Pat of Silver Bush (29 page)

“Oh, oh, don’t be cynical now,” said Judy, who picked up words as the children studied their lessons but not always the exact meaning. “Where’s the sinse av hating the poor day? Ye must just be looking this in the face. It’s Wild Dick and yer Uncle Horace over again … sure and Joe had always been more like Horace than his own dad. He knew if he tried to say good-bye Long Alec wud be trying to put him off. Now kape up yer pecker, Patsy, for the sake av yer mother. Siddy’s here to carry on and it’s the smart lad he is. His heart’s in the farm as Joe’s niver was, and he can aven drive the autymobile which the Good Man Above niver intinded innybody to do. Joe’s gone but he hasn’t taken Silver Bush wid him. Did ye be after seeing the liddle note he lift on Long Alec’s desk … no? There was a missage for ye in it … ‘tell Pat to be good to Snicklefritz’ … and there was one for me, too, be way av a joke. Joe always had a joke, the darlint. ‘Tell Judy to see that those blamed kittens in her picture are grown up be the time I come back.’ Sure and wasn’t he always laughing at thim same kittens.”

But Pat could not laugh again for a long time. She was the last one at Silver Bush to resign herself to the inevitable. Eventually she found herself doing it, with a sense of shame that it could be so. But the raw rainy winter was half over before she ceased to have sleepless nights when it stormed and began looking forward with pleasure to Joe’s letters, with bewitching foreign stamps on them which Cuddles proudly collected. They were full of the glamour of strange ports and distant lands, of the lure of adventure and white-winged ships, to which Pat thrilled in spite of herself. Somehow, although she hadn’t believed it possible, Silver Bush got on without him. Sid had stepped manfully into his place … in truth Sid was glad of an excuse to leave school … mother began to smile again, Frank Russell consoled Winnie, everybody ceased to listen for the gay whistle that had echoed so often through the twilights around the old barns. Even Snicklefritz stopped wearing a sorrowful cast of countenance and listening mournfully to every footstep on the stone walk.

Change … and worse than change, forgetfulness! It seemed dreadful to Pat that things could be forgotten. Why, they were just as bad as the family at Silverbridge that had one son in California and one in Australia, one in India and one in Petrograd and didn’t seem to mind it at all.

“Oh, oh, how cud we be living if we didn’t forget, me jewel?” said Judy.

“But Christmas was so terrible,” sighed Pat. “The first time we weren’t all here. I couldn’t help thinking of something I heard you say once … that once one of a family was away for Christmas it was likely they would never be all together again. I just couldn’t eat … and I didn’t see how any one else could.”

“But do ye be remimbering how ye slipped into the kitchen at bedtime and we had a faste on the bones?” said Judy slyly.

Everything passes. Winter was spring before they knew it. Everybody was looking forward with delight to Joe’s homecoming. March brought a saddening letter from him. He was not coming home in Pierce Morgan’s vessel. He had shipped for a voyage to China. Well, that was a disappointment … but meanwhile March was April, with sap astir and frogs tuning up the field of the Pool, and all the apple boughs that had fallen in winter storms to be gathered up and burned. Sid and Pat did that and they and Bets and Hilary had a glorious bonfire at night: and after it was over Pat couldn’t walk home with Bets because Sid did. Pat didn’t mind … she was too happy because Sid seemed to be having quite a crush on Bets this spring.

“He’s all out with May Binnie, Judy. Won’t it be lovely if he marries Bets some day?”

“Oh, oh, go aisy wid yer match-making,” said Judy sarcastically.

Besides, it was nice to sit with Hilary on Weeping Willy’s tombstone, in the glow from the smouldering embers in the orchard, and talk about things. Pat had learned to call him Hilary … she was even beginning to think of him as Hilary, though in moments of excitement the old name popped out. Judy never could bring her tongue to call him anything else. To her he would always be Jingle.

“The darlints,” she would say to Gentleman Tom, looking out of her kitchen window at them. “I do be wondering what’s afore thim in life. And how much longer is it they have to be young and light-hearted.”

Gentleman Tom would not tell her.

April was May, with a white fire of wild cherry in Happiness and young daffodils dancing all over the garden and little green cones shooting up in the iris beds. Every day Pat made some new discovery.

“One forgets all through the year how lovely spring really is and so it comes as a surprise every time,” she said.

And finally May was June, with a fairy wild plum hanging out in the Whispering Lane and purple waves of lilac breaking along the yard fence and Judy’s beds of white pansies all ablow … big white, velvety pansies … and everywhere all the different shades of green in the young spring woods on the hills.

“Spring is nicer at Silver Bush than anywhere else, Judy. Just look what a lovely iris … frosty white with a ripple of blue fringing every petal. It’s Joe’s iris … he planted it last spring … and now where is he?”

“On the other side av the world belike. Tell me, Patsy dear, do you be understanding how it is they don’t fall off down there? I’ve niver been able to get the hang of it into me mind somehow.”

Pat tried to explain but Judy still shook her grey bob in a maze of uncertainty.

“Oh, oh, it’s me own stupidity I’m knowing.”

“No, it’s my fault, Judy. I’ve a headache tonight.”

“Sure and it’s studying too hard ye are. That al-GEB-ra now, it’s mesilf do be thinking it isn’t fit for girls to be larning. Morning, noon and night at it as ye are.”

“I MUST study, Judy … the Entrance comes in another month and I MUST pass. Father and mother will feel dreadfully if I don’t. I’m not afraid of the mathematics; I’ve always been fond of arithmetic especially. Only … do you remember how dreadfully sorry I used to be for poor A and B and C because they had to work so hard. D appeared to have things easier.”

“Sure and I do remimber how pitiful ye used to look up and say, ‘Doesn’t A IVER have a holiday, Judy?’ It’s the grand marks ye’ll be making in iverything I’m ixpecting.”

“No, I’m such a dub in history, Judy. I can’t remember dates.”

“Dates, is it? And who care about dates? What difference does it make whin things happened as long as they did happen?”

“The examiners think it makes some difference, Judy. The only two dates I’m positively sure of are that Julius Caesar landed in Britain 55 B.C. and that the battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815. Outside of those everything is in a fog.”

“Me own Great-grandfather fell at the battle av Waterloo,” said Judy. “And left me Great-grandmother a widdy with nine small children. But what’s a widdy more or less in the world now after the Great War? Do ye be remimbering anything av it, Pat?”

“I was five when the armistice was signed. I remember the fireworks at the bridge … and, dimly, people talking of it before that. It seems like a dream. YOU never talk of it, Judy.”

“Sure and I was ashamed all through it bekase I had none of me own to go … and thankful that Siddy and Joe were children. Yer mother and yer Aunt Hazel and mesilf just knit socks for the soldiers and sat tight. It’s a time I don’t like to be thinking av, wid ivery one ranting at the Kaiser and yer Uncle Tom and yer dad moaning bekase they was too old to go, and us lying awake at night worrying for fear they’d find a loop-hole in spite av the Fam’ly Bible. And yet all av us a bit ashamed in our hearts that we didn’t have inny maple leaves in the windies. Not but what there was a bit av fun about it, wid all the girls that proud to be walking wid the boys in khaki and yer Uncle Tom singing a hymn av hate in the back yard at Swallyfield ivery morning afore breakfast. Sure and if I didn’t hear him shouting, ‘I’d rather die in the trenches than live under German rule,’ while I was milking I’d be running over to see if he’d got lumbago. He was that ixcited whin the election for the Union Government was on … sure and I did be fearing he’d burst a blood vessel. Whin he found yer Aunt Edith praying that it might go in he was rale indignant. ‘Elections ain’t won be prayers,’ sez he, and he marched her down to vote and her protesting all the way it was unwomanly. Ye niver saw such a tommyshaw. Sandy Taylor at the Bay Shore called his first b’y John Jellico Douglas Haig Lloyd George Bonar Law Kitchener. Ye shud av seen the look av the minister whin he was christened. And after it all the b’ys has just called him Slats all his life, him being so thin. They did be saying that Ralph Morgan married Jane Fisher just to escape inlisting. Sure and I’m no jidge av things matrimonial, Patsy, and niver pretinded to be but it did seem to me that I’d rather be facing the Kaiser and all his angels than marry a Fisher. Maybe Ralph come round to the same way av thinking. Whin we had the memorial service for the boys as had been killed he heaves a big sigh and sez to me, ‘Ah, Judy, THEY’RE AT PEACE,’ sez he. Oh, oh, it’s all over now and I’m hoping the world will have more sinse than iver to get in a mess like the same agin, more be token that the women can be voting.”

“Old Billy Smithson at Silverbridge doesn’t agree with you, Judy. He says women are fools and things will soon be in a worse mess than ever.”

“Oh, oh, and are ye thinking that possible now?” said Judy sarcastically. “Old Billy shudn’t be after jidging all women be his own. Well do I remimber the first time I was iver voting. I wore me blue silk and me high-heeled boots whin I wint to the polls and I was that ixcited I cud niver tell where I put the cross on me ballot. From what I culd ixplain to him yer dad always thought I’d put it in the wrong place. But innyway me man wint in so it was no great matter if I did. I’ve niver been voting since bekase it always happens I’ve been canning tomaties or some special job like that whiniver there’s an election.”

“Uncle Tom says every one ought to exercise her franchise … that it’s solemn duty.”

“Listen at that. Don’t it be sounding fine? But wud I be letting me tomaties or me baked damsons spoil bekase I had to traipse off to Silverbridge to be voting? Sure, Patsy dear, governmints may go in and governmints may go out but the jam pots av Silver Bush do have to be filled.”

Gentleman Tom Sits on the Stairs

Pat need not have worried about her history paper. She was not fated to write it that year. The headache she complained of had not disappeared by next morning and it was further complicated by a sore throat. Mother advised her to stay in bed and Pat agreed so meekly that Judy was alarmed. Early next morning she tiptoed anxiously in to see her.

“How’s the morning wid ye, me jewel?”

Pat looked at her with burning eyes above a flushed face.

“The dead clock out in the hall has begun ticking, Judy. Please stop it. Every tick hurts my head so.”

Judy ran out, roused Mrs. Gardiner, and telephoned for Dr. Bentley.

Pat had scarlet fever.

At first nobody was much alarmed. Joe and Winnie had had scarlet fever in childhood and had not been especially ill. But as the days wore on anxiety settled down over Silver Bush like an ever deepening cloud. Dr. Bentley looked grave and talked of “complications.” Mother, who had never had scarlet fever herself, was debarred from the sick room and Judy and Winnie waited on Pat. Judy would not hear of a trained nurse. She had never got over Miss Martin and her “Greta.” Nobody ever knew when she slept or if she slept at all. All night she sat by Pat’s bed in the bandy-legged Queen Anne chair, with its faded red damask seat, which Pat had rescued from the garret because she loved it … never dozing or nodding, ready with cooling drink and tender touch. Dr. Bentley afterwards spoke of her as “one of those born nurses who seem to know by instinct what it takes most women years of training to learn.”

When Pat became delirious she would do nothing and take nothing for anybody but Judy.

And Pat was very delirious. Delusion after delusion chased each other through her fevered brain. Weeping Willy had carried off the wooden button on the pantry door. “I’m sure God will think that so funny,” said Pat, vainly searching for it before God could find out. The cracks in the ceiling wouldn’t stay in place but crawled all over. She was on a lonely road, where the dark was waiting to pounce on her, calling to Jingle who was walking away unconcernedly with Emily-and-Lilian’s tombstone under his arm. She was at the bottom of the well where Wild Dick had thrown her. She was searching for the Secret Field which Dorothy had taken away. She heard Joe’s whistle but could never see Joe. Somebody had changed all the furniture in Silver Bush and Pat was vainly trying to get it back in place. The minister had said in church last Sunday that God held the world in the hollow of his hand. Suppose He got tired and dropped it, Judy?

“Sure and that’s one thing He’ll niver be doing, Patsy, rest ye aisy.”

The wind blew and would never stop … it must be so tired, Judy. Please make it stop. She was on a road at the head of a long procession of rolling cheeses … all the cheeses that had ever been made at Silver Bush … she HAD to keep ahead of them. Faces were looking in at the window … pressed against the pane … or leering in a row along the footboard of the bed like the Bay Shore ghost. Hideous faces, cruel, crafty, terrifying faces. Please, Judy, drive them away … please … please. She had long fierce arguments between Pat and Patricia. Time was running by her like the dark river of the hymn. She couldn’t catch up with it. If we stopped all the clocks couldn’t we stop time, Judy? Please! And who, oh, who would give poor Bold-and-Bad his meals?

“Sure and I will, Patsy darlint. Ye nadn’t be fretting over Bold-and-Bad. He’s living up to his name ivery minute of the day, slaping on the Poet’s bed and getting rolled up in me shate of fly-paper. Sure and ye niver saw a madder cat. It’s Gintleman Tom that’s doing the worrying. He do be setting on the landing ivery moment he can spare from his own lawful concerns.”

Then came two or three dreadful days when Pat’s life hung in the balance. Dr. Bentley shook his head. The family gave her up. But Judy never quailed. She hadn’t got the “sign” and as for Gentleman Tom he never budged off the landing, although sometimes he bristled and spat.