WORD FROM JEM
4th August 1918
"It is four years tonight since the dance at the lighthouse--four years
of war. It seems like three times four. I was fifteen then. I am
nineteen now. I expected that these past four years would be the most
delightful years of my life and they have been years of war--years of
fear and grief and worry--but I humbly hope, of a little growth in
strength and character as well.
"Today I was going through the hall and I heard mother saying something
to father about me. I didn't mean to listen--I couldn't help hearing
her as I went along the hall and upstairs--so perhaps that is why I
heard what listeners are said never to hear--something good of myself.
And because it was mother who said it I'm going to write it here in my
journal, for my comforting when days of discouragement come upon me, in
which I feel that I am vain and selfish and weak and that there is no
good thing in me.
"'Rilla has developed in a wonderful fashion these past four years. She
used to be such an irresponsible young creature. She has changed into a
capable, womanly girl and she is such a comfort to me. Nan and Di have
grown a little away from me--they have been so little at home--but
Rilla has grown closer and closer to me. We are chums. I don't see how
I could have got through these terrible years without her, Gilbert.'
"There, that is just what mother said--and I feel glad--and sorry--and
proud--and humble! It's beautiful to have my mother think that about
me--but I don't deserve it quite. I'm not as good and strong as all
that. There are heaps of times when I have felt cross and impatient and
woeful and despairing. It is mother and Susan who have been this
family's backbone. But I have helped a little, I believe, and I am so
glad and thankful.
"The war news has been good right along. The French and Americans are
pushing the Germans back and back and back. Sometimes I am afraid it is
too good to last--after nearly four years of disasters one has a
feeling that this constant success is unbelievable. We don't rejoice
noisily over it. Susan keeps the flag up but we go softly. The price
paid has been too high for jubilation. We are just thankful that it has
not been paid in vain.
"No word has come from Jem. We hope--because we dare not do anything
else. But there are hours when we all feel--though we never say
so--that such hoping is foolishness. These hours come more and more
frequently as the weeks go by. And we may never know. That is the most
terrible thought of all. I wonder how Faith is bearing it. To judge
from her letters she has never for a moment given up hope, but she must
have had her dark hours of doubt like the rest of us."
20th August 1918
"The Canadians have been in action again and Mr. Meredith had a
cable today saying that Carl had been slightly wounded and is in
the hospital. It did not say where the wound was, which is unusual,
and we all feel worried. There is news of a fresh victory every
day now."
30th August 1918
"The Merediths had a letter from Carl today. His wound was "only a
slight one"--but it was in his right eye and the sight is gone for
ever!
"'One eye is enough to watch bugs with,' Carl writes cheerfully. And we
know it might have been oh so much worse! If it had been both eyes! But
I cried all the afternoon after I saw Carl's letter. Those beautiful,
fearless blue eyes of his!
"There is one comfort--he will not have to go back to the front. He is
coming home as soon as he is out of the hospital--the first of our boys
to return. When will the others come?
"And there is one who will never come. At least we will not see him if
he does. But, oh, I think he will be there--when our Canadian soldiers
return there will be a shadow army with them--the army of the fallen.
We will not see them--but they will be there!"
1st September 1918
"Mother and I went into Charlottetown yesterday to see the moving
picture, "Hearts of the World." I made an awful goose of myself--father
will never stop teasing me about it for the rest of my life. But
it all seemed so horribly real--and I was so intensely interested
that I forgot everything but the scenes I saw enacted before my
eyes. And then, quite near the last came a terribly exciting one.
The heroine was struggling with a horrible German soldier who was
trying to drag her away. I knew she had a knife--I had seen her hide
it, to have it in readiness--and I couldn't understand why she didn't
produce it and finish the brute. I thought she must have forgotten it,
and just at the tensest moment of the scene I lost my head altogether.
I just stood right up on my feet in that crowded house and shrieked at
the top of my voice--'The knife is in your stocking--the knife is in
your stocking!'
"I created a sensation!
"The funny part was, that just as I said it, the girl did snatch out
the knife and stab the soldier with it!
"Everybody in the house laughed. I came to my senses and fell back in
my seat, overcome with mortification. Mother was shaking with laughter.
I could have shaken her. Why hadn't she pulled me down and choked me
before I had made such an idiot of myself. She protests that there
wasn't time.
"Fortunately the house was dark, and I don't believe there was anybody
there who knew me. And I thought I was becoming sensible and
self-controlled and womanly! It is plain I have some distance to go yet
before I attain that devoutly desired consummation."
20th September 1918
"In the east Bulgaria has asked for peace, and in the west the
British have smashed the Hindenburg line; and right here in Glen
St. Mary little Bruce Meredith has done something that I think
wonderful--wonderful because of the love behind it. Mrs. Meredith was
here tonight and told us about it--and mother and I cried, and Susan
got up and clattered the things about the stove.
"Bruce always loved Jem very devotedly, and the child has never
forgotten him in all these years. He has been as faithful in his way as
Dog Monday was in his. We have always told him that Jem would come
back. But it seems that he was in Carter Flagg's store last night and
he heard his Uncle Norman flatly declaring that Jem Blythe would never
come back and that the Ingleside folk might as well give up hoping he
would. Bruce went home and cried himself to sleep. This morning his
mother saw him going out of the yard, with a very sorrowful and
determined look, carrying his pet kitten. She didn't think much more
about it until later on he came in, with the most tragic little face,
and told her, his little body shaking with sobs, that he had drowned
Stripey.
"'Why did you do that?' Mrs. Meredith exclaimed.
"'To bring Jem back,' sobbed Bruce. 'I thought if I sacrificed Stripey
God would send Jem back. So I drownded him--and, oh mother, it was
awful hard--but surely God will send Jem back now, 'cause Stripey was
the dearest thing I had. I just told God I would give Him Stripey if He
would send Jem back. And He will, won't He, mother?'
"Mrs. Meredith didn't know what to say to the poor child. She just
could not tell him that perhaps his sacrifice wouldn't bring Jem
back--that God didn't work that way. She told him that he mustn't
expect it right away--that perhaps it would be quite a long time yet
before Jem came back.
"But Bruce said, 'It oughtn't to take longer'n a week, mother. Oh,
mother, Stripey was such a nice little cat. He purred so pretty. Don't
you think God ought to like him enough to let us have Jem?"
"Mr. Meredith is worried about the effect on Bruce's faith in God, and
Mrs. Meredith is worried about the effect on Bruce himself if his hope
isn't fulfilled. And I feel as if I must cry every time I think of it.
It was so splendid--and sad--and beautiful. The dear devoted little
fellow! He worshipped that kitten. And if it all goes for nothing--as
so many sacrifices seem to go for nothing--he will be brokenhearted,
for he isn't old enough to understand that God doesn't answer our
prayers just as we hope--and doesn't make bargains with us when we
yield something we love up to Him."
24th September 1918
"I have been kneeling at my window in the moonshine for a long
time, just thanking God over and over again. The joy of last night
and today has been so great that it seemed half pain--as if our
hearts weren't big enough to hold it.
"Last night I was sitting here in my room at eleven o'clock writing a
letter to Shirley. Every one else was in bed, except father, who was
out. I heard the telephone ring and I ran out to the hall to answer it,
before it should waken mother. It was long-distance calling, and when I
answered it said 'This is the telegraph Company's office in
Charlottetown. There is an overseas cable for Dr. Blythe.'
"I thought of Shirley--my heart stood still--and then I heard him
saying, 'It's from Holland.'
"The message was,
'Just arrived. Escaped from Germany. Quite well. Writing.
James Blythe.'
"I didn't faint or fall or scream. I didn't feel glad or surprised. I
didn't feel anything. I felt numb, just as I did when I heard Walter
had enlisted. I hung up the receiver and turned round. Mother was
standing in her doorway. She wore her old rose kimono, and her hair was
hanging down her back in a long thick braid, and her eyes were shining.
She looked just like a young girl.
"'There is word from Jem?' she said.
"How did she know? I hadn't said a word at the phone except
'Yes--yes--yes.' She says she doesn't know how she knew, but she did
know. She was awake and she heard the ring and she knew that there was
word from Jem.
"'He's alive--he's well--he's in Holland,' I said.
"Mother came out into the hall and said, 'I must get your father on the
'phone and tell him. He is in the Upper Glen.'
"She was very calm and quiet--not a bit like I would have expected her
to be. But then I wasn't either. I went and woke up Gertrude and Susan
and told them. Susan said 'Thank God,' firstly, and secondly she said
'Did I not tell you Dog Monday knew?' and thirdly, 'I'll go down and
make a cup of tea'--and she stalked down in her nightdress to make it.
She did make it--and made mother and Gertrude drink it--but I went back
to my room and shut my door and locked it, and I knelt by my window and
cried--just as Gertrude did when her great news came.
"I think I know at last exactly what I shall feel like on the
resurrection morning."
4th October 1918
"Today Jem's letter came. It has been in the house only six hours and
it is almost read to pieces. The post-mistress told everybody in the
Glen it had come, and everybody came up to hear the news.
"Jem was badly wounded in the thigh--and he was picked up and taken to
prison, so delirious with fever that he didn't know what was happening
to him or where he was. It was weeks before he came to his senses and
was able to write. Then he did write--but it never came. He wasn't
treated at all badly at his camp--only the food was poor. He had
nothing to eat but a little black bread and boiled turnips and now and
then a little soup with black peas in it. And we sat down every one of
those days to three good square luxurious meals! He wrote us as often
as he could but he was afraid we were not getting his letters because
no reply came. As soon as he was strong enough he tried to escape, but
was caught and brought back; a month later he and a comrade made
another attempt and succeeded in reaching Holland.
"Jem can't come home right away. He isn't quite so well as his cable
said, for his wound has not healed properly and he has to go into a
hospital in England for further treatment. But he says he will be all
right eventually, and we know he is safe and will be back home
sometime, and oh, the difference it makes in everything!
"I had a letter from Jim Anderson today, too. He has married an English
girl, got his discharge, and is coming right home to Canada with his
bride. I don't know whether to be glad or sorry. It will depend on what
kind of a woman she is. I had a second letter also of a somewhat
mysterious tenor. It is from a Charlottetown lawyer, asking me to go in
to see him at my earliest convenience in regard to a certain matter
connected with the estate of the 'late Mrs. Matilda Pitman.'
"I read a notice of Mrs. Pitman's death--from heart failure--in the
Enterprise a few weeks ago. I wonder if this summons has anything to do
with Jims."
5th October 1918
"I went into town this morning and had an interview with Mrs. Pitman's
lawyer--a little thin, wispy man, who spoke of his late client with
such a profound respect that it is evident that he as was much under
her thumb as Robert and Amelia were. He drew up a new will for her a
short time before her death. She was worth thirty thousand dollars,
the bulk of which was left to Amelia Chapley. But she left five
thousand to me in trust for Jims. The interest is to be used as I
see fit for his education, and the principal is to be paid over to
him on his twentieth birthday. Certainly Jims was born lucky. I saved
him from slow extinction at the hands of Mrs. Conover--Mary Vance saved
him from death by diptheritic croup--his star saved him when he fell
off the train. And he tumbled not only into a clump of bracken, but
right into this nice little legacy.
"Evidently, as Mrs. Matilda Pitman said, and as I have always believed,
he is no common child and he has no common destiny in store for him.
"At all events he is provided for, and in such a fashion that Jim
Anderson can't squander his inheritance if he wanted to. Now, if the
new English stepmother is only a good sort I shall feel quite easy
about the future of my war-baby.
"I wonder what Robert and Amelia think of it. I fancy they will nail
down their windows when they leave home after this!"