REALISM AND ROMANCE
"Warsaw has fallen," said Dr. Blythe with a resigned air, as he brought
the mail in one warm August day.
Gertrude and Mrs. Blythe looked dismally at each other, and Rilla, who
was feeding Jims a Morganized diet from a carefully sterilized spoon,
laid the said spoon down on his tray, utterly regardless of germs, and
said, "Oh, dear me," in as tragic a tone as if the news had come as a
thunderbolt instead of being a foregone conclusion from the preceding
week's dispatches. They had thought they were quite resigned to
Warsaw's fall but now they knew they had, as always, hoped against hope.
"Now, let us take a brace," said Susan. "It is not the terrible thing
we have been thinking. I read a dispatch three columns long in the
Montreal Herald yesterday that proved that Warsaw was not important
from a military point of view at all. So let us take the military point
of view, doctor dear."
"I read that dispatch, too, and it has encouraged me immensely," said
Gertrude. "I knew then and I know now that it was a lie from beginning
to end. But I am in that state of mind where even a lie is a comfort,
providing it is a cheerful lie."
"In that case, Miss Oliver dear, the German official reports ought to
be all you need," said Susan sarcastically. "I never read them now
because they make me so mad I cannot put my thoughts properly on my
work after a dose of them. Even this news about Warsaw has taken the
edge off my afternoon's plans. Misfortunes never come singly. I spoiled
my baking of bread today--and now Warsaw has fallen--and here is little
Kitchener bent on choking himself to death."
Jims was evidently trying to swallow his spoon, germs and all. Rilla
rescued him mechanically and was about to resume the operation of
feeding him when a casual remark of her father's sent such a shock and
thrill over her that for the second time she dropped that doomed spoon.
"Kenneth Ford is down at Martin West's over-harbour," the doctor was
saying. "His regiment was on its way to the front but was held up in
Kingsport for some reason, and Ken got leave of absence to come over to
the Island."
"I hope he will come up to see us," exclaimed Mrs. Blythe.
"He only has a day or two off, I believe," said the doctor absently.
Nobody noticed Rilla's flushed face and trembling hands. Even the most
thoughtful and watchful of parents do not see everything that goes on
under their very noses. Rilla made a third attempt to give the
long-suffering Jims his dinner, but all she could think of was the
question--Would Ken come to see her before he went away? She had not
heard from him for a long while. Had he forgotten her completely? If he
did not come she would know that he had. Perhaps there was even--some
other girl back there in Toronto. Of course there was. She was a little
fool to be thinking about him at all. She would not think about him. If
he came, well and good. It would only be courteous of him to make a
farewell call at Ingleside where he had often been a guest. If he did
not come--well and good, too. It did not matter very much. Nobody was
going to fret. That was all settled comfortably--she was quite
indifferent--but meanwhile Jims was being fed with a haste and
recklessness that would have filled the soul of Morgan with horror.
Jims himself didn't like it, being a methodical baby, accustomed to
swallowing spoonfuls with a decent interval for breath between each. He
protested, but his protests availed him nothing. Rilla, as far as the
care and feeding of infants was concerned, was utterly demoralized.
Then the telephone-bell rang. There was nothing unusual about the
telephone ringing. It rang on an average every ten minutes at
Ingleside. But Rilla dropped Jims' spoon again--on the carpet this
time--and flew to the 'phone as if life depended on her getting there
before anybody else. Jims, his patience exhausted, lifted up his voice
and wept.
"Hello, is this Ingleside?"
"Yes."
"That you, Rilla?" "Yeth--yeth." Oh, why couldn't Jims stop howling for
just one little minute? Why didn't somebody come in and choke him?
"Know who's speaking?"
Oh, didn't she know! Wouldn't she know that voice anywhere--at any time?
"It's Ken--isn't it?"
"Sure thing. I'm here for a look-in. Can I come up to Ingleside tonight
and see you?"
"Of courthe."
Had he used "you" in the singular or plural sense? Presently she would
wring Jims' neck--oh, what was Ken saying?
"See here, Rilla, can you arrange that there won't be more than a few
dozen people round? Understand? I can't make my meaning clearer over
this bally rural line. There are a dozen receivers down."
Did she understand! Yes, she understood.
"I'll try," she said.
"I'll be up about eight then. By-by."
Rilla hung up the 'phone and flew to Jims. But she did not wring that
injured infant's neck. Instead she snatched him bodily out of his
chair, crushed him against her face, kissed him rapturously on his
milky mouth, and danced wildly around the room with him in her arms.
After this Jims was relieved to find that she returned to sanity, gave
him the rest of his dinner properly, and tucked him away for his
afternoon nap with the little lullaby he loved best of all. She sewed
at Red Cross shirts for the rest of the afternoon and built a crystal
castle of dreams, all a-quiver with rainbows. Ken wanted to see her--to
see her alone. That could be easily managed. Shirley wouldn't bother
them, father and mother were going to the Manse, Miss Oliver never
played gooseberry, and Jims always slept the clock round from seven to
seven. She would entertain Ken on the veranda--it would be
moonlight--she would wear her white georgette dress and do her hair
up--yes, she would--at least in a low knot at the nape of her neck.
Mother couldn't object to that, surely. Oh, how wonderful and romantic
it would be! Would Ken say anything--he must mean to say something or
why should he be so particular about seeing her alone? What if it
rained--Susan had been complaining about Mr. Hyde that morning! What if
some officious Junior Red called to discuss Belgians and shirts? Or,
worst of all, what if Fred Arnold dropped in? He did occasionally.
The evening came at last and was all that could be desired in an
evening. The doctor and his wife went to the Manse, Shirley and Miss
Oliver went they alone knew where, Susan went to the store for
household supplies, and Jims went to Dreamland. Rilla put on her
georgette gown, knotted up her hair and bound a little double string of
pearls around it. Then she tucked a cluster of pale pink baby roses at
her belt. Would Ken ask her for a rose for a keepsake? She knew that
Jem had carried to the trenches in Flanders a faded rose that Faith
Meredith had kissed and given him the night before he left.
Rilla looked very sweet when she met Ken in the mingled moonlight and
vine shadows of the big veranda. The hand she gave him was cold and she
was so desperately anxious not to lisp that her greeting was prim and
precise. How handsome and tall Kenneth looked in his lieutenant's
uniform! It made him seem older, too--so much so that Rilla felt rather
foolish. Hadn't it been the height of absurdity for her to suppose that
this splendid young officer had anything special to say to her, little
Rilla Blythe of Glen St. Mary? Likely she hadn't understood him after
all--he had only meant that he didn't want a mob of folks around making
a fuss over him and trying to lionize him, as they had probably done
over-harbour. Yes, of course, that was all he meant--and she, little
idiot, had gone and vainly imagined that he didn't want anybody but
her. And he would think she had manoeuvred everybody away so that they
could be alone together, and he would laugh to himself at her.
"This is better luck than I hoped for," said Ken, leaning back in his
chair and looking at her with very unconcealed admiration in his
eloquent eyes. "I was sure someone would be hanging about and it was
just you I wanted to see, Rilla-my-Rilla."
Rilla's dream castle flashed into the landscape again. This was
unmistakable enough certainly--not much doubt as to his meaning here.
"There aren't--so many of us--to poke around as there used to be," she
said softly.
"No, that's so," said Ken gently. "Jem and Walter and the girls
away--it makes a big blank, doesn't it? But--" he leaned forward until
his dark curls almost brushed her hair--"doesn't Fred Arnold try to
fill the blank occasionally. I've been told so."
At this moment, before Rilla could make any reply, Jims began to cry at
the top of his voice in the room whose open window was just above
them--Jims, who hardly ever cried in the evening. Moreover, he was
crying, as Rilla knew from experience, with a vim and energy that
betokened that he had been already whimpering softly unheard for some
time and was thoroughly exasperated. When Jims started in crying like
that he made a thorough job of it. Rilla knew that there was no use to
sit still and pretend to ignore him. He wouldn't stop; and conversation
of any kind was out of the question when such shrieks and howls were
floating over your head. Besides, she was afraid Kenneth would think
she was utterly unfeeling if she sat still and let a baby cry like
that. He was not likely acquainted with Morgan's invaluable volume.
She got up. "Jims has had a nightmare, I think. He sometimes has one
and he is always badly frightened by it. Excuse me for a moment."
Rilla flew upstairs, wishing quite frankly that soup tureens had never
been invented. But when Jims, at sight of her, lifted his little arms
entreatingly and swallowed several sobs, with tears rolling down his
cheeks, resentment went out of her heart. After all, the poor darling
was frightened. She picked him up gently and rocked him soothingly
until his sobs ceased and his eyes closed. Then she essayed to lay him
down in his crib. Jims opened his eyes and shrieked a protest. This
performance was repeated twice. Rilla grew desperate. She couldn't
leave Ken down there alone any longer--she had been away nearly half an
hour already. With a resigned air she marched downstairs, carrying
Jims, and sat down on the veranda. It was, no doubt, a ridiculous thing
to sit and cuddle a contrary war-baby when your best young man was
making his farewell call, but there was nothing else to be done.
Jims was supremely happy. He kicked his little pink-soled feet
rapturously out under his white nighty and gave one of his rare laughs.
He was beginning to be a very pretty baby; his golden hair curled in
silken ringlets all over his little round head and his eyes were
beautiful.
"He's a decorative kiddy all right, isn't he?" said Ken.
"His looks are very well," said Rilla, bitterly, as if to imply that
they were much the best of him. Jims, being an astute infant, sensed
trouble in the atmosphere and realized that it was up to him to clear
it away. He turned his face up to Rilla, smiled adorably and said,
clearly and beguilingly, "Will--Will."
It was the very first time he had spoken a word or tried to speak.
Rilla was so delighted that she forgot her grudge against him. She
forgave him with a hug and kiss. Jims, understanding that he was
restored to favour, cuddled down against her just where a gleam of
light from the lamp in the living-room struck across his hair and
turned it into a halo of gold against her breast.
Kenneth sat very still and silent, looking at Rilla--at the delicate,
girlish silhouette of her, her long lashes, her dented lip, her
adorable chin. In the dim moonlight, as she sat with her head bent a
little over Jims, the lamplight glinting on her pearls until they
glistened like a slender nimbus, he thought she looked exactly like the
Madonna that hung over his mother's desk at home. He carried that
picture of her in his heart to the horror of the battlefields of
France. He had had a strong fancy for Rilla Blythe ever since the night
of the Four Winds dance; but it was when he saw her there, with little
Jims in her arms, that he loved her and realized it. And all the while,
poor Rilla was sitting, disappointed and humiliated, feeling that her
last evening with Ken was spoiled and wondering why things always had
to go so contrarily outside of books. She felt too absurd to try to
talk. Evidently Ken was completely disgusted, too, since he was sitting
there in such stony silence.
Hope revived momentarily when Jims went so thoroughly asleep that she
thought it would be safe to lay him down on the couch in the
living-room. But when she came out again Susan was sitting on the
veranda, loosening her bonnet strings with the air of one who meant to
stay where she was for some time.
"Have you got your baby to sleep?" she asked kindly.
Your baby! Really, Susan might have more tact.
"Yes," said Rilla shortly.
Susan laid her parcels on the reed table, as one determined to do her
duty. She was very tired but she must help Rilla out. Here was Kenneth
Ford who had come to call on the family and they were all unfortunately
out, and "the poor child" had had to entertain him alone. But Susan had
come to her rescue--Susan would do her part no matter how tired she was.
"Dear me, how you have grown up," she said, looking at Ken's six feet
of khaki uniform without the least awe. Susan had grown used to khaki
now, and at sixty-four even a lieutenant's uniform is just clothes and
nothing else. "It is an amazing thing how fast children do grow up.
Rilla here, now, is almost fifteen."
"I'm going on seventeen, Susan," cried Rilla almost passionately. She
was a whole month past sixteen. It was intolerable of Susan.
"It seems just the other day that you were all babies," said Susan,
ignoring Rilla's protest. "You were really the prettiest baby I ever
saw, Ken, though your mother had an awful time trying to cure you of
sucking your thumb. Do you remember the day I spanked you?"
"No," said Ken.
"Oh well, I suppose you would be too young--you were only about four
and you were here with your mother and you insisted on teasing Nan
until she cried. I had tried several ways of stopping you but none
availed, and I saw that a spanking was the only thing that would serve.
So I picked you up and laid you across my knee and lambasted you well.
You howled at the top of your voice but you left Nan alone after that."
Rilla was writhing. Hadn't Susan any realization that she was
addressing an officer of the Canadian Army? Apparently she had not. Oh,
what would Ken think? "I suppose you do not remember the time your
mother spanked you either," continued Susan, who seemed to be bent on
reviving tender reminiscences that evening. "I shall never, no never,
forget it. She was up here one night with you when you were about
three, and you and Walter were playing out in the kitchen yard with a
kitten. I had a big puncheon of rainwater by the spout which I was
reserving for making soap. And you and Walter began quarrelling over
the kitten. Walter was at one side of the puncheon standing on a chair,
holding the kitten, and you were standing on a chair at the other side.
You leaned across that puncheon and grabbed the kitten and pulled. You
were always a great hand for taking what you wanted without too much
ceremony. Walter held on tight and the poor kitten yelled but you
dragged Walter and the kitten half over and then you both lost your
balance and tumbled into that puncheon, kitten and all. If I had not
been on the spot you would both have been drowned. I flew to the rescue
and hauled you all three out before much harm was done, and your
mother, who had seen it all from the upstairs window, came down and
picked you up, dripping as you were, and gave you a beautiful spanking.
Ah," said Susan with a sigh, "those were happy old days at Ingleside."
"Must have been," said Ken. His voice sounded queer and stiff. Rilla
supposed he was hopelessly enraged. The truth was he dared not trust
his voice lest it betray his frantic desire to laugh.
"Rilla here, now," said Susan, looking affectionately at that unhappy
damsel, "never was much spanked. She was a real well-behaved child for
the most part. But her father did spank her once. She got two bottles
of pills out of his office and dared Alice Clow to see which of them
could swallow all the pills first, and if her father had not happened
in the nick of time those two children would have been corpses by
night. As it was, they were both sick enough shortly after. But the
doctor spanked Rilla then and there and he made such a thorough job of
it that she never meddled with anything in his office afterwards. We
hear a great deal nowadays of something that is called 'moral
persuasion,' but in my opinion a good spanking and no nagging
afterwards is a much better thing."
Rilla wondered viciously whether Susan meant to relate all the family
spankings. But Susan had finished with the subject and branched off to
another cheerful one.
"I remember little Tod MacAllister over-harbour killed himself that
very way, eating up a whole box of fruitatives because he thought they
were candy. It was a very sad affair. He was," said Susan earnestly,
"the very cutest little corpse I ever laid my eyes on. It was very
careless of his mother to leave the fruitatives where he could get
them, but she was well-known to be a heedless creature. One day she
found a nest of five eggs as she was going across the fields to church
with a brand new blue silk dress on. So she put them in the pocket of
her petticoat and when she got to church she forgot all about them and
sat down on them and her dress was ruined, not to speak of the
petticoat. Let me see--would not Tod be some relation of yours? Your
great grandmother West was a MacAllister. Her brother Amos was a
MacDonaldite in religion. I am told he used to take the jerks something
fearful. But you look more like your great grandfather West than the
MacAllisters. He died of a paralytic stroke quite early in life."
"Did you see anybody at the store?" asked Rilla desperately, in the
faint hope of directing Susan's conversation into more agreeable
channels.
"Nobody except Mary Vance," said Susan, "and she was stepping round as
brisk as the Irishman's flea."
What terrible similes Susan used! Would Kenneth think she acquired them
from the family!
"To hear Mary talk about Miller Douglas you would think he was the only
Glen boy who had enlisted," Susan went on. "But of course she always
did brag and she has some good qualities I am willing to admit, though
I did not think so that time she chased Rilla here through the village
with a dried codfish till the poor child fell, heels over head, into
the puddle before Carter Flagg's store."
Rilla went cold all over with wrath and shame. Were there any more
disgraceful scenes in her past that Susan could rake up? As for Ken, he
could have howled over Susan's speeches, but he would not so insult the
duenna of his lady, so he sat with a preternaturally solemn face which
seemed to poor Rilla a haughty and offended one.
"I paid eleven cents for a bottle of ink tonight," complained Susan.
"Ink is twice as high as it was last year. Perhaps it is because
Woodrow Wilson has been writing so many notes. It must cost him
considerable. My cousin Sophia says Woodrow Wilson is not the man she
expected him to be--but then no man ever was. Being an old maid, I do
not know much about men and have never pretended to, but my cousin
Sophia is very hard on them, although she married two of them, which
you might think was a fair share. Albert Crawford's chimney blew down
in that big gale we had last week, and when Sophia heard the bricks
clattering on the roof she thought it was a Zeppelin raid and went into
hysterics. And Mrs. Albert Crawford says that of the two things she
would have preferred the Zeppelin raid."
Rilla sat limply in her chair like one hypnotized. She knew Susan would
stop talking when she was ready to stop and that no earthly power could
make her stop any sooner. As a rule, she was very fond of Susan but
just now she hated her with a deadly hatred. It was ten o'clock. Ken
would soon have to go--the others would soon be home--and she had not
even had a chance to explain to Ken that Fred Arnold filled no blank in
her life nor ever could. Her rainbow castle lay in ruins round her.
Kenneth got up at last. He realized that Susan was there to stay as
long as he did, and it was a three mile walk to Martin West's
over-harbour. He wondered if Rilla had put Susan up to this, not
wanting to be left alone with him, lest he say something Fred Arnold's
sweetheart did not want to hear. Rilla got up, too, and walked silently
the length of the veranda with him. They stood there for a moment, Ken
on the lower step. The step was half sunk into the earth and mint grew
thickly about and over its edge. Often crushed by so many passing feet
it gave out its essence freely, and the spicy odour hung round them
like a soundless, invisible benediction. Ken looked up at Rilla, whose
hair was shining in the moonlight and whose eyes were pools of
allurement. All at once he felt sure there was nothing in that gossip
about Fred Arnold.
"Rilla," he said in a sudden, intense whisper, "you are the sweetest
thing."
Rilla flushed and looked at Susan. Ken looked, too, and saw that
Susan's back was turned. He put his arm about Rilla and kissed her. It
was the first time Rilla had ever been kissed. She thought perhaps she
ought to resent it but she didn't. Instead, she glanced timidly into
Kenneth's seeking eyes and her glance was a kiss.
"Rilla-my-Rilla," said Ken, "will you promise that you won't let anyone
else kiss you until I come back?"
"Yes," said Rilla, trembling and thrilling.
Susan was turning round. Ken loosened his hold and stepped to the walk.
"Good-bye," he said casually. Rilla heard herself saying it just as
casually. She stood and watched him down the walk, out of the gate, and
down the road. When the fir wood hid him from her sight she suddenly
said "Oh," in a choked way and ran down to the gate, sweet blossomy
things catching at her skirts as she ran. Leaning over the gate she saw
Kenneth walking briskly down the road, over the bars of tree shadows
and moonlight, his tall, erect figure grey in the white radiance. As he
reached the turn he stopped and looked back and saw her standing amid
the tall white lilies by the gate. He waved his hand--she waved
hers--he was gone around the turn.
Rilla stood there for a little while, gazing across the fields of mist
and silver. She had heard her mother say that she loved turns in
roads--they were so provocative and alluring. Rilla thought she hated
them. She had seen Jem and Jerry vanish from her around a bend in the
road--then Walter--and now Ken. Brothers and playmate and
sweetheart--they were all gone, never, it might be, to return. Yet
still the Piper piped and the dance of death went on.
When Rilla walked slowly back to the house Susan was still sitting by
the veranda table and Susan was sniffing suspiciously.
"I have been thinking, Rilla dear, of the old days in the House of
Dreams, when Kenneth's mother and father were courting and Jem was a
little baby and you were not born or thought of. It was a very romantic
affair and she and your mother were such chums. To think I should have
lived to see her son going to the front. As if she had not had enough
trouble in her early life without this coming upon her! But we must
take a brace and see it through."
All Rilla's anger against Susan had evaporated. With Ken's kiss still
burning on her lips, and the wonderful significance of the promise he
had asked thrilling heart and soul, she could not be angry with anyone.
She put her slim white hand into Susan's brown, work-hardened one and
gave it a squeeze. Susan was a faithful old dear and would lay down her
life for any one of them.
"You are tired, Rilla dear, and had better go to bed," Susan said,
patting her hand. "I noticed you were too tired to talk tonight. I am
glad I came home in time to help you out. It is very tiresome trying to
entertain young men when you are not accustomed to it."
Rilla carried Jims upstairs and went to bed, but not before she had sat
for a long time at her window reconstructing her rainbow castle, with
several added domes and turrets.
"I wonder," she said to herself, "if I am, or am not, engaged to
Kenneth Ford."