Mistress Pat (41 page)

She flung open the door and went in … lighted a lamp. There was nobody there except Bold-and-Bad. But Pat could have sworn that Judy had been there a moment before.

She did not sleep for a long time that night. She felt vaguely apprehensive, although she could assign no reason for it. As she said afterwards her soul knew something she did not. Late in the night she fell into a troubled slumber. Thus was passed her last night in that beloved old room where she had dreamed her dreams of girlhood and suffered the heartaches of womanhood, where she had endured her defeats and exulted over her victories. Never again was she to lay her head on its pillow … never again waken to see the morning sunshine gleaming in at her vine-hung window. She had looked from that window on spring blossom and summer greenness, on autumn fields and winter snows. She had seen star-shine and sunrise from it. She had knelt there in keen happiness and bitter sorrow. And now that was all finished. The Angel of the Years turned the page whereon it was writ while she lay in that uneasy slumber … and she knew it not.

It was Sunday and everybody went to church. Pat remembered as she went out of the door that when she was a child she had always been so sorry for Silver Bush when everybody went to church. It must feel lonely. She had always been glad when she was left home because she would be company for it.

Something made her turn her head as the car went down the lane. Silver Bush looked beautiful, even on that dour November day, against its sheltering trees. She felt her heart go out to it as they turned the corner and it was hidden from her sight.

The minister had just announced his text … it was always remarked as a curious coincidence that it was, “Thy house shall become a desolation” … when young Corey Robinson entered the church, hurried up the aisle and whispered a word to Long Alec. Pat heard it … every one in the church heard it in a few moments.

Silver Bush was burning!

Pat seemed to die a thousand deaths on that ride home. Yet when she got there she was curiously numb … terror seemed to have washed her being clean of everything. Even when she saw that terrible fire blazing against the grey November hillside she gave no sign … made no sound.

It seemed as if everybody in both the Glens and Silverbridge and Bay Shore were there … but nothing could be done … nothing but stand helplessly and see a home that had been a home for generations wiped out. That night Silver Bush, with all its memories, all its possessions, was in ashes!

They all went to Swallowfield until things could be settled. Pat took no part in the settling. Life had suddenly become for her like a landscape on the moon. She had the odd feeling of not belonging to this or any world that she had felt once or twice after a bad attack of flu. Only … this feeling would never pass. Mother, who bore up wonderfully, watched her anxiously.

It turned out that May had left the oil stove in the porch burning when she went to church. It was supposed to have exploded. Pat was not in the least interested in HOW it had happened. She was not interested in anything … not even in the finding of Judy’s “cream cow” quite unharmed amid the ashes in the cellar and the old front door with its knocker, lying on the lawn. Somebody had wrenched it off in a first vain attempt to enter the blazing house. She did not care when it was discovered that all the hooked rugs Judy had stored in the garret for her were safe, Aunt Barbara having borrowed them to copy the patterns the day before the fire. When you are horribly, hopelessly tired you can’t care about anything.

The only thing that seemed to be the least bit of comfort to her was that the white kittens had not been burned. She had packed the picture up after Judy’s death and sent it to Hilary. He had never even acknowledged it … that hurt her … but as she had sent it to his office she felt quite sure he must have received it. Yes, she was faintly glad Judy’s kittens had not been burned.

At first Long Alec talked of rebuilding Silver Bush. It was insured. Everybody seemed very pleased about the insurance … but no insurance could restore the old heirlooms … the old associations. And then, four days after the fire, Great-Aunt Frances at the Bay Shore died and it was found that she had left the Bay Shore farm to mother.

“It’s strange how things work out,” said Aunt Barbara.

“Very strange,” agreed Pat bitterly.

The kaleidoscope shifted again. Long Alec and mother and Pat would go to live at the Bay Shore. And the new house for Sid and May … a house without memories … would be built on the old foundation of Silver Bush. It would not be like the old Silver Bush. That was gone and the place thereof would know it no more.

May was openly triumphant. A new house, with all the bay windows she wanted and a colour-scheme kitchen like Olive’s! Lovely!

Mother was really pleased at the thought of going back to her old home to live.

“Mother is younger than I am,” thought Pat drearily.

She felt horribly old. Her love for Silver Bush had kept her young … and now it was gone. Nothing was left … there was only a dreadful, unbearable emptiness.

“Life has beaten me,” she told herself. She had had enough grief in her life to know that in time even the bitterest fades out into a not unpleasing dearness and sweetness of recollection. But this heartbreak could never fade. Everything had fallen into ruins around her. She could never fit into the life at the Bay Shore. She had a terrible feeling that she did not belong anywhere … or to anybody … in this new sad lonely world.

“I think … if I could ever be glad of anything again … I’d be glad that Judy died before this happened,” she thought. She did not say these things to anybody. Nobody but mother would have understood and she was not going to make things harder for mother. But her heart was like an unlighted room and nothing, she thought she knew, could ever illumine it again.

One evening two weeks later Pat slipped away in the twilight and went along the Whispering Lane like a ghost, to where home had been. She had never dared to go before. But something drew her now.

Where Silver Bush had been was only a yawning cellar full of ashes and charred beams. Pat leaned on the old yard gate … which had not burned because the wind had blown the flames back against the bush … and looked long and quietly about her. She wore her long blue coat and the little dress of crinkled red crepe she had worn to church … the only clothes she owned just now. Her head was bare and her face was very pale.

The evening was soft and gentle and almost windless. No living thing stirred near her except a lean adventurous barn cat that picked its way gingerly through the yard. Bold-and-Bad and Popka had been transferred to Swallowfield and Winnie had taken Squedunk.

It hurt Pat worse than anything else to see the dead stark trees of the birch grove. She shuddered as she recalled standing there that fatal Sunday and seeing the flames ravage them. It had seemed to hurt her even more than seeing her home burn … those trees she had always loved … trees that had been akin to her. More than half the bush was killed. The old aspen by the kitchen door was only a charred stump and the maple over the well was an indecency. The hood of the well was burned. May would have a pump put in now. But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

All the flower clumps near the house had been burned … Judy’s bleeding-heart … the southernwood … the white lilac. The lawn itself looked like an old yellow blanket. Beyond stretched a russet land of shadows and lonely furrows and woods that stirred faintly in their dreams. Far away, in the direction of Silverbridge, Angus Macaulay must have been working in his forge for she could hear the ring of his anvil, faintly clear, as if some goblin forger were at work among the hills.

“I suppose I can teach,” thought Pat. “I have my old licence. They won’t need me at the Bay Shore … they’ve had Anna Palmer there for years to help and she’ll stay on. But I can’t build up a new life … I’m too tired. I’ll just go on existing … withering into unimportance … drifting from one place to another … rootless … living in houses I hate … oh, can it be I standing here looking at the place where Silver Bush was? … that old Bible verse … ‘it shall be a heap forever … it shall not be built again’ … I wish that were true … I wish no house could ever be built here again … it will be a desecration. Oh, if I could only wake up and find it all a dream!”

“Pat, darling,” said a voice from the shadows around her.

She turned … incredulous … amazed …

“Jingle!”

The old name sprang to her lips. The autumn dusk was no longer cold and loveless over the remote hills. Something seemed to have come with him … courage … hope … inspiration … that same dear sense of protection and understanding that had come to her that evening of long ago when he had found her lost in the dark on the Base Line road. She held out both her hands but he caught her in his arms … his lips were seeking hers … a tremor half fear, half delight, shook her. And then that old, old unacknowledged ache of loneliness she had tried to stifle with Silver Bush vanished forever. His lips were on hers … and she KNEW. It was like a tide turning home.

“I’ve made you mine forever with that kiss,” he said triumphantly. “You can never belong to anyone else. And I’ve waited long enough for it,” he added with his old laugh.

Pat stood quivering with his arms about her. Life was not over after all … it was only beginning.

“I … I don’t deserve you, Hilary,” she whispered humbly. “It seems … it seems … oh, are you REALLY here? I’m not dreaming it, am I?”

“I’m real, sweetheart … joy … delight … wonder! I started as soon as I saw the account of the fire in an Island paper. But I was coming anyway … I had only been waiting to finish our house. I know what this tragedy of Silver Bush must have meant to you … but I’ve a home for you by another sea, Pat. And in it we’ll build up a new life and the old will become just a treasury of dear and sacred memories … of things time cannot destroy. Will you come to it with me?”

“I’ll go to the end of the world and back with you, Hilary. I can’t understand my not knowing all these years that it was you I loved. Those other men … some of them were so nice … I thought I couldn’t marry them because I couldn’t leave Silver Bush … but I know now it was because they weren’t YOU …”

“Are you really my girl … MY girl at last, Pat? You remember how furiously you used to deny it? And your eyes are as brown as ever, Pat. I can’t see in the dimness but I’m sure they are. And I know you look just as much as ever like a creamy rose with gold in its heart. Do you know, Pat, I never got your letter or Judy’s kittens till two months ago? I’ve been in Japan for over a year, studying Japanese architecture. Letters were forwarded but parcels weren’t. And you broke the postal laws shamelessly by tucking your letter inside the parcel. Dearest, let’s go into the old graveyard and sit on a slab. I want to have you wholly to myself for an hour before we go back to Swallowfield. There’s going to be a moonrise tonight … how long is it since we watched a moonrise together?”

“A moonrise tonight.” That was always a magical phrase. Pat was in a maze of happiness as they walked to the old graveyard and sat on Weeping Willy’s flat tombstone. She hadn’t felt like this for years … had believed she could never feel like this again … as if some supernal musician had swept her very soul with his fingers and evolved some ethereal harmony. Was it possible life could always be so rich … so poignant … so SIGNIFICANT as this?

“I want to tell you all about the home I have ready for you,” said Hilary. “When I came back from Japan and found the picture and your letter I wanted to come east at once. But that very day when I was prowling on the heights above the city I found a spot … a spot I RECOGNIZED, although I had never seen it before … a spot that WANTED me. There was a spring in the corner with a little brook trickling out … four darling little apple trees in another corner … and a hill of pines behind it, with a river and a mountain within neighborly distance … a faint blue mountain. I don’t know its name but we’ll call it the Hill of the Mist. That spot was just crying for a house to be built on it. So … I built one. It’s waiting for you. It’s a dear house, Pat … fat red chimneys … sharp little gables on the side of the roof … a door that says ‘come in’ and another one that says, ‘stay out.’ It’s painted white and has bottlegreen shutters like Silver Bush.”

“It sounds heavenly, Hilary … but I’d live in an igloo in Greenland if you were there.”

“There’s a lovely jam closet,” said Hilary slyly. “I thought you’d want one.”

Pat’s eyes flickered.

“Of course I want one. While I live and move and have my being I’ll want a jam closet,” she said decidedly. “And we’ll have Judy’s rugs on the floor and the old Silver Bush knocker on the door that says ‘come in’.”

“The dining-room has a wide, low window opening into the pine wood at the back. We can eat with the sound of the pines in our ears. And from the other window we can see the sunset while we eat our supper. I’ve built the house, Pat … I’ve provided the body but you must provide the soul. There’s a lovely big fireplace that can hold real logs … I left it all laid ready for lighting … you will light the fire and make the room live.”

“Like the old kitchen at Silver Bush. It WILL be homelike.”

“You could make any place homelike, Pat. We’ll sit there caring only when we want to care for what is outside … wind or rain, mist or moonshine. We’ll have a dog that wags his tail when he sees us … more than one. Lots of jolly little dogs and furry kittens. And a Silver Bush cat. I suppose Bold-and-Bad is too old to endure emigration to a far land.”

“Yes, he must end his days at Swallowfield. Aunt Barbara loves him. But I’m sure it will be possible to send a kitten by express— it has been done. Hilary, why did you give up writing to me?”

“I thought it wasn’t any use. I thought the only decent thing to do was to leave you in peace. Besides, you WERE taking me too much for granted, Pat. You were blinded by our years of friendship. When can we be married, Pat?”

“As soon as you like,” said Pat shamelessly. “At least … when I’ve had time to get a few clothes. I haven’t a rag but what I’m wearing.”