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For two days they were utterly happy, and then the shadow of the Great War loomed over them with a menace that was not to be ignored. They were conscious of the passing of the hours, and with a quick spasm of pain would come the thought: “At this time—three days hence—we shall be together no longer.” Yet it was during these sadder hours that Janet began to know her man, and in knowing him to fear for him. Love seemed to give her a subtle insight—an insight that was fraught with vague misgivings.

One afternoon he took her into the library to show her the portrait of his great uncle, Gerard Hammersly. It hung over the mantelpiece in a good light—a picture in oils of a man in a dark blue cavalry uniform, his shako in the crook of his arm, one hand on the hilt of his sword. He looked straight out of the picture with dark, fearless eyes—a look that challenged and arrested. Pierce’s likeness to his uncle was remarkable. Janet saw the same proud nostrils, the same restive lift of the head. It was individualism at its best and at its fiercest; the individualism of a D’Artagnan or a Henry the Fifth—no temperament for a machine-made patriotism and the gross hypocrisies of a political adventure.

That portrait disturbed her most strangely. It was as though Gerard Hammersly had repeated himself in his nephew; and given like conditions it was almost possible to imagine that Pierce might act as his great uncle had acted. And civilisation, in the gross agony of its disillusionment, had ceased to value individualism. In fact, it was a danger, a disloyalty to the organised mob; a thing to be crushed, trodden on.

She spoke to Porteous Hammersly about that portrait.

“The likeness is extraordinary.”

He gave her a queer, cautious look.

“Did Pierce tell you about his Uncle Gerard?”

“Yes.”

There was a something behind Porteous Hammersly’s eyes that touched her intuition. He also had been troubled by that portrait and that past; she was sure of it, for old Hammersly had a soul.

“Do you approve of what Gerard did?” she asked him.

“My dear, I can’t tell. It is a question how far the individual has a right to defy the law of the majority.”

“Supposing it had happened in this war?”

Once again he gave her that queer, troubled look.

“We are supposed to be fighting for our existence as a nation, Janet. No, I don’t suppose they would show a Gerard much mercy. We thought we were civilised, and we find that we are savages—clever, devilish savages. Every man must brandish a club—and kill. Of course, there are individual heroisms that are splendid.”

“Somehow, I think there is a nobleness in it all. France is noble, and Serbia, and Belgium.”

“And what of England, child?”

She looked solemn as a Cassandra.

“I have a feeling that England has lost its soul, and has not found it again—yet. Aren’t we horribly selfish still. Isn’t the stuff in the papers just so much talk?”

Old Hammersly looked baffled.

“I don’t know. I can’t make up my mind about things. I feel like a man in a crowd with everyone talking at once.”

And there they left it.

Janet began to glimpse Pierce’s weaknesses, and perhaps she loved him with a new mother-love because of them.

A girl who has suffered and thought and fought things out for herself is so much older than the man of her own age, however clever he may be. In the subtlety of her intuition, and in her intimate feeling of the human heart-beats of life, she is his silent and conscious mistress. Women’s knowledge is from within; most of man’s from without.

Pierce would lie with his head in her lap under some Scots fir, with the bracken making green glooms about them, and talk and talk, with his eyes staring at the sky. He was a lovable, highly-sensed egoist. Soldier that he was, his individualism had remained fierce and critical; it had not learnt to subordinate itself, to sacrifice itself blindly. His very cleverness made him undisciplined—as discipline, or resignation, is understood in modern war. He hated authority; he hated routine; and sometimes his voice was inclined to be querulous.

“I know we have had to improvise, improvise, but why we do such fatuous things, I can’t imagine. Take my own case: I’m a chap who wants inspiration. I fight on my nerves; I want to feel the men I’m leading are my men; men I’ve lived and trained with, not an anonymous crowd that don’t care a button whether you get hit or not. There are thousands of men like me, and what do they do with us? Send us out like a lot of cockerels in baskets to a strange farmyard! Oh, I know! You can’t categorise temperaments. We English are too stupid for that.”

She stroked his hair.

“I know it’s hard. But they are all British.”

“There you are—at once. There are sorts of English that I hate worse than Germans. I can’t help it. I don’t want to live with them, much less go through such a devil’s ordeal in their company. There were one or two men in my regiment whom I loathed—impossible people. It’s no use talking to me about the King’s uniform and all that. A blackguard giving me orders makes me feel mutinous.”

He kept her thinking of that portrait of his great-uncle Gerard, and she could imagine him defying all customs and regulations just as Gerard Hammersly had defied them.

“Don’t you take things too much to heart, dear man?”

“I? Well, I hate vulgarity and caddishness and red tape, and the beastly cheap cynicism that you hear in the average mess.”

“Why not take them for granted?”

“I suppose I’m a bad soldier, but I haven’t learnt to be meek and resigned. I often wish that I had been born a Frenchman.”

“Why?”

“France has a soul. The French are real soldiers. The average Englishman doesn’t understand passion and patriotism. He just talks sentimental tosh, and feels warm in his tummy. After all, have we anything to be proud of as a nation? Do I, for instance, grudge the Germans East Ham, or Whitechapel, or the Potteries, or half Lancashire? Not in the least. They could not make things any uglier.”

“You remind me of Bernard Shaw.”

“Thanks. But I do wish I could feel proud of my own people, but somehow I can’t.”

A slow and secret misgiving began to take possession of Janet, and she could not help asking herself questions. Would Pierce stand the strain; had he not too restive an imagination? There was no disloyalty in these doubts of hers; she was very quick and sensitive, and she had an uncanny feeling that these fears of hers were prophetic. She could have wished him less impatient, less ready to let that fiery individualism of his flare out against those in authority.

“Dear girl.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll come up to town with me to-morrow? I’m going to have my khaki drill fitted.”

“Of course I’ll come.”

“I want to say good-bye to Mrs. Hansard and her kiddies this afternoon. Hansard is a great friend of mine; he’s in France. Have you met her?”

“No.”

“She’s a dear, and charming. They live up at Vine Court. She would make rather a good friend for you, Janet, and you’d love the kiddies. Will you drive up with me this afternoon?”

“I should love to.”

The drive to Vine Court took them through the meadows where the long grasses, with the sorrel and daisies, spread a net of silver and bronze. Now and again the road ran close to the Scarr River, a stream of black velvet with green water-weeds trailing under the willows.

Janet noticed that Pierce looked at the country with a peculiar, keen-eyed tenderness. It was like a moving picture slipping out of his life, this England that he had not yet learnt to love.

Vine Court showed itself close to the river, an old Tudor place half hidden in lush greenness, with twisted chimneys, and a broad wealth of old red brick, grey weathered oak and mullioned windows. The road to it led through a meadow planted with huge chestnuts; a high holly hedge shut in the garden.

The drive wound between herbaceous borders that were masses of colour, the blues of delphiniums and anchusas, the white of lilies, the reds of poppies and roses, the gaudy golds of gaillardias, the velvet peach and purple of sweet williams. The whole place smelt of honeysuckle and roses. Ancient trees painted a rich, shadowy background. It was a place of peace and greenness, soft sunlight and honey-hunting bees.

“What a sweet spot!”

“Dick Hansard is a great gardener. He will be back on leave in a week or so, and he’ll spread himself around and love the place. Think of it—after the trenches.”

“I can hear children.”

“There they are.”

They had a glimpse of three mites playing in the grass under some old apple trees. A youngster in blue had been making a wreath of white daisies, and was in the act of crowning the yellow head of a little lady of two. A maid was with them. She straightened herself, turned sharply, and looked anxiously towards the car.

They saw her come hurrying across a lawn, rather white, and with eyes whose vision seemed turned inward. Hammersly had stopped the car.

“Is Mrs. Hansard in, Kate?”

“She is not seeing anybody, sir, since she had the news.”

“What news? Is Mr. Hansard wounded?”

“He’s killed, sir.”

Pierce blurted out a “Good God!” and leant over the steering wheel of the car.

“Killed!”

His voice sounded incredulous.

“When did you hear?”

“The telegram came about twelve, sir. Mrs. Hansard has her mother with her.”

Pierce’s face had a blank, stunned look.

“And his kiddies making daisy chains over there! No—I can’t send a message, Kate. I’ll write.”

He turned the car and drove back between the masses of living colour, watching the children out of the corners of his eyes. Janet had said nothing, but there were tears on her cheeks.

“Old Dick dead. Good God! This damned war! And those kiddies.”

She laid a hand against his arm.

“It’s too tragic! The poor girl in there!”

“And all those flowers! Waiting for him. He just loved every bit of this place. He was such a good chap, so straight and simple and clean! Just fooled away by someone, I suppose!”

“Oh, don’t say that! It makes it so much worse.”

“It makes it damnable.”

He was so deeply moved that he hardly spoke to Janet on the way home. His eyes seemed intent on watching the road ahead of him, that white strip winding through the green of an English June. Richard Hansard dead, hidden away in a hole somewhere over there in France, while his kiddies played in the sunlight! Hansard had been so much alive, such a lover of home things, and it seemed only yesterday that Pierce had seen him married. Hansard had hated going; it had almost torn his heart out, and now he was dead.

“This damnable war!”

“It is so difficult to realise things.”

“I don’t think I ever realised them—till to-day. That garden and the children, and the darkened house, and Hansard lying dead over there.”

“She has the children.”

“Yes, but they were such pals. There is one blessing; Dick will have left her an income. She was a doctor’s daughter, and she would have had nothing.”

He relapsed again into an awed silence, but he was thinking of Janet as well as of the Hansards and their home. What would happen to her if he never came back? She would be left with a miserable little income, living on her mother, cramped, fettered, a bird in a cage.