here, another filler chapter. I feel like the story needs a background since the next chapter will be rather eventful, hence the rather static introduction in the first two. it's rather short if that's any comfort.
I'm not sure how I did- but then I hardly ever am. Walter is my greatest fear; I just can't muster enough depth to write him well. is he- bearable, at least?
I wanted to thank you or all your reviews- special thanksgo to AnneFan here, as I cannot PM you- I'm always so glad to receive them, they are the greatest source of insight and inspiration! and it feels so nice to get them at the beginning of a story, there can really be no greater encouragement. I hope you will share your impressions with me- also the ones about things I got wrong- so that I could get them right (ish).
the underlined part comes from LMM's 'Rilla of Ingleside'.
As soon as they piled out the Ingleside gate, to the accompaniment of Dog Monday's rueful howling, they paired off after a fashion. Jem walked with Faith Meredith, naturally, and Jerry Meredith with Nan. Di and Walter were together, walking slowly; Walter inhaling the dark loveliness of the evening, Di- examining their little crowd, gradually swelling with neighbors as the parade moved through the Glen.
Oh, there was Carl Meredith for you, marching next to Miranda Pryor for the purpose of tormenting Joe Milgrave and nothing else; the poor boy would not get a lot of his beloved 'bug-talk'- Susan's term- since Miranda would probably squeek and run- or, more likely, faint to hear about the lately Westropp's discovery. She sometimes cast hankering glances at Joe, but walked on sedately, the appreciation of the company of Queen's graduate and parson's son in one person smeared across her pallid face. Di chuckled.
Shirley and Una walked together again. They were both rather silent and, even having known their quiet nature and the likely contentment at not having to talk in excess, she still could not fathom how they managed to stay so calm and unmoved in the face of the beauty surrounding them. As for herself, she could have sung in loud voice at that very moment.
"I know what you're thinking of," Walter whispered. "You're wondering whether Kingsport will look so beautiful at night. Or am I wrong?"
"When have you ever been wrong?"
The dark road uncoiled before them with all its little firs and spruces, closing them in a dome of resinous, balmy air. The westerning hills were still tinted with the last vestiges on sunlight, but the sky above their heads was canopied with stars, twinking- as though they were at their fingertips. Di turned her head a little and Walter' clear, manly profile came into view. He added to the beauty of the night.
Walter was, as he had always been, the handsomest of the Ingleside boys, with those glossy black hair and faultless features of his. His eyes were gray- gray like frost flowers, like silvery mists over dark valleys, and always somewhat distant; but the inner luster suggested that wherever his soul was wandering- it was a very beautiful place. A poet to his fingertips, Miss Oliver had once said, and rightly so!
Diana admired and loved Walter with all her heart. She couldn't even compare the feelings harbored for him in her heart to those she had for Jem or Shirley and she didn't feel an ounce of guilt. Walter was just as devoted to her.
What was once called 'especial chums' in the Ingleside parlance had turned into affinity of souls. If they had often said the same thing together as children- at present they did not even need to speak, they just looked into each other's eyes. Their hearts spoke one language. Walter almost always called her 'My Di' and her ear caught the emphasis on the pronoun, that one precious bit more prominent than in his pet name for little Rilla. They belonged to each other, now- and would belong always and forever. She desperately wanted to believe that.
And it seemed so, for all the world, as they walked on in comfortable silence. Jem and Faith rushed ahead of them, engrossed in a story he was telling.
"The doctor lost both his legs–they were smashed to pulp–and he was left on the field to die. And he crawled about from man to man, to all the wounded men round him, as long as he could, and did everything possible to relieve their sufferings–never thinking of himself–he was tying a bit of bandage round another man's leg when he went under. They found them there, the doctor's dead hands still held the bandage tight, the bleeding was stopped and the other man's life was saved. Some hero, wasn't he, Faith? I tell you when I read that–"
Di moaned.
"I know it's a beautiful story of courage, sacrifice and the goodness of human nature; why, I almost cried when I read it myself. But I do wish Jem would save it for a more fitting occasion. Does Faith really take so kindly to it, I wonder?"
"Oh, is that any better, in your opinion?" Walter laughed and, in one of his all too rare fits of cutting humor, nodded to another pair, speeding past them.
"No, the war is not said and done yet! I refuse to believe it so long as it is not declared. I swear, Jerry, I have yet to meet a fatalist like you- to think I could have gone with Una and Shirl instead!" Nan seethed, but somehow managed to do it in a low voice, softened by a warm undertone. The power of her message suffered greatly.
Di and Walter exchanged eloquent glances- and laughed light-heartedly. Then Di noticed a little envious look which Baby Rilla shot her over Miss Oliver's head- and she wound her arm through his.
"Rilla looks lovely," she said magnanimously, as he pressed her fingers.
"Exeptionally so," Walter corrected her. "She looks lovely on a daily basis. Tonight she is as fair as the dawn and as fresh as a- pansy, rather than daisy."
"Oh, of course, she's in fine feather. A bit too fine for her first dance- a bit too early for a girl not yet fifteen- a bit too much for a party which Irene Howard will attend. I can already hear the gossips she is going to send into the air after tonight! But, well, since Ken is going to be there-"
She caught Walter's eyes in the midst of her tirade.
"Oh, don't look at me with this sad, reproachful older- brotherly look! I'm not being vicious- I love our Baby as much as anyone could. I'm just more objective than you are, since she does not fawn over me so devotedly. And I have the uncomfortable role of the outstaged sister to play for tonight. Hence the chip on my shoulder, I suppose."
Walter laughed his quiet, velvety laugh.
"As if anyone could do that," he said, taking both her hands in his and standing in front of her. "Outshine you, that is. Not you- you with all your moonshine charm, that ever-changing play of feeling on your sweet, freckled face. Not now, when you look just like a full-blown anemone. No, My Di, Nan may be a flower elf and Rilla a sweet, little sylphid- but you are a dryad, you are one with the winds, you whisper with the woods. The laurel of the beauty of Ingleside rests on your head, dear."
Di blushed at this poem of a compliment, but she was not pleased enough not to notice a little loophole; Faith Meredith could not stake claims to the title reserved for Ingleside girls.
"My, I am so glad you are my brother. I would be swept off my feet now, if I were just another Glen girl swooning at you."
But his admiration touched her very heart. It was something real as Walter never told falsehoods; it came straight from his beauty-longing heart. Had anyone else said the words, they would have been thoroughly cliché perhaps. But from Walter- they were all truth and all poetry.
He smiled, as Di rested her head on his shoulder, resuming their walk. She felt a fleeting touch of remorse for her treatment of Rilla; perhaps she had been a little too rapacious, driven by an undercurrent of jealousy. But how silly would she be now, thinking a little sister could as much as near the place in his heart reserved for her- and her alone!
When Rilla looked back again, Di smiled at her. She suddenly felt sorry for her, knowing the pains which jealousy may set ablaze. But she soon turned away, for one such pain was sparkled in her own heart.
Far before them, two pairs were binding. Jem and Jerry were both positively galloping forward, hauling Faith and Nan behind; they all met at the turn of the road from which, Di knew, they could see the harbor shore. They had covered the whole distance without a glance back, without a single thought about the rest of the company- and now Nan and Faith linked their free arms with each other. They were both positively beaming with aplomb and glee- and seemed fully absorbed in their companions and each other.
Di didn't manage to scowl, however; at that very moment Nan turned back and, not having a free hand to beckon her with, she made do with a summoning toss of her head.
It didn't matter that Jem, impatient to skipper one of the boats moored near the little pier right below the quiet House of Dreams, pulled them firmly and they bumped into one another like beads on a string, laughing as if there was no greater joy in the world than tripping on a sandy road- other than having your toes stepped over.
But Di unbent her half-knitted brow. Nan did notice, after all- and she turned around as soon as Di's heart began to fret in doubt. As if she could sense it. Their bond- a bond which only twins can know- was not severed; if one of them moved away, the other one was drawn in her direction.
"I am much too old for the amounts of jealousy I still have in me," she mused in thought. "Nan and Walt both would speak with one voice that I'm acting ridiculous."
Nan saved a place in the boat for her, right next to herself- and she even thought of Walter, positioning him directly in front of Di. Right next to Faith Meredith, too, but poor Nan was not to know how inopportune this seating was.
Thanks be that Jem and Joe Milgrave urged everybody into the boats as if they had no manners at all, impatient for their race; thanks be that Jem was so disgruntled upon losing that Nan sneered at his scowl all the way upon the rock-cut step, lined with Japanese lanterns and wallflower fellows; thanks be, finally, that Rilla was so excited that she almost left her old, comfortable shoes at the pier, as she was so quick as to put on her silver slippers before the climb. Thanks be that no one noticed Faith's sudden silence and Walter's darkened, stormy eyes. Thanks be, in particular, that Una didn't see it, chasing Rilla with her boots.
And that Di herself did not have to watch his torment for long.