Pat of Silver Bush Read online

  The boughs of the old fir tree outside tapped on the house. Dogs seemed to be barking everywhere over North Glen. Now and then a big June-bug thudded against the window. The water in the Field of the Pool glimmered mysteriously. Away up on the hill the moonlight glinting on one of the windows of the Long Lonely House gave it a strange, momentary appearance of being lighted up. Pat had a thrill. A tree-top behind the house looked like a witch crouched on its roof, just alighted from her broomstick. Pat’s flesh crawled deliciously. Maybe there really were witches. Maybe they flew on a broomstick over the harbor at nights. What a jolly way of getting about! Maybe they brought the babies. But no, no. They didn’t want anything at Silver Bush that witches brought. Better the parsley bed than that. It was a lovely night for a baby to come. Was that a great white bird sailing over the trees? No, only a silvery cloud. Another June-bug…swoop went the wind around Uncle Tom’s apple house…tap-tap went the fir boughs…Pat was fast asleep in the big chair and there Sidney found her when he slipped cautiously in at dawn before anyone else at Swallowfield was up.

  “Oh, Siddy!” Pat threw her arms about him and held him close to her in the chair. “Isn’t it funny…I’ve been here all night. The bed was so big and lonesome. Oh Sid, do you think Judy has found it yet?”

  “Found what?”

  “Why…the baby.” Surely it was all right to tell Sid now. It was such a relief not to have a guilty secret from him any longer. “Judy went hunting for it in the parsley bed last night…for mother, you know.”

  Sid looked very wise…or as wise as a boy could look who had two big, round, funny brown eyes under fuzzy golden-brown curls. He was a year older than Pat…he had been to school…he knew just what that parsley bed yarn amounted to. But it was just as well for a girl like Pat to believe it.

  “Let’s go home and see,” he suggested.

  Pat got quickly into her clothes and they crept noiselessly downstairs and out of doors into a land pale in the morning twilight. The dew-wet earth was faintly fragrant. Pat had no memory of ever having been up before sunrise in her life. How lovely it was to be walking hand in hand with Sid along the Whispering Lane before the day had really begun!

  “I hope this new kid will be a girl,” said Sid. “Two boys are enough in a family but nobody cares how many girls there are. And I hope it’ll be good-looking.”

  For the first time in her life Pat felt a dreadful stab of jealousy. But she was loyal, too.

  “Of course it will. But you won’t like it better than me, will you…oh, please, Siddy?”

  “Silly! Of course I won’t like it better than you. I don’t expect to like it at all,” said Sid disdainfully.

  “Oh, you must like it a little, because of mother. And oh, Sid, please promise that you’ll never like any girl better than me.”

  “Sure I won’t.” Sid was very fond of Pat and didn’t care who knew it. At the gate he put his chubby arms about her and kissed her.

  “You won’t every marry another girl, Sid?”

  “Not much. I’m going to be a bachelor like Uncle Tom. He says he likes a quiet life and I do, too.”

  “And we’ll always live at Silver Bush and I’ll keep house for you,” said Pat eagerly.

  “Sure. Unless I go west; lots of boys do.”

  “Oh!” A cold wind blew across Pat’s happiness. “Oh, you must never go west, Sid…you couldn’t leave Silver Bush. You couldn’t find any nice place.”

  “Well, we can’t all stay here, you know, when we grow up,” said Sid reasonably.

  “Oh, why can’t we?” cried Pat, on the point of tears again. The lovely morning was spoiled for her.

  “Oh, well, we’ll be here for years yet,” said Sid soothingly. “Come along. There’s Judy giving Friday and Monday their milk.”

  “Oh, Judy,” gasped Pat, “did you find it?”

  “Sure and didn’t I that? The prettiest baby ye iver set eyes on and swate beyond iverything. I’m thinking I must be putting on me dress-up dress whin I get the work done be way av cilebrating.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad it’s pretty because it belongs to our family,” said Pat. “Can we see it right away?”

  “Indade and ye can’t, me jewel. It’s up in yer mother’s room and she’s sound aslape and not to be disturbed. She had a wakeful night av it. I was a tarrible long time finding that baby. Me eyesight isn’t what it was I’m grieving to say. I’m thinking that’s the last baby I’ll iver be able to find in the parsley bed.”

  • • •

  Judy gave Pat and Sid their breakfast in the kitchen. Nobody else was up. It was such fun to have breakfast there with Judy and have the milk poured over their porridge out of her “cream cow”…that little old brown jug in the shape of a cow, with her tail curled up in a most un-cowlike fashion for a handle and her mouth for a spout. Judy had brought the cream cow from Ireland with her and prized it beyond all saying. She had promised to leave it to Pat when she died. Pat hated to hear Judy talk of dying, but, as she had also promised to live a hundred years…D. V.…that was nothing to worry about yet awhile.

  The kitchen was a cheery place and was as tidy and spotless as if Silver Bush had not just been passing through a night of suspense and birth. The walls were whitewashed snowily: the stove shone: Judy’s blue and white jugs on the scoured dresser sparkled in the rays of the rising sun. Judy’s geraniums bloomed in the windows. The space between stove and table was covered by a big, dark-red rug with three black cats hooked in it. The cats had eyes of yellow wool which were still quite bright and catty in spite of the fact that they had been trodden over for many years. Judy’s living black cat sat on the bench and thought hard. Two fat kittens were sleeping in a patch of sunlight on the floor. And, as if that were not enough in the cat line, there were three marvelous kittens in a picture on the wall…Judy’s picture, likewise brought out from Ireland. Three white kittens with blue eyes, playing with a ball of silk thread gloriously entangled. Cats and kittens might come and go at Silver Bush, but Judy’s kittens were eternally young and frisky. This was a comfort to Pat who, when she was very young, was afraid they might grow up and change, too. It always broke her heart when some beloved kitten turned overnight into a lanky half-grown cat.

  There were other pictures…Queen Victoria at her coronation and King William riding his white horse over the Boyne: a marble cross, poised on a dark rock in a raging ocean, lavishly garlanded with flowers, having a huge open Bible on a purple cushion at its foot: the Burial of the Pet Bird: mottoes worked in wool…Home, Sweet Home…Upwards and Onwards. These had all been judged at successive spring cleanings to be unworthy of the other rooms but Judy wouldn’t have them burned. Pat wouldn’t have liked them anywhere else but she liked them on the walls of Judy’s kitchen. It wouldn’t have been quite the same without them.

  It was lovely, Pat thought as she ate her toast, that everything was just the same. She had had a secret, dreadful fear that she would find everything changed and different and heart-breaking.

  Dad came in just as they finished and Pat flew to him. He looked tired but he caught her up with a smile.

  “Has Judy told you that you have a new sister?”

  “Yes. I’m glad. I think it will be an improvement,” said Pat, gravely and staunchly.

  Dad laughed.

  “That’s right. Some folks have been afraid you mightn’t like it…might think your nose was out of joint.”

  “My nose is all right,” said Pat. “Feel it.”

  “Av course her nose is all right. Don’t ye be after putting inny such notions in her head, Long Alec Gardiner,” said Judy, who had bossed little Long Alec about when he was a child and continued to do so now that he was big Long Alec with a family of his own. “And ye naden’t have been thinking that child wud be jealous…she hasn’t a jealous bone in her body, the darlint. Jealous, indade!” Judy’s gray-green eyes flashed quite fiercely. Nob
ody need be thinking the new baby was more important than Pat or that more was going to be made of it.

  • • •

  It was well on in the forenoon when they were allowed upstairs. Judy marshaled them up, very imposing in her blue silk dress, of a day when it was a recommendation for silk that it could stand alone. She had had it for fifteen years, having got in in honor of the bride young Long Alec was bringing to Silver Bush, and she put it on only for very special occasions. It had been donned for every new baby and the last time it had been worn was six years ago at Grandmother Gardiner’s funeral. Fashions had changed considerably but what cared Judy? A silk dress was a silk dress. She was so splendid in it that the children were half in awe of her. They liked her much better in her old drugget but Judy tasted her day of state.

  A nurse in white cap and apron was queening it in mother’s room. Mother was lying on her pillows, white and spent after that dreadful headache, with her dark wings of hair around her face and her sweet, dreamy, golden-brown eyes shining with happiness. Aunt Barbara was rocking a quaint old black cradle, brought down from the garret…a cradle a hundred years old which Great-great-Grandfather Nehemiah had made with his own hands. Every Silver Bush baby had been rocked in it. The nurse did not approve of either cradles or rocking but she was powerless against Aunt Barbara and Judy combined.

  “Not have a cradle for it, do ye be saying?” the scandalized Judy had ejaculated. “Ye’ll not be intinding to put the swate wee cratur in a basket? Oh, oh, did inny one iver be hearing the like av it? It’s niver a baby at Silver Bush that’ll be brought up in your baskets, as if it was no better than a kitten, and that I’m telling ye. Here’s the cradle that I’ve polished wid me own hands and into that same cradle she’ll be going.”

  Pat, after a rapturous kiss for mother, tip-toed over to the cradle, trembling with excitement. Judy lifted the baby out and held it so that the children could see it.

  “Oh, Judy, isn’t she sweet?” whispered Pat in ecstasy. “Can’t I hold her for just the tiniest moment?”

  “That ye can, darlint,”…and Judy put the baby into Pat’s arms before either nurse or Aunt Barbara could prevent her. Oh, oh, that was one in the eye for the nurse!

  Pat stood holding the fragrant thing as knackily as if she had been doing it all her life. What tiny, darling legs it had! What dear, wee, crumpled paddies! What little pink nails like perfect shells!

  “What color are its eyes, Judy?”

  “Blue,” said Judy, “big and blue like violets wid dew on them, just like Winnie’s. And it’s certain I am that she do be having dimples in her chakes. Sure a woman wid a baby like that naden’t call the quane her cousin.”

  “‘The child that is born on the Sabbath day

  Will be bonny and blithe and good and gay,’”

  said Aunt Barbara.

  “Of course she will,” said Pat. “She would, no matter what day she was born on. Isn’t she our baby?”

  “Oh, oh, there’s the right spirit for ye,” said Judy.

  “The baby must really be put back in the cradle now,” said the nurse by way of reasserting her authority.

  Pat relinquished it reluctantly. Only a few minutes ago she had been thinking of the baby as an interloper, only to be tolerated for mother’s sake. But now it was one of the family and it seemed as if it had always been at Silver Bush. No matter how it had come, from stork or black bag or parsley bed, it was there and it was theirs.

  CHAPTER 5

  “What’s in a Name?”

  The new baby at Silver Bush did not get its name until three weeks later when mother was able to come downstairs and the nurse had gone home, much to Judy’s satisfaction. She approved of Miss Martin as little as Miss Martin approved of her.

  “Oh, oh, legs and lipstick!” she would say contemptuously, when Miss Martin doffed her regalia and went out to take the air. Which was unjust to Miss Martin, who had no more legs than other women of the fashion and used her lipstick very discreetly. Judy watched her down the lane with a malevolent eye.

  “Oh, oh, but I’d like to be putting a tin ear on that one. Wanting to call the wee treasure Greta! Oh, oh, Greta! And her with a grandfather that died and come back to life, that he did!”

  “Did he really, Judy Plum?”

  “He did that. Old Jimmy Martin was dead as a doornail for two days. The doctors said it. Thin he come back to life…just to spite his family I’m telling ye. But, as ye might ixpect, he was niver the same agin. His relations were rale ashamed av him. Miss Martin naden’t be holding that rid head av hers so high.”

  “But why, Judy?” asked Sid. “Why were they ashamed of him?”

  “Oh, oh, whin ye’re dead it’s only dacent to stay dead,” retorted Judy. “Ye’d think she’d remimber that whin she was trying to boss folks who looked after babies afore she was born or thought av, the plum-faced thing! But she’s gone now, good riddance, and we won’t have her stravaging about the house with a puss on her mouth inny more. Too minny bushels for a small canoe…it do be that that’s the trouble wid her.”

  “She can’t help her grandfather, Judy,” said Pat.

  “Oh, oh, I’m not saying she could, me jewel. We none of us can hilp our ancistors. Wasn’t me own grandmother something av a witch? But it’s sure we’ve all got some and it ought to kape us humble.”

  Pat was glad Miss Martin was gone, not because she didn’t like her but because she knew she would be able to hold the baby oftener now. Pat adored the baby. How in the world had Silver Bush ever got on without her? Silver Bush without the baby was quite unthinkable to Pat now. When Uncle Tom asked her gravely if they had decided yet whether to keep or drown the baby she was horrified and alarmed.

  “Sure, me jewel, he was only tazing ye,” comforted Judy, with her great, broad, jolly laugh. “’Tis just an ould bachelor’s idea av a joke.”

  They had put off naming the baby until Miss Martin had gone, because nobody really wanted to call the baby Greta but didn’t want to hurt her feelings. The very afternoon she left they attended to the matter…or tried to.

  But it was no easy thing to pick a name. Mother wanted to call it Doris after her own mother and father wanted Rachel after his mother. Winnie, who was romantic, wanted Elaine, and Joe thought Dulcie would be nice. Pat had secretly called it Miranda for a week and Sidney thought such a blue-eyed baby ought to be named Violet. Aunt Hazel thought Kathleen just the name for it, and Judy, who must have her say with the rest, thought Emmerillus was a rale classy name. The Silver Bush people thought Judy must mean Amaryllis but were never sure of it.

  In the end father suggested that each of them plant a named seed in the garden and see whose came up first. That person should have the privilege of naming the baby.

  “If we find more than one up at once the winners must plant over again,” he said.

  This was a sporting chance and the children were excited. The seeds were planted and tagged and watched every day: but it was Pat who thought of getting up early in the morning to keep tabs on the bed. Judy said things came up in the night. There was nothing at dark…and in the morning there you were. And there Pat was on the eighth morning, just as the sun was rising, up before anyone but Judy. You would have to get up before you went to bed if you meant to get ahead of Judy.

  And Pat’s seed was up! For just one moment she exulted. Then she grew sober and her long-lashed amber eyes filled with a troubled wonder. Of course Miranda was a lovely name for a baby. But father wanted Rachel. Mother had named her and Sidney, Uncle Tom had named Joe, Hazel had named Winnie, surely it was father’s turn. He hadn’t said much…father never said much…but Pat knew somehow that he wanted very badly to name the baby Rachel. In her secret heart Pat had hoped that father’s seed would be first.

  She looked around her. No living creature in sight except Gentleman Tom, sitting darkly on the cheese stone. The next moment her seed was y
anked out and flung into the burdock patch behind the hen-house. Dad had a chance yet.

  But luck seemed against poor dad. Next morning Win’s and mother’s seeds were up. Pat ruthlessly uprooted them, too. Win didn’t count and mother had named two children already. That was plenty for her. Joe’s met the same fate next morning. Then up popped Sid’s and Judy’s. Pat was quite hardened in rascality now and they went. Anyhow, no child ought ever to be called Emmerillus.

  The next day there was none up and Pat began to be worried. Everyone was wondering why none of the seeds were up yet. Judy darkly insinuated that they had been planted the wrong time of the moon. And perhaps father’s wouldn’t come up at all. Pat prayed very desperately that night that it might be up the next morning.

  It was.

  Pat looked about her in triumph, quite untroubled as yet by her duplicity. She had won the victory for father. Oh, how lovely everything was! Gossamer clouds of pale gold floated over the Hill of the Mist. The wind had fallen asleep among the silver birches. The tall firs among them quivered with some kind of dark laughter. The fields were all around her like great gracious arms. The popples, as Judy called them, were whispering around the granary. The world was just a big, smiling greenness, with a vast, alluring blueness seawards. There was a clear, pale, silvery sky over her and everything in the garden seemed to have burst into bloom overnight. Judy’s big clump of bleeding-heart by the kitchen door was hung with ruby jewels. The country was sprinkled with white houses in the sunrise. A stealthy kitten crept through the orchard. Thursday was licking his sleek little chops on the window sill of his beloved granary. A red squirrel chattered at him from a bough of the maple tree over the well. Judy came out to draw a bucket of water.