THE TURNING OF THE TIDE
Susan was very sorrowful when she saw the beautiful old lawn of
Ingleside ploughed up that spring and planted with potatoes. Yet she
made no protest, even when her beloved peony bed was sacrificed. But
when the Government passed the Daylight Saving law Susan balked. There
was a Higher Power than the Union Government, to which Susan owed
allegiance.
"Do you think it right to meddle with the arrangements of the
Almighty?" she demanded indignantly of the doctor. The doctor, quite
unmoved, responded that the law must be observed, and the Ingleside
clocks were moved on accordingly. But the doctor had no power over
Susan's little alarm.
"I bought that with my own money, Mrs. Dr. dear," she said firmly, "and
it shall go on God's time and not Borden's time."
Susan got up and went to bed by "God's time," and regulated her own
goings and comings by it. She served the meals, under protest, by
Borden's time, and she had to go to church by it, which was the
crowning injury. But she said her prayers by her own clock, and fed the
hens by it; so that there was always a furtive triumph in her eye when
she looked at the doctor. She had got the better of him by so much at
least.
"Whiskers-on-the-moon is very much delighted with this daylight saving
business," she told him one evening. "Of course he naturally would be,
since I understand that the Germans invented it. I hear he came near
losing his entire wheat-crop lately. Warren Mead's cows broke into the
field one day last week--it was the very day the Germans captured the
Chemang-de-dam, which may have been a coincidence or may not--and were
making fine havoc of it when Mrs. Dick Clow happened to see them from
her attic window. At first she had no intention of letting Mr. Pryor
know. She told me she had just gloated over the sight of those cows
pasturing on his wheat. She felt it served him exactly right. But
presently she reflected that the wheat-crop was a matter of great
importance and that 'save and serve' meant that those cows must be
routed out as much as it meant anything. So she went down and phoned
over to Whiskers about the matter. All the thanks she got was that he
said something queer right out to her. She is not prepared to state
that it was actually swearing for you cannot be sure just what you hear
over the phone; but she has her own opinion, and so have I, but I will
not express it for here comes Mr. Meredith, and Whiskers is one of his
elders, so we must be discreet."
"Are you looking for the new star?" asked Mr. Meredith, joining Miss
Oliver and Rilla, who were standing among the blossoming potatoes
gazing skyward.
"Yes--we have found it--see, it is just above the tip of the tallest
old pine."
"It's wonderful to be looking at something that happened three thousand
years ago, isn't it?" said Rilla. "That is when astronomers think the
collision took place which produced this new star. It makes me feel
horribly insignificant," she added under her breath.
"Even this event cannot dwarf into what may be the proper perspective
in star systems the fact that the Germans are again only one leap from
Paris," said Gertrude restlessly.
"I think I would like to have been an astronomer," said Mr. Meredith
dreamily, gazing at the star.
"There must be a strange pleasure in it," agreed Miss Oliver, "an
unearthly pleasure, in more senses than one. I would like to have a few
astronomers for my friends."
"Fancy talking the gossip of the hosts of heaven," laughed Rilla.
"I wonder if astronomers feel a very deep interest in earthly affairs?"
said the doctor. "Perhaps students of the canals of Mars would not be
so keenly sensitive to the significance of a few yards of trenches lost
or won on the western front."
"I have read somewhere," said Mr. Meredith, "that Ernest Renan wrote
one of his books during the siege of Paris in 1870 and 'enjoyed the
writing of it very much.' I suppose one would call him a philosopher."
"I have read also," said Miss Oliver, "that shortly before his death he
said that his only regret in dying was that he must die before he had
seen what that 'extremely interesting young man, the German Emperor,'
would do in his life. If Ernest Renan 'walked' today and saw what that
interesting young man had done to his beloved France, not to speak of
the world, I wonder if his mental detachment would be as complete as it
was in 1870."
"I wonder where Jem is tonight," thought Rilla, in a sudden bitter
inrush of remembrance.
It was over a month since the news had come about Jem. Nothing had been
discovered concerning him, in spite of all efforts. Two or three
letters had come from him, written before the trench raid, and since
then there had been only unbroken silence. Now the Germans were again
at the Marne, pressing nearer and nearer Paris; now rumours were coming
of another Austrian offensive against the Piave line. Rilla turned away
from the new star, sick at heart. It was one of the moments when hope
and courage failed her utterly--when it seemed impossible to go on even
one more day. If only they knew what had happened to Jem--you can face
anything you know. But a beleaguerment of fear and doubt and suspense
is a hard thing for the morale. Surely, if Jem were alive, some word
would have come through. He must be dead. Only--they would never
know--they could never be quite sure; and Dog Monday would wait for the
train until he died of old age. Monday was only a poor, faithful,
rheumatic little dog, who knew nothing more of his master's fate than
they did.
Rilla had a "white night" and did not fall asleep until late. When she
wakened Gertrude Oliver was sitting at her window leaning out to meet
the silver mystery of the dawn. Her clever, striking profile, with the
masses of black hair behind it, came out clearly against the pallid
gold of the eastern sky. Rilla remembered Jem's admiration of the curve
of Miss Oliver's brow and chin, and she shuddered. Everything that
reminded her of Jem was beginning to give intolerable pain. Walter's
death had inflicted on her heart a terrible wound. But it had been a
clean wound and had healed slowly, as such wounds do, though the scar
must remain for ever. But the torture of Jem's disappearance was
another thing: there was a poison in it that kept it from healing. The
alternations of hope and despair, the endless watching each day for the
letter that never came--that might never come--the newspaper tales of
ill-usage of prisoners--the bitter wonder as to Jem's wound--all were
increasingly hard to bear.
Gertrude Oliver turned her head. There was an odd brilliancy in her
eyes.
"Rilla, I've had another dream."
"Oh, no--no," cried Rilla, shrinking. Miss Oliver's dreams had always
foretold coming disaster.
"Rilla, it was a good dream. Listen--I dreamed just as I did four years
ago, that I stood on the veranda steps and looked down the Glen. And it
was still covered by waves that lapped about my feet. But as I looked
the waves began to ebb--and they ebbed as swiftly as, four years ago,
they rolled in--ebbed out and out, to the gulf; and the Glen lay before
me, beautiful and green, with a rainbow spanning Rainbow Valley--a
rainbow of such splendid colour that it dazzled me--and I woke.
Rilla--Rilla Blythe--the tide has turned."
"I wish I could believe it," sighed Rilla.
"Sooth was my prophecy of fear
Believe it when it augurs cheer,"
quoted Gertrude, almost gaily. "I tell you I have no doubt."
Yet, in spite of the great Italian victory at the Piave that came a few
days later, she had doubt many a time in the hard month that followed;
and when in mid-July the Germans crossed the Marne again despair came
sickeningly. It was idle, they all felt, to hope that the miracle of
the Marne would be repeated. But it was: again, as in 1914, the tide
turned at the Marne. The French and the American troops struck their
sudden smashing blow on the exposed flank of the enemy and, with the
almost inconceivable rapidity of a dream, the whole aspect of the war
changed.
"The Allies have won two tremendous victories," said the doctor on 20th
July.
"It is the beginning of the end--I feel it--I feel it," said Mrs.
Blythe.
"Thank God," said Susan, folding her trembling old hands, Then she
added, under her breath, "but it won't bring our boys back."
Nevertheless she went out and ran up the flag, for the first time since
the fall of Jerusalem. As it caught the breeze and swelled gallantly
out above her, Susan lifted her hand and saluted it, as she had seen
Shirley do. "We've all given something to keep you flying," she said.
"Four hundred thousand of our boys gone overseas--fifty thousand of
them killed. But--you are worth it!" The wind whipped her grey hair
about her face and the gingham apron that shrouded her from head to
foot was cut on lines of economy, not of grace; yet, somehow, just then
Susan made an imposing figure. She was one of the women--courageous,
unquailing, patient, heroic--who had made victory possible. In her,
they all saluted the symbol for which their dearest had fought.
Something of this was in the doctor's mind as he watched her from the
door.
"Susan," he said, when she turned to come in, "from first to last of
this business you have been a brick!"