Phineas McPhail, M.A., late of Glasgow and Cambridge, looked at Doggie with his keen little grey eyes beneath bent and bristling eyebrows. In the language of 33702 Private McPhail, he asked:
“What the blazes is it all about?”
“That’s a long story,” said Doggie, looking at his watch. “In the meantime, I had better give some orders about dinner. And you would like to wash.”
He threw open a wing of the folding-doors, once in Georgian times separating drawing-room from withdrawing-room, and now separating living-room from bedroom, and switching on the light, invited McPhail to follow.
“I think you’ll find everything you want,” said he.
Phineas McPhail, left alone to his ablutions, again looked round, and he had more reason than ever to ask what it was all about. Marmaduke’s bedroom at Denby Hall had been a dream of satinwood and dull blue silk. The furniture and hangings had been Mrs. Trevor’s present to Marmaduke on his sixteenth birthday. He remembered how he had been bored to death by that stupendous ass of an old woman—for so he had characterized her—during the process of selection and installation. The present room, although far more luxurious than any that Phineas McPhail had slept in for years, formed a striking contrast with that remembered nest of effeminacy.
“I’ll have to give it up,” he said to himself. But just as he had put the finishing touches to his hair an idea occurred to him. He flung open the door.
“Laddie, I’ve got it. It’s a woman.”
But Doggie laughed and shook his head, and leaving McPhail, took his turn in the bedroom. For the first time since his return to civil life he ceased for a few moments to brood over his troubles. McPhail’s mystification amused him. McPhail’s personality and address, viewed in the light of the past, were full of interest. Obviously he was a man who lived unashamed on low levels. Doggie wondered how he could have regarded him for years with a respect almost amounting to veneration. In a curious unformulated way Doggie felt that he had authority over this man so much older than himself, who had once been his master. It tickled into some kind of life his deadened self-esteem. Here at last was a man with whom he could converse on sure ground. The khaki uniform caused him no envy.
“The poet is not altogether incorrect,” said McPhail, when they sat down to dinner, “in pointing out the sweet uses of adversity. If it had not been for the adversity of a wee bit operation, I should not now be on sick furlough. And if I had not been on furlough I shouldn’t have the pleasure of this agreeable reconciliation. Here’s to you, laddie, and to our lasting friendship.” He sipped his claret. “It’s not like the Lafitte in the old cellar—Eheu fugaces anni et—what the plague is the Latin for vintages? But ’twill serve.” He drank again and smacked his lips. “It will even serve very satisfactorily. Good wine at a perfect temperature is not the daily drink of the British soldier.”