Jem and Jerry went to Charlottetown that night and two days later they came back in khaki. The Glen hummed with excitement over it. Life at Ingleside had suddenly become a tense, strained, thrilling thing. Mrs. Blythe and Nan were brave and smiling and wonderful. Already Mrs. Blythe and Miss Cornelia were organizing a Red Cross. The doctor and Mr. Meredith were rounding up the men for a Patriotic Society. Rilla, after the first shock, reacted to the romance of it all, in spite of her heartache. Jem certainly looked magnificent in his uniform. It was splendid to think of the lads of Canada answering so speedily and fearlessly and uncalculatingly to the call of their country. Rilla carried her head high among the girls whose brothers had not so responded. In her diary she wrote:
“He goes to do what I had done
Had Douglas’s daughter been his son,”
and was sure she meant it. If she were a boy of course she would go, too! She hadn’t the least doubt of that.
She wondered if it was very dreadful of her to feel glad that Walter hadn’t got strong as soon as they had wished after the fever.
“I couldn’t bear to have Walter go,” she wrote. “I love Jem ever so much but Walter means more to me than anyone in the world and I would die if he had to go. He seems so changed these days. He hardly ever talks to me. I suppose he wants to go, too, and feels badly because he can’t. He doesn’t go about with Jem and Jerry at all. I shall never forget Susan’s face when Jem came home in his khaki. It worked and twisted as if she were going to cry, but all she said was, ‘You look almost like a man in that, Jem.’ Jem laughed. He never minds because Susan thinks him just a child still. Everybody seems busy but me. I wish there was something I could do but there doesn’t seem to be anything. Mother and Nan and Di are busy all the time and I just wander about like a lonely ghost. What hurts me terribly, though, is that mother’s smiles, and Nan’s, just seem put on from the outside. Mother’s eyes never laugh now. It makes me feel that I shouldn’t laugh either — that it’s wicked to feel laughy. And it’s so hard for me to keep from laughing, even if Jem is going to be a soldier. But when I laugh I don’t enjoy it either, as I used to do. There’s something behind it all that keeps hurting me — especially when I wake up in the night. Then I cry because I am afraid that Kitchener of Khartoum is right and the war will last for years and Jem may be — but no, I won’t write it. It would make me feel as if it were really going to happen. The other day Nan said, ‘Nothing can ever be quite the same for any of us again.’ It made me feel rebellious. Why shouldn’t things be the same again — when everything is over and Jem and Jerry are back? We’ll all be happy and jolly again and these days will seem just like a bad dream.
“The coming of the mail is the most exciting event of every day now. Father just snatches the paper — I never saw father snatch before — and the rest of us crowd round and look at the headlines over his shoulder. Susan vows she does not and will not believe a word the papers say but she always comes to the kitchen door, and listens and then goes back, shaking her head. She is terribly indignant all the time, but she cooks up all the things Jem likes especially, and she did not make a single bit of fuss when she found Monday asleep on the spare-room bed yesterday right on top of Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s apple-leaf spread. ‘The Almighty only knows where your master will be having to sleep before long, you poor dumb beast,’ she said as she put him quite gently out. But she never relents towards Doc. She says the minute he saw Jem in khaki he turned into Mr. Hyde then and there and she thinks that ought to be proof enough of what he really is. Susan is funny, but she is an old dear. Shirley says she is one half angel and the other half good cook. But then Shirley is the only one of us she never scolds.
“Faith Meredith is wonderful. I think she and Jem are really engaged now. She goes about with a shining light in her eyes, but her smiles are a little stiff and starched, just like mother’s. I wonder if I could be as brave as she is if I had a lover and he was going to the war. It is bad enough when it is your brother. Bruce Meredith cried all night, Mrs. Meredith says, when he heard Jem and Jerry were going. And he wanted to know if the ‘K of K.’ his father talked about was the King of Kings. He is the dearest kiddy. I just love him — though I don’t really care much for children. I don’t like babies one bit — though when I say so people look at me as if I had said something perfectly shocking. Well, I don’t, and I’ve got to be honest about it. I don’t mind looking at a nice clean baby if somebody else holds it — but I wouldn’t touch it for anything and I don’t feel a single real spark of interest in it. Gertrude Oliver says she just feels the same. (She is the most honest person I know. She never pretends anything.) She says babies bore her until they are old enough to talk and then she likes them — but still a good ways off. Mother and Nan and Di all adore babies and seem to think I’m unnatural because I don’t.
“I haven’t seen Kenneth since the night of the party. He was here one evening after Jem came back but I happened to be away. I don’t think he mentioned me at all — at least nobody told me he did and I was determined I wouldn’t ask — but I don’t care in the least. All that matters absolutely nothing to me now. The only thing that does matter is that Jem has volunteered for active service and will be going to Valcartier in a few more days — my big, splendid brother Jem. Oh, I’m so proud of him!
“I suppose Kenneth would enlist too if it weren’t for his ankle. I think that is quite providential. He is his mother’s only son and how dreadful she would feel if he went. Only sons should never think of going!”
Walter came wandering through the valley as Rilla sat there, with his head bent and his hands clasped behind him. When he saw Rilla he turned abruptly away; then as abruptly he turned and came back to her.
“Rilla-my-Rilla, what are you thinking of?”
“Everything is so changed, Walter,” said Rilla wistfully. “Even you — you’re changed. A week ago we were all so happy — and — and — now I just can’t find myself at all. I’m lost.”
Walter sat down on a neighbouring stone and took Rilla’s little appealing hand.
“I’m afraid our old world has come to an end, Rilla. We’ve got to face that fact.”
“It’s so terrible to think of Jem,” pleaded Rilla. “Sometimes I forget for a little while what it really means and feel excited and proud — and then it comes over me again like a cold wind.”
“I envy Jem!” said Walter moodily.
“Envy Jem! Oh, Walter you — you don’t want to go too.”
“No,” said Walter, gazing straight before him down the emerald vistas of the valley, “no, I don’t want to go. That’s just the trouble. Rilla, I’m afraid to go. I’m a coward.”
“You’re not!” Rilla burst out angrily. “Why, anybody would be afraid to go. You might be — why, you might be killed.”
“I wouldn’t mind that if it didn’t hurt,” muttered Walter. “I don’t think I’m afraid of death itself — it’s of the pain that might come before death — it wouldn’t be so bad to die and have it over — but to keep on dying! Rilla, I’ve always been afraid of pain — you know that. I can’t help it — I shudder when I think of the possibility of being mangled or — or blinded. Rilla, I cannot face that thought. To be blind — never to see the beauty of the world again — moonlight on Four Winds — the stars twinkling through the fir-trees — mist on the gulf. I ought to go — I ought to want to go — but I don’t — I hate the thought of it — I’m ashamed — ashamed.”
“But, Walter, you couldn’t go anyhow,” said Rilla piteously. She was sick with a new terror that Walter would go after all. “You’re not strong enough.”
“I am. I’ve felt as fit as ever I did this last month. I’d pass any examination — I know it. Everybody thinks I’m not strong yet — and I’m skulking behind that belief. I — I should have been a girl,” Walter concluded in a burst of passionate bitterness.
“Even if you were strong enough, you oughtn’t to go,” sobbed Rilla. “What would mother