The Rough Road Part 6

"All right, Peddle. Don't worry. I'll show myself in. Look after that man of mine. Quite easy. Give him some beer in a bucket and leave him to it."

Then the door burst open and Oliver, pipe in mouth and hat on one side, came into the room.

"Hallo, Doggie! Thought I'd look you up. Hope I'm not disturbing you."

"Not at all," said Doggie. "Do sit down."

But Oliver walked about and looked at things.

"I like your water-colours. Did you collect them yourself?"

"Yes."

"I congratulate you on your taste. This is a beauty. Who is it by?"

The appreciation brought Doggie at once to his side. Oliver, the connoisseur, was showing himself in a new and agreeable light. Doggie took him delightedly round the pictures, expounding their merits and their little histories. He found that Oliver, although unlearned, had a true sense of light and colour and tone. He was just beginning to like him, when the tactless fellow, stopping before the collection of little dogs, spoiled everything.

"My holy aunt!" he cried--an objurgation which Doggie had abhorred from boyhood--and he doubled with laughter in his horrid schoolboy fas.h.i.+on--"My dear Doggie--is that your family? How many litters?"

"It's the finest collection of the kind in the world," replied Doggie stiffly, "and is worth several thousand pounds."

Oliver heaved himself into a chair--that was Doggie's impression of his method of sitting down--a Sheraton chair with delicate arms and legs.

"Forgive me," he said, "but you're such a funny devil."--Doggie gaped.

The conception of himself as a funny devil was new.--"Pictures and music I can understand. But what the deuce is the point of these dam little dogs?"

But Doggie was hurt. "It would be useless to try to explain," said he.

Oliver took off his hat and sent it skimming on to the couch.

"Look here, old chap," he said, "I seem to have put my foot into it again. I didn't mean to, really. Peggy gave me h.e.l.l this morning for not treating you as a man and a brother, and I came round to try to put things right."

"It's very considerate of Peggy, I'm sure," said Marmaduke.

"Now look here, old Doggie----"

"I told you when we first met yesterday that I vehemently object to being called Doggie."

"But why?" asked Oliver. "I've made inquiries, and find that all your pals----"

"I haven't any pals, as you call them."

"Well, all our male contemporaries in the place who have the honour of your acquaintance--they all call you Doggie, and you don't seem to mind."

"I do mind," replied Marmaduke angrily, "but as I avoid their company as much as possible, it doesn't very much matter."

Oliver stretched out his legs and put his hands behind his back--then wriggled to his feet. "What a beast of a chair! Anyhow," he went on, puffing at his pipe, "don't let us quarrel. I'll call you Marmaduke, if you like, when I can remember--it's a beast of a name--like the chair. I'm a rough sort of chap. I've had ten years' pretty rough training. I've slept on boards. I've slept in the open without a cent to hire a board. I've gone cold and I've gone hungry, and men have knocked me about and I've knocked men about--and I've lost the Durdlebury sense of social values. In the wilds if a man once gets the name, say, of Duck-Eyed Joe, it sticks to him, and he accepts it and answers to it, and signs 'Duck-Eyed Joe' on an IOU and honours the signature."

"But I'm not in the wilds," said Marmaduke, "and haven't the slightest intention of ever leading the unnatural and frightful life you describe. So what you say doesn't apply to me."

"Quite so," replied Oliver. "That wasn't the moral of my discourse.

The habit of mind engendered in the wilds applies to me. Just as I could never think of Duck-Eyed Joe as George Wilkinson, so you, James Marmaduke Trevor, will live imperishably in my mind as Doggie. I was making a sort of apology, old chap, for my habit of mind."

"If it is an apology----" said Marmaduke.

Oliver, laughing, clapped him boisterously on the shoulder. "Oh, you solemn comic cuss!" He strode to a rose-bowl and knocked the ashes of his pipe into the water--Doggie trembled lest he might next squirt tobacco juice over the ivory curtains. "You don't give a fellow a chance. Look here, tell me, as man to man, what are you going to do with your life? I don't mean it in the high-brow sense of people who live in unsuccessful plays and garden cities, but in the ordinary common-sense way of the world. Here you are, young, strong, educated, intelligent----"

"I'm not strong," said Doggie.

"Oh, shucks! A month's exercise would make you as strong as a mule.

Here you are--what the blazes are you going to do with yourself?"

"I don't admit that you have any right to question me," said Doggie, lighting a cigarette.

"Peggy has given it to me. We had a heart to heart talk this morning, I a.s.sure you. She called me a swaggering, hectoring barbarian. So I told her what I'd do. I said I'd come here and squeak like a little mouse and eat out of your hand. I also said I'd take you out with me to the Islands and give you a taste for fresh air and salt water and exercise. I'll teach you how to sail a schooner and how to go about barefoot and swab decks. It's a life for a man out there, I tell you.

If you've nothing better to do than living here snug like a flea on a dog's back, until you get married, you'd better come."

Doggie smiled pityingly, but said politely:

"Your offer is very kind, Oliver; but I don't think that kind of life would suit me."

"Oh yes it would," said Oliver. "It would make you healthy, wealthy--if you took a fancy to put some money into the pearl fishery--and wise. I'd show you the world, make a man of you, for Peggy's sake, and teach you how men talk to one another in a gale of wind."

The door opened and Peddle appeared.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Oliver--but your man----"

"Yes? What about him? Is he misbehaving himself? Kissing the maids?"

"No, sir," said Peddle--"but none of them can get on with their work.

He has drunk two quart jugs of beer and wants a third."

"Well, give it to him."

"I shouldn't like to see the man intoxicated, sir," said Peddle.

"You couldn't. No one has or ever will."

"He is also standing on his head, sir, in the middle of the kitchen table."

"It's his great parlour-trick. You just try to do it, Peddle--especially after two quarts of beer. He's showing his grat.i.tude, poor chap--just like the juggler of Notre-Dame in the story. And I'm sure everybody's enjoying themselves?"

"The maids are nearly in hysterics, sir."

"But they're quite happy?"

"Too happy, sir."

"Lord!" cried Oliver, "what a lot of stuffy owls you are! What do you want me to do? What would you like me to do, Doggie? It's your house."