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...o...b..t. 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 antic.i.p.ate; 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 pa.s.sion. 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 pinp.r.i.c.ks 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, pa.s.sed 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 c.o.c.katoo-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 att.i.tude 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. It"ll please the dear old birds. I know all the tabbies in the town have been mewing about us. Now they can mew about somebody else."
"That"s awfully good of you, Peggy," said Marmaduke. "I"ll go up to town to-morrow and get you the jolliest ring you ever saw."
She sketched him a curtsy. "That"s one thing, at any rate, I can trust you in--your taste in jewellery."
He moved nearer to her. "I suppose you know, Peggy dear, I"ve been awfully fond of you for quite a long time."
"The feeling is more or less reciprocated," she replied lightly. Then, "You can kiss me if you like. I a.s.sure you it"s quite usual."
He kissed her somewhat shyly on the lips.
She whispered: "I do think I care for you, old thing." Marmaduke replied sententiously: "You have made me a very happy man." Then they sat down side by side on the sofa, and for all Peggy"s mocking audacity, they could find nothing in particular to say to each other.
"Let us play patience," she said at last.
And when Mrs. Conover appeared awhile later, she found them poring over the cards in a state of unruffled calm. Peggy looked up, smiled, and nodded.
"We"ve fixed it up, Mummy; but we"re not going to be married for a year."
Doggie went home that evening in a tepid glow. It contented him. He thought himself the luckiest of mortals. A young man with more pa.s.sion or imagination might have deplored the lack of romance in the betrothal. He might have desired on the part of the maiden either more shyness, delicacy, and elusiveness, or more resonant emotion. The finer tendrils of his being might have shivered, ready to shrivel, as at a touch of frost, in the cool ironical atmosphere which the girl had created around her. But Doggie was not such a young man. Such pa.s.sions as heredity had endowed him with had been drugged by training. No tales of immortal love had ever fired his blood. Once, somewhere abroad, the unprincipled McPhail found him reading _Manon Lescaut_--he had bought a cheap copy haphazard--and taking the delectable volume out of his hands, asked him what he thought of it.
"It"s like reading about a lunatic," replied the bewildered Doggie.
"Do such people as Des Grieux exist?"
"Ay, laddie," replied McPhail, greatly relieved. "Your ac.u.men has pierced to the root of the matter. They do exist, but nowadays we put them into asylums. We must excuse the author for living in the psychological obscurity of the eighteenth century. It"s just a silly, rotten book."