Chapter Seventeen—That Strange, Strange Night
"As soon as the news came, I knew I should go fight," Walter said quietly. "Yes, I'd had rheumatic fever, but I was better. I knew I was well enough to fight, but I just couldn't stomach the idea. That had always been Jem's bailiwick—fighting and enjoying it. I'd always fought only when I had to—like when I fought Dan Reese…" His voice trailed off, remembering that long-ago day in the Glen. "And I hated ugliness…and I knew that the War would be ugly. I had no idea how ugly."
"Finally, I knew that if I wanted to be able to live with myself, I'd have to go. If I didn't, I figured that I'd be a coward to…certain people in the Glen. I went for myself as well, to prove that I wasn't a coward."
Una looked indignant. "I never thought of you as a coward. And I'm sure that anyone who had tried to say such a thing to either of our families would have been properly squelched!"
An odd look crossed Walter's face, but he continued on without comment. "When I reached France, it was not at all like the France I had read about. Our first week, we were in the front lines of the trenches. You'd be sitting there, talking to one of your mates, when there'd be a loud boom—you'd look over, and the person you'd be talking to would be dead, with the top of his head blown off by a shell. You could never fully relax, even when you had a chance to sleep, because if the alarm came over for gas, woe to those soldiers who were caught without a gas mask.
"And the mud and rats! Una, it was like nothing you've ever seen, or hopefully will ever see, in your life. But that wasn't the worst part of it for me. The worst part was the other men in my battalion.
"One of the men—Lew Hermans—had been at Redmond with me, but had joined up earlier. He knew that I'd been sent a white feather at college, and made sure that everyone else in our battalion knew as well. And when they found out that my middle name was Cuthbert, I was done for."
"What does having Cuthbert for a middle name have to do with anything?" Una asked, puzzled.
"'Cuthbert' was slang for a coward in England—someone who either wasn't in the War, or had gotten an easy job back at home, or Blighty, as the British called it. Once that got around, that was my nickname. It made no difference to the other men that I was there fighting right along with them. I was still a coward at heart, and they knew it."
"But you received the D.C. medal for saving a comrade…" Una trailed off.
"Yes, and you know who it was?" Walter laughed bitterly. "Lew Hermans. But it didn't seem to make any difference. He just sneered, 'Well, Cuthbert, I guess you showed some guts for once. Maybe a few years of this'll make a man out of you.'"
Walter talked on and on, the strain of the memories apparent in his voice as Una began to see what had caused such a transformation in her former playmate. "I couldn't write poetry to save my life, except 'The Piper'. That night I wrote it—it was like coming up out of deep water into fresh air. Even if I couldn't be the greatest soldier since Napoleon, I had done something worthy with my life. How was I to know that it was the last poem I'd ever write?"
When "The Piper" became famous, Walter continued, nothing changed outwardly. He was considered even more of a sissy than he had been previously. However, inwardly, he found war a little easier to deal with. If mere words could have such an effect around the globe, he would fight for the writers of words yet to be. "I understood the concept of patriotism—it would have been hard to find someone who loved his native land more than I loved the Island. And since there seemed to be no other way to protect the Island and those I loved except through bloodshed, bloodshed it was…though something in me recoiled every time I had to pull the trigger of my gun.
"That last night of my old life…the night I wrote Rilla…Una, did you ever see that letter? I asked her to show it to you," Walter said.
"Yes," Una answered quietly. She disliked the notion of telling Walter that it was in her trunk back at her inn, that she had memorized it years before. There were some topics that didn't need to come up on this strange, strange night.
"It was the oddest thing, that night…" Walter shook his head, remembering. "All that night, I kept seeing your face before me. I could see you and hear Rilla's laugh. The two of you and the Piper. I figured that the Piper was going to pipe me 'West' the next day, and Rilla seemed to represent the life I'd held so dear, but you…I couldn't seem to get you out of my head, though I couldn't understand why. I wouldn't have thought…" He looked at her abruptly, as if he'd just remembered that she was in the room with him. "No disrespect meant, Una. I always treasured our friendship. I just never could figure out why you were one of my 'deathbed visitations'."
Una thought privately that she could answer that riddle, but chose not to.
"What happened that next day?" she asked. "We heard that you had been killed by a bullet during the very beginning of the charge."
"I don't know if I'll ever know for certain what happened that day. I was hit by a bullet; hit me in the left shoulder and knocked me off my feet a bit. Directly afterwards, a shell went off right by me, just as I fell unconscious. I never realized that I was considered dead for quite a while, just a prisoner. What I do know is that when I woke up, my identification tag that was always around my wrist—we had one for our wrist and one around our neck; they gave name, rank, and church affiliation—the one around my wrist was gone. There was a slight scratch on my arm, so I assume that when the shell went off, a piece of shrapnel sliced through the string holding my tag on. I would assume that the man next to me was killed—probably someone found my tag and assumed that I had 'gone West' as well."
Walter stopped abruptly and looked at her with concern. "How are you feeling? Do you need to sleep?"
"No, my head hurts too much. I slept a little earlier; that should be enough for now," Una said, rubbing the injured member. "Continue…please?"
"The prison camp was sheer torture at first. All I remember of the first few weeks is excruciating pain, pain beyond anything I'd ever known. They told me later that it had been anyone's guess as to whether I'd live or die…I honestly don't know why they bothered to try and save me.
"There was a man, a Doktor Ernst Schwartz, there who had met my father, back when he and Mother had visited Europe for a medical convention. He was the one who really tried to save me, I heard—had been very impressed with Dad's capabilities as a physician and remembered my mother as a lovely, gracious woman. He fought day and night to heal my wounds and, when I had recovered, fought just as hard to heal my spirit. He had two children: a son, August, who had died two weeks before Courcelette, and a daughter, Gretchen. His wife had died when Gretchen was born, and he remembered my mother's kindness to his children. I suppose I helped fill August's place, in a way.
"It never seemed to make any difference to Doktor Schwartz that I had fought against his country. When I had healed enough to work, he had me as his aide in the hospitals, taking care of Germans, French, and English alike. According to him, I had the hands of a healer."
"Your father's hands," Una whispered, looking at the long, capable fingers now knotted together in the agony of remembering.
"I don't think he was correct—Jem was always the one with medical tendencies—but I helped him all I could out of gratitude. When he was transferred to a prison camp in Germany, I went with him. I don't know how he ever cleared it with the authorities, but somehow, he did. I think that then was the time that I realized that not all Germans were evil Huns, bent on butchery and terror. Many of them didn't know why they were fighting, except out of patriotism to their country. And what more did most Canadians fight for?
"After the Armistice, I wrote home, explaining what had happened and my changed feelings about the War. I never received an answer. I supposed that to my family, I was as good as dead. Later on, I found out that I had been reported as killed at Courcelette. No matter—when the letter reached them, they probably decided that I should continue being dead, rather than embarrass the Blythe name. Doktor Schwartz asked me if I would come back to Germany with him, and since I had nowhere else to go, I went with him."
Una thought about this. It was an almost inconceivable thought that a German could be human enough to care about a war-sick young man and practically adopt him as a son. And for Walter to believe that his family had rejected him…
"That was in 1919," Walter continued. "For ten years, I lived with the Schwartzes as Doktor Schwartz's assistant, eventually becoming fluent in German and Polish, with a smattering of French—we lived in St. Suffom, which is near the border of Germany and Poland…I suppose that Prussia would be a better way to describe it. There was a fair amount of prejudice against me as a Canadian, but the Doktor wouldn't stand for anyone to malign me in his presence. However, it was a small town, much like the Glen—you know what's being said." He smiled wryly. "I never could win—destined to always be a coward or a turncoat, I suppose."
"That's not true," Una protested as vehemently as she could, her headache being taken into consideration.
"Well, we won't debate it one way or the other." Walter dismissed her protest and continued on. "Doktor Schwartz died in the fall of 1929, not long before the stock market crash in the States. He'd left everything to Gretchen and me equally, having no other family; unfortunately, by the time the will was read, the estate was worth considerably less than he had intended—he had speculated heavily with the little money he had accumulated. Gretchen is the sort of woman that people will rise up and call blessed—the Doktor hoped that we'd fall in love, I think—and I gave her what was left of my share and came here. St. Suffom had nothing left for me once Doktor Schwartz was gone."
"Not Gretchen?" Una asked curiously, wondering what this mystery woman was like.
"No…I thought of her as a sister, much like Di. We had splendid talks, and she knew that I'd never care for her that way…nor did she want me to. She was in love with the baker from the next village, and they married not long after I left, I believe. I never went back."
"Why did you come here?" Una asked, feeling oddly relieved that this paragon of a Gretchen had not managed to capture Walter's heart. She twisted Shirley's ring around her finger.
"Penance," he said. "That's it in a nutshell. Since I didn't die when I was supposed to, I felt an obligation to the place, to be the Piper, I suppose. I take care of the place, collecting stray rings and dead leaves."
Una blushed at the mention of stray rings, hoping that the dim light would obscure her face.
"I try not to let people see me; I honestly prefer my solitude. When I need supplies, I go to a village a ways away. Once in a while, I'll hear the mention of 'zee Piper of Courcelette', who plays his flute for the dead soldiers. Such a legend is comforting, in a way. I've finally found my place."
"Walter…this can't be your place, can it truly? Come home with me to Glen St. Mary's. Something must have happened to that letter—I can't imagine your family, any of them, ever turning their backs on you. Your mother nearly died of grief when we heard of your supposed death," Una pleaded, sitting up in bed with a distressed look on her face.
"Calm down, Una. Lie back down. I don't want you to worry about anything right now. Let me make you some tea to help you sleep again. We'll talk about serious matters in the morning."
Una's head spun as she heard Walter clattering away at the stove in the other room. This was not the Walter she had known, for certain. But this man, bitter and hurt, filled her with compassion. He has to come home, she thought, sipping the strong herbal tea. He has to see his family again. Then, an unbidden thought…What on earth will Shirley say?