sodden uniform. "Blast this rain!"
+
+Phineas thrust his hand beneath his clothing and produced a long,
+amorphous and repulsive substance, like a painted tallow candle
+overcome by intense heat, from which he gravely bit an inch or two.
+
+"What's that?" asked Doggie.
+
+"It's a stick of peppermint," said Phineas. "I've still an aunt in
+Galashiels who remembers my existence."
+
+Doggie stuck out his hand like a monkey in the Zoo.
+
+"You selfish beast!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+The fighting went on and, to Doggie, the inhabitants of the outside
+world became almost as phantasmagorical as Phineas's providential aunt
+in Galashiels. Immediate existence held him. In an historic battle Mo
+Shendish fell with a machine bullet through his heart. Doggie,
+staggering with the rest of the company to the attack over the muddy,
+shell-torn ground, saw him go down a few yards away. It was not till
+later that he knew he had gone West with many other great souls.
+Doggie and Phineas mourned for him as a brother. Without him France
+was a muddier and a bloodier place and the outside world more unreal
+than ever.
+
+Then to Doggie came a heart-broken letter from the Dean. Oliver had
+gone the same road as Mo. Peggy was frantic with grief. Vividly Doggie
+saw the peaceful deanery on which all the calamity of all the war had
+crashed with sudden violence.
+
+"Why I should thank God we parted as friends, I don't quite know,"
+said Doggie, "but I do."
+
+"I suppose, laddie," said Phineas, "it's good to feel that smiling
+eyes and hearty hands will greet us when we too pass over the Border.
+My God, man," he added reflectively, after a pause, "have you ever
+considered what a goodly company it will be? When you come to look at
+it that way, it makes Death quite a trivial affair."
+
+"I suppose it does to us while we're here," said Doggie. "We've seen
+such a lot of it. But to those who haven't--my poor Peggy--it's the
+end of her universe."
+
+Yes, it was all very well to take death philosophically, or
+fatalistically, or callously, or whatever you liked to call it, out
+there, where such an attitude was the only stand against raving
+madness; but at home, beneath the grey mass of the cathedral, folks
+met Death as a strange and cruel horror. The new glory of life that
+Peggy had found, he had blackened out in an instant. Doggie looked
+again at the old man's letter--his handwriting was growing shaky--and
+forgot for a while the familiar things around him, and lived with
+Peggy in her sorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, as far as Doggie's sorely tried division was affected, came the
+end of the great autumn fighting. He found himself well behind the
+lines in reserve, and so continued during the cold dreary winter months.
+And the more the weeks that crept by and the more remote seemed
+Jeanne, the more Doggie hungered for the sight of her. But all this
+period of his life was but a dun-coloured monotony, with but few
+happenings to distinguish week from week. Most of the company that had
+marched with him into Frelus were dead or wounded. Nearly all the
+officers had gone. Captain Willoughby, who had interrogated Jeanne with
+regard to the restored packet, and, on Doggie's return, had informed
+him with a friendly smile that they were a damned sight too busy then
+to worry about defaulters of the likes of him, but that he was going
+to be court-martialled and shot as soon as peace was declared, when
+they would have time to think of serious matters--Captain Willoughby
+had gone to Blighty with a leg so mauled that never would he command
+again a company in the field. Sergeant Ballinghall, who had taught
+Doggie to use his fists, had retired, minus a hand, into civil life. A
+scientific and sporting helper at Roehampton, he informed Doggie by
+letter, was busily engaged on the invention of a boxing-glove which
+would enable him to carry on his pugilistic career. "So, in future
+times," said he, "if any of your friends among the nobility and gentry
+want lessons in the noble art, don't forget your old friend
+Ballinghall." Whereat--incidentally--Doggie wondered. Never, for a
+fraction of a second, during their common military association, had
+Ballinghall given him to understand that he regarded him otherwise
+than as a mere Tommy without any pretensions to gentility. There had
+been times when Ballinghall had cursed him--perhaps justifiably and
+perhaps lovingly--as though he had been the scum of the earth. Doggie
+would no more have dared address him in terms of familiarity than he
+would have dared slap the Brigadier-General on the back. And now the
+honest warrior sought Doggie's patronage. Of the original crowd in
+England who had transformed Doggie's military existence by making him
+penny-whistler to the company, only Phineas and himself were left.
+There were others, of course, good and gallant fellows, with whom he
+became bound in the rough intimacy of the army; but the first friends,
+those under whose protecting kindliness his manhood had developed,
+were the dearest. And their ghosts remained dear.
+
+At last the division was moved up and there was more fighting.
+
+One day, after a successful raid, Doggie tumbled back with the rest of
+the men into the trench and, looking about, missed Phineas. Presently
+the word went round that "Mac" had been hit, and later the rumour was
+confirmed by the passage down the trench of Phineas on a stretcher,
+his weather-battered face a ghastly ivory.
+
+"I'm alive all right, laddie," he gasped, contorting his lips into a
+smile. "I've got it clean through the chest like a gentleman. But it
+gars me greet I canna look after you any longer."
+
+He made an attempt at waving a hand, and the stretcher-bearers carried
+him away out of the army for ever.
+
+Thereafter Doggie felt the loneliest thing on earth, like Wordsworth's
+cloud, or the Last Man in Tom Hood's grim poem. For was he not the
+last man of the original company, as he had joined it, hundreds of
+years ago, in England? It was only then that he realized fully the
+merits of the wastrel Phineas McPhail. Not once or twice, but a
+thousand times had the man's vigilant affection, veiled under cynical
+humour, saved him from despair. Not once but a thousand times had the
+gaunt, tireless Scotchman saved him from physical exhaustion. At every
+turn of his career, since his enlistment, Phineas had been there,
+watchful, helpful, devoted. There he had been, always ready and
+willing to be cursed. To curse him had been the great comfort of
+Doggie's life. Whom could he curse now? Not a soul--no one, at any
+rate, against whom he could launch an anathema with any real heart in
+it. Than curse vainly and superficially, far better not to curse at
+all. He missed Phineas beyond all his conception of the blankness of
+bereavement. Like himself, Phineas had found salvation in the army.
+Doggie realized how he had striven in his own queer way to redeem the
+villainy of his tutorship. No woman could have been more gentle, more
+unselfish.
+
+"What the devil am I going to do?" said Doggie.
+
+Meanwhile Phineas, lying in a London hospital with a bullet through
+his body, thought much and earnestly of his friend, and one morning
+Peggy got a letter.
+
+    "DEAR MADAM,--
+
+    "Time was when I could not have addressed you without incurring
+    your not unjustifiable disapproval. But I take the liberty of
+    doing so now, trusting to your generous acquiescence in the
+    proposition that the war has purged many offences. If this has
+    not happened, to some extent, in my case, I do not see how it
+    has been possible for me to have regained and retained the trust
+    and friendship of so sensitive and honourable a gentleman as Mr.
+    Marmaduke Trevor.
+
+    "If I ask you to come and see me here, where I am lying severely
+    wounded, it is not with an intention to solicit a favour for
+    myself personally--although I'll not deny that the sight of a
+    kind and familiar face would be a boon to a lonely and
+    friendless man--but with a deep desire to advance Mr. Trevor's
+    happiness. Lest you may imagine I am committing an unpardonable
+    impertinence and thereby totally misunderstand me, I may say
+    that this happiness can only be achieved by the aid of powerful
+    friends both in London and Paris.
+
+    "It is only because the lad is the one thing dear to me left in
+    the world, that I venture to intrude on your privacy at such a
+    time.
+
+                                                "I am, dear Madam,
+                                           "Yours very faithfully,
+                                                "PHINEAS MCPHAIL."
+
+Peggy came down to breakfast, and having dutifully kissed her parents,
+announced her intention of going to London by the eleven o'clock
+train.
+
+"Why, how can you, my dear?" asked Mrs. Conover.
+
+"I've nothing particular to do here for the next few days."
+
+"But your father and I have. Neither of us can start off to London at
+a moment's notice."
+
+Peggy replied with a wan smile: "But, dearest mother, you forget. I'm
+an old, old married woman."
+
+"Besides, my dear," said the Dean, "Peggy has often gone away by
+herself."
+
+"But never to London," said Mrs. Conover.
+
+"Anyhow, I've got to go." Peggy turned to the old butler. "Ring up
+Sturrocks's and tell them I'm coming."
+
+"Yes, miss," said Burford.
+
+"He's as bad as you are, mother," said Peggy.
+
+So she went up to London and stayed the night at Sturrocks's alone,
+for the first time in her life. She half ate a lonely, execrable war
+dinner in the stuffy, old-fashioned dining-room, served ceremoniously
+by the ancient head waiter, the friend of her childhood, who, in view
+of her recent widowhood, addressed her in the muffled tones of the
+sympathetic undertaker. Peggy nearly cried. She wished she had chosen
+another hotel. But where else could she have gone? She had stayed at
+few hotels in London: once at the Savoy; once at Claridge's; every
+other time at Sturrocks's. The Savoy? Its vastness had frightened her.
+And Claridge's? No; that was sanctified for ever. Oliver in his lordly
+way had snapped his fingers at Sturrocks's. Only the best was good
+enough for Peggy. Now only Sturrocks's remained.
+
+She sought her room immediately after the dreary meal and sat before
+the fire--it was a damp, chill February night--and thought miserable
+and aching thoughts. It happened to be the same room which she had
+occupied, oh--thousands of years ago--on the night when Doggie,
+point-device in new Savile Row uniform, had taken her to dinner at the
+Carlton. And she had sat, in the same imitation Charles the Second
+brocaded chair, looking into the same generous, old-fashioned fire,
+thinking--thinking. And she remembered clenching her fist and
+apostrophizing the fire and crying out aloud: "Oh, my God! if only he
+makes good!"
+
+Oceans of years lay between then and now. Doggie had made good; every
+man who came home wounded must have made good. Poor old Doggie. But
+how in the name of all that was meant by the word Love she could ever
+have contemplated--as she had contemplated, with an obstinate,
+virginal loyalty--marriage with Doggie, she could not understand.
+
+She undressed, brought the straight-backed chair close to the fire,
+and, in her dainty nightgown, part of her trousseau, sat elbow on
+knee, face in thin, clutching hands, slippered feet on fender,
+thinking, thinking once again. Thinking now of the gates of Paradise
+that had opened to her for a few brief weeks. Of the man who never had
+to make good, being the wonder of wonders of men, the delicious
+companion, the incomparable lover, the all-compelling revealer, the
+great, gay, scarcely, to her woman's limited power of vision,
+comprehended heroic soldier. Of the terrifying meaninglessness of
+life, now that her God of Very God, in human form, had been swept, in
+an instant, off the earth into the Unknown.
+
+Yet was life meaningless after all? There must be some significance,
+some inner truth veiled in mystery, behind even the casually accepted
+and never probed religion to which she had been born and in which she
+had found poor refuge. For, like many of her thoughtless,
+unquestioning class, she had looked at Christ through stained-glass
+windows, and now the windows were darkened.... For the first time in
+her life, her soul groped intensely towards eternal verities. The fire
+burned low and she shivered. She became again the bit of human flotsam
+cruelly buffeted by the waves, forgotten of God. Yet, after she had
+risen and crept into bed and while she was staring into the darkness,
+her heart became filled with a vast pity for the thousands and
+thousands of women, her sisters, who at that moment were staring,
+hopeless, like her, into the unrelenting night.
+
+She did not fall asleep till early morning. She rose late. About
+half-past eleven as she was preparing to walk abroad on a dreary
+shopping excursion--the hospital visiting hour was in the afternoon--a
+telegram arrived from the Dean.
+
+    "Just heard that Marmaduke is severely wounded."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She scarcely recognized the young private tutor of Denby Hall in the
+elderly man with the deeply furrowed face, who smiled as she
+approached his bed. She had brought him flowers, cigarettes of the
+exquisite kind that Doggie used to smoke, chocolates....
+
+She sat down by his bedside.
+
+"All this is more than gracious, Mrs. Manningtree," said Phineas. "To
+a _vieux routier_ like me, it is a wee bit overwhelming."
+
+"It's very little to do for Doggie's best friend."
+
+Phineas's eyes twinkled. "If you call him Doggie, like that, maybe it
+won't be so difficult for me to talk to you."
+
+"Why should it be difficult at all?" she asked. "We both love him."
+
+"Ay," said Phineas. "He's a lovable lad, and it is because others
+besides you and me find him lovable, that I took the liberty of
+writing to you."
+
+"The girl in France?"
+
+"Eh?" He put out a bony hand, and regarded her in some disappointment.
+"Has he told you? Perhaps you know all about it."
+
+"I know nothing except that--'a girl in France,' was all he told me.
+But--first about yourself. How badly are you wounded--and what can we
+do for you?"
+
+She dragged from a reluctant Phineas the history of his wound and
+obtained confirmation of his statement from a nurse who happened to
+pass up the gangway of the pleasant ward and lingered by the bedside.
+McPhail was doing splendidly. Of course, a man with a hole through his
+body must be expected to go back to the regime of babyhood. So long as
+he behaved himself like a well-conducted baby all would be well. Peggy
+drew the nurse a few yards away.
+
+"I've just heard that his dearest friend out there, a boy whom he
+loves dearly and has been through the whole thing with him in the same
+company--it's odd, but he was his private tutor years ago--both
+gentlemen, you know--in fact, I'm here just to talk about the boy----"
+Peggy grew somewhat incoherent. "Well--I've just heard that the boy
+has been seriously wounded. Shall I tell him?"
+
+"I think it would be better to wait for a few days. Any shock like
+that sends up their temperatures. We hate temperatures, and we're
+getting his down so nicely."
+
+"All right," said Peggy, and she went back smiling to Phineas. "She
+says you're getting on amazingly, Mr. McPhail."
+
+Said Phineas: "I'm grateful to you, Mrs. Manningtree, for concerning
+yourself about my entirely unimportant carcass. Now, as Virgil says,
+'_paullo majora canemus_.'"
+
+"You have me there, Mr. McPhail," said Peggy.
+
+"Let us sing of somewhat greater things. That is the bald translation.
+Let us talk of Doggie--if so be it is agreeable to you."
+
+"Carry on," said Peggy.
+
+"Well," said Phineas, "to begin at the beginning, we marched into a
+place called Frelus----"
+
+In his pedantic way he began to tell her the story of Jeanne, so far
+as he knew it. He told her of the girl standing in the night wind and
+rain on the bluff by the turning of the road. He told her of Doggie's
+insane adventure across No Man's Land to the farm of La Folette. Tears
+rolled down Peggy's cheeks. She cried, incredulous:
+
+"Doggie did that? Doggie?"
+
+"It was child's play to what he had to do at Guedecourt."
+
+But Peggy waved away the vague heroism of Guedecourt.
+
+"Doggie did that? For a woman?"
+
+The whole elaborate structure of her conception of Doggie tumbled down
+like a house of cards.
+
+"Ay," said Phineas.
+
+"He did that"--Phineas had given an imaginative and picturesque
+account of the episode--"for this girl Jeanne?"
+
+"It is a strange coincidence, Mrs. Manningtree," replied Phineas, with
+a flicker of his lips elusively suggestive of unctuousness, "that
+almost those identical words were used by Mademoiselle Bossiere in my
+presence. '_Il a fait cela pour moi!_' But--you will pardon me for
+saying it--with a difference of intonation, which, as a woman, no
+doubt you will be able to divine and appreciate."
+
+"I know," said Peggy. She bent forward and picked with finger and
+thumb at the fluff of the blanket. Then she said, intent on the fluff:
+"If a man had done a thing like that for me, I should have crawled
+after him to the ends of the earth." Presently she looked up with a
+flash of the eyes. "Why isn't this girl doing it?"
+
+"You must listen to the end of the story," said Phineas. "I may tell
+you that I always regarded myself, with my Scots caution, as a model
+of tact and discretion; but after many conversations with Doggie, I'm
+beginning to have my doubts. I also imagined that I was very careful
+of my personal belongings; but facts have convicted me of criminal
+laxity."
+
+Peggy smiled. "That sounds like a confession, Mr. McPhail."
+
+"Maybe it's in the nature of one," he assented. "But by your leave,
+Mrs. Manningtree, I'll resume my narrative."
+
+He continued the story of Jeanne: how she had learned through him of
+Doggie's wealth and position and early upbringing; of the memorable
+dinner-party with poor Mo; of Doggie's sensitive interpretation of her
+French _bourgeoise_ attitude; and finally the loss of the letter
+containing her address in Paris.
+
+After he had finished, Peggy sat for a long while thinking. This
+romance in Doggie's life had moved her as she thought she could never
+be moved since the death of Oliver. Her thoughts winged themselves
+back to an afternoon, remote almost as her socked and sashed
+childhood, when Doggie, immaculately attired in grey and pearl
+harmonies, had declared, with his little effeminate drawl, that tennis
+made one so terribly hot. The scene in the Deanery garden flashed
+before her. It was succeeded by a scene in the Deanery drawing-room
+when, to herself indignant, he had pleaded his delicacy of
+constitution. And the same Doggie, besides braving death a thousand
+times in the ordinary execution of his soldier's duties, had performed
+this queer deed of heroism for a girl. Then his return to
+Durdlebury----
+
+"I'm afraid," she said suddenly, "I was dreadfully unkind to him when
+he came home the last time. I didn't understand. Did he tell you?"
+
+Phineas stretched out a hand and with the tips of his fingers touched
+her sleeve.
+
+"Mrs. Manningtree," he said softly, "don't you know that Doggie's a
+very wonderful gentleman?"
+
+Again her eyes grew moist. "Yes. I know. Of course he never would have
+mentioned it.... I thought, Mr. McPhail, he had deteriorated--God
+forgive me! I thought he had coarsened and got into the ways of an
+ordinary Tommy--and I was snobbish and uncomprehending and horrible.
+It seems as if I am making a confession now."
+
+"Ay. Why not? If it were not for the soul's health, the ancient Church
+wouldn't have instituted the practice."
+
+She regarded him shrewdly for a second. "You've changed too."
+
+"Maybe," said Phineas. "It's an ill war that blows nobody good. And
+I'm not complaining of this one. But you were talking of your
+miscomprehension of Doggie."
+
+"I behaved very badly to him," she said, picking again at the
+blanket. "I misjudged him altogether--because I was ignorant of
+everything--everything that matters in life. But I've learned better
+since then."
+
+"Ay," remarked Phineas gravely.
+
+"Mr. McPhail," she said, after a pause, "it wasn't those rotten ideas
+that prevented me from marrying him----"
+
+"I know, my dear little lady," said Phineas, grasping the plucking
+hand. "You just loved the other man as you never could have loved
+Doggie, and there's an end to't. Love just happens. It's the holiest
+thing in the world."
+
+She turned her hand, so as to meet his in a mutual clasp, and withdrew
+it.
+
+"You're very kind--and sympathetic--and understanding----" Her voice
+broke. "I seem to have been going about misjudging everybody and
+everything. I'm beginning to see a little bit--a little bit farther--I
+can't express myself----"
+
+"Never mind, Mrs. Manningtree," said Phineas soothingly, "if you
+cannot express yourself in words. Leave that to the politicians and
+the philosophers and the theologians, and other such windy expositors
+of the useless. But you can express yourself in deeds."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Find Jeanne for Doggie."
+
+Peggy bent forward with a queer light in her eyes.
+
+"Does she love him--really love him as he deserves to be loved?"
+
+"It is not often, Mrs. Manningtree, that I commit myself to a definite
+statement. But, to my certain knowledge, these two are breaking their
+hearts for each other. Couldn't you find her, before the poor laddie
+is killed?"
+
+"He's not killed yet, thank God!" said Peggy, with an odd thrill in
+her voice.
+
+He was alive. Only severely wounded. He would be coming home soon,
+carried, according to convoy, to any unfriendly hospital
+dumping-ground in the United Kingdom. If only she could bring this
+French girl to him! She yearned to make reparation for the past, to
+act according to the new knowledge that love and sorrow had brought
+her.
+
+"But how can I find her--just a girl--an unknown Mademoiselle
+Bossiere--among the millions of Paris?"
+
+"I've been racking my brains all the morning," replied Phineas, "to
+recall the address, and out of the darkness there emerges just two
+words, _Port Royal_. If you know Paris, does that help you at all?"
+
+"I don't know Paris," replied Peggy humbly. "I don't know anything.
+I'm utterly ignorant."
+
+"I beg entirely to differ from you, Mrs. Manningtree," said Phineas.
+"You have come through much heavy travail to a correct appreciation of
+the meaning of human love between man and woman, and so you have in
+you the wisdom of all the ages."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Peggy, becoming practical. "But _Port Royal_?"
+
+"The clue to the labyrinth," replied Phineas.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
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