“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.
One day, walking with Peggy and Marmaduke in the garden, he said: “I wish I could get hold of that confounded fellow, Chipmunk!”
Partly through deference to the good Dean’s delicately hinted distaste for that upsetter of decorous households, and partly to allow his follower to attend to his own domestic affairs, he had left Chipmunk in London. Fifteen years ago Chipmunk had parted from a wife somewhere in the neighbourhood of the East India Docks. Both being illiterate, neither had since communicated with the other. As he had left her earning good money in a factory, his fifteen years’ separation had been relieved from anxiety as to her material welfare. A prudent, although a beer-loving man, he had amassed considerable savings, and it was the dual motive of sharing these with his wife and of protecting his patron from the ever-lurking perils of London, that had brought him across the seas. When Oliver had set him free in town, he was going in quest of his wife. But as he had forgotten the name of the street near the East India Docks where his wife lived, and the name of the factory in which she worked, the successful issue of the quest, in Oliver’s opinion, seemed problematical. The simple Chipmunk, however, was quite sanguine. He would run into her all right. As soon as he had found her he would let the Captain know. Up to the present he had not communicated with the Captain. He could give the Captain no definite address, so the Captain could not communicate with him. Chipmunk had disappeared into the unknown.
“Isn’t he quite capable of taking care of himself?” asked Peggy.
“I’m not so sure,” replied Oliver. “Besides, he’s hanging me up. I’m kind of responsible for him, and I’ve got sixty pounds of his money. It’s all I could do to persuade him not to stow the lot in his pocket, so as to divide it with Mrs. Chipmunk as soon as he saw her. I must find out what has become of the beggar before I move.”
“I suppose,” said Doggie, “you’re anxious now to get back to the South Seas?”
Oliver stared at him. “No, sonny, not till the war’s over.”
“Why, you wouldn’t be in any great danger out there, would you?”
Oliver laughed. “You’re the funniest duck that ever was, Doggie. I’ll never get to the end of you.” And he strolled away.
“What does he mean?” asked the bewildered Doggie.
“I think,” replied Peggy, smiling, “that he means he’s going to fight.”
“Oh,” said Doggie. Then after a pause he added, “He’s just the sort of chap for a soldier, isn’t he?”
The next day Oliver’s anxiety as to Chipmunk was relieved by the appearance of the man himself, incredibly dirty and dusty and thirsty. Having found no trace of his wife, and having been robbed of the money he carried about him, he had tramped to Durdlebury, where he reported himself to his master as if nothing out of the way had happened.
“You silly blighter,” said Oliver. “Suppose I had let you go with your other sixty pounds, you would have been pretty well in the soup, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, Cap’en,” said Chipmunk.
“And you’re not going on any blethering idiot wild-goose chases after wives and such-like truck again, are you?”
“No, Cap’en,” said Chipmunk.
This was in the stable-yard, after Chipmunk had shaken some of the dust out of his hair and clothes and had eaten and drunk voraciously. He was now sitting on an upturned bucket and smoking his clay pipe with an air of solid content. Oliver, lean and supple, his hands in his pockets, looked humorously down upon him.
“And you’ve got to stick to me for the future, like a roseate leech.”
“Yes, Cap’en.”
“You’re going to ride a horse.”
“A wot?” roared Chipmunk.
“A thing on four legs, that kicks like hell.”
“Wotever for? I ain’t never ridden no ’osses.”
“You’re going to learn, you unmilitary-looking, worm-eaten scab. You’ve got to be a ruddy soldier.”
“Gorblime!” said Chipmunk, “that’s the first I ’eard of it. A ’oss soldier? You’re not kiddin’, are you, Cap’en?”
“Certainly not.”
“Gorblime! Who would ha’ thought it?” Then he spat lustily and sucked at his pipe.
“You’ve nothing to say against it, have you?”
“No, Cap’en.”
“All right. And look here, when we’re in the army you must chuck calling me Cap’en.”
“What shall I have to call yer? Gineral?” Chipmunk asked simply.
“Mate, Bill, Joe – any old name.”
“Ker-ist!” said Chipmunk.
“Do you know why we’re going to enlist?”
“Can’t say as ’ow I does, Cap’en.”
“You chuckle-headed swab! Don’t you know we’re at war?”
“I did ’ear some talk about it in a pub one night,” Chipmunk admitted. “’Oo are we fighting? Dutchmen or Dagoes?”
“Dutchmen.”
Chipmunk spat in his