Rilla of Ingleside
by Lucy Maud Montgomery
CHAPTER I
GLEN "NOTES" AND OTHER MATTERS
It was a warm, golden-cloudy, lovable afternoon. In the big living-room
at Ingleside Susan Baker sat down with a certain grim satisfaction
hovering about her like an aura; it was four o'clock and Susan, who had
been working incessantly since six that morning, felt that she had
fairly earned an hour of repose and gossip. Susan just then was
perfectly happy; everything had gone almost uncannily well in the
kitchen that day. Dr. Jekyll had not been Mr. Hyde and so had not grated
on her nerves; from where she sat she could see the pride of her heart--
the bed of peonies of her own planting and culture, blooming as no other
peony plot in Glen St. Mary ever did or could bloom, with peonies
crimson, peonies silvery pink, peonies white as drifts of winter snow.
Susan had on a new black silk blouse, quite as elaborate as anything
Mrs. Marshall Elliott ever wore, and a white starched apron, trimmed
with complicated crocheted lace fully five inches wide, not to mention
insertion to match. Therefore Susan had all the comfortable
consciousness of a well-dressed woman as she opened her copy of the
Daily Enterprise and prepared to read the Glen "Notes" which, as Miss
Cornelia had just informed her, filled half a column of it and mentioned
almost everybody at Ingleside. There was a big, black headline on the
front page of the Enterprise, stating that some Archduke Ferdinand or
other had been assassinated at a place bearing the weird name of
Sarajevo, but Susan tarried not over uninteresting, immaterial stuff
like that; she was in quest of something really vital. Oh, here it was--
"Jottings from Glen St. Mary." Susan settled down keenly, reading each
one over aloud to extract all possible gratification from it.
Mrs. Blythe and her visitor, Miss Cornelia--alias Mrs. Marshall Elliott
--were chatting together near the open door that led to the veranda,
through which a cool, delicious breeze was blowing, bringing whiffs of
phantom perfume from the garden, and charming gay echoes from the
vine-hung corner where Rilla and Miss Oliver and Walter were laughing
and talking. Wherever Rilla Blythe was, there was laughter.
There was another occupant of the living-room, curled up on a couch, who
must not be overlooked, since he was a creature of marked individuality,
and, moreover, had the distinction of being the only living thing whom
Susan really hated.
All cats are mysterious but Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde--"Doc" for short--
was trebly so. He was a cat of double personality--or else, as Susan
vowed, he was possessed by the devil. To begin with, there had been
something uncanny about the very dawn of his existence. Four years
previously Rilla Blythe had had a treasured darling of a kitten, white
as snow, with a saucy black tip to its tail, which she called Jack
Frost. Susan disliked Jack Frost, though she could not or would not give
any valid reason therefor.
"Take my word for it, Mrs. Dr. dear," she was wont to say ominously,
"that cat will come to no good."
"But why do you think so?" Mrs. Blythe would ask.
"I do not think--I know," was all the answer Susan would vouchsafe.
With the rest of the Ingleside folk Jack Frost was a favourite; he was
so very clean and well groomed, and never allowed a spot or stain to be
seen on his beautiful white suit; he had endearing ways of purring and
snuggling; he was scrupulously honest.
And then a domestic tragedy took place at Ingleside. Jack Frost had
kittens!
It would be vain to try to picture Susan's triumph. Had she not always
insisted that that cat would turn out to be a delusion and a snare? Now
they could see for themselves!
Rilla kept one of the kittens, a very pretty one, with peculiarly sleek
glossy fur of a dark yellow crossed by orange stripes, and large,
satiny, golden ears. She called it Goldie and the name seemed
appropriate enough to the little frolicsome creature which, during its
kittenhood, gave no indication of the sinister nature it really
possessed. Susan, of course, warned the family that no good could be
expected from any offspring of that diabolical Jack Frost; but Susan's
Cassandra-like croakings were unheeded.
The Blythes had been so accustomed to regard Jack Frost as a member of
the male sex that they could not get out of the habit. So they
continually used the masculine pronoun, although the result was
ludicrous. Visitors used to be quite electrified when Rilla referred
casually to "Jack and his kitten," or told Goldie sternly, "Go to your
mother and get him to wash your fur."
"It is not decent, Mrs. Dr. dear," poor Susan would say bitterly. She
herself compromised by always referring to Jack as "it" or "the white
beast," and one heart at least did not ache when "it" was accidentally
poisoned the following winter.
In a year's time "Goldie" became so manifestly an inadequate name for
the orange kitten that Walter, who was just then reading Stevenson's
story, changed it to Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde. In his Dr. Jekyll mood the
cat was a drowsy, affectionate, domestic, cushion-loving puss, who liked
petting and gloried in being nursed and patted. Especially did he love
to lie on his back and have his sleek, cream-coloured throat stroked
gently while he purred in somnolent satisfaction. He was a notable
purrer; never had there been an Ingleside cat who purred so constantly
and so ecstatically.
"The only thing I envy a cat is its purr," remarked Dr. Blythe once,
listening to Doc's resonant melody. "It is the most contented sound in
the world."
Doc was very handsome; his every movement was grace; his poses
magnificent. When he folded his long, dusky-ringed tail about his feet
and sat him down on the veranda to gaze steadily into space for long
intervals the Blythes felt that an Egyptian sphinx could not have made a
more fitting Deity of the Portal.
When the Mr. Hyde mood came upon him--which it invariably did before
rain, or wind--he was a wild thing with changed eyes. The
transformation always came suddenly. He would spring fiercely from a
reverie with a savage snarl and bite at any restraining or caressing
hand. His fur seemed to grow darker and his eyes gleamed with a
diabolical light. There was really an unearthly beauty about him. If the
change happened in the twilight all the Ingleside folk felt a certain
terror of him. At such times he was a fearsome beast and only Rilla
defended him, asserting that he was "such a nice prowly cat." Certainly
he prowled.
Dr. Jekyll loved new milk; Mr. Hyde would not touch milk and growled
over his meat. Dr. Jekyll came down the stairs so silently that no one
could hear him. Mr. Hyde made his tread as heavy as a man's. Several
evenings, when Susan was alone in the house, he "scared her stiff," as
she declared, by doing this. He would sit in the middle of the kitchen
floor, with his terrible eyes fixed unwinkingly upon hers for an hour at
a time. This played havoc with her nerves, but poor Susan really held
him in too much awe to try to drive him out. Once she had dared to throw
a stick at him and he had promptly made a savage leap towards her. Susan
rushed out of doors and never attempted to meddle with Mr. Hyde again--
though she visited his misdeeds upon the innocent Dr. Jekyll, chasing
him ignominiously out of her domain whenever he dared to poke his nose
in and denying him certain savoury tidbits for which he yearned.
"'The many friends of Miss Faith Meredith, Gerald Meredith and James
Blythe,'" read Susan, rolling the names like sweet morsels under her
tongue, "'were very much pleased to welcome them home a few weeks ago
from Redmond College. James Blythe, who was graduated in Arts in 1913,
had just completed his first year in medicine.'"
"Faith Meredith has really got to be the most handsomest creature I ever
saw," commented Miss Cornelia above her filet crochet. "It's amazing how
those children came on after Rosemary West went to the manse. People
have almost forgotten what imps of mischief they were once. Anne,
dearie, will you ever forget the way they used to carry on? It's really
surprising how well Rosemary got on with them. She's more like a chum
than a step-mother. They all love her and Una adores her. As for that
little Bruce, Una just makes a perfect slave of herself to him. Of
course, he is a darling. But did you ever see any child look as much
like an aunt as he looks like his Aunt Ellen? He's just as dark and just
as emphatic. I can't see a feature of Rosemary in him. Norman Douglas
always vows at the top of his voice that the stork meant Bruce for him
and Ellen and took him to the manse by mistake."
"Bruce adores Jem," said Mrs Blythe. "When he comes over here he follows
Jem about silently like a faithful little dog, looking up at him from
under his black brows. He would do anything for Jem, I verily believe."
"Are Jem and Faith going to make a match of it?"
Mrs. Blythe smiled. It was well known that Miss Cornelia, who had been
such a virulent man-hater at one time, had actually taken to
match-making in her declining years.
"They are only good friends yet, Miss Cornelia."
"Very good friends, believe me," said Miss Cornelia emphatically. "I
hear all about the doings of the young fry."
"I have no doubt that Mary Vance sees that you do, Mrs. Marshall
Elliott," said Susan significantly, "but I think it is a shame to talk
about children making matches."
"Children! Jem is twenty-one and Faith is nineteen," retorted Miss
Cornelia. "You must not forget, Susan, that we old folks are not the
only grown-up people in the world."
Outraged Susan, who detested any reference to her age--not from vanity
but from a haunting dread that people might come to think her too old to
work--returned to her "Notes."
"'Carl Meredith and Shirley Blythe came home last Friday evening from
Queen's Academy. We understand that Carl will be in charge of the school
at Harbour Head next year and we are sure he will be a popular and
successful teacher.'"
"He will teach the children all there is to know about bugs, anyhow,"
said Miss Cornelia. "He is through with Queen's now and Mr. Meredith and
Rosemary wanted him to go right on to Redmond in the fall, but Carl has
a very independent streak in him and means to earn part of his own way
through college. He'll be all the better for it."
"'Walter Blythe, who has been teaching for the past two years at
Lowbridge, has resigned,'" read Susan. "'He intends going to Redmond
this fall.'"
"Is Walter quite strong enough for Redmond yet?" queried Miss Cornelia
anxiously.
"We hope that he will be by the fall," said Mrs. Blythe. "An idle summer
in the open air and sunshine will do a great deal for him."
"Typhoid is a hard thing to get over," said Miss Cornelia emphatically,
"especially when one has had such a close shave as Walter had. I think
he'd do well to stay out of college another year. But then he's so
ambitious. Are Di and Nan going too?"
"Yes. They both wanted to teach another year but Gilbert thinks they had
better go to Redmond this fall."
"I'm glad of that. They'll keep an eye on Walter and see that he doesn't
study too hard. I suppose," continued Miss Cornelia, with a side glance
at Susan, "that after the snub I got a few minutes ago it will not be
safe for me to suggest that Jerry Meredith is making sheep's eyes at
Nan."
Susan ignored this and Mrs. Blythe laughed again.
"Dear Miss Cornelia, I have my hands full, haven't I?--with all these
boys and girls sweethearting around me? If I took it seriously it would
quite crush me. But I don't--it is too hard yet to realize that they're
grown up. When I look at those two tall sons of mine I wonder if they
can possibly be the fat, sweet, dimpled babies I kissed and cuddled and
sang to slumber the other day--only the other day, Miss Cornelia.
Wasn't Jem the dearest baby in the old House of Dreams? and now he's a
B.A. and accused of courting."
"We're all growing older," sighed Miss Cornelia.
"The only part of me that feels old," said Mrs. Blythe, "is the ankle I
broke when Josie Pye dared me to walk the Barry ridge-pole in the Green
Gables days. I have an ache in it when the wind is east. I won't admit
that it is rheumatism, but it does ache. As for the children, they and
the Merediths are planning a gay summer before they have to go back to
studies in the fall. They are such a fun-loving little crowd. They keep
this house in a perpetual whirl of merriment."
"Is Rilla going to Queen's when Shirley goes back?"
"It isn't decided yet. I rather fancy not. Her father thinks she is not
quite strong enough--she has rather outgrown her strength--she's
really absurdly tall for a girl not yet fifteen. I am not anxious to
have her go--why, it would be terrible not to have a single one of my
babies home with me next winter. Susan and I would fall to fighting with
each other to break the monotony."
Susan smiled at this pleasantry. The idea of her fighting with "Mrs. Dr.
dear!"
"Does Rilla herself want to go?" asked Miss Cornelia.
"No. The truth is, Rilla is the only one of my flock who isn't
ambitious. I really wish she had a little more ambition. She has no
serious ideals at all--her sole aspiration seems to be to have a good
time."
"And why should she not have it, Mrs. Dr. dear?" cried Susan, who could
not bear to hear a single word against anyone of the Ingleside folk,
even from one of themselves. "A young girl should have a good time, and
that I will maintain. There will be time enough for her to think of
Latin and Greek."
"I should like to see a little sense of responsibility in her, Susan.
And you know yourself that she is abominably vain."
"She has something to be vain about," retorted Susan. "She is the
prettiest girl in Glen St. Mary. Do you think that all those
over-harbour MacAllisters and Crawfords and Elliotts could scare up a
skin like Rilla's in four generations? They could not. No, Mrs. Dr.
dear, I know my place but I cannot allow you to run down Rilla. Listen
to this, Mrs. Marshall Elliott."
Susan had found a chance to get square with Miss Cornelia for her digs
at the children's love affairs. She read the item with gusto.
"'Miller Douglas has decided not to go West. He says old P.E.I. is good
enough for him and he will continue to farm for his aunt, Mrs. Alec
Davis.'"
Susan looked keenly at Miss Cornelia.
"I have heard, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, that Miller is courting Mary
Vance."
This shot pierced Miss Cornelia's armour. Her sonsy face flushed.
"I won't have Miller Douglas hanging round Mary," she said crisply. "He
comes of a low family. His father was a sort of outcast from the
Douglases--they never really counted him in--and his mother was one of
those terrible Dillons from the Harbour Head."
"I think I have heard, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, that Mary Vance's own
parents were not what you could call aristocratic."
"Mary Vance has had a good bringing up and she is a smart, clever,
capable girl," retorted Miss Cornelia. "She is not going to throw
herself away on Miller Douglas, believe me! She knows my opinion on the
matter and Mary has never disobeyed me yet."
"Well, I do not think you need worry, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, for Mrs.
Alec Davis is as much against it as you could be, and says no nephew of
hers is ever going to marry a nameless nobody like Mary Vance."
Susan returned to her mutton, feeling that she had got the best of it in
this passage of arms, and read another "note."
"'We are pleased to hear that Miss Oliver has been engaged as teacher
for another year. Miss Oliver will spend her well-earned vacation at her
home in Lowbridge.'"
"I'm so glad Gertrude is going to stay," said Mrs. Blythe. "We would
miss her horribly. And she has an excellent influence over Rilla who
worships her. They are chums, in spite of the difference in their ages."
"I thought I heard she was going to be married?"
"I believe it was talked of but I understand it is postponed for a
year."
"Who is the young man?"
"Robert Grant. He is a young lawyer in Charlottetown. I hope Gertrude
will be happy. She has had a sad life, with much bitterness in it, and
she feels things with a terrible keenness. Her first youth is gone and
she is practically alone in the world. This new love that has come into
her life seems such a wonderful thing to her that I think she hardly
dares believe in its permanence. When her marriage had to be put off she
was quite in despair--though it certainly wasn't Mr. Grant's fault.
There were complications in the settlement of his father's estate--his
father died last winter--and he could not marry till the tangles were
unravelled. But I think Gertrude felt it was a bad omen and that her
happiness would somehow elude her yet."
"It does not do, Mrs. Dr. dear, to set your affections too much on a
man," remarked Susan solemnly.
"Mr. Grant is quite as much in love with Gertrude as she is with him,
Susan. It is not he whom she distrusts--it is fate. She has a little
mystic streak in her--I suppose some people would call her
superstitious. She has an odd belief in dreams and we have not been able
to laugh it out of her. I must own, too, that some of her dreams--but
there, it would not do to let Gilbert hear me hinting such heresy. What
have you found of much interest, Susan?"
Susan had given an exclamation.
"Listen to this, Mrs. Dr. dear. 'Mrs. Sophia Crawford has given up her
house at Lowbridge and will make her home in future with her niece, Mrs.
Albert Crawford.' Why that is my own cousin Sophia, Mrs. Dr. dear. We
quarrelled when we were children over who should get a Sunday-school
card with the words 'God is Love,' wreathed in rosebuds, on it, and have
never spoken to each other since. And now she is coming to live right
across the road from us."
"You will have to make up the old quarrel, Susan. It will never do to be
at outs with your neighbours."
"Cousin Sophia began the quarrel, so she can begin the making up also,
Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan loftily. "If she does I hope I am a good
enough Christian to meet her half-way. She is not a cheerful person and
has been a wet blanket all her life. The last time I saw her, her face
had a thousand wrinkles--maybe more, maybe less--from worrying and
foreboding. She howled dreadful at her first husband's funeral but she
married again in less than a year. The next note, I see, describes the
special service in our church last Sunday night and says the decorations
were very beautiful."
"Speaking of that reminds me that Mr. Pryor strongly disapproves of
flowers in church," said Miss Cornelia. "I always said there would be
trouble when that man moved here from Lowbridge. He should never have
been put in as elder--it was a mistake and we shall live to rue it,
believe me! I have heard that he has said that if the girls continue to
'mess up the pulpit with weeds' that he will not go to church."
"The church got on very well before old Whiskers-on-the-moon came to the
Glen and it is my opinion it will get on without him after he is gone,"
said Susan.
"Who in the world ever gave him that ridiculous nickname?" asked Mrs.
Blythe.
"Why, the Lowbridge boys have called him that ever since I can remember,
Mrs. Dr. dear--I suppose because his face is so round and red, with
that fringe of sandy whisker about it. It does not do for anyone to call
him that in his hearing, though, and that you may tie to. But worse than
his whiskers, Mrs. Dr. dear, he is a very unreasonable man and has a
great many queer ideas. He is an elder now and they say he is very
religious; but I can well remember the time, Mrs. Dr. dear, twenty years
ago, when he was caught pasturing his cow in the Lowbridge graveyard.
Yes, indeed, I have not forgotten that, and I always think of it when he
is praying in meeting. Well, that is all the notes and there is not much
else in the paper of any importance. I never take much interest in
foreign parts. Who is this Archduke man who has been murdered?"
"What does it matter to us?" asked Miss Cornelia, unaware of the hideous
answer to her question which destiny was even then preparing. "Somebody
is always murdering or being murdered in those Balkan States. It's their
normal condition and I don't really think that our papers ought to print
such shocking things. The Enterprise is getting far too sensational with
its big headlines. Well, I must be getting home. No, Anne dearie, it's
no use asking me to stay to supper. Marshall has got to thinking that if
I'm not home for a meal it's not worth eating--just like a man. So off
I go. Merciful goodness, Anne dearie, what is the matter with that cat?
Is he having a fit?"--this, as Doc suddenly bounded to the rug at Miss
Cornelia's feet, laid back his ears, swore at her, and then disappeared
with one fierce leap through the window.
"Oh, no. He's merely turning into Mr. Hyde--which means that we shall
have rain or high wind before morning. Doc is as good as a barometer."
"Well, I am thankful he has gone on the rampage outside this time and
not into my kitchen," said Susan. "And I am going out to see about
supper. With such a crowd as we have at Ingleside now it behooves us to
think about our meals betimes."
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
DEW OF MORNING
Outside, the Ingleside lawn was full of golden pools of sunshine and
plots of alluring shadows. Rilla Blythe was swinging in the hammock
under the big Scotch pine, Gertrude Oliver sat at its roots beside her,
and Walter was stretched at full length on the grass, lost in a romance
of chivalry wherein old heroes and beauties of dead and gone centuries
lived vividly again for him.
Rilla was the "baby" of the Blythe family and was in a chronic state of
secret indignation because nobody believed she was grown up. She was so
nearly fifteen that she called herself that, and she was quite as tall
as Di and Nan; also, she was nearly as pretty as Susan believed her to
be. She had great, dreamy, hazel eyes, a milky skin dappled with little
golden freckles, and delicately arched eyebrows, giving her a demure,
questioning look which made people, especially lads in their teens, want
to answer it. Her hair was ripely, ruddily brown and a little dent in
her upper lip looked as if some good fairy had pressed it in with her
finger at Rilla's christening. Rilla, whose best friends could not deny
her share of vanity, thought her face would do very well, but worried
over her figure, and wished her mother could be prevailed upon to let
her wear longer dresses. She, who had been so plump and roly-poly in the
old Rainbow Valley days, was incredibly slim now, in the arms-and-legs
period. Jem and Shirley harrowed her soul by calling her "Spider." Yet
she somehow escaped awkwardness. There was something in her movements
that made you think she never walked but always danced. She had been
much petted and was a wee bit spoiled, but still the general opinion was
that Rilla Blythe was a very sweet girl, even if she were not so clever
as Nan and Di.
Miss Oliver, who was going home that night for vacation, had boarded for
a year at Ingleside. The Blythes had taken her to please Rilla who was
fathoms deep in love with her teacher and was even willing to share her
room, since no other was available. Gertrude Oliver was twenty-eight and
life had been a struggle for her. She was a striking-looking girl, with
rather sad, almond-shaped brown eyes, a clever, rather mocking mouth,
and enormous masses of black hair twisted about her head. She was not
pretty but there was a certain charm of interest and mystery in her
face, and Rilla found her fascinating. Even her occasional moods of
gloom and cynicism had allurement for Rilla. These moods came only when
Miss Oliver was tired. At all other times she was a stimulating
companion, and the gay set at Ingleside never remembered that she was so
much older than themselves. Walter and Rilla were her favourites and she
was the confidante of the secret wishes and aspirations of both. She
knew that Rilla longed to be "out"--to go to parties as Nan and Di did,
and to have dainty evening dresses and--yes, there is no mincing
matters--beaux! In the plural, at that! As for Walter, Miss Oliver knew
that he had written a sequence of sonnets "to Rosamond"--i.e., Faith
Meredith--and that he aimed at a Professorship of English literature in
some big college. She knew his passionate love of beauty and his equally
passionate hatred of ugliness; she knew his strength and his weakness.
Walter was, as ever, the handsomest of the Ingleside boys. Miss Oliver
found pleasure in looking at him for his good looks--he was so exactly
like what she would have liked her own son to be. Glossy black hair,
brilliant dark grey eyes, faultless features. And a poet to his
fingertips! That sonnet sequence was really a remarkable thing for a lad
of twenty to write. Miss Oliver was no partial critic and she knew that
Walter Blythe had a wonderful gift.
Rilla loved Walter with all her heart. He never teased her as Jem and
Shirley did. He never called her "Spider." His pet name for her was
"Rilla-my-Rilla"--a little pun on her real name, Marilla. She had been
named after Aunt Marilla of Green Gables, but Aunt Marilla had died
before Rilla was old enough to know her very well, and Rilla detested
the name as being horribly old-fashioned and prim. Why couldn't they
have called her by her first name, Bertha, which was beautiful and
dignified, instead of that silly "Rilla"? She did not mind Walter's
version, but nobody else was allowed to call her that, except Miss
Oliver now and then. "Rilla-my-Rilla" in Walter's musical voice sounded
very beautiful to her--like the lilt and ripple of some silvery brook.
She would have died for Walter if it would have done him any good, so
she told Miss Oliver. Rilla was as fond of italics as most girls of
fifteen are--and the bitterest drop in her cup was her suspicion that
he told Di more of his secrets than he told her.
"He thinks I'm not grown up enough to understand," she had once lamented
rebelliously to Miss Oliver, "but I am! And I would never tell them to a
single soul--not even to you, Miss Oliver. I tell you all my own--I
just couldn't be happy if I had any secret from you, dearest--but I
would never betray his. I tell him everything--I even show him my
diary. And it hurts me dreadfully when he doesn't tell me things. He
shows me all his poems, though--they are marvellous, Miss Oliver. Oh, I
just live in the hope that some day I shall be to Walter what
Wordsworth's sister Dorothy was to him. Wordsworth never wrote anything
like Walter's poems--nor Tennyson, either."
"I wouldn't say just that. Both of them wrote a great deal of trash,"
said Miss Oliver dryly. Then, repenting, as she saw a hurt look in
Rilla's eye, she added hastily,
"But I believe Walter will be a great poet, too--some day--and you will
have more of his confidence as you grow older."
"When Walter was in the hospital with typhoid last year I was almost
crazy," sighed Rilla, a little importantly. "They never told me how ill
he really was until it was all over--father wouldn't let them. I'm glad
I didn't know--I couldn't have borne it. I cried myself to sleep every
night as it was. But sometimes," concluded Rilla bitterly--she liked to
speak bitterly now and then in imitation of Miss Oliver--"sometimes I
think Walter cares more for Dog Monday than he does for me."
Dog Monday was the Ingleside dog, so called because he had come into the
family on a Monday when Walter had been reading Robinson Crusoe. He
really belonged to Jem but was much attached to Walter also. He was
lying beside Walter now with nose snuggled against his arm, thumping his
tail rapturously whenever Walter gave him an absent pat. Monday was not
a collie or a setter or a hound or a Newfoundland. He was just, as Jem
said, "plain dog"--very plain dog, uncharitable people added.
Certainly, Monday's looks were not his strong point. Black spots were
scattered at random over his yellow carcass, one of them, apparently,
blotting out an eye. His ears were in tatters, for Monday was never
successful in affairs of honour. But he possessed one talisman. He knew
that not all dogs could be handsome or eloquent or victorious, but that
every dog could love. Inside his homely hide beat the most affectionate,
loyal, faithful heart of any dog since dogs were; and something looked
out of his brown eyes that was nearer akin to a soul than any theologian
would allow. Everybody at Ingleside was fond of him, even Susan,
although his one unfortunate propensity of sneaking into the spare room
and going to sleep on the bed tried her affection sorely.
On this particular afternoon Rilla had no quarrel on hand with existing
conditions.
"Hasn't June been a delightful month?" she asked, looking dreamily afar
at the little quiet silvery clouds hanging so peacefully over Rainbow
Valley. "We've had such lovely times--and such lovely weather. It has
just been perfect every way."
"I don't half like that," said Miss Oliver, with a sigh. "It's ominous--
somehow. A perfect thing is a gift of the gods--a sort of compensation
for what is coming afterwards. I've seen that so often that I don't care
to hear people say they've had a perfect time. June has been delightful,
though."
"Of course, it hasn't been very exciting," said Rilla. "The only
exciting thing that has happened in the Glen for a year was old Miss
Mead fainting in Church. Sometimes I wish something dramatic would
happen once in a while."
"Don't wish it. Dramatic things always have a bitterness for some one.
What a nice summer all you gay creatures will have! And me moping at
Lowbridge!"
"You'll be over often, won't you? I think there's going to be lots of
fun this summer, though I'll just be on the fringe of things as usual, I
suppose. Isn't it horrid when people think you're a little girl when
you're not?"
"There's plenty of time for you to be grown up, Rilla. Don't wish your
youth away. It goes too quickly. You'll begin to taste life soon
enough."
"Taste life! I want to eat it," cried Rilla, laughing. "I want
everything--everything a girl can have. I'll be fifteen in another
month, and then nobody can say I'm a child any longer. I heard someone
say once that the years from fifteen to nineteen are the best years in a
girl's life. I'm going to make them perfectly splendid--just fill them
with fun."
"There's no use thinking about what you're going to do--you are
tolerably sure not to do it."
"Oh, but you do get a lot of fun out of the thinking," cried Rilla.
"You think of nothing but fun, you monkey," said Miss Oliver
indulgently, reflecting that Rilla's chin was really the last word in
chins. "Well, what else is fifteen for? But have you any notion of going
to college this fall?"
"No--nor any other fall. I don't want to. I never cared for all those
ologies and isms Nan and Di are so crazy about. And there's five of us
going to college already. Surely that's enough. There's bound to be one
dunce in every family. I'm quite willing to be a dunce if I can be a
pretty, popular, delightful one. I can't be clever. I have no talent at
all, and you can't imagine how comfortable it is. Nobody expects me to
do anything so I'm never pestered to do it. And I can't be a
housewifely, cookly creature, either. I hate sewing and dusting, and
when Susan couldn't teach me to make biscuits nobody could. Father says
I toil not neither do I spin. Therefore, I must be a lily of the field,"
concluded Rilla, with another laugh.
"You are too young to give up your studies altogether, Rilla."
"Oh, mother will put me through a course of reading next winter. It will
polish up her B.A. degree. Luckily I like reading. Don't look at me so
sorrowfully and so disapprovingly, dearest. I can't be sober and serious
--everything looks so rosy and rainbowy to me. Next month I'll be
fifteen--and next year sixteen--and the year after that seventeen.
Could anything be more enchanting?"
"Rap wood," said Gertrude Oliver, half laughingly, half seriously. "Rap
wood, Rilla-my-Rilla."
DEW OF MORNING
Outside, the Ingleside lawn was full of golden pools of sunshine and
plots of alluring shadows. Rilla Blythe was swinging in the hammock
under the big Scotch pine, Gertrude Oliver sat at its roots beside her,
and Walter was stretched at full length on the grass, lost in a romance
of chivalry wherein old heroes and beauties of dead and gone centuries
lived vividly again for him.
Rilla was the "baby" of the Blythe family and was in a chronic state of
secret indignation because nobody believed she was grown up. She was so
nearly fifteen that she called herself that, and she was quite as tall
as Di and Nan; also, she was nearly as pretty as Susan believed her to
be. She had great, dreamy, hazel eyes, a milky skin dappled with little
golden freckles, and delicately arched eyebrows, giving her a demure,
questioning look which made people, especially lads in their teens, want
to answer it. Her hair was ripely, ruddily brown and a little dent in
her upper lip looked as if some good fairy had pressed it in with her
finger at Rilla's christening. Rilla, whose best friends could not deny
her share of vanity, thought her face would do very well, but worried
over her figure, and wished her mother could be prevailed upon to let
her wear longer dresses. She, who had been so plump and roly-poly in the
old Rainbow Valley days, was incredibly slim now, in the arms-and-legs
period. Jem and Shirley harrowed her soul by calling her "Spider." Yet
she somehow escaped awkwardness. There was something in her movements
that made you think she never walked but always danced. She had been
much petted and was a wee bit spoiled, but still the general opinion was
that Rilla Blythe was a very sweet girl, even if she were not so clever
as Nan and Di.
Miss Oliver, who was going home that night for vacation, had boarded for
a year at Ingleside. The Blythes had taken her to please Rilla who was
fathoms deep in love with her teacher and was even willing to share her
room, since no other was available. Gertrude Oliver was twenty-eight and
life had been a struggle for her. She was a striking-looking girl, with
rather sad, almond-shaped brown eyes, a clever, rather mocking mouth,
and enormous masses of black hair twisted about her head. She was not
pretty but there was a certain charm of interest and mystery in her
face, and Rilla found her fascinating. Even her occasional moods of
gloom and cynicism had allurement for Rilla. These moods came only when
Miss Oliver was tired. At all other times she was a stimulating
companion, and the gay set at Ingleside never remembered that she was so
much older than themselves. Walter and Rilla were her favourites and she
was the confidante of the secret wishes and aspirations of both. She
knew that Rilla longed to be "out"--to go to parties as Nan and Di did,
and to have dainty evening dresses and--yes, there is no mincing
matters--beaux! In the plural, at that! As for Walter, Miss Oliver knew
that he had written a sequence of sonnets "to Rosamond"--i.e., Faith
Meredith--and that he aimed at a Professorship of English literature in
some big college. She knew his passionate love of beauty and his equally
passionate hatred of ugliness; she knew his strength and his weakness.
Walter was, as ever, the handsomest of the Ingleside boys. Miss Oliver
found pleasure in looking at him for his good looks--he was so exactly
like what she would have liked her own son to be. Glossy black hair,
brilliant dark grey eyes, faultless features. And a poet to his
fingertips! That sonnet sequence was really a remarkable thing for a lad
of twenty to write. Miss Oliver was no partial critic and she knew that
Walter Blythe had a wonderful gift.
Rilla loved Walter with all her heart. He never teased her as Jem and
Shirley did. He never called her "Spider." His pet name for her was
"Rilla-my-Rilla"--a little pun on her real name, Marilla. She had been
named after Aunt Marilla of Green Gables, but Aunt Marilla had died
before Rilla was old enough to know her very well, and Rilla detested
the name as being horribly old-fashioned and prim. Why couldn't they
have called her by her first name, Bertha, which was beautiful and
dignified, instead of that silly "Rilla"? She did not mind Walter's
version, but nobody else was allowed to call her that, except Miss
Oliver now and then. "Rilla-my-Rilla" in Walter's musical voice sounded
very beautiful to her--like the lilt and ripple of some silvery brook.
She would have died for Walter if it would have done him any good, so
she told Miss Oliver. Rilla was as fond of italics as most girls of
fifteen are--and the bitterest drop in her cup was her suspicion that
he told Di more of his secrets than he told her.
"He thinks I'm not grown up enough to understand," she had once lamented
rebelliously to Miss Oliver, "but I am! And I would never tell them to a
single soul--not even to you, Miss Oliver. I tell you all my own--I
just couldn't be happy if I had any secret from you, dearest--but I
would never betray his. I tell him everything--I even show him my
diary. And it hurts me dreadfully when he doesn't tell me things. He
shows me all his poems, though--they are marvellous, Miss Oliver. Oh, I
just live in the hope that some day I shall be to Walter what
Wordsworth's sister Dorothy was to him. Wordsworth never wrote anything
like Walter's poems--nor Tennyson, either."
"I wouldn't say just that. Both of them wrote a great deal of trash,"
said Miss Oliver dryly. Then, repenting, as she saw a hurt look in
Rilla's eye, she added hastily,
"But I believe Walter will be a great poet, too--some day--and you will
have more of his confidence as you grow older."
"When Walter was in the hospital with typhoid last year I was almost
crazy," sighed Rilla, a little importantly. "They never told me how ill
he really was until it was all over--father wouldn't let them. I'm glad
I didn't know--I couldn't have borne it. I cried myself to sleep every
night as it was. But sometimes," concluded Rilla bitterly--she liked to
speak bitterly now and then in imitation of Miss Oliver--"sometimes I
think Walter cares more for Dog Monday than he does for me."
Dog Monday was the Ingleside dog, so called because he had come into the
family on a Monday when Walter had been reading Robinson Crusoe. He
really belonged to Jem but was much attached to Walter also. He was
lying beside Walter now with nose snuggled against his arm, thumping his
tail rapturously whenever Walter gave him an absent pat. Monday was not
a collie or a setter or a hound or a Newfoundland. He was just, as Jem
said, "plain dog"--very plain dog, uncharitable people added.
Certainly, Monday's looks were not his strong point. Black spots were
scattered at random over his yellow carcass, one of them, apparently,
blotting out an eye. His ears were in tatters, for Monday was never
successful in affairs of honour. But he possessed one talisman. He knew
that not all dogs could be handsome or eloquent or victorious, but that
every dog could love. Inside his homely hide beat the most affectionate,
loyal, faithful heart of any dog since dogs were; and something looked
out of his brown eyes that was nearer akin to a soul than any theologian
would allow. Everybody at Ingleside was fond of him, even Susan,
although his one unfortunate propensity of sneaking into the spare room
and going to sleep on the bed tried her affection sorely.
On this particular afternoon Rilla had no quarrel on hand with existing
conditions.
"Hasn't June been a delightful month?" she asked, looking dreamily afar
at the little quiet silvery clouds hanging so peacefully over Rainbow
Valley. "We've had such lovely times--and such lovely weather. It has
just been perfect every way."
"I don't half like that," said Miss Oliver, with a sigh. "It's ominous--
somehow. A perfect thing is a gift of the gods--a sort of compensation
for what is coming afterwards. I've seen that so often that I don't care
to hear people say they've had a perfect time. June has been delightful,
though."
"Of course, it hasn't been very exciting," said Rilla. "The only
exciting thing that has happened in the Glen for a year was old Miss
Mead fainting in Church. Sometimes I wish something dramatic would
happen once in a while."
"Don't wish it. Dramatic things always have a bitterness for some one.
What a nice summer all you gay creatures will have! And me moping at
Lowbridge!"
"You'll be over often, won't you? I think there's going to be lots of
fun this summer, though I'll just be on the fringe of things as usual, I
suppose. Isn't it horrid when people think you're a little girl when
you're not?"
"There's plenty of time for you to be grown up, Rilla. Don't wish your
youth away. It goes too quickly. You'll begin to taste life soon
enough."
"Taste life! I want to eat it," cried Rilla, laughing. "I want
everything--everything a girl can have. I'll be fifteen in another
month, and then nobody can say I'm a child any longer. I heard someone
say once that the years from fifteen to nineteen are the best years in a
girl's life. I'm going to make them perfectly splendid--just fill them
with fun."
"There's no use thinking about what you're going to do--you are
tolerably sure not to do it."
"Oh, but you do get a lot of fun out of the thinking," cried Rilla.
"You think of nothing but fun, you monkey," said Miss Oliver
indulgently, reflecting that Rilla's chin was really the last word in
chins. "Well, what else is fifteen for? But have you any notion of going
to college this fall?"
"No--nor any other fall. I don't want to. I never cared for all those
ologies and isms Nan and Di are so crazy about. And there's five of us
going to college already. Surely that's enough. There's bound to be one
dunce in every family. I'm quite willing to be a dunce if I can be a
pretty, popular, delightful one. I can't be clever. I have no talent at
all, and you can't imagine how comfortable it is. Nobody expects me to
do anything so I'm never pestered to do it. And I can't be a
housewifely, cookly creature, either. I hate sewing and dusting, and
when Susan couldn't teach me to make biscuits nobody could. Father says
I toil not neither do I spin. Therefore, I must be a lily of the field,"
concluded Rilla, with another laugh.
"You are too young to give up your studies altogether, Rilla."
"Oh, mother will put me through a course of reading next winter. It will
polish up her B.A. degree. Luckily I like reading. Don't look at me so
sorrowfully and so disapprovingly, dearest. I can't be sober and serious
--everything looks so rosy and rainbowy to me. Next month I'll be
fifteen--and next year sixteen--and the year after that seventeen.
Could anything be more enchanting?"
"Rap wood," said Gertrude Oliver, half laughingly, half seriously. "Rap
wood, Rilla-my-Rilla."
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
MOONLIT MIRTH
Rilla, who still buttoned up her eyes when she went to sleep so that she
always looked as if she were laughing in her slumber, yawned, stretched,
and smiled at Gertrude Oliver. The latter had come over from Lowbridge
the previous evening and had been prevailed upon to remain for the dance
at the Four Winds lighthouse the next night.
"The new day is knocking at the window. What will it bring us, I
wonder."
Miss Oliver shivered a little. She never greeted the days with Rilla's
enthusiasm. She had lived long enough to know that a day may bring a
terrible thing.
"I think the nicest thing about days is their unexpectedness," went on
Rilla. "It's jolly to wake up like this on a golden-fine morning and
wonder what surprise packet the day will hand you. I always day-dream
for ten minutes before I get up, imagining the heaps of splendid things
that may happen before night."
"I hope something very unexpected will happen today," said Gertrude. "I
hope the mail will bring us news that war has been averted between
Germany and France."
"Oh--yes," said Rilla vaguely. "It will be dreadful if it isn't, I
suppose. But it won't really matter much to us, will it? I think a war
would e so exciting. The Boer war was, they say, but I don't remember
anything about it, of course. Miss Oliver, shall I wear my white dress
tonight or my new green one? The green one is by far the prettier, of
course, but I'm almost afraid to wear it to a shore dance for fear
something will happen to it. And will you do my hair the new way? None
of the other girls in the Glen wear it yet and it will make such a
sensation."
"How did you induce your mother to let you go to the dance?"
"Oh, Walter coaxed her over. He knew I would be heart-broken if I didn't
go. It's my first really-truly grown-up party, Miss Oliver, and I've
just lain awake at nights for a week thinking it over. When I saw the
sun shining this morning I wanted to whoop for joy. It would be simply
terrible if it rained tonight. I think I'll wear the green dress and
risk it. I want to look my nicest at my first party. Besides, it's an
inch longer than my white one. And I'll wear my silver slippers too.
Mrs. Ford sent them to me last Christmas and I've never had a chance to
wear them yet. They're the dearest things. Oh, Miss Oliver, I do hope
some of the boys will ask me to dance. I shall die of mortification--
truly I will, if nobody does and I have to sit stuck up against the wall
all the evening. Of course Carl and Jerry can't dance because they're
the minister's sons, or else I could depend on them to save me from
utter disgrace."
"You'll have plenty of partners--all the over-harbour boys are coming--
there'll be far more boys than girls."
"I'm glad I'm not a minister's daughter," laughed Rilla. "Poor Faith is
so furious because she won't dare to dance tonight. Una doesn't care, of
course. She has never hankered after dancing. Somebody told Faith there
would be a taffy-pull in the kitchen for those who didn't dance and you
should have seen the face she made. She and Jem will sit out on the
rocks most of the evening, I suppose. Did you know that we are all to
walk down as far as that little creek below the old House of Dreams and
then sail to the lighthouse? Won't it just be absolutely divine?"
"When I was fifteen I talked in italics and superlatives too," said Miss
Oliver sarcastically. "I think the party promises to be pleasant for
young fry. I expect to be bored. None of those boys will bother dancing
with an old maid like me. Jem and Walter will take me out once out of
charity. So you can't expect me to look forward to it with your touching
young rapture."
"Didn't you have a good time at your first party, though, Miss Oliver?"
"No. I had a hateful time. I was shabby and homely and nobody asked me
to dance except one boy, homelier and shabbier than myself. He was so
awkward I hated him--and even he didn't ask me again. I had no real
girlhood, Rilla. It's a sad loss. That's why I want you to have a
splendid, happy girlhood. And I hope your first party will be one you'll
remember all your life with pleasure."
"I dreamed last night I was at the dance and right in the middle of
things I discovered I was dressed in my kimono and bedroom shoes,"
sighed Rilla. "I woke up with a gasp of horror."
"Speaking of dreams--I had an odd one," said Miss Oliver absently. "It
was one of those vivid dreams I sometimes have--they are not the vague
jumble of ordinary dreams--they are as clear cut and real as life."
"What was your dream?"
"I was standing on the veranda steps, here at Ingleside, looking down
over the fields of the Glen. All at once, far in the distance, I saw a
long, silvery, glistening wave breaking over them. It came nearer and
nearer--just a succession of little white waves like those that break
on the sandshore sometimes. The Glen was being swallowed up. I thought,
'Surely the waves will not come near Ingleside'--but they came nearer
and nearer--so rapidly--before I could move or call they were breaking
right at my feet--and everything was gone--there was nothing but a
waste of stormy water where the Glen had been. I tried to draw back--
and I saw that the edge of my dress was wet with blood--and I woke--
shivering. I don't like the dream. There was some sinister significance
in it. That kind of vivid dream always 'comes true' with me."
"I hope it doesn't mean there's a storm coming up from the east to spoil
the party," murmured Rilla.
"Incorrigible fifteen!" said Miss Oliver dryly. "No, Rilla-my-Rilla, I
don't think there is any danger that it foretells anything so awful as
that."
There had been an undercurrent of tension in the Ingleside existence for
several days. Only Rilla, absorbed in her own budding life, was unaware
of it. Dr. Blythe had taken to looking grave and saying little over the
daily paper. Jem and Walter were keenly interested in the news it
brought. Jem sought Walter out in excitement that evening.
"Oh, boy, Germany has declared war on France. This means that England
will fight too, probably--and if she does--well, the Piper of your old
fancy will have come at last."
"It wasn't a fancy," said Walter slowly. "It was a presentiment--a
vision--Jem, I really saw him for a moment that evening long ago.
Suppose England does fight?"
"Why, we'll all have to turn in and help her," cried Jem gaily. "We
couldn't let the 'old grey mother of the northern sea' fight it out
alone, could we? But you can't go--the typhoid has done you out of
that. Sort of a shame, eh?"
Walter did not say whether it was a shame or not. He looked silently
over the Glen to the dimpling blue harbour beyond.
"We're the cubs--we've got to pitch in tooth and claw if it comes to a
family row," Jem went on cheerfully, rumpling up his red curls with a
strong, lean, sensitive brown hand--the hand of the born surgeon, his
father often thought. "What an adventure it would be! But I suppose Grey
or some of those wary old chaps will patch matters up at the eleventh
hour. It'll be a rotten shame if they leave France in the lurch, though.
If they don't, we'll see some fun. Well, I suppose it's time to get
ready for the spree at the light."
Jem departed whistling "Wi' a hundred pipers and a' and a'," and Walter
stood for a long time where he was. There was a little frown on his
forehead. This had all come up with the blackness and suddenness of a
thundercloud. A few days ago nobody had even thought of such a thing. It
was absurd to think of it now. Some way out would be found. War was a
hellish, horrible, hideous thing--too horrible and hideous to happen in
the twentieth century between civilized nations. The mere thought of it
was hideous, and made Walter unhappy in its threat to the beauty of
life. He would not think of it--he would resolutely put it out of his
mind. How beautiful the old Glen was, in its August ripeness, with its
chain of bowery old homesteads, tilled meadows and quiet gardens. The
western sky was like a great golden pearl. Far down the harbour was
frosted with a dawning moonlight. The air was full of exquisite sounds--
sleepy robin whistles, wonderful, mournful, soft murmurs of wind in the
twilit trees, rustle of aspen poplars talking in silvery whispers and
shaking their dainty, heart-shaped leaves, lilting young laughter from
the windows of rooms where the girls were making ready for the dance.
The world was steeped in maddening loveliness of sound and colour. He
would think only of these things and of the deep, subtle joy they gave
him. "Anyhow, no one will expect me to go," he thought. "As Jem says,
typhoid has seen to that."
Rilla was leaning out of her room window, dressed for the dance. A
yellow pansy slipped from her hair and fell out over the sill like a
falling star of gold. She caught at it vainly--but there were enough
left. Miss Oliver had woven a little wreath of them for her pet's hair.
"It's so beautifully calm--isn't that splendid? We'll have a perfect
night. Listen, Miss Oliver--I can hear those old bells in Rainbow
Valley quite clearly. They've been hanging there for over ten years."
"Their wind chime always makes me think of the aerial, celestial music
Adam and Eve heard in Milton's Eden," responded Miss Oliver.
"We used to have such fun in Rainbow Valley when we were children," said
Rilla dreamily.
Nobody ever played in Rainbow Valley now. It was very silent on summer
evenings. Walter liked to go there to read. Jem and Faith trysted there
considerably; Jerry and Nan went there to pursue uninterruptedly the
ceaseless wrangles and arguments on profound subjects that seemed to be
their preferred method of sweethearting. And Rilla had a beloved little
sylvan dell of her own there where she liked to sit and dream.
"I must run down to the kitchen before I go and show myself off to
Susan. She would never forgive me if I didn't."
Rilla whirled into the shadowy kitchen at Ingleside, where Susan was
prosaically darning socks, and lighted it up with her beauty. She wore
her green dress with its little pink daisy garlands, her silk stockings
and silver slippers. She had golden pansies in her hair and at her
creamy throat. She was so pretty and young and glowing that even Cousin
Sophia Crawford was compelled to admire her--and Cousin Sophia Crawford
admired few transient earthly things. Cousin Sophia and Susan had made
up, or ignored, their old feud since the former had come to live in the
Glen, and Cousin Sophia often came across in the evenings to make a
neighbourly call. Susan did not always welcome her rapturously for
Cousin Sophia was not what could be called an exhilarating companion.
"Some calls are visits and some are visitations, Mrs. Dr. dear," Susan
said once, and left it to be inferred that Cousin Sophia's were the
latter.
Cousin Sophia had a long, pale, wrinkled face, a long, thin nose, a
long, thin mouth, and very long, thin, pale hands, generally folded
resignedly on her black calico lap. Everything about her seemed long and
thin and pale. She looked mournfully upon Rilla Blythe and said sadly,
"Is your hair all your own?"
"Of course it is," cried Rilla indignantly.
"Ah, well!" Cousin Sophia sighed. "It might be better for you if it
wasn't! Such a lot of hair takes from a person's strength. It's a sign
of consumption, I've heard, but I hope it won't turn out like that in
your case. I s'pose you'll all be dancing tonight--even the minister's
boys most likely. I s'pose his girls won't go that far. Ah, well, I
never held with dancing. I knew a girl once who dropped dead while she
was dancing. How any one could ever dance aga' after a judgment like
that I cannot comprehend."
"Did she ever dance again?" asked Rilla pertly.
"I told you she dropped dead. Of course she never danced again, poor
creature. She was a Kirke from Lowbridge. You ain't a-going off like
that with nothing on your bare neck, are you?"
"It's a hot evening," protested Rilla. "But I'll put on a scarf when we
go on the water."
"I knew of a boat load of young folks who went sailing on that harbour
forty years ago just such a night as this--just exactly such a night as
this," said Cousin Sophia lugubriously, "and they were upset and drowned
--every last one of them. I hope nothing like that'll happen to you
tonight. Do you ever try anything for the freckles? I used to find
plantain juice real good."
"You certainly should be a judge of freckles, Cousin Sophia," said
Susan, rushing to Rilla's defence. "you were more speckled than any toad
when you was a girl. Rilla's only come in summer but yours stayed put,
season in and season out; and you had not a ground colour like hers
behind them neither. You look real nice, Rilla, and that way of fixing
your hair is becoming. But you are not going to walk to the harbour in
those slippers, are you?"
"Oh, no. We'll all wear our old shoes to the harbour and carry our
slippers. Do you like my dress, Susan?"
"It minds me of a dress I wore when I was a girl," sighed Cousin Sophia
before Susan could reply. "It was green with pink posies on it, too, and
it was flounced from the waist to the hem. We didn't wear the skimpy
things girls wear nowadays. Ah me, times has changed and not for the
better I'm afraid. I tore a big hole in it that night and someone
spilled a cup of tea all over it. Ruined it completely. But I hope
nothing will happen to your dress. It orter to be a bit longer I'm
thinking--your legs are so terrible long and thin."
"Mrs. Dr. Blythe does not approve of little girls dressing like grown-up
ones," said Susan stiffly, intending merely a snub to Cousin Sophia. But
Rilla felt insulted. A little girl indeed! She whisked out of the
kitchen in high dudgeon. Another time she wouldn't go down to show
herself off to Susan--Susan, who thought nobody was grown up until she
was sixty! And that horrid Cousin Sophia with her digs about freckles
and legs! What business had an old--an old beanpole like that to talk
of anybody else being long and thin? Rilla felt all her pleasure in
herself and her evening clouded and spoiled. The very teeth of her soul
were set on edge and she could have sat down and cried.
But later on her spirits rose again when she found herself one of the
gay crowd bound for the Four Winds light.
The Blythes left Ingleside to the melancholy music of howls from Dog
Monday, who was locked up in the barn lest he make an uninvited guest at
the light. They picked up the Merediths in the village, and others
joined them as they walked down the old harbour road. Mary Vance,
resplendent in blue crepe, with lace overdress, came out of Miss
Cornelia's gate and attached herself to Rilla and Miss Oliver who were
walking together and who did not welcome her over-warmly. Rilla was not
very fond of Mary Vance. She had never forgotten the humiliating day
when Mary had chased her through the village with a dried codfish. Mary
Vance, to tell the truth, was not exactly popular with any of her set.
Still, they enjoyed her society--she had such a biting tongue that it
was stimulating. "Mary Vance is a habit of ours--we can't do without
her even when we are furious with her," Di Blythe had once said.
Most of the little crowd were paired off after a fashion. Jem walked
with Faith Meredith, of course, and Jerry Meredith with Nan Blythe. Di
and Walter were together, deep in confidential conversation which Rilla
envied.
Carl Meredith was walking with Miranda Pryor, more to torment Joe
Milgrave than for any other reason. Joe was known to have a strong
hankering for the said Miranda, which shyness prevented him from
indulging on all occasions. Joe might summon enough courage to amble up
beside Miranda if the night were dark, but here, in this moonlit dusk,
he simply could not do it. So he trailed along after the procession and
thought things not lawful to be uttered of Carl Meredith. Miranda was
the daughter of Whiskers-on-the-moon; she did not share her father's
unpopularity but she was not much run after, being a pale, neutral
little creature, somewhat addicted to nervous giggling. She had silvery
blonde hair and her eyes were big china blue orbs that looked as if she
had been badly frightened when she was little and had never got over it.
She would much rather have walked with Joe than with Carl, with whom she
did not feel in the least at home. Yet it was something of an honour,
too, to have a college boy beside her, and a son of the manse at that.
Shirley Blythe was with Una Meredith and both were rather silent because
such was their nature. Shirley was a lad of sixteen, sedate, sensible,
thoughtful, full of a quiet humour. He was Susan's "little brown boy"
yet, with his brown hair, brown eyes, and clear brown skin. He liked to
walk with Una Meredith because she never tried to make him talk or
badgered him with chatter. Una was as sweet and shy as she had been in
the Rainbow Valley days, and her large, dark-blue eyes were as dreamy
and wistful. She had a secret, carefully-hidden fancy for Walter Blythe
that nobody but Rilla ever suspected. Rilla sympathized with it and
wished Walter would return it. She liked Una better than Faith, whose
beauty and aplomb rather overshadowed other girls--and Rilla did not
enjoy being overshadowed.
But just now she was very happy. It was so delightful to be tripping
with her friends down that dark, gleaming road sprinkled with its little
spruces and firs, whose balsam made all the air resinous around them.
Meadows of sunset afterlight were behind the westerning hills. Before
them was the shining harbour. A bell was ringing in the little church
over-harbour and the lingering dream-notes died around the dim,
amethystine points. The gulf beyond was still silvery blue in the
afterlight. Oh, it was all glorious--the clear air with its salt tang,
the balsam of the firs, the laughter of her friends. Rilla loved life--
its bloom and brilliance; she loved the ripple of music, the hum of
merry conversation; she wanted to walk on forever over this road of
silver and shadow. It was her first party and she was going to have a
splendid time. There was nothing in the world to worry about--not even
freckles and over-long legs--nothing except one little haunting fear
that nobody would ask her to dance. It was beautiful and satisfying just
to be alive--to be fifteen--to be pretty. Rilla drew a long breath of
rapture--and caught it midway rather sharply. Jem was telling some
story to Faith--something that had happened in the Balkan War.
"The doctor lost both his legs--they were smashed to pulp--and he was
left on the field to die. And he crawled about from man to man, to all
the wounded men round him, as long as he could, and did everything
possible to relieve their sufferings--never thinking of himself--he
was tying a bit of bandage round another man's leg when he went under.
They found them there, the doctor's dead hands still held the bandage
tight, the bleeding was stopped and the other man's life was saved. Some
hero, wasn't he, Faith? I tell you when I read that--"
Jem and Faith moved on out of hearing. Gertrude Oliver suddenly
shivered. Rilla pressed her arm sympathetically.
"Wasn't it dreadful, Miss Oliver? I don't know why Jem tells such
gruesome things at a time like this when we're all out for fun."
"Do you think it dreadful, Rilla? I thought it wonderful--beautiful.
Such a story makes one ashamed of ever doubting human nature. That man's
action was godlike. And how humanity responds to the ideal of
self-sacrifice. As for my shiver, I don't know what caused it. The
evening is certainly warm enough. Perhaps someone is walking over the
dark, starshiny spot that is to be my grave. That is the explanation the
old superstition would give. Well, I won't think of that on this lovely
night. Do you know, Rilla, that when night-time comes I'm always glad I
live in the country. We know the real charm of night here as town
dwellers never do. Every night is beautiful in the country--even the
stormy ones. I love a wild night storm on this old gulf shore. As for a
night like this, it is almost too beautiful--it belongs to youth and
dreamland and I'm half afraid of it."
"I feel as if I were part of it," said Rilla.
"Ah yes, you're young enough not to be afraid of perfect things. Well,
here we are at the House of Dreams. It seems lonely this summer. The
Fords didn't come?"
"Mr. and Mrs. Ford and Persis didn't. Kenneth did--but he stayed with
his mother's people over-harbour. We haven't seen a great deal of him
this summer. He's a little lame, so didn't go about very much."
"Lame? What happened to him?"
"He broke his ankle in a football game last fall and was laid up most of
the winter. He has limped a little ever since but it is getting better
all the time and he expects it will be all right before long. He has
been up to Ingleside only twice."
"Ethel Reese is simply crazy about him," said Mary Vance. "She hasn't
got the sense she was born with where he is concerned. He walked home
with her from the over-harbour church last prayer-meeting night and the
airs she has put on since would really make you weary of life. As if a
Toronto boy like Ken Ford would ever really think of a country girl like
Ethel!"
Rilla flushed. It did not matter to her if Kenneth Ford walked home with
Ethel Reese a dozen times--it did not! Nothing that he did mattered to
her. He was ages older than she was. He chummed with Nan and Di and
Faith, and looked upon her, Rilla, as a child whom he never noticed
except to tease. And she detested Ethel Reese and Ethel Reese hated her
--always had hated her since Walter had pummelled Dan so notoriously in
Rainbow Valley days; but why need she be thought beneath Kenneth Ford's
notice because she was a country girl, pray? As for Mary Vance, she was
getting to be an out-and-out gossip and thought of nothing but who
walked home with people!
There was a little pier on the harbour shore below the House of Dreams,
and two boats were moored there. One boat was skippered by Jem Blythe,
the other by Joe Milgrave, who knew all about boats and was nothing loth
to let Miranda Pryor see it. They raced down the harbour and Joe's boat
won. More boats were coming down from the Harbour Head and across the
harbour from the western side. Everywhere there was laughter. The big
white tower on Four Winds Point was overflowing with light, while its
revolving beacon flashed overhead. A family from Charlottetown,
relatives of the light's keeper, were summering at the light, and they
were giving the party to which all the young people of Four Winds and
Glen St. Mary and over-harbour had been invited. As Jem's boat swung in
below the lighthouse Rilla desperately snatched off her shoes and donned
her silver slippers behind Miss Oliver's screening back. A glance had
told her that the rock-cut steps climbing up to the light were lined
with boys, and lighted by Chinese lanterns, and she was determined she
would not walk up those steps in the heavy shoes her mother had insisted
on her wearing for the road. The slippers pinched abominably, but nobody
would have suspected it as Rilla tripped smilingly up the steps, her
soft dark eyes glowing and questioning, her colour deepening richly on
her round, creamy cheeks. The very minute she reached the top of the
steps an over-harbour boy asked her to dance and the next moment they
were in the pavilion that had been built seaward of the lighthouse for
dances. It was a delightful spot, roofed over with fir-boughs and hung
with lanterns. Beyond was the sea in a radiance that glowed and
shimmered, to the left the moonlit crests and hollows of the sand-dunes,
to the right the rocky shore with its inky shadows and its crystalline
coves. Rilla and her partner swung in among the dancers; she drew a long
breath of delight; what witching music Ned Burr of the Upper Glen was
coaxing from his fiddle--it was really like the magical pipes of the
old tale which compelled all who heard them to dance. How cool and fresh
the gulf breeze blew; how white and wonderful the moonlight was over
everything! This was life--enchanting life. Rilla felt as if her feet
and her soul both had wings.
MOONLIT MIRTH
Rilla, who still buttoned up her eyes when she went to sleep so that she
always looked as if she were laughing in her slumber, yawned, stretched,
and smiled at Gertrude Oliver. The latter had come over from Lowbridge
the previous evening and had been prevailed upon to remain for the dance
at the Four Winds lighthouse the next night.
"The new day is knocking at the window. What will it bring us, I
wonder."
Miss Oliver shivered a little. She never greeted the days with Rilla's
enthusiasm. She had lived long enough to know that a day may bring a
terrible thing.
"I think the nicest thing about days is their unexpectedness," went on
Rilla. "It's jolly to wake up like this on a golden-fine morning and
wonder what surprise packet the day will hand you. I always day-dream
for ten minutes before I get up, imagining the heaps of splendid things
that may happen before night."
"I hope something very unexpected will happen today," said Gertrude. "I
hope the mail will bring us news that war has been averted between
Germany and France."
"Oh--yes," said Rilla vaguely. "It will be dreadful if it isn't, I
suppose. But it won't really matter much to us, will it? I think a war
would e so exciting. The Boer war was, they say, but I don't remember
anything about it, of course. Miss Oliver, shall I wear my white dress
tonight or my new green one? The green one is by far the prettier, of
course, but I'm almost afraid to wear it to a shore dance for fear
something will happen to it. And will you do my hair the new way? None
of the other girls in the Glen wear it yet and it will make such a
sensation."
"How did you induce your mother to let you go to the dance?"
"Oh, Walter coaxed her over. He knew I would be heart-broken if I didn't
go. It's my first really-truly grown-up party, Miss Oliver, and I've
just lain awake at nights for a week thinking it over. When I saw the
sun shining this morning I wanted to whoop for joy. It would be simply
terrible if it rained tonight. I think I'll wear the green dress and
risk it. I want to look my nicest at my first party. Besides, it's an
inch longer than my white one. And I'll wear my silver slippers too.
Mrs. Ford sent them to me last Christmas and I've never had a chance to
wear them yet. They're the dearest things. Oh, Miss Oliver, I do hope
some of the boys will ask me to dance. I shall die of mortification--
truly I will, if nobody does and I have to sit stuck up against the wall
all the evening. Of course Carl and Jerry can't dance because they're
the minister's sons, or else I could depend on them to save me from
utter disgrace."
"You'll have plenty of partners--all the over-harbour boys are coming--
there'll be far more boys than girls."
"I'm glad I'm not a minister's daughter," laughed Rilla. "Poor Faith is
so furious because she won't dare to dance tonight. Una doesn't care, of
course. She has never hankered after dancing. Somebody told Faith there
would be a taffy-pull in the kitchen for those who didn't dance and you
should have seen the face she made. She and Jem will sit out on the
rocks most of the evening, I suppose. Did you know that we are all to
walk down as far as that little creek below the old House of Dreams and
then sail to the lighthouse? Won't it just be absolutely divine?"
"When I was fifteen I talked in italics and superlatives too," said Miss
Oliver sarcastically. "I think the party promises to be pleasant for
young fry. I expect to be bored. None of those boys will bother dancing
with an old maid like me. Jem and Walter will take me out once out of
charity. So you can't expect me to look forward to it with your touching
young rapture."
"Didn't you have a good time at your first party, though, Miss Oliver?"
"No. I had a hateful time. I was shabby and homely and nobody asked me
to dance except one boy, homelier and shabbier than myself. He was so
awkward I hated him--and even he didn't ask me again. I had no real
girlhood, Rilla. It's a sad loss. That's why I want you to have a
splendid, happy girlhood. And I hope your first party will be one you'll
remember all your life with pleasure."
"I dreamed last night I was at the dance and right in the middle of
things I discovered I was dressed in my kimono and bedroom shoes,"
sighed Rilla. "I woke up with a gasp of horror."
"Speaking of dreams--I had an odd one," said Miss Oliver absently. "It
was one of those vivid dreams I sometimes have--they are not the vague
jumble of ordinary dreams--they are as clear cut and real as life."
"What was your dream?"
"I was standing on the veranda steps, here at Ingleside, looking down
over the fields of the Glen. All at once, far in the distance, I saw a
long, silvery, glistening wave breaking over them. It came nearer and
nearer--just a succession of little white waves like those that break
on the sandshore sometimes. The Glen was being swallowed up. I thought,
'Surely the waves will not come near Ingleside'--but they came nearer
and nearer--so rapidly--before I could move or call they were breaking
right at my feet--and everything was gone--there was nothing but a
waste of stormy water where the Glen had been. I tried to draw back--
and I saw that the edge of my dress was wet with blood--and I woke--
shivering. I don't like the dream. There was some sinister significance
in it. That kind of vivid dream always 'comes true' with me."
"I hope it doesn't mean there's a storm coming up from the east to spoil
the party," murmured Rilla.
"Incorrigible fifteen!" said Miss Oliver dryly. "No, Rilla-my-Rilla, I
don't think there is any danger that it foretells anything so awful as
that."
There had been an undercurrent of tension in the Ingleside existence for
several days. Only Rilla, absorbed in her own budding life, was unaware
of it. Dr. Blythe had taken to looking grave and saying little over the
daily paper. Jem and Walter were keenly interested in the news it
brought. Jem sought Walter out in excitement that evening.
"Oh, boy, Germany has declared war on France. This means that England
will fight too, probably--and if she does--well, the Piper of your old
fancy will have come at last."
"It wasn't a fancy," said Walter slowly. "It was a presentiment--a
vision--Jem, I really saw him for a moment that evening long ago.
Suppose England does fight?"
"Why, we'll all have to turn in and help her," cried Jem gaily. "We
couldn't let the 'old grey mother of the northern sea' fight it out
alone, could we? But you can't go--the typhoid has done you out of
that. Sort of a shame, eh?"
Walter did not say whether it was a shame or not. He looked silently
over the Glen to the dimpling blue harbour beyond.
"We're the cubs--we've got to pitch in tooth and claw if it comes to a
family row," Jem went on cheerfully, rumpling up his red curls with a
strong, lean, sensitive brown hand--the hand of the born surgeon, his
father often thought. "What an adventure it would be! But I suppose Grey
or some of those wary old chaps will patch matters up at the eleventh
hour. It'll be a rotten shame if they leave France in the lurch, though.
If they don't, we'll see some fun. Well, I suppose it's time to get
ready for the spree at the light."
Jem departed whistling "Wi' a hundred pipers and a' and a'," and Walter
stood for a long time where he was. There was a little frown on his
forehead. This had all come up with the blackness and suddenness of a
thundercloud. A few days ago nobody had even thought of such a thing. It
was absurd to think of it now. Some way out would be found. War was a
hellish, horrible, hideous thing--too horrible and hideous to happen in
the twentieth century between civilized nations. The mere thought of it
was hideous, and made Walter unhappy in its threat to the beauty of
life. He would not think of it--he would resolutely put it out of his
mind. How beautiful the old Glen was, in its August ripeness, with its
chain of bowery old homesteads, tilled meadows and quiet gardens. The
western sky was like a great golden pearl. Far down the harbour was
frosted with a dawning moonlight. The air was full of exquisite sounds--
sleepy robin whistles, wonderful, mournful, soft murmurs of wind in the
twilit trees, rustle of aspen poplars talking in silvery whispers and
shaking their dainty, heart-shaped leaves, lilting young laughter from
the windows of rooms where the girls were making ready for the dance.
The world was steeped in maddening loveliness of sound and colour. He
would think only of these things and of the deep, subtle joy they gave
him. "Anyhow, no one will expect me to go," he thought. "As Jem says,
typhoid has seen to that."
Rilla was leaning out of her room window, dressed for the dance. A
yellow pansy slipped from her hair and fell out over the sill like a
falling star of gold. She caught at it vainly--but there were enough
left. Miss Oliver had woven a little wreath of them for her pet's hair.
"It's so beautifully calm--isn't that splendid? We'll have a perfect
night. Listen, Miss Oliver--I can hear those old bells in Rainbow
Valley quite clearly. They've been hanging there for over ten years."
"Their wind chime always makes me think of the aerial, celestial music
Adam and Eve heard in Milton's Eden," responded Miss Oliver.
"We used to have such fun in Rainbow Valley when we were children," said
Rilla dreamily.
Nobody ever played in Rainbow Valley now. It was very silent on summer
evenings. Walter liked to go there to read. Jem and Faith trysted there
considerably; Jerry and Nan went there to pursue uninterruptedly the
ceaseless wrangles and arguments on profound subjects that seemed to be
their preferred method of sweethearting. And Rilla had a beloved little
sylvan dell of her own there where she liked to sit and dream.
"I must run down to the kitchen before I go and show myself off to
Susan. She would never forgive me if I didn't."
Rilla whirled into the shadowy kitchen at Ingleside, where Susan was
prosaically darning socks, and lighted it up with her beauty. She wore
her green dress with its little pink daisy garlands, her silk stockings
and silver slippers. She had golden pansies in her hair and at her
creamy throat. She was so pretty and young and glowing that even Cousin
Sophia Crawford was compelled to admire her--and Cousin Sophia Crawford
admired few transient earthly things. Cousin Sophia and Susan had made
up, or ignored, their old feud since the former had come to live in the
Glen, and Cousin Sophia often came across in the evenings to make a
neighbourly call. Susan did not always welcome her rapturously for
Cousin Sophia was not what could be called an exhilarating companion.
"Some calls are visits and some are visitations, Mrs. Dr. dear," Susan
said once, and left it to be inferred that Cousin Sophia's were the
latter.
Cousin Sophia had a long, pale, wrinkled face, a long, thin nose, a
long, thin mouth, and very long, thin, pale hands, generally folded
resignedly on her black calico lap. Everything about her seemed long and
thin and pale. She looked mournfully upon Rilla Blythe and said sadly,
"Is your hair all your own?"
"Of course it is," cried Rilla indignantly.
"Ah, well!" Cousin Sophia sighed. "It might be better for you if it
wasn't! Such a lot of hair takes from a person's strength. It's a sign
of consumption, I've heard, but I hope it won't turn out like that in
your case. I s'pose you'll all be dancing tonight--even the minister's
boys most likely. I s'pose his girls won't go that far. Ah, well, I
never held with dancing. I knew a girl once who dropped dead while she
was dancing. How any one could ever dance aga' after a judgment like
that I cannot comprehend."
"Did she ever dance again?" asked Rilla pertly.
"I told you she dropped dead. Of course she never danced again, poor
creature. She was a Kirke from Lowbridge. You ain't a-going off like
that with nothing on your bare neck, are you?"
"It's a hot evening," protested Rilla. "But I'll put on a scarf when we
go on the water."
"I knew of a boat load of young folks who went sailing on that harbour
forty years ago just such a night as this--just exactly such a night as
this," said Cousin Sophia lugubriously, "and they were upset and drowned
--every last one of them. I hope nothing like that'll happen to you
tonight. Do you ever try anything for the freckles? I used to find
plantain juice real good."
"You certainly should be a judge of freckles, Cousin Sophia," said
Susan, rushing to Rilla's defence. "you were more speckled than any toad
when you was a girl. Rilla's only come in summer but yours stayed put,
season in and season out; and you had not a ground colour like hers
behind them neither. You look real nice, Rilla, and that way of fixing
your hair is becoming. But you are not going to walk to the harbour in
those slippers, are you?"
"Oh, no. We'll all wear our old shoes to the harbour and carry our
slippers. Do you like my dress, Susan?"
"It minds me of a dress I wore when I was a girl," sighed Cousin Sophia
before Susan could reply. "It was green with pink posies on it, too, and
it was flounced from the waist to the hem. We didn't wear the skimpy
things girls wear nowadays. Ah me, times has changed and not for the
better I'm afraid. I tore a big hole in it that night and someone
spilled a cup of tea all over it. Ruined it completely. But I hope
nothing will happen to your dress. It orter to be a bit longer I'm
thinking--your legs are so terrible long and thin."
"Mrs. Dr. Blythe does not approve of little girls dressing like grown-up
ones," said Susan stiffly, intending merely a snub to Cousin Sophia. But
Rilla felt insulted. A little girl indeed! She whisked out of the
kitchen in high dudgeon. Another time she wouldn't go down to show
herself off to Susan--Susan, who thought nobody was grown up until she
was sixty! And that horrid Cousin Sophia with her digs about freckles
and legs! What business had an old--an old beanpole like that to talk
of anybody else being long and thin? Rilla felt all her pleasure in
herself and her evening clouded and spoiled. The very teeth of her soul
were set on edge and she could have sat down and cried.
But later on her spirits rose again when she found herself one of the
gay crowd bound for the Four Winds light.
The Blythes left Ingleside to the melancholy music of howls from Dog
Monday, who was locked up in the barn lest he make an uninvited guest at
the light. They picked up the Merediths in the village, and others
joined them as they walked down the old harbour road. Mary Vance,
resplendent in blue crepe, with lace overdress, came out of Miss
Cornelia's gate and attached herself to Rilla and Miss Oliver who were
walking together and who did not welcome her over-warmly. Rilla was not
very fond of Mary Vance. She had never forgotten the humiliating day
when Mary had chased her through the village with a dried codfish. Mary
Vance, to tell the truth, was not exactly popular with any of her set.
Still, they enjoyed her society--she had such a biting tongue that it
was stimulating. "Mary Vance is a habit of ours--we can't do without
her even when we are furious with her," Di Blythe had once said.
Most of the little crowd were paired off after a fashion. Jem walked
with Faith Meredith, of course, and Jerry Meredith with Nan Blythe. Di
and Walter were together, deep in confidential conversation which Rilla
envied.
Carl Meredith was walking with Miranda Pryor, more to torment Joe
Milgrave than for any other reason. Joe was known to have a strong
hankering for the said Miranda, which shyness prevented him from
indulging on all occasions. Joe might summon enough courage to amble up
beside Miranda if the night were dark, but here, in this moonlit dusk,
he simply could not do it. So he trailed along after the procession and
thought things not lawful to be uttered of Carl Meredith. Miranda was
the daughter of Whiskers-on-the-moon; she did not share her father's
unpopularity but she was not much run after, being a pale, neutral
little creature, somewhat addicted to nervous giggling. She had silvery
blonde hair and her eyes were big china blue orbs that looked as if she
had been badly frightened when she was little and had never got over it.
She would much rather have walked with Joe than with Carl, with whom she
did not feel in the least at home. Yet it was something of an honour,
too, to have a college boy beside her, and a son of the manse at that.
Shirley Blythe was with Una Meredith and both were rather silent because
such was their nature. Shirley was a lad of sixteen, sedate, sensible,
thoughtful, full of a quiet humour. He was Susan's "little brown boy"
yet, with his brown hair, brown eyes, and clear brown skin. He liked to
walk with Una Meredith because she never tried to make him talk or
badgered him with chatter. Una was as sweet and shy as she had been in
the Rainbow Valley days, and her large, dark-blue eyes were as dreamy
and wistful. She had a secret, carefully-hidden fancy for Walter Blythe
that nobody but Rilla ever suspected. Rilla sympathized with it and
wished Walter would return it. She liked Una better than Faith, whose
beauty and aplomb rather overshadowed other girls--and Rilla did not
enjoy being overshadowed.
But just now she was very happy. It was so delightful to be tripping
with her friends down that dark, gleaming road sprinkled with its little
spruces and firs, whose balsam made all the air resinous around them.
Meadows of sunset afterlight were behind the westerning hills. Before
them was the shining harbour. A bell was ringing in the little church
over-harbour and the lingering dream-notes died around the dim,
amethystine points. The gulf beyond was still silvery blue in the
afterlight. Oh, it was all glorious--the clear air with its salt tang,
the balsam of the firs, the laughter of her friends. Rilla loved life--
its bloom and brilliance; she loved the ripple of music, the hum of
merry conversation; she wanted to walk on forever over this road of
silver and shadow. It was her first party and she was going to have a
splendid time. There was nothing in the world to worry about--not even
freckles and over-long legs--nothing except one little haunting fear
that nobody would ask her to dance. It was beautiful and satisfying just
to be alive--to be fifteen--to be pretty. Rilla drew a long breath of
rapture--and caught it midway rather sharply. Jem was telling some
story to Faith--something that had happened in the Balkan War.
"The doctor lost both his legs--they were smashed to pulp--and he was
left on the field to die. And he crawled about from man to man, to all
the wounded men round him, as long as he could, and did everything
possible to relieve their sufferings--never thinking of himself--he
was tying a bit of bandage round another man's leg when he went under.
They found them there, the doctor's dead hands still held the bandage
tight, the bleeding was stopped and the other man's life was saved. Some
hero, wasn't he, Faith? I tell you when I read that--"
Jem and Faith moved on out of hearing. Gertrude Oliver suddenly
shivered. Rilla pressed her arm sympathetically.
"Wasn't it dreadful, Miss Oliver? I don't know why Jem tells such
gruesome things at a time like this when we're all out for fun."
"Do you think it dreadful, Rilla? I thought it wonderful--beautiful.
Such a story makes one ashamed of ever doubting human nature. That man's
action was godlike. And how humanity responds to the ideal of
self-sacrifice. As for my shiver, I don't know what caused it. The
evening is certainly warm enough. Perhaps someone is walking over the
dark, starshiny spot that is to be my grave. That is the explanation the
old superstition would give. Well, I won't think of that on this lovely
night. Do you know, Rilla, that when night-time comes I'm always glad I
live in the country. We know the real charm of night here as town
dwellers never do. Every night is beautiful in the country--even the
stormy ones. I love a wild night storm on this old gulf shore. As for a
night like this, it is almost too beautiful--it belongs to youth and
dreamland and I'm half afraid of it."
"I feel as if I were part of it," said Rilla.
"Ah yes, you're young enough not to be afraid of perfect things. Well,
here we are at the House of Dreams. It seems lonely this summer. The
Fords didn't come?"
"Mr. and Mrs. Ford and Persis didn't. Kenneth did--but he stayed with
his mother's people over-harbour. We haven't seen a great deal of him
this summer. He's a little lame, so didn't go about very much."
"Lame? What happened to him?"
"He broke his ankle in a football game last fall and was laid up most of
the winter. He has limped a little ever since but it is getting better
all the time and he expects it will be all right before long. He has
been up to Ingleside only twice."
"Ethel Reese is simply crazy about him," said Mary Vance. "She hasn't
got the sense she was born with where he is concerned. He walked home
with her from the over-harbour church last prayer-meeting night and the
airs she has put on since would really make you weary of life. As if a
Toronto boy like Ken Ford would ever really think of a country girl like
Ethel!"
Rilla flushed. It did not matter to her if Kenneth Ford walked home with
Ethel Reese a dozen times--it did not! Nothing that he did mattered to
her. He was ages older than she was. He chummed with Nan and Di and
Faith, and looked upon her, Rilla, as a child whom he never noticed
except to tease. And she detested Ethel Reese and Ethel Reese hated her
--always had hated her since Walter had pummelled Dan so notoriously in
Rainbow Valley days; but why need she be thought beneath Kenneth Ford's
notice because she was a country girl, pray? As for Mary Vance, she was
getting to be an out-and-out gossip and thought of nothing but who
walked home with people!
There was a little pier on the harbour shore below the House of Dreams,
and two boats were moored there. One boat was skippered by Jem Blythe,
the other by Joe Milgrave, who knew all about boats and was nothing loth
to let Miranda Pryor see it. They raced down the harbour and Joe's boat
won. More boats were coming down from the Harbour Head and across the
harbour from the western side. Everywhere there was laughter. The big
white tower on Four Winds Point was overflowing with light, while its
revolving beacon flashed overhead. A family from Charlottetown,
relatives of the light's keeper, were summering at the light, and they
were giving the party to which all the young people of Four Winds and
Glen St. Mary and over-harbour had been invited. As Jem's boat swung in
below the lighthouse Rilla desperately snatched off her shoes and donned
her silver slippers behind Miss Oliver's screening back. A glance had
told her that the rock-cut steps climbing up to the light were lined
with boys, and lighted by Chinese lanterns, and she was determined she
would not walk up those steps in the heavy shoes her mother had insisted
on her wearing for the road. The slippers pinched abominably, but nobody
would have suspected it as Rilla tripped smilingly up the steps, her
soft dark eyes glowing and questioning, her colour deepening richly on
her round, creamy cheeks. The very minute she reached the top of the
steps an over-harbour boy asked her to dance and the next moment they
were in the pavilion that had been built seaward of the lighthouse for
dances. It was a delightful spot, roofed over with fir-boughs and hung
with lanterns. Beyond was the sea in a radiance that glowed and
shimmered, to the left the moonlit crests and hollows of the sand-dunes,
to the right the rocky shore with its inky shadows and its crystalline
coves. Rilla and her partner swung in among the dancers; she drew a long
breath of delight; what witching music Ned Burr of the Upper Glen was
coaxing from his fiddle--it was really like the magical pipes of the
old tale which compelled all who heard them to dance. How cool and fresh
the gulf breeze blew; how white and wonderful the moonlight was over
everything! This was life--enchanting life. Rilla felt as if her feet
and her soul both had wings.
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
THE PIPER PIPES
Rilla's first party was a triumph--or so it seemed at first. She had so
many partners that she had to split her dances. Her silver slippers
seemed verily to dance of themselves and though they continued to pinch
her toes and blister her heels that did not interfere with her enjoyment
in the least. Ethel Reese gave her a bad ten minutes by beckoning her
mysteriously out of the pavilion and whispering, with a Reese-like
smirk, that her dress gaped behind and that there was a stain on the
flounce. Rilla rushed miserably to the room in the lighthouse which was
fitted up for a temporary ladies' dressing-room, and discovered that the
stain was merely a tiny grass smear and that the gap was equally tiny
where a hook had pulled loose. Irene Howard fastened it up for her and
gave her some over-sweet, condescending compliments. Rilla felt
flattered by Irene's condescension. She was an Upper Glen girl of
nineteen who seemed to like the society of the younger girls--spiteful
friends said because she could queen it over them without rivalry. But
Rilla thought Irene quite wonderful and loved her for her patronage.
Irene was pretty and stylish; she sang divinely and spent every winter
in Charlottetown taking music lessons. She had an aunt in Montreal who
sent her wonderful things to wear; she was reported to have had a sad
love affair--nobody knew just what, but its very mystery allured. Rilla
felt that Irene's compliments crowned her evening. She ran gaily back to
the pavilion and lingered for a moment in the glow of the lanterns at
the entrance looking at the dancers. A momentary break in the whirling
throng gave her a glimpse of Kenneth Ford standing at the other side.
Rilla's heart skipped a beat--or, if that be a physiological
impossibility, she thought it did. So he was here, after all. She had
concluded he was not coming--not that it mattered in the least. Would
he see her? Would he take any notice of her? Of course, he wouldn't ask
her to dance--that couldn't be hoped for. He thought her just a mere
child. He had called her "Spider" not three weeks ago when he had been
at Ingleside one evening. She had cried about it upstairs afterwards and
hated him. But her heart skipped a beat when she saw that he was edging
his way round the side of the pavilion towards her. Was he coming to her
--was he?--was he?--yes, he was! He was looking for her--he was here
beside her--he was gazing down at her with something in his dark grey
eyes that Rilla had never seen in them. Oh, it was almost too much to
bear! and everything was going on as before--the dancers were spinning
round, the boys who couldn't get partners were hanging about the
pavilion, canoodling couples were sitting out on the rocks--nobody
seemed to realize what a stupendous thing had happened.
Kenneth was a tall lad, very good looking, with a certain careless grace
of bearing that somehow made all the other boys seem stiff and awkward
by contrast. He was reported to be awesomely clever, with the glamour of
a far-away city and a big university hanging around him. He had also the
reputation of being a bit of a lady-killer. But that probably accrued to
him from his possession of a laughing, velvety voice which no girl could
hear without a heartbeat, and a dangerous way of listening as if she
were saying something that he had longed all his life to hear.
"Is this Rilla-my-Rilla?" he asked in a low tone.
"Yeth," said Rilla, and immediately wished she could throw herself
headlong down the lighthouse rock or otherwise vanish from a jeering
world.
Rilla had lisped in early childhood; but she had grown out of it. Only
on occasions of stress and strain did the tendency re-assert itself. She
hadn't lisped for a year; and now at this very moment, when she was so
especially desirous of appearing grown up and sophisticated, she must go
and lisp like a baby! It was too mortifying; she felt as if tears were
going to come into her eyes; the next minute she would be--blubbering--
yes, just blubbering--she wished Kenneth would go away--she wished he
had never come. The party was spoiled. Everything had turned to dust and
ashes.
And he had called her "Rilla-my-Rilla"--not "Spider" or "Kid" or
"Puss," as he had been used to call her when he took any notice whatever
of her. She did not at all resent his using Walter's pet name for her;
it sounded beautifully in his low caressing tones, with just the
faintest suggestion of emphasis on the "my." It would have been so nice
if she had not made a fool of herself. She dared not look up lest she
should see laughter in his eyes. So she looked down; and as her lashes
were very long and dark and her lids very thick and creamy, the effect
was quite charming and provocative, and Kenneth reflected that Rilla
Blythe was going to be the beauty of the Ingleside girls after all. He
wanted to make her look up--to catch again that little, demure,
questioning glance. She was the prettiest thing at the party, there was
no doubt of that.
What was he saying? Rilla could hardly believe her ears.
"Can we have a dance?"
"Yes," said Rilla. She said it with such a fierce determination not to
lisp that she fairly blurted the word out. Then she writhed in spirit
again. It sounded so bold--so eager--as if she were fairly jumping at
him! What would he think of her? Oh, why did dreadful things like this
happen, just when a girl wanted to appear at her best?
Kenneth drew her in among the dancers.
"I think this game ankle of mine is good for one hop around, at least,"
he said.
"How is your ankle?" said Rilla. Oh, why couldn't she think of something
else to say? She knew he was sick of inquiries about his ankle. She had
heard him say so at Ingleside--heard him tell Di he was going to wear a
placard on his breast announcing to all and sundry that the ankle was
improving, etc. And now she must go and ask this stale question again.
Kenneth was tired of inquiries about his ankle. But then he had not
often been asked about it by lips with such an adorable kissable dent
just above them. Perhaps that was why he answered very patiently that it
was getting on well and didn't trouble him much, if he didn't walk or
stand too long at a time.
"They tell me it will be as strong as ever in time, but I'll have to cut
football out this fall."
They danced together and Rilla knew every girl in sight envied her.
After the dance they went down the rock steps and Kenneth found a little
flat and they rowed across the moonlit channel to the sand-shore; they
walked on the sand till Kenneth's ankle made protest and then they sat
down among the dunes. Kenneth talked to her as he had talked to Nan and
Di. Rilla, overcome with a shyness she did not understand, could not
talk much, and thought he would think her frightfully stupid; but in
spite of this it was all very wonderful--the exquisite moonlit night,
the shining sea, the tiny little wavelets swishing on the sand, the cool
and freakish wind of night crooning in the stiff grasses on the crest of
the dunes, the music sounding faintly and sweetly over the channel.
"'A merry lilt o' moonlight for mermaiden revelry,'" quoted Kenneth
softly from one of Walter's poems.
And just he and she alone together in the glamour of sound and sight! If
only her slippers didn't bite so! and if only she could talk cleverly
like Miss Oliver--nay, if she could only talk as she did herself to
other boys! But words would not come, she could only listen and murmur
little commonplace sentences now and again. But perhaps her dreamy eyes
and her dented lip and her slender throat talked eloquently for her. At
any rate Kenneth seemed in no hurry to suggest going back and when they
did go back supper was in progress. He found a seat for her near the
window of the lighthouse kitchen and sat on the sill beside her while
she ate her ices and cake. Rilla looked about her and thought how lovely
her first party had been. She would never forget it. The room re-echoed
to laughter and jest. Beautiful young eyes sparkled and shone. From the
pavilion outside came the lilt of the fiddle and the rhythmic steps of
the dancers.
There was a little disturbance among a group of boys crowded about the
door; a young fellow pushed through and halted on the threshold, looking
about him rather sombrely. It was Jack Elliott from over-harbour--a
McGill medical student, a quiet chap not much addicted to social doings.
He had been invited to the party but had not been expected to come since
he had to go to Charlottetown that day and could not be back until late.
Yet here he was--and he carried a folded paper in his hand.
Gertrude Oliver looked at him from her corner and shivered again. She
had enjoyed the party herself, after all, for she had foregathered with
a Charlottetown acquaintance who, being a stranger and much older than
most of the guests, felt himself rather out of it, and had been glad to
fall in with this clever girl who could talk of world doings and outside
events with the zest and vigour of a man. In the pleasure of his society
she had forgotten some of her misgivings of the day. Now they suddenly
returned to her. What news did Jack Elliott bring? Lines from an old
poem flashed unbidden into her mind--"there was a sound of revelry by
night"--"Hush! Hark! A deep sound strikes like a rising knell"--why
should she think of that now? Why didn't Jack Elliott speak--if he had
anything to tell? Why did he just stand there, glowering importantly?
"Ask him--ask him," she said feverishly to Allan Daly. But somebody
else had already asked him. The room grew very silent all at once.
Outside the fiddler had stopped for a rest and there was silence there
too. Afar off they heard the low moan of the gulf--the presage of a
storm already on its way up the Atlantic. A girl's laugh drifted up from
the rocks and died away as if frightened out of existence by the sudden
stillness.
"England declared war on Germany today," said Jack Elliott slowly. "The
news came by wire just as I left town."
"God help us," whispered Gertrude Oliver under her breath. "My dream--
my dream! The first wave has broken." She looked at Allan Daly and tried
to smile.
"Is this Armageddon?" she asked.
"I am afraid so," he said gravely.
A chorus of exclamations had arisen round them--light surprise and idle
interest for the most part. Few there realized the import of the message
--fewer still realized that it meant anything to them. Before long the
dancing was on again and the hum of pleasure was as loud as ever.
Gertrude and Allan Daly talked the news over in low, troubled tones.
Walter Blythe had turned pale and left the room. Outside he met Jem,
hurrying up the rock steps.
"Have you heard the news, Jem?"
"Yes. The Piper has come. Hurrah! I knew England wouldn't leave France
in the lurch. I've been trying to get Captain Josiah to hoist the flag
but he says it isn't the proper caper till sunrise. Jack says they'll be
calling for volunteers tomorrow."
"What a fuss to make over nothing," said Mary Vance disdainfully as Jem
dashed off. She was sitting out with Miller Douglas on a lobster trap
which was not only an unromantic but an uncomfortable seat. But Mary and
Miller were both supremely happy on it. Miller Douglas was a big,
strapping, uncouth lad, who thought Mary Vance's tongue uncommonly
gifted and Mary Vance's white eyes stars of the first magnitude; and
neither of them had the least inkling why Jem Blythe wanted to hoist the
lighthouse flag. "What does it matter if there's going to be a war over
there in Europe? I'm sure it doesn't concern us."
Walter looked at her and had one of his odd visitations of prophecy.
"Before this war is over," he said--or something said through his lips
--"every man and woman and child in Canada will feel it--you, Mary,
will feel it--feel it to your heart's core. You will weep tears of
blood over it. The Piper has come--and he will pipe until every corner
of the world has heard his awful and irresistible music. It will be
years before the dance of death is over--years, Mary. And in those
years millions of hearts will break."
"Fancy now!" said Mary who always said that when she couldn't think of
anything else to say. She didn't know what Walter meant but she felt
uncomfortable. Walter Blythe was always saying odd things. That old
Piper of his--she hadn't heard anything about him since their playdays
in Rainbow Valley--and now here he was bobbing up again. She didn't
like it, and that was the long and short of it.
"Aren't you painting it rather strong, Walter?" asked Harvey Crawford,
coming up just then. "This war won't last for years--it'll be over in a
month or two. England will just wipe Germany off the map in no time."
"Do you think a war for which Germany has been preparing for twenty
years will be over in a few weeks?" said Walter passionately. "This
isn't a paltry struggle in a Balkan corner, Harvey. It is a death
grapple. Germany comes to conquer or to die. And do you know what will
happen if she conquers? Canada will be a German colony."
"Well, I guess a few things will happen before that," said Harvey
shrugging his shoulders. "The British navy would have to be licked for
one; and for another, Miller here, now, and I, we'd raise a dust,
wouldn't we, Miller? No Germans need apply for this old country, eh?"
Harvey ran down the steps laughing.
"I declare, I think all you boys talk the craziest stuff," said Mary
Vance in disgust. She got up and dragged Miller off to the rock-shore.
It didn't happen often that they had a chance for a talk together; Mary
was determined that this one shouldn't be spoiled by Walter Blythe's
silly blather about Pipers and Germans and such like absurd things. They
left Walter standing alone on the rock steps, looking out over the
beauty of Four Winds with brooding eyes that saw it not.
The best of the evening was over for Rilla, too. Ever since Jack
Elliott's announcement, she had sensed that Kenneth was no longer
thinking about her. She felt suddenly lonely and unhappy. It was worse
than if he had never noticed her at all. Was life like this--something
delightful happening and then, just as you were revelling in it,
slipping away from you? Rilla told herself pathetically that she felt
years older than when she had left home that evening. Perhaps she did--
perhaps she was. Who knows? It does not do to laugh at the pangs of
youth. They are very terrible because youth has not yet learned that
"this, too, will pass away." Rilla sighed and wished she were home, in
bed, crying into her pillow.
"Tired?" said Kenneth, gently but absently--oh, so absently. He really
didn't care a bit whether she were tired or not, she thought.
"Kenneth," she ventured timidly, "you don't think this war will matter
much to us in Canada, do you?"
"Matter? Of course it will matter to the lucky fellows who will be able
to take a hand. I won't--thanks to this confounded ankle. Rotten luck,
I call it."
"I don't see why we should fight England's battles," cried Rilla. "She's
quite able to fight them herself."
"That isn't the point. We are part of the British Empire. It's a family
affair. We've got to stand by each other. The worst of it is, it will be
over before I can be of any use."
"Do you mean that you would really volunteer to go if it wasn't for your
ankle? asked Rilla incredulously.
"Sure I would. You see they'll go by thousands. Jem'll be off, I'll bet
a cent--Walter won't be strong enough yet, I suppose. And Jerry
Meredith--he'll go! And I was worrying about being out of football this
year!"
Rilla was too startled to say anything. Jem--and Jerry! Nonsense! Why
father and Mr. Meredith wouldn't allow it. They weren't through college.
Oh, why hadn't Jack Elliott kept his horrid news to himself?
Mark Warren came up and asked her to dance. Rilla went, knowing Kenneth
didn't care whether she went or stayed. An hour ago on the sand-shore he
had been looking at her as if she were the only being of any importance
in the world. And now she was nobody. His thoughts were full of this
Great Game which was to be played out on bloodstained fields with
empires for stakes--a Game in which womenkind could have no part.
Women, thought Rilla miserably, just had to sit and cry at home. But all
this was foolishness. Kenneth couldn't go--he admitted that himself--
and Walter couldn't--thank goodness for that--and Jem and Jerry would
have more sense. She wouldn't worry--she would enjoy herself. But how
awkward Mark Warren was! How he bungled his steps! Why, for mercy's
sake, did boys try to dance who didn't know the first thing about
dancing; and who had feet as big as boats? There, he had bumped her into
somebody! She would never dance with him again!
She danced with others, though the zest was gone out of the performance
and she had begun to realize that her slippers hurt her badly. Kenneth
seemed to have gone--at least nothing was to be seen of him. Her first
party was spoiled, though it had seemed so beautiful at one time. Her
head ached--her toes burned. And worse was yet to come. She had gone
down with some over-harbour friends to the rock-shore where they all
lingered as dance after dance went on above them. It was cool and
pleasant and they were tired. Rilla sat silent, taking no part in the
gay conversation. She was glad when someone called down that the
over-harbour boats were leaving. A laughing scramble up the lighthouse
rock followed. A few couples still whirled about in the pavilion but the
crowd had thinned out. Rilla looked about her for the Glen group. She
could not see one of them. She ran into the lighthouse. Still, no sign
of anybody. In dismay she ran to the rock steps, down which the
over-harbour guests were hurrying. She could see the boats below--where
was Jem's--where was Joe's?
"Why, Rilla Blythe, I thought you'd be gone home long ago," said Mary
Vance, who was waving her scarf at a boat skimming up the channel,
skippered by Miller Douglas.
"Where are the rest?" gasped Rilla.
"Why, they're gone--Jem went an hour ago--Una had a headache. And the
rest went with Joe about fifteen minutes ago. See--they're just going
around Birch Point. I didn't go because it's getting rough and I knew
I'd be seasick. I don't mind walking home from here. It's only a mile
and a half. I s'posed you'd gone. Where were you?"
"Down on the rocks with Jem and Mollie Crawford. Oh, why didn't they
look for me?"
"They did--but you couldn't be found. Then they concluded you must have
gone in the other boat. Don't worry. You can stay all night with me and
we'll 'phone up to Ingleside where you are."
Rilla realized that there was nothing else to do. Her lips trembled and
tears came into her eyes. She blinked savagely--she would not let Mary
Vance see her crying. But to be forgotten like this! To think nobody had
thought it worth while to make sure where she was--not even Walter.
Then she had a sudden dismayed recollection.
"My shoes," she exclaimed. "I left them in the boat."
"Well, I never," said Mary. "You're the most thoughtless kid I ever saw.
You'll have to ask Hazel Lewison to lend you a pair of shoes."
"I won't." cried Rilla, who didn't like the said Hazel. "I'll go
barefoot first."
Mary shrugged her shoulders.
"Just as you like. Pride must suffer pain. It'll teach you to be more
careful. Well, let's hike."
Accordingly they hiked. But to "hike" along a deep-rutted, pebbly lane
in frail, silver-hued slippers with high French heels, is not an
exhilarating performance. Rilla managed to limp and totter along until
they reached the harbour road; but she could go no farther in those
detestable slippers. She took them and her dear silk stockings off and
started barefoot. That was not pleasant either; her feet were very
tender and the pebbles and ruts of the road hurt them. Her blistered
heels smarted. But physical pain was almost forgotten in the sting of
humiliation. This was a nice predicament! If Kenneth Ford could see her
now, limping along like a little girl with a stone bruise! Oh, what a
horrid way for her lovely party to end! She just had to cry--it was too
terrible. Nobody cared for her--nobody bothered about her at all. Well,
if she caught cold from walking home barefoot on a dew-wet road and
went into a decline perhaps they would be sorry. She furtively wiped her
tears away with her scarf--handkerchiefs seemed to have vanished like
shoes!--but she could not help sniffling. Worse and worse!
"You've got a cold, I see," said Mary. "You ought to have known you
would, sitting down in the wind on those rocks. Your mother won't let
you go out again in a hurry I can tell you. It's certainly been
something of a party. The Lewisons know how to do things, I'll say that
for them, though Hazel Lewison is no choice of mine. My, how black she
looked when she saw you dancing with Ken Ford. And so did that little
hussy of an Ethel Reese. What a flirt he is!"
"I don't think he's a flirt," said Rilla as defiantly as two desperate
sniffs would let her.
"You'll know more about men when you're as old as I am," said Mary
patronizingly. "Mind you, it doesn't do to believe all they tell you.
Don't let Ken Ford think that all he has to do to get you on a string is
to drop his handkerchief. Have more spirit than that, child."
To be thus hectored and patronized by Mary Vance was unendurable! And it
was unendurable to walk on stony roads with blistered heels and bare
feet! And it was unendurable to be crying and have no handkerchief and
not to be able to stop crying!
"I'm not thinking"--sniff--"about Kenneth"--sniff--"Ford"--two
sniffs--"at all," cried tortured Rilla.
"There's no need to fly off the handle, child. You ought to be willing
to take advice from older people. I saw how you slipped over to the
sands with Ken and stayed there ever so long with him. Your mother
wouldn't like it if she knew."
"I'll tell my mother all about it--and Miss Oliver--and Walter," Rilla
gasped between sniffs. "You sat for hours with Miller Douglas on that
lobster trap, Mary Vance! What would Mrs. Elliott say to that if she
knew?"
"Oh, I'm not going to quarrel with you," said Mary, suddenly retreating
to high and lofty ground. "All I say is, you should wait until you're
grown-up before you do things like that."
Rilla gave up trying to hide the fact that she was crying. Everything
was spoiled--even that beautiful, dreamy, romantic, moonlit hour with
Kenneth on the sands was vulgarized and cheapened. She loathed Mary
Vance.
"Why, whatever's wrong?" cried mystified Mary. "What are you crying
for?"
"My feet--hurt so--" sobbed Rilla clinging to the last shred of her
pride. It was less humiliating to admit crying because of your feet than
because--because somebody had been amusing himself with you, and your
friends had forgotten you, and other people patronized you.
"I daresay they do," said Mary, not unkindly. "Never mind. I know where
there's a pot of goose-grease in Cornelia's tidy pantry and it beats all
the fancy cold creams in the world. I'll put some on your heels before
you go to bed."
Goose-grease on your heels! So this was what your first party and your
first beau and your first moonlit romance ended in!
Rilla gave over crying in sheer disgust at the futility of tears and
went to sleep in Mary Vance's bed in the calm of despair. Outside, the
dawn came greyly in on wings of storm; Captain Josiah, true to his word,
ran up the Union Jack at the Four Winds Light and it streamed on the
fierce wind against the clouded sky like a gallant unquenchable beacon.
THE PIPER PIPES
Rilla's first party was a triumph--or so it seemed at first. She had so
many partners that she had to split her dances. Her silver slippers
seemed verily to dance of themselves and though they continued to pinch
her toes and blister her heels that did not interfere with her enjoyment
in the least. Ethel Reese gave her a bad ten minutes by beckoning her
mysteriously out of the pavilion and whispering, with a Reese-like
smirk, that her dress gaped behind and that there was a stain on the
flounce. Rilla rushed miserably to the room in the lighthouse which was
fitted up for a temporary ladies' dressing-room, and discovered that the
stain was merely a tiny grass smear and that the gap was equally tiny
where a hook had pulled loose. Irene Howard fastened it up for her and
gave her some over-sweet, condescending compliments. Rilla felt
flattered by Irene's condescension. She was an Upper Glen girl of
nineteen who seemed to like the society of the younger girls--spiteful
friends said because she could queen it over them without rivalry. But
Rilla thought Irene quite wonderful and loved her for her patronage.
Irene was pretty and stylish; she sang divinely and spent every winter
in Charlottetown taking music lessons. She had an aunt in Montreal who
sent her wonderful things to wear; she was reported to have had a sad
love affair--nobody knew just what, but its very mystery allured. Rilla
felt that Irene's compliments crowned her evening. She ran gaily back to
the pavilion and lingered for a moment in the glow of the lanterns at
the entrance looking at the dancers. A momentary break in the whirling
throng gave her a glimpse of Kenneth Ford standing at the other side.
Rilla's heart skipped a beat--or, if that be a physiological
impossibility, she thought it did. So he was here, after all. She had
concluded he was not coming--not that it mattered in the least. Would
he see her? Would he take any notice of her? Of course, he wouldn't ask
her to dance--that couldn't be hoped for. He thought her just a mere
child. He had called her "Spider" not three weeks ago when he had been
at Ingleside one evening. She had cried about it upstairs afterwards and
hated him. But her heart skipped a beat when she saw that he was edging
his way round the side of the pavilion towards her. Was he coming to her
--was he?--was he?--yes, he was! He was looking for her--he was here
beside her--he was gazing down at her with something in his dark grey
eyes that Rilla had never seen in them. Oh, it was almost too much to
bear! and everything was going on as before--the dancers were spinning
round, the boys who couldn't get partners were hanging about the
pavilion, canoodling couples were sitting out on the rocks--nobody
seemed to realize what a stupendous thing had happened.
Kenneth was a tall lad, very good looking, with a certain careless grace
of bearing that somehow made all the other boys seem stiff and awkward
by contrast. He was reported to be awesomely clever, with the glamour of
a far-away city and a big university hanging around him. He had also the
reputation of being a bit of a lady-killer. But that probably accrued to
him from his possession of a laughing, velvety voice which no girl could
hear without a heartbeat, and a dangerous way of listening as if she
were saying something that he had longed all his life to hear.
"Is this Rilla-my-Rilla?" he asked in a low tone.
"Yeth," said Rilla, and immediately wished she could throw herself
headlong down the lighthouse rock or otherwise vanish from a jeering
world.
Rilla had lisped in early childhood; but she had grown out of it. Only
on occasions of stress and strain did the tendency re-assert itself. She
hadn't lisped for a year; and now at this very moment, when she was so
especially desirous of appearing grown up and sophisticated, she must go
and lisp like a baby! It was too mortifying; she felt as if tears were
going to come into her eyes; the next minute she would be--blubbering--
yes, just blubbering--she wished Kenneth would go away--she wished he
had never come. The party was spoiled. Everything had turned to dust and
ashes.
And he had called her "Rilla-my-Rilla"--not "Spider" or "Kid" or
"Puss," as he had been used to call her when he took any notice whatever
of her. She did not at all resent his using Walter's pet name for her;
it sounded beautifully in his low caressing tones, with just the
faintest suggestion of emphasis on the "my." It would have been so nice
if she had not made a fool of herself. She dared not look up lest she
should see laughter in his eyes. So she looked down; and as her lashes
were very long and dark and her lids very thick and creamy, the effect
was quite charming and provocative, and Kenneth reflected that Rilla
Blythe was going to be the beauty of the Ingleside girls after all. He
wanted to make her look up--to catch again that little, demure,
questioning glance. She was the prettiest thing at the party, there was
no doubt of that.
What was he saying? Rilla could hardly believe her ears.
"Can we have a dance?"
"Yes," said Rilla. She said it with such a fierce determination not to
lisp that she fairly blurted the word out. Then she writhed in spirit
again. It sounded so bold--so eager--as if she were fairly jumping at
him! What would he think of her? Oh, why did dreadful things like this
happen, just when a girl wanted to appear at her best?
Kenneth drew her in among the dancers.
"I think this game ankle of mine is good for one hop around, at least,"
he said.
"How is your ankle?" said Rilla. Oh, why couldn't she think of something
else to say? She knew he was sick of inquiries about his ankle. She had
heard him say so at Ingleside--heard him tell Di he was going to wear a
placard on his breast announcing to all and sundry that the ankle was
improving, etc. And now she must go and ask this stale question again.
Kenneth was tired of inquiries about his ankle. But then he had not
often been asked about it by lips with such an adorable kissable dent
just above them. Perhaps that was why he answered very patiently that it
was getting on well and didn't trouble him much, if he didn't walk or
stand too long at a time.
"They tell me it will be as strong as ever in time, but I'll have to cut
football out this fall."
They danced together and Rilla knew every girl in sight envied her.
After the dance they went down the rock steps and Kenneth found a little
flat and they rowed across the moonlit channel to the sand-shore; they
walked on the sand till Kenneth's ankle made protest and then they sat
down among the dunes. Kenneth talked to her as he had talked to Nan and
Di. Rilla, overcome with a shyness she did not understand, could not
talk much, and thought he would think her frightfully stupid; but in
spite of this it was all very wonderful--the exquisite moonlit night,
the shining sea, the tiny little wavelets swishing on the sand, the cool
and freakish wind of night crooning in the stiff grasses on the crest of
the dunes, the music sounding faintly and sweetly over the channel.
"'A merry lilt o' moonlight for mermaiden revelry,'" quoted Kenneth
softly from one of Walter's poems.
And just he and she alone together in the glamour of sound and sight! If
only her slippers didn't bite so! and if only she could talk cleverly
like Miss Oliver--nay, if she could only talk as she did herself to
other boys! But words would not come, she could only listen and murmur
little commonplace sentences now and again. But perhaps her dreamy eyes
and her dented lip and her slender throat talked eloquently for her. At
any rate Kenneth seemed in no hurry to suggest going back and when they
did go back supper was in progress. He found a seat for her near the
window of the lighthouse kitchen and sat on the sill beside her while
she ate her ices and cake. Rilla looked about her and thought how lovely
her first party had been. She would never forget it. The room re-echoed
to laughter and jest. Beautiful young eyes sparkled and shone. From the
pavilion outside came the lilt of the fiddle and the rhythmic steps of
the dancers.
There was a little disturbance among a group of boys crowded about the
door; a young fellow pushed through and halted on the threshold, looking
about him rather sombrely. It was Jack Elliott from over-harbour--a
McGill medical student, a quiet chap not much addicted to social doings.
He had been invited to the party but had not been expected to come since
he had to go to Charlottetown that day and could not be back until late.
Yet here he was--and he carried a folded paper in his hand.
Gertrude Oliver looked at him from her corner and shivered again. She
had enjoyed the party herself, after all, for she had foregathered with
a Charlottetown acquaintance who, being a stranger and much older than
most of the guests, felt himself rather out of it, and had been glad to
fall in with this clever girl who could talk of world doings and outside
events with the zest and vigour of a man. In the pleasure of his society
she had forgotten some of her misgivings of the day. Now they suddenly
returned to her. What news did Jack Elliott bring? Lines from an old
poem flashed unbidden into her mind--"there was a sound of revelry by
night"--"Hush! Hark! A deep sound strikes like a rising knell"--why
should she think of that now? Why didn't Jack Elliott speak--if he had
anything to tell? Why did he just stand there, glowering importantly?
"Ask him--ask him," she said feverishly to Allan Daly. But somebody
else had already asked him. The room grew very silent all at once.
Outside the fiddler had stopped for a rest and there was silence there
too. Afar off they heard the low moan of the gulf--the presage of a
storm already on its way up the Atlantic. A girl's laugh drifted up from
the rocks and died away as if frightened out of existence by the sudden
stillness.
"England declared war on Germany today," said Jack Elliott slowly. "The
news came by wire just as I left town."
"God help us," whispered Gertrude Oliver under her breath. "My dream--
my dream! The first wave has broken." She looked at Allan Daly and tried
to smile.
"Is this Armageddon?" she asked.
"I am afraid so," he said gravely.
A chorus of exclamations had arisen round them--light surprise and idle
interest for the most part. Few there realized the import of the message
--fewer still realized that it meant anything to them. Before long the
dancing was on again and the hum of pleasure was as loud as ever.
Gertrude and Allan Daly talked the news over in low, troubled tones.
Walter Blythe had turned pale and left the room. Outside he met Jem,
hurrying up the rock steps.
"Have you heard the news, Jem?"
"Yes. The Piper has come. Hurrah! I knew England wouldn't leave France
in the lurch. I've been trying to get Captain Josiah to hoist the flag
but he says it isn't the proper caper till sunrise. Jack says they'll be
calling for volunteers tomorrow."
"What a fuss to make over nothing," said Mary Vance disdainfully as Jem
dashed off. She was sitting out with Miller Douglas on a lobster trap
which was not only an unromantic but an uncomfortable seat. But Mary and
Miller were both supremely happy on it. Miller Douglas was a big,
strapping, uncouth lad, who thought Mary Vance's tongue uncommonly
gifted and Mary Vance's white eyes stars of the first magnitude; and
neither of them had the least inkling why Jem Blythe wanted to hoist the
lighthouse flag. "What does it matter if there's going to be a war over
there in Europe? I'm sure it doesn't concern us."
Walter looked at her and had one of his odd visitations of prophecy.
"Before this war is over," he said--or something said through his lips
--"every man and woman and child in Canada will feel it--you, Mary,
will feel it--feel it to your heart's core. You will weep tears of
blood over it. The Piper has come--and he will pipe until every corner
of the world has heard his awful and irresistible music. It will be
years before the dance of death is over--years, Mary. And in those
years millions of hearts will break."
"Fancy now!" said Mary who always said that when she couldn't think of
anything else to say. She didn't know what Walter meant but she felt
uncomfortable. Walter Blythe was always saying odd things. That old
Piper of his--she hadn't heard anything about him since their playdays
in Rainbow Valley--and now here he was bobbing up again. She didn't
like it, and that was the long and short of it.
"Aren't you painting it rather strong, Walter?" asked Harvey Crawford,
coming up just then. "This war won't last for years--it'll be over in a
month or two. England will just wipe Germany off the map in no time."
"Do you think a war for which Germany has been preparing for twenty
years will be over in a few weeks?" said Walter passionately. "This
isn't a paltry struggle in a Balkan corner, Harvey. It is a death
grapple. Germany comes to conquer or to die. And do you know what will
happen if she conquers? Canada will be a German colony."
"Well, I guess a few things will happen before that," said Harvey
shrugging his shoulders. "The British navy would have to be licked for
one; and for another, Miller here, now, and I, we'd raise a dust,
wouldn't we, Miller? No Germans need apply for this old country, eh?"
Harvey ran down the steps laughing.
"I declare, I think all you boys talk the craziest stuff," said Mary
Vance in disgust. She got up and dragged Miller off to the rock-shore.
It didn't happen often that they had a chance for a talk together; Mary
was determined that this one shouldn't be spoiled by Walter Blythe's
silly blather about Pipers and Germans and such like absurd things. They
left Walter standing alone on the rock steps, looking out over the
beauty of Four Winds with brooding eyes that saw it not.
The best of the evening was over for Rilla, too. Ever since Jack
Elliott's announcement, she had sensed that Kenneth was no longer
thinking about her. She felt suddenly lonely and unhappy. It was worse
than if he had never noticed her at all. Was life like this--something
delightful happening and then, just as you were revelling in it,
slipping away from you? Rilla told herself pathetically that she felt
years older than when she had left home that evening. Perhaps she did--
perhaps she was. Who knows? It does not do to laugh at the pangs of
youth. They are very terrible because youth has not yet learned that
"this, too, will pass away." Rilla sighed and wished she were home, in
bed, crying into her pillow.
"Tired?" said Kenneth, gently but absently--oh, so absently. He really
didn't care a bit whether she were tired or not, she thought.
"Kenneth," she ventured timidly, "you don't think this war will matter
much to us in Canada, do you?"
"Matter? Of course it will matter to the lucky fellows who will be able
to take a hand. I won't--thanks to this confounded ankle. Rotten luck,
I call it."
"I don't see why we should fight England's battles," cried Rilla. "She's
quite able to fight them herself."
"That isn't the point. We are part of the British Empire. It's a family
affair. We've got to stand by each other. The worst of it is, it will be
over before I can be of any use."
"Do you mean that you would really volunteer to go if it wasn't for your
ankle? asked Rilla incredulously.
"Sure I would. You see they'll go by thousands. Jem'll be off, I'll bet
a cent--Walter won't be strong enough yet, I suppose. And Jerry
Meredith--he'll go! And I was worrying about being out of football this
year!"
Rilla was too startled to say anything. Jem--and Jerry! Nonsense! Why
father and Mr. Meredith wouldn't allow it. They weren't through college.
Oh, why hadn't Jack Elliott kept his horrid news to himself?
Mark Warren came up and asked her to dance. Rilla went, knowing Kenneth
didn't care whether she went or stayed. An hour ago on the sand-shore he
had been looking at her as if she were the only being of any importance
in the world. And now she was nobody. His thoughts were full of this
Great Game which was to be played out on bloodstained fields with
empires for stakes--a Game in which womenkind could have no part.
Women, thought Rilla miserably, just had to sit and cry at home. But all
this was foolishness. Kenneth couldn't go--he admitted that himself--
and Walter couldn't--thank goodness for that--and Jem and Jerry would
have more sense. She wouldn't worry--she would enjoy herself. But how
awkward Mark Warren was! How he bungled his steps! Why, for mercy's
sake, did boys try to dance who didn't know the first thing about
dancing; and who had feet as big as boats? There, he had bumped her into
somebody! She would never dance with him again!
She danced with others, though the zest was gone out of the performance
and she had begun to realize that her slippers hurt her badly. Kenneth
seemed to have gone--at least nothing was to be seen of him. Her first
party was spoiled, though it had seemed so beautiful at one time. Her
head ached--her toes burned. And worse was yet to come. She had gone
down with some over-harbour friends to the rock-shore where they all
lingered as dance after dance went on above them. It was cool and
pleasant and they were tired. Rilla sat silent, taking no part in the
gay conversation. She was glad when someone called down that the
over-harbour boats were leaving. A laughing scramble up the lighthouse
rock followed. A few couples still whirled about in the pavilion but the
crowd had thinned out. Rilla looked about her for the Glen group. She
could not see one of them. She ran into the lighthouse. Still, no sign
of anybody. In dismay she ran to the rock steps, down which the
over-harbour guests were hurrying. She could see the boats below--where
was Jem's--where was Joe's?
"Why, Rilla Blythe, I thought you'd be gone home long ago," said Mary
Vance, who was waving her scarf at a boat skimming up the channel,
skippered by Miller Douglas.
"Where are the rest?" gasped Rilla.
"Why, they're gone--Jem went an hour ago--Una had a headache. And the
rest went with Joe about fifteen minutes ago. See--they're just going
around Birch Point. I didn't go because it's getting rough and I knew
I'd be seasick. I don't mind walking home from here. It's only a mile
and a half. I s'posed you'd gone. Where were you?"
"Down on the rocks with Jem and Mollie Crawford. Oh, why didn't they
look for me?"
"They did--but you couldn't be found. Then they concluded you must have
gone in the other boat. Don't worry. You can stay all night with me and
we'll 'phone up to Ingleside where you are."
Rilla realized that there was nothing else to do. Her lips trembled and
tears came into her eyes. She blinked savagely--she would not let Mary
Vance see her crying. But to be forgotten like this! To think nobody had
thought it worth while to make sure where she was--not even Walter.
Then she had a sudden dismayed recollection.
"My shoes," she exclaimed. "I left them in the boat."
"Well, I never," said Mary. "You're the most thoughtless kid I ever saw.
You'll have to ask Hazel Lewison to lend you a pair of shoes."
"I won't." cried Rilla, who didn't like the said Hazel. "I'll go
barefoot first."
Mary shrugged her shoulders.
"Just as you like. Pride must suffer pain. It'll teach you to be more
careful. Well, let's hike."
Accordingly they hiked. But to "hike" along a deep-rutted, pebbly lane
in frail, silver-hued slippers with high French heels, is not an
exhilarating performance. Rilla managed to limp and totter along until
they reached the harbour road; but she could go no farther in those
detestable slippers. She took them and her dear silk stockings off and
started barefoot. That was not pleasant either; her feet were very
tender and the pebbles and ruts of the road hurt them. Her blistered
heels smarted. But physical pain was almost forgotten in the sting of
humiliation. This was a nice predicament! If Kenneth Ford could see her
now, limping along like a little girl with a stone bruise! Oh, what a
horrid way for her lovely party to end! She just had to cry--it was too
terrible. Nobody cared for her--nobody bothered about her at all. Well,
if she caught cold from walking home barefoot on a dew-wet road and
went into a decline perhaps they would be sorry. She furtively wiped her
tears away with her scarf--handkerchiefs seemed to have vanished like
shoes!--but she could not help sniffling. Worse and worse!
"You've got a cold, I see," said Mary. "You ought to have known you
would, sitting down in the wind on those rocks. Your mother won't let
you go out again in a hurry I can tell you. It's certainly been
something of a party. The Lewisons know how to do things, I'll say that
for them, though Hazel Lewison is no choice of mine. My, how black she
looked when she saw you dancing with Ken Ford. And so did that little
hussy of an Ethel Reese. What a flirt he is!"
"I don't think he's a flirt," said Rilla as defiantly as two desperate
sniffs would let her.
"You'll know more about men when you're as old as I am," said Mary
patronizingly. "Mind you, it doesn't do to believe all they tell you.
Don't let Ken Ford think that all he has to do to get you on a string is
to drop his handkerchief. Have more spirit than that, child."
To be thus hectored and patronized by Mary Vance was unendurable! And it
was unendurable to walk on stony roads with blistered heels and bare
feet! And it was unendurable to be crying and have no handkerchief and
not to be able to stop crying!
"I'm not thinking"--sniff--"about Kenneth"--sniff--"Ford"--two
sniffs--"at all," cried tortured Rilla.
"There's no need to fly off the handle, child. You ought to be willing
to take advice from older people. I saw how you slipped over to the
sands with Ken and stayed there ever so long with him. Your mother
wouldn't like it if she knew."
"I'll tell my mother all about it--and Miss Oliver--and Walter," Rilla
gasped between sniffs. "You sat for hours with Miller Douglas on that
lobster trap, Mary Vance! What would Mrs. Elliott say to that if she
knew?"
"Oh, I'm not going to quarrel with you," said Mary, suddenly retreating
to high and lofty ground. "All I say is, you should wait until you're
grown-up before you do things like that."
Rilla gave up trying to hide the fact that she was crying. Everything
was spoiled--even that beautiful, dreamy, romantic, moonlit hour with
Kenneth on the sands was vulgarized and cheapened. She loathed Mary
Vance.
"Why, whatever's wrong?" cried mystified Mary. "What are you crying
for?"
"My feet--hurt so--" sobbed Rilla clinging to the last shred of her
pride. It was less humiliating to admit crying because of your feet than
because--because somebody had been amusing himself with you, and your
friends had forgotten you, and other people patronized you.
"I daresay they do," said Mary, not unkindly. "Never mind. I know where
there's a pot of goose-grease in Cornelia's tidy pantry and it beats all
the fancy cold creams in the world. I'll put some on your heels before
you go to bed."
Goose-grease on your heels! So this was what your first party and your
first beau and your first moonlit romance ended in!
Rilla gave over crying in sheer disgust at the futility of tears and
went to sleep in Mary Vance's bed in the calm of despair. Outside, the
dawn came greyly in on wings of storm; Captain Josiah, true to his word,
ran up the Union Jack at the Four Winds Light and it streamed on the
fierce wind against the clouded sky like a gallant unquenchable beacon.
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
"THE SOUND OF A GOING"
Rilla ran down through the sunlit glory of the maple grove behind
Ingleside, to her favourite nook in Rainbow Valley. She sat down on a
green-mossed stone among the fern, propped her chin on her hands and
stared unseeingly at the dazzling blue sky of the August afternoon--so
blue, so peaceful, so unchanged, just as it had arched over the valley
in the mellow days of late summer ever since she could remember.
She wanted to be alone--to think things out--to adjust herself, if it
were possible, to the new world into which she seemed to have been
transplanted with a suddenness and completeness that left her half
bewildered as to her own identity. Was she--could she be--the same
Rilla Blythe who had danced at Four Winds Light six days ago--only six
days ago? It seemed to Rilla that she had lived as much in those six
days as in all her previous life--and if it be true that we should count
time by heart-throbs she had. That evening, with its hopes and fears and
triumphs and humiliations, seemed like ancient history now. Could she
really ever have cried just because she had been forgotten and had to
walk home with Mary Vance? Ah, thought Rilla sadly, how trivial and
absurd such a cause of tears now appeared to her. She could cry now with
a right good will--but she would not--she must not. What was it mother
had said, looking, with her white lips and stricken eyes, as Rilla had
never seen her mother look before,
"When our women fail in courage,
Shall our men be fearless still?"
Yes, that was it. She must be brave--like mother--and Nan--and Faith
--Faith, who had cried with flashing eyes, "Oh, if I were only a man, to
go too!" Only, when her eyes ached and her throat burned like this she
had to hide herself in Rainbow Valley for a little, just to think things
out and remember that she wasn't a child any longer--she was grown-up
and women had to face things like this. But it was--nice--to get away
alone now and then, where nobody could see her and where she needn't
feel that people thought her a little coward if some tears came in spite
of her.
How sweet and woodsey the ferns smelled! How softly the great feathery
boughs of the firs waved and murmured over her! How elfinly rang the
bells of the "Tree Lovers"--just a tinkle now and then as the breeze
swept by! How purple and elusive the haze where incense was being
offered on many an altar of the hills! How the maple leaves whitened in
the wind until the grove seemed covered with pale silvery blossoms!
Everything was just the same as she had seen it hundreds of times; and
yet the whole face of the world seemed changed.
"How wicked I was to wish that something dramatic would happen!" she
thought. "Oh, if we could only have those dear, monotonous, pleasant
days back again! I would never, never grumble about them again."
Rilla's world had tumbled to pieces the very day after the party. As
they lingered around the dinner table at Ingleside, talking of the war,
the telephone had rung. It was a long-distance call from Charlottetown
for Jem. When he had finished talking he hung up the receiver and turned
around, with a flushed face and glowing eyes. Before he had said a word
his mother and Nan and Di had turned pale. As for Rilla, for the first
time in her life she felt that every one must hear her heart beating and
that something had clutched at her throat.
"They are calling for volunteers in town, father," said Jem. "Scores
have joined up already. I'm going in tonight to enlist."
"Oh--Little Jem," cried Mrs. Blythe brokenly. She had not called him
that for many years--not since the day he had rebelled against it. "Oh
--no--no--Little Jem."
"I must, mother. I'm right--am I not, father?" said Jem.
Dr. Blythe had risen. He was very pale, too, and his voice was husky.
But he did not hesitate.
"Yes, Jem, yes--if you feel that way, yes--"
Mrs. Blythe covered her face. Walter stared moodily at his plate. Nan
and Di clasped each others' hands. Shirley tried to look unconcerned.
Susan sat as if paralysed, her piece of pie half-eaten on her plate.
Susan never did finish that piece of pie--a fact which bore eloquent
testimony to the upheaval in her inner woman for Susan considered it a
cardinal offence against civilized society to begin to eat anything and
not finish it. That was wilful waste, hens to the contrary
notwithstanding.
Jem turned to the phone again. "I must ring the manse. Jerry will want
to go, too."
At this Nan had cried out "Oh!" as if a knife had been thrust into her,
and rushed from the room. Di followed her. Rilla turned to Walter for
comfort but Walter was lost to her in some reverie she could not share.
"All right," Jem was saying, as coolly as if he were arranging the
details of a picnic. "I thought you would--yes, tonight--the seven
o'clock--meet me at the station. So long."
"Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan. "I wish you would wake me up. Am I dreaming
--or am I awake? Does that blessed boy realize what he is saying? Does
he mean that he is going to enlist as a soldier? You do not mean to tell
me that they want children like him! It is an outrage. Surely you and
the doctor will not permit it."
"We can't stop him," said Mrs. Blythe, chokingly. "Oh, Gilbert!"
Dr. Blythe came up behind his wife and took her hand gently, looking
down into the sweet grey eyes that he had only once before seen filled
with such imploring anguish as now. They both thought of that other time
--the day years ago in the House of Dreams when little Joyce had died.
"Would you have him stay, Anne--when the others are going--when he
thinks it his duty--would you have him so selfish and small-souled?"
"No--no! But--oh--our first-born son--he's only a lad--Gilbert--
I'll try to be brave after a while--just now I can't. It's all come so
suddenly. Give me time."
The doctor and his wife went out of the room. Jem had gone--Walter had
gone--Shirley got up to go. Rilla and Susan remained staring at each
other across the deserted table. Rilla had not yet cried--she was too
stunned for tears. Then she saw that Susan was crying--Susan, whom she
had never seen shed a tear before.
"Oh, Susan, will he really go?" she asked.
"It--it--it is just ridiculous, that is what it is," said Susan.
She wiped away her tears, gulped resolutely and got up.
"I am going to wash the dishes. That has to be done, even if everybody
has gone crazy. There now, dearie, do not you cry. Jem will go, most
likely--but the war will be over long before he gets anywhere near it.
Let us take a brace and not worry your poor mother."
"In the Enterprise today it was reported that Lord Kitchener says the
war will last three years," said Rilla dubiously.
"I am not acquainted with Lord Kitchener," said Susan, composedly, "but
I dare say he makes mistakes as often as other people. Your father says
it will be over in a few months and I have as much faith in his opinion
as I have in Lord Anybody's. So just let us be calm and trust in the
Almighty and get this place tidied up. I am done with crying which is a
waste of time and discourages everybody."
Jem and Jerry went to Charlottetown that night and two days later they
came back in khaki. The Glen hummed with excitement over it. Life at
Ingleside had suddenly become a tense, strained, thrilling thing. Mrs.
Blythe and Nan were brave and smiling and wonderful. Already Mrs. Blythe
and Miss Cornelia were organizing a Red Cross. The doctor and Mr.
Meredith were rounding up the men for a Patriotic Society. Rilla, after
the first shock, reacted to the romance of it all, in spite of her
heartache. Jem certainly looked magnificent in his uniform. It was
splendid to think of the lads of Canada answering so speedily and
fearlessly and uncalculatingly to the call of their country. Rilla
carried her head high among the girls whose brothers had not so
responded. In her diary she wrote:
"He goes to do what I had done
Had Douglas's daughter been his son,"
and was sure she meant it. If she were a boy of course she would go,
too! She hadn't the least doubt of that.
She wondered if it was very dreadful of her to feel glad that Walter
hadn't got strong as soon as they had wished after the fever.
"I couldn't bear to have Walter go," she wrote. "I love Jem ever so much
but Walter means more to me than anyone in the world and I would die if
he had to go. He seems so changed these days. He hardly ever talks to
me. I suppose he wants to go, too, and feels badly because he can't. He
doesn't go about with Jem and Jerry at all. I shall never forget Susan's
face when Jem came home in his khaki. It worked and twisted as if she
were going to cry, but all she said was, 'You look almost like a man in
that, Jem.' Jem laughed. He never minds because Susan thinks him just a
child still. Everybody seems busy but me. I wish there was something I
could do but there doesn't seem to be anything. Mother and Nan and Di
are busy all the time and I just wander about like a lonely ghost. What
hurts me terribly, though, is that mother's smiles, and Nan's, just seem
put on from the outside. Mother's eyes never laugh now. It makes me feel
that I shouldn't laugh either--that it's wicked to feel laughy. And
it's so hard for me to keep from laughing, even if Jem is going to be a
soldier. But when I laugh I don't enjoy it either, as I used to do.
There's something behind it all that keeps hurting me--especially when
I wake up in the night. Then I cry because I am afraid that Kitchener of
Khartoum is right and the war will last for years and Jem may be--but
no, I won't write it. It would make me feel as if it were really going
to happen. The other day Nan said, 'Nothing can ever be quite the same
for any of us again.' It made me feel rebellious. Why shouldn't things
be the same again--when everything is over and Jem and Jerry are back?
We'll all be happy and jolly again and these days will seem just like a
bad dream.
"The coming of the mail is the most exciting event of every day now.
Father just snatches the paper--I never saw father snatch before--and
the rest of us crowd round and look at the headlines over his shoulder.
Susan vows she does not and will not believe a word the papers say but
she always comes to the kitchen door, and listens and then goes back,
shaking her head. She is terribly indignant all the time, but she cooks
up all the things Jem likes especially, and she did not make a single
bit of fuss when she found Monday asleep on the spare-room bed yesterday
right on top of Mrs. Rachel Lynde's apple-leaf spread. 'The Almighty
only knows where your master will be having to sleep before long, you
poor dumb beast,' she said as she put him quite gently out. But she
never relents towards Doc. She says the minute he saw Jem in khaki he
turned into Mr. Hyde then and there and she thinks that ought to be
proof enough of what he really is. Susan is funny, but she is an old
dear. Shirley says she is one half angel and the other half good cook.
But then Shirley is the only one of us she never scolds.
"Faith Meredith is wonderful. I think she and Jem are really engaged
now. She goes about with a shining light in her eyes, but her smiles are
a little stiff and starched, just like mother's. I wonder if I could be
as brave as she is if I had a lover and he was going to the war. It is
bad enough when it is your brother. Bruce Meredith cried all night, Mrs.
Meredith says, when he heard Jem and Jerry were going. And he wanted to
know if the 'K of K.' his father talked about was the King of Kings. He
is the dearest kiddy. I just love him--though I don't really care much
for children. I don't like babies one bit--though when I say so people
look at me as if I had said something perfectly shocking. Well, I don't,
and I've got to be honest about it. I don't mind looking at a nice clean
baby if somebody else holds it--but I wouldn't touch it for anything
and I don't feel a single real spark of interest in it. Gertrude Oliver
says she just feels the same. (She is the most honest person I know. She
never pretends anything.) She says babies bore her until they are old
enough to talk and then she likes them--but still a good ways off.
Mother and Nan and Di all adore babies and seem to think I'm unnatural
because I don't.
"I haven't seen Kenneth since the night of the party. He was here one
evening after Jem came back but I happened to be away. I don't think he
mentioned me at all--at least nobody told me he did and I was
determined I wouldn't ask--but I don't care in the least. All that
matters absolutely nothing to me now. The only thing that does matter is
that Jem has volunteered for active service and will be going to
Valcartier in a few more days--my big, splendid brother Jem. Oh, I'm so
proud of him!
"I suppose Kenneth would enlist too if it weren't for his ankle. I think
that is quite providential. He is his mother's only son and how dreadful
she would feel if he went. Only sons should never think of going!"
Walter came wandering through the valley as Rilla sat there, with his
head bent and his hands clasped behind him. When he saw Rilla he turned
abruptly away; then as abruptly he turned and came back to her.
"Rilla-my-Rilla, what are you thinking of?"
"Everything is so changed, Walter," said Rilla wistfully. "Even you--
you're changed. A week ago we were all so happy--and--and--now I just
can't find myself at all. I'm lost."
Walter sat down on a neighbouring stone and took Rilla's little
appealing hand.
"I'm afraid our old world has come to an end, Rilla. We've got to face
that fact."
"It's so terrible to think of Jem," pleaded Rilla. "Sometimes I forget
for a little while what it really means and feel excited and proud--and
then it comes over me again like a cold wind."
"I envy Jem!" said Walter moodily.
"Envy Jem! Oh, Walter you--you don't want to go too."
"No," said Walter, gazing straight before him down the emerald vistas of
the valley, "no, I don't want to go. That's just the trouble. Rilla, I'm
afraid to go. I'm a coward."
"You're not!" Rilla burst out angrily. "Why, anybody would be afraid to
go. You might be--why, you might be killed."
"I wouldn't mind that if it didn't hurt," muttered Walter. "I don't
think I'm afraid of death itself--it's of the pain that might come
before death--it wouldn't be so bad to die and have it over--but to
keep on dying! Rilla, I've always been afraid of pain--you know that. I
can't help it--I shudder when I think of the possibility of being
mangled or--or blinded. Rilla, I cannot face that thought. To be blind
--never to see the beauty of the world again--moonlight on Four Winds--
the stars twinkling through the fir-trees--mist on the gulf. I ought to
go--I ought to want to go--but I don't--I hate the thought of it--
I'm ashamed--ashamed."
"But, Walter, you couldn't go anyhow," said Rilla piteously. She was
sick with a new terror that Walter would go after all. "You're not
strong enough."
"I am. I've felt as fit as ever I did this last month. I'd pass any
examination--I know it. Everybody thinks I'm not strong yet--and I'm
skulking behind that belief. I--I should have been a girl," Walter
concluded in a burst of passionate bitterness.
"Even if you were strong enough, you oughtn't to go," sobbed Rilla.
"What would mother do? She's breaking her heart over Jem. It would kill
her to see you both go."
"Oh, I'm not going--don't worry. I tell you I'm afraid to go--afraid.
I don't mince the matter to myself. It's a relief to own up even to you,
Rilla. I wouldn't confess it to anybody else--Nan and Di would despise
me. But I hate the whole thing--the horror, the pain, the ugliness. War
isn't a khaki uniform or a drill parade--everything I've read in old
histories haunts me. I lie awake at night and see things that have
happened--see the blood and filth and misery of it all. And a bayonet
charge! If I could face the other things I could never face that. It
turns me sick to think of it--sicker even to think of giving it than
receiving it--to think of thrusting a bayonet through another man."
Walter writhed and shuddered. "I think of these things all the time--
and it doesn't seem to me that Jem and Jerry ever think of them. They
laugh and talk about 'potting Huns'! But it maddens me to see them in
the khaki. And they think I'm grumpy because I'm not fit to go."
Walter laughed bitterly. "It is not a nice thing to feel yourself a
coward." But Rilla got her arms about him and cuddled her head on his
shoulder. She was so glad he didn't want to go--for just one minute she
had been horribly frightened. And it was so nice to have Walter
confiding his troubles to her--to her, not Di. She didn't feel so
lonely and superfluous any longer.
"Don't you despise me, Rilla-my-Rilla?" asked Walter wistfully. Somehow,
it hurt him to think Rilla might despise him--hurt him as much as if it
had been Di. He realized suddenly how very fond he was of this adoring
kid sister with her appealing eyes and troubled, girlish face.
"No, I don't. Why, Walter, hundreds of people feel just as you do. You
know what that verse of Shakespeare in the old Fifth Reader says--'the
brave man is not he who feels no fear.'"
"No--but it is 'he whose noble soul its fear subdues.' I don't do that.
We can't gloss it over, Rilla. I'm a coward."
"You're not. Think of how you fought Dan Reese long ago."
"One spurt of courage isn't enough for a lifetime."
"Walter, one time I heard father say that the trouble with you was a
sensitive nature and a vivid imagination. You feel things before they
really come--feel them all alone when there isn't anything to help you
bear them--to take away from them. It isn't anything to be ashamed of.
When you and Jem got your hands burned when the grass was fired on the
sand-hills two years ago Jem made twice the fuss over the pain that you
did. As for this horrid old war, there'll be plenty to go without you.
It won't last long."
"I wish I could believe it. Well, it's supper-time, Rilla. You'd better
run. I don't want anything."
"Neither do I. I couldn't eat a mouthful. Let me stay here with you,
Walter. It's such a comfort to talk things over with someone. The rest
all think that I'm too much of a baby to understand."
So they two sat there in the old valley until the evening star shone
through a pale-grey, gauzy cloud over the maple grove, and a fragrant
dewy darkness filled their little sylvan dell. It was one of the
evenings Rilla was to treasure in remembrance all her life--the first
one on which Walter had ever talked to her as if she were a woman and
not a child. They comforted and strengthened each other. Walter felt,
for the time being at least, that it was not such a despicable thing
after all to dread the horror of war; and Rilla was glad to be made the
confidante of his struggles--to sympathize with and encourage him. She
was of importance to somebody.
When they went back to Ingleside they found callers sitting on the
veranda. Mr. and Mrs. Meredith had come over from the manse, and Mr. and
Mrs. Norman Douglas had come up from the farm. Cousin Sophia was there
also, sitting with Susan in the shadowy background. Mrs. Blythe and Nan
and Di were away, but Dr. Blythe was home and so was Dr. Jekyll, sitting
in golden majesty on the top step. And of course they were all talking
of the war, except Dr. Jekyll who kept his own counsel and looked
contempt as only a cat can. When two people foregathered in those days
they talked of the war; and old Highland Sandy of the Harbour Head
talked of it when he was alone and hurled anathemas at the Kaiser across
all the acres of his farm. Walter slipped away, not caring to see or be
seen, but Rilla sat down on the steps, where the garden mint was dewy
and pungent. It was a very calm evening with a dim, golden afterlight
irradiating the glen. She felt happier than at any time in the dreadful
week that had passed. She was no longer haunted by the fear that Walter
would go.
"I'd go myself if I was twenty years younger," Norman Douglas was
shouting. Norman always shouted when he was excited. "I'd show the
Kaiser a thing or two! Did I ever say there wasn't a hell? Of course
there's a hell--dozens of hells--hundreds of hells--where the Kaiser
and all his brood are bound for."
"I knew this war was coming," said Mrs. Norman triumphantly. "I saw it
coming right along. I could have told all those stupid Englishmen what
was ahead of them. I told you, John Meredith, years ago what the Kaiser
was up to but you wouldn't believe it. You said he would never plunge
the world in war. Who was right about the Kaiser, John? You--or I? Tell
me that."
"You were, I admit," said Mr. Meredith.
"It's too late to admit it now," said Mrs. Norman, shaking her head, as
if to intimate that if John Meredith had admitted it sooner there might
have been no war.
"Thank God, England's navy is ready," said the doctor.
"Amen to that," nodded Mrs. Norman. "Bat-blind as most of them were
somebody had foresight enough to see to that."
"Maybe England'll manage not to get into trouble over it," said Cousin
Sophia plaintively. "I dunno. But I'm much afraid."
"One would suppose that England was in trouble over it already, up to
her neck, Sophia Crawford," said Susan. "But your ways of thinking are
beyond me and always were. It is my opinion that the British Navy will
settle Germany in a jiffy and that we are all getting worked up over
nothing."
Susan spat out the words as if she wanted to convince herself more than
anybody else. She had her little store of homely philosophies to guide
her through life, but she had nothing to buckler her against the
thunderbolts of the week that had just passed. What had an honest,
hard-working, Presbyterian old maid of Glen St. Mary to do with a war
thousands of miles away? Susan felt that it was indecent that she should
have to be disturbed by it.
"The British army will settle Germany," shouted Norman. "Just wait till
it gets into line and the Kaiser will find that real war is a different
thing from parading round Berlin with your moustaches cocked up."
"Britain hasn't got an army," said Mrs. Norman emphatically. "You
needn't glare at me, Norman. Glaring won't make soldiers out of timothy
stalks. A hundred thousand men will just be a mouthful for Germany's
millions."
"There'll be some tough chewing in the mouthful, I reckon," persisted
Norman valiantly. "Germany'll break her teeth on it. Don't you tell me
one Britisher isn't a match for ten foreigners. I could polish off a
dozen of 'em myself with both hands tied behind my back!"
"I am told," said Susan, "that old Mr. Pryor does not believe in this
war. I am told that he says England went into it just because she was
jealous of Germany and that she did not really care in the least what
happened to Belgium."
"I believe he's been talking some such rot," said Norman. "I haven't
heard him. When I do, Whiskers-on-the-moon won't know what happened to
him. That precious relative of mine, Kitty Alec, holds forth to the same
effect, I understand. Not before me, though--somehow, folks don't
indulge in that kind of conversation in my presence. Lord love you,
they've a kind of presentiment, so to speak, that it wouldn't be healthy
for their complaint."
"I am much afraid that this war has been sent as a punishment for our
sins," said Cousin Sophia, unclasping her pale hands from her lap and
reclasping them solemnly over her stomach. "'The world is very evil--
the times are waxing late.'"
"Parson here's got something of the same idea," chuckled Norman.
"Haven't you, Parson? That's why you preached t'other night on the text
'Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.' I didn't
agree with you--wanted to get up in the pew and shout out that there
wasn't a word of sense in what you were saying, but Ellen, here, she
held me down. I never have any fun sassing parsons since I got married."
"Without shedding of blood there is no anything," said Mr. Meredith, in
the gentle dreamy way which had an unexpected trick of convincing his
hearers. "Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by
self-sacrifice. Our race has marked every step of its painful ascent
with blood. And now torrents of it must flow again. No, Mrs. Crawford, I
don't think the war has been sent as a punishment for sin. I think it is
the price humanity must pay for some blessing--some advance great
enough to be worth the price--which we may not live to see but which
our children's children will inherit."
"If Jerry is killed will you feel so fine about it?" demanded Norman,
who had been saying things like that all his life and never could be
made to see any reason why he shouldn't. "Now, never mind kicking me in
the shins, Ellen. I want to see if Parson meant what he said or if it
was just a pulpit frill."
Mr. Meredith's face quivered. He had had a terrible hour alone in his
study on the night Jem and Jerry had gone to town. But he answered
quietly.
"Whatever I felt, it could not alter my belief--my assurance that a
country whose sons are ready to lay down their lives in her defence will
win a new vision because of their sacrifice."
"You do mean it, Parson. I can always tell when people mean what they
say. It's a gift that was born in me. Makes me a terror to most parsons,
that! But I've never caught you yet saying anything you didn't mean. I'm
always hoping I will--that's what reconciles me to going to church.
It'd be such a comfort to me--such a weapon to batter Ellen here with
when she tries to civilize me. Well, I'm off over the road to see Ab.
Crawford a minute. The gods be good to you all."
"The old pagan!" muttered Susan, as Norman strode away. She did not care
if Ellen Douglas did hear her. Susan could never understand why fire did
not descend from heaven upon Norman Douglas when he insulted ministers
the way he did. But the astonishing thing was Mr. Meredith seemed really
to like his brother-in-law.
Rilla wished they would talk of something besides war. She had heard
nothing else for a week and she was really a little tired of it. Now
that she was relieved from her haunting fear that Walter would want to
go it made her quite impatient. But she supposed--with a sigh--that
there would be three or four months of it yet.
"THE SOUND OF A GOING"
Rilla ran down through the sunlit glory of the maple grove behind
Ingleside, to her favourite nook in Rainbow Valley. She sat down on a
green-mossed stone among the fern, propped her chin on her hands and
stared unseeingly at the dazzling blue sky of the August afternoon--so
blue, so peaceful, so unchanged, just as it had arched over the valley
in the mellow days of late summer ever since she could remember.
She wanted to be alone--to think things out--to adjust herself, if it
were possible, to the new world into which she seemed to have been
transplanted with a suddenness and completeness that left her half
bewildered as to her own identity. Was she--could she be--the same
Rilla Blythe who had danced at Four Winds Light six days ago--only six
days ago? It seemed to Rilla that she had lived as much in those six
days as in all her previous life--and if it be true that we should count
time by heart-throbs she had. That evening, with its hopes and fears and
triumphs and humiliations, seemed like ancient history now. Could she
really ever have cried just because she had been forgotten and had to
walk home with Mary Vance? Ah, thought Rilla sadly, how trivial and
absurd such a cause of tears now appeared to her. She could cry now with
a right good will--but she would not--she must not. What was it mother
had said, looking, with her white lips and stricken eyes, as Rilla had
never seen her mother look before,
"When our women fail in courage,
Shall our men be fearless still?"
Yes, that was it. She must be brave--like mother--and Nan--and Faith
--Faith, who had cried with flashing eyes, "Oh, if I were only a man, to
go too!" Only, when her eyes ached and her throat burned like this she
had to hide herself in Rainbow Valley for a little, just to think things
out and remember that she wasn't a child any longer--she was grown-up
and women had to face things like this. But it was--nice--to get away
alone now and then, where nobody could see her and where she needn't
feel that people thought her a little coward if some tears came in spite
of her.
How sweet and woodsey the ferns smelled! How softly the great feathery
boughs of the firs waved and murmured over her! How elfinly rang the
bells of the "Tree Lovers"--just a tinkle now and then as the breeze
swept by! How purple and elusive the haze where incense was being
offered on many an altar of the hills! How the maple leaves whitened in
the wind until the grove seemed covered with pale silvery blossoms!
Everything was just the same as she had seen it hundreds of times; and
yet the whole face of the world seemed changed.
"How wicked I was to wish that something dramatic would happen!" she
thought. "Oh, if we could only have those dear, monotonous, pleasant
days back again! I would never, never grumble about them again."
Rilla's world had tumbled to pieces the very day after the party. As
they lingered around the dinner table at Ingleside, talking of the war,
the telephone had rung. It was a long-distance call from Charlottetown
for Jem. When he had finished talking he hung up the receiver and turned
around, with a flushed face and glowing eyes. Before he had said a word
his mother and Nan and Di had turned pale. As for Rilla, for the first
time in her life she felt that every one must hear her heart beating and
that something had clutched at her throat.
"They are calling for volunteers in town, father," said Jem. "Scores
have joined up already. I'm going in tonight to enlist."
"Oh--Little Jem," cried Mrs. Blythe brokenly. She had not called him
that for many years--not since the day he had rebelled against it. "Oh
--no--no--Little Jem."
"I must, mother. I'm right--am I not, father?" said Jem.
Dr. Blythe had risen. He was very pale, too, and his voice was husky.
But he did not hesitate.
"Yes, Jem, yes--if you feel that way, yes--"
Mrs. Blythe covered her face. Walter stared moodily at his plate. Nan
and Di clasped each others' hands. Shirley tried to look unconcerned.
Susan sat as if paralysed, her piece of pie half-eaten on her plate.
Susan never did finish that piece of pie--a fact which bore eloquent
testimony to the upheaval in her inner woman for Susan considered it a
cardinal offence against civilized society to begin to eat anything and
not finish it. That was wilful waste, hens to the contrary
notwithstanding.
Jem turned to the phone again. "I must ring the manse. Jerry will want
to go, too."
At this Nan had cried out "Oh!" as if a knife had been thrust into her,
and rushed from the room. Di followed her. Rilla turned to Walter for
comfort but Walter was lost to her in some reverie she could not share.
"All right," Jem was saying, as coolly as if he were arranging the
details of a picnic. "I thought you would--yes, tonight--the seven
o'clock--meet me at the station. So long."
"Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan. "I wish you would wake me up. Am I dreaming
--or am I awake? Does that blessed boy realize what he is saying? Does
he mean that he is going to enlist as a soldier? You do not mean to tell
me that they want children like him! It is an outrage. Surely you and
the doctor will not permit it."
"We can't stop him," said Mrs. Blythe, chokingly. "Oh, Gilbert!"
Dr. Blythe came up behind his wife and took her hand gently, looking
down into the sweet grey eyes that he had only once before seen filled
with such imploring anguish as now. They both thought of that other time
--the day years ago in the House of Dreams when little Joyce had died.
"Would you have him stay, Anne--when the others are going--when he
thinks it his duty--would you have him so selfish and small-souled?"
"No--no! But--oh--our first-born son--he's only a lad--Gilbert--
I'll try to be brave after a while--just now I can't. It's all come so
suddenly. Give me time."
The doctor and his wife went out of the room. Jem had gone--Walter had
gone--Shirley got up to go. Rilla and Susan remained staring at each
other across the deserted table. Rilla had not yet cried--she was too
stunned for tears. Then she saw that Susan was crying--Susan, whom she
had never seen shed a tear before.
"Oh, Susan, will he really go?" she asked.
"It--it--it is just ridiculous, that is what it is," said Susan.
She wiped away her tears, gulped resolutely and got up.
"I am going to wash the dishes. That has to be done, even if everybody
has gone crazy. There now, dearie, do not you cry. Jem will go, most
likely--but the war will be over long before he gets anywhere near it.
Let us take a brace and not worry your poor mother."
"In the Enterprise today it was reported that Lord Kitchener says the
war will last three years," said Rilla dubiously.
"I am not acquainted with Lord Kitchener," said Susan, composedly, "but
I dare say he makes mistakes as often as other people. Your father says
it will be over in a few months and I have as much faith in his opinion
as I have in Lord Anybody's. So just let us be calm and trust in the
Almighty and get this place tidied up. I am done with crying which is a
waste of time and discourages everybody."
Jem and Jerry went to Charlottetown that night and two days later they
came back in khaki. The Glen hummed with excitement over it. Life at
Ingleside had suddenly become a tense, strained, thrilling thing. Mrs.
Blythe and Nan were brave and smiling and wonderful. Already Mrs. Blythe
and Miss Cornelia were organizing a Red Cross. The doctor and Mr.
Meredith were rounding up the men for a Patriotic Society. Rilla, after
the first shock, reacted to the romance of it all, in spite of her
heartache. Jem certainly looked magnificent in his uniform. It was
splendid to think of the lads of Canada answering so speedily and
fearlessly and uncalculatingly to the call of their country. Rilla
carried her head high among the girls whose brothers had not so
responded. In her diary she wrote:
"He goes to do what I had done
Had Douglas's daughter been his son,"
and was sure she meant it. If she were a boy of course she would go,
too! She hadn't the least doubt of that.
She wondered if it was very dreadful of her to feel glad that Walter
hadn't got strong as soon as they had wished after the fever.
"I couldn't bear to have Walter go," she wrote. "I love Jem ever so much
but Walter means more to me than anyone in the world and I would die if
he had to go. He seems so changed these days. He hardly ever talks to
me. I suppose he wants to go, too, and feels badly because he can't. He
doesn't go about with Jem and Jerry at all. I shall never forget Susan's
face when Jem came home in his khaki. It worked and twisted as if she
were going to cry, but all she said was, 'You look almost like a man in
that, Jem.' Jem laughed. He never minds because Susan thinks him just a
child still. Everybody seems busy but me. I wish there was something I
could do but there doesn't seem to be anything. Mother and Nan and Di
are busy all the time and I just wander about like a lonely ghost. What
hurts me terribly, though, is that mother's smiles, and Nan's, just seem
put on from the outside. Mother's eyes never laugh now. It makes me feel
that I shouldn't laugh either--that it's wicked to feel laughy. And
it's so hard for me to keep from laughing, even if Jem is going to be a
soldier. But when I laugh I don't enjoy it either, as I used to do.
There's something behind it all that keeps hurting me--especially when
I wake up in the night. Then I cry because I am afraid that Kitchener of
Khartoum is right and the war will last for years and Jem may be--but
no, I won't write it. It would make me feel as if it were really going
to happen. The other day Nan said, 'Nothing can ever be quite the same
for any of us again.' It made me feel rebellious. Why shouldn't things
be the same again--when everything is over and Jem and Jerry are back?
We'll all be happy and jolly again and these days will seem just like a
bad dream.
"The coming of the mail is the most exciting event of every day now.
Father just snatches the paper--I never saw father snatch before--and
the rest of us crowd round and look at the headlines over his shoulder.
Susan vows she does not and will not believe a word the papers say but
she always comes to the kitchen door, and listens and then goes back,
shaking her head. She is terribly indignant all the time, but she cooks
up all the things Jem likes especially, and she did not make a single
bit of fuss when she found Monday asleep on the spare-room bed yesterday
right on top of Mrs. Rachel Lynde's apple-leaf spread. 'The Almighty
only knows where your master will be having to sleep before long, you
poor dumb beast,' she said as she put him quite gently out. But she
never relents towards Doc. She says the minute he saw Jem in khaki he
turned into Mr. Hyde then and there and she thinks that ought to be
proof enough of what he really is. Susan is funny, but she is an old
dear. Shirley says she is one half angel and the other half good cook.
But then Shirley is the only one of us she never scolds.
"Faith Meredith is wonderful. I think she and Jem are really engaged
now. She goes about with a shining light in her eyes, but her smiles are
a little stiff and starched, just like mother's. I wonder if I could be
as brave as she is if I had a lover and he was going to the war. It is
bad enough when it is your brother. Bruce Meredith cried all night, Mrs.
Meredith says, when he heard Jem and Jerry were going. And he wanted to
know if the 'K of K.' his father talked about was the King of Kings. He
is the dearest kiddy. I just love him--though I don't really care much
for children. I don't like babies one bit--though when I say so people
look at me as if I had said something perfectly shocking. Well, I don't,
and I've got to be honest about it. I don't mind looking at a nice clean
baby if somebody else holds it--but I wouldn't touch it for anything
and I don't feel a single real spark of interest in it. Gertrude Oliver
says she just feels the same. (She is the most honest person I know. She
never pretends anything.) She says babies bore her until they are old
enough to talk and then she likes them--but still a good ways off.
Mother and Nan and Di all adore babies and seem to think I'm unnatural
because I don't.
"I haven't seen Kenneth since the night of the party. He was here one
evening after Jem came back but I happened to be away. I don't think he
mentioned me at all--at least nobody told me he did and I was
determined I wouldn't ask--but I don't care in the least. All that
matters absolutely nothing to me now. The only thing that does matter is
that Jem has volunteered for active service and will be going to
Valcartier in a few more days--my big, splendid brother Jem. Oh, I'm so
proud of him!
"I suppose Kenneth would enlist too if it weren't for his ankle. I think
that is quite providential. He is his mother's only son and how dreadful
she would feel if he went. Only sons should never think of going!"
Walter came wandering through the valley as Rilla sat there, with his
head bent and his hands clasped behind him. When he saw Rilla he turned
abruptly away; then as abruptly he turned and came back to her.
"Rilla-my-Rilla, what are you thinking of?"
"Everything is so changed, Walter," said Rilla wistfully. "Even you--
you're changed. A week ago we were all so happy--and--and--now I just
can't find myself at all. I'm lost."
Walter sat down on a neighbouring stone and took Rilla's little
appealing hand.
"I'm afraid our old world has come to an end, Rilla. We've got to face
that fact."
"It's so terrible to think of Jem," pleaded Rilla. "Sometimes I forget
for a little while what it really means and feel excited and proud--and
then it comes over me again like a cold wind."
"I envy Jem!" said Walter moodily.
"Envy Jem! Oh, Walter you--you don't want to go too."
"No," said Walter, gazing straight before him down the emerald vistas of
the valley, "no, I don't want to go. That's just the trouble. Rilla, I'm
afraid to go. I'm a coward."
"You're not!" Rilla burst out angrily. "Why, anybody would be afraid to
go. You might be--why, you might be killed."
"I wouldn't mind that if it didn't hurt," muttered Walter. "I don't
think I'm afraid of death itself--it's of the pain that might come
before death--it wouldn't be so bad to die and have it over--but to
keep on dying! Rilla, I've always been afraid of pain--you know that. I
can't help it--I shudder when I think of the possibility of being
mangled or--or blinded. Rilla, I cannot face that thought. To be blind
--never to see the beauty of the world again--moonlight on Four Winds--
the stars twinkling through the fir-trees--mist on the gulf. I ought to
go--I ought to want to go--but I don't--I hate the thought of it--
I'm ashamed--ashamed."
"But, Walter, you couldn't go anyhow," said Rilla piteously. She was
sick with a new terror that Walter would go after all. "You're not
strong enough."
"I am. I've felt as fit as ever I did this last month. I'd pass any
examination--I know it. Everybody thinks I'm not strong yet--and I'm
skulking behind that belief. I--I should have been a girl," Walter
concluded in a burst of passionate bitterness.
"Even if you were strong enough, you oughtn't to go," sobbed Rilla.
"What would mother do? She's breaking her heart over Jem. It would kill
her to see you both go."
"Oh, I'm not going--don't worry. I tell you I'm afraid to go--afraid.
I don't mince the matter to myself. It's a relief to own up even to you,
Rilla. I wouldn't confess it to anybody else--Nan and Di would despise
me. But I hate the whole thing--the horror, the pain, the ugliness. War
isn't a khaki uniform or a drill parade--everything I've read in old
histories haunts me. I lie awake at night and see things that have
happened--see the blood and filth and misery of it all. And a bayonet
charge! If I could face the other things I could never face that. It
turns me sick to think of it--sicker even to think of giving it than
receiving it--to think of thrusting a bayonet through another man."
Walter writhed and shuddered. "I think of these things all the time--
and it doesn't seem to me that Jem and Jerry ever think of them. They
laugh and talk about 'potting Huns'! But it maddens me to see them in
the khaki. And they think I'm grumpy because I'm not fit to go."
Walter laughed bitterly. "It is not a nice thing to feel yourself a
coward." But Rilla got her arms about him and cuddled her head on his
shoulder. She was so glad he didn't want to go--for just one minute she
had been horribly frightened. And it was so nice to have Walter
confiding his troubles to her--to her, not Di. She didn't feel so
lonely and superfluous any longer.
"Don't you despise me, Rilla-my-Rilla?" asked Walter wistfully. Somehow,
it hurt him to think Rilla might despise him--hurt him as much as if it
had been Di. He realized suddenly how very fond he was of this adoring
kid sister with her appealing eyes and troubled, girlish face.
"No, I don't. Why, Walter, hundreds of people feel just as you do. You
know what that verse of Shakespeare in the old Fifth Reader says--'the
brave man is not he who feels no fear.'"
"No--but it is 'he whose noble soul its fear subdues.' I don't do that.
We can't gloss it over, Rilla. I'm a coward."
"You're not. Think of how you fought Dan Reese long ago."
"One spurt of courage isn't enough for a lifetime."
"Walter, one time I heard father say that the trouble with you was a
sensitive nature and a vivid imagination. You feel things before they
really come--feel them all alone when there isn't anything to help you
bear them--to take away from them. It isn't anything to be ashamed of.
When you and Jem got your hands burned when the grass was fired on the
sand-hills two years ago Jem made twice the fuss over the pain that you
did. As for this horrid old war, there'll be plenty to go without you.
It won't last long."
"I wish I could believe it. Well, it's supper-time, Rilla. You'd better
run. I don't want anything."
"Neither do I. I couldn't eat a mouthful. Let me stay here with you,
Walter. It's such a comfort to talk things over with someone. The rest
all think that I'm too much of a baby to understand."
So they two sat there in the old valley until the evening star shone
through a pale-grey, gauzy cloud over the maple grove, and a fragrant
dewy darkness filled their little sylvan dell. It was one of the
evenings Rilla was to treasure in remembrance all her life--the first
one on which Walter had ever talked to her as if she were a woman and
not a child. They comforted and strengthened each other. Walter felt,
for the time being at least, that it was not such a despicable thing
after all to dread the horror of war; and Rilla was glad to be made the
confidante of his struggles--to sympathize with and encourage him. She
was of importance to somebody.
When they went back to Ingleside they found callers sitting on the
veranda. Mr. and Mrs. Meredith had come over from the manse, and Mr. and
Mrs. Norman Douglas had come up from the farm. Cousin Sophia was there
also, sitting with Susan in the shadowy background. Mrs. Blythe and Nan
and Di were away, but Dr. Blythe was home and so was Dr. Jekyll, sitting
in golden majesty on the top step. And of course they were all talking
of the war, except Dr. Jekyll who kept his own counsel and looked
contempt as only a cat can. When two people foregathered in those days
they talked of the war; and old Highland Sandy of the Harbour Head
talked of it when he was alone and hurled anathemas at the Kaiser across
all the acres of his farm. Walter slipped away, not caring to see or be
seen, but Rilla sat down on the steps, where the garden mint was dewy
and pungent. It was a very calm evening with a dim, golden afterlight
irradiating the glen. She felt happier than at any time in the dreadful
week that had passed. She was no longer haunted by the fear that Walter
would go.
"I'd go myself if I was twenty years younger," Norman Douglas was
shouting. Norman always shouted when he was excited. "I'd show the
Kaiser a thing or two! Did I ever say there wasn't a hell? Of course
there's a hell--dozens of hells--hundreds of hells--where the Kaiser
and all his brood are bound for."
"I knew this war was coming," said Mrs. Norman triumphantly. "I saw it
coming right along. I could have told all those stupid Englishmen what
was ahead of them. I told you, John Meredith, years ago what the Kaiser
was up to but you wouldn't believe it. You said he would never plunge
the world in war. Who was right about the Kaiser, John? You--or I? Tell
me that."
"You were, I admit," said Mr. Meredith.
"It's too late to admit it now," said Mrs. Norman, shaking her head, as
if to intimate that if John Meredith had admitted it sooner there might
have been no war.
"Thank God, England's navy is ready," said the doctor.
"Amen to that," nodded Mrs. Norman. "Bat-blind as most of them were
somebody had foresight enough to see to that."
"Maybe England'll manage not to get into trouble over it," said Cousin
Sophia plaintively. "I dunno. But I'm much afraid."
"One would suppose that England was in trouble over it already, up to
her neck, Sophia Crawford," said Susan. "But your ways of thinking are
beyond me and always were. It is my opinion that the British Navy will
settle Germany in a jiffy and that we are all getting worked up over
nothing."
Susan spat out the words as if she wanted to convince herself more than
anybody else. She had her little store of homely philosophies to guide
her through life, but she had nothing to buckler her against the
thunderbolts of the week that had just passed. What had an honest,
hard-working, Presbyterian old maid of Glen St. Mary to do with a war
thousands of miles away? Susan felt that it was indecent that she should
have to be disturbed by it.
"The British army will settle Germany," shouted Norman. "Just wait till
it gets into line and the Kaiser will find that real war is a different
thing from parading round Berlin with your moustaches cocked up."
"Britain hasn't got an army," said Mrs. Norman emphatically. "You
needn't glare at me, Norman. Glaring won't make soldiers out of timothy
stalks. A hundred thousand men will just be a mouthful for Germany's
millions."
"There'll be some tough chewing in the mouthful, I reckon," persisted
Norman valiantly. "Germany'll break her teeth on it. Don't you tell me
one Britisher isn't a match for ten foreigners. I could polish off a
dozen of 'em myself with both hands tied behind my back!"
"I am told," said Susan, "that old Mr. Pryor does not believe in this
war. I am told that he says England went into it just because she was
jealous of Germany and that she did not really care in the least what
happened to Belgium."
"I believe he's been talking some such rot," said Norman. "I haven't
heard him. When I do, Whiskers-on-the-moon won't know what happened to
him. That precious relative of mine, Kitty Alec, holds forth to the same
effect, I understand. Not before me, though--somehow, folks don't
indulge in that kind of conversation in my presence. Lord love you,
they've a kind of presentiment, so to speak, that it wouldn't be healthy
for their complaint."
"I am much afraid that this war has been sent as a punishment for our
sins," said Cousin Sophia, unclasping her pale hands from her lap and
reclasping them solemnly over her stomach. "'The world is very evil--
the times are waxing late.'"
"Parson here's got something of the same idea," chuckled Norman.
"Haven't you, Parson? That's why you preached t'other night on the text
'Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.' I didn't
agree with you--wanted to get up in the pew and shout out that there
wasn't a word of sense in what you were saying, but Ellen, here, she
held me down. I never have any fun sassing parsons since I got married."
"Without shedding of blood there is no anything," said Mr. Meredith, in
the gentle dreamy way which had an unexpected trick of convincing his
hearers. "Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by
self-sacrifice. Our race has marked every step of its painful ascent
with blood. And now torrents of it must flow again. No, Mrs. Crawford, I
don't think the war has been sent as a punishment for sin. I think it is
the price humanity must pay for some blessing--some advance great
enough to be worth the price--which we may not live to see but which
our children's children will inherit."
"If Jerry is killed will you feel so fine about it?" demanded Norman,
who had been saying things like that all his life and never could be
made to see any reason why he shouldn't. "Now, never mind kicking me in
the shins, Ellen. I want to see if Parson meant what he said or if it
was just a pulpit frill."
Mr. Meredith's face quivered. He had had a terrible hour alone in his
study on the night Jem and Jerry had gone to town. But he answered
quietly.
"Whatever I felt, it could not alter my belief--my assurance that a
country whose sons are ready to lay down their lives in her defence will
win a new vision because of their sacrifice."
"You do mean it, Parson. I can always tell when people mean what they
say. It's a gift that was born in me. Makes me a terror to most parsons,
that! But I've never caught you yet saying anything you didn't mean. I'm
always hoping I will--that's what reconciles me to going to church.
It'd be such a comfort to me--such a weapon to batter Ellen here with
when she tries to civilize me. Well, I'm off over the road to see Ab.
Crawford a minute. The gods be good to you all."
"The old pagan!" muttered Susan, as Norman strode away. She did not care
if Ellen Douglas did hear her. Susan could never understand why fire did
not descend from heaven upon Norman Douglas when he insulted ministers
the way he did. But the astonishing thing was Mr. Meredith seemed really
to like his brother-in-law.
Rilla wished they would talk of something besides war. She had heard
nothing else for a week and she was really a little tired of it. Now
that she was relieved from her haunting fear that Walter would want to
go it made her quite impatient. But she supposed--with a sigh--that
there would be three or four months of it yet.
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
SUSAN, RILLA, AND DOG MONDAY MAKE A RESOLUTION
The big living-room at Ingleside was snowed over with drifts of white
cotton. Word had come from Red Cross headquarters that sheets and
bandages would be required. Nan and Di and Rilla were hard at work. Mrs.
Blythe and Susan were upstairs in the boys' room, engaged in a more
personal task. With dry, anguished eyes they were packing up Jem's
belongings. He must leave for Valcartier the next morning. They had been
expecting the word but it was none the less dreadful when it came.
Rilla was basting the hem of a sheet for the first time in her life.
When the word had come that Jem must go she had her cry out among the
pines in Rainbow Valley and then she had gone to her mother.
"Mother, I want to do something. I'm only a girl--I can't do anything
to win the war--but I must do something to help at home."
"The cotton has come up for the sheets," said Mrs. Blythe. "You can help
Nan and Di make them up. And Rilla, don't you think you could organize a
Junior Red Cross among the young girls? I think they would like it
better and do better work by themselves than if mixed up with the older
people."
"But, mother--I've never done anything like that."
"We will all have to do a great many things in the months ahead of us
that we have never done before, Rilla."
"Well"--Rilla took the plunge--"I'll try, mother--if you'll tell me
how to begin. I have been thinking it all over and I have decided that I
must be as brave and heroic and unselfish as I can possibly be."
Mrs. Blythe did not smile at Rilla's italics. Perhaps she did not feel
like smiling or perhaps she detected a real grain of serious purpose
behind Rilla's romantic pose. So here was Rilla hemming sheets and
organizing a Junior Red Cross in her thoughts as she hemmed; moreover,
she was enjoying it--the organizing that is, not the hemming. It was
interesting and Rilla discovered a certain aptitude in herself for it
that surprised her. Who would be president? Not she. The older girls
would not like that. Irene Howard? No, somehow Irene was not quite as
popular as she deserved to be. Marjorie Drew? No, Marjorie hadn't enough
backbone. She was too prone to agree with the last speaker. Betty Mead--
calm, capable, tactful Betty--the very one! And Una Meredith for
treasurer; and, if they were very insistent, they might make her, Rilla,
secretary. As for the various committees, they must be chosen after the
Juniors were organized, but Rilla knew just who should be put on which.
They would meet around--and there must be no eats--Rilla knew she
would have a pitched battle with Olive Kirk over that--and everything
should be strictly business-like and constitutional. Her minute book
should be covered in white with a Red Cross on the cover--and wouldn't
it be nice to have some kind of uniform which they could all wear at the
concerts they would have to get up to raise money--something simple but
smart?
"You have basted the top hem of that sheet on one side and the bottom
hem on the other," said Di.
Rilla picked out her stitches and reflected that she hated sewing.
Running the Junior Reds would be much more interesting.
Mrs. Blythe was saying upstairs, "Susan, do you remember that first day
Jem lifted up his little arms to me and called me 'mo'er'--the very
first word he ever tried to say?"
"You could not mention anything about that blessed baby that I do not
and will not remember till my dying day," said Susan drearily.
"Susan, I keep thinking today of once when he cried for me in the night.
He was just a few months old. Gilbert didn't want me to go to him--he
said the child was well and warm and that it would be fostering bad
habits in him. But I went--and took him up--I can feel that tight
clinging of his little arms round my neck yet. Susan, if I hadn't gone
that night, twenty-one years ago, and taken my baby up when he cried for
me I couldn't face tomorrow morning."
"I do not know how we are going to face it anyhow, Mrs. Dr. dear. But do
not tell me that it will be the final farewell. He will be back on leave
before he goes overseas, will he not?"
"We hope so but we are not very sure. I am making up my mind that he
will not, so that there will be no disappointment to bear. Susan, I am
determined that I will send my boy off tomorrow with a smile. He shall
not carry away with him the remembrance of a weak mother who had not the
courage to send when he had the courage to go. I hope none of us will
cry."
"I am not going to cry, Mrs. Dr. dear, and that you may tie to, but
whether I shall manage to smile or not will be as Providence ordains and
as the pit of my stomach feels. Have you room there for this fruit-cake?
And the shortbread? And the mince-pie? That blessed boy shall not
starve, whether they have anything to eat in that Quebec place or not.
Everything seems to be changing all at once, does it not? Even the old
cat at the manse has passed away. He breathed his last at a quarter to
ten last night and Bruce is quite heart-broken, they tell me."
"It's time that pussy went where good cats go. He must be at least
fifteen years old. He has seemed so lonely since Aunt Martha died."
"I should not have lamented, Mrs. Dr. dear, if that Hyde-beast had died
also. He has been Mr. Hyde most of the time since Jem came home in
khaki, and that has a meaning I will maintain. I do not know what Monday
will do when Jem is gone. The creature just goes about with a human look
in his eyes that takes all the good out of me when I see it. Ellen West
used to be always railing at the Kaiser and we thought her crazy, but
now I see that there was a method in her madness. This tray is packed,
Mrs. Dr. dear, and I will go down and put in my best licks preparing
supper. I wish I knew when I would cook another supper for Jem but such
things are hidden from our eyes."
Jem Blythe and Jerry Meredith left next morning. It was a dull day,
threatening rain, and the clouds lay in heavy grey rolls over the sky;
but almost everybody in the Glen and Four Winds and Harbour Head and
Upper Glen and over-harbour--except Whiskers-on-the-moon--was there to
see them off. The Blythe family and the Meredith family were all
smiling. Even Susan, as Providence did ordain, wore a smile, though the
effect was somewhat more painful than tears would have been. Faith and
Nan were very pale and very gallant. Rilla thought she would get on very
well if something in her throat didn't choke her, and if her lips didn't
take such spells of trembling. Dog Monday was there, too. Jem had tried
to say good-bye to him at Ingleside but Monday implored so eloquently
that Jem relented and let him go to the station. He kept close to Jem's
legs and watched every movement of his beloved master.
"I can't bear that dog's eyes," said Mrs. Meredith.
"The beast has more sense than most humans," said Mary Vance. "Well, did
we any of us ever think we'd live to see this day? I bawled all night to
think of Jem and Jerry going like this. I think they're plumb deranged.
Miller got a maggot in his head about going but I soon talked him out of
it--likewise his aunt said a few touching things. For once in our lives
Kitty Alec and I agree. It's a miracle that isn't likely to happen
again. There's Ken, Rilla."
Rilla knew Kenneth was there. She had been acutely conscious of it from
the moment he had sprung from Leo West's buggy. Now he came up to her
smiling.
"Doing the brave-smiling-sister-stunt, I see. What a crowd for the Glen
to muster! Well, I'm off home in a few days myself."
A queer little wind of desolation that even Jem's going had not caused
blew over Rilla's spirit.
"Why? You have another month of vacation."
"Yes--but I can't hang around Four Winds and enjoy myself when the
world's on fire like this. It's me for little old Toronto where I'll
find some way of helping in spite of this bally ankle. I'm not looking
at Jem and Jerry--makes me too sick with envy. You girls are great--no
crying, no grim endurance. The boys'll go off with a good taste in their
mouths. I hope Persis and mother will be as game when my turn comes."
"Oh, Kenneth--the war will be over before your turn cometh."
There! She had lisped again. Another great moment of life spoiled! Well,
it was her fate. And anyhow, nothing mattered. Kenneth was off already--
he was talking to Ethel Reese, who was dressed, at seven in the morning,
in the gown she had worn to the dance, and was crying. What on earth had
Ethel to cry about? None of the Reeses were in khaki. Rilla wanted to
cry, too--but she would not. What was that horrid old Mrs. Drew saying
to mother, in that melancholy whine of hers? "I don't know how you can
stand this, Mrs. Blythe. I couldn't if it was my pore boy." And mother--
oh, mother could always be depended on! How her grey eyes flashed in her
pale face. "It might have been worse, Mrs. Drew. I might have had to
urge him to go." Mrs. Drew did not understand but Rilla did. She flung
up her head. Her brother did not have to be urged to go.
Rilla found herself standing alone and listening to disconnected scraps
of talk as people walked up and down past her.
"I told Mark to wait and see if they asked for a second lot of men. If
they did I'd let him go--but they won't," said Mrs. Palmer Burr.
"I think I'll have it made with a crush girdle of velvet," said Bessie
Clow.
"I'm frightened to look at my husband's face for fear I'll see in it
that he wants to go too," said a little over-harbour bride.
"I'm scared stiff," said whimsical Mrs. Jim Howard. "I'm scared Jim
will enlist--and I'm scared he won't."
"The war will be over by Christmas," said Joe Vickers.
"Let them European nations fight it out between them," said Abner Reese.
"When he was a boy I gave him many a good trouncing," shouted Norman
Douglas, who seemed to be referring to some one high in military circles
in Charlottetown. "Yes, sir, I walloped him well, big gun as he is now."
"The existence of the British Empire is at stake," said the Methodist
minister.
"There's certainly something about uniforms," sighed Irene Howard.
"It's a commercial war when all is said and done and not worth one drop
of good Canadian blood," said a stranger from the shore hotel.
"The Blythe family are taking it easy," said Kate Drew.
"Them young fools are just going for adventure," growled Nathan
Crawford.
"I have absolute confidence in Kitchener," said the over-harbour doctor.
In these ten minutes Rilla passed through a dizzying succession of
anger, laughter, contempt, depression and inspiration. Oh, people were--
funny! How little they understood. "Taking it easy," indeed--when even
Susan hadn't slept a wink all night! Kate Drew always was a minx.
Rilla felt as if she were in some fantastic nightmare. Were these the
people who, three weeks ago, were talking of crops and prices and local
gossip?
There--the train was coming--mother was holding Jem's hand--Dog
Monday was licking it--everybody was saying good-bye--the train was
in! Jem kissed Faith before everybody--old Mrs. Drew whooped
hysterically--the men, led by Kenneth, cheered--Rilla felt Jem seize
her hand--"Good-bye, Spider"--somebody kissed her cheek--she believed
it was Jerry but never was sure--they were off--the train was pulling
out--Jem and Jerry were waving to everybody--everybody was waving back
--mother and Nan were smiling still, but as if they had just forgotten
to take the smile off--Monday was howling dismally and being forcibly
restrained by the Methodist minister from tearing after the train--
Susan was waving her best bonnet and hurrahing like a man--had she gone
crazy?--the train rounded a curve. They had gone.
Rilla came to herself with a gasp. There was a sudden quiet. Nothing to
do now but to go home--and wait. The doctor and Mrs. Blythe walked off
together--so did Nan and Faith--so did John Meredith and Rosemary.
Walter and Una and Shirley and Di and Carl and Rilla went in a group.
Susan had put her bonnet back on her head, hindside foremost, and
stalked grimly off alone. Nobody missed Dog Monday at first. When they
did Shirley went back for him. He found Dog Monday curled up in one of
the shipping-sheds near the station and tried to coax him home. Dog
Monday would not move. He wagged his tail to show he had no hard
feelings but no blandishments availed to budge him.
"Guess Monday has made up his mind to wait there till Jem comes back,"
said Shirley, trying to laugh as he rejoined the rest. This was exactly
what Dog Monday had done. His dear master had gone--he, Monday, had
been deliberately and of malice aforethought prevented from going with
him by a demon disguised in the garb of a Methodist minister. Wherefore,
he, Monday, would wait there until the smoking, snorting monster, which
had carried his hero off, carried him back.
Ay, wait there, little faithful dog with the soft, wistful, puzzled
eyes. But it will be many a long bitter day before your boyish comrade
comes back to you.
The doctor was away on a case that night and Susan stalked into Mrs.
Blythe's room on her way to bed to see if her adored Mrs. Dr. dear were
"comfortable and composed." She paused solemnly at the foot of the bed
and solemnly declared,
"Mrs. Dr. dear, I have made up my mind to be a heroine."
"Mrs. Dr. dear" found herself violently inclined to laugh--which was
manifestly unfair, since she had not laughed when Rilla had announced a
similar heroic determination. To be sure, Rilla was a slim, white-robed
thing, with a flower-like face and starry young eyes aglow with feeling;
whereas Susan was arrayed in a grey flannel nightgown of strait
simplicity, and had a strip of red woollen worsted tied around her grey
hair as a charm against neuralgia. But that should not make any vital
difference. Was it not the spirit that counted? Yet Mrs. Blythe was hard
put to it not to laugh.
"I am not," proceeded Susan firmly, "going to lament or whine or
question the wisdom of the Almighty any more as I have been doing
lately. Whining and shirking and blaming Providence do not get us
anywhere. We have just got to grapple with whatever we have to do
whether it is weeding the onion patch, or running the Government. I
shall grapple. Those blessed boys have gone to war; and we women, Mrs.
Dr. dear, must tarry by the stuff and keep a stiff upper lip."
SUSAN, RILLA, AND DOG MONDAY MAKE A RESOLUTION
The big living-room at Ingleside was snowed over with drifts of white
cotton. Word had come from Red Cross headquarters that sheets and
bandages would be required. Nan and Di and Rilla were hard at work. Mrs.
Blythe and Susan were upstairs in the boys' room, engaged in a more
personal task. With dry, anguished eyes they were packing up Jem's
belongings. He must leave for Valcartier the next morning. They had been
expecting the word but it was none the less dreadful when it came.
Rilla was basting the hem of a sheet for the first time in her life.
When the word had come that Jem must go she had her cry out among the
pines in Rainbow Valley and then she had gone to her mother.
"Mother, I want to do something. I'm only a girl--I can't do anything
to win the war--but I must do something to help at home."
"The cotton has come up for the sheets," said Mrs. Blythe. "You can help
Nan and Di make them up. And Rilla, don't you think you could organize a
Junior Red Cross among the young girls? I think they would like it
better and do better work by themselves than if mixed up with the older
people."
"But, mother--I've never done anything like that."
"We will all have to do a great many things in the months ahead of us
that we have never done before, Rilla."
"Well"--Rilla took the plunge--"I'll try, mother--if you'll tell me
how to begin. I have been thinking it all over and I have decided that I
must be as brave and heroic and unselfish as I can possibly be."
Mrs. Blythe did not smile at Rilla's italics. Perhaps she did not feel
like smiling or perhaps she detected a real grain of serious purpose
behind Rilla's romantic pose. So here was Rilla hemming sheets and
organizing a Junior Red Cross in her thoughts as she hemmed; moreover,
she was enjoying it--the organizing that is, not the hemming. It was
interesting and Rilla discovered a certain aptitude in herself for it
that surprised her. Who would be president? Not she. The older girls
would not like that. Irene Howard? No, somehow Irene was not quite as
popular as she deserved to be. Marjorie Drew? No, Marjorie hadn't enough
backbone. She was too prone to agree with the last speaker. Betty Mead--
calm, capable, tactful Betty--the very one! And Una Meredith for
treasurer; and, if they were very insistent, they might make her, Rilla,
secretary. As for the various committees, they must be chosen after the
Juniors were organized, but Rilla knew just who should be put on which.
They would meet around--and there must be no eats--Rilla knew she
would have a pitched battle with Olive Kirk over that--and everything
should be strictly business-like and constitutional. Her minute book
should be covered in white with a Red Cross on the cover--and wouldn't
it be nice to have some kind of uniform which they could all wear at the
concerts they would have to get up to raise money--something simple but
smart?
"You have basted the top hem of that sheet on one side and the bottom
hem on the other," said Di.
Rilla picked out her stitches and reflected that she hated sewing.
Running the Junior Reds would be much more interesting.
Mrs. Blythe was saying upstairs, "Susan, do you remember that first day
Jem lifted up his little arms to me and called me 'mo'er'--the very
first word he ever tried to say?"
"You could not mention anything about that blessed baby that I do not
and will not remember till my dying day," said Susan drearily.
"Susan, I keep thinking today of once when he cried for me in the night.
He was just a few months old. Gilbert didn't want me to go to him--he
said the child was well and warm and that it would be fostering bad
habits in him. But I went--and took him up--I can feel that tight
clinging of his little arms round my neck yet. Susan, if I hadn't gone
that night, twenty-one years ago, and taken my baby up when he cried for
me I couldn't face tomorrow morning."
"I do not know how we are going to face it anyhow, Mrs. Dr. dear. But do
not tell me that it will be the final farewell. He will be back on leave
before he goes overseas, will he not?"
"We hope so but we are not very sure. I am making up my mind that he
will not, so that there will be no disappointment to bear. Susan, I am
determined that I will send my boy off tomorrow with a smile. He shall
not carry away with him the remembrance of a weak mother who had not the
courage to send when he had the courage to go. I hope none of us will
cry."
"I am not going to cry, Mrs. Dr. dear, and that you may tie to, but
whether I shall manage to smile or not will be as Providence ordains and
as the pit of my stomach feels. Have you room there for this fruit-cake?
And the shortbread? And the mince-pie? That blessed boy shall not
starve, whether they have anything to eat in that Quebec place or not.
Everything seems to be changing all at once, does it not? Even the old
cat at the manse has passed away. He breathed his last at a quarter to
ten last night and Bruce is quite heart-broken, they tell me."
"It's time that pussy went where good cats go. He must be at least
fifteen years old. He has seemed so lonely since Aunt Martha died."
"I should not have lamented, Mrs. Dr. dear, if that Hyde-beast had died
also. He has been Mr. Hyde most of the time since Jem came home in
khaki, and that has a meaning I will maintain. I do not know what Monday
will do when Jem is gone. The creature just goes about with a human look
in his eyes that takes all the good out of me when I see it. Ellen West
used to be always railing at the Kaiser and we thought her crazy, but
now I see that there was a method in her madness. This tray is packed,
Mrs. Dr. dear, and I will go down and put in my best licks preparing
supper. I wish I knew when I would cook another supper for Jem but such
things are hidden from our eyes."
Jem Blythe and Jerry Meredith left next morning. It was a dull day,
threatening rain, and the clouds lay in heavy grey rolls over the sky;
but almost everybody in the Glen and Four Winds and Harbour Head and
Upper Glen and over-harbour--except Whiskers-on-the-moon--was there to
see them off. The Blythe family and the Meredith family were all
smiling. Even Susan, as Providence did ordain, wore a smile, though the
effect was somewhat more painful than tears would have been. Faith and
Nan were very pale and very gallant. Rilla thought she would get on very
well if something in her throat didn't choke her, and if her lips didn't
take such spells of trembling. Dog Monday was there, too. Jem had tried
to say good-bye to him at Ingleside but Monday implored so eloquently
that Jem relented and let him go to the station. He kept close to Jem's
legs and watched every movement of his beloved master.
"I can't bear that dog's eyes," said Mrs. Meredith.
"The beast has more sense than most humans," said Mary Vance. "Well, did
we any of us ever think we'd live to see this day? I bawled all night to
think of Jem and Jerry going like this. I think they're plumb deranged.
Miller got a maggot in his head about going but I soon talked him out of
it--likewise his aunt said a few touching things. For once in our lives
Kitty Alec and I agree. It's a miracle that isn't likely to happen
again. There's Ken, Rilla."
Rilla knew Kenneth was there. She had been acutely conscious of it from
the moment he had sprung from Leo West's buggy. Now he came up to her
smiling.
"Doing the brave-smiling-sister-stunt, I see. What a crowd for the Glen
to muster! Well, I'm off home in a few days myself."
A queer little wind of desolation that even Jem's going had not caused
blew over Rilla's spirit.
"Why? You have another month of vacation."
"Yes--but I can't hang around Four Winds and enjoy myself when the
world's on fire like this. It's me for little old Toronto where I'll
find some way of helping in spite of this bally ankle. I'm not looking
at Jem and Jerry--makes me too sick with envy. You girls are great--no
crying, no grim endurance. The boys'll go off with a good taste in their
mouths. I hope Persis and mother will be as game when my turn comes."
"Oh, Kenneth--the war will be over before your turn cometh."
There! She had lisped again. Another great moment of life spoiled! Well,
it was her fate. And anyhow, nothing mattered. Kenneth was off already--
he was talking to Ethel Reese, who was dressed, at seven in the morning,
in the gown she had worn to the dance, and was crying. What on earth had
Ethel to cry about? None of the Reeses were in khaki. Rilla wanted to
cry, too--but she would not. What was that horrid old Mrs. Drew saying
to mother, in that melancholy whine of hers? "I don't know how you can
stand this, Mrs. Blythe. I couldn't if it was my pore boy." And mother--
oh, mother could always be depended on! How her grey eyes flashed in her
pale face. "It might have been worse, Mrs. Drew. I might have had to
urge him to go." Mrs. Drew did not understand but Rilla did. She flung
up her head. Her brother did not have to be urged to go.
Rilla found herself standing alone and listening to disconnected scraps
of talk as people walked up and down past her.
"I told Mark to wait and see if they asked for a second lot of men. If
they did I'd let him go--but they won't," said Mrs. Palmer Burr.
"I think I'll have it made with a crush girdle of velvet," said Bessie
Clow.
"I'm frightened to look at my husband's face for fear I'll see in it
that he wants to go too," said a little over-harbour bride.
"I'm scared stiff," said whimsical Mrs. Jim Howard. "I'm scared Jim
will enlist--and I'm scared he won't."
"The war will be over by Christmas," said Joe Vickers.
"Let them European nations fight it out between them," said Abner Reese.
"When he was a boy I gave him many a good trouncing," shouted Norman
Douglas, who seemed to be referring to some one high in military circles
in Charlottetown. "Yes, sir, I walloped him well, big gun as he is now."
"The existence of the British Empire is at stake," said the Methodist
minister.
"There's certainly something about uniforms," sighed Irene Howard.
"It's a commercial war when all is said and done and not worth one drop
of good Canadian blood," said a stranger from the shore hotel.
"The Blythe family are taking it easy," said Kate Drew.
"Them young fools are just going for adventure," growled Nathan
Crawford.
"I have absolute confidence in Kitchener," said the over-harbour doctor.
In these ten minutes Rilla passed through a dizzying succession of
anger, laughter, contempt, depression and inspiration. Oh, people were--
funny! How little they understood. "Taking it easy," indeed--when even
Susan hadn't slept a wink all night! Kate Drew always was a minx.
Rilla felt as if she were in some fantastic nightmare. Were these the
people who, three weeks ago, were talking of crops and prices and local
gossip?
There--the train was coming--mother was holding Jem's hand--Dog
Monday was licking it--everybody was saying good-bye--the train was
in! Jem kissed Faith before everybody--old Mrs. Drew whooped
hysterically--the men, led by Kenneth, cheered--Rilla felt Jem seize
her hand--"Good-bye, Spider"--somebody kissed her cheek--she believed
it was Jerry but never was sure--they were off--the train was pulling
out--Jem and Jerry were waving to everybody--everybody was waving back
--mother and Nan were smiling still, but as if they had just forgotten
to take the smile off--Monday was howling dismally and being forcibly
restrained by the Methodist minister from tearing after the train--
Susan was waving her best bonnet and hurrahing like a man--had she gone
crazy?--the train rounded a curve. They had gone.
Rilla came to herself with a gasp. There was a sudden quiet. Nothing to
do now but to go home--and wait. The doctor and Mrs. Blythe walked off
together--so did Nan and Faith--so did John Meredith and Rosemary.
Walter and Una and Shirley and Di and Carl and Rilla went in a group.
Susan had put her bonnet back on her head, hindside foremost, and
stalked grimly off alone. Nobody missed Dog Monday at first. When they
did Shirley went back for him. He found Dog Monday curled up in one of
the shipping-sheds near the station and tried to coax him home. Dog
Monday would not move. He wagged his tail to show he had no hard
feelings but no blandishments availed to budge him.
"Guess Monday has made up his mind to wait there till Jem comes back,"
said Shirley, trying to laugh as he rejoined the rest. This was exactly
what Dog Monday had done. His dear master had gone--he, Monday, had
been deliberately and of malice aforethought prevented from going with
him by a demon disguised in the garb of a Methodist minister. Wherefore,
he, Monday, would wait there until the smoking, snorting monster, which
had carried his hero off, carried him back.
Ay, wait there, little faithful dog with the soft, wistful, puzzled
eyes. But it will be many a long bitter day before your boyish comrade
comes back to you.
The doctor was away on a case that night and Susan stalked into Mrs.
Blythe's room on her way to bed to see if her adored Mrs. Dr. dear were
"comfortable and composed." She paused solemnly at the foot of the bed
and solemnly declared,
"Mrs. Dr. dear, I have made up my mind to be a heroine."
"Mrs. Dr. dear" found herself violently inclined to laugh--which was
manifestly unfair, since she had not laughed when Rilla had announced a
similar heroic determination. To be sure, Rilla was a slim, white-robed
thing, with a flower-like face and starry young eyes aglow with feeling;
whereas Susan was arrayed in a grey flannel nightgown of strait
simplicity, and had a strip of red woollen worsted tied around her grey
hair as a charm against neuralgia. But that should not make any vital
difference. Was it not the spirit that counted? Yet Mrs. Blythe was hard
put to it not to laugh.
"I am not," proceeded Susan firmly, "going to lament or whine or
question the wisdom of the Almighty any more as I have been doing
lately. Whining and shirking and blaming Providence do not get us
anywhere. We have just got to grapple with whatever we have to do
whether it is weeding the onion patch, or running the Government. I
shall grapple. Those blessed boys have gone to war; and we women, Mrs.
Dr. dear, must tarry by the stuff and keep a stiff upper lip."
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
A WAR-BABY AND A SOUP TUREEN
"Liege and Namur--and now Brussels!" The doctor shook his head. "I
don't like it--I don't like it."
"Do not you lose heart, Dr. dear; they were just defended by
foreigners," said Susan superbly. "Wait you till the Germans come
against the British; there will be a very different story to tell and
that you may tie to."
The doctor shook his head again, but a little less gravely; perhaps they
all shared subconsciously in Susan's belief that "the thin grey line"
was unbreakable, even by the victorious rush of Germany's ready
millions. At any rate, when the terrible day came--the first of many
terrible days--with the news that the British army was driven back they
stared at each other in blank dismay.
"It--it can't be true," gasped Nan, taking a brief refuge in temporary
incredulity.
"I felt that there was to be bad news today," said Susan, "for that
cat-creature turned into Mr. Hyde this morning without rhyme or reason
for it, and that was no good omen."
"'A broken, a beaten, but not a demoralized, army,'" muttered the
doctor, from a London dispatch. "Can it be England's army of which such
a thing is said?"
"It will be a long time now before the war is ended," said Mrs. Blythe
despairingly.
Susan's faith, which had for a moment been temporarily submerged, now
reappeared triumphantly.
"Remember, Mrs. Dr. dear, that the British army is not the British navy.
Never forget that. And the Russians are on their way, too, though
Russians are people I do not know much about and consequently will not
tie to."
"The Russians will not be in time to save Paris," said Walter gloomily.
"Paris is the heart of France--and the road to it is open. Oh, I wish"
--he stopped abruptly and went out.
After a paralysed day the Ingleside folk found it was possible to "carry
on" even in the face of ever-darkening bad news. Susan worked fiercely
in her kitchen, the doctor went out on his round of visits, Nan and Di
returned to their Red Cross activities; Mrs. Blythe went to
Charlottetown to attend a Red Cross Convention; Rilla after relieving
her feelings by a stormy fit of tears in Rainbow Valley and an outburst
in her diary, remembered that she had elected to be brave and heroic.
And, she thought, it really was heroic to volunteer to drive about the
Glen and Four Winds one day, collecting promised Red Cross supplies with
Abner Crawford's old grey horse. One of the Ingleside horses was lame
and the doctor needed the other, so there was nothing for it but the
Crawford nag, a placid, unhasting, thick-skinned creature with an
amiable habit of stopping every few yards to kick a fly off one leg with
the foot of the other. Rilla felt that this, coupled with the fact that
the Germans were only fifty miles from Paris, was hardly to be endured.
But she started off gallantly on an errand fraught with amazing results.
Late in the afternoon she found herself, with a buggy full of parcels,
at the entrance to a grassy, deep-rutted lane leading to the harbour
shore, wondering whether it was worth while to call down at the Anderson
house. The Andersons were desperately poor and it was not likely Mrs.
Anderson had anything to give. On the other hand, her husband, who was
an Englishman by birth and who had been working in Kingsport when the
war broke out, had promptly sailed for England to enlist there, without,
it may be said, coming home or sending much hard cash to represent him.
So possibly Mrs. Anderson might feel hurt if she were overlooked. Rilla
decided to call. There were times afterwards when she wished she hadn't,
but in the long run she was very thankful that she did.
The Anderson house was a small and tumbledown affair, crouching in a
grove of battered spruces near the shore as if rather ashamed of itself
and anxious to hide. Rilla tied her grey nag to the rickety fence and
went to the door. It was open; and the sight she saw bereft her
temporarily of the power of speech or motion.
Through the open door of the small bedroom opposite her, Rilla saw Mrs.
Anderson lying on the untidy bed; and Mrs. Anderson was dead. There was
no doubt of that; neither was there any doubt that the big, frowzy,
red-headed, red-faced, over-fat woman sitting near the door-way, smoking
a pipe quite comfortably, was very much alive. She rocked idly back and
forth amid her surroundings of squalid disorder, and paid no attention
whatever to the piercing wails proceeding from a cradle in the middle of
the room.
Rilla knew the woman by sight and reputation. Her name was Mrs. Conover;
she lived down at the fishing village; she was a great-aunt of Mrs.
Anderson; and she drank as well as smoked.
Rilla's first impulse was to turn and flee. But that would never do.
Perhaps this woman, repulsive as she was, needed help--though she
certainly did not look as if she were worrying over the lack of it.
"Come in," said Mrs. Conover, removing her pipe and staring at Rilla
with her little, rat-like eyes.
"Is--is Mrs. Anderson really dead?" asked Rilla timidly, as she stepped
over the sill.
"Dead as a door nail," responded Mrs. Conover cheerfully. "Kicked the
bucket half an hour ago. I've sent Jen Conover to 'phone for the
undertaker and get some help up from the shore. You're the doctor's
miss, ain't ye? Have a cheer?"
Rilla did not see any chair which was not cluttered with something. She
remained standing.
"Wasn't it--very sudden?"
"Well, she's been a-pining ever since that worthless Jim lit out for
England--which I say it's a pity as he ever left. It's my belief she
was took for death when she heard the news. That young un there was born
a fortnight ago and since then she's just gone down and today she up and
died, without a soul expecting it."
"Is there anything I can do to--to help?" hesitated Rilla.
"Bless yez, no--unless ye've a knack with kids. I haven't. That young
un there never lets up squalling, day or night. I've just got that I
take no notice of it."
Rilla tiptoed gingerly over to the cradle and more gingerly still pulled
down the dirty blanket. She had no intention of touching the baby--she
had no "knack with kids" either. She saw an ugly midget with a red,
distorted little face, rolled up in a piece of dingy old flannel. She
had never seen an uglier baby. Yet a feeling of pity for the desolate,
orphaned mite which had "come out of the everywhere" into such a dubious
"here", took sudden possession of her.
"What is going to become of the baby?" she asked.
"Lord knows," said Mrs. Conover candidly. "Min worried awful over that
before she died. She kept on a-saying 'Oh, what will become of my pore
baby' till it really got on my nerves. I ain't a-going to trouble myself
with it, I can tell yez. I brung up a boy that my sister left and he
skinned out as soon as he got to be some good and won't give me a mite
o' help in my old age, ungrateful whelp as he is. I told Min it'd have
to be sent to an orphan asylum till we'd see if Jim ever came back to
look after it. Would yez believe it, she didn't relish the idee. But
that's the long and short of it."
"But who will look after it until it can be taken to the asylum?"
persisted Rilla. Somehow the baby's fate worried her.
"S'pose I'll have to," grunted Mrs. Conover. She put away her pipe and
took an unblushing swig from a black bottle she produced from a shelf
near her. "It's my opinion the kid won't live long. It's sickly. Min
never had no gimp and I guess it hain't either. Likely it won't trouble
any one long and good riddance, sez I."
Rilla drew the blanket down a little farther.
"Why, the baby isn't dressed!" she exclaimed, in a shocked tone.
"Who was to dress him I'd like to know," demanded Mrs. Conover
truculently. "I hadn't time--took me all the time there was looking
after Min. 'Sides, as I told yez, I don't know nithing about kids. Old
Mrs. Billy Crawford, she was here when it was born and she washed it and
rolled it up in that flannel, and Jen she's tended it a bit since. The
critter is warm enough. This weather would melt a brass monkey."
Rilla was silent, looking down at the crying baby. She had never
encountered any of the tragedies of life before and this one smote her
to the core of her heart. The thought of the poor mother going down into
the valley of the shadow alone, fretting about her baby, with no one
near but this abominable old woman, hurt her terribly. If she had only
come a little sooner! Yet what could she have done--what could she do
now? She didn't know, but she must do something. She hated babies--but
she simply could not go away and leave that poor little creature with
Mrs. Conover--who was applying herself again to her black bottle and
would probably be helplessly drunk before anybody came.
"I can't stay," thought Rilla. "Mr. Crawford said I must be home by
supper-time because he wanted the pony this evening himself. Oh, what
can I do?"
She made a sudden, desperate, impulsive resolution.
"I'll take the baby home with me," she said. "Can I?"
"Sure, if yez wants to," said Mrs. Conover amiably. "I hain't any
objection. Take it and welcome."
"I--I can't carry it," said Rilla. "I have to drive the horse and I'd
be afraid I'd drop it. Is there a--a basket anywhere that I could put
it in?"
"Not as I knows on. There ain't much here of anything, I kin tell yez.
Min was pore and as shiftless as Jim. Ef ye opens that drawer over there
yez'll find a few baby clo'es. Best take them along."
Rilla got the clothes--the cheap, sleazy garments the poor mother had
made ready as best she could. But this did not solve the pressing
problem of the baby's transportation. Rilla looked helplessly round. Oh,
for mother--or Susan! Her eyes fell on an enormous blue soup tureen at
the back of the dresser.
"May I have this to--to lay him in?" she asked.
"Well, 'tain't mine but I guess yez kin take it. Don't smash it if yez
can help--Jim might make a fuss about it if he comes back alive--which
he sure will, seein' he ain't any good. He brung that old tureen out
from England with him--said it'd always been in the family. Him and Min
never used it--never had enough soup to put in it--but Jim thought the
world of it. He was mighty perticuler about some things but didn't worry
him none that there weren't much in the way o' eatables to put in the
dishes."
For the first time in her life Rilla Blythe touched a baby--lifted it--
rolled it in a blanket, trembling with nervousness lest she drop it or--
or--break it. Then she put it in the soup tureen.
"Is there any fear of it smothering?" she asked anxiously.
"Not much odds if it do," said Mrs. Conover.
Horrified Rilla loosened the blanket round the baby's face a little. The
mite had stopped crying and was blinking up at her. It had big dark eyes
in its ugly little face.
"Better not let the wind blow on it," admonished Mrs. Conover. "Take its
breath if it do."
Rilla wrapped the tattered little quilt around the soup tureen.
"Will you hand this to me after I get into the buggy, please?"
"Sure I will," said Mrs. Conover, getting up with a grunt.
And so it was that Rilla Blythe, who had driven to the Anderson house a
self-confessed hater of babies, drove away from it carrying one in a
soup tureen on her lap!
Rilla thought she would never get to Ingleside. In the soup tureen there
was an uncanny silence. In one way she was thankful the baby did not cry
but she wished it would give an occasional squeak to prove that it was
alive. Suppose it were smothered! Rilla dared not unwrap it to see, lest
the wind, which was now blowing a hurricane, should "take its breath,"
whatever dreadful thing that might be. She was a thankful girl when at
last she reached harbour at Ingleside.
Rilla carried the soup tureen to the kitchen, and set it on the table
under Susan's eyes. Susan looked into the tureen and for once in her
life was so completely floored that she had not a word to say.
"What in the world is this?" asked the doctor, coming in.
Rilla poured out her story. "I just had to bring it, father," she
concluded. "I couldn't leave it there."
"What are you going to do with it?" asked the doctor coolly.
Rilla hadn't exactly expected this kind of question.
"We--we can keep it here for awhile--can't we--until something can be
arranged?" she stammered confusedly.
Dr. Blythe walked up and down the kitchen for a moment or two while the
baby stared at the white walls of the soup tureen and Susan showed signs
of returning animation.
Presently the doctor confronted Rilla.
"A young baby means a great deal of additional work and trouble in a
household, Rilla. Nan and Di are leaving for Redmond next week and
neither your mother nor Susan is able to assume so much extra care under
present conditions. If you want to keep that baby here you must attend
to it yourself."
"Me!" Rilla was dismayed into being ungrammatical. "Why--father--I--I
couldn't!"
"Younger girls than you have had to look after babies. My advice and
Susan's is at your disposal. If you cannot, then the baby must go back
to Meg Conover. Its lease of life will be short if it does for it is
evident that it is a delicate child and requires particular care. I
doubt if it would survive even if sent to an orphans' home. But I cannot
have your mother and Susan over-taxed."
The doctor walked out of the kitchen, looking very stern and immovable.
In his heart he knew quite well that the small inhabitant of the big
soup tureen would remain at Ingleside, but he meant to see if Rilla
could not be induced to rise to the occasion.
Rilla sat looking blankly at the baby. It was absurd to think she could
take care of it. But--that poor little, frail, dead mother who had
worried about it--that dreadful old Meg Conover.
"Susan, what must be done for a baby?" she asked dolefully.
"You must keep it warm and dry and wash it every day, and be sure the
water is neither too hot nor too cold, and feed it every two hours. If
it has colic, you put hot things on its stomach," said Susan, rather
feebly and flatly for her.
The baby began to cry again.
"It must be hungry--it has to be fed anyhow," said Rilla desperately.
"Tell me what to get for it, Susan, and I'll get it."
Under Susan's directions a ration of milk and water was prepared, and a
bottle obtained from the doctor's office. Then Rilla lifted the baby out
of the soup tureen and fed it. She brought down the old basket of her
own infancy from the attic and laid the now sleeping baby in it. She put
the soup tureen away in the pantry. Then she sat down to think things
over.
The result of her thinking things over was that she went to Susan when
the baby woke.
"I'm going to see what I can do, Susan. I can't let that poor little
thing go back to Mrs. Conover. Tell me how to wash and dress it."
Under Susan's supervision Rilla bathed the baby. Susan dared not help,
other than by suggestion, for the doctor was in the living-room and
might pop in at any moment. Susan had learned by experience that when
Dr. Blythe put his foot down and said a thing must be, that thing was.
Rilla set her teeth and went ahead. In the name of goodness, how many
wrinkles and kinks did a baby have? Why, there wasn't enough of it to
take hold of. Oh, suppose she let it slip into the water--it was so
wobbly! If it would only stop howling like that! How could such a tiny
morsel make such an enormous noise. Its shrieks could be heard over
Ingleside from cellar to attic.
"Am I really hurting it much, Susan, do you suppose?" she asked
piteously.
"No, dearie. Most new babies hate like poison to be washed. You are real
knacky for a beginner. Keep your hand under its back, whatever you do,
and keep cool."
Keep cool! Rilla was oozing perspiration at every pore. When the baby
was dried and dressed and temporarily quieted with another bottle she
was as limp as a rag.
"What must I do with it tonight, Susan?"
A baby by day was dreadful enough; a baby by night was unthinkable.
"Set the basket on a chair by your bed and keep it covered. You will
have to feed it once or twice in the night, so you would better take the
oil heater upstairs. If you cannot manage it call me and I will go,
doctor or no doctor."
"But, Susan, if it cries?"
The baby, however, did not cry. It was surprisingly good--perhaps
because its poor little stomach was filled with proper food. It slept
most of the night but Rilla did not. She was afraid to go to sleep for
fear something would happen to the baby. She prepared its three o'clock
ration with a grim determination that she would not call Susan. Oh, was
she dreaming? Was it really she, Rilla Blythe, who had got into this
absurd predicament? She did not care if the Germans were near Paris--
she did not care if they were in Paris--if only the baby wouldn't cry
or choke or smother or have convulsions. Babies did have convulsions,
didn't they? Oh, why had she forgotten to ask Susan what she must do if
the baby had convulsions? She reflected rather bitterly that father was
very considerate of mother's and Susan's health, but what about hers?
Did he think she could continue to exist if she never got any sleep? But
she was not going to back down now--not she. She would look after this
detestable little animal if it killed her. She would get a book on baby
hygiene and be beholden to nobody. She would never go to father for
advice--she wouldn't bother mother--and she would only condescend to
Susan in dire extremity. They would all see!
Thus it came about that Mrs. Blythe, when she returned home two nights
later and asked Susan where Rilla was, was electrified by Susan's
composed reply.
"She's upstairs, Mrs. Dr. dear, putting her baby to bed."
A WAR-BABY AND A SOUP TUREEN
"Liege and Namur--and now Brussels!" The doctor shook his head. "I
don't like it--I don't like it."
"Do not you lose heart, Dr. dear; they were just defended by
foreigners," said Susan superbly. "Wait you till the Germans come
against the British; there will be a very different story to tell and
that you may tie to."
The doctor shook his head again, but a little less gravely; perhaps they
all shared subconsciously in Susan's belief that "the thin grey line"
was unbreakable, even by the victorious rush of Germany's ready
millions. At any rate, when the terrible day came--the first of many
terrible days--with the news that the British army was driven back they
stared at each other in blank dismay.
"It--it can't be true," gasped Nan, taking a brief refuge in temporary
incredulity.
"I felt that there was to be bad news today," said Susan, "for that
cat-creature turned into Mr. Hyde this morning without rhyme or reason
for it, and that was no good omen."
"'A broken, a beaten, but not a demoralized, army,'" muttered the
doctor, from a London dispatch. "Can it be England's army of which such
a thing is said?"
"It will be a long time now before the war is ended," said Mrs. Blythe
despairingly.
Susan's faith, which had for a moment been temporarily submerged, now
reappeared triumphantly.
"Remember, Mrs. Dr. dear, that the British army is not the British navy.
Never forget that. And the Russians are on their way, too, though
Russians are people I do not know much about and consequently will not
tie to."
"The Russians will not be in time to save Paris," said Walter gloomily.
"Paris is the heart of France--and the road to it is open. Oh, I wish"
--he stopped abruptly and went out.
After a paralysed day the Ingleside folk found it was possible to "carry
on" even in the face of ever-darkening bad news. Susan worked fiercely
in her kitchen, the doctor went out on his round of visits, Nan and Di
returned to their Red Cross activities; Mrs. Blythe went to
Charlottetown to attend a Red Cross Convention; Rilla after relieving
her feelings by a stormy fit of tears in Rainbow Valley and an outburst
in her diary, remembered that she had elected to be brave and heroic.
And, she thought, it really was heroic to volunteer to drive about the
Glen and Four Winds one day, collecting promised Red Cross supplies with
Abner Crawford's old grey horse. One of the Ingleside horses was lame
and the doctor needed the other, so there was nothing for it but the
Crawford nag, a placid, unhasting, thick-skinned creature with an
amiable habit of stopping every few yards to kick a fly off one leg with
the foot of the other. Rilla felt that this, coupled with the fact that
the Germans were only fifty miles from Paris, was hardly to be endured.
But she started off gallantly on an errand fraught with amazing results.
Late in the afternoon she found herself, with a buggy full of parcels,
at the entrance to a grassy, deep-rutted lane leading to the harbour
shore, wondering whether it was worth while to call down at the Anderson
house. The Andersons were desperately poor and it was not likely Mrs.
Anderson had anything to give. On the other hand, her husband, who was
an Englishman by birth and who had been working in Kingsport when the
war broke out, had promptly sailed for England to enlist there, without,
it may be said, coming home or sending much hard cash to represent him.
So possibly Mrs. Anderson might feel hurt if she were overlooked. Rilla
decided to call. There were times afterwards when she wished she hadn't,
but in the long run she was very thankful that she did.
The Anderson house was a small and tumbledown affair, crouching in a
grove of battered spruces near the shore as if rather ashamed of itself
and anxious to hide. Rilla tied her grey nag to the rickety fence and
went to the door. It was open; and the sight she saw bereft her
temporarily of the power of speech or motion.
Through the open door of the small bedroom opposite her, Rilla saw Mrs.
Anderson lying on the untidy bed; and Mrs. Anderson was dead. There was
no doubt of that; neither was there any doubt that the big, frowzy,
red-headed, red-faced, over-fat woman sitting near the door-way, smoking
a pipe quite comfortably, was very much alive. She rocked idly back and
forth amid her surroundings of squalid disorder, and paid no attention
whatever to the piercing wails proceeding from a cradle in the middle of
the room.
Rilla knew the woman by sight and reputation. Her name was Mrs. Conover;
she lived down at the fishing village; she was a great-aunt of Mrs.
Anderson; and she drank as well as smoked.
Rilla's first impulse was to turn and flee. But that would never do.
Perhaps this woman, repulsive as she was, needed help--though she
certainly did not look as if she were worrying over the lack of it.
"Come in," said Mrs. Conover, removing her pipe and staring at Rilla
with her little, rat-like eyes.
"Is--is Mrs. Anderson really dead?" asked Rilla timidly, as she stepped
over the sill.
"Dead as a door nail," responded Mrs. Conover cheerfully. "Kicked the
bucket half an hour ago. I've sent Jen Conover to 'phone for the
undertaker and get some help up from the shore. You're the doctor's
miss, ain't ye? Have a cheer?"
Rilla did not see any chair which was not cluttered with something. She
remained standing.
"Wasn't it--very sudden?"
"Well, she's been a-pining ever since that worthless Jim lit out for
England--which I say it's a pity as he ever left. It's my belief she
was took for death when she heard the news. That young un there was born
a fortnight ago and since then she's just gone down and today she up and
died, without a soul expecting it."
"Is there anything I can do to--to help?" hesitated Rilla.
"Bless yez, no--unless ye've a knack with kids. I haven't. That young
un there never lets up squalling, day or night. I've just got that I
take no notice of it."
Rilla tiptoed gingerly over to the cradle and more gingerly still pulled
down the dirty blanket. She had no intention of touching the baby--she
had no "knack with kids" either. She saw an ugly midget with a red,
distorted little face, rolled up in a piece of dingy old flannel. She
had never seen an uglier baby. Yet a feeling of pity for the desolate,
orphaned mite which had "come out of the everywhere" into such a dubious
"here", took sudden possession of her.
"What is going to become of the baby?" she asked.
"Lord knows," said Mrs. Conover candidly. "Min worried awful over that
before she died. She kept on a-saying 'Oh, what will become of my pore
baby' till it really got on my nerves. I ain't a-going to trouble myself
with it, I can tell yez. I brung up a boy that my sister left and he
skinned out as soon as he got to be some good and won't give me a mite
o' help in my old age, ungrateful whelp as he is. I told Min it'd have
to be sent to an orphan asylum till we'd see if Jim ever came back to
look after it. Would yez believe it, she didn't relish the idee. But
that's the long and short of it."
"But who will look after it until it can be taken to the asylum?"
persisted Rilla. Somehow the baby's fate worried her.
"S'pose I'll have to," grunted Mrs. Conover. She put away her pipe and
took an unblushing swig from a black bottle she produced from a shelf
near her. "It's my opinion the kid won't live long. It's sickly. Min
never had no gimp and I guess it hain't either. Likely it won't trouble
any one long and good riddance, sez I."
Rilla drew the blanket down a little farther.
"Why, the baby isn't dressed!" she exclaimed, in a shocked tone.
"Who was to dress him I'd like to know," demanded Mrs. Conover
truculently. "I hadn't time--took me all the time there was looking
after Min. 'Sides, as I told yez, I don't know nithing about kids. Old
Mrs. Billy Crawford, she was here when it was born and she washed it and
rolled it up in that flannel, and Jen she's tended it a bit since. The
critter is warm enough. This weather would melt a brass monkey."
Rilla was silent, looking down at the crying baby. She had never
encountered any of the tragedies of life before and this one smote her
to the core of her heart. The thought of the poor mother going down into
the valley of the shadow alone, fretting about her baby, with no one
near but this abominable old woman, hurt her terribly. If she had only
come a little sooner! Yet what could she have done--what could she do
now? She didn't know, but she must do something. She hated babies--but
she simply could not go away and leave that poor little creature with
Mrs. Conover--who was applying herself again to her black bottle and
would probably be helplessly drunk before anybody came.
"I can't stay," thought Rilla. "Mr. Crawford said I must be home by
supper-time because he wanted the pony this evening himself. Oh, what
can I do?"
She made a sudden, desperate, impulsive resolution.
"I'll take the baby home with me," she said. "Can I?"
"Sure, if yez wants to," said Mrs. Conover amiably. "I hain't any
objection. Take it and welcome."
"I--I can't carry it," said Rilla. "I have to drive the horse and I'd
be afraid I'd drop it. Is there a--a basket anywhere that I could put
it in?"
"Not as I knows on. There ain't much here of anything, I kin tell yez.
Min was pore and as shiftless as Jim. Ef ye opens that drawer over there
yez'll find a few baby clo'es. Best take them along."
Rilla got the clothes--the cheap, sleazy garments the poor mother had
made ready as best she could. But this did not solve the pressing
problem of the baby's transportation. Rilla looked helplessly round. Oh,
for mother--or Susan! Her eyes fell on an enormous blue soup tureen at
the back of the dresser.
"May I have this to--to lay him in?" she asked.
"Well, 'tain't mine but I guess yez kin take it. Don't smash it if yez
can help--Jim might make a fuss about it if he comes back alive--which
he sure will, seein' he ain't any good. He brung that old tureen out
from England with him--said it'd always been in the family. Him and Min
never used it--never had enough soup to put in it--but Jim thought the
world of it. He was mighty perticuler about some things but didn't worry
him none that there weren't much in the way o' eatables to put in the
dishes."
For the first time in her life Rilla Blythe touched a baby--lifted it--
rolled it in a blanket, trembling with nervousness lest she drop it or--
or--break it. Then she put it in the soup tureen.
"Is there any fear of it smothering?" she asked anxiously.
"Not much odds if it do," said Mrs. Conover.
Horrified Rilla loosened the blanket round the baby's face a little. The
mite had stopped crying and was blinking up at her. It had big dark eyes
in its ugly little face.
"Better not let the wind blow on it," admonished Mrs. Conover. "Take its
breath if it do."
Rilla wrapped the tattered little quilt around the soup tureen.
"Will you hand this to me after I get into the buggy, please?"
"Sure I will," said Mrs. Conover, getting up with a grunt.
And so it was that Rilla Blythe, who had driven to the Anderson house a
self-confessed hater of babies, drove away from it carrying one in a
soup tureen on her lap!
Rilla thought she would never get to Ingleside. In the soup tureen there
was an uncanny silence. In one way she was thankful the baby did not cry
but she wished it would give an occasional squeak to prove that it was
alive. Suppose it were smothered! Rilla dared not unwrap it to see, lest
the wind, which was now blowing a hurricane, should "take its breath,"
whatever dreadful thing that might be. She was a thankful girl when at
last she reached harbour at Ingleside.
Rilla carried the soup tureen to the kitchen, and set it on the table
under Susan's eyes. Susan looked into the tureen and for once in her
life was so completely floored that she had not a word to say.
"What in the world is this?" asked the doctor, coming in.
Rilla poured out her story. "I just had to bring it, father," she
concluded. "I couldn't leave it there."
"What are you going to do with it?" asked the doctor coolly.
Rilla hadn't exactly expected this kind of question.
"We--we can keep it here for awhile--can't we--until something can be
arranged?" she stammered confusedly.
Dr. Blythe walked up and down the kitchen for a moment or two while the
baby stared at the white walls of the soup tureen and Susan showed signs
of returning animation.
Presently the doctor confronted Rilla.
"A young baby means a great deal of additional work and trouble in a
household, Rilla. Nan and Di are leaving for Redmond next week and
neither your mother nor Susan is able to assume so much extra care under
present conditions. If you want to keep that baby here you must attend
to it yourself."
"Me!" Rilla was dismayed into being ungrammatical. "Why--father--I--I
couldn't!"
"Younger girls than you have had to look after babies. My advice and
Susan's is at your disposal. If you cannot, then the baby must go back
to Meg Conover. Its lease of life will be short if it does for it is
evident that it is a delicate child and requires particular care. I
doubt if it would survive even if sent to an orphans' home. But I cannot
have your mother and Susan over-taxed."
The doctor walked out of the kitchen, looking very stern and immovable.
In his heart he knew quite well that the small inhabitant of the big
soup tureen would remain at Ingleside, but he meant to see if Rilla
could not be induced to rise to the occasion.
Rilla sat looking blankly at the baby. It was absurd to think she could
take care of it. But--that poor little, frail, dead mother who had
worried about it--that dreadful old Meg Conover.
"Susan, what must be done for a baby?" she asked dolefully.
"You must keep it warm and dry and wash it every day, and be sure the
water is neither too hot nor too cold, and feed it every two hours. If
it has colic, you put hot things on its stomach," said Susan, rather
feebly and flatly for her.
The baby began to cry again.
"It must be hungry--it has to be fed anyhow," said Rilla desperately.
"Tell me what to get for it, Susan, and I'll get it."
Under Susan's directions a ration of milk and water was prepared, and a
bottle obtained from the doctor's office. Then Rilla lifted the baby out
of the soup tureen and fed it. She brought down the old basket of her
own infancy from the attic and laid the now sleeping baby in it. She put
the soup tureen away in the pantry. Then she sat down to think things
over.
The result of her thinking things over was that she went to Susan when
the baby woke.
"I'm going to see what I can do, Susan. I can't let that poor little
thing go back to Mrs. Conover. Tell me how to wash and dress it."
Under Susan's supervision Rilla bathed the baby. Susan dared not help,
other than by suggestion, for the doctor was in the living-room and
might pop in at any moment. Susan had learned by experience that when
Dr. Blythe put his foot down and said a thing must be, that thing was.
Rilla set her teeth and went ahead. In the name of goodness, how many
wrinkles and kinks did a baby have? Why, there wasn't enough of it to
take hold of. Oh, suppose she let it slip into the water--it was so
wobbly! If it would only stop howling like that! How could such a tiny
morsel make such an enormous noise. Its shrieks could be heard over
Ingleside from cellar to attic.
"Am I really hurting it much, Susan, do you suppose?" she asked
piteously.
"No, dearie. Most new babies hate like poison to be washed. You are real
knacky for a beginner. Keep your hand under its back, whatever you do,
and keep cool."
Keep cool! Rilla was oozing perspiration at every pore. When the baby
was dried and dressed and temporarily quieted with another bottle she
was as limp as a rag.
"What must I do with it tonight, Susan?"
A baby by day was dreadful enough; a baby by night was unthinkable.
"Set the basket on a chair by your bed and keep it covered. You will
have to feed it once or twice in the night, so you would better take the
oil heater upstairs. If you cannot manage it call me and I will go,
doctor or no doctor."
"But, Susan, if it cries?"
The baby, however, did not cry. It was surprisingly good--perhaps
because its poor little stomach was filled with proper food. It slept
most of the night but Rilla did not. She was afraid to go to sleep for
fear something would happen to the baby. She prepared its three o'clock
ration with a grim determination that she would not call Susan. Oh, was
she dreaming? Was it really she, Rilla Blythe, who had got into this
absurd predicament? She did not care if the Germans were near Paris--
she did not care if they were in Paris--if only the baby wouldn't cry
or choke or smother or have convulsions. Babies did have convulsions,
didn't they? Oh, why had she forgotten to ask Susan what she must do if
the baby had convulsions? She reflected rather bitterly that father was
very considerate of mother's and Susan's health, but what about hers?
Did he think she could continue to exist if she never got any sleep? But
she was not going to back down now--not she. She would look after this
detestable little animal if it killed her. She would get a book on baby
hygiene and be beholden to nobody. She would never go to father for
advice--she wouldn't bother mother--and she would only condescend to
Susan in dire extremity. They would all see!
Thus it came about that Mrs. Blythe, when she returned home two nights
later and asked Susan where Rilla was, was electrified by Susan's
composed reply.
"She's upstairs, Mrs. Dr. dear, putting her baby to bed."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
