Pat of Silver Bush Read online

  “But, Judy, you’re not ugly.”

  “Maybe it’s not so bad as that,” said Judy cautiously, “but I wudn’t have picked this face if I cud have had the picking. There now, I’ve finished me rose and a beauty it is and I must be off to me milking. Ye’d better go and let that Thursday cratur into the granary afore it breaks its heart. And don’t be saying a word to inny one about this business av the parsley bed.”

  “I won’t. But, Judy…I’ve a kind of awful feeling in my stomach.”

  Judy laughed.

  “The cliverness av the cratur! I know what ye do be hinting at. Well, after I’m finished wid me cows ye might slip into the kitchen and I’ll be frying ye an egg.”

  “In butter, Judy?”

  “Sure in butter. Lashings av it…enough to sop yer bits av bread in it the way ye like. And I’m not saying but what there might be a cinnymon bun left over from supper.”

  Judy, who never wore an apron, turned up her drugget skirt around her waist, showing her striped petticoat, and stalked downstairs, talking to herself as was her habit. Gentleman Tom followed her like a dark familiar. Pat uncoiled herself and went down to let Thursday into the granary. She still had a queer feeling though she could not decide whether it was really in her stomach or not. The world all at once seemed a bit too big. This new baby was an upsetting sort of an idea. The parsley bed had suddenly become a sinister sort of place. For a moment Pat was tempted to go to it and deliberately tear it all up by the roots. Judy wouldn’t be able to find a baby in it then. But mother…mother wanted a baby. It would never do to disappoint mother.

  “But I’ll hate it,” thought Pat passionately. “An outsider like that!”

  If she could only talk it over with Sid it would be a comfort. But she had promised Judy not to say a word to anybody about it. It was the first time she had ever had a secret from Sid and it made her feel uncomfortable. Everything seemed to have changed a little in some strange fashion…and Pat hated change.

  • • •

  Half an hour later she had put the thought of it out of her mind and was in the garden, bidding the flowers goodnight. Pat never omitted this ceremony. She was sure they would miss her if she forgot it. It was so beautiful in the garden, in the late twilight, with a silvery hint of moonrise over the Hill of the Mist. The trees around it…old maples that Grandmother Gardiner had planted when she came as a bride to Silver Bush…were talking to each other as they always did at night. Three little birch trees that lived together in one corner were whispering secrets. The big crimson peonies were blots of darkness in the shadows. The bluebells along the path trembled with fairy laughter. Some late June lilies starred the grass at the foot of the garden: the columbines danced: the white lilac at the gate flung passing breaths of fragrance on the dewy air: the southernwood…Judy called it “lad’s love”…which the little Quaker Great-grand had brought with her from the old land a hundred years ago, was still slyly aromatic.

  Pat ran about from plot to plot and kissed everything. Tuesday ran with her and writhed in furry ecstasy on the walks before her…walks that Judy had picked off with big stones from the shore, dazzlingly whitewashed.

  When Pat had kissed all her flowers good-night she stood for a little while looking at the house. How beautiful it was, nestled against its wooded hill, as if it had grown out of it…a house all white and green, just like its own silver birches, and now patterned over charmingly with three shadows cast by a moon that was floating over the Hill of the Mist. She always loved to stand outside of Silver Bush after dark and look at its lighted windows. There was a light in the kitchen where Sid was at his lessons…a light in the parlor where Winnie was practicing her music…a light up in mother’s room. A light for a moment flashed in the hall, as somebody went upstairs, bringing out the fan window over the front door.

  “Oh, I’ve got such a lovely home,” breathed Pat, clasping her hands. “It’s such a nice friendly house. Nobody…nobody…has such a lovely home. I’d just like to hug it.”

  Pat had her egg in the kitchen with plenty of butter gravy, and then there was the final ceremony of putting a saucer of milk for the fairies on the well platform. Judy never omitted it.

  “There’s no knowing what bad luck we might be having if we forgot it. Sure and we know how to trate fairies at Silver Bush.”

  The fairies came by night and drank it up. This was one of the things Pat was strongly inclined to believe. Hadn’t Judy herself seen fairies dancing in a ring one night when she was a girleen in Ould Ireland?

  “But Joe says there are no fairies in P E. Island,” she said wistfully.

  “The things Joe do be saying make me sometimes think the b’y don’t be all there,” said Judy indignantly. “Wasn’t there folks coming out to P. E. I. from the Ould Country for a hundred years, me jewel? And don’t ye be belaving there’d always be a fairy or two, wid a taste for a bit av adventure, wud stow himself away among their belongings and come too, and thim niver a bit the wiser? And isn’t the milk always gone be morning, I’m asking ye?”

  Yes, it was. You couldn’t get away from that.

  “You’re sure the cats don’t drink it, Judy?”

  “Oh, oh, cats, is it? There don’t be much a cat wudn’t do if it tuk it into its head, I’m granting ye, but the bouldest that iver lived wudn’t be daring to lap up the milk that was left for a fairy. That’s the only thing no cat’d ever do…be disrespictful to a fairy—and it’d be well for mortal craturs to folly his example.”

  “Couldn’t we stay up some night, Judy, and watch? I’d love to see a fairy.”

  “Oh, oh, see, is it? Me jewel, ye can’t see the fairies unless ye have the seeing eye. Ye’d see nothing at all, only just the milk drying up slow, as it were. Now be off to bed wid ye and mind ye don’t forget yer prayers or maybe ye’ll wake up and find Something sitting on your bed in the night.”

  “I never do forget my prayers,” said Pat with dignity.

  “All the better for ye. I knew a liddle girl that forgot one night and a banshee got hold av her. Oh, oh, she was niver the same agin.”

  “What did the banshee do to her, Judy?”

  “Do to her, is it? It put a curse on her, that it did. Ivery time she tried to laugh she cried and ivery time she tried to cry she laughed. Oh, oh, ’twas a bitter punishment. Now, what’s after plaguing ye? I can tell be the liddle face av ye ye’re not aisy.”

  “Judy, I keep thinking about that baby in the parsley bed. Don’t you think…they’ve no baby over at Uncle Tom’s. Couldn’t you give it to them? Mother could see it as often as she wanted to. We’re four of a family now.”

  “Oh, oh, do ye be thinking four is innything av a family to brag av? Why, yer great-great-grandmother, old Mrs. Nehemiah, had seventeen afore she called it a day. And four av thim died in one night wid the black cholera.”

  “Oh, Judy, how could she ever bear that?”

  “Sure and hadn’t she thirteen left, me jewel? But they do say as she was niver the same agin. And now it’s not telling ye agin to go to bed I’ll be doing…oh, no, it’s not telling.”

  • • •

  Pat tiptoed upstairs, past the old grandfather clock on the landing that wouldn’t go…hadn’t gone for forty years. The “dead clock” she and Sid called it. But Judy always insisted that it told the right time twice a day. Then down the hall to her room, with a wistful glance at the close-shut spareroom door as she passed it…the Poet’s room, as it was called, because once a poet who had been a guest at Silver Bush had slept there for a night. Pat had a firm belief that if you could only open the door of any shut room quickly enough you would catch all the furniture in strange situations. The chairs crowded together talking, the table lifting its white muslin skirts to show its pink sateen petticoat, the fire shovel and tongs dancing a fandango by themselves. But then you never could. Some sound always warned them and they were back in their pl
aces as demure as you please.

  Pat said her prayers…Now I Lay Me, and the Lord’s Prayer, and then her own prayer. This was always the most interesting part because she made it up herself. She could not understand people who didn’t like to pray. May Binnie, now. May had told her last Sunday in Sunday School that she never prayed unless she was scared about something. Fancy that!

  Pat prayed for everybody in the family and for Judy Plum and Uncle Tom and Aunt Edith and Aunt Barbara…and for Sailor Uncle Horace at sea…and everybody else’s sailor uncle at sea…and all the cats and Gentleman Tom and Joe’s dog…“little black Snicklefritz with his curly tail,” so that God wouldn’t get mixed up between Joe’s dog and Uncle Tom’s dog who was big and black with a straight tail…and any fairies that might be hanging round and any poor ghosts that might be sitting on the tombstones…and for Silver Bush itself…dear Silver Bush.

  “Please keep it always the same, dear God,” begged Pat, “and don’t let any more trees blow down.”

  Pat rose from her knees and stood there a bit rebelliously. Surely she had prayed for everybody and everything she could really be expected to pray for. Of course on stormy nights she always prayed for people who might be out in the storm. But this was a lovely spring night.

  Finally she plumped down on her knees again.

  “Please, dear God, if there is a baby out there in that parsley bed, keep it warm tonight. Dad says there may be a little frost.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Sunday’s Child

  It was only a few evenings later that there was a commotion in the house at Silver Bush…pale faces…mysterious comings and goings. Aunt Barbara came over with a new white apron on, as if she were going to work instead of visit. Judy stalked about, muttering to herself. Father, who had been hanging round the house all day rather lazily for him, came down from mother’s room and telephoned with the dining-room door shut. Half an hour afterwards Aunt Frances came over from the Bay Shore and whisked Winnie and Joe off on an unlooked-for weekend.

  Pat was sitting on Weeping Willy’s tombstone. She was on her dignity for she felt that she was being kept out of things somehow and she resented it. There was no resorting to mother who had kept her room all the afternoon. So Pat betook herself to the graveyard and the society of her family ghosts until Judy Plum came along…a portentously solemn Judy Plum, looking wiser than any mortal woman could possibly be.

  “Pat, me jewel, wud ye be liking to spind the night over at yer Uncle Tom’s for a bit av a change? Siddy will be going along wid ye.”

  “Why?” demanded Pat distantly.

  “Yer mother do be having a tarrible headache and the house has got to be that still. The doctor’s coming…”

  “Is mother bad enough to want a doctor?” cried Pat in quick alarm. Mary May’s mother had had the doctor a week before…and died!

  “Oh, oh, be aisy now, darlint. A doctor’s just a handy thing to have round whin a body has one of thim headaches. I’m ixpecting yer mother to be fine and dandy be the morning if the house is nice and quiet tonight. So just you and Siddy run over to Swallowfield like good children. And since the moon do be at its full at last I’m thinking it’s high time for the parsley bed. No telling what ye’ll be seeing here tomorrow.”

  “That baby, I suppose,” said Pat, a little contemptuously. “I should think, Judy Plum, if mother has such a bad headache it’s a poor time to bother her with a new baby.”

  “She’s been waiting for it so long I’m looking for it to iffect a miraculous cure,” said Judy. “Innyhow, it’s tonight or niver wid that moon. It was be way av being just such a night whin I found you in the parsley bed.”

  Pat looked at the moon disapprovingly. It didn’t look like a proper moon…so queer and close and red and lanterny. But it was all of a piece with this odd night.

  “Come, skip along…here’s yer liddle nighty in the black satchel.”

  “I want to wait for Sid.”

  “Siddy’s hunting me turkeys. He’ll be over whin he finds thim. Sure, ye’re not afraid to go alone? It’s only a cat’s walk over there and the moon’s up.”

  “You know very well, Judy Plum, that I’m not afraid. But things are…queer…tonight.”

  Judy chuckled.

  “They do take spells av being that and far be it from me to deny it. Likely the woods are full av witches tonight but they won’t be bothering ye if ye mind yer own business. Here’s a handful av raisins for ye, same as ye git on Sundays, and niver be bothering yer head wid things ye can’t understand.”

  Pat went over to Swallowfield rather unwillingly, although it was a second home to her…the adjoining farm where Uncle Tom and Aunt Edith and Aunt Barbara lived. Judy Plum approved of Aunt Barbara, had an old vendetta with Aunt Edith, and had no opinion of old bachelors. A man should be married. If he wasn’t he had cheated some poor woman out of a husband. But Pat was very fond of big, jolly Uncle Tom, with his nice, growly way of speaking, who was the only man in North Glen still wearing a beard…a beautiful, long, crinkly black beard. She liked Aunt Barbara, who was round and rosy and jolly, but she was always a little afraid of Aunt Edith, who was thin and sallow and laughterless, and had a standing feud with Judy Plum.

  “Born unmarried, that one,” Judy had been heard to mutter spitefully.

  Pat went to Swallowfield by the Whispering Lane, which was fringed with birches, also planted by some long-dead bride. The brides of Silver Bush seemed to have made a hobby of planting trees. The path was picked out by big stones which Judy Plum whitewashed as far as the gate; from the gate Aunt Edith did it, because Uncle Tom and Aunt Barbara wouldn’t be bothered and she wasn’t going to let Judy Plum crow over her. The lane was crossed halfway by the gate and beyond it were no birches but dear fence corners full of bracken and lady fern and wild violets and caraway. Pat loved the Whispering Lane. When she was four she had asked Judy Plum if it wasn’t the “way of life” the minister talked about in church; and somehow ever since it had seemed to her that some beautiful secret hid behind the birches and whispered in the nodding lace of its caraway blossoms.

  She skipped along the lane, light-hearted again, eating her raisins. It was full of dancing, inviting shadows…friendly shadows out for a playmate. Once a shy gray rabbit hopped from bracken clump to bracken clump. Beyond the lane were dim, windy pastures of twilight. The air smelled deliciously. The trees wanted to be friends with her. All the little grass stems swayed towards her in the low breezes. Uncle Tom’s barn field was full of woolly-faced lambs at their evening games and three dear wee Jersey calves, with soft, sweet eyes, looked at her over the fence. Pat loved Jersey calves and Uncle Tom was the only man in North Glen who kept Jerseys.

  Beyond, in the yard, Uncle Tom’s buildings were like a little town by themselves. He had so many of them…pig houses and hen houses and sheep houses and boiler houses and goose houses and turnip houses…even an apple house which Pat thought was a delightful name. North Glen people said that Tom Gardiner put up some kind of a new building every year. Pat thought they all huddled around the big barn like chickens around their mother. Uncle Tom’s house was an old one, with two wide, low windows that looked like eyes on either side of a balcony that was like a nose. It was a prim and dignified house but all its primness couldn’t resist its own red front door which was just like an impish tongue sticking out of its face. Pat always felt as if the house was chuckling to itself over some joke nobody but itself knew, and she liked the mystery. She wouldn’t have liked Silver Bush to be like that: Silver Bush mustn’t have secrets from her : but it was all right in Swallowfield.

  • • •

  If it had not been for mother’s headache and the doctor coming and Judy Plum’s parsley bed Pat would have thought it romantic and delightful to have spent a night at Swallowfield. She had never been there for a night before…it was too near home. But that was part of its charm…to be so near home and yet n
ot quite home…to look out of the window of the gable room and see home…see its roof over the trees and all its windows lighted up. Pat was a bit lonely. Sid was far away at the other end of the house. Uncle Tom had made speeches about doctors and black bags until Aunt Edith had shut him up…or Pat. Perhaps it was Pat.

  “If you mean, Uncle Tom,” Pat had said proudly, “that Dr. Bentley is bringing us a baby in a black bag you’re very much mistaken. We grow our own babies. Judy Plum is looking for ours in the parsley bed at this very minute.”

  “Well…I’m…dashed,” said Uncle Tom. And he looked as if he were dashed. Aunt Edith had given Pat a pin-wheel cookie and hustled her off to bed in a very pretty room where the curtains and chair covers were of creamy chintz with purple violets scattered over it and where the bed had a pink quilt. All very splendid. But it looked big and lonesome.

  Aunt Edith turned the bedclothes and saw Pat cuddled down before she left. But she did not kiss her as Aunt Barbara would have done. And there would be no Judy Plum to tiptoe in when she thought you were asleep and whisper, “God bless and kape ye through the night, me jewel.” Judy never missed doing that. But tonight she would be hunting through the parsley bed, likely never thinking of her “jewel” at all. Pat’s lips trembled. The tears were very near now…and then she thought of Weeping Willy. One disgrace like that was enough in a family. She would not be Weeping Pat.

  But she could not sleep. She lay watching the chimneys of Silver Bush through the window and wishing Sid’s room were only near hers. Suddenly a light flashed from the garret window of Silver Bush…flashed a second and disappeared. It was as if the house had winked at her…called to her. In a moment Pat was out of bed and at the window. She curled up in the big flounced and ruffled wing chair. It was no use to try to sleep so she would just cuddle here and watch dear Silver Bush. It was like a beautiful picture…the milk-white house against its dark wooded hill, framed in an almost perfectly round opening in the boughs of the trees. Besides…who knew?…maybe Ellen Price was right after all and the storks did bring the babies. It was a nicer idea than any of the others. Perhaps if she watched she might see a silvery bird, flying from some far land beyond the blue gulf’s rim and lighting on the roof of Silver Bush.