Mistress Pat (21 page)

In spite of his absurd Victorian phrases Pat found herself for the first time rather liking him. He couldn’t help being a South Glen MacLeod. They were all like that. And she made up her mind that she would never entertain Judy or Suzanne by an account of this proposal … though to be sure that wretched Emmy and Dot would spread it all over the clan.

All in all, Pat drew a breath of relief when the last guest had gone and the last lantern candle expired, leaving the silver bush to its dreams and its moonlight. The party had been a tremendous success … “the nicest party I’ve ever been to,” Suzanne whispered before she took the hill road. “And that supper! Come up tomorrow night and we’ll have a good pi-jaw about everything.”

But when you were hostess there was, as Judy said, “a bit av a strain,” especially with the proposal of Samuel thrown in. She turned from the gate and ran up the back walk, crushing the damp mint as she ran. The late August night had grown a bit chilly and Judy’s kitchen, where a fire had been lit to brew the coffee, seemed attractive.

Pat halted in the doorway in amazement. There were Uncle Tom and the aunts … mother … Rae … Judy … Tillytuck … dad … and Uncle Horace! For of course the stranger could be nobody else.

Pat felt a little bit dazed as he rose to shake hands with her. This was not the Uncle Horace she had pictured … neither the genial old rascal of Judy’s yarns nor the typical tar of dad’s reminiscences. He was tall and thin and saturnine, with hair of pepper and salt. With his long lean face and shell-rimmed spectacles he looked more like a somewhat dyspeptic minister than a retired sea-captain. To be sure, there was something about his mouth … and his keen blue eyes … Pat felt that she wouldn’t have liked to head that mutiny against him.

“This is Pat,” said Long Alec.

“Humph! I’ve been hearing things about you,” grunted Uncle Horace as he shook hands.

Pat hadn’t a glimmer whether the things were complimentary or the reverse and retreated into herself. Uncle Horace, it seemed, had arrived unexpectedly, walking up from Silverbridge. Finding a party in full swing he had decided not to show himself until it was over.

“Had some fun watching the dance from the bush,” he said. “Some pretty girls clothed in smiles … and not much else. I never expected to see P.E. Island girls at a dance with no clothes on.”

“No clothes,” said Aunt Edith, rather staggered. She had not graced the party but had come over to find out what was keeping Tom so late.

“Well, none to speak of. There were three girls there with no back at all to their frocks. Times have changed since we were young, Alec.”

“For the better I should think,” said Rae pertly. “It must have been awful … dresses lined and re-lined, sleeves as big as balloons, and rats in your hair.”

Uncle Horace looked at her meditatively, as if wondering what kind of an insect she was, fitted his finger-tips carefully together, and went on with his tale. For the first time in her life Rae Gardiner felt squelched.

“When I felt that I needed a little sustenance I slipped into the pantry when the coast was clear and got me a cake. A real good cake … roll-jelly … I didn’t think they made them now. Then I scouted around for some milk and found a bowl of whipped cream in the ice-house. ‘Plenty more where that came from,’ thought I. Made a pretty decent meal.”

“And me blaming Sam Binnie,” said Judy. “Oh, oh, I’ll be begging his pardon, Binnie and all as he is.”

“I kept back in the bush … had to,” said Uncle Horace. “If I moved I fell over some canoodling couple. There were people in love all over the place.”

“Love is in the air at Silver Bush, symbolically speaking,” said Tillytuck. “I find it rather pleasant. The little girls’ love affairs give a flavour to life.”

“But Judy here isn’t married yet,” said Uncle Horace gravely.

“Oh, oh, I cudn’t support a husband,” sighed Judy.

“Don’t you think it’s time?” said Uncle Horace gravely. “We’re none of us getting younger, you know, Judy.”

“But I’m hoping some av us do be getting a liddle wiser,” retorted Judy witheringly.

But she was plainly in high cockalorum. Horace had always had a warm spot in her heart and in her eyes he was still a boy.

“I got a drink of the old well while you were at supper,” said Uncle Horace in a different tone. “There’s none like it the world over. I’ve always understood David and his craving for a drink from the well at Bethlehem. And the ferns along the road from Silverbridge. I’ve smelled smells all the world over, east and west, and there’s no perfume like the fragrance of spice ferns as you walk along a P.E. Island road on a summer evening. Well, young folks like your girls and Judy mayn’t mind staying up all night, Alec, but I’m not equal to it any longer. Judy, do you suppose it’s possible to have fried chicken for breakfast?”

“How like a man!” Rae telegraphed in disgust to Pat. Expecting to have fried chicken for breakfast when it was four o’clock after a party! But Judy was actually looking pleased.

“There do be a pair av young roosters out there just asking for it,” she said meditatively.

Judy and Pat and Rae had a last word when everybody had gone.

“Oh, oh, but I’m faling like a bit av chewed string,” sighed Judy. “Howiver, the party was a grand success and aven Tillytuck sitting down on a shate av fly-paper in the pantry where he did have no business to be and thin strutting pompous-like across the platform wid it stuck to his pants cudn’t be called inny refliction on Silver Bush. He did be purtinding to be mad about it but I’m belaving he did it on purpose to make a sinsation. Oh, oh, ye cud have knocked me down wid a feather whin I was after clearing up the supper dishes. I did be hearing a thud … and there was me fine Horace full lingth on the floor ye rubbed up so well, Patsy. ‘Tarrible slippy floor ye’ve got, woman,’ was all he said. Ye niver cud be telling if Horace was mad or if he wasn’t.”

“I like him,” said Pat, who had made up her mind about him when he talked of the well and the ferns.

“Pat, what on earth were you and Samuel MacLeod doing in the garden?” asked Rae.

“Oh, just moonlighting,” answered Pat, demure as an owl.

“I never saw anything so funny as the two of you dancing together. He looked like a windmill in a fit.”

“Don’t ye be making fun av the poor boy,” said Judy. “He can’t be hilping his long arms and legs. At that, it do be better than being sawed off. And while he cudn’t be said to talk he does be managing to get things said.”

“He gets them said all right,” thought Pat. But she heroically contented herself with thinking of it.

Uncle Horace did not prove hard to entertain. When he was not talking over old times with dad or Uncle Tom or Judy he was reading sentimental novels … the more sentimental the better. When he had exhausted the Silver Bush library he borrowed from the neighbours. But the book David Kirk lent him did not please him at all.

“They don’t get married at the last,” he grumbled. “I don’t care a hoot for a book where they don’t get properly married … or hanged … at the last. These modern novels that leave everything unfinished annoy me. And the heroines are all too old. I don’t like ‘em a day over sixteen.”

“But things are often unfinished in real life,” said Pat, who had picked up the idea from David.

“All the more reason why they should come right in books,” said Uncle Horace testily. “Real life! We get enough real life living.
I
like fairy tales. I like a nice snug tidy ending in a book with all the loose ends tucked in. Judy’s yarns never left things in the air. That’s why she’s always been such a corking success as a story-teller.”

Uncle Horace was no mean story-teller himself when they could get him going … which wasn’t always. Around Judy’s kitchen fire in the cool evenings he would loosen up. They heard the tale of his being wrecked on the Magdalens on his first voyage … of the shark crashing through the glass roof of his cabin and landing on the dinner table … of the ghost of the black dog that haunted one of his ships and foreboded misfortune.

“Did you ever see it yourself?” asked David Kirk with a sceptical twist to his lips.

Uncle Horace looked at him witheringly.

“Yes … once,” he said. “Before the mutiny off Bombay.”

His listeners shivered. When Tillytuck and Judy told tales of seeing ghosts nobody minded or believed it. But it was different with Uncle Horace someway. Still, David stuck to his guns. Sailors were always superstitious.

“You don’t mean to say that you really believe in ghosts, Captain Gardiner?”

Uncle Horace looked through David and far away.

“I believe what I see, sir. It may be that my eyes deceived me. Not everybody can see ghosts. It is a gift.”

“A gift I wasn’t dowered with,” said Suzanne, a trifle too complacently. Uncle Horace demolished her with one of those rare looks of his. Suzanne afterwards told Pat that she felt as if that look had bored a hole clean through her and shown her to be hollow and empty.

The next excitement was Amy’s wedding to which everyone at Silver Bush and Swallowfield went through a pouring rain, except Judy and mother. Uncle Horace would not go in the car. It transpired that he had never been in a car and was determined he never would be. So he went with Uncle Tom in the phaeton and got well drenched for his prejudices. It rained all day. But Uncle Horace came back in high good humour.

“Thank goodness there’s a bride or two left in the world yet,” he said as he came dripping into the kitchen where Rae, who had reached home before him, was describing to a greedy Judy how Amy’s bridal veil of tulle was held to her head in the latest fashion by a triple strand of pearls, with white gardenias at the back. Judy didn’t feel that what-do-you-call-‘ems could be so lucky as orange blossoms but she knew without asking that the wedding feast would have been more fashionable than filling and she had a “liddle bite” ready for everybody as they came in. Pat was last of all, having lingered to help Aunt Jessie and Norma. She looked around at the bright, homely picture with satisfaction. It was dismal to start anywhere in rain: but to come home in rain was pleasant … to step from cold and wet into warmth and welcome. The only thing she missed was the cats. Since Uncle Horace’s coming they had been religiously banished. Gentleman Tom spent his leisure in the kitchen chamber, Tillytuck kept a disgruntled Bold-and-Bad in the granary and Squedunk was a patient prisoner in the church barn. Only when Uncle Horace was away were they allowed to sneak back into the kitchen.

But that night, while everybody slumbered in the comfort of Silver Bush a poor, foot-sore, half-dead little cat came crawling up the lane. It was Popka, cold, tired, hungry on the last lap of his hundred mile journey from East Point. When he reached the well-remembered doorstone he paused and tried to lick his wet fur into some semblance of decency before meowing faintly and pitifully for admittance. But the door of Silver Bush remained cruelly closed. Not even Judy in the kitchen chamber heard that feeble cry. Poor Popka dragged himself around to the back and there discovered the broken pane in the cellar window which Judy had been lamenting for a week. In the kitchen he found a saucer of milk under the table which an overstuffed Bold-and-Bad had left when Judy had smuggled him in for his supper. Heartened by this Popka looked happily about him. It was home. The kitchen was warm and cosy … there were several inviting cushions. But Popka craved the comfort of contact with some of his human friends. On four weary legs he climbed the stairs. Alas, every door but one was closed to him. The door of the Poet’s room was half open. Popka slipped in. Ah, here was companionship. Popka jumped on the bed.

Pat, going downstairs before any one else, saw a sight through the door of the Poet’s room that both horrified and delighted her. Popka, her dear, lamented Popka, was curled into a placid vibrant ball on Uncle Horace’s stomach. Pat slipped in, gently lifted Popka and gently departed, leaving Uncle Horace apparently undisturbed. But when Uncle Horace came down to breakfast his first words were,

“Who came in and took my cat?”

“I did,” confessed Pat. “I thought you hated cats.”

“Used to,” said Uncle Horace. “Couldn’t bear ‘em years ago. Wiser now. Found out they made life worth living. Been wondering why you didn’t have any round. Used to be too much cat here if anything. Missed ‘em. Tell you tonight how I come to make friends with the tribe.”

That night around the kitchen fire, while Popka purred on his knee and Bold-and-Bad winked at him from the lounge, Uncle Horace told of the mystery of the black cat with the bows of ribbon in its ears.

“It was the last voyage I made on this side of the world. We sailed from Halifax for China and the first mate had his young brother with him … a lad of seventeen. He’d fetched his favourite cat along with him … Pills was his name. The cat’s I mean, not the boy’s. The boy’s name was Geordie. Pills was black … the blackest thing you ever saw, with one white shoe, and cute as a pet fox. Both the cat’s ears had been punched and he was togged out with little bows of red ribbon tied in ‘em. That proud he was of them, too! Once when Geordie took them out to put fresh ones in and didn’t do it for a day Pills just sulked till he had his ribbons back. Every one on board made a pet of him, except Cannibal Jim …”

“Cannibal Jim? Why was he called that?” asked Rae.

Uncle Horace frowned at her. He did not like interruptions.

“Don’t know, miss. Never asked him. It was his own business. I’d never liked cats before myself but I couldn’t help liking Pills. I got just as fond of him as the others and felt as tickled as could be when he favoured me by coming to sleep in my cabin at night. ‘Twasn’t everybody he’d sleep with. No, sir! That cat picked his bedfellows. There were only three people he’d sleep with … Geordie and me and the cook. Turn and turn about. He never got mixed up. One night the cook took him when it was my turn but that cat threw fits till the cook let him go and in less than a minute he was kneading his paws on my stomach. Next night was the cook’s regular turn but Pills punished him by acting up again and went and slept in a coil of rope on deck. He wouldn’t sleep with Geordie or me out of our turn but the cook had to be dealt with. Well, right in the middle of the Indian Ocean Pills disappeared … clean disappeared. We kept hoping for days he’d turn up but he never did. I’d hard work to keep the crew from mobbing Cannibal Jim, for every one believed he’d thrown Pills overboard, though he swore till all was blue he’d never touched him. And now for the part you won’t believe. Six months later that cat walks into his own old home in Halifax and curled up on his own special cushion. That’s a fact, explain it as you like. He was mighty thin and his feet were bleeding but Geordie’s mother knew him at once by the bows in his ears. She took it into her head the ship was lost and that somehow the cat had survived and got home. She nearly went crazy till she found out different. I went to see Pills when I got back and he knew me right off … draped himself around my legs and purred like mad. There wasn’t any doubt in the world that it was Pills.”