Rilla of Ingleside Read online

  CHAPTER XI

  DARK AND BRIGHT

  At Christmas the college boys and girls came home and for a littlewhile Ingleside was gay again. But all were not there--for the firsttime one was missing from the circle round the Christmas table. Jem, ofthe steady lips and fearless eyes, was far away, and Rilla felt thatthe sight of his vacant chair was more than she could endure. Susan hadtaken a stubborn freak and insisted on setting out Jem's place for himas usual, with the twisted little napkin ring he had always had since aboy, and the odd, high Green Gables goblet that Aunt Marilla had oncegiven him and from which he always insisted on drinking.

  "That blessed boy shall have his place, Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susanfirmly, "and do not you feel over it, for you may be sure he is here inspirit and next Christmas he will be here in the body. Wait you tillthe Big Push comes in the spring and the war will be over in a jiffy."

  They tried to think so, but a shadow stalked in the background of theirdetermined merrymaking. Walter, too, was quiet and dull, all throughthe holidays. He showed Rilla a cruel, anonymous letter he had receivedat Redmond--a letter far more conspicuous for malice than for patrioticindignation.

  "Nevertheless, all it says is true, Rilla."

  Rilla had caught it from him and thrown it into the fire.

  "There isn't one word of truth in it," she declared hotly. "Walter,you've got morbid--as Miss Oliver says she gets when she broods toolong over one thing."

  "I can't get away from it at Redmond, Rilla. The whole college isaflame over the war. A perfectly fit fellow, of military age, whodoesn't join up is looked upon as a shirker and treated accordingly.Dr. Milne, the English professor, who has always made a special pet ofme, has two sons in khaki; and I can feel the change in his mannertowards me."

  "It's not fair--you're not fit."

  "Physically I am. Sound as a bell. The unfitness is in the soul andit's a taint and a disgrace. There, don't cry, Rilla. I'm not going ifthat's what you're afraid of. The Piper's music rings in my ears dayand night--but I cannot follow."

  "You would break mother's heart and mine if you did," sobbed Rilla."Oh, Walter, one is enough for any family."

  The holidays were an unhappy time for her. Still, having Nan and Di andWalter and Shirley home helped in the enduring of things. A letter andbook came for her from Kenneth Ford, too; some sentences in the lettermade her cheeks burn and her heart beat--until the last paragraph,which sent an icy chill over everything.

  "My ankle is about as good as new. I'll be fit to join up in a coupleof months more, Rilla-my-Rilla. It will be some feeling to get intokhaki all right. Little Ken will be able to look the whole world in theface then and owe not any man. It's been rotten lately, since I've beenable to walk without limping. People who don't know look at me as muchas to say 'Slacker!' Well, they won't have the chance to look it muchlonger."

  "I hate this war," said Rilla bitterly, as she gazed out into the maplegrove that was a chill glory of pink and gold in the winter sunset.

  "Nineteen-fourteen has gone," said Dr. Blythe on New Year's Day. "Itssun, which rose fairly, has set in blood. What will nineteen-fifteenbring?"

  "Victory!" said Susan, for once laconic.

  "Do you really believe we'll win the war, Susan?" said Miss Oliverdrearily. She had come over from Lowbridge to spend the day and seeWalter and the girls before they went back to Redmond. She was in arather blue and cynical mood and inclined to look on the dark side.

  "'Believe' we'll win the war!" exclaimed Susan. "No, Miss Oliver, dear,I do not believe--I know. That does not worry me. What does worry me isthe trouble and expense of it all. But then you cannot make omeletswithout breaking eggs, so we must just trust in God and make big guns."

  "Sometimes I think the big guns are better to trust in than God," saidMiss Oliver defiantly.

  "No, no, dear, you do not. The Germans had the big guns at the Marne,had they not? But Providence settled them. Do not ever forget that.Just hold on to that when you feel inclined to doubt. Clutch hold ofthe sides of your chair and sit tight and keep saying, 'Big guns aregood but the Almighty is better, and He is on our side, no matter whatthe Kaiser says about it.' I would have gone crazy many a day lately,Miss Oliver, dear, if I had not sat tight and repeated that to myself.My cousin Sophia is, like you, somewhat inclined to despond. 'Oh, dearme, what will we do if the Germans ever get here,' she wailed to meyesterday. 'Bury them,' said I, just as off-hand as that. 'There isplenty of room for the graves.' Cousin Sophia said that I was flippantbut I was not flippant, Miss Oliver, dear, only calm and confident inthe British navy and our Canadian boys. I am like old Mr. WilliamPollock of the Harbour Head. He is very old and has been ill for a longtime, and one night last week he was so low that his daughter-in-lawwhispered to some one that she thought he was dead. 'Darn it, I ain't,'he called right out--only, Miss Oliver, dear, he did not use so mild aword as 'darn'--'darn it, I ain't, and I don't mean to die until theKaiser is well licked.' Now, that, Miss Oliver, dear," concluded Susan,"is the kind of spirit I admire."

  "I admire it but I can't emulate it," sighed Gertrude. "Before this, Ihave always been able to escape from the hard things of life for alittle while by going into dreamland, and coming back like a giantrefreshed. But I can't escape from this."

  "Nor I," said Mrs. Blythe. "I hate going to bed now. All my life I'veliked going to bed, to have a gay, mad, splendid half-hour of imaginingthings before sleeping. Now I imagine them still. But such differentthings."

  "I am rather glad when the time comes to go to bed," said Miss Oliver."I like the darkness because I can be myself in it--I needn't smile ortalk bravely. But sometimes my imagination gets out of hand, too, and Isee what you do--terrible things--terrible years to come."

  "I am very thankful that I never had any imagination to speak of," saidSusan. "I have been spared that. I see by this paper that the CrownPrince is killed again. Do you suppose there is any hope of his stayingdead this time? And I also see that Woodrow Wilson is going to writeanother note. I wonder," concluded Susan, with the bitter irony she hadof late begun to use when referring to the poor President, "if thatman's schoolmaster is alive."

  In January Jims was five months old and Rilla celebrated theanniversary by shortening him.

  "He weighs fourteen pounds," she announced jubilantly. "Just exactlywhat he should weigh at five months, according to Morgan."

  There was no longer any doubt in anybody's mind that Jims was gettingpositively pretty. His little cheeks were round and firm and faintlypink, his eyes were big and bright, his tiny paws had dimples at theroot of every finger. He had even begun to grow hair, much to Rilla'sunspoken relief. There was a pale golden fuzz all over his head thatwas distinctly visible in some lights. He was a good infant, generallysleeping and digesting as Morgan decreed. Occasionally he smiled but hehad never laughed, in spite of all efforts to make him. This worriedRilla also, because Morgan said that babies usually laughed aloud fromthe third to the fifth month. Jims was five months and had no notion oflaughing. Why hadn't he? Wasn't he normal?

  One night Rilla came home late from a recruiting meeting at the Glenwhere she had been giving patriotic recitations. Rilla had never beenwilling to recite in public before. She was afraid of her tendency tolisp, which had a habit of reviving if she were doing anything thatmade her nervous. When she had first been asked to recite at the UpperGlen meeting she had refused. Then she began to worry over her refusal.Was it cowardly? What would Jem think if he knew? After two days ofworry Rilla phoned to the president of the Patriotic Society that shewould recite. She did, and lisped several times, and lay awake most ofthe night in an agony of wounded vanity. Then two nights after sherecited again at Harbour Head. She had been at Lowbridge andover-harbour since then and had become resigned to an occasional lisp.Nobody except herself seemed to mind it. And she was so earnest andappealing and shining-eyed! More than one recruit joined up becauseRilla's eyes seemed to look right at him when she passionately demandedhow could men die better than fighting for the ash
es of their fathersand the temples of their gods, or assured her audience with thrillingintensity that one crowded hour of glorious life was worth an agewithout a name. Even stolid Miller Douglas was so fired one night thatit took Mary Vance a good hour to talk him back to sense. Mary Vancesaid bitterly that if Rilla Blythe felt as bad as she had pretended tofeel over Jem's going to the front she wouldn't be urging other girls'brothers and friends to go.

  On this particular night Rilla was tired and cold and very thankful tocreep into her warm nest and cuddle down between her blankets, thoughas usual with a sorrowful wonder how Jem and Jerry were faring. She wasjust getting warm and drowsy when Jims suddenly began to cry--and kepton crying.

  Rilla curled herself up in her bed and determined she would let himcry. She had Morgan behind her for justification. Jims was warm,physically comfortable--his cry wasn't the cry of pain--and had hislittle tummy as full as was good for him. Under such circumstances itwould be simply spoiling him to fuss over him, and she wasn't going todo it. He could cry until he got good and tired and ready to go tosleep again.

  Then Rilla's imagination began to torment her. Suppose, she thought, Iwas a tiny, helpless creature only five months old, with my fathersomewhere in France and my poor little mother, who had been so worriedabout me, in the graveyard. Suppose I was lying in a basket in a big,black room, without one speck of light, and nobody within miles of me,for all I could see or know. Suppose there wasn't a human beinganywhere who loved me--for a father who had never seen me couldn't loveme very much, especially when he had never written a word to or aboutme. Wouldn't I cry, too? Wouldn't I feel just so lonely and forsakenand frightened that I'd have to cry?

  Rilla hopped out. She picked Jims out of his basket and took him intoher own bed. His hands were cold, poor mite. But he had promptly ceasedto cry. And then, as she held him close to her in the darkness,suddenly Jims laughed--a real, gurgly, chuckly, delighted, delightfullaugh.

  "Oh, you dear little thing!" exclaimed Rilla. "Are you so pleased atfinding you're not all alone, lost in a huge, big, black room?" Thenshe knew she wanted to kiss him and she did. She kissed his silky,scented little head, she kissed his chubby little cheek, she kissed hislittle cold hands. She wanted to squeeze him--to cuddle him, just asshe used to squeeze and cuddle her kittens. Something delightful andyearning and brooding seemed to have taken possession of her. She hadnever felt like this before.

  In a few minutes Jims was sound asleep; and, as Rilla listened to hissoft, regular breathing and felt the little body warm and contentedagainst her, she realized that--at last--she loved her war-baby.

  "He has got to be--such--a--darling," she thought drowsily, as shedrifted off to slumberland herself.

  In February Jem and Jerry and Robert Grant were in the trenches and alittle more tension and dread was added to the Ingleside life. In March"Yiprez," as Susan called it, had come to have a bitter significance.The daily list of casualties had begun to appear in the papers and noone at Ingleside ever answered the telephone without a horrible coldshrinking--for it might be the station-master phoning up to say atelegram had come from overseas. No one at Ingleside ever got up in themorning without a sudden piercing wonder over what the day might bring.

  "And I used to welcome the mornings so," thought Rilla.

  Yet the round of life and duty went steadily on and every week or soone of the Glen lads who had just the other day been a rollickingschoolboy went into khaki.

  "It is bitter cold out tonight, Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan, coming inout of the clear starlit crispness of the Canadian winter twilight. "Iwonder if the boys in the trenches are warm."

  "How everything comes back to this war," cried Gertrude Oliver. "Wecan't get away from it--not even when we talk of the weather. I nevergo out these dark cold nights myself without thinking of the men in thetrenches--not only our men but everybody's men. I would feel the sameif there were nobody I knew at the front. When I snuggle down in mycomfortable bed I am ashamed of being comfortable. It seems as if itwere wicked of me to be so when many are not."

  "I saw Mrs. Meredith down at the store," said Susan, "and she tells methat they are really troubled over Bruce, he takes things so much toheart. He has cried himself to sleep for a week, over the starvingBelgians. 'Oh, mother,' he will say to her, so beseeching-like, 'surelythe babies are never hungry--oh, not the babies, mother! Just say thebabies are not hungry, mother.' And she cannot say it because it wouldnot be true, and she is at her wits' end. They try to keep such thingsfrom him but he finds them out and then they cannot comfort him. Itbreaks my heart to read about them myself, Mrs. Dr. dear, and I cannotconsole myself with the thought that the tales are not true. When Iread a novel that makes me want to weep I just say severely to myself,'Now, Susan Baker, you know that is all a pack of lies.' But we mustcarry on. Jack Crawford says he is going to the war because he is tiredof farming. I hope he will find it a pleasant change. And Mrs. RichardElliott over-harbour is worrying herself sick because she used to bealways scolding her husband about smoking up the parlour curtains. Nowthat he has enlisted she wishes she had never said a word to him. Youknow Josiah Cooper and William Daley, Mrs. Dr. dear. They used to befast friends but they quarrelled twenty years ago and have never spokensince. Well, the other day Josiah went to William and said right out,'Let us be friends. 'Tain't any time to be holding grudges.' Williamwas real glad and held out his hand, and they sat down for a good talk.And in less than half an hour they had quarrelled again, over how thewar ought to be fought, Josiah holding that the Dardanelles expeditionwas rank folly and William maintaining that it was the one sensiblething the Allies had done. And now they are madder at each other thanever and William says Josiah is as bad a pro-German asWhiskers-on-the-Moon. Whiskers-on-the-moon vows he is no pro-German butcalls himself a pacifist, whatever that may be. It is nothing proper orWhiskers would not be it and that you may tie to. He says that the bigBritish victory at New Chapelle cost more than it was worth and he hasforbid Joe Milgrave to come near the house because Joe ran up hisfather's flag when the news came. Have you noticed, Mrs. Dr. dear, thatthe Czar has changed that Prish name to Premysl, which proves that theman had good sense, Russian though he is? Joe Vickers told me in thestore that he saw a very queer looking thing in the sky tonight overLowbridge way. Do you suppose it could have been a Zeppelin, Mrs. Dr.dear?"

  "I do not think it very likely, Susan."

  "Well, I would feel easier about it if Whiskers-on-the-moon were notliving in the Glen. They say he was seen going through strangemanoeuvres with a lantern in his back yard one night lately. Somepeople think he was signalling."

  "To whom--or what?"

  "Ah, that is the mystery, Mrs. Dr. dear. In my opinion the Governmentwould do well to keep an eye on that man if it does not want us to beall murdered in our beds some night. Now I shall just look over thepapers a minute before going to write a letter to little Jem. Twothings I never did, Mrs. Dr. dear, were write letters and readpolitics. Yet here I am doing both regular and I find there issomething in politics after all. Whatever Woodrow Wilson means I cannotfathom but I am hoping I will puzzle it out yet."

  Susan, in her pursuit of Wilson and politics, presently came uponsomething that disturbed her and exclaimed in a tone of bitterdisappointment,

  "That devilish Kaiser has only a boil after all."

  "Don't swear, Susan," said Dr. Blythe, pulling a long face.

  "'Devilish' is not swearing, doctor, dear. I have always understoodthat swearing was taking the name of the Almighty in vain?"

  "Well, it isn't--ahem--refined," said the doctor, winking at MissOliver.

  "No, doctor, dear, the devil and the Kaiser--if so be that they arereally two different people--are not refined. And you cannot refer tothem in a refined way. So I abide by what I said, although you maynotice that I am careful not to use such expressions when young Rillais about. And I maintain that the papers have no right to say that theKaiser has pneumonia and raise people's hopes, and then come out andsay he has nothing but a bo
il. A boil, indeed! I wish he was coveredwith them."

  Susan stalked out to the kitchen and settled down to write to Jem;deeming him in need of some home comfort from certain passages in hisletter that day.

  "We're in an old wine cellar tonight, dad," he wrote, "in water to ourknees. Rats everywhere--no fire--a drizzling rain coming down--ratherdismal. But it might be worse. I got Susan's box today and everythingwas in tip-top order and we had a feast. Jerry is up the line somewhereand he says the rations are rather worse than Aunt Martha's ditto usedto be. But here they're not bad--only monotonous. Tell Susan I'd give ayear's pay for a good batch of her monkey-faces; but don't let thatinspire her to send any for they wouldn't keep.

  "We have been under fire since the last week in February. One boy--hewas a Nova Scotian--was killed right beside me yesterday. A shell burstnear us and when the mess cleared away he was lying dead--not mangledat all--he just looked a little startled. It was the first time I'dbeen close to anything like that and it was a nasty sensation, but onesoon gets used to horrors here. We're in an absolutely different world.The only things that are the same are the stars--and they are never intheir right places, somehow.

  "Tell mother not to worry--I'm all right--fit as a fiddle--and glad Icame. There's something across from us here that has got to be wipedout of the world, that's all--an emanation of evil that would otherwisepoison life for ever. It's got to be done, dad, however long it takes,and whatever it costs, and you tell the Glen people this for me. Theydon't realize yet what it is has broken loose--I didn't when I firstjoined up. I thought it was fun. Well, it isn't! But I'm in the rightplace all right--make no mistake about that. When I saw what had beendone here to homes and gardens and people--well, dad, I seemed to see agang of Huns marching through Rainbow Valley and the Glen, and thegarden at Ingleside. There were gardens over here--beautiful gardenswith the beauty of centuries--and what are they now? Mangled,desecrated things! We are fighting to make those dear old places wherewe had played as children, safe for other boys and girls--fighting forthe preservation and safety of all sweet, wholesome things.

  "Whenever any of you go to the station be sure to give Dog Monday adouble pat for me. Fancy the faithful little beggar waiting there forme like that! Honestly, dad, on some of these dark cold nights in thetrenches, it heartens and braces me up no end to think that thousandsof miles away at the old Glen station there is a small spotted dogsharing my vigil.

  "Tell Rilla I'm glad her war-baby is turning out so well, and tellSusan that I'm fighting a good fight against both Huns and cooties."

  "Mrs. Dr. dear," whispered Susan solemnly, "what are cooties?"

  Mrs. Blythe whispered back and then said in reply to Susan's horrifiedejaculations, "It's always like that in the trenches, Susan."

  Susan shook her head and went away in grim silence to re-open a parcelshe had sewed up for Jem and slip in a fine tooth comb.