Then Doggie’s letter brought comfort and gladness to the Deanery. It reassured them as to his fate. It healed the wounded family honour. It justified Peggy in playing the game.
She took the letter round to Dr. Murdoch’s and thrust it into the hand of an astonished Nancy, with whom since the quarrel she had not been on speaking terms.
“This is in Marmaduke’s handwriting. You recognize it. Just read the top line when I’ve folded it. ‘I have enlisted in the 10th Wessex.’ See?” She withdrew the letter. “Now, what could a man, let alone an honourable gentleman, do more? Say you’re sorry for having said beastly things about him.”
Nancy, who had regretted the loss of a lifelong friendship, professed her sorrow.
“The least you can do then, is to go round and spread the news, and say you’ve seen the letter with your own eyes.”
To several others, on a triumphant round of visits, did she show the vindicating sentence. Any soft young fool, she asserted, with the directness and not unattractive truculence of her generation, can get a commission and muddle through, but it took a man to enlist as a private soldier.
“Everybody recognizes now, darling,” said the reconciled Nancy a few days later, “that Doggie is a top-hole, splendid chap. But I think I ought to tell you that you’re boring Durdlebury stiff.”
Peggy laughed. It was good to be engaged to a man no longer under a cloud.
“It will all come right, dear old thing,” she wrote to Doggie. “It’s a cinch, as the Americans say. You’ll soon get used to it—especially if you can realize what it means to me. ‘Saving face’ has been an awful business. Now it’s all over. Of course, I’ll accept the two-seater. I’ve had lessons in driving since you went away—I had thoughts of going out to France to drive Y.M.C.A. cars, but that’s off for the present. I’ll love the two-seater. Swank won’t be the word. But ‘a parting gift’ is all rot. The engagement stands and all Durdlebury knows it…” and so on, and so on. She set herself out, honestly, loyally, to be the kindest girl in the world to Doggie. Mrs. Conover happened to come into the drawing-room just as she was licking the stamp. She thumped it on the envelope with her palm and, looking round from the writing-desk against the wall, showed her mother a flushed and smiling face.
“If anybody says I’m not good—the goodest thing the cathedral has turned out for half a dozen centuries—I’ll tear her horrid eyes out from their sockets!”