Pat of Silver Bush (9 page)

“Well, I do be thinking it wud be a dull world if nobody iver did anything he oughtn’t. What wud we find to talk about?” asked Judy unanswerably. “Innyway, it’s to bed ye must be going. And say a prayer for all poor ghosts. If Wild Dick or Waping Willy or ather or both av thim are on the fence tonight ‘tis a wet time they’ll be having av it.”

“Maybe I won’t be so lonesome if I say my prayers twice,” thought Pat. She said them twice and even contrived to pray for her new uncle. Perhaps as a reward for this she fell asleep instantly. Once in the night she wakened and a flood of desolation poured over her. But in the darkness she heard a melodious purring and felt the beautiful touch of a velvet cat. Pat swallowed hard. The rain was still sobbing around the eaves. Aunt Hazel was gone. But Silver Bush held her in its heart. To lie in this dear house, sheltered from the storm, with Thursday purring under her hand … apples to be picked tomorrow … oh, life to beckon once more. Pat fell asleep comforted.

A Day to Spend

Again it was September at Silver Bush … a whole year since Aunt Hazel was married: and now it seemed to Pat that Aunt Hazel had always been married. She and Uncle Bob often came “home” for a visit and Pat was very fond of Uncle Bob now, and even thought his flying jibs were nice. The last time, too, Aunt Hazel had had a darling, tiny baby, with amber-brown eyes like Pat’s own. Cuddles wasn’t a baby any longer. She was toddling round on her own chubby legs and was really a sister to be proud of. She had been through all her teething at eleven months. It was beautiful to watch her waking up and beautiful to bend over her while she was asleep. She seemed to know you were there and would smile delightedly. A spirit of her own, too. When she was eight months old she had bitten Uncle Tom when he poked a finger into her mouth to find out if she had any teeth. He found out.

And now had come the invitation for Pat to spend a Saturday at the Bay Shore farm, with Great-aunt Frances Selby and Great-aunt Honor Atkins … not to mention “Cousin” Dan Gowdy and a still greater aunt, who was mother’s great-aunt. Pat’s head was usually dizzy when she got this far and small wonder, as Judy would say.

Pat loved the sound of “a day to spend.” It sounded so gloriously lavish to “spend” a whole day, letting its moments slip one by one through your fingers like beads of gold.

But she was not enthusiastic over spending it at the Bay Shore. When she and Sid had been very small they had called the Bay Shore the Don’t-touch-it House guiltily, to themselves. Everybody was so old there. Two years ago, when she had been there with mother, she remembered how Aunt Frances frowned because when they were walking in the orchard, she, Pat, had picked a lovely, juicy, red plum from a laden tree. And Aunt Honor, a tall lady with snow-white hair and eyes as black as her dress, had asked her to repeat some Bible verses and had been coldly astonished when Pat made mistakes in them. The great-aunts always asked you to repeat Bible verses … so said Winnie and Joe who had been there often … and you never could tell what they would give when you got through … a dime or a cooky or a tap on the head.

But to go ALONE to the Bay Shore! Sidney had been asked, too, but Sidney had gone to visit Uncle Brian’s while his teeth were attended to. Perhaps it was just as well because Sidney was not in high favour at the Bay Shore, having fallen asleep at the supper table and tumbled ingloriously off his chair to the floor, with an heirloom goblet in his hand, the last time he was there.

Pat talked it over with Judy Friday evening, sitting on the sandstone steps at the kitchen door and working her sums to be all ready for Monday. Pat was a year older and an inch taller, by the marks Judy kept on the old pantry door where she measured every child on its birthday. She was well on in subtraction and Judy was helping her. Judy could add and subtract. When her head was clear she could multiply. Division she never attempted.

The kitchen behind them was full of the spicy smell of Judy’s kettle of pickles. Gentleman Tom was sitting on the well platform, keeping an eye on Snicklefritz, who was dozing on the cellar door, keeping an eye on Gentleman Tom. In the corner of the yard was a splendid pile of cut hardwood which Pat and Sid had stacked neatly up in the summer evenings after school. Pat gloated over it. It was so prophetic of cosy, cheerful winter evenings when the wind would growl and snarl because it couldn’t get into Silver Bush. Pat would have been perfectly happy if it had not been for the morrow’s visit.

“The aunts are so … so stately,” she confided to Judy. She would never have dared criticise them to mother who had been a Selby and was very proud of her people.

“The grandmother av thim was a Chidlaw,” said Judy as if that explained everything. “I’m not saying but they’re a bit grim but they’ve had a tarrible lot av funerals at the Bay Shore. Yer Aunt Frances lost her man afore she married him and yer Aunt Honor lost hers after she married him and they’ve niver settled which got the worst av it. They’re a bit near, too, it must be confessed, and thim wid lashings of money. But they do be rale kind at heart and they think a lot av all yer mother’s children.”

“I don’t mind Aunt Frances or Aunt Honor, but I’m a LITTLE afraid of Great-great-aunt Hannah and Cousin Dan,” confessed Pat.

“Oh, oh, ye nadn’t be. Maybe ye’ll not be seeing the ould leddy at all. She hasn’t left her own room for sixteen years and she’s ninety-three be the clock, so she is, and there don’t be minny seeing her. And ould Danny is harmless. He fell aslape at the top av the stairs and rolled down thim whin he was a lad. He was niver the same agin. But some do be saying he saw the ghost.”

“Oh, Judy, is there a ghost at Bay Shore?”

“Not now. But long ago there was. Oh, oh, they were tarrible ashamed av it.”

“Why?”

“Ye know they thought it was kind av a disgraceful thing to have a ghost in the house. Some folks do be thinking it an honour but there ye are. I’m not denying the Bay Shore ghost was a troublesome cratur. Sure and he was a nice, frindly, sociable ghost and hadn’t any rale dog-sense about the proper time for appearing. He was a bit lonesome it wud seem. He wud sit round on the footboards av their beds and look at thim mournful like, as if to say, ‘Why the divil won’t ye throw a civil word to a felly?’ And whin company come and they were all enjying thimselves they’d hear a dape sigh and there me fine ghost was. It was be way av being tarrible monotonous after a while. But the ghost was niver seen agin after yer great-great-uncle died and yer Great-aunt Honor tuk to running things. I’m thinking she was a bit too near, aven for a ghost, that one. So ye nadn’t be afraid av seeing him but ye’d better not be looking too close at the vase that makes the faces.”

“A vase … that makes faces!”

“Sure, me jewel. It’s on the parlour mantel and it made a face once at Sarah Jenkins as was hired there whin she was dusting it. She was nather to hold nor bind wid fright.”

This was delightful. But after all, Pat thought Judy was a little too contemptuous of the Bay Shore people.

“Their furniture is very grand, Judy.”

“Grand, is it?” Judy knew very well she had been snubbed. “Oh, oh, ye can’t be telling ME innything about grandeur. Didn’t I work in Castle McDermott whin I was a slip av a girleen? Grandeur, is it? Lace and sating bed-quilts, I’m telling ye. And a white marble staircase wid a golden bannister. Dinner sets av solid gold and gold vases full av champagne. And thiry servants if there was one. Sure and they kipt servants to wait on the other servants there. The ould lord wud pass round plates wid gold sovereigns at the Christmas dinner and hilp yerself. Oh, oh, what’s yer Bay Shore farm to that, I’m asking. And now just rin over thim verses ye larnt last Sunday, in case yer Aunt Honor wants ye to say some.”

“I can say them without a mistake to you, Judy. But it will be so different with Aunt Honor.”

“Sure and ye’d better just shut yer eyes and purtind she’s a cabbage-head, darlint. Though old Jed Cattermole didn’t be thinking her that whin she put him in his place at the revival meetings.”

“What did she do, Judy?”

“Do, is it? I’m telling ye. Old Jed thought he was extry cliver bekase he didn’t belave in God. Just be way av showing off one night he wint to one av the revival matings ould Mr. Campbell was having whin he was minister at South Glen. And after all the tistimonies me bould Jed gets up and sez, sez he, ‘I’m not belaving there’s inny God but if there is He do be a cruel, unrasonable ould tyrant. And now,’ sez Jed, swelling up all over wid consate, like an ould tom turkey, ‘if there is a God why doesn’t he strike me dead for what I’ve said. I dare Him to do it,’ sez ould Jed, feeling bigger than iver. Iverybody was so shocked ye cud have heard a pin fall. And yer Aunt Honor turns round and sez she, cool-like, ‘Do you really think ye’re av that much importance to God, Jedediah Cattermole?’ Iverybody laughed. Did ye iver be seeing one av thim big rid balloons whin ye’ve stuck a pin in it? Oh, oh, that was me proud Jed. He was niver the same agin. Now yer sums are done and me pickles are done, so we’ll just have a bit av fun roasting some crab apples wid cloves stuck in thim for scint.”

“I wish Sid was here,” sighed Pat. “He does love clove apples so. Will he be back Sunday night, do you think, Judy? I CAN’T live another week without him.”

“Ye set yer heart too much on Siddy, me jewel. What’ll ye be after doing whin ye grow up and have to part?”

“Oh, that’ll never be, Judy. Sid and I are never going to part. We’ll neither of us marry but just live on here at Silver Bush and take care of everything. We have it all settled.”

Judy sighed.

“I wish ye wudn’t be so set on him. Why don’t ye be after getting yersilf a chum in school like the other liddle girls? Winnie has lashings av thim.”

“I don’t want anybody but Sid. The girls in school are nice but I don’t love any of them. I don’t WANT to love any one or anything but my own family and Silver Bush.”

Since Pat had to go to the Bay Shore farm she was glad it was this particular Saturday because father was going to replace the old board fence around the orchard with a new one. Pat hated to see the old fence torn down. It was covered with such pretty lichens, and vines had grown over its posts and there was a wave of caraway all along it as high as your waist.

Judy had a reason for being glad, too. The ukase had gone forth that the big poplar in the corner of the yard must be cut down because its core was rotten and the next wind might send it crashing down on the hen-house. Judy had plotted with Long Alec to cut it down the day Pat was away for she knew every blow of the axe would go to the darlint’s heart.

Joe ran Pat down to the Bay Shore in the car. She bent from it as it whirled out of the lane to wave good-bye to Silver Bush. Cuddles’ dear little rompers on the line behind the house were plumped out with wind and looked comically like three small Cuddles swinging from the line. Pat sighed and then resolved to make the best of things. The day was lovely, full of blue, sweet autumn hazes. The road to the Bay Shore was mostly down hill, running for part of the way through spruce “barrens,” its banks edged with ferns, sweet-smelling bay bushes, and clusters of scarlet pigeon-berries. There was a blue, waiting sea at the end and an old grey house fronting the sunset, so close to the purring waves that in storms their spray dashed over its very doorstep … a wise old house that knew many things, as Pat always felt. Mother’s old home and therefore to be loved, whether one could love the people in it or not.

It still made quite a sensation at Bay Shore when any one arrived in a car. The aunts came out and gave a prim welcome and Cousin Dan waved from a near field where he was turning over the sod into beautiful red furrows, so even and smooth. Cousin Dan was very proud of his ploughing.

Joe whirled away, leaving Pat to endure her ordeal of welcome and examination. The great-aunts were as stiff as the starched white petticoats that were still worn at Bay Shore. To tell truth, the great-aunts were really frightfully at a loss what to say to this long-legged, sunburned child whom they thought it a family duty to invite to Bay Shore once in so long. Then Pat was taken up to the Great-great’s room for a few minutes. She went reluctantly. Great-great-aunt Hannah was so mysteriously old … a tiny, shrunken, wrinkled creature peering at her out of a mound of quilts in a huge, curtained bed.

“So this is Mary’s little girl,” said a piping voice.

“No. I am Patricia Gardiner,” said Pat, who hated to be called anybody’s little girl, even mother’s.

Great-great-aunt Hannah put a claw-like hand on Pat’s arm and drew her close to the bed, peering at her with old, old blue eyes, so old that sight had come back to them.

“Nae beauty … nae beauty,” she muttered.

“She may grow up better-looking than you expect,” said Aunt Frances, as one determinedly looking on the bright side. “She is terribly sunburned now.”

Pat’s little brown face, with its fine satiny skin, flushed mutinously. She did not care if she were “no beauty” but she disliked being criticised to her face like this. Judy would have said it wasn’t manners. And then when they went downstairs Aunt Honor said in a tone of horror,

“There’s a rip in your dress, child.”

Pat wished they wouldn’t call her “child.” She would have loved to stick her tongue out at Aunt Honor but that wouldn’t be manners either. She stood very stiff while Aunt Honor brought needle and thread and sewed it up.

“Of course Mary can’t attend to everything and Judy Plum wouldn’t care if they were all in rags,” said Aunt Frances condoningly.

“Judy WOULD care,” cried Pat. “She’s VERY particular about our clothes and our manners. That shoulder ripped on the way over. So there.”

In spite of this rather unpropitious beginning the day was not so bad. Pat said her verses correctly and Aunt Honor gave her a cooky … and watched her eat it. Pat was in agonies of thirst but was too shy to ask for a glass of water. When dinner time came, however, there was plenty of milk … Judy would have said “skim” milk. But it was served in a lovely old gold-green glass pitcher that made the skimmiest of milk look like Jersey cream. The table was something of the leanest, according to Silver Bush standards. Pat’s portion of the viands was none too lavish, but she ate it off a plate with a coloured border of autumn leaves … one of the famous Selby plates, a hundred years old. Pat felt honoured and tried not to feel hungry. For dessert she had three of the tabooed red plums.