It was a warm, golden-cloudy, lovable afternoon. In the big livingroom at Ingleside Susan Baker sat down with a certain grim satisfaction hovering about her like an aura; it was four o’clock and Susan, who had been working incessantly since six that morning, felt that she had fairly earned an hour of repose and gossip. Susan just then was perfectly happy; everything had gone almost uncannily well in the kitchen that day. Dr. Jekyll had not been Mr. Hyde and so had not grated on her nerves; from where she sat she could see the pride of her heart — the bed of peonies of her own planting and culture, blooming as no other peony plot in Glen St. Mary ever did or could bloom, with peonies crimson, peonies silvery pink, peonies white as drifts of winter snow.
Susan had on a new black silk blouse, quite as elaborate as anything Mrs. Marshall Elliott ever wore, and a white starched apron, trimmed with complicated crocheted lace fully five inches wide, not to mention insertion to match. Therefore Susan had all the comfortable consciousness of a well-dressed woman as she opened her copy of the Daily Enterprise and prepared to read the Glen “Notes” which, as Miss Cornelia had just informed her, filled half a column of it and mentioned almost everybody at Ingleside. There was a big, black headline on the front page of the Enterprise, stating that some Archduke Ferdinand or other had been assassinated at a place bearing the weird name of Sarajevo, but Susan tarried not over uninteresting, immaterial stuff like that; she was in quest of something really vital. Oh, here it was—”Jottings from Glen St. Mary.” Susan settled down keenly, reading each one over aloud to extract all possible gratification from it.
Mrs. Blythe and her visitor, Miss Cornelia — alias Mrs. Marshall Elliott — were chatting together near the open door that led to the veranda, through which a cool, delicious breeze was blowing, bringing whiffs of phantom perfume from the garden, and charming gay echoes from the vine-hung corner where Rilla and Miss Oliver and Walter were laughing and talking. Wherever Rilla Blythe was, there was laughter.
There was another occupant of the livingroom, curled up on a couch, who must not be overlooked, since he was a creature of marked individuality, and, moreover, had the distinction of being the only living thing whom Susan really hated.
All cats are mysterious but Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde—”Doc” for short — was trebly so. He was a cat of double personality — or else, as Susan vowed, he was possessed by the devil. To begin with, there had been something uncanny about the very dawn of his existence. Four years previously Rilla Blythe had had a treasured darling of a kitten, white as snow, with a saucy black tip to its tail, which she called Jack Frost. Susan disliked Jack Frost, though she could not or would not give any valid reason therefor.
“Take my word for it, Mrs. Dr. dear,” she was wont to say ominously, “that cat will come to no good.”
“But why do you think so?” Mrs. Blythe would ask.
“I do not think — I know,” was all the answer Susan would vouchsafe.
With the rest of the Ingleside folk Jack Frost was a favourite; he was so very clean and well groomed, and never allowed a spot or stain to be seen on his beautiful white suit; he had endearing ways of purring and snuggling; he was scrupulously honest.
And then a domestic tragedy took place at Ingleside. Jack Frost had kittens!
It would be vain to try to picture Susan’s triumph. Had she not always insisted that that cat would turn out to be a delusion and a snare? Now they could see for themselves!
Rilla kept one of the kittens, a very pretty one, with peculiarly sleek glossy fur of a dark yellow crossed by orange stripes, and large, satiny, golden ears. She called it Goldie and the name seemed appropriate enough to the little frolicsome creature which, during its kittenhood, gave no indication of the sinister nature it really possessed. Susan, of course, warned the family that no good could be expected from any offspring of that diabolical Jack Frost; but Susan’s Cassandra-like croakings were unheeded.
The Blythes had been so accustomed to regard Jack Frost as a member of the male sex that they could not get out of the habit. So they continually used the masculine pronoun, although the result was ludicrous. Visitors used to be quite electrified when Rilla referred casually to “Jack and his kitten,” or told Goldie sternly, “Go to your mother and get him to wash your fur.”
“It is not decent, Mrs. Dr. dear,” poor Susan would say bitterly. She herself compromised by always referring to Jack as “it” or “the white beast,” and one heart at least did not ache when “it” was accidentally poisoned the following winter.
In a year’s time “Goldie” became so manifestly an inadequate name for the orange kitten that Walter, who was just then reading Stevenson’s story, changed it to Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde. In his Dr. Jekyll mood the cat was a drowsy, affectionate, domestic, cushion-loving puss, who liked petting and gloried in being nursed and patted. Especially did he love to lie on his back and have his sleek, cream-coloured throat stroked gently while he purred in somnolent satisfaction. He was a notable purrer; never had there been an Ingleside cat who purred so constantly and so ecstatically.
“The only thing I envy a cat is its purr,” remarked Dr. Blythe once, listening to Doc’s resonant melody. “It is the most contented sound in the world.”
Doc was very handsome; his every movement was grace; his poses magnificent. When he folded his long, dusky-ringed tail about his feet and sat him down on the veranda to gaze steadily into space for long intervals the Blythes felt that an Egyptian sphinx could not have made a more fitting Deity of the Portal.
When the Mr. Hyde mood came upon him — which it invariably did before rain, or wind — he was a wild thing with changed eyes. The transformation always came suddenly. He would spring fiercely from a reverie with a savage snarl and bite at any restraining or caressing hand. His fur seemed to grow darker and his eyes gleamed with a diabolical light. There was really an unearthly beauty about him. If the change happened in the twilight all the Ingleside folk felt a certain terror of him. At such times he was a fearsome beast and only Rilla defended him, asserting that he was “such a nice prowly cat.” Certainly he prowled.
Dr. Jekyll loved new milk; Mr. Hyde would not touch milk and growled over his meat. Dr. Jekyll came down the stairs so silently that no one could hear him. Mr. Hyde made his tread as heavy as a man’s. Several evenings, when Susan was alone in the house, he “scared her stiff,” as she declared, by doing this. He would sit in the middle of the kitchen floor, with his terrible eyes fixed unwinkingly upon hers for an hour at a time. This played havoc with her nerves, but poor Susan really held him in too much awe to try to drive him out. Once she had dared to throw a stick at him and he had promptly made a savage leap towards her. Susan rushed out of doors and never attempted to meddle with Mr. Hyde again — though she visited his misdeeds upon the innocent Dr. Jekyll, chasing him ignominiously out of her domain whenever he dared to poke his nose in and denying him certain savoury tidbits for which he yearned.
“‘The many friends of Miss Faith Meredith, Gerald Meredith and James Blythe,’” read Susan, rolling the names like sweet morsels under her tongue, “‘were very much pleased to welcome them home a few weeks ago from Redmond College. James Blythe, who was graduated in Arts in 1913, had just completed his first year in medicine.’”
“Faith Meredith has really got to be the most handsomest creature I ever saw,” commented Miss Cornelia above her filet crochet. “It’s amazing how those children came on after Rosemary West went to the manse. People have almost forgotten what imps of mischief they were once. Anne, dearie, will you ever forget the way they used to carry on? It’s really surprising how well Rosemary got on with them. She’s more like a chum than a stepmother. They all love her and Una adores her. As for that little Bruce, Una just makes a perfect slave of herself to him. Of course, he is a darling. But did you ever see any child look as much like an aunt as he looks like his Aunt Ellen? He’s just as dark and just as emphatic. I can’t see a feature of Rosemary in him. Norman Douglas always vows at the top of his voice that the stork meant Bruce for him and Ellen and took him to the manse by mistake.”
“Bruce adores Jem,” said Mrs Blythe. “When he comes over here he follows Jem about silently like a faithful little dog, looking up at him from under his black brows. He would do anything for Jem, I verily believe.”
“Are Jem and Faith going to make a match of it?”
Mrs. Blythe smiled. It was well known that Miss Cornelia, who had been such a virulent man-hater at one time, had actually taken to matchmaking in her declining years.
“They are only good friends yet, Miss Cornelia.”
“Very good friends, believe me,” said Miss Cornelia emphatically. “I hear all about the doings of the young fry.”
“I have no doubt that Mary Vance sees that you do, Mrs. Marshall Elliott,” said Susan significantly, “but I think it is a shame to talk about children making matches.”
“Children! Jem is twenty-one and Faith is nineteen,” retorted Miss Cornelia. “You must not forget, Susan, that we old folks are not the only grownup people in the world.”
Outraged Susan, who detested any reference to her age — not from vanity but from a haunting dread that people might come to think her too old to work — returned to her “Notes.”
“‘Carl Meredith and Shirley Blythe came home last Friday evening from Queen’s Academy. We understand that Carl will be in charge of the school at Harbour Head next year and we are sure he will be a popular and successful teacher.’”
“He will teach the children all there is to know about bugs, anyhow,” said Miss Cornelia. “He is through with Queen’s now and Mr. Meredith and Rosemary wanted him to go right on to Redmond in the fall, but Carl has a very independent streak in him and means to earn part of his own way through college. He’ll be all the better for it.”
“‘Walter Blythe, who has been teaching for the past two years at Lowbridge, has resigned,’” read Susan. “‘He intends going to Redmond this fall.’”
“Is Walter quite strong enough for Redmond yet?” queried Miss Cornelia anxiously.
“We hope that he will be by the fall,” said Mrs. Blythe. “An idle summer in the open air and sunshine will do a great deal for him.”
“Typhoid is a hard thing to get over,” said Miss Cornelia emphatically, “especially when one has had such a close shave as Walter had. I think he’d do well to stay out of college another year. But then he’s so ambitious. Are Di and Nan going too?”
“Yes. They both wanted to teach another year but Gilbert thinks they had better go to Redmond this fall.”
“I’m glad of that. They’ll keep an eye on Walter and see that he doesn’t study too hard. I suppose,” continued Miss Cornelia, with a side glance at Susan, “that after the snub I got a few minutes ago it will not be safe for me to suggest that Jerry Meredith is making sheep’s eyes at Nan.”
Susan ignored this and Mrs. Blythe laughed again.
“Dear Miss Cornelia, I have my hands full, haven’t I? — with all these boys and girls sweethearting around me? If I took it seriously it would quite crush me. But I don’t — it is too hard yet to realize that they’re grown up. When I look at those two tall sons of mine I wonder if they can possibly be the fat, sweet, dimpled babies I kissed and cuddled and sang to slumber the other day — only the other day, Miss Cornelia. Wasn’t Jem the dearest baby in the old House of Dreams? and now he’s a B.A. and accused of courting.”
“We’re all growing older,” sighed Miss Cornelia.
“The only part of me that feels old,” said Mrs. Blythe, “is the ankle I broke when Josie Pye dared me to walk the Barry ridgepole in the Green Gables days. I have an ache in it when the wind is east. I won’t admit that it is rheumatism, but it does ache. As for the children, they and the Merediths are planning a gay summer before they have to go back to studies in the fall. They are such a fun-loving little crowd. They keep this house in a perpetual whirl of merriment.”
“Is Rilla going to Queen’s when Shirley goes back?”
“It isn’t decided yet. I rather fancy not. Her father thinks she is not quite strong enough — she has rather outgrown her strength — she’s really absurdly tall for a girl not yet fifteen. I am not anxious to have her go — why, it would be terrible not to have a single one of my babies home with me next winter. Susan and I would fall to fighting with each other to break the monotony.”
Susan smiled at this pleasantry. The idea of her fighting with “Mrs. Dr. dear!”
“Does Rilla herself want to go?” asked Miss Cornelia.
“No. The truth is, Rilla is the only one of my flock who isn’t ambitious. I really wish she had a little more ambition. She has no serious ideals at all — her sole aspiration seems to be to have a good time.”
“And why should she not have it, Mrs. Dr. dear?” cried Susan, who could not bear to hear a single word against anyone of the Ingleside folk, even from one of themselves. “A young girl should have a good time, and that I will maintain. There will be time enough for her to think of Latin and Greek.”
“I should like to see a little sense of responsibility in her, Susan. And you know yourself that she is abominably vain.”
“She has something to be vain about,” retorted Susan. “She is the prettiest girl in Glen St. Mary. Do you think that all those over-harbour MacAllisters and Crawfords and Elliotts could scare up a skin like Rilla’s in four generations? They could not. No, Mrs. Dr. dear, I know my place but I cannot allow you to run down Rilla. Listen to this, Mrs. Marshall Elliott.”
Susan had found a chance to get square with Miss Cornelia for her digs at the children’s love affairs. She read the item with gusto.
“‘Miller Douglas has decided not to go West. He says old P.E.I. is good enough for him and he will continue to farm for his aunt, Mrs. Alec Davis.’”
Susan looked keenly at Miss Cornelia.
“I have heard, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, that Miller is courting Mary Vance.”
This shot pierced Miss Cornelia’s armour. Her sonsy face flushed.
“I won’t have Miller Douglas hanging round Mary,” she said crisply. “He comes of a low family. His father was a sort of outcast from the Douglases — they never really counted him in — and his mother was one of those terrible Dillons from the Harbour Head.”
“I think I have heard, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, that Mary Vance’s own parents were not what you could call aristocratic.”
“Mary Vance has had a good bringing up and she is a smart, clever, capable girl,” retorted Miss Cornelia. “She is not going to throw herself away on Miller Douglas, believe me! She knows my opinion on the matter and Mary has never disobeyed me yet.”
“Well, I do not think you need worry, Mrs. Marshall Elliott, for Mrs. Alec Davis is as much against it as you could be, and says no nephew of hers is ever going to marry a nameless nobody like Mary Vance.”
Susan returned to her mutton, feeling that she had got the best of it in this passage of arms, and read another “note.”
“‘We are pleased to hear that Miss Oliver has been engaged as teacher for another year. Miss Oliver will spend her well-earned vacation at her home in Lowbridge.’”
“I’m so glad Gertrude is going to stay,” said Mrs. Blythe. “We would miss her horribly. And she has an excellent influence over Rilla who worships her. They are chums, in spite of the difference in their ages.”
“I thought I heard she was going to be married?”
“I believe it was talked of but I understand it is postponed for a year.”
“Who is the young man?”
“Robert Grant. He is a young lawyer in Charlottetown. I hope Gertrude will be happy. She has had a sad life, with much bitterness in it, and she feels things with a terrible keenness. Her first youth is gone and she is practically alone in the world. This new love that has come into her life seems such a wonderful thing to her that I think she hardly dares believe in its permanence. When her marriage had to be put off she was quite in despair — though it certainly wasn’t Mr. Grant’s fault. There were complications in the settlement of his father’s estate — his father died last winter — and he could not marry till the tangles were unravelled. But I think Gertrude felt it was a bad omen and that her happiness would somehow elude her yet.”
“It does not do, Mrs. Dr. dear, to set your affections too much on a man,” remarked Susan solemnly.
“Mr. Grant is quite as much in love with Gertrude as she is with him, Susan. It is not he whom she distrusts — it is fate. She has a little mystic streak in her — I suppose some people would call her superstitious. She has an odd belief in dreams and we have not been able to laugh it out of her. I must own, too, that some of her dreams — but there, it would not do to let Gilbert hear me hinting such heresy. What have you found of much interest, Susan?”
Susan had given an exclamation.
“Listen to this, Mrs. Dr. dear. ‘Mrs. Sophia Crawford has given up her house at Lowbridge and will make her home in future with her niece, Mrs. Albert Crawford.’ Why that is my own cousin Sophia, Mrs. Dr. dear. We quarrelled when we were children over who should get a Sunday-school card with the words ‘God is Love,’ wreathed in rosebuds, on it, and have never spoken to each other since. And now she is coming to live right across the road from us.”
“You will have to make up the old quarrel, Susan. It will never do to be at outs with your neighbours.”
“Cousin Sophia began the quarrel, so she can begin the making up also, Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan loftily. “If she does I hope I am a good enough Christian to meet her halfway. She is not a cheerful person and has been a wet blanket all her life. The last time I saw her, her face had a thousand wrinkles — maybe more, maybe less — from worrying and foreboding. She howled dreadful at her first husband’s funeral but she married again in less than a year. The next note, I see, describes the special service in our church last Sunday night and says the decorations were very beautiful.”
“Speaking of that reminds me that Mr. Pryor strongly disapproves of flowers in church,” said Miss Cornelia. “I always said there would be trouble when that man moved here from Lowbridge. He should never have been put in as elder — it was a mistake and we shall live to rue it, believe me! I have heard that he has said that if the girls continue to ‘mess up the pulpit with weeds’ that he will not go to church.”
“The church got on very well before old Whiskers-on-the-moon came to the Glen and it is my opinion it will get on without him after he is gone,” said Susan.
“Who in the world ever gave him that ridiculous nickname?” asked Mrs. Blythe.
“Why, the Lowbridge boys have called him that ever since I can remember, Mrs. Dr. dear — I suppose because his face is so round and red, with that fringe of sandy whisker about it. It does not do for anyone to call him that in his hearing, though, and that you may tie to. But worse than his whiskers, Mrs. Dr. dear, he is a very unreasonable man and has a great many queer ideas. He is an elder now and they say he is very religious; but I can well remember the time, Mrs. Dr. dear, twenty years ago, when he was caught pasturing his cow in the Lowbridge graveyard. Yes, indeed, I have not forgotten that, and I always think of it when he is praying in meeting. Well, that is all the notes and there is not much else in the paper of any importance. I never take much interest in foreign parts. Who is this Archduke man who has been murdered?”
“What does it matter to us?” asked Miss Cornelia, unaware of the hideous answer to her question which destiny was even then preparing. “Somebody is always murdering or being murdered in those Balkan States. It’s their normal condition and I don’t really think that our papers ought to print such shocking things. The Enterprise is getting far too sensational with its big headlines. Well, I must be getting home. No, Anne dearie, it’s no use asking me to stay to supper. Marshall has got to thinking that if I’m not home for a meal it’s not worth eating — just like a man. So off I go. Merciful goodness, Anne dearie, what is the matter with that cat? Is he having a fit?” — this, as Doc suddenly bounded to the rug at Miss Cornelia’s feet, laid back his ears, swore at her, and then disappeared with one fierce leap through the window.
“Oh, no. He’s merely turning into Mr. Hyde — which means that we shall have rain or high wind before morning. Doc is as good as a barometer.”
“Well, I am thankful he has gone on the rampage outside this time and not into my kitchen,” said Susan. “And I am going out to see about supper. With such a crowd as we have at Ingleside now it behooves us to think about our meals betimes.”
Families and individuals alike soon become used to new conditions and accept them unquestioningly. By the time a week had elapsed it seemed as it the Anderson baby had always been at Ingleside. After the first three distracted nights Rilla began to sleep again, waking automatically to attend to her charge on schedule time. She bathed and fed and dressed it as skilfully as if she had been doing it all her life. She liked neither her job nor the baby any the better; she still handled it as gingerly as if it were some kind of a small lizard, and a breakable lizard at that; but she did her work thoroughly and there was not a cleaner, better-cared-for infant in Glen St. Mary. She even took to weighing the creature every day and jotting the result down in her diary; but sometimes she asked herself pathetically why unkind destiny had ever led her down the Anderson lane on that fatal day. Shirley, Nan, and Di did not tease her as much as she had expected. They all seemed rather stunned by the mere fact of Rilla adopting a war-baby; perhaps, too, the doctor had issued instructions. Walter, of course, never had teased her over anything; one day he told her she was a brick.
“It took more courage for you to tackle that five pounds of new infant, Rilla-my-Rilla, than it would be for Jem to face a mile of Germans. I wish I had half your pluck,” he said ruefully.
Rilla was very proud of Walter’s approval; nevertheless, she wrote gloomily in her diary that night: —
“I wish I could like the baby a little bit. It would make things easier. But I don’t. I’ve heard people say that when you took care of a baby you got fond of it — but you don’t — I don’t, anyway. And it’s a nuisance — it interferes with everything. It just ties me down — and now of all times when I’m trying to get the Junior Reds started. And I couldn’t go to Alice Clow’s party last night and I was just dying to. Of course father isn’t really unreasonable and I can always get an hour or two off in the evening when it’s necessary; but I knew he wouldn’t stand for my being out half the night and leaving Susan or mother to see to the baby. I suppose it was just as well, because the thing did take colic — or something — about one o’clock. It didn’t kick or stiffen out, so I knew that, according to Morgan, it wasn’t crying for temper; and it wasn’t hungry and no pins were sticking in it. It screamed till it was black in the face; I got up and heated water and put the hot-water bottle on its stomach, and it howled worse than ever and drew up its poor wee thin legs. I was afraid I had burnt it but I don’t believe I did. Then I walked the floor with it although ‘Morgan on Infants’ says that should never be done. I walked miles, and oh, I was so tired and discouraged and mad — yes, I was. I could have shaken the creature if it had been big enough to shake, but it wasn’t. Father was out on a case, and mother had had a headache and Susan is squiffy because when she and Morgan differ I insist upon going by what Morgan says, so I was determined I wouldn’t call her unless I had to.
“Finally, Miss Oliver came in. She has rooms with Nan now, not me, all because of the baby, and I am brokenhearted about it. I miss our long talks after we went to bed, so much. It was the only time I ever had her to myself. I hated to think the baby’s yells had wakened her up, for she has so much to bear now. Mr. Grant is at Valcartier, too, and Miss Oliver feels it dreadfully, though she is splendid about it. She thinks he will never come back and her eyes just break my heart — they are so tragic. She said it wasn’t the baby that woke her — she hadn’t been able to sleep because the Germans are so near Paris; she took the little wretch and laid it flat on its stomach across her knee and thumped its back gently a few times, and it stopped shrieking and went right off to sleep and slept like a lamb the rest of the night. I didn’t — I was too worn out.
“I’m having a perfectly dreadful time getting the Junior Reds started. I succeeded in getting Betty Mead as president, and I am secretary, but they put Jen Vickers in as treasurer and I despise her. She is the sort of girl who calls any clever, handsome, or distinguished people she knows slightly by their first names — behind their backs. And she is sly and two-faced. Una doesn’t mind, of course. She is willing to do anything that comes to hand and never minds whether she has an office or not. She is just a perfect angel, while I am only angelic in spots and demonic in other spots. I wish Walter would take a fancy to her, but he never seems to think about her in that way, although I heard him say once she was like a tea rose. She is too. And she gets imposed upon, just because she is so sweet and willing; but I don’t allow people to impose on Rilla Blythe and ‘that you may tie to,’ as Susan says.
“Just as I expected, Olive was determined we should have lunch served at our meetings. We had a battle royal over it. The majority was against eats and now the minority is sulking. Irene Howard was on the eats side and she has been very cool to me ever since and it makes me feel miserable. I wonder if mother and Mrs. Elliott have problems in the Senior Society too. I suppose they have, but they just go on calmly in spite of everything. I go on — but not calmly — I rage and cry — but I do it all in private and blow off steam in this diary; and when it’s over I vow I’ll show them. I never sulk. I detest people who sulk. Anyhow, we’ve got the society started and we’re to meet once a week, and we’re all going to learn to knit.
“Shirley and I went down to the station again to try to induce Dog Monday to come home but we failed. All the family have tried and failed. Three days after Jem had gone Walter went down and brought Monday home by main force in the buggy and shut him up for three days. Then Monday went on a hunger strike and howled like a Banshee night and day. We had to let him out or he would have starved to death.
“So we have decided to let him alone and father has arranged with the butcher near the station to feed him with bones and scraps. Besides, one of us goes down nearly every day to take him something. He just lies curled up in the shipping-shed, and every time a train comes in he will rush over to the platform, wagging his tail expectantly, and tear around to every one who comes off the train. And then, when the train goes and he realizes that Jem has not come, he creeps dejectedly back to his shed, with his disappointed eyes, and lies down patiently to wait for the next train. Mr. Gray, the station master, says there are times when he can hardly help crying from sheer sympathy. One day some boys threw stones at Monday and old Johnny Mead, who never was known to take notice of anything before, snatched up a meat axe in the butcher’s shop and chased them through the village. Nobody has molested Monday since.
“Kenneth Ford has gone back to Toronto. He came up two evenings ago to say goodbye. I wasn’t home — some clothes had to be made for the baby and Mrs. Meredith offered to help me, so I was over at the manse, and I didn’t see Kenneth. Not that it matters; he told Nan to say goodbye to Spider for him and tell me not to forget him wholly in my absorbing maternal duties. If he could leave such a frivolous, insulting message as that for me it shows plainly that our beautiful hour on the sandshore meant nothing to him and I am not going to think about him or it again.
“Fred Arnold was at the manse and walked home with me. He is the new Methodist minister’s son and very nice and clever, and would be quite handsome if it were not for his nose. It is a really dreadful nose. When he talks of commonplace things it does not matter so much, but when he talks of poetry and ideals the contrast between his nose and his conversation is too much for me and I want to shriek with laughter. It is really not fair, because everything he said was perfectly charming and if somebody like Kenneth had said it I would have been enraptured. When I listened to him with my eyes cast down I was quite fascinated; but as soon as I looked up and saw his nose the spell was broken. He wants to enlist, too, but can’t because he is only seventeen. Mrs. Elliott met us as we were walking through the village and could not have looked more horrified if she caught me walking with the Kaiser himself. Mrs. Elliott detests the Methodists and all their works. Father says it is an obsession with her.”
About 1st September there was an exodus from Ingleside and the manse. Faith, Nan, Di and Walter left for Redmond; Carl betook himself to his Harbour Head school and Shirley was off to Queen’s. Rilla was left alone at Ingleside and would have been very lonely if she had had time to be. She missed Walter keenly; since their talk in Rainbow Valley they had grown very near together and Rilla discussed problems with Walter which she never mentioned to others. But she was so busy with the Junior Reds and her baby that there was rarely a spare minute for loneliness; sometimes, after she went to bed, she cried a little in her pillow over Walter’s absence and Jem at Valcartier and Kenneth’s unromantic farewell message, but she was generally asleep before the tears got fairly started.
“Shall I make arrangements to have the baby sent to Hopetown?” the doctor asked one day two weeks after the baby’s arrival at Ingleside.
For a moment Rilla was tempted to say “Yes.” The baby could be sent to Hopetown — it would be decently looked after — she could have her free days and untrammelled nights back again. But — but — that poor young mother who hadn’t wanted it to go to the asylum! Rilla couldn’t get that out of her thoughts. And that very morning she discovered that the baby had gained eight ounces since its coming to Ingleside. Rilla had felt such a thrill of pride over this.
“You — you said it mightn’t live if it went to Hopetown,” she said.
“It mightn’t. Somehow, institutional care, no matter how good it may be, doesn’t always succeed with delicate babies. But you know what it means if you want it kept here, Rilla.”
“I’ve taken care of it for a fortnight — and it has gained half a pound,” cried Rilla. “I think we’d better wait until we hear from its father anyhow. He mightn’t want to have it sent to an orphan asylum, when he is fighting the battles of his country.”
The doctor and Mrs. Blythe exchanged amused, satisfied smiles behind Rilla’s back; and nothing more was said about Hopetown.
Then the smile faded from the doctor’s face; the Germans were twenty miles from Paris. Horrible tales were beginning to appear in the papers of deeds done in martyred Belgium. Life was very tense at Ingleside for the older people.
“We eat up the war news,” Gertrude Oliver told Mrs. Meredith, trying to laugh and failing. “We study the maps and nip the whole Hun army in a few well-directed strategic moves. But Papa Joffre hasn’t the benefit of our advice — and so Paris — must — fall.”
“Will they reach it — will not some mighty hand yet intervene?” murmured John Meredith.
“I teach school like one in a dream,” continued Gertrude; “then I come home and shut myself in my room and walk the floor. I am wearing a path right across Nan’s carpet. We are so horribly near this war.”
“Them German men are at Senlis. Nothing nor nobody can save Paris now,” wailed Cousin Sophia. Cousin Sophia had taken to reading the newspapers and had learned more about the geography of northern France, if not about the pronunciation of French names, in her seventy-first year than she had ever known in her schooldays.
“I have not such a poor opinion of the Almighty, or of Kitchener,” said Susan stubbornly. “I see there is a Bernstoff man in the States who says that the war is over and Germany has won — and they tell me Whiskers-on-the-moon says the same thing and is quite pleased about it, but I could tell them both that it is chancy work counting chickens even the day before they are hatched, and bears have been known to live long after their skins were sold.”
“Why ain’t the British navy doing more?” persisted Cousin Sophia.
“Even the British navy cannot sail on dry land, Sophia Crawford. I have not given up hope, and I shall not, Tomascow and Mobbage and all such barbarous names to the contrary notwithstanding. Mrs. Dr. dear, can you tell me if R-h-e-i-m-s is Rimes or Reems or Rames or Rems?”
“I believe it’s really more like ‘Rhangs,’ Susan.”
“Oh, those French names,” groaned Susan.
“They tell me the Germans has about ruined the church there,” sighed Cousin Sophia. “I always thought the Germans was Christians.”
“A church is bad enough but their doings in Belgium are far worse,” said Susan grimly. “When I heard the doctor reading about them bayonetting the babies, Mrs. Dr. dear, I just thought, ‘Oh, what if it were our little Jem!’ I was stirring the soup when that thought came to me and I just felt that if I could have lifted that saucepan full of that boiling soup and thrown it at the Kaiser I would not have lived in vain.”
“Tomorrow — tomorrow — will bring the news that the Germans are in Paris,” said Gertrude Oliver, through her tense lips. She had one of those souls that are always tied to the stake, burning in the suffering of the world around them. Apart from her own personal interest in the war, she was racked by the thought of Paris falling into the ruthless hands of the hordes who had burned Louvain and ruined the wonder of Rheims.
But on the morrow and the next morrow came the news of the miracle of the Marne. Rilla rushed madly home from the office waving the Enterprise with its big red headlines. Susan ran out with trembling hands to hoist the flag. The doctor stalked about muttering “Thank God.” Mrs. Blythe cried and laughed and cried again.
“God just put out His hand and touched them—’thus far — no farther’,” said Mr. Meredith that evening.
Rilla was singing upstairs as she put the baby to bed. Paris was saved — the war was over — Germany had lost — there would soon be an end now — Jem and Jerry would be back. The black clouds had rolled by.
“Don’t you dare have colic this joyful night,” she told the baby. “If you do I’ll clap you back into your soup tureen and ship you off to Hopetown — by freight — on the early train. You have got beautiful eyes — and you’re not quite as red and wrinkled as you were — but you haven’t a speck of hair — and your hands are like little claws — and I don’t like you a bit better than I ever did. But I hope your poor little white mother knows that you’re tucked in a soft basket with a bottle of milk as rich as Morgan allows instead of perishing by inches with old Meg Conover. And I hope she doesn’t know that I nearly drowned you that first morning when Susan wasn’t there and I let you slip right out of my hands into the water. Why will you be so slippery? No, I don’t like you and I never will but for all that I’m going to make a decent, upstanding infant of you. You are going to get as fat as a self-respecting child should be, for one thing. I am not going to have people saying ‘what a puny little thing that baby of Rilla Blythe’s is’ as old Mrs. Drew said at the senior Red Cross yesterday. If I can’t love you I mean to be proud of you at least.”
Rilla read her first love letter in her Rainbow Valley fir-shadowed nook, and a girl’s first love letter, whatever blase, older people may think of it, is an event of tremendous importance in the teens. After Kenneth’s regiment had left Kingsport there came a fortnight of dully-aching anxiety and when the congregation sang in Church on Sunday evenings,
“Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea,”
Rilla’s voice always failed her; for with the words came a horribly vivid mind picture of a submarined ship sinking beneath pitiless waves amid the struggles and cries of drowning men. Then word came that Kenneth’s regiment had arrived safely in England; and now, at last, here was his letter. It began with something that made Rilla supremely happy for the moment and ended with a paragraph that crimsoned her cheeks with the wonder and thrill and delight of it. Between beginning and ending the letter was just such a jolly, newsy epistle as Ken might have written to anyone; but for the sake of that beginning and ending Rilla slept with the letter under her pillow for weeks, sometimes waking in the night to slip her fingers under and just touch it, and looked with secret pity on other girls whose sweethearts could never have written them anything half so wonderful and exquisite. Kenneth was not the son of a famous novelist for nothing. He “had a way” of expressing things in a few poignant, significant words that seemed to suggest far more than they uttered, and never grew stale or flat or foolish with ever so many scores of readings. Rilla went home from Rainbow Valley as if she flew rather than walked.
But such moments of uplift were rare that autumn. To be sure, there was one day in September when great news came of a big Allied victory in the west and Susan ran out to hoist the flag — the first time she had hoisted it since the Russian line broke and the last time she was to hoist it for many dismal moons.
“Likely the Big Push has begun at last, Mrs. Dr. dear,” she exclaimed, “and we will soon see the finish of the Huns. Our boys will be home by Christmas now. Hurrah!”
Susan was ashamed of herself for hurrahing the minute she had done it, and apologized meekly for such an outburst of juvenility. “But indeed, Mrs. Dr. dear, this good news has gone to my head after this awful summer of Russian slumps and Gallipoli setbacks.”
“Good news!” said Miss Oliver bitterly. “I wonder if the women whose men have been killed for it will call it good news. Just because our own men are not on that part of the front we are rejoicing as if the victory had cost no lives.”
“Now, Miss Oliver dear, do not take that view of it,” deprecated Susan. “We have not had much to rejoice over of late and yet men were being killed just the same. Do not let yourself slump like poor Cousin Sophia. She said, when the word came, ‘Ah, it is nothing but a rift in the clouds. We are up this week but we will be down the next.’ ‘Well, Sophia Crawford,’ said I, — for I will never give in to her, Mrs. Dr. dear—’God himself cannot make two hills without a hollow between them, as I have heard it said, but that is no reason why we should not take the good of the hills when we are on them.’ But Cousin Sophia moaned on. ‘Here is the Gallipolly expedition a failure and the Grand Duke Nicholas sent off, and everyone knows the Czar of Rooshia is a pro-German and the Allies have no ammunition and Bulgaria is going against us. And the end is not yet, for England and France must be punished for their deadly sins until they repent in sackcloth and ashes.’ ‘I think myself,’ I said, ‘that they will do their repenting in khaki and trench mud, and it seems to me that the Huns should have a few sins to repent of also.’ ‘They are instruments in the hands of the Almighty, to purge the garner,’ said Sophia. And then I got mad, Mrs. Dr. dear, and told her I did not and never would believe that the Almighty ever took such dirty instruments in hand for any purpose whatever, and that I did not consider it decent for her to be using the words of Holy Writ as glibly as she was doing in ordinary conversation. She was not, I told her, a minister or even an elder. And for the time being I squelched her, Mrs. Dr. dear. Cousin Sophia has no spirit. She is very different from her niece, Mrs. Dean Crawford over-harbour. You know the Dean Crawfords had five boys and now the new baby is another boy. All the connection and especially Dean Crawford were much disappointed because their hearts had been set on a girl; but Mrs. Dean just laughed and said, ‘Everywhere I went this summer I saw the sign “MEN WANTED” staring me in the face. Do you think I could go and have a girl under such circumstances?’ There is spirit for you, Mrs. Dr. dear. But Cousin Sophia would say the child was just so much more cannon fodder.”
Cousin Sophia had full range for her pessimism that gloomy autumn, and even Susan, incorrigible old optimist as she was, was hard put to it for cheer. When Bulgaria lined up with Germany Susan only remarked scornfully, “One more nation anxious for a licking,” but the Greek tangle worried her beyond her powers of philosophy to endure calmly.
“Constantine of Greece has a German wife, Mrs. Dr. dear, and that fact squelches hope. To think that I should have lived to care what kind of a wife Constantine of Greece had! The miserable creature is under his wife’s thumb and that is a bad place for any man to be. I am an old maid and an old maid has to be independent or she will be squashed out. But if I had been a married woman, Mrs. Dr. dear, I would have been meek and humble. It is my opinion that this Sophia of Greece is a minx.”
Susan was furious when the news came that Venizelos had met with defeat. “I could spank Constantine and skin him alive afterwards, that I could,” she exclaimed bitterly.
“Oh, Susan, I’m surprised at you,” said the doctor, pulling a long face. “Have you no regard for the proprieties? Skin him alive by all means but omit the spanking.”
“If he had been well spanked in his younger days he might have more sense now,” retorted Susan. “But I suppose princes are never spanked, more is the pity. I see the Allies have sent him an ultimatum. I could tell them that it will take more than ultimatums to skin a snake like Constantine. Perhaps the Allied blockade will hammer sense into his head; but that will take some time I am thinking, and in the meantime what is to become of poor Serbia?”
They saw what became of Serbia, and during the process Susan was hardly to be lived with. In her exasperation she abused everything and everybody except Kitchener, and she fell upon poor President Wilson tooth and claw.
“If he had done his duty and gone into the war long ago we should not have seen this mess in Serbia,” she avowed.
“It would be a serious thing to plunge a great country like the United States, with its mixed population, into the war, Susan,” said the doctor, who sometimes came to the defence of the President, not because he thought Wilson needed it especially, but from an unholy love of baiting Susan.
“Maybe, doctor dear — maybe! But that makes me think of the old story of the girl who told her grandmother she was going to be married. ‘It is a solemn thing to be married,’ said the old lady. ‘Yes, but it is a solemner thing not to be,’ said the girl. And I can testify to that out of my own experience, doctor dear. And I think it is a solemner thing for the Yankees that they have kept out of the war than it would have been if they had gone into it. However, though I do not know much about them, I am of the opinion that we will see them starting something yet, Woodrow Wilson or no Woodrow Wilson, when they get it into their heads that this war is not a correspondence school. They will not,” said Susan, energetically waving a saucepan with one hand and a soup ladle with the other, “be too proud to fight then.”
On a pale-yellow, windy evening in October Carl Meredith went away. He had enlisted on his eighteenth birthday. John Meredith saw him off with a set face. His two boys were gone — there was only little Bruce left now. He loved Bruce and Bruce’s mother dearly; but Jerry and Carl were the sons of the bride of his youth and Carl was the only one of all his children who had Cecilia’s very eyes. As they looked lovingly out at him above Carl’s uniform the pale minister suddenly remembered the day when for the first and last time he had tried to whip Carl for his prank with the eel. That was the first time he had realised how much Carl’s eyes were like Cecilia’s. Now he realised it again once more. Would he ever again see his dead wife’s eyes looking at him from his son’s face? What a bonny, clean, handsome lad he was! It was — hard — to see him go. John Meredith seemed to be looking at a torn plain strewed with the bodies of “able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five.” Only the other day Carl had been a little scrap of a boy, hunting bugs in Rainbow Valley, taking lizards to bed with him, and scandalizing the Glen by carrying frogs to Sunday School. It seemed hardly — right — somehow that he should be an “able-bodied man” in khaki. Yet John Meredith had said no word to dissuade him when Carl had told him he must go.