“How are the Pettibones?” Cecily turned. Her older sister Felicity and her mother Janet were peeking over her shoulder.
“Doing just fine,” Cecily replied, “but I think Izzy’s a little lonesome for Avonlea. I guess things at the Pettibone home are a little tense.”
“Well, that doesn’t surprise me,” Janet said. “Clive and Arthur Pettibone couldn’t agree on how to make toast.”
“Will you come to the general store with us?” Felicity asked. “I must pick up some things for when Gus returns. I swear if he mentions how much he wants pot roast one more time...”
When Cecily had returned to King Farm, she took the letter out of its envelope and read eagerly.
Miss Cecily King
Avonlea, P.E.I., CanadaApril 23, 1915
Dear Cecily,
I am sorry that it has taken me so long to write back to you, Cess. Dal final examinations are looming ahead and I have been studying so much I have geometry and history coming out of my ears. Muriel and Father help me study when I am home and hopefully I will be able to remember all of those Latin conjugations that used to give me fits.
I think I am starting to enjoy Halifax a bit more. But sometimes I feel so lonesome for the red roads and sandy beaches of Avonlea. Usually I walk down to the harbour when I’m feeling very homesick for the sea.
This brings me to a bit of news that I have to share with you. I asked Father and he said yes (he always does if I bother him enough) to you coming to visit me in Halifax, if you are at all able to. Arthur and Morgan will be there also, but they won’t bother us much and you know how to deal with the particular species of male known as brothers. The Dalhousie football team has been disbanded, so please excuse Morgan if he sulks. We haven’t seen Arthur since Christmas. He and Father are NOT going to fight about the war. I am determined on this point, if I have to lock them in separate rooms. It would be so jolly if you would come, Cess. It would be just like old times. You absolutely must meet Miss Shirley, well I think of her as Miss Shirley, but she tells us to call her “Anne” because she gets “Miss Shirley-ed enough while I am teaching school.” She was Muriel’s prize student in Avonlea.
I cannot write any more right now. Father has just entered the room and has a geometry book and That Look on his face. I think I must study now. Please tell me if you can come. I miss you so much.
Your Chum,
Iz
* * *
A young, well-dressed, sophisticated girl entered the lobby of the Charlottetown Hospital and looked around. She removed her stylish hat and revealed brown hair that was swept up in the latest fashion. The former tomboyish girl had developed quite a liking for pretty, fashionable clothing, a liking her father indulged her in lavishly. She walked over to the desk where a nurse was busily attending to an irate man who was demanding that he be allowed to see his wife.
“What in the Sam Hill kind of an institution is this?” the man asked. “I demand to see my wife!”
“I’m sorry, sir. Mrs. Brighton is having surgery now.”
“Surgery! I bring my wife in with a pain in her stomach and now you tell me you’ve got some doctor cutting her to pieces! I won’t have it! It better not be that uppity young doctor I had the last time I was here!”
“Sir, please calm yourself. If you would just take a seat. A surgeon should be out in a moment to speak with you. Please, sir.”
The man shook his head and reluctantly situated himself in the waiting room, muttering oaths under his breath.
Thus relieved of the trying individual, the nurse turned her attention to the girl. “How can I help you, miss?”
“I’m looking for Dr. Pettibone. Dr. Arthur Pettibone,” she said.
“Is he expecting you?”
“He’s my brother,” she answered proudly.
“I believe he’s in surgery at the moment. If you would please take a seat.”
Izzy Pettibone nodded and headed over to the seats in the waiting room. As she was walking, she heard her brother’s voice call her name.
“Iz!”
She turned and ran over to her brother with a happy smile on her face. “Arthur!” She tried to hug him, but he held her back.
“I don’t want to spoil your clothes,” he said. He was wearing surgical apron that was spotted with blood. Arthur studied his sister a moment, berating himself for staying away so much. His little, rambunctious, tomboy sister had grown into a beautiful young woman and he had missed so much of that transformation. He’d been away so much, but they still had become very close. He kissed her cheek and then pressed his finger to her nose in a teasing, brotherly fashion.
“How was the surgery?”
“Oh, I think it went well. Did you make it through Dal examinations?”
“I’m still breathing, aren’t I? Are you almost ready? The train leaves in an hour and it’s sometimes late. We don’t want to miss the ferry,” Izzy said.
“Just give me a minute, sis. I have a surprise for you.”
Izzy watched her brother’s tall figure stride down the hallway of the hospital. He was so confident and self-assured. She had always admired him.
Arthur found Mr. Brighton in the waiting room and talked to him in a low, gentle voice. He tried to explain to Mr. Brighton the outcome of his wife’s surgery, but the man became incensed and wouldn’t listen to a word Arthur said.
“You!” Izzy heard Mr. Brighton yell. “You’re not even old enough to shave every day. I demand to see my wife. I’m not going to stand here and allow my wife to be operated on by some crackpot doctor barely out of short pants! Why the Halifax aren’t you in the Army, where you belong, boy?”
“Mr. Brighton,” Arthur said in a dangerously calm voice, “you will address me as Dr. Pettibone, not ‘boy.’ As I was saying, your wife is suffering from an inflamed ulcer, the cause of which is most likely the fact that she has had to live with your horrible temper for the past forty years.” Mr. Brighton’s face became livid. “Now, if you do not calm yourself and act appropriately, I will instruct every nurse in this hospital to restrict you from seeing your wife. Is that clear?” He turned to Izzy, who had walked over to them during Mr. Brighton’s outburst, and said in a very composed tone, “Iz, are you ready?”
Izzy, thus apprised of a typical day in her brother’s life, waited patiently for another half an hour until Arthur was ready to leave. As they were walking out of the hospital, their joyful chatter was interrupted when they noticed a woman in who stood at the front desk. Seated next to her in a wheelchair was a young man, no more than nineteen or twenty, who stared blankly in front of him, his countenance devoid of all emotion.
“Please,” the woman was saying to a doctor. “Please, you must help him. He’s my son, my only son. What can you do for him? They sent him back from the war like this. Help him! Please!”
“Ma’am,” a nurse said, trying to calm her. “Ma’am, please.”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” said a doctor. “He’s shell-shocked. There’s nothing we can do.”
Izzy and Arthur watched them for a long while. “He was in the war,” Izzy said.
“The war did that to him?” Arthur put his arm around his sister and led her through the doors of the hospital, no words passing between them.
* * *
Izzy stood in her brother’s apartment with her eyes closed. “Don’t open them until I tell you to,” her instructed. She could hear his footsteps cross the floor as he entered another room. She heard a door open and then close. There was a faint whimpering sound. “Hold out your arms.” Izzy did so.
Suddenly, she felt something small and furry in her arms and a soft, wet tongue on her cheeks. “Now.” She opened her eyes in surprise.
“A puppy! Oh, Arthur! He’s adorable!” Izzy then noticed that the puppy’s right leg was in a splint. “What happened to the poor fellow?”
“I found him in an alley a couple of months ago and made friends with him. He looked like someone had abandoned him. I brought him back here, fixed him up, and now he’s yours. I can’t keep him here.”
“What should I name him?” Izzy asked, smiling. “What will Father say?”
* * *
“Lord Kitchener,” Clive proclaimed, holding the puppy up high.
“Kitchener? Really, Clive.”
“Who else would you rather us name him after, woman? Woodrow Wilson? That spineless Yankee pacifist.”
“Wilson isn’t a pacifist, Father,” Arthur said in a rather tired tone, as he placed his suitcase in the hall.
“He behaves enough like one. The dog’s name is Kitchener and I’ll have no disputes. Will I, you little devil?”
The puppy licked Clive’s face eagerly. Clive kept the puppy tucked under one arm and his newspaper under the other. “He certainly is friendly,” Muriel observed. “You two come on in and get settled.” Izzy and Arthur removed their coats and hung up their hats. They proceeded into the parlour after their father.
“Is Morgan at home?” Arthur asked.
“No,” Clive responded.
“Where is he? What’s he been up to?”
Clive briskly opened a newspaper entitled The Halifax Beacon and showed Arthur an editorial cartoon. It was very clever and obviously anti-war. “That,” Clive pointed to the drawing, “is what your brother has been ‘up to’. There’s one in this-this pacifist rag nearly every week.”
“Father, please,” implored Izzy.
“Father, you don’t have any proof that it’s Morgan.”
“I don’t need proof,” Clive responded gruffly as he sat in his chair. “It’s exactly the kind of thing that boy would do.” Clive began stroking the puppy’s head. Kitchener crawled into his lap. “Have a seat, son. I have a bit of an errand I’d like you to run for me in Avonlea, Arthur.”
“What’s that?”
“We’ll discuss it later. Tell me all about the hospital. I hear you’re short on supplies.”
“Yes, quite.”
“If the Americans would join in, I’m sure that problem would be alleviated.”
“Do you really think that’s in the Americans’ best interest, Father?”
“It’s not a question of the good of one country. It’s a question of what is best for the world.”
“If England insists on getting herself into a hopeless predicament, we shouldn’t expect the United States to bail us out,” Arthur replied defiantly.
“Arthur performed surgery today,” Izzy told her father, noticing that their friendly conversation was hovering perilously close to an argument. Muriel entered with the tea and shared a look with her stepdaughter. They had made an agreement: Muriel would manage her husband’s temper and Izzy would manage Arthur’s.
The relationship between Clive Pettibone and his oldest child could have been called capricious at best. Over the years, their disagreements had subsided, each learning that there were certain subjects on which they did not and would not ever agree. Clive had even begun consulting Arthur on important family matters. They had started listening to each other. But the war had precluded any further progress in their relationship. Good-natured political debates had progressed into arguments, which had in turn progressed into out and out rows.
“Indeed? What exactly do you plan to do now that your internship is completed?”
“Well, I suppose I should stay on at the hospital as a surgeon,”
“A fine thing,” Clive averred.
“I suppose it would be if I really wanted to stay.”
“How’s that?”
“I don’t really like it there.”
“You’re doing such a fine job.”
“It’s not the work. The hospital...it’s-it’s too restrictive. They have all of these rules…”
“Rules and regulations are the stuff that keep society on track, Arthur. I suppose I should know better than to ask you to appreciate their value.”
“More tea, dear?” Muriel asked.
“Thank you,” Clive responded.
Clive kept his steady gaze on his son. Arthur didn’t flinch. Izzy and Muriel were grateful when they heard the front door open and Morgan’s footsteps in the hallway. He entered, dressed like many college boys, in plain khaki pants and a sweater striped in the Dalhousie colours: black and yellow. “Hello, all,” he said. “I’m so glad you all made it here, Arthur.” Morgan said.
“You think I’d miss your graduation, little brother?”
“Hello, Izzy, Muriel,” Morgan said. He paused for a moment, noticing the tension that had sprung up when he entered the room. “Dad.” Clive acknowledged Morgan with a nod.
Morgan held a brown portfolio in his hand that Muriel took an immediate interest in.
“What’s in here?” she asked. Morgan opened it and showed his stepmother some very unflattering drawings of some very important personages.
Muriel laughed at several of them. “Is this King George?” she asked. Morgan nodded. “Clive, children, come look.”
“I don’t need to look at pictures to know that my son is disloyal to the Empire,” Clive said bitterly. The rest of his family was silent.
“Morgan, why don’t you have a seat, dear?” Muriel asked, as a way of easing the tension. Morgan took an immediate interest in his older brother, whom he hadn’t seen in months. The two young men struck up a conversation. Izzy, annoyed at her father and Arthur, stood up and walked out of the room. Clive remained seated in his chair, with his newspaper and the puppy. He stared out a window that was at the far end of the parlour. All he could see was a young wounded soldier returning to the outstretched arms of his mother.
* * *
A large banner that read “Dalhousie University Class of 1915” hung above the wooden stage. The dean of the university, a balding man in his late sixties, read the names of the graduates.
“David Alan Parker,” a studious-looking lad with spectacles crossed the stage and received his diploma.
“Jonathan Reginald Octavius Parsons III.”
“Anna Elizabeth Petrie.”
“Morgan Aragon Pettibone.”
Morgan’s family watched happily from their seats in the auditorium as he crossed the stage and accepted his diploma. He had been awarded the prestigious Ravenhurst scholarship and was graduating with the highest of honours.
The dean continued reading the list of graduates. It was a small graduating class that year. Many of the young men had enlisted or were making plans to.
Morgan made his way through his friends at the reception, all congratulating each other and giving their best wishes. Several young graduates boldly announced their intentions to enlist in the Army as soon as they left the reception. Morgan quickly found his family.
“Huzzah!” his father said when he saw him. Morgan removed his cap while his family congratulated him.
“I’m so proud of you, Morgan,” Izzy said. “I can’t believe you’re really going to study art in Italy! I hope I can go to Europe someday.”
“I’m rather nervous about his going abroad right now, Clive.”
“Nonsense, Muriel. The scholarship is a wonderful honour. Besides, the war won’t last much longer.”
“Yes,” Izzy agreed. “Things will soon be back to normal,” she said optimistically.
“We’re all very proud of you, Morgan,” Clive said.
A throng of young men passed by them, singing a popular war tune. “Hey, Morgan!” called one of them. “We’re all off to join up! Come along!”
Morgan, who had absolutely no intention of enlisting, shouted back, “Not right now, lads!”
“Suit yourself!” The young men went off marching and singing at the top of their lungs.
Clive didn’t feel that there was any need to push his son into enlisting. He hoped that Morgan would get his crazy notions about the war out of his head. He hoped that Morgan knew his duty and would do it. He put his arm around his younger son and the two began walking away from the Dalhousie campus with his wife, daughter, and older son following behind.
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