Captain Jim Part 36

So they held their heads high, as befitted people with just cause for being proud, and set themselves to find the rest that comes from hard work. There was plenty to do, for the house was always full of Tired People. Not that the Lintons ever tried to entertain their guests.

Tired People came to a big, quiet house, where everything ran smoothly, and all that was possible was done for comfort. Beyond that, they did exactly as they chose. There were horses and the motor for those who cared to ride and drive; the links for golfers; walks with beautiful scenery for energetic folk, and dainty rooms with big easy-chairs, or restful lounges under the trees on the lawn, for those who asked from Fate nothing better than to be lazy. No one was expected to make conversation or to behave as an ordinary guest.

Everywhere there was a pleasant feeling of homeliness and welcome; shy men became suddenly at their ease; nerve-racked men, strained with long months of the noise and horror of war, relaxed in the peace of Homewood, and went back to duty with a light step and a clear eye.

Only there was missing the wild merriment of the first few weeks, when Jim and Wally dashed in and out perpetually and kept the house in a simmer of uncertainty and laughter. That could never come again.

But beyond the immediate needs of the Tired People there was much to plan and carry out. Conscription in England was an established fact; already there were few fit men to be seen out of uniform. David Linton looked forward to a time when shortage of labour, coupled with the deadly work of the German submarines, should mean a shortage of food; and he and Norah set themselves to provide against that time of scarcity. Miss de Lisle and Philip Hardress entered into every plan, lending the help of brains as well as hands. The farm was put under intensive culture, and the first provision made for the future was that of fertilizers, which, since most of them came from abroad, were certain to be scarce. Mr. Linton and Hardress breathed more freely when they had stored a two years' supply. The flock of sheep was increased; the fowl-run doubled in size, and put in charge of a disabled soldier, a one-armed Australian, whom Hardress found in London, ill and miserable, and added to the list of Homewood's patients--and cures. Young heifers were bought, and "boarded-out" at neighbouring farms; a populous community of grunting pigs occupied a little field. And in the house Norah and Miss de Lisle worked through the spring and summer, until the dry and s.p.a.cious cellars and storerooms showed row upon row of shelves covered with everything that could be preserved or salted or pickled, from eggs to runner beans.

Sometimes the Tired People lent a hand, becoming interested in their hosts' schemes. Norah formed a fast friendship with a cheerful subaltern in the Irish Guards, who was with them for a wet fortnight, much of which he spent in the kitchen stoning fruit, making jam, and acting as bottler-in-chief to the finished product. There were many who asked nothing better than to work on the farm, digging, planting or harvesting: indeed, in the summer, one crop would have been ruined altogether by a fierce storm, but for the Tired People, who, from an elderly Colonel to an Australian signaller, flung themselves upon it, and helped to finish getting it under cover--carrying the last sheaves home just as the rain came down in torrents, and returning to Homewood in a soaked but triumphant procession. Indeed, nearly all the unending stream of guests came under the spell of the place; so that Norah used to receive anxious inquiries from various corners of the earth afterwards--from Egypt or Salonica would come demands as to the success of a catch-crop which the writer had helped to sow, or of a brood of Buff Orpingtons which he had watched hatching out in the incubator: even from German East Africa came a letter asking after a special litter of pigs! Perhaps it was that every one knew that the Lintons were shouldering a burden bravely, and tried to help.

They kept Jim very close to them. A stranger, hearing the name so often on their lips, might have thought that he was still with them.

Together, they talked of him always; not sadly, but remembering the long, happy years that now meant a memory too dear ever to let go.

Jim had once asked Norah for a promise. "If I go West," he said, "don't wear any horrible black frocks." So she went about in her ordinary dresses, especially the blue frocks he had loved--with just a narrow black band on her arm. There were fresh flowers under his picture every day, but she did not put them sadly. She would smile at the frank happy face as she arranged leaves and blossoms with a loving hand.

Later on, David Linton fitted up a carpenter's bench and a workshop; the days were too full for much thinking, but he found the evenings long. He enlisted Hardress in his old work of splint-making, and then found that half his guests used to stray out to the lit workshop after dinner and beg for jobs, so that before long the nearest Hospital Supply Depot could count on a steady output of work from Homewood.

Mrs. Hunt and Norah used to come as polishers; Miss de Lisle suddenly discovered that her soul for cooking included a corner for carpentry, and became extraordinarily skilful in the use of chisel and plane.

When the autumn days brought a chill into the air, Mr. Linton put a stove into the workshop; and it became a kind of club, where the whole household might often be found; they extended their activities to the manufacture of crutches, bed-rests, bed-tables, and half a dozen other aids to comfort for broken men. No work had helped David Linton so much.

In the early summer Wally came back on leave: a changed Wally, with grim lines where there had once been only merry ones in his lean, brown face. He did not want to come to Homewood; only when begged to come did he master the pitiful shrinking he felt from meeting them.

"I didn't know how to face you," he said. Norah had gone to meet him, and they were walking back from the station.

"Don't, Wally; you hurt," she said.

"It's true, though; I didn't. I feel as if you must hate me for coming back--alone."

"Hate you!--and you were Jim's chum!"

"I always came as Jim's chum," Wally said heavily. "From the very first, when I was a lonely little nipper at school, I sort of belonged to Jim. And now--well, I just can't realize it, Norah. I can't keep on thinking about him as dead. I know he is, and one minute I'm feeling half-insane about it, and the next I forget, and think I hear him whistling or calling me." He clenched his hands. "It's the minute after that that is the worst of all," he said.

For a time they did not speak. They walked on slowly, along the pleasant country lane with its blossoming hedges.

"I know," Norah said. "There's not much to choose between you and Dad and me, when it comes to missing Jim. But as for you--well you did come as Jim's chum first--and always; but you came just as much because you were yourself. You know you belonged to Billabong, as we all did. You can't cut yourself off from us now, Wally."

"I?" he echoed. "Well, if I do, I have mighty little left. But I felt that you couldn't want to see me. I know what it must be like to see me come back without him."

"I'm not going to say it doesn't hurt," said Norah. "Only it hurts you as much as it does us. And the thing that would be ever so much worse is for you not to come. Why, you're the only comfort we have left. Don't you see, you're like a bit of Jim coming back to us?"

"Oh, Norah--Norah!" he said. "If I could only have saved him!"

"Don't we know you'd have died quite happily if you could!" Norah said. "Just as happily as he would have died for you."

"He did, you know," Wally said. All the youth and joy had gone out of his voice, leaving it flat and toneless. "Two or three times that morning he kept me out of a specially hot spot, and took it himself.

He was always doing it: we nearly punched each other's heads about it the day before--I told him he was using his rank unfairly. He just grinned and said subalterns couldn't understand necessary strategy in the field!"

"He would!" said Norah, laughing.

Wally stared at her.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you laugh again!"

"Not laugh!" Norah echoed. "Why, it wouldn't be fair to Jim if we didn't. We keep him as near us as we can--talk about him, and about all the old, happy times. We did have such awfully good times together, didn't we? We're never going to get far away from him."

The boy gave a great sigh.

"I've been getting a long way from everything," he said.

"Since--since it happened I couldn't let myself think: it was just as if I were going mad. The only thing I've wanted to do was to fight, and I've had that."

"He looks as if his mind were more tired than his body," David Linton said that evening. "One can see that he has just been torturing himself with all sorts of useless thoughts. You'll have to take him in hand, Norah. Put the other work aside for a while and go out with him--ride as much as you can. It won't do you any harm, either."

"We never thought old Wally would be one of the Tired People," Norah said musingly.

"No, indeed. And I think there has been no one more utterly tired.

It won't do, Norah: the boy will be ill if we don't look after him."

"We've just got to make him feel how much we want him," Norah said.

"Yes. And we have to teach him to think happily about Jim--not to fight it all the time. Fighting won't make it any better," said David Linton, with a sigh.

But there was no riding for Wally, for a while. The next day found him too ill to get up, and the doctor, sent for hastily, talked of shock and over-strain, and ordered bed until his temperature should be pleased to go down: which was not for many a weary day. Possibly it was the best thing that could have happened to Wally. He grew, if not reconciled, at least accustomed to his loss; grew, too, to thinking himself a coward when he saw the daily struggle waged by the two people he loved best. And Norah was wise enough to call in other nurses: chief of them the Hunt babies, Alison and Michael, who rolled on his bed and played with him, while Geoffrey sat as close to him as possible, and could hardly be lured from the room. It was not for weeks after his return that they heard Wally laugh; and then it was at some ridiculous speech of Michael's that he suddenly broke into the ghost of his old mirth.

Norah's heart gave a leap.

"Oh, he's better!" she thought. "You blessed little Michael!"

And so, healing came to the boy's bruised soul. Not that the old, light-hearted Wally came back: but he learned to talk of Jim, and no longer to hug his sorrow in silence. Something became his of the peace that had fallen upon Norah and her father. It was all they could hope for, to begin with.

They said good-bye to him before they considered him well enough to go back to the trenches. But the call for men was insistent, and the boy himself was eager to go.

"Come back to us soon," Norah said, wistfully.

"Oh, I'm safe to come back," Wally said. "I'm n.o.body's dog, you know."

"That's not fair!" she flashed. "Say you're sorry for saying it!"

He flushed.

"I'm sorry if I hurt you, Nor. I suppose I was a brute to say that."

Something of his old quaint fun came into his eyes for a moment.

"Anyhow it's something to be somebody's dog--especially if one happens to belong to Billabong-in-Surrey!"

CHAPTER XV

PRISONERS AND CAPTIVES

The church was half in ruins. Great portions of the roof had been torn away by sh.e.l.l-fire, and there were gaping holes in the walls through which could be caught glimpses of sentries going backwards and forwards. Sometimes a grey battalion swung by; sometimes a German officer peered in curiously, with a sneer on his lips. The drone of aircraft came from above, through the holes where the rafters showed black against the sky. Ever the guns boomed savagely from beyond.