CLIFFORD SCOTT JOINS UP.

Otago Witness, Issue 3352, 12 June 1918, Page 58

CLIFFORD SCOTT JOINS UP.

By Margaret E. Murphy. Clifford Humphrey Bell Scott had been master of Long Acres School for more years than he troubled to count, so gently had the quiet years passed. Pie ruled' in the schoolroom, his sister Hilda and Grandmother Clifford ruled in the glebe, and the green countryside backed by a line of steep hills curving round it suited .all three of them. It suited grandmother, because she could keep a pony trap, and enjoy a position of mild importance in an unsophisticated countryside, Hilda because she had the tastes and instincts of a tranquil country woman, and Clifford because, besides affording him a means of livelihood, its roads and hills provided a rich field for the study of natural life, in which he delighted. His scholars, the settlers' children, with faces rosy and shining from the morning's scrubbing, came trooping and shouting to the schoolroom, their bags and pockets bulging with tops, marbles, skipping ropes, or apples, according to the season; their placid minds but little disturbed by thoughts of lessons. There was not a shock-headed urchin Among them but brought strange beasties to master in matchboxes, and if the ten minutes' Nature talk with which Long Acres School began its day sometimes lengthened into half an hour or more no ono seemed any the worse. Down to the tiniest scholar among them they adored the master. Meeting him on a holiday, in his weather-beaten tweeds, his fox terrier Nip at his heels, heads would hang shyly, hands come out of pockets, till he had passed with a cheering word, then they would go playing upon their way. Slight of stature, with hair the colour of a sunbleached tussock and eyes Iblue as a speedwell, there was a genuine humility and naive candour about him that were very winning. The parents accepted him with a reserve that gradually gava way

to rtospect when they found that he know more about soils and fertilisers and insect pests than they did' themselves. He was a patient and pains-taking student; he had a pile of methodicallykept note-books, accurate and detailed ; but he lacked, and knew that he lacked, that quick-kindling, emotional mind that can express .tself in iitting and fluent words. He cherished a vision of a pupil, gifted and brilliant, who might become a John Burrows, a Benusan, a Roberts, or a Gilbert White, and collaborate in the preparation of a natural history of Long Acres. Into this gentle Arcadian existence the great war burst like a crashing shell. Pull of an enthusiasm, doubtless bequeathed by a long line of fighting ancestors, he volunteered for active service, only to find himself rejected becase ho did not measure up to the then military standard. "Rejected unfit!" cried his unbelieving grandmother, & patriot of deepest dye. "Why, Clifford Scott, you are as sound and hardy as Nip himself. I never heard such nonsense ." " Neither did I, Gran. Still, there it is. They would ■not have me." " Well, they shall whistle for your services till they have reached a better state of mind." Grandmother dropped four stitches in the sock she was knitting, so upset was she. "As though a man's worth was to be measured by his inches." " There were a number of rejects, Gran; I'm only one of them. The authorities seem to require a combination of Hercules and Adonis, and I am scarcely that. Still, they will take me later, so do not worry." Clifford Scott was correct in that. On hia next appearance before a medical board he was passed fit A, and drafted into camp. At about the same time Hilda became engaged to James Bryce, of Clover Lea, and was married almost at once. " James is going into camp after harvest, Grannie, and when Clifford goes you are to come and live with us," she said. " Seemingly war changes many things, Hilda. I daresay you are wise to take your happiness while it offers,"- agreed Grandmother Clifford. " Tell James I will accept the home he gives mo gratefully. I am too old to begin a new life without you, my dear." Clifford Scott saw his sister and grandmother, his only near relatives, comfortably settled at Clover Lea, and then he left Long Acres for Trentham Camp. Beyond reducing him to the common denomination of Gus, his platoon paid little attention to him till his absentmindedness and somewhat pedantic manner of speaking attracted notice. " Why don't you tie your bally pannikin round your neck?" inquired an indignant mess orderly when the little .schoolmaster failed to produce that useful utensil. " Likewise your knife, fork, and spoon," pursued the still indignant one, with the waiting dixie of tea. You are- always losing something." "It is passing strange," admitted Private Scott, " but I cannot put an ■article down anywhere but I either forget whero I have placed it or it is not there on my return.' Shouts of derisive laughter greeted this naive admission. " They'll beat you for vour bootlaces, mate, if you ain't careful/' agreed Hugh M'Lane, returned soldier and lancecorporal. Private Scott bore their badinage goodhumouredly, gazing at his tormentors through gold-rimmed eye-glasses in a puzzled sort of way, as though he had suddenly encountered a new genus. The day on which his Reinforcement had its first route march —a day of shimmering heat and dust, when the men, sweltering in their "shorts," were glad of a ten minutes' rest by the roadside—was long remembered by Private C. H. B. Scott. Upon that day the small cloud of his troubles gathered in a thunderburst and descended upon his defenceless head. He had thought it no harm to spend his few minutes of leisure in strolling away to where some butterflies, with wings of faintest lavender, were fitting above the sun-dried grass and roadside weeds. Becoming absorbed in watching their dainty, mazy flights, he forgot his military tally until a shrill shriek from the platoon corporal brought a realisation of things. At the remembrance of the rating to which that blustering person subjected him he grew hot for wooks a f t<>rw'.ivrl s . Big Mac's peacefullv-intended opinion that "Gus was a decent enough little chap, though dotty about buss" made the decent one fighting mad clean through. So that was how the the thick heads valued Intellect and him a 8.A., and member of the institute, whose paper on "The distribution of species and its value in determining the extent of the glacial >neriod in the South Island of New Zealand." had been received with such flattering notice. Talk about pearls before swine. He would show that corporal that a man with brains could learn his beastlv drill if he set his mind to it. Tf muscle and pluck were the only things thev admired in the army, he would prove that he possessed his share of them. To everv man drafted into camp without previous military training there comes a period during which he has to swina his interests from a civilian to a military centre. However skilled he may have been in his chosen calling, ho has now to begin at the very beginning to distinguish his right foot, from his left, to do the goose-step, and learn the moves of a new and deso-erate game. In Clifford Scott's sympathies and pursuits, his gentle manners and self-distrust, there was nothing martial, nothing that promised the emergence of a fleeing man. excepting his thoroughness. Ws latent fiehting instincts once aroused, time and traininsr,"a conscientious devotion to duty, and the helping hand of Lance-corporal M'Lane did the rest.

"What I want to know is, 'Why do the boys pick on to me. Mac?' " Hugh M'Lane had seen fighting in Gallipoli and France, been invalided home, and was again returning to the righting front, to be in at the finish; but this simple question embarrassed him. "I had not noticed they paid attentions to you in special, Gus." he temporised, with his eyes on the electric light globe. "Yes, you have noticed it, Mac, and stood up for me like the good 'chap you are. I want you to help me to stand on my own feet and be so much like the rest of the follows that they would not be able to pick me out of our platoon." "First, you'll have to get rid of them glasses. They make you look like the comic professor every time," he suggested tentatively to test the earnestness of the recruit. "Well, yes; I can dispense with them. Thev are as much a habit as a convenience. '' "Then your talk. Gus, its like bits out of the dickshunary."You think I should use the vernacular - more freely?" "The "how much?" inquired Mac suspiciously. "Well, the everyday speech of the men." "Yes, but don't overdo it, Scott. That there bounder of a corporal —he's no example to follow. I'd like to give him one in the eye for his dirty tongue." The ex-school master pondered this. "Is there anything else?" "Be a sport. Put vour back into your work, and don't swank," summed up Mac trenchantly. "I am perfectly innocent of any intention or desire to swank," protested the private. "Sure you are," grinned Mac. "Come to the canteen and have a coffee. It's downright lonesome in these huts when the fellows are away on leave." It is to be supposed that Private C. H. B. Scott pondered these sayings in his heart, for a marked change was soon observable in him. "Once the fellows see you are not a Johnny Head-In-Air, but just a shy awkward chap, they'll stand for you all right," Mac encouraged. And Private Scott listened with respect to the man who had been Over There. "Do you think they are picking me for a trier?" he inquired some days later. "Bet your life, Gus. On the parade ground a man's nothing but his regimental number; but, by crummie, the lellow that don't try to obey orders and keeps us doing the same bally thing over and over again because of his thick head and clumsy feet; that fellow is goin' to get what's comin' to him from the boys, let alone the drill sergeant. Likewise the follow, that's doin' his level best is soon spotted for a trier." "I say, Mao, when the boys are barricking me to take my turn and sing a song, ought 1 to try?" "Can you sing for nuts?" "Gran' takes me for a Caruso, dinkum." When M'Lane discovered that the modest one had a good baritone voice, and a range of songs from "Drake's Drum" to 'Annie Laurie," his delight was genuine. Mac owned to a voice "that would make a morepork lust hisself with pride, by comparison." "Scott's rendering of "The Auld Hoose" put the final seal upon their friendship. That and the fact that the private could walk him to a standstill on a route march. "You're not a bad little sort, Gus," complimented the laconic Mac; and Private Scott would not have exchanged that faint praise for a king's commission. In khaki, on final leave at Long Acres, the change that had taken place in him » received full and perfect recognition. Hilda, in her tranquil way, allowed that he made a very nice soldier. "You never looked so much a man in all your life before, Cliff," said grandmother. Later, in her cherful lamp-lit room she had from him all she wished. "Clifford, tel] me all about it," she demanded imperiously. "I got a bit of a gruelling at first, Gran. I was stupid and awkward, and my heart wasn't in it. But big Mac—a splendid chap, you'll hear enough about him—took me in hand, and I got past o the drill sergeant without a word." "You have no regrets?" "Not one, Gran. Soldiering on this side is a good life. I want to go "Over There" and prove my mettle in the front line, shoulder to shoulder with my mates." "You are ready to die. if need be?' "Die! we never think of it, dinkum, Gran. We are too busy learning to be soldiers to think of being heroes.' "The possibility has to be faced, dear." Grandmother was crying the difficult tears of the very old. "I've settled all my affairs, made my will, and all that; that's part of onr pre- . parations—a necessary part. Whether I go east or west, dear Gran., I ony pray to play to man." "I would not have youi pray for safety, lad but fight for it," said the brave old ladv. He was silent, with dreaming eyes upon the fire. Then he stroked softly the wrinkled hand that rested in his. "If I do go west,, dear Gran., remember that heaven rings with laughter now—so many of the young and happy dead are there."