THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF PEACE.
I'm not out of the Army yet, but lately I was home on leave. At a time like that you don't really care about being demobilised just yet. After all, to earn—or let us say to be paid—several pounds for a fortnight's luxurious idleness is a far, far better thing than to receive about the same number of shillings for a like period of unremitting toil. There you have an indication of the financial prospects of my civvy career. None the less, to me in Blighty the future looked as rosy as a robin's breast, and life was immensely satisfactory. I deemed that I was capable of saying "Ha, ha" among the captains (though myself only boasting two pips). Then one day, in the lane that leads to the downs, I met Woggles.
I've known Woggles for years and years. Some time ago she became a V.A.D. and began to drive an ambulance about France; since when I had lost sight of her. I greeted her therefore with jubilation.
"Oh, Woggles," I cried, "this is a great occasion. How shall we celebrate it?"
"Well, if you like I'll go back again on to the top with you and show you the Weald. But I'd much rather you came home to tea. I could make some 'Dog's Delight'—s'posing you haven't outgrown such simple tastes."
"Oh, if you put it like that," I said cheerfully.
Well, it was a bitter sort of afternoon and growing late. The annoyance of Bogie (an enthusiastic puppy) at missing his walk might appropriately be solaced with portions of "Dog's Delight." It's a large home-made bun thing which used to delight me as well as Bogie's mother in days gone by.
"I ought to warn you," said Woggles as we walked across the fields, "that Mother and Dad are out to-day. I expect your dog'll have to take acting rank as chaperon."
"By the way," I said, "you don't know each other, do you?" I called Bogie, who was giving a vivid imitation of a cavalry screen protecting our advance, and made him sit up and pretend to be begging. "Now fix your eyes on the kind lady," I commanded. "Woggles—Bogie: Bogie—Woggles. Two very nice people." Bogie barked, put out his tongue and let the wind blow his left ear inside out. Woggles laughed in that excellent way she has.
At the Rectory she sang to me even better than she used to; the "Delight" was an achievement, Bogie being most agreeably surprised; there was a glow of firelight such as I love, and a vast comfortable chair. I felt lazy and very happy.
"This tea idea of yours was simply an inspiration. I don't know when I've been so pleased with myself and existence generally. At the moment my moral is as high as Mount Everest."
"Yes, I noticed something like that," Woggles agreed. "More tea? It's only about your fifth cup." Suddenly serious, she went on: "I wonder—is there much to be happy about just now? Dad thinks not; and so do I, rather. Do you want to talk about it, or would you rather find faces in the fire?"
"Please I want to talk about it."
"Carry on then. Fortify yourself with that last bit of 'Delight.'"
In spite of this reinforcement I found it wasn't so very easy to begin.
"Well," I said slowly, "I expect the foundation of my joie de vivre is a great relief that the War's over. Lots of troops celebrated that with song and dance and so forth on November 11th and subsequent nights; I'm spreading it over a much longer time. In a way it's like having a death sentence repealed, for millions of us. Not the heroic spirit, is it?—but there you are."
"Of course everyone feels that," Woggles admitted. "Only now that it is all over, aren't we sort of looking round and counting the cost? Thinking that all this loss of life and suffering hasn't made the world so very much better? Look at Russia and our strikes. Doesn't Bolshevism worry you?" she asked.
"The fact is," I told her, "I believe I've evolved a philosophy of life which nothing of that kind can seriously disturb—or I hope not. It's very jolly to feel like that."
"It must be. May we have this philosophy, please? Perhaps you'll make a disciple."
"It's an awfully simple one really, only I think people lose sight of it so strangely. Just to realise the extraordinary pleasure everyday things can give you—if you'll only let them. You compree that?"
"It doesn't sound very convincing," Woggles objected. "Everyday things! As for instance?"
"Oh, what shall I say? One of those really fine mornings; huge white clouds in a deep blue sky; the feel of a good drive at golf; smoke from cottage chimneys at dusk; wondering what's round the next corner of an unknown road; bare branches at night with the stars tangled in them; the wind that blows across these downs of ours; the music of a sentence of STEVENSON'S; Bogie here and his funny little ways—Well, I needn't go on?"
"No, you needn't," said Woggles thoughtfully and looked at me rather hard for a space. "We're old friends, aren't we, and all that sort of thing?" she demanded.
"What a question! I hope we are. But why?"
"Well, I'm going to ask you something. But I may say I'm rather nervous. You'll promise not to set Bogie at me or strangle me with your Sam Browne?"
"I will."
"Well, then, have you been asking Betty Willoughby to marry you, and has she said 'Yes'?"
I was amazed. Was Woggles also among the soothsayers? Because a few evenings earlier, with the help of a splendid full moon and one or two extenuating circumstances—
"But this is black magic and wizardry," I said. "It's a dead secret. How on earth did you know?"
"Oh, I just guessed," said Woggles.