The Rough Road Part 52

"I suppose, laddie," said Phineas, "it's good to feel that smiling eyes and hearty hands will greet us when we too pa.s.s over the Border.

My G.o.d, man," he added reflectively, after a pause, "have you ever considered what a goodly company it will be? When you come to look at it that way, it makes Death quite a trivial affair."

"I suppose it does to us while we're here," said Doggie. "We've seen such a lot of it. But to those who haven't--my poor Peggy--it's the end of her universe."

Yes, it was all very well to take death philosophically, or fatalistically, or callously, or whatever you liked to call it, out there, where such an att.i.tude was the only stand against raving madness; but at home, beneath the grey ma.s.s of the cathedral, folks met Death as a strange and cruel horror. The new glory of life that Peggy had found, he had blackened out in an instant. Doggie looked again at the old man's letter--his handwriting was growing shaky--and forgot for a while the familiar things around him, and lived with Peggy in her sorrow.

Then, as far as Doggie's sorely tried division was affected, came the end of the great autumn fighting. He found himself well behind the lines in reserve, and so continued during the cold dreary winter months.

And the more the weeks that crept by and the more remote seemed Jeanne, the more Doggie hungered for the sight of her. But all this period of his life was but a dun-coloured monotony, with but few happenings to distinguish week from week. Most of the company that had marched with him into Frelus were dead or wounded. Nearly all the officers had gone. Captain Willoughby, who had interrogated Jeanne with regard to the restored packet, and, on Doggie's return, had informed him with a friendly smile that they were a d.a.m.ned sight too busy then to worry about defaulters of the likes of him, but that he was going to be court-martialled and shot as soon as peace was declared, when they would have time to think of serious matters--Captain Willoughby had gone to Blighty with a leg so mauled that never would he command again a company in the field. Sergeant Ballinghall, who had taught Doggie to use his fists, had retired, minus a hand, into civil life. A scientific and sporting helper at Roehampton, he informed Doggie by letter, was busily engaged on the invention of a boxing-glove which would enable him to carry on his pugilistic career. "So, in future times," said he, "if any of your friends among the n.o.bility and gentry want lessons in the n.o.ble art, don't forget your old friend Ballinghall." Whereat--incidentally--Doggie wondered. Never, for a fraction of a second, during their common military a.s.sociation, had Ballinghall given him to understand that he regarded him otherwise than as a mere Tommy without any pretensions to gentility. There had been times when Ballinghall had cursed him--perhaps justifiably and perhaps lovingly--as though he had been the sc.u.m of the earth. Doggie would no more have dared address him in terms of familiarity than he would have dared slap the Brigadier-General on the back. And now the honest warrior sought Doggie's patronage. Of the original crowd in England who had transformed Doggie's military existence by making him penny-whistler to the company, only Phineas and himself were left.

There were others, of course, good and gallant fellows, with whom he became bound in the rough intimacy of the army; but the first friends, those under whose protecting kindliness his manhood had developed, were the dearest. And their ghosts remained dear.

At last the division was moved up and there was more fighting.

One day, after a successful raid, Doggie tumbled back with the rest of the men into the trench and, looking about, missed Phineas. Presently the word went round that "Mac" had been hit, and later the rumour was confirmed by the pa.s.sage down the trench of Phineas on a stretcher, his weather-battered face a ghastly ivory.

"I'm alive all right, laddie," he gasped, contorting his lips into a smile. "I've got it clean through the chest like a gentleman. But it gars me greet I canna look after you any longer."

He made an attempt at waving a hand, and the stretcher-bearers carried him away out of the army for ever.

Thereafter Doggie felt the loneliest thing on earth, like Wordsworth's cloud, or the Last Man in Tom Hood's grim poem. For was he not the last man of the original company, as he had joined it, hundreds of years ago, in England? It was only then that he realized fully the merits of the wastrel Phineas McPhail. Not once or twice, but a thousand times had the man's vigilant affection, veiled under cynical humour, saved him from despair. Not once but a thousand times had the gaunt, tireless Scotchman saved him from physical exhaustion. At every turn of his career, since his enlistment, Phineas had been there, watchful, helpful, devoted. There he had been, always ready and willing to be cursed. To curse him had been the great comfort of Doggie's life. Whom could he curse now? Not a soul--no one, at any rate, against whom he could launch an anathema with any real heart in it. Than curse vainly and superficially, far better not to curse at all. He missed Phineas beyond all his conception of the blankness of bereavement. Like himself, Phineas had found salvation in the army.

Doggie realized how he had striven in his own queer way to redeem the villainy of his tutorship. No woman could have been more gentle, more unselfish.

"What the devil am I going to do?" said Doggie.

Meanwhile Phineas, lying in a London hospital with a bullet through his body, thought much and earnestly of his friend, and one morning Peggy got a letter.

"DEAR MADAM,--

"Time was when I could not have addressed you without incurring your not unjustifiable disapproval. But I take the liberty of doing so now, trusting to your generous acquiescence in the proposition that the war has purged many offences. If this has not happened, to some extent, in my case, I do not see how it has been possible for me to have regained and retained the trust and friendship of so sensitive and honourable a gentleman as Mr.

Marmaduke Trevor.

"If I ask you to come and see me here, where I am lying severely wounded, it is not with an intention to solicit a favour for myself personally--although I'll not deny that the sight of a kind and familiar face would be a boon to a lonely and friendless man--but with a deep desire to advance Mr. Trevor's happiness. Lest you may imagine I am committing an unpardonable impertinence and thereby totally misunderstand me, I may say that this happiness can only be achieved by the aid of powerful friends both in London and Paris.

"It is only because the lad is the one thing dear to me left in the world, that I venture to intrude on your privacy at such a time.

"I am, dear Madam, "Yours very faithfully, "PHINEAS MCPHAIL."

Peggy came down to breakfast, and having dutifully kissed her parents, announced her intention of going to London by the eleven o'clock train.

"Why, how can you, my dear?" asked Mrs. Conover.

"I've nothing particular to do here for the next few days."

"But your father and I have. Neither of us can start off to London at a moment's notice."

Peggy replied with a wan smile: "But, dearest mother, you forget. I'm an old, old married woman."

"Besides, my dear," said the Dean, "Peggy has often gone away by herself."

"But never to London," said Mrs. Conover.

"Anyhow, I've got to go." Peggy turned to the old butler. "Ring up Sturrocks's and tell them I'm coming."

"Yes, miss," said Burford.

"He's as bad as you are, mother," said Peggy.

So she went up to London and stayed the night at Sturrocks's alone, for the first time in her life. She half ate a lonely, execrable war dinner in the stuffy, old-fashioned dining-room, served ceremoniously by the ancient head waiter, the friend of her childhood, who, in view of her recent widowhood, addressed her in the m.u.f.fled tones of the sympathetic undertaker. Peggy nearly cried. She wished she had chosen another hotel. But where else could she have gone? She had stayed at few hotels in London: once at the Savoy; once at Claridge's; every other time at Sturrocks's. The Savoy? Its vastness had frightened her.

And Claridge's? No; that was sanctified for ever. Oliver in his lordly way had snapped his fingers at Sturrocks's. Only the best was good enough for Peggy. Now only Sturrocks's remained.

She sought her room immediately after the dreary meal and sat before the fire--it was a damp, chill February night--and thought miserable and aching thoughts. It happened to be the same room which she had occupied, oh--thousands of years ago--on the night when Doggie, point-device in new Savile Row uniform, had taken her to dinner at the Carlton. And she had sat, in the same imitation Charles the Second brocaded chair, looking into the same generous, old-fashioned fire, thinking--thinking. And she remembered clenching her fist and apostrophizing the fire and crying out aloud: "Oh, my G.o.d! if only he makes good!"

Oceans of years lay between then and now. Doggie had made good; every man who came home wounded must have made good. Poor old Doggie. But how in the name of all that was meant by the word Love she could ever have contemplated--as she had contemplated, with an obstinate, virginal loyalty--marriage with Doggie, she could not understand.

She undressed, brought the straight-backed chair close to the fire, and, in her dainty nightgown, part of her trousseau, sat elbow on knee, face in thin, clutching hands, slippered feet on fender, thinking, thinking once again. Thinking now of the gates of Paradise that had opened to her for a few brief weeks. Of the man who never had to make good, being the wonder of wonders of men, the delicious companion, the incomparable lover, the all-compelling revealer, the great, gay, scarcely, to her woman's limited power of vision, comprehended heroic soldier. Of the terrifying meaninglessness of life, now that her G.o.d of Very G.o.d, in human form, had been swept, in an instant, off the earth into the Unknown.

Yet was life meaningless after all? There must be some significance, some inner truth veiled in mystery, behind even the casually accepted and never probed religion to which she had been born and in which she had found poor refuge. For, like many of her thoughtless, unquestioning cla.s.s, she had looked at Christ through stained-gla.s.s windows, and now the windows were darkened.... For the first time in her life, her soul groped intensely towards eternal verities. The fire burned low and she shivered. She became again the bit of human flotsam cruelly buffeted by the waves, forgotten of G.o.d. Yet, after she had risen and crept into bed and while she was staring into the darkness, her heart became filled with a vast pity for the thousands and thousands of women, her sisters, who at that moment were staring, hopeless, like her, into the unrelenting night.

She did not fall asleep till early morning. She rose late. About half-past eleven as she was preparing to walk abroad on a dreary shopping excursion--the hospital visiting hour was in the afternoon--a telegram arrived from the Dean.

"Just heard that Marmaduke is severely wounded."

She scarcely recognized the young private tutor of Denby Hall in the elderly man with the deeply furrowed face, who smiled as she approached his bed. She had brought him flowers, cigarettes of the exquisite kind that Doggie used to smoke, chocolates....

She sat down by his bedside.

"All this is more than gracious, Mrs. Manningtree," said Phineas. "To a _vieux routier_ like me, it is a wee bit overwhelming."

"It's very little to do for Doggie's best friend."

Phineas's eyes twinkled. "If you call him Doggie, like that, maybe it won't be so difficult for me to talk to you."

"Why should it be difficult at all?" she asked. "We both love him."

"Ay," said Phineas. "He's a lovable lad, and it is because others besides you and me find him lovable, that I took the liberty of writing to you."

"The girl in France?"

"Eh?" He put out a bony hand, and regarded her in some disappointment.

"Has he told you? Perhaps you know all about it."

"I know nothing except that--'a girl in France,' was all he told me.

But--first about yourself. How badly are you wounded--and what can we do for you?"

She dragged from a reluctant Phineas the history of his wound and obtained confirmation of his statement from a nurse who happened to pa.s.s up the gangway of the pleasant ward and lingered by the bedside.