Rilla of Ingleside
killed just the same. Do not let yourself slump like poor Cousin
Sophia. She said, when the word came, 'Ah, it is nothing but a rift in
the clouds. We are up this week but we will be down the next.' 'Well,
Sophia Crawford,' said I,--for I will never give in to her, Mrs. Dr.
dear--'God himself cannot make two hills without a hollow between them,
as I have heard it said, but that is no reason why we should not take
the good of the hills when we are on them.' But Cousin Sophia moaned
on. 'Here is the Gallipolly expedition a failure and the Grand Duke
Nicholas sent off, and everyone knows the Czar of Rooshia is a
pro-German and the Allies have no ammunition and Bulgaria is going
against us. And the end is not yet, for England and France must be
punished for their deadly sins until they repent in sackcloth and
ashes.' 'I think myself,' I said, 'that they will do their repenting in
khaki and trench mud, and it seems to me that the Huns should have a
few sins to repent of also.' 'They are instruments in the hands of the
Almighty, to purge the garner,' said Sophia. And then I got mad, Mrs.
Dr. dear, and told her I did not and never would believe that the
Almighty ever took such dirty instruments in hand for any purpose
whatever, and that I did not consider it decent for her to be using the
words of Holy Writ as glibly as she was doing in ordinary conversation.
She was not, I told her, a minister or even an elder. And for the time
being I squelched her, Mrs. Dr. dear. Cousin Sophia has no spirit. She
is very different from her niece, Mrs. Dean Crawford over-harbour. You
know the Dean Crawfords had five boys and now the new baby is another
boy. All the connection and especially Dean Crawford were much
disappointed because their hearts had been set on a girl; but Mrs. Dean
just laughed and said, 'Everywhere I went this summer I saw the sign
"MEN WANTED" staring me in the face. Do you think I could go and have a
girl under such circumstances?' There is spirit for you, Mrs. Dr. dear.
But Cousin Sophia would say the child was just so much more cannon
fodder."
Cousin Sophia had full range for her pessimism that gloomy autumn, and
even Susan, incorrigible old optimist as she was, was hard put to it
for cheer. When Bulgaria lined up with Germany Susan only remarked
scornfully, "One more nation anxious for a licking," but the Greek
tangle worried her beyond her powers of philosophy to endure calmly.
"Constantine of Greece has a German wife, Mrs. Dr. dear, and that fact
squelches hope. To think that I should have lived to care what kind of
a wife Constantine of Greece had! The miserable creature is under his
wife's thumb and that is a bad place for any man to be. I am an old
maid and an old maid has to be independent or she will be squashed out.
But if I had been a married woman, Mrs. Dr. dear, I would have been
meek and humble. It is my opinion that this Sophia of Greece is a minx."
Susan was furious when the news came that Venizelos had met with
defeat. "I could spank Constantine and skin him alive afterwards, that
I could," she exclaimed bitterly.
"Oh, Susan, I'm surprised at you," said the doctor, pulling a long
face. "Have you no regard for the proprieties? Skin him alive by all
means but omit the spanking."
"If he had been well spanked in his younger days he might have more
sense now," retorted Susan. "But I suppose princes are never spanked,
more is the pity. I see the Allies have sent him an ultimatum. I could
tell them that it will take more than ultimatums to skin a snake like
Constantine. Perhaps the Allied blockade will hammer sense into his
head; but that will take some time I am thinking, and in the meantime
what is to become of poor Serbia?"
They saw what became of Serbia, and during the process Susan was hardly
to be lived with. In her exasperation she abused everything and
everybody except Kitchener, and she fell upon poor President Wilson
tooth and claw.
"If he had done his duty and gone into the war long ago we should not
have seen this mess in Serbia," she avowed.
"It would be a serious thing to plunge a great country like the United
States, with its mixed population, into the war, Susan," said the
doctor, who sometimes came to the defence of the President, not because
he thought Wilson needed it especially, but from an unholy love of
baiting Susan.
"Maybe, doctor dear--maybe! But that makes me think of the old story of
the girl who told her grandmother she was going to be married. 'It is a
solemn thing to be married,' said the old lady. 'Yes, but it is a
solemner thing not to be,' said the girl. And I can testify to that out
of my own experience, doctor dear. And I think it is a solemner thing
for the Yankees that they have kept out of the war than it would have
been if they had gone into it. However, though I do not know much about
them, I am of the opinion that we will see them starting something yet,
Woodrow Wilson or no Woodrow Wilson, when they get it into their heads
that this war is not a correspondence school. They will not," said
Susan, energetically waving a saucepan with one hand and a soup ladle
with the other, "be too proud to fight then."
On a pale-yellow, windy evening in October Carl Meredith went away. He
had enlisted on his eighteenth birthday. John Meredith saw him off with
a set face. His two boys were gone--there was only little Bruce left
now. He loved Bruce and Bruce's mother dearly; but Jerry and Carl were
the sons of the bride of his youth and Carl was the only one of all his
children who had Cecilia's very eyes. As they looked lovingly out at
him above Carl's uniform the pale minister suddenly remembered the day
when for the first and last time he had tried to whip Carl for his
prank with the eel. That was the first time he had realised how much
Carl's eyes were like Cecilia's. Now he realised it again once more.
Would he ever again see his dead wife's eyes looking at him from his
son's face? What a bonny, clean, handsome lad he was! It was--hard--to
see him go. John Meredith seemed to be looking at a torn plain strewed
with the bodies of "able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and
forty-five." Only the other day Carl had been a little scrap of a boy,
hunting bugs in Rainbow Valley, taking lizards to bed with him, and
scandalizing the Glen by carrying frogs to Sunday School. It seemed
hardly--right--somehow that he should be an "able-bodied man" in khaki.
Yet John Meredith had said no word to dissuade him when Carl had told
him he must go.
Rilla felt Carl's going keenly. They had always been cronies and
playmates. He was only a little older than she was and they had been
children in Rainbow Valley together. She recalled all their old pranks
and escapades as she walked slowly home alone. The full moon peeped
through the scudding clouds with sudden floods of weird illumination,
the telephone wires sang a shrill weird song in the wind, and the tall
spikes of withered, grey-headed golden-rod in the fence corners swayed
and beckoned wildly to her like groups of old witches weaving unholy
spells. On such a night as this, long ago, Carl would come over to
Ingleside and whistle her out to the gate. "Let's go on a moon-spree,
Rilla," he would say, and the two of them would scamper off to Rainbow
Valley. Rilla had never been afraid of his beetles and bugs, though she
drew a hard and fast line at snakes. They used to talk together of
almost everything and were teased about each other at school; but one
evening when they were about ten years of age they had solemnly
promised, by the old spring in Rainbow Valley, that they would never
marry each other. Alice Clow had "crossed out" their names on her slate
in school that day, and it came out that "both married." They did not
like the idea at all, hence the mutual vow in Rainbow Valley. There was
nothing like an ounce of prevention. Rilla laughed over the old
memory--and then sighed. That very day a dispatch from some London
paper had contained the cheerful announcement that "the present moment
is the darkest since the war began." It was dark enough, and Rilla
wished desperately that she could do something besides waiting and
serving at home, as day after day the Glen boys she had known went
away. If she were only a boy, speeding in khaki by Carl's side to the
Western front! She had wished that in a burst of romance when Jem had
gone, without, perhaps, really meaning it. She meant it now. There were
moments when waiting at home, in safety and comfort, seemed an
unendurable thing.
The moon burst triumphantly through an especially dark cloud and shadow
and silver chased each other in waves over the Glen. Rilla remembered
one moonlit evening of childhood when she had said to her mother, "The
moon just looks like a sorry, sorry face." She thought it looked like
that still--an agonised, care-worn face, as though it looked down on
dreadful sights. What did it see on the Western front? In broken
Serbia? On shell-swept Gallipoli?
"I am tired," Miss Oliver had said that day, in a rare outburst of
impatience, "of this horrible rack of strained emotions, when every day
brings a new horror or the dread of it. No, don't look reproachfully at
me, Mrs. Blythe. There's nothing heroic about me today. I've slumped. I
wish England had left Belgium to her fate--I wish Canada had never sent
a man--I wish we'd tied our boys to our apron strings and not let one
of them go. Oh--I shall be ashamed of myself in half an hour--but at
this very minute I mean every word of it. Will the Allies never strike?"
"Patience is a tired mare but she jogs on," said Susan.
"While the steeds of Armageddon thunder, trampling over our hearts,"
retorted Miss Oliver. "Susan, tell me--don't you ever--didn't you
ever--take spells of feeling that you must scream--or swear--or smash
something--just because your torture reaches a point when it becomes
unbearable?"
"I have never sworn or desired to swear, Miss Oliver dear, but I will
admit," said Susan, with the air of one determined to make a clean
breast of it once and for all, "that I have experienced occasions when
it was a relief to do considerable banging."
"Don't you think that is a kind of swearing, Susan? What is the
difference between slamming a door viciously and saying d----"
"Miss Oliver dear," interrupted Susan, desperately determined to save
Gertrude from herself, if human power could do it, "you are all tired
out and unstrung--and no wonder, teaching those obstreperous youngsters
all day and coming home to bad war news. But just you go upstairs and
lie down and I will bring you up a cup of hot tea and a bite of toast
and very soon you will not want to slam doors or swear."
"Susan, you're a good soul--a very pearl of Susans! But, Susan, it
would be such a relief--to say just one soft, low, little tiny d---"
"I will bring you a hot-water bottle for the soles of your feet, also,"
interposed Susan resolutely, "and it would not be any relief to say
that word you are thinking of, Miss Oliver, and that you may tie to."
"Well, I'll try the hot-water bottle first," said Miss Oliver,
repenting herself on teasing Susan and vanishing upstairs, to Susan's
intense relief. Susan shook her head ominously as she filled the
hot-water bottle. The war was certainly relaxing the standards of
behaviour woefully. Here was Miss Oliver admittedly on the point of
profanity.
"We must draw the blood from her brain," said Susan, "and if this
bottle is not effective I will see what can be done with a mustard
plaster."
Gertrude rallied and carried on. Lord Kitchener went to Greece, whereat
Susan foretold that Constantine would soon experience a change of
heart. Lloyd George began to heckle the Allies regarding equipment and
guns and Susan said you would hear more of Lloyd George yet. The