The Rough Road Part 13

By return of post came the answer:

"DEAREST,--

"We are all desperately disappointed. Perhaps we hurried on things too quickly and tried you too high all at once. I ought to have known. Oh, my poor dear boy, you must have had a dreadful time. Why didn't you tell me? The news in the 'Gazette'

came upon me like a thunderbolt. I didn't know what to think.

I'm afraid I thought the worst, the very horrid worst--that you had got tired of it and resigned of your own accord. How was one to know? Your letter was almost a relief.

"In offering to release me from my engagement you are acting like the honourable gentleman you are. Of course, I can understand your feelings. But I should be a little beast to accept right away like that. If there are any feathers about, I should deserve to have them stuck on to me with tar. Don't think of going abroad or doing anything foolish, dear, like that, till you have seen me--that is to say, us, for Dad is bringing Mother and me up to town by the first train to-morrow. Dad feels sure that everything is not lost. He'll dig out General Gadsby and fix up something for you. In the meantime, get us rooms at the Savoy, though Mother is worried as to whether it's a respectable place for Deans to stay at. But I know you wouldn't like to meet us at Sturrocks's--otherwise you would have been there yourself.

Meet our train. All love from

"PEGGY."

Doggie engaged the rooms, but he did not meet the train. He did not even stay in the hotel to meet his relations. He could not meet them.

He could not meet the pity in their eyes. He read in Peggy's note a desire to pet and soothe him and call him "Poor little Doggie," and he writhed. He could not even take up an heroic att.i.tude, and say to Peggy: "When I have retrieved the past and can bring you an unsullied reputation, I will return and claim you. Till then farewell." There was no retrieving the past. Other men might fail at first, and then make good; but he was not like them. His was the fall of Humpty Dumpty. Final--irretrievable.

He packed up his things in a fright and, leaving no address at the Savoy, drove to the Russell Hotel in Bloomsbury. But he wrote Peggy a letter "to await arrival." If time had permitted he would have sent a telegram, stating that he was off for Tobolsk or Tierra del Fuego, and thereby prevented their useless journey; but they had already started when he received Peggy's message.

Nothing could be done, he wrote, in effect, to her, nothing in the way of redemption. He would not put her father to the risk of any other such humiliation. He had learned, by the most bitter experience, that the men who counted now in the world's respect and in woman's love were men of a type to which, with all the goodwill in the world, he could not make himself belong--he did not say to which he wished he could belong with all the agony and yearning of his soul. Peggy must forget him. The only thing he could do was to act up to her generous estimate of him as an honourable gentleman. As such it was his duty to withdraw for ever from her life. His exact words, however, were: "You know how I have always hated slang, how it has jarred upon me, often to your amus.e.m.e.nt, when you have used it. But I have learned in the past months how expressive it may be. Through slang I've learned what I am. I am a born 'rotter.' A girl like you can't possibly love and marry a rotter. So the rotter, having a lingering sense of decency, makes his bow and exits--G.o.d knows where."

Peggy, red-eyed, adrift, rudderless on a frightening sea, called her father into her bedroom at the Savoy and showed him the letter. He drew out and adjusted his round tortoise-sh.e.l.l-rimmed reading-gla.s.ses and read it.

"That's a miraculously new Doggie," said he.

Peggy clutched the edges of his coat.

"I've never heard you call him that before."

"It has never been worth while," said the Dean.

CHAPTER VIII

At the Savoy, during the first stupefaction of his misery, Doggie had not noticed particularly the prevalence of khaki. At the Russell it dwelt insistent, like the mud on Salisbury Plain. Men that might have been the twin brethren of his late brother officers were everywhere, free, careless, efficient. The sight of them added the gnaw of envy to his heartache. Even in his bedroom he could hear the jingle of their spurs and their cheery voices as they clanked along the corridor. On the third day after his migration he took a bold step and moved into lodgings in Woburn Place. Here at least he could find quiet, untroubled by heart-rending sights and sounds. He spent most of his time in dull reading and dispirited walking. For he could walk now--so much had his training done for him--and walk for many miles without fatigue. For all the enjoyment he got out of it, he might as well have marched round a prison yard. Indeed there were some who tramped the prison yards with keener zest. They were buoyed up with the hope of freedom, they could look forward to the ever-approaching day when they should be thrown once more into the glad whirl of life. But the miraculously new Doggie had no hope. He felt for ever imprisoned in his shame. His failure preyed on his mind.

He dallied with thoughts of suicide. Why hadn't he salved, at any rate, his service revolver? Then he remembered the ugly habits of the unmanageable thing--how it always kicked its muzzle up in the air.

Would he have been able even to shoot himself with it? And he smiled in self-derision. Drowning was not so difficult. Any fool could throw himself into the water. With a view to the inspection of a suitable spot, Doggie wandered, idly, in the dusk of one evening, to Waterloo Bridge, and turning his back to the ceaseless traffic, leaned his elbows on the parapet and stared in front of him. A few lights already gleamed from Somerset House and the more dimly seen buildings of the Temple. The dome of St. Paul's loomed a dark shadow through the mist.

The river stretched below very peaceful, very inviting. The parapet would be easy to climb. He did not know whether he could dive in the approved manner--hands joined over head. He had never learned to swim, let alone dive. At any rate, he could fall off. In that art the riding-school had proved him a past master. But the spot had its disadvantages. It was too public. Perhaps other bridges might afford more privacy. He would inspect them all. It would be something to do.

There was no hurry. As he was not wanted in this world, so he had no a.s.surance of being welcome in the next. He had a morbid vision of avatar after avatar being kicked from sphere to sphere.

At this point of his reflections he became aware of a presence by his side. He turned his head and found a soldier, an ordinary private, very close to him, also leaning on the parapet.

"I thought I wasn't mistaken in Mr. Marmaduke Trevor."

Doggie started away, on the point of flight, dreading the possible insolence of one of the men of his late regiment. But the voice of the speaker rang in his ears with a strange familiarity, and the great fleshy nose, the high cheek-bones, and the little grey eyes in the weather-beaten face suggested vaguely some one of the long ago. His dawning recognition amused the soldier.

"Yes, laddie. Ye're right. It's your old Phineas--Phineas McPhail, Esq., M.A., defunct. Now 33702 Private P. McPhail redivivus."

He warmly wrung the hand of the semi-bewildered Doggie, who murmured: "Very glad to meet you, I'm sure."

Phineas, gaunt and bony, took his arm.

"Would it not just be possible," he said, in his old half-pedantic, half-ironic intonation, "to find a locality less exposed to the roar of traffic and the rude jostling of pedestrians and the inclemency of the elements, in which we can enjoy the amenities of a little refined conversation?"

It was like a breath from the past. Doggie smiled.

"Which way are you going?"

"Your way, my dear Marmaduke, was ever mine, until I was swept, I thought for ever, out of your path by a torrential spate of whisky."

He laughed, as though it had been a playful freak of destiny. Doggie laughed, too. But for the words he had addressed to hotel and lodging-house folk, he had spoken to no one for over a fortnight. The instinctive craving for companionship made Phineas suddenly welcome.

"Yes. Let us have a talk," said he. "Come to my rooms, if you have the time. There'll be some dinner."

"Will I come? Will I have dinner? Will I re-enter once more the paradise of the affluent? Laddie, I will."

In the Strand they hailed a taxi and drove to Bloomsbury. On the way Phineas asked:

"You mentioned your rooms. Are you residing permanently in London?"

"Yes," said Doggie.

"And Durdlebury?"

"I'm not going back."

"London's a place full of temptations for those without experience,"

Phineas observed sagely.

"I've not noticed any," Doggie replied. On which Phineas laughed and slapped him on the knee.

"Man," said he, "when I first saw you I thought you had changed into a disillusioned misanthropist. But I'm wrong. You haven't changed a bit."

A few minutes later they reached Woburn Place. Doggie showed him into the sitting-room on the drawing-room floor. A fire was burning in the grate, for though it was only early autumn, the evening was cold. The table was set for Doggie's dinner. Phineas looked round him in surprise. The heterogeneous and tasteless furniture, the dreadful Mid-Victorian prints on the walls--one was the "Return of the Guards from the Crimea," representing the landing from the troop-ship, repellent in its smug unreality, the coa.r.s.e gla.s.s and well-used plate on the table, the crumpled napkin in a ring (for Marmaduke who in his mother's house had never been taught to dream that a napkin could possibly be used for two consecutive meals!), the general air of slipshod Philistinism--all came as a shock to Phineas, who had expected to find in Marmaduke's "rooms" a replica of the fastidious prettiness of the peac.o.c.k and ivory room at Denby Hall. He scratched his head, covered with a thick brown thatch.

"Laddie," said he gravely, "you must excuse me if I take a liberty; but I canna fit you into this environment."

Doggie looked about him also. "Seems funny, doesn't it?"

"It cannot be that you've come down in the world?"

"To bed-rock," said Doggie.

"No?" said Phineas, with an air of concern. "Man, I'm awful sorry. I know what the coming down feels like. And I, finding it not abhorrent to a sophisticated and well-trained conscience, and thinking you could well afford it, extracted a thousand pounds from your fortune. My dear lad, if Phineas McPhail could return the money----"

Doggie broke in with a laugh. "Pray don't distress yourself, Phineas.

It's not a question of money. I've as much as ever I had. The last thing in the world I've had to think of has been money."