Читать книгу Valour - Warwick Deeping - Страница 7

Table of Contents

So the elder Hammerslys accepted the situation, arguing that the times were abnormal, and that they could not quarrel with an only son a few days before he went on active service. Women can be very adaptable, especially when it is a question of covering a retreat, and Pierce’s mother appeared at breakfast with an air of self-sacrificing serenity that suggested victory in surrender.

“You had better bring Jane to lunch, Pierce.”

“Janet, Mother.”

“I stand corrected. There is a more aristocratic flavour about the name of Janet. For your sake, Pierce, I will efface myself; we must make the best of this affair.”

“I don’t think we shall find it so very hard, Mater.”

“In your absence, Pierce, I will afford Janet every advantage in the way of—education. She might like some French lessons.”

Pierce showed signs of restiveness.

“It is very considerate of you, but you haven’t realised, Mater, that Janet is a gentlewoman. She speaks French and German. As far as education goes she is better off than any girl in Scarshott.”

“Indeed! Quite a blue stocking!”

Pierce drove up to Heather Cottage in the little Singer, and found Janet tying up some of her roses. One long shoot had scratched her cheek, and there was a little drop of red blood hanging there like a ruby.

“Hallo, a real live wound!”

“Have I scratched myself?”

She put her handkerchief to her face, her eyes smiling into his.

“My people expect you to lunch. I have got a formal letter somewhere.”

“I want you to be quite frank, Pierce. Are they very angry with me?”

“The pater was splendid; we had a long confab; there is nothing wrong with the pater’s heart.”

“And your mother?”

He took her hands.

“I’ll admit I had to fight the mater, but she surrendered and peace reigns. And now, there is a finger here that has got to be decorated. Can your mother spare you?”

“I think so.”

“Then we’ll run around in the car.”

That was one of the happiest mornings of their lives. They drove in to Scarshott, and processed once or twice up and down the High Street with the triumphant audacity of lovers. There was no doubt about the elemental picturesqueness of their romance. They were watched with peculiar interest, and to Pierce Hammersly this love pageantry moved to subtle music. He was a romantic egoist, and life was full of colour, delight and tenderness.

They drew up outside the bank. Pierce cashed a cheque, and came out smiling.

“Will it please Her Highness to walk a little way.”

Pierce Hammersly was not a man who looked tentatively in shop windows. He walked in with that large air that does not consider trifles, an aristocratic English tranquillity that assumes the ownership of the earth.

Cranston’s, the local jewellers, was one of those ancient and solidly established shops that suggest the solemnity of a cathedral close. Old Cranston had the presence and the manners of a dean. He sold you a wedding-ring as though he were performing the marriage ceremony, and he was so polite that he made self-conscious people feel apologetic.

He swept forward to receive Pierce.

“Good morning, Mr. Hammersly; good morning, madam.”

“Show me some rings, Mr. Cranston, will you?”

“Signet rings, sir—or ladies’ rings? Ex-actly. I understand. That tray out of the window, sir. A chair, Mr. Wills, for the lady. Delightful weather—just what we should wish to see in June. Permit me to show you the contents of this tray, Mr. Hammersly.”

Pierce caught Janet’s eye and winked at her.

“Is there any particular sort of ring, sir?”

Mr. Cranston rubbed his pink hands together, and hovered tactfully over the problem. It did not do to jump to conclusions, and Mr. Cranston prided himself on his discretion.

“I want a ring for this lady, Mr. Cranston.”

“Ex-actly. Now—as to stones—diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds? Sapphires. Thank you. Now here is a very elegant thing—an exquisite thing. Such superb colour.”

With Mr. Cranston’s sympathetic assistance they managed to find the one miraculous ring that was to change its velvet bed for Janet’s hand. It cost Pierce Hammersly forty guineas. He began to look around the shop for other plunder.

“May I have the pleasure of showing you something else, sir? Bracelets, pendants, ladies’ watches——?”

“Have you a watch, Janet?”

“Yes. And I don’t care for trinkets.”

She looked at him tenderly, but meaningly.

“What about——?”

“No, really—I won’t have anything else.”

Mr. Cranston effaced the merchant in himself, most delicately.

“Will you wear the ring, madam, or shall I——”

“I’ll wear it, thank you.”

Mr. Cranston handed it with great stateliness to Pierce, who slipped it on Janet’s finger. Cranston beamed on them, and slid round the counter to open the door.

“Pierce, I almost feel married!”

They laughed joyously.

“It was quite a rite of the church——bless you, my children—what? There is quite a good shop down by the Guildhall.”

She stood firmly by the car.

“I am not going to let you buy me anything else.”

“Why not?”

“Pride, dear. I am not going to let anybody say——”

“Oh, you sensitive goddess! But you are adorable. All right; I surrender.”

“Thank you, dear man.”

They reached Orchards about twelve o’clock, and found old Porteous sitting under the weeping ash near the porch, and pretending to read the paper. He had been waiting for them, determined that the house of the Hammerslys should meet Janet with a smile.

He flourished the paper at them.

“Here you are! Delighted to see you, my dear. Let me open the door.”

He was very gallant and fatherly, and the aloofness melted out of Janet’s eyes. She went into the house with one hand resting in the crook of Porteous’s arm, and her heart wholly his from that moment.

“Sophie, here are our young people.”

Sophia Hammersly rose slowly from her chair. It was obvious that she had decided to make the affair as formal and unintimate as was possible, without risking a further battle with her son. She gave Janet a high and drooping hand to shake, and stared at her with hard and observant eyes.

“I am glad to meet you, Miss Yorke. I hope you will make my son—happy.”

A slight emphasis on the “hope” trailed a flicker of doubt after it.

Janet behaved admirably, and with the utmost nerve. She began talking quite calmly and frankly to Mrs. Hammersly. They sat opposite each other, Janet on the chesterfield, Mrs. Sophia on a high chair, and Pierce’s mother seemed the more nervous of the two. The girl’s repose was the repose of the well-bred woman of the world. She did not fidget, did not chatter, and her eyes looked straight at Sophia Hammersly as though her pride had nothing to fear.

The two men loitered awhile, and then drifted out into the garden. Porteous Hammersly had a whimsical smile on his face.

“Pierce, that girl’s splendid. Did she know——?”

“She knew that mother and I had issued ultimata to each other on her account.”

“No! That was a bit of fine breeding, real breeding. I don’t care if Yorke was a fraudulent idiot; he passed on some good blood.”

“I haven’t thanked you yet, Pater.”

“What for?”

“The way you met Janet. You should have seen the way her face softened.”

“Tut, tut; the great thing in life is not to hurt people. Let’s go and choose the child a rose.”

Though Mrs. Sophia remained a mass of ice, that lunch proved much less of an ordeal than Janet had expected. Porteous was in great form. In fact, he most thoroughly enjoyed himself, and even made a boast of it under the cold eyes of his wife.

“I suppose you young people want the afternoon to yourselves.”

“Not a bit of it. What’s the plan, Pater?”

“Why shouldn’t we take the Rolls-Royce, and run over to Imping Water for tea.”

Janet turned bright eyes to his.

“I should have loved it, but mother is all alone. You see, she’s an invalid.”

Porteous’s eyes said “Good girl.” His wife gave a faint, cynical sniff. Little hypocrite, making fools of the men!

“Mrs. Yorke is not strong enough to motor? If she would ignore formalities——”

“She really is not fit for it, Mr. Hammersly. She has a heart——”

“Dear, dear. I know that’s serious.”

After lunch they sat in the big veranda and talked, the three of them, for Mrs. Sophia had a headache, and went to lie down. Old Porteous, horribly afraid of finding himself de trop, jumped up twice, and was ignominiously held by the coat-tails by his son.

“Don’t go, Dad.”

“But, my dear boy——”

“Janet, tell him he has got to stay.”

“Am I boring you, Mr. Hammersly?”

Her roguish, happy eyes reassured him.

“Bless my soul, bored indeed! Well, I like that! So you went to old Cranston for the ring, did you? I suppose he blessed you?”

They brimmed with laughter while Pierce imitated Mr. Cranston’s well-known episcopal and benedictory manner.

“And Janet winked at me.”

“I didn’t.”

“I almost think she did, Pierce.”

Pierce walked back with Janet to Heather Cottage, a man wholly delighted with the woman of his choice. He stayed to tea with the Yorkes, made himself charming to Janet’s mother, and talked with a humorous yet fiery abandonment that made them both laugh. He told them tales of the amateur army, yet there was a tinge of bitterness in his voice. “If only we were like the French,” was his cry.

After tea Mrs. Yorke shepherded them abroad.

“I know Mr. Hammersly would like a walk.”

They wandered out together into the woods, and it was still Pierce who talked, wittily, facetiously, but sometimes with passion. Janet had slipped into a silent mood, with a shadow as of much thinking in her eyes. This new-won man of hers puzzled her not a little, challenged her curiosity. He was an egoist, with a sensitive temperament, generous, fiery, proud, much more impassioned than the ordinary Anglo-Saxon, less stupidly passive, less tolerant of restraint.

He noticed her silence and linked an arm in hers.

“What a garrulous idiot I am! And this wise goddess thinks the more.”

“I am considering my new responsibilities.”

“Me?”

“The whole house of Hammersly.”

His eyes flashed laughter.

“Oh, the mater! You need not take her seriously. The mater patronises everybody. If she weren’t my mother, I should hate her like poison. Father is different.”

“He’s a dear,” she confessed, “and you are like him in some ways, and yet not the least bit like him.”

“This is getting interesting. Let’s sit down here, and go into the matter thoroughly.”

They lay facing each other in the bracken under the sweeping branches of an old and stunted Scots fir. Janet unpinned her hat and laid it between them. It was very still and peaceful in this great wood.

“Now, you are going to analyse me.”

“I’m serious, Pierce. In some ways, you don’t seem quite English.”

“I’m not. I take it as a compliment. My great grandmother was a Frenchwoman.”

“Was she?”

“Yes. And I’m supposed to be absurdly like a great uncle of mine, Gerard Hammersly. We have got his portrait in the library; I’ll show it you. He was rather notorious in his day.”

“How?”

“Uncle Gerard was in the army. He was one of those restive, fiery men who cannot stand a blackguard. There was some general or other—in one of those Indian campaigns—who ought to have been in jail instead of at the head of a brigade. Uncle Gerard was under him. There was an almighty row about something, and Gerard Hammersly did a thing which was right morally, but utterly wrong according to regulations. They broke him for it—threw him out. The thing caused a sensation for a time; there were squabbles in Parliament over it.”

“And what happened to your uncle?”

“He became a Frenchman, fought for France, and was killed at Sedan.”

She sat up, with her chin resting on her crossed arms that rested on her bent knees; she stared into the shadowy deeps of the wood.

“And they say you are like him?”

“I have noticed it myself. And I have an idea that I am like him in temperament. I have learnt that already in the army. I can’t stand being hectored by a man whom I don’t like or respect. My brain gets red hot, and I feel like boiling over.”

“I can understand.”

He edged nearer, and put an arm over her shoulders.

“I think there is a bit of the rebel in both of us. But what does anything else matter, dear? We have just four more days.”

The woman in her answered him. She drew close and let her head rest on his shoulder. Her eyes were full of enchantment.

“Just four days! I’ll wait for you, Pierce; I shall be so proud of you. And some day you will come back to me.”

“Dear heart——”

“This war is teaching us how to love.”