The Rough Road

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.