 CHAPTER X The regiments of the new armies have gathered into their rank and file a mixed crowd transcending the dreams of democracy. At one end of the social scale are men of refined minds and gentle nurture, at the other, creatures from the slums, with slum minds and morals, and between them the whole social gamut is run. Experience seems to show that neither of the extreme elements tend, in the one case to elevate, or in the other to debase, the battalion. Leading the common life, sharing the common hardships, striving towards common ideals, they inevitably, irresistibly, tend to merge themselves in the average. The highest in the scale sink, the lowest rise. The process, as far as the change of soul state is concerned, is infinitely more to the amelioration of the lowest than to the degradation of the highest. But one also is more real, the other more apparent. In the one case it is merely the shuffling off of manners, of habits, of prejudices, and the assuming of others horribly distasteful or humorously accepted, according to temperate. In the other case it is an enforced education. And all the congaries of human atoms that make up the battalion learn new and precious lessons and acquire new virtues, patience, obedience, courage, endurance. But from the point of view of a decorous tea-party in a cathedral town, the tone, or the standard of manners, or whatever you would like by way of definition of that vague and comforting word, the tone of the average is deplorably low. The hooligan may be cooked for excessive foulness, but the ride of the high horse is brutally dragged down into the mire. A curious part of it all is that the gutter element being eliminated altogether, the corporate standing of the remaining majority is lower than the standard of each individual. By developing a philosophical discursion on some such lines did Phineas McPhail seek to initiate Doggy into the weird mysteries of the new social life. Doggy heard with his ears, but thought in terms of Dirtlebury tea-parties. Nowhere in the mass could he find the spiritual outlook of his Irish poet-warrior. The individuals that may have had it kept it preciously to themselves. The outlook, as conveyed in speech, was grossly materialistic. From the language of the canteen he recoiled and disgust. He could not reconcile it with the nobler attributes of the users. It was in vain for Phineas to plead that he must accept the lingua franca of the British army, like all other things appertaining thereto. Doggy's stomach revolted against most of the other things. The disregard, from his point of view, of personal cleniless, universal in the ranks, filled him with dismay. Even on Salisbury Plain he managed to get a little hot water for his morning tub. Here, save in the officer's quarters, cureless and remote, inaccessible paradise, there was not such a thing as a tub in the place, let alone hot water to fill it. The men never dreamed of such a thing as a tub. As a matter of fact they were scrupulously clean according to the lights of the British tommy, but the lights were not those of Marmaduke Trevor. He had learned the supreme wisdom of keeping lips closed on such matters and did not complain. But all his fastidiousness rebelled. He hated the sluice of head and shoulders of water from a bucket in the raw open air. His hands swelled, blistered and cracked, and his nails, once so beautifully manicured, grew rich black rims, and all the wicy water in the buckets would not remove the grime. Now and then he went into the town and had a hot bath, but very few of the others ever seemed to think of such a thing. The habit of the British army of going to bed in its day-shirt was peculiarly repellent. Yet Doggy knew that to vary from the sacred ways of his fellow men was to bring disaster on his head. Some of the men slept under canvas still. But Doggy, fortunately, as he reckoned, for he had begun to appreciate fine shades in misery, was put with a dozen others in a ramshackle hut of which the woodwork had warped and let in the breezes above, below, and all round the sides. Doggy, though dismalid cold, welcomed the air for obvious reasons. They were fortunate, too, in having straw palliasses, recently provided when it was discovered that sleeping on badly boarded floors with fierce drafts playing upwards along human spines was strangely fatal to human bodies. But Doggy found his bed very hard lying, and it smelled sour and sickly. For nights, in spite of fatigue, he could not sleep. His mates sang and talked and banded jests and sarcasms of esoteric meaning. Some of the recruits from factories or farms satirised their officers for peculiarities common to their social cast and gave grotesque imitations of their motor speech. Doggy wondered, but held his peace. The deadly stupidity and weariness of it all. And when the talk stopped and they settled to sleep, the snorings and mutterings and coffings began, and kept poor Doggy awake most of the night. The irremediable, intimate propinquity with coarse humanity oppressed him. He would have given worlds to go out, even into the pouring rain, and walk about the camp or sleep under a hedge so long as he could be alone. And he would think longingly of his satin wood bedroom with its luxurious bed and lavender scented sheets, and of his beloved peacock and ivy room and its pictures and exquisite furniture, and the great fire roaring up the chimney, and devised intricate tortures for the Kaiser who dragged him down to this squalor. The meals, the rough cooking, the primitive service, the table manners of his companions, offended his delicate senses. He missed napkins. Never could he bring himself to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, and the back of his hand on the seat of his trousers. Nor could he watch with equanimity an honest soul pick his teeth with his little finger. But Doggy knew that acquiescence was the way of happiness, and protest the way of woe. At first he made fewer acquaintances beyond theirs with whom he was intimately associated. It seemed more politic to obey his instincts and remain unabstrusive in company, and drift away inoffensively when the chance occurred. One of the men with whom he talked occasionally was a red-headed little cockney by the name of Shendish. For some reason or the other, perhaps because his name conveyed a perfectly wrong suggestion of the Hebraic, he was always called Mo Shendish. Don't you wish you were back, mate? he asked one day, having waited to speak till Doggy had addressed and stamped a letter which he was writing at the end of the canteen table. Where, said Doggy? Home, sweet home, in the family castle, where gilded footmen, aunts and sausages and mashabouts on trays and courts of beer all day long. Hardo. You're a lucky chap to have a castle, said Doggy. Mo Shendish grinned. He showed little yellow teeth beneath a little red moustache. I ain't half-got one, he said he. It's in Mayre Street, ain't he? Which I was there now. He sighed, and in an abstracted way he took a half-smoked cigarette from behind his ear and relitted. What were you before you joined? You looked like a clock. He pronounced it as if it were spelt with a U. Something of the sort, replied Doggy cautiously. I can always tell you, educated blokes, make you a five quid a week easy, I suppose. About that, said Doggy. What were you? I was making my 30-bob a week regular. I was in the fish business, I was. I know I'm serving in a ruddy country at one and tuppin' today. Funny life, innit? I can't say it's very enjoyable, said Doggy. Not the same as sitting in a snub office all day with his pen in your lilly wand and going home to your I.T. in a top hat. What may you join up? The force of circumstances, said Doggy. Ah, same here, said Mo. Only I couldn't put in such fancy language. First my pals went out one after the other, then the girls began to look saucy at me, and at last one particular bit of skirt what I'd been walking out with took to promenade him with a blight-ren karky. It'd been silly of me to go and knock his head off, so I enlisted. It's all right now. Just the same sort of thing in my case, replied Doggy. I'm glad things are right with the young lady. Ah, first-class. She's straight, she is, and never stag about it. She's a— He paused for a word to express the inexpressive she. A paragon? A peach? Doggy corrected himself. Then as the sudden frown of perplexed suspicion was swiftly replaced by a grin of content, he was struck by a bright idea. What's her name? Aggy. What's yours? A laggis? replied Doggy, with miraculous readiness of invention. I've got a photograph, Shendish confided in a whisper, a latest hand on his tunic pocket. Then he looked round at the half-filled canteen to see that he was unobserved. You won't give me a wave, I'll show it here, will you? Doggy swore secrecy. The photograph of Aggy, an angler square-browed damsel, who looked as though she could guide the most recalcitrant of fishmongers into the paths of duty, was produced and thrust into Doggy's hand. He inspected it with polite appreciation, on his red-headed friend regarded him with fatuous anxiety. Charming! Charming! said Doggy in his pleasantest way. What's her colouring? Oh, fair air and blue eyes! said Shendish. The kind of question, half-idled yet unconsciously tactful, was one of those human things which cost so little, but are worth so much. He gave Doggy a devoted friend. Mo, said he a day or two later, you're such a decent chap, why do you use such abominable language? God knows, smiled Mo unabashed, I suppose it's friendly like. Even though this is a brave and thoughtful answer. That's why I think you'll make a mistake, old pal, if you don't mind my mentioning. I know what you are, but the others don't. You're not friendly enough. See what I mean? Supposing you say as you would in a city restaurant when you're having a lunch, will you kindly pass me the salt? Well, may it stand offish. They'd say, come off it. But if you were local about it and say, where's the bloody salt? That's friendly. They understand. They chuck it at you. Said Doggy, it's very, I mean, bloody difficult. So he tried to be friendly, and if he met with no great positive success, he at least escaped animosity. In his spare time he mooned about by himself, shy, disgusted, and miserable. Once when a group of men were kicking a football about, the ball rolled his way, instead of kicking it back to the expectant players, he picked it up and fast to the nearest and handed it to him politely. Thanks, mate, said this donnish man, but why didn't you kick it? He turned away without waiting for a reply. Doggy had not kicked it because he'd never kicked a football in his life and shrank from an exhibition of incompetence. At drill things were easier than on Salisbury Plain. His actions been veiled in the obscurity of squad or platoon or company. Many others besides himself were cursed by sergeants and rated by subletons and drastically and treated by captains. He had the consolation of community and suffering. As a trembling officer he'd been the only one, the only one marked and labelled as a freak apart, the only one stuck in the eternal pillory. Here were fools and incapables even more dull and ineffective than he. A plough-boy fellow recruit from Dorseture, Pugsley by name, did not know right from left, and having mastered the art of forming foes, could not get into his brain the reverse process of forming front. He wept under the lash of the corpore's tongue, and to Doggy these tears were healing dews of heaven's distillation. By degrees he learned the many arts of war as taught to the private soldier in England. He could refrain from shutting his eyes when he pressed the trigger of his rifle, but to the end of his career his shooting was erratic. He could perform with the weapon the other tricks of precision. Unencumbered he could march with the best. The torture of the heavy pack nearly killed him, but in time as his muscles developed he was able to slog along under the burden. He even learned to dig. That was the worst most back-breaking art of all. Now and then Phineas McPhail and himself would get together and walk into the little seaside town. It was out of the season, and there was little to look at save the deserted shops and the squall-freted pier, and the maidens of the place who usually were in company with Lads in Karky. Sometimes a girl alone would give Doggy a glance of shy invitation. For Doggy, in his short slight way, was not a bad-looking fellow, carrying himself well and wearing his uniform with instinctive grace. But the damsel ogled in vain. On one such occasion Phineas burst into a guffaw. Why don't you talk to the poor body? She's a respectable girl enough. Where's the harm? Go square-pushing, said Doggy, contemptuously, using the soldier's slang for walking about with a young woman. No, thank you. And why not? I'm not constantly elided to plunge into a course of sensual debauchery, but are we a bit agossip with a pretty innocent girl? My dear, good chap, Doggy interrupted. What on earth did I have in common with her? Youth? I feel as old as hell, said Doggy Bittley. You'll be feeling older soon, replied Phineas, and able to look down on hell with feelings of superiority. Doggy walked on in silence for a few paces, then he said, I think I can't understand it's this mania for picking up girls, just to walk about the streets with them. It's so inane, it's a disease. Did you ever consider, said Phineas, how in a station less exalted than that which you used to adorn the young of opposite sexes managed to meet, select and marry? Man, the British army is going to be a grand education for you in sociology, but at any rate you don't suppose I'm going to select and marry out of the street. You might do worse, said Phineas. Then after a slight pause he asked, have you any news lately from Dirtlebury? Confound Dirtlebury, said Doggy. Phineas checked him with one hand, and waved the other towards a hosiery on the other side of the street. If you will give me the money in advance, so as to vey the ungenerous spirit of the no-treating law, you can stand me a court of ale of the crown and scepter, and join me in the rinking to its confusion. So they entered the saloon bar of the public house. Doggy drank a glass of beer while Phineas swallowed a couple of pints. Two or three other soldiers were there, in whose artless talk Macphail joined lustily. Doggy, unobtrusive at the end of the bar, maintained a desultry and uncomfortable conversation with the barmaid, who was the florid and hearty type, about the weather. Some days later Macphail again made allusion to Dirtlebury. Doggy again confounded it. I don't want to hear of it or think of it, he exclaimed in his nervous way, until this filthy horror is over. They want me to get leave and go down and stay. They're making my life miserable with kindness, I wish they'd leave me alone. They don't understand a little bit. I want to get through this thing alone, all by myself. I'm sorry I persuaded you to join a regiment in which you were inflicted with the disadvantage of my society, said Phineas. Doggy threw out an impatient arm. Oh, you don't count, said he. A few minutes afterwards, repenting his brusqueness, he tried to explain to Phineas why he did not count. The others knew nothing about him. Phineas knew everything. And you know everything about Phineas, said Macphail Grinley. When you're in toffee to sympathetic toffetion, whether we drop of the milk of human kindness is more a comfort than a radiant angel who showers down upon you from the celestial Fortnum and Mason's potted shrimps and caviar. The sobbing is clear for a moment from Doggy's young briar. I never can make up my mind, Phineas, said he, whether you're a very wise man or awful fraud. Give me the benefit of the doubt, laddie, replied Macphail. It's the grand theological principle of Christianity. Time went on. The regiment was moved to the east coast. On the journey a zeppelin raid paralyzed the railway service. Doggy spent the night under the lee of the bookstore at Woodaloo Station. Men huddled up near him, their heads on their kit bags, slept, and snored. Doggy almost wept with pain and cold and hatred of the Kaiser. On the east coast much the same life as on the south, save that the wind, as if hunger sent, found its way more savagely to the skin. Then suddenly came the news of a large draft for France, which included both Macphail and Shendish. They went away on leave. The gladness with which he welcomed their return showed Doggy how great a part they played in his new life. In a day or two they would depart God-new-Wither, and he would be left in dreadful loneliness. Through him the two men, the sentimental cockney fishmonger and the wasteful Cambridge graduate, had become friends. He spent with them all his leisure time. Then one of the silly tragic comedies of life occurred. Macphail got drunk in the crowded bar of a little public house in the village. It was the last possible drink together of the draft and their pals. The draft was to entrain before daybreak on the morrow. It was a foolish, singing, shouting, carky throng. Macphail, who had borrowed ten pounds from Doggy, in order to see him through the hardships of the front, established himself close by the bar, and was drinking whisky. He was also distributing surreptitious sixpences and shillings into eager hands, which would convert them into alcohol for eagle throats. Doggy, anxious, stood by his side. The spirit from which Macphail had for so long abstained, mounted to his unaccustomed brain. He began to hector, and, master of picturesque speech, he compelled an admiring audience. Doggy did not realise the extent of his drunkenness until, vaulting himself as a scot and therefore the sort of the army, he picked a quarrel with a stolid's Hampshire giant, who professed to have no use for Phineas's fellow countrymen. The men closed. Suddenly some one shited from the doorway. Be quiet, you fools, the APM's coming down the road. Now the assistant provost Marshall, if he heard hell's delight going on in a tavern, would naturally make an inquisitorial appearance. The combatants were separated. Macphail threw a shilling on the bar counter and demanded another whisky. Macphail threw a shilling on the bar counter and demanded another whisky. He was about to lift the glass to his lips when Doggy, terrified as to what might happen, knocked the glass out of his hand. Don't be an ass, he cried. Phineas was very drunk. He gazed at his old pupil, took off his cap, and, stretching over the bar, hung it on the handle of a beer-pull. Then, staggering back, he pointed an accusing finger. He had the audacity to call me an ass. Little blinking Marmady Doggy Trevor, little Doggy Trevor, whom I trained up from infancy in the way he shouldn't go. Why, Doggy Trevor, some one shouted in inquiry. Never mind, he replied Phineas with drunk and impressiveness. My old friend Marmady conspired my whisky and called me an ass. I called him Doggy, little Doggy Trevor. You all bear witness he knocked the drink out of my mouth? I'll never give him. He doesn't like being called Doggy, and I have no predilection to be called an ass. I'm thinking I'm just going to strangle him. He stuck out his bony claws towards the shrinking Doggy, but stout arms closed round him, and a horny hand was clamped over his mouth, and they got him through the bar and the back parlor into the yard, where they pumped water on his head. And when the APM and his satellites passed by, the quiet of the whipping hand was the holy piece of a nunnery. Doggy, a mochendish and a few other staunch souls, got Macphail back to quarters without much trouble. On parting the delinquent semi-sobered, shook Doggy by the hand, and smiled with an air of great affection. I've been very drunk, laddie, and I've been angry with you for the first time in my life, but when you knocked the glass out of my hand, I thought you were in danger of losing your good manners in the army, and how many a parlor together when you'd join me out there. The matter would have drifted out of Doggy's mind, as one of no importance, had not the detested appellation by which Phineas held him, struck the imagination of his comrades. It filled a long felt want, no nickname for private J. M. Trevor having yet been invented. Doggy, Trevor, he was, and Doggy, Trevor, he remained for the rest of his period of service. He resigned himself to the inevitable. The sting had gone out of the name through his comrades' ignorance of its origin, but he loathed it as much as ever. It sounded in his ears an everlasting reproach. In spite of the ill turn done in drunkenness, Doggy missed Macphail. He missed mochendish, his more constant companion, even more. Their place was in some degree taken, or rather usurped, for it was without Doggy's volition, by Taffy Jones, once clarked to a firm of outside bookmakers. As Doggy had never seen a race-course, had never made a bet, and was entirely ignorant of the names even of famous Derby winners, Taffy regarded him as an astonishing freak worth the attention of a student of human nature. He began to cultivate Doggy's virgin mind by aid of reminiscence, and of such racing news as to be found in the sportsman. He was a garrulous person, and Doggy a good listener. To please him, Doggy backed horses through the old firm for small sums. The fact of his being a man of large independent means, both he and Phineas, to his credit, had kept a close secret. His clarkly origin divined and promulgated by Mo Shendish being unquestioningly accepted, so the bets proposed by Taffy were of a modest nature. Once he brought off a forty-to-one chance. Taffy rushed to him with the news, dancing with excitement. Doggy's stoke of indifference to the winning of twenty pounds, a year's army pay, gave him cause for great wonder. As Doggy showed similar equanimity when he lost, Taffy put him down as a born sportsman. He began to mime tremendously. This friendship with Taffy is worth special record, for it was indirectly the cause of a little revolution in Doggy's regimental life. Taffy was an earnest though indifferent performer on the penny whistle. He was his constant companion, the solace of his leisure moments, and one of the minor tortures of Doggy's existence. His version of the Marseillais was peculiarly excruciating. One day when Taffy was playing it with dreadful variation of his own to an admiring group in the YMCA hut, Doggy, his nerves rasped to the roar by the false notes of maddening intervals, snatched out of his hand, and began to play himself. Here the two, shrinking morbidly from any form of notoriety, he'd shown no sign of musical accomplishment. But today the musician's impulse was irresistible. He played the Marseillais as no one there had heard it on penny whistle before. The hut recognized a master's touch, for Doggy was a fine executant musician. When he stopped there was a roar. Go on! Doggy went on. They kept him whistling till the hut was crowded. Thence forward he was penny whistler by excellence to the battalion. He whistled himself into quite a useful popularity. End of Chapter 10 CHAPTER 11 We're all very proud of you, Mabadouk, said the dean. I think you're just splendid, said Peggy. They were sitting in Doggy's rooms in Werben Place, Doggy having been given his three days leave before going to France. Once again Dirtlebury had come to Doggy and not Doggy to Dirtlebury. Aunt Sophia, however, somewhat ailing, had stayed at home. Doggy stood awkwardly before them, conscious of swollen hands and broken nails, shapeless ammunition boots and ill-fitting slacks, morbidly conscious too of his original failure. You're about ten inches more round the chest than you were, said the dean, admiringly. And the picture of health, cried Peggy. To any one who has a sound constitution, answered Doggy, it's quite a healthy life. Now that you've got into the way, I'm sure you must really love it, said Peggy, with an encouraging smile. It isn't so bad, he replied. What none of us can quite understand, my dear fellow, said the dean, is you're shying at Dirtlebury. As we have written you, everybody's singing or praises, not a soul but would have given you a hearty welcome. Besides, Peggy chimed in, you needn't have made an exhibition of yourself in the town if you didn't want to. The poor pedals are woefully disappointed. There's a war going on, they must bear up, like loads of other people, replied Doggy. He is becoming quite cynical, Peggy laughed. But apart from the pedals there's your own beautiful house waiting for you. It seems so funny not to go into it instead of moping in these fussy lodgings. Perhaps, said Doggy quietly, if I went there I should never want to come back. There's something to be said from that point of view, the dean admitted. A solution of continuity is never quite without its dangers. Even Oliver confessed as much. Oliver? Yes, didn't Peggy tell you? I didn't think barbecue could be interested, said Peggy quickly. He and Oliver have never been what you might call bosom friends. I shouldn't have minded about hearing of him, said Doggy. Why should I? What's he doing? The dean gave information. Oliver, now a captain, had come home on leave a month ago, and had spent some of it at the deanery. He'd seen a good deal of fighting, had had one or two narrow escapes. Was he keen to get back? asked Doggy. The dean smiled. I incensed his case in my remarks to the dangers of the solution of continuity. Oh rubbish daddy! cried his daughter with a flush. Oliver is as keen as mustard. The dean made a little suggestion of submission. She continued. He doesn't like the beastness out there for its own sake, as any more than Marmaduke will. But he simply loves his job. He's improved tremendously. Once he thought he was the only man in the country who had seen life stark naked, and he put on frills accordingly. Now that he's just one of a million who have been up against lifestrips to his skeleton, he's a bit subdued. I'm glad of that, said Doggy. The dean, a vainly indulgent, joined his fingertips together and smiled. Piggy is right, said he, although I don't wholly approve of her modern lack of reticence in metaphor. Oliver is coming out true gold from the far. He's a capital fellow, and he spoke of you, my dear Marmaduke, in the kindest way in the world. He has a tremendous admiration for your pluck. That's very good of him, I'm sure, said Doggy. Presently the dean, good, tactful man, discovered that he must go out and have a prescription made up at a chemist. That arch-hun enemy, the gout against which he must never be unprepared. He would be back in time for dinner. The engaged couple were left alone. Well, said Piggy. Well, dear, said Doggy. Her lips invited. He responded. She drew him to the saddle-back sofa, and they sat down side by side. I quite understand, dear old thing, she said. I know the resignation and the rest of it hurts you awfully. It hurt me. But it's no use grousing over spilt milk. You've already mopped it all up. It's no disgrace to be a private. It's an honour. There are thousands of gentlemen in the ranks. Besides, you'll work your way up, and they'll offer you another commission in no time. You're very good and sweet, dear, said Doggy, to have such faith in me. But I've had a year. A year, cried Piggy. Good Lord, so it is! She counted on her fingers. Not quite, but eleven months. It's eleven months since I've seen you. Do you realise that? The war has put a stop to time. It is just one endless day. One awful, endless day, Doggy acquiesced with a smile. But I was saying, I've had a year, or an endless day, of eleven months, in which to learn myself. What I don't know about myself isn't knowledge. Piggy interrupted with a laugh. You must be a wonder. Dad's always preaching about self-knowledge. Tell me all about it. Doggy shook his head, at the same time passing his hand over it in a familiar gesture. Then Piggy cried. I knew there was something wrong with you. Why didn't you tell me? You've had your hair cut, cut quite differently. It was McPhail, careful godfather, who had taken it as a recruit to the Regimental Barber, and prescribed a transformation from the sleek long hair brushed back over the head to a conventional military crop with a rudiment of a side parting. On the crown a few bristles stood up, as if uncertain which way to go. It's advisable, Doggy replied, for a Tommy's hair to be cut as short as possible. The Germans are sheared like convicts. Piggy regarded him open-eyed and puzzle-browed. He liked to turn no further, but pursued the main proposition. I wouldn't take a commission, said he, if the war-office went mad and sank on its knees and beat its head in the dust before me. In Heaven's name, why not? I've learned my place in the world, said Doggy. Piggy shook him by the shoulder and turned on him a young, eager face. Your place in the world is out of a cultivated gentleman of old family, Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall. That was the funny old world, said he, that stood on its legs, legs wide apart with its hands beneath the tails of its dress-coat, in front of the drawing-room far. The present world's standing on its head. Everything's upside down. It has no sort of use for Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall. No more use than for Galaath. By the way, how is the poor little beast getting on? Piggy laughed. Oh, Galaath is perfectly short of his position. He's got it rammed into his mind that he drives the two-seater. She returned to the attack. Do you intend always to remain a private? I do, said he, not even a corporal. You see, I've learned to be a private of sorts, and that satisfies my ambition. Well, I give up, said Piggy, though why you wouldn't let Dad get to a nice cushy job is a thing I can't understand, for the life of me I can't. I've made my bed, and I must lie on it, he said quietly. I don't believe you've got such a thing as a bed. Doggy smiled. Oh, yes, a bed of a sort. Then, netting her puzzled face, he said concealingly, it'll all come right when the war's over. But when will that be? And who knows, my dear man, what may happen to you? If I'm knocked out, I am knocked out, and there's an end of it," replied Doggy philosophically. She put her hand on his. But what's to become of me? We didn't cry over my corpse yet, said Doggy. The dean, after a while, returned with his bottle of medicine, which he displayed with conscientious ostentation. They dined. Piggy again went over the ground of the possible commission. I'm afraid she's set her heart on it, my boy, said the dean. Piggy cried a little on parting. This time Doggy was going not to the fringe, but to the heart of the great adventure, into the thick of the carnage. A year ago, she said through her tears, she would have thought herself much more fitted for it than Marmaduke. Perhaps you are still, dear, said Doggy, with his patient smile. He saw them to the taxi, which was to take them to the familiar starix's. Before getting in, Piggy embraced him. Keep out of the way of shells and bullets as much as you can. The dean blew his nose. God blessed him. A murmured something incoherent about fighting for the glory of Old England. Good luck! cried Piggy from the window. She blew him a kiss. The taxi drove off, and Doggy went back into the house with leaden feet. The meeting, which she had morbidly dreaded, had brought him no comfort. It had not removed the invisible barrier between Piggy and himself. But Piggy seemed so unconscious of it that he began to wonder whether it only existed in his diseased imagination. Though by his silences and reserves he had given her cause for resentment and reproach, her attitude was nothing less than angelic. He sat down moodly in an armchair, his hands deep in his trouser pockets, and his legs stretched out. The fault lay in himself, he argued. What was the matter with him? He seemed to have lost all human feeling, like the man with a stone heart and the old legend. Otherwise, why had he felt no prick of jealousy at Piggy's admiring comprehension of Oliver? Of course he loved her. Of course he wanted to marry her when this nightmare was over. That went without saying. But why couldn't he look to the glowing future? A poet had called a lover's mistress, the load-star of his one desire. That, to him, Piggy ought to be, load-star, one desire. The words confused him. He had no load-star. His one desire was to be left alone. Without doubt he was suffering from some process of moral petrifaction. Though he was no psychologist, he had never acquired the habit of turning himself inside out and looting over the horrid spectacle. All his life he had been a simple soul, with simple motives and a simple, though possibly selfish, standard to measure them. But now his soul was knocked into a chaotic state of complexity, and his poor little standards were no manner of use. He saw himself, as in a glass, darkly, mystified by unknown change. He rose, sighed, shook himself. I give it up, said he, and went to bed. Doggy went to France. A France hitherto undreamed of, either by him or by any young Englishman. A France clean-swept and garnished for war. A France save for the ubiquitous English soldiery of silent towns and empty villages and deserted roads. A France of smiling fields and sorrowful faces of women, and drawn, patient faces of old men. And when even then the women and old men were rarely met by day, for they were at work on the land, solitary figures on the landscape, with vast spaces between them. In the quiet townships, English street signs and placards conflicted with the sense of being in friendly provincial France, and gave the impression of foreign domination. For beyond that long, grim line of eternal thunder, away over there in the distance, which was called the front, street signs and placards and yet another alien tongue also outraged the serene genius of French urban life. Yet our signs were a symbol of a mighty empire's brotherhood, and the dimmed eyes that beheld the Place de la Fontaine transformed into Holborn Circus, and the grand roux into Piccadilly, smiled. And the owners with eager courtesy directed the stray Tommy to Regent Street, which they had known all their life as the roux fulme m'assignil, a word which Tommy could not pronounce, still less remember. It was as much as Tommy could do to get the hold of an approximation to the name of the town. And besides these renaming, other inscriptions flamed about the streets, alphabetic hieroglyphs in which the mystic letters HQ most often appeared. This way to the YMCA hut, in many humble windows, the startling announcements, washing done here. British motor lorries and ambulances crowded the little plus and aligned along the avenues. British faces, British voices everywhere. The blue uniform and blue helmet of a French soldier seemed as in Congress, though as welcome as in London. And the straight, endless roads, so French with their infinite border of poplars, their patient little stones marking every hundred metres, until the tenth road into the proud kilometre stone, proclaiming the distance to the next stately town, rang too with the sound of British voices, and the tramp of British feet, and the clatter of British transport, and the screech and whir of cars, revealing as they passed the flash of red and gold of the British staff. Yet the finely cultivated land remained to show that it was France, and the little whitewashed villages, the curet in shovel-hat and rusty cassock, the children in blue or black plouses, who stared as the British troops went by, the patient elderly French territorial and their old pre-war uniforms, guarding unthreatened culverts or repairing the roads. The helpful signs set up in happier days by the touring club of France. Into this strange anomaly of a land came doggie with his draft, still half-stupify by the remorselessness of the stupendous machine in which he had been caught, in spite of his many months of training in England. He had loathed the East Coast camp. When he landed at Boulogne in the dark and the pouring rain, and hunted his pack with the others, who went all singing to the rest camp, he regretted East Anglia. "'Give us a turn on the whistle, doggie,' said a corporal. "'I was seasick into it, and through it overboard,' he growled, stumbling over the rails of the quay. "'Oh, you only young liar!' said the man next to him.' But doggie did not trouble to reply, his neighbour being only a private like himself. Then the draft joined its unit. In his youth doggie had often wondered at the meaning of the familiar inscription on every goods-van in England, the meaning of the familiar inscription on every goods-van in France, Caron-t-Homme-ouite-chevaux.' Now he ceased to wonder. He was one of the forty men. At the railhead he began to march, and at last joined the remnant of his battalion. They had been through hard fighting and were now in billets. Until he joined them he had not realised the drain there had been on the reserves at home. Very many familiar faces of officers were missing. New men had taken their place, and very many of his old comrades had gone, some to Blighty, some west of that island of Desire, and those who remained had the eyes of children who passed through the valley of the shadow of death. McPhail and Mo Shendish had passed through unscathed. In the reconstruction of the regiment Chance willed that the three of them found themselves in the same platoon of A Company. Doggie almost embraced them when they met. "'Lady,' said McPhail to him, as he was drinking a mahogany-coloured liquid that was known by the name of Tea out of a tin mug, and eating a hunk of bread and jam. I don't know whether or not I'm pleased to see you. You are safer in England. Once I may spend many months of my life in shielding you from the dangers of France. But France is a much more dangerous place nowadays, and I can't help you. You've come right into the thick of it. Just listen to the hell's delight that's going on over yonder.' The easterly wind brought them the roar streaked with stritence of the artillery duel in progress in the nearest flexion of the front. Never sitting in the cellar entrance to a house in a little town which had already been somewhat mauled. Just opposite was a shuttered house on the ground floor of which had been a hatter and hosier's shop, and there still swung bravely on an iron rod the red brim of what what's have been a monstrous red hat. Next door, the façade of the upper stories had been shelled away, and the naked interiors gave the impression of a pathetic doll's house. Women's garments still hung on pegs, a cottage piano lurched forward drunkenly on three legs with the keyboard ripped open, the treble notes on the ground, the bass incongruously in the air. In the attic, ironically secure, hung a cheap German print of blousy children feeding a pig. The wide, flag-stone street smelt sour. At various cavern doors sat groups of the billeted soldiers. Now and then squads marched up and down were not on to stay clad in kharky and dun-coloured helmets. Officers, some only recognisable about the Simon-Brown Belt, others spruce and point device, passed by. Here and there a shop was open, and the elderly proprietor and his wife stood by the doorway to get the afternoon air. Women and children straggled rarely through the streets. The Bosch had left the little town alone for some time, they had other things to do with their heavy guns, and all the French population, save those whose homes were reduced to nothingness, had remained. They took no notice of the distant bombardment. It had grown to be a phenomenon of nature, like the wind and the rain. But to Doggy it was new. Just as the town was opposite with its sturdy, crownless hat-brim of a sign was new. He listened, as McPhail had bitten him, to the artillery duel with an odd little spasm of his heart. What do you think of that, now? asked McPhail grandly, as if it was the greatest show on earth run by him, the proprietor. It's rather noisy, said Doggy, with the little ironical twist of his lips that was growing habitual. Did they keep it up at night? They do. I don't think it's fair to interfere with one's sleep like that, said Doggy. You've got to adapt yourself to it, said McPhail sagely. No doubt you'll be remembering my theory of adaptability. Through that I've made myself into a very brave man. When I wanted to run away, a very natural desire, considering the scrupulous attention I've always paid to my bodily well-being, I reflected on the preposterous obstacles put in the way of flight by a boy, who had those obstacles put in the way of flight by a bulbous military system, and adapted myself to the static and dynamic conditions of the trenches. Gawd blimey, said Mo Shendish, stretched out by his side. Just listen to him. I suppose you'll say you sucked honey out of the shells, remarked Doggy. I'm no great hand at mixing metaphors. What about drinks? asked Mo. And nor the drinks either, replied McPhail. Both are bad for the brain, but as what you were saying, laddie, I'm not denying that I've derived considerable interest and amusement from a bombardment. Yet it has its sad aspect. He paused from ember to. Man, he continued. What an awful waste of money! I don't know what old Mac has joined about, said Mo Shendish, but you can take it from me. He's only a terry with a bayonet. One diamond he's talking to a boss through his at, the next the boss is wriggling like a worm on a bent pin. Mo winked at Phineas. The temptation to tell the tale to the newcomer was too strong. Doggy grew very serious. You've been killing men like that? Thousands, laddie, replied Phineas. The picture of unbostful voracity. And so has Mo. Mo Shendish, helmeted, browned, dried, toughened. A very different Mo from the padded ferret whom Aggie had driven into the ranks of war, hunched himself up, his hands clasping his knees. I don't mind doing it when you're so excited you don't know where you are, said he. But I don't not think you'll be afterwards. As a matter of fact, he'd only once got home with the bayonet, and the memory was unpleasant. But you've just thought of it, said Phineas. It was you, not me, said Mo. That makes all the difference. It's astonishing, Phineas remarked, intentionally, how many people are not only refused to catch pleasure as it flies, but to spurn it when it sits up and begs of them. Laddie, he turned to Doggy. The more one wallows in hedonism, the more one realizes its unplumbed depths. A little girl of ten, neatly pigtailed, but piteously shod, came near and cast a child's envious eye on Doggy's bread and jam. Approach, my little one, Phineas cried in French words, but with the action of Sockey Hall Street. If I gave you a frank, what would you do with it? I should buy nourishment de l'anasture, for Maman. Let me a frank, Laddie, said MacPhail. And when Doggy had slipped the coin into his palm, he dressed the child in unintelligible grand eloquence, and sent her on her way mystified, but rejoicing. C'est bon droit, dongley? Ah, Laddie! Cron Phineas, stretching himself out comfortably by the jam of the door. You've got to learn to savour the exquisite pleasure of a genuinely kindly act. Oh, don! cried Moe, with Doggy's money you were flinging about. MacPhail whiffed him with a glance. You're an unphilosophical ignoramus, said he. CHAPTER XII Perhaps one of the greatest influences which transformed Doggy into a fairly efficient, though undistinguished, infantryman was a morbid social terror of his officers. It saved him from many a guard room and from many a heart-to-heart talk wherein the zealous lieutenant gets to know his men. He lived in dread lest military delinquency or civil accomplishment should be the means of revealing the disgrace which bit like an acid into his soul. His undisguisable air of superior breeding could not fail to attract notice. Often his officers asked him what he was in civil life. His reply, a clark, sir, had to satisfy them. He had to develop a curious self-protecting faculty of shutting himself up like a hedgehog at the approach of danger. Once a breezy subleton had selected him as his batman. But Doggy's agonised. It would be awfully good of you, sir, if you wouldn't mind not thinking of it. And the appeal in his eyes established the free masonry of caste and saved him from dreaded intimate relations. All right, if you'd rather not, Trevor, said the subleton. But why doesn't a chap like you try for a commission? I'm much happier as I am, sir, replied Doggy, and that was the end of the matter. But Phineas, when he heard of it, it was on the east coast, began, if you still consider yourself too fine to clean another man's boots. Doggy, in one of his quick fits of anger interrupted, if you think I'm just a dirty little snob, if you don't understand why I begged to be let off, you're the thickest headed fool in creation. I'm near that laddie, replied Phineas, with his usual ironic submissiveness. Haven't I kept you secret all this time? Thus it was, Doggy's fixed idea, to lose himself in the locust swarm, to be prominent neither for good nor evil, even in the little clot of fifty, ultimately almost identical locusts that formed his platoon. It braced him to the performance of hideous tasks. It restrained him from display of superior intellectual power or artistic capability. The world upheaval had thrown him from his peacock and ivory room, with its finest collection on earth of little china-dogs, and a horrible, fetid hole in the ground in northern France. It had thrown not the average young Englishman of comfortable position, who had toyed with aesthetic superficialities as an amusement, but a poor little by-product of cloistered life, who had been brought up from babyhood to regard these things as the nervous texture of his very existence. He was wrapped from head to heel in fine a net, to every tiny mesh of which he was acutely sensitive. A hole in the ground in northern France. The regiment, after its rest, moved on and took its turn in the trenches. Four days on, four days off. Four days on of misery inconceivable. Four days on during which the officers watched the men with the unwavering vigilance of kindly cats. How are you getting along, Trevor? Nicely thank you, sir. Feet all right? Yes, thank you, sir. Sure, if you want to grouse, grouse away. That's what I'm talking to you for. I'm perfectly happy, sir. The damn sight more than I am, laughed the Subbleton, and with a cheery nod in acknowledgement of Doggy's salute, splashed down the muddy trench. But Doggy was chilled to the bone, and he had no feeling in his feet, which were under six inches of water, and his woollen loves being wet through were useless, and prevented his numbed hands from feeling the sandbags with which he and the rest of the platoon were repairing the parapet. For the Germans had just consecrated an hour's general hate to the vicinity of the trench, and its exquisite symmetry, the pride of the platoon commander, had been disturbed. There had also been a few ghastly casualties. A shell had fallen and burst in the traverse at the far end of the trench. Something that looked like half a man's head and a bit of shoulder had dropped just in front of the dugout, where Doggy and his section were sheltering. Doggy, staring at it, was violently sick. In a stupefied way he found himself mingling with others who were engaged in clearing up the horror. A murmur reached him that it was Taffy Jones who had thus been dismembered. The bombardment over, he had taken his place with the rest in the reparation of the parapet, and as he happened to be at the end of the line, the officer had spoken to him. If he had been suffering tortures unknown to Attila and unimagined by his successors, he would have answered just the same. But he lamented Taffy's death to Phineas, who listened sympathetically. Such a cheery comrade, such a smart soldier, such a kindly soul. Not a black spot in him, said Doggy. Are you all right, said McPhail? What would have been your opinion of a bookmaker's clerk? I know, replied Doggy, but this isn't a year ago. Just look round. He laughed, somewhat hysterically, for the fate of Taffy had unstrung him for the time. Phineas contemplated the length of deep, narrow ditch with its planks half-swimming on filthy liquid, its wire revetment holding up the oozing sides, the dingy parapet above which it was death to put one's head, the grey, free sky, the only thing free along that awful row of parallel ditches that stretched from the Belgian coast to Switzerland, the clay-covered, shapeless figures of men, their fellows, almost undistinguishable even by features from themselves. It has been borne upon me lately, said Phineas, that patriotism is an amazing virtue. Doggy drew a foot out of the Marseilles to find a less precarious purchase higher up the slope. And I've been thinking, Phineas, whether it's really patriotism that has brought you and me into this, what can we call it? Dante's inferno is a child's play to it. Dante has no more imagination, said Phineas, than a free Kirk percentile in curcubri. But is it patriotism? Doggy persisted. If I thought it was, I should be happier. If we had orders to go over the top and attack and I could shout England forever and lose myself just in the thick of it. There's a brass hat coming down the trench, said Phineas, and brass hats have no use for rap-sodical privates. They stood to attention as the staff officer passed by. Then Doggy broke in impatiently. I wish to goodness you could understand what I'm trying to get at. A smile illuminated the gaunt, unshaven, mud-caged face of Phineas McPhail. Laddie, said he, let England as an abstraction fend for itself. But you have a bonny English soul within you, and for that you're fighting. And so had poor Taffy Jones. And I have a bonny Scottish thirst, the poignancy of which both of you have been happily spared. I believe you, Laddie, to seek and slumber. A sarsis from Marloddom. Doggy had been out a long time. He'd seen many places, much fighting and endured manifold miseries. After one of the spells in the trenches, the worst he had experienced, a company was marched into Newbillet some miles behind the lines in the once prosperous village of Freilu. They'd slouched along, dead tired, drooping under their packs, sodden with mud and sleeplessness, silent, with not a note of a song among them. But at the entrance to the village, quickened by a word or two of exhortation from officers and sergeants, they pulled themselves together and marched in, heads up, forward in fortless step. The seer was jealous of the honour of his men. He assumed that his predecessors in the village had been a rotten lot, and was determined to share the inhabitants of Freilu what a crack English regiment was really like. Freilu was an unimportant, unheard-of village, but the opinion of a thousand Freilusis made up front his opinion of the British army. Doggy, almost half stupefied with fatigue, responded to the sentiment like the rest. He was conscious of making part of a gallant show. It was only when they halted and stood easy that he lost a count of things. The wide main street of the village swam characterless before his eyes. He followed not directions, but directed men with a sheep-like instinct, and found himself stumbling through an archway down a narrow path. He had a dim consciousness of lurching sideways, confusedly apologising to a woman who supported him back to equilibrium. And the next thing he saw was a barn full of fresh straw, and when somebody pointed to a vacant strip, he fell down with many others and went to sleep. The Ravalli sighed a minute afterwards, though a whole night had passed, and there was the blessed clean water to wash in. He long since ceased to be fastidious in his ablutions, and there was breakfast, sizzling bacon and bread and jam. And there, in front of the kitchen, aiding with the hot water for the tea, moved a slim girl with dark and, as Doggy thought, tragic eyes. Kit inspection, feet inspection, all the duties of the day and dinner were over. Most of the men returned to their billets to sleep. Some, including Doggy, wanted about the village, taking the air, and visiting the little modest cafes, and talking with indifferent success, so far as the interchange of our ticket at Ideas was concerned, with shy children. McPhail and Mo Shendish being among the sleepers, Doggy mooned about by himself in his usual self-effacing way. There was little to interest him in the long-straggling village. He passed through a hundred such. Low, white-washed houses, interspersed with perky, balconyed buildings given over to little shops on the ground floor, with here and there a discreet iron gate shutting off the doctors or the attorneys' villa, and bearing the oval plate indicating the name and pursuit of the tenant. Here and there, too, long white-washed walls and closing a dairy or a timber-yard stretched on each side of the great high road, and the village gradually dwindled away at each end into the gently undulating country. There was just a by-lane or two, one leading up to the little great church and presbytery, and another to the little cemetery, with its trim paths and black-and-white wooden crosses and wirework pious offerings. At open doors the British soldiers lounged at ease, and in the dim interiors behind them the forms of the women of the house, blue apron, moved to and fro. The early afternoon was warm. A westerly breeze deadened the sound of the distant bombardment to an unheeded drone, and a holy peace settled over the place. Doggy, clean, refreshed, comfortably drowsy, having explored the village, returned to his billet, and, looking at it from the opposite side of the way, for the first time realized its nature. The lane into which he had stumbled the night before, ran under an archway supporting some kind of overhead chamber, and separated the dwelling-house from a warehouse-wall, on which vast letters proclaimed the fact that Verve-Maurant-Ethie carried on therein the business of hay and corn-dealers. Hence Doggy reflected the fresh deep straw on which he and his fortunate comrades had wallowed. The double-gate under the archway was held back by arne stanchions. The two-storied house looked fairly large and comfortable. The front doors stood wide open, giving the view of a neat stiff little hall or living-room. An article of furniture caught his idle eye. He crossed the road in order to have a nearer view. It was a huge, polished, mahogany cask, standing about three feet high, and bound with shining brass bands, such as he remembered having seen once in Brittany. He advanced still closer, and suddenly the slim, dark girl appeared and stood in the doorway, a look frankly and somewhat rebukingly into his inquisitive eyes. Doggy flushed as one caught in an unmanally act. A crying thought of the British army is that it prescribes for the rank and file no form of polite recognition of the existence of civilians. It is contrary to army orders to salute or to take off their caps. They can only jerk their heads and grin, an elegant proceeding, which places them at a disadvantage with the fair sex. Doggy therefore sketched a vague salutation halfway between a salute and a bar, and began a profuse apology. Man was almost pardoned his curiosity, but as a lover of old things he had been struck by the beautiful tonneau. An amused light came into her sombre eyes and a smile flickered round her lips. Doggy noted instantly how pale she was and how tiny faint little lines persisted to the corners of those lips in spite of the smile. There is no reason for excuses, monsieur, she said. The door was open to the view of everybody. Pourtant, said Doggy, c'était un peu mal élevé. She laughed. Pardon, but it's the role. First to find an English soldier apologising for looking into a house, and then to find him talking French like a boulou. Doggy said, with a little touch of natural jealousy, and a reversion to Dernalbury-Punctilio. I hope, Amazelle, you have always found the English soldier conduct himself like a gentleman. Mais oui, mais oui, she cried. They are all charming, nous en deux, comme des moutons. But this is a question of delicacies somewhat exaggerated. It's good of you, Amazelle, to forgive me, said Doggy. By all the rules of polite intercourse either Doggy should have made his bow and exit, or the maiden, exercising her prerogative, should have given him the opportunity of a graceful will draw. But they remained where they were, the girl framed by the doorway, the live little figure in khaki and lichen-covered helmet looking up at her from the foot of the two front steps. At last he said in some embarrassment, That's a very beautiful casque of yours. She wavered for a few seconds, then she said, You can enter, monsieur, and examine it if you like. Mamazelle was very aimable, said Doggy. Mamazelle moved aside, and Doggy entered, taking off his helmet and holding it under his arm like an opera hat. There was nothing much to see in the little vestibule parlour, a stiff, tassled chair or two, a great old linen press taking up most of one side of a wall, a cheap table covered with a chenille-like tablecloth, and the resplendent old casque about which he lingered. He mentioned Brittany. Her tragic face lighted up again. Monsieur was right, her aunt, Madame Mourron, was Breton, and had brought the casque with her as part of her diary, together with the press and other furniture. Doggy alluded to the vastly lettered encryption, verve Mourron et fille. Madame Mourron was in a sense his hostess, and the sons, One is in Madame Rasker, and the other, Alas, monsieur. Doggy knew what that alas meant. The are gone, she said. And Madame your aunt? She shrugged her thin, though shapely shoulders. It nearly killed her. She is old and an invalid. She has been in bed for the last three weeks. Then what becomes of the business? It is I, monsieur, who am the business, and I know nothing about it. She sighed. Then with her blue apron, otherwise she was dressed in unrelieved black. She rubbed an imaginary speck from the brass banding of the casque. This, I suppose you know, was for the best brandy, monsieur. And now, he asked, a memory, a sentiment, a thing of beauty. In a feminine way which he understood, she herded him to the door by way of dismissal. Dirtlebury helped him. A tiny French village has as many slanderous tongues as an English cathedral city. He was preparing to take polite leave, when she looked swiftly at him, and made the faintest gesture of a detaining hand. Now I remember, it was you who nearly fell into me last night, when you were entering through the gate. The dim recollection came back. The firm woman's arm round him for the few tottering seconds. It seems I am always bound to be impolite, for I don't think I thank you, smiled doggy. You were at the end of your tether. Then very gently, pauvre garçon. The salabache had kept us awake for four nights, said doggy. That was why. And you are rested now? He laughed, almost. There at the door. He looked out and drew back. A knot of men were gathered by the gate of the yard. Apparently she had seen them too, for a flush rose to her pale cheeks. Mum was out, said doggy. I should like to creep back into the barn and sleep. If I pass my comments they'll want to detain me. That would be a pity, she said to me only. Come this way, monsieur. She led him through her room and a passage to the kitchen. They shared a pleasurable sense of adventure and secrecy. At the kitchen door she paused and spoke to an old woman, chopping up vegetables. To her net, let monsieur pass. To doggy, she said. Au revoir, monsieur. And disappeared. The old woman looked at him at first with disfavour. She did not hold with Tommy's needlessly tramping over the clean flags of her kitchen. But doggy's polite apology for disturbing her and a youthful grace of manner, he still held his tin hat under his arm, caused her features to relax. You are English? With a smile he indicated his uniform. Why yes, madame. How comes it then that you speak French? Because I have always loved your beautiful France, madame. France, oh, la pauvre France, she sighed, drew a wisp of what had been a corner of snuff from her pocket, opened it, dipped in a tentative finger and thumb, and, finding it empty, gazed at it with disappointment. sighed again, and with the methodical hopelessness of age, folded it up into the neatest of little squares and thrust it back in her pocket. Then she went on with her vegetables. Doggy took his leave and emerged into the yard. He dosed pleasantly on the straw of the barn, but it was not the dead sleep of the night. Bits of his recent little adventure fitted into the semi-conscious intervals. He heard the girl's voice saying so gently, pauvre garçon, and it was very comforting. He was finally arised by Phineas and Mochendish, who, having slept like tired dogs some distance off down the barn, now desired his company for a stroll round the village. Doggy, good-naturedly, assented. As they passed the house door he cast a quick glance. It was open, but the slim figure in black with the blue apron was not visible within. The shining cast, however, seemed to smile a friendly greeting. If you believe the London papers, Phineas, you'd think that the war-worn soldier coming from the trenches is met behind the lines with luxurious Turkish baths, comfortable warm canteens, picture-palaces, and theatrical entertainments. Can you perceive here any of those amenities of modern warfare? They looked round them and admitted they could not. Apparently, Phineas, the colonel, good but limited man, has missed all the proper places and dumps us in localities unrecognised by the London press. Put me on the pier at Brighton, sang Mo Shendish, but I soon have Margit or Yarmouth any day. Brighton's too toffish for welts. And cockles. I wonder whether we shall ever eat them again. A faraway dreamy look crept into his eyes. Does your young lady like cockles? Doggy ass, sympathetically. Daggy, funny thing. I was just thinking of her. She fared dotes on him. We had a day at Sarvan just before the war. He launched into anecdote. His companions listened. Phineas ironically carrying out his theory of adaptability. Doggy with final instinct. It appeared there had been an altercation of a right of choice with an itinerant vendor, in which, to Aggy's admiration, Mo had come off triumphant. Yes, eh? explained. Being in the fish-strave-myself, I could spot the winners. James, mommy-goot-trever of Denby Hall, laughed and slapped him on the back. And said indulgently, Good old Mo. At the little schoolhouse they stopped to gossip with some of their friends who were billeted there, and they sang the praises of the Verve-Maurice Barn. I wonder you don't have the house full of officers, if it's so wonderful? said someone. An omniscient corporal in the confidence of the quartermaster explained that the landlady being ill in bed and the place run by a young girl, the house had been purposely missed. Aggy drew a breath of relief at the news and attributed Madame Morin's melody to the intervention of a kindly providence. Somehow he did not fancy officers having the run of the house. They strolled on, and came to a forlorn little debited abuck, showing in its small window some clay pipes, and a few fly-blown picture-postcards. Now, Aggy, in spite of his training in adversity, had never resigned himself to wood-binds, and other such brands supplied to the British army, and Egyptian and Turkish being beyond his social pale, he taken to smoking French regi, cook of tobacco, of which he laid in a stock whenever he had the chance. So now he entered the shop, leaving finesse and mow outside. As they looked on French cigarettes with sturdy British contempt, they were not interested in dogged his purchases. A one girl of thirteen rows from behind the counter. What is he a day, monsieur?" Doggy stated his desire. The girl was calculating the price of the packets before wrapping them up, when his eyes fell upon a neat little pile of cornits in a pigeon-hole at the back. They directly suggested to him one of the great luminous ideas of his life. It was only afterwards that he realized its effulgence. For the moment he was made a concern with the needs of a poor old woman who had sighed lamentably over an empty paper of comfort. Do you sell snuff? But yes, monsieur. Give me some of the best quality. But how much does monsieur desire? A lot, said Doggy. And he bought a great package, enough to set the whole village sneezing to the end of the war. And, peering round the tiny shop and aspiring in the recesses of a glass case, a little olive wood box ornamented on the top with pandies and forget-be-nots purchased that also. He just paid when his companions put their heads in the doorway. Moe, pointing waggishly to Doggy, warned the little girl against his depravity. Mauvais, Mauvais, said he. Qu'est-ce que dit? asked the child. He's the idiot of the regiment whom I have to look after and feed with pap, said Doggy, and be hungry. He's begging you not to detain me. Mon Dieu! cried the child. Doggy, always courteous, went out with a balsua mamazelle and joined his friends. What were you jabbering to her about? Mauvais suspiciously. Doggy gave him the literal translation of his speech. Phineas burst into loud laughter. Landy said he. I've never heard you make a joke before. It is the regiment and you're his keeper. That's fine. What has come of you today? Have you ever seen a thing like that in Mayor Street, Antony? I have knocked his blingy head off. The club motioned it. Doggy stopped and put his parcel-filled hands behind his back. Have a try now, Mau. But Mau made him fry his ugly face, and thus established harmony. It was late that evening before Doggy could find an opportunity of slipping, unobserved, through the open door into the house kitchen dimly illuminated by an oil lamp. Madame, said he, took Twanette. I observed today that you had come to the end of your snuff. Would you permit a little English soldier to give you some? Also a little box to keep it in? The old woman, spare, myriad wrinkled beneath her peasant's quaff, yet looking as if carved out of weather-beaten oak, glanced from the gift to the donor, and from the donor to the gift. The Monsieur—Monsieur—why? she began quaveringly. You surely have someone, la barre, over yonder? said Doggy, with the sweep of his hand. May we, but how did you know my grandson, Montpetieu? It is he, my comrade, who sends the snuff to the grand maire. And Doggy bolted. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 of The Rough Road by William John Locke This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Simon Evers Chapter 13 At breakfast next morning Doggy searched the courtyard in vain for the slim figure of the girl. Yesterday she had stood just outside the kitchen door. Today her office was usurped by a hefty cook with the sleeves of his gray shirt rolled up, and his collar open and vast and tight-hitched braces unromantically strapped all over him. Doggy felt a pang of disappointment and abused the tea. Monsieur just stared and asked what was wrong with it. Rotten, said Doggy. He can't expect you to slap up city IBC shops in France, said Moe. Doggy, who was beginning to acquire a sense of rueful humour, smiled and was appeased. It was only in the afternoon that he saw the girl again. She was standing at the doorway of the house with her hand on her bosom, as though she had just come out to breathe fresh air, when Doggy and his two friends emerged from the yard. As their eyes met, she greeted him with her sad little smile. Inboldened he stepped forward. Bonjour, ma mousselle. Bonjour, monsieur. I hope madame your aunt is better today. She seemed to derive some dry amusement from his substitute. Alas, no, monsieur. Was that why I had not the pleasure of seeing you this morning? Where? Yesterday you filled our tea-cattles. But, monsieur, she replied primly, I'm not the vivandier of the regiment. That's a pity, laughed Doggy. Then he became aware of the adjacent forms and staring eyes of Phineas and Moe, who for the first time in their military career beheld him on easy terms with a strange and prepossessing young woman. After a second's thought he came to a diplomatic decision. Ma mousselle, said he, in his best Dirtlebury manner. May I dare to present my two comrades, my best friends in the battalion, monsieur McPhail, monsieur Shendish? She made them each a little formal bow, and then, somewhat maliciously, addressed McPhail as the bigger and the elder of the two. I don't yet know the name of your friend. Phineas put his great hand on Doggy's shoulder. James, mama, you could forever. Otherwise call Doggy, Miss, said Moe. She made a little graceful gesture of non-comprehension. Non-comperie, asked Moe. No, monsieur. Phineas explained in his rasping and consciously translated French. It is a nickname of the regiment, Doggy. The flushed and embarrassed subject of the discussion saw her lips move silently to the word. But his name is Trevor. Monsieur Trevor, said Phineas. She smiled again. And the strangest thing about her smile was that there was a matter of her lips and rarely of her eyes, which always maintained the haunting sadness of their tragic depths. Monsieur Trevor, she repeated imitatedly. And yours, McPhail? McPhail. McPhail, c'est assez difficile. And yours? Moe guessed. Shendish, said he. She repeated that also, whereout Moe grinned fatuously, showing his little yellow teeth beneath his scrubby red moustache. Mar French, call me Mao, said he. She grasped his meaning. Moe, she said. And she said it so funnily and softly, with ever so little a touch of criticality, that the sentimental warrior roared with delight. You going right for a star, Miss? From her two-steps height advantage, she looked down on the three upturned British faces, and her eyes went calmly from one to the other. She turned to Doggy. One would say, Monsieur, that you were the three musketeers. Possibly, ma'am, as well, laughed Doggy. He had not felt so light-hearted for many months. But we lack a d'artagnan. When you find him, bring him to me, said the girl. Mamoiselle, said Philius, gallantly, we would not be such imbeciles. At that moment, the voice of Trunet came from within. Mamoiselle Jean, Mamoiselle Jean. Oui, oui, je viens, she cried. Bonsoir, Monsieur. And she was gone. Doggy looked into the empty vestibule, and smiled at the friendly brandy-gask. Provided it is pronounced correctly, so as to rhyme with the English, Anne. It is a very pretty name. Doggy thought she looked like Jean, a Jean dark of this modern war. The youngs are very fascinating lassie, Philius remarked soberly, as they started on their stroll. Did you happen to observe that all the time she was talking so prettily, she was looking at ghosts behind us? Do you think so? asked Doggy, startled. Man, I know it, replied Philius. Ghost be blowed, cried Mochendish. She's a bit of all right, she is, what I call, class. Doesn't chuck herself at your head, like some of them, and on the other hand, as none of you blooming standoffishness. See what I mean? He touched them each by an arm. He was between them. Yeah, how do you think I could pick up this blinking lingo? Quick. Make violent love to Twanette, and ask her to teach you. There's nothing like it, said Doggy. Who's Twanette? The nice old lady in the kitchen. Mo flung his arm away. Ah, go, boil yourself, said he. But the making of love to the old woman of the kitchen led to possibilities of which Mochendish never dreamed. They never dawned on Doggy, until he found himself at it that evening. It was dusk. The men were lunging and smoking about the courtyard. Doggy, who had long since exchanged poor Taffy Jones' imperfect penny-wistle for a scientific musical instrument ordered from Bond Street, was playing with his sensitive skill the heirs they loved. He just finished Anilori. Man, Venus used to declare, when Doggy Trevor plays Anilori, he has the power to take your heart by the strings and drag it out through your eyes. He just come to the end of this popular and gizzard piercing tune, and received his mead of applause. When Twanette came out of the kitchen, two great zinc crocs in her hands, and crossed to the pump in the corner of the yard. Three or four would be pumpers, among them Doggy, went to her aid. All right, mother, we'll see to it, said one of them. So they pumped and filled the crocs, and one man got hold of one, and Doggy got hold of another, and they carried them to the kitchen steps. Monsieur, said Twanette to the first, and he went away with a friendly nod. But to Doggy, she said, on through, Monsieur. And Monsieur carried the two crocs over the threshold, and Twanette shut the door behind him. And there, sitting over some needle-work in the corner of the kitchen by a lamp, sat Jean. She looked up, rather startled, frowned for the brief part of a second, and regarded him inquiringly. Abroad him, Monsieur, to show him the photograph of Montpetio, the comrade who sent me the snuff, so explained Twanette, rummaging in a cupboard. May I stay and look at it? asked Doggy, buttoning up his tunic. N'est pas fatement, Monsieur, c'est Jean. It is Twanette's kitchen. Miseaux, said the old woman, turning with the photograph, that of a solid young infaturement. Doggy made polite remarks. Twanette put on a pair of silver-room spectacles and scabbed the picture. Then she handed it to Jean. Don't you think there is a great deal of resemblance? Jean directed a comparing glance at Doggy and smiled. Like two little soldiers in a pod, she said. Twanette talked of her Petit-O, who was at Saint-Michel, but far away, very far, beside as though he were fighting remote in the Caucasus. Presently came the sharp ring of a bell. Jean put aside her work and rose. It is my aunt who has awakened. But Twanette was already at the door. I will go up, mademoiselle Jean. Do not derange yourself. She bustled away. Once more, the pair found themselves alone together. If you don't continue sewing, mademoiselle, said Doggy, I shall think that I am disturbing you and must bid you good night. Jean sat down and resumed her work. Her sensation, more like laughter than anything else, fluttered round Doggy's heart. Voulez-vous vous asseoir, Monsieur Trevon? Vous êtes bien aimable, mademoiselle Jean, said Doggy, sitting down on a straight-back chair by the old cloth-colored kitchen table, which was between them. May I move the lamp slightly? he asked, for it hid her from his view. He moved it somewhat to her left. He threw shadows over her features, accentuating their appealing sadness. He watched her, and thought of Macphail's words about the ghosts. He noted, too, as the needle went in and out of the fabric, that her hands, though roughened by coarse work, were finely made with long fingers and delicate wrists. He broke a silence that grew embarrassing. You seem to have suffered greatly, mademoiselle Jean, he said softly. Her lips covered. Mais oui, Monsieur. Monsieur Trevon, he said. She put her hands and needlework in her lap and looked at him full. And you, too, have suffered? Ah, I, oh, no. But, yes, I've seen too much of it not to know. I see it in the eyes. Your two comrades today, they are good fellows, but they have not suffered. You are different. Well, not a bit, he did, lad. Or just little, indistinguishable bits of the conglomerate Tommy. And I, Monsieur, have the honour to say that you are different. This was very flattering. More, it was sweet unction, grateful to many a bruise. How, said he, you do not belong to their world. Your Tommies are wonderful in their kindness and chivalry. Until I met them, I had never seen an Englishman in my life. I had imbecile ideas. I thought they would be without manners, and pull insultant. I find I could walk among them, without fear, as if I were a princess. It is true. It is because you have the air of a princess, said Doggy, a sad little disguise princess of a fairytale, who is recognised by all the wild boars and rabbits in the wood. She lands aside. There isn't a woman in Frélu who is differently treated. I am only an ignorant girl, half bourgeois, half peasant, monsieur. But I have my woman's knowledge. And I know there is the difference between you and the others. You are a son of good family. It is evident. You have a delicacy of mind and of feeling. You were not born to be a soldier. Mama Zaljon, cried Doggy, do I appear as bad as that? Do you take me for an ombusquet monquet? Now an ombusquet is a slacker who lies in the safe ambush of a soft job. And an ombusquet monquet is a slacker who fortuitously has failed to win the fungus wreath of Slackerdom. She flushed deep red. Je ne suis pas mal honnête, monsieur. Doggy spread himself elbow-wise over the table. The girl's visible register of moods was fascinating. Pardon, Mama Zaljon, you are quite right. But it is not a question of what I was born to be, but what I was trained to be. I wasn't trained to be a soldier, but I do my best. She looked at him waveringly. Forgive me, Mama Zaljon. But you flash out on the point of honour. Doggy laughed, which shows that I have the essential of the soldier. Doggy's manner was not without charm. She relented. You know very well what I mean, she said rebukingly, and you don't deserve that I should tell it to you. You must my intention to say that you have sacrificed many things to make herself a simple soldier. Only a few idle habits, said Doggy. You joined, like the rest, as a volunteer. Of course. You banded everything to fight for your country? Under the spell of her dark eyes Doggy spoke according to Phineas after the going west of Taffy Jones. I think, Mama Zaljon, it was rather to fight for my soul, she resumed her sewing. That's what I meant long ago, she remarked with the first draw of the needle. No one could fight for his soul without passing through suffering. She went on sewing. Doggy, shrinking from her reply that might have cited fatuous, remained silent. But he realised a wonderful faculty of comprehension in Jean. After a while he said, Where did you learn all your wisdom, Madame Zaljon? At the convent, I suppose, my father gave me a good education. An English poet has said, Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. Doggy had rather a fight to express the meaning exactly in French. You don't gather wisdom in convents. It is true. Since then I have seen many things. She stayed across the room, not at Doggy, and he thought again of the ghosts. Tell me some of them, Madame Zaljon? He said in a low voice. She shot a swift glance at him, and met his honest brown eyes. I saw my father murdered in front of me, she said in a harsh voice. My God! said Doggy. It was on the retreat. We lived in Combre, my father and mother and I. He was a lawyer. When we heard the Germans were coming, my father, somewhat of an invalid, decided to fly. He had heard of what they had already done in Belgium. We tried to go by train. Parmoillel. We took to the road with many others. We could not get a horse. We had postponed our flight till too late. Only a handcart with a few necessaries and precious things. And we walked until we nearly died of heat and dust and grief. For our hearts were very heavy, monsieur. The roads too were full of English in the retreat. I shall not tell you what I saw of the wounded by the roadside. I sometimes see them now in my dreams. And we were helpless. We thought we would leave the main roads, and at last we got lost, and found ourselves in a little wood. We sat down to rest and to eat. It was cool and pleasant, and I laughed to cheer my parents. For they knew how I loved to eat under the freshness of the trees. She shivered. I, perhaps, shall never have to eat a meal in a wood again. We had squarely begun when a body of cavalry with strange pointed helmets rode along the path and, seeing us, halted. My mother, half dead with terror, cried out, Mondeur, c'est son désoulant! A leader, I suppose, an officer, called out something in German. My father replied, I do not understand German, so I did not know, and I shall never know what they said. But my father protested in anger, and stood in front of the horse, making gestures. And then the officer struck out his revolver and shot him through the heart, and he fell, dead. And the murderer turned his horse's head round, and he laughed. He laughed, monsieur. Damn him, said Doggingly Lush! Damn him! He gazed deep into John's dark, tearless eyes. She continued in the same, even voice. My mother became mad, she was a peasant of Breton, where the blood is fierce, and she screamed and clung to the bridle of the horse. And he wrote her down, and the horse trembled on her. Then he pointed at me, who was supporting the body of my father, and three men dismounted. But suddenly he heard something, gave an order, and the men mounted again, and they all rode away, laughing and jeering. And the last man, in bad French, shouted at me a foul insult. And I was there, monsieur Trevor, with my father dead, and my mother stunned and bruised and bleeding. Doggie, sensitive, quivered to the girl's tragedy. He said, with tense face, God, give me strength to kill every German I see! She nodded slowly. No German is a human being. If I were God, I would exterminate the occursions raised like wolves. You're right, sir Doggie. A short silence fell. He asked, what happened then? Oh dear, how must forget! I was overwhelmed with grief and horror. Some hours afterwards a small body of English infantry came. Many of them had bloodstained bandages. An officer who spoke a little French questioned me. I told him what had happened. He spoke with another officer, and because I recognized the word Ouland, I knew they were anxious about the patrol. They asked me the way to some place, I forget where. But I was lost. They looked at a map. Meanwhile my mother had recovered consciousness. I gave her a little wine from the bottle we had opened for our repast. I happened to look at the officer and saw him pass his tongue over his cracked lips. All the men had thrown themselves down by the side of the robe. I handed him the bottle and the little tin cup. To my surprise he did not drink. He said, Mamoiselle, this is war, and we are all in very great peril. My men are dying of thirst, and if you have any more of the wine, give it to them, and they will do their utmost to conduct your mother and yourself to a place of safety. Alas, there were only three bottles and our little basket of provisions. Naturally I gave it all, together with the food. He called a sergeant who took the provisions and distributed them while I was tending my mother. But I noticed that the two officers took neither bite nor sub. It was only after the pursuit, Trevor, that I realised I had seen your great English gentleman. Then they dug a little grave for my father. They were soon finished. The danger was grave, and some children took a rope and pulled the hand-guard with my mother lying on top of our distance. And I walked with them, until the whole of my life was blotted out with fatigue. We got onto the route national again, and mingled again with the retreat. And in the night as we were still marching, there was a halt. I went to my mother. She was cold, monsieur, cold and stiff. She was dead. She paused, tragically. After a few moments she continued. I fainted. I do not know what happened till I recovered consciousness at dawn. I found myself wrapped in one of our blankets, lying under the hand-guard. It was the market square of our little town, and there were many old men and women and children, refugees like me. I rose and found a paper, a leaf torn from a notebook, fixed to the hand-guard. It was from the officer. Bidding me farewell. Middletree necessity forced him to go on with his men. But he kept his word, and brought me to a place of safety. That is how I first met the English, monsieur Trever. They had carried me, I suppose, on the hand-guard all night. They who were not broken with weariness. I owe them my life, and my reason. And I was very happy. And your mother? How should I know? She replied simply. She went on with her sewing. Doggy wondered how her hand could be so steady. There was a long silence. What words, say, vain implications on the accursed race were adequate. Presently, her glance rested for a second or two on his sensitive face. Why do you not smoke, monsieur Trever? May I? Of course. It calms the nerves. I ought not to have saddened you with my griefs. Doggy took out his pink packet and lit a cigarette. You are very understanding, mademoiselle Jean. But it does a selfish man like me good to be saddened by a story like yours. I have not had much opportunity in my life of feeling for another's suffering. And since the war, I am abruti. You? Do you think if I had not found you just the reverse I should have told you all this? You have paid me a great compliment, mademoiselle Jean. Then after a while he asked. From the market square of the little town you found means to come here? I last know, she said, putting her work in her lap again. I made my way with my hand-gut. It was easy. To our original destination a little farm belonging to the eldest brother of my father. The farm of Lafollette. He lived there alone a widower with his farm servants. He had no children. We thought we were safe. Alas news came that the Germans were always advancing. We had time to fly. All the farm-hams fled, except Père Grigou, who loved him. But my uncle was obstinate. To a Frenchman the soil he possesses is his flesh and his blood. He would die rather than leave it. And my uncle had the murder of my father and mother on his brain. He told Père Grigou to take me away, but I stayed with him. It was Père Grigou who forced us to hide. That lasted two days. There was a well in the farm, and one night Père Grigou tied up my money and my mother's jewellery and my father's papers en far, all the precious things we had, in a packet of waterproof, and sank it with a long string down the well so that the Germans could not find it. It was foolish, but he insisted. One day my uncle and Père Grigou went out of the little cops where he had been hiding in order to reconnoitre, for he thought the Germans might be going away. And my uncle, who would not listen to me, took his gun. Presently I heard a shot, and then another. You can guess what it meant. And soon Père Grigou came, white and shaking with terror. My God, said Doggy again. It was terrible, she said, but they were in the right. And then we lay hidden until it was dark, how they did not find us, I don't know. And then we escaped across country. I thought of coming here to my aunt Morin, which is not far from La Follette, but I reflected that soon the Bosch would be here also. And we went on. We got to a high road, and once more I was among troops and the refugees. I met some kind folks in a carriage, a Monsieur Madame Tharide, and they took me in. And so I got to Paris where I had the hospitality of a friend of the convent who was married. And Père Grigou? He insisted on going back to bury my uncle. Nothing could move him. He had not parted from him all his life. They were foster brothers. Where is he now? Who knows. She paused, looked again at her ghosts, and continued. That is all, Monsieur Trevor. The Germans passed through here and repassed on their retreat. And as soon as it was safe I came to help my aunt who was souffrant and had lost her son. I also, because I could not live on charity on my friend, for voyez-vous, I was without a sue. All my money having been hidden in the well by Père Grigou. Doggy lent his elbows on the table. And you come through all that, madame aux agents, just as you are. How just as I am. So gentle and kind and comprehending. Her cheek flushed. I am not the only French woman who has passed through such things and kept herself proud. But the struggle has been very hard. Doggy rose and clenched his fists and rubbed his head from front to back in his old indecisive way, and began to swear incoherently in English. She smiled sadly. Ah, mon pauvre ami. He wheeled round. Why do you call me a mon pauvre ami? Because I see that you would like to help me and you can't. Jean cried Doggy, many half over the table which was between them. She rose too, startled on quick defensive, he said, and replied to her at glance. Why shouldn't I call you Jean? You haven't the right. What if I gain it? How? I don't know, said Doggy. The door burst suddenly open and the anxious face of motion disappeared. Here, you silly cuckoo, don't you know you're on guard tonight? You've just got about thirty seconds. Good Lord, cried Doggy. I forgot. Balsois, my mausoleum, serviced me to tear, and he rushed out. Moe lingered with the grin and jerked her back with thumb. If he weren't for old Moe, miss, I don't know what would happen to our friend Doggy. I've got to look after him like a baby I have. He's on to relief guard, and if old Mac—that's McVile, she nodded recognition of the name—and I hadn't remembered, miss. He'd have been in what you might call a lull. Compery? Yes, she said. Guard, sentinel. Sentinel, sentry, right. He was lit, she said, picking out her few English words from her memory. Yes, grinned Moe. He, guardhouse? Bless you, miss, you talk English as well as I do, cried the admiring Moe. Yes! When his turn comes, up and down on the street, by the gate. He saw her puzzled look. Rue, port, said he. Ah, oui, je comprends, margeant. Merci, monsieur, et bonsoir. Good night, miss, c'est Moe. Sometime later, he disturbed Phineas, by whose sight he slept from his initial preparation for slumber. Mac, is there any book I could learn this blinking lingo from? Troy, of it, out of love, replied Phineas sleepily. End of chapter 13