The Rough Road Part 54

"I beg entirely to differ from you, Mrs. Manningtree," said Phineas.

"You have come through much heavy travail to a correct appreciation of the meaning of human love between man and woman, and so you have in you the wisdom of all the ages."

"Yes, yes," said Peggy, becoming practical. "But _Port Royal_?"

"The clue to the labyrinth," replied Phineas.

CHAPTER XXIV

The Dean of an English cathedral is a personage.

He has power. He can stand with folded arms at its door and forbid entrance to anyone, save, perhaps, the King in person. He can tell not only the Bishop of the Diocese, but the very Archbishop of the Province, to run away and play. Having power and using it benignly and graciously, he can exert its subtler form known as influence. In the course of his distinguished career he is bound to make many queer friends in high places.

"My dear Field-Marshal, could you do me a little favour...?"

"My dear Amba.s.sador, my daughter, etc., etc...."

Deans, discreet, dignified gentlemen, who would not demand the impossible, can generally get what they ask for.

When Peggy returned to Durdlebury and put Doggie's case before her father, and with unusual fervour roused him from his first stupefaction at the idea of her mad project, he said mildly:

"Let me understand clearly what you want to do. You want to go to Paris by yourself, discover a girl called Jeanne Bossiere, concerning whose address you know nothing but two words--Port Royal--of course there is a Boulevard Port Royal somewhere south of the Luxembourg Gardens----"

"Then we've found her," cried Peggy. "We only want the number."

"Please don't interrupt," said the Dean. "You confuse me, my dear. You want to find this girl and re-establish communication between her and Marmaduke, and--er--generally play Fairy G.o.dmother."

"If you like to put it that way," said Peggy.

"Are you quite certain you would be acting wisely? From Marmaduke's point of view----"

"Don't call him Marmaduke"--she bent forward and touched his knee caressingly--"Marmaduke could never have risked his life for a woman.

It was Doggie who did it. She thinks of him as Doggie. Every one thinks of him now and loves him as Doggie. It was Oliver's name for him, don't you see? And he has stuck it out and made it a sort of t.i.tle of honour and affection--and it was as Doggie that Oliver learned to love him, and in his last letter to Oliver he signed himself 'Your devoted Doggie.'"

"My dear," smiled the Dean, and quoted: "'What's in a name? A rose----'"

"Would be unendurable if it were called a bug-squash. The poetry would be knocked out of it."

The Dean said indulgently: "So the name Doggie connotes something poetic and romantic?"

"You ask the girl Jeanne."

The Dean tapped the back of his daughter's hand that rested on his knee.

"There's no fool like an old fool, my dear. Do you know why?"

She shook her head.

"Because the old fool has learned to understand the young fool, whereas the young fool doesn't understand anybody."

She laughed and threw herself on her knees by his side.

"Daddy, you're immense!"

He took the tribute complacently. "What was I saying before you interrupted me? Oh yes. About the wisdom of your proposed action. Are you sure they want each other?"

"As sure as I'm sitting here," said Peggy.

"Then, my dear," said he, "I'll do what I can."

Whether he wrote to Field-Marshals and Amba.s.sadors or to lesser luminaries, Peggy did not know. The Dean observed an old-world punctilio about such matters. At the first reply or two to his letters he frowned; at the second or two he smiled in the way any elderly gentleman may smile when he finds himself recognized by high-and-mightiness as a person of importance.

"I think, my dear," said he at last, "I've arranged everything for you."

So it came to pa.s.s that while Doggie, with a shattered shoulder and a touched left lung, was being transported from a base hospital in France to a hospital in England, Peggy, armed with all kinds of pa.s.sports and recommendations, and a very fixed, personal sanctified idea, was crossing the Channel on her way to Paris and Jeanne.

And, after all, it was no wild-goose chase, but a very simple matter.

An urbane, elderly person at the British Emba.s.sy performed certain telephonic gymnastics. At the end:

"_Merci, merci. Adieu!_"

He turned to her.

"A representative from the Prefecture of Police will wait on you at your hotel at ten o'clock to-morrow morning."

The official called, took notes, and confidently a.s.sured her that he would obtain the address of Mademoiselle Jeanne Bossiere within twelve hours.

"But how, monsieur, are you going to do it?" asked Peggy.

"Madame," said he, "in spite of the war, the telegraphic, telephonic, and munic.i.p.al systems of France work in perfect order--to say nothing of that of the police. Frelus, I think, is the name of the place she started from?"

At eight o'clock in the evening, after her lonely dinner in the great hotel, the polite official called again. She met him in the lounge.

"Madame," said he, "I have the pleasure to inform you that Mademoiselle Jeanne Bossiere, late of Frelus, is living in Paris at 743^bis Boulevard Port Royal, and spends all her days at the succursale of the French Red Cross in the Rue Vaugirard."

"Have you seen her and told her?"

"No, madame, that did not come within my instructions."

"I am infinitely grateful to you," said Peggy.

"_Il n'y a pas de quoi_, madame. I perform the tasks a.s.signed to me and am only too happy, in this case, to have been successful."