I have always been obsessed with Rilla of Ingleside. This was the book that started my life long love of WWI and even my Socks For Soldiers knitting. Considering that my books are set in WWI era its fun to revisit Rilla. Since P. D. James writes fan fiction I guess I can too. Here are some unrelated vignette that I strung together. I am sticking quite close to the books.
"The door bell rang, Rilla turned reluctantly stair wards. She must answer it—there was no one else in the house; but she hated the idea of callers just then. She went downstairs slowly, and opened the front door.
A man in khaki was standing on the steps—a tall fellow, with dark eyes and hair, and a narrow white scar running across his brown cheek. Rilla stared at him foolishly for a moment. Who was it?
She ought to know him—there was certainly something very familiar about him—"Rilla-my-Rilla," he said.
"Ken," gasped Rilla. Of course, it was Ken—but he looked so much older—he was so much changed—that scar—the lines about his eyes and lips—her thoughts went whirling helplessly.
Ken took the uncertain hand she held out, and looked at her. The slim Rilla of four years ago had rounded out into symmetry. He had left a schoolgirl, and he found a woman—a woman with wonderful eyes and a dented lip, and rose-bloom cheek—a woman altogether beautiful and desirable—the woman of his dreams.
"Is it Rilla-my-Rilla?" he asked, meaningly.
Emotion shook Rilla from head" Joy—happiness—sorrow—fear—every passion that had wrung her heart in those four long years seemed to surge up in her soul for a moment as the deeps of being were stirred. She had tried to speak; at first voice would not come. Then—
"Yeth," said Rilla.
She wanted to look down at her feet; to avert her gaze before she revealed too much of her own heart. But she found that she could not look away. For an instant the pain of four years welled in her heart and then slowly dissipated. His eyes appeared so different; they were like Jem's, old eyes that seemed to view her as some sort of relic of past days.
Then the strange spell broke and she felt herself drawn to his heart. Arms strong with toil held her close and the brass buttons of the khaki uniform pressed against her face. Peace and trembling joy so filled her she could only absorb it all with slow comprehension like the twilight coming in a summer evening.
"I did not think you would come back." She lifted her head and gazed defiantly back at him. She would not be a complete fool over him.
" I said I would come back to you, Rilla-my-rilla. And I did."
" But you have been home a fortnight and I did not receive a single line. What was I to expect that you had quite forgotten about me." She smiled reproachfully up at him with the little questioning look in her brows very much in evidence. A harder heart than Kenneth Fords would have been unable to resist it.
"My mother was ill with influenza when I came home. For a time we were worried she would not survive. I would have come much sooner if not for that. I could not send a note. Some things cannot be expressed on paper." He touched the soft rose bloom cheek with tentative fingers and the color flamed up most becomingly.
" For instance, I do not think this could be conveyed in a letter." He bent his head with slow deliberation and kissed the dented, ruby lips tenderly. The touch was sweet with memories and warm with the hope which even war could not break.
Rilla came to herself with a start of horror. She was on the front porch kissing a soldier in broad daylight in view of anyone passing by. What would people think of her? Susan would be utterly scandalized. She disengaged herself and opened the door wider, "Please come in."
Her tone was almost formal though the eyes were shining and the nervous trembling of her hands revealed her discomfiture. She lead him into the drawing room and stood by the hearth feeling completely unable to think of a single thing to say. What must he think of her?
But Kenneth Ford was thinking of how plucky and courageous this woman was. Not for nothing had he read her letters and seen her grow more and more mature and the ready sympathy come through every line. But this elegant young woman was not the same person that had been so earnestly young in the before the war days. She might be horrified at his liberty.
"I'm sorry. I ought not to have done that. In fact I ought not to have ever extracted that promise from you. You were too young to understand what it meant to me." He stood near her but did not touch her.
She whirled about and her eyes snapped with temper though she felt nearer to tears than anything in her whole life, " Too young… Don't you know it was the only bright spot in an otherwise dark horizon? I kept that promise."
" I have loved you, Rilla Blythe since that night. You were holding Jim's in your arms and you looked like the picture of the Madonna my mother keeps on her desk. Yet I had heard too many rumors of Fred Arnold and believed you were his sweetheart. It was only a look in your eyes that made me think there was some hope after all. All these years I have waited to speak to you." He was looking down at her as if she was not a foolish child. The tones were velvety as they always had been, but older and slightly husker as if the years had roughened them, and she wondered if such beauty could come to her after so many tears and trials.
She came to him then and he held her close in the fading afternoon sunlight. They were broken, in the exquisite brokenness of lost youth, but they had gained certain knowledge in human nature. She at last murmured in broken strains, for she could not help but think of Walter and how he had predicted such a moment coming to her, "I have loved you always, I think. There was never one moment but it grew along with me."