LAND ARMY TESTS
The discussions of the concert, after it had happened, went on for as
many days in our camp as the pre-concert discussions.
I'll skip those. I'll skip the days which suddenly seemed to have
"gone flat," with all the thrill gone out of Land-work, for the time
being. I'll skip my own broodings--which were those of just any
other girl in love with a man who prefers another woman! For since
it could not be the "Signora" I concluded that it was Muriel after
all.
I'll come to the next excitement in the Land-worker's life--namely,
the test-exams.!
You see our time was nearly up at the Practice Farm. Our six weeks'
training was drawing to a close. If, at the tests, we gained a
certain percentage of marks, Elizabeth and I would be considered
"finished pupils," and we would be passed out and sent off.
Where?
Heaven and the Organizing Secretary of the County knew where that job
would be found.
I told myself that I only hoped it would be a good long trail away
from Careg, away from the farm of bitter-sweet memories.
Vic was instructive on the subject of the changes to come.
"Any people ought to like the look o' you two, now you've shaped to
the work," she kindly remarked. "Still, you never know whether looks
is going to help a girl or to stand in her way in this world. A nice
thing it would be if you was landed like one of the smartest-looking
girls I ever saw join up, Chrissie Devon!"
"What happened to her?" I inquired.
"Chrissie was fine with horses," Vic said, "all her people having
ridden. She was a clever girl, well educated, and a beautiful figure
on horseback. I-T, she was. The secretary got her a job with a
brother of our Mr. Rhys, the bailiff, who keeps a lot of horses.
Thought it would be just the right thing for her. So it would have.
The only thing was, our Mr. Rhys's brother didn't consider himself
half-artful. He----"
Vic broke off to laugh.
"He turned up at the station before the one that she was going to,
and saw her in the train. And," Vic concluded with an impressive
nod, "sent her back to the depot by the next one. Then he strafed
our poor little organizing secretary till she didn't dare see him for
a year. 'The idea!' says he, 'of sending me a girl that looked like
that! Me, a widower. She would be owning the horses and me inside
o' six months!'"
"So then," Vic told us, "Chrissie was sent to a very old married
couple up in the hills. The old man was about ninety, and the old
woman p'raps a shade more juvenile. Chrissie worked her hardest for
them. But, if you'll believe me, she didn't give satisfaction there
neither. The old woman asked our secretary if she couldn't be
removed. And when the secretary asked what was the grouse, it turns
out that the old woman was certain that the new Land Girl had taken
it into her head that she would be 'his second.' I ask you!"
"And where did she go to next?" Elizabeth asked.
"Chrissie? Oh, now's she going in for motor-tractor driving. She
don't stay long enough in one place to put anybody's back up with her
fatal beauty. That's the story of her. I wonder what they'll do
with you and Mop?"
The day of the tests arrived.
It should have seen the arrival also of the examiner from London. Of
this unknown personage we were all, including the gentle giant, Mr.
Price, in a state of terror. However, a telegram came to say that
this magnate was unable to attend.
His place was taken by the local examiner, who turned out to be that
other Mr. Rhys, the widower who had strafed the organizing secretary
for sending him a too-good-looking Land Girl. Now he and that
secretary, a little bright-eyed Welshwoman who had been a
school-marm, had evidently made up their difference.
She, the secretary, had come over to help with the tests, for which
we had in the big farmyard an audience that I had not expected. Not
only these examiners and the two Prices looked on while I brought in
the cows to the stalls and set to work with stool and pail, but also
the visitors from the Lodge!
Heavens! how my heart sank into my clumping Land Army boots as I
beheld the little procession coming through the red-painted farmyard
gate. Captain Holiday, in those disgraceful but becoming grey tweeds
of his, was walking with Mrs. Elvey in her smartest toque! Behind
them the slim-waisted, uniformed figure of young Colonel Fielding,
escorting Muriel Elvey.
"We've come to look on at the tests, if we may," Captain Holiday
announced cheerfully to the Prices.
Greetings were exchanged with the ladies, and though I kept my eyes
quite steadily upon the work that I had in hand, I could not help
seeing Muriel's amused stare and smile, just as I couldn't help
hearing her treble twitter to the men of "mustn't it be too quaint to
have to wear those clothes and things--and how wonderful not to be
afraid of all those great animals--I should be terrified of cows, I
know I should."
Indulgent laughter came from all the men. I remembered one of
Elizabeth's contemptuous axioms about the sex--"a pretty girl can't
be too helpless or too afraid of mice to please a man, even now!"
Elizabeth, at this moment sitting beside the cow, Blodwen, wore her
most man-hating looks upon her small, set face. As for me, I felt
that now, on this occasion of all others, when, as a Land-worker, I
ought to have been at my best, I was absolutely at my worst, nervous,
flurried and awkward.
I had a hideous presentiment that I should overturn my milking-pail,
or some fiasco of that sort!
Raging inwardly, I approached the black-and-white cow who had become
my friend. She was the easiest in the stable, as Mrs. Price had said
on that first time of all when I had milked her. But now, to my
horror, I realized that she was going to fidget and to be difficult.
She was going to "let me down" before all these people!
Suddenly I heard Captain Holiday's voice, not brusque as usual, but
quiet.
"I say, Muriel, my child," he said, "stand outside the door, will
you? If strangers go and stand close up to the cow when she's being
milked she gets bad-tempered and there's no doing anything with her."
"Oh, isn't there? I didn't know. I'm so sorry," said Muriel,
airily, and she fluttered out to stand beside Colonel Fielding.
Feeling grateful beyond words to the man who had helped me thus, I
went on milking with more assurance. The nervous flurry melted away
from me. I succeeded in forgetting that I was doing what I was with
a maximum of so many marks for "approach," for "time," for
"quantity," for "clean-stripping."
I forgot Mrs. Elvey's lorgnette upon me from the cow-house door; and
the eyes of the others, and the chatter of Muriel to the two young
men.
I just did the best I could.
Presently Mr. Rhys, the examiner, had taken Elizabeth and me into an
empty shed, and, looking doubtfully upon us, began to ask us simple
questions as to our everyday work. I was glad to realize that--as is
so often the case with the male examiner--he was more nervous than we
were. Or did he think that we, too, had designs upon his widowerhood?
At all events, the marks that Mr. Rhys put down upon his papers
seemed to be satisfactory.
"Well, after all, I may have squeezed through!" I thought.
And half an hour later Mrs. Price came to Elizabeth and me in the
kitchen, where she had insisted upon our having a cup of tea after
our labours, and told us that we had both got through our tests with
nearly full marks in all subjects.
Pride filled my heart, as you may imagine. Surely it was not an
unnatural thing for the thought to flash across me:
"Well, now Captain Holiday will hear that! He'll know that I am not
a complete imbecile at my job after all, even if he did go away this
afternoon before he saw that I had got over my nervousness!"--for the
whole of the Lodge party had disappeared towards the farm before I
had begun upon my second cow. "He'll have to think that I am some
sort of a credit to him after all the tips he's given me. And
perhaps he will say so to Muriel, even if he is in love with her."
And then I put away those thoughts.
As Elizabeth and I tramped back to camp with the glad news that we
were now fully fledged Land-workers, I turned resolutely to the
future and the new job.
The little organizing secretary had promised to let us know in a day
or two what she had settled for us. She had also promised to arrange
that Elizabeth and I should be sent somewhere together.
For the meantime we were to stay where we were in camp, as it seemed
scarcely worth while to move us to the depot. The secretary said she
was almost certain she had got us our job--at a rectory with a farm
attached. It was at the other side of the county.
"That's a good thing!" thought I.
I did not say so to Elizabeth. I hadn't confided a word to Elizabeth
of what I felt. I had taken my confidence away from the
once-intimate chum.
And then suddenly her confidence returned to me; in fact, I had it as
I'd never had it before.
It was on the afternoon after we'd passed our tests--Sunday. (On the
Monday we were to hear for certain about that new job of ours.) I'd
missed Elizabeth shortly after the midday meal, and I found her in
that old haunt of hers on the wall under the bushes.
Crouched up there she was sobbing as if her heart would break.
I was afraid she would be furious that I'd come upon her like this.
But the unexpected happened. She turned and clung to me.
"Oh, Joan! I am so unhappy," she sobbed. "Oh, it's so awful. We
are going away from this place, and I shall never, never see him
again!"