Peggy ran in, having delivered the two-seater to the care of myrmidons.
“Now that the affecting meeting is over, let us have tea. Oliver, ring the bell.”
The tea came. It appeared to Doggie, handing round the three-tiered silver cake-stand, that he had returned to some forgotten former incarnation. The delicate china cup in his hand seemed too frail for the material usages of life and he feared lest he should break it with rough handling. Old habit, however, prevailed, and no one noticed his sense of awkwardness. The talk lay chiefly between Oliver and himself. They exchanged experiences as to dates and localities. They bandied about the names of places which will be inscribed in letters of blood in history for all time, as though they were popular golf-courses. Both had known Ypres and Plug Street, and the famous wall at Arras, where the British and German trenches were but five yards apart. Oliver’s division had gone down to the Somme in July for the great push.
“I ought to be there now,” said Oliver. “I feel a hulking slacker and fraud, being home on sick leave. But the M.O. said I had just escaped shell-shock by the skin of my nerves, and they packed me home for a fortnight to rest up—while the regiment, what there’s left of it, went into reserve.”
“Did you get badly cut up?” asked Doggie.
“Rather. We broke through all right. Then machine guns which we had overlooked got us in the back.”
“My lot’s down there now,” said Doggie.
“You’re well out of it, old chap,” laughed Oliver.
For the first time in his life Doggie began really to like Oliver. The old-time swashbuckling swagger had gone—the swagger of one who would say: “I am the only live man in this comatose crowd. I am the dare-devil buccaneer who defies the thunder and sleeps on boards while the rest of you are lying soft in feather-beds.” His direct, cavalier way he still retained; but the army, with the omnipotent might of its inherited traditions, had moulded him to its pattern; even as it had moulded Doggie. And Doggie, who had learned many of the lessons in human psychology which the army teaches, knew that Oliver’s genial, familiar talk was not all due to his appreciation of their social equality in the bosom of their own family, but that he would have treated much the same any Tommy into whose companionship he had been casually thrown. The Tommy would have said “sir” very scrupulously, which on Doggie’s part would have been an idiotic thing to do; but they would have got on famously together, bound by the freemasonry of fighting men who had cursed the same foe for the same reasons. So Oliver stood out before Doggie’s eyes in a new light, that of the typical officer trusted and beloved by his men, and his heart went out to him.
“I’ve brought Chipmunk over,” said Oliver. “You remember the freak? The poor devil hasn’t had a day’s leave for a couple of years. Didn’t want it. Why should he go and waste money in a country where he didn’t know a human being? But this time I’ve fixed it up for him and his leave is coterminous with mine. He has been my servant all through. If they took him away from me, he’d be quite capable of strangling the C.O. He’s a funny beggar.”