"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!