He would have a bad quarter of an hour with Peggy. Naturally. She would say, and with every right: “What about me? Am I not to be considered?” Yes, of course she would be considered. The position his fortune assured him would always be hers. He had no notion of asking her to share a log cabin in the wilds of Canada, or to bury herself in Oliver’s dud island of Huaheine. The great world would be before them. “But give me some sort of an idea of what you propose to do,” she would with perfect propriety demand. And there Doggie was stuck. He had not the ghost of a programme. All he had was faith in the war, faith in the British spirit and genius that would bring it to a perfect end, in which there would be unimagined opportunities for a man to fling himself into a new life, and new conditions, and begin the new work of a new civilization.
“If she’ll only understand,” said he, “that I can’t go back to those blasted little dogs, all will be well.”
Not quite all. Although his future was as nebulous as the planetary system in the Milky Way, at the back of his mind was a vague conviction that it would be connected somehow with the welfare of those men whom he had learned to know and love: the men to whom reading was little pleasure, writing a school-child’s laborious task, the glories of the earth as interpreted through art a sealed book; the men whose daily speech was foul metaphor; the men, hemi-demi-semi-educated, whose crude socialistic opinions the open lessons of history and the eternal facts of human nature derisively refuted; the men who had sweated and slaved in factory and in field to no other purpose than to obey the biological laws of the perpetuation of the species; yet the men with the sweet minds of children, the gushing tenderness of women, the hearts of lions; the men compared to whom the rotten squealing heroes of Homer were a horde of cowardly savages. They were men, these comrades of his, swift with all that there can be of divine glory in men.
And when they came home and the high gods sounded the false trumpet of peace?
There would be men’s work in England for all the Doggies in England to do.
Again, if Peggy could understand this, all would be well. If she missed the point altogether, and tauntingly advised him to go and join his friends the Socialists at once—then—he shoved his cap to the back of his head and wrinkled his forehead—then——
“Everything will be in the soup,” said he.
These reflections brought him to the Deanery. The nearest way of entrance was the stable-yard gate, which was always open. He strode in, waved a hand to Chipmunk who was sitting on the ground with his back against the garage, smoking a pipe, and entered the house by the French window of the dining-room. Where should he find Peggy? His whole mind was set on the immediate interview. Obviously the drawing-room was the first place of search. He opened the drawing-room door, the hinges and lock oily, noiseless, perfectly ordained, like everything in the perfectly ordained English Deanery, and strode in.
His entrance was so swift, so protected from sound, that the pair had no time to start apart before he was there, with his amazed eyes full upon them. Peggy’s hands were on Oliver’s shoulders, tears were streaming down her face, as her head was thrown back from him, and Oliver’s arm was around her. Her back was to the door. Oliver withdrew his arm and retired a pace or two.
“Lord Almighty,” he whispered, “here’s Doggie!”