Rilla of Ingleside
trenches--not only our men but everybody's men. I would feel the same
if there were nobody I knew at the front. When I snuggle down in my
comfortable bed I am ashamed of being comfortable. It seems as if it
were wicked of me to be so when many are not."
"I saw Mrs. Meredith down at the store," said Susan, "and she tells me
that they are really troubled over Bruce, he takes things so much to
heart. He has cried himself to sleep for a week, over the starving
Belgians. 'Oh, mother,' he will say to her, so beseeching-like, 'surely
the babies are never hungry--oh, not the babies, mother! Just say the
babies are not hungry, mother.' And she cannot say it because it would
not be true, and she is at her wits' end. They try to keep such things
from him but he finds them out and then they cannot comfort him. It
breaks my heart to read about them myself, Mrs. Dr. dear, and I cannot
console myself with the thought that the tales are not true. When I
read a novel that makes me want to weep I just say severely to myself,
'Now, Susan Baker, you know that is all a pack of lies.' But we must
carry on. Jack Crawford says he is going to the war because he is tired
of farming. I hope he will find it a pleasant change. And Mrs. Richard
Elliott over-harbour is worrying herself sick because she used to be
always scolding her husband about smoking up the parlour curtains. Now
that he has enlisted she wishes she had never said a word to him. You
know Josiah Cooper and William Daley, Mrs. Dr. dear. They used to be
fast friends but they quarrelled twenty years ago and have never spoken
since. Well, the other day Josiah went to William and said right out,
'Let us be friends. 'Tain't any time to be holding grudges.' William
was real glad and held out his hand, and they sat down for a good talk.
And in less than half an hour they had quarrelled again, over how the
war ought to be fought, Josiah holding that the Dardanelles expedition
was rank folly and William maintaining that it was the one sensible
thing the Allies had done. And now they are madder at each other than
ever and William says Josiah is as bad a pro-German as
Whiskers-on-the-Moon. Whiskers-on-the-moon vows he is no pro-German but
calls himself a pacifist, whatever that may be. It is nothing proper or
Whiskers would not be it and that you may tie to. He says that the big
British victory at New Chapelle cost more than it was worth and he has
forbid Joe Milgrave to come near the house because Joe ran up his
father's flag when the news came. Have you noticed, Mrs. Dr. dear, that
the Czar has changed that Prish name to Premysl, which proves that the
man had good sense, Russian though he is? Joe Vickers told me in the
store that he saw a very queer looking thing in the sky tonight over
Lowbridge way. Do you suppose it could have been a Zeppelin, Mrs. Dr.
dear?"
"I do not think it very likely, Susan."
"Well, I would feel easier about it if Whiskers-on-the-moon were not
living in the Glen. They say he was seen going through strange
manoeuvres with a lantern in his back yard one night lately. Some
people think he was signalling."
"To whom--or what?"
"Ah, that is the mystery, Mrs. Dr. dear. In my opinion the Government
would do well to keep an eye on that man if it does not want us to be
all murdered in our beds some night. Now I shall just look over the
papers a minute before going to write a letter to little Jem. Two
things I never did, Mrs. Dr. dear, were write letters and read
politics. Yet here I am doing both regular and I find there is
something in politics after all. Whatever Woodrow Wilson means I cannot
fathom but I am hoping I will puzzle it out yet."
Susan, in her pursuit of Wilson and politics, presently came upon
something that disturbed her and exclaimed in a tone of bitter
disappointment,
"That devilish Kaiser has only a boil after all."
"Don't swear, Susan," said Dr. Blythe, pulling a long face.
"'Devilish' is not swearing, doctor, dear. I have always understood
that swearing was taking the name of the Almighty in vain?"
"Well, it isn't--ahem--refined," said the doctor, winking at Miss
Oliver.
"No, doctor, dear, the devil and the Kaiser--if so be that they are
really two different people--are not refined. And you cannot refer to
them in a refined way. So I abide by what I said, although you may
notice that I am careful not to use such expressions when young Rilla
is about. And I maintain that the papers have no right to say that the
Kaiser has pneumonia and raise people's hopes, and then come out and
say he has nothing but a boil. A boil, indeed! I wish he was covered
with them."
Susan stalked out to the kitchen and settled down to write to Jem;
deeming him in need of some home comfort from certain passages in his
letter that day.
"We're in an old wine cellar tonight, dad," he wrote, "in water to our
knees. Rats everywhere--no fire--a drizzling rain coming down--rather
dismal. But it might be worse. I got Susan's box today and everything
was in tip-top order and we had a feast. Jerry is up the line somewhere
and he says the rations are rather worse than Aunt Martha's ditto used
to be. But here they're not bad--only monotonous. Tell Susan I'd give a
year's pay for a good batch of her monkey-faces; but don't let that
inspire her to send any for they wouldn't keep.
"We have been under fire since the last week in February. One boy--he
was a Nova Scotian--was killed right beside me yesterday. A shell burst
near us and when the mess cleared away he was lying dead--not mangled
at all--he just looked a little startled. It was the first time I'd
been close to anything like that and it was a nasty sensation, but one
soon gets used to horrors here. We're in an absolutely different world.
The only things that are the same are the stars--and they are never in
their right places, somehow.
"Tell mother not to worry--I'm all right--fit as a fiddle--and glad I
came. There's something across from us here that has got to be wiped
out of the world, that's all--an emanation of evil that would otherwise
poison life for ever. It's got to be done, dad, however long it takes,
and whatever it costs, and you tell the Glen people this for me. They
don't realize yet what it is has broken loose--I didn't when I first
joined up. I thought it was fun. Well, it isn't! But I'm in the right
place all right--make no mistake about that. When I saw what had been
done here to homes and gardens and people--well, dad, I seemed to see a
gang of Huns marching through Rainbow Valley and the Glen, and the
garden at Ingleside. There were gardens over here--beautiful gardens
with the beauty of centuries--and what are they now? Mangled,
desecrated things! We are fighting to make those dear old places where
we had played as children, safe for other boys and girls--fighting for
the preservation and safety of all sweet, wholesome things.
"Whenever any of you go to the station be sure to give Dog Monday a
double pat for me. Fancy the faithful little beggar waiting there for
me like that! Honestly, dad, on some of these dark cold nights in the
trenches, it heartens and braces me up no end to think that thousands
of miles away at the old Glen station there is a small spotted dog
sharing my vigil.
"Tell Rilla I'm glad her war-baby is turning out so well, and tell
Susan that I'm fighting a good fight against both Huns and cooties."
"Mrs. Dr. dear," whispered Susan solemnly, "what are cooties?"
Mrs. Blythe whispered back and then said in reply to Susan's horrified
ejaculations, "It's always like that in the trenches, Susan."
Susan shook her head and went away in grim silence to re-open a parcel
she had sewed up for Jem and slip in a fine tooth comb.
CHAPTER XII
IN THE DAYS OF LANGEMARCK
"How can spring come and be beautiful in such a horror," wrote Rilla in
her diary. "When the sun shines and the fluffy yellow catkins are
coming out on the willow-trees down by the brook, and the garden is
beginning to be beautiful I can't realize that such dreadful things are
happening in Flanders. But they are!
"This past week has been terrible for us all, since the news came of
the fighting around Ypres and the battles of Langemarck and St. Julien.
Our Canadian boys have done splendidly--General French says they 'saved
the situation,' when the Germans had all but broken through. But I
can't feel pride or exultation or anything but a gnawing anxiety over
Jem and Jerry and Mr. Grant. The casualty lists are coming out in the
papers every day--oh, there are so many of them. I can't bear to read
them for fear I'd find Jem's name--for there have been cases where
people have seen their boys' names in the casualty lists before the
official telegram came. As for the telephone, for a day or two I just
refused to answer it, because I thought I could not endure the horrible
moment that came between saying 'Hello' and hearing the response. That
moment seemed a hundred years long, for I was always dreading to hear
'There is a telegram for Dr. Blythe.' Then, when I had shirked for a
while, I was ashamed of leaving it all for mother or Susan, and now I
make myself go. But it never gets any easier. Gertrude teaches school
and reads compositions and sets examination papers just as she always
has done, but I know her thoughts are over in Flanders all the time.
Her eyes haunt me.
"And Kenneth is in khaki now, too. He has got a lieutenant's commission
and expects to go overseas in midsummer, so he wrote me. There wasn't
much else in the letter--he seemed to be thinking of nothing but going
overseas. I shall not see him again before he goes--perhaps I will
never see him again. Sometimes I ask myself if that evening at Four
Winds was all a dream. It might as well be--it seems as if it happened
in another life lived years ago--and everybody has forgotten it but me.
"Walter and Nan and Di came home last night from Redmond. When Walter
stepped off the train Dog Monday rushed to meet him, frantic with joy.
I suppose he thought Jem would be there, too. After the first moment,
he paid no attention to Walter and his pats, but just stood there,
wagging his tail nervously and looking past Walter at the other people
coming out, with eyes that made me choke up, for I couldn't help
thinking that, for all we knew, Monday might never see Jem come off
that train again. Then, when all the people were out, Monday looked up
at Walter, gave his hand a little lick as if to say, 'I know it isn't
your fault he didn't come--excuse me for feeling disappointed,' and
then he trotted back to his shed, with that funny little sidelong
waggle of his that always makes it seem that his hind legs are
travelling directly away from the point at which his forelegs are
aiming.
"We tried to coax him home with us--Di even got down and kissed him
between the eyes and said, 'Monday, old duck, won't you come up with us
just for the evening?' And Monday said--he did!--'I am very sorry but I
can't. I've got a date to meet Jem here, you know, and there's a train
goes through at eight.'
"It's lovely to have Walter back again though he seems quiet and sad,
just as he was at Christmas. But I'm going to love him hard and cheer
him up and make him laugh as he used to. It seems to me that every day
of my life Walter means more to me.
"The other evening Susan happened to say that the mayflowers were out
in Rainbow Valley. I chanced to be looking at mother when Susan spoke.
Her face changed and she gave a queer little choked cry. Most of the
time mother is so spunky and gay you would never guess what she feels
inside; but now and then some little thing is too much for her and we
see under the surface. 'Mayflowers!' she said. 'Jem brought me
mayflowers last year!' and she got up and went out of the room. I would