Rilla of Ingleside
"Stop--stop--STOP that abominable prayer! What an abominable prayer!"
Every head in the church flew up. A boy in khaki at the back gave a
faint cheer. Mr. Meredith raised a deprecating hand, but Norman was
past caring for anything like that. Eluding his wife's restraining
grasp, he gave one mad spring over the front of the pew and caught the
unfortunate Whiskers-on-the-moon by his coat collar. Mr. Pryor had not
"stopped" when so bidden, but he stopped now, perforce, for Norman, his
long red beard literally bristling with fury, was shaking him until his
bones fairly rattled, and punctuating his shakes with a lurid
assortment of abusive epithets.
"You blatant beast!"--shake--"You malignant carrion"--shake--"You
pig-headed varmint!"--shake--"you putrid pup"--shake--"you pestilential
parasite"--shake--"you--Hunnish scum"--shake--"you indecent
reptile--you--you--" Norman choked for a moment. Everybody believed
that the next thing he would say, church or no church, would be
something that would have to be spelt with asterisks; but at that
moment Norman encountered his wife's eye and he fell back with a thud
on Holy Writ. "You whited sepulchre!" he bellowed, with a final shake,
and cast Whiskers-on-the-moon from him with a vigour which impelled
that unhappy pacifist to the very verge of the choir entrance door. Mr.
Pryor's once ruddy face was ashen. But he turned at bay. "I'll have the
law on you for this," he gasped.
"Do--do," roared Norman, making another rush. But Mr. Pryor was gone.
He had no desire to fall a second time into the hands of an avenging
militarist. Norman turned to the platform for one graceless, triumphant
moment.
"Don't look so flabbergasted, parsons," he boomed. "You couldn't do
it--nobody would expect it of the cloth--but somebody had to do it. You
know you're glad I threw him out--he couldn't be let go on yammering
and yodelling and yawping sedition and treason. Sedition and
treason--somebody had to deal with it. I was born for this hour--I've
had my innings in church at last. I can sit quiet for another sixty
years now! Go ahead with your meeting, parsons. I reckon you won't be
troubled with any more pacifist prayers."
But the spirit of devotion and reverence had fled. Both ministers
realized it and realized that the only thing to do was to close the
meeting quietly and let the excited people go. Mr. Meredith addressed a
few earnest words to the boys in khaki--which probably saved Mr.
Pryor's windows from a second onslaught--and Mr. Arnold pronounced an
incongruous benediction, at least he felt it was incongruous, for he
could not at once banish from his memory the sight of gigantic Norman
Douglas shaking the fat, pompous little Whiskers-on-the-moon as a huge
mastiff might shake an overgrown puppy. And he knew that the same
picture was in everybody's mind. Altogether the union prayer-meeting
could hardly be called an unqualified success. But it was remembered in
Glen St. Mary when scores of orthodox and undisturbed assemblies were
totally forgotten.
"You will never, no, never, Mrs. Dr. dear, hear me call Norman Douglas
a pagan again," said Susan when she reached home. "If Ellen Douglas is
not a proud woman this night she should be."
"Norman Douglas did a wholly indefensible thing," said the doctor.
"Pryor should have been let severely alone until the meeting was over.
Then later on, his own minister and session should deal with him. That
would have been the proper procedure. Norman's performance was utterly
improper and scandalous and outrageous; but, by George,"--the doctor
threw back his head and chuckled, "by George, Anne-girl, it was
satisfying."
CHAPTER XXI
"LOVE AFFAIRS ARE HORRIBLE"
Ingleside
20th June 1916
"We have been so busy, and day after day has brought such exciting
news, good and bad, that I haven't had time and composure to write in
my diary for weeks. I like to keep it up regularly, for father says a
diary of the years of the war should be a very interesting thing to
hand down to one's children. The trouble is, I like to write a few
personal things in this blessed old book that might not be exactly what
I'd want my children to read. I feel that I shall be a far greater
stickler for propriety in regard to them than I am for myself!
"The first week in June was another dreadful one. The Austrians seemed
just on the point of overrunning Italy: and then came the first awful
news of the Battle of Jutland, which the Germans claimed as a great
victory. Susan was the only one who carried on. 'You need never tell me
that the Kaiser has defeated the British Navy,' she said, with a
contemptuous sniff. 'It is all a German lie and that you may tie to.'
And when a couple of days later we found out that she was right and
that it had been a British victory instead of a British defeat, we had
to put up with a great many 'I told you so's,' but we endured them very
comfortably.
"It took Kitchener's death to finish Susan. For the first time I saw
her down and out. We all felt the shock of it but Susan plumbed the
depths of despair. The news came at night by 'phone but Susan wouldn't
believe it until she saw the Enterprise headline the next day. She did
not cry or faint or go into hysterics; but she forgot to put salt in
the soup, and that is something Susan never did in my recollection.
Mother and Miss Oliver and I cried but Susan looked at us in stony
sarcasm and said, 'The Kaiser and his six sons are all alive and
thriving. So the world is not left wholly desolate. Why cry, Mrs. Dr.
dear?' Susan continued in this stony, hopeless condition for
twenty-four hours, and then Cousin Sophia appeared and began to condole
with her.
"'This is terrible news, ain't it, Susan? We might as well prepare for
the worst for it is bound to come. You said once--and well do I
remember the words, Susan Baker--that you had complete confidence in
God and Kitchener. Ah well, Susan Baker, there is only God left now.'
"Whereat Cousin Sophia put her handkerchief to her eyes pathetically as
if the world were indeed in terrible straits. As for Susan, Cousin
Sophia was the salvation of her. She came to life with a jerk.
"'Sophia Crawford, hold your peace!' she said sternly. 'You may be an
idiot but you need not be an irreverent idiot. It is no more than
decent to be weeping and wailing because the Almighty is the sole stay
of the Allies now. As for Kitchener, his death is a great loss and I do
not dispute it. But the outcome of this war does not depend on one
man's life and now that the Russians are coming on again you will soon
see a change for the better.'
"Susan said this so energetically that she convinced herself and
cheered up immediately. But Cousin Sophia shook her head.
"'Albert's wife wants to call the baby after Brusiloff,' she said, 'but
I told her to wait and see what becomes of him first. Them Russians has
such a habit of petering out.'
"The Russians are doing splendidly, however, and they have saved Italy.
But even when the daily news of their sweeping advance comes we don't
feel like running up the flag as we used to do. As Gertrude says,
Verdun has slain all exultation. We would all feel more like rejoicing
if the victories were on the western front. 'When will the British
strike?' Gertrude sighed this morning. 'We have waited so long--so
long.'
"Our greatest local event in recent weeks was the route march the
county battalion made through the county before it left for overseas.
They marched from Charlottetown to Lowbridge, then round the Harbour
Head and through the Upper Glen and so down to the St. Mary station.
Everybody turned out to see them, except old Aunt Fannie Clow, who is
bedridden and Mr. Pryor, who hadn't been seen out even in church since
the night of the Union Prayer Meeting the previous week.
"It was wonderful and heartbreaking to see that battalion marching
past. There were young men and middle-aged men in it. There was Laurie
McAllister from over-harbour who is only sixteen but swore he was
eighteen, so that he could enlist; and there was Angus Mackenzie, from
the Upper Glen who is fifty-five if he is a day and swore he was
forty-four. There were two South African veterans from Lowbridge, and
the three eighteen-year-old Baxter triplets from Harbour Head.
Everybody cheered as they went by, and they cheered Foster Booth, who
is forty, walking side by side with his son Charley who is twenty.
Charley's mother died when he was born, and when Charley enlisted
Foster said he'd never yet let Charley go anywhere he daren't go
himself, and he didn't mean to begin with the Flanders trenches. At the
station Dog Monday nearly went out of his head. He tore about and sent
messages to Jem by them all. Mr. Meredith read an address and Reta
Crawford recited 'The Piper.' The soldiers cheered her like mad and
cried 'We'll follow--we'll follow--we won't break faith,' and I felt so
proud to think that it was my dear brother who had written such a
wonderful, heart-stirring thing. And then I looked at the khaki ranks
and wondered if those tall fellows in uniform could be the boys I've
laughed with and played with and danced with and teased all my life.
Something seems to have touched them and set them apart. They have
heard the Piper's call.
"Fred Arnold was in the battalion and I felt dreadfully about him, for
I realized that it was because of me that he was going away with such a
sorrowful expression. I couldn't help it but I felt as badly as if I
could.
"The last evening of his leave Fred came up to Ingleside and told me he
loved me and asked me if I would promise to marry him some day, if he
ever came back. He was desperately in earnest and I felt more wretched
than I ever did in my life. I couldn't promise him that--why, even if
there was no question of Ken, I don't care for Fred that way and never
could--but it seemed so cruel and heartless to send him away to the
front without any hope of comfort. I cried like a baby; and yet--oh, I
am afraid that there must be something incurably frivolous about me,
because, right in the middle of it all, with me crying and Fred looking
so wild and tragic, the thought popped into my head that it would be an
unendurable thing to see that nose across from me at the breakfast
table every morning of my life. There, that is one of the entries I
wouldn't want my descendants to read in this journal. But it is the
humiliating truth; and perhaps it's just as well that thought did come
or I might have been tricked by pity and remorse into giving him some
rash assurance. If Fred's nose were as handsome as his eyes and mouth
some such thing might have happened. And then what an unthinkable
predicament I should have been in!
"When poor Fred became convinced that I couldn't promise him, he
behaved beautifully--though that rather made things worse. If he had
been nasty about it I wouldn't have felt so heartbroken and
remorseful--though why I should feel remorseful I don't know, for I
never encouraged Fred to think I cared a bit about him. Yet feel
remorseful I did--and do. If Fred Arnold never comes back from
overseas, this will haunt me all my life.
"Then Fred said if he couldn't take my love with him to the trenches at
least he wanted to feel that he had my friendship, and would I kiss him
just once in good-bye before he went--perhaps for ever?
"I don't know how I could ever had imagined that love affairs were
delightful, interesting things. They are horrible. I couldn't even give
poor heartbroken Fred one little kiss, because of my promise to Ken. It
seemed so brutal. I had to tell Fred that of course he would have my
friendship, but that I couldn't kiss him because I had promised
somebody else I wouldn't.
"He said, 'It is--is it--Ken Ford?'