Hammersly edged the car through a gathering and an unfriendly crowd. He could have killed some of those people; pulped them as the wheels of his car pulped some of the hawker’s oranges.
“The swine!”
And then he became conscious of Janet. She had drawn a little apart and was sitting there with a rigid, haughty look, her eyes set in a cold stare. Her face was almost colourless, her lips pale. And of a sudden Pierce Hammersly’s anger died out of him. He understood in an instant the shameful significance of all that had happened. That beast in the battered hat had struck home; he had drawn blood from Janet’s pride.
Pierce said nothing, for he could find nothing to say, and by his own silence he was judged.
CHAPTER XXVI
They had tea together before the library fire; Janet at the brass tea tray, very grave and silent; Porteous Hammersly sunk in one of the big armchairs; Pierce restless and gloomy, seated farther back in the shadow, as though he feared the light upon his face. He was absorbed in watching Janet, without appearing to watch her, for there was something in her eyes that he had never seen before; a something that made it difficult for him to meet their gaze. He did not know whether it was pity or whether it was scorn, but the finer manhood in him shrank from it, and remained silent and ashamed.
She talked to Porteous across the light of the fire, and Pierce noticed how steady and white her hands were when she touched the things upon the tray. He had a clear view of her profile, and the soft lines of her hair and throat. She seemed to have developed a new dignity, a sad and quiet stateliness that made him suddenly remember his vulgar, tempestuous altercation with that drink-sodden beast in Scarshott market-place. He felt himself flush with the shame of it. He realised that he had behaved like an irritable ill-balanced, badly-bred fool. Good God! Was he really like that—a petulant and excitable ass; a fellow who lost control of himself when he was thwarted, or when other people got in his way?
Then Janet was rising and putting on her hat, with Porteous protesting against her going so soon.
She smiled down at him as she ran the hatpins through her hair.
“I have been away for three whole hours. Mother likes to be read to after tea.”
Her eyes swept round to Pierce who was still sitting well back in the shadow.
“You need not bother to come with me.”
Her voice was very kind and quiet.
“Of course I am coming.”
He stood up, challenged by his own fear, for if Hammersly had ever feared anything, he was afraid of that walk to Heather Cottage with Janet in the darkness. He knew that he had hurt her that afternoon, and that the Janet who stood there in the firelight had become a woman of mystery, of tragic accusations, griefs and gentlenesses.
It was a particularly dark evening, and Pierce was glad of the darkness. He knew every turn and twist of the drive, but to Janet it was less familiar, and he had to guide her.
“More this way.”
“My eyes haven’t got accustomed to it yet.”
He did not slip his arm through hers as he would have done even a few days ago, for somehow he felt that it would be an insult if he touched her, and so he held himself a little apart, very miserable and self-contemptuous.
“Are we near the gate?”
“Yes.”
“I can see the elms now. One really ought to have a torch.”
“I’ll get you one to-morrow.”
She was just a shadowy figure at his side; a poignant, tantalising presence that dominated all his unhappy pride. He wondered what her thoughts were; whether he had angered her beyond forgetting; made himself wholly contemptible. The rebel in him had surrendered with such strange swiftness that he felt bewildered, lost, and most piteously lonely.
And then she began to talk to him of Grace Hansard and the children at Vine Court, and of how Hansard had died so bravely; how he had been brave in spite of himself, and of Grace’s sacred pride in him. She spoke gently and quite naturally, as though she were telling him a tale, and as he listened to her voice Hammersly’s heart smote him and all his bitterness turned to pain. A sudden wild scorn of himself gripped him by the throat. He found himself envying Hansard; envying that dead man whom women spoke of with such tenderness.
“Pierce——”
He started. They were quite near the cottage, and a dim light showed in one of the windows.
“Will you come and see Grace with me to-morrow?”
He would rather she had asked him to go out and be shot.
“No.”
“But why not?”
“She does not want to see me.”
“You are quite wrong. She does.”
He answered her sullenly, miserably.
“I don’t want to see her. I did not know you had seen her lately.”
“We became great friends while you were away. I think her a wonderful woman. Good night, dear.”
She slipped through the gate and closed it behind her.
“Don’t wait; I think it’s going to rain. Good night.”
She left him standing there, haunted by the persuasiveness of her voice and the subtlety of her abrupt retreat. He felt that something lay behind that desire of hers that he should go up to Vine Court with her to-morrow. How could he go? And in asking and answering that question he seemed to thrust open a closed door and to let a great rush of light into his soul.
What a judgment of Solomon! How simply and wonderfully she had contrived to make him prove himself to himself by challenging him to meet Grace Hansard. She had guessed that he would shrink and falter; that he would betray himself by refusing to go near Vine Court. And he had betrayed himself; she had dared the defiant devil in him and seen it sulk and flinch from the ordeal; she had made him disclose his own moral bankruptcy.
He remained at the gate awhile, resting his elbows on it, listening, hoping that she would take pity on him and come back to see if he had gone. Never in his life had he felt so miserable and so lonely. With a few gentle and miraculous touches she seemed to have broken the iron of his pride, shown himself to himself, brought him to the edge of a terrible awakening. Had he been right or wrong; was he a weak fool, an emotional idiot at the mercy of a clever woman? Yet, why should she want to make him confess that he had not the courage—the insolence—to meet Grace Hansard’s eyes? Damnation, but she was right! He had not the courage to meet Grace Hansard; to go into that house and prattle about England’s decadence; to look into the eyes of Hansard’s wife and say: “I am satisfied; I have nothing to regret.” It was unthinkable, blasphemous, absurd!
But no Janet returned to him out of the darkness, and he walked back over Scarshott Common like a man bewildered, and still half dazed by some dire blow. He was conscious of pain, spiritual nausea, shame, wonder, and an almost savage hatred of his own soul. Two figures held the stage before him—the figure of that beast of a hawker flapping his arms and screaming abuse, and the figure of Grace Hansard, that brown-eyed, clear-browed woman, whose man had left her a dear legacy of pride.
From that moment there was no more unhappy man in Scarshott than Pierce Hammersly. Self-knowledge had come to him like a flash of divine revelation. It was April after March; greenness and soft rains and a note of exquisite pain instead of bluster and dust, hard skies and mocking swirls of sleet. He discovered that a man cannot live alone, cut himself off from the world of common people, or carry a light heart without a sense of comradeship and spiritual well-being. His eyes were opened; he began to see the crass and monstrous treachery of a vindictive egotism at such a time as this.
But the ultimate humility was not his as yet; he went about sullenly, miserably, realising that he had not convinced the people who mattered; that he had put them in a position to be pitied by the very people whom he had despised. He understood now Scarshott’s attitude towards himself; that silence, those looks of cold curiosity. He had been making a melodramatic fool of himself all these weeks; trying to strut above the level of the town; throwing a defi
ance at it that had broken harmlessly against Scarshott’s unimaginative common sense.
Hammersly had hated anything in khaki, and now he began to fear it, being tempted to face about or turn down a side street whenever he sighted a man in brown. The war was becoming abominably aggressive, demanding more and more of the life of the country, forcing itself into every home, or like Death—stealing up and touching men upon the shoulder. England was passing through a very necessary period of pessimism; the adventurous spirit had gone, and a new inspiration was needed to convince the cautious, bide-your-time gentlemen that they would have to take their share in wet-blanketing the German fever. The slow and casual British soul began to realise that the war was no newspaper affair, no sensational interlude; but that it was life itself, remorseless and splendid, a stark fight for elemental things.
In his heart of hearts Pierce Hammersly knew this, and the truth confronted him with an ever-increasing sternness. Man is a nation in miniature, and the consciousness of a nation is made up of the massed psychical experiences of individual men. Even the most selfish people began to glimpse the sacrifices that were ahead of them, but in the souls of the true men and women a new courage and a new faith were born.
No one will ever forget the squeals of the weaklings, the elaborate arguments why such and such men should stop at home, the consternation of the flabby folk, the rush for birth certificates and marriage licenses. It was the death-struggle of Britain’s selfishness, her little individual egotisms, her back-parlour hypocrisies. The army of France watched this national soul-storm with wonder, bitterness, and an occasional jeer. There were so many people rushing to “do their bit” in comfort and security. Who could sell stockings over a counter if Mr. So-and-So went away? “Yank all the blighters out here” was the Tommy’s inward verdict; “doing your bit in a bed, what!” The Voluntary System still spluttered and argued: “We are free people.” Yes—but—when hundreds of thousands volunteer themselves out of danger! Thomas, the plain man, had no use for such cowardly blather.
And Pierce found himself more and more fascinated by this last querulous fight for freedom, the wrigglings and ingenious complainings of the weak and the crooked, the selfish and the greedy, the objectors who objected to everything that placed them under any national restraint. He took an almost morbid personal interest in the great question; it touched his conscience, challenged his unhappy pride. He saw that England had been divided into two great factions: the generous, honourable folk who had given themselves in the beginning; and the grudging, careful, gun-shy citizens who shouted for the voluntary principle in order that the grim honesty of Conscription might never see the light.
He had belonged in the beginning to the gentry of Britain; that fine family that had included bricklayers, butchers, baronets, intellectualists, men from off the soil. But he no longer belonged to it. He found that he had joined himself to that other mass of humanity: the people who argued and wrote letters to the papers, and talked about the number of their children, their own ages, how indispensable they were at home, and how they were waiting for the other man over the way to make up his mind. In fact, he was worse than these poor worried loiterers obsessed by all manner of domestic dreads. He had belonged to the aristocracy of Britain; the aristocracy whose blue blood was courage; he was renegade; he had deserted to join the ranks of the army that wanted to fight by proxy.
And then Janet again asked him to go with her to Vine Court. They were sitting alone in front of the library fire at Orchards, and the wind was making a great stir in the elms.
“My dear girl—don’t——”
She saw him flinch like a sensitive child.
“I can’t do it.”
She thrilled with bitter and compassionate exultation. He was very near the edge. His own fate was driving him towards it.
CHAPTER XXVII
There had been a frost overnight, and the frost still held in spite of a clear sky and a pale yellow sun. The lawns at Orchards were painted a pearl grey, the hedges and trees all crusted with silver. Youngsters were sliding on a series of frozen puddles under the elms by the Orchards gate; their breath steamed in the air, and their faces were red and chubby. Some of them had discovered a holly bush—well berried, flaming crimson in the sunlight, like a Christmas beacon just lit. Scarshott town lay white-roofed under a film of soft grey haze, but away on the hills the pine woods were black against a keen blue sky, the dark stems of the trees rising out of a welter of tawny bracken.
There was an exhilaration in the air, a glitter and a mystery even about the hard high road, while Scarshott Common was a little goblin world of strange fantastic beauty, and Janet Yorke, walking through those miniature mountains of frosted furze, carried her head with an adventurous pride. The day had a message for her. Her eyes looked at the world with a deep and laughing tenderness. She believed that her triumph was very near; that her love was about to venture into the dark valley and lead her man back into the brave sunlight.
She laughed at the youngsters sliding on the frozen puddles and hailed them like a man.
“Hallo, you little beggars.”
“Come and slide, miss,” said one of them.
“Ain’t she a pretty lady?” quoth a chubby thing whose stockings looked shocked at having to travel so far to meet her petticoats.
The omen was a happy one. Janet walked up the drive under the glitter of the great elms, and found that man of hers alone before the fire.
“I want to do some shopping. Come with me.”
He looked helplessly at her shining eyes and glowing face.
“You had much better go alone.”
“No—you are coming with me.”
“Shall I go and get the car?”
“It is not the day for the car. We are going to walk.”
Her exultant and prophetic vitality dominated him, carried him away, like a sick man who needed thrusting out into the clean air and the sunshine. He had no wish to walk through Scarshott and loiter in shops with her, for he had grown so acutely sensitive of late that he had hardly shown himself in the town. But he was so much afraid now of his own cowardice that he could not confess it to her, and he went with her with strange docility.
They walked down Scarshott High Street, two sensitive and self-conscious creatures, poignantly alive to all that passed about them. And it happened that the son of a local tradesman, who had done gallantly in France and been given a commission, was home on leave. They chanced on this Second Lieutenant strolling up the High Street, a pleasant-faced and rather shy youngster, with a couple of delighted girls sharing his radiance. One of the great dames of the neighbourhood stopped to congratulate him, but a moment later she cut Pierce Hammersly dead.
In passing the youngster Hammersly tried to meet his frank stare. He failed, and fell into an anguish of self-humiliation. Janet had flushed hotly, feeling that his humiliation was also hers.
“Who was that?”
Her eyes were agleam, her upper lip quivering.
“Young Hardcastle. Where do you want to go?”
She knew that the street had suddenly become a place of public torture.
“I don’t think I want to go anywhere.”
“I see.”
He felt savage and miserable.
“Shall we get back home?”
“Yes.”
They walked back to Orchards, with a great red sun looming beyond the naked trees. It shone on Janet’s grave face and thoughtful eyes, but Pierce walked with his head hanging down, saying nothing, and wishing himself dead.
At Orchards they had tea with old Porteous before a fine wood fire—a comfortable tea with hot cakes and buttered toast, and big chairs to lounge in, and yet a most unhappy meal, made up of dreadful silences and of trite words spoken now and again. Porteous Hammersly had the look of a moping bird, his head sunk between his shoulders. And Pierce was thinking of young Hardcastle and his bright-eyed girls, and of the wet trenches in France, and other notable battle corners where the me
n who had been his friends were carrying on a great tradition.
Presently Janet rose to go. It was done quietly, and yet there was something tensely dramatic in the way she stood looking down at Pierce.
“Are you coming with me?”
“Of course.”
Her voice sounded gentle and very calm, but it made him afraid.
“I suppose it is freezing still. You did not put on the furs I gave you.”
“I’m a warm-blooded creature.”
She went across and kissed Porteous with quiet tenderness, and Pierce felt the pain of the firelight shining on her hair.
The night was fine and dry, and the sky full of crisp stars. Fallen leaves rustled against their feet—leaves that had fallen from the great giant elms overhead. Halfway along the avenue Pierce made a gesture as though he would have taken Janet’s hand, but she repulsed him gently. Their love had come to the crossways, and that night he was to be persuaded to stand and make his choice.
“Pierce——”
“Yes—dear girl?”
“Your father is not in great health.”
“Isn’t he?”
“You must have noticed it.”
The tender intimacy of her voice accused him as she moved at his side, holding herself a little aloof. Yet for the moment Pierce Hammersly could find nothing to say to her. He was afraid, most and acutely and whole-heartedly afraid of her, because he knew that if she were about to give judgment against him it would be a judgment that he could not challenge.
“Haven’t you seen how he has changed?”
He answered her almost sullenly.
“I am not blind. I suppose he is worrying.”
“But—Pierce——?”
“Well?”
“Are you going to let him go on worrying? Don’t think I’m a prig; I’m only most desperately human.”
They had reached the place where a sandy track turned off to the cottage, but Janet passed it by, and walked on slowly towards the pine woods. A great, black headland jutted out towards the road, a cliff of towering trees with the stars dusted thickly above it. The woods were quite open here, with nothing but a dry and shallow ditch to mark them off from the common land, and this great grove ahead of them looked like a huge cavern opening to the underworld, or some mysterious temple whose roof was upheld by a thousand pillars.
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