“He’d be shot or something if he refused to go,” said Doggie. “But why can’t we turn it over to Sir Owen Julius?”
“That old archæological fossil?”
Peggy, womanlike, forgot that they had approached him in the first place.
“He’d never begin to understand what we want. Fox hinted as much. Now Fox is modern and up to date and sympathetic. If I can’t have Fox, I won’t have Sir Owen. Why, he’s older than Dad! He’s decrepit. Can’t we get another architect?”
“Do you think, dear,” said Doggie, “that, in the circumstances, it would be a nice thing to do?”
She flashed a glance at him. She had woven no young girl’s romantic illusions around Marmaduke. Should necessity have arisen, she could have furnished you with a merciless analysis of his character. But in that analysis she would have frankly included a very fine sense of honour. If he said a thing wasn’t quite nice—well, it wasn’t quite nice.
“I suppose it wouldn’t,” she admitted. “We shall have to wait. But it’s a rotten nuisance all the same.”
Hundreds of thousands of not very intelligent, but at the same time by no means unpatriotic, people, like Peggy, at the beginning of the war thought trivial disappointments rotten nuisances. We had all waxed too fat during the opening years of the twentieth century, and, not having a spiritual ideal in God’s universe, we were in danger of perishing from Fatty Degeneration of the Soul. As it was, it took a year or more of war to cure us.
It took Peggy quite a month to appreciate the meaning of the mobilization of Major Fox, R.F.A. A brigade of Territorial artillery flowed over Durdlebury, and the sacred and sleepy meadows became a mass of guns and horse-lines and men in khaki, and waggons and dingy canvas tents—and the old quiet streets were thick with unaccustomed soldiery. The Dean called on the Colonel and officers, and soon the house was full of eager young men holding the King’s commission. Doggie admired their patriotism, but disliked their whole-hearted embodiment of the military spirit. They seemed to have no ideas beyond their new trade. The way they clanked about in their great boots and spurs got on his nerves. He dreaded also lest Peggy should be affected by the meretricious attraction of a uniform. There were fine hefty fellows among the visitors at the Deanery, on whom Peggy looked with natural admiration. Doggie bitterly confided to Goliath that it was the “glamour of brawn.” It never entered his head during those early days that all the brawn of all the manhood of the nation would be needed. We had our well-organized Army and Navy, composed of peculiarly constituted men whose duty it was to fight; just as we had our well-organized National Church, also composed of peculiarly constituted men whose duty it was to preach. He regarded himself as remote from one as from the other.
Oliver, who had made a sort of peace with Doggie and remained at the Deanery, very quickly grew restless.