“We all find we cannot do any work that requires concentration of thought. So we all knit furiously, because we can do that mechanically. At least the dreadful waiting is over — the horrible wondering where and when the blow will fall. It has fallen — but they shall not prevail against us!
“Oh, what is happening on the western front tonight as I write this, sitting here in my room with my journal before me? Jims is asleep in his crib and the wind is wailing around the window; over my desk hangs Walter’s picture, looking at me with his beautiful deep eyes; the Mona Lisa he gave me the last Christmas he was home hangs on one side of it, and on the other a framed copy of “The Piper.” It seems to me that I can hear Walter’s voice repeating it — that little poem into which he put his soul, and which will therefore live for ever, carrying Walter’s name on through the future of our land. Everything about me is calm and peaceful and ‘homey.’ Walter seems very near me — if I could just sweep aside the thin wavering little veil that hangs between, I could see him — just as he saw the Pied Piper the night before Courcelette.
“Over there in France tonight — does the line hold?”
CHAPTER XXVIII
BLACK SUNDAY
In March of the year of grace 1918 there was one week into which must have crowded more of searing human agony than any seven days had ever held before in the history of the world. And in that week there was one day when all humanity seemed nailed to the cross; on that day the whole planet must have been agroan with universal convulsion; everywhere the hearts of men were failing them for fear.
It dawned calmly and coldly and greyly at Ingleside. Mrs. Blythe and Rilla and Miss Oliver made ready for church in a suspense tempered by hope and confidence. The doctor was away, having been summoned during the wee sma’s to the Marwood household in Upper Glen, where a little war-bride was fighting gallantly on her own battleground to give life, not death, to the world. Susan announced that she meant to stay home that morning — a rare decision for Susan.
“But I would rather not go to church this morning, Mrs. Dr. dear,” she explained. “If Whiskers-on-the-moon were there and I saw him looking holy and pleased, as he always looks when he thinks the Huns are winning, I fear I would lose my patience and my sense of decorum and hurl a Bible or hymn-book at him, thereby disgracing myself and the sacred edifice. No, Mrs. Dr. dear, I shall stay home from church till the tide turns and pray hard here.”
“I think I might as well stay home, too, for all the good church will do me today,” Miss Oliver said to Rilla, as they walked down the hard-frozen red road to the church. “I can think of nothing but the question, ‘Does the line still hold?’”
“Next Sunday will be Easter,” said Rilla. “Will it herald death or life to our cause?”
Mr. Meredith preached that morning from the text, “He that endureth to the end shall be saved,” and hope and confidence rang through his inspiring sentences. Rilla, looking up at the memorial tablet on the wall above their pew, “sacred to the memory of Walter Cuthbert Blythe,” felt herself lifted out of her dread and filled anew with courage. Walter could not have laid down his life for naught. His had been the gift of prophetic vision and he had foreseen victory. She would cling to that belief — the line would hold.
In this renewed mood she walked home from church almost gaily. The others, too, were hopeful, and all went smiling into Ingleside. There was no one in the living-room, save Jims, who had fallen asleep on the sofa, and Doc, who sat “hushed in grim repose” on the hearth-rug, looking very Hydeish indeed. No one was in the dining-room either — and, stranger still, no dinner was on the table, which was not even set. Where was Susan?
“Can she have taken ill?” exclaimed Mrs. Blythe anxiously. “I thought it strange that she did not want to go to church this morning.”
The kitchen door opened and Susan appeared on the threshold with such a ghastly face that Mrs. Blythe cried out in sudden panic.
“Susan, what is it?”
“The British line is broken and the German shells are falling on Paris,” said Susan dully.
The three women stared at each other, stricken.
“It’s not true — it’s not,” gasped Rilla.
“The thing would be — ridiculous,” said Gertrude Oliver — and then she laughed horribly.
“Susan, who told you this — when did the news come?” asked Mrs. Blythe.
“I got it over the long-distance phone from Charlottetown half an hour ago,” said Susan. “The news came to town late last night. It was Dr. Holland phoned it out and he said it was only too true. Since then I have done nothing, Mrs. Dr. dear. I am very sorry dinner is not ready. It is the first time I have been so remiss. If you will be patient I will soon have something for you to eat. But I am afraid I let the potatoes burn.”
“Dinner! Nobody wants any dinner, Susan,” said Mrs. Blythe wildly. “Oh, this thing is unbelievable — it must be a nightmare.”
“Paris is lost — France is lost — the war is lost,” gasped Rilla, amid the utter ruins of hope and confidence and belief.
“Oh God — Oh God,” moaned Gertrude Oliver, walking about the room and wringing her hands, “Oh — God!”
Nothing else — no other words — nothing but that age old plea — the old, old cry of supreme agony and appeal, from the human heart whose every human staff has failed it.
“Is God dead?” asked a startled little voice from the doorway of the living-room. Jims stood there, flushed from sleep, his big brown eyes filled with dread, “Oh Willa — oh, Willa, is God dead?”
Miss Oliver stopped walking and exclaiming, and stared at Jims, in whose eyes tears of fright were beginning to gather. Rilla ran to his comforting, while Susan bounded up from the chair upon which she had dropped.
“No,” she said briskly, with a sudden return of her real self. “No, God isn’t dead — nor Lloyd George either. We were forgetting that, Mrs. Dr. dear. Don’t cry, little Kitchener. Bad as things are, they might be worse. The British line may be broken but the British navy is not. Let us tie to that. I will take a brace and get up a bite to eat, for strength we must have.”
They made a pretence of eating Susan’s “bite,” but it was only a pretence. Nobody at Ingleside ever forgot that black afternoon. Gertrude Oliver walked the floor — they all walked the floor; except Susan, who got out her grey war sock.
“Mrs. Dr. dear, I must knit on Sunday at last. I have never dreamed of doing it before for, say what might be said, I have considered it was a violation of the third commandment. But whether it is or whether it is not I must knit today or I shall go mad.”
“Knit if you can, Susan,” said Mrs. Blythe restlessly. “I would knit if I could — but I cannot — I cannot.”
“If we could only get fuller information,” moaned Rilla. “There might be something to encourage us — if we knew all.”
“We know that the Germans are shelling Paris,” said Miss Oliver bitterly. “In that case they must have smashed through everywhere and be at the very gates. No, we have lost — let us face the fact as other peoples in the past have had to face it. Other nations, with right on their side, have given their best and bravest — and gone down to defeat in spite of it. Ours is ‘but one more To baffled millions who have gone before.’”
“I won’t give up like that,” cried Rilla, her pale face suddenly flushing. “I won’t despair. We are not conquered — no, if Germany overruns all France we are not conquered. I am ashamed of myself for this hour of despair. You won’t see me slump again like that, I’m going to ring up town at once and ask for particulars.”
But town could not be got. The long-distance operator there was submerged by similar calls from every part of the distracted country. Rilla finally gave up and slipped away to Rainbow Valley. There she knelt down on the withered grey grasses in the little nook where she and Walter had had their last talk together, with her head bowed against the mossy trunk of a fallen tree. The sun had broken through the black clouds and drenched the valle
y with a pale golden splendour. The bells on the Tree Lovers twinkled elfinly and fitfully in the gusty March wind.
“Oh God, give me strength,” Rilla whispered. “Just strength — and courage.” Then like a child she clasped her hands together and said, as simply as Jims could have done, “Please send us better news tomorrow.”
She knelt there a long time, and when she went back to Ingleside she was calm and resolute. The doctor had arrived home, tired but triumphant, little Douglas Haig Marwood having made a safe landing on the shores of time. Gertrude was still pacing restlessly but Mrs. Blythe and Susan had reacted from the shock, and Susan was already planning a new line of defence for the channel ports.
“As long as we can hold them,” she declared, “the situation is saved. Paris has really no military significance.”
“Don’t,” said Gertrude sharply, as if Susan had run something into her. She thought the old worn phrase ‘no military significance’ nothing short of ghastly mockery under the circumstances, and more terrible to endure than the voice of despair would have been.
“I heard up at Marwood’s of the line being broken,” said the doctor, “but this story of the Germans shelling Paris seems to be rather incredible. Even if they broke through they were fifty miles from Paris at the nearest point and how could they get their artillery close enough to shell it in so short a time? Depend upon it, girls, that part of the message can’t be true. I’m going to try to try a long-distance call to town myself.”
The doctor was no more successful than Rilla had been, but his point of view cheered them all a little, and helped them through the evening. And at nine o’clock a long-distance message came through at last, that helped them through the night.
“The line broke only in one place, before St. Quentin,” said the doctor, as he hung up the receiver, “and the British troops are retreating in good order. That’s not so bad. As for the shells that are falling on Paris, they are coming from a distance of seventy miles — from some amazing long-range gun the Germans have invented and sprung with the opening offensive. That is all the news to date, and Dr. Holland says it is reliable.”
“It would have been dreadful news yesterday,” said Gertrude, “but compared to what we heard this morning it is almost like good news. But still,” she added, trying to smile, “I am afraid I will not sleep much tonight.”
“There is one thing to be thankful for at any rate, Miss Oliver, dear,” said Susan, “and that is that Cousin Sophia did not come in today. I really could not have endured her on top of all the rest.”
CHAPTER XXIX
“WOUNDED AND MISSING”
“Battered but Not Broken” was the headline in Monday’s paper, and Susan repeated it over and over to herself as she went about her work. The gap caused by the St. Quentin disaster had been patched up in time, but the Allied line was being pushed relentlessly back from the territory they had purchased in 1917 with half a million lives. On Wednesday the headline was “British and French Check Germans”; but still the retreat went on. Back — and back — and back! Where would it end? Would the line break again — this time disastrously?
On Saturday the headline was “Even Berlin Admits Offensive Checked,” and for the first time in that terrible week the Ingleside folk dared to draw a long breath.
“Well, we have got one week over — now for the next,” said Susan staunchly.
“I feel like a prisoner on the rack when they stopped turning it,” Miss Oliver said to Rilla, as they went to church on Easter morning. “But I am not off the rack. The torture may begin again at any time.”
“I doubted God last Sunday,” said Rilla, “but I don’t doubt him today. Evil cannot win. Spirit is on our side and it is bound to outlast flesh.”
Nevertheless her faith was often tried in the dark spring that followed. Armageddon was not, as they had hoped, a matter of a few days. It stretched out into weeks and months. Again and again Hindenburg struck his savage, sudden blows, with alarming, though futile success. Again and again the military critics declared the situation extremely perilous. Again and again Cousin Sophia agreed with the military critics.
“If the Allies go back three miles more the war is lost,” she wailed.
“Is the British navy anchored in those three miles?” demanded Susan scornfully.
“It is the opinion of a man who knows all about it,” said Cousin Sophia solemnly.
“There is no such person,” retorted Susan. “As for the military critics, they do not know one blessed thing about it, any more than you or I. They have been mistaken times out of number. Why do you always look on the dark side, Sophia Crawford?”
“Because there ain’t any bright side, Susan Baker.”
“Oh, is there not? It is the twentieth of April, and Hindy is not in Paris yet, although he said he would be there by April first. Is that not a bright spot at least?”
“It is my opinion that the Germans will be in Paris before very long and more than that, Susan Baker, they will be in Canada.”
“Not in this part of it. The Huns shall never set foot in Prince Edward Island as long as I can handle a pitchfork,” declared Susan, looking, and feeling quite equal to routing the entire German army single-handed. “No, Sophia Crawford, to tell you the plain truth I am sick and tired of your gloomy predictions. I do not deny that some mistakes have been made. The Germans would never have got back Passchendaele if the Canadians had been left there; and it was bad business trusting to those Portuguese at the Lys River. But that is no reason why you or anyone should go about proclaiming the war is lost. I do not want to quarrel with you, least of all at such a time as this, but our morale must be kept up, and I am going to speak my mind out plainly and tell you that if you cannot keep from such croaking your room is better than your company.”
Cousin Sophia marched home in high dudgeon to digest her affront, and did not reappear in Susan’s kitchen for many weeks. Perhaps it was just as well, for they were hard weeks, when the Germans continued to strike, now here, now there, and seemingly vital points fell to them at every blow. And one day in early May, when wind and sunshine frolicked in Rainbow Valley and the maple grove was golden-green and the harbour all blue and dimpled and white-capped, the news came about Jem.
There had been a trench raid on the Canadian front — a little trench raid so insignificant that it was never even mentioned in the dispatches and when it was over Lieutenant James Blythe was reported “wounded and missing.”
“I think this is even worse than the news of his death would have been,” moaned Rilla through her white lips, that night.
“No — no—’missing’ leaves a little hope, Rilla,” urged Gertrude Oliver.
“Yes — torturing, agonized hope that keeps you from ever becoming quite resigned to the worst,” said Rilla. “Oh, Miss Oliver — must we go for weeks and months — not knowing whether Jem is alive or dead? Perhaps we will never know. I — I cannot bear it — I cannot. Walter — and now Jem. This will kill mother — look at her face, Miss Oliver, and you will see that. And Faith — poor Faith — how can she bear it?”
Gertrude shivered with pain. She looked up at the pictures hanging over Rilla’s desk and felt a sudden hatred of Mona Lisa’s endless smile.
“Will not even this blot it off your face?” she thought savagely.
But she said gently, “No, it won’t kill your mother. She’s made of finer mettle than that. Besides, she refuses to believe Jem is dead; she will cling to hope and we must all do that. Faith, you may be sure, will do it.”
“I cannot,” moaned Rilla, “Jem was wounded — what chance would he have? Even if the Germans found him — we know how they have treated wounded prisoners. I wish I could hope, Miss Oliver — it would help, I suppose. But hope seems dead in me. I can’t hope without some reason for it — and there is no reason.”
When Miss Oliver had gone to her own room and Rilla was lying on her bed in the moonlight, praying desperately for a little strength, Susan stepped in like a
gaunt shadow and sat down beside her.
“Rilla, dear, do not you worry. Little Jem is not dead.”
“Oh, how can you believe that, Susan?”
“Because I know. Listen you to me. When that word came this morning the first thing I thought of was Dog Monday. And tonight, as soon as I got the supper dishes washed and the bread set, I went down to the station. There was Dog Monday, waiting for the train, just as patient as usual. Now, Rilla, dear, that trench raid was four days ago — last Monday — and I said to the station-agent, ‘Can you tell me if that dog howled or made any kind of a fuss last Monday night?’ He thought it over a bit, and then he said, ‘No, he did not.’ ‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘There’s more depends on it than you think!’ ‘Dead sure,’ he said. ‘I was up all night last Monday night because my mare was sick, and there was never a sound out of him. I would have heard if there had been, for the stable door was open all the time and his kennel is right across from it!’ Now Rilla dear, those were the man’s very words. And you know how that poor little dog howled all night after the battle of Courcelette. Yet he did not love Walter as much as he loved Jem. If he mourned for Walter like that, do you suppose he would sleep sound in his kennel the night after Jem had been killed? No, Rilla dear, little Jem is not dead, and that you may tie to. If he were, Dog Monday would have known, just as he knew before, and he would not be still waiting for the trains.”
It was absurd — and irrational — and impossible. But Rilla believed it, for all that; and Mrs. Blythe believed it; and the doctor, though he smiled faintly in pretended derision, felt an odd confidence replace his first despair; and foolish and absurd or not, they all plucked up heart and courage to carry on, just because a faithful little dog at the Glen station was still watching with unbroken faith for his master to come home. Common sense might scorn — incredulity might mutter “Mere superstition” — but in their hearts the folk of Ingleside stood by their belief that Dog Monday knew.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 212
