The Change
There is no difference this blithe morning
'Tween yesterday and today…
The dim fringed poppies still are blowing
In sea fields misty and grey.
Sunlight streamed through the crisp white curtains of the Glen St. Mary's manse. Una Meredith pulled the pillow over her head. It can't possibly be time to get up yet, she thought to herself. I'll just lie here a few more minutes until Rosemary comes and knocks. It's a lazybones sort of morning…
But Una couldn't manage to fall back asleep. "Umm…" she murmured, stretching. "Suppose I might as well get up." She sat up in bed, trying to recall the events of the previous day. It had been a glorious September day—the leaves in Rainbow Valley had just started to change their colors. She had taken Bruce on an expedition to look for apples, but the only ones that they had found were sour.
Una slowly climbed out of bed. This is going to bother me until I can remember. It's as if I completely blocked yesterday from my mind. Well, I went to the Junior Reds meeting and sewed what felt like dozens of shirts—I really should join the Ladies' Aid or the regular Reds now, since I turned twenty, but I know Rilla can use my help. Rilla…something about Rilla?
The west wind overhead in the beeches
Is the friend of lovers still,
And the river puts its arm as bluely
Around the beckoning hill.
The water in her wash basin was cold, waking her up thoroughly. "A real bathroom…one of these days!" she laughed. "When we're all rich and famous…no, I don't want riches or fame. Just hot water in the mornings. Ouch! What happened to my finger? I seem to have poked it with a needle or something yesterday, sewing."
Shrugging off her white cotton nightgown, Una slipped on a work dress. It was a pale rose—it hadn't always been a work dress, but she had torn it quite badly several years previously at a picnic. "And I wore a tea rose in my hair from Mrs. Blythe's garden…that was a golden sort of day. There haven't been any of those in a long time—not since the War began. The War…" Her entire body shuddered as she remembered what had happened the night before.
She had been trimming the miniature rosebush in the kitchen window after supper when Dr. Blythe had come over, his face drawn and grey and strangely old.
"What's wrong, Gilbert?" her father had asked. Dr. Blythe had merely held out a telegram.
John Meredith read it aloud to a worried audience. "WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR SON, WALTER CUTHBERT BLYTHE, WAS KILLED IN ACTION…" His voice broke off. "I'm so sorry. If there's anything…anything…that we can do… You don't want platitudes, so I won't give them. But we sorrow with you." Rosemary nodded in assent.
"Thank you," Dr. Blythe had said quietly, turning to leave. "I must go back…Anne…Rilla…"
Una felt as if she were turned to stone. There had been a mistake. There must have been a mistake. Why, only a few months before, Gertrude Oliver had thought that her fiancé had been killed, but it had only been a horrible mix-up. That was all it was…a mistake.
"Una! Are you all right?" Rosemary asked.
"What?" Una replied dazedly.
"Your finger—it's bleeding from the thorns. And you've picked that rose to shreds."
Una looked down. All she could see was red—red blood, red petals. Her head started to spin. "Rosemary—it wasn't true, was it?"
There were tears in Rosemary's eyes, and in her father's as well. "He's gone, Una. Walter's dead. I know it must be hard for you…you'd been friends for so long."
Una made her way to her room as in a daze. Mechanically, she got ready for bed. "I'm dreaming. I'll wake up in the morning and find out it was all a bad dream."
Well, morning had come…and with it, the realization that the preceding night had not been a dream.
The tears began to fall now, faster and faster, spotting the pink dress—the pink dress that he had said that she looked like a tea rose in. "Walter is dead. He is dead—and I loved him. But he will never know."
The rose that laughed in the waning twilight
Laughs with the same delight,
But pale and sweet as the lilies of Eden
A little hope died last night.
Author's Note: I wrote this story quite some time ago, but never posted it here until now. The poem "The Change" was written by L. M. Montgomery. The characters belong to her as well.