CHAPTER XXXV
"RILLA-MY-RILLA!"
Carl Meredith and Miller Douglas came home just before Christmas andGlen St. Mary met them at the station with a brass band borrowed fromLowbridge and speeches of home manufacture. Miller was brisk andbeaming in spite of his wooden leg; he had developed into abroad-shouldered, imposing looking fellow and the D. C. Medal he worereconciled Miss Cornelia to the shortcomings of his pedigree to such adegree that she tacitly recognized his engagement to Mary.
The latter put on a few airs--especially when Carter Flagg took Millerinto his store as head clerk--but nobody grudged them to her.
"Of course farming's out of the question for us now," she told Rilla,"but Miller thinks he'll like storekeeping fine once he gets used to aquiet life again, and Carter Flagg will be a more agreeable boss thanold Kitty. We're going to be married in the fall and live in the oldMead house with the bay windows and the mansard roof. I've alwaysthought that the handsomest house in the Glen, but never did I dreamI'd ever live there. We're only renting it, of course, but if things goas we expect and Carter Flagg takes Miller into partnership we'll ownit some day. Say, I've got on some in society, haven't I, consideringwhat I come from? I never aspired to being a storekeeper's wife. ButMiller's real ambitious and he'll have a wife that'll back him up. Hesays he never saw a French girl worth looking at twice and that hisheart beat true to me every moment he was away."
Jerry Meredith and Joe Milgrave came back in January, and all winterthe boys from the Glen and its environs came home by twos and threes.None of them came back just as they went away, not even those who hadbeen so fortunate as to escape injury.
One spring day, when the daffodils were blowing on the Ingleside lawn,and the banks of the brook in Rainbow Valley were sweet with white andpurple violets, the little, lazy afternoon accommodation train pulledinto the Glen station. It was very seldom that passengers for the Glencame by that train, so nobody was there to meet it except the newstation agent and a small black-and-yellow dog, who for four and a halfyears had met every train that had steamed into Glen St. Mary.Thousands of trains had Dog Monday met and never had the boy he waitedand watched for returned. Yet still Dog Monday watched on with eyesthat never quite lost hope. Perhaps his dog-heart failed him at times;he was growing old and rheumatic; when he walked back to his kennelafter each train had gone his gait was very sober now--he never trottedbut went slowly with a drooping head and a depressed tail that hadquite lost its old saucy uplift.
One passenger stepped off the train--a tall fellow in a fadedlieutenant's uniform, who walked with a barely perceptible limp. He hada bronzed face and there were some grey hairs in the ruddy curls thatclustered around his forehead. The new station agent looked at himanxiously. He was used to seeing the khaki-clad figures come off thetrain, some met by a tumultuous crowd, others, who had sent no word oftheir coming, stepping off quietly like this one. But there was acertain distinction of bearing and features in this soldier that caughthis attention and made him wonder a little more interestedly who he was.
A black-and-yellow streak shot past the station agent. Dog Mondaystiff? Dog Monday rheumatic? Dog Monday old? Never believe it. DogMonday was a young pup, gone clean mad with rejuvenating joy.
He flung himself against the tall soldier, with a bark that choked inhis throat from sheer rapture. He flung himself on the ground andwrithed in a frenzy of welcome. He tried to climb the soldier's khakilegs and slipped down and groveled in an ecstasy that seemed as if itmust tear his little body in pieces. He licked his boots and when thelieutenant had, with laughter on his lips and tears in his eyes,succeeded in gathering the little creature up in his arms Dog Mondaylaid his head on the khaki shoulder and licked the sunburned neck,making queer sounds between barks and sobs.
The station agent had heard the story of Dog Monday. He knew now whothe returned soldier was. Dog Monday's long vigil was ended. Jem Blythehad come home.
"We are all very happy--and sad--and thankful," wrote Rilla in herdiary a week later, "though Susan has not yet recovered--never willrecover, I believe--from the shock of having Jem come home the verynight she had, owing to a strenuous day, prepared a 'pick up' supper. Ishall never forget the sight of her, tearing madly about from pantry tocellar, hunting out stored away goodies. Just as if anybody cared whatwas on the table--none of us could eat, anyway. It was meat and drinkjust to look at Jem. Mother seemed afraid to take her eyes off him lesthe vanish out of her sight. It is wonderful to have Jem back--andlittle Dog Monday. Monday refuses to be separated from Jem for amoment. He sleeps on the foot of his bed and squats beside him atmeal-times. And on Sunday he went to church with him and insisted ongoing right into our pew, where he went to sleep on Jem's feet. In themiddle of the sermon he woke up and seemed to think he must welcome Jemall over again, for he bounded up with a series of barks and wouldn'tquiet down until Jem took him up in his arms. But nobody seemed tomind, and Mr. Meredith came and patted his head after the service andsaid, "'Faith and affection and loyalty are precious things whereverthey are found. That little dog's love is a treasure, Jem.'
"One night when Jem and I were talking things over in Rainbow Valley, Iasked him if he had ever felt afraid at the front.
"Jem laughed.
"'Afraid! I was afraid scores of times--sick with fear--I who used tolaugh at Walter when he was frightened. Do you know, Walter was neverfrightened after he got to the front. Realities never scared him--onlyhis imagination could do that. His colonel told me that Walter was thebravest man in the regiment. Rilla, I never realized that Walter wasdead till I came back home. You don't know how I miss him now--youfolks here have got used to it in a sense--but it's all fresh to me.Walter and I grew up together--we were chums as well as brothers--andnow here, in this old valley we loved when we were children, it hascome home to me that I'm not to see him again.'
"Jem is going back to college in the fall and so are Jerry and Carl. Isuppose Shirley will, too. He expects to be home in July. Nan and Diwill go on teaching. Faith doesn't expect to be home before September.I suppose she will teach then too, for she and Jem can't be marrieduntil he gets through his course in medicine. Una Meredith has decided,I think, to take a course in Household Science at Kingsport--andGertrude is to be married to her Major and is frankly happy aboutit--'shamelessly happy' she says; but I think her attitude is verybeautiful. They are all talking of their plans and hopes--more soberlythan they used to do long ago, but still with interest, and adetermination to carry on and make good in spite of lost years.
"'We're in a new world,' Jem says, 'and we've got to make it a betterone than the old. That isn't done yet, though some folks seem to thinkit ought to be. The job isn't finished--it isn't really begun. The oldworld is destroyed and we must build up the new one. It will be thetask of years. I've seen enough of war to realize that we've got tomake a world where wars can't happen. We've given Prussianism itsmortal wound but it isn't dead yet and it isn't confined to Germanyeither. It isn't enough to drive out the old spirit--we've got to bringin the new.'
"I'm writing down those words of Jem's in my diary so that I can readthem over occasionally and get courage from them, when moods come whenI find it not so easy to 'keep faith.'"
Rilla closed her journal with a little sigh. Just then she was notfinding it easy to keep faith. All the rest seemed to have some specialaim or ambition about which to build up their lives--she had none. Andshe was very lonely, horribly lonely. Jem had come back--but he was notthe laughing boy-brother who had gone away in 1914 and he belonged toFaith. Walter would never come back. She had not even Jims left. All atonce her world seemed wide and empty--that is, it had seemed wide andempty from the moment yesterday when she had read in a Montreal paper afortnight-old list of returned soldiers in which was the name ofCaptain Kenneth Ford.
So Ken was home--and he had not even written her that he was coming. Hehad been in Canada two weeks and she had not had a line from him. Ofcourse he had forgotten--if there was ever anything to forget--ahandclasp
--a kiss--a look--a promise asked under the influence of apassing emotion. It was all absurd--she had been a silly, romantic,inexperienced goose. Well, she would be wiser in the future--verywise--and very discreet--and very contemptuous of men and their ways.
"I suppose I'd better go with Una and take up Household Science too,"she thought, as she stood by her window and looked down through adelicate emerald tangle of young vines on Rainbow Valley, lying in awonderful lilac light of sunset. There did not seem anything veryattractive just then about Household Science, but, with a whole newworld waiting to be built, a girl must do something.
The door bell rang, Rilla turned reluctantly stairwards. She mustanswer it--there was no one else in the house; but she hated the ideaof callers just then. She went downstairs slowly, and opened the frontdoor.
A man in khaki was standing on the steps--a tall fellow, with dark eyesand hair, and a narrow white scar running across his brown cheek. Rillastared at him foolishly for a moment. Who was it?
She ought to know him--there was certainly something very familiarabout him--"Rilla-my-Rilla," he said.
"Ken," gasped Rilla. Of course, it was Ken--but he looked so mucholder--he was so much changed--that scar--the lines about his eyes andlips--her thoughts went whirling helplessly.
Ken took the uncertain hand she held out, and looked at her. The slimRilla of four years ago had rounded out into symmetry. He had left aschool girl, and he found a woman--a woman with wonderful eyes and adented lip, and rose-bloom cheek--a woman altogether beautiful anddesirable--the woman of his dreams.
"Is it Rilla-my-Rilla?" he asked, meaningly.
Emotion shook Rilla from head to foot.Joy--happiness--sorrow--fear--every passion that had wrung her heart inthose four long years seemed to surge up in her soul for a moment asthe deeps of being were stirred. She had tried to speak; at first voicewould not come. Then--"Yeth," said Rilla.
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