Porteous Hammersly and the girl looked at each other like shy children.
“Bless me, but you young people——”
Janet was mute, and her eyes waited on the chivalry of Pierce’s father. Porteous Hammersly was very pink, and a little breathless. He looked at Janet, and, being the man he was, he somehow felt that he could let his impulses run away with him.
“My dear, I’m very glad to meet you. Pierce is a scoundrel. He ought to have told me.”
“We only knew yesterday, Pater. Besides, I was afraid Janet would say no to me.”
Porteous held out his hand.
“Well, I am not surprised.”
“I hope—you will like me, Mr. Hammersly.”
“I don’t suppose I shall be able to help it.”
She had called on his sympathy, and it rushed to serve her.
“I will be quite frank. I did not know whether I ought to let Pierce—get engaged to me. Perhaps people have told you——?”
Pierce thrust in.
“I think father knows. If not, it is my business to tell him.”
But Porteous Hammersly insisted on speaking for himself.
“My dear, I am not going to let you humiliate yourself. Just so, just so. If you young people happen to love each other—well, all I say is, God bless you both. Now, let’s consider——”
He stuttered, and lost himself in the sudden remembering of his wife.
“Pierce, my boy——”
“I am going to bring Janet to Orchards to-morrow.”
“Yes, that is what I was going to suggest. Exactly. Now, I expect you two young people want to amuse yourselves. I’ll take myself off. I dare say we shall meet again—later. We have got to get to know each other, Miss Yorke. Yes, good-bye.”
Pierce sized up his father’s embarrassment, and swept Janet off into the rose garden.
“The pater’s a sportsman. You will like him.”
“I like him already,” she said simply. “I’m not hiding the fact that this must be a shock to your people.”
“Janet——!”
“It must be. I have the courage to face things—because——”
He bent over her, dearly.
“Don’t be afraid of the pater. But I’ll own up—my mother——”
She nodded.
“Don’t let her make you flare up, Janet, and throw me over. I know what I am asking. I love you; I want you.”
“I will be very patient, dear.”
“Leave it to me. I am not going to have your pride outraged.”
Ten minutes later Porteous Hammersly found his wife at his elbow.
“Porteous, what has happened to Pierce?”
“Happened to him? Why, I was with him a few minutes ago.”
“Haven’t you seen him—with that Yorke girl? It’s abominable!”
Porteous Hammersly displayed a scandalous and genial stupidity. His admirable assumption of cheeriness steadied the situation.
“I don’t see anything abominable about it, Sophia. He has just got engaged to the girl, and she’s charming.”
“Engaged! Good heavens, why Yorke was——”
“Tut, tut, not so loud, Sophia. This war is teaching us to forget such things. The girl is charming.”
“Oh, you fool!”
She gulped and turned away.
“I am going home. How we mothers have to suffer!”
CHAPTER IV
Pierce drove Janet home, making her wear his light burberry, for his own blood was afire, and his love delighted in these small tendernesses. It was one of those limpid evenings, soft, fresh and dewy, with the scent of mown hay drifting from the fields, and the distant hills looking like a dim blue haze-wrapped sea. Janet’s eyes seemed to give back the western sunlight. She was silent, dreamy, a little solemn.
Pierce left her at the porch.
“Good night, dearest. To-morrow——?”
“Well?”
“There is a certain shop in Scarshott where they sell such things as rings.”
She smiled up at him.
“Something quite simple——”
“Sapphires. Like that exquisite piece of ribbon there. Then you will come to lunch with me—at home.”
“I suppose so. I will try to be meek.”
“You will be nothing of the kind,” he said. “I have no use for meekness.”
Dinner at Orchards developed into an ogreish meal. Mrs. Sophia sat there like a white gravestone, all belettered with solemn, accusing grief. Her husband persisted in being voluble and banal. Pierce looked grim and cool and on guard.
When the mother had rustled out of the room, Porteous Hammersly filled his port glass and lit a cigar.
“Pierce, my boy, what about this engagement of yours?”
“Isn’t it perfectly in order, sir?”
“My dear lad, you ought to know that all I care about is your happiness. If I ever had any snobbery in me, this war has wiped it out; you are going to the front; we have no right to refuse such men anything. But it’s your mother, Pierce. She is upset, shocked.”
“You mean because old Yorke made a mess of life?”
“Your mother is an ambitious woman, Pierce; she had social ideas of her own for you.”
“Poor little Grace Rentoul! Or the Dixon girl! I couldn’t marry any tow-haired fool, Dad, who happened to have money. We Hammerslys have money; I can afford to marry a real woman with grit and cleverness. Isn’t there sound sense in that?”
“Admirable sense, Pierce.”
Porteous reflected for some moments, turning his wine-glass round by the stem with finger and thumb. He had lost all his sententiousness, the real man in him acted and spoke and felt.
“About marriage, Pierce. We don’t discuss these things enough in England. Forget I’m your father, and let’s talk like a pair of friends.”
“What do you want me to tell you?”
“Just what you expect of marriage.”
Hammersly leant his elbows on the table, and looked at his father over his clasped hands.
“I have been in love before, Pater—just a few days’ excitement, and all that. But this is different, because Janet is different. I began to be fond of her quite a long while ago, but she held me at arm’s length. She’s proud; that business of her father’s made her something of a rebel. You know, Pater, how most women bore one after a while.”
His father nodded.
“I don’t think I have ever said it before, Pierce, but from what I have seen of life the average marriage is only a makeshift; it is the best we can do. In fact, there are people who ought not to marry. And I don’t believe in a man marrying too young; he hasn’t seen life, he hasn’t found out what things are worth—sexual things, I mean. I believe in a young man having his adventures.”
Pierce looked at his father in astonishment. He had never suspected that such heretical truths lay hidden under that debonair, conventional surface. Older men rarely speak out what is in their hearts; for in telling such truths they uncover their own nakedness, and we civilised people have been taught to be ashamed of nakedness. Hence much suffering and many hidden sores.
“I respect you for telling me this, Pater. You mean that if a man has never had adventures——”
“There comes a time in his life when he finds that he has never lived. A great restlessness torments him. Life is successful, safe, boring, but he regrets the experiences that he might have had. Perhaps he breaks out. We hide these truths, Pierce, and try to pretend. Well, you see—so much depends on the woman.”
Pierce was thinking of his mother. His knowledge of her made him realise the patience and the self-restraint of the man who sat opposite him.
“Of course, one always imagines the woman one loves is unique. But I don’t think that Janet would ever bore me. Besides, I may never live to be married.”
“God forbid, my boy. But you have every right to choose, and there is something that makes me think that Janet is the woman for you.”
“But you don’t know her, Pater.”
“She has suffered, Pierce, and she has seen something of life. It is the woman who has never suffered, who has never had to deny herself anything, who is so impossible to live with. There are responsibilities on your side too, Pierce. I don’t know much about women, but I have an idea that a woman must be allowed to spend herself, live on her emotions. Your cold, clever, moral man must make a ghastly mate.”
Pierce Hammersly stretched out a hand to his father across the table.
“I have never known you till now, Pater. I have never suspected you of being so human. We English are such reserved beggars.”
“Again, it is the war, Pierce. It has made us draw closer together; it has made some of us understand life better. And now——”
He spread his hands, and gave his son a half-whimsical look.
“You have got to persuade your mother. Women can say such bitter things.”
“I don’t want Janet hurt. Mother can say what she likes to me.”
“Go and talk to her. And Pierce——”
“Yes.”
“Try not to be sarcastic or clever. Your mother does not understand sarcasm or cleverness.”
“I will go and see her, now.”
Pierce did not find his mother in the drawing-room. She was in her bedroom, wrapped up in a pale pink rest-gown, sitting in expectant isolation, and waiting for the inevitable male thing to appear.
Pierce knocked at her door.
“Are you there, Mother?”
“I am here, Pierce.”
“I want to talk to you.”
“I have been expecting you to come.”
She received him with the air of a woman whose faith in human nature had been outraged.
“You may sit down, Pierce.”
He did not sit down, for his spirit was the spirit that attacked. His mother symbolised obstinate and blind resistance, that sort of selfishness that is wholly negative.
“I want to bring Janet to see you to-morrow.”
“I most absolutely refuse to see the girl, Pierce.”
He glanced at her with restive, clever eyes.
“That’s rather awkward, Mater. You will have to see her some day. We are not going to be married till I come back again—that is, of course, if I ever come back.”
Now, when a woman of Mrs. Hammersly’s breed wants to justify her own prejudices, she crowns herself with a fictitious altruism, and pretends that her recalcitrancy is for the other person’s good.
“I am not thinking of myself, Pierce. I am thinking of you.”
He began to smile with thin lips, for his temperament was undisciplined. Opposition angered him. He had not the tired patience of his father.
“Which means, Mother, that you insist on choosing my wife for me?”
“I wish to protect you from an adventuress.”
“Exactly what I expected you to say, Mater.”
“Mere infatuation. Men are all alike—utter fools when a pretty face is concerned. The girl has caught you—or thinks she has caught you. The daughter of a petty swindler with no social position.”
Pierce stood a moment with his hands in his pockets, and then made a subtle movement towards the door.
“You are utterly wrong, Mother. And isn’t this rather mean of you, trying to poison my little romance before I go out to that hell?”
Then there was a scene. Mrs. Hammersly lost her temper, and showed it by indulging in one of the few storms of emotion that had ever ruffled her heavy serenity.
“Oh, this is monstrous!”
Pierce paused with his hand on the door-handle, and watched his mother flaring up and down the room, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief and breathing heavily.
“As if I were not your best friend! You are just a silly, infatuated boy, and I want to save you. Haven’t I loved you all these years? And then when some little wench appears you turn on me—because—because—I try to tell you the truth.”
Pierce refused to be moved.
“You have never spoken to Janet, Mother; you know nothing about her.”
“What ingratitude! My own son——”
She padded to and fro in a fluster of wrath, and Pierce watched her with a feeling of antipathy.
“I’m sorry. So you refuse to see Janet?”
“You have to choose between your mother—and that girl.”
“That is just what you are compelling me to do. I will go and have my things packed. I can get rooms at The White Hart.”
His mother swung round, and stared at him in stupid bewilderment. Her chin seemed to relax; her face looked flabbier, whiter, more ponderous. She was one of those women who are essential cowards, and who go on tyrannising over people all their lives, till some day a rebel strikes back. Had she married a bully instead of marrying Porteous Hammersly, she might have stood a chance of being loved by her son. And Fate willed it that he should deal her a blow, and cow the shrew in her—the shrew that had victimised his father.
“Pierce, you can’t mean——”
“I’m sorry, Mater—but you see I am in deadly earnest. If you refuse to accept the woman I hope to marry I shall leave this house.”
She gaped at him, and then flounced down in an armchair.
“I can’t believe it! How we women have to suffer! I try to do my best, and you—you——”
“Why not see Janet?”
“I can’t. What—humiliate myself before my own son?”
He opened the door.
“Very well. I’m sorry. You haven’t been very kind to me, Mater, have you? Good-bye.”
Before he had closed the door she called him back.
“Pierce!”
He came back into the room and stood waiting.
“Well, Mother?”
She had managed to find some tears.
“I’ll sacrifice myself—yes—rather than there should be a scandal. I suppose I must sacrifice my honest prejudices. You will never know what this means to me.”
He said very quietly:
“I’m very proud of Janet, Mother. I don’t want anybody to hurt her.”
“You don’t think of us—your father and myself. Your father is so weak. Of course, he has given in; he always leaves all responsibilities to me.”
Pierce went and stood by her.
“Father trusts me, as I trust the woman I mean to marry. It’s inevitable, Mater—unless I don’t come back.”
CHAPTER V
So the elder Hammerslys accepted the situation, arguing that the times were abnormal, and that they could not quarrel with an only son a few days before he went on active service. Women can be very adaptable, especially when it is a question of covering a retreat, and Pierce’s mother appeared at breakfast with an air of self-sacrificing serenity that suggested victory in surrender.
“You had better bring Jane to lunch, Pierce.”
“Janet, Mother.”
“I stand corrected. There is a more aristocratic flavour about the name of Janet. For your sake, Pierce, I will efface myself; we must make the best of this affair.”
“I don’t think we shall find it so very hard, Mater.”
“In your absence, Pierce, I will afford Janet every advantage in the way of—education. She might like some French lessons.”
Pierce showed signs of restiveness.
“It is very considerate of you, but you haven’t realised, Mater, that Janet is a gentlewoman. She speaks French and German. As far as education goes she is better off than any girl in Scarshott.”
“Indeed! Quite a blue stocking!”
Pierce drove up to Heather Cottage in the little Singer, and found Janet tying up some of her roses. One long shoot had scratched her cheek, and there was a little drop of red blood hanging there like a ruby.
“Hallo, a real live wound!”
“Have I scratched myself?”
She put her handkerchief to her face, her eyes smiling into his.
“My people
expect you to lunch. I have got a formal letter somewhere.”
“I want you to be quite frank, Pierce. Are they very angry with me?”
“The pater was splendid; we had a long confab; there is nothing wrong with the pater’s heart.”
“And your mother?”
He took her hands.
“I’ll admit I had to fight the mater, but she surrendered and peace reigns. And now, there is a finger here that has got to be decorated. Can your mother spare you?”
“I think so.”
“Then we’ll run around in the car.”
That was one of the happiest mornings of their lives. They drove in to Scarshott, and processed once or twice up and down the High Street with the triumphant audacity of lovers. There was no doubt about the elemental picturesqueness of their romance. They were watched with peculiar interest, and to Pierce Hammersly this love pageantry moved to subtle music. He was a romantic egoist, and life was full of colour, delight and tenderness.
They drew up outside the bank. Pierce cashed a cheque, and came out smiling.
“Will it please Her Highness to walk a little way.”
Pierce Hammersly was not a man who looked tentatively in shop windows. He walked in with that large air that does not consider trifles, an aristocratic English tranquillity that assumes the ownership of the earth.
Cranston’s, the local jewellers, was one of those ancient and solidly established shops that suggest the solemnity of a cathedral close. Old Cranston had the presence and the manners of a dean. He sold you a wedding-ring as though he were performing the marriage ceremony, and he was so polite that he made self-conscious people feel apologetic.
He swept forward to receive Pierce.
“Good morning, Mr. Hammersly; good morning, madam.”
“Show me some rings, Mr. Cranston, will you?”
“Signet rings, sir—or ladies’ rings? Ex-actly. I understand. That tray out of the window, sir. A chair, Mr. Wills, for the lady. Delightful weather—just what we should wish to see in June. Permit me to show you the contents of this tray, Mr. Hammersly.”
Pierce caught Janet’s eye and winked at her.
“Is there any particular sort of ring, sir?”
Mr. Cranston rubbed his pink hands together, and hovered tactfully over the problem. It did not do to jump to conclusions, and Mr. Cranston prided himself on his discretion.
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