Rilla of Ingleside
since the Lusitania was sunk. When I pictured those dead women and
children floating about in that pitiless, ice-cold water--well, at
first I just felt a sort of nausea with life. I wanted to get out of
the world where such a thing could happen--shake its accursed dust from
my feet for ever. Then I knew I had to go."
"There are--plenty--without you."
"That isn't the point, Rilla-my-Rilla. I'm going for my own sake--to
save my soul alive. It will shrink to something small and mean and
lifeless if I don't go. That would be worse than blindness or
mutilation or any of the things I've feared."
"You may--be--killed," Rilla hated herself for saying it--she knew it
was a weak and cowardly thing to say--but she had rather gone to pieces
after the tension of the evening.
"'Comes he slow or comes he fast
It is but death who comes at last.'"
quoted Walter. "It's not death I fear--I told you that long ago. One
can pay too high a price for mere life, little sister. There's so much
hideousness in this war--I've got to go and help wipe it out of the
world. I'm going to fight for the beauty of life, Rilla-my-Rilla--that
is my duty. There may be a higher duty, perhaps--but that is mine. I
owe life and Canada that, and I've got to pay it. Rilla, tonight for
the first time since Jem left I've got back my self-respect. I could
write poetry," Walter laughed. "I've never been able to write a line
since last August. Tonight I'm full of it. Little sister, be brave--you
were so plucky when Jem went."
"This--is--different," Rilla had to stop after every word to fight down
a wild outburst of sobs. "I loved--Jem--of course--but--when--he
went--away--we thought--the war--would soon--be over--and you
are--everything to me, Walter."
"You must be brave to help me, Rilla-my-Rilla. I'm exalted
tonight--drunk with the excitement of victory over myself--but there
will be other times when it won't be like this--I'll need your help
then."
"When--do--you--go?" She must know the worst at once.
"Not for a week--then we go to Kingsport for training. I suppose we'll
go overseas about the middle of July--we don't know."
One week--only one week more with Walter! The eyes of youth did not see
how she was to go on living.
When they turned in at the Ingleside gate Walter stopped in the shadows
of the old pines and drew Rilla close to him.
"Rilla-my-Rilla, there were girls as sweet and pure as you in Belgium
and Flanders. You--even you--know what their fate was. We must make it
impossible for such things to happen again while the world lasts.
You'll help me, won't you?"
"I'll try, Walter," she said. "Oh, I will try."
As she clung to him with her face pressed against his shoulder she knew
that it had to be. She accepted the fact then and there. He must
go--her beautiful Walter with his beautiful soul and dreams and ideals.
And she had known all along that it would come sooner or later. She had
seen it coming to her--coming--coming--as one sees the shadow of a
cloud drawing near over a sunny field, swiftly and inescapably. Amid
all her pain she was conscious of an odd feeling of relief in some
hidden part of her soul, where a little dull, unacknowledged soreness
had been lurking all winter. No one--no one could ever call Walter a
slacker now.
Rilla did not sleep that night. Perhaps no one at Ingleside did except
Jims. The body grows slowly and steadily, but the soul grows by leaps
and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour. From that night
Rilla Blythe's soul was the soul of a woman in its capacity for
suffering, for strength, for endurance.
When the bitter dawn came she rose and went to her window. Below her
was a big apple-tree, a great swelling cone of rosy blossom. Walter had
planted it years ago when he was a little boy. Beyond Rainbow Valley
there was a cloudy shore of morning with little ripples of sunrise
breaking over it. The far, cold beauty of a lingering star shone above
it. Why, in this world of springtime loveliness, must hearts break?
Rilla felt arms go about her lovingly, protectingly. It was
mother--pale, large-eyed mother.
"Oh, mother, how can you bear it?" she cried wildly. "Rilla, dear, I've
known for several days that Walter meant to go. I've had time to--to
rebel and grow reconciled. We must give him up. There is a Call greater
and more insistent than the call of our love--he has listened to it. We
must not add to the bitterness of his sacrifice."
"Our sacrifice is greater than his," cried Rilla passionately. "Our
boys give only themselves. We give them."
Before Mrs. Blythe could reply Susan stuck her head in at the door,
never troubling over such frills of etiquette as knocking. Her eyes
were suspiciously red but all she said was,
"Will I bring up your breakfast, Mrs. Dr. dear."
"No, no, Susan. We will all be down presently. Do you know--that Walter
has joined up."
"Yes, Mrs. Dr. dear. The doctor told me last night. I suppose the
Almighty has His own reasons for allowing such things. We must submit
and endeavour to look on the bright side. It may cure him of being a
poet, at least"--Susan still persisted in thinking that poets and
tramps were tarred with the same brush--"and that would be something.
But thank God," she muttered in a lower tone, "that Shirley is not old
enough to go."
"Isn't that the same thing as thanking Him that some other woman's son
has to go in Shirley's place?" asked the doctor, pausing on the
threshold.
"No, it is not, doctor dear," said Susan defiantly, as she picked up
Jims, who was opening his big dark eyes and stretching up his dimpled
paws. "Do not you put words in my mouth that I would never dream of
uttering. I am a plain woman and cannot argue with you, but I do not
thank God that anybody has to go. I only know that it seems they do
have to go, unless we all want to be Kaiserised--for I can assure you
that the Monroe doctrine, whatever it is, is nothing to tie to, with
Woodrow Wilson behind it. The Huns, Dr. dear, will never be brought to
book by notes. And now," concluded Susan, tucking Jims in the crook of
her gaunt arms and marching downstairs, "having cried my cry and said
my say I shall take a brace, and if I cannot look pleasant I will look
as pleasant as I can."
CHAPTER XV
UNTIL THE DAY BREAK
"The Germans have recaptured Premysl," said Susan despairingly, looking
up from her newspaper, "and now I suppose we will have to begin calling
it by that uncivilised name again. Cousin Sophia was in when the mail
came and when she heard the news she hove a sigh up from the depths of
her stomach, Mrs. Dr. dear, and said, 'Ah yes, and they will get
Petrograd next I have no doubt.' I said to her, 'My knowledge of
geography is not so profound as I wish it was but I have an idea that
it is quite a walk from Premysl to Petrograd.' Cousin Sophia sighed
again and said, 'The Grand Duke Nicholas is not the man I took him to
be.' 'Do not let him know that,' said I. 'It might hurt his feelings
and he has likely enough to worry him as it is. But you cannot cheer
Cousin Sophia up, no matter how sarcastic you are, Mrs. Dr. dear. She
sighed for the third time and groaned out, 'But the Russians are
retreating fast,' and I said, 'Well, what of it? They have plenty of
room for retreating, have they not?' But all the same, Mrs. Dr. dear,
though I would never admit it to Cousin Sophia, I do not like the
situation on the eastern front."
Nobody else liked it either; but all summer the Russian retreat went
on--a long-drawn-out agony.
"I wonder if I shall ever again be able to await the coming of the mail
with feelings of composure--never to speak of pleasure," said Gertrude
Oliver. "The thought that haunts me night and day is--will the Germans
smash Russia completely and then hurl their eastern army, flushed with
victory, against the western front?"
"They will not, Miss Oliver dear," said Susan, assuming the role of
prophetess.
"In the first place, the Almighty will not allow it, in the second,
Grand Duke Nicholas, though he may have been a disappointment to us in
some respects, knows how to run away decently and in order, and that is
a very useful knowledge when Germans are chasing you. Norman Douglas
declares he is just luring them on and killing ten of them to one he
loses. But I am of the opinion he cannot help himself and is just doing
the best he can under the circumstances, the same as the rest of us. So
do not go so far afield to borrow trouble, Miss Oliver dear, when there
is plenty of it already camping on our very doorstep."
Walter had gone to Kingsport the first of June. Nan, Di and Faith had
gone also to do Red Cross work in their vacation. In mid-July Walter
came home for a week's leave before going overseas. Rilla had lived
through the days of his absence on the hope of that week, and now that
it had come she drank every minute of it thirstily, hating even the
hours she had to spend in sleep, they seemed such a waste of precious
moments. In spite of its sadness, it was a beautiful week, full of
poignant, unforgettable hours, when she and Walter had long walks and
talks and silences together. He was all her own and she knew that he
found strength and comfort in her sympathy and understanding. It was
very wonderful to know she meant so much to him--the knowledge helped
her through moments that would otherwise have been unendurable, and
gave her power to smile--and even to laugh a little. When Walter had
gone she might indulge in the comfort of tears, but not while he was
here. She would not even let herself cry at night, lest her eyes should
betray her to him in the morning.
On his last evening at home they went together to Rainbow Valley and
sat down on the bank of the brook, under the White Lady, where the gay
revels of olden days had been held in the cloudless years. Rainbow
Valley was roofed over with a sunset of unusual splendour that night; a
wonderful grey dusk just touched with starlight followed it; and then
came moonshine, hinting, hiding, revealing, lighting up little dells
and hollows here, leaving others in dark, velvet shadow.
"When I am 'somewhere in France,'" said Walter, looking around him with
eager eyes on all the beauty his soul loved, "I shall remember these
still, dewy, moon-drenched places. The balsam of the fir-trees; the
peace of those white pools of moonshine; the 'strength of the
hills'--what a beautiful old Biblical phrase that is. Rilla! Look at
those old hills around us--the hills we looked up at as children,
wondering what lay for us in the great world beyond them. How calm and
strong they are--how patient and changeless--like the heart of a good
woman. Rilla-my-Rilla, do you know what you have been to me the past
year? I want to tell you before I go. I could not have lived through it
if it had not been for you, little loving, believing heart."
Rilla dared not try to speak. She slipped her hand into Walter's and
pressed it hard.
"And when I'm over there, Rilla, in that hell upon earth which men who
have forgotten God have made, it will be the thought of you that will
help me most. I know you'll be as plucky and patient as you have shown
yourself to be this past year--I'm not afraid for you. I know that no
matter what happens, you'll be Rilla-my-Rilla--no matter what happens."
Rilla repressed tear and sigh, but she could not repress a little
shiver, and Walter knew that he had said enough. After a moment of
silence, in which each made an unworded promise to each other, he said,
"Now we won't be sober any more. We'll look beyond the years--to the
time when the war will be over and Jem and Jerry and I will come
marching home and we'll all be happy again."
"We won't be--happy--in the same way," said Rilla.