The Rough Road Part 10

"A flaw in the dainty and divine ordering of things makes you shiver now, old Doggie. What will you do when you see a fellow digging out another fellow's intestines with the point of a bayonet? A bigger flaw there somehow!"

"Don't talk like that. You make me sick," said Doggie.

CHAPTER VI

During the next few months there happened terrible and marvellous things, which are all set down in the myriad chronicles of the time; which shook the world and brought the unknown phenomenon of change into the Close of Durdlebury. Folks of strange habit and speech walked in it, and, gazing at the Gothic splendour of the place, saw through the mist of autumn and the mist of tears not Durdlebury but Louvain.

More than one of those grey houses flanking the cathedral and sharing with it the continuity of its venerable life, was a house of mourning; not for loss in the inevitable and not unkindly way of human destiny as understood and accepted with long disciplined resignation--but for loss sudden, awful, devastating; for the gallant lad who had left it but a few weeks before, with a smile on his lips, and a new and dancing light of manhood in his eyes, now with those eyes unclosed and glazed staring at the pitiless Flanders sky. Not one of those houses but was linked with a battlefield. Beyond the memory of man the reader of the Litany had droned the accustomed invocation on behalf of the Sovereign and the Royal Family, the Bishops, Priests and Deacons, the Lords of the Council and all prisoners and captives, and the congregation had lumped them all together in their responses with an undifferentiating convention of fervour. What had prisoners and captives, any more than the Lords of the Council, to do with their lives, their hearts, their personal emotions? But now--Durdlebury men were known to be prisoners in German hands, and after "all prisoners and captives" there was a long and pregnant silence, in which was felt the reverberation of war against pier and vaulted arch and groined roof of the cathedral, which was broken too, now and then, by the stifled sob of a woman, before the choir came in with the response so new and significant in its appeal--"We beseech thee to hear us, O Lord!"

And in every home the knitting-needles of women clicked, as they did throughout the length and breadth of the land. And the young men left shop and trade and counting-house. And young parsons fretted, and some obtained the Bishop's permission to become Army chaplains, and others, snapping their fingers (figuratively) under the Bishop's nose, threw their ca.s.socks to the nettles and put on the full (though in modern times not very splendiferous) panoply of war. And in course of time the brigade of artillery rolled away and new troops took their place; and Marmaduke Trevor, Esquire, of Denby Hall, was called upon to billet a couple of officers and twenty men.

Doggie was both patriotic and polite. Having a fragment of the British Army in his house, he did his best to make them comfortable. By January he had no doubt that the Empire was in peril, that it was every man's duty to do his bit. He welcomed the new-comers with open arms, having unconsciously abandoned his att.i.tude of superiority over mere brawn. Doggie saw the necessity of brawn. The more the better. It was every patriotic Englishman's duty to encourage brawn. If the two officers had allowed him, he would have fed his billeted men every two hours on prime beefsteaks and burgundy. He threw himself heart and soul into the reorganization of his household. Officers and men found themselves in clover. The officers had champagne every night for dinner. They thought Doggie a capital fellow.

"My dear chap," they would say, "you're spoiling us. I don't say we don't like it and aren't grateful. We jolly well are. But we're supposed to rough it--to lead the simple life--what? You're doing us too well."

"Impossible!" Doggie would reply, filling up the speaker's gla.s.s.

"Don't I know what we owe to you fellows? In what other way can a helpless, delicate crock like myself show his grat.i.tude and in some sort of little way serve his country?"

When the sympathetic and wine-filled guest would ask what was the nature of his malady, he would tap his chest vaguely and reply:

"Const.i.tutional. I've never been able to do things like other fellows.

The least thing bowls me out."

"Dam hard lines--especially just now."

"Yes, isn't it?" Doggie would answer. And once he found himself adding, "I'm fed up with doing nothing."

Here can be noted a distinct stage in Doggie's development. He realized the brutality of fact. When great German guns were yawning open-mouthed at you, it was no use saying, "Take the nasty, horrid things away, I don't like them." They wouldn't go unless you took other big guns and fired at them. And more guns were required than could be manned by the peculiarly const.i.tuted fellows who made up the artillery of the original British Army. New fellows not at all warlike, peaceful citizens who had never killed a cat in anger, were being driven by patriotism and by conscience to man them. Against Blood and Iron now supreme, the superior, aesthetic and artistic being was of no avail. You might lament the fall in relative values of collections of wall-papers and little china dogs, as much as you liked; but you could not deny the fall; they had gone down with something of an ign.o.ble "wallop." Doggie began to set a high value on guns and rifles and such-like deadly engines, and to inquire petulantly why the Government were not providing them at greater numbers and at greater speed. On his periodic visits to London he wandered round by Trafalgar Square and Whitehall, to see for himself how the recruiting was going on. At the Deanery he joined in ardent discussions of the campaign in Flanders. On the walls of his peac.o.c.k and ivory room were maps stuck all over with little pins. When he told the young officer that he was wearied of inaction, he spoke the truth.

He began to feel mightily aggrieved against Providence for keeping him outside this tremendous national league of youth. He never questioned his physical incapacity. It was as real a fact as the German guns. He went about pitying himself and seeking pity.

The months pa.s.sed. The regiment moved away from Durdlebury, and Doggie was left alone in Denby Hall.

He felt solitary and restless. News came from Oliver that he had been offered and had accepted an infantry commission, and that Chipmunk, having none of the special qualities of a "'oss soldier," had, by certain skilful wire-pullings, been transferred to his regiment, and had once more become his devoted servant. "A month of this sort of thing," he wrote, "would make our dear old Doggie sit up." Doggie sighed. If only he had been blessed with Oliver's const.i.tution!

One morning Briggins, his chauffeur, announced that he could stick it no longer and was going to join up. Then Doggie remembered a talk he had had with one of the young officers who had expressed astonishment at his not being able to drive a car. "I shouldn't have the nerve," he had replied. "My nerves are all wrong--and I shouldn't have the strength to change tyres and things."... If his chauffeur went, he would find it very difficult to get another. Who would drive the Rolls-Royce?

"Why not learn to drive yourself, sir?" said Briggins. "Not the Rolls-Royce. I would put it up or get rid of it, if I were you. If you engage a second-rate man, as you'll have to, who isn't used to this make of car, he'll do it in for you pretty quick. Get a smaller one in its place and drive it yourself. I'll undertake to teach you enough before I go."

So Doggie, following Briggins' advice, took lessons and, to his amazement, found that he did not die of nervous collapse when a dog crossed the road in front of the car and that the fitting of detachable wheels did not require the strength of a Hercules. The first time he took Peggy out in the two-seater he swelled with pride.

"I'm so glad to see you can do something!" she said.

Although she was kind and as mildly affectionate as ever, he had noticed of late a curious reserve in her manner. Conversation did not flow easily. There seemed to be something at the back of her mind. She had fits of abstraction from which, when rallied, she roused herself with an effort.

"It's the war," she would declare. "It's affecting everybody that way."

Gradually Doggie began to realize that she spoke truly. Most people of his acquaintance, when he was by, seemed to be thus afflicted. The lack of interest they manifested in his delicacy of const.i.tution was almost impolite. At last he received an anonymous letter, "For little Doggie Trevor, from the girls of Durdlebury," enclosing a white feather.

The cruelty of it broke Doggie down. He sat in his peac.o.c.k and ivory room and nearly wept. Then he plucked up courage and went to Peggy.

She was rather white about the lips as she listened.

"I'm sorry," she said, "but I expected something of the sort to happen."

"It's brutal and unjust."

"Yes, it's brutal," she admitted coldly.

"I thought you, at any rate, would sympathize with me," he cried.

She turned on him. "And what about me? Who sympathizes with me? Do you ever give a moment's thought to what I've had to go through the last few months?"

"I don't quite know what you mean," he stammered.

"I should have thought it was obvious. You can't be such an innocent babe as to suppose people don't talk about you. They don't talk to you because they don't like to be rude. They send you white feathers instead. But they talk to me. 'Why isn't Marmaduke in khaki?' 'Why isn't Doggie fighting?' 'I wonder how you can allow him to slack about like that!'--I've had a pretty rough time fighting your battles, I can tell you, and I deserve some credit. I want sympathy just as much as you do."

"My dear," said Doggie, feeling very much humiliated, "I never knew. I never thought. I do see now the unpleasant position you've been in.

People are brutes. But," he added eagerly, "you told them the real reason?"

"What's that?" she asked, looking at him with cold eyes.

Then Doggie knew that the wide world was against him. "I'm not fit.

I've no const.i.tution. I'm an impossibility."

"You thought you had nerves until you learned to drive the car. Then you discovered that you hadn't. You fancy you've a weak heart. Perhaps if you learned to walk thirty miles a day you would discover you hadn't that either. And so with the rest of it."

"This is very painful," he said, going to the window and staring out.

"Very painful. You are of the same opinion as the young women who sent me that abominable thing."

She had been on the strain for a long while and something inside her had snapped. At his woebegone att.i.tude she relented however, and came up and touched his shoulder.

"A girl wants to feel some pride in the man she's going to marry. It's horrible to have to be always defending him--especially when she's not sure she's telling the truth in his defence."

He swung round horrified. "Do you think I'm shamming, so as to get out of serving in the Army?"

"Not consciously. Unconsciously, I think you are. What does your doctor say?"

Doggie was taken aback. He had no doctor. He had not consulted one for years, having no cause for medical advice. The old family physician who had attended his mother in her last illness and had prescribed Gregory powders for him as a child, had retired from Durdlebury long ago. There was only one person living familiar with his const.i.tution, and that was himself. He made confession of the surprising fact. Peggy made a little gesture.

"That proves it. I don't believe you have anything wrong with you. The nerves business made me sceptical. This is straight talking. It's horrid, I know. But it's best to get through with it once and for all."

Some men would have taken deep offence and, consigning Peggy to the devil, have walked out of the room. But Doggie, a conscientious, even though a futile human being, was gnawed for the first time by the suspicion that Peggy might possibly be right. He desired to act honourably.

"I'll do," said he, "whatever you think proper."

Peggy was swift to smite the malleable iron. To use the conventional phrase might give an incorrect impression of red-hot martial ardour on the part of Doggie.