The Rough Road Part 38

But this was England, and although he was hedged about, protected and restricted by War Office Regulation Red Tape twisted round to the strength of steel cables, yet he was in command of telegraphs, of telephones, and, in a secondary degree, of the railway system of the United Kingdom.

He found himself deprecating the compulsory facilities of communication in the civilized world. The Deanery must be informed of his home-coming.

As soon as he could secure the services of a nurse he wrote out three telegrams: one addressed "Conover, The Deanery, Durdlebury"; one to Peddle at Denby Hall, and one to Jeanne. The one to Jeanne was the longest, and was "Reply paid."

"This is going to cost a small fortune, young man," said the nurse.

Doggie smiled as he drew out a 1 treasury note from his soldier's pocket-book, the pathetic object containing a form of Will on the right-hand flap and on the left the directions for the making of the Will, concluding with the world-famous typical signature of Thomas Atkins.

"It's a bust, Sister," said he. "I've been saving up for it for months."

Then, duty accomplished, he reconciled himself to the corner of fairyland in which he had awoke that morning. Things must take their course, and while they were taking it, why worry? So long as they didn't commit the outrage of giving him bully-beef for dinner, the present coolness and comfort sufficed for his happiness.

CHAPTER XVIII

The replies to the telegrams were satisfactory. Peggy, adjuring him to write a full account of himself, announced her intention of coming up to see him as soon as he could guarantee his fitness to receive visitors.

Jeanne wired: "_Paquet recu. Mille remerciements._" The news cheered him exceedingly. It was worth a hole in the leg. Henceforward Jeanne would be independent of Aunt Morin, of whose generous affection, in spite of Jeanne's loyal reticence, he had formed but a poor opinion.

Now the old lady could die whenever she liked, and so much the better for Jeanne. Jeanne would then be freed from the unhealthy sick-room, from dreary little Frelus, and from enforced consorting with the riff-raff (namely, all other regiments except his own) of the British Army. Even as it was, he did not enjoy thinking of her as hail-fellow-well-met with his own fellow-privates--perhaps with the exception of Phineas and Mo, who were in a different position, having been formally admitted into a peculiar intimacy. Of course, if Doggie had possessed a more a.n.a.lytical mind, he would have been greatly surprised to discover that these feelings arose from a healthy, barbaric sense of ownership of Jeanne; that Mo and Phineas were in a special position because they humbly recognized this fact of ownership and adopted a respectful att.i.tude towards his property, and that of all other predatory men in uniform he was distrustful and jealous. But Doggie was a simple soul and went through a great many elementary emotions, just as Monsieur Jourdain spoke prose, _sans le savoir_.

Without knowing it, he would have gone to the ends of the earth for Jeanne, have clubbed over the head any fellow-savage who should seek to rob him of Jeanne. It did not occur to him that savage instinct had already sent him into the jaws of death, solely in order to establish his primitive man's ownership of Jeanne. When he came to reflect, in his Doggie-ish way, on the motives of his exploit, he was somewhat baffled. Jeanne, with her tragic face, and her tragic history, and her steadfast soul shining out of her eyes, was the most wonderful woman he had ever met. She personified the heroic womanhood of France. The foul invader had robbed her of her family and her patrimony. The dead were dead, and could not be restored; but the material wealth, G.o.d--who else?--had given him this miraculous chance to recover; and he had recovered it. National pride helped to confuse issues. He, an Englishman, had saved this heroic daughter of France from poverty....

If only he could have won back to his own trench, and, later, when the company returned to Frelus, he could have handed her the packet and seen the light come into those wonderful eyes!

Anyhow, she had received it. She sent him a thousand thanks. How did she look, what did she say when she cut the string and undid the seals and found her little fortune?

Translate Jeanne into a princess, the dirty waterproof package into a golden casket, himself into a knight disguised as a squire of low degree, and what more could you want for a first-cla.s.s fairy-tale? The idea struck Doggie at the moment of "lights out," and he laughed aloud.

"It doesn't take much to amuse some people," growled his neighbour, Penworthy.

"Sign of a happy disposition," said Doggie.

"What've you got to be happy about?"

"I was thinking how alive we are, and how dead you and I might be,"

said Doggie.

"Well, I don't think it funny thinking how one might be dead," replied Penworthy. "It gives me the creeps. It's all very well for you. You'll stump around for the rest of your life like a gentleman on a wooden leg. Chaps like you have all the luck; but as soon as I get out of this, I'll be pa.s.sed fit for active service ... and not so much of your larfing at not being dead. See?"

"All right, mate," said Doggie. "Good night."

Penworthy made no immediate reply; but presently he broke out:

"What d'you mean by talking like that? I'd hate being dead."

A voice from the far end of the room luridly requested that the conversation should cease. Silence reigned.

A letter from Jeanne. The envelope bore a French stamp with the Frelus postmark, and the address was in a bold feminine hand. From whom could it be but Jeanne? His heart gave a ridiculous leap and he tore the envelope open as he had never torn open envelope of Peggy's.

But at the first two words the leap seemed to be one in mid-air, and his heart went down, down, down like an aeroplane done in, and arrived with a hideous b.u.mp upon rocks.

"_Cher Monsieur_"

_Cher Monsieur_ from Jeanne--Jeanne who had called him "Dog-gie" in accents that had rendered adorable the once execrated syllables. _Cher Monsieur!_

And the following, in formal French--it might have been a convent exercise in composition--is what she said:

"The military authorities have remitted into my possession the package which you so heroically rescued from the well of the farm of La Folette. It contains all that my father was able to save of his fortune, and on consultation with Maitre Pepineau here, it appears that I have sufficient to live modestly for the rest of my life. For the marvellous devotion of you, monsieur, an English gentleman, to the poor interests of an obscure young French girl, I can never be sufficiently grateful. There will never be a prayer of mine, until I die, in which you will not be mentioned. To me it will be always a symbolic act of your chivalrous England in the aid of my beloved France. That you have been wounded in this n.o.ble and selfless enterprise, is to me a subject both of pride and terrifying dismay. I am moved to the depths of my being. But I have been a.s.sured, and your telegram confirms the a.s.surance, that your wound is not dangerous. If you had been killed while rendering me this wonderful service, or incapacitated so that you could no longer strike a blow for your country and mine, I should never have forgiven myself. I should have felt that I had robbed France of a heroic defender. I pray G.o.d that you may soon recover, and in fighting once more against our common enemy, you may win the glory that no English soldier can deserve more than you. Forgive me if I express badly the emotions which overwhelm me. It is impossible that we shall meet again. One of the few English novels I have tried to read, _a coups de dictionnaire_, was _Ships that Pa.s.s in the Night_. In spite of the great thing that you have done for me, it is inevitable that we should be such pa.s.sing vessels. It is life. If, as I shall ceaselessly pray, you survive this terrible war, you will follow your destiny as an Englishman of high position, and I that which G.o.d marks out for me.

"I ask you to accept again the expression of my imperishable grat.i.tude. Adieu.

"JEANNE BOSSIeRE."

The more often Doggie read this perfectly phrased epistle, the greater waxed his puzzledom. The grat.i.tude was all there; more than enough. It was grat.i.tude and nothing else. He had longed for a human story telling just how the thing had happened, just how Jeanne had felt. He had wanted her to say: "Get well soon and come back, and I'll tell you all about it." But instead of that she dwelt on the difference of their social status, loftily announced that they would never meet again and that they would follow different destinies, and bade him the _adieu_ which in French is the final leave-taking. All of which to Doggie, the unsophisticated, would have seemed ridiculous, had it not been so tragic. He couldn't reconcile the beautiful letter, written in faultless handwriting and impeccable French, with the rain-swept girl on the escarpment. What did she mean? What had come over her?

But the ways of Jeannes are not the ways of Doggies. How was he to know of the boastings of Phineas McPhail, and the hopelessness with which they filled Jeanne's heart? How was he to know that she had sat up most of the night in her little room over the gateway, drafting and redrafting this precious composition, until, having reduced it to soul-devastating correct.i.tude, and, with aching eyes and head, made a fair and faultless copy, she had once more cried herself into miserable slumber?

At once Doggie called for pad and pencil, and began to write:

"MY DEAR JEANNE,--

"I don't understand. What fly has stung you? (_Quelle mouche vous a piquee?_) Of course we shall meet again. Do you suppose I am going to let you go out of my life?"

(He sucked his pencil. Jeanne must be spoken to severely.)

"What rubbish are you talking about my social position? My father was an English parson (_pasteur anglais_) and yours a French lawyer. If I have a little money of my own, so have you.

And we are not ships and we have not pa.s.sed in the night. And that we should not meet again is not Life. It is absurdity. We are going to meet as soon as wounds and war will let me, and I am not your '_Cher Monsieur_,' but your '_Cher Dog-gie_,'

and----"

"Here is a letter for you, brought by hand," said the nurse, bustling to his bedside.

It was from Peggy.

"Oh, lord!" said Doggie.

Peggy was there. She had arrived from Durdlebury all alone, the night before, and was putting up at an hotel. The venerable idiot, with red crosses and bits of tin all over her, who seemed to run the hospital, wouldn't let her in to see him till the regulation visiting hour of three o'clock. That she, Peggy, was a Dean's daughter, who had travelled hundreds of miles to see the man she was engaged to, did not seem to impress the venerable idiot in the least. Till three o'clock then. With love from Peggy.

"The lady, I believe, is waiting for an answer," said the nurse.

"Oh, my hat!" said Doggie below his breath.

To write the answer, he had to strip from the pad the page on which he had begun the letter to Jeanne. He wrote: "Dearest Peggy." Then the pencil-point's impress through the thin paper stared at him. Almost every word was decipherable. Recklessly he tore the pad in half and on a virgin page scribbled his message to Peggy. The nurse departed with it. He took up the flimsy sheet containing his interrupted letter to Jeanne and glanced at it in dismay. For the first time it struck him that such words, to a girl even of the lowest intelligence, could only have one interpretation. Doggie said, "Oh, lord!" and "Oh, my hat!"

and Oh all sorts of unprintable things that he had learned in the army. And he put to himself the essential question: What the Hades was he playing at?