Chapter 22

"Well done," commends Miss Oliver and hands Rilla back her exercise book.

A quick look at the opened page tells Rilla that all but three of the maths problems she solved earlier are marked as correct. Frowning slightly, she concentrates on the three problems that Miss Oliver deemed to be incorrect, trying to understand where she went wrong with them.

"Do you want me to explain?" asks her teacher.

Rilla shakes her head. "No, I think I see." She picks up her pen and opens a new page, ready to solve the problems once more. She lightly taps her pen against her chin as she considers her mistakes and where she veered off the rules. Maths, after all, is mainly about applying the appropriate rules correctly to a problem.

It takes a moment, but then she starts scribbling, having seen which mistakes she made in her first attempt. Miss Oliver, who is watching her work, nods approval. "Yes, very good."

Feeling pleased, Rilla shuts her exercise book and looks at her teacher. "Is there anything more for today?"

"No, we're done for the day," replies Miss Oliver. "For tomorrow, I want you to write an essay arguing the pros and cons of conscription."

Rilla takes a deep breath. Essay-writing isn't a particular talent of hers, because while she understands the rules of building an argument, words never quite want to bend to her will the way she means for them to. She can make a point fine, but it always sounds just a little bit clumsy, coming from her, in a way it never would if her mother or her sisters wrote the same essay.

Besides, conscription is a sore subject and not one she is entirely sure where she stands on. Back in 1914, when the war had just started and they still thought it would be over by Christmas, it seems so clearcut to her, like something that no sane person could oppose. After all, so many brave young men were leaving to protect their country and certainly, it was only right and proper to make those too cowardly to go follow them.

Now, in 1917, it's not so easy anymore. They know now that the war won't be over in another few months and perhaps not for years. They know now which price needs to be paid for war and that the price is paid in the loss of lives and innocence.

The war took Walter from them, but at least they could take comfort in the fact that he went voluntarily. He made the decision to go, knowing that it might cost him his life, and yet, he went anyway. In the midst of this war, it gave him some control over his fate, which wouldn't be true for those conscripted to the army, whose fate would be decided by a law.

Besides, she's the mother of a son herself now. Can she really argue for a law that makes other mothers give up their own sons to an uncertain fate, possibly to die?

Writing an essay would be challenging at the best of times, more so than solving maths problems or translating Greek vocabulary. However, writing an essay about conscription, of all possible subjects, is complicated for a lot of other reasons, many of them painfully personal.

Still, she must be grateful to Miss Oliver for helping her at all, for without her teacher's support, she wouldn't be able to keep up with the workload, which she knows very well. Thus, she will do as she's asked, even if it means writing an essay about conscription.

"Do you want me to argue a certain side?" she queries.

Miss Oliver shakes her head. "No. I want you to consider arguments for both sides and come to your own conclusion. I'm interested to see where you stand on the matter."

She seems to genuinely mean her words, her expression sincere and attentive. Miss Oliver is not an easy to read person, and Rilla thinks she prefers it that way, but she likes her nevertheless. She knows some people might consider her teacher to be somewhat odd, but there's nothing false about her and no pretence. To someone, who went from pretending not to be pregnant to pretending to be a soldier's wife to pretending not to be a mother to now pretending to be a scholar, there's a certain appeal to that.

"I'll do my best," she promises Miss Oliver.

"I know you will," answers the teacher with a smile. "And now, I believe it's time to go home for both of us. Do you have any plans for the evening?"

Rilla almost laughs at the absurdity of the question. As if she had any evening plans!

"I still have some history homework to do and then might write some letters", she replies.

There's a letter from Carl waiting to be answered and Jem is due a letter as well, though he hasn't yet had time to reply to her last one. She knows he's okay though, because Shirley had a note from him last week, and she knows better than to blame Jem for not answering in a timely manner. After all, no-one has any idea where he is right now and under which conditions he currently lives.

Also waiting for her is a letter from Daisy that Mrs Procter gave to her at the breakfast table. She hasn't yet had time to read the letter, but she's looking forward to curling up in one of Mrs Procter's big armchairs later and perusing it. Daisy, having indeed moved to Edmonton to live with her sister, found work as a salesgirl and always has amusing anecdotes to tell about her customers, making her letters a special treat.

She did not find out any further information about Rilla's son before leaving the mining village, but Rilla didn't really expect her to. Aunt Dora wouldn't be Aunt Dora if she hadn't covered her tracks.

"Then I don't want to keep you any longer," Miss Oliver tells her. "We'll see each other on Monday?"

"Yes, of course." Rilla nods and, not for the first time, has to resist the urge to ask Miss Oliver why she is sacrificing so much of her time to help her. She'd like to know, of course, but she's learned that some answers better remain unsaid.

Packing her bag, she takes her leave from Miss Oliver and, stepping from the office, finds Shirley waiting for her in the hall.

"Did you wait long?" she asks him as she closes the office door behind herself.

Shirley pushes himself from the wall and shoulders his bag. "Just a few minutes."

He doesn't always wait to walk her home, but when their schedules align, they often make the short stroll to their boarding house together.

Falling into step beside each other, they walk along the hall. In passing, Rilla nods at a girl from her science course. She's friendly with most of her classmates without being close to any of them. Having changed from first to second year in September, she only joined her current classmates when most of their friendships had already been formed, and besides, her workload hardly leaves her with time to socialise.

There's an irony she recognises to her choosing to study over socialising, of course. Her fifteen-year-old self would have been appalled, but then, what did her fifteen-year-old self know?

"How are your studies?" asks Shirley, possibly having read her mind.

"Miss Oliver tasked me with writing an essay arguing the positive and negative sides of conscription," Rilla relays, grimacing slightly.

Shirley inclines his head. "No easy subject," he acknowledges, showing again his talent to come right to the heart of the matter.

"No, not at all," sighs Rilla.

"Do you want to talk it through?" offers her brother. "If you want to, we can discuss the different aspects before you write them down."

"That'd be lovely." Rilla smiles at him to show her gratefulness. Always, Shirley is ready to help her with her homework and other assignments, even if he, too, must have work to do. With him being in his third year, Rilla isn't entirely sure what he is studying, but whenever she catches a glimpse of his work, it looks very technical to her.

As they leave the school building, Rilla finds the street to be quite busy for a cold winter afternoon. "Let's wait until we're back at Mrs Procter's to discuss conscription though," she suggests. After all, it's a divisive subject and she believes that in a place like Charlottetown, arguing against conscription in public wouldn't be well-received by most passers-by.

"Of course," agrees Shirley, and Rilla thinks he probably already considered the point and came to the same conclusion before she did.

They continue walking in companionable silence, both taken up with their own thoughts. Rilla is just considering picking her brother's brain about the English Reformation so she might have an easier time with her history homework later on, when a young woman approaches them directly.

She's wearing a heavy winter coat, as they all are, and looks to be about Shirley's age. She stops right in front of them, thus bringing both siblings to a halt as well. Rilla is still wondering whether she knows her from somewhere, when the other woman reaches into her coat pockets and hold something out to Shirley.

It's a white feather.

It looks somewhat dishevelled from having been inside the coat pocket and the tip is bent, but it is still, undeniably, a white feather.

Involuntarily, Rilla gasps for air.

How dare she! How dare this stranger present her brother with a white feather!

Too shocked by the audacity, she is briefly robbed of her speech. As she mentally grapples for words to express just what she thinks of the entire situation, the woman remains standing in front of them, calmly holding out the feather to Shirley.

And Shirley, to Rilla's utter bafflement, takes it.

"Thank you," he politely tells the woman. Taking the arm of his spluttering sister, he gently pulls her along, both of them sidestepping the young woman who looks no less surprised by this development than Rilla is.

They pass by three or four houses before Rilla finds her speech again. "What was that?" she hisses. She tries to stop, half-turning towards the other woman, but Shirley's hand remains on her arm, and he firmly steers her onward.

"She gave me a feather," he establishes calmly, as if Rilla hadn't seen that with her own eyes.

"A white feather," she stresses, quite as if the feather's colour and its meaning had escaped her brother.

"Indeed," agrees Shirley, still very calm, and considers the feather he's still holding with interest.

Angrily, Rilla plucks it from his hand and stuffs it into the pocket of her own coat, breaking the shaft as she does. "How dare she!" she exclaims, increasingly livid.

"It's fine," Shirley tries to calm her. "It doesn't mean anything."

"It doesn't mean anything?" Rilla repeats, indignant. "She just called you a coward!"

Shirley shrugs. "It doesn't mean anything. She doesn't know me."

"Of course she doesn't!" Rilla cries out. When an elderly man on the other side of the street turns to look at her quizzically, she lowers her voice, but does nothing to keep the indignation out of it. "She doesn't know you and yet, she thinks she can judge you! In 1917, no less! Who even gives out white feathers anymore?"

"She sees I'm not in uniform," Shirley points out. "For her, that's reason enough to judge."

"That shows you how little she understands!" Rilla snaps, annoyed both at the woman's audacity and the calmness her brother shows in response to it. Why is he so understanding about this horrible stranger's actions?

They've reached the boarding house and Shirley holds open the door for Rilla to walk through. She does, but doesn't allow him to take her coat, instead shrugging out of it on her own and hanging it from the coat rack.

"I don't understand how you can be so calm about it!" she exclaims. Her detested green hat gets tossed on top of a side table with a little more force than necessary and she places her school bag on the floor with an audible thud.

Shirley, watching her, smiles briefly. "This isn't the first white feather I received. I've had time to come to terms with it."

Rilla takes a deep breath. "How often have they done this?"

"A couple of times." Her brother shrugs. "It doesn't mean anything. I know why they're doing this, but it doesn't affect me."

Of course, Rilla knows that Walter, too, received a white feather before he signed up, and that it affected him quite strongly. There were other reasons for him leaving, obviously, but the judgement he received for not being in uniform played its own role.

And now, Walter is gone forever.

"I'm not Walter," Shirley consoles her, once more seeming to read what's on her mind. "I know he took it hard, but I'm not like that. You don't need to avenge me."

"I should though," Rilla grumbles. "I should go back there and give her a piece of my mind!"

"And tell her what?" asks Shirley, looking curious.

"That you're not a coward!" his sister exclaims. "That you have reasons for not having signed up yet. That…"

She trails of, because indignant as she is on Shirley's behalf, she also doesn't really know why he's still in civilian clothes. He turned eighteen last April, yet here he is, still a student at Queen's. She doesn't judge him for it, indeed she's glad for it, but she doesn't really know why he chose to stay.

Again, Shirley smiles, but he makes the smile a kind one, when it could easily have been condescending. "That's what I thought."

"Well, what are your reasons then?" demands Rilla, feeling cornered and disliking that she's being kept in the dark. "What am I supposed to tell Litte Miss White Feather about why you're not in uniform?"

Taking her elbow, Shirley gently steers her in direction of the salon. Only once Rilla is securely seated in an armchair and he has sat down opposite her, does Shirley speak. "I'm waiting for Canada to establish a Flying Corps."

Rilla blinks at him, trying to understand. "A Flying Corps?"

Shirley nods in reply. "I want to fly. Maybe that's selfish of me, but when I think of those trenches, full of mud and vermin… Call me selfish, but I can't picture myself as an infantry soldier. I considered becoming a sapper, but they're mainly employed as miners and those tunnels are hardly better than the trenches are. What I really want to do is to fly."

While he speaks, Rilla remembers the aviation literature she saw her brother engrossed in in the past months, both technical books and magazine chronicling the exploit of England's aces. Trust Shirley to ensure he is prepared!

"You want to become a pilot?" she asks, frowning, as she tries to make sense of his revelations.

Shirley nods. "At the moment, there's no opportunity to train to be a pilot here in Canada," he explains. "To join the Royal Flying Corps, I would have had to travel to England as a civilian and join up there. I couldn't see father giving his permission for me to do that, and anyway, civilian travel across the Atlantic has almost ceased, so I figured I'd wait. It only makes sense for them to establish training schools here in Canada before long, so I thought I'd wait for that to happen."

"Will they?" asks Rilla, a strange taste in her mouth.

"It looks like it," replies Shirley. "They already set up a recruiting office in Toronto and called for volunteers. I expect they will widen that to cover the rest of the country soon."

"And if they do, you will sign up?" Her anger having dissipated, Rilla suddenly feels oddly deflated. She didn't realise before how close she had grown to her quiet older brother since September, and how much she would miss him if he left.

"That's the plan," replies Shirley in his typical, no-nonsense way.

Rilla nods, pauses, then nods again. "I'll miss you."

For a moment, surprise flits over Shirley's face, followed by a small smile. "And I'll miss you, Spider."

The old childhood nickname was once a source of anger and shame for Rilla, but now, she laughs quietly at Shirley bringing it up. She knows he's teasing her, but she also recognises now that it's done to express endearment in a way typical to her older brother.

"Make sure to stay safe, won't you?" she asks, keeping her own voice light, but putting meaning behind her words.

Shirley nods, his expression sincere. "I will, as long as you promise to keep doing what you're doing."

"Studying?" asks Rilla, surprised. "Sure, I'll do my best. It won't be easier without your support though."

"You don't need me," Shirley tells her earnestly. "You're doing fine on your own with your studies and you'll graduate without problems. That's not what I meant though."

Unsure what it is that he means, Rilla frowns slightly, but remains silent and waits for him to continue.

There's a moment of silence as Shirley looks at her thoughtfully. "I want to be a pilot. I prepared to the best of my abilities, and I made a plan how to become one. That's my goal, the one I've been working towards."

Rilla nods, though she still doesn't see what he's trying to say.

"My point is…" Shirley pauses briefly. "You have your own goal and your own reasons for wanting to reach it. I understand that it's not something we talk about and I respect that, but I want you to know that I believe you can do it."

"You do?" asks Rilla, quietly, and a little uncertainly.

"Sure. I'll become a pilot and you'll become a lawyer," Shirey stresses, sounding quite sure. "And then you'll do what you need to do, so that when I come home again, you've found what you're looking for."

A/N: If you can, be a little gentle today. Real life isn't easy right now. Thank you.

To Anonymous:
You know, what I find genuinely curious is the expectation that just because someone posts their stories here, they have to take any sort of unkindness lying down. I mean, of course I understand that when someone puts something on a site like this, they invite reactions, which can be good or bad. I even noticed that for some reason, the general tone turned significantly more hostile on this sub-page in the last year, which affects other stories even more than mine, so to some extent, I also know what to expect. For my part, I generally agree with Shirley's assessment when it comes to the opinion of strangers, so nothing anyone writes here can ever truly impact me personally, especially not in light of the real problems happening out in the real world. That said, there's certainly never anything wrong with constructive, politely worded criticism and I sincerely wouldn't want to miss it. I generally respond by trying to explain what I was thinking when I wrote something the way I did, but to me, that's in the way of a healthy discussion and equal exchange of views, which I mostly find to be fun and refreshing.
Beyond that, I even make a point to take on the unkind, unconstructive criticism from anonymous strangers (though I draw the line at personal insults) and try to respond to it, but the truth is, when someone is impolite to me first, I just don't feel obliged to go out of my way to be super polite to them in return either. I never expected everyone to like my writing, but I am expecting to be treated with decency if I'm supposed to respond in kind. My point is, why is it that it's apparently okay for anonymous people to write unkind reviews under the guise of "being helpful", but then it's being frowned upon when the writers stands up for themselves instead of turning the other cheek? How is that fair? We're humans, too, so why can't we also expect to be treated with a little common decency?
Now, I fully respect your decision to give my writing a berth from now on, and I sincerely hope that you find stories more to your liking. If, however, you permit me some feedback of my own – the reviews you left me were not kind. I know that nuances often get lost in written conversations and I truly do believe you when you say you didn't intend for your reviews to be mean, but as the recipient of those messages, allow me to tell you that you didn't succeed. I've had nastier reviews from others, that's true, but that doesn't alleviate the fact that yours weren't kind either. Maybe you even really had a point with what you wrote, I don't know, but the way you worded it just wasn't nice and thus, it wasn't helpful. I would have been perfectly happy to discuss your point if you'd just been a little more polite about wording it, but I'm sort of past the idea that I'm obligated to meet unkindness from anonymous strangers with graciousness at all cost, just because I'm putting myself and my writing out there.
I have no idea whether you're even reading this, so I won't address any of the story-related points you made in your last review. If you do read it, I hope that maybe, I was able to give you some food for thought regarding your own reviews and the impact their wording can have. For my part, I mean you no ill and I sincerely wish you all the best and many enjoyable stories in your future.

To Joanna:
I went back to re-read the relevant chapters of RoI before writing about Christmas at Ingleside, to see how the loss of Walter impacted everyone in the weeks and months afterwards. Outwardly, LMM doesn't give us a lot, because Rilla appears to pull herself together fairly quickly and move on with life, but upon closer look, there's quite a bit between the lines. To me, there's a distinct feeling that Ingleside was very quiet in the last quarter of 1916 and that there wasn't a lot of lightness or laughter, so I tried to evoke that same atmosphere in my previous chapter. It's quiet and it's cold, inside and out, because time hasn't yet brought warmth back - both in the way of spring and in that peculiar way that time has of healing even the deepest wounds.
Indeed, the trust isn't rebuilt between Rilla and Anne, but they're tentatively trying to reforge the bond between them and, crucially, they're both working at it. In the summer, we saw Anne try her best, even though Rilla wasn't yet ready to meet her in kind, but here, they're both making an attempt to start rebuilding what was lost. Anne, despite still hurting severely from losing Walter, is reaching out to Rilla by showing interest in her life and she's treading lightly while doing so, because she knows how quickly Rilla could be chased away by too much pressure. For her own part, Rilla, for the first time in months, is able to sympathise with her mother and consider Anne's feelings. It's not all forgiven and forgotten, but she recognises her mother's own struggles and she recognises that Anne is truly, genuinely trying to connect to her. In response, she offers an act of kindness by giving her Walter's last letter. They're not yet ready to talk about what's standing between them, but they're trying to use kindness to build a bridge over what separates them, which is what I tried to show in the previous chapter. The relationship between Anne and Rilla is one that I'm putting a lot of thought into and try very hard to get right, so I'm glad to hear that this scene hit the mark =).
When it comes to secrets, I think that Rilla is quite a curious egg, because even in canon, she's not exactly forthcoming when it comes to sharing important information. Yes, she's very ready to let the world know about all the small joys and small grievances that fill her everyday life, but when it comes to the truly important stuff, she's actually quite guarded about it. I mean, Anne doesn't learn about her special relationship with Ken until months after he first kissed her and as far as we know, no-one else is told about it at all, so that's certainly something Rilla doesn't shout off the rooftops. She lets everyone see what's on the surface, but still keeps the personal thoughts and feelings close to herself, only sharing them with very few people she truly trusts. I'm certainly leaning far into that with this story, but I believe it's something we definitely see in canon as well.

To Guest:
What about Una, indeed. It's an excellent question and it's one I asked myself while writing the previous chapter. Giving Walter's letter to Anne means that Una cannot have it, which I'm very aware of. In the book, her having the original letter feels like a small way to make up for losing Walter (without ever having truly had him), whereas in my story, she doesn't even have that. I imagine Rilla might give her a copy at some point, but it's not the same, so there's no way around it that Una lost out by this particular plot change.
Why did I decide to go for it anyway, you might wonder. Well, to me, the act of Rilla offering the letter to Una in canon really tells us much more about Rilla than it does about Una. It truly shows her compassionate and selfless side, because she parts with something dear to her to comfort someone she cares for. When giving the letter to Anne in this story, she's doing exactly the same, and that, I think, is the crucial message. She cares for her mother, enough so to give away the letter that means so much to her, and if I had to boil down the last chapter to only one aspect, it would be that: an act of care for a person you love.