Pat of Silver Bush (12 page)

“Did you ever see her, Judy?”

“Niver … and no one else round here. Jim Gordon married her out av Novy Scotia and they lived there. He did be dying just after the baby was born and his lady widow didn’t be wearing her weeds long. She married her second whin this Jingle-lad was no more’n two and wint away to foreign parts and left the baby wid his uncle Larry. Jim Gordon was as nice a feller as iver stepped, aven if he did be always trying to make soup in a sieve. I’m thinking he’d turn over in his grave if he knew that Larry had the bringing-up av his b’y. Larry do be taking after his mother. His father was the gay lad wid a flattering tongue. He cudn’t spake widout paying ye a compliment. But he was whispered to death.”

“WHISPERED to death, Judy?”

“I’m telling ye. He bruk a poor girl’s heart and she died. But her voice was always at his ear after that … she whispered him to death for all av his fine new bride. Ye shud av seen him in church wid his head hanging down, hearing something that all the praching and singing cudn’t drown. Oh, oh, ‘tis an ould story now and better forgotten. There do be few fam’lies that haven’t a skiliton in some av their closets. There was Solomon Gardiner over at South Glen … the man who swore at God.”

“What happened to him?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Just that. Nothing iver happened to him agin. The Good Man Above just left him alone. Oh, oh, but it was hard on the family. Come and hilp me wid the turkeys now. But what’s troubling ye, darlint?”

“I’m afraid, Judy … perhaps Jingle has a flattering tongue, too. He said … he said …”

“Out wid it.”

“He said I had the prettiest eyes he ever saw.”

Judy chuckled.

“Sure and there’s no great flattery in that. And to think av him that shy at dinner ye wud be thinking he cudn’t say bo to a goose. There’s a bit av Irish in the Gordons be token of their old lady grandmother.”

“Do YOU think I have pretty eyes, Judy?” It was the first time Pat had ever thought about her eyes.

“Ye have the Selby eyes and Winnie has the Gardiner eyes and they’ll both pass wid a shove. But niver be minding yer eyes for minny a year yet and don’t be belaving all the b’ys say to ye, me jewel. Remimber compliments cost thim nothing.”

When Judy’s fine flock of white turkeys had been shooed off the graveyard fence and into their house Sid had arrived home in Uncle Brian’s car. He had to be told about Jingle but took it quite easily … to Pat’s relief and something that was not relief. She almost wished he had taken it a little harder. Didn’t he CARE?

“He needs a friend so much,” she explained. “I’ve got three brothers now. But of course I’ll always love you best, Siddy.”

“You’d better, old girl,” said Sid. “If you don’t I’ll like May Binnie better’n you.”

“Of course I couldn’t love anybody better than my own family,” said Pat, still wistfully.

But Sid ran in to coax a snack out of Judy Plum. He was in high spirits for he had just discovered a new wart on his left hand. That meant he was ahead of Sam Binnie at last. They had been ties for quite a time.

Pat crept a bit lonesomely up the back stairs and sat down by the round window. The little pearly pool over in the field was mirroring black spruce trees against a red sunset. For a moment the windows of the Long Lonely House were ablaze … then went sorrowfully out. There was not even a kitten to be seen in the yard. Oh, if Sid had just been a LITTLE jealous of Jingle! She knew how SHE would feel if he had made a chum of any girl but her. Suppose he should ever like May Binnie better … hateful May Binnie with her bold black eyes. For a moment she almost hated herself for liking Jingle.

Then she thought of Happiness and the water laughing down the stones in that secret place.

“Jingle likes my eyes,” thought Pat. “Friends ARE nice.”

Black Magic

It was in the last week of October that McGinty disappeared. Pat was just as heartbroken as Jingle. It seemed now that Jingle and McGinty had been always part of her life … as if there could never have been a time when they did not come over Jordan every Saturday afternoon or slip into Judy’s kitchen in the chill “dims” for an evening of fun and laughter. To Jingle, who had never known a real home, these evenings were wonderful … little glimpses into another world.

The only fly in Pat’s ointment was that Sid and Jingle didn’t hit it off very well. Not that they disliked each other; they simply did not speak the same language. Had they been older they might have said they bored each other. Sid thought Jingle a queer, moony fellow with his dream houses and his dark glasses and his ragged clothes, and said so. Jingle thought Sid had a bit too high an opinion of himself, even for a Gardiner of Silver Bush, and did not say so. Thus it came about that Pat and Sid played and prowled together after school, but Saturday afternoons, when Sid wanted to be off with Joe at the farm work, she gave to Jingle. For the most part they spent them in Happiness and Jingle built no end of houses and had a new idea every week for the house he was going to build for Pat. Pat was interested in it although of course she would never live anywhere but at Silver Bush. They explored woodland and barrens and stream but Pat never took Jingle to the Secret Field. THAT was her and Sid’s secret just as Happiness was hers and Jingle’s. Pat hugged herself in delight. Secrets were such lovely things. She used to sit in church and pity the people who didn’t know anything about the Secret Field and Happiness.

McGinty went everywhere with them and was the happiest little dog in the world. And then … there was no McGinty.

Pat found Jingle in Happiness one afternoon, face downwards amid the frosted ferns, sobbing as if his heart would break. Pat herself had been feeling a good deal like crying. For one thing, that hateful May Binnie had given Sid an apple in school the day before … a wonderful apple with Sid’s initials and her own … such cheek! … in pale green on its red side. May had pasted the letters over the apple weeks before and this was the result. Sid was quite tickled over it but Pat would have hurled the apple into the stove if she had dared. Sid put it on the dining-room mantel and she had to look at it during every meal. Then, too, Sid had been cross with her that morning because it had rained the day before.

“You prayed for rain Thursday night … I heard you,” he reproached her. “And you KNEW I wanted Friday to be fine.”

“No, I didn’t, Siddy,” wailed Pat. “I heard dad saying the springs were so low … and the one in Hap … the one that Jordan comes from is. That was why I prayed for rain. I’m sorry, Siddy.”

“Don’t call me Siddy,” retorted Sid, who seemed full of grievances just then. “You know I hate it.”

“I won’t, ever again,” promised Pat. “Please don’t be mad at me, Siddy … Sid, I mean. I just can’t bear it.”

“Well, don’t be a baby then. You’re worse than Cuddles,” said Sid. But he gave her a careless hug and Pat was partially comforted. Only partially. She set off for Happiness rather dolefully but the sight of Jingle’s distress drove all thoughts of her own troubles from her mind.

“Oh, Jingle, what’s the matter?”

“McGinty’s gone,” said Jingle, sitting up.

“Gone?”

“Gone … or lost. He went with me to the store at Silverbridge last night and he … he disappeared. I couldn’t find him anywhere. Oh, Pat!”

Jingle’s head went down again. He didn’t care who saw him cry. Pat mingled her tears with his but assured him that McGinty would be found … must be found.

Followed a terrible week. No trace of McGinty could be discovered. Judy was of opinion that the dog had been stolen. Jingle put up a notice in the stores offering a reward of twenty-five cents … all he had in the world … for the recovery of McGinty. Pat wanted to make it forty-five cents … she had a dime and was sure she could borrow another from Judy. But Jingle wouldn’t let her. Pat prayed every bedtime that McGinty might be found and sat up in the middle of the night to pray again.

“Dear God, please bring McGinty back to Jingle. PLEASE, dear God. You know he’s all Jingle’s got with his mother so far away.”

And everything was in vain. There was no trace of McGinty. Jingle went home every night with no little golden-brown comrade running through the yard to meet him. He could not sleep, picturing a little lost dog alone in the world on a bleak autumn night. Where was McGinty? Was he cold and lonely? Maybe he wasn’t getting enough … or anything … to eat.

“Judy, can’t you do something?” begged Pat desperately. “You’ve always said there was a bit of a witch in you. You said once your grandmother could turn herself into a cat whenever she wanted to. Can’t you find McGinty?”

Judy—who had, however, decided that something must be done before Pat worried herself to death … shook her head.

“I’ve been trying, me jewel, but I know whin I’m bate. If I had me grandmother’s magic book I might manage it. But there it is. My advice to ye is to go and see Mary Ann McClenahan on the Silverbridge road. She’s a witch in good standing I belave, though I’m telling the world she do be a bit hefty for a broomstick. If she can’t hilp ye I don’t know av inny that can.”

Pat had been compelled to give up believing in fairies but she still had an open mind towards witches. They had certainly existed once. The Bible said so. And you couldn’t get away from the fact that Judy’s grandmother had been one.

“Are you sure Mary Ann McClenahan is a witch, Judy?”

“Oh, oh, she always knows what ye do be thinking av. That shows she’s a witch.”

Pat ran to tell Jingle. She found him standing on the stone bridge over Jordan, scowling viciously at the sky and shaking his fist at it.

“Jingle … you’re not … praying that way?”

“No, I was just telling God what I thought of the whole business,” said Jingle despairingly.

But he agreed to go the next evening to Mary Ann McClenahan’s. They asked Sid to go, too … the more the safer … but Sid was training a young owl he had caught in the silver bush and declined to have any truck with witches. They started off staunchly, although Joe, going off to plough the Mince Pie field, with a delightful jingle of chains about his horses, solemnly warned them to watch out.

“Old Mary Ann signed her name in the devil’s book you know. I’D jump out of my skin if she looked cross-wise at me.”

Pat was not easily frightened and remained in her skin. If God, seemingly, wouldn’t pay any attention to your desperate little prayers could you be blamed if you resorted to a witch?

“Mind ye’re home afore dark,” cautioned Judy. “Sure and ‘tis Hollow Eve this blessed night and all the dead folks will be walking. Ye just do be telling Mary Ann yer story straight out and do as she bids ye.”

Jingle and Pat went down the lane where the wind blew the shadows of bare birches about and waves of dead leaves lay along under the spruce hedges. The late autumn sunshine flowed goldenly about them. The Hill of the Mist wore a faint purple scarf. Pat had on her new scarlet tam and was pleasantly conscious of it, amid all her anxieties about McGinty. Jingle strode along, his hands in his ragged pockets, and his still raggeder trousers flapping about his bare legs. Pat had never been out on the main road with him in broad daylight before. In Happiness and along the kinks of Jordan it did not matter how he was dressed. But here … well, she hoped none of the Binnies would be abroad, that was all.

Mrs. McClenahan’s little, whitewashed house with its bright blue door was a good two miles from Silver Bush, along the Silverbridge road. A huge willow, from which a few forlorn, pale-yellow leaves were fluttering down on the grey roof, overshadowed it, and there was a quaint little dormer window over the door.

“Oh, Pat, look at that window,” whispered Jingle, forgetting even McGinty in his momentary ecstasy. “I never saw such a lovely window. I’ll put one like that in YOUR house.”

The window might be all right but the paling was very ragged and the yard it enclosed was a jungle of burdocks. Pat reflected that being a witch didn’t seem like a very profitable business after all. She thought shrewdly that if SHE had ever signed her name in the devil’s book she would have made a better bargain than that.

Jingle knocked on the blue door. Presently steps sounded inside. A prickly sensation went over Pat. Perhaps after all it was not right to tamper with the powers of darkness. Then the door opened and Mary Ann McClenahan stood on the threshold, looking down at them out of tiny black eyes, surrounded by cushions of fat. Her untidy hair was black too, coal-black, although she must be as old as Judy. Altogether she looked much too plump and jolly for a witch and Pat’s terror passed away.

“Now who may ye be and what might ye be wanting wid me,” said Mrs. McClenahan with an accent three times as strong as Judy’s.

Pat had the Selby trick of never wasting words or breath or time.

“Hilary Gordon here has lost his dog and Judy said if we came to you perhaps you could find it for him. That is, if you really are a witch. Are you?”

Mary Ann McClenahan’s look at once grew secretive and mysterious.

“Whisht, child … don’t be talking av witches in the open daylight like this. Little ye know what might happen. And finding a lost cratur isn’t something to be done on a dure-step. Come inside … and at that ye’d better come up to the loft where I can go on wid me waving. I’m waving a tablecloth for the fairies up there. All the witches in P. E. Island promised to do one apiece for thim. The poor liddle shiftless craturs left all ther tablecloths out in the frost last Tuesday night and ‘twas the ruination av thim.”

They went up the narrow stairs to a cluttered loft where Mrs. McClenahan’s loom stood by the window that had caught Jingle’s eye. On the sill a perfectly clean black cat was licking himself all over to make himself cleaner. His big, yellow, black-rimmed eyes shone rather uncannily in the gloom of the loft. In spite of his being a witch’s cat Pat liked the look of him. What she would have felt like had she known that he was her lost and deplored Sunday, given to Mary Ann McClenahan by Judy a year before I cannot tell you. Luckily Sunday had grown out of all recognition.

Mrs. McClenahan pushed a stool and a rickety chair towards the children and went back to her weaving.