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Updated: June 4, 2025
"I'm afraid, Peggy dear," he said, with his patient, pleasant smile, "you are rather sheltered from the war in Durdlebury." She cried out indignantly. "Indeed we're not. The newspapers come to Durdlebury, don't they? And everybody's doing something. We have the war all around us. We've even succeeded in getting wounded soldiers in the Cottage Hospital. Nancy Murdoch is a V.A.D. and scrubs floors.
No outside convulsions could ever cause a flutter of her calm wings. As it was thirty years ago, when the Dean first came to Durdlebury, as it was three hundred, six hundred years ago, so it was now; and so it would be hundreds of years hence as long as that majestic pile housing the Spirit of God should last.
It was to be County of the fine inner Arcanum of County and only Durdlebury by the grace of Peggy Trevor. No "durdling," as Oliver called it, for her. Denby Hall was going to be the very latest thing of September, 1915, when she proposed, the honeymoon concluded, to take smart and startling possession. Lots of Mrs. Trevor's rotten old stuffy furniture would have to go.
I don't pretend to enjoy the life any more than I could enjoy living in a kraal of savages in Central Africa. But that is a matter of no account. I don't propose to return to Durdlebury till the end of the war. I left it as an officer and I'm not coming back as a private soldier. I enclose a cheque for £500.
When I left Durdlebury, I hadn't a man friend in the world. Now I have a lot of wonderful pals who would go through hell for one another and for me." "Tommies?" "Of course Tommies." "You mean gentlemen in the ranks?" "Not a bit of it. Or yes. All are gentlemen in the ranks. All sorts and conditions of men. The man whom I honour and love more than anyone else, comes from a fish-shop in Hackney.
But between the two there'll be any old sort of flux." "Did you learn all this horrible, rank socialism in France?" "Perhaps, but it seems so obvious." "It's only because you've been living among Tommies, who've got these stupid ideas into their heads. If you had been living among your social equals " "In Durdlebury?" She flashed rebellion. "Yes. In Durdlebury. Why not?"
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.
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