CHAPTER XXV
SHIRLEY GOES
"No, Woodrow, there will be no peace without victory," said Susan,sticking her knitting needle viciously through President Wilson's namein the newspaper column. "We Canadians mean to have peace and victory,too. You, if it pleases you, Woodrow, can have the peace without thevictory"--and Susan stalked off to bed with the comfortableconsciousness of having got the better of the argument with thePresident. But a few days later she rushed to Mrs. Blythe in red-hotexcitement.
"Mrs. Dr. dear, what do you think? A 'phone message has just comethrough from Charlottetown that Woodrow Wilson has sent that Germanambassador man to the right about at last. They tell me that means war.So I begin to think that Woodrow's heart is in the right place afterall, wherever his head may be, and I am going to commandeer a littlesugar and celebrate the occasion with some fudge, despite the howls ofthe Food Board. I thought that submarine business would bring things toa crisis. I told Cousin Sophia so when she said it was the beginning ofthe end for the Allies."
"Don't let the doctor hear of the fudge, Susan," said Anne, with asmile. "You know he has laid down very strict rules for us along thelines of economy the government has asked for."
"Yes, Mrs. Dr. dear, and a man should be master in his own household,and his women folk should bow to his decrees. I flatter myself that Iam becoming quite efficient in economizing"--Susan had taken to usingcertain German terms with killing effect--"but one can exercise alittle gumption on the quiet now and then. Shirley was wishing for someof my fudge the other day--the Susan brand, as he called it--and I said'The first victory there is to celebrate I shall make you some.' Iconsider this news quite equal to a victory, and what the doctor doesnot know will never grieve him. I take the whole responsibility, Mrs.Dr. dear, so do not you vex your conscience."
Susan spoiled Shirley shamelessly that winter. He came home fromQueen's every week-end, and Susan had all his favourite dishes for him,in so far as she could evade or wheedle the doctor, and waited on himhand and foot. Though she talked war constantly to everyone else shenever mentioned it to him or before him, but she watched him like a catwatching a mouse; and when the German retreat from the Bapaume salientbegan and continued, Susan's exultation was linked up with somethingdeeper than anything she expressed. Surely the end was in sight--wouldcome now before--anyone else--could go.
"Things are coming our way at last. We have got the Germans on therun," she boasted. "The United States has declared war at last, as Ialways believed they would, in spite of Woodrow's gift for letterwriting, and you will see they will go into it with a vim since Iunderstand that is their habit, when they do start. And we have got theGermans on the run, too."
"The States mean well," moaned Cousin Sophia, "but all the vim in theworld cannot put them on the fighting line this spring, and the Allieswill be finished before that. The Germans are just luring them on. Thatman Simonds says their retreat has put the Allies in a hole."
"That man Simonds has said more than he will ever live to make good,"retorted Susan. "I do not worry myself about his opinion as long asLloyd George is Premier of England. He will not be bamboozled and thatyou may tie to. Things look good to me. The U. S. is in the war, and wehave got Kut and Bagdad back--and I would not be surprised to see theAllies in Berlin by June--and the Russians, too, since they have gotrid of the Czar. That, in my opinion was a good piece of work."
"Time will show if it is," said Cousin Sophia, who would have been veryindignant if anyone had told her that she would rather see Susan put toshame as a seer, than a successful overthrow of tyranny, or even themarch of the Allies down Unter den Linden. But then the woes of theRussian people were quite unknown to Cousin Sophia, while thisaggravating, optimistic Susan was an ever-present thorn in her side.
Just at that moment Shirley was sitting on the edge of the table in theliving-room, swinging his legs--a brown, ruddy, wholesome lad, from topto toe, every inch of him--and saying coolly, "Mother and dad, I waseighteen last Monday. Don't you think it's about time I joined up?"
The pale mother looked at him.
"Two of my sons have gone and one will never return. Must I give youtoo, Shirley?"
The age-old cry--"Joseph is not and Simeon is not; and ye will takeBenjamin away." How the mothers of the Great War echoed the oldPatriarch's moan of so many centuries agone!
"You wouldn't have me a slacker, mother? I can get into theflying-corps. What say, dad?"
The doctor's hands were not quite steady as he folded up the powders hewas concocting for Abbie Flagg's rheumatism. He had known this momentwas coming, yet he was not altogether prepared for it. He answeredslowly, "I won't try to hold you back from what you believe to be yourduty. But you must not go unless your mother says you may."
Shirley said nothing more. He was not a lad of many words. Anne did notsay anything more just then, either. She was thinking of little Joyce'sgrave in the old burying-ground over-harbour--little Joyce who wouldhave been a woman now, had she lived--of the white cross in France andthe splendid grey eyes of the little boy who had been taught his firstlessons of duty and loyalty at her knee--of Jem in the terribletrenches--of Nan and Di and Rilla, waiting--waiting--waiting, while thegolden years of youth passed by--and she wondered if she could bear anymore. She thought not; surely she had given enough.
Yet that night she told Shirley that he might go.
They did not tell Susan right away. She did not know it until, a fewdays later, Shirley presented himself in her kitchen in his aviationuniform. Susan didn't make half the fuss she had made when Jem andWalter had gone. She said stonily, "So they're going to take you, too."
"Take me? No. I'm going, Susan--got to."
Susan sat down by the table, folded her knotted old hands, that hadgrown warped and twisted working for the Ingleside children to stilltheir shaking, and said:
"Yes, you must go. I did not see once why such things must be, but Ican see now."
"You're a brick, Susan," said Shirley. He was relieved that she took itso coolly--he had been a little afraid, with a boy's horror of "ascene." He went out whistling gaily; but half an hour later, when paleAnne Blythe came in, Susan was still sitting there.
"Mrs. Dr. dear," said Susan, making an admission she would once havedied rather than make, "I feel very old. Jem and Walter were yours butShirley is mine. And I cannot bear to think of him flying--his machinecrashing down--the life crushed out of his body--the dear little body Inursed and cuddled when he was a wee baby."
"Susan--don't," cried Anne.
"Oh, Mrs. Dr. dear, I beg your pardon. I ought not to have saidanything like that out loud. I sometimes forget that I resolved to be aheroine. This--this has shaken me a little. But I will not forgetmyself again. Only if things do not go as smoothly in the kitchen for afew days I hope you will make due allowance for me. At least," saidpoor Susan, forcing a grim smile in a desperate effort to recover loststanding, "at least flying is a clean job. He will not get so dirty andmessed up as he would in the trenches, and that is well, for he hasalways been a tidy child."
So Shirley went--not radiantly, as to a high adventure, like Jem, notin a white flame of sacrifice, like Walter, but in a cool,business-like mood, as of one doing something, rather dirty anddisagreeable, that had just got to be done. He kissed Susan for thefirst time since he was five years old, and said, "Good-bye,Susan--mother Susan."
"My little brown boy--my little brown boy," said Susan. "I wonder," shethought bitterly, as she looked at the doctor's sorrowful face, "if youremember how you spanked him once when he was a baby. I am thankful Ihave nothing like that on my conscience now."
The doctor did not remember the old discipline. But before he put onhis hat to go out on his round of calls he stood for a moment in thegreat silent living-room that had once been full of children's laughter.
"Our last son--our last son," he said aloud. "A good, sturdy, sensiblelad, too. Always reminded me of my father. I suppose I ought to beproud that he wanted to go--I was proud when Jem
went--even when Walterwent--but 'our house is left us desolate.'"
"I have been thinking, doctor," old Sandy of the Upper Glen said to himthat afternoon, "that your house will be seeming very big the day."
Highland Sandy's quaint phrase struck the doctor as perfectlyexpressive. Ingleside did seem very big and empty that night. YetShirley had been away all winter except for week-ends, and had alwaysbeen a quiet fellow even when home. Was it because he had been the onlyone left that his going seemed to leave such a huge blank--that everyroom seemed vacant and deserted--that the very trees on the lawn seemedto be trying to comfort each other with caresses of freshly-buddingboughs for the loss of the last of the little lads who had romped underthem in childhood?
Susan worked very hard all day and late into the night. When she hadwound the kitchen clock and put Dr. Jekyll out, none too gently, shestood for a little while on the doorstep, looking down the Glen, whichlay tranced in faint, silvery light from a sinking young moon. ButSusan did not see the familiar hills and harbour. She was looking atthe aviation camp in Kingsport where Shirley was that night.
"He called me 'Mother Susan,'" she was thinking. "Well, all our menfolk have gone now--Jem and Walter and Shirley and Jerry and Carl. Andnone of them had to be driven to it. So we have a right to be proud.But pride--" Susan sighed bitterly--"pride is cold company and thatthere is no gainsaying."
The moon sank lower into a black cloud in the west, the Glen went outin an eclipse of sudden shadow--and thousands of miles away theCanadian boys in khaki--the living and the dead--were in possession ofVimy Ridge.
Vimy Ridge is a name written in crimson and gold on the Canadian annalsof the Great War. "The British couldn't take it and the French couldn'ttake it," said a German prisoner to his captors, "but you Canadians aresuch fools that you don't know when a place can't be taken!"
So the "fools" took it--and paid the price.
Jerry Meredith was seriously wounded at Vimy Ridge--shot in the back,the telegram said.
"Poor Nan," said Mrs. Blythe, when the news came. She thought of herown happy girlhood at old Green Gables. There had been no tragedy likethis in it. How the girls of to-day had to suffer! When Nan came homefrom Redmond two weeks later her face showed what those weeks had meantto her. John Meredith, too, seemed to have grown old suddenly in them.Faith did not come home; she was on her way across the Atlantic as aV.A.D. Di had tried to wring from her father consent to her going also,but had been told that for her mother's sake it could not be given. SoDi, after a flying visit home, went back to her Red Cross work inKingsport.
The mayflowers bloomed in the secret nooks of Rainbow Valley. Rilla waswatching for them. Jem had once taken his mother the earliestmayflowers; Walter brought them to her when Jem was gone; last springShirley had sought them out for her; now, Rilla thought she must takethe boys' place in this. But before she had discovered any, BruceMeredith came to Ingleside one twilight with his hands full of delicatepink sprays. He stalked up the steps of the veranda and laid them onMrs. Blythe's lap.
"Because Shirley isn't here to bring them," he said in his funny, shy,blunt way.
"And you thought of this, you darling," said Anne, her lips quivering,as she looked at the stocky, black-browed little chap, standing beforeher, with his hands thrust into his pockets.
"I wrote Jem to-day and told him not to worry 'bout you not gettingyour mayflowers," said Bruce seriously, "'cause I'd see to that. And Itold him I would be ten pretty soon now, so it won't be very longbefore I'll be eighteen, and then I'll go to help him fight, and maybelet him come home for a rest while I took his place. I wrote Jerry,too. Jerry's getting better, you know."
"Is he? Have you had any good news about him?"
"Yes. Mother had a letter to-day, and it said he was out of danger."
"Oh, thank God," murmured Mrs. Blythe, in a half-whisper.
Bruce looked at her curiously.
"That is what father said when mother told him. But when l said it theother day when I found out Mr. Mead's dog hadn't hurt my kitten--Ithought he had shooken it to death, you know--father looked awfulsolemn and said I must never say that again about a kitten. But Icouldn't understand why, Mrs. Blythe. I felt awful thankful, and itmust have been God that saved Stripey, because that Mead dog had'normous jaws, and oh, how it shook poor Stripey. And so why couldn't Ithank Him? 'Course," added Bruce reminiscently, "maybe I said it tooloud--'cause I was awful glad and excited when I found Stripey was allright. I 'most shouted it, Mrs. Blythe. Maybe if I'd said it sort ofwhispery like you and father it would have been all right. Do you know,Mrs. Blythe"--Bruce dropped to a "whispery" tone, edging a littlenearer to Anne--"what I would like to do to the Kaiser if I could?"
"What would you like to do, laddie?"
"Norman Reese said in school to-day that he would like to tie theKaiser to a tree and set cross dogs to worrying him," said Brucegravely. "And Emily Flagg said she would like to put him in a cage andpoke sharp things into him. And they all said things like that. ButMrs. Blythe"--Bruce took a little square paw out of his pocket and putit earnestly on Anne's knee--"I would like to turn the Kaiser into agood man--a very good man--all at once if I could. That is what I woulddo. Don't you think, Mrs. Blythe, that would be the very worstestpunishment of all?"
"Bless the child," said Susan, "how do you make out that would be anykind of a punishment for that wicked fiend?"
"Don't you see," said Bruce, looking levelly at Susan, out of hisblackly blue eyes, "if he was turned into a good man he wouldunderstand how dreadful the things he has done are, and he would feelso terrible about it that he would be more unhappy and miserable thanhe could ever be in any other way. He would feel just awful--and hewould go on feeling like that forever. Yes"--Bruce clenched his handsand nodded his head emphatically, "yes, I would make the Kaiser a goodman--that is what I would do--it would serve him 'zackly right."