Hello again, Anne-girls! I promise I've not disappeared off the face of the earth. I've merely been on holiday - without internet...or a lot of technology - which is why you haven't seen any updates from my corner in about a month. But I'm back now, so Walter and Co. can be appropriately sent through the emotional wringer.

Oh, dear. I may have just spoiled a bit of the story. But "Tragedy" is one of the genres here, after all...

17 May, 1915

Walter stepped off the train at Glen St. Mary after Nan and Di, a suitcase in one hand and another coward's letter in the other. It had come just that morning, as he was leaving his boarding house. This time, however, the white feather had been accompanied by a note:

Thousands have enlisted - what's wrong with you?

That wasn't the only thing, either. On his way from purchasing his ticket home yesterday, he had been ambushed by what felt like the entire Kingsport contingent of the Order of the White Feather. They had swooped in on him, rather like a flock of the birds whose feathers they passed out, and by the time he had forced his way through the lot of them, he was covered in lipstick marks, had lost his hat, and had white feathers sticking out of every pocket and crevice. His ears were still ringing with their accusations of "Coward" and "Duty-dodger," by the time he arrived at his boarding house.

He had to wonder: did they ambush every man who wasn't in uniform this way, or was he the only one who warranted this sort of special treatment?

The Piper sounded closer now, as though he were just around the corner. That explained the large amounts of boys in khaki coming from the recruitment office, he supposed. The pied piper was calling his children across the foam.

He was roused from his thoughts by an enthusiastic Dog Monday, who had flung himself at him with a frantic joy. But when Walter leaned down to pat him, Monday looked past him, an expectant look in his eyes.

"Sorry, Monday," Walter said softly, "Jem's not here."

Monday gave him a little lick, as if to say, "It's not your fault," and trotted back to the kennel that had been erected for him. If Walter knew Dog Monday - and he did - that dog was going to stay there until Jem came home.

Walter looked back at him before stepping up to his family. "Hello, Mother - Dad - Rilla."

His mother gave him a kiss on the cheek before wrapping her arms around him. "Hello, darling," she looked up at him, her large grey eyes, a few shades lighter than his own, now filled with worry and sorrow. He could see the toll the past nine months had taken on her, hard as she tried to mask it with her natural spunk.

His father shook his hand. "Redmond's still standing, I take it?"

"Well, something's got to prop up all that ivy," Walter hiked up a grin for Dad's benefit before being pulled into a hug by his baby sister - now a baby no longer.

"Hi, Rilla-my-Rilla," he noticed that she had grown again, and that she reached to his nose now instead of his chin, "how are the Junior Reds?"

"We're putting on a concert to help the Belgians," she informed him eagerly, "but we've had the most awful time rehearsing. Miranda Pryor promised to help with a dialogue and when she had her part all learnt her father put his foot down and refused to allow her to help at all. I am not blaming Miranda exactly, but I do think she might have a little more spunk sometimes. If she put her foot down once in a while she might bring her father to terms, for she is all the housekeeper he has and what would he do if she 'struck'? If I were in Miranda's shoes…*" he let her prattle on as they made their way to where the horses were hitched.

"And how is your war-baby?" he asked her, referring to the baby Rilla had taken in, and was bound and determined to raise single-handedly...with a little help from Susan, of course.

"Jims cut his first tooth today," Rilla informed him proudly. "I am very glad, for he is nearly nine months old and Mary Vance has been insinuating that he is awfully backward about cutting his teeth. He has begun to creep but doesn't crawl as most babies do. "* by now, they were well on their way to Ingleside, and as they passed the little path that led toward Rainbow Valley, Walter tapped his father on the back.

"I'll get off here, Dad - I'll join you later, but I'd like to see Rainbow Valley first."

Hopping out of the buggy, Walter disappeared down the overgrown path, over roots, past mossy trees and overgrown ferns. He had always wondered if this is what the prehistoric forests had looked like. Up ahead, the trail broadened and became lighter, and Walter emerged from it, stepping into Rainbow Valley, which was now carpeted with the whiteness of the first mayflowers. He stooped down to pick a bundle, and once he had straightened up, looked around again, taking careful stock of his surroundings.

Rainbow Valley was gloriously unchanged. Here, he felt at least five years younger, and wondered if the fact that he had spent the majority of his growing-up-years here was a contributing factor. This was where they - the Ingleside and Manse children - had played, had read, and had occasionally done homework, although that last one was reserved mostly for Walter and Una, the two quietest of the bunch.

He wondered where Una was now; her last letter had come two weeks ago, and she knew that he would be coming home that week. He decided that he would pay a call to the Manse as soon as possible to say hello - to her, and to the Manse folk as well.

Suddenly, the silence around him - funny how he hadn't noticed the silence until it had been broken - was split by the sound of pipes. Walter's head snapped round, looking in the direction from which the bagpipes were sounding. They were coming closer - any moment now, their player was going to come over the rise and into Rainbow Valley.

For a moment, Walter wondered whether to hide behind the nearest tree and wait for this piper to march past, or to wait for him to appear - it was probably someone he knew, anyways.

But while the sound of bagpipes came closer, their piper did not appear. It was only when the valley was so filled with their sound that Walter had clapped his hand over his ears, that he finally recognized the tune. The instrument was different now, but the melody was the same; the wild music* he knew so well, whether it came from a flute or bagpipe, calling stridently for one and all to come assemble.

The Piper, it seemed, had traded his flute in for a set of bagpipes. The Piper was in earnest now. And he - and Jem, and Jerry, and Carl - would have to follow him, just as Walter had said they would all those years ago, on this same spot.

It seemed fitting, thought Walter somewhere over the din that covering his ears did very little to mitigate, that the Piper of his youth was now playing the instrument that had called up men from all over the British empire.

As the music faded away, Walter realized that he was shaking, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead. Scooping up another handful of mayflowers for Mother - Jem had always brought her some of the first mayflowers, and Walter thought he might do the same, now that Jem wasn't here - he hied himself home, trying to ignore the feeling of unease that persisted even as the Piper's music died.

Mother had liked the mayflowers, thought Walter as he stepped out onto the veranda, but she would have liked them more if they had come from Jem. He didn't blame her, of course - Jem was the son who might die any day, might never come home - and there was the Piper's song again. Couldn't a man get a single bloody minute without that incessant wailing? He had much preferred it when the Piper hadn't had bagpipes.

Walter spotted the white-clad figure of Rilla down by the far end of the garden, and went to join here there.

"It's good to see P.E.I. twilight once more," he said, trying to dispel thoughts of the Piper, war and white feathers, "I didn't really remember that the sea was so blue and the roads so red and the wood nooks so wild and fairy haunted. Yes, the fairies still abide here. I vow I could find scores of them under the violets in Rainbow Valley." His cheerfulness felt slightly forced, but Rilla didn't seem to notice.

"And isn't the sky blue over Rainbow Valley?" she said, "Blue—blue—you'd have to say 'blue' a hundred times before you could express how blue it is."

Susan wandered by, her head tied up with a shawl, her hands full of garden implements. Doc, stealthy and wild-eyed, was shadowing her steps among the spirea bushes.

"The sky may be blue," said Susan, "but that cat has been Hyde all day so we will likely have rain tonight and by the same token I have rheumatism in my shoulder."

"It may rain—but don't think rheumatism, Susan—think violets," Walter tried to force some cheer into his tone. His smile felt brittle as he fought to keep it in place, and he watched Susan narrow her eyes at him consideringly.

Indeed, Walter dear, I do not know what you mean by thinking violets," she responded, "and rheumatism is not a thing to be joked about, as you may some day realize for yourself. I hope I am not of the kind that is always complaining of their aches and pains, especially now when the news is so terrible. Rheumatism is bad enough but I realize, and none better, that it is not to be compared to being gassed by the Huns."

"Oh, my God, no!"* The phrase was out of his mouth before he could even think about stopping it. He turned towards the house, visions of Germans, chlorine gas, and suffocation running through his mind. He could see the mud of the trenches in front of him, hear the guns rumbling all around him, and feel the gas burning at his eyes and throat.

And above it all, the whispered accusation:

"Coward."

Walter would not sleep well that night.

*Rilla of Ingleside

This chapter's title is taken from the song "Pyramid's Loneliness" (words and music by Les. Coney, 1917)

There are two notes today: one on bagpipes, and another on the use of the word "hi". Let's start with the bagpipes, shall we? When I first read RoI, the only "pipes" that I knew of were bagpipes. So it was only natural, I suppose, that the Piper of my imagination played bagpipes (an instrument which, by the way, my mother abhors, and my younger brother desperately wants to take up. Guess who's winning :) ) Well, after a discussion with kslchen, I learned that the Piper was originally playing something more flute-like. Hence an entire paragraph on the change of instrument.

And now, I have a note on the use of the word "hi". I was a little apprehensive about using it here, but after a quick consultation with Profs. Google and Webster, I discovered that the first usage of "hi" was found in 1862, long before this story takes place. Walter, a good college boy, would have certainly had this greeting as part of his vocabulary. "Hi" (don't ask me why I keep putting it in quotations) is derived from the Middle English hei, hai, ai, eh and heh which were (and I quote), "expressing challenge, rebuttal, anger, derision, sorrow, or concern; also a shout of encouragement to hunting dogs."

The popularity of "hi" as a greeting coincided with the rise in popularity of "hello", which - as discussed somewhere in the AoGG forums - also coincided with the use of the telephone. Incidentally, "hello" won out over Alexander Graham Bell's suggested greeting: "Ahoy."

Just imagine: had things been only slightly different, we might all be bawling "Ahoy!" down the phone lines every time we called someone :)

And that, my dears, is your fun fact for the day.

It's so nice to be back!
Anne