Even that swim of his appealed to his egotism as something symbolical. He was washing off the dust of the place, cleansing himself, wiping out his humiliations. He resumed his khaki drill uniform with the ironical feelings of a man preparing a grim jest. It even occurred to him to wonder how Uncle Gerard had felt when they had stripped him of his epaulettes and his sword. Very scornful and a little amused, perhaps, and not in the least ashamed.
When Hammersly returned he found the mess tense with significant excitement. Men were laughing a little hysterically and smoking hard, and a great deal of talking was being done. Rumours buzzed like flies, while Goss—who knew—grinned and said little.
As a matter of fact, the Staff had schemed and ordered one of those little affairs that give a semblance of movement and life to an enterprise that may be hopelessly bogged. There happened to be a little bit of Turkish trench that should have belonged to the English system, and didn’t. It had made itself objectionable in various ways, and the powers had decreed that it should be taken and occupied by an attacking force from the 74th Footshires. Goss allowed the mess to know the truth when he had listened long enough to their imaginative conjectures.
“There’ll be half an hour’s shelling, with a cruiser or two giving us an impartial slap on the back, and then a company of ours will go over the top, clear out the Turks, consolidate, and hold on.”
Everybody knew what these local attacks meant. The men called them “Free passes to Hell.” You won fifty yards of yellow trench, stuck there while the enemy bombed and shelled you viciously, and if you succeeded in remaining, you wondered what you had gained by it. But war is like that.
Hammersly was leaning against a pile of biscuit-boxes that formed one of the end walls of the mess. His brain glowed at a kind of white heat. He had recognised the fact that certain of his brother officers were sending furtive looks in his direction.
“So that’s it, is it? We haven’t had one of those little stunts for quite a long time.”
“And when is it to be?”
“This evening.”
Someone broke into a cackling laugh.
“And who is going to qualify for a halo?”
“I haven’t heard yet.”
“I think the ‘old man’ ought to make us toss up.”
Then they heard Hammersly speaking in a strange, hard voice. He was leaning, square-shouldered, against the wall of biscuit-boxes, and looking straight down on the mess with steady, shining eyes.
“I don’t think that question need worry you.”
Then he began to smile.
“I’ll bet any man here, up to any figure, that I shall have the honour of leading the suicide party.”
No one answered him; his bet went unchallenged.
Captain Goss was meditating some sort of retreat, when a sergeant came in and saluted.
“Is Mr. Hammersly here, gentlemen?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“The Colonel wants you, sir, in the orderly-room.”
Hammersly straightened himself, and smiled round at the room who were watching him.
“You see,” he said, “I should have won my bet. All the same, someone will have the honour of taking my place.”
And he walked out of the mess, leaving them to wonder what he had meant.
Hammersly never forgot his short journey along that bit of yellow trench; he noticed objects, details, curiosities, with minute precision. It was as though even inanimate things had taken on an enormous significance. He was about to say farewell to them, and he knew it. Even the familiar features of that earthy alley, with its nondescript shelters and lurking places, stood out before him with strange vividness. There were the petrol cans, the holes in the ground roofed with waterproof sheets, the dump of stores, the empty ammunition boxes, a broken stretcher, a roll of wire netting. He arrived at the orderly-room with a sense of taking leave of the place for good and ever.
Barnack was alone, sitting at an improvised table; the orderly-room staff were away at dinner. He looked up as Hammersly entered, and his hard eyes gave a momentary glitter.
“Ah—Mr. Hammersly.”
“You sent for me, sir.”
“Yes. My regiment, or rather a small portion of it, is to attack this evening. I have chosen you, Mr. Hammersly, to lead the attacking party. Now, I had better explain——”
But Hammersly interrupted him, speaking with a slow and quiet voice:
“Explanations will be unnecessary, sir. I shall refuse to carry out your orders.”
Barnack did not move. He just sat staring at the man in front of him.
Then he spoke:
“Very well, Mr. Hammersly, you will be put under arrest.”
“I am very much obliged to you, sir; that is what I desire.”
CHAPTER XX
Early in October Janet Yorke received that letter in which Pierce had hinted at an imminent catastrophe. His confessions were too frank for her to doubt his meaning, and she was shocked, frightened, and confounded.
She found herself beset by all manner of impulses, all manner of emotions, the most diverse fears and hopes.
Perhaps he was sickening for some illness, and had written that letter in a moment of feverish misery.
But then her prophetic intuition had foretold some such crisis in the life of this man. She could not escape from her own intimate readings of Pierce’s character; even her love had to give evidence against itself. Her imagination had spun a web, and she was but reading the tale that her own soul had woven.
Perhaps these were some of the most miserable days of Janet’s life. Her hopes tantalised her, like wayward streams of sunlight on a cloudy day. She pictured that rallying letter of hers reaching him, and inflaming his pride. She pictured him sick, snatched away from that mad, self-willed crisis, feeble and safe in some white ship on the sea. She even pictured him dead, dead at his post, stricken down with honour, dead but unshamed.
Love—ideal love—is a mingling of many tendernesses, frailties and strengths, and there was a mother-pity in Janet’s heart for this man of hers, who, like a passionate child, was trying to break unbreakable things. His egotism shocked her and filled her with compassion. Yet this love of hers had set up a dear pride, a white statue sacred to valour and chivalry; it was the ideal of a sensitive and proud girl, an emblem that she could show to other women, and remain tranquil and unashamed.
All this had to be borne in silence. Her loyalty and her pride held her from rushing to confide in Grace Hansard or Porteous Hammersly. She kept the secret even from her mother, standing bravely by the hope that Pierce had written that letter in a moment of acute misery or of savage exasperation. She was bound by her honour to remain silent, lest she should bring her man and her love for him into needless contempt.
There were moments when she reproached herself with the accusation that she had not helped Pierce as she might have helped him. The ordeal was, perhaps, more terrible than she had imagined. She wondered whether she had made it clear to him that her love was mingled with pride, that she would rather suffer any anguish than hear him charged with dishonour.
And here her woman’s love stood at the parting of the ways. She had to choose, as thousands of women have had to choose, between loving a weakling and losing a brave man. There may be a hundred excuses to be made for the man whose soul has failed him; a woman’s mother-love may bleed with understanding and with pity, and yet——! The great renunciation may have shone in her eyes; she may have shed brave tears and sent her man to talk with Death in the mud and the rain. And then—to have him sent back to her, a confessed weakling and a coward! Her pride and her compassion stand and gaze at each other with tragic and questioning eyes.
The arrival of each post marked the crisis in so many periods of passionate suspense. She would watch for the man, go to the gate to meet him, if he came, which was seldom.
Three whole days passed and the postman never came to the cottage. Her hope began to flicker like a lamp that is empty
of oil.
If that letter had been the last that Pierce had written to her, then something had happened. He was either dead, or sick, or in dire trouble—and the last was the thing she feared. She could not conceive his leaving her to live for days on that one ominous letter if he had repented of his madness and recovered the mastery of his soul. She tried to make herself believe that it was the mail that had failed. A ship had been sunk. Yet her heart was sceptical.
Then she received a postcard.
“I am well,” it said, and no more.
It did not tell her where Pierce was, what had happened to him, what he was doing. Its ominous reticence did not reassure her. It was like a message from a prison.
She walked down daily to Scarshott, hoping that at Orchards she might hear something that would give the lie to her suspicions. Both she and Porteous Hammersly kept up an appearance of complete cheerfulness; each felt it necessary to reassure the other, and neither of them had any faith in the other’s sincerity. They were plucky people trying not to appear worried and miserable, like men in the trenches who meet with a “Cheer-o” in two feet of liquid mud.
Their carefulness in making inquiries of each other was pathetic.
“We shall be sure to have a whole batch of letters soon.”
“Of course. One might go two weeks without hearing.”
When Janet received that postcard she mentioned the fact very tentatively to Porteous.
“I’ve had news. Pierce is well.”
Old Hammersly looked at her curiously.
“Was it a card?”
“Yes.”
“I had one too. But he didn’t say where he was on mine.”
“He couldn’t do. It would not be allowed.”
“Of course not. But still——”
She knew what he was thinking. “Why only a card?”
Janet made a suggestion.
“Something dramatic must be expected—a victory—and they have stopped all letters.”
She happened to turn her head and glance at Gerard Hammersly’s portrait. It was an illusion, of course, some trick of the light, but a glimmer of ironical pity seemed to strike down on her from Gerard Hammersly’s eyes.
She turned away, half angrily; she was beginning to hate that portrait.
“It’s no use our worrying. It does not help, does it?”
Porteous most emphatically agreed with her.
“This war should teach us to be fatalists.”
A long silence followed the arrival of that enigmatic postcard. It had come like a warning cry in a long night of suspense, leaving those who listened and waited to imagine all sorts of evil happenings. Then Mrs. Yorke fell ill, and Janet had to nurse her. This new anxiety was almost a relief to her; it helped her to spend herself and to rise above mere morbid speculation. Her mother was like a frail and very gentle-natured child—one of those pathetic little women who are born to be loved and petted, and who exhale a perfume of sweet helplessness.
Janet was very much tied to the cottage, and Porteous Hammersly discovered an opportunity for showing his infinite good-nature. He came bustling up to Heather Cottage and radiated kindliness, and produced baskets of fruit and flowers and more tangible offers of sympathy.
“Now, my dear girl, you really are doing too much; you must have some help here.”
She assured him that she could manage.
“But I really must insist on it, my dear. I have noticed that you are getting a little pale. Now, I know of a most excellent woman who can cook and nurse——”
He held up an admonishing forefinger.
“Now, do be a good child. I want you to allow me to make you a little allowance, for Pierce’s sake; say a hundred a year—a mere trifle. No, you mustn’t refuse it—you mustn’t really; I shall be hurt.”
She kissed him, and he blushed and looked delighted.
“You are a dear to me. I would not take it from anyone else in the world.”
“That’s splendid.”
“But I’m going to give you something in return; I am going to work for you—three or four hours each day.”
“How?”
“I know that you have lost a lot of your people at the tannery. You let your best clerk enlist last week. Women have got to do their share. I know I could help you in the office; I am sure that I could soon pick things up.”
“My dear girl, quite unnecessary, quite unnecessary—at present.”
But she could see how pleased he was.
“Directly mother is a little better I shall begin.”
“You determined young woman——”
“If you want to help me, is it not just as natural that I should want to help you? I shall be keen, and keenness——”
“I believe you would be tremendously efficient. Meanwhile, I am going to send Bains up to take you out for an hour’s drive each day. And I will give you that woman’s address; she’s the widow of a man who used to work for me.”
Another week passed, and Janet received a second postcard. “I am well,” was all it said, and she detected a note of defiance in its bluntness.
Old Hammersly drove up to see her about an hour before noon. He looked depressed and troubled, and she guessed that he, too, had received one of those curt messages.
She carried two chairs out into the garden and made him sit down in the sunlight under the shelter of a cypress hedge, for it was one of those warm, still autumn days when the dew lies long on the grass and the sky is a thin, pure blue.
“I’m worried, Janet. I have had another of those cards from Pierce.”
“So have I.”
“I don’t understand it. I met Morrison yesterday; he has a boy out there, and he has been getting letters regularly—quite recent ones.”
Janet’s heart beat fast for a moment. She felt the last shreds of her hope falling, falling—like the yellow leaves of the birch trees over yonder.
“Strange!”
Something in her voice made Porteous Hammersly look at her. She flushed guiltily, wondering whether he was on the edge of discovering her secret knowledge and her fears.
“My dear child——”
“Yes?”
He was looking at her intently and frowning.
“Can you throw any light on this matter? I mean—has Pierce ever said anything in his letters to you?”
She met his eyes bravely.
“Perhaps——”
“Then tell me. I am not an old woman, Janet; I’m a man of the world.”
“You see, I did not want anyone to know—that Pierce was suffering—was unhappy out there. He did write me one very desperate letter. I burnt it. I thought it might be just one of those miserable moments that must come to a man—at times. I did not want to——”
Old Porteous’s face was tragically grave.
“You did not want to—worry me. Of course, that is like you, Janet. But it seems to me that we ought to prepare ourselves——”
He looked at her pathetically, as though hoping she would contradict him. But she could not contradict him.
“Yes. Do you remember that portrait?”
“Good God—Gerard’s?”
“Yes.”
He hid his face in his hands.
The one person who suffered from no misgivings was Pierce’s mother. She was a woman with an excellent appetite and a perfect digestion, and no sensitive and distempered reflections ever clogged her mind. Pierce had written her sundry formal and descriptive letters; he had found his mother rather receptive of scandal; she welcomed it, and proved herself a ready listener to every voice that cried, “Treachery, bribery—we are betrayed!” Pierce had sent her a full list of the so-called Gallipoli scandals—from the history of the Aragon, to the dubious behaviour of certain distinguished officers under shell-fire.
Mrs. Sophia behaved like the thoroughly eupeptic and stupid fool that she was. She went about boasting of her son and his doings, boring everybody with intimate and rather imaginative descriptions of
his adventures. No young man had ever suffered such hardships and faced such dangers as Pierce Hammersly had done. He was the unique son of a boastful and selfish mother.
She passed on his scandalous gossip, speaking with immense impressiveness, and airing her inferior knowledge. The rottenness and incapacity of the administration were apparent. The whole Gallipoli campaign was proving a ghastly fiasco. The lives that had been sacrificed, wasted! The incomprehensible muddling!
Moreover, she went about prating of “slackers” and “cowards.” She even stopped young men in Scarshott, and desired them to tell her why they were failing to do their duty. She was a “white feather” propagandist.
And there were people who were exasperated by Sophia Hammersly, and very much bored by the heroism of her son. She was laying the last straw on the back of her own vanity; digging the pit that was to swallow up her pride.
CHAPTER XXI
Pierce Hammersly had been tried by a general court-martial and dismissed the Service, the charges of cowardice and refusal to obey orders having been proved against him. He was tried by English gentlemen and sentenced by them, and the apparent leniency of his sentence might have caused ignorant and querulous people to blaspheme and cry out against “class favouritism.” Certain facts and fragments of evidence had told in his favour. He had gone sick with paratyphoid two days before leaving the Peninsula, and Leatherhead, in his evidence, had suggested that the feeling of malaise connected with the onset of the disease might have weakened the prisoner’s soldierly spirit. He had also described Hammersly as neurotic and excitable. As for Colonel Barnack, he was grimly fair in all his statements. His evidence agreed with the doctor’s. He described Hammersly as undisciplined, highly strung, quite the wrong type of man to make a good soldier. He was over-civilised, and a degenerate so far as the military virtues were concerned.
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