Chapter Thirty—The First Mayflowers
There were so many things that Una wanted to say; so many questions that she wanted to ask. But in the end, all she could say was, "Thank you, Walter. They're lovely."
"I hoped that you'd like them. I remember you said once that you loved Rainbow Valley best in spring, because of the mayflowers. Since you couldn't be home this year, I thought that I'd bring the mayflowers to you."
"That—that was very thoughtful of you," Una stammered. "But I didn't realize that you had been home lately. The last I'd heard, you were in Toronto."
"I went home for a visit a few days ago," Walter said.
"Faith never mentioned it in the letter she sent me."
"I probably arrived after she sent it. Today's the tenth, and I arrived in the Glen on the seventh."
"Then you were hardly home at all," Una said. She looked at him, puzzled. Something was different about him, but she couldn't decide exactly what it was.
"Long enough for what I needed to do, which was apologize to my family for being such a fool since I was reunited with them," Walter said. "That and some other matters of business."
It was his eyes that were different, Una realized. The bitterness that had been there ever since she had seen him that night at Courcelette was gone, and in its place was a sense of peace.
"They're lovely. The flowers, I mean. Are they truly the first ones?" Una asked, realizing that she had been staring dumbly at Walter long after he had finished talking.
"Yes. I'm glad you like them."
"I even have a vase that I can use…the younger children made it for me. Of course, it's papier-mâché, so it won't hold water, but I could always put this glass in it, wouldn't you think?" Her hands were shaking so much that she could barely place the filled glass inside the vase without spilling it. Calm down, Una. You're reading too much into this.
Walter came and stood behind her and began to place the flowers in the vase. "Lovely," he whispered, no louder than a breath. "Utterly, completely lovely."
"What did you say? I couldn't hear you," Una said, half turning towards him. She was very conscious of him, merely inches away from her—his black hair, flecked with silver; his face, still the face of a dreamer even after all that he'd been through; his eyes, eyes that were looking at her, looking at her like no one ever had before.
"I said," Walter said quietly, placing one of the mayflowers in her hair, "utterly, completely lovely. Oh, Una…"
And then he kissed her. Not a brotherly kiss like he had given her before going off to war, not a kiss like a hurricane like the one they had shared aboard the ship home, but a long, deep kiss that filled not only all the empty crevices of her soul, but all the parts that she had thought were already filled as well.
"I love you," Walter murmured into her hair. "I've loved you for quite a while now, but I thought that I'd take this opportunity to mention it."
"I'm glad you did," Una said, pulling back enough that she could look him directly in the eyes. "The odd bit is—I love you, too."
*********
"I never dreamed that I could feel like this," Una whispered a bit later.
Walter laughed—a real laugh, such as she hadn't heard from him in years. "Oh, I dreamed of it—but my dreams weren't close enough. Until a few days ago, I didn't think that they'd ever be anything but dreams."
"What changed things?"
"Well, I discovered that you were no longer engaged."
"You didn't know?" Una asked, surprised.
"No. I think that everyone assumed that I already knew, so no one bothered to tell me, and then it was something that just didn't come up in conversation. You might have mentioned it when I saw you in Muskoka, you know." Walter sat on the edge of her desk, his legs swinging.
Una, whose legs were feeling rather shaky after her kiss, pulled her desk chair over by Walter and looked up at him with eyes that shone like stars. Surely she wasn't dreaming—she wasn't going to wake up and realize that this moment had never happened. "I suppose, like everyone else, I assumed that you knew. And I did try to say something at the end about that if you wanted to dance with me at my wedding you'd have to wait a while."
"True. Which caused me to be greatly puzzled when Rilla and Ken mentioned that you had taken this position at Hopetown, since I expected to receive a wedding invitation at any point. I asked Rilla when your wedding was supposed to be, and she looked at me oddly and said that if I didn't know, that I should ask the parties concerned." He smiled rather ruefully. "We'd had some words, I suppose you'd say, about the amount of time I was spending with Irene. Still, I think that she could have been a bit kinder to me."
"Did you care for Irene?" The question spilled out before Una could take it back. If the answer was "yes"…
Walter looked at her. "How could I? She wasn't you."
"Then why—" Una decided not to pursue the matter. Irene had always been rather conniving, and she doubted that Walter had been aware of how close he and Irene had seemed. "How did you find out that I wasn't engaged any longer?"
"I kept wondering when your wedding was going to be—I figured that once it happened, I could deal with my feelings and move on, but until then, it was eating me up inside. So I called Shirley last week and in the midst of our conversation, attempted to casually ask when the wedding was. I caught him rather off guard, I think.
"'You didn't know?' he asked. 'The engagement's off—has been since Christmas.'
"You could have knocked me over with a feather at that point. For months, I had assumed that the two of you were happily engaged. All I could ask was 'Why?'
"'Why do you want to know?' Shirley asked. I thought that it seemed a bit presumptuous to ask, but I supposed that it was a bit presumptuous of me to ask about something that personal as well. And then I told him what I'd never told anyone, that I loved you and that I thought that I'd loved you more or less ever since you showed up at Courcelette that stormy night last autumn.
"And then he told me that he thought that you loved me. Not that you'd said so, but that he could still tell. Then you really could have knocked me down with that feather." Walter looked at Una. A pensive look was on her face.
"So that's what the surprise present was that he sent me the telegram about—you!" Una exclaimed. Then, sighing, she murmured, "I hope—I hope that it didn't hurt too much for him to say that. I don't love him—I love you and have always loved you—but I think I hurt him badly."
"He doesn't hold a grudge; he just wants you to be happy. He told me so."
"I hope that he's happy as well. Walter?"
"Yes, Una?"
"Since you said that you loved me ever since last fall, does that mean that you weren't kissing Faith that night on the ship?"
Walter laughed. "I was not kissing Faith."
"I'm glad to hear it. Now I can enjoy the memory without thinking that it was truly for my sister." The memory of the kiss had long been a sore spot in Una's heart, but no longer.
"Even when I told you about Faith, it didn't mean that I still loved her. The hurt was still there, but I knew that the sweetest, most beautiful woman in Canada—or anyone else—was in that cabin with me," Walter said.
A knock came at the door. "Come in," Una called, trying to remove the flower from her hair while simultaneously patting her hair down.
Elma Madison's head popped around the doorframe. "Miss Meredith? There's a fight between two of the girls in Room 9." Her big eyes grew even larger as she realized that there was a visitor in the room—a male visitor, who was sitting on top of Miss Meredith's desk. "I'm so sorry…did I interrupt something?" It was plain that Elma didn't quite know where to place Walter—was he a prospective parent? If so, why was he sitting on the desk?
Una shook her head. "It's all right, Elma. I'll be up in a minute. This is a dear—a dear friend of mine, Walter Blythe. He came to wish me a happy birthday. Walter, this is Miss Elma Madison, our teacher for the younger children."
"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Madison," Walter said, standing up.
"And yours, sir," Elma said shyly. As Una followed her out of the room, Elma whispered, "Who is he?"
Una smiled dreamily. "'The birthday of my life has come….'"
*******
Privacy, Una decided, was impossible to come by in an orphanage. All that next day, she never had a chance to talk to Walter alone. Finally, she cornered Elma in her office.
"I'm going to disappear for a while," she whispered. "Can you keep the place from burning down while I'm gone?"
Elma smiled at her superior. "Certainly." She paused for a moment, as if afraid of stepping over her boundaries. "We aren't going to lose you, are we, Miss Meredith? You've hardly been here at all, and now it looks as if you might want your own home."
Una, who had stayed up most of the night trying to decide that very thing, shook her head. "I'm not planning on leaving."
Elma beamed. "I knew it! And Mr. Blythe—why, we'll finally have someone who can help with the older boys."
"It would be nice," Una said noncommittally. I can't leave this place, she thought to herself. It's become a part of me. But—but what if Walter doesn't want to?
She tried to approach the subject in a calm, matter-of-fact fashion when the two of them went on a ramble through the spring woods. Mindful of her good dress (worn in hopes of the approving smile she received), Una sat on a large grey stone, plaiting wildflowers in a chain while Walter lay at her feet, gazing up at her with the eyes of a man who has finally found his heart's desire.
"So how soon can we be married?" he asked her. "Does two weeks from today sound good? That would give us enough time to get whatever frills and furbelows you need."
Una let her mind wander into the realm of "frills and furbelows" for a minute before turning her attention to the answer she knew she must give. "I've wanted to talk to you about that," she said nervously. "I love you—you know that. But I don't think that we should be married quite yet. We know each other—we grew up together. But the Walter and Una that we are now are so different from the Walter and Una of Rainbow Valley days that I think that we should be better acquainted first."
Walter sighed impatiently. "I suppose you're right," he said. "I don't want to wait—I feel like I've been waiting my entire life for you."
"I know. But I don't think that we're ready yet. You're still dealing with a lot of issues in your life, and I have an orphanage to run. Hopetown has become very important to me, and I can't see leaving it."
Walter thought for a while before nodding slowly. "I hadn't thought about the orphanage. I think I'd like to help you there once we're married, but I don't know if I'll be able to handle it. I'm trying to escape from my memories of the War and afterwards, but it's a slow, painful process. I've been writing to Rev. Blake—Philip's father—these last few months. He's been helping me understand that God didn't turn His back on me any more than my family did—I turned my back on Him." He sat up and took Una's hand in his. "I love you, Una Meredith. And we will marry—I'm sure of it."
Una squeezed his hand as hard as she could before answering. "I love you, Walter Blythe. And I fully intend to marry you before the year is out, even though I don't know if I'd call what you've said a proposal." She smiled before continuing. "We've both 'kept faith' a long time—and in a little while longer, we'll have our reward!"
Walter placed the completed chain of wildflowers in her hair, and they walked through the woods hand in hand towards the orphanage. When they reached the edge of the woods, Una turned back for a minute.
"I thought I heard music," she said. "Does the Piper pipe here as well?"
"I don't care if he does," Walter told her. "He's had me in his thrall long enough—I'll no longer be haunted by shadows." He bent and kissed her, and the joy of the present finally wiped away the cobwebs of the past for both of them.
Author's Note: Many thanks to all my reviewers…it's nice to know that you're enjoying my story. There's an epilogue to follow, which hopefully should be done within the next few weeks.