“Prisoners! Not me. There was just three of them—my Minnie, and little Flo, and young Ben. They saved me a bit of my Minnie’s hair. I’ve got it just here”—he stroked the breast pocket of his tunic as though he were thinking of the softness of his wife’s fair hair; “no, I’m not out for prisoners. I’m just waiting to feel my bayonet in a Hun’s chest.”
D Hut scraped its feet, and made a sort of hoarse noise in its throat.
Then there was the day when Buck arrived—a big, slit-eyed docker, with a flat and evil face and a most pestilent tongue. He was raw and he was a bully, and he tried to shove his great hairy fist down the throat of D Hut the very first night. For some reason or other he picked out Hammersly, addressed him as a “blasted toff,” and informed him he would knock his head off for the price of a pint of beer. He had had too much of the stuff himself, and Lambourne, that man of the woods, stood up and would have smitten him, but Corporal Palk took Buck to himself.
“Nar, look ’ere, Flat Nose, this ain’t a gin palace. This is D ’ut, and Hi’m the corporal in charge—see? You get that wind off yer stomick, or I’ll tame yer pretty quick.”
The docker begged to remark that Palk might be a “b——y corp’ral,” and but for those “b——y stripes” he—Buck—would smash him flat.
Palk seemed delighted.
“Why—’ere’s a real liddle gentleman of the name of Buck, wantin’ to make our ’appy ’ome a real paradise. Nar, don’t ’it the gen’leman, Lambourne; I’m goin’ to forget ter-morrer—after tea—as I’m a real corp’ral, and our liddle Buck can ’ave ’is face made flatter.”
And so the New Army discloses its varied professional abilities. Palk had fought at “The Ring” under the pseudonym of “Teddy Walker”; he took the docker down into a quiet corner of the pine woods, with D Hut in attendance, and discarding his chevrons for half an hour, punched Private Buck’s flat face into one big bulge.
“Next time you feel a bit bully, my bloke, you come along to Mister Palk.”
But the Buck was tamed. Discipline and Corporal Palk reduced him to sullen decency.
Then there were those famous afternoons when Hammersly, Lambourne, and McVittie went out on pass, and trudging to Wiledon Station, took train to Langridge Wells. A most respectable town, Langridge Wells, but there were shops and pavements and petticoats, and things you could buy, and things you could eat. McVittie had an affection for the Castle Hotel, but he was a decent soul and gave no trouble. Lambourne would stand outside toy shops and wonder what he could send the kids. Hammersly was always in favour of an hour at the hairdressers, and this hour of luxury became his regular contribution to the outing. The three would sit down solemnly and be shaved, clipped, shampooed, singed. Impatient people, fidgeting with papers, cursed them silently and went away, while the three grew warm and sleek with a feeling of well-being, and decided that they would conclude with “scalp massage.” It was Hammersly who led them in these Capuan indulgences, but they took to it as cats take to a soft hand; the huts and the mud and the margarine awaited them over yonder.
Then they would have tea, a Gargantuan tea, with Lambourne exercising himself on doughnuts as though they were mere crumbs of bread. And McVittie would stare at him with his blue eyes, and grin each time that Lambourne’s hand sneaked over to the dish.
“It’s juggling; it’s like eating bombs! Supposing one of ’em were to go off inside ye, Lamb. Think of the nice little ladies behind the counter, and the squashy cakes all blown into a disgraceful mess!”
“We’ll call him Buster Brown, Mac!”
“Or Gilbert the Filbert.”
“The Keeper of the Nuts.”
McVittie was sentimental and fell in love with the young lady who sold him Gold Flake cigarettes—a young lady with sleek, fair hair and “I keep it for you” smile. His infatuation caused a temporary dislocation of the trinity, till McVittie found one of his own lieutenants charming Miss Goldflake so charmfully that she refused to smile at the ex-ship’s cook. The Scot in McVittie was sobered.
“My goodness, and I have spent two and sax-pence more than was necessary, paying for that smile! Don’t you have nothing to do with women, Lamb.”
“I’ve done with them. I’m married.”
“And how do you like it?”
“Like it? I’ve never thought about it—one way or the other.”
“My goodness! Prince, old dear, here’s a chap, a regular born Lamb.”
Lambourne drove an elbow into the Scotsman’s ribs.
“She has given me three children, and she has saved my money for me, and she’s——”
McVittie put an apologetic arm round him, and the other round Pierce.
“‘Annie Laurie’s’ the tune, Lambie. You’re a decent, braw laddie. Such fools as me buying cigs I don’t want, just because——oh—hell!”
And so the fine, primitive, human life dealt well with Pierce Hammersly. He grew harder, kinder, gayer, stouter in heart and stomach. There was not a smarter man in D Company; it was good to see him carrying his pack and the way his head came round with a flash of the eyes and a lift of the chin when the words were “Eyes right.”
His letters to Janet and his father were tender, merry, and quizzical, and the letters he received from them gave him a glow at the heart. Those two were happy about him; proud of him. After all, courage and honour and unselfishness were the things that mattered.
CHAPTER XXX
Then came the spring, and that most wonderful day when the sky was as blue as blue above the pines, and all the winter mud of the camp seemed to have melted into green foam. Hammersly did not feel quite sane that morning, for he had interviewed his Company Officer the night before with very pleasant results.
“Well, Hammersly, what is it?”
“Can I have a day’s leave to-morrow, sir?”
“What for?”
“I want to meet a friend, sir.”
“Let’s see, you haven’t had any leave at all yet, Hammersly, have you?”
“No, sir.”
“All right. Get your pass made out.”
And Hammersly had managed to smuggle off a telegram to someone who had come to stay for a night or two at Langridge Wells. “Will meet you to-morrow at Melling Station. Come early and wire train.”
D Hut smiled over the enthusiasm with which Hammersly cleaned his buttons and his boots that morning, and over the extreme care he took in putting on his puttees. The spring was in his blood, and all the sunshine of that April day. He blushed when Private McVittie, rushing out for the nine o’clock parade, punched him in the back, with a “Good luck, lad; it’s ‘Annie Laurie’ all over ye—what!”
The birds piped Pierce Hammersly on that three miles march to Melling Station. He had chosen Melling because it was quiet and not used by the men in khaki, and because there was a pleasant inn there half buried in the pine woods. Great white clouds sailed in the blue sky; the banks were a mass of primroses and wild violets, and all the green growth of the year glimmered in the sunshine. There were white lambs in the green field close by Melling Station, and Hammersly laughed aloud as he stood to watch them at their play.
He found that he had half an hour to wait at the station, and he strolled up and down by a bank where daffodils were in bloom and bees hummed about the pink blossoms of a row of flowering currants. Even this waiting was delightful, this exquisite impatience. Melling Station, with its little pseudo-Gothic buildings and its red-gravelled platforms, seemed as empty as the woods. An old punchinello of a porter bobbed in and out of the lamp-room and booking-office, sniffing energetically as though he smelt the spring. A few country folk wandered in as the half-hour slipped by, among them an old dame with a huge bunch of primroses that were travelling south to spread their perfume through some hospital where a wounded country lad lay blessing his good luck.
Then the signal arm dropped, and Hammersly stood at the very edge of the platform and looked towards Langridge Wells where the line ran in a deep cutting bet
ween tall woods of Scots fir. The sky was a blue panel let into walls of a dark green. He heard the faint roar of the train in the distance, dying away and swelling like the sound of the sea. It seemed a very long while before the engine came into view, the most prosaic and the most romantic thing in the world.
“Now then, stand clear, please.”
Punchinello fussed up and down, sniffing with that red beak of a nose.
Hammersly was looking for a head at an open window. He saw a blue arm and a grey suede glove struggling with a handle farther along the train. Punchinello turned gallant and opened the door, and Hammersly saw Romance descend upon Melling Station.
She was dressed in some soft blue stuff with a touch of cerise over the bosom and the throat. Her blue straw hat was just a hat, and yet part of her very comely and exquisite self. He was conscious of her quick colour, and the glimmer of her eyes as she came towards him, happy, radiant.
“Pierce——!”
“I don’t care; I can’t help it. You shouldn’t look so adorable.”
His impetuosity was new and rather delightful; it ignored Punchinello, and all the casual eyes in the train. He put his arms round her like a man who was not ashamed of anything, and kissed her as a lover should kiss a woman—fully and dearly on the mouth.
“You wicked man! Don’t you see——”
“I see—just you.”
She was all red and thrilled, a little abashed, a little amused.
“Now, dear man——”
He swept her away with one arm through hers.
“Give me that wrap. I say—you look perfectly splendid. I never saw anything like you.”
She laughed dearly.
“So it seems,” for he was bending forward and looking in her face with deep wonder and delight.
A small boy at the door of the booking-office claimed Janet’s ticket, and it had to be hunted for in her vanity bag. The child grinned at Hammersly, but he might just as well have grinned at a blind man.
“What are you going to do with me?”
They were walking up the slope to the village.
“Well, to begin with, I think I will kiss you again.”
“My dear man!”
“I can’t help it. I never saw anything so absolutely intoxicating.”
She put a hand on his mouth.
“You wild creature. Now, where are we going?”
“Anywhere. There is a delightful little inn here where we can lunch, and there are woods where no b—— I beg your pardon. I say, Janet; I’m so absurdly happy.”
“Are you?”
“Am I—indeed! Just look at my buttons; you can see your face in them.”
They made their way to The Seven Stars, the particular inn that Hammersly had discovered, a half brick and half timber place at the far end of the village and on the very edge of the woodlands. Its garden was full of daffodils and wallflowers that were just coming into bloom, and its tiled roof was stained all gold with lichen.
“What a sweet place!”
Hammersly interviewed an unobtrusive and pleasant old person in a blue check apron, and arranged lunch. The pleasant old person showed him a panelled parlour with a mantelshelf crowded with brass and pewter, a stone floor and Sussex oak furniture.
“If the lady would like to rest——”
Pierce glanced at Janet and smiled. She looked such an ardent, vital creature, that the thought of her needing a chair amused him.
“Tired, dear?”
“No.”
She smiled back at him, and Hammersly explained to the pleasant person that they were going for a walk and would be back for lunch at one. No; cold chicken would do quite well, though a little soup would also be acceptable. And an apple tart? Yes. Good heavens, what did food matter, when the sunlight was like yellow wine?
They went out into the woods, such woods, green depths of mystery, silent and strange as love. Pierce discovered a fallen spruce that had been blown down by some winter gale; it made them a woodland seat, with primroses for a carpet. They heard the cuckoo calling to the spring.
They held hands and talked, sitting sideways on the tree trunk and looking into each other’s eyes.
“How fit you look, man thing.”
“Fit! I should think so.”
She eyed him with shrewd and penetrating and exultant pride.
“You are so much better looking, too.”
“Oh, come now!”
“It is a fact. Something has been agreeing with you.”
He stared thoughtfully into the green depths of the woods.
“Well, I suppose it’s because I’m satisfied; because I’m not worrying; because I have given up criticising. I am in the great game with my whole heart; and then—your letters—and the dad’s.”
“Dear!”
“They make me sort of flush inside, and feel cheery and proud; quite a simple, happy sort of devil.”
She drew him to her with impulsive tenderness.
“Oh, I’m so glad. I knew you could be fine and chivalrous, and it makes me feel very humble and very proud. Because you have roughed things, done things you must have hated.”
He kissed her.
“You piece of most dear splendour. No; I have been learning to be human and honest; I have found quite simple men who have put me to shame. There are fellows over there who are worth knowing; worth the best comradeship a man can give. Do you realise that we are all turning into Socialists, Janet?”
“Are we?”
“The war is teaching us to do the things we thought impossible; making us laugh at our little old squabbling, selfish prejudices. It’s good—damned good—to be alive.”
So the day passed; a man’s day, a woman’s day, tender, memorable, fine and true. They lunched at The Seven Stars and spent the afternoon wandering in the woods, picking wild flowers, and loving each other with every word and look and gesture. They talked of Scarshott, old Porteous, themselves, the war, the men of D Hut, when Pierce would be likely to go out. And the last matter led to a very touching little incident between them.
“You’ll get leave, Pierce—before you go?”
“I can get it. We could meet—in town.”
She said very softly:
“I should like you to come to Scarshott.”
He looked at her steadily a moment and then dropped his bunches of flowers and caught her hands.
“Do you mean that?”
“Of course.”
“Then you are not ashamed any longer?”
“My dear one—no!”
That evening, after tea, when they were walking from The Seven Stars to Melling Station, they met no less a person than Corporal Palk, though what he was doing at Melling no one but himself knew. He came up with a great breadth of smiling democratic friendliness, and Pierce stopped like the new man he was, smiling back into Corporal Palk’s eyes.
“Janet—here’s a friend of mine. Corporal Palk—Miss Yorke, my fiancée.”
The corporal saluted with great energy, and then held out a hand.
“Prard to meet our Prince’s lidy.”
Janet gave him her hand and a beam of the eyes.
“Of course, I’ve heard of you. Pierce told me all about that little boxing match in the woods.”
Corporal Palk was delighted.
“Did ’e, now! Yus, that was some scrap; done a bit of it in my time, yer see. Good for discipline, what! Learns a bloke ter keep ’is temper. And ’ow d’yer think our Prince is lookin’? We call ’im the Prince of Panonia.”
“I have never seen him looking better.”
“It’s me as gives ’im physical drill.”
“And why the Prince of Panonia?”
Palk looked with sidelong affection at Hammersly.
“Why? I guess because he’s a real sport; bit of a blood horse. ’Ow’s that, ol’ chum?”
Pierce declared that it was very much all right.
“I’d like to have your punch though.”
“
Would yer? Not ’alf!”
So Corporal Palk, having admired Janet very considerably and like a very natural gentleman, went upon his way, while the two lovers wandered on towards the station. But Corporal Palk was back in D Hut before Hammersly returned, and describing with emphasis how he had met the Prince’s young woman, and how he most thoroughly approved of her.
“There ain’t no flies on old Prince. Fine bit of goods, and a real lidy. What! ’ow do I know? ’Ow do I know anythink—you blasted codfish! Course I know. Can’t I tell when the —— sky’s all blue? I ain’t lived in Camden Tarn f’ nothink.”
CHAPTER XXXI
Janet had spoken the truth, for the Pierce Hammersly who had caught her in his arms on the platform of Melling Station was a man with steadier eyes and a finer simplicity. His face looked kinder, more solid and less irritable, for he had been living a Spartan life with uncomplicated and unselfconscious people, and Janet had missed certain little mannerisms in him, little egotistical affectations. Life had carved him anew out of fresh oak, a bigger and handsomer man, with more simplicity, more boldness, straighter in his speech, harder in his body. She had known in a moment that she could claim the woman’s dearest right—the right to be proud of her man.
She carried her pride back to Scarshott and shared it with Porteous Hammersly.
“Pierce is looking splendid. We had a most delightfully unconventional day, and I was introduced to his corporal.”
“Looks well, does he? I ought to have been over there myself, but he asked me to wait awhile.”
“I think you will see him soon. He expects to be in France before long, and he will get his draft leave. He is coming home.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
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