The Rough Road Part 39

Obviously, the first thing to do was to destroy the letter to Jeanne and the tell-tale impress. This he forthwith did. He tore the sheets into the tiniest fragments, stretched out his arm to put the handful on the table by the bed, missed his aim and dropped it on the floor.

Whereby he incurred the just wrath of the hard-worked nurse.

Again he took up Jeanne's letter. After all, what was wrong with it?

He must look at things from her point of view. What had really happened? Let him set out the facts judicially. They had struck up a day or two's friends.h.i.+p. She had told him, as she might have told any decent soul, her sad and romantic story. The English during the great retreat had rendered her unforgettable services. She was a girl of a generously responsive nature. She would pay her debt of grat.i.tude to the English soldier. Her fine _vale_ on the memorable night of rain was part payment of her debt to England. Yes. Let him get things in the right perspective.... She had made friends with him because he was one of the few private soldiers who could speak her language. It was but natural that she should tell him of the sunken packet. It was one of the most vital facts of her life. But just an outside fact: nothing to do with any shy mysterious workings of her woman's soul. She might have told the story to any man in the company without derogation from her womanly dignity. And any man Jack of them, having Jeanne's confidence, having the knowledge of the situation of the ruined well, having the G.o.d-sent opportunity of recovering the treasure, would, of absolute certainty, have done exactly what he, Doggie, had done.

Supposing Mo Shendish had been the privileged person, instead of himself. What, by way of thanks, could Jeanne have written? A letter practically identical.

Practically. A very comfortable sort of word; but Doggie's cultivated mind disliked it. It was a slovenly word, a makes.h.i.+ft for the hard broom of clean thought. This infernal "practically" begged the whole question. Jeanne would not have sentimentalized to Mo Shendish about s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sing in the night. No, she wouldn't, in spite of all his efforts to persuade himself that she would. Well, perhaps dear old Mo was a rough, uneducated sort of chap. He could not have established with Jeanne such delicate relations of friends.h.i.+p as exist between social equals. Obviously the finer shades of her letter would have varied according to the personality of the recipient. Jeanne and himself, owing to the abnormal conditions of war, had suddenly become very intimate friends. The war, as she imagined, must part them for ever. She bade him a touching and dignified farewell, and that was the end of the matter. It had all been an idyllic episode; beginning, middle, and end; neatly rounded off; a thing done, and done with--except as a strange romantic memory. It was all over. As long as he remained in the army, a condition for which, as a private soldier, he was not responsible, how could he see Jeanne again? By the time he rejoined, the regiment would be many miles away from Frelus. This, in her clear, steady way, she realized. Her letter must be final.

It had to be final. Was not Peggy coming at three o'clock?

Again Doggie thought, somewhat wistfully, of the old care-free, full physical life, and again he murmured:

"It's all dam funny!"

Peggy stood for a moment at the door scanning the ward; then perceiving him, she marched down with a defiant glance at nurses and blue-uniformed comrades and men in bed and other strangers, swung a chair and established herself by his bedside.

"You dear old thing, I couldn't bear to think of you lying here alone," she said, with the hurry that seeks to cover shyness. "I had to come. Mother's gone _fut_ and can't travel, and Dad's running all the parsons' shows in the district. Otherwise one of them would have come too."

"It's awfully good of you, Peggy," he said, with a smile, for fair and flushed she was pleasant to look upon. "But it must have been a fiendish journey."

"Rotten!" said Peggy. "But that's a trifle. You're the all-important thing. Tell me straight. You're not badly hurt, are you?"

"Lord, no," he replied cheerfully. "Just the fleshy part of the leg--a clean bullet-wound. Bone touched; but they say I'll be fit quite soon."

"Sure? They're not going to cut off your leg or do anything horrid?"

He laughed. "Sure," said he.

"That's all right."

There was a pause. Now that they had met they seemed to have little to say. She looked around. Presently she remarked:

"Everything looks quite fresh and clean."

"It's perfect."

"Rather public, though," said Peggy.

"Publicity is the paradoxical condition of the private's life,"

laughed Doggie.

Another pause.

"Well, how are you feeling?"

"First-rate," said Doggie. "It's nothing to fuss over. I hope to be out again in a month or two."

"Out where?"

"In France--with the regiment."

Peggy drew a little breath of astonishment and sat up on her chair.

His surprising statement seemed to have broken up the atmosphere of restraint.

"Do you mean to say you _want_ to go back to the trenches?"

Conscientious Doggie knitted his brows. A fervent "Yes" would proclaim him a modern Paladin, eager to slay Huns. Now, as a patriotic Englishman he loved Huns to be slain, but as the survivor of James Marmaduke Trevor, dilettante expert on the theorbo and the viol da gamba and owner of the peac.o.c.k and ivory room in Denby Hall, to say nothing of the collector of little china dogs, he could not honestly declare that he enjoyed the various processes of slaying them.

"I can't explain," he replied, after a while. "When I was out, I thought I hated every minute of it. Now I look back, I find I've had quite a good time. I've not once really been sick or sorry. For instance, I've often thought myself beastly miserable with wet and mud and east wind--but I've never had even a cold in the head. I never knew how good it was to feel fit. And there are other things. When I left Durdlebury, I hadn't a man friend in the world. Now I have a lot of wonderful pals who would go through h.e.l.l for one another--and for me."

"Tommies?"

"Of course--Tommies."

"You mean gentlemen in the ranks?"

"Not a bit of it. Or yes. All are gentlemen in the ranks. All sorts and conditions of men. The man whom I honour and love more than anyone else, comes from a fish-shop in Hackney. That's the fascinating part of it. Do understand me, Peggy," he continued, after a short silence, during which she regarded him almost uncomprehendingly. "I don't say I'm yearning to sleep in a filthy dug out or to wallow in the ground under sh.e.l.l-fire, or anything of that sort. That's beastly. There's only one other word for it, which begins with the same letter, and the superior kind of private doesn't use it in ladies' society.... But while I'm lying here I wonder what all the other fellows are doing--they're such good chaps--real, true, clean men--out there you seem to get to essentials--all the rest is leather and prunella--and I want to be back among them again. Why should I be in clover while they're in choking dust--a lot of it composed of desiccated Boches?"

"How horrid!" cried Peggy, with a little s.h.i.+ver.

"Of course it's horrid. But they've got to stick it, haven't they? And then there's another thing. Out there one hasn't any worries."

Peggy p.r.i.c.ked up her ears. "Worries? What kind of worries?"

Doggie became conscious of indiscretion. He temporized.

"Oh, all kinds. Every man with a sort of trained intellect must have them. You remember John Stuart Mill's problem: 'Which would you sooner be--a contented hog, or a discontented philosopher?' At the Front you have all the joys of the contented hog."

Instinctively he stretched out his hand for a cigarette. She bent forward, gripped a matchbox, and lit the cigarette for him.

Doggie thanked her politely; but in a dim way he felt conscious of something lacking in her little act of helpfulness. It had been performed with the unsmiling perfunctoriness of the nurse; an act of duty, not of tenderness. As she blew out the match, which she did with an odd air of deliberation, her face wore the same expression of hardness it had done on that memorable day when she had refused him her sympathy over the white feather incident.

"I can't understand your wanting to go back at all. Surely you've done your bit," she said.

"No one has done his bit who's alive and able to carry on," replied Doggie.

Peggy reflected. Yes. There was some truth in that. But she thought it rather hard lines on the wounded to be sent back as soon as they were patched up. Most of them hated the prospect. That was why she couldn't understand Doggie's desire.

"Anyhow, it's jolly n.o.ble of you, dear old thing," she declared with rather a spasmodic change of manner, "and I'm very proud of you."

"For G.o.d's sake, don't go imagining me a hero," cried Doggie in alarm, "for I'm not. I hate the fighting like poison. The only reason I don't run away is because I can't. It would be far more dangerous than standing still. It would mean an officer's bullet through my head at once."

"Any man who is wounded in the defence of his country is a hero," said Peggy defiantly.

"Rot!" said Doggie.