Chapter 2: Una

Author's Note: Hi again! Here's the second chapter, and I felt so sad when writing it. Poor Una. I posted and edited the first chapter yesterday, and till now I've got 4 reviews, 1 favourite and 2 author/story subscriptions! I have to thank you guys ever so much for making me squeal with delight (literally) every time I receive an email notification from FFnet, and I really hope you review with an account because I feel the need to PM you my thanks.

I hope you enjoy and kindly review!

Love, Evening. :)

"I'm sorry I didn't write to you sooner," Walter murmured, his black eyes gazing intently at her. "I wrote Rilla tonight, and I meant to write you, too, but now I shan't have the time…" His voice trailed off as he turned his head to the hill.

Una Meredith saw a tall, lank figure with a feathered hat on his head and a pipe in his hands marching over the hill, followed by a troop of boys, unfaltering as they crossed from the Allies' trenches to the German's. She saw one familiar handsome dark head among them, and felt like she must gasp—but she couldn't. She couldn't move; she couldn't breathe.

The night, at Courcelette, was a deep violet, not quite black. It was that indecisive shade in between that seems to always forebode some life-altering happening, whatever it may be. One cannot help but to feel a shiver down the spine when encountering such a night. Not one breath stirred upon that hill, not even from the Canadian boys, and not one creature was in sight. There was only the deep, numbly sweet music that Una refused to believe was coming out of the pipe in the first figure's mouth.

Walter's soft, fine face turned back to hers—oh, it was so close to her own! It was the only thing she could see; it was before her and blocked out everything else.

"I can see the steadfastness in your blue eyes now, Una," he told her, his eloquent eyes flashing and his melting voice tender. "Somehow I can see those eyes very plainly tonight. Keep faith, Una," he said slowly as his voice began to fade away with his face. "We go over the top at dawn. Keep faith."

Una opened her eyes gradually, as if she had been awake all along and was only now choosing to get up. She looked around her, but of course she was in her room, at the manse. But why was it so cold? She pressed her hands to her neck to gain warmth from them, but they, too, were clammy.

Wrapping her kimono around her as tightly as it would go, she rose up from her bed and took a few sluggish steps to the open window. The night sky over the Glen was quiet, but not silent, like at Courcelette. The midnight was a deep, velvety black only illuminated by the moon and the stars, not a violet-black, like at Courcelette.

Her hand moved to her heart involuntarily, as if pressing against it could stop the throbbing ache she was already beginning to feel. She refused to believe that her dream wasn't exactly a dream—but she knew it was. Her eyes showed what was in her heart; the dark blue that had, even before tonight, always seemed so sad and grieving, were full with that indescribable emotion no woman should ever have to feel.

And as she gazed into the breathing night—not dead, like at Courcelette—she held on fiercely to Walter's face which had only moments before appeared before her eyes, so heartbreakingly near she had wanted to reach out and beg him to stay and tell him she had always cared for him, ever since they were children.

Eyes closed and each breath haggard and laboured, she recalled the day they had all gathered to send Walter off.

Carl and Shirley had declared that they, too, would soon be joining their fellows at the trenches, to which, Una saw, her father and Susan paled. And then Walter had shook hands with her.

Una looked at him wistfully, sorrowfully, her eyes unable to hide the pain and ache she felt inside, although she could never tell him what she felt. His own gallant, feeling eyes were brimming with emotion, and he bent his curly head, with the khaki cap she had grown to resent, to kiss her. His mouth was warm on hers, but it was only brotherly, as a comrade would kiss a childhood friend. She could feel that, but for one wonderful, terrible moment all her love showed in her upturned face, but it retreated when he loosened his grip on her arm and went to Rilla.

"God bless you, Rilla-my-Rilla," he whispered lovingly to his now-patient sister. Then, as he stepped onto the rear platform, waving to them as the train so cruelly pulled out of the station, Una went to the girl she longed to call sister, and they held each other's icy hands as they gazed after the boy no one could ever love more than they did.

When he was gone at last, Una slipped away from the two families, but without any idea of where she should go. She wanted to go to Rainbow Valley, of course, but Rilla would doubtlessly be there, and she had to be alone. A half hour later, she ended up at the Four Winds shore, near Dr and Mrs Blythe's old "House of Dreams", away from Glen St. Mary entirely.

She remembered sitting against a rock on the beach, with her arms curled tightly around her knees. On that first day of Una's enduring, endless vigil of love, the waves stroked her toes, trying to cheer her up, the wind caressed her cheeks, as if to wipe away the tears that weren't there, and she stared out to sea unthinkingly, her eyes pricked but dry, her cheeks pale but dry, her lips silent and dry.

Then, in the evening, she had returned to the manse and carried on as usual. All the women in the Glen did that—they had their own period of mourning, however long that may be, and then carried on as usual, however they might do that. The women, in these three years, had reluctantly but selflessly untied their apron strings and sent off the men they loved, be it friend, brother, beau or son. Mrs Blythe had sent off two sons, her stepmother one, her sister a beau, and now it was she who was to send off…what was he? A brother, perhaps.

Yet the women never lost hope, not entirely. It was they who had made the greatest sacrifice, for, as Rilla said, the boys gave only themselves, while the women gave them. In their eyes shined the age-old love that helped them to hold on when there seemed to be nothing to grip, a love that, it seemed, had to be enough to convince the Almighty to send their boys back to them.

Una recalled all this, and much more, as some hidden bird sang a happy little dirge to the happy days of yesterday, the crickets shrilly told of all that went on at the front today, and the frogs croaked hoarsely in a vain attempt to hope for tomorrow, until she thought she would go mad.

Without bothering to take off her kimono, she crawled back between the sheets and closed her eyes, but as soon as that happened, Walter's face became torturously clearer and his poet's voice resounded firmly in her ears, "Keep faith. We go over the top at dawn. Keep faith. Keep faith…"

The girl thought she was going to scream if this carried on any further. And why was she acting so cowardly, so silly? It wasn't as if, she told herself sternly, anything was going to happen to Walter. The Blythe and the Meredith boys had, since the first—Jem—had gone off, been taken care of by some stars sent by a higher power Himself.

"Nothing," she said aloud, squeezing her eyes shut, "is going to happen."

But the hands that gripped the covers so violently tossed them aside and the feet belonging to the same maiden sprang up to walk about the room quickly. Una had neither web nor loom, but it was a certainty that "she made three paces through the room", and many more. When finally her legs gave out, she fell into the chair before her desk and, flinging her cold face into her hands, indulged in a good, long cry that had been due and suppressed since Walter's departure.

The weeping brought Rosemary Meredith to her door, but the mother hesitated as she reached for the knob; she had never before heard such strangled sobs. She thought of the thoughtful, ever-wistful girl in the room, and shook her head doubtfully.

Sometimes we hide things so well that even those who love and know us best do not think anything of it, and it was because of this that no one, not even Mr and Mrs Meredith knew the reason why Una cried with such angst that night, when she had never before been known to cry because of the war. No one, except perhaps Rilla, suspected.

However, when a crack appeared in the black sky and the dye from a petal's rose gradually poured from the cup of dawn, Una dried her hollow eyes and picked up the pieces of courage shed the night before to carry on. Already the burning sensation in her chest was beginning to fade, and she started to believe that all that had haunted her mind was merely figments of nothingness.

It was well, then, that she did not hear the faint but unmistakable howling of a dog coming from, it seemed, the train station—or, if she did, that she did not understand the meaning of it.