The Rough Road Part 43

"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 G.o.ds in bra.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 sh.e.l.l 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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.

"h.e.l.lo, old chap!"

Doggie took the hand in an honest grip.

"h.e.l.lo, 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 sh.e.l.l-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-sh.e.l.l 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 gla.s.s-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 G.o.d! 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?"