CHAPTER IX

OUR MESS-MATES

"Whence came ye, merry Damsels, whence came ye, So many, and so many, and such glee?" --KEATS.

Later Elizabeth and I talked to Miss Easton, who, while the Campites played, read, sewed, or danced as before, told us a little about them all--these girls, who were already less strange to us, and who were all to become our friends.

Miss Easton began with her own story. Her last job had been in a munitions factory, where she'd worked ten hours a day on a skeleton bridge 35 feet up in the air, which had danced and quivered with the heat of a row of furnaces below. She said it always felt like Vesuvius going to break into eruption. Not unnaturally her health had broken down.

At the Labour Exchange she had mentioned "Forestry" as a forlorn hope, and they'd given her a trial--in more senses than one.

She had been set to cross-cut sawing with a hardened "old hand." Twenty-five trees was counted a day's work. Halfway through the twenty-third she had fainted clean off. For a week she'd crept back to her billet, and had just taken her aches and blisters to bed, where she lay like a log until the next morning. Now she could stand anything--climb like a cat or run like a deer.

"I feel finer every day," she told us, smiling.

Then she told us of the others, in order of what used to be called "Social Importance." I suppose Sybil Wentworth came first. She was the country-house girl, who had only known London as the Season, the Park, Hurlingham and Henley. Her own home was lovely, Miss Easton said; there was Georgian wing and a Norman chapel, and it boasted one of those other countless bedrooms where Queen Elizabeth had passed a night.

Now Sybil's mattress was drawn up next to Lil's, who had been maid-of-all-work in one of the million villas that are too small to house and feed a servant decently, but where a servant must be kept because one is kept in bigger houses.

Among Lil's mates were a girl from Somerville, a pickle-factory hand, a student of music, and Vic the Cockney.

In every community of girls is one who will always take the lead by virtue of her vitality and initiative. Here it was Victoria Jelks, the ex-coster girl from Kentish Town, who stood out as one of the handsomest, "goeyest," and most efficient women I have met.

The forewoman took Vic's advice; Sybil deferred to her. Yet she belonged to the class that we have seen blackening Hampstead Heath on Bank Holidays, grimy and anæmic, made ugly by the life and toil of town. The country, the air, the healthy work have beautified them back into the mould that Nature meant; have given them back shapeliness and colour.

I pondered over the miracle, as I saw it now.

For these once-town girls, too, the two great drawbacks of the country did not exist. Dulness, loneliness! How could they feel lonely or bored leading this communal life all set to laughter? No wonder if they found it like the very best bits of being back at school again! With fewer restrictions, too, with what wealth of new ideas, fresh outlooks on life gained by the intermingling of class with class....

Kitchener's First Army was not more of a medley of types!

"Why," Elizabeth asked softly, "have they all joined up?"

"Oh! Different reasons they give," answered the forewoman. "One joins because her pal joined. Lil there was tired of domestic service--I'm sure I don't blame her. Another hears what fun the life is--and it is fun, even if we do have to work hard. We couldn't work so hard if it weren't fun! Another thinks it's a shame if we can't do as much as the Frenchwomen do. Another girl just said, 'I've got six brothers serving.'"

Here a lump came into my throat as I listened. I thought of my own brothers. Jack, who went down with his ship in '15--Guy with his guns--Victor, the youngest of us all, who had just got his wings, and was off to join his air squadron in France. What sort of sister was I to those fighting boys? Unworthy! Poor in physique and grit, I'd been ready to buy myself out of the Land Army almost before I'd given it a trial.

I was still thinking of that after "Lights out," when all the girls were already asleep.

But Elizabeth, from the next mattress, heard.

She crept near in the darkness.

"Joan! What is it? Why are you crying?" she whispered. "Are you cross because I teased you about that wretched Harry?"

"No! Oh, no," I whispered back. "It's only that I--I felt ashamed of myself! There was I--ready to jack up this morning! I won't now. No, not if I never stop feeling stiff again, I shall stick it. I've just made up my mind this minute."

"You made it up before," murmured my chum, wriggling back to her mattress. "You made it up this morning when that young man said----"

"Oh, bother that interfering young man," I interrupted, "I hope I don't see him again."

Elizabeth, as she rolled over again, said drowsily but firmly, "You'll see him again before three days are up."