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Rough Road

<h2 class="chapter_title">CHAPTER XIX</h2> 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: <blockquote> “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.” </blockquote> “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. <hr class="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. 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. </div> <div class="chapter" id="chapter_XX"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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