“I suppose one does not realise——”
“As I tell you, Dad, I did not—till I found myself in the power of a man who was half a Cromwell and half a cad. All the other fellows were afraid of him. Why? Because your little Colonel-god can send you slap up against a machine-gun or keep you playing cards with him in the mess. Good heavens!—the fawning and toadying I have seen. It made me sick. And I did not hit it with Barnack—our C.O. He was the sort of man who believed in making or breaking, and he worked his theories on me. I had all the dirty jobs. I might have risen to it if the man had been human, but he wasn’t—and I kicked.”
His father’s face seemed to have grown thin and shadowy, for dusk was falling, and the fire did not give out much light.
“It never crossed my mind that men could be penalised.”
“People at home don’t suspect all that. Well, I have had that experience; I have had my taste of the English spirit, Dad, and it has made me an anarchist, an outlaw—if you like. I’m out against society——”
Porteous put out an appealing hand.
“I know, I can understand, but, my dear boy, let us try and face things calmly; you have got to go on living, and individual injustices don’t count in this war. It is too big, I suppose.”
“It’s the Machine; it is a machine, and nothing more.”
“I know. But Pierce——”
“Well, Dad?”
“Try and remember Janet. We three must stand together, and if you have suffered—try and remember that we have suffered too. Now, let’s be getting home. I’ll tell Moss to ’phone for the car.”
“Why not walk, Dad?”
And then Pierce Hammersly received one of his first great shocks. He realised that his father was shy of walking up Mill Street; that he was afraid of Scarshott; that life had taken on new shames, new bitternesses, new complexities.
So they drove to Orchards and had tea in the library, and talked of unimportant things, like men afraid of touching upon the truth. Gerard Hammersly’s portrait had been taken down, but in the half light Pierce did not notice that it had gone. He was in a fever to see Janet, to pour out his tale to her, to justify himself, to discover how near her heart beat to his, for his father’s reticences had shaken him a little, and he was less sure of himself than he had been an hour ago. A man can give scorn for scorn when some casual enemy makes a mouth at him, but when those who love him show eyes that are shamed and sad, then his self-pride is apt to melt like wax.
He slipped away out of the house and along the avenue of elms all bleak and dim in the grey autumn darkness. The road was soft with the pulp of fallen leaves, but overhead dry stars were shining. There seemed something incredible about this home-coming, a strangeness that he could not overpass. The surroundings were so familiar, the great trees and the white posts and rails, but the self that had returned with him was a strange, new, unhappy self—a spirit of discords, arrogancies, doubts, dismays. For weeks he had known nothing but loneliness—the sensitive, armed loneliness of a man wandering through a savage and hostile country. And now—he was going to see her; the woman who held the magic fire in her bosom!
And suddenly he realised that he was afraid. Of what? Of her eyes, her voice, the poise of her head, of what she might say to him. He faltered on the dark edge of Scarshott Common. It was as though his old self had been stunned and wounded, and was now struggling back to consciousness, to find that tragic and desperate things had happened.
He fought with himself and went on.
Of course, she would understand, side with him, play the comrade. What was he afraid of? Janet was not the meek, conventional creature, the slave of social inadequacies; a mere impressionable girl.
He saw a light in one of the upper windows of the cottage, but the rest of the little house seemed to be in darkness. Pierce hesitated a moment at the gate, conscious of a strange and incalculable force within there that could not be estimated or defied. What would she say to him; what would he see in her eyes? For the first time that rebel pride of his faltered and came near uttering a despairing cry; he wanted those arms of hers round his neck; he wanted to be understood, comforted.
Walking up the gravel path, and knocking at the door, the thought crossed his mind that there was a poignant romanticism even in such objects as brick and timber porches and brass door-knockers. He touched the rough walls with sensitive fingers. After all, it was femininity that counted; Gallipoli had taught him that, with its mob of sick and depressed men in dirty khaki, and never a petticoat or any homelike thing to be seen. For Hammersly it was a moment of passionate and tense expectancy, his waiting there in the darkness and wondering how she would welcome him.
He heard footsteps and the sound of a lock being turned. The door opened slowly.
“Who is it?”
“Janet—can’t you guess?”
It seemed to him that a soft, warm perfume floated out as the door opened.
“You——? Pierce?”
“Yes—at last.”
Her hands and face were white in the dusk. She seemed to falter a little, hold back.
“Janet—may I come in?”
Something in his voice cried out to the woman in her, with a whisper of loneliness and pain.
Her hands went out to him.
“I have been waiting——”
And Hammersly’s pride burst like a skin of fermenting wine. He found himself kissing those hands of hers, and shedding tears over them. She closed the door and mothered him into the little room where a fire glowed red; a room that was full of mystery and warmth, soft shadows and the dearness of her presence.
“Come——”
She sat down in a low basket-chair before the fire, and with the ingenuousness of a child he stretched himself on the rug with his head resting on her knees.
“Janet——”
“Dear man——”
“I wondered whether you would let me come back to you.”
“But you must trust me.”
“I want to tell you everything. Shall we be left alone?”
“Mother has been ill; she is in bed.”
“I’m sorry, dear.”
He turned his head and looked at her intently.
“I wonder what you think of me? Would you be ashamed to walk through Scarshott?”
The firelight lit her face, and he saw that her eyes were very sad.
“No—not yet.”
“Why do you say not yet?”
“Because I still believe in you. And now tell me everything, and I want you to talk as though you were talking to your own inner self and not to me.”
He turned his face towards the fire, and lay resting against her knees, and her hands lay on his shoulders. She hoped for humility, a frank confession of a new faith from him; but her tenderness had warmed and revived his egotism, and from the beginning he talked to justify himself, accusing everybody, condemning everything. England was rotten, the army a mere stomach on legs, its organisation contemptible. The men who had volunteered were being sacrificed with cynical indifference, while the politicians polished the boots of the shirkers at home. He had seen the English fighting man and he wanted to see no more of him. There was no doubt about the nation being decadent; everybody had lost faith out there, and why should a man throw his life away because some fanatical cad gave him all the dirty work to do?
But Janet’s eyes were full of a great sadness. He had not learnt his lesson yet, and she knew that she would have to help him to learn it.
CHAPTER XXV
So Pierce Hammersly began life anew in Scarshott, driving down daily to the tannery and taking up the duties of junior partner without enthusiasm, and with no settled purpose to steady him. He shared the private room with his father, but he noticed that Porteous stayed more frequently at home, pottering about alone in his glasshouses, or going to sleep in front of the library fire. Father and son appeared to have come to a tacit understanding in their attitude towards Pierce’s past and future. It w
as an attitude of silence, of nervous and uncomfortable reserve. Both men avoided the one vital issue, and this silence created a certain constraint that was like grit in the wheels of life.
Pierce had prepared himself for an atmosphere of active enmity so far as Scarshott was concerned; he had expected tangible evidences of the town’s hostility, but nothing sensational occurred. At first he was a little surprised, nonplussed. He was out to be challenged, and no one challenged him; people were curiously silent; if he went into a shop there was silence; the clerks in the office were like so many dumb creatures whenever he passed through it. He saw nothing but a sort of cold curiosity on the faces of the people whom he met, and this chilling and sinister interest blew like a perpetual wind through the passage of each day.
A man can deal with tangible and physical attacks, but he cannot fight a fog. Scarshott gave Hammersly no chance of making any passionate assault upon its silence, of justifying himself, of giving it a lecture on psychology. The town turned his defiant home-coming into a pathetic anti-climax; it just stared at him coldly and contemptuously, and left him alone.
Once only was he subjected to any sort of exhibition of popular disapproval, and that when half a dozen urchins in brown paper cocked hats, marching down Mill Street, and carrying toy guns and wooden swords, set themselves at his heels, shouting: “Cowardy, cowardy custard, couldn’t touch no mustard.” A few people laughed, but Hammersly reached the tannery gate white as chalk and cold with shameful anger.
Old Moss drove the youngsters off.
“Now, you boys, get along with you.”
But from that day Hammersly never walked down one of the meaner streets of Scarshott. He went everywhere in his car, driving it himself, his eyes fixed on the road ahead of him.
There were the people whom he did not know, and there were the people whom he knew. The first week or so he forced himself to stop and speak to acquaintances, holding his head high and looking them in the eyes. He found them curiously mute, irresponsive, inattentive. They said the most trite and obvious things, and seemed in a hurry to edge away. On one occasion he compelled himself to go to a small social affair in place of his father, and he noticed the sudden silence that fell when he and Janet entered the room. This silence challenged him. He moved about, making himself audaciously pleasant, but found no eyes that smiled. They were cold, curious, expectant. When he attached himself to a group of older men who were discussing some piece of parochial business, and forced himself half aggressively into the discussion, he found that no one listened to what he said. His voice was no more than so much sound. He simply did not count.
Driving away from the place with Janet in the car, he let fall some words of bitterness.
“What provincials these people are!”
“Do you think so?”
He noticed that she did not look at him.
“Assuredly.”
“I think they are just average men and women. You cannot expect them to be much else.”
He said no more, for her proud, unhappy face hurt him.
But there were certain people whom Hammersly could not bring himself to meet. His courage failed towards them, and in his secret heart a kind of hatred made the thought of meeting them intolerable. They were the few people whom he had liked, people who had interested him. Grace Hansard, old Roger Wendover, Chalford the doctor, and a few more. Nor could he escape from the significance of his own dread of these old friends. They were people who counted, people whose views of life could not be despised. His own reluctance to come into human contact with them shocked him, made him suspect that he was less of the iron rebel than he had thought.
And Janet?
She would lie awake at night, her face burning, loving Pierce and hating him, very miserable and very proud. She had framed and chosen her most wise and tender part; it was her business to endure it, waiting, hoping, believing in the inevitable end.
And this man of hers never guessed how she suffered. It did not occur to him to imagine what Scarshott said of her; that she had caught her man and his money, and that she did not mean to surrender them.
“I can’t understand a girl of any character remaining engaged to a man like that.”
“She ought to be ashamed.”
People judge so easily, more especially the people who have never suffered. There were a few whose vision went deeper, and who saw and understood.
Grace Hansard had that vision. It was very strange to Janet that Grace was so gentle, so free from all bitterness in her attitude towards Pierce. She did not judge; she explained, sympathised.
Janet went to Vine Court more often than Pierce suspected. It was like stealing into a warm, still place out of the wind. She found that she could talk to Grace without any feeling of dishonour.
“Of course, I believe that there can only be one end to it. But he has got to discover it for himself. Meanwhile—it’s heartbreaking.”
Grace made her sit on a cushion at her feet, and stroked her hair.
“I know. But some day there will be an awakening. I know Pierce almost as well as you do, dear; you have to touch such men, touch them to tears. Oh, I believe in him.”
“What soft hands you have. I want to bring him here. May I?”
“Of course. But Janet——”
“Dear?”
“I hope he will not come.”
“You mean, he will not have the courage?”
“Not that—in a sense. But I hope that he will be too sensitive. He must be thinking—thinking all the time. He and my man were friends—and my man lies dead out there. Do not ask him yet.”
“And when I do——?”
“If he refuses”—she bent over Janet—“then, the real man in him is awake; he will be near—very near. Yes, I believe it will happen.”
Old Hammersly had aged. He had lost his jauntiness, that cheery and sententious confidence in men and things that had cloaked and covered up inherent diffidences. He troubled less about his clothes; his buttonhole forgot to blossom; he had a shrunken look, and an almost furtive lowering of the eyes. A great talker—one of those shrewd, babbling, kindly fellows—he had grown silent and frowningly thoughtful. There were times when he went wandering about the place with a bewildered and baffled air, as though life had tricked him and left him with empty pockets.
Pierce could not but notice the change in his father; his depression was so obvious that it was like straw spread in a street outside a house where someone lay deadly sick. There was an air about him, too, that said: “No inquiries, please.” And Pierce felt himself perpetually accused by his father’s melancholy, by the way he hid himself at home, even by his sudden bursts of artificial cheerfulness. They never discussed the situation; both of them left this skeleton locked in the cupboard; they ceased to be able to talk to each other in the old frank, friendly way.
Janet was often at Orchards when Pierce was at the tannery, and there were secret conferences between Porteous Hammersly and his future daughter, confidences in which she admonished him with wise courage.
“I have not given up hope, dear. But you must go on in the same way; of course—he notices it——”
“One may feel rather desperate, child, but it seems like stabbing the boy in the back, this playing on his better feelings.”
“Don’t you see that it is inevitable? A time will come when he will realise that he has not convinced the real people—the people who matter.”
“And then——”
“He will not be able to convince himself. It is bitter for all of us, but it is the only way.”
To Pierce she played the good comrade, though there were times when she could not bear him to touch her. These cold moods troubled him, for it was when he needed her most that she seemed to hold aloof. Yet there were moments when she kissed him with passion, the passion that goes before a parting, and again he would go away unhappy, dreading the doubts that pressed upon him more and more. For a whole day she would baffle him with a mysterious reserve,
a silence that was not mere moodiness. He became aware of a look of expectancy in her eyes, as though she were watching and waiting for something to happen, and this look of hers filled him with a feeling of tragic insecurity. He saw himself standing alone on the edge of a cliff with darkness under his feet.
And then a certain vulgar incident drew blood from his soul. It was market day in Scarshott, and Pierce was driving through the town with Janet in the Singer, circumnavigating droves of sheep and cattle, and being irritated by the leisurely cussedness of the people in country carts. He felt in a hurry, a mere mood, for he had nothing to hurry for, and at the corner of the market-place he collided with a hawker’s barrow. It was the hawker’s fault, for he turned his barrow across the road, ignoring the sound of Hammersly’s horn, and not troubling to glance round to see what was behind him. Anyhow, the barrow was overset, and a collection of vegetables and fruit spread about the road.
Hammersly lost his temper.
“Why the devil didn’t you keep to your own side, you damned fool?”
The hawker was a hook-nosed, red-eyed scoundrel in an old bowler hat, one of Scarshott’s bad characters, a fomenter of strife in low taverns. He screamed like an angry bird at Hammersly.
“That’s it—that’s like a gen’leman, ain’t it? Why didn’t yer blow yer blasted trumpet?”
“I did blow it, you fool.”
“Nar yer didn’t. And look ’ere——”
Hammersly was white with rage. He felt Janet touch his arm.
“Please drive on.”
The hawker was standing in front of the car, jerking his arms up and down like an animated scarecrow.
“Look ’ere, who’s callin’ names, hey?”
“Get out of the way, man. Send in the bill for all that stuff, I’ll pay for it.”
“Get out of the way, is it? Pay for it, will yer?”
Hammersly raced his engine and let the clutch in slowly, the hawker side-stepping and hollowing his figure so that the near mud-guard just missed his waistcoat.
“Yah! And who was kicked ’ome because ’e was a coward. That’s class justice, that is; a pore man would a’ bin shot.”
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