Hammersly flushed up like a sensitive boy.
“Only my foot.”
“You saved our lives, you know. Shake hands.”
They shook hands, looking into each other’s eyes.
“You ought to feel pleased with yourself, Hammersly.”
“Not a bit.”
“I’m not going to keep quiet about it. You ought to get the Cross.”
CHAPTER XXXVI
Twenty-four hours later Private Hammersly lay abed in a general hospital somewhere on the French coast, with a few old letters and Janet’s photograph on the table beside him. His foot, smothered up in dressings, no longer seemed to belong to him. He had been washed, put into a hospital nightshirt, given some hot soup, had his temperature taken and his pulse rate registered by a little nurse with brown eyes and black hair who took him in charge as though he belonged to her. His name, rank, unit, regimental number, and the nature of his wound were recorded on the case sheet at the head of his bed. And he felt most flagrantly and serenely comfortable, a tired man who exulted in his pillow and in the clean sheets, in the brightly coloured coverlet of his bed, in the flowers on the tables, in the pleasant figure of the little nurse with her pretty bosom and swinging skirts.
Through the window opposite him he could see sand dunes, a few pine trees, and the blue sea. The ward seemed most strangely quiet after the monstrous racket of the trenches. He turned his head right and left and looked at the other beds and the inmates. The two men next him were both asleep, and Hammersly understood the meaning of that sleep—a blessed and luxurious oblivion after days and nights of hell. One or two of the beds had red screens round them, ominous screens. Some of the men were chatting, others reading papers.
The nurse drifted near, and Hammersly hailed her.
“Nurse——”
She came to him, smiling, like a creature out of another world.
“I don’t want to bother you, Nurse, but are there any other men of the Fifty-third Sussex here?”
“Not in this ward. Now we want you to go to sleep.”
“Yes, I’ll be very good. But can I write a letter?”
Her eyes glimmered at his.
“I see——”
“I shan’t sleep till I have scribbled something home.”
She brought him a bed-table with a sloping flap, some note-paper and a pencil.
“Nearly everybody wants this first dose of medicine.”
“I’m sure it does them good, Nurse.”
“Of course.”
He thought her a very charming and sensible young woman.
So Pierce scribbled a short letter to Janet.
“My Dear Heart,—Don’t worry. Here I am in No. 33 General Hospital, and as comfortable as could be. Left foot a little bit knocked about. I’m happy. I have got my pride back. Surely life is very good. . . .”
Then he lay down, curled himself up, and slept as though he had not slept for weeks. The nurse came softly and took the table away, smiled at him, glanced at the address on the envelope, smiled again, and went to make sure that the letter was posted.
When Hammersly woke there were red screens round his bed. The little nurse was bending over him, with her hand on his shoulder, and a couple of doctors stood at the bottom of the bed.
“Had a good sleep, Tommy?”
“Splendid, sir.”
“Now, let’s have another look at this foot, Nurse.”
The elaborate and careful business of removing the dressings was gone through, as though hidden poisons lurked in the clean bed-clothes and the air of the spotless ward.
“Hurting you?”
“Not a bit, sir.”
The nurse bunched the clothes up so that Hammersly could not see the thing that had once been a foot, but as a matter of fact, he made no attempt to get a glimpse of it. The two doctors were making a careful examination; they appeared to understand each other without speaking; a glance, a nod of the head sufficed. Then the taller of the two came round and felt Hammersly’s pulse.
“I say, my friend, I am afraid that foot of yours is rather badly smashed.”
He looked down kindly at Pierce.
“You mean it is no more use?”
“Yes. I am afraid we shall have to amputate it.”
Hammersly smiled up at him.
“That’s quite a small thing. It won’t worry me in the least.”
They operated on him next day, and with complete success, and he was back in bed, being abominably sick after the anæsthetic. The little nurse was very kind to him, and full of pleasant sympathy.
“You’ll feel better—soon. I know it seems very hard to lose a foot.”
“That’s nothing, Nurse. It’s only this confounded sickness. What’s a foot—after all? I’m one of the lucky ones.”
“We have sent a wire off to your people.”
“What a brick you are, Nurse. Yet ‘brick’ seems the wrong sort of word to use.”
“I like it.”
And they laughed.
* * *
At Scarshott there were two people who were very happy, for a wound is good news to those at home when death has been dared and cheated. Pierce’s letter reached Janet a day after the official telegram, and kindled such a glow of joy and exultation in her that she ran out into the pine woods to take in deep breaths of sweet woodland air. Her man had proved himself; he had passed through the valley of shadows; he would come back to her, proud and unashamed. The suspense melted out of her brain; her heart beat like the joyous wings of a bird.
Now while they had been lying side by side outside that dressing-station, Hammersly and Guest had scribbled down each other’s home addresses, Pierce making his record on the back of Janet’s photograph, Guest pencilling Hammersly’s on the corner of an envelope. And Guest, lying abed in a hospital not twenty miles away, thought much and often of Hammersly and also of those people of his at home. These thoughts of his gathered and took shape in the form of a letter, a letter that sent Porteous Hammersly walking through Scarshott town with a rose in his buttonhole, and his hat tilted at a triumphant angle.
“I should like you to know,” wrote Guest, “that I owe my life to your son’s courage, and that four other men can say the same. He behaved most splendidly, bringing in wounded under fire, and to save us, he, single-handed, attacked a German patrol. I hope he will be with you soon, and I’m proud to have known him.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
Late in July a white ship carried Pierce Hammersly across the Channel. He was disembarked as a stretcher case, having not yet reached the felicity of crutches, and being put on board a hospital train, he ended the day’s journey as one of a little convoy assigned to a V.A.D. hospital in one of the southern counties. It had been raining, but the clouds broke towards sunset, letting in a great stream of golden light. The earth smelt fresh and sweet, and there was a soft and pleasant dripping from the trees. The rain pools on the platform of the village station caught the gleam of the sunset, and this village station had one of those high-banked gardens that was a smother of flowers. These wounded men sniffed the air exultantly, and breathed in well-remembered summer perfumes as they were carried or walked to where the cars were waiting. One of them stopped to pick a sprig or two of mignonette, and, holding it to his nose, breathed deeply in.
“No gas-helmet wanted, Snowy!”
A fragile youngster, with large, troubled eyes, looked up at the big chestnut trees along the road.
“Isn’t it green!”
“By God,” said a voice, “it’s good to be home.”
Dusk fell as the three cars climbed out of a red village and up a wooded hill covered with well-grown larches. The orderly had left the curtains looped back, and Hammersly had a view of a wonderful dusky landscape, all soft and dim, melting into a green-gold afterglow. The tall larches stood solemn and stiff, with a few stars glimmering above them. Even the grey road had a mystery and a romance of its own, winding in and out between the darkening woods.
&
nbsp; The man on the other stretcher had been lying very still, with his hands folded on his breast. He had lost a leg, and was as white as milk. And suddenly he began to speak.
“Seems worth it, somehow, all that funk and sweat and worrying. Can’t you smell the hay, old pal?”
“They must have been cutting in that field over the hedge.”
“Lord, I should like to roll in it! Did you see that little garden down at the station?”
“Rather.”
“It damned nearly made me cry.”
This V.A.D. hospital had settled itself in Poyntz Hall, a big country house hidden away in the middle of a deer park, a weather-worn, red-brick house, sunning itself on the south slope of a hill. Its gardens were a century old; so were the beeches and oaks in the park. There was a great stretch of water where the deer came down at dusk to drink. In the distance, between the dense green masses of the woods, you could see the glint of yellowing cornfields touching the blue of the sky.
Pierce’s bed was pulled out on to the terrace next morning, but he was in an adventurous mood, and growing restless.
“Can I have this letter posted, Sister, please? My people don’t know I am here.”
“Of course.”
“And I think I could manage to get about on crutches. The stump has healed.”
“We will see what the doctor says.”
The doctor came and saw, and promoted Hammersly to the mobile section.
“Don’t you go tumbling about. And take care of that leg. Get someone to supervise his first attempt, Sister.”
So Pierce was allowed to dress and to stump up and down the terrace, and even to descend the broad steps, a man with one arm steadying him. Poyntz Hall reminded him of Orchards with its great lawns, its cedars, its sharply contrasted masses of light and shadow, and its wealth of flowers. Pierce found a long chair under one of the cedars, and the peace of the place was so compelling that he lay down and went to sleep.
Scarshott was eighty miles away, but that letter from Poyntz Hall brought the Hammerslys’ big car speeding along the summer roads. Mrs. Sophia was away from home at the time, and in his heart of hearts Porteous Hammersly did not regret her absence, for on this almost sacred day he had a girl with wonderful and proud eyes beside him. And in watching her, Porteous Hammersly marvelled that he had ever been a snob. This war was giving life its truer values; in the future there would be more winning of things, and less buying of them.
He was an unselfish old boy, and as the car turned in at the park gates he proposed to efface himself for the first half hour.
“I shall stay in the car, Janet, for a while.”
“Oh—no!”
He smiled at her.
“Won’t it look rather ridiculous if we both insist on sitting here? And age is supposed to be privileged.”
“I wonder why you are so good to me.”
“Because I like it, or can’t help it; which is the best possible reason.”
At Poyntz Hall the commandant had to be interviewed, and the commandant was a large woman in a red linen dress, who looked stupid, but was not by any means.
“Private Hammersly? I expect he will be out in the garden. It isn’t the regular visiting hour.”
“I haven’t seen him since he was wounded, and his father and I have driven eighty miles.”
“Have you? I will send a boy scout to find your brother.”
Janet’s face betrayed her.
“Really, how obtuse of me. I am sure that he will be out in the garden. Perhaps you would like to see the garden? We are particularly proud of our ramblers; I’ll show you the way, and the scout can find Private Hammersly.”
“Thank you so much.”
This rose garden was a very sweet and sequestered spot, surrounded by a yew hedge ten feet high, and in this green and living wall recesses had been cut for seats. The commandant was a woman of understanding, and when Pierce entered the rose garden, tapping the flagged walk with his crutches, he could see nothing but masses of rambler roses, smothering arches and pillars and running along ropes like flame.
“Janet.”
He called to her as though he were the lord of the garden and no other man in hospital dress had any right to be within hearing.
“Where are you?”
“Here.”
Janet was in one of the green recesses, and she came out of her hiding-place, with the sunlight in her eyes. Hammersly was resting on his crutches under a wooden arch covered with red and white rambler roses, and she saw his crutches and that edge of grey cloth that ended in nothing. And her heart went out to him with a great rush of pity and pride.
“My dear girl—my dearest——”
He was absurdly moved, and he kept on saying the same words over and over again. Moreover, he was not very sure upon his crutches, and she had to steady him with her hands upon his shoulders.
“You have lost a foot!”
“Why, so I have!”
“But, Pierce, you never told us.”
“Didn’t I? Well, what does it matter; they rig you up so prettily now. Good God, is it really you, Janet?”
“Really me.”
“Let’s go and sit down. Are you all alone?”
“Father is waiting in the car. He insisted on my seeing you first.”
“Dear old pater; always a sportsman. I say—I think I shall have to hobble along on my own, Janet; I shall only tread on your toes with these things.”
He laughed, and his laughter was happy and tender, while she hovered near him, watching, ready to help him when he should need her. An oak bench stood in one of the recesses in the yew hedge, and Janet took his crutches and helped to lower him with an arm about his body.
“You never told me how it all happened, but someone else wrote to us.”
“Who?”
“Captain Guest.”
“Did he? I could have died for that man, for our officers were splendid.”
“So were you.”
He looked half shyly at her.
“I think I did all right, and the funny thing was I did not feel afraid. I had your picture and your letters in my pocket.”
“Dear man.”
She took his face between her hands and kissed him impulsively.
“I’m so very proud of you. I never thought it was possible to be so happy. There—I really must go and fetch your father.”
“Yes, I’m a selfish pig.”
She went away, and returning with Porteous Hammersly, she pushed him gently into that labyrinth of roses, and left the two men together.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Like many other towns in England, Scarshott was being educated. It was developing the glimmerings of a social imagination; a more intimate understanding of the horrors and heroisms, the sordid splendours, the pathetic moral victories of this great war. There were people in Scarshott, even people of the middle classes, who began to have glimpses of a new era, a new ordering of the ways and means of life, of strange and inevitable changes that would have shocked them into a screaming and frightened rage in the early summer of 1914. Someone was bold enough to say that the British working man had behaved splendidly; that the future was his; that democracy had justified itself. The older individualism was bleeding to death. These armies that have faced German gas and German shells are not likely to falter in their advance upon the Future. Bigness must replace littleness; the red blood of a fine comradeship must flow through us all. Let the bugles blow the “Fall-in,” and let us march into the New Epoch like good comrades, not thinking solely of self as in the old days, but of every man and every woman and every child in these our islands.
Scarshott was learning humility, sympathy, kindliness. True, the town was still in its “infants’ school,” but had been shocked out of its rigid, non-vital, sneering, critical selfishness. It had lost a score of its young men; it had seen scores of its young men wounded. Therefore, if Scarshott smiled at all, it smiled very kindly over Porteous Hammersly’s second flowerin
g. He was once more the debonair and dressy old gentleman, gay with that frank and honest gaiety that the war has given us, a laughing philosopher and not a dry-as-dust in tears.
His workpeople welcomed that flower in his buttonhole.
“The old boy’s feeling pleased with life.”
“And he deserves it. Young Pierce did the right thing; he couldn’t ’ave done more.”
“They say he’s lost his foot.”
“Yes, saving a wounded officer, and several other chaps. A man couldn’t do more than that, could he?”
Moreover, Porteous Hammersly was one of those who had begun to look at the industrial system with a new sort of vision. He had had Pierce’s letters to help him; letters written with a fresh and vivid sincerity, the letters of a man who had lived with men.
“We can’t go back to the old ways, Pater. It’s unthinkable. The fact is, the average man is an amazing good chap; we can’t shove him back into any corner, and keep him there sweating ten hours a day. Before this war we had lost the spirit of unity; we were fighting each other. Oh—I know. We said all sorts of sneering things about the working man, but it is the working man who has checkmated Germany. I have been asking myself all sorts of stiff questions. Why should I have so much more than I really want, when other people are just existing? There is only one honest answer to that question, Pater. Yes, I’m a Socialist. What a lot of rot we used to talk about Socialism! And it is with us now, the Socialism of Organisation, the Fair Deal, Discipline, the Courage that faces facts, and is not afraid to turn things upside down. If any man tries to talk the old individualistic, selfish stuff to me when I come home I shall want to kick him.”
And again:
“Of course there must always be authority, but not the authority that money gives. Men will do anything, put up with almost anything when they realise that it is for a big end, a big ideal, for the good of the whole family. We don’t want any more swollen individualism in our natural life, I mean that individualism that is too rich and too powerful. I have lived with working men, heard them talk, and some of them are my very good friends. I have come to understand and to share their distrust of the big boss. I believe our future industrial army could be as well disciplined and as solid and as comradely as this Fighting Army. I should like to see this discipline carried on, becoming a tradition. It is such a mistake to imagine that discipline makes life harder. It doesn’t. Discipline for all and for the benefit of all. It would mean life—real life—for millions, instead of mere existence.”
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