CHAPTER XXIV

STORM

"Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky." --MEREDITH.

I turned up my face. Splash! came the first huge thunder drop upon it.

"Run for it. Run for the farm!" exclaimed both the men. I saw Colonel Fielding's slender hand dart out and catch that sunburnt paw of Elizabeth's as they dashed after the farmer's wife. Hand in hand they ran over the field like children, laughing like children too--and I knew this would be another of "THE" moments of life to my little chum.

I was legging it after them when I was stopped as if by a shot. From behind me there was a sharp cry.

"Joan! Joan!"

I turned to the corner under the elms where we had been picnicking. Every one had left it in their dash for cover before the rain came on. Only Captain Holiday was there; he stood, his back to the biggest elm, his hands spread out behind him on the trunk, his face ghastly white.

"Joan!" he called like a child.

I ran back to him.

"What's the matter?" I asked anxiously. "Has your knee let you down?"--I knew that one of his wounds had been in the knee--"Where are you hurt?"

"I'm not hurt," he said, and tried to smile. "Only I----"

Crashing thunder drowned his voice. Then I saw an odd thing happen. His whole body seemed to shrink and flatten itself against that tree. He caught his hands away from the bark and covered his face. He was in an agony.

I hurried to him. He clutched my arm.

"Don't go," he muttered. "I say, I'm mad sorry, but I can't help it. I thought I was right again. I've been like this ever since the Somme. Those guns--I'm afraid you'll have to stay with me. I can't move from here yet. You see I----"

Crash! came the thunder just above us again. He shook as it rolled away. Then in a whisper that seemed torn from him I heard him say: "I'm frightened of that."

I could have cried. For in a flash as of the lightning now playing above the hills I seemed to understand all.

Shell-shock! This healthy and normal young man had been through every horror of war, and I knew how bravely. Some of the wounded soldiers at the hospital had been in his old company; they had had plenty of tales to tell. He was as plucky as any lion--but he was "done in" now. Thunder, that brought back to him the guns of that hell in which he had been last wounded, found him paralysed and helpless with shock.

I took both his hands.

"I'll stay with you," I said as comfortingly as I could. "Come to the other side of the tree, it's absolutely sheltered there." I sat down, leaning against the trunk. "Sit down by me."

I remembered how often I had been told as a child not to shelter under trees in a thunderstorm, but what else was there to do?

The big warm thunder-drops, that had been coming one by one, were now pattering faster and faster on the leaves. Again the thunder crashed; Captain Holiday crouched up close to me. I found myself slipping my arm about his neck--he was trembling. What else could I do? I heard him say "Thank you, dear." And he put his head down on my shoulder. He buried his brown face against my overall when the next crash came.

Yes! He clung to me for comfort as if there were no other help for him in the world. At that moment there was no other.

What a half-hour! I felt I must be dreaming. Could it be I, Joan Matthews, Land Girl, who was sitting there? Yes; here was my own overalled arm round the quite solid-feeling neck of the young man; it was my own shoulder against which his head was refuged. Once I was nearly, nearly sure I felt his lips against the rough holland of my smock--but that was a chance touch. Once I found myself wishing wildly that the storm need never stop, and that I could stay here like this for ever, not moving, not speaking!

To speak would mean a drop out of the seventh heaven and back to Britain in war-time, to a world full of disappointments--and Muriel.

Even Muriel would never be able to take this one little half-hour from me when I had been Dick Holiday's only help in distress, when he had just once said "Dear" to me; even if he hardly knew in his agitation to whom he was speaking!

I should always have one perfect memory.

It was he who spoke first, in the lull that came after thunder that seemed now receding.

He lifted his head at last, and said huskily:

"Joan, I'm afraid you'll think I'm the limit. I mean you'll never think anything of me again! Cold feet--a coward!"

"A coward? You?" I retorted.

Tears rushed into my eyes again. I was red with conflicting emotions.

The young soldier beside me was still pale. I looked at his downcast face.

"You think I think you're the kind of man who gets cold feet?" I cried.

My voice shook with reproach.

"Oh!" I exclaimed, "how horrid of you to say such a thing."

At this he sat up straight under that tree and looked at me. A more normal expression came over his face.

"Horrid?" he echoed.

And then in quite his own brusque, ragging voice he declared:

"Mention any subject on earth to a woman, and she'll always find the unexpected comment. Always! Anyhow, this woman will. I don't understand why you've just called me 'horrid,' Joan!"

"You don't understand me at all when you think I understand so little," I said bitterly. "As if I didn't realize what it meant for a man to be wrecked by shell-shock. As if I thought it was the same thing as his being frightened, cowardly! Good heavens! As if I didn't know how you'd behaved out in France, Captain Holiday?"

Resentfully I wound up: "But you will persist in thinking me a fool!" I said bitterly.

Now he was quite himself again.

"Why should I think you a fool?" he barked.

"I don't know!" I barked in return.

Staring at the now abating rain, I suggested sharply: "Perhaps you laugh at me for being on land work at all?"

Captain Holiday turned, looked hard at me. I thought he would snap again. Instead of that he replied gently.

"Land work? Honestly I think it's the noblest work women can do today."

He glanced at the hayfield, cleared only that afternoon, gleaming under the rain.

"Cramped occupations, unhealthy city life, flat chests, specialists' fees--all swept away!" he said musingly. "Land work would help us to that, you know. Land work would give us rosier wives, better babies"--then he turned upon me with his abruptest question--"I suppose you think it's odd of me to think of such things?"

"Certainly not. I agree with every word you say," I assured him. "Only----"

I was thinking of Muriel. Land work and she were as the poles apart, yet he loved her (or so I was driven to suppose). And yet he clung to his ideals of a country life!

"Only--what?" he took me up. "What were you going to say?"

"That girl you spoke to me about the other evening," I said, "that girl who won't say either 'Yes' or 'No' to you--'the' girl--what does she think about all this?"

He paused for a moment and glanced at the sky.

Presently he turned those grey and friendly eyes of his upon me again. They smiled very sweetly as he answered my question.

"She? Oh! She thinks as I'd like her to think."

So then I knew he must be completely under Muriel's sway. That lovely, super-civilized girl could "take him in" about her views on any subject. If she wanted him to believe that she hated town and luxury and only loved roughing it on the land, he would believe her.

He was all hers!

Suddenly chilled, and sore at heart, I got up. I took a step outside the shelter of those elms that had seen my wonderful half-hour. It was over, over. All over!