Chapter 1
"Bertha Marilla Blythe!"
Rilla winces, not so much at her full name being used as at the way Susan's voice catches in shock. Being one of her charges, she knows how hard it is to truly shock Susan. The world might think differently, mainly because of Susan Baker's penchant for observing and reporting on her neighbours' lives, but the children of Ingleside learned early on that in the face of a true crisis, Susan could be counted upon to be unflappable.
Thus, when she now sees genuine shock written upon Susan's feature, understanding dawns on Rilla. If her transgression is bad enough to shock even Susan, what will the rest of the world think? And, more importantly, does she even want to find out?
With her secret now revealed, she senses that one way or another, she's unable to do anything about it though. Thus, she just watches, frozen to the spot, as the shock slowly wanes from Susan's face, to be replaced by a grim sort of resolve that is, at the same time, terrifying and oddly comforting in its familiarity.
"Bertha Marilla Blythe," Susan repeats, this time in a more measured way. "Whatever is the meaning of this?"
Rilla grimaces slightly. If only she knew!
With quick steps, Susan crosses the room and pulls the undershirt tight over Rilla's midriff. The unfamiliar dent in her otherwise slim figure stands out to them both, unable to be denied.
Still, as instinct kicks in, Rilla ties to move away anyway, her hands swatting at Susan's hold on her undershirt. The attempt is futile, because the older woman holds firm, no to be deterred by the squirming girl in front of her.
Finally, when Susan lets go, it's off her own accord. She takes a step back and looks at Rilla, looks up at the last child of Ingleside, who has now outgrown her, in more than one sense of the word. She sighs, heavily, and if Rilla thinks it's from disappointment, she isn't wrong, but also doesn't grasp the full meaning of that sigh. For Susan Baker might not have seen much of the world, but she has seen many of the people in it and she understands, in ways that Rilla cannot yet, the path that lies ahead and the pain set to accompany every step of the way.
"How did this happen?" she asks, her voice disapproving, but her expression weary.
Of course, Rilla has an idea about how it happened, because while she doesn't understand the nuances of it all, she understands enough to tie an unusual occurrence to an unusual condition. However, she has no words to describe the vague memory tugging at the edge of her consciousness and besides, it's too shameful to talk about anyway, so she just tilts her chin up and presses her lips together, for once resolutely silent.
Susan clucks her tongue. Having spent the better part of the past twenty years raising the Blythe children, she recognises, in the set way of Rilla's chin and the mutinous glint in her eyes, the stubbornness that they all share, each in their own way. Experience taught her how that stubbornness can be broken down, but this is not a situation that can be resolved by grounding or sending someone to bed without dinner, and Susan knows when her own authority has reached an end.
"I need to inform your parents," she tells Rilla plainly.
Though the announcement doesn't come as a surprise, it still takes Rilla's breath away for a moment. Instinctively, she wraps her arms around herself, her trembling hands grasping the sides of her undershirt.
"Must you?" she pleads, stubbornness worn away by fear in an instant.
Susan shakes her head slightly at the almost childish naivety on display. "Better get dressed," she suggests practically. "I expect someone will get you shortly."
Not waiting for a reply from the girl in front of her, Susan walks to the door. Having almost left the room, she stops, briefly, and might have said something more, but then shakes her head and leaves, closing the door behind herself. This, after all, is for the Doctor and Mrs Dr Dear to take care of.
Rilla stays behind, staring at the closed door as she feels her world crumbling around her. There was a part within her that sensed this before, a part that realised there would be no turning back from this, but she had done well to silence that part until now. Now, what had been but a whispering voice in her head before, is screaming at her inside her mind and it terrifies her.
And yet, it isn't in her nature to be cowed too easily. Internally, she rails and she rages, but just as she feels the fear pressing down on her too heavily, a different sort of feeling starts taking over. Defiance, it might be called, or perhaps it's merely the last scrap of dignity brought out by sheer desperation. Whatever the roots of it, it breaks her frozen stance and propels her into movement.
Tossing her head, she turns her back on the door. If she has to face the truth of her situation, she resolves, at least she can do so while being dressed properly. Susan isn't wrong about that. She has, after all, always drawn a certain satisfaction from being well-dressed and while some people might put it down to vanity, there's undeniable comfort to looking put together.
When two more attempts to put on the treacherous corset fail miserably, alas, Rilla flings it to the side, impatient and frustrated at the garment that betrayed her. It's easier, being angry, than being scared, and if her anger can be directed at an inanimate corset, that's easier still.
Pride, too, is an emotion that comes naturally to her, so she holds on to that. If the corset won't bend to her will, she can still cling to whatever dignity she has left. Her body is bent out of shape, but if she pulls her skirt a little higher under her bust and leaves two of her blouse's lower buttons undone beneath it, she can still pull on her day clothes. The skirt doesn't quite sit as it ought to and when she turns sidewards in front of the mirror, there's no denying the cause of it, but she feels better, being properly dressed, than she did being confronted in nothing but her undershirt.
Brushing her hair, she carefully twists it into a low knot. A simple hairstyle, but a proper one, because she has a feeling that even if there's nothing to truly help her case now, looking very proper won't hurt it either. Thus, she makes sure that no wayward wisps of hair escape the knot. Only when she is satisfied does she step back from the mirror and surveys herself a final time in its small surface.
Deciding that she looks the part, even if she doesn't feel it, she sits down on her bed, folds her hands in her lap – and waits.
She waits for hours, almost unmoving, her mind racing at times and being completely blank at others. The nearby church bells keep the time, noting its passing with their ringing, first nine times, then ten. Just as Rilla waits for them to ring again and note the beginning of the twelfth hour of the day, there's a knock on the door.
"Yes?", she calls out, despite feeling woefully unprepared for what is to come.
The door opens to reveal Susan once again. "Your parents want to speak to you. They're waiting in the library."
Rilla takes a deep breath and gets to her feet. Carefully smoothing her skirt down, she watches as Susan retreats from the door. Moments later, the older woman's steps can be heard on the stairs and Rilla listens until the sound grows fainter. The moment of reprieve is all too short, alas, leaving her with no choice but to go downstairs herself and face her parents.
It's curious, she reflects as she walks down the stairs herself, to be scared of her parents. She never used to be afraid of their reaction as a child. Wary, yes, and reluctant to reveal certain misdemeanours, but never truly scared. Their parents, after all, were mostly known for being fair, only disciplining when necessary and generally of the understanding sort, and besides, she herself had always been a good girl. The older ones acted out to varying degrees, with Jem getting into the most trouble, but as the youngest, Rilla was never included in their adventures. She knows she was considered to be spoiled, maybe still is, but she mostly toed the line as far as rules went and thus, rarely gave anyone cause to discipline her.
Now though, she is, perhaps for the first time in her life, properly afraid to face her parents. She might understand only half of what is going with herself, but she senses that sixteen years of good behaviour won't be enough to counterbalance this one transgression. It is all set to be wiped out, because what she did is too unspeakable to have a place in the catalogue of misdemeanours previously known inside the walls of Ingleside.
Thus, it is with her heart beating in her throat that she walks down the final set of steps and turns left towards the library. From the kitchen, the overly loud clattering of pots and pans can be heard and Rilla can't decide whether there's comfort to be had in the mundane sounds of lunch-making or whether something so normal as lunch makes the situation feel even more bizarre.
All too soon, she's reached the door of the library. There's a brief moment of hesitation when the young girl inside her pleads with her to turn and run away, but at the same time, she knows there's nowhere to run. Thus, she squares her shoulders and raises her hand to knock on the library's door.
The knock is timid and yet, the sound is unusually loud in her own ears. Equally, the moment until her father's voice calls for her to come in, feels unusually long.
When she does enter, she immediately sees both parents in the room. Her mother, sitting in an armchair by the fire, is very pale. Her father, standing by his desk, looks untypically grim. Despite the warmth of the fire, the atmosphere of the room is enough to make Rilla shiver inwardly.
Carefully closing the door, she turns back toward her parents. No-one invites her to sit, so she remains standing in the middle of the room, clasping her hands in front of her, and waits. Theirs was never a house where children only spoke when spoken to, but then, theirs was never a house where they had to deal with problems such as hers.
She looks from father to mother and back again. When their eyes meet, her mother looks down, lips pressed together and a pained expression on her face. Her father, meanwhile, looks at her straight, a fine line of disapproval between his eyes.
"Susan said you have something to tell us." His voice is so sudden in the silence of the room that Rilla flinches inwardly.
She doesn't, however, answer the unspoken question. It's not subordination that keeps her silent or even shame, it's the inability to form into words what she has no words for. This is something so big, so unfathomable, that mere speech must fall short to describe it, and faced with the impossibility of her task, Rilla cannot but remain silent.
Her father, in turn, finds the words she cannot grasp.
"You're with child."
The silence that follows is so oppressive it's almost deafening. Not a sound can be heard inside the room, save for the quiet crackle of the fire. Outside, there's the faint clattering of Susan working in the kitchen and, further away, the bells of two churches, striking in unison.
With every ring of the bells, Rilla feels her father's voice resonate in her head.
With child.
With child.
With child.
With child.
With child.
With child.
With child.
With child.
With child.
With child.
Without thinking, she raises her hands to cover her ears while shaking her head. It's the movement of a child, faced with a fear too big to understand, but she is barely aware of it. "I don't know," she murmurs. "I don't know."
"Have you lain with a man?" Her father's voice again, breaking through the porous barrier created by the hands pressed to her ears.
Bewildered, Rilla looks at him, lowering her hands again without thinking.
It's not an expression she is familiar with and thus, she can't, at first, place it. She expects that the answer must be 'yes', because otherwise, why would her father have asked it? Still, the question sounds strange to her, or it does, right up until that moment when a memory rises to the surface of her mind, unbidden and uncalled for.
She was lying down, wasn't she? And he was lying on top of her.
Could this be what her father means?
"I think so," she whispers. She doesn't want to be difficult, of course not, but she also doesn't want to lie, so this is the best she can do.
Has she lain with a man? She thinks so.
Is she with child? She doesn't know.
There's a sound from the corner of the room where her mother sits, almost like a sob, but when Rilla looks at her, she turns away, her face hidden by a hand pressed to her forehead. There's no help to be had here, Rilla realises with a jolt, and no comfort either.
She has no time to dwell on the thought though, because her father continues his queries, relentless and unmoving. "When?"
"Last year," she answers vaguely, without really thinking about it.
The set line of his mouth tells her that he considers her answers to be lacking, but her take on the timeline of her transgression doesn't appear to interest him overly much, because he doesn't press the matter. Instead, he considers her closely for a moment, his gaze the clinical one of a doctor, and Rilla can't help shrinking away from it.
"Normally, I'd say autumn, but you're young, so late summer is probably more accurate," he tells her, his voice painfully analytical. "No matter, it's nothing an examination won't reveal."
Briefly, Rilla wonders what kind of examination he means, but it's too shameful to even imagine, so she pushes the thought away, far away, where it will bother her no longer, at least not for now. This entire situation already hurts too much as it is.
Her father's searching gaze has returned to her face and whatever he sees there, it doesn't serve to soften his own features. In fact, Rilla cannot read his expression at all, not even when he asks his next question. Instead, his face is perhaps even more indecipherable than ever.
"Were you –" Here, there's the briefest of pauses, as if he can't quite find the word, or can't bring himself to say it, but it's over in the blink of an eye. "Were you forced?"
Forced?
The word gets stuck in Rilla's mind as she turns it over and over, unable to make sense of it. Force is not something she's familiar with and she has no true concept of what the word encompasses. It's vaguely related to violence, she thinks, which is in turn has never been a part of her life at all.
She doesn't think she was forced.
Having spent months trying to force the recollection from her mind, the memory of that evening is, admittedly, hazy. It has a dreamlike quality to it, like something that didn't really happen at all, but much as she tried to forget it, the memory is not truly gone. She was there through it all, of course, and conscious of what happened as well, so she remembers, despite wanting so badly to forget. She remembers his murmurs and the way his face moved above her. She remembers the coarse feel of the couch beneath her, and she remembers wondering absently what would happen if Susan returned earlier than planned. She also remembers some pain, a sharp sting followed by a dull ache, but – force?
No, she doesn't remember force.
She does, however, recognise the way out presenting itself through her father's question. Because if she was forced, she cannot be held responsible and if she can't be held responsible then nothing of this is her fault. She wants, desperately, for it not to be her fault.
To say so would be lying though, would mean adding yet another sin on top of the sins already accumulated, and for some reason, she shies away from doing so instinctively. She's already bad enough, isn't she, without telling falsehoods to duck away from the responsibility that must surely now be hers?
Thus, she shakes her head. "No."
Her father's face, if possible, becomes even grimmer.
"His name."
It's no longer a question, Rilla notes, and while she takes a moment to recognises it for what it is, the order becomes clear to her quickly enough. For an order it truly is and one that does not give room for denial.
His name.
She knows, of course. In fact, it's right on the tip of her tongue, the name of the man in question. It's just a syllable, short and easily spoken, and she's already parting her lips to say it out loud – only to falter all of a sudden.
Seeing the hesitation, her father grows impatient. "The name!" His hitherto impassive voice has a sharp edge to it now, becoming pressing and urgent.
It would be easy to answer, Rilla thinks. It would be easy to say the name into the silence of the room that is otherwise broken only intermittently by the crackling of the fire and her mother's quiet sobs. It would be easy to reveal the name and share the burden, because surely, this is a responsibility for two people to carry?
And yet, even knowing all that, she doesn't speak. She's not entirely sure why she remains silent, why she keeps the name to herself, but without having made a conscious decision, she suddenly realises that she won't say it out loud. Perhaps she's trying to protect him, or maybe she's trying to protect the bond between them and the moments they shared, but whatever it is, it's enough to make her defy her father's order, the first proper order anyone has ever given her.
She raises her head and then, almost imperceptibly, she shakes her head.
Even as she does, she's not quite sure how she expects her father to react. Neither of them has ever been in this situation or even a situation that came anywhere close to it, so there are no paths well-travelled and no prior experiences to draw from. And yet still, her father must recognise something from the tilt of her chin and the way her mouth is set, because he doesn't repeat his order again.
Instead, he turns, abruptly, and the dismissal is as clear as day.
"Go to your room."
And with nothing else left to do, Rilla does.
A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed! I'm really blown away by the interest in this story and the kind feedback I received. My life doesn't leave me with a lot of time to write right now, but knowing how well-received the story is, I promise to make even more of an effort than normal to carve out the time to write, so that hopefully, you can read a new chapter every Tuesday. I hope the story lives up to your expectations and as always, I dearly love to hear what you think!
To Guest No.1:
Who's the father, indeed? It's an excellent question! It's also a question that Anne and Gilbert would really like to have an answer to as well. So far, Rilla isn't telling, but we'll see whether she changes her mind once the repercussions for her situation become clear to her.
To Guest No.2:
I'm entirely certain that stories about premarital pregnancies have been written before. In fact, I can name several published novels dealing with that same subject, so you're correct that it's not a premise that's never been dealt with in literature before. However, that's probably true for almost all story premises out there, so at some point, I think it's not so much about the idea itself but about what you make of it. That said, happily, everyone is free to read whatever is to their liking, so if my story is not your cup of tea, there's certainly enough literature out there to last you a couple of lifetimes =).
To Guest No.3:
Thank you so much for your kind words and perfectly voicing my own thoughts in the matter! There are broad story premises that can be written about in so many different ways and taken into so many different directions, and I think that this is one of them. I've pondered how to write this particular story for years until I felt I came up with a plot that's interesting enough and I very much hope that you will agree with my assessment =). Certainly, I'm happy to hear that you enjoyed the prologue already and hope that the following chapters will live up to it as well!
To prego01:
I'm glad to hear you liked reading the prologue and hope you will continue to enjoy the story! I have a regular posting schedule, so there should be a new chapter every Tuesday at 9pm GMT, if you like to check in on new updates. I promise to do my very best to keep up with the schedule, too!
To Guest No.4:
There's nothing to forgive! Being a little older and wiser than I was when first reading RoI, I understand that Rilla's behaviour can be frustrating and that the symbolism of her characters is even potentially problematic, but 11-year-old me missed all those nuances, so that I've been seeing the story through her eyes ever since. She doeslend herself exceedingly well to this particular plot, I think, and I'm certainly happy to hear that you've enjoyed my prologue despite her being the main character. I hope you will continue to read along as I take her for quite the adventure and I hope you will continue to enjoy it, too =).
To Guest No.5:
Absolutely! Illegitimate children weren't much less common in the past than they're now, it was all just hushed up a lot more. Doing research into my own family, I've come across so many children born out of wedlock, though quite a few of them were later legitimised by their parents' marriage. Passing a young girl's child off as a younger sibling or a niece/nephew, was, as you describe, also a much-used 'solution' and was probably even more common than we know today. It's not an option open to Rilla, due Anne being past childbearing age and her sisters being unmarried themselves, but I hope the path I've planned for her will also be interesting to read about. I'll certainly promise to do my utmost to finish this story, because I know how frustrating abandoned stories can be.