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After dinner Mrs. Sophia followed her husband into the library, and since she disliked the room and never sat there during a normal day, her presence filled Porteous Hammersly with a sense of discomfort. Pierce had gone out by way of the high gate leading into the park, and Porteous had seen him disappear beyond the trees.

“Is Pierce out for a stroll?”

“He has gone out to see some people, Sophia.”

“Oh—! Who?”

Porteous felt a fool when he had to betray his ignorance.

“He didn’t tell me.”

“Didn’t you ask him?”

“No. Why should I?”

The opposing attitudes towards life of these two people showed in that question and answer. Mrs. Sophia looked annoyed. Her husband had a way of doing things that she thought quixotic and absurd. She was always telling him that he was much too generous and kind-hearted, too easily fooled.

“Have you ever considered the question of Pierce marrying?”

Porteous Hammersly put the evening paper aside, and showed himself resignedly attentive.

“I can’t say that I have, Sophia.”

“You mean you have not troubled?”

“I am not a believer in interference. After all, marriage——”

He did not complete what he had meant to say, simply because he had caught himself rushing into disastrous sincerity.

“I have a sense of parental responsibility, Porteous. I should like to see Pierce engaged before he leaves us. It is a unique opportunity——”

“But my dear Sophia, how do we know? Pierce has given us no indications.”

“Grace Rentoul would marry him.”

“But what has that to do with it?”

His wife stared him out of countenance.

“What a haphazard creature you are, Porteous. You choose a boy’s career, and what is marriage but one of the great landmarks in his career? I—should like to see him engaged to Grace Rentoul.”

“But, my dear. You don’t understand Pierce.”

“I am asking her here to-morrow. I am going to let Pierce see as much of her as possible. He used to like her. And the Rentouls—well, they are the Rentouls.”

She spread her big white hands, and Porteous Hammersly glimpsed all that that gesture of hers implied. If a man was a baronet, had large estates, and a daughter who was gentle and charming—what more could the mother of a son desire?

“It means safety, Porteous, security. Young men are such fools.”

“I see, my dear. I appreciate your point of view, but would Grace suit our boy?”

“What earthly objection——?”

“Yes, yes, but we don’t all look at life in the same calm way. You don’t understand Pierce.”

“My dear Porteous, I understand him perfectly. Surely I ought to know my own son!”

Pierce Hammersly had left the long shadows of the park behind him, and was striking across Scarshott Common with its masses of furze and sweeps of heather. Scarshott stood on the edge of the pine country, a world of black spruces and Scots firs, of heather and bracken, with an occasional thicket of birches lightening the solemn gloom of the resinous trees. The sun was setting behind Claybury Hill, sending great slants of light over the oak woods and meadows about Scarshott town.

Pierce Hammersly’s objective lay over yonder where the common ended, and the woods began. It was a little white rough-cast cottage with a brown tiled roof, one of those very new cottages with a queer squat chimney, unnecessary buttresses, a mock oak and plaster gable over the porch, and a general air of studied originality. It was the first thing of its kind that had been perpetrated in Scarshott, where the Victorians had been content with adding a blunt brick ugliness to the finer Georgian atmosphere.

A ragged laurel hedge surrounded the garden, and behind it a girl was cutting the grass edges with a pair of shears. She appeared to be expecting someone, for she looked over the hedge from time to time and watched Hammersly crossing the common.

She was a tall girl with a mass of rich brown hair, bright red lips and a quick colour. At the first glance a man might have thought nothing of her face. It was rather broad and sun-tanned, the mouth too big, the cheek bones slightly prominent. Her eyes were large, of a blue-green colour, and set well apart under straight brows. You noticed at once the redness of her lips and her white, strong teeth. Yet there was a human and spiritual attractiveness about her face. It promised mystery, elusiveness, passion, though there was a tinge of bitterness about the mouth and an expectation of sadness in the eyes.

“Janet!”

He was at the gate, and she turned to meet him, dropping the shears points downwards in the grass.

“Hallo!”

His eyes were the eyes of a lover, and though they found an answering light in hers, she was very much the queen of her own soul.

“You got my letter?”

“Yes. And you are going out?”

“We are supposed to sail about the 30th. They are sending me out unattached.”

“What does that mean?”

“I shall be tacked on to something when I get out there. Utterly unsatisfactory, but everything is unsatisfactory about this war. What’s the use of being proud of your unit, and getting to know your men! The volunteer is just a dog.”

There was a suggestion of pain deep down in her eyes.

“It is hard. I suppose they can’t help it.”

“The English haven’t any imagination. We deal in labels and tins of meat, and returns, and vouchers; of course it is trying to be thorough. The fact is, in this war, we are like a man late out of bed and dressing in a furious haste to try and catch the train.”

She smiled at him.

“Will you come in and see mother?”

“Of course. How is Mrs. Yorke?”

“Not very strong. But come in.”

She repeated the invitation in a way that made it a challenge, and Hammersly was sufficiently sensitive to understand her meaning.

“And afterwards?”

“Well——?”

“I want to talk to you, Janet. Let’s go down into the woods. Will you?”

“Perhaps.”

She pulled off her gardening gloves and took Pierce into the cottage. It was most simply furnished and with studied taste. The tall clock in the hall, the Sheraton bureau, and the Hepplewhite chairs in the drawing-room were genuine, and in fine condition. Japanese matting, and plain cord carpets covered the floors. The walls were distempered a soft amberish buff. Here and there a little picture in oils gleamed out with rich colour.

The Yorkes had been unfortunate. Wentworth Yorke had died in prison after being sentenced to five years’ penal servitude for fraud. His wife, fortunate in possessing a little income of her own, had fled with long-legged, quick-coloured Janet to some place where they could be as proud as they pleased. And Janet had put up her hair, lengthened her skirts, and taken the world’s challenge to herself. Scarshott had attempted to be kind to the Yorkes, pityingly, tolerantly kind, but Janet had refused all pity, and refused it with a fierceness that had offended some of the Scarshott ladies.

Mrs. Yorke held out a tremulous, blue veined hand to Hammersly. She was a frail old lady, with a high colour and frightened eyes. She talked in a kind of breathless way, not merely because her spirit was broken, but because she had a heart that should have failed her years ago, in the opinion of the doctors.

“How good of you to come and see us. I hear this is your last leave. How terrible! This war frightens me so, Mr. Hammersly.”

Pierce chatted to her gently for ten minutes, and Mrs. Yorke appeared to understand things perfectly when he pretended that they were expecting him at home.

“Of course. The time must seem so short to them, Mr. Hammersly. I do hope—I do indeed hope—that you will be spared.”

It was Janet who led the way into the pine woods, not as a girl luring on her lover, but as a woman who deigned to hear what a man might wish to say to her. She did not look at Hammersly, but walked beside him with a detached air, her head held high, her eyes gazing into the deepening gloom under the trees.

“Janet, do you realise what this means?”

He was pale with the intensity of his love.

“I am human, Pierce.”

“This damnable war! Of course I expect to come back; everyone does. But you know—why I’m here?”

They were deep in the woods, the straight trunks rising all about them making a world of mystery and of silence. Twilight was drifting over the black tree tops and the bracken was turning grey.

She stood and faced him.

“What am I to think?”

“Good God, you know I love you? I came to tell you. I can’t go out there—to that hell—without the thought of you.”

She looked at him with an air of suffering aloofness.

“Perhaps I know. But I do not know yet how you love me. You remember—about my father.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Every difference. Think.”

He flushed slightly.

“You mean——”

“Try to put yourself in my place. Ought I to let you love me?”

“You can’t prevent it. Janet, what does it matter? You were not responsible; your father might have committed a dozen murders for all I care.”

She said very gently, “Do you realise that I have a devilish pride?”

“I ask for pride. I don’t want some sop of a girl with fluffy hair. I want—you.”

“Well?”

He looked at her fixedly.

“Do you imagine that I think I am conferring a favour?”

“All men do, though the best of them don’t enlarge on it. It is the other people.”

Pierce Hammersly straightened himself, with a quick, proud lifting of the head.

“By God, you are right, and I love this pride in you, Janet. Will you let me take you down to my people, and boast about my luck? I want to go swaggering through Scarshott with you at my side.”

“Do you love me like that?”

“Why, yes. How else could I love you, dear?”

Her eyes lit up with a light that was sacred.

“Pierce! You shall never regret it.”

“Regret it! Oh—my dear, isn’t life wonderful?”

She let his arms take her, let her mouth meet his.