In April, when the snows finally melted and the mud started to harden, Aunt Nan and Uncle Jerry made their promised visit from Avonlea to the Glen. Accompanying them were dark-haired, jolly Gil and sweet brown-eyed Rosie, as well as one of Lynde's younger brothers, Abe.
Gil and Phil immediately vanished in the direction of Rainbow Valley, Phil animatedly telling his cousin all about the water creatures he was studying in the brook. Lee and Leigh swooped in on Rosie and dragged her off to the House of Dreams, with Jo and Owen trailing after, arguing vociferously over who was prettier, Rosie or Lucy Douglas.
That left Uncle Jerry to talk with Grandfather and Uncle Jem, and Abe and Lynde to settle down in the kitchen for a cosy chat, and Grandmother, Gwen, Aunt Nan, and Aunt Faith to put on their sweaters and gossip on the verandah (though spring was coming, the days were still chilly).
"So," Aunt Nan said, pulling out her knitting. "Tell me all the Glen news!"
"The biggest news is that Persis is trying to find property in the village to open a veterinary clinic," Aunt Faith said.
Aunt Nan shook her glossy nut-brown head. If she had been a little older or more suspicious-minded, Gwen might have guessed that it was not due to nature that Aunt Nan's hair was still so glossy and free of grey. Grandmother and Aunt Faith knew, but they loved Nan despite her little vanities.
"Well, if Shirley doesn't mind, I suppose … I'm still old-fashioned enough to not like wives working outside the home. Who makes the meals? And cleans the house? And takes care of the children? It was bad enough when Persis was just making house calls, but now a clinic …" She shook her head and clicked her tongue.
"Mother works," Gwen said, stung to a defence of her aunt, and by association, her mother. "She writes a column, every week. And Mrs. Grant works; she still teaches."
"Oh Gwen, writing is different from real work," Aunt Nan said, at which Grandmother bristled just a little. "And Gertrude Grant—well, she's only out of the house when the children are, while they're all at school, so that's not the same either. Well, Persis and Shirley have always gone their own way, to be sure! And they're happy, so I won't judge them."
"Myself, I envy Persis just slightly," Aunt Faith said. "Now that Jack's sixteen and practically grown, and Jem is so busy with the doctoring, I find myself at loose ends quite often. I wish I had some sort of work to occupy myself. As Mother Blythe knows, I have no knack for cooking or knitting or sewing or anything domestic!"
"Why don't you get back into nursing?" Grandmother asked. "You enjoyed it during the War, I know, and Jem and Bruce are always complaining that they don't have enough reliable nurses."
Aunt Faith looked startled. "I never thought about that. I'd have to take some sort of course … it's been ages since I've done anything of the nursing variety."
"Oh Faith, you really should!" cried Aunt Nan, abandoning her former position with startling rapidity. Gwen saw Grandmother smother a smile behind her hand. "Of course you could take a refresher course; it wouldn't be difficult for someone as clever as you at all." She sighed. "Sometimes I look back on my Redmond days and wonder if it was really worth all the expense and work. Here I am, a farmer's wife, raising my two rascals and never thinking about philosophy or mathematics or literature at all. Of course, back then Jerry had great and grand plans, too. The War changed all that."
Aunt Faith patted her hand sympathetically. "But just think of how much happier Jerry is as a farmer, out in the quiet and rest, than he would have been otherwise."
Aunt Nan dabbed at her eyes with the soft pink garment she was knitting. "Oh, I know! When I think of all the soldiers who suffered far more from shell-shock than he did, or the ones who were physically injured so badly … Carl's eye … and when I look at Jerry romping through the fields with the children, laughing and having a good time … well, a life of quiet seclusion doesn't seem so bad at all."
Grandmother wasn't smiling at all anymore. "So much sorrow from the war," she mourned. "Carl's eye, Jem's leg, Jerry's back injury … and even those who didn't take physical harm wounded in their souls, as with Jerry's shell-shock. Oh girls, sometimes I think I've lived too long in the world! When I see the Germans re-occupying the Rhineland, I wonder what the point was of the last war, and if we're going to see yet another one."
"Surely not, Mother," Aunt Nan said. "I have to believe that some good came out of the War. And I can't imagine there would be another one. King Edward would never allow it!"
"I wouldn't count on that," Aunt Faith said cynically. "He's as pro-German a monarch as England has seen in generations."
"Oh," Gwen gasped, making the ladies all jump. They'd almost forgotten her presence. "Oh Grandmother, you don't really think there'll be another war, do you?"
Grandmother put on a slightly guilty smile. "Of course not, Gwen. I expect I'm just tired, that's all."
But the shadow didn't leave her eyes, and Gwen was not fully comforted.
Phil was turning fourteen in just a few weeks. He would be eighteen in four years—old enough to fight. If there was another war …
But Gwen couldn't think of that. Even if there was, Phil wouldn't go off to fight in it. He had too much sense.
Her soul was still troubled, though, and before long she slipped away from the ladies on the verandah and wandered off toward Rainbow Valley. Phil and Gil had abandoned the brook—she suspected they had joined the others at the House of Dreams. When Aunt Persis was there, the very air shimmered with laughter, and even when she wasn't fun seemed to lurk around every corner. Grandmother said that so many happy people had lived there, they had permeated the essence of the house of joy.
Gwen didn't necessarily want the company of her siblings and cousins right then, however. Nor was an atmosphere of raucous fun exactly what she wanted, either. For the first time, she started to think about what it must have been like for Mother, Dad, and the aunts and uncles when they were young and the Great War was happening. They were once young and carefree, too, and they all had to grow up awfully quickly. Aunt Rilla was her age, fifteen (or nearly there) when it started.
Gwen shivered. And Uncle Walter had never come back.
"There won't be another war," she said aloud to a nearby birch tree, which shook its limbs either in agreement or mockery (she couldn't tell which).
"Who says there will be one?" Fanny asked, ducking unexpectedly past an old maple tree.
"Hullo, Fan," Gwen said listlessly. "Aunt Nan—and Aunt Faith—and Grandmother were talking about war."
"Well, I shouldn't think there'd be another one," Fanny said. "After all, didn't we make Germany sign a treaty?"
"Yes, but Grandfather says the Germans made a mockery of that when they occupied the Rhineland again." Gwen remembered his angry face at the breakfast table and shivered.
"Oh—the Rhineland," Fanny said vaguely. "Who really cares about that, anyway? Listen, I came over here to see if you wanted to study ancient history at my house. I forgot that your aunt and uncle and cousins were here, though."
"No, it's fine," Gwen said. "They won't even notice I'm gone." She felt a pang as she said it, but she knew it was true. Phil was bust with Gil, and Jo and Lee with the other younger ones, and her aunts and uncles and grandparents were all occupied with their own interests. She was at loose ends, as Mother put it.
Besides, it would be much more pleasant to study long-ago wars than think about one happening in their future!
Gwen returned from Fanny's house in the twilit evening (mentally exhausted and a little depressed from trying to keep up with her friend's memory), and decided to slip in through the side door rather than make a grand entrance through the front. As she did, she heard her name through the open parlour window. She knew she shouldn't eavesdrop, but curiosity as to what was being said overcame her scruples, and she halted to hear.
"Helen Flagg says Gwen is one of the best natural runners she's ever seen," Grandfather said, pride evident in his voice. "She says, with proper training, our Gwennie could even go to the Olympics!"
Aunt Nan laughed—not meanly, but it still stung a little to the listener in the bushes. "Well, I certainly hope she can at least learn to be less clumsy! Right now I'd say she's more apt to win by knocking her opponents over than by outrunning them."
Gwen glowered at the window. "I'm not that bad," she muttered under her breath. At the moment, even Coach's breathtaking compliment and Grandfather's pride paled beside Aunt Nan's gentle, tolerant amusement.
"Now Nan," Uncle Jerry said. "Wouldn't you like to be aunt and uncle to a famous athlete?"
For a moment, Gwen puffed up again—until Uncle Jerry chuckled, and she realized he was joking, too.
"You may have your fun now," Grandfather said firmly, "but someday our Gwen will make you laugh out of the other side of your face. Mark my words, she's got a grand future before her."
Gwen had to blink sudden stinging tears out of her eyes. Grandfather's confidence in her was almost more painful than her aunt and uncle's mockery. She desperately wanted to prove him right—and just as desperately feared she would disappoint him.
"It doesn't matter to me whether Gwen becomes an Olympian or just runs for her own pleasure, or if she proves to be a brilliant scholar, or decides she wants to settles down and raise lots of fat babies," Grandmother said, so loudly that Gwen guiltily wondered if Grandmother knew she was listening. "I am proud of her, just as she is now, and I will always be proud of her, no matter what she does."
"Well said, Anne-girl," Grandfather applauded.
"Even if you do say that about all your grandchildren," Aunt Nan said, still teasing.
"And it's true for all of them," Grandmother laughed.
Gwen crept past the window and escaped into the house and up the stairs to Mother's room. There, she sat down at the desk and looked up at the Girl with a Pearl Earring.
"I'm glad that Grandmother and Grandfather are proud of me already, just for being me," she whispered, thinking it out aloud. "And I'm glad to know they'll love me no matter what I do with my life." Mother and Dad were the same way, and just thinking about that unconditional love made Gwen feel stronger. "But I would like—I would—to do something grand, to make everyone in the family take notice."
To make Aunt Nan and Uncle Jerry forget their teasing, was what she meant. She loved her aunt and uncle, and she knew that they loved her, but sometimes she got a wee bit tired of always being labeled "the clumsy one." Phil was "the smart one;" Lee "the sweet one;" Jo defied all labels (except Uncle Shirley's extremely apt enfant terrible); Rosie "the pretty one;" Gil "the clown;" Chloe "the proud one;" Jack "the one who would go far" … every cousin had his or her own label, and rarely did the aunts or uncles stop to see beyond that. Sometimes Gwen didn't mind; it almost made her feel safe, as though she always knew her place in the family. Of late, though, when she herself was changing and growing so much, she wished her extended family wouldn't be so quick to assume she was the same as she had always been, and would always be.
Did Coach really think she had potential to go to the Olympics? Gwen knew she was fast—knew that Coach had great hopes for her—but she'd never thought about the running lasting past high school. In fact, she had never thought about her running lasting past this year; next winter Mother and Dad would be back from India and they'd all go back to Kingsport, where Gwen's school had no track and field team.
But maybe—just maybe—somehow things could work out so she could keep running. She did love it, even after just a couple of months. She felt strong when she ran, confident and sure of herself, in a way she never felt any other time.
Gwen sat up straighter. She would give running her all, she decided. Even if she couldn't keep up with it once they were back home—even if she never made it to the Olympics—even if she never won a meet against another school—she would do her very, very best. She would make Coach proud, and justify Grandfather's confidence in her, and prove to Aunt Nan that there was something she could do well.
She sat there at her desk, forgetful of the late hour, watching the stars twinkle in the heavens above, dreaming great dreams until past midnight. Grandmother, tiptoeing through long after everyone else was asleep, found her there, with her head pillowed on her desk, eyes closed and a smile on her sleeping lips.
Grandmother shook her head and pulled the blanket off the bed, tucking it securely around Gwen's shoulders and lap. A few years ago, she could have carried the child back to bed, but Gwen was too tall and sturdy now for Grandmother's frail old bones. No, she would have to sleep there and simply suffer the stiff neck in the morning as a result.
"Bless the child," Grandmother said fondly.