Rilla of Ingleside - Lucy Maud Montgomery (the gingerbread man read aloud .TXT) 📗

Jekyll, sitting in golden majesty on the top step. And of course they were all talking of the war, except Dr. Jekyll who kept his own counsel and looked contempt as only a cat can. When two people foregathered in those days they talked of the war; and old Highland Sandy of the Harbour Head talked of it when he was alone and hurled anathemas at the Kaiser across all the acres of his farm. Walter slipped away, not caring to see or be seen, but Rilla sat down on the steps, where the garden mint was dewy and pungent. It was a very calm evening with a dim, golden afterlight irradiating the glen. She felt happier than at any time in the dreadful week that had passed. She was no longer haunted by the fear that Walter would go.

“I’d go myself if I was twenty years younger,” Norman Douglas was shouting. Norman always shouted when he was excited. “I’d show the Kaiser a thing or two! Did I ever say there wasn’t a hell? Of course there’s a hell—dozens of hells—hundreds of hells—where the Kaiser and all his brood are bound for.”

“I knew this war was coming,” said Mrs. Norman triumphantly. “I saw it coming right along. I could have told all those stupid Englishmen what was ahead of them. I told you, John Meredith, years ago what the Kaiser was up to but you wouldn’t believe it. You said he would never plunge the world in war. Who was right about the Kaiser, John? You—or I? Tell me that.”

“You were, I admit,” said Mr. Meredith.

“It’s too late to admit it now,” said Mrs. Norman, shaking her head, as if to intimate that if John Meredith had admitted it sooner there might have been no war.

“Thank God, England’s navy is ready,” said the doctor.

“Amen to that,” nodded Mrs. Norman. “Bat-blind as most of them were somebody had foresight enough to see to that.”

“Maybe England’ll manage not to get into trouble over it,” said Cousin Sophia plaintively. “I dunno. But I’m much afraid.”

“One would suppose that England was in trouble over it already, up to her neck, Sophia Crawford,” said Susan. “But your ways of thinking are beyond me and always were. It is my opinion that the British Navy will settle Germany in a jiffy and that we are all getting worked up over nothing.”

Susan spat out the words as if she wanted to convince herself more than anybody else. She had her little store of homely philosophies to guide her through life, but she had nothing to buckler her against the thunderbolts of the week that had just passed. What had an honest, hard-working, Presbyterian old maid of Glen St. Mary to do with a war thousands of miles away? Susan felt that it was indecent that she should have to be disturbed by it.

“The British army will settle Germany,” shouted Norman. “Just wait till it gets into line and the Kaiser will find that real war is a different thing from parading round Berlin with your moustaches cocked up.”

“Britain hasn’t got an army,” said Mrs. Norman emphatically. “You needn’t glare at me, Norman. Glaring won’t make soldiers out of timothy stalks. A hundred thousand men will just be a mouthful for Germany’s millions.”

“There’ll be some tough chewing in the mouthful, I reckon,” persisted Norman valiantly. “Germany’ll break her teeth on it. Don’t you tell me one Britisher isn’t a match for ten foreigners. I could polish off a dozen of ‘em myself with both hands tied behind my back!”

“I am told,” said Susan, “that old Mr. Pryor does not believe in this war. I am told that he says England went into it just because she was jealous of Germany and that she did not really care in the least what happened to Belgium.”

“I believe he’s been talking some such rot,” said Norman. “I haven’t heard him. When I do, Whiskers-on-the-moon won’t know what happened to him. That precious relative of mine, Kitty Alec, holds forth to the same effect, I understand. Not before me, though—somehow, folks don’t indulge in that kind of conversation in my presence. Lord love you, they’ve a kind of presentiment, so to speak, that it wouldn’t be healthy for their complaint.”

“I am much afraid that this war has been sent as a punishment for our sins,” said Cousin Sophia, unclasping her pale hands from her lap and reclasping them solemnly over her stomach. “‘The world is very evil— the times are waxing late.’”

“Parson here’s got something of the same idea,” chuckled Norman. “Haven’t you, Parson? That’s why you preached t’other night on the text ‘Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.’ I didn’t agree with you—wanted to get up in the pew and shout out that there wasn’t a word of sense in what you were saying, but Ellen, here, she held me down. I never have any fun sassing parsons since I got married.”

“Without shedding of blood there is no anything,” said Mr. Meredith, in the gentle dreamy way which had an unexpected trick of convincing his hearers. “Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by self-sacrifice. Our race has marked every step of its painful ascent with blood. And now torrents of it must flow again. No, Mrs. Crawford, I don’t think the war has been sent as a punishment for sin. I think it is the price humanity must pay for some blessing—some advance great enough to be worth the price—which we may not live to see but which our children’s children will inherit.”

“If Jerry is killed will you feel so fine about it?” demanded Norman, who had been saying things like that all his life and never could be made to see any reason why he shouldn’t. “Now, never mind kicking me in the shins, Ellen. I want to see if Parson meant what he said or if it was just a pulpit frill.”

Mr. Meredith’s face quivered. He had had a terrible hour alone in his study on the night Jem and Jerry had gone to town. But he answered quietly.

“Whatever I felt, it could not alter my belief—my assurance that a country whose sons are ready to lay down their lives in her defence will win a new vision because of their sacrifice.”

“You do mean it, Parson. I can always tell when people mean what they say. It’s a gift that was born in me. Makes me a terror to most parsons, that! But I’ve never caught you yet saying anything you didn’t mean. I’m always hoping I will—that’s what reconciles me to going to church. It’d be such a comfort to me—such a weapon to batter Ellen here with when she tries to civilize me. Well, I’m off over the road to see Ab. Crawford a minute. The gods be good to you all.”

“The old pagan!” muttered Susan, as Norman strode away. She did not care if Ellen Douglas did hear her. Susan could never understand why fire did not descend from heaven upon Norman Douglas when he insulted ministers the way he did. But the astonishing thing was Mr. Meredith seemed really to like his brother-in-law.

Rilla wished they would talk of something besides war. She had heard nothing else for a week and she was really a little tired of it. Now that she was relieved from her haunting fear that Walter would want to go it made her quite impatient. But she supposed—with a sigh—that there would be three or four months of it yet.