It was from Peggy.
“Oh, lord!” said Doggie.
Peggy was there. She had arrived from Durdlebury all alone, the night before, and was putting up at an hotel. The venerable idiot, with red crosses and bits of tin all over her, who seemed to run the hospital, wouldn’t let her in to see him till the regulation visiting hour of three o’clock. That she, Peggy, was a Dean’s daughter, who had travelled hundreds of miles to see the man she was engaged to, did not seem to impress the venerable idiot in the least. Till three o’clock then. With love from Peggy.
“The lady, I believe, is waiting for an answer,” said the nurse.
“Oh, my hat!” said Doggie below his breath.
To write the answer, he had to strip from the pad the page on which he had begun the letter to Jeanne. He wrote: “Dearest Peggy.” Then the pencil-point’s impress through the thin paper stared at him. Almost every word was decipherable. Recklessly he tore the pad in half and on a virgin page scribbled his message to Peggy. The nurse departed with it. He took up the flimsy sheet containing his interrupted letter to Jeanne and glanced at it in dismay. For the first time it struck him that such words, to a girl even of the lowest intelligence, could only have one interpretation. Doggie said, “Oh, lord!” and “Oh, my hat!” and Oh all sorts of unprintable things that he had learned in the army. And he put to himself the essential question: What the Hades was he playing at?
Obviously, the first thing to do was to destroy the letter to Jeanne and the tell-tale impress. This he forthwith did. He tore the sheets into the tiniest fragments, stretched out his arm to put the handful on the table by the bed, missed his aim and dropped it on the floor. Whereby he incurred the just wrath of the hard-worked nurse.
Again he took up Jeanne’s letter. After all, what was wrong with it? He must look at things from her point of view. What had really happened? Let him set out the facts judicially. They had struck up a day or two’s friendship. She had told him, as she might have told any decent soul, her sad and romantic story. The English during the great retreat had rendered her unforgettable services. She was a girl of a generously responsive nature. She would pay her debt of gratitude to the English soldier. Her fine vale on the memorable night of rain was part payment of her debt to England. Yes. Let him get things in the right perspective…. She had made friends with him because he was one of the few private soldiers who could speak her language. It was but natural that she should tell him of the sunken packet. It was one of the most vital facts of her life. But just an outside fact: nothing to do with any shy mysterious workings of her woman’s soul. She might have told the story to any man in the company without derogation from her womanly dignity. And any man Jack of them, having Jeanne’s confidence, having the knowledge of the situation of the ruined well, having the God-sent opportunity of recovering the treasure, would, of absolute certainty, have done exactly what he, Doggie, had done. Supposing Mo Shendish had been the privileged person, instead of himself. What, by way of thanks, could Jeanne have written? A letter practically identical.
Practically. A very comfortable sort of word; but Doggie’s cultivated mind disliked it. It was a slovenly word, a makeshift for the hard broom of clean thought. This infernal “practically” begged the whole question. Jeanne would not have sentimentalized to Mo Shendish about ships passing in the night. No, she wouldn’t, in spite of all his efforts to persuade himself that she would. Well, perhaps dear old Mo was a rough, uneducated sort of chap. He could not have established with Jeanne such delicate relations of friendship as exist between social equals. Obviously the finer shades of her letter would have varied according to the personality of the recipient. Jeanne and himself, owing to the abnormal conditions of war, had suddenly become very intimate friends. The war, as she imagined, must part them for ever. She bade him a touching and dignified farewell, and that was the end of the matter. It had all been an idyllic episode; beginning, middle, and end; neatly rounded off; a thing done, and done with—except as a strange romantic memory. It was all over. As long as he remained in the army, a condition for which, as a private soldier, he was not responsible, how could he see Jeanne again? By the time he rejoined, the regiment would be many miles away from Frélus. This, in her clear, steady way, she realized. Her letter must be final.
It had to be final. Was not Peggy coming at three o’clock?