“You could not mention anything about that blessed baby that I do not and will not remember till my dying day,” said Susan drearily.
“Susan, I keep thinking today of once when he cried for me in the night. He was just a few months old. Gilbert didn’t want me to go to him — he said the child was well and warm and that it would be fostering bad habits in him. But I went — and took him up — I can feel that tight clinging of his little arms round my neck yet. Susan, if I hadn’t gone that night, twenty-one years ago, and taken my baby up when he cried for me I couldn’t face tomorrow morning.”
“I do not know how we are going to face it anyhow, Mrs. Dr. dear. But do not tell me that it will be the final farewell. He will be back on leave before he goes overseas, will he not?”
“We hope so but we are not very sure. I am making up my mind that he will not, so that there will be no disappointment to bear. Susan, I am determined that I will send my boy off tomorrow with a smile. He shall not carry away with him the remembrance of a weak mother who had not the courage to send when he had the courage to go. I hope none of us will cry.”
“I am not going to cry, Mrs. Dr. dear, and that you may tie to, but whether I shall manage to smile or not will be as Providence ordains and as the pit of my stomach feels. Have you room there for this fruit-cake? And the shortbread? And the mince-pie? That blessed boy shall not starve, whether they have anything to eat in that Quebec place or not. Everything seems to be changing all at once, does it not? Even the old cat at the manse has passed away. He breathed his last at a quarter to ten last night and Bruce is quite heart-broken, they tell me.”
“It’s time that pussy went where good cats go. He must be at least fifteen years old. He has seemed so lonely since Aunt Martha died.”
“I should not have lamented, Mrs. Dr. dear, if that Hyde-beast had died also. He has been Mr. Hyde most of the time since Jem came home in khaki, and that has a meaning I will maintain. I do not know what Monday will do when Jem is gone. The creature just goes about with a human look in his eyes that takes all the good out of me when I see it. Ellen West used to be always railing at the Kaiser and we thought her crazy, but now I see that there was a method in her madness. This tray is packed, Mrs. Dr. dear, and I will go down and put in my best licks preparing supper. I wish I knew when I would cook another supper for Jem but such things are hidden from our eyes.”
Jem Blythe and Jerry Meredith left next morning. It was a dull day, threatening rain, and the clouds lay in heavy grey rolls over the sky; but almost everybody in the Glen and Four Winds and Harbour Head and Upper Glen and over-harbour — except Whiskers-on-the-moon — was there to see them off. The Blythe family and the Meredith family were all smiling. Even Susan, as Providence did ordain, wore a smile, though the effect was somewhat more painful than tears would have been. Faith and Nan were very pale and very gallant. Rilla thought she would get on very well if something in her throat didn’t choke her, and if her lips didn’t take such spells of trembling. Dog Monday was there, too. Jem had tried to say good-bye to him at Ingleside but Monday implored so eloquently that Jem relented and let him go to the station. He kept close to Jem’s legs and watched every movement of his beloved master.
“I can’t bear that dog’s eyes,” said Mrs. Meredith.
“The beast has more sense than most humans,” said Mary Vance. “Well, did we any of us ever think we’d live to see this day? I bawled all night to think of Jem and Jerry going like this. I think they’re plumb deranged. Miller got a maggot in his head about going but I soon talked him out of it — likewise his aunt said a few touching things. For once in our lives Kitty Alec and I agree. It’s a miracle that isn’t likely to happen again. There’s Ken, Rilla.”
Rilla knew Kenneth was there. She had been acutely conscious of it from the moment he had sprung from Leo West’s buggy. Now he came up to her smiling.
“Doing the brave-smiling-sister-stunt, I see. What a crowd for the Glen to muster! Well, I’m off home in a few days myself.”
A queer little wind of desolation that even Jem’s going had not caused blew over Rilla’s spirit.
“Why? You have another month of vacation.”
“Yes — but I can’t hang around Four Winds and enjoy myself when the world’s on fire like this. It’s me for little old Toronto where I’ll find some way of helping in spite of this bally ankle. I’m not looking at Jem and Jerry — makes me too sick with envy. You girls are great — no crying, no grim endurance. The boys’ll go off with a good taste in their mouths. I hope Persis and mother will be as game when my turn comes.”
“Oh, Kenneth — the war will be over before your turn cometh.”
There! She had lisped again. Another great moment of life spoiled! Well, it was her fate. And anyhow, nothing mattered. Kenneth was off already — he was talking to Ethel Reese, who was dressed, at seven in the morning, in the gown she had worn to the dance, and was crying. What on earth had Ethel to cry about? None of the Reeses were in khaki. Rilla wanted to cry, too — but she would not. What was that horrid old Mrs. Drew saying to mother, in that melancholy whine of hers? “I don’t know how you can stand this, Mrs. Blythe. I couldn’t if it was my pore boy.” And mother — oh, mother could always be depended on! How her grey eyes flashed in her pale face. “It might have been worse, Mrs. Drew. I might have had to urge him to go.” Mrs. Drew did not understand but Rilla did. She flung up her head. Her brother did not have to be urged to go.
Rilla found herself standing alone and listening to disconnected scraps of talk as people walked up and down past her.
“I told Mark to wait and see if they asked for a second lot of men. If they did I’d let him go — but they won’t,” said Mrs. Palmer Burr.
“I think I’ll have it made with a crush girdle of velvet,” said Bessie Clow.
“I’m frightened to look at my husband’s face for fear I’ll see in it that he wants to go too,” said a little over-harbour bride.
“I’m scared stiff,” said whimsical Mrs. Jim Howard. “I’m scared Jim will enlist — and I’m scared he won’t.”
“The war will be over by Christmas,” said Joe Vickers.
“Let them European nations fight it out between them,” said Abner Reese.
“When he was a boy I gave him many a good trouncing,” shouted Norman Douglas, who seemed to be referring to some one high in military circles in Charlottetown. “Yes, sir, I walloped him well, big gun as he is now.”
“The existence of the British Empire is at stake,” said the Methodist minister.
“There’s certainly something about uniforms,” sighed Irene Howard.
“It’s a commercial war when all is said and done and not worth one drop of good Canadian blood,” said a stranger from the shore hotel.
“The Blythe family are taking it easy,” said Kate Drew.
“Them young fools are just going for adventure,” growled Nathan Crawford.
“I have absolute confidence in Kitchener,” said the over-harbour doctor.
In these ten minutes Rilla passed through a dizzying succession of anger, laughter, contempt, depression and inspiration. Oh, people were — funny! How little they understood. “Taking it easy,” indeed — when even Susan hadn’t slept a wink all night! Kate Drew always was a minx.
Rilla felt as if she were in some fantastic nightmare. Were these the people who, three weeks ago, were talking of crops and prices and local gossip?
There — the train was coming — mother was holding Jem’s hand — Dog Monday was licking it — everybody was saying good-bye — the train was in! Jem kissed Faith before everybody — old Mrs. Drew whooped hysterically — the men, led by Kenneth, cheered — Rilla felt Jem seize her hand—”Good-bye, Spider” — somebody kissed her cheek — she believed it was Jerry but never was sure — they were off — the train was pulling out — Jem and Jerry were waving to everybody — everybody was waving back — mother and Nan were smiling still, but as if they had just forgotten to take the smile off �
�� Monday was howling dismally and being forcibly restrained by the Methodist minister from tearing after the train — Susan was waving her best bonnet and hurrahing like a man — had she gone crazy? — the train rounded a curve. They had gone.
Rilla came to herself with a gasp. There was a sudden quiet. Nothing to do now but to go home — and wait. The doctor and Mrs. Blythe walked off together — so did Nan and Faith — so did John Meredith and Rosemary. Walter and Una and Shirley and Di and Carl and Rilla went in a group. Susan had put her bonnet back on her head, hindside foremost, and stalked grimly off alone. Nobody missed Dog Monday at first. When they did Shirley went back for him. He found Dog Monday curled up in one of the shipping-sheds near the station and tried to coax him home. Dog Monday would not move. He wagged his tail to show he had no hard feelings but no blandishments availed to budge him.
“Guess Monday has made up his mind to wait there till Jem comes back,” said Shirley, trying to laugh as he rejoined the rest. This was exactly what Dog Monday had done. His dear master had gone — he, Monday, had been deliberately and of malice aforethought prevented from going with him by a demon disguised in the garb of a Methodist minister. Wherefore, he, Monday, would wait there until the smoking, snorting monster, which had carried his hero off, carried him back.
Ay, wait there, little faithful dog with the soft, wistful, puzzled eyes. But it will be many a long bitter day before your boyish comrade comes back to you.
The doctor was away on a case that night and Susan stalked into Mrs. Blythe’s room on her way to bed to see if her adored Mrs. Dr. dear were “comfortable and composed.” She paused solemnly at the foot of the bed and solemnly declared,
“Mrs. Dr. dear, I have made up my mind to be a heroine.”
“Mrs. Dr. dear” found herself violently inclined to laugh — which was manifestly unfair, since she had not laughed when Rilla had announced a similar heroic determination. To be sure, Rilla was a slim, white-robed thing, with a flower-like face and starry young eyes aglow with feeling; whereas Susan was arrayed in a grey flannel nightgown of strait simplicity, and had a strip of red woollen worsted tied around her grey hair as a charm against neuralgia. But that should not make any vital difference. Was it not the spirit that counted? Yet Mrs. Blythe was hard put to it not to laugh.
“I am not,” proceeded Susan firmly, “going to lament or whine or question the wisdom of the Almighty any more as I have been doing lately. Whining and shirking and blaming Providence do not get us anywhere. We have just got to grapple with whatever we have to do whether it is weeding the onion patch, or running the Government. I shall grapple. Those blessed boys have gone to war; and we women, Mrs. Dr. dear, must tarry by the stuff and keep a stiff upper lip.”
CHAPTER VII
A WAR-BABY AND A SOUP TUREEN
“Liege and Namur — and now Brussels!” The doctor shook his head. “I don’t like it — I don’t like it.”
“Do not you lose heart, Dr. dear; they were just defended by foreigners,” said Susan superbly. “Wait you till the Germans come against the British; there will be a very different story to tell and that you may tie to.”
The doctor shook his head again, but a little less gravely; perhaps they all shared subconsciously in Susan’s belief that “the thin grey line” was unbreakable, even by the victorious rush of Germany’s ready millions. At any rate, when the terrible day came — the first of many terrible days — with the news that the British army was driven back they stared at each other in blank dismay.
“It — it can’t be true,” gasped Nan, taking a brief refuge in temporary incredulity.
“I felt that there was to be bad news today,” said Susan, “for that cat-creature turned into Mr. Hyde this morning without rhyme or reason for it, and that was no good omen.”
“‘A broken, a beaten, but not a demoralized, army,’” muttered the doctor, from a London dispatch. “Can it be England’s army of which such a thing is said?”
“It will be a long time now before the war is ended,” said Mrs. Blythe despairingly.
Susan’s faith, which had for a moment been temporarily submerged, now reappeared triumphantly.
“Remember, Mrs. Dr. dear, that the British army is not the British navy. Never forget that. And the Russians are on their way, too, though Russians are people I do not know much about and consequently will not tie to.”
“The Russians will not be in time to save Paris,” said Walter gloomily. “Paris is the heart of France — and the road to it is open. Oh, I wish” — he stopped abruptly and went out.
After a paralysed day the Ingleside folk found it was possible to “carry on” even in the face of ever-darkening bad news. Susan worked fiercely in her kitchen, the doctor went out on his round of visits, Nan and Di returned to their Red Cross activities; Mrs. Blythe went to Charlottetown to attend a Red Cross Convention; Rilla after relieving her feelings by a stormy fit of tears in Rainbow Valley and an outburst in her diary, remembered that she had elected to be brave and heroic. And, she thought, it really was heroic to volunteer to drive about the Glen and Four Winds one day, collecting promised Red Cross supplies with Abner Crawford’s old grey horse. One of the Ingleside horses was lame and the doctor needed the other, so there was nothing for it but the Crawford nag, a placid, unhasting, thick-skinned creature with an amiable habit of stopping every few yards to kick a fly off one leg with the foot of the other. Rilla felt that this, coupled with the fact that the Germans were only fifty miles from Paris, was hardly to be endured. But she started off gallantly on an errand fraught with amazing results.
Late in the afternoon she found herself, with a buggy full of parcels, at the entrance to a grassy, deep-rutted lane leading to the harbour shore, wondering whether it was worth while to call down at the Anderson house. The Andersons were desperately poor and it was not likely Mrs. Anderson had anything to give. On the other hand, her husband, who was an Englishman by birth and who had been working in Kingsport when the war broke out, had promptly sailed for England to enlist there, without, it may be said, coming home or sending much hard cash to represent him. So possibly Mrs. Anderson might feel hurt if she were overlooked. Rilla decided to call. There were times afterwards when she wished she hadn’t, but in the long run she was very thankful that she did.
The Anderson house was a small and tumbledown affair, crouching in a grove of battered spruces near the shore as if rather ashamed of itself and anxious to hide. Rilla tied her grey nag to the rickety fence and went to the door. It was open; and the sight she saw bereft her temporarily of the power of speech or motion.
Through the open door of the small bedroom opposite her, Rilla saw Mrs. Anderson lying on the untidy bed; and Mrs. Anderson was dead. There was no doubt of that; neither was there any doubt that the big, frowzy, red-headed, red-faced, over-fat woman sitting near the door-way, smoking a pipe quite comfortably, was very much alive. She rocked idly back and forth amid her surroundings of squalid disorder, and paid no attention whatever to the piercing wails proceeding from a cradle in the middle of the room.
Rilla knew the woman by sight and reputation. Her name was Mrs. Conover; she lived down at the fishing village; she was a great-aunt of Mrs. Anderson; and she drank as well as smoked.
Rilla’s first impulse was to turn and flee. But that would never do. Perhaps this woman, repulsive as she was, needed help — though she certainly did not look as if she were worrying over the lack of it.
“Come in,” said Mrs. Conover, removing her pipe and staring at Rilla with her little, rat-like eyes.
“Is — is Mrs. Anderson really dead?” asked Rilla timidly, as she stepped over the sill.
“Dead as a door nail,” responded Mrs. Conover cheerfully. “Kicked the bucket half an hour ago. I’ve sent Jen Conover to ‘phone for the undertaker and get some help up from the shore. You’re the doctor’s miss, ain’t ye? Have a cheer?”
Rilla did not see any chair which was not cluttered with something. She remained standing.
/> “Wasn’t it — very sudden?”
“Well, she’s been a-pining ever since that worthless Jim lit out for England — which I say it’s a pity as he ever left. It’s my belief she was took for death when she heard the news. That young un there was born a fortnight ago and since then she’s just gone down and today she up and died, without a soul expecting it.”
“Is there anything I can do to — to help?” hesitated Rilla.
“Bless yez, no — unless ye’ve a knack with kids. I haven’t. That young un there never lets up squalling, day or night. I’ve just got that I take no notice of it.”
Rilla tiptoed gingerly over to the cradle and more gingerly still pulled down the dirty blanket. She had no intention of touching the baby — she had no “knack with kids” either. She saw an ugly midget with a red, distorted little face, rolled up in a piece of dingy old flannel. She had never seen an uglier baby. Yet a feeling of pity for the desolate, orphaned mite which had “come out of the everywhere” into such a dubious “here”, took sudden possession of her.
“What is going to become of the baby?” she asked.
“Lord knows,” said Mrs. Conover candidly. “Min worried awful over that before she died. She kept on a-saying ‘Oh, what will become of my pore baby’ till it really got on my nerves. I ain’t a-going to trouble myself with it, I can tell yez. I brung up a boy that my sister left and he skinned out as soon as he got to be some good and won’t give me a mite o’ help in my old age, ungrateful whelp as he is. I told Min it’d have to be sent to an orphan asylum till we’d see if Jim ever came back to look after it. Would yez believe it, she didn’t relish the idee. But that’s the long and short of it.”
“But who will look after it until it can be taken to the asylum?” persisted Rilla. Somehow the baby’s fate worried her.
“S’pose I’ll have to,” grunted Mrs. Conover. She put away her pipe and took an unblushing swig from a black bottle she produced from a shelf near her. “It’s my opinion the kid won’t live long. It’s sickly. Min never had no gimp and I guess it hain’t either. Likely it won’t trouble any one long and good riddance, sez I.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 192