The first three numbers were successfully over. Rilla was in the little dressing-room behind the platform, looking out on the moonlit harbour and rehearsing her own recitations. She was alone, the rest of the performers being in the larger room on the other side. Suddenly she felt two soft bare arms slipping round her waist, then Irene Howard dropped a light kiss on her cheek.
“Rilla, you sweet thing, you’re looking simply angelic to-night. You have spunk — I thought you would feel so badly over Walter’s enlisting that you’d hardly be able to bear up at all, and here you are as cool as a cucumber. I wish I had half your nerve.”
Rilla stood perfectly still. She felt no emotion whatever — she felt nothing. The world of feeling had just gone blank.
“Walter — enlisting” — she heard herself saying — then she heard Irene’s affected little laugh.
“Why, didn’t you know? I thought you did of course, or I wouldn’t have mentioned it. I am always putting my foot in it, aren’t I? Yes, that is what he went to town for to-day — he told me coming out on the train to-night, I was the first person he told. He isn’t in khaki yet — they were out of uniforms — but he will be in a day or two. I always said Walter had as much pluck as anybody. I assure you I felt proud of him, Rilla, when he told me what he’d done. Oh, there’s an end of Rick MacAllister’s reading. I must fly. I promised I’d play for the next chorus — Alice Clow has such a headache.”
She was gone — oh, thank God, she was gone! Rilla was alone again, staring out at the unchanged, dream-like beauty of moonlit Four Winds. Feeling was coming back to her — a pang of agony so acute as to be almost physical seemed to rend her apart.
“I cannot bear it,” she said. And then came the awful thought that perhaps she could bear it and that there might be years of this hideous suffering before her.
She must get away — she must rush home — she must be alone. She could not go out there and play for drills and give readings and take part in dialogues now. It would spoil half the concert; but that did not matter — nothing mattered. Was this she, Rilla Blythe — this tortured thing, who had been quite happy a few minutes ago? Outside, a quartette was singing “We’ll never let the old flag fall” — the music seemed to be coming from some remote distance. Why couldn’t she cry, as she had cried when Jem told them he must go? If she could cry perhaps this horrible something that seemed to have seized on her very life might let go. But no tears came! Where were her scarf and coat? She must get away and hide herself like an animal hurt to the death.
Was it a coward’s part to run away like this? The question came to her suddenly as if someone else had asked it. She thought of the shambles of the Flanders front — she thought of her brother and her playmate helping to hold those fire-swept trenches. What would they think of her if she shirked her little duty here — the humble duty of carrying the programme through for her Red Cross? But she couldn’t stay — she couldn’t — yet what was it mother had said when Jem went: “When our women fail in courage shall our men be fearless still?” But this — this was unbearable.
Still, she stopped half-way to the door and went back to the window. Irene was singing now; her beautiful voice — the only real thing about her — soared clear and sweet through the building. Rilla knew that the girls’ Fairy Drill came next. Could she go out there and play for it? Her head was aching now — her throat was burning. Oh, why had Irene told her just then, when telling could do no good? Irene had been very cruel. Rilla remembered now that more than once that day she had caught her mother looking at her with an odd expression. She had been too busy to wonder what it meant. She understood now. Mother had known why Walter went to town but wouldn’t tell her until the concert was over. What spirit and endurance mother had!
“I must stay here and see things through,” said Rilla, clasping her cold hands together.
The rest of the evening always seemed like a fevered dream to her. Her body was crowded by people but her soul was alone in a torture-chamber of its own. Yet she played steadily for the drills and gave her readings without faltering. She even put on a grotesque old Irish woman’s costume and acted the part in the dialogue which Miranda Pryor had not taken. But she did not give her “brogue” the inimitable twist she had given it in the practices, and her readings lacked their usual fire and appeal. As she stood before the audience she saw one face only — that of the handsome, dark-haired lad sitting beside her mother — and she saw that same face in the trenches — saw it lying cold and dead under the stars — saw it pining in prison — saw the light of its eyes blotted out — saw a hundred horrible things as she stood there on the beflagged platform of the Glen hall with her own face whiter than the milky crab-blossoms in her hair. Between her numbers she walked restlessly up and down the little dressing-room. Would the concert never end!
It ended at last. Olive Kirk rushed up and told her exultantly that they had made a hundred dollars. “That’s good,” Rilla said mechanically. Then she was away from them all — oh, thank God, she was away from them all — Walter was waiting for her at the door. He put his arm through hers silently and they went together down the moonlit road. The frogs were singing in the marshes, the dim, ensilvered fields of home lay all around them. The spring night was lovely and appealing. Rilla felt that its beauty was an insult to her pain. She would hate moonlight for ever.
“You know?” said Walter.
“Yes. Irene told me,” answered Rilla chokingly.
“We didn’t want you to know till the evening was over. I knew when you came out for the drill that you had heard. Little sister, I had to do it. I couldn’t live any longer on such terms with myself as I have been since the Lusitania was sunk. When I pictured those dead women and children floating about in that pitiless, ice-cold water — well, at first I just felt a sort of nausea with life. I wanted to get out of the world where such a thing could happen — shake its accursed dust from my feet for ever. Then I knew I had to go.”
“There are — plenty — without you.”
“That isn’t the point, Rilla-my-Rilla. I’m going for my own sake — to save my soul alive. It will shrink to something small and mean and lifeless if I don’t go. That would be worse than blindness or mutilation or any of the things I’ve feared.”
“You may — be — killed,” Rilla hated herself for saying it — she knew it was a weak and cowardly thing to say — but she had rather gone to pieces after the tension of the evening.
“‘Comes he slow or comes he fast
It is but death who comes at last.’”
quoted Walter. “It’s not death I fear — I told you that long ago. One can pay too high a price for mere life, little sister. There’s so much hideousness in this war — I’ve got to go and help wipe it out of the world. I’m going to fight for the beauty of life, Rilla-my-Rilla — that is my duty. There may be a higher duty, perhaps — but that is mine. I owe life and Canada that, and I’ve got to pay it. Rilla, tonight for the first time since Jem left I’ve got back my self-respect. I could write poetry,” Walter laughed. “I’ve never been able to write a line since last August. Tonight I’m full of it. Little sister, be brave — you were so plucky when Jem went.”
“This — is — different,” Rilla had to stop after every word to fight down a wild outburst of sobs. “I loved — Jem — of course — but — when — he went — away — we thought — the war — would soon — be over — and you are — everything to me, Walter.”
“You must be brave to help me, Rilla-my-Rilla. I’m exalted tonight — drunk with the excitement of victory over myself — but there will be other times when it won’t be like this — I’ll need your help then.”
“When — do — you — go?” She must know the worst at once.
“Not for a week — then we go to Kingsport for training. I suppose we’ll go overseas about the middle of July — we don’t know.”
One week — only one week more with Walter! The eyes of youth did not see how she was to go on living.
“Rilla-my-Rilla, there were girls as sweet and pure as you in Belgium and Flanders. You — even you — know what their fate was. We must make it impossible for such things to happen again while the world lasts. You’ll help me, won’t you?”
“I’ll try, Walter,” she said. “Oh, I will try.”
As she clung to him with her face pressed against his shoulder she knew that it had to be. She accepted the fact then and there. He must go — her beautiful Walter with his beautiful soul and dreams and ideals. And she had known all along that it would come sooner or later. She had seen it coming to her — coming — coming — as one sees the shadow of a cloud drawing near over a sunny field, swiftly and inescapably. Amid all her pain she was conscious of an odd feeling of relief in some hidden part of her soul, where a little dull, unacknowledged soreness had been lurking all winter. No one — no one could ever call Walter a slacker now.
Rilla did not sleep that night. Perhaps no one at Ingleside did except Jims. The body grows slowly and steadily, but the soul grows by leaps and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour. From that night Rilla Blythe’s soul was the soul of a woman in its capacity for suffering, for strength, for endurance.
When the bitter dawn came she rose and went to her window. Below her was a big apple-tree, a great swelling cone of rosy blossom. Walter had planted it years ago when he was a little boy. Beyond Rainbow Valley there was a cloudy shore of morning with little ripples of sunrise breaking over it. The far, cold beauty of a lingering star shone above it. Why, in this world of springtime loveliness, must hearts break?
Rilla felt arms go about her lovingly, protectingly. It was mother — pale, large-eyed mother.
“Oh, mother, how can you bear it?” she cried wildly. “Rilla, dear, I’ve known for several days that Walter meant to go. I’ve had time to — to rebel and grow reconciled. We must give him up. There is a Call greater and more insistent than the call of our love — he has listened to it. We must not add to the bitterness of his sacrifice.”
“Our sacrifice is greater than his,” cried Rilla passionately. “Our boys give only themselves. We give them.”
Before Mrs. Blythe could reply Susan stuck her head in at the door, never troubling over such frills of etiquette as knocking. Her eyes were suspiciously red but all she said was,
“Will I bring up your breakfast, Mrs. Dr. dear.”
“No, no, Susan. We will all be down presently. Do you know — that Walter has joined up.”
“Yes, Mrs. Dr. dear. The doctor told me last night. I suppose the Almighty has His own reasons for allowing such things. We must submit and endeavour to look on the bright side. It may cure him of being a poet, at least” — Susan still persisted in thinking that poets and tramps were tarred with the same brush—”and that would be something. But thank God,” she muttered in a lower tone, “that Shirley is not old enough to go.”
“Isn’t that the same thing as thanking Him that some other woman’s son has to go in Shirley’s place?” asked the doctor, pausing on the threshold.
“No, it is not, doctor dear,” said Susan defiantly, as she picked up Jims, who was opening his big dark eyes and stretching up his dimpled paws. “Do not you put words in my mouth that I would never dream of uttering. I am a plain woman and cannot argue with you, but I do not thank God that anybody has to go. I only know that it seems they do have to go, unless we all want to be Kaiserised — for I can assure you that the Monroe doctrine, whatever it is, is nothing to tie to, with Woodrow Wilson behind it. The Huns, Dr. dear, will never be brought to book by notes. And now,” concluded Susan, tucking Jims in the crook of her gaunt arms and marching downstairs, “having cried my cry and said my say I shall take a brace, and if I cannot look pleasant I will look as pleasant as I can.”
CHAPTER XV
UNTIL THE DAY BREAK
“The Germans have recaptured Premysl,” said Susan despairingly, looking up from her newspaper, “and now I suppose we will have to begin calling it by that uncivilised name again. Cousin Sophia was in when the mail came and when she heard the news she hove a sigh up from the depths of her stomach, Mrs. Dr. dear, and said, ‘Ah yes, and they will get Petrograd next I have no doubt.’ I said to her, ‘My knowledge of geography is not so profound as I wish it was but I have an idea that it is quite a walk from Premysl to Petrograd.’ Cousin Sophia sighed again and said, ‘The Grand Duke Nicholas is not the man I took him to be.’ ‘Do not let him know that,’ said I. ‘It might hurt his feelings and he has likely enough to worry him as it is. But you cannot cheer Cousin Sophia up, no matter how sarcastic you are, Mrs. Dr. dear. She sighed for the third time and groaned out, ‘But the Russians are retreating fast,’ and I said, ‘Well, what of it? They have plenty of room for retreating, have they not?’ But all the same, Mrs. Dr. dear, though I would never admit it to Cousin Sophia, I do not like the situation on the eastern front.”
Nobody else liked it either; but all summer the Russian retreat went on — a long-drawn-out agony.
“I wonder if I shall ever again be able to await the coming of the mail with feelings of composure — never to speak of pleasure,” said Gertrude Oliver. “The thought that haunts me night and day is — will the Germans smash Russia completely and then hurl their eastern army, flushed with victory, against the western front?”
“They will not, Miss Oliver dear,” said Susan, assuming the role of prophetess.
“In the first place, the Almighty will not allow it, in the second, Grand Duke Nicholas, though he may have been a disappointment to us in some respects, knows how to run away decently and in order, and that is a very useful knowledge when Germans are chasing you. Norman Douglas declares he is just luring them on and killing ten of them to one he loses. But I am of the opinion he cannot help himself and is just doing the best he can under the circumstances, the same as the rest of us. So do not go so far afield to borrow trouble, Miss Oliver dear, when there is plenty of it already camping on our very doorstep.”
Walter had gone to Kingsport the first of June. Nan, Di and Faith had gone also to do Red Cross work in their vacation. In mid-July Walter came home for a week’s leave before going overseas. Rilla had lived through the days of his absence on the hope of that week, and now that it had come she drank every minute of it thirstily, hating even the hours she had to spend in sleep, they seemed such a waste of precious moments. In spite of its sadness, it was a beautiful week, full of poignant, unforgettable hours, when she and Walter had long walks and talks and silences together. He was all her own and she knew that he found strength and comfort in her sympathy and understanding. It was very wonderful to know she meant so much to him — the knowledge helped her through moments that would otherwise have been unendurable, and gave her power to smile — and even to laugh a little. When Walter had gone she might indulge in the comfort of tears, but not while he was here. She would not even let herself cry at night, lest her eyes should betray her to him in the morning.
On his last evening at home they went together to Rainbow Valley and sat down on the bank of the brook, under the White Lady, where the gay revels of olden days had been held in the cloudless years. Rainbow Valley was roofed over with a sunset of unusual splendour that night; a wonderful grey dusk just touched with starlight followed it; and then came moonshine, hinting, hiding, revealing, lighting up little dells and hollows here, leaving others in dark, velvet shadow.
“When I am ‘somewhere in France,’” said Walter, looking around him with eager eyes on all the beauty his soul loved, “I shall remember these still, dewy, moon-drenched places. The balsam of the fir-trees; the peace of those white pools of moonshine; the ‘strength of the hills’ — what a beautiful old Biblical phrase that is. Rilla! Look at those old hills around us — the hills we looked up at as children, wondering what lay for us in the great world beyond them. How calm and strong they are — how pat
ient and changeless — like the heart of a good woman. Rilla-my-Rilla, do you know what you have been to me the past year? I want to tell you before I go. I could not have lived through it if it had not been for you, little loving, believing heart.”
Rilla dared not try to speak. She slipped her hand into Walter’s and pressed it hard.
“And when I’m over there, Rilla, in that hell upon earth which men who have forgotten God have made, it will be the thought of you that will help me most. I know you’ll be as plucky and patient as you have shown yourself to be this past year — I’m not afraid for you. I know that no matter what happens, you’ll be Rilla-my-Rilla — no matter what happens.”
Rilla repressed tear and sigh, but she could not repress a little shiver, and Walter knew that he had said enough. After a moment of silence, in which each made an unworded promise to each other, he said, “Now we won’t be sober any more. We’ll look beyond the years — to the time when the war will be over and Jem and Jerry and I will come marching home and we’ll all be happy again.”
“We won’t be — happy — in the same way,” said Rilla.
“No, not in the same way. Nobody whom this war has touched will ever be happy again in quite the same way. But it will be a better happiness, I think, little sister — a happiness we’ve earned. We were very happy before the war, weren’t we? With a home like Ingleside, and a father and mother like ours we couldn’t help being happy. But that happiness was a gift from life and love; it wasn’t really ours — life could take it back at any time. It can never take away the happiness we win for ourselves in the way of duty. I’ve realised that since I went into khaki. In spite of my occasional funks, when I fall to living over things beforehand, I’ve been happy since that night in May. Rilla, be awfully good to mother while I’m away. It must be a horrible thing to be a mother in this war — the mothers and sisters and wives and sweethearts have the hardest times. Rilla, you beautiful little thing, are you anybody’s sweetheart? If you are, tell me before I go.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 199