Book: Rilla of Ingleside

L >> Lucy Maud Montgomery >> Rilla of Ingleside




Rilla's presentiment proved correct. After supper she dressed herself
carefully in her blue, beaded crepe--for vanity is harder to quell than
pride and Irene always saw any flaw or shortcoming in another girl's
appearance. Besides, as Rilla had told her mother one day when she was
nine years old, "It is easier to behave nicely when you have your good
clothes on."

Rilla did her hair very becomingly and donned a long raincoat for fear
of a shower. But all the while her thoughts were concerned with the
coming distasteful interview, and she kept rehearsing mentally her part
in it. She wished it were over--she wished she had never tried to get
up a Belgian Relief concert--she wished she had not quarreled with
Irene. After all, disdainful silence would have been much more effective
in meeting the slur upon Walter. It was foolish and childish to fly out
as she had done--well, she would be wiser in the future, but meanwhile a
large and very unpalatable slice of humble pie had to be eaten, and
Rilla Blythe was no fonder of that wholesome article of diet than the
rest of us.

By sunset she was at the door of the Howard house--a pretentious abode,
with white scroll-work round the eaves and an eruption of bay-windows on
all its sides. Mrs. Howard, a plump, voluble dame, met Rilla gushingly
and left her in the parlour while she went to call Irene. Rilla threw
off her rain-coat and looked at herself critically in the mirror over
the mantel. Hair, hat, and dress were satisfactory--nothing there for
Miss Irene to make fun of. Rilla remembered how clever and amusing she
used to think Irene's biting little comments about other girls. Well, it
had come home to her now.

Presently, Irene skimmed down, elegantly gowned, with her pale,
straw-coloured hair done in the latest and most extreme fashion, and an
over-luscious atmosphere of perfume enveloping her.

"Why how do you do, Miss Blythe?" she said sweetly. "This is a very
unexpected pleasure."

Rilla had risen to take Irene's chilly finger-tips and now, as she sat
down again, she saw something that temporarily stunned her. Irene saw it
too, as she sat down, and a little amused, impertinent smile appeared on
her lips and hovered there during the rest of the interview.

On one of Rilla's feet was a smart little steel-buckled shoe and a filmy
blue silk stocking. The other was clad in a stout and rather shabby boot
and black lisle!

Poor Rilla! She had changed, or begun to change her boots and stockings
after she had put on her dress. This was the result of doing one thing
with your hands and another with your brain. Oh, what a ridiculous
position to be in--and before Irene Howard of all people--Irene, who
was staring at Rilla's feet as if she had never seen feet before! And
once she had thought Irene's manner perfection! Everything that Rilla
had prepared to say vanished from her memory. Vainly trying to tuck her
unlucky foot under her chair, she blurted out a blunt statement.

"I have come to athk a favour of you, Irene."

There--lisping! Oh, she had been prepared for humiliation but not to
this extent! Really, there were limits!

"Yes?" said Irene in a cool, questioning tone, lifting her
shallowly-set, insolent eyes to Rilla's crimson face for a moment and
then dropping them again as if she could not tear them from their
fascinated gaze at the shabby boot and the gallant shoe.

Rilla gathered herself together. She would not lisp--she would be calm
and composed.

"Mrs. Channing cannot come because her son is ill in Kingsport, and I
have come on behalf of the committee to ask you if you will be so kind
as to sing for us in her place." Rilla enunciated every word so
precisely and carefully that she seemed to be reciting a lesson.

"It's something of a fiddler's invitation, isn't it?" said Irene, with
one of her disagreeable smiles.

"Olive Kirk asked you to help when we first thought of the concert and
you refused," said Rilla.

"Why, I could hardly help--then--could I?" asked Irene plaintively.
"After you ordered me never to speak to you again? It would have been
very awkward for us both, don't you think?"

Now for the humble pie.

"I want to apologize to you for saying that, Irene." said Rilla
steadily. "I should not have said it and I have been very sorry ever
since. Will you forgive me?"

"And sing at your concert?" said Irene sweetly and insultingly.

"If you mean," said Rilla miserably, "that I would not be apologizing to
you if it were not for the concert perhaps that is true. But it is also
true that I have felt ever since it happened that I should not have said
what I did and that I have been sorry for it all winter. That is all I
can say. If you feel you can't forgive me I suppose there is nothing
more to be said."

"Oh, Rilla dear, don't snap me up like that," pleaded Irene. "Of course
I'll forgive you--though I did feel awfully about it--how awfully I
hope you'll never know. I cried for weeks over it. And I hadn't said or
done a thing!"

Rilla choked back a retort. After all, there was no use in arguing with
Irene, and the Belgians were starving.

"Don't you think you can help us with the concert," she forced herself
to say. Oh, if only Irene would stop looking at that boot! Rilla could
just hear her giving Olive Kirk an account of it.

"I don't see how I really can at the last moment like this," protested
Irene. "There isn't time to learn anything new."

"Oh, you have lots of lovely songs that nobody in the Glen ever heard
before," said Rilla, who knew Irene had been going to town all winter
for lessons and that this was only a pretext. "They will all be new down
there."

"But I have no accompanist," protested Irene.

"Una Meredith can accompany you," said Rilla.

"Oh, I couldn't ask her," sighed Irene. "We haven't spoken since last
fall. She was so hateful to me the time of our Sunday-school concert
that I simply had to give her up."

Dear, dear, was Irene at feud with everybody? As for Una Meredith being
hateful to anybody, the idea was so farcical that Rilla had much ado to
keep from laughing in Irene's very face.

"Miss Oliver is a beautiful pianist and can play any accompaniment at
sight," said Rilla desperately. "She will play for you and you could run
over your songs easily tomorrow evening at Ingleside before the
concert."

"But I haven't anything to wear. My new evening-dress isn't home from
Charlottetown yet, and I simply cannot wear my old one at such a big
affair. It is too shabby and old-fashioned."

"Our concert," said Rilla slowly, "is in aid of Belgian children who are
starving to death. Don't you think you could wear a shabby dress once
for their sake, Irene?"

"Oh, don't you think those accounts we get of the conditions of the
Belgians are very much exaggerated?" said Irene. "I'm sure they can't be
actually starving you know, in the twentieth century. The newspapers
always colour things so highly."

Rilla concluded that she had humiliated herself enough. There was such a
thing as self-respect. No more coaxing, concert or no concert. She got
up, boot and all.

"I am sorry you can't help us, Irene, but since you cannot we must do
the best we can."

Now this did not suit Irene at all. She desired exceedingly to sing at
that concert, and all her hesitations were merely by way of enhancing
the boon of her final consent. Besides, she really wanted to be friends
with Rilla again. Rilla's whole-hearted, ungrudging adoration had been
very sweet incense to her. And Ingleside was a very charming house to
visit, especially when a handsome college student like Walter was home.
She stopped looking at Rilla's feet.

"Rilla, darling, don't be so abrupt. I really want to help you, if I can
manage it. Just sit down and let's talk it over."

"I'm sorry, but I can't. I have to be home soon--Jims has to be settled
for the night, you know."

"Oh, yes--the baby you are bringing up by the book. It's perfectly
sweet of you to do it when you hate children so. How cross you were just
because I kissed him! But we'll forget all that and be chums again,
won't we? Now, about the concert--I dare say I can run into town on the
morning train after my dress, and out again on the afternoon one in
plenty of time for the concert, if you'll ask Miss Oliver to play for
me. I couldn't--she's so dreadfully haughty and supercilious that she
simply paralyses poor little me."

Rilla did not waste time or breath defending Miss Oliver. She coolly
thanked Irene, who had suddenly become very amiable and gushing, and got
away. She was very thankful the interview was over. But she knew now
that she and Irene could never be the friends they had been. Friendly,
yes--but friends, no. Nor did she wish it. All winter she had felt
under her other and more serious worries, a little feeling of regret for
her lost chum. Now it was suddenly gone. Irene was not as Mrs. Elliott
would say, of the race that knew Joseph. Rilla did not say or think that
she had outgrown Irene. Had the thought occurred to her she would have
considered it absurd when she was not yet seventeen and Irene was
twenty. But it was the truth. Irene was just what she had been a year
ago--just what she would always be. Rilla Blythe's nature in that year
had changed and matured and deepened. She found herself seeing through
Irene with a disconcerting clearness--discerning under all her
superficial sweetness, her pettiness, her vindictiveness, her
insincerity, her essential cheapness. Irene had lost for ever her
faithful worshipper.

But not until Rilla had traversed the Upper Glen Road and found herself
in the moon-dappled solitude of Rainbow Valley did she fully recover her
composure of spirit. Then she stopped under a tall wild plum that was
ghostly white and fair in its misty spring bloom and laughed.

"There is only one thing of importance just now--and that is that the
Allies win the war," she said aloud. "Therefore, it follows without
dispute that the fact that I went to see Irene Howard with odd shoes and
stockings on is of no importance whatever. Nevertheless, I, Bertha
Marilla Blythe, swear solemnly with the moon as witness"--Rilla lifted
her hand dramatically to the said moon--"that I will never leave my
room again without looking carefully at both my feet."



CHAPTER XIV

THE VALLEY OF DECISION

Susan kept the flag flying at Ingleside all the next day, in honour of
Italy's declaration of war.

"And not before it was time, Mrs. Dr. dear, considering the way things
have begun to go on the Russian front. Say what you will, those Russians
are kittle cattle, the grand duke Nicholas to the contrary
notwithstanding. It is a fortunate thing for Italy that she has come in
on the right side, but whether it is as fortunate for the Allies I will
not predict until I know more about Italians than I do now. However, she
will give that old reprobate of a Francis Joseph something to think
about. A pretty Emperor indeed--with one foot in the grave and yet
plotting wholesale murder"--and Susan thumped and kneaded her bread
with as much vicious energy as she could have expended in punching
Francis Joseph himself if he had been so unlucky as to fall into her
clutches.

Walter had gone to town on the early train, and Nan offered to look
after Jims for the day and so set Rilla free. Rilla was wildly busy all
day, helping to decorate the Glen hall and seeing to a hundred last
things. The evening was beautiful, in spite of the fact that Mr. Pryor
was reported to have said that he "hoped it would rain pitch forks
points down," and to have wantonly kicked Miranda's dog as he said it.
Rilla, rushing home from the hall, dressed hurriedly. Everything had
gone surprisingly well at the last; Irene was even then downstairs
practising her songs with Miss Oliver; Rilla was excited and happy,
forgetful even of the Western front for the moment. It gave her a sense
of achievement and victory to have brought her efforts of weeks to such
a successful conclusion. She knew that there had not lacked people who
thought and hinted that Rilla Blythe had not the tact or patience to
engineer a concert programme. She had shown them! Little snatches of
song bubbled up from her lips as she dressed. She thought she was
looking very well. Excitement brought a faint, becoming pink into her
round creamy cheeks, quite drowning out her few freckles, and her hair
gleamed with red-brown lustre. Should she wear crab-apple blossoms in
it, or her little fillet of pearls? After some agonised wavering she
decided on the crab-apple blossoms and tucked the white waxen cluster
behind her left ear. Now for a final look at her feet. Yes, both
slippers were on. She gave the sleeping Jims a kiss--what a dear little
warm, rosy, satin face he had--and hurried down the hill to the hall.
Already it was filling--soon it was crowded. Her concert was going to
be a brilliant success.

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.

When they turned in at the Ingleside gate Walter stopped in the shadows
of the old pines and drew Rilla close to him.

"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 brook 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

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.