Rilla of Ingleside
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
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.