Rilla of Ingleside
the boys are so scarce. I've got overalls and I can tell you they're
real becoming. Mrs. Alec Douglas says they're indecent and shouldn't be
allowed, and even Mrs. Elliott kinder looks askance at them. But bless
you, the world moves, and anyhow there's no fun for me like shocking
Kitty Alec."
"By the way, father," said Rilla, "I'm going to take Jack Flagg's place
in his father's store for a month. I promised him today that I would,
if you didn't object. Then he can help the farmers get the harvest in.
I don't think I'd be much use in a harvest myself--though lots of the
girls are--but I can set Jack free while I do his work. Jims isn't much
bother in the daytime now, and I'll always be home at night."
"Do you think you'll like weighing out sugar and beans, and trafficking
in butter and eggs?" said the doctor, twinkling.
"Probably not. That isn't the question. It's just one way of doing my
bit." So Rilla went behind Mr. Flagg's counter for a month; and Susan
went into Albert Crawford's oat-fields.
"I am as good as any of them yet," she said proudly. "Not a man of them
can beat me when it comes to building a stack. When I offered to help
Albert looked doubtful. 'I am afraid the work will be too hard for
you,' he said. 'Try me for a day and see,' said I. 'I will do my
darnedest.'"
None of the Ingleside folks spoke for just a moment. Their silence
meant that they thought Susan's pluck in "working out" quite wonderful.
But Susan mistook their meaning and her sun-burned face grew red.
"This habit of swearing seems to be growing on me, Mrs. Dr. dear," she
said apologetically. "To think that I should be acquiring it at my age!
It is such a dreadful example to the young girls. I am of the opinion
it comes of reading the newspapers so much. They are so full of
profanity and they do not spell it with stars either, as used to be
done in my young days. This war is demoralizing everybody."
Susan, standing on a load of grain, her grey hair whipping in the
breeze and her skirt kilted up to her knees for safety and
convenience--no overalls for Susan, if you please--neither a beautiful
nor a romantic figure; but the spirit that animated her gaunt arms was
the self-same one that captured Vimy Ridge and held the German legions
back from Verdun.
It is not the least likely, however, that this consideration was the
one which appealed most strongly to Mr. Pryor when he drove past one
afternoon and saw Susan pitching sheaves gamely.
"Smart woman that," he reflected. "Worth two of many a younger one yet.
I might do worse--I might do worse. If Milgrave comes home alive I'll
lose Miranda and hired housekeepers cost more than a wife and are
liable to leave a man in the lurch any time. I'll think it over."
A week later Mrs. Blythe, coming up from the village late in the
afternoon, paused at the gate of Ingleside in an amazement which
temporarily bereft her of the power of motion. An extraordinary sight
met her eyes. Round the end of the kitchen burst Mr. Pryor, running as
stout, pompous Mr. Pryor had not run in years, with terror imprinted on
every lineament--a terror quite justifiable, for behind him, like an
avenging fate, came Susan, with a huge, smoking iron pot grasped in her
hands, and an expression in her eye that boded ill to the object of her
indignation, if she should overtake him. Pursuer and pursued tore
across the lawn. Mr. Pryor reached the gate a few feet ahead of Susan,
wrenched it open, and fled down the road, without a glance at the
transfixed lady of Ingleside.
"Susan," gasped Anne.
Susan halted in her mad career, set down her pot, and shook her fist
after Mr. Pryor, who had not ceased to run, evidently believing that
Susan was still full cry after him.
"Susan, what does this mean?" demanded Anne, a little severely.
"You may well ask that, Mrs. Dr. dear," Susan replied wrathfully. "I
have not been so upset in years. That--that--that pacifist has actually
had the audacity to come up here and, in my own kitchen, to ask me to
marry him. HIM!"
Anne choked back a laugh.
"But--Susan! Couldn't you have found a--well, a less spectacular method
of refusing him? Think what a gossip this would have made if anyone had
been going past and had seen such a performance."
"Indeed, Mrs. Dr. dear, you are quite right. I did not think of it
because I was quite past thinking rationally. I was just clean mad.
Come in the house and I will tell you all about it."
Susan picked up her pot and marched into the kitchen, still trembling
with wrathful excitement. She set her pot on the stove with a vicious
thud. "Wait a moment until I open all the windows to air this kitchen
well, Mrs. Dr. dear. There, that is better. And I must wash my hands,
too, because I shook hands with Whiskers-on-the-moon when he came
in--not that I wanted to, but when he stuck out his fat, oily hand I
did not know just what else to do at the moment. I had just finished my
afternoon cleaning and thanks be, everything was shining and spotless;
and thought I 'now that dye is boiling and I will get my rug rags and
have them nicely out of the way before supper.'
"Just then a shadow fell over the floor and looking up I saw
Whiskers-on-the-moon, standing in the doorway, dressed up and looking
as if he had just been starched and ironed. I shook hands with him, as
aforesaid, Mrs. Dr. dear, and told him you and the doctor were both
away. But he said,
"I have come to see you, Miss Baker.'
"I asked him to sit down, for the sake of my own manners, and then I
stood there right in the middle of the floor and gazed at him as
contemptuously as I could. In spite of his brazen assurance this seemed
to rattle him a little; but he began trying to look sentimental at me
out of his little piggy eyes, and all at once an awful suspicion
flashed into my mind. Something told me, Mrs. Dr. dear, that I was
about to receive my first proposal. I have always thought that I would
like to have just one offer of marriage to reject, so that I might be
able to look other women in the face, but you will not hear me bragging
of this. I consider it an insult and if I could have thought of any way
of preventing it I would. But just then, Mrs. Dr. dear, you will see I
was at a disadvantage, being taken so completely by surprise. Some men,
I am told, consider a little preliminary courting the proper thing
before a proposal, if only to give fair warning of their intentions;
but Whiskers-on-the-moon probably thought it was any port in a storm
for me and that I would jump at him. Well, he is undeceived--yes, he is
undeceived, Mrs. Dr. dear. I wonder if he has stopped running yet."
"I understand that you don't feel flattered, Susan. But couldn't you
have refused him a little more delicately than by chasing him off the
premises in such a fashion?"
"Well, maybe I might have, Mrs. Dr. dear, and I intended to, but one
remark he made aggravated me beyond my powers of endurance. If it had
not been for that I would not have chased him with my dye-pot. I will
tell you the whole interview. Whiskers sat down, as I have said, and
right beside him on another chair Doc was lying. The animal was
pretending to be asleep but I knew very well he was not, for he has
been Hyde all day and Hyde never sleeps. By the way, Mrs. Dr. dear,
have you noticed that that cat is far oftener Hyde than Jekyll now? The
more victories Germany wins the Hyder he becomes. I leave you to draw
your own conclusions from that. I suppose Whiskers thought he might
curry favour with me by praising the creature, little dreaming what my
real sentiments towards it were, so he stuck out his pudgy hand and
stroked Mr. Hyde's back. 'What a nice cat,' he said. The nice cat flew
at him and bit him. Then it gave a fearful yowl, and bounded out of the
door. Whiskers looked after it quite amazed. 'That is a queer kind of a
varmint,' he said. I agreed with him on that point, but I was not going
to let him see it. Besides, what business had he to call our cat a
varmint? 'It may be a varmint or it may not,' I said, 'but it knows the
difference between a Canadian and a Hun.' You would have thought, would
you not, Mrs. Dr. dear, that a hint like that would have been enough
for him! But it went no deeper than his skin. I saw him settling back
quite comfortable, as if for a good talk, and thought I, 'If there is
anything coming it may as well come soon and be done with, for with all
these rags to dye before supper I have no time to waste in flirting,'
so I spoke right out. 'If you have anything particular to discuss with
me, Mr. Pryor, I would feel obliged if you would mention it without
loss of time, because I am very busy this afternoon.' He fairly beamed
at me out of that circle of red whisker, and said, 'You are a
business-like woman and I agree with you. There is no use in wasting
time beating around the bush. I came up here today to ask you to marry
me.' So there it was, Mrs. Dr. dear. I had a proposal at last, after
waiting sixty-four years for one.
"I just glared at that presumptuous creature and I said, 'I would not
marry you if you were the last man on earth, Josiah Pryor. So there you
have my answer and you can take it away forthwith.' You never saw a man
so taken aback as he was, Mrs. Dr. dear. He was so flabbergasted that
he just blurted out the truth. 'Why, I thought you'd be only too glad
to get a chance to be married,' he said. That was when I lost my head,
Mrs. Dr. dear. Do you think I had a good excuse, when a Hun and a
pacifist made such an insulting remark to me? 'Go,' I thundered, and I
just caught up that iron pot. I could see that he thought I had
suddenly gone insane, and I suppose he considered an iron pot full of
boiling dye was a dangerous weapon in the hands of a lunatic. At any
rate he went, and stood not upon the order of his going, as you saw for
yourself. And I do not think we will see him back here proposing to us
again in a hurry. No, I think he has learned that there is at least one
single woman in Glen St. Mary who has no hankering to become Mrs.
Whiskers-on-the-moon."
CHAPTER XXVII
WAITING
Ingleside,
1st November 1917
"It is November--and the Glen is all grey and brown, except where the
Lombardy poplars stand up here and there like great golden torches in
the sombre landscape, although every other tree has shed its leaves. It
has been very hard to keep our courage alight of late. The Caporetto
disaster is a dreadful thing and not even Susan can extract much
consolation out of the present state of affairs. The rest of us don't
try. Gertrude keeps saying desperately, 'They must not get Venice--they
must not get Venice,' as if by saying it often enough she can prevent
them. But what is to prevent them from getting Venice I cannot see.
Yet, as Susan fails not to point out, there was seemingly nothing to
prevent them from getting to Paris in 1914, yet they did not get it,
and she affirms they shall not get Venice either. Oh, how I hope and
pray they will not--Venice the beautiful Queen of the Adriatic.
Although I've never seen it I feel about it just as Byron did--I've
always loved it--it has always been to me 'a fairy city of the heart.'
Perhaps I caught my love of it from Walter, who worshipped it. It was
always one of his dreams to see Venice. I remember we planned
once--down in Rainbow Valley one evening just before the war broke
out--that some time we would go together to see it and float in a
gondola through its moonlit streets.
"Every fall since the war began there has been some terrible blow to
our troops--Antwerp in 1914, Serbia in 1915; last fall, Rumania, and
now Italy, the worst of all. I think I would give up in despair if it
were not for what Walter said in his dear last letter--that 'the dead