IN THE DAYS OF LANGEMARCK
"How can spring come and be beautiful in such a horror," wrote Rilla in
her diary. "When the sun shines and the fluffy yellow catkins are
coming out on the willow-trees down by the brook, and the garden is
beginning to be beautiful I can't realize that such dreadful things are
happening in Flanders. But they are!
"This past week has been terrible for us all, since the news came of
the fighting around Ypres and the battles of Langemarck and St. Julien.
Our Canadian boys have done splendidly--General French says they 'saved
the situation,' when the Germans had all but broken through. But I
can't feel pride or exultation or anything but a gnawing anxiety over
Jem and Jerry and Mr. Grant. The casualty lists are coming out in the
papers every day--oh, there are so many of them. I can't bear to read
them for fear I'd find Jem's name--for there have been cases where
people have seen their boys' names in the casualty lists before the
official telegram came. As for the telephone, for a day or two I just
refused to answer it, because I thought I could not endure the horrible
moment that came between saying 'Hello' and hearing the response. That
moment seemed a hundred years long, for I was always dreading to hear
'There is a telegram for Dr. Blythe.' Then, when I had shirked for a
while, I was ashamed of leaving it all for mother or Susan, and now I
make myself go. But it never gets any easier. Gertrude teaches school
and reads compositions and sets examination papers just as she always
has done, but I know her thoughts are over in Flanders all the time.
Her eyes haunt me.
"And Kenneth is in khaki now, too. He has got a lieutenant's commission
and expects to go overseas in midsummer, so he wrote me. There wasn't
much else in the letter--he seemed to be thinking of nothing but going
overseas. I shall not see him again before he goes--perhaps I will
never see him again. Sometimes I ask myself if that evening at Four
Winds was all a dream. It might as well be--it seems as if it happened
in another life lived years ago--and everybody has forgotten it but me.
"Walter and Nan and Di came home last night from Redmond. When Walter
stepped off the train Dog Monday rushed to meet him, frantic with joy.
I suppose he thought Jem would be there, too. After the first moment,
he paid no attention to Walter and his pats, but just stood there,
wagging his tail nervously and looking past Walter at the other people
coming out, with eyes that made me choke up, for I couldn't help
thinking that, for all we knew, Monday might never see Jem come off
that train again. Then, when all the people were out, Monday looked up
at Walter, gave his hand a little lick as if to say, 'I know it isn't
your fault he didn't come--excuse me for feeling disappointed,' and
then he trotted back to his shed, with that funny little sidelong
waggle of his that always makes it seem that his hind legs are
travelling directly away from the point at which his forelegs are
aiming.
"We tried to coax him home with us--Di even got down and kissed him
between the eyes and said, 'Monday, old duck, won't you come up with us
just for the evening?' And Monday said--he did!--'I am very sorry but I
can't. I've got a date to meet Jem here, you know, and there's a train
goes through at eight.'
"It's lovely to have Walter back again though he seems quiet and sad,
just as he was at Christmas. But I'm going to love him hard and cheer
him up and make him laugh as he used to. It seems to me that every day
of my life Walter means more to me.
"The other evening Susan happened to say that the mayflowers were out
in Rainbow Valley. I chanced to be looking at mother when Susan spoke.
Her face changed and she gave a queer little choked cry. Most of the
time mother is so spunky and gay you would never guess what she feels
inside; but now and then some little thing is too much for her and we
see under the surface. 'Mayflowers!' she said. 'Jem brought me
mayflowers last year!' and she got up and went out of the room. I would
have rushed off to Rainbow Valley and brought her an armful of
mayflowers, but I knew that wasn't what she wanted. And after Walter
got home last night he slipped away to the valley and brought mother
home all the mayflowers he could find. Nobody had said a word to him
about it--he just remembered himself that Jem used to bring mother the
first mayflowers and so he brought them in Jem's place. It shows how
tender and thoughtful he is. And yet there are people who send him
cruel letters!
"It seems strange that we can go in with ordinary life just as if
nothing were happening overseas that concerned us, just as if any day
might not bring us awful news. But we can and do. Susan is putting in
the garden, and mother and she are housecleaning, and we Junior Reds
are getting up a concert in aid of the Belgians. We have been
practising for a month and having no end of trouble and bother with
cranky people. Miranda Pryor promised to help with a dialogue and when
she had her part all learnt her father put his foot down and refused to
allow her to help at all. I am not blaming Miranda exactly, but I do
think she might have a little more spunk sometimes. If she put her foot
down once in a while she might bring her father to terms, for she is
all the housekeeper he has and what would he do if she 'struck'? If I
were in Miranda's shoes I'd find some way of managing
Whiskers-on-the-moon. I would horse-whip him, or bite him, if nothing
else would serve. But Miranda is a meek and obedient daughter whose
days should be long in the land.
"I couldn't get anyone else to take the part, because nobody liked it,
so finally I had to take it myself. Olive Kirk is on the concert
committee and goes against me in every single thing. But I got my way
in asking Mrs. Channing to come out from town and sing for us, anyhow.
She is a beautiful singer and will draw such a crowd that we will make
more than we will have to pay her. Olive Kirk thought our local talent
good enough and Minnie Clow won't sing at all now in the choruses
because she would be so nervous before Mrs. Channing. And Minnie is the
only good alto we have! There are times when I am so exasperated that I
feel tempted to wash my hands of the whole affair; but after I dance
round my room a few times in sheer rage I cool down and have another
whack at it. Just at present I am racked with worry for fear the Isaac
Reeses are taking whooping-cough. They have all got a dreadful cold and
there are five of them who have important parts in the programme and if
they go and develop whooping-cough what shall I do? Dick Reese's violin
solo is to be one of our titbits and Kit Reese is in every tableau and
the three small girls have the cutest flag-drill. I've been toiling for
weeks to train them in it, and now it seems likely that all my trouble
will go for nothing.
"Jims cut his first tooth today. I am very glad, for he is nearly nine
months old and Mary Vance has been insinuating that he is awfully
backward about cutting his teeth. He has begun to creep but doesn't
crawl as most babies do. He trots about on all fours and carries things
in his mouth like a little dog. Nobody can say he isn't up to schedule
time in the matter of creeping anyway--away ahead of it indeed, since
ten months is Morgan's average for creeping. He is so cute, it will be
a shame if his dad never sees him. His hair is coming on nicely too,
and I am not without hope that it will be curly.
"Just for a few minutes, while I've been writing of Jims and the
concert, I've forgotten Ypres and the poison gas and the casualty
lists. Now it all rushes back, worse than ever. Oh, if we could just
know that Jem is all right! I used to be so furious with Jem when he
called me Spider. And now, if he would just come whistling through the
hall and call out, 'Hello, Spider,' as he used to do, I would think it
the loveliest name in the world."
Rilla put away her diary and went out to the garden. The spring evening
was very lovely. The long, green, seaward-looking glen was filled with
dusk, and beyond it were meadows of sunset. The harbour was radiant,
purple here, azure there, opal elsewhere. The maple grove was beginning
to be misty green. Rilla looked about her with wistful eyes. Who said
that spring was the joy of the year? It was the heart-break of the
year. And the pale-purply mornings and the daffodil stars and the wind
in the old pine were so many separate pangs of the heart-break. Would
life ever be free from dread again?
"It's good to see P.E.I. twilight once more," said Walter, joining her.
"I didn't really remember that the sea was so blue and the roads so red
and the wood nooks so wild and fairy haunted. Yes, the fairies still
abide here. I vow I could find scores of them under the violets in
Rainbow Valley."
Rilla was momentarily happy. This sounded like the Walter of yore. She
hoped he was forgetting certain things that had troubled him.
"And isn't the sky blue over Rainbow Valley?" she said, responding to
his mood. "Blue--blue--you'd have to say 'blue' a hundred times before
you could express how blue it is."
Susan wandered by, her head tied up with a shawl, her hands full of
garden implements. Doc, stealthy and wild-eyed, was shadowing her steps
among the spirea bushes.
"The sky may be blue," said Susan, "but that cat has been Hyde all day
so we will likely have rain tonight and by the same token I have
rheumatism in my shoulder."
"It may rain--but don't think rheumatism, Susan--think violets," said
Walter gaily--rather too gaily, Rilla thought.
Susan considered him unsympathetic.
"Indeed, Walter dear, I do not know what you mean by thinking violets,"
she responded stiffly, "and rheumatism is not a thing to be joked
about, as you may some day realize for yourself. I hope I am not of the
kind that is always complaining of their aches and pains, especially
now when the news is so terrible. Rheumatism is bad enough but I
realize, and none better, that it is not to be compared to being gassed
by the Huns."
"Oh, my God, no!" exclaimed Walter passionately. He turned and went
back to the house.
Susan shook her head. She disapproved entirely of such ejaculations. "I
hope he will not let his mother hear him talking like that," she
thought as she stacked the hoes and rake away.
Rilla was standing among the budding daffodils with tear-filled eyes.
Her evening was spoiled; she detested Susan, who had somehow hurt
Walter; and Jem--had Jem been gassed? Had he died in torture?
"I can't endure this suspense any longer," said Rilla desperately.
But she endured it as the others did for another week. Then a letter
came from Jem. He was all right.
"I've come through without a scratch, dad. Don't know how I or any of
us did it. You'll have seen all about it in the papers--I can't write
of it. But the Huns haven't got through--they won't get through. Jerry
was knocked stiff by a shell one time, but it was only the shock. He
was all right in a few days. Grant is safe, too."
Nan had a letter from Jerry Meredith. "I came back to consciousness at
dawn," he wrote. "Couldn't tell what had happened to me but thought
that I was done for. I was all alone and afraid--terribly afraid. Dead
men were all around me, lying on the horrible grey, slimy fields. I was
woefully thirsty--and I thought of David and the Bethlehem water--and
of the old spring in Rainbow Valley under the maples. I seemed to see
it just before me--and you standing laughing on the other side of
it--and I thought it was all over with me. And I didn't care. Honestly,
I didn't care. I just felt a dreadful childish fear of loneliness and
of those dead men around me, and a sort of wonder how this could have
happened to me. Then they found me and carted me off and before long I
discovered that there wasn't really anything wrong with me. I'm going
back to the trenches tomorrow. Every man is needed there that can be
got."
"Laughter is gone out of the world," said Faith Meredith, who had come
over to report on her letters. "I remember telling old Mrs. Taylor long
ago that the world was a world of laughter. But it isn't so any longer."
"It's a shriek of anguish," said Gertrude Oliver.
"We must keep a little laughter, girls," said Mrs. Blythe. "A good
laugh is as good as a prayer sometimes--only sometimes," she added
under her breath. She had found it very hard to laugh during the three
weeks she had just lived through--she, Anne Blythe, to whom laughter
had always come so easily and freshly. And what hurt most was that
Rilla's laughter had grown so rare--Rilla whom she used to think
laughed over-much. Was all the child's girlhood to be so clouded? Yet
how strong and clever and womanly she was growing! How patiently she
knitted and sewed and manipulated those uncertain Junior Reds! And how
wonderful she was with Jims.
"She really could not do better for that child than if she had raised a
baker's dozen, Mrs. Dr. dear," Susan had avowed solemnly. "Little did I
ever expect it of her on the day she landed here with that soup tureen."