 6 During the next few months there happened terrible and marvellous things, which were all set down in the myriad chronicles of the time, which shook the world and brought the unknown phenomena of change into the close of Dirtlebury. The use of strange habit and speech walked in it, and, gazing at the gothic splendour of the place, saw through the mist of autumn and the mist of tears, not Dirtlebury, but Louvain. More than one of those greyhouses flanking the cathedral and sharing with it the continuity of its venerable life was a house of mourning. Not forloss in the inevitable and not unkindly way of human destiny has understood and accepted with long disciplined resignation, but forloss sudden, awful, devastating. For the gallant lad who had left it but a few weeks before with a smile on his lips and a new and dancing light of manhood in his eyes, now with those eyes unclosed and glazed, staring at the pittiest, flauntless sky. Not one of those houses but was linked with a battlefield. Beyond the memory of man the reader of the litany had droned the accustomed invocation on behalf of the sovereign and the royal family, the bishops, priests, and deacons, the lords of the council, and all prisoners and captives, and the congregation had lumped them all together in their responses with an undifferentiating convention of fervour. What had prisoners and captives any more than the lords of the council to do with their lives, their hearts, their personal emotions? But now, dirtyly men were known to be prisoners in German hands, and after all prisoners and captives there was a long and pregnant silence, in which was felt the reverberation of war against pure and vaulted arch and groin roof of the cathedral, which was broken to now and then by the stifled sob of a woman. Before the choir came in with a response so new and significant in its appeal, we beseech thee to hear us, O Lord. And in every home the knitting needles of women clicked, as they did through the length and breadth of the land. And the young man left shop and trade and counting-house, and young Parsons fretted, and some obtained the bishop's permission to become army chaplains, and others, snapping their fingers figuratively under the bishop's nose, threw their cassocks to the nettles, and put on the full, though in modern times not very splendiferous, panoply of war. And in course of time the brigade of artillery rolled away, and new troops took their place. And Barmadu Trevor, a squire of Denby Hall, was called upon to billet a couple of officers and twenty men. Doggy was both patriotic and polite. Having a fragment of the British army in his house, he did his best to make them comfortable. By January he had no doubt that the empire was in peril, that it was every man's duty to do his bit. He welcomed the newcomers with open arms, having unconsciously abandoned his attitude of superiority over mere brawn. Doggy saw the necessity of brawn, the more the better, as every patriotic Englishman's duty to encourage brawn. If the two officers had allowed him, he would have fed his billeted men every two hours on prime beef steaks and burgundy. He threw himself heart and soul into the reorganization of his household. Officers and men found themselves in clover. The officers had champagne every night for dinner. They thought Doggy a capital fellow. My dear chap, they would say you're sponious! I don't say we don't like it, not grateful, we jolly well are, but we're supposed to rough it, to lead the simple life. What? He would say he has too well. Impossible!" Doggy would reply, filling up the speaker's glass. Don't I know what we owe to you, fellows? In what other way can a helpless, delicate crock like myself show his gratitude, and in some sort of little way serve his country? When the sympathetic and wine-filled guest would ask what was the nature of his malady, he would tap his chest vaguely and reply, �Constitutional! I've never been able to do things like other fellows. The least thing bulls me out.� �Damn our lines, especially just now! �Yes, isn't it?� Doggy would answer, and once he find himself adding, �I'm fed up with doing nothing.� Here culminated a distinct stage in Doggy's development. He realized the brutality of fact. When great German guns were yawning open mouths of you, it was never you saying, �Take the nasty, horrid things away, I don't like them.� They wouldn't go unless you took other big guns and fired at them. And more guns were required than could be manned by the peculiarly constituted fellows who made up the artillery of the original British army. New fellows not at all warlike. Peaceful citizens who had never killed a cat in anger were being driven by patriotism and by conscience to man them. Against blood and iron now supreme, the superior aesthetic and artistic being was of no avail. You might lament the fall in relative values of collections of wallpapers and little china dogs as much as you liked, but you could not deny the fall. They had gone down with something of an ignoble wallop. Doggy began to set a high value on guns and rifles and such like deadly engines, and to inquire petunately why the government were not provided them at greater numbers and at greater speed. On his periodic visits to London he wandered round by Trafalgar Square and White Hall to see for himself how the recruiting was going on. At the denary he joined in ardent discussions of the campaign in Flanders. On the walls of his peacock and ivory room were maps stuck all over with little pins. When he told the young officer that he was weird of inaction he spoke the truth. He began to feel mightily aggrieved against Providence for keeping him outside this tremendous national league of youth. He never questioned his physical incapacity. It was as real a fact as the German guns. He went about pitting himself and seeking pity. The months passed. The regiment moved away from Dirtlebury, and Doggy was left alone at Denby Hall. He felt solitary and restless. News came from Oliver that he had been offered and had accepted an infantry commission, and that Chipmunk, having none of the special qualities of an cross-shoulder, had, by certain skilful wire-pullings, been transferred to his regiment, and had once more become his devoted servant. A month of this sort of thing, he wrote, would make our dear old Doggy sit up. Doggy sighed. If only he had been blessed with Oliver's constitution. One morning Briggins, his chauffeur, announced that he could stick it no longer and was going to join up. Doggy remembered a talk he'd had with one of the young officers who had expressed astonishment that he's not been able to drive a car. I shouldn't have the nerve, he had replied. My nerves are all wrong, and I shouldn't have the strength to change tars and things. If his chauffeur went, he would find it very difficult to get another. Who would drive the Rolls-Royce? Why not learn to drive yourself, sir, then Briggins? Not the Rolls-Royce. I would put it up or get rid of it if I were you. If you engage a second-rate man, as you would have to, who isn't used to this make of car, you'd do it in for you pretty quick. You'd get a small one in its place and drive it yourself. I'll undertake to teach you enough before I go." So Doggy, following Briggins advice, took lessons, and to his amazement found that he did not die of nervous collapse when a dog crossed the road in front of the car, and that the fitting of detachable wheels did not require the strength of a Hercules. The first time he took Peggy out in the two-seater, he swelled with pride. I'm so glad to see you can do something," she said. Although she was kind and as mildly affectionate as ever, he'd noticed of later curious reserve in her manner. Conversation did not flow easily. There seemed to be something in the back of her mind. She had fits of abstraction from which, when rallied, she roused herself with an effort. It's the war, she would declare. It's affecting everybody that way. Gradually Doggy began to realise that she spoke truly. Most people of his acquaintance, when he was by, seemed to be thus afflicted. The lack of interest they manifested in his delicacy of constitution was almost impolite. At last he received an anonymous letter, for little Doggy Trevor from the Girls of Dirtlebury, in closing, a white feather. The cruelty of it broke Doggy down. He sat in his peacock and ivory room and nearly wept. Then he picked up courage and went to Peggy. She was rather white about the lips, as she listened. "'I'm sorry,' she said, but I expected something of the sorts to happen.' "'It's brutal and unjust.' "'Yes, it's brutal,' she admitted coldly. "'I thought you at any rate would sympathise with me,' he cried. She turned on him. "'And what about me? Who sympathises with me? Do you ever give a moment's thought to what I've had to go through the last few months?' "'I don't quite know what you mean,' he stammered. "'I should have thought it was obvious. You can't be such an innocent babe as to suppose people don't talk about you. They don't talk to you, you, because they don't like to be rude. They send you white feathers instead. But they talk to me. Why isn't Marmaduke and Karky? Why isn't Doggy fighting? I wonder how you can allow him to slack about like that.' "'I've had a pretty rough time fighting your battles, I can tell you, and I deserve some credit. I won't sympathise just as much as you do.' "'My dear,' said Doggy, feeling very much humiliated, "'I never knew, I never thought. I do see now the unpleasant position you've been in. People are brutes. But,' he added eagerly, "'you told them the real reason? What's that?' she asked, looking at him with cold eyes. Then Doggy knew that the wide world was against him. Ah, I'm not fit. I've no constitution. I'm an impossibility. You thought you had nerves until you learned to drive the car? Then you discovered that you hadn't. You fancy you've a weak heart. Perhaps if you learned to walk thirty miles a day, you would discover you hadn't that either. And so were the rest of it.' "'This is very painful,' he said, going to the window and staring out. Very painful. You are of the same opinion as the young women who sent me that abominable thing. She'd been on the strain for a long while, and something inside her had snapped. At his were-begone attitude she relented, however, and came up and touched his shoulder. Her girl wants to feel some pride in the man she's going to marry. It's horrible to have to be always defending him, especially when she's not sure she's telling the truth in his defense.' He swung round, horrified. "'Did you think I'm shamming so as to be get out of serving in the army?' "'Not consciously. Unconsciously. I think you are. What does your doctor say?' Doggy was taken aback. He had no doctor. He had not consulted one for years, having no cause for medical advice. The old family physician who had attended his mother in her last illness, and had presided Gregory Proud as for him as a child, and retired from Dernhamry long ago. There was only one person living familiar with his constitution, and that was himself. He made confession of the surprising fact. Peggy made a little gesture. "'That proves it. I don't believe you have anything wrong with you. The nerves business made me skeptical. This is straight talking. It's horrid, I know, but it's best to get through with it once and for all.' Some member have taken deeper fence, and, consigning Peggy to the devil, have walked out of the room. But Doggy, a conscientious, even though a futile human being, was gnawed for the first time by the suspicion that Peggy might possibly be right. He desired to act honourably. "'I'll do,' said he, "'whatever you think proper.'" Peggy was swift to smite the malleable yarn. To use the conventional phrase might give an incorrect impression of red-hot martial ardour on the part of Doggy. "'Good,' she said with the first smile of the day, "'I'll hold you to it. But it will be an honourable bargain. Get Dr. Murdock to overhaul you thoroughly with a view to the army. If he passes you, take a commission. Dad says he could easily get you one through his old friend General Gadsby at the War-Office. If he doesn't, and your unfit, I'll stick to you through thick and thin, and make the young women of Dirtleby wish they'd never been born.' She put out a hand. Doggy took it. "'Very well,' said he. "'I agree.' She laughed, and ran to the door. "'Where are you going?' To the telephone, to ring up Dr. Murdock for an appointment. "'Your flabby,' said Dr. Murdock, the next morning to the anxious Doggy in pink pyjamas. "'But that's merely a matter of unused muscles. Physical training will set it right in no time. Otherwise, my dear Trevor, you're in splendid health. I was afraid your family history might be against you. You're a lot of elderly parents, and so forth. But nothing of the sort. Not only are you a first-class life for an insurance company, but you're a first-class life for the army, and that's saying a good deal. There's not a flaw in your health-constitution.' He put away his death-escape, and smiled at a Doggy, who regarded him blankly as the announcer of a doom. He went on to prescribe a course of physical exercises, so many miles a day walking, such as back-breaking and contortional performances in his bathroom. If possible, a skilfully graduated career in a gymnasium. But his words fell on the ears of a Doggy in a dream. And when he had ended, Doggy said, "'I'm afraid, Doctor, you'll have to write all that out for me.' "'And with pleasure,' smiled the doctor, and gripped him by the hand. And seeing Doggy wince, he said heartily, "'Ah, I'll soon set that right for you. I'll get you something in your rubber-contrivance to practice with for half an hour a day, and you'll develop a hand like a gorilla's.' Dr. Murdoch grinned his way in his little car to his next patient. Here was this young slacker coddled from birth, absolutely horse-strong and utterly confounded at being told so. He grinned and chuckled so much that he nearly killed his most valuable old lady patient who was crossing the high street. But Doggy crept out of bed and put on a violet dressing-garn that clashed horribly with his pink pyjamas, and wandered like a man in a nightmare to his breakfast. But he could not eat. He swallowed a cup of coffee and sought refuge in his own room. He was frightened, horribly frightened, caught on a net from which there was no escape, not the tiniest break of a mesh. He had given his word, and in justice to Doggy, be it said that he held his word sacred, he had given his word to join the army if he should be passed by Murdoch. He had been passed, more than passed. He would have to join, he would have to fight, he would have to live in a muddy trench, sleep in mud, eat in mud, plow through mud, in the midst of falling shells and other instruments of death. And he would be an officer, with all kinds of strange and vulgar men under him, men like Chipmunkford's instance whom he would never understand. He was almost physically sick with apprehension. He realized that he had never come under a man in his life. He'd be mortally afraid of brigins, his late chauffeur. He had heard that men at the front lived on some solid horror called bully-beef dug out of tins, and some liquid horror called cocoa also dug out of tins. The men kept on their clothes even their boots for weeks at a time. The rats ran over them while they tried to sleep. The lice, hitherto associated in his mind with the most revolting type of tramp, out there made no distinction of persons. They were the common lot of the lowest tommy and the finest gentlemen. And then the fighting, the noise of the horrid guns, the disgusting sights of men shattered to bloody bits, horrible stench, the terror of having one's face shot half away and being an object of revolt and horror to all beholders for the rest of his life. Death! Feverishly he ruffled his comely hair. Death! He was surprised that the contemplation of it did not freeze the blood in his veins. Yes, he put it clearly before him. He given his words to Peggy that he would go and expose himself to death. Death! What did it mean? He had been brought up in Orthodox Church of England Christianity. His flaccid mind had never questioned the truth of its dogmas. He believed, in a general sort of way, that good people went to heaven and bad people went to hell. His conscience was clear. He had never done any harm to anybody. As far as he knew he had broken none of the Ten Commandments. In a technical sense he was a miserable sinner, and so proclaimed himself once a week. But though perhaps he had done nothing in his life to merit eternal bliss in paradise, yet on the other hand he committed no action which would justify a kindly and just creator in consigning him to the eternal flames of hell. Somehow the thought of death did not worry him. It faded from his mind, being far less terrible than life under prospective conditions. Discomfort, hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue, pain, above all the terror of his fellows. These were the soul-wrecking anticipations of this new life into which it was a matter of honor for him to plunge. And to an essential gentleman like Doggy, a matter of honor was a matter of life. And so, dressed in his pink pyjamas and violet dressing-gown, amid the peacock-blue and ivory hangings of his boudoir room, and stared up by the cuntless, unsympathetic eyes of his little China dogs, Doggy Trevor passed through his first Gethsemane. His decision was greeted with joy of the Deenery. Peggy threw her arms round his neck and gave him the very first real kiss he had ever received. It revived him considerably. His aunt Sophia also embraced him. The Deen shook him warmly by the hand and talked to eloquent patriotism. Doggy already felt a hero. He left the house in a glow, but the drive home in the two-seater was cold, and the pitch-dark night presaged other nights of mercilessness in the future. And when Doggy sat alone by his far, sipping the hot milk which Peadle presented him on a silver tray, the doubts and fears of the morning racked him again. At a noble possibility occurred to him. Murock might be wrong. Murock might be prejudiced by local gossip. Would it not be better to go up to London and obtain the opinion of a first-class man to whom he was unknown? There was also another alternative—flight. He might go to America and do nothing to the south of France and help in some sort of way with hospitals for French wounded. He caught himself up short as the thoughts passed through his mind, and he shuddered. He took up the glass of hot milk and put it down again. Milk? He needed something stronger. At last an amour showed him his sleek hair, tisled into an upstanding wig. In a kind of horror of himself he went to the dining-room, and for the first time in his life drank a stiff whiskey and soda for the sake of the stimulant. Reaction came. He thought a man wants more. Rather suised at once than such a damnable dishonour. According to the directions with the dean, a man of affairs had given him. He sat down and wrote his application to the war-office for a commission. Then, a unique adventure, he stole out of the barred and bolted house, without thought of hat and overcoat—let the reducers of alcohol mark it well—ran down the drive and posted the letter in the box some few yards beyond his entrance gates. The dean had already posted his letter to his old friend General Gadsby at the war-office, so that I was cast. The rubicon was crossed. The bridges were burnt. The irrevocable step was taken. Dr. Murdock turned up the next morning with his prescription for physical training. And then Doggy trained assiduously, monotonously, wearily. He grew appalled by the senselessness of his apparently unnecessary exertion. Now and then Peggy accompanied him on his prescribed walks, but the charm of her accompany was discounted by the glaring superiority of her powers of endurance. While he ached with fatigue, she pressed along as fresh as Atalanta at the beginning of her race. When they parted by the deanry door, she would stand flushed, radiant in her youth and health and say, We've had a topping warm out, dear. Now isn't it a glorious thing to feel oneself alive? But poor Doggy of the flabby muscles felt half dead. The fateful letter burdening Doggy with the King's Commission arrived a few weeks later. A second left tenancy in a fusilia battalion of the new army. Dates and instructions were given. The Impress of the Royal Arms at the head of the paper, with its grotesque perky larn and unicorn, conveyed to Doggy a sense of the grip of some uncanny power. The typewritten words scarcely mattered. The Impress fascinated him. There was no getting away from it. Those two, pawing beasts, helped him in their clutch. They headed a deathward, from which there was no appeal. Doggy put his house in order, dismissed with bounty those of his servants who would no longer be needed, and kept the pedals, husband and wife, to look after his interests. On his last night at home he went wistfully through the familiar place, the drawing-room, sacred to his mother's memory, the dining-room so solid in its half-century of comfort, his own peacock and ivy room so intensely himself, so expressive as his every taste, every mood, every emotion. Those strange old-world musical instruments. He could play them all with the touch or breath of a master and a lover. The old Italian theobo. He took it up. How few today knew its melodious secret. He looked around. All these daintinesses and prettinesses had a meaning. They signified the magical little beauties of life, things which asserted a range of spiritual truths, nonetheless real and consolatory, because vice and crime and ugliness and misery and war co-existed in ghastly fact on other facets of the planet earth. The sweetness here expressed was an essential to the world's spiritual life, as the sweet elements of foodstuffs to its physical life. To the getting together of these articles of beauty he devoted the years of his youth. And, another point of view, was he not the guardian by inheritance, in other words by divine providence, of this beautiful English home, the trustee of English comfort of the sacred traditions of sweet English life that have made England the only country, the only country, he thought, that could call itself a country and not a compromise in the world. And he was going to leave it all. All that it meant in beauty and dignity and ease of life. For what? For horror and filthiness and ugliness, for everything against which his beautiful peacock and ivy room protested. Doggy's last night at Denby Hall was a troubled one. Aunt Sophia and Peggy accompanied him to London and stayed with him at his stuffy little hotel off Bond Street, while Doggy got his kit together. They bought everything in every West End shop that any salesman assured them was essential for active service. Swords, revolvers, field glasses, pocket knives, for gigantic pockets, compasses, mestens, cooking batteries, sleeping bags, waterproofs, boots innumerable, toilet accessories, drinking cups, thermos flasks, field stationary cases, periscopes, tinted glasses, Gieve waistcoats, cholera belts, portable medicine cases, earplugs, tin openers, corkscrews, notebooks, pencils, luminous watches, electric torches, pins, housewives, patent seat walking sticks, everything that the man of commercial instincts had devised for the prosecution of the war. The amount of warlike equipment with which Doggy, with the aid of his Aunt Sophia and Peggy, encumbered the narrow little passages of Sturrocks's hotel, must have weighed about a tonne. At last Doggy's uniforms, several suits, came home. He had devoted enormous care to their fit. Atard in one he looked beautiful. Peggy decreed a dinner at the carton. She and Doggy alone. Her mother could get some stuffy old relation to spend the evening with her at Sturrocks's. She wanted Doggy all to herself, so as to realize the dream of many disgusting and humiliating months. And as she swept through the palm court and up the brawn stairs and wound through the crowded tables of the restaurant with the carkey-clad Doggy by her side, she felt proud and uplifted. Here was her soldier whom she had made, her very own man in cargy. Dear old thing, she whispered, pressing his arm as they trekked to their table, don't you feel glorious, don't you feel as if you could face the universe? Peggy drank one glass of the Court of Champagne. Doggy drank the rest. On getting into bed he wondered why this unprecedented quantitative wire had not affected his sobriety. Its only effect had been to stifle thought. He went to bed and slept happily, for Peggy's parting kiss had been such as but could use to any young man's felicity. The next morning Aunt Sophia and Peggy saw him off to his depot with his ton of luggage. He leaned out of the carriage window and exchanged hand-kisses with Peggy until the curve of the line cut her off. Then he settled down in his corner with the morning post. But he could not concentrate his attention on the morning news. This strange costume which he wore to his clothes seemed unreal, monstrous. No longer the natty dress in which he'd been proud to prink the night before, but a nightmare, a necessite like investiture, signifying some abominable burning doom. The train swept him into a world that was upside down. CHAPTER VII Those were proud days for Peggy. She went about Dirtlebury with her head in the air, and her step was as martial as though she herself wore the king's uniform. And she regarded the other girls of the town with a defiant eye. If only she could discover, she thought, the sander of the abominable feather. In Timpani's drapery establishment she raked the girls of the counter with a searching glance. At the cathedral's services she studied the demure faces of her contemporaries. Now that Doggy was a soldier, she held the anonymous exploits to be cowardly and brutal. What do people know of the thousand-and-one reasons that kept eligible young men out of the army? What are they known of Marmaduke? As soon as the illusion of his life had been dispelled, he marched away with as gallant a trade as anybody. And though Doggy had kept to himself his shrinkings and his terrors, she knew that what to the average heartly bred young man was a gay adventure was to him an ordeal of considerable difficulty. She longed for his first leave so that she could parade him before the town, in the event of there being a lurking skeptic who still refused to believe that he had joined the army. Boris in the drawing-room, framed in silver, stood a large full-length photograph of Doggy in his new uniform. She wrote to him daily, chronicling the little doings of the town, at times reviling it for downlifts. Dad, or numberless committees, was scarcely ever in the house, except for hurried meals. Most of the pleasant young clergy had gone. Many of the girls had gone, too, Dorothy Bruce, to be a probationer in a VAD hospital. If Dirtlebury were not such a rotten out-of-the-world place, the infirmary would be full of wounded soldiers, and she could do her turn at nursing. As things were, she could only knit socks for Tommy's and a silk carkey tie for her own boy. But when everybody was doing their bit, these occupations were not enough to prevent her feeling a little slacker. He would have to do the patriotic work for both of them. Tell her all about himself, and let her share everything with him in imagination. He also expressed her affection for him in shy and slangy terms. Doggy wrote regularly. His letters were as shy and conveyed less information. The work was hard, the hours long, his accommodation spartan. They were in huts on Salisbury Plain. Sometimes he confessed himself too tired to write more than a few lines. He had a bad cold in the head. He was better. The head inoculated him against typhoid, and allowed him two or three slack days. The first time he had unaccountably fainted. But he had seen some of the men do the same, and the doctor had assured him that it had nothing to do with Cardis. He had gone for a route-march, and had returned a dusted lump of fatigue. But after having shaken the dust out of his moustache, Doggy had a playful turn of phrase down then, and drunk a court of shandy-gaff, he had felt refreshed. Then it rained hard, and they were all but washed out of the huts. It was a very strange life, one which he never dreamed could have existed. Fancy me, he wrote, glad to sleep on a drenched bed. There was the riding school. Why hadn't he learned to ride as a boy? He had been told that the horse was a noble animal, and the friend of man. He was afraid he would return to his dear Peggy with many of his young illusions shattered. The horse was the most ignoble, malevolent beast that had ever walked, except the sergeant major in the riding school. Peggy was filled with admiration for his philosophic endurance of hardships. It was real courage. His letters contained simple statements of fact, but not a word of complaint. On the other hand they were not ebullient with joy. But then, Peggy reflected, there was not much to be joyous about in a ramshackle heart on Salisbury plain. Dear old thing, she would write, although you don't grouse, I know you must be having a pretty thin time. But you're bucking up splendidly, and when you get your leave, I'll do a girl's very damnedest—don't be shocked, but I'm sure you've learning far worse language in the army—to make it up to you." Her heart was very full of him. Then the gamutime on his letters grew rarer and shorter. At last they ceased altogether. After a week's waiting she sent an anxious telegram. The answer came back. Quite well, we'll write soon. She waited. He did not write. One evening an unstamped envelope addressed to her in a feminine hand, which she recognized as that of Marmaduke's anonymous correspondent, was found in the deanry letter-box. The envelope enclosed a copy of a cutting from the gazette of the morning paper, and a sentence was underlined and adorned with exclamation marks at the sides. R. Fusiliers, Tempe, 2nd Lieutenant J. Trevor, resigns his commission. The colonel dealt with him as gently as he could in that final interview. He put his hand in a fatherly way on Doggy's shoulder, and made him not take it too much to heart. He'd done his best, but he was not cut out for an officer. These were merciless times in matters of life and death. We could not afford weak links in the chain. Soldiers in high command with great reputations already been scrapped. In Doggy's case there was no personal discredit. He'd always conducted himself like a gentleman and a man of honor, but he had not the qualities necessary for the commanding of men. He miscended his resignation. But what can I do, sir? asked Doggy in a choking voice. I'm disgraced for ever. The colonel reflected for a moment. He knew that Doggy's life had been a little hell on earth from the first day he had joined. He was very sorry for that poor little toy-pom in his pack of hounds. It was scarcity that toy-poms fault that he had failed. But the great hunt could have no use for toy-poms. At last he took a sheet of regimental note-paper and rope. Dear Trevor, I'm full of admiration for the plucky way in which you've striven to overcome your physical disabilities, and I'm only too sorry that they should have compelled the resignation of your commission and your severance from the regiment. Your sincerity, LG cared, left him a colonel. He handed it to Doggy. That's all I can do for you, my poor boy, did he? Thank you, sir, said Doggy. Doggy took a room at the Savoy Hotel and sat there most of the day, the pulp of a man. He'd gone to the Savoy, not daring to show his face at the familiar starix's. At the Savoy he was but a number unknown, unquestioned. He wore civilian clothes. Such of his uniforms and marshal paraphernalia has he been allowed to retain in camp, for one can't house a ton of kit in a hut, he'd given to his Batman. His one desire now was to escape from the eyes of his fellow men. He felt that he bore upon him the stigma of his disgrace, obvious to any casual glance. He was the man who'd been turned out of the army as a hopeless incompetent, even worse than the slacker, for the slacker might have latent the qualities that he lacked. Even at the best and brightest he could only be mistaken for a slacker, once more the likely recipient of white feathers from any damsel patriotically indiscreet. The Colonel's letter brought him little consolation. It is true that he carried about with him in his pocket-book, but the jibing eyes of observers had not the x-ray power to read it there, and he could not pin it on his hat. Besides, he knew that the kindly Colonel had stretched a point of veracity. No longer could he take refuge in his cherished delicacy of constitution, it would be a lie. Peggy, in her softest and most pitying mood, never guessed the nature of Doggy's ordeal. Those letters so brave, sometimes so playful, had been written with shaky hand, misty eyes, throbbing head, despairing heart. Looking back, it seemed to him one blurred dream of pain. His brother-officers were no worse than those in any other kitchen or regiment. Indeed, the Colonel was immensely proud of them, and sang their praises to any fellow dugout who would listen to him at the Naval and Military Club. But how were a crowd of young men, trained in the rough and tumble of public schools, universities, and sport, are now throbbing under the stress of the new deadly game, to understand poor Doggy Trevor? They had no time to take him seriously, saved to curse him when he did wrong. And in their leisure time he became naturally a but for their amusement. Surely I don't have to sleep in there. He asked the Subbleton, who was taking him round on the day of his arrival in camp, and showed him his squalid little cubby hole of a hut with its dirty boards, its cheap table and chair, its narrow, sleep-dispending little bed-stead. Yes, it's a beastly hole, isn't it? Till last month we were under canvas. Sleeping on the bare ground, following on the mud-like pigs, not one as without a cold, never had such a filthy time in my life. Doggy looked about him helplessly, while the comforter smiled grimly. Already his disconsolate attitude towards the dingy helpments of the camp and the layer of thick mud on his beautiful new boots had diverted his companion. Couldn't I have this furnished, at my own expense, a carpet and a proper bed and a few pictures? I wouldn't try. Why not? Now it might get broken, not quite accidentally. But surely, gasped Doggy, the soldiers would not be allowed to come in here and touch my furniture. It seems, said the Subbleton, after a bewildered stare, that you have quite a lot to learn. Doggy had. The Subbleton reported a new kind of animal to the mess. The mess sought to it that Doggy should be crammed with information, but information wholly incorrect and misleading, which added to his many difficulties. When his ton of kit arrived, he held an unwilling reception in the hut and found himself obliged to explain to gravely curious men the use for which the various articles were designed. This, I suppose, is a new type of gas-mask. No, it was a patent cooker. Doggy politely showed how it worked. He also demonstrated that a sleeping bag was not a kit sack of size unauthorized by the regulations, and that a huge steel-pointed walking-stick had nothing to do with agriculture. He was very weary of his visitors by the time they had gone. The next day the adjutant advised him to scrap the lot. So sorrowfully he sent back most of his possessions to London. Then the imp of mischance brought as a visitor to the mess a Subbleton from another regiment who belonged to Doggy's part of the country. Why, I'm bloated if it isn't Doggy Trevor! He exclaimed courteously, How'd you do, Doggy? So thenceforward he was known in the regiment by the hated name. There were rags in which, as he was often the victim, he was forced to join. His fastidiousness loathed the coarse personal contact of arms and legs and bodies. His undeveloped strength could not cope with the muscles of his young brother barbarians. Being with the day's fatigue he would plead to no avail to be left alone. Compared with these feared and detested scraps he considered, in aftertimes, battles to be agreeable recreations. Had he been otherwise competent he might have won through the teasing and the ragging of the mess. No one disliked him. He was pleasant-mannered, good-natured, and appeared to bear no mannice. True, his ignorance not only of the ways of the army but of the ways of their old hearty world was colossal. His mode of expression rather that of a precise old church dignitary than of a sublton and a regiment of fusiliers. His habits, including a nervous shrinking from untidiness and dirt, those of a dear old maid. But the mess thought, honestly, that he could be knocked into their own social shape, and in the process of knocking carried out their own traditions. They might have succeeded if Doggy had discovered any reserve source of pride from which to draw. But Doggy was hopeless at his work. The mechanism of a rifle filled him with dismay. He could not help shutting his eyes before he pulled the trigger. In yord all his life to lethargic action he found the smart, crisp movements of drill almost impossible to attain. The riding-school was a terror and a torture. Every second he deemed himself in imminent peril of death. Said the Sergeant Major. Now, Mr. Trevor, you're sitting on an horse and not an ollie-bush. And Doggy would wish the horse and the Sergeant Major in hell. Again, what notion could poor Doggy have of command? He had never raised his mild tenor voice to damn anybody in his life. At first the tone in which the officers ordered the men about shocked him. So rough, so unmanly, so unkind. He could not understand the cheery lack of resentment with which the men obeyed. He could not get into the way of military directness, could never check the polite, do you mind, that came instinctively to his lips. Now have you asked a private soldier whether he minds doing a thing instead of telling him to do it? His brain begins to get confused. As one defaulter, whose confusion of brain had led him into trouble, observed to his mates, what can you do with the blight owes a cross between a blinking archbishop and a ruddy, dicky bird? What else save showing divers and ingenious ways that you mocked at his authority? Doggy had the nervous dread of the men that he had anticipated. During his training on parade words of command stuck in his throat. When forced out, they grotesquely mixed themselves together. The Adjutant gave advice. Speak out, man. Bull! You're dealing with a soldier's a drill, not saying sweet nothings to old ladies in a drawing-room. And Doggy tried. He tried very hard. He was mortified by his own stupidity. Little points of drill and duty that the others of his own standing seemed to pick up at once, almost by instinct. He could only grasp after long and tedious toil. No one realised that his brain was stupefied by the awful and unaccustomed physical fatigue. And then came the inevitable end. So Doggy crept into the Savoy Hotel and hid himself there, wishing he were dead. There was some time before he could write the terrible letter to Peggy. He did so on the day when he saw that his resignation was gazetted. He wrote after many anguished attempts. Dear Peggy, I haven't written before about the dreadful thing that has happened because I simply couldn't. I have resigned my commission. Not on my own free will, for, believe me, I would have gone through anything for your sake, to say nothing of the country and my own self-respect. To put it brutally, I have been thrown out for sheer incompetence. I neither hope nor expect nor want you to continue your engagement to a disgraced man. I release you from every obligation your pity and generosity may think binding. I want you to forget me, a mario man who can do the work of this new world. What I shall do, I don't know. I have scarcely yet been able to think. Possibly I shall go abroad. At any rate, I shan't return to Dirdlebury. If women sent me white feathers before I joined, what would they send me now? It will always be my consolation to know that you once gave me your love, in spite of the pain of realising that I have forfeited it by my unworthiness. Please tell Uncle Edward that I feel keenly his position, for he was responsible for getting me the commission through General Gadsby. Give my love to my aunt if she will have it. Yours always affectionately, J. Marmaduke Trevor. By return of post came the answer. Dearest, we are all desperately disappointed. Perhaps we hurried on things too quickly and tried you too high all at once. I ought to have known. Oh, my poor dear boy, you must have had a dreadful time. Why didn't you tell me? The news in the Gazette came upon me like a thunderbolt. I didn't know what to think. I was afraid I thought the worst, the very horrid worst, that you had got tired of it and resigned of your own accord. How was one to know? Your letter was almost a relief. In offering to release me from my engagement, you are acting like the honourable gentleman you are. Of course I can understand your feelings. But I should be a little beast to accept right away like that. If there are any feathers about I should deserve to have them stuck onto me with tar. Do you think of going abroad or doing anything foolish dear like that till you have seen me? That is to say, us. For Dad is bringing Mother and me up to town by the first train to-morrow. Dad feels sure that everything is not lost. He'll dig out General Gatsby and fix up something for you. In the meantime, get us rooms at the Savoy. The Mother is worried as to whether it's a respectable place for deans to stay at. But I know you wouldn't like to meet us at Starex's, otherwise you would have been there yourself. Meet our train. All love from Peggy. Doggy engaged the rooms, but he did not meet the train. He did not even stay in the hotel to meet his relations. He could not meet them. He could not meet the pity in their eyes. He read in Peggy's note a desire to pet and soothe him and call him poor little doggy, and he writhed. He could not even take up an heroic attitude and say to Peggy, When I've retrieved the past and can bring you an unsullied reputation, I will return and claim you, till then farewell. There was no retrieving the past. Other men might fail at first and then make good. But he was not like them. His was the fall of Humpty Dumpty—final, irretrievable. He packed up his things in a fright, and, leaving no address at the Savoy, drove to the Russell Hotel in Bloomsbury. And he wrote Peggy a letter to await arrival. If time had permitted he would have sent a telegram stating that he was off for Toblox to or Tierra del Fuego, and thereby preventing their useless journey. But they had already started when he received Peggy's message. Nothing could be done, he wrote, in effect, to her, nothing in the way of redemption. He would not put her father to the risk of any other such humiliation. He had learned, by the most bitter experience, that the men who counted now in the world's respect and in women's love were men of a type to which, with all the good will in the world, he could not make himself belong. He did not say to which he wished he could belong with all the agonies and yearning of his soul. Peggy must forget him. The only thing he could do was to act up to her generous estimate of him as an honourable gentleman. As such it was his duty to withdraw forever from her life. His exact words, however were. You know how I have always hated slang, how it has jarred upon me, often to your amusement, when you have used it. But I have learned, in the past months, how expressive it may be. Through slang I have learned what I am. I am a born rotter. A girl like you can't possibly love and marry a rotter. After the rotter, having a lingering sense of decency, makes his bow and exits, God knows where. Peggy, red-eyed, adrift, rudderless on a frightening sea, called her father into her bedroom at the Savoy and showed him the letter. He drew out and adjusted his round torso-shell-rimmed reading-glasses and read it. "'That's a miraculous new doggy,' said he. Peggy clutched the edges of his coat. "'I've never heard you call him that before.' "'It has never been worthwhile,' said the dean.' CHAPTER VIII At Savoy, during the first stupefaction of his misery, Doggy had not noticed particularly the prevalence of karky. With the rustle it dwelt insistent, like the mud on Sillsbury plain. Men that might have been the twin brethren of his late brother-officers were everywhere, free, careless, efficient. The sight of them added the gnaw of envy to his heartache. Even at his bedroom he could hear the jingle of their spurs and their cheery voices as they clanked along the corridor. On the third day after his migration he took a bold step and moved into lodgings in Wormen Place. There at least he could find quiet, untroubled by heart-rending sights and sounds. He spent most of his time in dull reading and dispirited walking. For he could walk now, so much had his training done for him, and walked for many miles without fatigue. For all the enjoyment he got out of it he might as well have marched round a prison yard. Indeed, there were some who trapped the prison yards with keener zest. They were buoyed up with the hope of freedom they could look forward to the ever-approaching day when they should be thrown once more into the glad world of life. But the miraculously new doggie had no hope. He felt forever imprisoned in his shame. His failure preyed on his mind. He dulled with thoughts of suicide. Why hadn't he solved at any rate his service-revolver? Then he remembered the ugly habits of the unmanageable thing, how it always kicked its muzzle up in the air. Would he have been able even to shoot himself with it? He smiled in self-territion. Drining was not so difficult. Any fool could throw himself into the water. With a view to the inspection of a suitable spot, doggie wandered, idly, in the dusk of one evening, to Waterloo Bridge, and, turning his back to the ceaseless traffic, leaned his elbows on the parapet and stared in front of him. A few lights already gleamed from Somerset House and the more dimly seen buildings of the temple. The dome of St. Paul's loomed a dark shadow through the mist. The river stretched below, very peaceful, very inviting. The parapet would be easy to climb. He did not know whether he could dive in the approved manner, hands joined overhead. He never learned to swim, let alone dive. At any rate, he could fall off. In that art the writing-school approved him a past master. But the spot had its disadvantages, it was too public. Perhaps other bridges might afford more privacy. He would inspect them all. It would be something to do. There was no hurry. As he was not wanted in this world, so he had no assurance of being welcome in the next. He had a morbid vision of avatar after avatar being kicked from sphere to sphere. At this point of his reflections he became aware of a presence by his side. He turned his head and found a soldier, an ordinary private, very close to him, also leaning on the parapet. I thought I was a mystic, and in Mr. Marmaduke Trevor. Doggy started away on the point of flight, dreading the possible insolence of one of the men of his late regiment. But the voice of the speaker rang in his ears with a strange familiarity, and the great fleshy nose, the high cheekbones, and the little grey eyes and the weather-beaten face suggested vaguely someone of the long ago. His dawning recognition amused the soldier. Yes, laddie, you're right. It's your old Phineas, Phineas McPhailer-Squire, M.A., defunct. Now 33702, Private P. McPhile, Rev. Vivus." He warmly wrung the hand of the semi-wilded doggy who murmured, that it lads to meet you, I'm sure. Phineas, gaunt and bony, took his arm. Would it not just be possible, he said, in his old half-pedantic, half-ironic intonation, to find a locality less exposed to the roar of traffic and the rude jostling of pedestrians and the inclemency of the elements, in which we can enjoy the amenities of a little refined conversation? It was like a breath from the past. Doggy smiled. Which way are you going? Your way, my dear Mamadouk, was ever mine, until I was swept, I thought, for ever, out of your path by a torrential spate of whisky. He laughed, as there had been a playful freak of destiny. He laughed, too. But for the words he had addressed to hotel and lodging-house folk, he'd spoken to no-one for over a fortnight. Instinctive craving for companionship made Phineas suddenly welcome. Yes, let us have a talk, said he, come to my rooms, if you have the time. There'll be some dinner. Will I come? Will I have dinner? Will I re-enter once more the paradise of the affluent? Ladi, I will. In the strand they hurled a taxi and drove to Bloomsbury. On the way Phineas asked, you mentioned your rooms. Are you residing permanently in London? Yes, said Doggy. And Dirtlebury? I'm not going back. London's a place full of temptations for those without experience," Phineas observed, sagely. I've not noticed any," Doggy replied, on which Phineas laughed and slapped him on the knee. Man, said he, when I first saw you, I thought you would change into a disillusioned misanthropist. But I'm wrong. You haven't changed a bit. A few minutes later they reached to urban place. Doggy showed him into the sitting-room on the drawing-room floor. A fire was burning in the grate, for though it was only early autumn, the evening was cold. The table was set for Doggy's dinner. Phineas looked round him in surprise. They had herogeneous and tasteless furniture, the dreadful mid-Victorian prints on the walls. One was of the return of the guards from the Crimea, representing the landing from the troop ship, repellent in its smug unreality, the coarse glass and well-used plate on the table, the crumpled napkin in a ring, for Marmaduke, who in his mother's house had never been taught to dream that a napkin could possibly be used for two consecutive meals. The general air of slips-chod Philistinism all came as a shock to Phineas, who had expected to find in Marmaduke's rooms a replica of the fastidious prettiness of the peacock and ivory room at Denby Hall. He scratched his head, covered with a thick brown thatch. "'Lady,' said he gravely, "'you must excuse me if I take a liberty. But I cannot fit you into this environment.'" Doggy looked about him also. "'Seems funny, doesn't it? It cannot be that you've come down in the world.' "'To bedrock,' said Doggy. "'No,' said Phineas, with an air of concern. "'Man, I'm awful sorry. I know what the coming down feels like, and I, finding it not abhorrent to a sophisticated and well-trained conscience, and thinking you could well afford it, extracted a thousand pounds from your fortune. "'My dear lad, if Phineas Macphail could return the money.'" Doggy broke in with a laugh. "'I pray don't distress yourself, Phineas. It's not a question of money. I have as much as ever I had. The lasting in the world I've had to think of has been money." "'Then what in the holy names of thunder and beauty?' cried Phineas, throwing out one hand to an ancient saddle-bag sofa whose ends were covered by flimsy rags, and the other to the decayed omelute clock on the metal piece. "'What in the name of common sense are you doing in this awful and elegant boarding-house?' "'I don't know,' replied Doggy. "'It's a fact,' he continued after a pause. "'The scheme of decoration is revolting to every aesthetic sense which I have spent my life incul- tivating. Its futile pretentiousness is the rosping irritation of every hour. Yet here I am, quite comfortable, and here I propose to stay.'" Phineas Macphail, MA, late of Glasgow in Cambridge, looked at Doggy with his keen little grey eyes beneath bent and bristling eyebrows. In the language of 3.3702, Private Macphail he asked, "'What the blazes is it all about?' "'That's a long story,' said Doggy. Looking at his watch. "'In the meantime, I'd better give some orders about dinner, and you would like to watch.'" He threw open a wing of the folding doors. Once in Georgian times separating drawing-room from withdrawing-room, and now separating living-room from bedroom, and, switching on the light, invited Macphail to follow. "'I think you'll find everything you want,' said he. Phineas Macphail, left alone to his ablutions, again looked around, and he had more reason than ever to ask what it was all about. Marmaduke's bedroom at Denby Hall had been a dream of Satinwood and dull blue silk. The furniture and hangings had been Mrs. Trevor's presence to Marmaduke on his sixteenth birthday. He remembered how he'd been bored to death by that stupendous ass of an old woman, for so he had characterised her, during the process of selection and installation. The present-room, although far more luxurious than any that Phineas Macphail had slept in for years, formed a striking contrast with that remembered nest of effeminacy. "'I'll have to give it up,' he said to himself. But just as he put the finishing touches to his hair, an idea occurred to him. He flung open the door. "'Lady, I've got it. It's a woman!' The doggie laughed and shook his head, and, leaving Macphail, took his turn in the bedroom. For the first time since his return to civil life, he ceased for a few minutes to brood over his troubles. Macphail's mystification amused him. Macphail's personality and address, viewed in the light of the past, were full of interest. Obviously, he was a man who lived unashamed on low levels. Doggie wondered how he could have regarded him for years with a respect almost amounting to veneration. In a curious, unformulated way, Doggie felt that he had authority over this man so much older than himself who once been his master. He tickled into some kind of life his deadened self-esteem. Here at last was a man with whom he could converse on shore ground. The cocky uniform caused him no envy. "'The poet is not altogether incorrect,' said Macphail, when they sat down to dinner, in pointing out the sweet uses of adversity. If it had not been for the adversity of a wee-bit operation, I should not now be on sick furlough. And if I had not been on furlough, I shouldn't have the pleasure of this agreeable reconciliation. Here's to you, laddie, and to our lasting friendship,' he sipped his claret. "'It's not like the Lafite of the old cellar, a Hugh Fugatis and yet what the plague is the Latin for vintage?' "'But it will serve,' he drank again, and smacked his lips. "'It should even serve very satisfactorily. Good wine at a perfect temperature is not the daily drink of the British soldier.' "'By the way,' said Doggie, "'you haven't told me why you became a soldier.' "'A series of vicissitudes dating from the hour I left your house,' said Phineas. "'Vicissitudes, the recital of which would ring your heart, laddie, and make angels weep, if their lacrimal glands were not too busily engaged by the horrors of war, culminated four months ago in an attack of fervid and penniless pathritism. No one seemed to want me except my country. She'd clambered for me on every hoarding and every omen of us. A recruiting sergeant in Trafalgar Square tapped me on the arm and said, "'Young man, your country wants you,' said I with my Scottish caution. "'Can you take your avatavit that you've got the information straight from the war-office?' "'I can,' said he. Then I threw myself on his bosom and made him take me to her. "'That's how I became 3.3702 Private Phineas McPhail, A Company, Tenth Wethix Rangers, and the remuneration of one shearing and tuppence per diem.' "'Do you like it?' asked Doggy. Phineas rubbed the side of his thick nose thoughtfully. "'There you come to the metaphysical conception of human happiness,' he replied. "'In itself it is a vile life. To a man of thirty-five—' "'Good Lord,' cried Doggy, I was taught to you, about fifty.' "'Your mother caught me young, laddie. To a man of thirty-five, a graduate of ancient and honourable universities and a will-and-candidate for holy horrors, it is a life that would seem to have no attraction whatever. The hours are absurd, the work distasteful, and the mode of living are repulsive. But strange to say it fully contents me. The secret of happiness lies in the supple adaptability to conditions. When I found that it was necessary to perform ridiculous antics with my legs and arms, I entered into the comicality of the idea, and performed them with an indulgent zest, which soon won me the precious encomiums of my superiors in rank. When I found that the language of the can-team was not that of the pulpit or the drawing-room, I quickly acquired the new vocabulary and won the pleasant esteem of my equals. By means of this faculty of adaptability I can suck enjoyment out of everything. But at the same time, mind you, keeping in reserve a little secret fount of pleasure? What do you call a little secret fount of pleasure? Ask Dogi. I'll give you an illustration, and if you're the man I consider you to be, you'll take a humorous view of my frankness. At present I adapt myself to a rough atmosphere of coarseness and lustiness in which nothing coarse or lusty I could do would produce the slightest ripple of a convulsion. But I have my store of a cultivated mind and cheap editions of the classics, my little secret fount of castellate a drink from whenever I so please. On the other hand, when I had the honour of being responsible for your education, I adapted myself to a hot-house atmosphere in which the respectability and the concomitant virtues of supineness and sloth were cultivated like rare orchids, but in my bedroom I kept up secret fount which had its source in some good to Scott's distillery. Whereupon he tacked his plateful of chicken with vehement gusto. You're a hedonist, Phineas, said Dogi, after a thoughtful pause. Man, said Phineas, laying down his knife and fork, you've just hit it. I am. I'm an accomplished hedonist. An early recognition of the fact saved me from the church. And the church from you, said Dogi, quietly. Phineas shot a swift glance at him beneath his shaggy brown eyebrows. I, said he, though Mark Q., if I had followed my original vocation, the bench of bishops could not have surpassed me in the unction in which I would have wallowed. If I had been born at B. in a desert laddie, I would have sucked honey out of a dead camel. With easy and picturesque cynicism, and in a Glasgow accent which had curiously broadened since his spell of oriental ease at Denby Hall, he developed his philosophy, illustrating it by instance more or less reputable in his later career. At first, possessor of the ill-gotten thousand pounds, and of considerable savings from a substantial salary, he'd enjoyed the short, wild riot of the prodigal's life. Paris saw most of his money. The Paris which under his auspices Dogi never knew. Plentiful Claret set his tongue wagging in Rabbalasian reminiscence. After Paris came husks. Not bad husks, if you knew how to cook them. Borrowed salt and pepper, and a little stolen butter worked on the funders, but they were irritating to the stomach. He lay on the floor, said he, and yelled for fatted calf. But there was no soft-headed parent to supply it. Phineas McPhail must be a slave again, and work for his living. Then came private coaching, freelance journalism, hunting for secretarieships. The commonplace story humorously told of the Wastrel's decline. Then a gorgeous efflorescent in light green and gold, as the man outside of Pitcher Palace in Camberwell. And lastly the penniless patriot, throwing himself into the arms of his desirous country. "'Have you any whisky on the house, laddie?' he asked, after the dinner things had been taken away. "'No,' said Dogi, but I could easily get you some. "'I pray don't,' said McPhail. "'If you had, I was going to ask you to be kind enough not to let your excellent landlord, whom I recognise as a butler of the old school, produce it. Butlers of the old school are apt, like a pedal, to bring in a maddening tray of decanters, siphons, and lasses. You may not believe me, but I haven't touched a drop of whisky since I joined the army.' "'Why?' asked Dogi. McPhail looked at the long, carefully preserved ash of one of Dogi's excellent cigars. "'It's all a part of the doctrine of adaptability. In order to attain happiness in the army, the first step is to avoid differences of opinion with the civil and military police and non-commissioned officers, and such like psychophantic mermidons of authority. Being a man of academic education, it is with difficulty that I agree with them when I'm sober. If I were drunk, my bonny laddie,' he waved a hand, "'well, I don't get drunk. And as I have no use for whisky, as merely an agreeable beverage, I have struck whisky out of my hedonistic scream of existence. But if you are any more of that pleasant, slad it!' Dogi rang the bell and gave the order. The landlord bought him bottle and glasses. "'Now, my dear Mamadouk,' said Phineas, after an appreciative sip, "'now that I have told you the story of my life, may I, without impertinent curiosity, again ask you what you meant when you said you had come down to Bedrock?' The sight of the man, smug, cynical, shameless, sprawling luxuriously on the sofa, with his tunic unbuttoned, filled him with sudden fury. Such fury as Oliver's insulted arouse! Such as had impilled him during a vicious rag in the mess to clutch a man's hair and almost pull it out by the roots. "'Yes, you may, and I'll tell you,' he cried, starting to his feet, "'I've reached the bedrock of myself, the bedrock of humiliation and disgrace. And it's all your fault. Instead of training me to be a man, you padded to my very poor mother's weaknesses, and brought me up like a little toy dog. The infernal name still sticks to me wherever I go. You made a helpless fool of me, and let me go out a helpless fool into the world. And when you came across me, I was thinking whether it wouldn't be best to throw myself over the parapet. A month ago you would have salute me in the street and stood before me at attention when I spoke to you. "'Hey, what's that, laddie?' interrupted Phineas, sitting up. "'You've held a commission in the army?' "'Yes,' said Doggie fiercely, and I've been chucked. I've been thrown out as a hopeless rotter. "'And who is most to blame? You or I? It's you. You've brought me to this infernal place. I'm here in hiding, hiding from my family and the decent folk I'm ashamed to meet. And it's all your fault, and now you have it.' "'Lady, laddie,' said Phineas reproachfully. The facts of my being a guest beneath your roof and my humble military rank render it difficult for me to make an appropriate reply.' Doggie's rage had spent itself. These rarefits were short-lived and left him somewhat unnerved. "'I'm sorry, Phineas. As you say, you're my guest. And as to your uniform, God knows I honour every man who wears it.' "'That's taking things in the right spirit,' Phineas concealing graciously, helping himself to another glass of wine. And the right spirit is a great healer of differences. I'll not go so far as to deny that there is an element of justice in your apportionment of blame. There may, on occasions, have been some small dereliction of duty. But you'll have been observing that in the recent exposition of my philosophy I have not laboured the point of duty to disproportionate exaggeration.' Doggie lit a cigarette. His fingers were still shaking. "'I'm glad you went up. It's a sign of grace.' "'I,' said Phineas, no man is altogether bad. In spite of everything, I've always entertained a warm affection for you, laddie. And when I saw you staring at bogeys round about the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, my heart went out to you. You didn't look over happy.' Doggie, always responsive to human kindness, was touched. He felt a note of sincerity in McPhail's tone. Perhaps he had judged him partially, overlooking the plea and extenuation which Phineas had set up, that in every man there must be some saving remnant of goodness. "'I wasn't happy, Phineas,' he said. I was as miserable an outcast as could be found in London. And when a fellow is down an outch, you must forgive him for speaking more bitterly than he ought. "'Don't I know, laddie? Don't I know?' said Phineas sympathetically. He reached for the cigar-box. Do you mind if I take another, perhaps two, one to smoke afterwards in memory of this meeting? It is a long time since my lips touched a thing so gracious as a real Havana.' "'Take a lot,' said Doggie generously. I don't really like cigars. I only bought them because I thought they might be stronger than cigarettes.' Phineas filled his pockets. "'You can pay no greater compliment to a man's honesty of purpose,' said he, then by taking him at his word. And now,' he continued, when he carefully ditched the cigar he had first chosen, "'let us review the entire situation. What about our good friends at Dirtlebury? What about your uncle, the very reverent the dean, against whom I bear no ill will? Though I do not say that his ultimate treatment of me was not over-hasty. What about him? If you call upon me to put my almost fantastically variegated experience of life at your disposal, and advise you in this crisis, so I must ask you to let me know the exact conditions in which you find yourself.' Doggie smiled once again, finding something diverting and yet stimulating in the calm assurance of Private McPhail. "'I'm not aware that I've asked you for advice, Phineas. The fact that you're not aware of many things that you do is no proof that you don't do them, and do them in a manner perfectly obvious to another party,' replied Phineas sententiously. "'You're asking for advice and consolation from any friendly human creature to whom you're not ashamed to speak? You've had an awful, sorrowful time, laddie.' Doggie roamed about the room, with McPhail's little gray eyes fixed on him. Yes, Phineas was right. He would have given most of his possessions to be able these later days to pour out his tortured soul into sympathetic ears. But shame had kept him, still kept him, would always keep him, from the ears of those he loved. Yes, Phineas had said the darbolically right thing. This could not be ashamed to speak to Phineas. And there was something good in Phineas which he had noticed with surprise. How easy for him, in response to bitter accusations, to cast the blame on his mother. He himself had given the opening. How easy for him to point to his predecessor's short tenure of office and plead the alternative of carrying out Mrs. Trevor's theory of education or of resigning his position in favour of some psychophant even more time-serving. But he had kept silent. Doggie stopped short and looked at Phineas with eyes dumbly questioning and quivering lips. Phineas rose and put his hands on the boy's shoulders and said very gently, "'Tell me all about it, laddie.' Then Doggie broke down, and with a gush of unminded tears found expression for his stony despair. His story took a long time in the telling, and Phineas interjected in occasional sympathetic, "'Eye, eye,' and a delicately hinted question, extracted from Doggie all there was to tell from the outbreak of war to their meeting on Waterloo Bridge. "'And now,' cried he at last, a dismally tragic figure, his young face distorted and reddened, his sleek hair ruffled from the back into unsightly perpendicularities, an invariable sign of distracted emotion, and his hands appealingly outstretched. "'What the hell am I going to do?' "'Lady,' said Phineas, standing on the hearth-rike, his hands on his hips. "'If you pose the question in the polite language of the precincts of Dirtlebury Cathedral, I might have been at a loss to reply. But the manly invocation of hell shows me that your foot is already on the upward path. If you had prefaced it by the adjectives that gives colour to all the aspirations of the British army, it would have been better. "'But I'm not reproaching you, laddie. Poco a poco. It is enough. It shows me you are not going to run away to a neutral country and present the unedifying spectacle of a mangy little British lion at the mercy of a menagerie of healthy hyenas and such like inferior, though truculent, beasties. "'My God!' cried Doggy. "'Haven't I thought of it till I'm half mad?' "'It would be just as you say, unendurable.' He began to pace the room again. "'And I can't go to France. It would be just the same as England. Everyone would be looking white feathers at me. The only thing I can do is to go out of the world. I'm not fit for it. Oh, I don't mean suicide. I'm not enough pluck. That's off. But I could, um, bury myself in the wilderness somewhere where no one would ever find me.' "'Laddie,' said McPhail, "'I misdoubt that you're going to settle down in any wilderness. You haven't the faculty of adaptability of which I have spoken to night at some length. Your heart is young and not coated with the holy varnish of callousness, which is a secret preparation only to those who have served a long apprenticeship in a severe school of egotism.' "'That's all very well,' cried Doggy. "'But what the—' Phineas waved an interrupting hand. "'You've got to go back, laddie. You've got to whip all the moral courage in you and go back to Dernlebury. The dean, with his influence and the letter you've shown me from your kindle, can easily get you some honourable employment in either service. Not so exacting as the one which you have recently found yourself unable to perform.' Doggy threw a newly-lighted cigarette into the fire and turned passionately on McPhail. "'I won't. I won't. You're talking dribbling rot. I can't. I'd sooner die than go back there with my tail between my legs. I'd sooner enlist as a private soldier.' "'Enlist,' said Phineas. And he drew himself up straight and gaunt. "'Well, why not?' "'Enlist!' Echoed Doggy in a dull tone. "'Have you never contemplated such a possibility?' "'Good God, no,' said Doggy. "'I have enlisted, and I am a man of ancient lineage as honourable, so as not to enter into unproductive argument as yours. And I am a master of arts of the two universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. Yet I failed to find anything dishonourable in my present estate as 33702 Private Phineas McPhail in the British Army.' He seemed not to hear him. He stared at him wildly. "'Enlist,' he repeated, as a tommy. "'Even as a tommy,' said Phineas. He glanced at the all-malued clock. It is past one. The respectable widow-woman near the elephant and castle who has let me a bedroom will be worn by anxiety as to my long return. Mama Duke, my dear dear lady, I must leave you. If you will be lunching here twelve hours hence, nothing will give me greater pleasure than to join you. Laddie, do you think you can manage a fried soul on a sweetbread?' "'Enlist,' said Doggy, following him out to the front door in a dream. He opened the door. Phineas shook hands. "'Fried soul on a sweetbread at one-thirty?' "'Of course, with pleasure,' said Doggy.' Phineas fumbled in his pockets. "'It's a long cry at this time of night from Bloomsbury to the elephant and castle. You haven't the price of a taxi fare about you, laddie, two or three pounds?' Doggy drew from his patent note-case a sheaf of one pound and tensioning treasury-notes, and handed them over to McVales a vulture-clutch. "'Good night, laddie. Good night.' Phineas strode away into the blackness. Doggy shut the front door and put up the chain and went back to his sitting-room. He whined his fingers in his hair. "'Enlist, my God!' He handed a cigarette, and after a few puffs flung it into the grate. He stared at the alternatives. Flight, which was craven, a lifetime of self-contempt, Dirtlebury, which was impossible, enlistment. Yet what was a man incapable, yet able-bodied, honourable, that is graced to do? His landlord found him at seven o'clock in the morning, asleep, in an arm-chair. CHAPTER IX After a bath and a change and breakfast, Doggy went out for one of his solitary walks. At Dirtlebury, such a night as the last would have kept him in bed in a darkened room for most of the following day. But he had spent many far, far worse on Salisbury plain, and the inexorable re-valley had dragged him out into the raw, dreadful morning, heedless of his headache and yearning for slumber, until at last the process of hardening had begun. Today Doggy was as unfantigued a young man as walked to the streets of London, a fact which his mind was too confusedly occupied to appreciate. Once more was he beset, less by the perplexities of the future, than by a sense of certain impending doom. After Phineas Macphales, why not, he been able to give no answer. He could give no answer now, as he marched with swinging step, automatically, down Oxford Street and the Bayswater Road, in the direction of Kensington Gardens. He could give no answer, as he stood sightlessly staring at the Peter Pan statue. A one-armed man in a khaki cap and hospital blue came and stood by his side, and looked in a pleased yet puzzled way at the exquisite poem in Marble. At last he spoke, in a rich Irish accent. I beg your pardon, sir, but could you be telling me the meaning of it at all? Doggy awoke and smiled. Do you like it? I do, said the soldier. It's about Peter Pan, a kind of fairytale. You can see the little people peeping out. I think you call them so in Ireland. We do that, said the soldier. So Doggy sketched the outline of the immortal story of the boy who will never grow old, and the Irishman listened with deep interest. Indeed, said he after a time, it is good to come back to the true things after the things out there. He waved his one arm in the vague direction of the war. Why do you call them true things? Doggy asked quickly. They turned away, and Doggy found himself sitting on a bench by the man's side. It's not me that can tell you that, said he, and my wife and children in Galway. Were you there at the outbreak of war? He was. A reservist called back to the colours after some years of retirement from the army. He had served in India and South Africa a hard-bitten soldier proud of the traditions of his old regiment. There was scarcely any of them left, and that was all that was left of him. Doggy smiled cheerily. Doggy contold him with him on the loss of his arm. Ah, sure, he replied, it might keep me out of a fight when I go into Balinashlaw. Who would you want to fight? asked Doggy. The dirty shin-fainters that do who be always shouting freedom for Ireland, and to hell with freedom for the rest of the world. If I had lost my arm in a glorious cause, what would I have lost it for? Can you tell me that? Doggy agreed that he had fought for the greater freedom of humanity, and gave him a cigarette, and they went on talking. The Irishman had been in the retreat from Mons, the first battle of Eep, and he had lost his arm in no battle at all, just a stray shell over the road as they were marching back to Billetts. They discussed the war, the ethics of it. Doggy still wanted to know why the realities of blood and mud and destruction were not the true things. Gradually he found that the Irishman meant that the true things were the spiritual undying things, that the grim realities would pass away, that from these dead realities would arise the noble ideals of the future, which would be symbolized in song and marble, that all he had endured and sacrificed was but a part of the great sacrifice we were making for the freedom of the world. Being a man roughly educated on a Galway farm and an infantry regiment, he had great difficulty in coordinating his ideas, but he had a curious power of vision that enabled him to pierce to the heart of things which he interpreted according to his untrained sense of beauty. They parted with expressions of mutual esteem. Doggy struck across the gardens with a view to returning home by Night's Bridge, Piccadilly, and Shaftesbury Avenue. He strode along, his thoughts filled with the Irish soldier. He was a man, maimed for life, and quite content that it should be so, who had reckoned all the horrors through which he had passed as externals unworthy of the consideration of his unconquerable soul. A man simple, unassuming, expansive only through his Celtic temperament, which allowed him to talk easily to a stranger before whom his English or Scotch comrade would have been dumb and gaping as an oyster. Obviously brave, sincere, and loyal. Perhaps something even higher, perhaps in essence the very highest. The Poet Warrior. The term struck Doggy's brain with a thud, like the explosive fusion of two elements. During his walk to Kensington Gardens a poisonous current had run at the back of his mind. Drifting on it, might he not escape? Was he not of too fine a porcelain to mingle with the coarse and common pottery of the ranks? Was it necessary to go into the thick of the coarse clay vessels just to be shattered? It was easy for Phineas to proclaim that he found no derogation to his dignity as a man of birth and a university graduate in identifying himself with his fellow privates. Phineas had systematically brutalized himself into fitness for the position. He had armed himself in brass. He's triplex. He's marred at his own wit. But he, James Marmaduke Trevor, who had lived his life as a clean gentleman, was in a category apart. Now he found that his talk with the Irishman had been an antidote to the poison. He felt ashamed. Did he dare set himself up to be finer clay than that common soldier? Spiritually was he even of clay as fine. In a great judgment of souls which of the twain would be among the elect? The ultra-refined Mr. Marmaduke Trevor of Temby Hall or the ignorant poet-warrior of Bannon Aslaw? Not Doggy Trevor, he said between his teeth. And he went home in a chastened spirit. Phineas McPhail appeared punctually at half-past one, and feasted succulently on fried soul and sweet bread. At day, said he, the man who can provide such fiends is a thing of beauty, which, as the poet says, is a joy-frever. The light in his window is a beacon to the hungry Tommy dragging himself through the viscous wilderness of regulation stew. I'm afraid it won't be a beacon for very long, said Doggy. Eh? queried Phineas Sharpley. He'd surely not be thinking of refusing an old friend as three meal. Doggy coloured at the coarseness of the misunderstanding. How could I be such a brute? There won't be a light in the window because I shall be here there. I'm going to enlist. Phineas put his elbows on the table and regarded him earnestly. I would not take too seriously words spoken in the heat of midnight revelry, even though the revel was conducted on the gentinist's principles. Have you thought of the matter in the cool and sober hours of the morning? Yes. It's an uncool, hard life, laddie. The one I'm leading is a harder, said Doggy. I made up my mind. Then I have one piece of advice to give you, said McPhail. Sink the name of Marmaduke, which would only stimulate the ignorant ribaldry of the canteen, and adopt the name of James, which your godfathers and godmothers with miraculous foresight, considering their limitations in the matter of common sense, have given you. That's a good idea, said Doggy. Also, it would tend to the obliteration of class prejudices if you gave up smoking turkey cigarettes at ten gilings a hundred, and arrived in your platoon as an amateur of fags. I can't stand fags, said Doggy. You can. The human organism is so constituted that it can stand the sweepings of the elephant's house in the zoological gardens. Try. This time it's only fags. Doggy took one from the crumpled paper packet which was handed to him and lit it. He made a rye face, never before having smoked American tobacco. How do you like the flavour? asked Phineas. I think I'd prefer the elephant's house, said Doggy, eyeing the thing with disgust. You'll find it the flavour of the whole British army. Said McPhail. A few days later the dean received a letter bearing the penciled address of a camp on the south coast, and written by 35792 Private James M. Trevor, a company two-tenth Wessex Rangers. It ran. I hope you won't think to be heartless for having left you so long without news of me, but until later I had the same reasons for remaining in seclusion as when I last wrote. Even though I'm not asking for sympathy or reconsideration of my failure or desire in any way to take advantage of the generosity of you all. I have enlisted in the tenth Wessex. Phineas McPhail, whom I met in London and whose character for good or evil I can better gauge now than formally, is a private in the same battalion. I didn't pretend to enjoy the life any more than I could enjoy living in a crawl of savages in Central Africa, but that is a matter of no account. I didn't propose to return to Dirtlebury till the end of the war. I left it as an officer, and I'm not coming back as a private soldier. I'd like to check for five hundred prams. Perhaps Aunt Sophia would be so kind as to use the money—it ought to last some time—for the general upkeep wages, etc., of Denby Hall. I feel sure she will not refuse me this favour. Give Peggy my love, and tell her I hope she will accept the two-seater as a parting gift. It will make me happy to know that she is driving it. I am keeping on, as appeared out there in London, the Bloomsbury rooms in which I have been living, and I've written to Peddle to see about making them more comfortable. Please ask anybody who might care to write to address me as James M., and not as Marmaduke. The dean read the letter. The family were at breakfast. Then he took off his tortoise shell spectacles and wiped them. It's from Marmaduke at last, said he. He has carried out my prophecy and enlisted. Peggy caught at her breath and shot out a hand for the letter, which she read eagerly, and then passed over to her mother. Mrs. Conover began to cry. Oh, the poor boy, it would be worse than ever for him. It will, said Peggy, but I think it's splendid of him to try. How did he bring himself to do it? Breed tells, said the dean, That's what everyone seems to have forgotten. He's a thoroughbred doggy. There's the old French proverb. Peggy looked at him gratefully. You're very comforting, she said. We must knit him some socks. Observe, Mrs. Conover. I hear those supply to the army are very rough and ready. My dear, smiled the dean, Marmaduke's considerable income does not cease because his pay in the army is one on top and to-day, and I should think he would have the sense to provide himself with adequate under-clothing. Also, judging from the account of your shopping orgy in London, he is already late in a stock that would last out several Antarctic winters. The dean tapped his egg gently. Then what can we do for the poor boy? asked his wife. The dean scooped the top of his egg off with a vicious thrust. We can cut out slanderous tongues, said he. There would be much-columniating cackle in the little town. Nay, more cackle is of geese than had been venom of the snakeiest kind. The deanry, father and mother and daughter, each in their several ways had suffered greatly. It is hard to stand up against poisoned ridicule. My dear, continued the dean, it will be our business to smite the Philistines, hip and thigh. The reasons which guided Marmaduke in the resignation of his commission are the concern of nobody. The fact remains that Mr. Marmaduke Trevor resigned his commission in order to— Piggy interrupted with a smile. In order to—is that a bit Jesuitical, daddy? I have a great respect for the Jesuits, my dear, to the dean, holding out an impressive expoon. The fact remains, in the eyes of the world, as I have remarked, that Mr. Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall, a man of fortune and high position of the county, resigned his commission in order— for reasons best known to himself— to serve his country more effectively in the humbler ranks of the army. And, my dear, this egg is far too full for wartime. With a hazardous plunge of his spoon, he made a yellow, yelky horror of the eggshell. And I am going to proclaim the fact far and wide and, indeed, rub it in. That'll be Johnny Decent of you, daddy, said his daughter. It'll help a lot. In the failure of Marmaduke to retain his commission, the family honour had not been concerned. The boy had done his best. They blamed not him, but the disastrous training that had unfitted him for the command of men. They reproached themselves for their haste in throwing him headlong into the fiercest element of the national struggle towards efficiency. They could have found an easier school, in which you could have learned to do his share creditably in the national work. Many young men of their acquaintance, far more capable than Marmaduke, were wearing the uniform of a less strenuous branch of the service. It had been a blunder, a failure, but without loss of honour. But when slanderous tongues attacked poor Doggy for running away with a yelp from a little hardship, when a story or two of Doggy's career in the regiment arrived in Dirtlebury, highly flavoured in transit, and more and more poisoned as it went from mouth to mouth, when a legend was spread abroad that he'd bolted from Salisbury Plain, and was run to earth in a Turkish bath in London, and was only saved from court-martial by family influence, then the family honour of the connovers was wounded to its proud English depths. And they could say nothing. They had only Doggy's words to go upon. They accepted it unquestioningly, but they knew no details. Doggy had disappeared. Naturally they contradicted these evil rumours. The good folks of Dirtlebury expected them to do so, and listened with well-bred incredulity. To the question, where is he now, and what is he going to do? They could only answer, we don't know. They were helpless. Peggy had a bitter quarrel with one of her intimates Nancy Murdoch, daughter of the doctor, who proclaimed the soundness of Marmaduke's constitution. He may have told you so dear, said Nancy, but how do you know? Because whatever else he may be, he's not a liar, retorted Peggy. Nancy gave the most delicate suspicion of a shrug to her pretty shoulders. Now there was a beginning of it. Peggy, naturally combative, armed for the fight, and defended Marmaduke. You talk as though you were still engaged to him, said Nancy. So I am, did laugh Peggy rashly. Then where's your engagement ring? Where I choose to keep it. They're taught like originality and conviction. You can't send it back to him because you don't know where he is, and what did Mrs. Conover mean by telling mother that Mr. Trevor had broken off the engagement? She never told her any such thing, cried Peggy mendaciously, for Mrs. Conover had committed the indiscretion under assurance of silence. Pardon me, said Nancy, much on her dignity. Of course I understand you're denying it. It isn't pleasant to be thrown over by any man, but by a man like Doggie Trevor. You're a spiteful beast, Nancy, and I'll never speak to you again. You've neither womanly decency nor Christian feeling. And Peggy marched out of the doctor's house. As a result of the quarrel, however, she resumed the wearing of the ring, which she flaunted defiantly with left hand deliberately unloved. Here the two should not have been certain of the continuance of the engagement. Marmaduke's repudiation was definite enough, but it had been dictated by his sensitive honour. It lay with her to agree or decline. She passed through wearisome days of doubt. A physically sound fighting man set about his business as being unfit for war does not appear a romantic figure in a girl's eyes. She was bitterly disappointed with Doggie for the sudden withering of her hopes. Had he fulfilled them, she could have loved him wholeheartedly, after the simple way of women. For her sex, exhilarated by the barbaric convulsion of the land, clamoured for something heroic, something at least intensely masculine, in which she could find feminine exultation. She also felt resentment at his flight from the Savoy, his silence and practical disappearance. Although not blaming him unjustly, she failed to realise the spiritual piteousness of his plight. If the war had done anything in this country, it has saved the young women of the gentler classes, at any rate, from the abyss of sordid and cynical materialism. Hesitated to announce the rupture of the engagement, she allowed it to remain in a state of suspended animation, and, as a symbolic act, ceased to wear the ring. Nancy's taunts had goaded her to a more heroic attitude. The first person to whom she showed the newly-ringed hand was her mother. The engagement isn't off until I declare it's off. I'm going to play the game. You know best, dear," said the gentle Mrs. Conover, but it's all very upsetting. Then Doggie's letter brought comfort and gladness to the deanery. It reassured them as to his fate. It healed the wounded family honour. It justified Peggy in playing the game. She took the letter round to Dr. Murdoch's, and thrust it into the hand of an astonished Nancy, with whom, since the quarrel, she'd not been on speaking terms. This is in Marmaduke's handwriting. You recognise it? Just read the top line, where I've folded it. I have enlisted in the Tenth Wessex. See? She withdrew the letter. Now, what could a man, let alone an honourable gentleman, do more? Say you're sorry for having said beastly things about him. Nancy, who had regretted the loss of a lifelong friendship, professed her sorrow. The least you could do, then, is to go round and spread the news, and say you've seen the letter with your own eyes. To several others, on a triumphant round of visits, did she show the vindicating sentence. Any soft young fool, she asserted, with the directness and not unattractive traculence of her generation, can get a commission and muddle through, but it took a man to enlist as a private soldier. Everybody recognises now, darling, said the reconciled Nancy a few days later, the doggy is a top-hole splendid chap. But I think I'd like to tell you that you're boring, dirtle-briss, div. Peggy laughed. It was good to be engaged to a man no longer under a cloud. It'll all come right, dear old thing, she wrote to doggy. It's a cinch, as the Americans say. You'll soon get used to it, especially if you can realise what it means to me. Saving face has been an awful business. Now it's all over. Of course I'll accept the two-seater. I've had lessons in driving since you went away. I had thought of going out to France to drive YMCA cars, but that's off for the present. I'll love the two-seater. Swank won't be the word. But a parting gift is all rot. The engagement stands and all dirtle-briss knows it. And so on, and so on. She set herself out, honestly, loyally, to be the kindest girl in the world to doggy. Mrs. Conover happened to come into the drawing-room just as she was licking the stamp. She thumped it on the envelope with her palm, and looking round from the writing-desk against the wall, showed her mother a flushed and smiling face. If anybody says I'm not good, the goodest thing the cathedral has turned out for half a dozen centuries are tear her horrid eyes out from their sockets. My dear! cried her horrified mother. Doggy kept the letter unopened in his tunic pocket until he could find solitude in which to read it. After morning parade he wandered to the deserted trench at the end of the camp, where the stuff to sacks, representing German defenders, were hung for bayonet practice. It was a noon of gray mist through which the alignments of huts and tents were barely visible. Instinctively avoiding the wet earth of the Parados, he went round, and tired after the recent spell of physical drill, sat down on the equally wet sandbags of the model parapet, a pathetic, lonely little cocky figure isolated for the moment by the kindly mist from an uncomprehending world. He read Peggy's letter several times. He recognized her goodness, her loyalty. The grateful tears even came to his eyes, and he brushed them away hurriedly with a swift look round. But his heart beat none the faster. A long-faded memory of childhood came back to him in regained color, some quarrel with Peggy. What it was all about he had entirely forgotten, but he remembered her little flushed face and her angry words. Well, I'm a sport and you ain't! He remembered also rebuking her prigishly for unintelligible language and mincing away. He read the letter again in the light of this flash of memory. The only difference between it and the childish speech lay in the fact that instead of a declaration of contrasts, she now uttered a declaration of similitude. They were both sports. There she was wrong. Doggy shook his head. In her sense of the word he was not a sport. A sport takes chances, plays the game with a smile on his lips. There was no smile on his. He loathed the game with a sickening, shivering loathing. He was engaged in it because a conglomeration of irresistible forces had driven him into the melee. He never occurred to Doggy that he was under orders of his own soul. This simple yet stupendous fact never occurred to Peggy. He sat on the wet sandbags and thought and thought. Though he reproached himself for basing gratitude, the letter did not satisfy him. It left his heart cold. What he sought in it he did not know. It was something he could not find, something that was not there. The seamist thickened around him. Peggy seemed very far away. He was still engaged to her, for it would be monstrous to persist in his withdrawal. He must accept the situation which she decreed. He owed that to her loyalty. But how to continue the correspondence? It was hard enough to write from Salisbury Plain. From here it was well nigh impossible. Thus, as Doggy brought up against a new problem, he struggled desperately to defer its solution.