Rilla of Ingleside
simply terrible if it rained tonight. I think I'll wear the green dress
and risk it. I want to look my nicest at my first party. Besides, it's
an inch longer than my white one. And I'll wear my silver slippers too.
Mrs. Ford sent them to me last Christmas and I've never had a chance to
wear them yet. They're the dearest things. Oh, Miss Oliver, I do hope
some of the boys will ask me to dance. I shall die of
mortification--truly I will, if nobody does and I have to sit stuck up
against the wall all the evening. Of course Carl and Jerry can't dance
because they're the minister's sons, or else I could depend on them to
save me from utter disgrace."
"You'll have plenty of partners--all the over-harbour boys are
coming--there'll be far more boys than girls."
"I'm glad I'm not a minister's daughter," laughed Rilla. "Poor Faith is
so furious because she won't dare to dance tonight. Una doesn't care,
of course. She has never hankered after dancing. Somebody told Faith
there would be a taffy-pull in the kitchen for those who didn't dance
and you should have seen the face she made. She and Jem will sit out on
the rocks most of the evening, I suppose. Did you know that we are all
to walk down as far as that little creek below the old House of Dreams
and then sail to the lighthouse? Won't it just be absolutely divine?"
"When I was fifteen I talked in italics and superlatives too," said
Miss Oliver sarcastically. "I think the party promises to be pleasant
for young fry. I expect to be bored. None of those boys will bother
dancing with an old maid like me. Jem and Walter will take me out once
out of charity. So you can't expect me to look forward to it with your
touching young rapture."
"Didn't you have a good time at your first party, though, Miss Oliver?"
"No. I had a hateful time. I was shabby and homely and nobody asked me
to dance except one boy, homelier and shabbier than myself. He was so
awkward I hated him--and even he didn't ask me again. I had no real
girlhood, Rilla. It's a sad loss. That's why I want you to have a
splendid, happy girlhood. And I hope your first party will be one
you'll remember all your life with pleasure."
"I dreamed last night I was at the dance and right in the middle of
things I discovered I was dressed in my kimono and bedroom shoes,"
sighed Rilla. "I woke up with a gasp of horror."
"Speaking of dreams--I had an odd one," said Miss Oliver absently. "It
was one of those vivid dreams I sometimes have--they are not the vague
jumble of ordinary dreams--they are as clear cut and real as life."
"What was your dream?"
"I was standing on the veranda steps, here at Ingleside, looking down
over the fields of the Glen. All at once, far in the distance, I saw a
long, silvery, glistening wave breaking over them. It came nearer and
nearer--just a succession of little white waves like those that break
on the sandshore sometimes. The Glen was being swallowed up. I thought,
'Surely the waves will not come near Ingleside'--but they came nearer
and nearer--so rapidly--before I could move or call they were breaking
right at my feet--and everything was gone--there was nothing but a
waste of stormy water where the Glen had been. I tried to draw
back--and I saw that the edge of my dress was wet with blood--and I
woke--shivering. I don't like the dream. There was some sinister
significance in it. That kind of vivid dream always 'comes true' with
me."
"I hope it doesn't mean there's a storm coming up from the east to
spoil the party," murmured Rilla.
"Incorrigible fifteen!" said Miss Oliver dryly. "No, Rilla-my-Rilla, I
don't think there is any danger that it foretells anything so awful as
that."
There had been an undercurrent of tension in the Ingleside existence
for several days. Only Rilla, absorbed in her own budding life, was
unaware of it. Dr. Blythe had taken to looking grave and saying little
over the daily paper. Jem and Walter were keenly interested in the news
it brought. Jem sought Walter out in excitement that evening.
"Oh, boy, Germany has declared war on France. This means that England
will fight too, probably--and if she does--well, the Piper of your old
fancy will have come at last."
"It wasn't a fancy," said Walter slowly. "It was a presentiment--a
vision--Jem, I really saw him for a moment that evening long ago.
Suppose England does fight?"
"Why, we'll all have to turn in and help her," cried Jem gaily. "We
couldn't let the 'old grey mother of the northern sea' fight it out
alone, could we? But you can't go--the typhoid has done you out of
that. Sort of a shame, eh?"
Walter did not say whether it was a shame or not. He looked silently
over the Glen to the dimpling blue harbour beyond.
"We're the cubs--we've got to pitch in tooth and claw if it comes to a
family row," Jem went on cheerfully, rumpling up his red curls with a
strong, lean, sensitive brown hand--the hand of the born surgeon, his
father often thought. "What an adventure it would be! But I suppose
Grey or some of those wary old chaps will patch matters up at the
eleventh hour. It'll be a rotten shame if they leave France in the
lurch, though. If they don't, we'll see some fun. Well, I suppose it's
time to get ready for the spree at the light."
Jem departed whistling "Wi' a hundred pipers and a' and a'," and Walter
stood for a long time where he was. There was a little frown on his
forehead. This had all come up with the blackness and suddenness of a
thundercloud. A few days ago nobody had even thought of such a thing.
It was absurd to think of it now. Some way out would be found. War was
a hellish, horrible, hideous thing--too horrible and hideous to happen
in the twentieth century between civilized nations. The mere thought of
it was hideous, and made Walter unhappy in its threat to the beauty of
life. He would not think of it--he would resolutely put it out of his
mind. How beautiful the old Glen was, in its August ripeness, with its
chain of bowery old homesteads, tilled meadows and quiet gardens. The
western sky was like a great golden pearl. Far down the harbour was
frosted with a dawning moonlight. The air was full of exquisite
sounds--sleepy robin whistles, wonderful, mournful, soft murmurs of
wind in the twilit trees, rustle of aspen poplars talking in silvery
whispers and shaking their dainty, heart-shaped leaves, lilting young
laughter from the windows of rooms where the girls were making ready
for the dance. The world was steeped in maddening loveliness of sound
and colour. He would think only of these things and of the deep, subtle
joy they gave him. "Anyhow, no one will expect me to go," he thought.
"As Jem says, typhoid has seen to that."
Rilla was leaning out of her room window, dressed for the dance. A
yellow pansy slipped from her hair and fell out over the sill like a
falling star of gold. She caught at it vainly--but there were enough
left. Miss Oliver had woven a little wreath of them for her pet's hair.
"It's so beautifully calm--isn't that splendid? We'll have a perfect
night. Listen, Miss Oliver--I can hear those old bells in Rainbow
Valley quite clearly. They've been hanging there for over ten years."
"Their wind chime always makes me think of the aerial, celestial music
Adam and Eve heard in Milton's Eden," responded Miss Oliver.
"We used to have such fun in Rainbow Valley when we were children,"
said Rilla dreamily.
Nobody ever played in Rainbow Valley now. It was very silent on summer
evenings. Walter liked to go there to read. Jem and Faith trysted there
considerably; Jerry and Nan went there to pursue uninterruptedly the
ceaseless wrangles and arguments on profound subjects that seemed to be
their preferred method of sweethearting. And Rilla had a beloved little
sylvan dell of her own there where she liked to sit and dream.
"I must run down to the kitchen before I go and show myself off to
Susan. She would never forgive me if I didn't."
Rilla whirled into the shadowy kitchen at Ingleside, where Susan was
prosaically darning socks, and lighted it up with her beauty. She wore
her green dress with its little pink daisy garlands, her silk stockings
and silver slippers. She had golden pansies in her hair and at her
creamy throat. She was so pretty and young and glowing that even Cousin
Sophia Crawford was compelled to admire her--and Cousin Sophia Crawford
admired few transient earthly things. Cousin Sophia and Susan had made
up, or ignored, their old feud since the former had come to live in the
Glen, and Cousin Sophia often came across in the evenings to make a
neighbourly call. Susan did not always welcome her rapturously for
Cousin Sophia was not what could be called an exhilarating companion.
"Some calls are visits and some are visitations, Mrs. Dr. dear," Susan
said once, and left it to be inferred that Cousin Sophia's were the
latter.
Cousin Sophia had a long, pale, wrinkled face, a long, thin nose, a
long, thin mouth, and very long, thin, pale hands, generally folded
resignedly on her black calico lap. Everything about her seemed long
and thin and pale. She looked mournfully upon Rilla Blythe and said
sadly,
"Is your hair all your own?"
"Of course it is," cried Rilla indignantly.
"Ah, well!" Cousin Sophia sighed. "It might be better for you if it
wasn't! Such a lot of hair takes from a person's strength. It's a sign
of consumption, I've heard, but I hope it won't turn out like that in
your case. I s'pose you'll all be dancing tonight--even the minister's
boys most likely. I s'pose his girls won't go that far. Ah, well, I
never held with dancing. I knew a girl once who dropped dead while she
was dancing. How any one could ever dance aga' after a judgment like
that I cannot comprehend."
"Did she ever dance again?" asked Rilla pertly.
"I told you she dropped dead. Of course she never danced again, poor
creature. She was a Kirke from Lowbridge. You ain't a-going off like
that with nothing on your bare neck, are you?"
"It's a hot evening," protested Rilla. "But I'll put on a scarf when we
go on the water."
"I knew of a boat load of young folks who went sailing on that harbour
forty years ago just such a night as this--just exactly such a night as
this," said Cousin Sophia lugubriously, "and they were upset and
drowned--every last one of them. I hope nothing like that'll happen to
you tonight. Do you ever try anything for the freckles? I used to find
plantain juice real good."
"You certainly should be a judge of freckles, Cousin Sophia," said
Susan, rushing to Rilla's defence. "You were more speckled than any
toad when you was a girl. Rilla's only come in summer but yours stayed
put, season in and season out; and you had not a ground colour like
hers behind them neither. You look real nice, Rilla, and that way of
fixing your hair is becoming. But you are not going to walk to the
harbour in those slippers, are you?"
"Oh, no. We'll all wear our old shoes to the harbour and carry our
slippers. Do you like my dress, Susan?"
"It minds me of a dress I wore when I was a girl," sighed Cousin Sophia
before Susan could reply. "It was green with pink posies on it, too,
and it was flounced from the waist to the hem. We didn't wear the
skimpy things girls wear nowadays. Ah me, times has changed and not for
the better I'm afraid. I tore a big hole in it that night and someone
spilled a cup of tea all over it. Ruined it completely. But I hope
nothing will happen to your dress. It orter to be a bit longer I'm
thinking--your legs are so terrible long and thin."
"Mrs. Dr. Blythe does not approve of little girls dressing like
grown-up ones," said Susan stiffly, intending merely a snub to Cousin
Sophia. But Rilla felt insulted. A little girl indeed! She whisked out
of the kitchen in high dudgeon. Another time she wouldn't go down to