Rilla of Ingleside
been on the spot you would both have been drowned. I flew to the rescue
and hauled you all three out before much harm was done, and your
mother, who had seen it all from the upstairs window, came down and
picked you up, dripping as you were, and gave you a beautiful spanking.
Ah," said Susan with a sigh, "those were happy old days at Ingleside."
"Must have been," said Ken. His voice sounded queer and stiff. Rilla
supposed he was hopelessly enraged. The truth was he dared not trust
his voice lest it betray his frantic desire to laugh.
"Rilla here, now," said Susan, looking affectionately at that unhappy
damsel, "never was much spanked. She was a real well-behaved child for
the most part. But her father did spank her once. She got two bottles
of pills out of his office and dared Alice Clow to see which of them
could swallow all the pills first, and if her father had not happened
in the nick of time those two children would have been corpses by
night. As it was, they were both sick enough shortly after. But the
doctor spanked Rilla then and there and he made such a thorough job of
it that she never meddled with anything in his office afterwards. We
hear a great deal nowadays of something that is called 'moral
persuasion,' but in my opinion a good spanking and no nagging
afterwards is a much better thing."
Rilla wondered viciously whether Susan meant to relate all the family
spankings. But Susan had finished with the subject and branched off to
another cheerful one.
"I remember little Tod MacAllister over-harbour killed himself that
very way, eating up a whole box of fruitatives because he thought they
were candy. It was a very sad affair. He was," said Susan earnestly,
"the very cutest little corpse I ever laid my eyes on. It was very
careless of his mother to leave the fruitatives where he could get
them, but she was well-known to be a heedless creature. One day she
found a nest of five eggs as she was going across the fields to church
with a brand new blue silk dress on. So she put them in the pocket of
her petticoat and when she got to church she forgot all about them and
sat down on them and her dress was ruined, not to speak of the
petticoat. Let me see--would not Tod be some relation of yours? Your
great grandmother West was a MacAllister. Her brother Amos was a
MacDonaldite in religion. I am told he used to take the jerks something
fearful. But you look more like your great grandfather West than the
MacAllisters. He died of a paralytic stroke quite early in life."
"Did you see anybody at the store?" asked Rilla desperately, in the
faint hope of directing Susan's conversation into more agreeable
channels.
"Nobody except Mary Vance," said Susan, "and she was stepping round as
brisk as the Irishman's flea."
What terrible similes Susan used! Would Kenneth think she acquired them
from the family!
"To hear Mary talk about Miller Douglas you would think he was the only
Glen boy who had enlisted," Susan went on. "But of course she always
did brag and she has some good qualities I am willing to admit, though
I did not think so that time she chased Rilla here through the village
with a dried codfish till the poor child fell, heels over head, into
the puddle before Carter Flagg's store."
Rilla went cold all over with wrath and shame. Were there any more
disgraceful scenes in her past that Susan could rake up? As for Ken, he
could have howled over Susan's speeches, but he would not so insult the
duenna of his lady, so he sat with a preternaturally solemn face which
seemed to poor Rilla a haughty and offended one.
"I paid eleven cents for a bottle of ink tonight," complained Susan.
"Ink is twice as high as it was last year. Perhaps it is because
Woodrow Wilson has been writing so many notes. It must cost him
considerable. My cousin Sophia says Woodrow Wilson is not the man she
expected him to be--but then no man ever was. Being an old maid, I do
not know much about men and have never pretended to, but my cousin
Sophia is very hard on them, although she married two of them, which
you might think was a fair share. Albert Crawford's chimney blew down
in that big gale we had last week, and when Sophia heard the bricks
clattering on the roof she thought it was a Zeppelin raid and went into
hysterics. And Mrs. Albert Crawford says that of the two things she
would have preferred the Zeppelin raid."
Rilla sat limply in her chair like one hypnotized. She knew Susan would
stop talking when she was ready to stop and that no earthly power could
make her stop any sooner. As a rule, she was very fond of Susan but
just now she hated her with a deadly hatred. It was ten o'clock. Ken
would soon have to go--the others would soon be home--and she had not
even had a chance to explain to Ken that Fred Arnold filled no blank in
her life nor ever could. Her rainbow castle lay in ruins round her.
Kenneth got up at last. He realized that Susan was there to stay as
long as he did, and it was a three mile walk to Martin West's
over-harbour. He wondered if Rilla had put Susan up to this, not
wanting to be left alone with him, lest he say something Fred Arnold's
sweetheart did not want to hear. Rilla got up, too, and walked silently
the length of the veranda with him. They stood there for a moment, Ken
on the lower step. The step was half sunk into the earth and mint grew
thickly about and over its edge. Often crushed by so many passing feet
it gave out its essence freely, and the spicy odour hung round them
like a soundless, invisible benediction. Ken looked up at Rilla, whose
hair was shining in the moonlight and whose eyes were pools of
allurement. All at once he felt sure there was nothing in that gossip
about Fred Arnold.
"Rilla," he said in a sudden, intense whisper, "you are the sweetest
thing."
Rilla flushed and looked at Susan. Ken looked, too, and saw that
Susan's back was turned. He put his arm about Rilla and kissed her. It
was the first time Rilla had ever been kissed. She thought perhaps she
ought to resent it but she didn't. Instead, she glanced timidly into
Kenneth's seeking eyes and her glance was a kiss.
"Rilla-my-Rilla," said Ken, "will you promise that you won't let anyone
else kiss you until I come back?"
"Yes," said Rilla, trembling and thrilling.
Susan was turning round. Ken loosened his hold and stepped to the walk.
"Good-bye," he said casually. Rilla heard herself saying it just as
casually. She stood and watched him down the walk, out of the gate, and
down the road. When the fir wood hid him from her sight she suddenly
said "Oh," in a choked way and ran down to the gate, sweet blossomy
things catching at her skirts as she ran. Leaning over the gate she saw
Kenneth walking briskly down the road, over the bars of tree shadows
and moonlight, his tall, erect figure grey in the white radiance. As he
reached the turn he stopped and looked back and saw her standing amid
the tall white lilies by the gate. He waved his hand--she waved
hers--he was gone around the turn.
Rilla stood there for a little while, gazing across the fields of mist
and silver. She had heard her mother say that she loved turns in
roads--they were so provocative and alluring. Rilla thought she hated
them. She had seen Jem and Jerry vanish from her around a bend in the
road--then Walter--and now Ken. Brothers and playmate and
sweetheart--they were all gone, never, it might be, to return. Yet
still the Piper piped and the dance of death went on.
When Rilla walked slowly back to the house Susan was still sitting by
the veranda table and Susan was sniffing suspiciously.
"I have been thinking, Rilla dear, of the old days in the House of
Dreams, when Kenneth's mother and father were courting and Jem was a
little baby and you were not born or thought of. It was a very romantic
affair and she and your mother were such chums. To think I should have
lived to see her son going to the front. As if she had not had enough
trouble in her early life without this coming upon her! But we must
take a brace and see it through."
All Rilla's anger against Susan had evaporated. With Ken's kiss still
burning on her lips, and the wonderful significance of the promise he
had asked thrilling heart and soul, she could not be angry with anyone.
She put her slim white hand into Susan's brown, work-hardened one and
gave it a squeeze. Susan was a faithful old dear and would lay down her
life for any one of them.
"You are tired, Rilla dear, and had better go to bed," Susan said,
patting her hand. "I noticed you were too tired to talk tonight. I am
glad I came home in time to help you out. It is very tiresome trying to
entertain young men when you are not accustomed to it."
Rilla carried Jims upstairs and went to bed, but not before she had sat
for a long time at her window reconstructing her rainbow castle, with
several added domes and turrets.
"I wonder," she said to herself, "if I am, or am not, engaged to
Kenneth Ford."
CHAPTER XVII
THE WEEKS WEAR BY
Rilla read her first love letter in her Rainbow Valley fir-shadowed
nook, and a girl's first love letter, whatever blase, older people may
think of it, is an event of tremendous importance in the teens. After
Kenneth's regiment had left Kingsport there came a fortnight of
dully-aching anxiety and when the congregation sang in Church on Sunday
evenings,
"Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea,"
Rilla's voice always failed her; for with the words came a horribly
vivid mind picture of a submarined ship sinking beneath pitiless waves
amid the struggles and cries of drowning men. Then word came that
Kenneth's regiment had arrived safely in England; and now, at last,
here was his letter. It began with something that made Rilla supremely
happy for the moment and ended with a paragraph that crimsoned her
cheeks with the wonder and thrill and delight of it. Between beginning
and ending the letter was just such a jolly, newsy epistle as Ken might
have written to anyone; but for the sake of that beginning and ending
Rilla slept with the letter under her pillow for weeks, sometimes
waking in the night to slip her fingers under and just touch it, and
looked with secret pity on other girls whose sweethearts could never
have written them anything half so wonderful and exquisite. Kenneth was
not the son of a famous novelist for nothing. He "had a way" of
expressing things in a few poignant, significant words that seemed to
suggest far more than they uttered, and never grew stale or flat or
foolish with ever so many scores of readings. Rilla went home from
Rainbow Valley as if she flew rather than walked.
But such moments of uplift were rare that autumn. To be sure, there was
one day in September when great news came of a big Allied victory in
the west and Susan ran out to hoist the flag--the first time she had
hoisted it since the Russian line broke and the last time she was to
hoist it for many dismal moons.
"Likely the Big Push has begun at last, Mrs. Dr. dear," she exclaimed,
"and we will soon see the finish of the Huns. Our boys will be home by
Christmas now. Hurrah!"
Susan was ashamed of herself for hurrahing the minute she had done it,
and apologized meekly for such an outburst of juvenility. "But indeed,
Mrs. Dr. dear, this good news has gone to my head after this awful
summer of Russian slumps and Gallipoli setbacks."
"Good news!" said Miss Oliver bitterly. "I wonder if the women whose
men have been killed for it will call it good news. Just because our
own men are not on that part of the front we are rejoicing as if the
victory had cost no lives."
"Now, Miss Oliver dear, do not take that view of it," deprecated Susan.
"We have not had much to rejoice over of late and yet men were being