The Rough Road Part 53

McPhail was doing splendidly. Of course, a man with a hole through his body must be expected to go back to the regime of babyhood. So long as he behaved himself like a well-conducted baby all would be well. Peggy drew the nurse a few yards away.

"I've just heard that his dearest friend out there, a boy whom he loves dearly and has been through the whole thing with him in the same company--it's odd, but he was his private tutor years ago--both gentlemen, you know--in fact, I'm here just to talk about the boy----"

Peggy grew somewhat incoherent. "Well--I've just heard that the boy has been seriously wounded. Shall I tell him?"

"I think it would be better to wait for a few days. Any shock like that sends up their temperatures. We hate temperatures, and we're getting his down so nicely."

"All right," said Peggy, and she went back smiling to Phineas. "She says you're getting on amazingly, Mr. McPhail."

Said Phineas: "I'm grateful to you, Mrs. Manningtree, for concerning yourself about my entirely unimportant carca.s.s. Now, as Virgil says, '_paullo majora canemus_.'"

"You have me there, Mr. McPhail," said Peggy.

"Let us sing of somewhat greater things. That is the bald translation.

Let us talk of Doggie--if so be it is agreeable to you."

"Carry on," said Peggy.

"Well," said Phineas, "to begin at the beginning, we marched into a place called Frelus----"

In his pedantic way he began to tell her the story of Jeanne, so far as he knew it. He told her of the girl standing in the night wind and rain on the bluff by the turning of the road. He told her of Doggie's insane adventure across No Man's Land to the farm of La Folette. Tears rolled down Peggy's cheeks. She cried, incredulous:

"Doggie did that? Doggie?"

"It was child's play to what he had to do at Guedecourt."

But Peggy waved away the vague heroism of Guedecourt.

"Doggie did that? For a woman?"

The whole elaborate structure of her conception of Doggie tumbled down like a house of cards.

"Ay," said Phineas.

"He did that"--Phineas had given an imaginative and picturesque account of the episode--"for this girl Jeanne?"

"It is a strange coincidence, Mrs. Manningtree," replied Phineas, with a flicker of his lips elusively suggestive of unctuousness, "that almost those identical words were used by Mademoiselle Bossiere in my presence. '_Il a fait cela pour moi!_' But--you will pardon me for saying it--with a difference of intonation, which, as a woman, no doubt you will be able to divine and appreciate."

"I know," said Peggy. She bent forward and picked with finger and thumb at the fluff of the blanket. Then she said, intent on the fluff: "If a man had done a thing like that for me, I should have crawled after him to the ends of the earth." Presently she looked up with a flash of the eyes. "Why isn't this girl doing it?"

"You must listen to the end of the story," said Phineas. "I may tell you that I always regarded myself, with my Scots caution, as a model of tact and discretion; but after many conversations with Doggie, I'm beginning to have my doubts. I also imagined that I was very careful of my personal belongings; but facts have convicted me of criminal laxity."

Peggy smiled. "That sounds like a confession, Mr. McPhail."

"Maybe it's in the nature of one," he a.s.sented. "But by your leave, Mrs. Manningtree, I'll resume my narrative."

He continued the story of Jeanne: how she had learned through him of Doggie's wealth and position and early upbringing; of the memorable dinner-party with poor Mo; of Doggie's sensitive interpretation of her French _bourgeoise_ att.i.tude; and finally the loss of the letter containing her address in Paris.

After he had finished, Peggy sat for a long while thinking. This romance in Doggie's life had moved her as she thought she could never be moved since the death of Oliver. Her thoughts winged themselves back to an afternoon, remote almost as her socked and sashed childhood, when Doggie, immaculately attired in grey and pearl harmonies, had declared, with his little effeminate drawl, that tennis made one so terribly hot. The scene in the Deanery garden flashed before her. It was succeeded by a scene in the Deanery drawing-room when, to herself indignant, he had pleaded his delicacy of const.i.tution. And the same Doggie, besides braving death a thousand times in the ordinary execution of his soldier's duties, had performed this queer deed of heroism for a girl. Then his return to Durdlebury----

"I'm afraid," she said suddenly, "I was dreadfully unkind to him when he came home the last time. I didn't understand. Did he tell you?"

Phineas stretched out a hand and with the tips of his fingers touched her sleeve.

"Mrs. Manningtree," he said softly, "don't you know that Doggie's a very wonderful gentleman?"

Again her eyes grew moist. "Yes. I know. Of course he never would have mentioned it.... I thought, Mr. McPhail, he had deteriorated--G.o.d forgive me! I thought he had coa.r.s.ened and got into the ways of an ordinary Tommy--and I was sn.o.bbish and uncomprehending and horrible.

It seems as if I am making a confession now."

"Ay. Why not? If it were not for the soul's health, the ancient Church wouldn't have inst.i.tuted the practice."

She regarded him shrewdly for a second. "You've changed too."

"Maybe," said Phineas. "It's an ill war that blows n.o.body good. And I'm not complaining of this one. But you were talking of your miscomprehension of Doggie."

"I behaved very badly to him," she said, picking again at the blanket. "I misjudged him altogether--because I was ignorant of everything--everything that matters in life. But I've learned better since then."

"Ay," remarked Phineas gravely.

"Mr. McPhail," she said, after a pause, "it wasn't those rotten ideas that prevented me from marrying him----"

"I know, my dear little lady," said Phineas, grasping the plucking hand. "You just loved the other man as you never could have loved Doggie, and there's an end to't. Love just happens. It's the holiest thing in the world."

She turned her hand, so as to meet his in a mutual clasp, and withdrew it.

"You're very kind--and sympathetic--and understanding----" Her voice broke. "I seem to have been going about misjudging everybody and everything. I'm beginning to see a little bit--a little bit farther--I can't express myself----"

"Never mind, Mrs. Manningtree," said Phineas soothingly, "if you cannot express yourself in words. Leave that to the politicians and the philosophers and the theologians, and other such windy expositors of the useless. But you can express yourself in deeds."

"How?"

"Find Jeanne for Doggie."

Peggy bent forward with a queer light in her eyes.

"Does she love him--really love him as he deserves to be loved?"

"It is not often, Mrs. Manningtree, that I commit myself to a definite statement. But, to my certain knowledge, these two are breaking their hearts for each other. Couldn't you find her, before the poor laddie is killed?"

"He's not killed yet, thank G.o.d!" said Peggy, with an odd thrill in her voice.

He was alive. Only severely wounded. He would be coming home soon, carried, according to convoy, to any unfriendly hospital dumping-ground in the United Kingdom. If only she could bring this French girl to him! She yearned to make reparation for the past, to act according to the new knowledge that love and sorrow had brought her.

"But how can I find her--just a girl--an unknown Mademoiselle Bossiere--among the millions of Paris?"

"I've been racking my brains all the morning," replied Phineas, "to recall the address, and out of the darkness there emerges just two words, _Port Royal_. If you know Paris, does that help you at all?"

"I don't know Paris," replied Peggy humbly. "I don't know anything.

I'm utterly ignorant."