Pat of Silver Bush (20 page)

This MUST be a dream. Oh, if she could only wake up!

So many poisonous things were said in school. The girls talked so casually of the Gardiners going west … some a little enviously as if they would like to go, too. Jean Robinson said she only wished she could get away from this dull old hole.

And then one day May Binnie said that her father had decided to buy Silver Bush!

“If he does we’ll fix it up a bit, I can tell you,” she said to Pat. “Pa says he’ll cut down that old part of the orchard and plough it up and sow it with beans. We’ll build a sun-porch of course. And pa says he’ll cut down all them birch trees. He says too many trees aren’t healthy.”

Only sheer malice could have made her say THAT. Pat dragged herself home.

“The Binnies will cut down all our birches, Judy.”

“Oh, oh, the Good Man Above may have something to say to THAT,” said Judy darkly. But her faithful old heart was heavy. She knew Mac Binnie already looked on Silver Bush as his and was telling everybody about the “improvements” he meant to make.

“Improvements, is it?” Judy had demanded. “Sure he’d better be making some improvements in the manners av himsilf and his daughters, if it’s improvements he do be wanting, the ould wind-bag. Mrs. Binnie hersilf cud do wid a few. Fancy her in me kitchen and her looking like a haystack, niver to mintion her presiding at the dining room table where a Selby from Bay Shore has been sitting. Oh, oh, ‘tis a topsy-turvy world, so it is, and getting no better fast.”

“I was so happy just a little while ago, Judy. And now I’ll never be happy again.”

“Oh, oh, niver’s a long day, me jewel.”

“I hate May Binnie, Judy … I HATE her!”

“Sure, Patsy dear, hating do be something that’s always bist done yisterday. Life do be too short to waste inny av it hating. Though, if a body DID have a liddle more time … but thim Binnie craturs do be clane benath hating.”

“If there was anything we could do to prevent it,” sobbed Pat.

Judy shook her head.

“But there isn’t … not in Canady innyhow. That’s the worst av a new land where nather God nor the divil have had time to be getting much av a hold on things. Now, if there was a wishing well here like there was in me home in ould Ireland sure and ye cud make it all right in the twinkle av a fairy’s eye. All ye’d have to do is go to it at moonrise and ye’d get yer wish.”

Pat went to Happiness that night and wished over the Haunted Spring. Who knew?

It was horrible to live with fear … and suspense. Dad’s first letter came when Pat was in school and Judy told her first thing that there was no news yet. Long Alec thought the west a grand country. Allan had done well. But he hadn’t decided yet … he was looking about … he would be able to tell them next letter.

“So kape up yer pecker, Patsy darlint. There’s hope yet.”

“I’m afraid to hope, Judy,” said Pat drearily. “It HURTS too much to hope. It would be so much worse when you had to stop hoping.”

“Oh, oh, but ye’re too young to be larning THAT,” muttered Judy. She pounded and thumped and battered her bread, wishing it were Long Alec. Oh, oh, but wudn’t she knead some sinse into him! Him wid the good Island farm and a fine growing fam’ly to be draming av pulling up stakes and going to a new country at his age!

The next letter came. It was Saturday and Pat had wakened to a grey dawn. The rain against the windows was very dreary. Everybody at Silver Bush expected dad’s letter that day though nobody said anything about it, and Pat felt that the rain was a bad omen.

“Oh, oh, cheer up, Patsy darlint,” said Judy. “Sure and I remimber a bit av poetry I larned whin I was a girleen … ‘a dark and dreary morning often brings a pleasant day.’ Often have I seen it mesilf.”

It stopped raining at noon, although the clouds still hung dark and heavy over the silver bush. Pat was watching from the garden as the old postman drove up to the mail box. He was a little bent old man with a fringe of white beard, driving a crazy buggy behind a lean old sorrel horse. It seemed incredible that her destiny was in his bag. She went slowly down the lane, a pale moth of a girl, hardly knowing whether she wanted to see a letter or not. It would be so terrible to wait for its opening but at least they would KNOW.

The letter was there. Pat took it out and looked at it … “Mrs. Alex. B. Gardiner, Silver Bush, North Glen, P. E. Island.” All her life after a letter seemed to Pat a terrible intriguing, devilish thing. What might … or might not … be in it? She remembered that when she had been very small she had been horribly frightened of a “dead” letter she had carried home. She had thought it had come from a dead person. But this was even worse.

She walked back up the lane. Half way up she paused in a little bay of the fence which was full of the white-gold of the “life everlasting” that blooms in September. Her knees were shaking.

“Oh, dear God, please don’t let there be any bad news in this letter,” she whispered. And then desperately … because old Alec Gardiner in South Glen had a daughter Patricia, middle-aged and married, and there must be no mistake … “Dear God, it’s Long Alec’s Pat of Silver Bush speaking, not just Alec’s Pat.”

Somehow everybody was in the kitchen when Pat entered. Judy sat down on a chair rather suddenly. Bets was just arriving, having torn breathlessly down the hill when she saw the postman. Jingle and McGinty were hanging around the doorstep. McGinty had his ears turned down. Mother, her eyes very bright and with an unusual little red spot on either cheek, took the letter and looked around at all the tense, waiting faces … except Pat’s. She could not bear to look at Pat’s.

It was a thousand fold worse than when the letter had come about Winnie.

“We must all be as brave as possible if father says we must go,” she said gently.

She opened the letter steadily and glanced over it. It seemed as if the very trees outside stopped to listen.

“Thank God,” she said in a whisper.

“Mother …”

“Father is coming back. He doesn’t like the west as well as the Island. He says, ‘I’ll be very happy to be home again.’”

And at that very moment, as if waiting for the signal, the sun broke out of the clouds above the Silver Bush and the kitchen was flooded with dancing lights and elfin leaf shadows.

“So that’s that,” said Joe, a bit glumly. He whistled to Snicklefritz and went out.

Pat and Bets were weeping wildly in each other’s arms. Judy got up with a grunt.

“Oh, oh, and what’s all the tears for, I’m asking ye? I thought ye’d be dancing for joy.”

“You’re crying yourself, Judy.” Pat laughed through her tears.

“Sure and it’s the tinder heart av me. I cud niver see inny one crying that I didn’t jine in. Haven’t I wept the quarts at the funerals av people who didn’t be mattering a hoot to me? I’m that uplifted I wudn’t call the quane me cousin. Oh, oh, and it’s me limon pies that are burned as black as a cinder in me oven. Well, well, I’ll just be making another batch. We’ve had minny a good bite here and plaze the Good Man Above we’ll have minny another. It’s been a hard wake av it but iverything do be coming to an ind sometime if only ye do be living to see it.”

Pat had put on gladness like a garment. She wondered if anybody had ever died of happiness.

“I just couldn’t have borne it, Pat, if you went away,” sobbed Bets.

Jingle had said nothing. He had sniffed desperately, determined not to let any one see HIM cry. He was at that moment lying face downwards in the mint along Jordan and McGinty could have told you what he was doing. But McGinty wasn’t worried. His ears stuck up for he knew somehow that, in spite of shaking shoulders, his chum was happy.

Pat came dancing down the hill that night on feet that hardly seemed to touch the earth. She halted under the Watching Pine to gloat over Silver Bush, all her love for it glowing like a rose in her face. It had never looked so beautiful and beloved. How nice to see the smoke curling up from its chimney! How jolly and comfortable the fat, bursting old barns looked, where hundreds of kittens yet unborn would frisk! The wind was singing everywhere in the trees. Over her was a soft, deep, loving sky. Every field she looked on was a friend. The asters along the path were letters of the poem in her heart. She seemed to move and breathe in a trance of happiness. She was a reed in a moonlit pool … she was a wind in a wild garden … she was the stars and the lights of home … she was … she was Pat Gardiner of Silver Bush!

“Oh, dear God, this is such a lovely world,” she whispered.

“A nice hour to be coming in for yer supper,” said Judy.

“I was so happy I forgot all about supper. Oh, Judy, I’ll always love this day. I’m so happy I’m a little frightened … as if it couldn’t be RIGHT to feel so happy.”

“Oh, oh, drink all the happiness ye can, me darlint, whin the cup is held to yer lips,” said Judy wisely. “Now be after ating yer liddle bite and thin to bed. I packed yer mother off whin Cuddles wint. SHE hasn’t been slaping much of late ather I’m telling ye, though the Selbys kape their falings to thimselves. Oh, oh, and so Madam Binnie won’t be bossing things here for a while yet. And what may ye be thinking av that, me Gintleman Tom?”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep much even tonight, Judy. It’s lovely to be so happy you can’t sleep.”

But Pat was sound as a bell when Judy crept in to see if the little sisters had the extra blanket for the chill September night.

“Oh, oh, she’ll niver be quite that young agin,” whispered Judy. “It’s such a time as she’s had that makes even the liddle craturs old in their sowls. If one cud be after spanking Long Alec now as I did whin he was a b’y!”

“Am I So Ugly Judy?”

For the first time Pat was getting ready to go to a party … a real, evening party which Aunt Hazel was giving for two of her husband’s nieces who were visiting her. It was what Uncle Tom called a “double-barrelled party” … girls and boys of Winnie’s and Joe’s age for Elma Madison and young fry from ten to twelve for Kathleen. Sid pretended to hate the whole thing and vowed he wouldn’t go till the last minute when he suddenly changed his mind … perhaps because Winnie twitted him with sulking because May Binnie wasn’t invited.

“Sure and ye wudn’t be expicting she wud be,” said Judy loftily. “Since whin have the Binnies set themselves up for the aquals av the Gardiners … or aven av the Madisons I’m asking ye.”

Pat was very glad when Sid decided to go for Bets was laid up with a sore throat and Jingle, though invited, couldn’t or wouldn’t go because his only decent suit of clothes had become absurdly tight for him. He had hoped that his mother might send him money for a new suit at Christmas but Christmas had passed as usual without present or letter.

“It’s lovely to be nearly eleven,” Pat was exulting to Judy. “I’m almost one of the big girls now.”

“That ye are,” said Judy with a sigh.

It was exciting to be dressing for a real party. Winnie had already gone to several and it was one of the dear delights of Pat’s life to sit on the bed and watch her getting ready. But to be dressing yourself!

“Yellow’s yer colour, me jewel,” said Judy, as Pat slipped into her little party frock of primrose voile. “Sure and whin yer mother talked av getting the Nile grane I put me foot down. ‘One grane dress is enough in a life-time,’ sez I to her. ‘Don’t ye be remimbering all the bad luck she had in the one ye got her for the widding? Niver once did she put it on but something happened her or it.’”

“That was true, Judy, now that I come to think of it. I had it on when I broke mother’s Crown Derby plate … and quarrelled with Sid … we’d never done that before … and found the hole in my stocking leg at church … and put too much pepper in the turnips the day Aunt Frances was here to dinner… .”

“‘And innyhow,’ sez I, clinching the matter like, ‘grane doesn’t be suiting her complexion.’ So the yellow it is and ye’ll look like a dancing buttercup in it.”

“But I won’t be dancing, Judy. I’m not old enough. We’ll just play games. I do hope they won’t play Clap in and Clap out. They do that so often at school and I hate it … because … because, Judy, none of the boys ever pick me out to sit beside. I’m not pretty, you know.”

Pat said it without bitterness. Her lack of beauty had never worried her. But Judy tossed her head.

“They’d better wait till ye come into yer full looks afore they say that, I’m thinking. Now, here’s a trifle av scint for yer hanky …”

“Put a little bit behind my ears, too … please, Judy.”

“That I won’t. Scint behind the ears is no place for dacency. A drop on yer hanky and maybe a dab on yer frill. Here’s yer bit av blue fox for yer neck … though I’m not seeing where the blue comes in. But it sets ye. Now hold yer head up wid the best of thim and don’t be forgetting ye’re a Gardiner. Ye’re to recite I’m hearing?”

“Yes. Aunt Hazel asked me to. I’ve been practising to the little spruce bushes behind the hen-house. Bets was to sing if she hadn’t got a bad throat. It’s just too mean she’s sick. It would have been so wonderful to go to our first party together. I know I’ll be lonesome. I don’t know many of the Silverbridge girls. And I’ll miss Bets so. She’s lovely, Judy. They say Kathie Madison is pretty but I’m sure she isn’t prettier than Bets.”

Joe and Winnie and Sid and Pat all piled into the cutter to drive to Silverbridge through the fine blue crystal of the early winter evening, along roads where slender, lacy trees hung darkly against the rose and gold of the sky. That was fun … and at first the party was fun, too. Kathleen Madison WAS pretty … the prettiest girl Pat had ever seen in her life. A girl with close-cut curls of dark glossy gold, a skin of milk and roses, a dimpled bud of a mouth, and brilliant bluish-green eyes. Pat heard Chet Taylor of South Glen say she was worth walking three miles to see.

Well and good. It did not bother Pat. The evening went with a swing. The Silverbridge girls were all nice and friendly. They DID play Clap in and Clap out but Mark Madison asked Pat to sit with him so it did not matter if half a dozen other boys were jealously trying for Kathie. Oh, parties WERE fun!

Then, in an evil moment Pat’s hair bow fell off and she ran upstairs to put it on. Kathie Madison was in the room, too, pinning together a rent in the lace of her frock. As Pat stood before the looking-glass Kathie came and stood beside her. There was no particular malice in Kathie. She liked Pat Gardiner, as almost every girl did. But unluckily Mark Madison was the one boy Kathie had wanted for Clap in and Clap out. So she came and stood by Pat.