Valour

by Warwick Deeping

  As for Scarshott it had not been very kind to Janet Yorke. This romantic affair had not made it change its attitude towards her; she was the clever fisher woman; she had made her catch, but Scarshott reflected cynically that the line was now a very long one. Scarshott had derived some pleasure from the fact that such an anti-climax had been foisted upon the social vapourings of Mrs. Sophia.

  Life was hard for Janet in more ways than one. Her mother’s delicacy tied her to Heather Cottage; she could not go out and spend herself, play her part in the war; her activities had to be spiritual and inward. She nursed her mother, gardened, and kept the house, with occasional aid from a Scarshott char-woman; she had no badge and no uniform; she had to stay in the same place. Life happened to be solitary, and too full of those long silences that encourage too much thinking.

  Moreover, she had to smother her antipathy to Pierce’s mother. Mrs. Sophia made it quite plain to Janet that she was playing the philosopher. “What sacrifices we are making!” ran her cry, and Janet felt herself to be the living sign and symbol of Sophia Hammersly’s renunciation. Yet Sophia Hammersly’s attitude in public differed from her attitude at home. She had a woman’s instinct for self-defence, just as she knew instinctively that other women were exulting over her supposed disgust, and she took care to assume in other people’s drawing-rooms an air of surprised satisfaction.

  “Yes, really, I was rather amazed at first. But now that we know Janet, Porteous and I are delighted, yes—quite delighted. Pierce was no fool. She’s really a dear girl, and so clever.”

  “Indeed! Is that so? You see, I have never spoken to her yet.”

  “You will adore her. She is the best educated girl in the neighbourhood, speaks French, German and Italian. No, nothing of the ‘blue,’ rather shy and reserved. I can truthfully say that it is a great relief to me; Pierce was so run after; she will make him an admirable wife. Of course she has no money, but what does that matter to us!”

  Janet went three times a week to Orchards, and spent part of her time there sitting in the great, stupid drawing-room, talking to her future mother-in-law. These women detested each other, yet they agreed to meet on the common ground of a sentimental devotion to one particular man. Mrs. Sophia was utterly complacent in her admiration of her son. She had created him; he was hers; therefore he was all that could be desired. She did not love him as Janet loved him, with a passionate, wide-eyed tenderness that was all the more wonderful because she knew that he was human. Your perfect man would be detestable, and the imperfections of the creature make him the very human child of the woman who loves him. The Pierce Hammersly of his mother’s vision was a serene, tailor-made, genteel prig; but Janet saw in him the rebel, the potential coward, the sensitive man who might do splendidly or cover himself with shame.

  She feared and yearned, while Mrs. Sophia boasted.

  “Of course Pierce will make an ideal officer. He is a gentleman and so clever. I quite anticipate his winning the D.S.O.”

  And Janet wondered at this woman who was so grossly ignorant, so selfishly blind when she looked at her own son.

  “Pierce is very proud,” she said guardedly, “and pride helps.”

  Sophia Hammersly’s dead eyes stared at her obtusely.

  “Of course Pierce has pride. But I do not follow your argument.”

  Janet knew that it would be useless to try and make her understand that her son was a subtle mixture of cowardice and courage, selfishness and generosity. Mrs. Hammersly knew nothing of imagination, atmosphere, temperamental idiosyncrasies. Her son was just the gallant, stupid fellow in the pictures, striking heroic attitudes and waving a sword. She would have been hugely indignant had Janet suggested that he was mere human clay.

  But in Janet Mrs. Sophia discovered a person to be patronised, a protégée to be admonished. Her own attitude towards the feminine part of Scarshott necessitated a public confession of faith. She began to reflect that Pierce’s future wife ought to be taking her part in the life of the place, claiming the position that would be hers by right. Mrs. Hammersly’s motives were extraordinarily tangled and contradictory. She wanted to patronise Janet, she wanted to humiliate her and at the same time snub the ladies of Scarshott; there was her own self-love to be considered, her claim to magnanimity and breadth of mind; also she had to justify her boastings about Janet to her more intimate acquaintances.

  “You ought to get to know people, Janet. Pierce’s wife will have a position to fill. You had better come with me when I go calling.”

  Janet could find no reason for disagreeing with her.

  “People haven’t called on us yet.”

  “But they will do. You must expect them. And I think you ought to take your share in the social work of Scarshott. There is the V.A.D. hospital. And Dr. Skrimshire is giving a course of lectures on first aid.”

  “I might make time for that.”

  “I will speak to Mrs. Holmes about it.”

  So Pierce’s mother paraded Janet through the Scarshott drawing-rooms and gardens, and Janet wore the clothes that Pierce had given her, and looked very arrestive and handsome. She expected criticism and she received it; but Scarshott was unable to humiliate her, simply because Scarshott found her unassailable. It could not quarrel with her looks or her clothes or her manners, and her charm made victims of the men. She listened well, had a quick sense of humour, and was quite at her ease. There were people who dared to think that Pierce Hammersly had won more than he deserved.

  But her chief champion was old Porteous. They hit it off together amazingly; understood each other by instinct. Janet detected the origins of Pierce in him, and secret diffidences hidden beneath a somewhat sententious manner. He was an affectionate fellow, and he showed a desire to treat Janet with fatherly fondness; she appealed to him; she shared Pierce with him with a frank sympathy and an absolute lack of any self-assertion. Old Hammersly found that he could talk to her, tell her things, and not discover himself up against a blank wall.

  It was he who took her to see Grace Hansard—“Brave Grace” as he called her—who was trying to mend her life after death had broken it.

  “You’ll like her, Janet; she’s splendid.”

  He proved his wisdom, for these two women became friends almost from the first. Janet’s heart went out to Grace Hansard in that green corner of the world where her children played under the apple trees, and memories brought a choking at the throat. Grace was a “brown woman,” with brave hazel eyes. She had known Pierce well, and she admired his impetuous infatuation.

  “Come and see me when you can.”

  “I should love to come. But, you see, my mother is an invalid, and it is rather a long way.”

  Porteous solved the problem.

  “Nonsense. You can always have the little car, Janet, when you like. Why not learn to drive it? I’ll arrange for Bains to give you lessons.”

  But Scarshott did not immediately accept Janet Yorke. There were people whose antagonism to Sophia Hammersly was a question of self-respect; she challenged opposition, and received it. You felt driven to contradict her, even though the contradiction involved you in some absurdity.

  Mrs. Holmes, another great lady, would not accept any more workers for the V.A.D. hospital.

  “My dear, they simply fall over each other. We had three girls wanting to cook on the same day last week. Besides, Miss Yorke is quite untrained.”

  Mrs. Sophia always took a refusal as a personal affront.

  “Oh, if that is the case Janet need not waste her time there. I only suggested it because I thought you might like to have one clever woman. It is possible that Janet may be given a very important part in a Government department.”

  “Is that so?”

  “She is such a fine linguist, but then, you see, her mother is a problem.”

  Mrs. Sophia had to pass on the news to Janet.

  “My dear, Mrs. Holmes tells me that they have more girls than they want at the V.A.D.”

  “So I need not bothe
r.”

  “I was afraid you might be disappointed. Mrs. Holmes has a little clique of her own. These provincial towns are so narrow.”

  But Janet was living on a plane above such petulances. She had been uplifted by a great emotional experience, and her soul was drawn to those who loved and suffered. In a way she symbolised all that was fine in the women of England, that deep patience, that expectant tenderness, the courage that does not spend itself in little frittering activities. Scarshott was still a model of what England had been a year ago, petty, selfish, unimaginative, afraid of great emotions and of great ideals. Anything that was new had seemed iniquitous, Lloyd Georgian. And the new Scarshott had not yet been born. Its shops were still full of young men, and its middle classes had turned the war into a sort of never-ending bazaar.

  Janet was waiting for letters, those letters that would tell her so much. One had reached her from Malta, two more from Mudros, dear love-letters, but not yet the human documents that her love and her fear foreshadowed.

  And Gerard Hammersly still haunted her, staring down at her from the library wall. The picture was like a prophecy. Once she caught old Porteous standing in front of it, looking at the restive face as though it filled him with disquietude.

  She closed the door and stood there, smiling, though there was no smile in her heart.

  “You see it too?”

  “What, my dear child?”

  “The likeness?”

  She noticed that he looked depressed. His cheery optimism had clouded of late.

  “Pierce was always like Gerard. Most remarkable. When did you notice it?”

  “Weeks ago. Pierce showed me the portrait.”

  “Did he tell you anything?”

  “Uncle Gerard’s history. I sometimes think there is more than a physical resemblance.”

  Porteous cocked his head uneasily, and went in search of a cigar.

  “Perhaps. There’s pride—you know—in both of them.”

  He reflected a moment, and then glanced sideways at Janet.

  “Terrible ordeal, this war! I wonder how the men stand it.”

  She almost felt that he was conscious of certain streaks of cowardice in himself, and that they helped him to imagine what his son might be suffering.

  “No letters yet, Janet; no real letters, I mean. Pierce must be seeing the real thing. What a romantic enterprise! Don’t worry, my dear girl, the Hammerslys were always lucky.”

  She caught him glancing nervously at Gerard’s picture.

  “Pierce will behave like a gentleman. Yes, it will be all right.”

  CHAPTER XV

  In three days the admiring and interested Bains taught Janet to drive the little Singer.

  His professional pride enrolled itself in her service.

  “That’s O.K., miss. Just a little bit faster with your engine. That’s prime. Don’t be afraid to let her out at the ’ills; there ain’t many she won’t do on top.”

  Bains reported to his master on the driver of the little blue car.

  “She’s got hands, sir, and a nerve. Don’t get flustered, and she’s mighty quick on her brakes. Picked it up fine, I consider. Some of ’em fumble for weeks.”

  Janet kept her promise to Grace Hansard, and spent the whole of one afternoon at Vine Court, sitting under the mulberry tree on the big lawn, while the children played in the orchard. Grace Hansard had passed through the first period of anguish, and was able to look at life with wistful, tearless eyes. The two women had fallen in love with each other from the first, and Janet drove twice a week to Vine Court. She was human and quick-blooded, and Grace needed a friend.

  “Do come often. There is nobody down there who understands. I have got to the stage when I feel I must talk. It helps me.”

  Janet learnt much from Grace Hansard, for Grace had known one man, her husband, very intimately, and through him she had learnt to know man as he is. The Hansards had been in subtle sympathy with each other, and the wife had seen the war through her husband’s eyes. And, as she had said, it comforted her to talk about this man of hers who had left her the right to be very proud.

  The truths that she gathered from the woman who knew fascinated Janet, because of their significance in their bearings upon her anxiety for Pierce. She found that she had divined what was real in the war, tragic facts that the average person had failed to grasp.

  “The country has not realised things yet. Those people in Scarshott are hopeless. It makes me feel bitter at times. I suppose they refer to me as ‘Poor Mrs. Hansard,’ and think of my husband as a brave man. Good heavens, they don’t know how brave he was, they don’t realise what it meant to him.”

  “No one does, perhaps—till——”

  “He wasn’t brave, really. Oh, I’m not saying disloyal things. But he was brave in spite of himself; he had a wonderful sense of duty. He knew—I think—that he was going to die that morning, for the order he received meant almost certain death, and they tell me he went out calmly, proudly.”

  Her voice broke for a moment.

  “And they call me ‘Poor little Mrs. Hansard!’ I who have the right to such memories, to my pride in my man. Oh—it was bitter—I know; I felt at first that I hated the man who had sent him to his death. But I can hold my head high—and we were very happy.”

  Janet reached for her hand.

  “I do think you are splendid. You have got a great rich memory that no one can steal away. You couldn’t have borne to see him sneaking out of things like some of the men down in that town.”

  “I know. I gave him. He gave up—all this.”

  The children came racing over to them, and had to be chattered to and humoured.

  “Mummy, can’t we pic-lic in the orchard?”

  “And what is a pic-lic, Joan?”

  “Oh, you know, Mummy. It’s cabbage leaves for plates, and milk with tea in it.”

  “I see. Ask Hester to arrange it. William dear, what have you got there?”

  “An ickle snail, Mummy. It’s got such a cold in its head. It’s all frothy.”

  “Poor thing, so it is.”

  Said Janet as the children toddled back to the waiting Hester:

  “I can understand men being afraid.”

  “They are all afraid, except perhaps some of the very stupid ones. Dick used to tell me tragic stories. At the worst, you put life and all that out of your head, and just walk like a fatalist into oblivion. I know how my man suffered, but he was amazingly patient.”

  “And the impatient ones?”

  Grace closed her eyes.

  “I remember one tale. No, I can’t tell you; it is too horrible. I think it is worse for the men who rebel, the men who feel savage and bitter. Dick was spared that. He just felt most terribly sad.”

  Janet sat in silence, thinking of Pierce and her own premonitions.

  She was waiting for those letters—those real letters that would tell her how her man was braving the great ordeal. Gerard Hammersly’s face was more and more present in her thoughts. It was as though he knew, as though he were watching her with a kind of sardonic sympathy. She wrote to Pierce every day—brave letters, inspiring letters, but it seemed like throwing her love at a venture into the sea.

  Her miniature arrived from the people in Bond Street. It was excellent, and surprised her into a moment of sweet vanity. The man had caught her quick colour, the light in her eyes, and the gleams of gold in her hair. Janet had given the artist no more than two sittings, but a painter of miniatures may react to the charm of his model, seizing one arrestive face in the midst of a series of facial monotonies.

  That miniature arrived by the first post, and the evening post brought Janet a batch of Pierce’s letters. She trembled a little at the sight of them—those dear letters from that land of flies and death. Going up to her bedroom she locked the door, and, kneeling by the bed, spread the letters upon it. There were seven of them, and she was tenderly methodical in her dealings with them; she wanted to get the human sequence, and so sh
e arranged them, date by date, before she read a word.

  Her face grew grave as she read, for these letters betrayed an increasing bitterness that culminated in an outburst of rebellious scorn. Pierce cared nothing for the censorship; he had always expressed himself with virile frankness; the so-called soldierly spirit that accepts every blunder and makes no complaint had not been developed in him.

  The pictures he drew were sharp, vivid, and merciless; but they grew more gloomy, more savage in the later letters. The soul of the great adventure was dead; the troops were sick and sullen; everybody realised that the affair had been a political gamble.

  Some of his pen pictures hurt her, they were so savage, so pitiless, so obviously true. He told her scandalous things, and in his later letters he appeared to gloat over them and to mock at his own people.

  “We English are rushing to our great humiliation, and I’m glad.”

  He described Barnack to her, and she read hatred in every line of the description.

  “This man is a Prussian. He has no pity, no imagination. He sends you to meet death with the arrogance of a fanatic.”

  His picture of the mess and its atmosphere made her shudder. Were men like that? Was war so sordid, so servile, so tyrannical, with no fine devotion, no proud ideals? She saw Pierce’s impotent and scornful individualism dominating him, and she could trace its growth from page to page. He was miserable, angry, disillusioned, rebellious, petulant.

  “I don’t know how this is going to end,” he wrote, “but I know that many of us curse the people at home. This eternal blundering breaks the men’s hearts. They feel that they are being sacrificed for nothing. I can’t say I have any great desire to kill Turks; there is only man I should like to kill.”

  And again:

  “I am ceasing to care what happens. I feel I must strike back, rebel—or go mad. The humiliation of it all makes me savage. This man has never tried to help me.”

  From a soldier’s point of view the letters were scandalous, full of bitter truths that were not ripe for the telling. Janet knelt there with her face between her hands, confronting the egoism of the man she loved, his lack of that fine humility that smiles and carries on. History was repeating itself. Here was a second Gerard Hammersly—sensitive, proud, egotistical, contemptuous, driven to desperation by circumstances over which he had no control.