The Rough Road. Locke William John
music, Doggie had other social accomplishments. He could dance. He could escort young ladies home of nights. Not a dragon in Durdlebury would not have trusted Doggie with untold daughters. With women, old and young, he had no shynesses. He had been bred among them, understood their purely feminine interests, and instinctively took their point of view. On his visits to London, he could be entrusted with commissions. He could choose the exact shade of silk for a drawing-room sofa cushion, and had an unerring taste in the selection of wedding presents. Young men, other than budding ecclesiastical dignitaries, were rare in Durdlebury, and Doggie had little to fear from the competition of coarser masculine natures. In a word, Doggie was popular.
Although of no mean or revengeful nature, he was human enough to feel a little malicious satisfaction when it was proved to Durdlebury that Oliver had gone to the devil. His Aunt Sarah, Mrs. Manningtree, had died midway in the Phineas McPhail period; Mr. Manningtree a year or so later had accepted a living in the North of England, and died when Doggie was about four-and-twenty. Meanwhile Oliver, who had been withdrawn young from Rugby, where he had been a thorn in the side of the authorities, and had been pinned like a cockchafer to a desk in a family counting-house in Lothbury, E.C., had broken loose, quarrelled with his father, gone off with paternal malediction and a maternal heritage of a thousand pounds to California, and was lost to the family ken. When a man does not write to his family, what explanation can there be save that he is ashamed to do so? Oliver was ashamed of himself. He had taken to desperate courses. He was an outlaw. He had gone to the devil. His name was rarely mentioned in Durdlebury – to Marmaduke Trevor’s very great and catlike satisfaction. Only to the Dean’s ripe and kindly wisdom was his name not utterly anathema.
“My dear,” said he once to his wife, who was deploring her nephew’s character and fate – “I have hopes of Oliver even yet. A man must have something of the devil in him if he wants to drive the devil out.”
Mrs. Conover was shocked. “My dear Edward!” she cried.
“My dear Sophia,” said he, with a twinkle in his mild blue eyes that had puzzled her from the day when he first put a decorous arm round her waist. “My dear Sophia, if you knew what a ding-dong scrap of fiends went on inside me before I could bring myself to vow to be a virtuous milk-and-water parson, your hair, which is as long and beautiful as ever, would stand up straight on end.”
Mrs. Conover sighed.
“I give you up.”
“It’s too late,” said the Dean.
The Manningtrees, father and mother and son, were gone. Doggie bore the triple loss with equanimity. Then Peggy Conover, hitherto under the eclipse of boarding-schools, finishing schools and foreign travel, swam, at the age of twenty, within his orbit. When first they met, after a year’s absence, she very gracefully withered the symptoms of the cousinly kiss, to which they had been accustomed all their lives, by stretching out a long, frank, and defensive arm. Perhaps if she had allowed the salute, there would have been an end of the matter. But there came the phenomenon which, unless she was a minx of craft and subtlety, she did not anticipate; for the first time in his life he was possessed of a crazy desire to kiss her. Doggie fell in love. It was not a wild consuming passion. He slept well, he ate well, and he played the flute without a sigh causing him to blow discordantly into the holes of the instrument. Peggy vowing that she would not marry a parson, he had no rivals. He knew not even the pinpricks of jealousy. Peggy liked him. At first she delighted in him as in a new and animated toy. She could pull strings and the figure worked amazingly and amusingly. He proved himself to be a useful toy, too. He was at her beck all day long. He ran on errands, he fetched and carried. Peggy realized blissfully that she owned him. He haunted the Deanery.
One evening after dinner the Dean said:
“I am going to play the heavy father. How are things between you and Peggy?”
Marmaduke, taken unawares, reddened violently. He murmured that he didn’t know.
“You ought to,” said the Dean. “When a young man converts himself into a girl’s shadow, even although he is her cousin and has been brought up with her from childhood, people begin to gossip. They gossip even within the august precincts of a stately cathedral.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Marmaduke. “I’ve had the very best intentions.”
The Dean smiled.
“What were they?”
“To make her like me a little,” replied Marmaduke. Then, feeling that the Dean was kindly disposed, he blurted out awkwardly: “I hoped that one day I might ask her to marry me.”
“That’s what I wanted to know,” said the Dean.
“You haven’t done it yet?”
“No,” said Marmaduke.
“Why don’t you?”
“It seems taking such a liberty,” replied Marmaduke.
The Dean laughed. “Well, I’m not going to do it for you. My chief desire is to regularize the present situation. I can’t have you two running about together all day and every day. If you like to ask Peggy, you have my permission and her mother’s.”
“Thank you, Uncle Edward,” said Marmaduke.
“Let us join the ladies,” said the Dean.
In the drawing-room the Dean exchanged glances with his wife. She saw that he had done as he had been bidden. Marmaduke was not an ideal husband for a brisk, pleasure-loving modern young woman. But where was another husband to come from? Peggy had banned the Church. Marmaduke was wealthy, sound in health and free from vice. It was obvious to maternal eyes that he was in love with Peggy. According to the Dean, if he wasn’t, he oughtn’t to be for ever at her heels. The young woman herself seemed to take considerable pleasure in his company. If she cared nothing for him, she was acting in a reprehensible manner. So the Dean had been deputed to sound Marmaduke.
Half an hour later the young people were left alone. First the Dean went to his study. Then Mrs. Conover departed to write letters. Marmaduke advancing across the room from the door which he had opened, met Peggy’s mocking eyes as she stood on the hearthrug with her hands behind her back. Doggie felt very uncomfortable. Never had he said a word to her in betrayal of his feelings. He had a vague idea that propriety required a young man to get through some wooing before asking a girl to marry him. To ask first and woo afterwards seemed putting the cart before the horse. But how to woo that remarkably cool and collected young person standing there, passed his wit.
“Well,” she said, “the dear old birds seem very fussy to-night. What’s the matter?” And as he said nothing, but stood confused with his hands in his pockets, she went on. “You, too, seem rather ruffled. Look at your hair.”
Doggie, turning to a mirror, perceived that an agitated hand had disturbed the symmetry of his sleek black hair, brushed without a parting away from the forehead over his head. Hastily he smoothed down the cockatoo-like crest.
“I’ve been talking to your father, Peggy.”
“Have you really?” she said with a laugh.
Marmaduke summoned his courage.
“He told me I might ask you to marry me,” he said.
“Do you want to?”
“Of course I do,” he declared.
“Then why not do it?”
But before he could answer, she clapped her hands on his shoulders, and shook him, and laughed out loud.
“Oh, you dear silly old thing! What a way to propose to a girl!”
“I’ve never done such a thing before,” said Doggie, as soon as he was released.
She resumed her attitude on the hearthrug.
“I’m in no great hurry to be married. Are you?”
He said: “I don’t know. I’ve never thought of it. Just whenever you like.”
“All right,” she returned calmly. “Let it be a year hence. Meanwhile, we can be engaged.