Rilla of Ingleside

by L. M. Montgomery

  CHAPTER XIX

  "THEY SHALL NOT PASS"

  One cold grey morning in February Gertrude Oliver wakened with ashiver, slipped into Rilla's room, and crept in beside her.

  "Rilla--I'm frightened--frightened as a baby--I've had another of mystrange dreams. Something terrible is before us--I know."

  "What was it?" asked Rilla.

  "I was standing again on the veranda steps--just as I stood in thatdream on the night before the lighthouse dance, and in the sky a hugeblack, menacing thunder cloud rolled up from the east. I could see itsshadow racing before it and when it enveloped me I shivered with icycold. Then the storm broke--and it was a dreadful storm--blinding flashafter flash and deafening peal after peal, driving torrents of rain. Iturned in panic and tried to run for shelter, and as I did so a man--asoldier in the uniform of a French army officer--dashed up the stepsand stood beside me on the threshold of the door. His clothes weresoaked with blood from a wound in his breast, he seemed spent andexhausted; but his white face was set and his eyes blazed in his hollowface. 'They shall not pass,' he said, in low, passionate tones which Iheard distinctly amid all the turmoil of the storm. Then I awakened.Rilla, I'm frightened--the spring will not bring the Big Push we've allbeen hoping for--instead it is going to bring some dreadful blow toFrance. I am sure of it. The Germans will try to smash throughsomewhere."

  "But he told you that they would not pass," said Rilla, seriously. Shenever laughed at Gertrude's dreams as the doctor did.

  "I do not know if that was prophecy or desperation, Rilla, the horrorof that dream holds me yet in an icy grip. We shall need all ourcourage before long."

  Dr. Blythe did laugh at the breakfast table--but he never laughed atMiss Oliver's dreams again; for that day brought news of the opening ofthe Verdun offensive, and thereafter through all the beautiful weeks ofspring the Ingleside family, one and all, lived in a trance of dread.There were days when they waited in despair for the end as foot by footthe Germans crept nearer and nearer to the grim barrier of desperateFrance.

  Susan's deeds were in her spotless kitchen at Ingleside, but herthoughts were on the hills around Verdun. "Mrs. Dr. dear," she wouldstick her head in at Mrs. Blythe's door the last thing at night toremark, "I do hope the French have hung onto the Crow's Wood today,"and she woke at dawn to wonder if Dead Man's Hill--surely named by someprophet--was still held by the "poyloos." Susan could have drawn a mapof the country around Verdun that would have satisfied a chief of staff.

  "If the Germans capture Verdun the spirit of France will be broken,"Miss Oliver said bitterly.

  "But they will not capture it," staunchly said Susan, who could not eather dinner that day for fear lest they do that very thing. "In thefirst place, you dreamed they would not--you dreamed the very thing theFrench are saying before they ever said it--'they shall not pass.' Ideclare to you, Miss Oliver, dear, when I read that in the paper, andremembered your dream, I went cold all over with awe. It seemed to melike Biblical times when people dreamed things like that quitefrequently.

  "I know--I know," said Gertrude, walking restlessly about. "I cling toa persistent faith in my dream, too--but every time bad news comes itfails me. Then I tell myself 'mere coincidence'--'subconscious memory'and so forth."

  "I do not see how any memory could remember a thing before it was eversaid at all," persisted Susan, "though of course I am not educated likeyou and the doctor. I would rather not be, if it makes anything assimple as that so hard to believe. But in any case we need not worryover Verdun, even if the Huns get it. Joffre says it has no militarysignificance."

  "That old sop of comfort has been served up too often already whenreverses came," retorted Gertrude. "It has lost its power to charm."

  "Was there ever a battle like this in the world before?" said Mr.Meredith, one evening in mid-April.

  "It's such a titanic thing we can't grasp it," said the doctor. "Whatwere the scraps of a few Homeric handfuls compared to this? The wholeTrojan war might be fought around a Verdun fort and a newspapercorrespondent would give it no more than a sentence. I am not in theconfidence of the occult powers"--the doctor threw Gertrude atwinkle--"but I have a hunch that the fate of the whole war hangs onthe issue of Verdun. As Susan and Joffre say, it has no real militarysignificance; but it has the tremendous significance of an Idea. IfGermany wins there she will win the war. If she loses, the tide willset against her."

  "Lose she will," said Mr. Meredith: emphatically. "The Idea cannot beconquered. France is certainly very wonderful. It seems to me that inher I see the white form of civilization making a determined standagainst the black powers of barbarism. I think our whole world realizesthis and that is why we all await the issue so breathlessly. It isn'tmerely the question of a few forts changing hands or a few miles ofblood-soaked ground lost and won."

  "I wonder," said Gertrude dreamily, "if some great blessing, greatenough for the price, will be the meed of all our pain? Is the agony inwhich the world is shuddering the birth-pang of some wondrous new era?Or is it merely a futile

  struggle of ants In the gleam of a million million of suns?

  We think very lightly, Mr. Meredith, of a calamity which destroys anant-hill and half its inhabitants. Does the Power that runs theuniverse think us of more importance than we think ants?"

  "You forget," said Mr. Meredith, with a flash of his dark eyes, "thatan infinite Power must be infinitely little as well as infinitelygreat. We are neither, therefore there are things too little as well astoo great for us to apprehend. To the infinitely little an ant is of asmuch importance as a mastodon. We are witnessing the birth-pangs of anew era--but it will be born a feeble, wailing life like everythingelse. I am not one of those who expect a new heaven and a new earth asthe immediate result of this war. That is not the way God works. Butwork He does, Miss Oliver, and in the end His purpose will befulfilled."

  "Sound and orthodox--sound and orthodox," muttered Susan approvingly inthe kitchen. Susan liked to see Miss Oliver sat upon by the ministernow and then. Susan was very fond of her but she thought Miss Oliverliked saying heretical things to ministers far too well, and deservedan occasional reminder that these matters were quite beyond herprovince.

  In May Walter wrote home that he had been awarded a D.C. Medal. He didnot say what for, but the other boys took care that the Glen shouldknow the brave thing Walter had done. "In any war but this," wroteJerry Meredith, "it would have meant a V.C. But they can't make V.C.'sas common as the brave things done every day here."

  "He should have had the V.C.," said Susan, and was very indignant overit. She was not quite sure who was to blame for his not getting it, butif it were General Haig she began for the first time to entertainserious doubts as to his fitness for being Commander-in-Chief.

  Rilla was beside herself with delight. It was her dear Walter who haddone this thing--Walter, to whom someone had sent a white feather atRedmond--it was Walter who had dashed back from the safety of thetrench to drag in a wounded comrade who had fallen on No-man's-land.Oh, she could see his white beautiful face and wonderful eyes as he didit! What a thing to be the sister of such a hero! And he hadn't thoughtit worth while writing about. His letter was full of otherthings--little intimate things that they two had known and lovedtogether in the dear old cloudless days of a century ago.

  "I've been thinking of the daffodils in the garden at Ingleside," hewrote. "By the time you get this they will be out, blowing there underthat lovely rosy sky. Are they really as bright and golden as ever,Rilla? It seems to me that they must be dyed red with blood--like ourpoppies here. And every whisper of spring will be falling as a violetin Rainbow Valley.

  "There is a young moon tonight--a slender, silver, lovely thing hangingover these pits of torment. Will you see it tonight over the maplegrove?

  "I'm enclosing a little scrap of verse, Rilla. I wrote it one eveningin my trench dug-out by the light of a bit of candle--or rather it cameto me there--I didn't feel as if I were writing it--something seemed touse me as an instrum
ent. I've had that feeling once or twice before,but very rarely and never so strongly as this time. That was why I sentit over to the London Spectator. It printed it and the copy came today.I hope you'll like it. It's the only poem I've written since I cameoverseas."

  The poem was a short, poignant little thing. In a month it had carriedWalter's name to every corner of the globe. Everywhere it wascopied--in metropolitan dailies and little village weeklies--inprofound reviews and "agony columns," in Red Cross appeals andGovernment recruiting propaganda. Mothers and sisters wept over it,young lads thrilled to it, the whole great heart of humanity caught itup as an epitome of all the pain and hope and pity and purpose of themighty conflict, crystallized in three brief immortal verses. ACanadian lad in the Flanders trenches had written the one great poem ofthe war. "The Piper," by Pte. Walter Blythe, was a classic from itsfirst printing.

  Rilla copied it in her diary at the beginning of an entry in which shepoured out the story of the hard week that had just passed.

  "It has been such a dreadful week," she wrote, "and even though it isover and we know that it was all a mistake that does not seem to doaway with the bruises left by it. And yet it has in some ways been avery wonderful week and I have had some glimpses of things I neverrealized before--of how fine and brave people can be even in the midstof horrible suffering. I am sure I could never be as splendid as MissOliver was.

  "Just a week ago today she had a letter from Mr. Grant's mother inCharlottetown. And it told her that a cable had just come saying thatMajor Robert Grant had been killed in action a few days before.

  "Oh, poor Gertrude! At first she was crushed. Then after just a day shepulled herself together and went back to her school. She did not cry--Inever saw her shed a tear--but oh, her face and her eyes!

  "'I must go on with my work,' she said. 'That is my duty just now.'

  "I could never have risen to such a height.

  "She never spoke bitterly except once, when Susan said something aboutspring being here at last, and Gertrude said,

  "'Can the spring really come this year?'

  "Then she laughed--such a dreadful little laugh, just as one mightlaugh in the face of death, I think, and said,

  "'Observe my egotism. Because I, Gertrude Oliver, have lost a friend,it is incredible that the spring can come as usual. The spring does notfail because of the million agonies of others--but for mine--oh, canthe universe go on?'

  "'Don't feel bitter with yourself, dear,' mother said gently. 'It is avery natural thing to feel as if things couldn't go on just the samewhen some great blow has changed the world for us. We all feel likethat.'

  "Then that horrid old Cousin Sophia of Susan's piped up. She wassitting there, knitting and croaking like an old 'raven of bode andwoe' as Walter used to call her.

  "'You ain't as bad off as some, Miss Oliver,' she said, 'and youshouldn't take it so hard. There's some as has lost their husbands;that's a hard blow; and there's some as has lost their sons. Youhaven't lost either husband or son.'

  "'No,' said Gertrude, more bitterly still. 'It's true I haven't lost ahusband--I have only lost the man who would have been my husband. Ihave lost no son--only the sons and daughters who might have been bornto me--who will never be born to me now.'

  "'It isn't ladylike to talk like that,' said Cousin Sophia in a shockedtone; and then Gertrude laughed right out, so wildly that Cousin Sophiawas really frightened. And when poor tortured Gertrude, unable toendure it any longer, hurried out of the room, Cousin Sophia askedmother if the blow hadn't affected Miss Oliver's mind.

  "'I suffered the loss of two good kind partners,' she said, 'but it didnot affect me like that.'

  "I should think it wouldn't! Those poor men must have been thankful todie.

  "I heard Gertrude walking up and down her room most of the night. Shewalked like that every night. But never so long as that night. And onceI heard her give a dreadful sudden little cry as if she had beenstabbed. I couldn't sleep for suffering with her; and I couldn't helpher. I thought the night would never end. But it did; and then 'joycame in the morning' as the Bible says. Only it didn't come exactly inthe morning but well along in the afternoon. The telephone rang and Ianswered it. It was old Mrs. Grant speaking from Charlottetown, and hernews was that it was all a mistake--Robert wasn't killed at all; he hadonly been slightly wounded in the arm and was safe in the hospital outof harm's way for a time anyhow. They hadn't learned yet how themistake had happened but supposed there must have been another RobertGrant.

  "I hung up the telephone and flew to Rainbow Valley. I'm sure I didfly--I can't remember my feet ever touching the ground. I met Gertrudeon her way home from school in the glade of spruces where we used toplay, and I just gasped out the news to her. I ought to have had moresense, of course. But I was so crazy with joy and excitement that Inever stopped to think. Gertrude just dropped there among the goldenyoung ferns as if she had been shot. The fright it gave me ought tomake me sensible--in this respect at least--for the rest of my life. Ithought I had killed her--I remembered that her mother had died verysuddenly from heart failure when quite a young woman. It seemed yearsto me before I discovered that her heart was still beating. A prettytime I had! I never saw anybody faint before, and I knew there wasnobody up at the house to help, because everybody else had gone to thestation to meet Di and Nan coming home from Redmond. But Iknew--theoretically--how people in a faint should be treated, and now Iknow it practically. Luckily the brook was handy, and after I hadworked frantically over her for a while Gertrude came back to life. Shenever said one word about my news and I didn't dare to refer to itagain. I helped her walk up through the maple grove and up to her room,and then she said, 'Rob--is--living,' as if the words were torn out ofher, and flung herself on her bed and cried and cried and cried. Inever saw anyone cry so before. All the tears that she hadn't shed allthat week came then. She cried most of last night, I think, but herface this morning looked as if she had seen a vision of some kind, andwe were all so happy that we were almost afraid.

  "Di and Nan are home for a couple of weeks. Then they go back to RedCross work in the training camp at Kingsport. I envy them. Father saysI'm doing just as good work here, with Jims and my Junior Reds. But itlacks the romance theirs must have.

  "Kut has fallen. It was almost a relief when it did fall, we had beendreading it so long. It crushed us flat for a day and then we picked upand put it behind us. Cousin Sophia was as gloomy as usual and cameover and groaned that the British were losing everywhere.

  "'They're good losers,' said Susan grimly. 'When they lose a thing theykeep on looking till they find it again! Anyhow, my king and countryneed me now to cut potato sets for the back garden, so get you a knifeand help me, Sophia Crawford. It will divert your thoughts and keep youfrom worrying over a campaign that you are not called upon to run.'

  "Susan is an old brick, and the way she flattens out poor Cousin Sophiais beautiful to behold.

  "As for Verdun, the battle goes on and on, and we see-saw between hopeand fear. But I know that strange dream of Miss Oliver's foretold thevictory of France. 'They shall not pass.'"