Pat of Silver Bush (30 page)

“Sure and whativer is after Pat will have the hard time to get past that baste,” Judy said confidently.

But the third night, in the wee sma’ hours, when Silver Bush was holding its wakeful breath, wondering despairingly what the morrow would bring, Gentleman Tom arose, shook himself, and walked gravely downstairs to his own cushion in the kitchen.

“He was knowing there wasn’t inny more nade av sitting there,” said Judy at sunrise. “Pat had got the turn. I met him coming down whin I was coming up and he was after giving me a look. Whin I wint in the darlint’s room I was ixpecting to see a difference and I did. Look at her there, slaping as paceful as a lamb. Sure and this is a joyful day for Silver Bush. Ye can be watching her, Winnie, the while I brew me a jug av tay. I nade a bit av a stimulant, what wid me knees shaking and me poor head going round in circles.”

Pat’s convalescence was a long one. It was five weeks before she could even sit up in bed and drink her broth out of the dear little yellow bowl with blue roses in it … a Bay Shore heirloom … which Aunt Honor had sent over for her. She had a little gold cushion that was like a small sun behind her head … Aunt Hazel had sent IT up … and wore a lovely jacket of primrose silk which Aunt Edith had brought over for her. Everybody was so good to her. The banished Bets sent her up leaves full of wild strawberries and Hilary brought brook trout for her. When Hilary sprained his ankle so badly that he had to keep the house for a week Judy herself, armed with a can of worms and Sid’s hook and line stalked up and down the banks of Jordan to cater to Pat’s slowly-reviving appetite. Mother came to the door and looked in with happy eyes. Sometimes Cuddles’ darling anxious little face peered through the stair railings, not permitted to come any nearer.

It was seven weeks before Pat was allowed out of bed, despite her pleadings.

“I’m getting so tired of the bed, Judy. I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt me to get up for a little and sit in a chair by the window. I want to see OUTSIDE so much. You don’t know how tired I am of looking at the blue-bells on the wallpaper. That cluster of them over the wash-stand looks just like a little pot-bellied elf with a bonnet on and it grins at me. Now, don’t look terrified, Judy dear. I’m not out of my head again. You can see it for yourself.”

“I’m not denying there’s a resimblance. But ye’ll not be out av bed for two days more. Thim’s the doctor’s orders and I’ll folly them.”

“Well, prop me up on the pillows, Judy, so that I can at least see something out of the window.”

That was nice. She could see the slender fir-tops against the blue sky at the bottom of the garden … the cloud-castles that came and went … the swallow-haunted gable end of the barn … the smoke from Uncle Tom’s chimney making magic against the hills. Pat lived on this for two days more and then Judy let her sit on a chair by the window for half an hour. Pat managed to walk to the chair although she admitted she felt very like a bowl of jelly that would all fall apart if violently shaken. But her eyes and ears made the most of that half hour. At first it was a shock to see how the summer had gone while she had been sick. But what beautiful colours the world was showing. How wonderful to see again the blue shoulders of the hills across the harbour and the ecstasy of farewell summers in the field of that ilk … the silky wind ripples going over the grass on the lawn and all her own intimate, beloved trees. The breeze whispering from hill to hill and blowing in the scent of flowers to her. The honeysuckle over the graveyard paling with Judy’s ducks squattering around the well. Bold-and-Bad on the window sill of the church barn and a curly black dog, with a white heart on his breast, on the granary steps.

And … could it be? … Bets! A slim lovely girl in a lilac dress, her arms full of peonies, waving to her from the Whispering Lane. Bets had GROWN.

“Judy sent me word I could just look at you from here if I was right on the dot. Oh, Pat, darling, it’s just heavenly to see you again. If you knew what I’ve been through! I wanted to send Hilary word … he’s just been frantic … but Judy thought both of us would be too much excitement for you. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

Every day Pat was allowed to sit up a little longer, until she could spend the whole afternoon at her window. Hilary and Bets were allowed in the garden now and could shout things up at her, though Judy wouldn’t allow her to talk much in return. But it was enough just to be there, looking out on the beautiful moods of the fields, that sometimes twinkled in summer rain and sometimes basked in sunshine. One evening Judy let her stay up after supper. It was lovely to see the “dim” come stealing over the garden again. She recalled the last story she and Bets had read together, of an old enchanted garden in which flowers could talk. Just suppose her own flowers talked at night. That red rose in the corner became a passionate lover and whispered compliments to the white rose. That swaggering tiger lily told tales of incredible adventures. The nodding sleepy poppies gave away all their secrets. But the Madonna lilies only said their prayers.

She hadn’t seen the stars for so long. And to watch the moon rise! Bets and she had read a poem once about the moon rising over Hymettus. But it couldn’t be more beautiful than the moon rising over the Hill of the Mist with the harbour beyond. The tree shadows were lovely. The tall lilies looked like white saints in the moon-glow.

Judy coming in was quite horrified to find that Pat had not yet returned to bed.

“Ye haven’t been slaping, have ye now?” she queried anxiously. “Not slaping in the moonlight, child dear?”

“No. But I’d love to. Why shouldn’t I?”

“Listen at her. Don’t ye iver go slaping in moonlight. It’s liable ye are to go mad. Sure and I knew a man once … he slipt out in the moonlight one night and he was niver the same again.”

Pat sighed. She hated to leave that delicious silver bath of moonlight but she WAS tired. It was nice to feel tired again and drift off to sleep so easily.

Ten weeks from the day she took sick Pat came downstairs, feeling a glad freedom. What a day that was! Such a triumphant Judy! All the poppies dancing to do her honour! Comfortably hungry for her dinner once more. Such a delightful meal with everybody exchanging happy looks. Even Gentleman Tom made a fuss over her.

“Sure and the house do be glad to see you round it again,” gloated Judy.

“It was nice to see everything in the same place. She had been afraid something would be changed. The garden HAD changed a great deal. And even Bets and Jingle seemed changed … older, some way. Jingle had certainly grown taller. Oh, why did things have to change? The old sad question.

“Maybe there’s a bit av change in yersilf, darlint,” said Judy, a little sadly. Pat WAS changed … she looked older in some unmistakeable way.

“Sure and ye can’t be going quite so near the gate av death widout it changing ye,” whispered Judy to herself. “She isn’t the child inny more. She’ll never be the same again.”

The others thought it was just her pallor and thinness. Uncle Tom told her she had a lovely suit of bones.

“I’ll soon fatten up on your cooking, Judy. Life tastes good to-day.”

“Sure and life do be having a taste, don’t it, Patsy? I’m only a poor ould maid as has worked out all her days for a living and yet I’m declaring life has a taste. Sure and I smack me lips over it.”

“Hilary has brought me a jolly book to read … Bets is sweeter than ever. On the whole, it’s a pretty nice world in spite of change and it’s wonderful to be back in it again.”

“I’m telling ye. But, Patsy darlint, ye must be going careful. There’s to be no running all over for a while yet. Just sit ye still and listen to yer hair growing.”

Pat found it was more likely she would have to listen to her hair falling out. It began to fall out alarmingly. Judy assured her that it was only to be expected but even Judy was scared. Pat wept and would not be comforted.

“I’m bald, Judy … actually bald. I suppose it’s a judgement on me for hating my ginger hair. Judy, what if it never comes in again?”

“But av coorse it will,” said Judy … who was by no means as sure of it as she would have liked to be. She made Pat a cap of lace and silk to wear but there were some bad weeks. Some prophesied dire things. Aunt Edith had known a girl whose hair had come out like that.

“It grew in again WHITE,” said Aunt Edith.

Then the hair DID begin to grow in … a dark fuzz at first. Pat was relieved to find it was not white at any rate. Then longer … thicker …

“I do be belaving it’s going to be curly,” whispered Judy in a kind of awed rapture.

For the first time in weeks Pat wanted a mirror. The hair WAS curly. Not too curly but just lovely natural waves. And DARK … dark brown. Pat thought she would die of happiness. Her hair was “bobbed” now and at no cost to Judy who was only too glad to see her darling with hair at all.

“So you’ve made up your mind to be a beauty after all,” said Uncle Tom, the first time he saw her without a cap.

“Hardly that,” decided Pat, as she scrutinised herself in the mirror that night. “But it IS an improvement.”

“Innyway, ye’ll niver be nading a permanent,” said Judy, “and that’s be way av being a blessing. Sure and Dr. Bentley’s wife do be having a permanent, they tell me, and her scalp was burned so bad the hair do be all coming out in patches. I’m thinking she’ll be wishing she’d left the Good Man’s work alone.”

Altogether Pat was well satisfied with her bout of scarlet fever. She had got dark wavy hair out of it and escaped Queen’s for another year.

Glamour of Youth

Bets had passed her entrance but refused to go to Queen’s until Pat could go, too. Pat, having missed her exams, must wait until next year.

A nice thing had happened. Hilary had failed to pass his entrance … that was not the nice thing … owing to the fact that the teacher at the South Glen school had been a poor one. Larry Gordon took Hilary away and sent him to the North Glen school. Consequently every morning Hilary and Bets and Pat walked gaily to school together and found life good. Sid went no longer. He was father’s right-hand man now. But Cuddles was going. She started blithely off one September morning and Pat, recalling the day she had “started school,” felt very motherly and protective and sentimental as she watched dear Cuddles trotting along before them, hand in hand with another small, gleeful mite from the Robinson family. How little they knew of life, poor wee souls! How very aged and experienced Pat felt herself!

“Can you believe WE were ever as young as that?” she asked of Bets incredulously.

Bets couldn’t and sighed. Yet both of them tripped along the road as if they had been born, like Beatrice, under a dancing star. It was lovely to be old enough to remember childhood with a sigh. It was lovely to have before them a road filled with soft amethyst mist. It was lovely to see dark young fir trees edging harvest meadows. It was lovely to take a short cut through the little wood lane in Herbert Taylor’s woods. It was lovely to be together. For it all came back to that. Nothing would have had just the same flavour if it had not been shared with each other.

Joe had never been home. Letters came from him from spicy tropic lands and Arctic wastes and Mediterranean ports, and were great events at Silver Bush. After everybody had read them they were sent over to Swallowfield and from there to the Bay Shore and then back for mother’s “glory box,” as they called it in imitation of Judy’s glory box. Pat had a glory box of her own now in which she kept all kinds of “souvenirs,” labelled somewhat systematically … “a flower from Bets’ garden” … “new plan for ‘my house,’ drawn by Hilary Gordon” … “letters from my brother, Joseph A. Gardiner” … “a snap-shot of Bets and me under the Watching Pine” … “a packet of notes from my beloved friend, Elizabeth Gertrude Wilcox” … “the pencil I wrote my first letter to H.H. with.”

For “H.H.” was Harris J. Hynes … and Pat was over head and ears in love with him! Absolutely sunk, Winnie said. It had happened in church, one dull November day, when the moan of an eerie wind sounded around the tower and Pat was feeling sad for no earthly reason than that it pleased her to feel so. She had not felt sad when she had left Silver Bush for she had on her new scarlet hat under which her amber eyes glowed like jewels. Her skin, which had looked sallow with ginger hair, looked creamy with dark brown. Her lips were as red as her hat.

“Oh, oh, and isn’t that chick now!” said Judy admiringly. “I niver saw innything chicker. Oh, oh, Patsy darlint” … Judy sighed … “the beaus will soon be coming.”

Pat tossed her head.

“I don’t want beaus, Judy.”

“Oh, oh, ivery girl shud have a few beaus, Patsy. Sure and it’s her right and so I do be telling ould Tillie Taylor last wake whin she was saying she didn’t hold wid beaus. ‘Ather they manes nothing or they manes too much,’ sez she but what she was maning hersilf the Good Man Above only knows and maybe He’d be puzzled.”

“Anyway they don’t call them beaus now, Judy. That’s old fashioned. It’s boy-friends now.”

“Boy-friends, is it? Oh, oh, Patsy me jewel, some day ye’ll be finding the difference atween a frind and a beau.”

Pat and Bets were both pleased to be a bit sorrowful during that walk to church. They confessed they felt old. November was such a dreary month.

“Oh, Bets, the years will just go round like this … and changes will come … you’ll marry some one and go away from me. Bets, when I think of it I couldn’t suffer any more if I was dying. Bets, I just couldn’t bear it.”

“I couldn’t either,” said Bets in a broken voice. Then they both felt better. It was so wonderful to be young and sad together.

Pat’s mood lasted until the second hymn. Then everything was changed in the twinkling of an eye.

He had come in with some other boys. He was standing just across the aisle from her. He was looking right at her over his hymn book. Looking admiringly. It was the first time Pat had ever noticed a boy looking at her admiringly. She suddenly felt that she was beautiful. And … also for the first time she blushed devastatingly and dropped her eyes. There had never been a boy she couldn’t look squarely at before.