Sometimes listening to Faith's not so silent steps, as she crept cautiously up the Manse's creaking stairs on summer evenings, her goldenbrown eyes twinkling dreamily in the gloom. Una waited patiently, her blue eyes wistful, and thought about what Mary Vance had once whispered to her about herbs. But surely Faith would never need that information. Her radiant sister, leaned against the scratched old dressing mirror as she asked carelessly, " Una, will you lace me open? "
Quietly Una nodded, and after a few moments Faith leaned in her worn muslin nightgown to embrace Una, as she whispered, " You are the best sister when you wait for me thus."
Faith stretched enjoyably, as she hummed, and uneasily Una inquired, "Where were you?"
A small smile crossed Faith's red lips, which looked their usual reddest in the twilight, as she replied carelessly, "Oh, here and there, with Jem, of course."
A quiet night wind creaked the worn shutters in the Presbyterian Manse, and in the great bedroom two floors below, Rosemary Meredith said invitingly, "John." John Meredith looked dreamily up from his thick dusty book.
The flickering light of the oil lamp glowed around Rosemary, like a golden saintly halo, and the soft pillows smelled faintly of some herbal concoction, and smiling broadly, John let his book fall to the floor.
Verdant summery greenery of Rainbow Valley, Una met him as she knew she would. Walter politely raised his cap, which overshadowed his handsome features, the black hair falling on his narrow cheek, as he continued to write, with rapid motions, softly reciting Tennyson's verses;
In Love, if Love be Love,
if Love be ours,
Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers:
Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.
It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute
And ever widening slowly silence all.
The little rift within the lover's lute,
Or little pitted Speck in garner'd fruit,
That rotting inward slowly moulders all.
It is not worth the eeping: let it go:
But shall it? answer, darling, answer, no.
And trust me not at all or all in all.
Walter raised his bright gray eyes, and mused, "Have you ever experienced anything of the kind Tennyson writes about, Una? Love is a great mystery, they say. I prefer to think of rainbows and summer flowers, or the glint of the sun on the waves of Four Winds Bay."
Una felt a painful shyness constrict her throat, as she muttered, " Walter, I wanted to ask if you're coming to the prayer meeting?"
Melodious bells mingled with birdsong, as Una waited, waited, and at last Walter raised his dreamy eyes, and said with a wry twist of his lips, " Not this time, for I am going for a walk with Alice Parker. But if you could write down the prayers and hymns to be addressed it would be lovely, thank you."
Una felt a blush rise to her cheeks and hastily she got up and left Rainbow Valley with hurried steps, muttering over her shoulder, "Rosemary must be missing me already, I stayed here too long."
Walter sank down on the soft grass, and looked up at the clear sky, where the swallows were flying, and Una's plain blue-clad, practical figure had completely disappeared from his mind, as he took out his note-book, and began to write with renewed enthusiasm.
In the solitude of her own room, Una sank to her knees and put her head in her hands. She had been building up her courage for days, but Walter's words had completely broken her courage. Even though Mary Vance insisted that there was nothing between regal Alice Parker of Lowbridge and Walter Blythe of Ingelside, but it didn't seem like it if Walter didn't even come to the prayer meeting.
Worried, Rosemary Meredith knocked on Una's room door, as she inquired, "Una, would you like a chamomile wrap?"
As the summer wore on, Walter sat in Blythe's pew, talked with Una in a friendly polite tone, about literature and hymns, and by and by Una's hopes were awakened again, slowly like double rose in bloom.
Three years later, when the world was torn apart by the raging winds of war, Private Walter Cuthbert Blythe, sat on guard, looking intently into No Man's Land, clutching his rifle with cold fingers, murmured verses by Tennyson, from Idylls of the King
For friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew;
And some had visions out of golden youth,
And some beheld the faces of old ghosts
Look in upon the battle; and in the mist
Was many a noble deed, many a base,
And chance and craft and strength in single fights,
And ever and anon with host to host
Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn,
Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash
Of battleaxes on shatter'd helms, and shrieks
After the Christ, of those who falling down
Look'd up for heaven, and only saw the mist;
And shouts of heathen and the traitor knights,
Oaths, insult, filth, and monstrous blasphemies,
Sweat, writhings, anguish, labouring of the lungs
In that close mist, and cryings for the light,
Moans of the dying, and voices of the dead.
Last, as by some one deathbed after wail
Of suffering, silence follows, or thro' death
Or deathlike swoon, thus over all that shore,
Save for some whisper of the seething seas,
A dead hush fell; but when the dolorous day
Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came
A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew
The mist aside, and with that wind the tide
Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field
Of battle: but no man was moving there;
Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,
Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave
Brake in among dead faces, to and fro
Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down
Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen,
And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome,
And rolling far along the gloomy shores
The voice of days of old and days to be.
In the pocket of his uniform was a small worn notebook, full of poems and bloody fragments. He could barely remember Ingelside and the Glen, but Rainbow Valley was etched in his memory, indelibly. Muffled laughter could be heard from zigzagged trenches, the wind brought the smell of tobacco, and the distant thunder and smoke of cannons. The landscape was gloomy, the colors had disappeared, only mud, barbed wire, as far as the eye could see. Like a plowed field littered with corpses, the earth and sky were sepia with a metallic tint. In this bloody chaos that was around him, rainbows were simply an oxymoron, as was dew dabbled dells of golden childhood, but companionship and chivarly, it still was eternal, of sort. There was a wind humming and tomorrow they, all would go over the top, towards Courcelette.
Furious September wind shook the trees, in a dell, which a beauty-loving soldier lost on the shores of Lethe, following his duty, had named in a fit of faery fancy, in olden years. Raindrops glistened on the red and orange leaves of the maples.
Una Meredith stood completely numb and in the pocket of her blue wool cardigan was a stained letter that wasn't even addressed to her. The only thing she had gotten was a light kiss on the train platform, with all of Glen watching, as Rilla had said something to her brother in an obviously pointed manner.
Walter's lips on her cheek had been dry, and hot, and there had been a distant look in his eyes, as if he wasn't fully present. Una would have taken Walter's hand, but she had not dared, she had cast her eyes down, and a hot red had glowed on her cheeks, as Walter's boots had echoed on the platform, and then the whistle had sounded, and he had gone, in a puff of smoke. Exhausted, Una raised her red-rimmed eyes towards the bells on the top of the curved birch, and murmured, "Walter, I will keep faith."
A/N: Tennyson's poetry quotes are taken from Idylls of the King (1859)