Rilla of Ingleside
gallant Anzacs withdrew from Gallipoli and Susan approved the step,
with reservations. The siege of Kut-El-Amara began and Susan pored over
maps of Mesopotamia and abused the Turks. Henry Ford started for Europe
and Susan flayed him with sarcasm. Sir John French was superseded by
Sir Douglas Haig and Susan dubiously opined that it was poor policy to
swap horses crossing a stream, "though, to be sure, Haig was a good
name and French had a foreign sound, say what you might." Not a move on
the great chess-board of king or bishop or pawn escaped Susan, who had
once read only Glen St. Mary notes. "There was a time," she said
sorrowfully, "when I did not care what happened outside of P.E. Island,
and now a king cannot have a toothache in Russia or China but it
worries me. It may be broadening to the mind, as the doctor said, but
it is very painful to the feelings."
When Christmas came again Susan did not set any vacant places at the
festive board. Two empty chairs were too much even for Susan who had
thought in September that there would not be one.
"This is the first Christmas that Walter was not home," Rilla wrote in
her diary that night. "Jem used to be away for Christmases up in
Avonlea, but Walter never was. I had letters from Ken and him today.
They are still in England but expect to be in the trenches very soon.
And then--but I suppose we'll be able to endure it somehow. To me, the
strangest of all the strange things since 1914 is how we have all
learned to accept things we never thought we could--to go on with life
as a matter of course. I know that Jem and Jerry are in the
trenches--that Ken and Walter will be soon--that if one of them does
not come back my heart will break--yet I go on and work and plan--yes,
and even enjoy life by times. There are moments when we have real fun
because, just for the moment, we don't think about things and then--we
remember--and the remembering is worse than thinking of it all the time
would have been.
"Today was dark and cloudy and tonight is wild enough, as Gertrude
says, to please any novelist in search of suitable matter for a murder
or elopement. The raindrops streaming over the panes look like tears
running down a face, and the wind is shrieking through the maple grove.
"This hasn't been a nice Christmas Day in any way. Nan had toothache
and Susan had red eyes, and assumed a weird and gruesome flippancy of
manner to deceive us into thinking she hadn't; and Jims had a bad cold
all day and I'm afraid of croup. He has had croup twice since October.
The first time I was nearly frightened to death, for father and mother
were both away--father always is away, it seems to me, when any of this
household gets sick. But Susan was cool as a fish and knew just what to
do, and by morning Jims was all right. That child is a cross between a
duck and an imp. He's a year and four months old, trots about
everywhere, and says quite a few words. He has the cutest little way of
calling me "Willa-will." It always brings back that dreadful,
ridiculous, delightful night when Ken came to say good-bye, and I was
so furious and happy. Jims is pink and white and big-eyed and
curly-haired and every now and then I discover a new dimple in him. I
can never quite believe he is really the same creature as that scrawny,
yellow, ugly little changeling I brought home in the soup tureen.
Nobody has ever heard a word from Jim Anderson. If he never comes back
I shall keep Jims always. Everybody here worships and spoils him--or
would spoil him if Morgan and I didn't stand remorselessly in the way.
Susan says Jims is the cleverest child she ever saw and can recognize
Old Nick when he sees him--this because Jims threw poor Doc out of an
upstairs window one day. Doc turned into Mr. Hyde on his way down and
landed in a currant bush, spitting and swearing. I tried to console his
inner cat with a saucer of milk but he would have none of it, and
remained Mr. Hyde the rest of the day. Jims's latest exploit was to
paint the cushion of the big arm-chair in the sun parlour with
molasses; and before anybody found it out Mrs. Fred Clow came in on Red
Cross business and sat down on it. Her new silk dress was ruined and
nobody could blame her for being vexed. But she went into one of her
tempers and said nasty things and gave me such slams about 'spoiling'
Jims that I nearly boiled over, too. But I kept the lid on till she had
waddled away and then I exploded.
"'The fat, clumsy, horrid old thing,' I said--and oh, what a
satisfaction it was to say it.
"'She has three sons at the front,' mother said rebukingly.
"'I suppose that covers all her shortcomings in manners,' I retorted.
But I was ashamed--for it is true that all her boys have gone and she
was very plucky and loyal about it too; and she is a perfect tower of
strength in the Red Cross. It's a little hard to remember all the
heroines. Just the same, it was her second new silk dress in one year
and that when everybody is--or should be--trying to 'save and serve.'
"I had to bring out my green velvet hat again lately and begin wearing
it. I hung on to my blue straw sailor as long as I could. How I hate
the green velvet hat! It is so elaborate and conspicuous. I don't see
how I could ever have liked it. But I vowed to wear it and wear it I
will.
"Shirley and I went down to the station this morning to take Little Dog
Monday a bang-up Christmas dinner. Dog Monday waits and watches there
still, with just as much hope and confidence as ever. Sometimes he
hangs around the station house and talks to people and the rest of his
time he sits at his little kennel door and watches the track
unwinkingly. We never try to coax him home now: we know it is of no
use. When Jem comes back, Monday will come home with him; and if
Jem--never comes back--Monday will wait there for him as long as his
dear dog heart goes on beating.
"Fred Arnold was here last night. He was eighteen in November and is
going to enlist just as soon as his mother is over an operation she has
to have. He has been coming here very often lately and though I like
him so much it makes me uncomfortable, because I am afraid he is
thinking that perhaps I could care something for him. I can't tell him
about Ken--because, after all, what is there to tell? And yet I don't
like to behave coldly and distantly when he will be going away so soon.
It is very perplexing. I remember I used to think it would be such fun
to have dozens of beaux--and now I'm worried to death because two are
too many.
"I am learning to cook. Susan is teaching me. I tried to learn long
ago--but no, let me be honest--Susan tried to teach me, which is a very
different thing. I never seemed to succeed with anything and I got
discouraged. But since the boys have gone away I wanted to be able to
make cake and things for them myself and so I started in again and this
time I'm getting on surprisingly well. Susan says it is all in the way
I hold my mouth and father says my subconscious mind is desirous of
learning now, and I dare say they're both right. Anyhow, I can make
dandy short-bread and fruitcake. I got ambitious last week and
attempted cream puffs, but made an awful failure of them. They came out
of the oven flat as flukes. I thought maybe the cream would fill them
up again and make them plump but it didn't. I think Susan was secretly
pleased. She is past mistress in the art of making cream puffs and it
would break her heart if anyone else here could make them as well. I
wonder if Susan tampered--but no, I won't suspect her of such a thing.
"Miranda Pryor spent an afternoon here a few days ago, helping me cut
out certain Red Cross garments known by the charming name of 'vermin
shirts.' Susan thinks that name is not quite decent, so I suggested she
call them 'cootie sarks,' which is old Highland Sandy's version of it.
But she shook her head and I heard her telling mother later that, in
her opinion, 'cooties' and 'sarks' were not proper subjects for young
girls to talk about. She was especially horrified when Jem wrote in his
last letter to mother, 'Tell Susan I had a fine cootie hunt this
morning and caught fifty-three!' Susan positively turned pea-green.
'Mrs. Dr. dear,' she said, 'when I was young, if decent people were so
unfortunate as to get--those insects--they kept it a secret if
possible. I do not want to be narrow-minded, Mrs. Dr. dear, but I still
think it is better not to mention such things.'
"Miranda grew confidential over our vermin shirts and told me all her
troubles. She is desperately unhappy. She is engaged to Joe Milgrave
and Joe joined up in October and has been training in Charlottetown
ever since. Her father was furious when he joined and forbade Miranda
ever to have any dealing or communication with him again. Poor Joe
expects to go overseas any day and wants Miranda to marry him before he
goes, which shows that there have been 'communications' in spite of
Whiskers-on-the-moon. Miranda wants to marry him but cannot, and she
declares it will break her heart.
"'Why don't you run away and marry him?' I said. It didn't go against
my conscience in the least to give her such advice. Joe Milgrave is a
splendid fellow and Mr. Pryor fairly beamed on him until the war broke
out and I know Mr. Pryor would forgive Miranda very quickly, once it
was over and he wanted his housekeeper back. But Miranda shook her
silvery head dolefully.
"'Joe wants me to but I can't. Mother's last words to me, as she lay on
her dying-bed, were, "Never, never run away, Miranda," and I promised.'
"Miranda's mother died two years ago, and it seems, according to
Miranda, that her mother and father actually ran away to be married
themselves. To picture Whiskers-on-the-moon as the hero of an elopement
is beyond my power. But such was the case and Mrs. Pryor at least lived
to repent it. She had a hard life of it with Mr. Pryor, and she thought
it was a punishment on her for running away. So she made Miranda
promise she would never, for any reason whatever, do it.
"Of course, you cannot urge a girl to break a promise made to a dying
mother, so I did not see what Miranda could do unless she got Joe to
come to the house when her father was away and marry her there. But
Miranda said that couldn't be managed. Her father seemed to suspect she
might be up to something of the sort and he never went away for long at
a time, and, of course, Joe couldn't get leave of absence at an hour's
notice.
"'No, I shall just have to let Joe go, and he will be killed--I know he
will be killed--and my heart will break,' said Miranda, her tears
running down and copiously bedewing the vermin shirts!
"I am not writing like this for lack of any real sympathy with poor
Miranda. I've just got into the habit of giving things a comical twist
if I can, when I'm writing to Jem and Walter and Ken, to make them
laugh. I really felt sorry for Miranda who is as much in love with Joe
as a china-blue girl can be with anyone and who is dreadfully ashamed
of her father's pro-German sentiments. I think she understood that I
did, for she said she had wanted to tell me all about her worries
because I had grown so sympathetic this past year. I wonder if I have.
I know I used to be a selfish, thoughtless creature--how selfish and
thoughtless I am ashamed to remember now, so I can't be quite so bad as
I was.
"I wish I could help Miranda. It would be very romantic to contrive a
war-wedding and I should dearly love to get the better of
Whiskers-on-the-moon. But at present the oracle has not spoken."
CHAPTER XVIII
A WAR-WEDDING
"I can tell you this Dr. dear," said Susan, pale with wrath, "that
Germany is getting to be perfectly ridiculous."
They were all in the big Ingleside kitchen. Susan was mixing biscuits