The Rough Road Part 44

"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 etre 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, G.o.d 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 l.u.s.ty 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 gla.s.s 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 att.i.tude. 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 b.l.o.o.d.y-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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.s 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."