Part 31 (2/2)

Linton's heels, either on Brecon or afoot. The big Australian squatter and the little English boy had become great friends: there was something in the tiny lad that recalled the Jim of long ago, with his well-knit figure and steady eyes.

One man alone, out of all Tired People, had never left Homewood.

For a time after his arrival Philip Hardress had gained steadily in strength and energy; then a chill had thrown him back, and for months he sagged downwards; never very ill, but always losing vitality. The old depression seemed to come back to him tenfold. He could see nothing good in life: a cripple, a useless cripple. His parents were dead; save for a brother in Salonica, he was alone in the world. He was always courteous, always gentle; but a wall of misery seemed to cut him off from the household.

Then the magnificent physique of the boy a.s.serted itself, and gradually he grew stronger, and the hacking cough left him. Again it became possible to tempt him to try to ride. He spent hours in the keen wintry air, jogging round the fields and lanes with Mr. Linton and Geoffrey, returning with something of the light in his eyes that had encouraged Norah in his first morning, long ago.

”I believe all he wants is to get interested in something,” Norah said, watching him, one day, as he sat on the stone wall of the terrace, looking across the park. ”He was at Oxford before he joined the Army, wasn't he, Dad?”

Mr. Linton a.s.sented. ”His people arranged when he was little that he should be a barrister. But he hated the idea. His own wish was to go out to Canada.”

Norah pondered.

”Couldn't you give him a job on the farm, Dad?”

”I don't know,” said her father. ”I never thought of it. I suppose I might find him something to do; Hawkins and I will be busy enough presently.”

”He's beginning to worry at being here so long,” Norah said. ”Of course, we couldn't possibly let him go: he isn't fit for his own society. I think if you could find him some work he would be more content.”

So David Linton, after thinking the matter over, took Hardress into his plans for the farm which was to be the main source of supply for Homewood. He found him a quick and intelligent helper. The work was after the boy's own heart: he surrounded himself with agricultural books and treaties on fertilizers, made a study of soils, and took samples of earth from different parts of the farm--to the profound disgust of Hawkins. War had not done away with all expert agricultural science in England: Hardress sent his little packets of soil away, and received them back with advice as to treatment which, later on, resulted in the yield of the land being doubled--which Hawkins attributed solely to his own skill as a cultivator. But the cure was worked in Philip Hardress. The ring of hope came back into his voice: the ”shop-leg” dragged ever so little, as he walked across the park daily to where the ploughs were turning the gra.s.s of the farm fields into stretches of brown, dotted with white gulls that followed the horses' slow plodding up and down. The other guests took up a good deal of Mr. Linton's time: he was not sorry to have an overseer, since Hawkins, while honest and painstaking, was not afflicted with any undue allowance of brains. Together, in the study at night, they planned out the farm into little crops. Already much of the land was ready for the planting, and a model poultry-run built near the house was stocked with birds; while a flock of sheep grazed in the park, and to the tiny herd of cows had been added half a dozen pure-bred Jerseys. David Linton had taken Hardress with him on the trip to buy the stock, and both had enjoyed it thoroughly.

Meanwhile the boys at the Front sent long and cheery letters almost daily. Astonishment had come to them almost as soon as they rejoined, in finding themselves promoted; they gazed at their second stars in bewilderment which was scarcely lessened by the fact that their friends in the regiment were not at all surprised.

”Why, didn't you have a war on your own account in Ireland?” queried Anstruther. ”You got a Boche submarine sunk and caught half the crew, didn't you?”

”Well, but that was only a lark!” said Wally.

”You were wounded, anyhow, young Meadows. Of course _we_ know jolly well you don't deserve anything, but you can't expect the War Office to have our intimate sources of information.” He patted Wally on the back painfully. ”Just be jolly thankful you get more screw, and don't grumble. No one'll ever teach sense to the War Office!”

There was no lack of occupation in their part of the line. They saw a good deal of fighting, and achieved some reputation as leaders of small raids: Jim, in particular, having a power of seeing and hearing at night that had been developed in long years in the Bush--but which seemed to the Englishmen almost uncanny. There was reason to believe that the enemy felt even more strongly about it--there was seldom rest for the weary Boche in the trenches opposite Jim Linton's section.

Some of his raids were authorized: others were not. It is probable that the latter variety was more discouraging to the enemy.

Behind the fighting line they were in fairly comfortable billets. The officers were hardworked: the daily programme of drill and parades was heavy, and in addition there was the task of keeping the men interested and fit: no easy matter in the bitter cold of a North France winter. Jim proved a tower of strength to his company commander, as he had been to his school. He organized football teams, and taught them the Australian game: he appealed to his father for aid, and in prompt response out came cases of boxing-gloves, hockey and lacrosse sets, and footb.a.l.l.s enough to keep every man going.

Norah sent a special gift--a big case of indoor games for wet weather, with a splendid bagatelle board that made the battalion deeply envied by less fortunate neighbours: until a German sh.e.l.l disobligingly burst just above it, and reduced it to fragments. However, Norah's disgust at the news was so deep that the Tired People in residence at Homewood at the moment conspired together, and supplied the battalion with a new board in her name; and this time it managed to escape destruction.

The battalion had some stiff fighting towards the end of the winter, and earned a pat on the back from high quarters for its work in capturing some enemy trenches. But they lost heavily, especially in officers. Jim's company commander was killed at his side: the boy went out at night into No-Man's Land and brought his body in single-handed, in grim defiance of the Boche machine-guns. Jim had liked Anstruther: it was not to be thought of that his body should be dishonoured by the touch of a Hun. Next day he had a far harder task, for Anstruther had asked him to write to his mother if he failed to come back. Jim bit his pen for two hours over that letter, and in his own mind stigmatized it as ”a rotten effort,” after it was finished.

But the woman to whom it carried whatever of comfort was left in the world for her saw no fault in it. It was worn and frayed with reading when she locked it away with her dead son's letters.

Jim found himself a company commander after that day's fighting--doing captain's work without captain's rank. Wally was his subaltern, an arrangement rather doubted at first by the Colonel, until he saw that the chums played the game strictly, and maintained in working hours a discipline as firm as was their friends.h.i.+p. The men adored them: they knew their officers s.h.i.+rked neither work nor play, and that they knew their own limitations--neither Jim nor Wally ever deluded themselves with the idea that they knew as much as their hard-bitten non-commissioned officers. But they learned their men by heart, knowing each one's nickname and something of his private affairs; losing no opportunity of talking to them and gaining their confidence, and sizing them up, as they talked, just as in old days, as captains of the team, they had learned to size up boys at football. ”If I've got to go over the top I want to know what Joe Wilkins and Tiny Judd are doing behind me,” said Jim.

They had hoped for leave before the spring offensive, but it was impossible: the battalion was too shorthanded, and the enemy was endeavouring to be the four-times-armed man who ”gets his fist in fust.” In that early fighting it became necessary to deal with a nest of machine-guns that had got the range of their trenches to a nicety.

Sh.e.l.ls had failed to find them, and the list of casualties to their discredit mounted daily higher. Jim got the chance. He shook hands with Wally--a vision of miserable disappointment--in the small hours of a starlit night, and led a picked body of his men out of the front trench: making a long _detour_ and finally working nearer and nearer to the spot he had studied through his periscope for hours during the day. Then he planted his men in a sh.e.l.l-hole, and wriggled forward alone.

The men lay waiting, inwardly chafing at being left. Presently their officer came crawling back to them.

”We've got 'em cold,” he whispered. ”Come along--and don't fire a shot.”

It was long after daylight before the German guards in the main trenches suspected anything wrong with that particular nest of machine-guns, and marvelled at its silence. For there was no one left to tell them anything--of the fierce, silent onslaught from the rear; of men who dropped as it were from the clouds and fought with clubbed rifles, led by a boy who seemed in the starlight as tall as a young pine-tree. The gun-crews were sleeping, and most of them never woke again: the guards, drowsy in the quiet stillness, heard nothing until that swift, wordless avalanche was upon them.

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