Rilla of Ingleside
"A wedding-cake!" Susan stared. Rilla had, without any warning, brought
her a war-baby once upon a time. Was she now, with equal suddenness,
going to produce a husband?
"Yes, a wedding-cake--a scrumptious wedding-cake, Susan--a beautiful,
plummy, eggy, citron-peely wedding-cake. And we must make other things
too. I'll help you in the morning. But I can't help you in the
afternoon for I have to make a wedding-dress and time is the essence of
the contract, Susan."
Susan felt that she was really too old to be subjected to such shocks.
"Who are you going to marry, Rilla?" she asked feebly.
"Susan, darling, I am not the happy bride. Miranda Pryor is going to
marry Joe Milgrave tomorrow afternoon while her father is away in town.
A war-wedding, Susan--isn't that thrilling and romantic? I never was so
excited in my life."
The excitement soon spread over Ingleside, infecting even Mrs. Blythe
and Susan.
"I'll go to work on that cake at once," vowed Susan, with a glance at
the clock. "Mrs. Dr. dear, will you pick over the fruit and beat up the
eggs? If you will I can have that cake ready for the oven by the
evening. Tomorrow morning we can make salads and other things. I will
work all night if necessary to get the better of Whiskers-on-the-moon."
Miranda arrived, tearful and breathless.
"We must fix over my white dress for you to wear," said Rilla. "It will
fit you very nicely with a little alteration."
To work went the two girls, ripping, fitting, basting, sewing for dear
life. By dint of unceasing effort they got the dress done by seven
o'clock and Miranda tried it on in Rilla's room.
"It's very pretty--but oh, if I could just have a veil," sighed
Miranda. "I've always dreamed of being married in a lovely white veil."
Some good fairy evidently waits on the wishes of war-brides. The door
opened and Mrs. Blythe came in, her arms full of a filmy burden.
"Miranda dear," she said, "I want you to wear my wedding-veil tomorrow.
It is twenty-four years since I was a bride at old Green Gables--the
happiest bride that ever was--and the wedding-veil of a happy bride
brings good luck, they say."
"Oh, how sweet of you, Mrs. Blythe," said Miranda, the ready tears
starting to her eyes.
The veil was tried on and draped. Susan dropped in to approve but dared
not linger.
"I've got that cake in the oven," she said, "and I am pursuing a policy
of watchful waiting. The evening news is that the Grand Duke has
captured Erzerum. That is a pill for the Turks. I wish I had a chance
to tell the Czar just what a mistake he made when he turned Nicholas
down."
Susan disappeared downstairs to the kitchen, whence a dreadful thud and
a piercing shriek presently sounded. Everybody rushed to the
kitchen--the doctor and Miss Oliver, Mrs. Blythe, Rilla, Miranda in her
wedding-veil. Susan was sitting flatly in the middle of the kitchen
floor with a dazed, bewildered look on her face, while Doc, evidently
in his Hyde incarnation, was standing on the dresser, with his back up,
his eyes blazing, and his tail the size of three tails.
"Susan, what has happened?" cried Mrs. Blythe in alarm. "Did you fall?
Are you hurt?"
Susan picked herself up.
"No," she said grimly, "I am not hurt, though I am jarred all over. Do
not be alarmed. As for what has happened--I tried to kick that darned
cat with both feet, that is what happened."
Everybody shrieked with laughter. The doctor was quite helpless.
"Oh, Susan, Susan," he gasped. "That I should live to hear you swear."
"I am sorry," said Susan in real distress, "that I used such an
expression before two young girls. But I said that beast was darned,
and darned it is. It belongs to Old Nick."
"Do you expect it will vanish some of these days with a bang and the
odour of brimstone, Susan?"
"It will go to its own place in due time and that you may tie to," said
Susan dourly, shaking out her raddled bones and going to her oven. "I
suppose my plunking down like that has shaken my cake so that it will
be as heavy as lead."
But the cake was not heavy. It was all a bride's cake should be, and
Susan iced it beautifully. Next day she and Rilla worked all the
forenoon, making delicacies for the wedding-feast, and as soon as
Miranda phoned up that her father was safely off everything was packed
in a big hamper and taken down to the Pryor house. Joe soon arrived in
his uniform and a state of violent excitement, accompanied by his best
man, Sergeant Malcolm Crawford. There were quite a few guests, for all
the Manse and Ingleside folk were there, and a dozen or so of Joe's
relatives, including his mother, "Mrs. Dead Angus Milgrave," so called,
cheerfully, to distinguish her from another lady whose Angus was
living. Mrs. Dead Angus wore a rather disapproving expression, not
caring over-much for this alliance with the house of
Whiskers-on-the-moon.
So Miranda Pryor was married to Private Joseph Milgrave on his last
leave. It should have been a romantic wedding but it was not. There
were too many factors working against romance, as even Rilla had to
admit. In the first place, Miranda, in spite of her dress and veil, was
such a flat-faced, commonplace, uninteresting little bride. In the
second place, Joe cried bitterly all through the ceremony, and this
vexed Miranda unreasonably. Long afterwards she told Rilla, "I just
felt like saying to him then and there, 'If you feel so bad over having
to marry me you don't have to.' But it was just because he was thinking
all the time of how soon he would have to leave me."
In the third place, Jims, who was usually so well-behaved in public,
took a fit of shyness and contrariness combined and began to cry at the
top of his voice for "Willa." Nobody wanted to take him out, because
everybody wanted to see the marriage, so Rilla who was a bridesmaid,
had to take him and hold him during the ceremony.
In the fourth place, Sir Wilfrid Laurier took a fit.
Sir Wilfrid was entrenched in a corner of the room behind Miranda's
piano. During his seizure he made the weirdest, most unearthly noises.
He would begin with a series of choking, spasmodic sounds, continuing
into a gruesome gurgle, and ending up with a strangled howl. Nobody
could hear a word Mr. Meredith was saying, except now and then, when
Sir Wilfrid stopped for breath. Nobody looked at the bride except
Susan, who never dragged her fascinated eyes from Miranda's face--all
the others were gazing at the dog. Miranda had been trembling with
nervousness but as soon as Sir Wilfrid began his performance she forgot
it. All that she could think of was that her dear dog was dying and she
could not go to him. She never remembered a word of the ceremony.
Rilla, who in spite of Jims, had been trying her best to look rapt and
romantic, as beseemed a war bridesmaid, gave up the hopeless attempt,
and devoted her energies to choking down untimely merriment. She dared
not look at anybody in the room, especially Mrs. Dead Angus, for fear
all her suppressed mirth should suddenly explode in a most
un-young-ladylike yell of laughter.
But married they were, and then they had a wedding-supper in the
dining-room which was so lavish and bountiful that you would have
thought it was the product of a month's labour. Everybody had brought
something. Mrs. Dead Angus had brought a large apple-pie, which she
placed on a chair in the dining-room and then absently sat down on it.
Neither her temper nor her black silk wedding garment was improved
thereby, but the pie was never missed at the gay bridal feast. Mrs.
Dead Angus eventually took it home with her again.
Whiskers-on-the-moon's pacifist pig should not get it, anyhow.
That evening Mr. and Mrs. Joe, accompanied by the recovered Sir
Wilfrid, departed for the Four Winds Lighthouse, which was kept by
Joe's uncle and in which they meant to spend their brief honeymoon. Una
Meredith and Rilla and Susan washed the dishes, tidied up, left a cold
supper and Miranda's pitiful little note on the table for Mr. Pryor,
and walked home, while the mystic veil of dreamy, haunted winter
twilight wrapped itself over the Glen.
"I would really not have minded being a war-bride myself," remarked
Susan sentimentally.
But Rilla felt rather flat--perhaps as a reaction to all the excitement
and rush of the past thirty-six hours. She was disappointed
somehow--the whole affair had been so ludicrous, and Miranda and Joe so
lachrymose and commonplace.
"If Miranda hadn't given that wretched dog such an enormous dinner he
wouldn't have had that fit," she said crossly. "I warned her--but she
said she couldn't starve the poor dog--he would soon be all she had
left, etc. I could have shaken her."
"The best man was more excited than Joe was," said Susan. "He wished
Miranda many happy returns of the day. She did not look very happy, but
perhaps you could not expect that under the circumstances."
"Anyhow," thought Rilla, "I can write a perfectly killing account of it
all to the boys. How Jem will howl over Sir Wilfrid's part in it!"
But if Rilla was rather disappointed in the war wedding she found
nothing lacking on Friday morning when Miranda said good-bye to her
bridegroom at the Glen station. The dawn was white as a pearl, clear as
a diamond. Behind the station the balsamy copse of young firs was
frost-misted. The cold moon of dawn hung over the westering snow fields
but the golden fleeces of sunrise shone above the maples up at
Ingleside. Joe took his pale little bride in his arms and she lifted
her face to his. Rilla choked suddenly. It did not matter that Miranda
was insignificant and commonplace and flat-featured. It did not matter
that she was the daughter of Whiskers-on-the-moon. All that mattered
was that rapt, sacrificial look in her eyes--that ever-burning, sacred
fire of devotion and loyalty and fine courage that she was mutely
promising Joe she and thousands of other women would keep alive at home
while their men held the Western front. Rilla walked away, realising
that she must not spy on such a moment. She went down to the end of the
platform where Sir Wilfrid and Dog Monday were sitting, looking at each
other.
Sir Wilfrid remarked condescendingly: "Why do you haunt this old shed
when you might lie on the hearthrug at Ingleside and live on the fat of
the land? Is it a pose? Or a fixed idea?"
Whereat Dog Monday, laconically: "I have a tryst to keep."
When the train had gone Rilla rejoined the little trembling Miranda.
"Well, he's gone," said Miranda, "and he may never come back--but I'm
his wife, and I'm going to be worthy of him. I'm going home."
"Don't you think you had better come with me now?" asked Rilla
doubtfully. Nobody knew yet how Mr. Pryor had taken the matter.
"No. If Joe can face the Huns I guess I can face father," said Miranda
daringly. "A soldier's wife can't be a coward. Come on, Wilfy. I'll go
straight home and meet the worst."
There was nothing very dreadful to face, however. Perhaps Mr. Pryor had
reflected that housekeepers were hard to get and that there were many
Milgrave homes open to Miranda--also, that there was such a thing as a
separation allowance. At all events, though he told her grumpily that
she had made a nice fool of herself, and would live to regret it, he
said nothing worse, and Mrs. Joe put on her apron and went to work as
usual, while Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who had a poor opinion of lighthouses
for winter residences, went to sleep in his pet nook behind the
woodbox, a thankful dog that he was done with war-weddings.
CHAPTER XIX
"THEY SHALL NOT PASS"
One cold grey morning in February Gertrude Oliver wakened with a
shiver, slipped into Rilla's room, and crept in beside her.
"Rilla--I'm frightened--frightened as a baby--I've had another of my