Rilla of Ingleside, Lucy Maud Montgomery [surface ebook reader TXT] 📗
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Performer: 1594624275
Book online «Rilla of Ingleside, Lucy Maud Montgomery [surface ebook reader TXT] 📗». Author Lucy Maud Montgomery
“The last evening of his leave Fred came up to Ingleside and told me he loved me and asked me if I would promise to marry him some day, if he ever came back. He was desperately in earnest and I felt more wretched than I ever did in my life. I couldn’t promise him that—why, even if there was no question of Ken, I don’t care for Fred that way and never could—but it seemed so cruel and heartless to send him away to the front without any hope of comfort. I cried like a baby; and yet—oh, I am afraid that there must be something incurably frivolous about me, because, right in the middle of it all, with me crying and Fred looking so wild and tragic, the thought popped into my head that it would be an unendurable thing to see that nose across from me at the breakfast table every morning of my life. There, that is one of the entries I wouldn’t want my descendants to read in this journal. But it is the humiliating truth; and perhaps it’s just as well that thought did come or I might have been tricked by pity and remorse into giving him some rash assurance. If Fred’s nose were as handsome as his eyes and mouth some such thing might have happened. And then what an unthinkable predicament I should have been in!
“When poor Fred became convinced that I couldn’t promise him, he behaved beautifully—though that rather made things worse. If he had been nasty about it I wouldn’t have felt so heartbroken and remorseful—though why I should feel remorseful I don’t know, for I never encouraged Fred to think I cared a bit about him. Yet feel remorseful I did—and do. If Fred Arnold never comes back from overseas, this will haunt me all my life.
“Then Fred said if he couldn’t take my love with him to the trenches at least he wanted to feel that he had my friendship, and would I kiss him just once in goodbye before he went—perhaps for ever?
“I don’t know how I could ever had imagined that love affairs were delightful, interesting things. They are horrible. I couldn’t even give poor heartbroken Fred one little kiss, because of my promise to Ken. It seemed so brutal. I had to tell Fred that of course he would have my friendship, but that I couldn’t kiss him because I had promised somebody else I wouldn’t.
“He said, ‘It is—is it—Ken Ford?’
“I nodded. It seemed dreadful to have to tell it—it was such a sacred little secret just between me and Ken.
“When Fred went away I came up here to my room and cried so long and so bitterly that mother came up and insisted on knowing what was the matter. I told her. She listened to my tale with an expression that clearly said, ‘Can it be possible that anyone has been wanting to marry this baby?’ But she was so nice and understanding and sympathetic, oh, just so race-of-Josephy—that I felt indescribably comforted. Mothers are the dearest things.
“‘But oh, mother,’ I sobbed, ‘he wanted me to kiss him goodbye—and I couldn’t—and that hurt me worse than all the rest.’
“‘Well, why didn’t you kiss him?’ asked mother coolly. ‘Considering the circumstances, I think you might have.’
“‘But I couldn’t, mother—I promised Ken when he went away that I wouldn’t kiss anybody else until he came back.’
“This was another high explosive for poor mother. She exclaimed, with the queerest little catch in her voice, ‘Rilla, are you engaged to Kenneth Ford?’
“‘I—don’t—know,’ I sobbed.
“‘You—don’t—know?’ repeated mother.
“Then I had to tell her the whole story, too; and every time I tell it it seems sillier and sillier to imagine that Ken meant anything serious. I felt idiotic and ashamed by the time I got through.
“Mother sat a little while in silence. Then she came over, sat down beside me, and took me in her arms.
“‘Don’t cry, dear little Rilla-my-Rilla. You have nothing to reproach yourself with in regard to Fred; and if Leslie West’s son asked you to keep your lips for him, I think you may consider yourself engaged to him. But—oh, my baby—my last little baby—I have lost you—the war has made a woman of you too soon.’
“I shall never be too much of a woman to find comfort in mother’s hugs. Nevertheless, when I saw Fred marching by two days later in the parade, my heart ached unbearably.
“But I’m glad mother thinks I’m really engaged to Ken!”
“It is two years tonight since the dance at the light, when Jack Elliott brought us news of the war. Do you remember, Miss Oliver?”
Cousin Sophia answered for Miss Oliver. “Oh, indeed, Rilla, I remember that evening only too well, and you a-prancing down here to show off your party clothes. Didn’t I warn you that we could not tell what was before us? Little did you think that night what was before you.”
“Little did any of us think that,” said Susan sharply, “not being gifted with the power of prophecy. It does not require any great foresight, Sophia Crawford, to tell a body that she will have some trouble before her life is over. I could do as much myself.”
“We all thought the war would be over in a few months then,” said Rilla wistfully. “When I look back it seems so ridiculous that we ever could have supposed it.”
“And now, two years later, it is no nearer the end than it was then,” said Miss Oliver gloomily.
Susan clicked her knitting-needles briskly.
“Now, Miss Oliver, dear, you know that is not a reasonable remark. You know we are just two years nearer the end, whenever the end is appointed to be.”
“Albert read in a Montreal paper today that a war expert gives it as his opinion that it will last five years more,” was Cousin Sophia’s cheerful contribution.
“It can’t,” cried Rilla; then she added with a sigh, “Two years ago we would have said ‘It can’t last two years.’ But five more years of this!”
“If Rumania comes in, as I have strong hopes now of her doing, you will see the end in five months instead of five years,” said Susan.
“I’ve no faith in furriners,” sighed Cousin Sophia.
“The French are foreigners,” retorted Susan, “and look at Verdun. And think of all the Somme victories this blessed summer. The Big Push is on and the Russians are still going well. Why, General Haig says that the German officers he has captured admit that they have lost the war.”
“You can’t believe a word the Germans say,” protested Cousin Sophia. “There is no sense in believing a thing just because you’d like to believe it, Susan Baker. The British have lost millions of men at the Somme and how far have they got? Look facts in the face, Susan Baker, look facts in the face.”
“They are wearing the Germans out and so long as that happens it does not matter whether it is done a few miles east or a few miles west. I am not,” admitted Susan in tremendous humility, “I am not a military expert, Sophia Crawford, but even I can see that, and so could you if you were not determined to take a gloomy view of everything. The Huns have not got all the cleverness in the world. Have you not heard the story of Alistair MacCallum’s son Roderick, from the Upper Glen? He is a prisoner in Germany and his mother got a letter from him last week. He wrote that he was being very kindly treated and that all the prisoners had plenty of food and so on, till you would have supposed everything was lovely. But when he signed his name, right in between Roderick and MacCallum, he wrote two Gaelic words that meant ‘all lies’ and the German censor did not understand Gaelic and thought it was all part of Roddy’s name. So he let it pass, never dreaming how he was diddled. Well, I am going to leave the war to Haig for the rest of the day and make a frosting for my chocolate cake. And when it is made I shall put it on the top shelf. The last one I made I left it on the lower shelf and little Kitchener sneaked in and clawed all the icing off and ate it. We had company for tea that night and when I went to get my cake what a sight did I behold!”
“Has that pore orphan’s father never been heerd from yet?” asked Cousin Sophia.
“Yes, I had a letter from him in July,” said Rilla. “He said that when he got word of his wife’s death and of my taking the baby—Mr. Meredith wrote him, you know—he wrote right away, but as he never got any answer he had begun to think his letter must have been lost.”
“It took him two years to begin to think it,” said Susan scornfully. “Some people think very slow. Jim Anderson has not got a scratch, for all he has been two years in the trenches. A fool for luck, as the old proverb says.”
“He wrote very nicely about Jims and said he’d like to see him,” said Rilla. “So I wrote and told him all about the wee man, and sent him snapshots. Jims will be two years old next week and he is a perfect duck.”
“You didn’t used to be very fond of babies,” said Cousin Sophia.
“I’m not a bit fonder of babies in the abstract than ever I was,” said Rilla, frankly. “But I do love Jims, and I’m afraid I wasn’t really half as glad as I should have been when Jim Anderson’s letter proved that he was safe and sound.”
“You wasn’t hoping the man would be killed!” cried Cousin Sophia in horrified accents.
“No—no—no! I just hoped he would go on forgetting about Jims, Mrs. Crawford.”
“And then your pa would have the expense of raising him,” said Cousin Sophia reprovingly. “You young creeturs are terrible thoughtless.”
Jims himself ran in at this juncture, so rosy and curly and kissable, that he extorted a qualified compliment even from Cousin Sophia.
“He’s a reel healthy-looking child now, though mebbee his colour is a mite too high—sorter consumptive looking, as you might say. I never thought you’d raise him when I saw him the day after you brung him home. I reely did not think it was in you and I told Albert’s wife so when I got home. Albert’s wife says, says she, ‘There’s more in Rilla Blythe than you’d think for, Aunt Sophia.’ Them was her very words. ‘More in Rilla Blythe than you’d think for.’ Albert’s wife always had a good opinion of you.”
Cousin Sophia sighed, as if to imply that Albert’s wife stood alone in this against the world. But Cousin Sophia really did not mean that. She was quite fond of Rilla in her own melancholy way; but young creeturs had to be kept down. If they were not kept down society would be demoralized.
“Do you remember your walk home from the light two years ago tonight?” whispered Gertrude Oliver to Rilla, teasingly.
“I should think I do,” smiled Rilla; and then her smile grew dreamy and absent; she was remembering something else—that hour with Kenneth on the sandshore. Where would Ken be tonight? And Jem and Jerry and Walter and all the other boys who had danced and moonlighted on the old Four Winds Point that evening of mirth and laughter—their last joyous unclouded evening. In the filthy trenches of the Somme front, with the roar of the guns and the groans of stricken men for
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