Valour

by Warwick Deeping

  “I can hear children.”

  “There they are.”

  They had a glimpse of three mites playing in the grass under some old apple trees. A youngster in blue had been making a wreath of white daisies, and was in the act of crowning the yellow head of a little lady of two. A maid was with them. She straightened herself, turned sharply, and looked anxiously towards the car.

  They saw her come hurrying across a lawn, rather white, and with eyes whose vision seemed turned inward. Hammersly had stopped the car.

  “Is Mrs. Hansard in, Kate?”

  “She is not seeing anybody, sir, since she had the news.”

  “What news? Is Mr. Hansard wounded?”

  “He’s killed, sir.”

  Pierce blurted out a “Good God!” and leant over the steering wheel of the car.

  “Killed!”

  His voice sounded incredulous.

  “When did you hear?”

  “The telegram came about twelve, sir. Mrs. Hansard has her mother with her.”

  Pierce’s face had a blank, stunned look.

  “And his kiddies making daisy chains over there! No—I can’t send a message, Kate. I’ll write.”

  He turned the car and drove back between the masses of living colour, watching the children out of the corners of his eyes. Janet had said nothing, but there were tears on her cheeks.

  “Old Dick dead. Good God! This damned war! And those kiddies.”

  She laid a hand against his arm.

  “It’s too tragic! The poor girl in there!”

  “And all those flowers! Waiting for him. He just loved every bit of this place. He was such a good chap, so straight and simple and clean! Just fooled away by someone, I suppose!”

  “Oh, don’t say that! It makes it so much worse.”

  “It makes it damnable.”

  He was so deeply moved that he hardly spoke to Janet on the way home. His eyes seemed intent on watching the road ahead of him, that white strip winding through the green of an English June. Richard Hansard dead, hidden away in a hole somewhere over there in France, while his kiddies played in the sunlight! Hansard had been so much alive, such a lover of home things, and it seemed only yesterday that Pierce had seen him married. Hansard had hated going; it had almost torn his heart out, and now he was dead.

  “This damnable war!”

  “It is so difficult to realise things.”

  “I don’t think I ever realised them—till to-day. That garden and the children, and the darkened house, and Hansard lying dead over there.”

  “She has the children.”

  “Yes, but they were such pals. There is one blessing; Dick will have left her an income. She was a doctor’s daughter, and she would have had nothing.”

  He relapsed again into an awed silence, but he was thinking of Janet as well as of the Hansards and their home. What would happen to her if he never came back? She would be left with a miserable little income, living on her mother, cramped, fettered, a bird in a cage.

  CHAPTER VII

  Dusk was falling when Pierce Hammersly pushed open the gate of Heather Cottage. He had been running across the common, and he looked strung up and excited.

  Janet, rising out of a deck-chair, a pale white figure in the dusk, held out her hands to him.

  “I’m sorry I’m so late, dear; I have been talking things over with my father. Janet, you have got to marry me.”

  “My dear——!”

  “Before I go. It can be done—legally, I mean; there’s time. Dick Hansard’s death has made me see everything in a new light; supposing anything happened to me, your position would be so different if we were married.”

  “You mean——?”

  “I want to feel sure that you would not be left to the mercies of other people. I have talked to father about it. There would be the pension and a little money of my own, and I could will you a life interest in anything I was to inherit.”

  She took his face between her hands and kissed him.

  “You dear. This touches me very deeply. But I won’t marry you, Pierce.”

  “But, Janet——”

  “No, no——”

  “But why not? It will make me mad to think——”

  She looked into his eyes.

  “I want to wait for you. I haven’t asked for anything else in the world but you. And there’s a pride in me that forbids me to marry you for anything I might get.”

  “It’s just blank fanaticism!”

  “No, no. It’s a good pride, a clean pride. No one will be able to say that I made things safe for myself. Besides, dearest, if I lost you, I should be no worse off than before. I mean, money could not make it up to me; I should want to work, work to help me to bear it.”

  He held her in his arms and pleaded.

  “I only want to feel that you won’t be worried by sordid cares. Don’t you understand? Why trouble about what gossiping fools might say?”

  But she remained obdurate.

  “I won’t do it, dearest. I understand how you feel, and I love you for it. But there is a pride in my love; I am going to wait for you, just as I was before you came to me.”

  “Oh, my dear, won’t you let me leave you a little money?”

  “No, not a penny. I shall feel so much happier, stronger. And somehow I think that your father would agree with me.”

  “The pater was quite willing——”

  “Of course. He is generous and good. But—but supposing you never came back to me”—her voice broke a little—“I couldn’t bear to feel that I was profiting. If we had been engaged for months I might have felt differently.”

  He could not help but admire her delicate sense of self-respect.

  “Well, I give way to you. I shall leave you in trust with the pater. He’ll look after you. Now, about to-morrow. If we catch the 8.50, we shall be in town by 10.30. I will send the car for you at a quarter-past eight.”

  They wandered about the garden in the dusk, and a great sadness oppressed them both. The wrench was very near, and poor Dick Hansard’s death had brought the grim shadow of the reality very near to them. Pierce’s right arm held Janet with a new and desperate tenderness; her head rested upon his shoulder.

  “I feel almost a coward to-night, dear.”

  She sighed, and put her hand over his.

  “How small and futile the old troubles seem. Do you know that I shall think of you as a hero?”

  “I’m not a hero,” he said sadly. “Very few of us feel like heroes, Janet.”

  “And that’s why you are heroic, dear. I know that men must be afraid. Only people without imagination fail to realise that.”

  He flared up into one of his tirades.

  “That newspaper stuff! What tosh! The average Englishman pats himself, says ‘Our boys are splendid,’ and goes to bed and snores. Perhaps some day they will understand, when half our manhood has sacrificed itself, and all the miserable little skunks who are shirking the ordeal are shoved into the trenches for the enlightenment of their souls. But I should like to send some of the comfortable, middle-aged people out there, the men who are so cheerful and well fed, and who say: ‘Oh, we have only to go on long enough, and we are bound to win.’ They don’t see it with the eyes of the men who do the ‘going on.’”

  She poured sympathy on his bitterness, and lured him back into her heart.

  “We will have our photos taken to-morrow.”

  “I wish you would let me have a miniature painted for you. I suppose I might be allowed to pay for that? And for your railway ticket?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “We’ll arrange it to-morrow. You could have it sent out to me. And you will write every other day, Janet?”

  “Yes.”

  He drew her to him with sudden passion, and kissed her again and again, the long, yearning kisses of the lover.

  “My dearest, my dearest——”

  She clasped her hands about his neck.

  “I’m so proud of you. I’
m going to be brave—for your sake.”

  “I shall be thinking of you day and night.”

  Pierce Hammersly walked slowly back to Orchards under a star-bright sky. His heart was heavy within him, and he felt like a child, vaguely afraid of the strangeness and the horror of the unknown. No bands played. The sense of adventure, the stir and movement of strong men marching in the sunlight, the sense of great things dared and done, they inspired him no longer. He felt chilly, and most damnably depressed. The thought of leaving Janet wounded him. How warm her lips were, and how soft and desirable and dear she had felt in his arms. His soul shivered before the cynical sternness of this ghastly war, with its wounds and mud and agony, its crouching in holes, its shell-burst, mine-blasts, choking clouds of gas. He found himself wondering how Dick Hansard had died. Perhaps there was no body of Dick Hansard, but only a few strings of flesh. He shuddered.

  Pierce Hammersly felt glad to reach Orchards, and to walk out of the night into the lamplit library where his father sat reading. Porteous Hammersly gave his son the keen-searching look that a physician gives a patient.

  “All alone, Pater.”

  “So you are back.”

  Men throw such obvious remarks at each other when they are feeling ready either to curse or to weep. Pierce strolled casually to the mantelpiece, took a cigarette from the silver box, lit it, and sat down.

  “Not so warm to-night. I have just come back from the Cottage.”

  “It must be rather lonely for those two women up there.”

  There was a pause while Pierce tried to blow smoke rings.

  “I mentioned that matter to Janet, Pater.”

  “About—your marriage?”

  “Yes. She wouldn’t listen to me, wouldn’t hear of me making a will in her favour.”

  “She had reasons?”

  “A quixotic and delicate sort of pride. She said she would wait till I came back, and that she did not want to profit by—by my not coming back. She said she would not have people saying that she had made things safe for herself.”

  “I see.”

  “She said, too, she thought you would understand and agree with her.”

  Porteous Hammersly’s face twitched with suppressed emotion.

  “I do understand, and I think——”

  “That’s she’s right?”

  “I think she’s the finest girl I have ever known. I think she’s splendid, Pierce, absolutely splendid.”

  “By God! She’s——”

  He hid his face in his hands, inarticulate with emotion.

  His father got up, cleared his throat, and adjusted one of the blinds. Meanwhile Pierce had mastered himself; his face seemed lit up by an inward radiance.

  “Pater, if anything were to happen to me——”

  “My dear boy——!”

  “You wouldn’t let—you’d help her?”

  Porteous came over towards his son.

  “Good heavens, of course! Don’t worry, Pierce; I’d look on her as my daughter. I’d be proud—only too proud——”

  “Thanks, dear old Dad. I couldn’t bear to think——”

  “I would insist on helping her. I would say it was your—your wish. I’ll add something to my will, Pierce.”

  Pierce sprang up, and put his hands on his father’s shoulders.

  “Dear old Dad, you have always been very good to me. I—I——”

  “There, there, my dear boy, I’m sure——”

  They retreated, by mutual consent, into opposite corners of the room, and disposed of certain unmanly manifestations of emotion that were embarrassing and painful.

  Pierce searched for another cigarette, while his father pretended to be looking for something at his desk.

  “I’ll make a note of it, Pierce; I’ll write to Finlayson to-morrow.”

  “Thanks, Pater.”

  Porteous Hammersly sat down, and scribbled a few words on his memorandum block. His son discovered the evening paper, and made a great noise turning over the sheets.

  “Not much news to-night.”

  “Very little.”

  “I see we have scotched another submarine.”

  “Yes.”

  In three minutes they were talking quite calmly and pleasantly, as though there were no such things as love and tears and death.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Those were whirlwind hours, those hours of their last whole day together; hours that they tried to lengthen by crowding them with incidents—potential memories. Pierce had his khaki drill fitted and bought a sun helmet, and a few military playthings. They had their photographs taken by Fuselli of Bond Street, and Pierce arranged for the painting of that miniature of Janet. Then he lured her into shops and bought her hats and dresses, gloves and scarves, and she had not the heart to refuse him. His love wanted to spend itself. There was a pathos even in his extravagance, in his passionate seizing of this last chance of spoiling her.

  They lunched at the Savoy, a new experience for Janet, and one that affected her negatively. Pierce insisted on champagne, and his cheerfulness was of much the same quality—forced and artificial.

  She leant across the table towards him.

  “Pierce——”

  “Dear girl——”

  “Don’t let us stay here long. What time is our train?”

  “Three-thirty. You don’t like the atmosphere?”

  She looked at her ring.

  “I should like to be alone with you—and my own thoughts—in some solemn place, just for a while. I can’t pretend to rise to this—worldliness.”

  “I’m sorry, dear. It was a bad blunder; a piece of bad taste.”

  “No, I did not mean that. But these last memories will be so precious.”

  He looked into her eyes and beheld a new world in them; a world of mystery and strange idealism, and deep, sacred yearnings.

  “Of course. Yes, let us get out of the place. I have an idea——”

  He carried her off in a taxi to the great new cathedral at Westminster, and there they sat in the hush and the twilight, holding hands and saying nothing. The spirit of the great building brooded over them. Its silence was the silence of unspeakable emotion. They felt that they had never touched each other spiritually until that moment; they had partaken of a kind of sacrament together. Love had a new meaning.

  They remained there, sadly happy, for an hour, and then Pierce lifted Janet’s hand and kissed the ring he had given her.

  “We must be going, dear.”

  She sighed resignedly.

  “I shall never forget this. Now I am ready.”

  But the pain of parting had stirred in them, and it quickened and grew as the day passed. Pierce Hammersly was conscious of a desperate desire to be near her; he could do nothing but look at her; he did not want her out of his sight. A couple of prim females shared the carriage with them as far as Scarshott; dry, desiccated creatures whose souls seemed to rattle when they talked. Pierce hardly realised their presence. Janet was like a glowing figure of light whose radiance spread itself around and blotted out all trivial objects like a golden fog.

  The car was waiting for them at Scarshott Station, and Pierce told Bains to drive them to Heather Cottage. A tragic tenderness had displaced the triumphant excitement of the first few days, and a drive through Scarshott High Street had lost its zest. They did not want to be stared at; their love had grown more sacred.

  “I shall have to leave you for an hour or two, dear. I ought to spend some of the time with my people.”

  “Of course.”

  “I shall walk up after dinner. And about to-morrow?”

  She looked at him bravely.

  “I don’t think I will come up to town with you. I would rather say good-bye—to-night.”

  “Oh, my dear! Yes, but perhaps you are right. We don’t want to be gaped at.”

  He left her at the cottage and was driven back to Orchards in the mellow hush of a June evening. Porteous was strolling in the garden, trying to play the
philosopher among his roses, and not succeeding very well. The normal placid current of his life had glided suddenly into an abrupt and rocky channel, and there was the noise of rushing water in his ears, and a sense of something slipping—slipping into turmoil, fear, and darkness.

  “Hallo, here you are!”

  They looked at each other shyly, as though they knew that they were acting a part.

  “I suppose that Dent can pack for me, Pater? I am going to spend an hour with Janet after dinner.”

  Porteous winced.

  “What time is that train?”

  “Nine-fifteen. I shall only have to change platforms and pick up a kit-bag at the cloak-room.”

  “Is Janet going up with you?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t think I’ll come, Pierce—unless——”

  “The adventure starts to-morrow, Pater, and a man has to set his teeth some time.”

  “Exactly.”

  They strolled up and down one of the lawns under the broad shadows of the cedars. The peace and the stillness of the old place seemed strange and unreal, and yet so convincing that Pierce could hardly realise that he might be at sea when that same sun set to-morrow. Those Greek islands, and the Gallipoli Peninsula, vague dots upon the map, loomed up suddenly in the glare of his imagination. He felt his sure grip on life slipping away. It was like going to a strange school, a school whose strangeness haunted him, and oppressed him with vague dread.

  “Well, my boy, we must keep smiling.”

  Old Hammersly’s upper lip quivered as he uttered the platitude.

  “About Janet, Father.”

  “Yes. Count on me, Pierce.”

  “She’s sensitive, and fiercely proud. Don’t let people slight her.”

  “I’ll see to that. As to the future—I have already taken steps to render her independent.”

  “You are helping me, Dad, more than you know. I shall be thinking of you and Janet.”

  “Of course, my boy; of course. And when the war is over, you will have done your duty, and life will be good.”

  “I hope so, Pater, with all my heart.”

  They walked up and down in silence for a minute, and then Porteous mentioned his wife.