WAITING
Ingleside,
1st November 1917
"It is November--and the Glen is all grey and brown, except where the
Lombardy poplars stand up here and there like great golden torches in
the sombre landscape, although every other tree has shed its leaves. It
has been very hard to keep our courage alight of late. The Caporetto
disaster is a dreadful thing and not even Susan can extract much
consolation out of the present state of affairs. The rest of us don't
try. Gertrude keeps saying desperately, 'They must not get Venice--they
must not get Venice,' as if by saying it often enough she can prevent
them. But what is to prevent them from getting Venice I cannot see.
Yet, as Susan fails not to point out, there was seemingly nothing to
prevent them from getting to Paris in 1914, yet they did not get it,
and she affirms they shall not get Venice either. Oh, how I hope and
pray they will not--Venice the beautiful Queen of the Adriatic.
Although I've never seen it I feel about it just as Byron did--I've
always loved it--it has always been to me 'a fairy city of the heart.'
Perhaps I caught my love of it from Walter, who worshipped it. It was
always one of his dreams to see Venice. I remember we planned
once--down in Rainbow Valley one evening just before the war broke
out--that some time we would go together to see it and float in a
gondola through its moonlit streets.
"Every fall since the war began there has been some terrible blow to
our troops--Antwerp in 1914, Serbia in 1915; last fall, Rumania, and
now Italy, the worst of all. I think I would give up in despair if it
were not for what Walter said in his dear last letter--that 'the dead
as well as the living were fighting on our side and such an army cannot
be defeated.' No it cannot. We will win in the end. I will not doubt it
for one moment. To let myself doubt would be to 'break faith.'
"We have all been campaigning furiously of late for the new Victory
Loan. We Junior Reds canvassed diligently and landed several tough old
customers who had at first flatly refused to invest. I--even I--tackled
Whiskers-on-the-moon. I expected a bad time and a refusal. But to my
amazement he was quite agreeable and promised on the spot to take a
thousand dollar bond. He may be a pacifist, but he knows a good
investment when it is handed out to him. Five and a half per cent is
five and a half per cent, even when a militaristic government pays it.
"Father, to tease Susan, says it was her speech at the Victory Loan
Campaign meeting that converted Mr. Pryor. I don't think that at all
likely, since Mr. Pryor has been publicly very bitter against Susan
ever since her quite unmistakable rejection of his lover-like advances.
But Susan did make a speech--and the best one made at the meeting, too.
It was the first time she ever did such a thing and she vows it will be
the last. Everybody in the Glen was at the meeting, and quite a number
of speeches were made, but somehow things were a little flat and no
especial enthusiasm could be worked up. Susan was quite dismayed at the
lack of zeal, because she had been burningly anxious that the Island
should go over the top in regard to its quota. She kept whispering
viciously to Gertrude and me that there was 'no ginger' in the
speeches; and when nobody went forward to subscribe to the loan at the
close Susan 'lost her head.' At least, that is how she describes it
herself. She bounded to her feet, her face grim and set under her
bonnet--Susan is the only woman in Glen St. Mary who still wears a
bonnet--and said sarcastically and loudly, 'No doubt it is much cheaper
to talk patriotism than it is to pay for it. And we are asking charity,
of course--we are asking you to lend us your money for nothing! No
doubt the Kaiser will feel quite downcast when he hears of this
meeting!"
"Susan has an unshaken belief that the Kaiser's spies--presumably
represented by Mr. Pryor--promptly inform him of every happening in our
Glen.
"Norman Douglas shouted out 'Hear! Hear!' and some boy at the back
said, 'What about Lloyd George?' in a tone Susan didn't like. Lloyd
George is her pet hero, now that Kitchener is gone.
"'I stand behind Lloyd George every time,' retorted Susan.
"'I suppose that will hearten him up greatly,' said Warren Mead, with
one of his disagreeable 'haw-haws.'
"Warren's remark was spark to powder. Susan just 'sailed in' as she
puts it, and 'said her say.' She said it remarkably well, too. There
was no lack of 'ginger' in her speech, anyhow. When Susan is warmed up
she has no mean powers of oratory, and the way she trimmed those men
down was funny and wonderful and effective all at once. She said it was
the likes of her, millions of her, that did stand behind Lloyd George,
and did hearten him up. That was the key-note of her speech. Dear old
Susan! She is a perfect dynamo of patriotism and loyalty and contempt
for slackers of all kinds, and when she let it loose on that audience
in her one grand outburst she electrified it. Susan always vows she is
no suffragette, but she gave womanhood its due that night, and she
literally made those men cringe. When she finished with them they were
ready to eat out of her hand. She wound up by ordering them--yes,
ordering them--to march up to the platform forthwith and subscribe for
Victory Bonds. And after wild applause most of them did it, even Warren
Mead. When the total amount subscribed came out in the Charlottetown
dailies the next day we found that the Glen led every district on the
Island--and certainly Susan has the credit for it. She, herself, after
she came home that night was quite ashamed and evidently feared that
she had been guilty of unbecoming conduct: she confessed to mother that
she had been 'rather unladylike.'
"We were all--except Susan--out for a trial ride in father's new
automobile tonight. A very good one we had, too, though we did get
ingloriously ditched at the end, owing to a certain grim old dame--to
wit, Miss Elizabeth Carr of the Upper Glen--who wouldn't rein her horse
out to let us pass, honk as we might. Father was quite furious; but in
my heart I believe I sympathized with Miss Elizabeth. If I had been a
spinster lady, driving along behind my own old nag, in maiden
meditation fancy free, I wouldn't have lifted a rein when an
obstreperous car hooted blatantly behind me. I should just have sat up
as dourly as she did and said 'Take the ditch if you are determined to
pass.'
"We did take the ditch--and got up to our axles in sand--and sat
foolishly there while Miss Elizabeth clucked up her horse and rattled
victoriously away.
"Jem will have a laugh when I write him this. He knows Miss Elizabeth
of old.
"But--will--Venice--be--saved?"
19th November 1917
"It is not saved yet--it is still in great danger. But the Italians
are making a stand at last on the Piave line. To be sure military
critics say they cannot possibly hold it and must retreat to the
Adige. But Susan and Gertrude and I say they must hold it, because
Venice must be saved, so what are the military critics to do?
"Oh, if I could only believe that they can hold it!
"Our Canadian troops have won another great victory--they have stormed
the Passchendaele Ridge and held it in the face of all counter attacks.
None of our boys were in the battle--but oh, the casualty list of other
people's boys! Joe Milgrave was in it but came through safe. Miranda
had some bad days until she got word from him. But it is wonderful how
Miranda has bloomed out since her marriage. She isn't the same girl at
all. Even her eyes seem to have darkened and deepened--though I suppose
that is just because they glow with the greater intensity that has come
to her. She makes her father stand round in a perfectly amazing
fashion; she runs up the flag whenever a yard of trench on the western
front is taken; and she comes up regularly to our Junior Red Cross; and
she does--yes, she does--put on funny little 'married woman' airs that
are quite killing. But she is the only war-bride in the Glen and surely
nobody need grudge her the satisfaction she gets out of it.
"The Russian news is bad, too--Kerensky's government has fallen and
Lenin is dictator of Russia. Somehow, it is very hard to keep up
courage in the dull hopelessness of these grey autumn days of suspense
and boding news. But we are beginning to 'get in a low,' as old
Highland Sandy says, over the approaching election. Conscription is the
real issue at stake and it will be the most exciting election we ever
had. All the women 'who have got de age'--to quote Jo Poirier, and who
have husbands, sons, and brothers at the front, can vote. Oh, if I were
only twenty-one! Gertrude and Susan are both furious because they can't
vote.
"'It is not fair,' Gertrude says passionately. 'There is Agnes Carr who
can vote because her husband went. She did everything she could to
prevent him from going, and now she is going to vote against the Union
Government. Yet I have no vote, because my man at the front is only my
sweetheart and not my husband!"
"As for Susan, when she reflects that she cannot vote, while a rank old
pacifist like Mr. Pryor can--and will--her comments are sulphurous.
"I really feel sorry for the Elliotts and Crawfords and MacAllisters
over-harbour. They have always lined up in clearly divided camps of
Liberal and Conservative, and now they are torn from their moorings--I
know I'm mixing my metaphors dreadfully--and set hopelessly adrift. It
will kill some of those old Grits to vote for Sir Robert Borden's
side--and yet they have to because they believe the time has come when
we must have conscription. And some poor Conservatives who are against
conscription must vote for Laurier, who always has been anathema to
them. Some of them are taking it terribly hard. Others seem to be in
much the same attitude as Mrs. Marshall Elliott has come to be
regarding Church Union.
"She was up here last night. She doesn't come as often as she used to.
She is growing too old to walk this far--dear old 'Miss Cornelia.' I
hate to think of her growing old--we have always loved her so and she
has always been so good to us Ingleside young fry.
"She used to be so bitterly opposed to Church Union. But last night,
when father told her it was practically decided, she said in a resigned
tone, 'Well, in a world where everything is being rent and torn what
matters one more rending and tearing? Anyhow, compared with Germans
even Methodists seem attractive to me.'
"Our Junior R.C. goes on quite smoothly, in spite of the fact that
Irene has come back to it--having fallen out with the Lowbridge
society, I understand. She gave me a sweet little jab last
meeting--about knowing me across the square in Charlottetown 'by my
green velvet hat.' Everybody knows me by that detestable and detested
hat. This will be my fourth season for it. Even mother wanted me to get
a new one this fall; but I said, 'No.' As long as the war lasts so long
do I wear that velvet hat in winter."
23rd November 1917
"The Piave line still holds--and General Byng has won a splendid
victory at Cambrai. I did run up the flag for that--but Susan only
said 'I shall set a kettle of water on the kitchen range tonight.
I notice little Kitchener always has an attack of croup after any
British victory. I do hope he has no pro-German blood in his veins.
Nobody knows much about his father's people.'
"Jims has had a few attacks of croup this fall--just the ordinary
croup--not that terrible thing he had last year. But whatever blood
runs in his little veins it is good, healthy blood. He is rosy and
plump and curly and cute; and he says such funny things and asks such
comical questions. He likes very much to sit in a special chair in the
kitchen; but that is Susan's favourite chair, too, and when she wants
it, out Jims must go. The last time she put him out of it he turned
around and asked solemnly, 'When you are dead, Susan, can I sit in that
chair?' Susan thought it quite dreadful, and I think that was when she
began to feel anxiety about his possible ancestry. The other night I
took Jims with me for a walk down to the store. It was the first time
he had ever been out so late at night, and when he saw the stars he
exclaimed, 'Oh, Willa, see the big moon and all the little moons!' And
last Wednesday morning, when he woke up, my little alarm clock had
stopped because I had forgotten to wind it up. Jims bounded out of his
crib and ran across to me, his face quite aghast above his little blue
flannel pyjamas. 'The clock is dead,' he gasped, 'oh Willa, the clock
is dead.'
"One night he was quite angry with both Susan and me because we would
not give him something he wanted very much. When he said his prayers he
plumped down wrathfully, and when he came to the petition 'Make me a
good boy' he tacked on emphatically, 'and please make Willa and Susan
good, 'cause they're not.'
"I don't go about quoting Jims's speeches to all I meet. That always
bores me when other people do it! I just enshrine them in this old
hotch-potch of a journal!
"This very evening as I put Jims to bed he looked up and asked me
gravely, 'Why can't yesterday come back, Willa?'
"Oh, why can't it, Jims? That beautiful 'yesterday' of dreams and
laughter--when our boys were home--when Walter and I read and rambled
and watched new moons and sunsets together in Rainbow Valley. If it
could just come back! But yesterdays never come back, little Jims--and
the todays are dark with clouds--and we dare not think about the
tomorrows."
11th December 1917
"Wonderful news came today. The British troops captured Jerusalem
yesterday. We ran up the flag and some of Gertrude's old sparkle
came back to her for a moment.
"'After all,' she said, 'it is worth while to live in the days which
see the object of the Crusades attained. The ghosts of all the
Crusaders must have crowded the walls of Jerusalem last night, with
Coeur-de-lion at their head.'
"Susan had cause for satisfaction also.
"'I am so thankful I can pronounce Jerusalem and Hebron,' she said.
'They give me a real comfortable feeling after Przemysl and
Brest-Litovsk! Well, we have got the Turks on the run, at least, and
Venice is safe and Lord Lansdowne is not to be taken seriously; and I
see no reason why we should be downhearted.'
"Jerusalem! The 'meteor flag of England!' floats over you--the Crescent
is gone. How Walter would have thrilled over that!"
18th December 1917
"Yesterday the election came off. In the evening mother and Susan
and Gertrude and I forgathered in the living-room and waited in
breathless suspense, father having gone down to the village. We had
no way of hearing the news, for Carter Flagg's store is not on our
line, and when we tried to get it Central always answered that the
line 'was busy'--as no doubt it was, for everybody for miles around was
trying to get Carter's store for the same reason we were.
"About ten o'clock Gertrude went to the 'phone and happened to catch
someone from over-harbour talking to Carter Flagg. Gertrude shamelessly
listened in and got for her comforting what eavesdroppers are
proverbially supposed to get--to wit, unpleasant hearing; the Union
Government had 'done nothing' in the West.
"We looked at each other in dismay. If the Government had failed to
carry the West, it was defeated.
"'Canada is disgraced in the eyes of the world,' said Gertrude bitterly.
"'If everybody was like the Mark Crawfords over-harbour this would not
have happened,' groaned Susan. 'They locked their Uncle up in the barn
this morning and would not let him out until he promised to vote Union.
That is what I call effective argument, Mrs. Dr. dear.'
"Gertrude and I couldn't rest after all that. We walked the floor until
our legs gave out and we had to sit down perforce. Mother knitted away
as steadily as clockwork and pretended to be calm and serene--pretended
so well that we were all deceived and envious until the next day, when
I caught her ravelling out four inches of her sock. She had knit that
far past where the heel should have begun!
"It was twelve before father came home. He stood in the doorway and
looked at us and we looked at him. We did not dare ask him what the
news was. Then he said that it was Laurier who had 'done nothing' in
the West, and that the Union Government was in with a big majority.
Gertrude clapped her hands. I wanted to laugh and cry, mother's eyes
flashed with their old-time starriness and Susan emitted a queer sound
between a gasp and a whoop.
"This will not comfort the Kaiser much,' she said.
"Then we went to bed, but were too excited to sleep. Really, as Susan
said solemnly this morning, 'Mrs. Dr. dear, I think politics are too
strenuous for women.'"
31st December 1917
"Our fourth War Christmas is over. We are trying to gather up some
courage wherewith to face another year of it. Germany has, for the most
part, been victorious all summer. And now they say she has all her
troops from the Russian front ready for a 'big push' in the spring.
Sometimes it seems to me that we just cannot live through the winter
waiting for that.
"I had a great batch of letters from overseas this week. Shirley is at
the front now, too, and writes about it all as coolly and
matter-of-factly as he used to write of football at Queen's. Carl wrote
that it had been raining for weeks and that nights in the trenches
always made him think of the night of long ago when he did penance in
the graveyard for running away from Henry Warren's ghost. Carl's
letters are always full of jokes and bits of fun. They had a great
rat-hunt the night before he wrote--spearing rats with their
bayonets--and he got the best bag and won the prize. He has a tame rat
that knows him and sleeps in his pocket at night. Rats don't worry Carl
as they do some people--he was always chummy with all little beasts. He
says he is making a study of the habits of the trench rat and means to
write a treatise on it some day that will make him famous.
"Ken wrote a short letter. His letters are all rather short now--and he
doesn't often slip in those dear little sudden sentences I love so
much. Sometimes I think he has forgotten all about the night he was
here to say goodbye--and then there will be just a line or a word that
makes me think he remembers and always will remember. For instance
to-day's letter hadn't a thing in it that mightn't have been written to
any girl, except that he signed himself 'Your Kenneth,' instead of
'Yours, Kenneth,' as he usually does. Now, did he leave that 's' off
intentionally or was it only carelessness? I shall lie awake half the
night wondering. He is a captain now. I am glad and proud--and yet
Captain Ford sounds so horribly far away and high up. Ken and Captain
Ford seem like two different persons. I may be practically engaged to
Ken--mother's opinion on that point is my stay and bulwark--but I can't
be to Captain Ford!
"And Jem is a lieutenant now--won his promotion on the field. He sent
me a snap-shot, taken in his new uniform. He looked thin and
old--old--my boy-brother Jem. I can't forget mother's face when I
showed it to her. 'That--my little Jem--the baby of the old House of
Dreams?' was all she said.
"There was a letter from Faith, too. She is doing V.A.D. work in
England and writes hopefully and brightly. I think she is almost
happy--she saw Jem on his last leave and she is so near him she could
go to him, if he were wounded. That means so much to her. Oh, if I were
only with her! But my work is here at home. I know Walter wouldn't have
wanted me to leave mother and in everything I try to 'keep faith' with
him, even to the little details of daily life. Walter died for
Canada--I must live for her. That is what he asked me to do."
28th January 1918
"'I shall anchor my storm-tossed soul to the British
fleet and make a batch of bran biscuits,' said Susan today to Cousin
Sophia, who had come in with some weird tale of a new and
all-conquering submarine, just launched by Germany. But Susan is a
somewhat disgruntled woman at present, owing to the regulations
regarding cookery. Her loyalty to the Union Government is being sorely
tried. It surmounted the first strain gallantly. When the order about
flour came Susan said, quite cheerfully, 'I am an old dog to be
learning new tricks, but I shall learn to make war bread if it will
help defeat the Huns.'
"But the later suggestions went against Susan's grain. Had it not been
for father's decree I think she would have snapped her fingers at Sir
Robert Borden.
"'Talk about trying to make bricks without straw, Mrs. Dr. dear! How am
I to make a cake without butter or sugar? It cannot be done--not cake
that is cake. Of course one can make a slab, Mrs. Dr. dear. And we
cannot even camooflash it with a little icing! To think that I should
have lived to see the day when a government at Ottawa should step into
my kitchen and put me on rations!'
"Susan would give the last drop of her blood for her 'king and
country,' but to surrender her beloved recipes is a very different and
much more serious matter.
"I had letters from Nan and Di too--or rather notes. They are too busy
to write letters, for exams are looming up. They will graduate in Arts
this spring. I am evidently to be the dunce of the family. But somehow
I never had any hankering for a college course, and even now it doesn't
appeal to me. I'm afraid I'm rather devoid of ambition. There is only
one thing I really want to be--and I don't know if I'll be it or not.
If not--I don't want to be anything. But I shan't write it down. It is
all right to think it; but, as Cousin Sophia would say, it might be
brazen to write it down.
"I will write it down. I won't be cowed by the conventions and Cousin
Sophia! I want to be Kenneth Ford's wife! There now!
"I've just looked in the glass, and I hadn't the sign of a blush on my
face. I suppose I'm not a properly constructed damsel at all.
"I was down to see little Dog Monday today. He has grown quite stiff
and rheumatic but there he sat, waiting for the train. He thumped his
tail and looked pleadingly into my eyes. 'When will Jem come?' he
seemed to say. Oh, Dog Monday, there is no answer to that question; and
there is, as yet, no answer to the other which we are all constantly
asking 'What will happen when Germany strikes again on the western
front--her one great, last blow for victory!"
1st March 1918
"'What will spring bring?' Gertrude said today. 'I dread it as I
never dreaded spring before. Do you suppose there will ever again
come a time when life will be free from fear? For almost four years
we have lain down with fear and risen up with it. It has been the
unbidden guest at every meal, the unwelcome companion at every
gathering.'
"'Hindenburg says he will be in Paris on 1st April,' sighed Cousin
Sophia.
"'Hindenburg!' There is no power in pen and ink to express the contempt
which Susan infused into that name. 'Has he forgotten what day the
first of April is?'
"'Hindenburg has kept his word hitherto,' said Gertrude, as gloomily as
Cousin Sophia herself could have said it.
"'Yes, fighting against the Russians and Rumanians,' retorted Susan.
'Wait you till he comes up against the British and French, not to speak
of the Yankees, who are getting there as fast as they can and will no
doubt give a good account of themselves.'
"'You said just the same thing before Mons, Susan,' I reminded her.
"'Hindenburg says he will spend a million lives to break the Allied
front,' said Gertrude. 'At such a price he must purchase some successes
and how can we live through them, even if he is baffled in the end.
These past two months when we have been crouching and waiting for the
blow to fall have seemed as long as all the preceding months of the war
put together. I work all day feverishly and waken at three o'clock at
night to wonder if the iron legions have struck at last. It is then I
see Hindenburg in Paris and Germany triumphant. I never see her so at
any other time than that accursed hour.'
"Susan looked dubious over Gertrude's adjective, but evidently
concluded that the 'a' saved the situation.
"'I wish it were possible to take some magic draught and go to sleep
for the next three months--and then waken to find Armageddon over,'
said mother, almost impatiently.
"It is not often that mother slumps into a wish like that--or at least
the verbal expression of it. Mother has changed a great deal since that
terrible day in September when we knew that Walter would not come back;
but she has always been brave and patient. Now it seemed as if even she
had reached the limit of her endurance.
"Susan went over to mother and touched her shoulder.
"'Do not you be frightened or downhearted, Mrs. Dr. dear,' she said
gently. 'I felt somewhat that way myself last night, and I rose from my
bed and lighted my lamp and opened my Bible; and what do you think was
the first verse my eyes lighted upon? It was 'And they shall fight
against thee but they shall not prevail against thee, for I am with
thee, saith the Lord of Hosts, to deliver thee.' I am not gifted in the
way of dreaming, as Miss Oliver is, but I knew then and there, Mrs. Dr.
dear, that it was a manifest leading, and that Hindenburg will never
see Paris. So I read no further but went back to my bed and I did not
waken at three o'clock or at any other hour before morning.'
"I say that verse Susan read over and over again to myself. The Lord of
Hosts is with us--and the spirits of all just men made perfect--and
even the legions and guns that Germany is massing on the western front
must break against such a barrier. This is in certain uplifted moments;
but when other moments come I feel, like Gertrude, that I cannot endure
any longer this awful and ominous hush before the coming storm."
23rd March 1918
"Armageddon has begun!--'the last great fight of all!' Is it, I
wonder? Yesterday I went down to the post office for the mail. It
was a dull, bitter day. The snow was gone but the grey, lifeless
ground was frozen hard and a biting wind was blowing. The whole Glen
landscape was ugly and hopeless.
"Then I got the paper with its big black headlines. Germany struck on
the twenty-first. She makes big claims of guns and prisoners taken.
General Haig reports that 'severe fighting continues.' I don't like the
sound of that last expression.
"We all find we cannot do any work that requires concentration of
thought. So we all knit furiously, because we can do that mechanically.
At least the dreadful waiting is over--the horrible wondering where and
when the blow will fall. It has fallen--but they shall not prevail
against us!
"Oh, what is happening on the western front tonight as I write this,
sitting here in my room with my journal before me? Jims is asleep in
his crib and the wind is wailing around the window; over my desk hangs
Walter's picture, looking at me with his beautiful deep eyes; the Mona
Lisa he gave me the last Christmas he was home hangs on one side of it,
and on the other a framed copy of "The Piper." It seems to me that I
can hear Walter's voice repeating it--that little poem into which he
put his soul, and which will therefore live for ever, carrying Walter's
name on through the future of our land. Everything about me is calm and
peaceful and 'homey.' Walter seems very near me--if I could just sweep
aside the thin wavering little veil that hangs between, I could see
him--just as he saw the Pied Piper the night before Courcelette.
"Over there in France tonight--does the line hold?"