Martyrs' Manse,
Kingsport,
June, 1937
John,
I have just come from a telephone call with Nathan Arnold finalising arrangements for the little Arnolds over the summer. Well, for the foreseeable future, I probably mean. Of course, by the time this gets to you, I expect you'll have heard all about it by way of Nathan, Alice, Bruce, Di or some other branch of the Glen grapevine entirely.
The perils of international news, as it turns out. Certainly the perils of having contacts abroad who ring the international desk when news looks likely. This is why, if you were wondering, Naomi an Fred are even now making plans to head back to Singapore. Safer, Naomi thinks, than going directly to China. She thinks she'll do a better job covering whatever is unfolding if she's closer to the source. I'd take exception, except, well, it's her calling, isn't it? The way ministering was mine. She couldn't escape the work any more than I have. Besides, she always did say she'd go back.
They were supposed to go back in the Jubilee year. If it had gone ahead, you would have just missed them at Trinity house. But they decided against it, what with finally having Phil and I on the doorstep, and Phil's health increasingly precarious.
But then Una rang, which she virtually never does, with news of Chinese affairs and did Naomi need somewhere to stay if the paper sent her over. Well, that was that. My last letter from her, by the by, is somewhere between apologetic and newsy. There's quite a good bit about Akela tormenting the buffalo until Nenni the cat went and intervened. The upshot of this seems to have been that Carl had to lure a sulking Akela back into the house with offer of a lamb bone to gnaw on, while Una subsequently found the cat grooming papatee'sfur to a nicety. Iris thought it all a grand joke, and stood by clapping her hands in delight.
I'd say I'm trying not to be worried about it, you know, only Naomi knows I'm worried. We talked that all out over the phone too. I was left with the distinct impression she is equally worried, but needs must and all that. As things currently stand, Nathan Arnold has volunteered to take the children through July. He will then send them across to me by boat with Jem and Faith when they return from the August furlough. I then have them for a fortnight, and will send them back in time for the school term.
Naomi, meanwhile, is away until the paper is tired of her covering the crisis in China, or until it resolves itself; whichever comes first. And to think I never thought news would prove for complicated family situations.
Joanie, being ever her mother's daughter and Phil's granddaughter, isn't a bit fazed by all of this. She's decided that all the shuttling about will be a tremendous adventure. Pip is less convinced, and not as good at hiding it as he thinks he is. Ideally, of course, Naomi would take them with her. But the cost of travel being what it is, it would take quite the acrobatic feat to get five people there and back again. It was bad enough, she reminded me, back in '29 when she and Fred had only Joanie to consider. And naturally it's an all-or-none sort of venture. I mean, she can't very well split the children up. A shame, because as both she and Una lament, it will be a while yet before they get Joanie and Iris in the same place. Odd to think that in another life they might have grown up as something like friends.
I can't really complain, of course, what with the Cricket Club being what it is. I gather Di would be going along with them, but for Miss Abby and her fear of people disappearing on her. Di still says (and I tend to agree) that some of her best photographs came out of that summer in Singapore. I will never forget those boats drifting down the flooded streets. Was it really ten years ago? It doesn't seem right when I think on it.
It must be, though. Gil was beside himself, and Nan's girls (they were little then!) got into everything. Specifically Mandy got into the piano and didn't believe Gilbert when he said he knew how to play – tried to tell him only women could play the piano. I have the most vivid memory of his mangling a some study or other, while she shrieked with glee and tried to tell him she was right between bouts of laughter. Not to be proven wrong, he all but hauled your Bruce over to the piano (it would have been just before his Redmond tenure, by my reckoning), whereupon he began to play some elaborate composition, crossed-hands and I don't know what. Didn't Mandy's eyes go wide!
'Told you so,' said Gil with satisfaction and twinkling eyes. 'Bet he could teach you.' But then Miri emerged out of the clutches of greedy relatives and off they went together. They were that proud of their wedding finery – was it like that this time round, with Miri? I suppose Rilla will be in touch with her soon. You must be sure to let me know how she is. The other day an exasperated Faith said, 'Why on earth couldn't she have taken up with the aspiring farmer instead? At least I could stand to trust him,' and Jem mustered a smile. Another time, maybe had it been a year or three hence, we might have contrived to laugh. As Ellie and Mara rightly observe though, such things happen, and the best we can do is strive to be helpful about it.
Appreciably I can't do much at this end. If nothing else, I'm a stranger and would frighten Miri. Besides, I can't do lectures. Never could; ask any of my children. Phil would back them up, were she still here. But you have my ear, as do the children, if they want it. Always.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch,
Jo
New Manse,
Glen St Mary,
July, 1937
Jo,
We have just come from seeing our intrepid adventurers off. There were hugs all round, and promises to keep in touch, lots of handkerchief waving, and a few tears from the children, though they did their best to keep a stopper on them until afterwards. Naomi says they will be back soon, a pretence Fred and I kept up with her. Last week's news of the firing of Beijing, and indeed all the swapping about of names and capitals since, hardly inspires confidence. Naomi was quite as animated as you'd expect, and Alice has promised solemnly to spoil the children in her absence. Or at least to corrupt them into nursing. Bruce theorises she can do both at once and I'm disinclined to argue.
Speaking of Bruce, he assures me that that piece Gilbert mangled all those years ago was Chopin. Rosemary seconds him, and the fact of their memories agreeing on such a detail leads me to trust them on this point. I'm sorry I appear to have missed the moment in its entirety, as it sounds like rather a lovely memory to have. It sent us trawling through photo albums for snaps of Di's wedding, and indeed, the little girls certainly got their share of photos. I hadremembered their dresses for the simplicity of them. No lace or frills as I think Irene and Ethel had expected from daughters of Nan, but a very elegant cut, and the merest suggestion of sleeves. I recall Mandy said hers felt more like wings and that she liked to suppose she was a fairy, flitting about from place to place. This might account for why, when not at the Ingleside piano, she spent so much of that weekend up trees, communing with squirrels.
That was also the first airing of the little girls' lockets, do you remember? Miri's was oblong to Mandy's more rounded one, and it was the first time I think Susan Baker really allowed herself to believe that the family wouldn't all starve to death in the wilds of Canada. They had been a gift from Jerry 'just because' as Miri told us, delighted. Rosemary called it a terribly grown-up gift, and Anne said she'd always longed for people to give her things 'just because' growing up. She was thrilled that the little girls should know what that was like.
I mention the lockets as Miri is wearing hers in her wedding photo. This finally arrived, oh, a week or so back. I kept meaning to mention it to you and somehow never could remember when writing up an account. Anyway, in the picture, she and young Wilhelm have got their arms linked. She leans on him rather, in a fashion that recalls Nan with Jerry. That did make me smile. The brother, who is credited with the snap, has caught them between the sharing of some private joke, and they're both just this side of laughter. Miri's eyes are luminous in that way they get when she's lost to a daydream, and she's got her unencumbered hand up, as if she were waving at us. They look very smart, or smart enough to meet with Cornelia's approval. She took a long look at the picture, then nodded solemnly and said reflectively and a bit sorrowfully, 'Very nice. But I see she decided against white. A shame; I like the young girls to wear it. They can, you know, and I was always sorry I never could.'
Rosemary was quick to explain that Miri had never cared for white, nor Mandy either. They told me once conversationally that it made them think of nothing but ghosts, cold winters and freezing slowly to death. That got a sniff out of Cornelia that even Susan couldn't have bested, and the declaration that it was all 'stuff and nonsense.' Maybe so, but no stranger, surely, than Anne's innate betrayal by diamonds? Anyway, I think Miri looks very well. The commentary in the letter makes the dress out as navy, which Ellen says is too dark for a summer wedding. I don't pretend to know. I will say Miri looks terrifyingly grown up, between her hair all worn up, the cut of the dress and her gloved hands. Especially since most of our girls rebel against gloves on principle; Kitty loathes them, ditto Sophy. Sissy doesn't see their point and swears she will never, everwear them (her emphasis), a stance I keep waiting to hear Isobel has likewise adopted. Mandy says they get in the way of tree climbing, bird feeding and exploring her ponds. Also, she cannot draw with them on. Her sisters take her word as gospel, so I'm hardly holding my breath to hear Beatrice and Harriet are donning their first set of gloves – they don't even wear Nan's old pairs for dress-up as expected. Only Helen seems to appreciate them and Abby to aspire to them. Needless to say, Miri's white-gloved hands came as a bit of a shock. When did she get to looking respectable? Gil and I can't work it out, not least because she doesn't look at all like the girl we remember.
Rosemary here interjects to tell me I am oversimplifying, because of course no one ever looks the way you remember them when you are remembering from two years back. Certainly not when your memory is all jumbled with reminiscences about things that happened a decade or more previous – cf our discussion of Di's wedding. She also says I have an obligation to do Miri's hat justice, and has accordingly decoded its details. It's a suitably summery straw thing with an upturned brim and a ribbon the letter details as blue. Someone – Mrs Kiefer, I believe, has arranged a bouquet of cornflowers and love-in-the-mist slightly off-centre, a detail that must gratify Nan's heart. Anne was certainly enchanted by it. Miri goes on to say that she carried some of the same, though she has lost them by the time the photo was taken.
That is all we know. Rilla and Ken cannot get near her. All their messages were met with courteous acknowledgement that presently Miri was too tired for many visitors, thank you for offering, she wishes them well, etc&. They go to Germany shortly – will probably be there by the time this reaches you – and I understand Rilla's working plan is to attempt one of her 'drop in' calls on the off-chance. After all, it worked on Irene Howard, even in odd shoes. I do hope so.
Love and blessings,
J.M.
Ingleside,
Glen St. Mary,
July, 1937
Jo,
Still no luck at Rilla's end. Her last telegram details briefly a warm exchange with a well-intentioned neighbour of Miri's, but that's as close as she could get. They were moving on the next day, and Rilla intended to look in that mornin. As she's still in transit, I have yet to hear the outcome. Time was something of a commodity.
She has my sympathy, as it's been much the same here.
I was hoping for a lazy summer, what with Bruce having finally taken the practice over, when up Jims telephoned from Toronto. A lovely surprise, right up until the wee detail of the city reporting all manner of child illnesses.
'It sounded such an awful lot like your polio ordeal,' said Jims, contriving to put my heart in my mouth inside of ten seconds. 'I thought I'd ask what to do about the children.'
Pray to God they stay healthyhardly seemed inspiring advice, much less morale-boosting. Neither did Get them out of the city sharpish. Instead of all that, I took a breath and said how much we'd love to see them, why didn't he take them down to us for a bit, until it cleared up, or the hospitals were more certain about what it was.
'Sure thing,' said Jims, sounding more than a little relieved that he could temporarily retire his position as Acting Adult.
It was about then that I had to ring off to take an incoming call. This was Bruce, who was sorry to bother me, but did I mind…The way he said it sent my heart lurching from throat to stomach.
'You're going to tell me it's back, aren't you?' I said. Bruce thought so, as did Alice, but would feel better about a third opinion. 'Seeing as you know so much about it, and all,' he said. Of course, I said, turn about being fair play and all that. When you added up all the times I'd drafted the pair of them in to my previous endeavours in the name of more hands, and them no more than students in training, it was the least I could do. That got Bruce to laugh, something I sorely needed. Probably he did too, since nothing about being the other side of poliomyelitis in patients is much given to inducing laughter.
Bruce was right, of course. Third-party opinion entirely redundant. He knew it too. But the thing about knowing something awful is that it always comes with that first moment of unbelief, where you think maybe, possibly, you've got it wrong. For half a minute it's still possible to unbelieve it, so you draft in someone else to make it real. Because if someone else says it's happening, then it's not your fault that you noticed it happening. You must know what that was like. I thought the least I could do, after all these years, was take on the responsibility of making poliomyelitis a reality for Bruce Meredith.
It's worse than ever before, Jo. Is it the same in Kingsport? I know it is in Toronto – in fact, Toronto might just have the market cornered on Crisis. I rang Kitty for elucidation and she says they are drowning in deaths, and that that emphasis isn't hyperbole. She can't pass a house but it's got a black wreath, and the papers have entirely given up the pretence of keeping up on the death announcements. Rosedale Presbyterian is up to its elbows in funerals, and she thinks it's the same way out at Mary Magdalene, but can't be sure, as Cass is away on work with her anthropologists. It seems a safe enough bet, though.
Nothing for it, I suppose but to help each other through it as best we can. Thinking of you, and hoping Faith's cancelling the summer holiday won't complicate travel plans for the young Arnolds too much. I'll see if we can't send them back to you via Shirley, shall I?
Love ever,
Gil
Ingleside,
Glen St. Mary,
July, 1937
Jo,
The young Fords are settling in nicely, Jims inclusive. They arrived early last week, but between emergency summons from Bruce on my part and the Ford readiness to get into everything, I feel we've hardly seen each other. Jims did seek me out for advisement in a quiet moment as to what to do next year. He finished with the university as of June, which was earlier than expected, an a fact he's (rightly) proud of. Anyway, he's got his pick of what to do next between job offers and his lecturers wanting him to pursue further study. I tend to think he's angling towards a job; there's one in America building aeroplanes that he's terribly keen on, though naturally I can't imagine Rilla will be all that thrilled.
Anthony, meanwhile, has taken our piano hostage and sing-alongs have become a staple of evening entertainment. He's much better than I recall anyone of us being, which of course provoked Anne to asking where he was getting his lessons. A combination of the Toronto aunts, as it turns out. I confess, that surprised me more than it should have. Nothing about Cass has ever suggested at much musicality, the few times we've met. On the contrary, she's the sort of person you file under 'unremarkable' until reminded of her existence. Excellent in a crisis, but hardly the type that springs to mind listening to Anthony coax Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie out of the piano – or banjo – as the case may be.
Liam is making some study or other of our family history based heavily on our ancestral Bible. This involves trying to read my father's handwriting, and his father before that. Neither of them were writing-men, and I wish him luck in this effort. Still, he thinks it might make an interesting exercise in some thing or other that I don't understand whatever, but I guarantee you he learnt at the knee of Cassandra Hargreave and her indices.
Jims mostly marshals them, when not bending my ear about aeroplanes, and in-between does things like query our lack of a gas stove and ask when we're going to update the boiler. Sissy joins him, and manages to exhibit even more cheek than he does in the process. Already they have disassembled and reassembled Di's camera between them, mended the Manse radio and have lost the past couple of days to generally mucking about with my auto. This last greatly exasperates Anne, as it leaves them quite covered in grease. I mind less, on account of their obvious enjoyment and the fact of having got back into the habit of riding most places on Tam.
Speaking of which, one of Sissy's latest innovations has been to fasten a cart to Meg to see if she'll pull it. She can, and Abby is delighted, since this makes it possible to include Hector on our excursions. Of course, this has it's pitfalls. Dulce tried to join in the fun the other day, and Meg flattened her ears and positively refused to move. Miss Abby tried everything, and I tried whatever was left after that. Anthony and Jims thought it a great lark. (As predicted, Jims did rather wonder if I'd be trading the auto in for a time-machine back to the '90s, and possibly a proper old-world cart to complete the equestrian outfit.) In the end there was nothing for it but to lift Dulce out. Dulce was atypically indignant, and demonstrated this by giving chase to poor, irritable Meg. To which end Meg wandered over to the sweetbriar and proceeded to eat it until all interloping canines had vacated the premise. Nothing Miss Abby could do would persuade her otherwise, and Miss Abby has got remarkably good with that pony of late. Your Joanie assures me most solemnly that they have a whole secret language that revolves around carrots and regular brushes. I can believe it.
Speaking of Joanie, it is all set up with Shirley about seeing them to Kingsport. He and family are stopping through on return from Scotland; they'll collect Naomi's children then and deposit them on your doorstep. Iain and Isobel will be delighted to have the company. Mara will no doubt be relieved that it doesn't fall to her to keep them in rounds of cards for the entirety of the journey. So really, everyone benefits.
It goes without saying I demand a full report of their visit. So do the Cricket Club members, though I suspect they can get one from the source, whereas I cannot.
Love ever,
Gil
P.S. I seem to recall your Emma being prescribed spectacles. Does she wearthem? Because I've already run out of creative ways to tell Sissy she must wear hers, and she will keep getting eye strain in consequence.
New Manse,
Glen St. Mary,
August, 1937
Jo,
Rilla never could get near Miri – didn't we say? Do forgive us. I expect I meant to and forgot, and Gil meant to and then got swamped with work. Forgive me. I'm afraid it's been one of those summers. Rilla's on her way home directly. Well, Charlottetown, but it comes to the same thing. Gil will tell you about that, I expect.
I suppose I won't have said either that for the time being, Mandy has persuaded her family into staying in Struan. Well, I say persuaded. I mean that loosely. As I understand it, Mandy said she'd take the Challow family up on their offer of hospitality, the little girls launched into floods of tears (Rosemary presumes Mandy anticipated this) and Nan and Jerry relented. I'm relieved, I must say, though I do think someone might find a way of intimating to Mandy that her sister won't be returning. At least, none of the letters she writes make it sound that way. She's not in anything she wants out of, you understand. On the contrary. Her latest missive is profusely apologetic about failing to connect with Rilla, even as it details any other number of engagements she could and did keep. As Gil said the other evening, it's enough to make person wonder what kind of letters Mandy is on the receiving end of. Because even Mandy, she of the squirrel-communion and tree spirits isn't above acknowledging the reality of her world. Even if she does go about it by declaring that one cannot simply convert people to God through a loaf of baked bread. We laughed, of course, but she wasn't wrong.
Una has written a very sensible thing about it though, in her latest letter. Of the kind that made me wake up a bit and read it again to be sure I hadn't imagined the whole thing. There was the usual Adventures of Iris and the Misadventures of the Menagerie (Akela tried to eat a roast dinner, Nenni murdered a school of mynas and left them on the dinner plates for her people, where Una found them when trying to serve food). But there was also a lengthy digression on the refining ability of life experience. The point of it was to illustrate how Miri's brush with it in Europe may well have refined her beyond the sister Mandy is missing. Occasioning as it were, a kind of grief over the sister that was. Una likened it a bit to our Maywater days, when we all kept trying and failing to get back to the way we were before. The way overnight Una took on hunting down and mending buttons, and Faith became spokesperson for the group, while Jerry was their great protector. Carl – I sometimes think Carl learned to love animals because he could find them anywhere in nature. Of course, some of it was about missing Cecilia, about looking for her where she wasn't. But there was a secondary loss too, of their younger selves, that they felt too. Una thought Mandy was learning some of how that felt – discovering, as it were, that the sister she said goodbye to all those months ago, is not, in fact, the one she's in correspondence with. I don't suppose she is either, if it comes to that, but I think perhaps we're slower to notice our own metamorphosis than we do others'.
Una goes on to add how much they're enjoying having Naomi to stay again. They talk ACS ideas over tea and salted guavas, while Fred plays chess with Puck. Periodically they stop long enough to reminisce with Li, and Carl makes them all laugh with some story or other about the university. I'm left wondering when, exactly, your daughter fits journalism into her schedule. But she must, because we're kept in a steady stream of foreign affairs that does The Echoproud.
Love and blessings as ever, and our best to the young Arnolds. Their fellow members of the Cricket Club are voluble in the petition haste ye back!
J.M.
P.S. By all accounts your gift of the ribbon to Sissy Ford for her lenses was quite the favourite, though she hasn't got past wearing them around her neck. Gil would be at his witts end, I believe, if Bruce hadn't requisitioned him to battle polio. So it's Jims who is primarily exasperated with her presently.
Ingleside,
Glen St. Mary,
August, 1937
Have you ever looked a storm in the eye and known you can do nothing? Idiotic question. Of course you have, Jo. I'm not thinking.
It all began so well, too. Jims and the little ones came down, and it was idyllic. They went haring through Rainbow Valley; Liam dared to climb the Tree Lovers. Anthony kept us in music, and Sissy kept pace with all of them. I know Rilla was hoping for a girl with an inclination towards green hats, but the one she's got would much rather muck in with the boys. Jims prised me away from medical journals in the name of a fishing expedition, and then roped me into giving Sissy lessons in the same. Alastair and I competed over who could build the better fire, and pretended to be irritated when Liam with his Scout's Fire Starters badge outdid us both. I kept them in fish suppers – because I still cannot be bested at those – and sat out with them to watch the sunset. Shirley and family stopped by, as promised, and for all of a weekend, the little Fords and the Fox Corner children ran riot together with Di's wee ones, and it was the kind of summer I am always hoping for but never quite land. Usually, of course, they're all segregated into the Kingsport Contingent, the Toronto Fords, and our Glen folk. But with Jem and family back at Larkrise, and Kitty stuck at the paper – never mind most of the Glen children being under the polio – they necessarily came together. How Anne and I feasted on it! This is probably why I didn't right away think anything of Sissy's headache. She's always getting them, what with needing and refusing to wear her glasses – so she's not entirely unlike Rilla – and I gave her a powder and called it eye strain. She promised to wear the eyepiece and lay off reading for the day.
Instead, she sat in with Hector and tackled the Sundial, and then turned pages for Anthony at the upright. She had no appetite for supper, and Di teased her for spoiling her meal with nibbly things beforehand. But then she complained of an ache in her arms, and just like that I was out of reasonable explanations. Well, out of mundane explanations, I mean to say. I sent her straight up to soak in a hot bath, and tried not to think of Miss Abby sobbing into my chest that everyone keeps going away, Grandad. Rilla was still abroad, and I absolutely was not going to have to send her a telegram saying that girl she fought so hard for was dying of poliomyelitis. It just wasn't happening.
What I did do was telephone Bruce with an apology that I wouldn't be able to help out so much the next few weeks. Straight off he said was everything all right, and I said I hoped so – if he had a minute, maybe drop in on us, or send Alice. I rang off, and there was Jims, with those terrible eagle-ears he surely picked up at Rilla's knee.
'You look awfully grim,' he said, leaning against the study door. 'Tell me, is God dead?' Once – it feels in another life – he made us weep with laughter with that line. Neither of us was laughing. Jims looked grim himself and said 'It's your polio, isn't it?'
I wanted to correct him. To say it wasn't mine, I didn't invent it, all I'd ever done was fail over and over again at wiping the hideous thing from the face of the earth. But all Jims meant, bless him, was that I'd become something of the expert. It's much the way I talk about 'Jims's aeroplanes' and I knew it. So I checked the tirade I had boiling under the surface and nodded.
Jims said, 'It's very bad?' and I said it could be. Then we parted ways; Jims for Rainbow Valley, and me to rale against the world on Anne's shoulder.
Bruce and Alice both appeared on the Ingleside doorstep promptly the following morning, by which point I'd got Sissy in bed and was trying to bring her fever down. Di was excavating Susan's cure-alls for anything and everything on muscle pain. Bruce, Alice and I conferred, Jims demanded ingress as the standing Ford adult, and reluctantly we let him in. Should he wire Mother Rilla? How bad was it? At that stage we thought we could pull Sissy out of it sooner rather than later. She didn't seem as bad as Hector had last time. And she was older than baby Aurelia. So Jims wrote to say Sissy was ill but well cared for, everything was under control.
We hadn't banked on the dratted thing getting into her lungs, Jo. I don't know whywe didn't; I've lost track of the number of patients we've treated this summer who have died too young and gasping in front of us. The number we sent to hospital with a fighting chance, only to have the report come back that they'd died anyway. But those were other people's children. Oh, it's a terrible thing to write it like that. But Anne said it right. We were sitting either side of Sissy's bed, and she suddenly burst out, 'We've had our share – God must understand that. I know he does.' And I thought she was right. We'd lost Joy before she was ever really in the world, and Walter after he dedicated himself to it. Baby Aurelia with her fine, withered limbs, and sacrificed Hector's muscles to an illness I couldn't save him from simultaneously. And now the polio was back, creeping into Sissy's lungs, and I knew I'd never look Rilla in the eye again if I didn't get it back out.
'It's my fault,' said Jims from the door. 'I should have taken better care of them.'
'I should have told you to take them somewhere that didn't have polio,' I said, even though everything about the timeframe favoured Sissy travelling to us with it.
'Is there such a place?' asked Jims, and of all things, I was annoyed at how sensible that sounded.
I arranged to get her to the hospital. If there was anything I could do – anything at all – I was doing it. Jims went to draft Rilla and Ken another note. I bundled Sissy into the car. Rosemary and Di promised to watch over the Inglesidean children for the time being. Naturally, Anne had gone with Jims and I to Charlottetown.
I couldn't do anything else. That was the worst of it, Jo. I'd done everything I could for Rilla's girl and it still wasn't enough. I was reduced to trusting in higher powers than myself and could only sit there like a lemon, the same as all the rest of the family. I wonder now how anyone ever survives it. It reminds me terribly, horribly, of Alberta and why I went into medicine in the fist place. Only there wasn't supposed to be anything I couldn't fight.
We took it in turns to sit with Sissy, and fetch tea. Periodically we reminded one another we should probably eat. Even if it was only that dull, ditto stuff hospitals excel at. And there was Sissy, all bundled up in one of those great metal lungs, letting the thing breathe for her. So terribly small-looking. And her arms still in pain, I felt sure. I still couldn't do anything for her. I thought of Nan and Miss Abby and all of my people who have bargained with God in their turn and knew in a flash why they did it.
We were augmented – oh, I forget when – by Persis and Cass. Jims must have rung for them on one of his tea runs. They sent Anne and I home, for which Miss Abby's audible relief. She barrelled into my chest like a cannonball and said into my neck, 'I thought you would never, ever come back! I thought we'd never see you again!' And then, recovering a little, she narrowed her eyes and demanded to know where Sissy was. The look she gave me when I said she was with the doctors knocked the air out of me all over again. 'And Jims?' she wanted to know. 'Is he with the doctors too?' Then, narrowing her eyes still further, 'he doesn't have to tell Aunt Rilla that Sissy is never coming back from the hospital, does he, Grandad?'
In fact, Persis and Cass had tried to send Jims. Jims wouldn't go. It was only later, when I'd returned and Persis had threatened to deny him access to the university library that he went. I guess that must have been a private joke between them, because it got the kind of watery smile from Jims that is all Rilla, and his reluctant acquiesce about returning to Ingleside. There was a wire waiting from Rilla to say they were coming home as soon as possible, but not to bother about opening up the House of Dreams, they'd go direct to Charlottetown. I know, as Jims rang us up and said so.
In the interim, Persis, Cass and I watched little Sissy in her lung, and they explained the library joke to me. It wasn't really a joke, though I suppose it was a bit of shorthand. You'll remember all those years ago when Ken and Rilla were at such odds? Well, I gather Jims used to go off to his aunts when he wanted a respite and the Grants weren't at home. Only, nine times in ten Persis was at the university library collaborating on an index with Cass for this academic or that. So Jims took to meeting them there. He never helped with the indices – Liam did that – but he'd help himself to a science book or three and read companionably. And whenever he took stubborn moods, and wouldn't go home, or wouldn't eat, they used to threaten to tell the porter not to let him in for his books next visit. It would probably be funnier if he'd never had a reason to seek them out. Or if I were hearing about it all over a fish supper in Rainbow Valley instead of while machinery whirred over his sister.
I'll keep you updated, or try to. John might prove better at it. But now I ought to look into a reservation for Ken and Rilla. It rankles, having them under any other roof, but on the other hand, it makes far more sense they be near Sissy in town than way out in the Glen. And someone must organize it. Call it a change of scenery if you like.
Love ever, Jo. Be well. Keep yours well. Let me know if they're not. If there's ever anything I can do.
Gil
Observant readers will have noticed a change in the family name of Miri's Germans. This comes on advisement from Kslchen, who knows far more about these things than I ever will. Whereas I can passably sing my way through German music, she actually knows this stuff. I'd be mad not to listen.