Rilla of Ingleside
"No, not in the same way. Nobody whom this war has touched will ever be
happy again in quite the same way. But it will be a better happiness, I
think, little sister--a happiness we've earned. We were very happy
before the war, weren't we? With a home like Ingleside, and a father
and mother like ours we couldn't help being happy. But that happiness
was a gift from life and love; it wasn't really ours--life could take
it back at any time. It can never take away the happiness we win for
ourselves in the way of duty. I've realised that since I went into
khaki. In spite of my occasional funks, when I fall to living over
things beforehand, I've been happy since that night in May. Rilla, be
awfully good to mother while I'm away. It must be a horrible thing to
be a mother in this war--the mothers and sisters and wives and
sweethearts have the hardest times. Rilla, you beautiful little thing,
are you anybody's sweetheart? If you are, tell me before I go."
"No," said Rilla. Then, impelled by a wish to be absolutely frank with
Walter in this talk that might be the last they would ever have, she
added, blushing wildly in the moonlight, "but if--Kenneth Ford--wanted
me to be--"
"I see," said Walter. "And Ken's in khaki, too. Poor little girlie,
it's a bit hard for you all round. Well, I'm not leaving any girl to
break her heart about me--thank God for that."
Rilla glanced up at the Manse on the hill. She could see a light in Una
Meredith's window. She felt tempted to say something--then she knew she
must not. It was not her secret: and, anyway, she did not know--she
only suspected.
Walter looked about him lingeringly and lovingly. This spot had always
been so dear to him. What fun they all had had here lang syne. Phantoms
of memory seemed to pace the dappled paths and peep merrily through the
swinging boughs--Jem and Jerry, bare-legged, sunburned schoolboys,
fishing in the brook and frying trout over the old stone fireplace; Nan
and Di and Faith, in their dimpled, fresh-eyed childish beauty; Una the
sweet and shy, Carl, poring over ants and bugs, little slangy,
sharp-tongued, good-hearted Mary Vance--the old Walter that had been
himself lying on the grass reading poetry or wandering through palaces
of fancy. They were all there around him--he could see them almost as
plainly as he saw Rilla--as plainly as he had once seen the Pied Piper
piping down the valley in a vanished twilight. And they said to him,
those gay little ghosts of other days, "We were the children of
yesterday, Walter--fight a good fight for the children of to-day and
to-morrow."
"Where are you, Walter," cried Rilla, laughing a little. "Come
back--come back."
Walter came back with a long breath. He stood up and looked about him
at the beautiful valley of moonlight, as if to impress on his mind and
heart every charm it possessed--the great dark plumes of the firs
against the silvery sky, the stately White Lady, the old magic of the
dancing brook, the faithful Tree Lovers, the beckoning, tricksy paths.
"I shall see it so in my dreams," he said, as he turned away.
They went back to Ingleside. Mr. and Mrs. Meredith were there, with
Gertrude Oliver, who had come from Lowbridge to say good-bye. Everybody
was quite cheerful and bright, but nobody said much about the war being
soon over, as they had said when Jem went away. They did not talk about
the war at all--and they thought of nothing else. At last they gathered
around the piano and sang the grand old hymn:
"Oh God, our help in ages past
Our hope for years to come.
Our shelter from the stormy blast
And our eternal home."
"We all come back to God in these days of soul-sifting," said Gertrude
to John Meredith. "There have been many days in the past when I didn't
believe in God--not as God--only as the impersonal Great First Cause of
the scientists. I believe in Him now--I have to--there's nothing else
to fall back on but God--humbly, starkly, unconditionally."
"'Our help in ages past'--'the same yesterday, to-day and for ever,'"
said the minister gently. "When we forget God--He remembers us."
There was no crowd at the Glen Station the next morning to see Walter
off. It was becoming a commonplace for a khaki clad boy to board that
early morning train after his last leave. Besides his own, only the
Manse folk were there, and Mary Vance. Mary had sent her Miller off the
week before, with a determined grin, and now considered herself
entitled to give expert opinion on how such partings should be
conducted.
"The main thing is to smile and act as if nothing was happening," she
informed the Ingleside group. "The boys all hate the sob act like
poison. Miller told me I wasn't to come near the station if I couldn't
keep from bawling. So I got through with my crying beforehand, and at
the last I said to him, 'Good luck, Miller, and if you come back you'll
find I haven't changed any, and if you don't come back I'll always be
proud you went, and in any case don't fall in love with a French girl.'
Miller swore he wouldn't, but you never can tell about those
fascinating foreign hussies. Anyhow, the last sight he had of me I was
smiling to my limit. Gee, all the rest of the day my face felt as if it
had been starched and ironed into a smile."
In spite of Mary's advice and example Mrs. Blythe, who had sent Jem off
with a smile, could not quite manage one for Walter. But at least no
one cried. Dog Monday came out of his lair in the shipping-shed and sat
down close to Walter, thumping his tail vigorously on the boards of the
platform whenever Walter spoke to him, and looking up with confident
eyes, as if to say, "I know you'll find Jem and bring him back to me."
"So long, old fellow," said Carl Meredith cheerfully, when the
good-byes had to be said. "Tell them over there to keep their spirits
up--I am coming along presently."
"Me too," said Shirley laconically, proffering a brown paw. Susan heard
him and her face turned very grey.
Una shook hands quietly, looking at him with wistful, sorrowful,
dark-blue eyes. But then Una's eyes had always been wistful. Walter
bent his handsome black head in its khaki cap and kissed her with the
warm, comradely kiss of a brother. He had never kissed her before, and
for a fleeting moment Una's face betrayed her, if anyone had noticed.
But nobody did; the conductor was shouting "all aboard"; everybody was
trying to look very cheerful. Walter turned to Rilla; she held his
hands and looked up at him. She would not see him again until the day
broke and the shadows vanished--and she knew not if that daybreak would
be on this side of the grave or beyond it.
"Good-bye," she said.
On her lips it lost all the bitterness it had won through the ages of
parting and bore instead all the sweetness of the old loves of all the
women who had ever loved and prayed for the beloved.
"Write me often and bring Jims up faithfully, according to the gospel
of Morgan," Walter said lightly, having said all his serious things the
night before in Rainbow Valley. But at the last moment he took her face
between his hands and looked deep into her gallant eyes. "God bless
you, Rilla-my-Rilla," he said softly and tenderly. After all it was not
a hard thing to fight for a land that bore daughters like this.
He stood on the rear platform and waved to them as the train pulled
out. Rilla was standing by herself, but Una Meredith came to her and
the two girls who loved him most stood together and held each other's
cold hands as the train rounded the curve of the wooded hill.
Rilla spent an hour in Rainbow Valley that morning about which she
never said a word to anyone; she did not even write in her diary about
it; when it was over she went home and made rompers for Jims. In the
evening she went to a Junior Red Cross committee meeting and was
severely businesslike.
"You would never suppose," said Irene Howard to Olive Kirk afterwards,
"that Walter had left for the front only this morning. But some people
really have no depth of feeling. I often wish I could take things as
lightly as Rilla Blythe."
CHAPTER XVI
REALISM AND ROMANCE
"Warsaw has fallen," said Dr. Blythe with a resigned air, as he brought
the mail in one warm August day.
Gertrude and Mrs. Blythe looked dismally at each other, and Rilla, who
was feeding Jims a Morganized diet from a carefully sterilized spoon,
laid the said spoon down on his tray, utterly regardless of germs, and
said, "Oh, dear me," in as tragic a tone as if the news had come as a
thunderbolt instead of being a foregone conclusion from the preceding
week's dispatches. They had thought they were quite resigned to
Warsaw's fall but now they knew they had, as always, hoped against hope.
"Now, let us take a brace," said Susan. "It is not the terrible thing
we have been thinking. I read a dispatch three columns long in the
Montreal Herald yesterday that proved that Warsaw was not important
from a military point of view at all. So let us take the military point
of view, doctor dear."
"I read that dispatch, too, and it has encouraged me immensely," said
Gertrude. "I knew then and I know now that it was a lie from beginning
to end. But I am in that state of mind where even a lie is a comfort,
providing it is a cheerful lie."
"In that case, Miss Oliver dear, the German official reports ought to
be all you need," said Susan sarcastically. "I never read them now
because they make me so mad I cannot put my thoughts properly on my
work after a dose of them. Even this news about Warsaw has taken the
edge off my afternoon's plans. Misfortunes never come singly. I spoiled
my baking of bread today--and now Warsaw has fallen--and here is little
Kitchener bent on choking himself to death."
Jims was evidently trying to swallow his spoon, germs and all. Rilla
rescued him mechanically and was about to resume the operation of
feeding him when a casual remark of her father's sent such a shock and
thrill over her that for the second time she dropped that doomed spoon.
"Kenneth Ford is down at Martin West's over-harbour," the doctor was
saying. "His regiment was on its way to the front but was held up in
Kingsport for some reason, and Ken got leave of absence to come over to
the Island."
"I hope he will come up to see us," exclaimed Mrs. Blythe.
"He only has a day or two off, I believe," said the doctor absently.
Nobody noticed Rilla's flushed face and trembling hands. Even the most
thoughtful and watchful of parents do not see everything that goes on
under their very noses. Rilla made a third attempt to give the
long-suffering Jims his dinner, but all she could think of was the
question--Would Ken come to see her before he went away? She had not
heard from him for a long while. Had he forgotten her completely? If he
did not come she would know that he had. Perhaps there was even--some
other girl back there in Toronto. Of course there was. She was a little
fool to be thinking about him at all. She would not think about him. If
he came, well and good. It would only be courteous of him to make a
farewell call at Ingleside where he had often been a guest. If he did
not come--well and good, too. It did not matter very much. Nobody was
going to fret. That was all settled comfortably--she was quite
indifferent--but meanwhile Jims was being fed with a haste and
recklessness that would have filled the soul of Morgan with horror.
Jims himself didn't like it, being a methodical baby, accustomed to
swallowing spoonfuls with a decent interval for breath between each. He
protested, but his protests availed him nothing. Rilla, as far as the
care and feeding of infants was concerned, was utterly demoralized.
Then the telephone-bell rang. There was nothing unusual about the
telephone ringing. It rang on an average every ten minutes at