Soooo... some of you may have noticed that it's been two years since I first began this story. Exactly two years, in fact. And we've barely gotten to the interesting part. Ah, well, continue on we shall. Many, many heartfelt thanks to everyone who's commented and PM'd, asking whether I was going to pick this story up again. Many thanks to my beta reader, kslchen, who needed to remind me that this is historical fiction and that some things need to be glossed over a little. Without that reminder, I'd probably still be high up in the branches of my historically-accurate-crazy-tree, trying to figure things out. And even so, this chapter languished in my computer for six months before I, like many other people, found myself with an awful lot of extra time on my hands, and decided to give it a conclusion.

That being said, I hope you're all staying well while the world gets crazier than we thought possible. We have ourselves a lovely little community here, where we can come together without actually going anywhere, which is very much the MO at this time. Hugs from two meters' distance to you all!


2nd July, 1915

Dear Walter,

You are of course welcome to call at the Manse - I should hardly think you need an invitation, and we would all be delighted to see you. But please don't consider yourself obligated to call; this is, after all, a time for you to spend with your family, and you should not let me or anyone else interfere with that.

That being said, we're very likely to bake a cake on half a day's notice.

Yours,

Una


64th Battalion

Camp Sussex, NB

7 July 1915

Dear Una,

No fuss, please! I don't want anyone to go to too much trouble on my behalf. And while I am planning to call on your family - how would you care for a ramble through Rainbow Valley?

Yours,

Walter


Dr. and Mrs. Gilbert Blythe

Ingleside, Glen St. Mary, PEI

8 July 1915

Dear Mother and Dad,

I know I just sent a letter on Monday, but something's happened since then. I've been transferred to the 54th, along with Edgar and a few others from our battalion. We'll be staying at Camp Sussex until we get our leave next week, and will join up with the 54th in Montreal, rather than the 64th in Halifax.

I don't want you to be afraid for me - I was due to ship out sooner or later, after all, and now I at least know when. Besides, Edgar and I will be going together, so I'll have a friend with me. And Jem's already overseas, and he's fine so far.

I'll see you Saturday the 18th. Give Rilla, Jims, and the twins a kiss from me in the meantime.

Your loving son,

Walter


The train steamed into the Glen St. Mary station, where Walter could see a welcoming committee composed of those who had seen him off: Mother and Dad, Shirley and the twins, Rilla holding Jims on her hip, and Susan and her cabbage-rose hat. He was immediately engulfed in hugs and kisses, as though he had been gone a year instead of a month, fought Germans instead of skewered sandbags and dug latrines. But he appreciated it, knowing it might well be the last welcome home of this sort he would receive.

Rilla, especially, clung to him as though she would never let him go, and her eyes never left him except to give Jims a quick once-over.

"What is it, Rilla-my-Rilla? You look as though you were saying goodbye, rather than hello."

Her large hazel eyes fixed on his, and she buried her head in his shoulder. When she pulled away, there were two damp spots in the khaki shirt. That would be the only hint of tears Walter would see from her that week.

Mother and Dad greeted him with bright smiles disguising the harsh reality of another son in khaki. Susan, on the other hand, made it clear that her delight in seeing him would manifest itself on the Ingleside table.

"Oh, but they've certainly worked you half to death in that camp of yours!" she exclaimed. "Well, now matter - we'll soon have that undone. A week of Susan's cooking, and you'll be well fed when you go back. I've made a cake for you to eat just as soon as we get home."

"Thank you very much, Susan," Walter said with as much earnestness as he could muster. "I suppose we should get home, then, so we can make some headway on that cake."

The rather overloaded buggy, carrying eight people and one Jims, made an uneventful - if rather slow, due to the horse's decided lack of appreciation for its load - journey back to Ingleside. Walter, wedged between Rilla, holding a cheerfully babbling Jims on her lap, and the door, thought he saw a flash of a white dress and black hair on their way past Rainbow Valley, but it soon disappeared around a corner.


And so began Walter's last week at Ingleside. There were visitors, come to see the young schoolmaster off, meals that made the Ingleside table groan under their weight, a picnic in Rainbow Valley with the Blythes and Merediths, and through it all, Walter wrote. And wrote, and wrote, and wrote. Notebooks were used up, bits of scrap paper received tattoos of poetry - not even the backs of Susan's shopping lists were spared.

Poems, paragraphs, essays - all of varying quality, from what Walter would have marked as "needs improvement" in his teaching days, to a poem or two that might tentatively be called brilliant. Very tentatively, mind - Walter rarely gave his own work anything beyond a passing grade, regardless of what those around him might think of it.

On his second evening home, Walter stepped onto the veranda, the light from the kitchen throwing a yellow puddle onto the steps, the deep blue of night beckoning beyond, lightly perfumed with midsummer flowers. Halfway down the steps, he caught the faintest sniffling sound and turned to see Rilla, curled up in Susan's rocking chair, a most tragic look in her eyes. Walter extended a hand.

"Walk with me?" he asked.

She nodded, and took his hand to pull herself up. He tucked it into the crook of his arm, remembering when that same hand had been lily-white and chubby, belonging to a six year old roly-poly who slept on her stomach with her eyes buttoned shut. She was changed now - almost grown-up, in the right light, and Walter was fairly certain Kenneth Ford had noticed - but she was still his little Rilla-my-Rilla.

They walked in silence through Mother's story-book garden,* through the door in the brick wall surrounding it, into the orchard, where the apple trees cast dappled shadows on the dark ground. From there, they took a fairy-path through the pines and along the brook into Rainbow Valley, stars winking down at them from the navy sky. Walter sat down by a flat rock in the middle of the hollow, and Rilla sank down beside him, both tipping their heads back to look at the stars above.

"They look like diamonds, scattered over velvet," murmured Rilla. "And they look so close, too - as though you could just reach up and collect a handful of them."

"Ptolemy thought the stars were all fixed on a celestial sphere, rotating around the earth. Even then, he knew that the earth was round, although his placement of it was slightly off. You have to wonder, though, why mankind thought the earth was flat for such a long time afterwards…" Walter petered off, his schoolmaster self realizing that this was not the time and place for a lecture on the heavens and the history of their study.

"The stars are rolling in the sky,

The earth rolls on below,

And we can feel the rattling wheel

Revolving as we go.

Then tread away, my gallant boys,

And make the axle fly;

Why should not wheels go round about,

Like planets in the sky?"**

They stayed there until Rilla's breaths became deep, and her head rested against his shoulder. Not wanting to wake her, Walter scooped her up and carried her back home, laying her on the sofa before tiptoeing upstairs himself. Looking out his window, he fancied he could see a light coming from Una's window at the Manse. He stood there, watching as it burned, until it flickered and went out.


*Anne's House of Dreams

**The Treadmill Song, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

This chapter's title is taken from the song, "Good-Bye Dolly Gray" (Lyrics by Will D. Cobb, music by Paul Barnes, 1897 or 1900).