Mistress Pat (23 page)

The first day of November came when Judy must pack. It was mild and calm and sunny but there had been hard frost the night before, for the first time, and the garden had suffered. Pat hated to look at her flowers. The nasturtiums were positively indecent. She realised that the summer was over at last.

Judy’s trunk was in the middle of the kitchen floor. Pat helped her pack. “Don’t forget the black bottle, Judy,” Sid said slyly as he passed. Judy ignored this but she brought down her book of Useful Knowledge.

“I must be taking this, Patsy. There do be a lot av ettiket hints in it. Or do ye be thinking they’re a trifle out av date? The book is by way av being a bit ouldish. I wudn’t want me cousins in Ireland to be thinking I didn’t know the latest rules. And, Patsy darlint, I’m taking me ould dress-up dress as well as the new one. I did be always loving that dress. The new one is rale fine but I haven’t been wearing it long enough to fale acquainted wid it. Do ye rimimber how ye always hated to give up any av yer ould clothes, Patsy? And, Patsy dear, here’s the kay av me blue chist. I’m wanting ye to kape it for me whin I’m gone and if innything but good shud be happening to me over there … not that I’m thinking it will … ye’ll be finding me bit av a will in the baking powder can in the till.”

“Judy, just imagine it … this time next week you’ll be in the middle of the Atlantic.”

“Patsy dear,” said Judy soberly, “there’s a favour I’d be asking ye. Will ye be saying that liddle hymn ivery night whin ye say yer prayers … the one where it does be mintioning ‘those in peril on the say.’ It’d be a rale comfort to me on the bounding dape. Well, me trunk’s packed, thank the Good Man Above. Sure and I knew a woman that tuk four trunks wid her whin she wint to the Ould Country. I’m not knowing how she stud it. Iverything do be ready but what if something’ll be previnting me from going at the last minute, Patsy? I’m that built up on it I cudn’t be standing it.”

“Nothing will happen to prevent you, Judy. You’ll have a splendid trip and a lovely visit with all your cousins.”

“I’m hoping it, girl dear. But I’ve been seeing so minny disappointmints in life. And, Patsy dear, kape an eye on Gintleman Tom, will ye and see that Mrs. Puddleduck don’t be imposing on him. I’m not knowing how the poor baste will be doing widout me.”

“Don’t worry, Judy. I’ll look after him … if he doesn’t go and disappear as he did the last time you were away from home.”

Pat lingered a little while that evening on the back-stair landing looking out of the round window. There was a promise of gathering storm. A peevish wind was tormenting the boughs of the aspen poplar. Scudding clouds seemed to sweep the tips of the silver birches. Soon the rain would be falling on the dark autumn fields. But even a wild wet night like this would have been delightful at Silver Bush if her heart had been lighter. Judy would be gone by this time tomorrow night and Mrs. Puddleduck would be reigning in her stead. No Judy to come home to … no Judy to give you “liddle bites” … no Judy to stir pea soup … no Judy to slip in on cold nights with the eiderdown puff off the Poet’s bed.

“And what,” said Gentleman Tom on the step above, “is a poor cat to do?”

Long Alec took Judy to the station next morning through a drizzling rain. She was going to Summerside to spend the night at Uncle Brian’s and take the boat train with the Pattersons the next day. Everybody stood at the gate and waved her off, smiling gallantly till the car was out of sight. Pat turned back to the kitchen where Mrs. Puddleduck was already making a cake and looking quite at home.

“I hate her,” thought Pat, wildly and unjustly.

Dinner … the first meal without Judy … was a sorry affair. The soup of Mrs. Puddleduck was not the soup of Judy Plum.

“She doesn’t know how to stir the brew,” Tillytuck whispered to Pat.

Rae came home that night but supper was a gloomy affair. Mrs. Puddleduck’s cake, in spite of her domestic short course, rather looked as if somebody had sat down on it: Long Alec was very silent: Tillytuck went straight to his granary roost as soon as the meal was over. Nothing pleased him and he did not pretend to be pleased.

“I feel old, Pat … as old as Methuselah,” said Rae drearily, as they peeped into the kitchen before going to bed.

“I feel middle-aged, which is far worse,” moaned Pat.

Mrs. Puddleduck was sitting there, knitting complacently at a sweater. No cat was in sight, not even Gentleman Tom.

“I wish I could be a cat for a little while, just to bite you,” whispered Rae to the fat back of the unconscious Mrs. Puddleduck, who really was quite undeserving of all this hatred and, in fact, thought quite highly of herself for “helping the Gardiners out” while Judy Plum was gallivanting off to Ireland.

Saturday was dark and dour but a pleasant letter from Hilary helped Pat through the forenoon. Dear Hilary! What letters he could write! Hilary as a friend, even in faraway Toronto, was worth all the beaus in the Maritimes.

In mid-afternoon it began to rain again, battering everything down in the desolate garden. Tillytuck and Mrs. Puddleduck were already at loggerheads because when she complained that Just Dog had barked all night he had indulged in one of his silent fits of laughter and said blandly, “If you’d told me he’d purred I’d have been more surprised.”

Sid took the girls over to the Bay Shore to help Winnie paper a room. The air was as full of flying leaves as of rain, and floods ran muddily down the gutters of the road. It was just as bad when they returned at night.

“I suppose Judy is on board ship now. They were to sail from Halifax at five o’clock,” sighed Rae. “There’s Tillytuck playing his fiddle. How can he have the heart? But I suppose he’s trying to get on the good side of Mrs. Puddleduck. That man has no soul above snacks.”

“I don’t know how we’ll ever get through the winter,” said Pat.

They ran up the wet walk and opened the kitchen door … then stood on the threshold literally paralysed with amazement. Tillytuck’s fiddle was purring under his hands. Mother was mending by the table whereon was a huge platterful of fat doughnuts. Long Alec lay on the sofa, snoozing blissfully with Squedunk on his chest and Bold-and-Bad and Popka curled up at his feet. Gentleman Tom, with the air of a cat making up his mind to forgive somebody, was sitting on the rug, with his tail stretched out uncompromisingly behind him.

And Judy … JUDY … in her old drugget dress was sitting beside the stove stirring the contents of a savoury pot! Her knitting was on her lap and she looked like anything but a heart-broken woman.

For a moment the girls stared at her unbelievingly. Then with a shriek of “Judy!!!” they hurled themselves upon her. Wet as they were she hugged them with a fierce tenderness.

“Judy … Judy … DARLING … but why … why …?”

“I just cudn’t be going, that do be all, me jewels. I was knowing it in me heart as soon as I lift. Poor Alec hadn’t a word to throw to a dog. Ye cud have been scraping the blue mould off av him be the time we got to the station. But thinks I to mesilf, ‘I’d look like a nice fool backing out now, after all thim prisents,’ thinks I. So I did be sticking it out till I got into me bed at yer Uncle Brian’s that night … the second bist spare room it was … oh, oh, they trated me fine, I’ll be saying that for thim. But niver the wink wud I be slaping. I kipt thinking av me kitchen here, wid Mrs. Puddleduck reigning in me stid … and of all the things that might be happening to me, roaming abroad. Running inty an iceberg maybe … or maybe dying over there. Not that I’d be minding the dying so much but being buried among strangers. And thin if innything but good shud be happening to some av ye here! Thinks I, ‘Perhaps they’ll be larning to like Mrs. Puddleduck better’n me and her as smooth as crame.’ I cud see ye all, snug and cosy, wid the beaus slipping along in the dim. Thinks I, ‘There do be all the turkeys to be fattened for Christmas and the winter hooking to be done and mebbe Joe coming home to be married,’ … and I cudn’t be standing it. So at breakfast I up and told Brian I’d been after changing me mind and I’d just be going back to Silver Bush instead av to Ireland wid the Pattersons.”

“Judy, you said the other day it would break your heart if anything prevented you from going …”

“Oh, oh, yisterday and to-day do be two different things,” said Judy complacently. “Whin ye thought I was all ixcited over me trip I was just talking to kape me spirits up. It’s the happy woman I am to think I’ll slape in me own snug bed tonight wid Gintleman Tom curled up at me fate. Brian brought me home this afternoon and whin I stepped over the threshold of me kitchen I wudn’t have called the quane me cousin. Oh, oh, ye shud have been seeing Madam Puddleduck’s face! ‘I thought this was how it wud be,’ sez she, as spiteful as a fairy that had just got a spanking.”

“Judy, where IS Mrs. Puddleduck?”

“Safe back at the bridge where she belongs. Sure and she wasn’t for staying long whin she saw me back. Oh, oh, she’ll be saying plinty besides her prayers tonight. I wint inty me pantry thinking I’d see fine things in the ways av Sunday baking, what wid her domestic short course and all. But all I did be seeing was a cake looking like nothing on earth and a pie wid a lot of hen tracks on it. Tillytuck tells me he did be ating a pace av it and niver will his stomach be the same agin. Oh, oh, domestic science, sez I! I did be putting it in the pig’s pail and frying up a big batch av doughnuts.”

“Praise the sea but keep on land is a good proverb, symbolically speaking,” said Tillytuck. After which he ate nine doughnuts.

Everybody was shamelessly glad and showed it, much to Judy’s secret delight and relief. They shut out the rain and the cold wind. Never had the old kitchen held a more contented, more congenial bunch of people. Grief and loneliness had gone where old moons go and even King William looked jubilant in his never-ending passage of the Boyne. Outside it might be a dank and streaming November night but here was the eternal summer of the heart.

“Isn’t it nice to look OUT into a storm?” said Rae. “Listen to that wind roaring. I love it. Judy, I’m glad you’re not on the Atlantic.”

“I do be just where I want to be, Cuddles darlint, and faling rale high and hilarious. Sure and I do be good frinds wid Silver Bush agin. It’s been looking at me reproachful-like for a long time. I’m knowing now I cud niver be laving it. It’s got into the marrow av me. So here I am, wid enough fine clothes to do me for the rist av me life and all the fun av getting ready. Oh, oh, ‘twill be a stirring tale … the story av how Judy Plum wint to Ireland and got back so quick she met hersilf going. And now we’ll begin planning a bit for Christmas.”

Judy crept in that night to see if the girls were warm … the darling, thoughtful old thing.

“You’re such a DEPENDABLE old sport, Judy,” said a drowsy Pat, sitting up and hugging her. “It seems unbelievably lovely that you’re here … HERE … and not far away on the billow.”

Judy was not acquainted with Wilson Macdonald’s couplet,

“For this is wealth to know my foot’s returning Is always music to a friend of mine,”

but she felt that she was a very rich woman with only one small cloud on her perfect joy.

“Patsy darlint, do ye think I ought to be giving thim back … the prisents, I mane?”

“Certainly not, Judy. They were given to you and they are yours.”

Judy gave a sigh of relief.

“It’s rale glad I am to hear ye say so, Patsy. It wud have been bitter hard to give up that illigant t’ilet set. But I’m thinking I’ll give yer Aunt Edith’s hug-me-tight back to her. Niver will I let her be saying I come be it under false pretences.”

Just as a great wave of sleep was breaking over Pat a sad premonitory thought drifted across her mind.

“And yet … for all she didn’t go … I feel as if things were going to change.”

When Rae came home from Queen’s in the spring, the happy possessor of a teacher’s license, she got the home school and settled down for a summer of good fun before school should open. “Fun” to Rae at this stage meant beaus and, as Judy said, they were standing in line. Pat couldn’t quite get used to the idea of “little Cuddles” being really old enough to have beaus but Rae herself had no doubts on that point. And she admitted quite candidly that she liked having them. Not that she ever flirted, in spite of the Binnies. “College has improved Rae Gardiner some,” Mrs. Binnie was reported to have said, “but it ain’t cured her of being boy-crazy.”

Rae just LOOKED. “Come,” said that look. “I know a secret you would like to know and no one can tell it to you but me.”

She was not really as pretty as Winnie or as witty as Pat but there was magic in her … what Tillytuck called “glamour, symbolically speaking.” “The little monkey has a way with her,” said Uncle Tom. And the youth of both Glens knew it. It did not matter how much or how severely she snubbed them, this creature of cruelty and loveliness held them in thrall. Long Alec complained that Silver Bush was literally overrun and that they never had a quiet Sunday any more. But Judy would listen to no such growling.

“Wud ye be wanting yer girls to be like John B. Madison’s,” she enquired sarcastically. “Six av thim there and niver a beau to divide between them.”

“There’s reason in all things,” protested Long Alec, who liked to have an undisturbed Sunday afternoon nap.

“Not in beaus,” said Judy shrewdly. “And I’m minding that the yard at the Bay Shore used to be full of rigs on Sunday afternoons, young Alec Gardiner’s among them. Don’t be forgetting you were once young, Long Alec. We’ll all have a bit av quiet fun be times watching the antics. Were ye hearing what happened to Just Dog last Sunday afternoon whin one av the young Shortreed sprouts … Lloyd I’m thinking his name was … was sitting on the front porch steps, looking kind av holy and solemn, for all the world like his ould Grandfather Shortreed at prayer mating. Sure and the poor baste … not maning Lloyd … met up wid a rat in the stone dyke behind the church barn and cornered it. But me Mr. Rat put up a fight and clamped his teeth in Just Dog’s jaw. Such howling ye niver did be hearing as he tore across the yard and through me kitchen and the hall and out past the young fry on the steps and through me bed av petunias. Roaring down the lane he wint, the rat still houlding on tight. The girls wint into kinks and Tillytuck come bucketing out, rale indignant, and saying, the divil himself must have got inty the modern rats. ‘Oh, oh,’ sez I, ‘don’t be spaking so flippant av the divil, MR. Tillytuck. He’s an ancient ould lad and shud be rispicted,’ sez I. Lloyd Shortreed looked rale shocked.”