The Rough Road

“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.