"What do you mean by something very serious?"

"Our little contract, dear," said Doggie, "was based on the understanding that you would not be uprooted from the place in which are all your life's a.s.sociations. If I broke that understanding it would leave you a free agent to determine the contract, as the lawyers say. So perhaps, Peggy dear, we might dismiss--well--other considerations, and just discuss this."

Peggy twisted a rag of handkerchief and wavered for a moment. Then she broke out, with fresh tears on her cheek.

"You're a dear of dears to put it that way. Only you could do it. I've been a brute, old boy; but I couldn't help it. I _did_ try to play the game."

"You did, Peggy dear. You've been wonderful."

"And although it didn't look like it, I was trying to play the game when you came in. I really was. And so was he." She rose and threw the handkerchief away from her. "I'm not going to step out of the engagement by the side door you've left open for me, you dear old simple thing. It stands if you like. We're all honourable people, and Oliver"--she drew a sharp little breath--"Oliver will go out of our lives."

Doggie smiled--he had risen--and taking her hands, kissed them.

"I've never known what a splendid Peggy it is, until I lose her. Look here, dear, here's the whole thing in a nutsh.e.l.l. While I've been morbidly occupied with myself and my grievances and my disgrace and my efforts to pull through, and have gradually developed into a sort of half-breed between a Tommy and a gentleman with every mortal thing in me warped and changed, you've stuck to the original rotten a.s.s you lashed into the semblance of a man, in this very room, goodness knows how many months, or years, or centuries ago. In my infernal selfishness, I've treated you awfully badly."

"No, you haven't," she decided stoutly.

"Yes, I have. The ordinary girl would have told a living experiment like me to go hang long before this. But you didn't. And now you see a totally different sort of Doggie and you're making yourself miserable because he's a queer, unsympathetic, unfamiliar stranger."

"All that may be so," she said, meeting his eyes bravely. "But if the unfamiliar Doggie still cares for me, it doesn't matter."

Here was a delicate situation. Two very tender-skinned vanities opposed to each other. The smart of seeing one's affianced bride in the arms of another man hurts grievously sore. It's a primitive s.e.x affair, independent of love in its modern sense. If the savage's abandoned squaw runs off with another fellow, he pursues him with clubs and tomahawks until he has avenged the insult. Having known ME, to decline to Spotted Crocodile! So the finest flower of civilization cannot surrender the lady who once was his to the more favoured male without a primitive pang. On the other hand, Doggie knew very well that he did not love Peggy, that he had never loved Peggy. But how in common decency could a man tell a girl, who had wasted a couple of years of her life over him, that he had never loved her? Instead of replying to her questions, he walked about the room in a worried way.

"I take it," said Peggy incisively, after a while, "that you don't care for me any longer."

He turned and halted at the challenge. He snapped his fingers. What was the good of all this beating of the bush?

"Look here, Peggy, let's face it out. If you'll confess that you and Oliver are in love with each other, I'll confess to a girl in France."

"Oh?" said Peggy, with a swift change to coolness. "There's a girl in France, is there? How long has this been going on?"

"The last four days in billets before I got wounded," said Doggie.

"What is she like?"

Then Doggie suddenly laughed out loud and took her by the shoulders in a grasp rougher than she had ever dreamed to lie in the strength or nature of Marmaduke Trevor, and kissed her the heartiest, honestest kiss she had ever had from man, and rushed out of the room.

Presently he returned, dragging with him the disconsolate Major.

"Here," said he, "fix it up between you. I've told Peggy about a girl in France and she wants to know what she's like."

Peggy, shaken by the rude grip and the kiss, flashed and cried rebelliously:

"I'm not quite so sure that I want to fix it up with Oliver."

"Oh yes, you do," cried Oliver.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed up Doggie's cap and jammed it on Doggie's head and cried:

"Doggie, you're the best and truest and finest of dear old chaps in the whole wide world."

Doggie settled his cap, grinned, and moved to the door.

"Anything else, sir?"

Oliver roared, delighted: "No, Private Trevor, you can go."

"Very good, sir."

Doggie saluted smartly and went out. He pa.s.sed through the French window of the dining-room into the mellow autumn sunshine. Found himself standing in front of Chipmunk, who still smoked the pipe of elegant leisure by the door of the garage.

"This is a dam good old world all the same. Isn't it?" said he.

"If it was always like this, it would have its points," replied the unworried Chipmunk.

Doggie had an inspiration. He looked at his watch. It was nearly one o'clock.

"Hungry?"

"Always 'ungry. Specially about dinner-time."

"Come along of me to the Downshire Arms and have a bite of dinner."

Chipmunk rose slowly to his feet, and put his pipe into his tunic pocket, and jerked a slow thumb backwards.

"Ain't yer having yer meals 'ere?"

"Only now and then, as sort of treats," said Doggie. "Come along."

"Ker-ist!" said Chipmunk. "Can yer wait a bit until I've cleaned me b.u.t.tons?"

"Oh, bust your old b.u.t.tons!" laughed Doggie. "I'm hungry."

So the pair of privates marched through the old city to the Downshire Arms, the select, old-world hotel of Durdlebury, where Doggie was known since babyhood; and there, sitting at a window table with Chipmunk, he gave Durdlebury the great sensation of its life. If the Dean himself, clad in tights and spangles, had juggled for pence by the west door of the cathedral, tongues could scarcely have wagged faster. But Doggie worried his head about gossip not one jot. He was in joyous mood and ordered a gargantuan feast for Chipmunk and bottles of the strongest old Burgundy, such as he thought would get a grip on Chipmunk's whiskyfied throat; and under the genial influence of food and drink, Chipmunk told him tales of far lands and strange adventures; and when they emerged much later into the quiet streets, it was the great good fortune of Chipmunk's life that there was not the ghost of an a.s.sistant Provost-Marshal in Durdlebury.

"Doggie, old man," said Oliver afterwards, "my wonder and reverence for you increases hour by hour. You are the only man in the whole world who has ever made Chipmunk drunk."

"You see," said Doggie modestly, "I don't think he ever really loved anyone who fed him before."

CHAPTER XXII

Doggie, the lightest-hearted private in the British Army, danced, in a metaphorical sense, back to London, where he stayed for the rest of his leave at his rooms in Woburn Place; took his wholesome fill of theatres and music-halls, going to those parts of the house where Tommies congregate; and bought an old Crown Derby dinner service as a wedding present for Peggy and Oliver, a tortoise-sh.e.l.l-fitted dressing-case for Peggy, and for Oliver a magnificent gold watch that was an encyclopaedia of current information. He had never felt so happy in his life, so enchanted with the grimly smiling old world.

Were it not for the Boche, it could hold its own as a brave place with any planet going. He blessed Oliver, who, in turn, had blessed him as though he had displayed heroic magnanimity. He blessed Peggy, who, flushed with love and happiness and grat.i.tude, had shown him, for the first time, what a really adorable young woman she could be. He thanked Heaven for making three people happy, instead of three people miserable.