Pat of Silver Bush (18 page)

• • •

The next letter came. It was Saturday and Pat had wakened to a gray dawn. The rain against the windows was very dreary. Everybody at Silver Bush expected dad's letter that day though nobody said anything about it, and Pat felt that the rain was a bad omen.

“Oh, oh, cheer up, Patsy darlint,” said Judy. “Sure and I remimber a bit av poetry I larned whin I was a girleen…‘
a dark and dreary morning
often brings a pleasant day!
' Often have I seen it mesilf.”

It stopped raining at noon, although the clouds still hung dark and heavy over the silver bush. Pat was watching from the garden as the old postman drove up to the mail box. He was a little bent old man with a fringe of white beard, driving a crazy buggy behind a lean old sorrel horse. It seemed incredible that her destiny was in his bag. She went slowly down the lane, a pale moth of a girl, hardly knowing whether she wanted to see a letter or not. It would be so terrible to wait for its opening but at least they would
know.

The letter was there. Pat took it out and looked at it…“
Mrs. Alex. B. Gardiner, Silver Bush, North Glen, P. E. Island
.” All her life after a letter seemed to Pat a terrible intriguing, devilish thing. What might…or might not…be in it? She remembered that when she had been very small she had been horribly frightened of a “dead” letter she had carried home. She had thought it had come from a dead person. But this was even worse.

She walked back up the lane. Halfway up she paused in a little bay of the fence which was full of the white-gold of the “life everlasting” that blooms in September. Her knees were shaking.

“Oh, dear God, please don't let there be any bad news in this letter,” she whispered. And then desperately…because old Alec Gardiner in South Glen had a daughter Patricia, middle-aged and married, and there must be no mistake…“Dear God, its Long Alec's Pat of Silver Bush speaking, not just Alec's Pat.”

Somehow everybody was in the kitchen when Pat entered. Judy sat down on a chair rather suddenly. Bets was just arriving, having torn breathlessly down the hill when she saw the postman. Jingle and McGinty were hanging around the doorstep. McGinty had his ears turned down. Mother, her eyes very bright and with an unusual little red spot on either cheek, took the letter and looked around at all the tense, waiting faces…except Pat's. She could not bear to look at Pat's.

It was a thousand fold worse than when the letter had come about Winnie.

“We must all be as brave as possible if father says we must go,” she said gently.

She opened the letter steadily and glanced over it. It seemed as if the very trees outside stopped to listen.

“Thank God,” she said in a whisper.

“Mother…”

“Father is coming back. He doesn't like the west as well as the Island. He says, ‘I'll be very happy to be home again.'”

And at that very moment, as if waiting for the signal, the sun broke out of the clouds above the Silver Bush and the kitchen was flooded with dancing lights and elfin leaf shadows.

“So that's that,” said Joe, a bit glumly. He whistled to Snicklefritz and went out.

Pat and Bets were weeping wildly in each other's arms. Judy got up with a grunt.

“Oh, oh, and what's all the tears for, I'm asking ye? I thought ye'd be dancing for joy.”

“You're crying yourself, Judy.” Pat laughed through her tears.

“Sure and it's the tinder heart av me. I cud niver see inny one crying that I didn't jine in. Haven't I wept the quarts at the funerals av people who didn't be mattering a hoot to me? I'm that uplifted I wudn't call the quane me cousin. Oh, oh, and it's me limon pies that are burned as black as a cinder in me oven. Well, well, I'll just be making another batch. We've had minny a good bite here and plaze the Good Man Above we'll have minny another. It's been a hard wake av it but iverything do be coming to an ind sometime if only ye do be living to see it.”

Pat had put on gladness like a garment. She wondered if anybody had ever died of happiness.

“I just couldn't have borne it, Pat, if you went away,” sobbed Bets.

Jingle had said nothing. He had sniffed desperately, determined not to let any one see
him
cry. He was at that moment lying face downwards in the mint along Jordan and McGinty could have told you what he was doing. But McGinty wasn't worried. His ears stuck up for he knew somehow that, in spite of shaking shoulders, his chum was happy.

• • •

Pat came dancing down the hill that night on feet that hardly seemed to touch the earth. She halted under the Watching Pine to gloat over Silver Bush, all her love for it glowing like a rose in her face. It had never looked so beautiful and beloved. How nice to see the smoke curling up from its chimney! How jolly and comfortable the fat, bursting old barns looked, where hundreds of kittens yet unborn would frisk! The wind was singing everywhere in the trees. Over her was a soft, deep, loving sky. Every field she looked on was a friend. The asters along the path were letters of the poem in her heart. She seemed to move and breathe in a trance of happiness. She was a reed in a moonlit pool…she was a wind in a wild garden…she was the stars and the lights of home…she was…she was Pat Gardiner of Silver Bush!

“Oh, dear God, this is such a lovely world,” she whispered.

“A nice hour to be coming in for yer supper,” said Judy.

“I was so happy I forgot all about supper. Oh, Judy, I'll always love this day. I'm so happy I'm a little frightened…as if it couldn't be
right
to feel so happy.”

“Oh, oh, drink all the happiness ye can, me darlint, whin the cup is held to yer lips,” said Judy wisely. “Now be after ating yer liddle bite and thin to bed. I packed yer mother off whin Cuddles wint.
She
hasn't been slaping much of late ather I'm telling ye, though the Selbys kape their falings to thimselves. Oh, oh, and so Madam Binnie won't be bossing things here for a while yet. And what may ye be thinking av that, me Gentleman Tom?”

“I don't know if I'll be able to sleep much even tonight, Judy. It's lovely to be so happy you can't sleep.”

But Pat was sound as a bell when Judy crept in to see if the little sisters had the extra blanket for the chill September night.

“Oh, oh, she'll niver be quite that young agin,” whispered Judy. “It's such a time as she's had that makes even the liddle craturs old in their sowls. If one cud be after spanking Long Alec now as I did whin he was a b'y!”

For the first time Pat was getting ready to go to a party…a real, evening party which Aunt Hazel was giving for two of her husband's nieces who were visiting her. It was what Uncle Tom called a “double-barreled party”…girls and boys of Winnie's and Joe's age for Elma Madison and young fry from ten to twelve for Kathleen. Sid pretended to hate the whole thing and vowed he wouldn't go till the last minute when he suddenly changed his mind…perhaps because Winnie twitted him with sulking because May Binnie wasn't invited.

“Sure and ye wudn't be expicting she wud be,” said Judy loftily. “Since whin have the Binnies set themselves up for the aquals av the Gardiners…or aven av the Madisons I'm asking ye.”

Pat was very glad when Sid decided to go for Bets was laid up with a sore throat and Jingle, though invited, couldn't or wouldn't go because his only decent suit of clothes had become absurdly tight for him. He had hoped that his mother might send him money for a new suit at Christmas but Christmas had passed as usual without present or letter.

“It's lovely to be nearly eleven,” Pat was exulting to Judy. “I'm almost one of the big girls now.”

“That ye are,” said Judy with a sigh.

It was exciting to be dressing for a real party. Winnie had already gone to several and it was one of the dear delights of Pat's life to sit on the bed and watch her getting ready. But to be dressing yourself!

“Yellow's yer color, me jewel,” said Judy, as Pat slipped into her little party frock of primrose voile. “Sure and whin yer mother talked av getting the Nile grane I put me foot down. ‘One grane dress is enough in a life-time,' sez I to her. ‘Don't ye be remimbering all the bad luck she had in the one ye got her for the widding? Niver once did she put it on but something happened her or it.'”

“That was true, Judy, now that I come to think of it. I had it on when I broke mother's Crown Derby plate…and quarreled with Sid…we'd never done that before…and found the hole in my stocking leg at church…and put too much pepper in the turnips the day Aunt Frances was here to dinner…”

“‘And innyhow, sez I, clinching the matter like, grane doesn't be suiting her complexion.' So the yellow it is and ye'll look like a dancing buttercup in it.”

“But I won't be dancing, Judy. I'm not old enough. We'll just play games. I do hope they won't play Clap in and Clap out. They do that so often at school and I hate it…because…because, Judy, none of the boys ever pick me out to sit beside. I'm not pretty, you know.”

Pat said it without bitterness. Her lack of beauty had never worried her. But Judy tossed her head.

“They'd better wait till ye come into yer full looks afore they say that, I'm thinking. Now, here's a trifle av scint for yer hanky…”

“Put a little bit behind my ears, too…please, Judy.”

“That I won't. Scint behind the ears is no place for dacency. A drop on yer hanky and maybe a dab on yer frill. Here's yer bit av blue fox for yer neck…though I'm not seeing where the blue comes in. But it sets ye. Now hold yer head up wid the best of thim and don't be forgetting ye're a Gardiner. Ye're to recite I'm hearing?”

“Yes. Aunt Hazel asked me to. I've been practicing to the little spruce bushes behind the hen-house. Bets was to sing if she hadn't got a bad throat. It's just too mean she's sick. It would have been so wonderful to go to our first party together. I know I'll be lonesome. I don't know many of the Silverbridge girls. And I'll miss Bets so. She's lovely, Judy. They say Kathie Madison is pretty but I'm sure she isn't prettier than Bets.”

Joe and Winnie and Sid and Pat all piled into the cutter to drive to Silverbridge through the fine blue crystal of the early winter evening, along roads where slender, lacy trees hung darkly against the rose and gold of the sky. That was fun…and at first the party was fun, too. Kathleen Madison
was
pretty…the prettiest girl Pat had ever seen in her life. A girl with close-cut curls of dark glossy gold, a skin of milk and roses, a dimpled bud of a mouth, and brilliant bluish-green eyes. Pat heard Chet Taylor of South Glen say she was worth walking three miles to see.

Well and good. It did not bother Pat. The evening went with a swing. The Silverbridge girls were all nice and friendly. They
did
play Clap in and Clap out but Mark Madison asked Pat to sit with him so it did not matter if half a dozen other boys were jealously trying for Kathie. Oh, parties
were
fun!

Then, in an evil moment Pat's hair bow fell off and she ran upstairs to put it on. Kathie Madison was in the room, too, pinning together a rent in the lace of her frock. As Pat stood before the looking-glass Kathie came and stood beside her. There was no particular malice in Kathie. She liked Pat Gardiner, as almost every girl did. But unluckily Mark Madison was the one boy Kathie had wanted for Clap in and Clap out. So she came and stood by Pat.

“It's a lovely party, isn't it?” she said. “Your dress is real pretty. Only…do you think yellow goes well with such a brown skin?”

Something happened to Pat, as she looked at herself and Kathie in the mirror…something that had never happened before. It was not jealousy…it was a sudden, dreadful despair.
She
was
ugly!
Standing beside this fairy girl she was ugly. Pale hair…a brown face…a mouth like a straight line and a much too long straight line…Pat shuddered.

“What's the matter?” asked Kathie.

“Nothing. I just hit my funny bone,” said Pat valiantly. But everything had burst like a bubble. There was no more fun for her that evening. She even hated Mark Madison. He must have asked her to sit with him only out of pity…or because Aunt Hazel had ordered him to do it. She could not eat Aunt Hazel's wonderful supper and her recitation fell flat because as Uncle Robert said, she did not put any pep in it. Pep! Pat felt that she would never have pep again. She only wished she could get away home and cry. She did cry, quietly, as they drove home through the sparkling night of windless frost, over shadow-barred moonlit roads, between black velvet trees. All the beauty of the night was wasted on Pat who could see nothing but herself and Kathie side by side in the glass.

When she got home she slipped into the Poet's room to have another look at herself. Yes, there was no doubt about it. She was ugly. One did not mind not being very pretty. When Uncle Brian the last time he had been down, had said to her on leaving, “Try to be better looking when I come back,” Pat had laughed with the others…all except Judy, who had sent a very black look after Brian.

But to be ugly. The tears welled up in Pat's eyes. She had never thought she was ugly until she had seen herself beside Kathie. Now she
knew.
What a way for a lovely party to end! Talk about green being unlucky! Nothing worse than this could have happened to her in green. It was she who was unlucky. Nobody would ever love her…Bets couldn't really care for an ugly friend…Jingle must just have been making fun of her when he told her she had a cute nose and lovely eyes. Eyes…just between yellow and brown…they had looked just like a cat's beside Kathie's enormous blue orbs. And her lashes!

“Even if mine were long I couldn't flicker them like she does,” thought Pat disconsolately, forgetting that Kathie had “flickered” them in vain at Mark Madison.

Pat's bed was by the window where she could see the sunrise…if she woke early enough. She woke early enough the next morning but the wild red sunrise through the trees and its light falling over the white snow-fields did not thrill her. She had very little to say at breakfast. She told Judy dully that the party had been “very nice.” She went to school, blind to the aerial coloring of the opal winter day and the dance of loose snow over the meadows. She kept aloof from all the girls who had also been at the party. They were raving over Kathleen's looks. Pat simply couldn't bear it.

She had never been jealous of a girl's looks before. Bets was pretty and Pat was proud of her. To be sure she had always hated Norma but that was because Norma was said to be prettier than Winnie. She wondered if Jingle thought her
very
ugly. She remembered the colored chromo of the pretty little girl in the Gordon Parlor which she knew Jingle adored. She did not know he adored it because he had heard some one say it looked like his mother. As Pat remembered it, it looked like Kathie. Pat writhed.

Did everybody think her ugly? The old man who called around once a week selling fish always addressed her as “Pretty.” But then he called everybody pretty. She had never thought she was pretty…she had never thought much about her looks at all. And now she could think of nothing else. She was ugly…nobody would ever like her…Sid and Joe would be ashamed of their ugly sister….

“Patricia, have you finished your composition?” Patricia hadn't. How could you write compositions when the heart of you was broken?

• • •

There was company for supper at Silver Bush that night and Judy was too busy to pay any attention to Pat, although she watched her out of the tail of her eye. Pat had to wash the supper dishes. Ordinarily she made a saga of doing it. She liked to wash pretty dishes. Pat loved everything about the house but she loved the dishes particularly. It was such fun to make them clean and shining in the hot soapy water. She always washed her favorites first. The dishes she didn't like had just to wait until she was good and ready for them and it was fun to picture their dumb, glowering wrath as they waited
and
waited and saw the others preferred before them. That hideous old brown plate with the chipped edges…how furious it got! “It's
my
turn now…I'm an old family plate…I won't be treated like this…I've been at Silver Bush for fifty years…that stuck-up thing with the forget-me-nots on the rim has only been here for a year.” But it always had to wait until the very last in spite of its howls. Tonight Pat washed it first. Poor thing, it couldn't help being ugly.

She was glad of bedtime and crept off in mingled moonlight and twilight, while the purple shadows gathered along the lee of the snowdrifts behind the well and the west wind in the silver bush was twisting the birches mercilessly.

And then Judy, who had been out milking, invaded the room with a resolute air.

“What do be ailing ye, Pat? Sure and if ye're faling the way ye've been looking all day there's something sarious the matter. Wandering around widout a word to throw to a dog and peering into the looking-glass be times as if ye was after seeing if the wrinkles was coming. Make a clane breast av it, darlint.”

Pat sat up.

“Oh, Judy, it's such a terrible thing to be ugly, isn't it, Judy?
Am
I so very ugly, Judy?”

“So
that's
it? Oh, oh, and who's been telling ye ye was ugly, if a body may ask?”

“Nobody. But at the party Kathie Madison stood beside me in front of the glass…and I saw it for myself.”

“Oh, oh, there's not minny girls but wud look a bit plainer than common beside me fine Kathleen. I'm not denying she's handsome. And so was her mother afore her. But she wasn't after getting any more husbands than her homely sister for all av that…only one and that one no great shakes I'm telling ye. Wid all her looks she tuk her pigs to a poor market. It isn't the beauties that make the good marriages as a rule, Patsy darlint. There was Cora Davidson now at the Bay Shore. She was that good-looking the min were said to be crazy over her. But it's the fact, Patsy darlint, and her own mother it was that tould me, there niver was but one axed her to marry him. He axed her on Widnesday and on Thursday they took him to a lunatic asylum. Oh, I'm telling ye. And have ye iver heard what happened at her sister Annie's widding supper? They had the cake made in Charlottetown a wake before be way of being more stylish than their neighbors and whin the bride made a jab at it to cut it didn't a bunch av mice rin out and scamper all over the table? Oh, oh, the scraming and jumping! More like a wake than a widding! The Davidsons niver hilt up their heads agin for minny a long day I'm telling you.”

It was no use. Pat was not to be side-tracked by any of Judy's tales tonight.

“Oh, Judy, I hate to think I'm so ugly my family will be ashamed of me…people will call me ‘that plain Gardiner girl.' Last week at the pie social at Silverbridge nobody would buy Minnie Fraser's pie because she was so ugly…”

Pat's voice broke on a sob. Judy perceived that skillful handling was required. She sat down on Pat's bed and looked very lovingly at her. The dear liddle thing wid her wide, frindly smile, as if she did be imbracing all the world, and the golden-brown swateness of her eyes! Thinking she was ugly! Setting off in such high cockalorum for her first liddle party and coming home wid her bit av a heart half bruk in two!

“I'm not saying ye're handsome, Patsy, but I
am
saying it's distinguished looking ye are. Ye haven't come into yer looks yet. Wait ye a few years till ye've outgrown yer arms and legs. Wid yer eyes and a bit av luck ye'll get a finer husband than minny av thim.”

“Oh, Judy, it's not husbands I'm thinking of,” sobbed Pat impatiently. “And I don't want to be terribly handsome. Bets and I read a story last week about a girl who was so beautiful crowds rushed out to see her and a king died for love of her. I wouldn't want that. I just want to be pretty enough so that people wouldn't mind looking at me.”

“And who's been minding looking at ye, I'd like to know,” said Judy fiercely. “If that stuck-up puss av a Kathie Madison said innything to hurt yer liddle falings…”

“It wasn't what she said, Judy, so much as the way she said it. ‘Such a brown skin'…as if I was an Indian. Oh, Judy, I can't outgrow my skin, can I?”