Valour

by Warwick Deeping

  But Scarshott judged Pierce Hammersly as pigs in a pound might judge a highly bred horse that had bolted after being badly handled. He was just a coward; a cocky young prig who refused to realise his own shame, and there was an end of it. Many people were not sorry. A few women may have pitied him, as women will, perhaps because some women are more subtle in divining spiritual things.

  It happened that Janet was one of the first people to see that letter in the Scarshott Advertiser, and the paltriness of it made her cry out:

  “Oh, my dear, that you should have done this!”

  She had never thought that he could strike so false a note, making himself publicly contemptible by challenging such a town as Scarshott. He seemed to have lost his sense of dignity, his fine appreciation of what was manly and courageous and restrained. This last lapse of his hurt her horribly, more than anything else that he had done. It seemed so shamefully irreparable.

  Her thoughts turned instantly to Pierce’s father. Had he seen it, or would some fool thrust the paper under his nose?

  She put on her hat and cloak and rushed down to Orchards full of the thought that she could break the news to him as gently as anyone. She almost hated Pierce. Why had he not sent them word that he was in England, instead of holding aloof and humiliating them by stripping himself before all Scarshott in that letter? Gerard Hammersly would never have fallen to such a level. He would have carried his head fiercely and kept silent.

  But this vulgar, insolent posturing! She began to wonder whether Pierce had ceased to be sane.

  Janet arrived too late at Orchards for the accomplishing of her desire.

  Porteous Hammersly was being helped into his overcoat by Harkness, the footman, when a door opened, and his wife called him.

  “Porteous!”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you come here at once, please?”

  The overcoat was returned to its peg, and old Hammersly discovered himself standing halfway between the dining-room door and the fire, and staring at his wife who was walking up and down in a white fury.

  “Have you seen that?”

  She pointed to a copy of the Scarshott Advertiser that lay a-sprawl upon the table.

  “What is it, Sophia?”

  “Herrick must be prosecuted. How dared he publish such a letter in his rag. It is absolutely monstrous that Pierce should ever have written such a letter.”

  Her husband picked up the paper as though he were afraid of it, and searched about hurriedly.

  “What do you mean, Sophia? Where is it?”

  She came across, snatched the paper out of his hands, twisted it into a crumpled pad, and pointed out the place with one finger.

  “You must go and see Herrick at once. Demand to see the original of that letter.”

  Porteous Hammersly was reading, with his head poked forward, and a frown on his forehead. He was aware that his wife was talking and walking up and down, but he did not take in what she said. That letter had paralysed him.

  “Go and see Herrick at once. He must produce the original of that letter, or contradict himself and apologise.”

  Hammersly gave her a bewildered and inquiring look.

  “What did you say, Sophia?”

  “Haven’t you read that letter yet?”

  He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes as though he had been asleep.

  “Yes, I have read it, dear. It is very—very unexpected. I don’t see——”

  “I want that man Herrick to produce the original, his authority——”

  “But—why——?”

  “I don’t believe my son could write such a letter.”

  Porteous Hammersly looked at her with a tragic mingling of shrewdness and bewilderment.

  “Pierce must have written it, Sophia.”

  “Good heavens! I want you to go and see Herrick——”

  “But—my dear, Herrick would never have invented such a letter. How could he? It’s inconceivable—in every way. The boy wrote it; he must have written it.”

  Sophia Hammersly stared at him with round eyes in a bloodless face. Her husband’s tired, resigned voice convinced her.

  “Then how dared he write it! It is making us ridiculous. Such a letter in that wretched local rag! I don’t understand it; I don’t understand men. And after all that we have suffered!”

  She stormed towards the door.

  “I’ll not stay in the place; I refuse to stay here. I shall go to Harrogate at once. I refuse to stay here and be ridiculed and pitied. There are limits to what a woman should bear.”

  Old Hammersly watched her out of the room, and then sat down and stared at the fire with an air of utter helplessness.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  And so Janet found him, sitting hunched up before the fire, his fine full-blooded pride in life deflated, his eyes almost vacant; an old man to whom a great sorrow had discovered his own loneliness.

  She knew at once that he had seen that letter; the paper itself lay on the floor beside his chair.

  “So I have found you alone.”

  He perked up instantly like a ruffled bird on a perch, pushed his chair back, straightened his waistcoat, and managed to smile. She saw a surreptitious foot thrust the paper under the table.

  “Bless my soul! I never heard you come in. This is earliness—with a vengeance.”

  He sleekened with some of his habitual cheeriness, and continued:

  “I suppose you have had breakfast? Yes? Well, come and sit down. I ought to be at the office, but I shall insist now on being late. And what does this energy mean—shopping?”

  She understood that he imagined her to be innocent of all knowledge of that letter, and that he was planning to keep her in ignorance of it, just as she had been planning to keep it from him. His affectionate reticence touched her. She had not come there to be saved from pain, and Porteous Hammersly was to find in her a creature of fine and unexpected strength.

  “You need not try and hide that paper under the table.”

  “Which paper?”

  Her compassionate, wise eyes held his.

  “That wretched Scarshott Advertiser. Yes, I have seen it. There is nothing more to be said, is there? I think that the worst that could happen has happened to us now.”

  She drew a chair up close to his.

  “Do you want me to talk, or shall we just be silent?”

  “I was trying to think things out, dear—when you came. I have never had to face such a problem. I’m a bit bewildered.”

  She laid her hand on his.

  “I know. So was I—at first; it was like being lost in a fog. And then—suddenly—everything showed up clearly. But I want you to tell me how you feel.”

  His hand closed on hers. He stared at the fire for a while, silent, absorbed, and then he began to talk, and to give her a pathetic and disjointed picture of life as he saw it at that moment. He showed no bitterness against Pierce; his one desire was to help him.

  “Of course, he has taken up an impossible position, and yet I can understand how it all happened—even his writing that mad letter.”

  “It never ought to have been written,” she said quietly.

  “But can’t you imagine——”

  “I can understand how a man might feel, but no man ought to have written that letter.”

  He looked at her a little anxiously.

  “My dear—has it changed you?”

  “How could one help being changed by it? But I am trying to think of Pierce as a sick man whom a soul-fever has made irresponsible.”

  “My dear girl—I know. There is a lot of me in Pierce.”

  “Perhaps the best of him.”

  He smiled half-heartedly.

  “You are trying to help me—by flattery. But then—there is the future that he has to face. One must realise the popular prejudices, the scandal. I haven’t told you yet about his mother. It’s an instance in point.”

  “Yes?”

  “My wife is a very peculiar woman. She can
not face the scandal—and she is going away.”

  He spoke as though he were apologising for Sophia Hammersly.

  “It is beyond me. One ought to stand by one’s children. Of course, she is bitterly disappointed—but even then——”

  “She will change her mind.”

  Porteous’s face showed that he had no illusions as to his wife’s temper.

  “I doubt it. She is a very extraordinary woman; she never could bear having her comfort or her peace of mind interfered with. She will go to Harrogate and play the invalid. And now—about Pierce?”

  “He will come back here?”

  “I suppose so. But what is his future going to be? What can we do—you and I? A man chooses his own fate; I’m not trying to blind myself to the facts, for that letter has only made things worse. He seems to think he can defy Scarshott, everybody—all England.”

  She did not answer him for a while, but remained absorbed in thought, and Porteous Hammersly watched her with the beginnings of a blind faith in her courage.

  Presently she began to speak.

  “It will be very difficult. There are natures that cannot be driven or preached at; I am like that—so I know. With me there must be some great emotional appeal; a blaze of white light; an ideal of self-sacrifice. I believe there are men who would go dancing to meet death if beautiful music were being played to them. You have to touch their souls, and we English are such fumblers, so mute and stupid, that I have often doubted whether England has a soul.”

  Hammersly nodded.

  “You are almost arguing—for him. Supposing a man did not love this mute, uncouth country?”

  “But you cannot end it there. This war is not parochial, or merely national. If all our men had been too proud—or too clever—to soil their hands in this great cleansing, what would have happened to us—to all decent honourable people—to me?”

  He looked at her with a gleam of understanding.

  “You mean—that a woman has a right——?”

  “To claim that the man should be willing to fight for her, and for all that she means. Isn’t that an elemental, human truth? A man cannot shirk such things. And that is why the plain mass of people are right, utterly right, in agreeing to suffer and win this war. We are England now—all of us. We have discovered England—and ourselves. We are learning what solidarity, comradeship and courage mean. We cannot afford to have brilliant and paradoxical objectors. That is why the common man and woman will be right when they show Pierce no mercy.”

  She spoke with a passion that startled him, and a conviction that left him convinced.

  “My dear, how did you think this out? But then—of course, it is plain and obvious when you look at it in that way. You have been telling me—what I have been afraid to tell myself. Pierce will have no mercy shown him. But you——?”

  His eyes searched her face eagerly.

  “But—I——?”

  “You will show him mercy; you will not leave him to be broken?”

  He stretched out a hand and laid it on her knee.

  “Think—think, he may have been a sensitive, arrogant fool——”

  “My dear, I am not deserting him.”

  “You mean it?”

  Her eyes lit up with poignant compassion. Her face seemed to soften and to glow as he looked at her.

  “If I love him—I love him. And have I no forefeeling of what he will have to bear, of what I shall have to bear—and make him bear—if he still loves me?”

  “Of course—how could he help it? But what will you make him bear?”

  She drew him nearer.

  “Don’t you know that when a woman has had some ghastly news sent her, that she is not on the way to being comforted until she has broken down and wept.”

  “Yes—in a way; yes.”

  “Pierce is in the same phase—the stark, staring, bitter stage. He has got to weep, Father; to be humiliated—not by others——”

  “But by you?”

  “If he loves me still—but not grossly, obviously. He has got to be humbled by himself—through me—through my lost pride. It must come through someone whom he loves; through me—or through you. Now do you understand me?”

  He kissed her hands.

  “The devil shall be cast out of my son! And your love shall cast it out. Oh, self, self—and the heart of a woman! And yet you will be gentle with him?”

  “Has this war found any use for viragoes?”

  “What a head and heart you have! Of course! Why, I see light, and a little hope. And some day you will make a man of him—not a man like Gerard?”

  Her eyes flashed.

  “No, God helping us—both. I should like that picture taken down, Father. That Hammersly tradition needs breaking.”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  Three days later Pierce Hammersly came home, walking out of Scarshott Station into the thin sunlight of a fine November afternoon. He had warned no one of his coming. Cripps, the lame porter, more inarticulate and sulky than ever, piled Hammersly’s baggage into the King’s Head bus, slammed the door, and did not wait for a tip.

  “Orl right. Nothin’ more. He’s walkin’.”

  The driver watched Hammersly swinging up the road to the town.

  “Don’t see much sign of the husks,” he said; “he’s got new clothes on, anyway.”

  There was nothing of the prodigal about Hammersly. He re-entered Scarshott as an aggressor, admirably turned out in mufti, a handsome fellow enough, “a regular buck,” as the driver of the King’s Head bus expressed it. He carried his head high, and his eyes had a hard light in them. He looked squarely and insolently into the faces of the people he met, compelling himself to challenge them, and doing it well.

  Hammersly did not flinch from the first attack. He made his advance up Scarshott High Street, stopping to look into the windows of familiar shops, or turning into Mr. Vicar’s garage to inquire the price of petrol.

  “Two and a penny, sir,” said that worthy. “And—well, I’m damned, but he’s bounced me!” as Hammersly disappeared across the street.

  Pierce “bounced” quite a number of people on his way through Scarshott. He took them by surprise, asked coolly and cheerfully after their well-being, and was off before they could collect their patriotic wits and snub him.

  “Well, Mr. Hunt, how are you?”

  And Mr. Hunt would stare and respond with the social reflex.

  “Quite well, sir, thank you, and how are——?”

  By that time Hammersly would be past and away, leaving the honest patriot to realise that he had insulted his own self-respect by not remembering to be rude.

  Hammersly did not bear straight for Orchards, but turned down Mill Street to the tannery. Women standing in doorways gaped at him, and then clumped together in gossiping groups. He left a track of sensationalism behind him. His sang-froid and his insolence were no better than the sang-froid and the insolence of a vulgar adventurer or a crook; but he had lost his sense of the public fitness of things and the saving grace of humour.

  “Well, Moss, how are you?”

  The old porter at the tannery gate nearly fell off his stool.

  “Not so bad, sir.”

  “Is Mr. Porteous here?”

  “In the office, sir.”

  Porteous Hammersly was alone in his private room, sitting at his oak desk, a drawer open on either side of him. He turned his head and saw his son in the doorway, and for a moment neither of them moved or spoke.

  “My dear boy!”

  He pushed his chair back and rose, dropping his pince-nez among his papers.

  Pierce closed the door. The defiant pose melted out of him when he saw his father’s face.

  “Dear old Dad—I wonder whether you are pleased to see me?”

  “Don’t talk nonsense. Sit down here. I’ll get the cigars.”

  He bustled out to smother his emotion, brought out the cigars, poked the fire, and pushed one of the big leather chairs forward.

  Pierce
’s upper lip quivered.

  “Of course—you know everything?”

  “Everything.”

  The father’s eyes avoided the son’s.

  “Well, I’m up against the whole world. It is Uncle Gerard over again; and I’m going to fight through just as Gerard did. They have branded me, and I’m proud of the brand.”

  Porteous made a weak attempt to get him down from his high altitude.

  “Sit down, my dear boy. Now, I want to hear the whole truth. Well, supposing you tell me to-night; you see, Janet would not show me your letter——”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I think——”

  He floundered, and Pierce followed him in his flounderings. They sat and looked at each other uneasily, sensing all sorts of complexities and implications, reserves and fears, in the silence that followed. Pierce had only to ask himself one very obvious question in order to discover a new problem.

  “How is Janet?”

  “Quite well.”

  “I mean—has she changed?”

  “In what way?”

  “To me?”

  He was afraid, and he showed his fear.

  “Janet is a very fine woman, Pierce; an exceptional woman. I must leave you and Janet to each other.”

  “But was she so much—upset?”

  His father looked at him curiously.

  “Well, just imagine. But Janet won’t fail you.”

  “She’ll understand. I feel, Pater, that both of you will understand; I don’t care about anybody else; I don’t care what they say or think. And the mater——?”

  “She’s away—at Harrogate.”

  “Piqued?”

  “My dear boy, it was not very easy for any of us. But, of course, you had reasons—you must have had reasons——”

  Pierce tossed his head like a swimmer throwing off spray.

  “Reasons? I should think I had! People have no idea what militarism means, nor had I till I went on active service. At home—it is just a question of good manners, being polite to your Colonel, trying not to get red in the face when someone tells you off; but out there—good God!—what a difference! I suppose if your Colonel is a gentleman and human things are not so bad, but if he happens to be a beast, he can make your life hell.”