Not Because We Will

January 1940

But each day brings its petty dust
Our soon-chok'd souls to fill,
And we forget because we must,
And not because we will.

- Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), "Absence"

"No, Mugsy!" Una scolded, shooing the guilty little terrier away from the siren scent of chicken giblets wafting from the Ingleside pantry. "Go lie down by the fire like a sensible beastie and you'll have the innards when they're good and ready."

Faith grinned, holding the kitchen door open for Muggins as Una chivvied her out. The dog whined in protest, but desisted when Dr. Blythe senior appeared at the living room threshold and scooped her into his arms.

"Come sit with me a spell," he said, scratching her ears but grinning at Una. "It's been a while since I had a dog to help me lounge in front of a fire properly."

Behind Dr. Blythe, the living room was the very picture of creature comfort, the squashy sofa and becushioned armchairs bathed in the frolicsome flickering of a merry fire. Over by the silent radio, Jem and Mrs. Blythe sat together at a small table, salt-and-cayenne heads bent low over case notes and correspondence. Outside, a gentle flurry sent flakes to kiss the windowpanes, frigid but harmless to all within the hearth-fire's reach. Dr. Blythe settled Muggins beside him on the sofa, petting with one hand and wrangling the newspaper — Soviet Warplanes Pour Destruction on Finnish Cities; Nazi Drive in Prospect? — with the other.

Una slipped back toward the kitchen, leaving them all to their leisure.

"I'm sorry again for imposing on you," she said to Faith as she rolled up her sleeves and retrieved the butter tray from the icebox.

Faith laughed, tying up her hair in a silk scarf she had brought home from France in '36. "You're hardly a difficult guest, love. I'm likely to end the week with more clean linen than I started and a pantry full of pies besides."

"Only if Muggins doesn't get to them first. I really am sorry about her. She's out of sorts, being left behind."

Again.

"But Carl will be back soon?" Faith asked, scrupulously attentive to her flour-measuring for once.

The butter slices fell under Una's knife with perfect regularity, each creamy square exactly like all the others. "Yes. Tuesday, I think, or perhaps Wednesday."

"Well, you're welcome to stay as long as you like," Faith said. "Ceci was over the moon last night when her cream puffs turned out so well. She's been trying to get me to teach her, but mine are better for hockey than tea."

The creampuffs in question were currently residing under a glass dome in the pantry, awaiting Ceci's return from school. She'd be along any minute, pink-cheeked and eager to help with the pies; Una had promised to demonstrate the proper technique for making a lattice top. At going-on-fourteen, Ceci Blythe seemed poised to inherit her mother's careless beauty, though she was more sweet pea than rose. Sometimes, she would whisper her secrets to Una over potato peels or tubs of bluing, which is why Una knew that she was anxious about leaving the Glen School for the wide world of Lowbridge High and that she worried she'd never be able to make anything just exactly the way Susan had.

If justice demanded a full and thorough accounting, it must be said that the creampuffs were not precisely "the Susan brand," but they were a good deal like creampuffs, which was more than could be said of previous attempts. Wally and Jemmy had certainly registered their appreciation, nicking extras on their way out the door this morning.

"It's only I didn't want to stay at home alone," Una explained, "nor leave Mugsy in a cold house when I went to Lowbridge."

"You don't have to justify yourself, Una. I'm happy to see you anytime." Faith's smile quirked into a something sharper. "Besides, it gives me a chance to ask whether you might have any news of your own?"

"News?" Una frowned, sinking the pastry cutter into the bowl. She doubted Faith wanted to hear about Georgie Newgate's strep throat or the bickering over whether the St. Elizabeth's chapter of the Red Cross should combine with the larger Lowbridge chapter or remain independent . . .

Faith caught her bottom lip between her teeth, biting the pink flesh white. "How are your deaconess lessons going?"

Oh, that.

"Fine, thank you," Una answered comfortably. "We had a very enjoyable discussion of the Q Hypothesis this week."

"And who, exactly, is we," Faith asked, all innocence.

"Why me and Father Daniel of course."

"Oh yes, of course."

Una stopped crumbling her butter and blinked at her sister, who seemed on the verge of an explosion of giggles. "Whatever are you on about Faith?"

Faith pulled the mixing bowl across the table to take her own turn, sinking her fingers into the forming dough with determined zeal. "Nothing, I'm sure," she said, still grinning. "It's only that Rosemary seems to think very highly of Father Daniel. She had . . . rather a lot to say about your dinner."

That dinner. Goodness, Una could have melted with embarrassment when Carl had gone on and on about the ducks. She had so wanted everything to go well. Of course, Father Daniel had left the manse with three books that Father believed he would enjoy and Rosemary had invited him back next month and Father Daniel himself had insisted that he had had the most marvelous time. But Una had still felt an odd pang of disappointment when Jenny-the-motorcycle disappeared around a bend in the road.

"I think Father Daniel will get on with Father and Rosemary very well," Una said, stepping toward the sink to wash her hands. "That's why I introduced them."

"Am I to understand that this Father Daniel is invited back to the manse sometime in the near future?"

"Well, he'll have to return Father's books at some point, I'm sure."

"Indubitably."

Just what was so funny? Faith was snickering the way she did when there was some particularly jolly prank afoot, the joy of it bursting out of her in little snorts. Well, Una had learned long ago that all would be revealed in time and no use pressing when Faith had gone silly like this.

"Don't over-work that dough," Una warned, drying her hands on a towel. "I'm going to go ask if anyone would like tea."

Una left Faith chortling over the pie crust, padding as noiselessly as a little gray mouse toward the living room. The firelight still danced through the archway and into the wood-paneled hall, but a pair of low, urgent voices made her pause just short of the threshold. Peering in, Una could see that Dr. Blythe and Muggins were snoring together under the newspaper, but she could not see Jem and Mrs. Blythe without them seeing her. Una was loath to eavesdrop, but the first overheard sentence petrified her where she stood.

"Walter never bayonetted anyone, Mother."*

"But he wrote that he did," Mrs. Blythe said, her voice steady, if a bit faint. A paper crackled and she read:

"And when the moon rose redly in the east,
I killed a stripling boy!
He might have been my brother slim and fair;
I killed him horribly and I was glad,
It pleased me much to see his dabbled hair,
The pale and pretty lad."

Una's breath caught in her chest. Surely that couldn't be one of Walter's poems. He never . . .

"I don't think he wrote that from experience," Jem said gently. "But he saw . . . he saw . . ."

He trailed off, unable to summon words that could stand the blast of Walter's.

When Mrs. Blythe spoke, her voice was cool enough to send chills down Una's back, in spite of the fire.

"I am thankful now, Jem, that Walter did not come back," she said. "He never could have lived with his memories . . . and if he had seen the futility of the sacrifice they made then mirrored in this ghastly holocaust . . ."

"I know . . ." Jem said haltingly. "I know. Even I who am a tougher brand than Walter . . . but let us talk of something else. Who was it said, 'We forget because we must?' He was right."

"Rubbish," Mrs. Blythe hissed. "I haven't forgotten."

Una clapped a hand to her mouth as if she could recapture her little gasp. Had she ever heard Mrs. Blythe speak harshly to anyone, let alone Jem? Of course they hadn't forgotten and never could forget. At the same time, there were hours — days, even — when the dead rested peacefully, coming only when they were summoned, rather than intruding as they once had. At least Una's dead did. Perhaps Mrs. Blythe's were more insistent.

"I didn't mean that you could ever forget Walter," Jem said apologetically. "I only meant that we must go on with the business of living. It's we forget because we must, not because we will."

"Well I won't."

There was a long silence, long enough that Una considered going in, perhaps to rescue Jem with innocuous offers of tea. But Mrs. Blythe spoke again, her own apology woven into her softened tone.

"Do you know, Jem, on the night before you went away to Valcartier, Susan and I packed up your things. I remember telling her about a time when you were only a few months old and you cried for me in the night. Dad didn't want me to go to you — he thought you were warm and well and it would be fostering bad habits. But I went — and took you up — I can feel that tight clinging of your little arms round my neck yet. I remember telling Susan that if I hadn't gone that night and taken you up when you cried for me, I couldn't have faced that next morning."**

"I remember those nights with Sam," Jem said gently. "Though I can't say I ever tried very hard to resist going to him, whatever Dad or Morgan might have said about it."

"I've tried so hard, lately, to remember . . ." Mrs. Blythe whispered, ". . . to remember whether I ever went to Shirley like that."

"I'm sure you did."

"I'm not."

"Mum . . ."

"No. I'm not sure. Shirley never was much of a one for crying, not even when he was a tiny baby. Susan used to say he was saving up his strength. When he was a little older, he always ran to Susan to be kissed for bumps and rocked to sleep. And I can't help but wonder . . . would things be different between us now if I had done for him what I did for you?"

"Mum. Stop. You can't beat yourself up over a baby crying forty years ago. You were sick. There were so many of us. And Susan . . ."

"I don't mean when he was a baby," Mrs. Blythe cut him off. "I mean . . . oh, never mind."

"What, Mum?" Jem implored. "What happened between you two? I've never asked, but, it's clear that something did. When he and C . . . uhhh . . . when he went to the Caribbean that year and kept sending your letters back unopened . . ."

Una held her breath. She had had the story from Carl — in bits at least — but never from Shirley. All she knew was that it had been a long, slow road back to civility between Shirley and his parents. Whatever Mrs. Blythe had said or done, she certainly seemed to regret it.

"You have to understand," Mrs. Blythe pleaded. "We were only trying to help . . ."

Suddenly, the front door banged open in a great gust of icy wind and swirling flakes. "Hello! Mum! Dad! We're home!"

Una clutched a hand to her chest, her startled heart galloping frantically as Jemmy, Wally, and Zoe Maylock tumbled into the hall in a flurry of wooly scarves and high spirits. All conversation was obliterated by the young folks' chatter and Muggins' barks and the scrape of chairs as the adults came to greet them.

"Hi, Auntie Una!" Jemmy grinned, kissing her cheek with frigid lips. "Are there any of those cream puffs left?"

31 January 1940
Aster House
Kingsport, Nova Scotia

Dear Carl,

How are you getting along, honey? We miss you terribly. Sylvia was saying this morning that she feels suspended forever in the old year, as you always bring the new along in your luggage. It feels awfully bleak to come in from the cold after work and not find you at the table all inkstained and covered by a drift of papers, with Shirley tinkering at the radio and Mugsy snoring on the couch.

I'm afraid Aster House may soon be seeming even bigger than it does at present, as Syl has begun to get serious about the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. She couldn't get into the army in the last war because she wasn't a trained nurse then, but now nothing will stop her, not even me.

She had a meeting with a recruiting officer this week and the RCAMC is quite keen on her, what with her VAD service and her experience running her ward at the hospital here. She thinks they might commission her a Captain and have her serve as a matron.

I had hoped that 44 might be a bit too old for the army, but age means experience and the only thing they really seem to care about is that nurses are unmarried. The recruiting officer said Syl would make an ideal role model for the younger nurses (she saved that tidbit for last to make me laugh, which was both effective and much needed.) Of course I'm proud of her and she'll be doing good and necessary work, but I don't need to tell you I only give her up because I must and not because I want to.

Oh, Carl, do come visit a while this winter. I know it's a wrench coming here alone and Kingsport can have nothing on Toronto these days, but it's a dull, drab, dreary season without you. Bring Una along if you like — when was the last time she had anything like a vacation? And Mugsy, too. I don't know whether I ought to find some furry companion of my own to come home to or just work enough that I don't come home at all. Syl won't be going for a while yet, though — she told the hospital she'd stay at least through the end of February to help train her replacement. Come see us before then, or come after and keep me company for a week or two. I'd go for the RCAMC myself, but they've less need of obstetricians than we do here in Kingsport, so I must bide and muddle through somehow.

Don't even bother phoning — just come over. You still have your key? If not, you'll remember where the spare is. Nothing could be a better surprise than to come home one day and find you here.

Love always,

Di

Notes:

*The quoted conversation comes from The Blythes Are Quoted, in which Anne shares Walter's "The Aftermath" with Jem. Jem's line saying that Matthew Arnold was right is the very last line of TBAQ (and thus of AoGG canon for those who accept TBAQ as such). I'm not adhering to everything in TBAQ (for example, Susan lived until WWII), but I am taking Zoe Maylock from "A Commonplace Woman" and I have long been interested in Walter's poetry and the conversations around it.

**Quoted (and lightly edited for pronouns) from Rilla of Ingleside, chapter VI: "Susan, Rilla, and Dog Monday Make a Resolution."