“I know,” said Peggy. She bent forward and picked with finger and thumb at the fluff of the blanket. Then she said, intent on the fluff: “If a man had done a thing like that for me, I should have crawled after him to the ends of the earth.” Presently she looked up with a flash of the eyes. “Why isn’t this girl doing it?”
“You must listen to the end of the story,” said Phineas. “I may tell you that I always regarded myself, with my Scots caution, as a model of tact and discretion; but after many conversations with Doggie, I’m beginning to have my doubts. I also imagined that I was very careful of my personal belongings; but facts have convicted me of criminal laxity.”
Peggy smiled. “That sounds like a confession, Mr. McPhail.”
“Maybe it’s in the nature of one,” he assented. “But by your leave, Mrs. Manningtree, I’ll resume my narrative.”
He continued the story of Jeanne: how she had learned through him of Doggie’s wealth and position and early upbringing; of the memorable dinner-party with poor Mo; of Doggie’s sensitive interpretation of her French bourgeoise attitude; and finally the loss of the letter containing her address in Paris.
After he had finished, Peggy sat for a long while thinking. This romance in Doggie’s life had moved her as she thought she could never be moved since the death of Oliver. Her thoughts winged themselves back to an afternoon, remote almost as her socked and sashed childhood, when Doggie, immaculately attired in grey and pearl harmonies, had declared, with his little effeminate drawl, that tennis made one so terribly hot. The scene in the Deanery garden flashed before her. It was succeeded by a scene in the Deanery drawing-room when, to herself indignant, he had pleaded his delicacy of constitution. And the same Doggie, besides braving death a thousand times in the ordinary execution of his soldier’s duties, had performed this queer deed of heroism for a girl. Then his return to Durdlebury——
“I’m afraid,” she said suddenly, “I was dreadfully unkind to him when he came home the last time. I didn’t understand. Did he tell you?”
Phineas stretched out a hand and with the tips of his fingers touched her sleeve.
“Mrs. Manningtree,” he said softly, “don’t you know that Doggie’s a very wonderful gentleman?”
Again her eyes grew moist. “Yes. I know. Of course he never would have mentioned it…. I thought, Mr. McPhail, he had deteriorated—God forgive me! I thought he had coarsened and got into the ways of an ordinary Tommy—and I was snobbish and uncomprehending and horrible. It seems as if I am making a confession now.”