Pat of Silver Bush (40 page)

“Ye must av been hearing all me stories a million times over, Patsy. Though I do be thinking whin I saw the Joe Kellers to-day— he did be marrying his wife bekase a liddle girl he was swate on jilted him and she married him bekase Sam Miller av the Bay Shore jilted her. So what wud ye ixpect?”

“That they wouldn’t be very happy, Judy.”

“Oh, oh, and that’s where ye wud be wrong, me jewel. The marriage was be way av being a big success. That do be life, ye know.”

“Life IS queer, Judy. Winnie and her Frank now … she doesn’t seem to have a fear or doubt. I’d be frightened … I could never be SURE I loved any one ENOUGH to marry him. And then to-day … away down in my heart I was just SICK over Winnie going … and yet on the surface I was enjoying the excitement, too.”

“There do be always something to take the edge off things,” said Judy shrewdly. “That do be why nothing is iver as hard as ye think it’s going to be.”

Hilary came in after having driven some of the guests to the station and joined them. Bold-and-Bad, who had been sulking all day because nobody had admired him, lay down on the rug, gathered his feet and nose and tail into a snug circle, and forgave the world. Old Aunt Louisa, who had seen so much come and go, looked down on them from the wall. The white kittens still gambolled in immortal youth. King William still rode proudly across the Boyne. It was … rather nice to have a feeling of leisure and tranquillity again. And yet Pat was afraid that upstairs there was a dreadful stillness and silence after all the fuss was over that would pounce on her when she went to bed. She kept Hilary as long as she could and was so nice to him that when he said goodnight to her on the poplar-patterned doorstep he was bold enough to ask her to kiss him.

“Of course I’ll kiss you,” said Pat graciously. “I’ve been kissing so many friends to-day one more or less doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t want a friendly kiss,” said Hilary … and went off on that note.

“Oh, oh, and ye might av give him his kiss,” said Judy, who was always hearing what she had no business to. “He’ll be going away far enough all too soon, poor b’y.”

“I … I … was perfectly willing to kiss him,” cried Pat chokily. “And don’t … DON’T … talk of his going away. I can’t bear it tonight.”

Pat was very lonely when she went up to bed. The house seemed so strangely empty now that Winnie’s laugh had gone out of it. Here was the mirror that had reflected her face. That little vacant chair where she had always sat was very eloquent. Her little discarded slippers that could have danced by themselves the whole night through, so often had Winnie’s feet danced in them, comforted each other under the bed. They looked as if her feet had just stepped out of them. Her fragrance still lingered in the room. It was all terrible.

Pat leaned out of the window to drink in the cold, delicious air. The wind sounded eerie in the bushes. A dog was barking over at Swallowfield. Pat had rather thought that when she found herself alone she would cast herself on the bed in an abandonment of anguish. But there was still moonlight in the world … still owls in the silver bush. The old loyalties of home were still potent … it WOULD be nice to have a room of one’s very own.

A house always looks very pathetic and unfriended on a dawn after a festivity. Pat found happiness and comfort in restoring it all from cellar to garret. The presents were packed and sent to the Bay Shore. It WAS fun to read the account of the wedding in the papers.

“The bride before her marriage was Winifred Alma, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Alec Gardiner.” That hurt Pat. Wasn’t Winnie STILL their daughter? “The bridesmaids wore dresses of pink Georgette crępe with pink mohair hats and bouquets of sweet peas. Little Emmy Madison made a charming flower girl in a smocked frock of pink voile.” Fancy little Emmy having her name and dress in the papers! Miss Patricia Gardiner, sister of the bride, was charming in marigold voile. And oh, oh … “Miss Judy Plum wore blue silk with corsage of roses.” It must have been that rogue of a Jen Russell who had put that in. Judy was tremendously pleased. Her name right there with all the quality, bracketed with the groom’s aunt, the haughty Mrs. Ronald Russell in her black satin with mauve orchids! Though Judy was a bit dubious about “corsage.” It sounded … well … a liddle quare.

Then there were visits to the Bay Shore to help Winnie get settled in her big white house with its background of sapphire water, where there was a coloured, fir-scented garden, full of wind music and bee song, that dipped in terraces to the harbour shore and was always filled with the sound of “perilous seas forlorn.” Pat would have been quite happy if she could have forgotten that Hilary was going away.

The Chatelaine of Silver Bush

Pat was feeling older than she would probably feel at fifty. Life had all at once grown bare and chilly. Hilary was going to Toronto to take the five-year course in architecture.

His mother had arranged it, he told Pat briefly. Since that bitter day, when Doreen Garrison had finally turned her back on her Jingle-baby Hilary had never spoken of his mother. Pat knew he never heard from her except for some brief note containing a check for his college expenses.

Pat was glad for Hilary’s sake. He was on the way to realise all his dreams and ambitions. But on her own account she was very bleak. Nobody to prowl with … nobody to tell things to … it was always so easy to tell things to Hilary. Nobody to joke with.

“We’ve always laughed at the same things, Judy.”

“Oh, oh, and that’s why ye do be such good frinds, Patsy. It’s the rale test. It’s sorry I am mesilf that Jingle is going. A fine gintleman he’s got to be, that tall and straight standing. And ye tell me he’s to be an arkytict. Oh, oh, I’m hoping he won’t be like the one I heard of in ould Ireland. He did be buying the plan av a fine house from the Bad Man Below. And the price he had to be paying was his swateheart’s soul. ‘Twas a grand house I’m telling ye but there was few iver wanted to live in it.”

“I don’t think Hilary will spend souls buying plans from the devil,” said Pat, with a forlorn smile. “He can design plenty himself. But, Judy, it seems to me I just can’t bear it. Bets dead … Winnie gone … and now Hilary.”

“It’s mesilf that’s noticed how things do be going in threes like that, Patsy. It do be likely nothing but good’ll happen to ye for a long time now.”

“But life will be so … so empty, Judy.”

“He’ll be coming back some fine day.”

Pat shook her head. Talk of Hilary’s return was empty and meaningless. She knew he would never come back, unless for a vacation month or two. Their days of happy comradeship were over … their hours in Happiness … their rambles by field and shore. Childhood was gone. The “first fine rapture” of youth was gone.

“What’s to become av McGinty? Oh, oh, there’ll be one poor broken-hearted liddle dog.”

“Hilary is giving McGinty to me. I know he WILL be broken-hearted. But if love can help him …”

Pat choked. She was seeing McGinty’s eyes when the morrow brought no Hilary.

“Oh, oh, but I’m glad to hear that. I’m not liking a dogless house. Cats do be int’resting craturs, as Cuddles says, but there’s SOMETHING about a dog, now. Sure and there’ll be some fun saving bones again.”

Pat knew Hilary was waiting for her in Happiness. They had agreed to have their parting tryst there, before Hilary left to catch the night train. Slowly she went to keep it. The air was full of colour; there was just the faintest hint of frost in its sweet mildness; the evening sunshine was exceedingly mellow on grey old barns; as she went over Jordan she noticed the two dark, remote, pointed firs among the golden maples in the corner of the field. Hilary loved those firs. He said they were the twin spires of some mystic cathedral of sunset.

Hilary was waiting in Happiness, sitting on an old mossy stone by the spring that the years had never touched. Beside him sat a gay little dog with a hint of wistfulness behind his gaiety. McGinty felt something coming to him … something formless and chill. But as long as he was with his dear master what did it matter?

Hilary drew a quick breath: his eyes lit up slowly from within as was their way. She was coming to him over the field … a slip of a girl in a gold and orange sweater, the autumnal sunshine burnishing her dark-brown hair and glinting in her amber eyes; her face glowing with warm, ripe, KISSABLE tints, her body like a young sapling never to be broken, however it might bend.

“Trusty, dusky, vivid, true, With eyes of gold and bramble dew.”

Why couldn’t he have said that instead of Stevenson? It was truer of Pat than it could be of anybody else. Why couldn’t he say to her all the burning and eloquent things he thought of in the night but could never utter the next day?

Pat sat down on the stone beside Hilary. They talked only a little and that in rather jerky sentences.

“I’ll never come to Happiness again,” said Pat.

“Why not? I’d like to think of you sitting here sometimes … with McGinty.”

“Poor little dorglums!” Pat absently caressed McGinty’s willing head with one of her slender brown hands … her DEAR hands, thought Hilary. “No, I couldn’t bear to come here without you, Hilary. We’ve been here so often … we’ve been chums for so many years.”

“Can’t we … can’t we … sometime … be more than chums, Pat?” blurted Hilary desperately.

Pat instantly became just a little aloof, although her face had flushed to a sudden warm rose. Hilary was such a nice friend … chum … brother … but never a lover. Pat was very positive on that point.

“We’ve always been wonderful friends, Hilary. Don’t spoil it now. Why, we’ve been chums ever since that night you saved me from heaven knows what on the Line road. Ten years.”

“They’ve been very good years.” Hilary seemed to have taken his repulse more philosophically than she had feared. “What will the years to come be, I wonder?”

“They’ll be marvellous years for you, Hilary. You’ll succeed … you’ll reach the top. And then all your old friends here … ‘specially little old maid Pat of Silver Bush, will brag about having once known you.”

“I WILL succeed,” Hilary set his teeth together. “With your … friendship … I can do anything. I want to tell you … if I can … what your friendship and the life I’ve shared with you at Silver Bush have meant to me. It’s kept me from growing up hateful and cynical. You’ve all been so sure that life is good that I’ve never been able to disbelieve it … never will be able to. You’ll write me often, won’t you, Pat? It will be … lonely … at first. I don’t know a soul in Toronto.”

“Of course I will. And don’t forget, Hilary,” … Pat laughed teasingly … “you’re to build a house for me some day. I’ll live in it when Sid gets married and turns me out of Silver Bush. And you’ll come to see me in it … I’ll be a nice old lady with silver hair … and I’ll give you a cup of tea out of Grandmother Selby’s pot … and we’ll talk over our lives and … and … pretend it’s all been a dream … and that we’re just Pat and Jingle home once more.”

“Wherever YOU are, Pat, will always be home to me.”

There he went again. If it were not that they must presently say a long good-bye she would be angry with him. But she couldn’t be angry tonight. He would soon forget this nonsense. Hundreds of beautiful clever girls in Toronto. But they would always be friends … the very best of friends … she couldn’t imagine NOT being friends with Hilary.

They went back, following the curves of Jordan, talking of old days. It was lovely to remember things together. There were asters along their way. Hilary wanted to pick a rarely dark-blue cluster for her but she would not let him.

“No. Don’t pick them because they would fade and that would be my last memory of them. Let’s just leave them here and we can always remember them as we saw them together … beautiful and unfaded.”

That was the real Pat touch. Hilary remembered that she had never really liked to pick flowers. He never forgot her, as she stood there gloating over them, herself, to him, as beautiful and mysterious as the autumn twilight. Dear … desirable!

The brook was prattling away and crooning to itself. Tall firs, that had been mere saplings when they first explored it, stretched their protecting arms over it: the mosses were green on its banks. In its ripple and murmur the voices of their childhood sounded … all the long-unheard notes were there, blended with the sweet sorrow inseparable from bygones. Hilary at twenty and Pat at eighteen felt themselves to be aged travellers wistfully recalling youth.

They paused on the stone bridge across Jordan. Pat held out her hands. She wanted to cry on his shoulder and knew she must not. If she did … he would take her in his arms. That would be nice … but …

She wanted to tell him that she loved him dearly. She did love him so much … better than Joe now … almost better than Sidney. She wanted to kiss him … but Hilary did not want friendly kisses. Yet they COULDN’T part like this.

“I’m not going to say good-bye half a dozen times before I’m really gone … like old Aunty Sarah Gordon,” said Hilary, pretending to laugh. “Good-bye, Pat.”

But he seemed to have forgotten to let go her hands. This simply couldn’t be endured any longer.

“Good-bye, Jingle.” The old name came impulsively to her lips. She pulled her hands away from his warm, pleasant grip and ran up the path against the moon.

Hilary stood and looked after her. McGinty huddled shivering against his leg. McGinty knew things were all wrong somehow.

Hilary was thinking of the house he would build for Pat. He could see it … he could almost see its lights gleaming through the dusk of some land “beyond the hills and far away.” More beautiful than even Silver Bush. For a moment he almost hated Silver Bush. It was the only rival he feared. Then he set his teeth.

“I’ll have you yet, Pat.”

Pat stumbled up the path and across the field blindly and brought up against the garden gate. Then the denied tears came. She simply couldn’t bear it. Everything gone! Who COULD bear it?

Rays of the rising moon touched the Hill of the Mist with delicate silver fingers. The night was a blue pearl seaward. The low continual thunder of the gulf tides in the harbour bar filled the air. The dreaming peace of the orchard seemed to beckon. The old barns, that must be alive with the ghosts of all the kittens that had frolicked in them, were huddled together companionably. Silver Bush was full of friendly lights. Pat brushed the tears from her eyes and looked at it.