Mistress Pat (40 page)

“Are you sure you’re not tiring yourself, Judy?”

“Talking so much, sez she. Oh, oh, Patsy darlint, it rists me … and what do a few hours one way or another be mattering whin ye’ve come to journey’s ind?”

One night Judy talked of the disposal of her few treasures.

“There’ll be a bit av money in the bank after me funeral ixpinses do be paid. I’ve lift it to be divided betwane Winnie and Cuddles and yersilf. Winnie is to hev me autygraph quilt and I promised me blue chist to Siddy years ago. There do be some mats in the garret I put away for ye, Patsy, and me Book av Useful Knowledge and all the liddle things in me glory box. And the book wid all me resates in it. Ye’ll sind Hilary the white kittens, darlint. I’ll be giving me bead pincushion to yer Aunt Barbara for a liddle rimimberance. Her and me always did be hitting it off rale well. And ye’ll see that the ould black bottle is destroyed afore inny one sees it. Folks might be misunderstanding it.”

“I’ll … I’ll see to everything, Judy.”

“And, Patsy darlint, ye’ll see that they bury me out there in the ould graveyard where I won’t be far from Silver Bush? There do be a liddle place betwane Waping Willy and the fince where ye can be squazing me in wid a slip av white lilac at me hid. And I’d like a slab on me grave, too, in place av a standing-up tombstone, so the cats can slape on it. It wud be company-like. And ye’ll dress me in me ould dress-up dress … the blue one. I always did be liking it. It won’t be as tight as it was at Winnie’s widding. Do ye be minding?”

“Judy” … Pat did not often break down but there were times when she could not help it … “however can I … however can Silver Bush get along without you?”

“There’ll be a way,” said Judy gently. “There always do be a way. There do be only one thing … I’m wondering who’ll whitewash the stones and the posts nixt spring. Me fine May won’t … she niver hild be it.”

“I’ll see to that, Judy. Everything is going to be kept at Silver Bush just as you left it.”

“It’ll be too hard on yer hands, Patsy dear.” But Judy was not really worried. She knew the Good Man Above would attend to things.

But it seemed there were one or two things on Judy’s conscience.

“Patsy darlint, do ye be minding whin that bit av news about the countess visiting at Silver Bush was put in the paper and ye niver cud find out who did be doing it? Darlint, it was be way av being mesilf. I’ve been often thinking av owning up to it but niver cud I get up me courage. I did be wanting all the folks to know av it so I ‘phoned it in. The editor, he did be touching it up a bit though. Can ye be forgiving me, Patsy?”

“Forgive? Oh, Judy! Why … that was … nothing.”

“It wasn’t in kaping wid the traditions av Silver Bush and well I knew it. And, Patsy darlint, all thim stories av mine … most av thim happened but maybe I did touch thim up a bit, dramatic-like, now and agin. Me grandmother niver was a witch … but she CUD see things other folks cudn’t. One day I do be minding I was walking wid her, me being a slip av tin or twilve … and we met a man there was talk av. He was alone, saming-like, but me grandmother sez to him, sez she, ‘Good day to you and YER COMPANY.’ I’ve niver forgot his face but whin I asked her what she mint she said to thank God I didn’t be knowing and not another word wud she say. He did be hanging himself not long after on his verandah, deliberate-like. And now I’ve tould ye this I’m not worrying over innything. All will be coming right … I’m knowing it somehow, being death-wise. Love doesn’t iver be dying, Patsy. I’d like to have seen ye a bride, darlint. But it’s glad I am I’ll niver have to live at Silver Bush wid ye gone.”

One afternoon Judy wandered a little. She thought she heard Joe’s whistle and Rae’s laugh. “The Silver Bush girls always had the pretty way av laughing,” she murmured. She raked down some one who “didn’t be washing the butter properly.” Once she said, “If ye’d set a light in the windy, Patsy.” Again she was hunting through an imaginary parsley bed for something she couldn’t find. “I’m fearing I’ve lost the knack av finding thim,” she sighed.

But when Pat went up to her in the dim she was lying peacefully. Mrs. Binnie had just gone down and had passed Pat on the stairs with an ominous moan.

“Thank the Good Man Above I’ve seen the last av the Binnie gang,” said Judy. “I heard her groaning to you on the stairs. It’s bad luck to mate on the stairs as the mouse said whin the cat caught him half way down, but the luck’ll be on her. She’s been talking av funerals be way av cheering me up. ‘Whin me father died,’ sez she, ‘he had a wonderful funeral. The flowers were grand! And the crowds!’ Ye cud be seeing it was a great comfort to the fam’ly.”

“Are you feeling any worse, Judy?”

“I niver felt better in me life, darlint. I haven’t an ache or a pain. Wud ye be propping me up a bit? I’d like to have a look at the ould silver bush and the clouds having their fun wid the wind over it.”

“Can you guess who’s been here inquiring for you, Judy? Tillytuck, no less. He came all the way from the South shore to ask after you.”

“Oh, oh, that was very affable av him,” said Judy in a gratified tone.

Judy’s bed had been moved so that she could see out of the window when propped up. Pat raised her on her pillows and she looked out with a relish on a scene that was for her full of memories. The owls were calling in the silver bush. The patient acres of the old farm were lying in the fitful light of a windy sunset. But the twilight shadows were falling peacefully over the sheltered kitchen garden where Long Alec was burning weeds. Tillytuck, who had asked Long Alec if he might have a few parsnips, was squatted down on his haunches, busily digging, while a stick of some kind which he had thrust into his pants pocket stuck up behind him with a grotesque resemblance to a forked tail.

Judy reached out and clutched Pat’s hand.

“‘Did ye iver see the devil Wid his liddle wooden shovel Digging pittaties in the garden Wid his tail cocked up?’”

she quoted, laughing, and fell back on her pillows. Her kind loving eyes closed. Judy, who had laughed so bravely, gaily, gallantly all her life, had died laughing.

Silver Bush was made ready to receive death. Judy lay in state in the Big Parlour … Pat had a queer feeling that it should really have been in the kitchen … while outside great flakes of the first snowfall were coming down. Her busy hands were still, quite still, at last. Beautiful flowers had been sent in, but Pat searched her garden and found a few late ‘mums and some crimson leaves and berries to put in Judy’s hands, folded on the breast of her blue dress-up dress. Judy’s face took on a beauty and dignity in death it had never known in life. The funeral was largely attended … Pat couldn’t help feeling that Judy would have been proud of it. And then it was over … the house, so terribly still, to be put in order and no Judy to talk it over with in the kitchen afterwards! Pat reflected, with a horrible choke, how Judy would have enjoyed talking over her own funeral … how she would have chuckled over the jokes. For there had been jokes … it seemed that there were jokes everywhere, even at funerals. Old Malcolm Anderson making one of his rare remarks as he looked down on Judy’s dead face, “Poor woman, I hope you’re as happy as you look,” … mournfully, as if he rather doubted it; and Olive’s son yowling because his sisters pushed him away from the window and he couldn’t see the flowers being carried out … “Never mind,” one of his sisters comforting him, “you’ll see the flowers at mother’s funeral.”

When all was done, Pat, wondering how she could bear the dull, dead ache in her heart, averted her eyes from the spectral winter landscape and went to the kitchen expecting to find it a tragedy of emptiness. But mother was there in Judy’s place, with a chairful of cats beside her. Pat buried her head in mother’s lap and cried out all the tears she had wanted to cry out since Judy was stricken down.

“Oh, mother … mother … I’ve nothing but you and Silver Bush left now.”

The Eleventh Year

There were many times in the year following Judy’s death when cold waves of pain went over Pat. At first it seemed literally impossible to carry on without Judy. Life seemed very savourless now that Judy’s tales were all told. But Pat found, as others have done, that “we forget because we must.” Life began to be livable again and then sweet. Silver Bush seemed to cry to her, “Make me homelike again … keep my rooms lighted … my heart warmed. Bring young laughter here to keep me from growing old.”

Almost every one she had loved was changed or gone … the old voices of gladness sounded no more … but Silver Bush was still the same.

That first Christmas without Judy was bitter. Winnie wanted them all to go to the Bay Shore for the day but Pat wouldn’t hear of it. Leave Silver Bush alone for Christmas? Not she! Every tradition was scrupulously carried out. It was easier because mother could share in things now, and they had a good Christmas Day after all. Uncle Tom and Aunt Barbara and Winnie and Frank and their children came. May went home for the day, so there was no jarring presence. A letter came from Rae with the good news that in two years’ time she and Brook would be coming “home” to take charge of the Vancouver branch. Compared to China Vancouver seemed next door. As Judy used to say, there was always something to take the edge off. Nevertheless Pat was glad when the day was over. The first Christmas above a grave can never be a wholly joyous thing. She and mother talked it over in the kitchen afterwards and laughed a little over certain things. The cats purred around them and Uncle Tom and dad played checkers. But once or twice Pat caught herself listening for Judy’s step on the back stairs.

By spring hope was her friend again and her delight in Silver Bush was keen and vivid once more. Her love for it kept her young. To be sure, often now came little needle-like reminders of the passing years. Now and again there was another grey hair and she knew the quirk at the corner of her mouth was getting a little more pronounced. “We’re all growing old,” she thought with a pang. But she really didn’t mind it so much for herself. It was the change in others she hated to see. Winnie was getting matronly and Frank … who had just been elected to membership in the Provincial House … was grey above the ears. If other people would only stay young, Pat thought, she wouldn’t mind growing old herself. Though it was rather horrid to be told you “looked young,” as Uncle Brian once did. She knew the Binnies regarded her as definitely “on the shelf” and that they were calling her among themselves “the single perennial.” Even Little Mary once gravely asked her, “Aunt Pat, did YOU ever have any beaus?” It sometimes amused her to reflect that she was really quite a different person to different people. To the Binnies she was a disappointed spinster who had been “crossed in love” … to the Great-aunts at the Bay Shore she was an inexperienced child … to Lester Conway she was a divine, alluring, unobtainable creature. For Lester, who was now a young widower, had tried vainly to warm up the cold soup. Pat would none of him. The time when she had been so wildly in love with him in her Queen’s days seemed as far away and unreal as the days of immemorial antiquity. To be sure, he had been slim and romantic and dashing then, whereas he was stout and plump-faced now. And he had once laughed at Silver Bush. Pat had never forgiven him for that … never would forgive him.

In the spring Long Alec again announced that the next year the new house would be built. It had been postponed twice but the mortgage was paid at last and there would be no more postponements. Pat lived on this through the summer. Nevertheless, when the autumn came again it was not just a wholesome time for Pat. Sometimes mother watched her a little anxiously. Pat seemed to have an attack of nerves now and then. She developed a taste for taking lonely walks by herself among the twilight shadows. They seemed to be better company than she found in the sunlight. She came back from them looking as if she were of the band of grey shadows herself. Mother didn’t like it. It seemed to her that the child, on those lone rambles, was trying to warm herself by some fire that had died out years ago. She had that look on her face when she came in. Mother wanted Pat to go away for a visit somewhere but Pat only laughed.

“There is nowhere I could go where I would be half as happy as I am at Silver Bush. You know I’ve died several times of homesickness when I was away. Don’t worry over me, sweetheart. I’m fine and dandy … and next year Silver Bush will be OURS again … and I’ve a hundred plans for it.”

A night came when Pat found herself alone at Silver Bush … absolutely alone for the first time, in that old house where there had been always so many. Mother and father were over at the Bay Shore and would not be back till late. It was wonderful that mother could gad about like that again. Pat thought she wouldn’t mind being alone … COULD she be alone with dear Silver Bush? … but some restlessness drove her outside. There was a moan of the autumn wind in the leafless birches and a wonderful display of northern lights. Pat recalled that Judy had always been superstitious about northern lights. They were a “sign.” How Judy seemed to come back on a night like this! Dead and gone years seemed to be whispering to themselves all about her. The crisp leaves rustled under her feet as she went along the path to the orchard. She recalled old autumns when she and Sid had raced through the fallen leaves. There were voices in the wind, calling to her out of the past. Many things came back to her … bitter, beautiful, sad, joyous things … crises that had seemed to wreck life and were only dim memories now. She was haunted. This would not do. She must shake this off. She would go in and light up the house. It did not like to be dark and silent. Yet she paused for a moment on the doorstep, the prey of a sudden fancy. That shut door was a door of dreams through which she might slip into the Silver Bush of long ago. For a fleeting space she had a curious feeling that Judy and Tillytuck and Hilary and Rae and Winnie and Joe were all in there and if she could only go in quickly and silently enough she would find them. A world utterly passed away might be her universe once more.

“This is nonsense,” said Pat, giving herself a shake. “This won’t do. These moods are coming too often now.”