Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
- " Nothing Gold can Stay"
(1923)
Robert Frost(1874-1963)
A brilliant golden fall of 1923.
It was time of Courcelette's anniversary. Rilla Ford sat outside, as was her usual custom. In those moments, she relived the piercing pain she had experienced when Father had told her with a gray face that Walter had fallen. The years didn't seem to dilute the pain, it gradually became milder, but it never completely disappeared, nor should it.
Rilla hummed thoughtfully, as she remembered her brother, her lovely idealized love for Walter. His keen wide pure gray eyes that far-sighted gaze, his gallant, but sometimes petuliant, poetry-filled ways, of Keats, Tennyson, Shelley, and others, he who had loved autumn so much, its splendor of color on the Island, where the sense of mellow fruitfulness was imminent, as mists of the gulf cast lovely shroud, where still in Rainbow Valley the fae-bells rang twined on the double-trunk birch, whose leaves were a brilliant golden yellow by now.
The streets of Toronto were filled with cheerful people who hardly ever thought about the losses of the past war, despite the presence of memorial plaques in prominent places. 1920 were roaring, flappers, new music called jazz, and a new way of writing literature, everything was faster, sometimes it felt like Walter's dream no longer existed, or it did, but so that it had transformed into something else, a belief in the future, the golden harvest of his final letter, it was soon time for it to be fulfilled.
Rilla stretched as she turned her head smiling when she felt Ken's warm hand on her shoulder, her dress was modish green color and style was the style of the year. That pressure of that long fingered hand of a newspaper man, was as safe as was the scent of ink.
Ken quietly remarked, "Are you cold, do you want my coat, it's not appropriate for you to be out in the cold for too long, especially in your state." Rilla's other hand half absentmindedly caressed her big belly. She was due in fortnight or so. Her firstborn, a September baby.
Feeling unsettled and homesick Rilla pleaded, "Dearest, can we send a telegram to Glen. I'd like my parents to be on hand when the time comes."
Ken smiled at his wife, gray eyes full of love, as he said, "I've already done that, because I thought our families would make an occasion out of it anyway, or Susan might even if Mum or Persis wont, not to mention Aunt Annes penchant of italics in the times of family celebrations, she might read her poems or be inspired to write again."
The reddish-yellow maple-leaves danced in the wind, and the yellowed grass was cool cold under a thick striped blanket - it was approved Baker stamp, as Rilla leaned into Ken's embrace, as well as she could, as she said resolutely, with a flutter of her silky lashes, "And the names?"
Ken's lips touched Rilla's earlobe, as he murmured, "I think the name will come to us when we meet our child."
Rilla murmured, "Yeth."
