“I have a great respect for the Jesuits, my dear,” said the Dean, holding out an impressive egg-spoon. “The fact remains, in the eyes of the world, as I remarked, that Mr. Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall, a man of fortune and high position in the county, resigned his commission in order, for reasons best known to himself, to serve his country more effectively in the humbler ranks of the army, and—my dear, this egg is far too full for war time”—with a hazardous plunge of his spoon he had made a yellow yelky horror of the egg-shell—“and I’m going to proclaim the fact far and wide, and—indeed—rub it in.”
“That’ll be jolly decent of you, daddy,” said his daughter. “It will help a lot.”
In the failure of Marmaduke to retain his commission the family honour had not been concerned. The boy had done his best. They blamed not him but the disastrous training that had unfitted him for the command of men. They reproached themselves for their haste in throwing him headlong into the fiercest element of the national struggle towards efficiency. They could have found an easier school, in which he could have learned to do his share creditably in the national work. Many young men of their acquaintance, far more capable than Marmaduke, were wearing the uniform of a less strenuous branch of the service. It had been a blunder, a failure, but without loss of honour. But when slanderous tongues attacked poor Doggie for running away with a yelp from a little hardship; when a story or two of Doggie’s career in the regiment arrived in Durdlebury, highly flavoured in transit and more and more poisoned as it went from mouth to mouth; when a legend was spread abroad that he had bolted from Salisbury Plain and was run to earth in a Turkish Bath in London, and was only saved from court-martial by family influence, then the family honour of the Conovers was wounded to its proud English depths. And they could say nothing. They had only Doggie’s word to go upon; they accepted it unquestioningly, but they knew no details. Doggie had disappeared. Naturally, they contradicted these evil rumours. The good folks of Durdlebury expected them to do so, and listened with well-bred incredulity. To the question, “Where is he now and what is he going to do?” they could only answer, “We don’t know.” They were helpless.
Peggy had a bitter quarrel with one of her intimates, Nancy Murdoch, daughter of the doctor who had proclaimed the soundness of Marmaduke’s constitution.
“He may have told you so, dear,” said Nancy, “but how do you know?”
“Because whatever else he may be, he’s not a liar,” retorted Peggy.
Nancy gave the most delicate suspicion of a shrug to her pretty shoulders.
That was the beginning of it. Peggy, naturally combative, armed for the fight and defended Marmaduke.
“You talk as though you were still engaged to him,” said Nancy.
“So I am,” declared Peggy rashly.