Pat of Silver Bush Read online

  Pat had mislaid her fountain pen and the family ink-bottle was dry so she hunted up her very prettiest pencil to answer it, the one Sid had given her on her birthday, all gold and blue, with a big, silk, flame-colored tassel. Judy need not have worried over what Pat would write back. Her letter was really full of a dainty mockery that made the devoted Harris more “unalterably hers,” than ever.

  And, having written her letter, she wrapped the pencil in tissue paper and put it away in her glory box, vowing solemnly that it should never be used to write anything else…unless another letter to Harris. And she lay awake for hours with Harris’ letter under her pillow…she did not want to waste this happy night sleeping.

  “But what,” said Judy very slyly one day, “does Jingle be thinking av all this?”

  Pat winced. Hilary’s attitude had been a secret thorn in her side all winter. She knew he hated Harris by the fact that he always was dourly silent when Harris was about. One evening when Harris had been bragging a bit what several noted relatives of his had done…Judy could have told you all the Hynes bragged…Hilary had said quite nastily,

  “But what are you going to do?”

  Harris had been fine. He had just flung up his splendid crest and laughed kindly at Hilary: and when Hilary had turned away Harris had whispered to Pat,

  “I’m going to win the most wonderful girl in P. E. Island…something no other Hynes has ever done.”

  Still, Pat hated to feel the little chill of alienation between her and Hilary. They never went to Happiness now. Of course, they hardly ever had gone in winter and Hilary was studying very hard so that he had few foot-loose evenings to spend in Judy’s kitchen. Harris, of course, never spent his evenings in the kitchen. He was entertained in the Little Parlor, where he was supposed to help Pat with her French and Latin. Sometimes Pat thought it would have been much jollier in the kitchen. There were times when, Latin and French being exhausted, she found herself with little to say. Though that didn’t matter much. Harris had plenty for both.

  But, when the beautiful copper beech at the top of the hill field blew down in a terrific March gale, it was Hilary who understood her grief and comforted her. Harris couldn’t understand at all. Why such a fuss over an old tree? He laughed at her kindly as at an unreasonable child.

  “Snap out of it, Pat. Aren’t there any number of trees left in the world yet?”

  “There are any number of people left in the world when someone dies, but that doesn’t mend the grief of those who love him,” said Hilary.

  Harris laughed. He always laughed when Hilary said anything. “The moonstruck house-builder” he called him…though never in Pat’s hearing. Just at this moment Pat found herself thinking that Harris’ eyes were really too brown and glossy. Strange she had never noticed it before. But Hilary understood. Darling Hilary. A wave of affection for him seemed to flood her being. Even when it ebbed it seemed to have swept something away with it that had been there. She went to the picture with Harris that night but it was a little…flat. And Harris was really too possessive. He had his brother’s cutter and he was absurdly solicitous about the robes.

  “I’m not quite senile yet,” said Pat.

  Harris laughed.

  “So it can scratch.”

  Why could he never take anything seriously?

  When he lifted her out at the gate Pat looked at Silver Bush. It seemed to look back at her reproachfully. It struck her that she had been thinking more about Harris Hynes that winter than of dear Silver Bush. She was suddenly repentant.

  “Aren’t you ever going to kiss me, Pat?” Harris was whispering.

  “Perhaps…when you grow up,” said Pat…and laughed too.

  Harris had driven angrily away but Pat slept soundly, albeit it was their first tiff. Harris did not show himself at Silver Bush for a week and Sid and Winnie tormented her mercilessly about it. Pat wasn’t worried although Judy thought she might be.

  “Boys do be like that now and then, Patsy. They take the quare notions. He’ll be along some av these long-come-shorts, darlint.”

  “I haven’t a doubt of it,” said Pat with a shrug. “Meanwhile, I’ll get a little real studying done.”

  • • •

  Harris came back and everything was as before. Or was it? Where had the glamor gone? Pat felt a little disgusted with herself…and with Harris…and with the world in general. And then Harris went into Mr. Taylor’s store in Silverbridge! There was no reason why a clerk in a dry-goods store shouldn’t be as romantic as anybody else. But it seemed such a terrible come down after all his bird-man talk! Pat felt as if he were a stranger.

  “Mr. H. Jemuel Hynes has taken a position with Mr. Taylor of Silverbridge”…so ran one of the locals in the next paper…perhaps inspired by no friend of Hynes.

  “Jemuel! So that is what the J stood for. No wonder he wouldn’t tell it,” Pat giggled, as Judy read it out to her.

  Judy talked to herself as she kneaded her bread that night in a quiet kitchen. For everybody was out except Pat, who was studying in the Little Parlor.

  “Sure and the ind’s near whin she do be laughing at him. I’m not knowing why he shud be ashamed av a good Bible name. Well, it’s been a liddle experience like for her. She’ll know better how to handle the nixt one.”

  There was one final flare-up of romance the night she and Harris walked down the hill from Bets’ party. Harris had been very nice that evening; and he really would have been very handsome if his nose hadn’t that frightful kink in it. His hair was wonderful and he was a wonderful dancer. And it was a wonderful night. After all, there was no use, as Judy said, in expecting too much of any boy. They all had their liddle failings.

  “It’s cold…hurry,” she said impatiently.

  If Judy had heard that she would have known that the end was nearer still.

  They went through the Whispering Lane and Harris paused by the garden gate and drew her to him. Pat was looking at the garden, all sparkle and snow in the moonshine. How sweet it was, with its hidden secrets!

  “Look, Harris,” she said…and her voice rippled through a verse she loved.

  “So white with frost my garden lies,

  So still, so white my garden is,

  Full sure the fields of Paradise

  Are not more fair than this.

  The streets of pearl, the gates of gold,

  Are they indeed more peace possessed,

  Than this white pleasaunce pure and cold

  Against the amber west?”

  “Don’t let’s talk about the weather,” Harris was saying. “I want you only to think of me.”

  The light went out of Pat’s face as if someone had blown it out.

  “Hilary would have loved that.”

  She hadn’t meant to say it aloud…but it seemed to say itself.

  Harris laughed. Harris certainly had a frightful knack of laughing at the wrong time.

  “That sissy! I suppose he would moon over gardens and trees.”

  Something clicked inside Pat’s brain.

  “He isn’t a sissy,” she cried. “The idea of you calling him a sissy…you with your curls and your great soft cowey eyes,” she finished, but in thought.

  Harris tightened his arm.

  “It mustn’t be cross,” he said fatally.

  Pat stepped back and removed his arm.

  “I don’t want to see you again, Harris Jemuel Hynes,” she said clearly and distinctly.

  Harris found out eventually that she meant it.

  “You’re as fickle-minded as a breeze,” were his bitter parting words.

  Pat was not worried over her fickleness but she was rather worried over the conviction that Harris had always taken a bit too much for granted from the start. He was what horrid May Binnie called horridly, “a fast worker.” And she, Pat Gardiner of Silver Bush, had fallen
for it.

  Judy used a dreadful phrase sometimes of certain girls…“a bit too willing.”

  “Have I been too willing?” Pat asked herself solemnly.

  When it became manifest that Pat’s case with Harris Hynes was off she was tormented a good deal. Bets was very sweet and understanding and comforting, but Pat did not feel entirely easy until she had talked the matter over with Judy.

  “Oh, Judy, it was very exciting while it lasted. But it didn’t last.”

  “Oh, oh, darlint, I niver thought it wud come to innything. Ye’re too young for the sarious side. He was just a bit of an excursion like for ye. I wudn’t be after criticizing him as long as ye’d a liking for him, Pat, but wasn’t he a bit too free and aisy now? I do be liking the shy ones better that don’t be calling the cows be their first name at the second visit. And he do be standing wid his legs too far apart of real illigance. Now did ye iver notice the way Jingle stands? Like a soldier. He do be such a diffrunt looking by since he do be wearing better clo’se and having his hair cut at Silverbridge, niver to mintion his stylish glasses.”

  It was strange but rather nice just to feel quietly happy again, without thrills and chills and semi-demi-quavers.

  “Sid and Hilary are better than all the beaus in the world, Judy. I’m never going to fall in love again.”

  “Not before the nixt time innyway, Patsy.”

  “There won’t be any next time.”

  “Oh, oh, it’s much more comfortable not to be in love, I’m agreed. And wud ye be wanting that blue dress av yours much longer, darlint? It’s all gone under the arms and it do be just the shade for that bit av blue scroll in me mat.”

  “Oh, you can have it,” said Pat indifferently. She burned the letter just as indifferently. Nevertheless, years after, when she came across a little tasseled pencil in an old box in the attic she smiled and sighed.

  Hilary came in with his lean brown hands filled with the first mayflowers for her and they went off on a ramble to Happiness.

  “Sure and it’s the happy b’y that Jingle is this blessed night,” chuckled Judy.

  “Friendship is much more satisfactory than love,” Pat reflected, before she went to sleep.

  CHAPTER 29

  April Magic

  One dim wet evening in early spring, when a shabby old world was trying to wash the winter grime from its face before it must welcome April, there was wild music among the birches and Pat listened to it as she chatted with Judy in the kitchen. Mother was tired and had been packed off to bed early. Somehow, everybody at Silver Bush, without saying anything about it, was becoming very careful of mother.

  Cuddles was singing to herself in the Little Parlor…Cuddles had such a sweet voice, Pat reflected lovingly. Judy was mixing her bread with Gentleman Tom on one side of her and Bold-and-Bad on the other. Snicklefritz was curled up by the stove, snoring. Snicklefritz was getting old, as nobody would admit.

  And then…there was the sound of footsteps on the stone walk. Dad or Sid coming in from the barn, thought Pat. But Snicklefritz knew better. In an instant he was awake and had hurled himself at the door in a frenzy of barks and scratches.

  “Now, whativer’s got into the dog?” said Judy. “Sure and it’s long wakes since he bothered his liddle old head about inny stranger…and it’s the quare dream I had last night…and, hivenly day, am I draming still?”

  For the door was open and a bronzed young man was on the step…and Snicklefritz was speechless in ecstasy…and Pat had flown to his arms, wet as he was. Sid and dad were rushing in from the barn…and mother, who had been disobedient and hadn’t gone to bed after all, was flying down stairs…and Bold-and-Bad was spitting and bristling at all this fuss over a stranger. And everybody was a little crazy because Joe had come home…Joe so changed and yet the same Joe…hugging mother and the girls and Judy and laughing at the antics of Bold-and-Bad and pretending to be in a fury because the white kittens in Judy’s picture hadn’t grown up after all.

  They had a gay fortnight at Silver Bush. Snicklefritz simply refused to be parted one moment from Joe and insisted on sleeping on his bed at night. And every night Judy crept in to see if Joe was warm and ask the Good Man Above to bless him, as she had done when he was a child.

  There were tales to tell of far lands and strange faces and everybody was happy. Pat was too happy, Judy thought, with several wise shakes of her head.

  “The Ould Ones don’t be giving ye a gift like that for nothing, as me grandmother used to say. No, no, you would have to be paying.”

  And then Joe was gone again. And this time those he left knew that Joe would never belong to Silver Bush again. He would be home for a visit once in a while…with longer intervals between each visit…but his path was on the sea and his way on the great waters. To Pat came bitterly the realization that Joe was an outsider. The life of Silver Bush closed over his going with hardly a ripple.

  “Judy, it seems a little terrible. I was so brokenhearted when Joe went away the first time…I felt sure I couldn’t live without him. And now…I love him just as much as ever…and it was queer and lonely without him for a few days…but now it’s as if he’d always been away. If…if he had wanted to stay home…it doesn’t seem as if there was any real place for him. His old place seems to have grown over. And that hurts me, Judy.”

  “It do be life, Patsy darlint. They come and they go. But there do be one liddle heart that can’t find comfort. Do ye be looking at the eyes av that poor Snicklefritz. He’s too old to be standing such another parting.”

  Judy was right. The next morning Snicklefritz was found on Joe’s bed, with his head on Joe’s pillow. And Snicklefritz would waken no more to wail or weep. Pat and Sid and Hilary and Bets and Cuddles buried him in a corner of the old graveyard. Judy made no objections to this although she would never let a cat be buried there.

  “I thought you liked cats better than dogs, Judy,” said Cuddles.

  “I do that same, but a cat do be having no right in a graveyard,” was all Judy’s explanation.

  Cuddles prayed that night that Snicklefritz wouldn’t be lonesome. Pat knew he wouldn’t. He slept with his own. What more could an old dog ask? And perhaps on the nights when Wild Dick sang and Willy wept a jolly little ghost dog would come out of his grave and bark.

  • • •

  Pat and Bets were lingering by the little green gate at the top of the hill path, making plans. They were full of plans that spring…plans for the summer…plans for college in the fall…plans for life beyond. They were going to camp out for a week this summer…they were going to room together at Queen’s…and in a few years’ time they were going to take a trip to Europe. They had been planning imaginary journeys through all their years of comradeship but this one was going to be real…someday.

  “Isn’t it fun to make plans?” Pat would say happily.

  They had spent the afternoon together at the Long House. Pat loved the Long House next to Silver Bush. It was a house that always invited you to enter…a house, Pat often thought, that always said, “So glad you’ve come.” Open doors…geraniums in the windows…wide, shallow, well-trodden steps up to the porch. Inside, to take off the chill of the early spring, glowing fires. They had read poetry, together savoring the wealth of beauty found in linked words; they had discussed their grievances. Bets’ mother wouldn’t let her wear pajamas but insisted on nightdresses. And Bets did so crave a lovely pair of yellow ones like Sara Robinson had. So up to date. They did a great deal of laughing, pouncing on their jokes like frolicsome young kittens. And at the end Bets walked to the green gate with Pat and stood there talking for another hour. They just couldn’t get talked out. And anyway Pat was going the next day to the Bay Shore for a visit and there were so many last things to say. It was, they agreed, just tragic to be parted so long.

  It was the first mild evening of that late, cold spring. Beyond the lowlands the
sea was silver gray, save just at the horizon where there was a long line of shining gold. Far, far away a bell was ringing…some bell of lost Atlantis perhaps. A green, mystical twilight was screening all the bare, ugly fields from sight. Faint, enchanted star-fire shone over the spruces behind them. Down below them Uncle Tom was burning brush. Was there anything more fascinating than a fire in the open after night? And somewhere beyond those chilly skies was the real spring of blossom and the summer of roses. They gazed out over the world with all the old hill rapture no dweller in the valley ever knows. Oh, life was sweet together!

  “Couldn’t we have our tent back in the Secret Field the nights we sleep out?” said Bets. Bets knew about the Secret Field now. Sid had told her and Pat was glad. She couldn’t have told herself, after her pact with Sid, but she hated to have Bets shut out of any of her secrets.

  “Think of it,” she breathed. “Sleeping there…with the woods all around us…and the silver birches in the moonlight…we must arrange for a moon, of course. Bets, can’t you see it?”

  Bets could. Her cherry-blossom face, wrapped in a scarlet scarf, reflected Pat’s enthusiasm. That scarf became Bets, Pat reflected. But then everything did. Her clothes always seemed to love her. She could wear the simplest dress like a queen. She was so pretty…and yet you always thought more of the sweetness than the prettiness of her face.

  “Sid says we’d be scared to death back there,” she said. “But we won’t. Not even if the wee green folks of the hills Judy talks about came to our tent door and peeped in.”

  Suddenly the night laid its finger on their lips. Something uncanny…something fairy-like was abroad. The spruces on the hill against the pale sunset were all at once a company of old crones. They seemed to be listening to something. Then they would shake with scornful laughter. The near-by bushes rustled as if a faun had slipped through them. Pat and Bets instinctively put their arms around each other. At that moment they were elfin-hearted things themselves, akin to the shadows and the silences. They could have knelt down on the dear earth and kissed its clods for very gladness in it.