CHAPTER V

THE FIRST JOB

"Something attempted, something done."--LONGFELLOW.

Next morning at two o'clock--or such the unearthly hour seemed to me--I was awakened by a resonant girlish voice.

"Tumble up! It's late! I left you girls till the last minute. You were so dead asleep you never heard a sound. Up with you!"

Deeply-drowsy, bewildered, but refreshed, I scrambled out of my blankets and blinked about. Where was----

Ah! The hut!

Every mattress but Elizabeth's and mine was rolled up and stowed away. Every "Campite" had disappeared but big Vic and two who were on fatigue. Vic was hooking scarlet stripes to the sleeve of her clean smock. The others cleared breakfast away from the mess-table.

"You buck up and dress," Vic advised us. "The Timber-Girls and Miss Easton are all off to the woods already"--this was the first I'd heard of so many of the girls here being in the Forestry Corps--"and the other two farm-pupils have gone on.

"It's no use you asking for any bathrooms, Celery-face," he added good-humouredly. "Here's a basin. Young Sybil always takes a dip in the pool just outside, but you've no time today."

I also had no wish, at that moment, to go and dip into any ice-cold, fresh-water pools, out of doors and in the chill grey dawn. Brrr!

"No time for you to sit down for your breakfast either," Vic pursued, as we huddled on our unfamiliar garments and struggled with the lacings of our leggings. "Lil! Just pour these girls out their tea, and butter 'em some bread--they must eat as they go along."

In the early sunshine on the road Elizabeth and I devoured the country bread and the real farm-butter. Our guide and mentor, Vic, strode along between us in the slouch hat, holland overall, breeches, and leggings that looked so natural and becoming on her, though my chum and I, glancing at each other, could not yet grow accustomed to our own appearances.

My feet seemed to belong to somebody else, in these boots! They were so very different from the feet in the shoes that had pattered down streets and along corridors on my daily tube scramble in town!

Harry had always "noticed" what shoes I wore, more than any other part of my get-up. But now----

"'Let us go hence, my shoes, he will not see,'" I parodied gloomily to myself as I tramped along that lane.

Meanwhile Vic, cheerful as the morning, was pointing out to us what she considered the objects of interest as we went along.

"See that big white place over there in the trees? That's the hospital," Vic told us, pointing. "There's two o' the boys coming out now--see? This is the turning off to the town--at least, what they call a town. Mouldy! No pictures, nothing; still, why go to theatres when you can see life?

"You ought to have been here for the concert at the hospital last week. It was all right. They wanted to give it again at our hut; but Miss Easton and Mr. Rhys said 'No fear.' A shame, wasn't it? Never mind; they are going to have another, some time. See that hill to the right where that smoke's going up? That's where our girls work at the trees. And those corrugated iron roofs you can just see over there--that's the camp for the German prisoners, and----"

Vic broke off to ask if she were running us off our legs. Certainly she was a quicker walker than either of us. But I enjoyed the tramp through this heavenly air as much as I ever could enjoy anything again, I thought, in this Harry-less world.

So far, I thought "going on the land" was not so bad after all. Eating delicious bread and butter out-of-doors on a glorious morning at an hour when, in London, I should still have been a-bed! Not at all bad. It might even do a little to take my thoughts off the wound that could not help aching for ever.

And besides this, I was conscious that in the whole air of the place there was something as distinctive, as familiar as in the taste of the farmhouse bread and butter. It was a something that I had not savoured since I was a growing girl....

Other country landscapes that I had since seen had always made me feel the lack of this "something." ...

That these others were often, in a different way, as beautiful, I did admit. I appreciated their dignity, the prosperity of their wide, flat lands. They had so much that was to be admired, but not----

Ah! Not the "flavour" of Wales!

That wild charm one can no more describe than one could photograph the skylark's song. But, with that in one's blood, other charms leave one temperate. Once tasted, never to be forgotten.... I found myself sniffing it up now as if it were some rich and definite perfume, instead of some atmosphere made up of a thousand elusive things ... the dreams of youth included!

And I was glad--that is, as glad as I could allow myself to feel in the circumstances--that, to take up my new venture, Fate had sent me back to the Land of my Fathers.

"There!" exclaimed Vic presently. "There's the farm!"

She pointed to a square building of apricot red, backed by trees and a gently-sloping green hill. It had a flat slate roof, and its many windows glittered in the sun.

With interested curiosity I gazed upon it as we came nearer--the farm where my chum and I were to receive our training for this new life which we'd chosen for ourselves--on a toss-up! That farm--stacked with such memories for me now! On that first morning I wondered what it would mean for me.

"Here's our way, round by the back," Vic piloted us. Up a short lane we went, through a big, red wooden gate, and into the farmyard. It was the first farmyard I'd been into since Dad gave up that farm of his that had swallowed, sovereign by sovereign, all his capital. This other place looked--ah, how much larger and more prosperous!

The big, oblong yard was bordered by buildings that gave the place the air of a homely monastery with cloisters.

By a shed door to the left a labourer in shirt-sleeves and wearing a soldier's cap was holding a horse, and talking to a very big man in tweeds. As this man turned his face I saw it was the kindest-looking one that I had ever seen.

Vic led us up to him.

"Here's our two new pupils, Mr. Price," she introduced us. "This little one's Elizabeth Weare. This other young lady with the white face is Joan Matthews."

A very kindly smile was sent down upon us from the top reaches of that farmer's six-foot-four. He was indeed a gentle giant.

"You will soon get rosy cheeks here," he assured me. "Yes, yes. Vic, now, wasn't so much to look at when she came here first, a twelvemonth ago. Didn't like it at first!" This with a twinkle. "Couldn't get rid of her afterwards. Shows she likes it here now, doesn't it, for her to want to stay on as instructor?"

"Instructor!" murmured Elizabeth and I together. For the first time we realized this big, laughing Cockney-voiced Campite was also an official.

The farmer turned away with a friendly nod to us; and to Vic he added:

"You will put them on to their jobs of work, then, won't you--same as I told you yesterday?"

"Right you are, Mr. Price," returned Vic briskly. "Now, then, dear," to Elizabeth, "you'd better come along with me. Picking up stones for you. I'll show you the field that's got to be cleared."

I saw an indescribable mingling of expressions cross Elizabeth's small face under that brand-new Land Army hat. Pick up stones! The thing any child at the seaside can do! Was it for this that she had given up her post as an efficient clerk and had joined the Land Army? Such, I know, was her thought. But she only said "Right!" and stood by for our instructor's orders.

Vic turned to me.

"Now you," she went on, with a gesture towards the shed near which that labourer had been standing. "Here's your little job."

Now, I appeal to all you girls who joined up as I did, ignorant and "townified," to work on the Land! Had you any clear idea of what you thought would be the first task to which you would be set?

I hadn't.

But Elizabeth mischievously declares that I had already pictured my first job thus:

Scene, a shining, fragrant dairy, with roses framing the open lattice. Myself, in a lilac sun-bonnet, looking like a lady land-worker out of some revue, and wielding a snowy, carved wooden implement with which I printed a clover-blossom design off on to innumerable pats of golden butter.

If this was "The Ideal," how different was "The Real" to which Vic pointed now!

My "little job"!

I had smelt it the moment that I'd entered the farmyard. As a child I'd seen Dad's roughest farm-lad engaged upon a similar "little job," and I'd been sorry for him--it had seemed not only such hard work, but so disgusting!

It involved spade work and a pitchfork, a wheelbarrow and the midden in the centre of the yard, on which a speckled hen and her brood were peering and running about. It also involved a dive into dark and very evil-smelling recesses, with noisome straw underfoot and festoons of grey cobwebs overhead. Never had I thought I should set foot--or nose--in such a place.

But it was in tones of the cheeriest matter-of-course that Vic concluded:

"Yes, you start cleaning out that cow-house."

That cow-house! Start cleaning it out! I----!

Vic gave me my tools, bore off Elizabeth, and left me to it.

There I stood in the farmyard--I, the would-be farm-worker, to whom "work" had always meant sitting indoors and checking papers and clicking a typewriter!

Well, I must make a beginning.

I made the beginning that beginners do make--namely, I went at it like a bull at a gate.

With my hands that had not held any tool heavier than a fountain-pen, I grasped, I clutched the spade-handle, that felt so huge and so unwieldy. Violently I drove that spade into that brown and malodorous mass at my feet. Ugh! Violently I tried to raise the heavy spadeful of that horror. It was too heavy to lift. I struggled.

At the third or fourth effort I heaved the load up. Wildly I cast the foul burden into the wheelbarrow. I missed it by half, though; half that spadeful fell upon my boots and upon my immaculate gaiters. How revolting. I stamped myself free, shuddering.

Savagely I stooped to my loathsome task. I dug, heaved, threw. In ten minutes I was hot, dripping, exhausted. My arms shook and twitched with over-exertion.

And with a sudden more violent lunge than any of the others, I thrust my spade into the half-heaped barrow and left it.

I'd made up my mind. I wasn't going to stick this. I'd buy myself out. Going back to London offices and tightly-shut windows would be anyhow better than this.

I'd go! Yes! Now!

Hurriedly I began pulling down the sleeves of the smock that I'd rolled up above my elbows. I'd got one sleeve down, when the shed-door was suddenly darkened. A man's shape shut out the glimpse of farmyard. A man's eyes were upon me with an amused and curious stare.

I recognized him.

Yes! He was that young officer who had taken it upon himself, last night at the hut, to ask me how long I thought I should stick this.

Of course, he would--he would choose this moment to come upon me again!

Angry was not the word for my feelings towards the young man!

This was unfair. But it didn't affect him. He looked at me, and at the one sleeve that I had rolled down again. He gave the honeyed smile that every Land Girl at the camp had noticed for its sweetness. And then, in the brusque voice that was such a contrast to the smile, he said--without even a "good morning":

"Any one could see that you had never set foot on a farm before."

"How d'you know I haven't? As it happens I have!" I retorted crossly, and again I caught up the spade that I'd flung into the barrow.

"Anyhow, you don't know how to handle those things," he said, moving forward. "That's not the way to hold a spade."

Without more ado he took the spade out of my hands, holding it lightly. He drove it without violence into the foul mess that heaped the floor, taking up about half the quantity that I had done.

"You'll find," he remarked, "that if you don't overload the spade it will balance itself. Same with the pitchfork. Let the work do itself. Look."

He let that spade swing back, and the weight on it swung forward to the barrow with almost no exertion at all.

"Let weight weigh on your side," he said, driving in the spade. "Let force force. Let gravity grav. You see what I mean."

He gave me a little nod as I watched.

"You'll find," he said again, "that you can't fight nature. You can make her work for you, though."

Turning to the wheelbarrow, he picked up the handles of it and trundled it out into the sunny farmyard. Not quite knowing what he would be at, I followed the light figure in khaki towards that mound of unspeakableness, where the grey hen clucked to her young. A board slanted up the side of it. The young man turned to speak to me as he trundled.

"The same with the barrow," Captain Holiday went on. "You don't let it stand still at the foot of that plank and then heave it up. You heave it along the level here, where it's easiest. Then it'll go halfway up by itself. Like this."

Easily he ran the barrow halfway up the plank. Then, when I thought he was going to tip it over, he let it run down again, and wheeled it back with its noisome load to the cowshed.

"D'ye see?"

"Yes. But you might have emptied it for me," I suggested, "while you'd got it there."

"Oh, no," he said coolly, "that's not the idea." Then, quickly: "Won't you roll that sleeve of yours up again?"

This with a twinkle?

I bit my lip.

Of course he had caught me out in the very act of "chucking it." This made me all the more furious because I couldn't show it. Who was this Captain Holiday who permeated this district, asking leading questions of land-workers, and, without encouragement, showing them how and how not to do their work? Surely it was hardly any business of his, after all?

In what I meant to be a crushing tone, I asked him:

"Do you wheel many barrows in the Army?"

He replied cheerfully, and in a disarmingly boyish manner:

"It's just the same principle if you're swinging a bayonet. They're both weights. Now, you try again."

And I actually found myself rolling up my sleeves again and--obeying orders!

Yes! I did as I was told by this incredible young man, as I called him inwardly at the time.

I see now what he meant. Any other man would have gone on doing my work while I leaned against the edge of the stall. He made me do it myself, and at the exact moment when I'd decided I'd had enough of it!

"Take a rest now," broke in this Captain Holiday after he'd watched me critically for some minutes. "Resting is just as important as thrusting."

He drew up a long wooden crate near the cow-house door.

"Sit down," he ordered.

I did, still wondering half-exasperatedly who this tall young captain was.

Did he think that just because I was on the land I was to be spoken to by any stranger who drifted along? If so--well!

I was just wondering how I had better show him very plainly that he'd made a big mistake, when again I was disarmed by the sight of that charming smile. No man with a smile like that could make that kind of mistake. But again the smile was accompanied by the bluntest remark.

"You were jacking up just now, weren't you? Thinking you'd chuck the whole show?"

This nettled me exceedingly.

"No! I was doing nothing of the kind," I replied hotly.

"You know quite well that you were," he retorted quickly. "But you will always contradict me, and I shall never admit what you say. That's understood."

Evidently he meant that our acquaintance was to go on, whatever I intended.

He crossed his legs and pulled a loose nail out of the side of the crate on which we sat. I hadn't asked him to sit down by me. That, too, he'd taken as a matter of course.

Was this young soldier some relation of Mr. Price? Had he anything to do with this farm? Or did he just appoint himself instructor to any Land Girl he happened to meet?

Hoping to find out what his position was, I asked vaguely, but more politely than I had spoken before:

"Are you stationed here?"

"Here in this cowshed?" Captain Holiday asked blandly.

At this I told him, quite shortly, not to be silly.

Whereupon he laughed.

"Well, then, if you mean for a mile or two round here"--he gave a little circular jerk of his head--"I suppose I am. My house is here. You haven't seen my house yet, but you'd pass it coming from the camp. It's that white place in the trees beyond the hill."

"But--that's the hospital. Then you're wounded,"--I glanced at his gold stripes--"or still sick?"

"That doesn't follow. What I mean is that it's my house."

"Then you turned it into a hospital?"

"No," replied this puzzling young man quietly. Then added, as if he were speaking to one of his own soldiers: "Come along. Time's up! Take a turn with the spade again. And see if you can make the wheelbarrow go up easily next journey."

As I took up the spade again he strolled out of the shed. I thought he was not even going to have the manners to bid me good morning. But he turned his face, and said laughingly over his shoulder:

"Au revoir--unless you mean to jack up before I see you again?"

Without waiting for a reply, he crossed the yard towards the farmhouse.

I went on with my so-far-from-romantic task, a little surprised to find that there did seem to be something in what this Captain Holiday had said about handling spades and wheeling barrows. His was the better way, after all. I tried to follow it. I still found the unusual exercise was labour; but it was not altogether the struggle that it had been at my first ignorant and violent efforts.

I worked, getting more flushed and moist and dishevelled as the cleared space on the slate floor grew--very gradually--larger.

There--I'd managed to tip the barrow over quite neatly that time. I wished I could turn through that cow-house the canal of which I saw the silver blink between meadows beyond the stack-roofs. That would be "making Nature work for one" with a vengeance!

Now! This time the spade seemed ever so much lighter, and yet I'd managed to get quite a good load on to it.

Presently I was startled to hear a bell clanging noisily across the yard. A woman's voice called to some one "Dinner!"