The Rough Road
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“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.”