Brothers Far from Home

by Jean Little

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  The Manse, Uxbridge, Ontario, 1916

  December 1916

  January 1917

  February 1917

  March 1917

  April 1917

  May 1917

  June 1917

  July 1917

  August 1917

  September 1917

  October 1917

  November 1917

  December 1917

  January–April 1918

  May–December 1918

  What Became of Them All

  Historical Note

  Images and Documents

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Also Available

  Books in the Dear Canada Series

  The Manse

  Uxbridge, Ontario

  1916

  December 1916

  December 25, 1916

  It is Christmas Day and I hate my sister Verity. She is a BEAST. She is detestable, mean, cruel and heartless. I know hating her is wicked and I don’t care. After all, she despises me. Father and Mother say you should not hate anybody, but I have good reason for thinking my sister is the most abominable girl alive.

  Just over an hour ago, she called me “immature” and “a limpet.” She talked about me as though I were a changeling. And she did it in front of Jack, True Webb and Rufus West.

  How do I know? I heard her. She did not see me there. True had come over from next door carrying her skates and I knew the four of them would all be going out on the pond, so I naturally ran to the hall closet to get my boots. I sat down on the bottom step of the stairs to pull them on. The others were at the far end of the hall by the time I came out and they were so busy arguing that they did not see me. I had one boot almost on when I caught what they were arguing about.

  My horrid sister was saying, “Hurry up or the infants will want to tag along.”

  I thought she meant the Twins, or even Belle, and I began to do up my boot. I knew how she felt. Who would want two eight-year-olds and one nearly-five-year-old tagging along?

  Then Jack said, “Eliza’s a good scout and she skates pretty well, and she’s no infant. We could take her along.”

  And Verity said in a la-di-da voice, “Oh, Jack, she’s so immature, always wanting attention. We’re used to her but Rufus would find her a dead bore. She’ll cling to us like a limpet and giggle and spoil everything. Hurry before she discovers we’re gone.”

  Those were her exact words. They are burned into my soul. They are as bitter as gall.

  I don’t know what gall is exactly, but I know what the words are as bitter as. Once, when I was the Twins’ age, I sneaked a big swallow of vanilla extract right out of the bottle. It smelled so heavenly I could not resist. But the smell was the only good thing about it. I was sure I’d been poisoned and would die before I could spit it all up. Verity’s words were that bitter.

  True murmured something about it being too bad her sister Cornelia was not well enough to be outdoors yet. She has had the grippe and has been sick in bed ever since we moved here at the end of November.

  I have seen her at the window. She stared out at me as though I was some sort of bug instead of a girl like herself. I smiled at her and waved but she did not wave back. She has a pudding face and does not look like a bosom friend. Having a good friend right next door is what I long for.

  Verity latched onto True right away. (True is short for Gertrude. Hardly anyone knows that. I heard her swearing Verity to secrecy. No wonder.) Cornelia is thirteen, just a year older than I, so our being friends would be perfect.

  I waited for Jack to stick up for me again, the way Hugo would have. He would have said, “Get your skates, Monkeyshines,” and nobody would have argued. I would have answered back, “Hugo, don’t call me Monkeyshines,” because I always do. But I secretly like it and he knows I do. He understands everything. He never makes me feel like a changeling.

  I heard Mother say once, “I’m afraid poor Eliza is the odd man out in our family.” She meant to be sympathetic but I felt wounded all the same. Careless words like that can leave bruises on your heart, the kind that don’t show but that leave a tender place which goes on hurting for days.

  Jack is not Hugo though. He just went along with the rest. They all ran out, shutting the back door ever so softly, and left me sitting on the stairs.

  Father came out of his study before I could escape and said, “Hello there, Diddle Diddle Dumpling.”

  It took me a second to figure out why he said this. I had one boot off and one boot on, of course. He meant me to chuckle but I couldn’t do it. I did not even smile. He did not notice my distress. Why would he? He has Hugo and Jack and the War and the church to worry about. I don’t count compared to all of those.

  “Annabelle,” he called to Mother, “I just asked a Duck to supper.”

  He thinks we don’t know that when he calls people “Ducks” he means “lame ducks.” He invites them to meals all the time. They look so mournful they set my teeth on edge. It is one of the crosses ministers’ families have to bear. Mother says to think how lucky I am to be me instead of one of them, and it will help me be kind. Yet it is hard when you can’t even be spared their company on Christmas Day. Think of the dishes!

  With Hugo already at the Front that makes one less at the table. But there are still six of us children plus Mother and Father. Then Grandmother and Aunt Martha are here until New Year’s.

  Rufus will be here too, of course. This is Jack’s and his last leave before setting out for England. We’ll see them off on New Year’s Day. I’m trying not to think about it. Hugo’s going was worse, but I hate having my brothers far away.

  If Rufus tried to go all the way home to Prince Rupert for Christmas, he would spend almost his whole leave on the train. “Before long, I’ll be able to fly home,” he said.

  He wasn’t joking. He and Jack are always talking about the future of flying. (Our Uncle Jack too, which was why he paid for Jack’s flying lessons.) Most people think they are crackbrains. After all, who would risk his life in the sky when a perfectly good train would take him where he wants to go.

  The way they carry on together, you would think Rufus and Jack had been friends all their lives, not just for the few months they spent at Long Branch while they were training to fly. We will miss Jack when he goes, but we will all miss Rufus too.

  After I’d put my boot back in the closet and Father had vanished into the kitchen, I ran up here to the bedroom and cried and cried before I remembered this journal and decided to write it all down and relieve my feelings. Now my eyes are red and puffy and my cheeks feel starched. I will not, will not, will not cry any more!!! If I start up again the tears will drip on the page and make the ink run.

  Later

  I went to the head of the stairs and listened. The skaters are not home yet. The little ones are making a great rumpus playing Mother May I in the downstairs hall with Father. They think it is hilarious when Father turns into “Mother.” He hasn’t time to play with them like this usually and that makes him better than their Christmas toys. Everyone else is in the kitchen bustling about and gossiping. I heard Aunt Martha telling Mother she didn’t look a day over seventy-five. I suppose that is their idea of a joke. If they had spotted me, they would have hailed me down there and had me running my legs off fetching and carrying.

  Not one of them is missing me though. I stood in the shadows for ages but I never once heard my name mentioned. I don’t fit in and that is all there is to it. And I am not going down, Christmas or no Christmas. We opened all the good presents earlier this morning. I sa
w one handkerchief box with my name on it. It is from Great Aunt Annie. Pinching it did not make my heart beat fast with eager expectation.

  Verity will never believe I wrote such reams — after she told Grandmother that giving me a journal was a sheer waste of time!

  Maybe I should start reading my Christmas book now. I got A Girl of the Limberlost. I’ve already read Freckles by the same author and it was wonderful. Freckles was a Limberlost guard with only one hand. The girl in this one is called Elnora. Perhaps she has a hateful sister.

  Late Christmas Afternoon

  I just read over the pages I wrote earlier. I never wrote so much about myself in all my life.

  Thinking back, I believe I may have figured out what made Verity so vicious. I believe she’s sweet on Rufus. It stands out all over her. She simpers when he comes into a room and she talks about him all the time. These are sure signs. It is ridiculous. She’s only seventeen and he is twenty. He probably thinks she is immature. If he does, he is absolutely right.

  I am loving A Girl of the Limberlost. How comforting it is to have a good book waiting for you! Elnora has no sisters to make her life difficult, but her mother is as cold-hearted as the stepmother in Hansel and Gretel.

  Fifteen minutes later

  Verity gave me the book! I just saw where she wrote in the front, For Eliza, who likes reading better than anything, with love from her big sister, Verity. And around the words she drew a wreath of holly berries and leaves and she coloured them with her watercolour paints. They are perfect.

  So I suppose I must forgive her even though her spiteful words still make me feel like an orphan lost in the storm.

  One thing I am not though is an orphan. How can you be when your parents have seven children and you come smack in the middle? I should describe them all but it is too big a job for today. Boxing Day will be the perfect time to do it.

  I asked True if Cornelia likes to read and she said she doesn’t. I will have to find somebody else at school to chum with. Yet the girls I met there were not promising. Maybe it is because Father is a minister. That does make some people nervous. Or it might be my eye.

  I was not going to mention my eye problem. It only turns in a little when I am tired or tense. I was very nervous the few weeks I had to go to school before it closed for the Christmas holidays. I tried not to act shy. Maybe I tried too hard. We sit in double desks but there is an uneven number so nobody sat with me.

  “You will sit with Cornelia, you lucky thing,” Mabel Jackson said with a mean laugh. I wonder what’s wrong with Cornelia. Whatever it is, I would rather share a desk with her than with that niminy-piminy Mabel. She reminds me of those porcelain dolls from France, all velvet and lace on the outside but hard as rock underneath. Their curly hair and wide eyes make them seem beautiful, but their faces are proud and pouty when you look again. Mother was given one by her godmother when she was seven. She only takes it out to show people. You cannot play with it. And its prissy little mouth is exactly like Mabel’s. She thinks her father being the bank manager makes her a cut above the rest of us. Also she brags about her cousin serving in the battalion that Colonel Sam Sharpe organized back in 1915. I know the 116th was the first Canadian county battalion formed, but the boy is only her second cousin, not her brother.

  Mother would be saying “Meow!” at me to warn me not to be so catty. But she does not have to be in the same class as Mabel.

  Still Christmas

  I fell asleep for an hour and woke up inspired.

  This past summer, Verity was given Jane Eyre to read. I asked if I would like it and Mother hurried to say it was too old for me. There was something in the way she looked that sent me hotfoot to find where Verity had put it. I started right in and I loved most of it. It is a big book and I lost interest in it once in a while, but parts of it made me cry. I especially liked the bits about her miserable childhood. But I read it all the way to the end. It took me four whole days. (It must have been Mr. Rochester’s mad wife locked up in the attic that worried Mother, I suppose.) Anyway, Jane talks to someone she calls “Dear Reader.” I’ve decided to do that too.

  You, dear Reader, shall be the friend I long for and I will write this whole journal to you. I’ll pretend I’m like Jane Eyre and I’ll do my best to make it exciting for you. I am afraid, though, that my life is mostly pretty ordinary. There is no mad person locked in our attic.

  Pretending I’m someone in a book will be a thousand times better than writing “Dear Diary” as Verity always does. How do I know, dear Reader? I snooped, of course. It is her own fault for leaving her journal lying about. I think she wants me to read it.

  You, dear Reader, will keep me company. After Jack and Rufus have gone and I am left with Verity and “the Infants,” I won’t be so alone if I have you.

  Mother is calling me to “lend a hand.” I can hear Verity carrying on about how lovely the skating was. You would think Aunt Martha and Verity would have enough hands without mine. I will be back at bedtime probably. I am determined to show them all how mature and faithful I can be. You have helped me already, dear Reader.

  Christmas Bedtime

  When I got downstairs, True was just leaving. I asked her how Cornelia was.

  “Happy as a clam,” said True. “She got a new cross-stitch picture for Christmas and she’s stitching away, busy as a bee.”

  Dear Reader, can you picture a clam or a bee embroidering? I said I’d rather read. And she said their brother Richard was the reader of the family. Before he joined up, he always had his nose in a book.

  I asked her what sort of books he read and she waved one hand in the air and said, “Thick, dull ones. History, I think, and philosophy. Nothing I care about, that is certain.”

  Cornelia sounds less and less kindred. Imagine being strong enough to work on her cross-stitch but too weak to hold up a book. I’ll warrant she is also too feeble to “lend a hand” with housework. When I was upstairs, I saw her at the window again, all hunched over something. It must be her embroidery hoop.

  At dinner I pulled the wishbone with Charlie and got the long end. What I wished for is that I would meet you in the flesh some day, dear Reader, and I would recognize you at once. You are not supposed to tell wishes, but putting them down in your private journal is not the same as telling.

  I am sitting on my side of our double bed, writing. Verity is glancing over at me, unable to believe her eyes. I want to laugh, but I will not so betray myself. She has no idea I wrote in my journal this afternoon while she was swanning about on the pond. After going skating on the Speed River in Guelph all those years before we moved here, a mere pond is a come down.

  I confess, dear Reader, that I was furious at my sister before she called me immature. It began when we were opening gifts after church. Grandmother had just given us these elegant journals and I had opened my mouth to thank her nicely when Her High Mightyness Verity piped up, “It’s no use giving Eliza a journal. She’s begun at least five and never written more than a couple of pages in any. She’s almost ineligible.”

  Verity often tries to show off and uses the wrong word. I am what Father calls a voracious reader, but Verity is not. She still has not read Jane Eyre. I know because I put it on my own private shelf when I finished it and she has never noticed.

  Aunt Martha said, “I assume you mean ‘illiterate’ or ‘illegible,’ Verity. But Eliza is extremely literate and her penmanship is quite as readable as yours.”

  That was nice of her because I don’t think she has seen much of my writing. I was supposed to write her a bread-and-butter letter after she sent me two pairs of combinations for my birthday last week. She wrote on the card, “These warm combies are to keep the rectory draughts at bay.” (Rectory! — she should know that Presbyterian ministers don’t live in rectories but in manses.) The dratted combinations are woolen and they itch like fire. They also sag in the seat. I put down, Dear Aunt Martha, Mother says to thank you. Sincerely, Eliza Mary Bates.

  I sealed up th
e envelope so Mother could not check up on me and she tucked it in with the rest. I wondered if Auntie would tell, but she didn’t. She’s a peach.

  Grandmother said she was sorry she had given me such an unwelcome gift.

  I thanked her in a voice as sweet as the Turkish Delight that Mother used to buy in Toronto before sugar got so expensive. It was the sweetest thing I have ever tasted. We each got a stick of barley sugar today and it was lovely, but not as special as Turkish Delight.

  I even said I would enjoy writing in the journal. I thought I was lying but maybe I wasn’t. I am having a good time. If my hand was not growing tired, I could keep going for hours.

  The journal is a nice one, as you could see if you were really here, with a ribbon to mark the spot where you left off writing. The pages are thick and creamy. You put the dates in yourself, too, so you can write lots on one day and skip the next, and it will still be fine.

  So I can’t get away with just doing the first few pages. Grandmother said she would inspect it next Christmas. I was in flat despair at the thought. But having you, dear Reader, changes everything. I can hardly believe how many pages I have already filled.

  “Eliza, what are you up to?” Verity just asked me.

  Ha ha! I’ve got her goat. It is a good thing the bed is wide or she’d be able to read over my shoulder.

  “Just writing in my journal,” I said, scribbling like mad.

  She craned her neck, trying to get a peek, but I pulled it away and scowled at her. “You know, don’t you, that journals are private property,” I told her.

  Now she is flustered. Good.

  You are my age, dear Reader. You must be taller than I am. Almost everyone is. I am small for twelve. I have long dark flyaway hair. My nose is snub. Grandmother says, if I follow it, I’ll end up in the right place. She’s headed there too. Hers is positively pug. Girls in books almost always have beautiful eyes. But I don’t want to talk about my eyes now except to say they are brown.

  By the way, I have almost forgiven Verity. I heard Mother scolding her for being selfish and going off skating without me. “Mean-spirited” she called her. I could hear V. blubbering something about being tired of always having to be a big sister. She probably thinks I tattled, but I never did. It seems Father took in more than I thought he did when he found me sitting there with one boot off and one boot on.