Chapter 16

THE GARDEN BLOOMS AGAIN

The day that Gavin's picture appeared in the Algonquin paper with an account of the gallant deed in which he had given his life, Christina received a letter in an unknown handwriting.

Mitty brought it up to her room on a sunny April afternoon, where she was sitting, trying to interest herself in some sewing for baby Hugh. She laid the letter aside while she finished her work, too indifferent even to open it, but when the last button-hole was fashioned in the dainty little muslin dress she remembered it.

She opened it slowly, noticing with some interest that it was from the Front, and then she suddenly sat up very straight and read the written pages greedily. The letter was signed, Harry Kent, and was from a comrade of Gavin's in the Blue Bonnets, a boy whom he had often mentioned in his letters to Christina.

And inside was a letter from Gavin himself sealed in a separate envelope. The first was a formal note from a shy boy.

"Dear Miss Lindsay: I hope you won't mind if I take the liberty to write to you, though I am a stranger. Gavin Grant and I were pals, and when he went up to the Front for the last time he gave me the letter I am enclosing, and he asked me to mail it to you. We knew his company was going into a hot place, and he said he did not think he would get back. So he wrote you this letter and when I heard he was killed I said I would mail it to you. Gavin was the finest fellow I ever knew. He was always singing and he taught the fellows a lot of songs. There was one he was always singing, it was called a 'Warrior Bold,' and he was singing it that morning just before the Boche came over. The fellows in our Company would rather we had all gone West than Gavin, he was worth them all put together...."

There was more about what Gavin had done in that last dread struggle. But Christina could not take the time to read it. She opened Gavin's letter reverently, with trembling hands. The blinding tears would permit her to make out only a few sentences at a time.

"I wrote you a letter last night," it said, "and I hope you will not think I am too bold to be writing you another to-night. But we are going up into a rather bad place to-night and if I do not come back, I want to send you a good-bye message. I have never been able to tell you how much you have always been to me. I could not even write it in a letter. I have always been afraid I would offend you. But I thought you would not mind that I told you if I never came back. You have always been so far above me, that I did not have the courage to try to go with you. And then somebody else came, and I knew I had no chance then. But you have always been my girl in spite of all that, ever since the day you filled my pail with your berries to save me from a thrashing. I was always singing about you when I sang that old song,

"'My love is young and fair, My love has golden hair, And eyes so blue and heart so true That none with her compare.'

"It was partly because you were so much to me that I wanted to enlist. I felt that I would be fighting for you. And if I do not come back to-morrow I will be glad to feel that I will be helping to save you from harm. You will not miss me, but the Aunties will, and I am going to ask a great favour of you. Will you always go to see them, and comfort them? And tell them they must not grieve for me. It is so much better to come out here and die for a good cause than to live in peace and safety at home. I am so glad, and they must be glad too, for my sake. I will have your little ring----"

Christina could read no more just then. Her bright head went down on the sunny window sill, she slipped to the floor in a very passion of grief. She was realising with overwhelming remorse that a most beautiful thing had happened to her and her eyes had been too blind to see until the pageant had faded. Her True Knight--and what lady of high degree had a knight more noble?--her True Knight had ridden out to mortal combat, and she had not even waved him farewell from her window!

She left the work with Mitty the next day and went up over the hills to see the Grant Girls. She did not take her letter, it was too sacred for even their loving eyes, but she wanted to talk to them about Gavin and, if she were alone with Auntie Elspie, she would whisper to her that her heart had gone out into the storm and darkness after Gavin that night he went to the war, and that it still followed him somewhere in the shining regions where he moved.

She went slowly up over the dun fields, lying all quiet and restful, waiting for the stirring of the Spring. Away down in the beaver meadow a soft green flush told that the pussy willows were already out, a bold robin was singing the opening song of the Spring concert, and the crows cawed derisively over the memories of a vanquished Winter.

But Christina's sad heart could not respond to these little, gay greetings of Spring. She lingered in the bare slash, remembering the day of the berry-picking when Gavin had been in such deep trouble. She stood in the place where he had stood when he pulled the bind-weed, and when they had listened to the call of the opening drum beat of the war. And she went over in memory every foot of the walk in the harvest moonlight from Craig-Ellachie that night when she had been so happy with him, but had walked beside him with blinded eyes.

The garden at Craig-Ellachie had already wakened to life, the crocuses were out, rows and rows of them, and the garden hyacinths were holding up their little green spears. But there was no happy gardener working in the brown beds. Christina went slowly up the walk where the dry leafless branches of the climbing roses hung over her head. Gavin's dogs came tumbling down the steps to meet her in joyous welcome.

She looked up in wonder as the kitchen door was flung suddenly open. Mrs. Johnnie Dunn flashed into the doorway and shouted something incoherent, and as suddenly disappeared, and Hughie Reid's wife came to the window and waved frantically. Christina ran forward, filled with foreboding. She darted up the steps and stopped amazed in the doorway. The kitchen was full of people, it seemed, all moving about and talking wildly. Mr. Sinclair was there and Dr. McGarry and a half dozen women, and the Aunties were running about laughing and crying, and it seemed as if every one had suddenly gone quite mad.

And then it seemed to Christina that the room was going round and she found a chair and sat down quickly, for Mrs. Johnnie Dunn's voice from far away was calling out the most amazing and unbelievable thing--shouting that Gavin was not dead! He had been found! He had been buried in a shell-hole, half-dead, and when the Blue Bonnets swept back over the enemy's trenches he had been rescued. He had been badly wounded and had lain unconscious for a long time. But he was alive and was in a hospital in France!

Christina flew over the brown hills on the way to her mother with the news, saying over and over to her benumbed senses that Gavin was not dead, that he was alive. It seemed as if her heart had been so stupefied with grief that it could not yet accept joy. She ran in a kind of dream saying that she would soon wake up and find that this was not true.

But the glorious news was confirmed. There was a week of alternate wild hope and fear, and then, as wonderful as a message from the dead, came a cable from Gavin himself. He was in a hospital in France and was progressing rapidly. The next news told that he was in England, and then came a blessed letter from his nurse, saying that he was recovering slowly but surely and was promising himself that it would not be long until he would write a letter home.

Such a clamour of joy and relief as the news of Gavin brought to Orchard Glen no one would have thought possible. Every one had sorrowed deeply with the Grant Girls and now the whole countryside came out to Craig-Ellachie to rejoice with them and to hear again and again the story of Gavin's rescue. And the Grant Girls put in such a garden as the county had never seen, and grew young and bright again with joy and hope.

As for Christina she moved about in a golden dream. Life was not real at all these days, but the dream of it was beautiful and the colour came back to her cheeks and the light to her eyes, and she went about the house with her old swift motions.

She could not believe in the reality of her joy at all until she received her first letter from Gavin. As soon as the message came that he was in England she wrote him. It was her answer to the letter that he had never intended her to see during his life. It must have been a satisfactory answer, for not all the skill of surgeon and sister combined had produced a fraction of the healing and strengthening quality that its closely written pages brought to the wounded soldier in England. And his answer made Christina's eyes brighter and her step lighter than they had been since the day Jimmy and Neil went over the top.

It was not until Gavin was so well that he was walking about that he wrote confessing the full extent of his injuries. He had lost an arm, only his left arm, he wrote, which he really didn't miss much. He made jokes about it and warned Auntie Janet that she need not be laying plans to do as she pleased, for he could manage the whole family and make them mind, even with one arm. And as he was still a little lame and would be likely to carry a heavy stick for some time he would be quite able to keep her in her place.

But he did not write so lightly on the matter to Christina. He had only one arm, and was a poor hobbling creature, he confessed, and how could he ask her to share life with him? He was only half a man, and a poor weak half at that.

But Christina wrote him such a letter as forever put such notions out of Gavin's head. It was a letter that made him feel not like half a man but as though he had the strength of ten. For what was the loss of an arm when one had such a warm heart beating for him, and awaiting his coming?

Christina had not seen Wallace Sutherland since the day he had disappeared from her view in the black mist that had rolled up over her with the news that Gavin was killed. Her mind had been too much racked to think of him since, but now that it was at rest she remembered him with a feeling of shame. So she sat down and wrote him a letter, telling him humbly and frankly all the truth, how Gavin had held her heart long before she realised it. She begged him to forgive her if she had done him any injury and ended up by the tactful hint that as their association had been a pleasant friendship, in which the kindnesses had been so many and so generous on his side, she hoped he would think of her with pleasure, and that they would always continue to be friends.

But Wallace was thinking of Christina with feelings entirely the reverse of pleasant. And his mother was thinking very bitter thoughts about her indeed. For just when Mrs. Sutherland had become reconciled to her son's changed prospects, and when Uncle William was doing handsomely by the boy, when there was every prospect that Wallace would soon be married and be safe from the recruiting officers, with a farm and a wife and a widowed mother between him and military service, when everything had turned out better than she had dared to hope, suddenly the whole fabric of her plans came crashing about her ears. And all owing to the outrageous conduct of a girl who had thrown her son aside for a farm boy, merely for the glamour of a medal won on the battlefield!

It was really very hard on poor Mrs. Sutherland, and Christina was overcome with shame when she thought of her. For Wallace sold the Ford place to Mrs. Johnnie Dunn for a shamefully low figure and went off to the States where quite likely some wicked sleuth of a recruiting officer would find him and send him to the war after all.

Christina was very humble and very much ashamed of herself, but it was hard to worry over Wallace when such wonderful things were happening in one's own life. For before the apple blossoms came to decorate the orchard for her birthday, Sandy was home to help celebrate. Even the news that he was wounded came as a relief from the strain of waiting. At least he was off the battlefield. And then it proved that the wound was not serious; but he was lame and unfit for more active service and was coming home to finish his course at college if that were at all possible.

And Uncle Neil took out his fiddle when the letter heralding Sandy's return was received, and played softly some of his old favourite airs; tunes Christina had not heard since the boys went away to the war. And they brought the tender tears to her eyes, remembering the happy old days when they were all at home and Grandpa sang the Hindmost Hymn at eventide. Sandy's presence brought new life to the Lindsay home. John and Uncle Neil sat up half the nights listening to his tales of the world of glory and horror in which he had been living. And Christina and her mother could scarcely let him out of their sight. He was all that had been spared them from the War Monster's greed.

In spite of all the dread sights he had witnessed he was the same gay old Sandy, and the home took on some of its old-time life and gaiety. He and Christina soon fell back into their habit of comradeship. They had many confidences to exchange, and Christina had to tell all the story of Gavin and what his going had meant to her. Sandy was full of joy at the telling. Gavin had always been a True Knight in his eyes and then he had all the returned soldier's disdain of the slacker. Christina could not but shudder at what her life might have been had ambition ruled, instead of her heart and Wallace and Sandy were meeting here in the old home.

They had many long talks on the pump platform under the blossoming orchard boughs, and they smiled often over their great plans that had all turned out so differently from what they had expected.

"Are you still bound to get out of Orchard Glen?" asked Sandy slyly, and Christina had to confess that she was not. She could not quite explain to Sandy that all her restless ambition had been but the desire for something great and heroic such as her simple life did not seem to contain. But the great and heroic had come right to her door, unseen, it is true, but now recognised, and her soul was perfectly content in its radiance. Life could never be narrow and common-place any more. She had attained all her ambition through following the road her heart indicated,--the shining pathway of loving self-sacrifice that leads to the stars.