Pat of Silver Bush (35 page)

Pat liked to sit there in the twilight and watch the lights spring up in the houses along the street and in the valley and over on the other hill. Commonplace-looking houses, most of them, but who knew what might be going on inside of them? Sometimes Hilary sat there with her. Hilary was the only boy in the world with whom she could be at the same time taciturn and comfortable. They knew how to be silent together.

Pat took Hilary for granted and did not think about his looks at all, other than to see that he did not wear weird neckties. But quite a number of Queen’s girls thought Hilary a charming fellow, although everybody knew that he had eyes only for Pat Gardiner who did not care a hoot about him. Hilary was first and foremost a student and cared little for social doings although he had outgrown all his old awkwardness and shyness. The weekend trip home with Pat was all the diversion he sought or desired.

Those weekends were always delightful. They went on the train to Silverbridge and then walked home. First along the road. Up one long, spruce-walled hill … down into a green valley … another hill … another valley … twists and turns …

“I hate a straight road or a flat one,” said Pat. “This is a road I love … all curves and dips. It’s MY road. Oh, it may belong nominally to the township but it’s MINE. I love it all, even that dark little glen Judy calls Suicide Hollow. She used to tell me the loveliest creepy story about it years ago.”

Then they left the road and went straight home over country … past the eerie misty marsh and across the Secret Field and through the woods by little paths that had never been made but just happened. Perhaps there would be northern lights and a hazy new moon; or perhaps just a soft blue darkness. Cool running waters … aeolian harps in the spruces. The very stars were neighbours.

If only Bets could have been with them! Pat never took that walk home without thinking of Bets … Bets whose grave on the hillside was covered with a loose drift of autumn leaves.

And then Silver Bush! It came on you so suddenly and beautifully as you stepped over the crest of the hill field. It welcomed you like a friend with all its windows astar … Judy saw to that. Though once they caught her napping when she was late getting in from the barn and mother had gone to bed with a headache. There wasn’t a light in Silver Bush and Pat thought she almost loved it best in the dark … so brooding and motherly.

The same dear old creak to the gate … and the happiest dog in the world throwing himself at Hilary. McGinty always came as far as Silver Bush to meet Hilary. Never a Friday night did he miss. Then Judy’s kitchen and welcome. Hilary always stayed to supper and Judy invariably had hot pea soup to begin with, just to warm them up a liddle mite after their cold walk. And a juicy bone for McGinty.

The wind snoring round the house … all the news to hear … all the mad, bad, sad deeds Bold-and-Bad had done … three balls of velvet fluff with tiny whiskered faces tumbling about on the floor. Silver Bush was, as Aunt Edith scornfully said, always infested with kittens. As for Bold-and-Bad, he was ceasing to be a cat and was on the way to becoming a family habit.

Judy always gave them a box of eats to take back Monday morning.

“As long as one can get a liddle bite one can kape up,” she would say.

Pat wondered how Queen’s students who got home only once in a blue moon, survived. But then their homes were not Silver Bush!

Fancy’s Fool

Pat met him for the first time at the Dramatic Club’s exclusive dance in the Queen’s auditorium, by which they celebrated the successful presentation of their play Ladies in Waiting. Pat had been one of the ladies and had been voted exceptionally good, although in certain vivid scenes she could never look “passionate” enough to satisfy an exacting director.

“HOW can any one look passionate with a cute nose?” she would ask him pathetically. In the end she looked impish and elusive which seemed to take just as well with the audience.

He came up to her and told her that he was going to dance with her. He never asked a girl to dance or drive with him … he simply told her that she was going to do it. That, said the Queen’s girls, was his “line.” It seemed to be a popular one, though the girls he didn’t notice talked contemptuously of cave man stuff.

“I’ve been wondering all the evening who you were,” he told her.

“Couldn’t you have found out?” asked Pat.

“Perhaps. But I wanted to find out from yourself alone. We are going to the sun-porch presently to see if the moon is rising properly and then we can discover who we are.”

Pat discovered that he was Lester Conway and that he was in his third year at Queen’s, but had just come back to college after an absence caused by pneumonia. She also discovered that his home was in Summerside.

“I know you’re thinking just what I’m thinking,” he said gravely. “That we have been living ten miles apart all our lives and have never met till now.”

His tone implied that all their lives had been terribly wasted. But then, everything he said seemed to have some special significance. And he had a way of leaning towards you that shut out all the rest of the world.

“What an escape I’ve had. I was so bored with the whole affair that I was just going to go when … you happened. I saw you coming downstairs and ever since that moment I’ve been afraid to look away for fear you’d disappear.”

“Do you say that to every girl half an hour after you’ve met her?” demanded Pat, hoping that the sound of her voice would keep him from hearing how her heart was thumping.

“I’ve never said it to any girl before and I think you know that. And I think you’ve been waiting for me, haven’t you?”

Pat was of the opinion that she had but she had enough Silver Bush sense to keep her from saying so. A lovely colour was staining her cheeks. Her French-English-Scotch-Irish-Quaker blood was running like quicksilver through her veins. Yes, THIS was love. No nonsense this time about your knees shaking … no emotional thrills. Just a deep, quiet conviction that you had met your fate … some one you could follow to the world’s end … “beyond its utmost purple rim” … “deep into the dying day” …

He told her he was going to drive her home and did, through a night drenched with moonlight. He told her that he was going to see her soon again.

“This wonderful day has come and gone but there will be another tomorrow,” he said, dropping his voice and whispering the final word confidentially as he announced this remarkable fact.

Pat thought she was getting very sensible because she slept quite well that night … after she once got to sleep.

It was speedily an item of college gossip that Lester Conway and Pat Gardiner had a terrible “case” on each other. It was a matter of speculation what particular brand of magic she had used, for Lester Conway had never really fallen for any girl before though he had played around with several.

He was a dark lover … Pat felt that she could never bear a fair man again, remembering Harris Jemuel’s golden locks. He was not especially good-looking but Pat knew she had got far beyond the stage of admiring movie stars. He was distinguished-looking … with that faint, mysterious scowl. Lester thought he looked more interesting when he was scowling … like Lara and those fellows. His psychology was sound. Whenever a girl met him she wondered what he looked like when he smiled … and tried to find out.

He was appallingly clever. There was nothing he couldn’t do. He danced and skated and footballed and hockeyed and tennised and sang and acted and played the ukulele and drew. He had designed the last cover for The Lantern. Very futuristic, that drawing was. And in the February number he had a poem, To a Wild Blue Violet, containing some daring lines in spite of its Victorian title. It was unsigned and speculation was rife as to who had written it and who the wild blue violet was. Pat knew. It speaks volumes for her condition of heart and mind that she didn’t see anything comical in being called a blue violet. If she had been sane she would have known that a brown-and-orange marigold was more in her line. She was, in spite of her infatuation, a bit surprised to find that Lester could write poetry. She had faintly and reluctantly suspected that he wouldn’t know poetry when he saw it. But A Wild Blue Violet was “free verse.” Everything else, Lester told her, was outmoded. The tyranny of rhyme was ended forever. She would never have dared let him know after that that she had bought a second-hand volume called Poems of Passion and underlined half of them. I shall be dust when my heart forgets, she underlined twice.

She was horribly afraid she wasn’t half clever enough for him. He completely flabbergasted her one evening by a casual reference to the Einstein theory … looking at her sidewise to see if she were properly impressed. Pat didn’t know anything about the Einstein theory. She did not suspect that neither did he and spent much of the night writhing over her ignorance. What must he think of her? She went to the public library and tried to read up about it but it made her head ache and she was unhappy until the next evening when Lester told her she was as wonderful as a new-mooned April evening.

“I’d like to know if you said that because it just came into your head or if you made it up last night,” said Pat. Her tongue was always her own, whatever her heart might be. But she was happy again in spite of Einstein. Lester really did not pay many compliments, so one prized it when he did. Not like Harris Hynes whose “line” had evidently been to say something flattering whenever he opened his mouth. Judy had always said HE must have kissed the Blarney stone. How wraith-like Harris seemed now, beside Lester’s scowls and commands. To think she had ever fancied she cared for him! Mere school-girl infatuation … calf love. He had so little appreciation of the beautiful, poor fellow. She recalled pointing out the Hill of the Mist to him one moonlit winter night and he had said admiringly that it looked like a frosted cake. Poor Harris!

And poor Hilary! HE had had to retire into his corner again. No more evenings in the park … no more rambles together. Even the weekend walks did not often come his way now. The car roads held and Lester drove her home in his little red roadster. He was the only boy at Queen’s who had his own car. There was no pea soup in Judy’s kitchen for HIM. And Pat almost prayed that he wouldn’t notice the terrible crack in the dining-room ceiling.

It worried Pat a little that Judy didn’t have much of a mind to him. Not that she ever said so. It was what she DIDN’T say. And her tone when Pat told her he was one of the Summerside Conways … Lester B. Conway.

“Oh, oh, it do be a noble name. And is it any secret what the B. do be standing for? Not Bartholomew be inny chance?”

“B. stands for Branchley,” said Pat shortly. “His mother was one of the Homeburn Branchleys.”

“Sure I do be knowing thim all. Conways AND Branchleys. His mother used to visit here before ould Conway made his pile. She was rale humble thin. Minny’s the time I’ve wiped yer Lester’s liddle nose for him whin he was knee high to a toad. Howsomiver,” concluded Judy loftily, “it’s likely the matter is too high for me. Money makes the mare go and it’s the cute one ye are, I’m thinking.”

Judy was really impossible. To insinuate that she, Patricia Gardiner, had picked out Lester Conway because he had money.

“She should know me better,” thought Pat indignantly.

But she felt the lack of Judy. If darling Bets were only alive! She would have understood. What a comfort it would have been to talk over her problems with Bets. For there WERE problems. For instance, Lester had told her she was to marry him right away as soon as college closed. There was no sense in waiting. He was going right into business with his dad.

This was simply ridiculous. Of course, some day … but she wasn’t going to even think of getting married for years yet. She must teach school and help them at home … reshingle and repaint Silver Bush … get a hardwood floor in the dining-room … a brass knocker for the front door … pay for Cuddles’ music lessons.

Lester just laughed at this the night of the Saturday Satellites’ Easter dance.

“You are too lovely, Pat, to be wasted any longer on a shabby, obscure old farm like Silver Bush,” he said.

A little madness came over Pat. The very soul of her was aflame.

“Don’t ever speak to me again, Lester Conway,” she said, each word falling like a tinkling drop of icy water on a cold stone.

“Why, what have I done?” said Lester in genuine amazement.

That made it worse, if anything could make it worse. He didn’t realise at all what he had done. Pat turned her back on him and flew upstairs. To get her wraps was the work of a minute … to slip down the back-stairs and through the side-hall, another minute. Then out … and back to Linden Avenue. The bite and tang of the cold air seemed to increase her anger. Patricia Gardiner of Silver Bush had never in all her life been so furious.

Lester came down the next evening, looking more Lara-like than ever. He ignored the incident … he thought that would be the best policy … and told her she was going with him to the Easter Prom.

“Thank you, I’m not,” said Pat, “and please don’t waste any more of those charming scowls on me. When I tell anybody I’m through with him I’m THROUGH.”

When Pat said anything in a certain way she was believed.

“Of all the fickle girls,” said Lester. Just like Harris. Men were so tiresomely alike.

“I was born in moonlight, they tell me,” said Pat coolly. “So I’m naturally changeable. No one can insult Silver Bush in my hearing. And I’m tired … very tired … of taking orders from you.”

The Conway temper … Judy could have told you a few things about IT … flared up.

“Oh … well … if you’re going off the deep end about it!” he said nastily. “Anyway, I just began going about with you to put a spoke in Hilary Gordon’s wheel.”

She was glad he had said that. He had set her free. She had been hating him so bitterly that her hate had made her as much of a prisoner as love had. Now he had simply ceased to exist.

“I’ve heard Judy use a phrase,” said Pat to herself after he had flung away, scowling for once in real earnest, “‘fancy’s fool.’ Well, I’ve been fancy’s fool. And that is that.”