Mistress Pat (2 page)

“A pessimist.”

“Oh, oh, doesn’t that sound just like her! Innyway, don’t be letting her make ye that. Aven if Joe doesn’t get home, the darlint, there’ll be Winnie and Frank and yer Aunt Hazel’s liddle gang, and the turkeys we’ll be having for dinner are roosting on the fence behind the church barn this blessed minute growing as hard as they kin. And Pat there is saving up all the resates and menoos in the magazines. Oh, oh, there’ll be the great preparations I’m thinking and me fine Edith won’t be spiling it wid her sighs and sorrows. She do be having a grudge at life, that one. Patsy, do ye be minding the time ye were dancing naked here by the light av the moon and me lady Edith nabbed ye?”

“Dancing naked? And you won’t even let me wear shorts round home,” moaned Cuddles.

“And they broke my heart by sending me to Coventry,” went on Pat, as if Cuddles had not spoken. “They never knew how cruel they were. And the night you came home, Judy, and I smelt the ham frying!”

“Sure, minny’s the good liddle bite we’ve had in the ould days, Patsy. But there’s as minny ahead as behind I’m hoping. And maybe, Miss Cuddles … as I shud be after calling Rachel … if ye won’t be stoning inny cherries will ye be above making some blueberry muffins for supper? Patsy is wanting to finish her hemstitching and Siddy’s that fond av thim.”

“I’ll do that,” agreed Cuddles. “I like blueberry things. Oh, and I’m going up to the Bay Shore next week to pick blueberries with Winnie. She says I can sleep out in a tent right down by the shore. I want to sleep out some night here in Silver Bush. We could have a hammock swung between those two big trees there. It would be heavenly. Judy, did Uncle Tom ever have any love affairs when he was young?”

“Oh, oh, the way ye do be jumping from one thing to another!” protested Judy. “No doubt he had his fun girling like the rest av the b’ys. I’m not knowing why it niver turned serious. What put him into yer head?”

“He’s asked me to mail a letter for him at Silverbridge three times this summer. He said they were too nosy at the North Glen post office. It was addressed to a lady.”

Pat and Judy exchanged knowing glances. Judy repressed her excitement and spoke with careful carelessness.

“Did ye be noticing the name av the lady, Cuddles darlint?”

“Oh, Mrs. Something-or-other,” said Cuddles with a yawn. “I forget the name. Uncle Tom looked so red and sheepish when he asked me I just wondered what he was up to.”

“Yer Uncle Tom must be close on sixty,” reflected Judy. “It do be the time some min take a second silly spell about the wimmen. But wid Edith to kape him straight he can’t go far. Sure and I do be minding how crazy he was to go to the Klondike whin the big gold rush was on … nather to hold nor bind. But me lady Edith nipped that in the bud and I’m thinking he’s niver ralely forgiven her for it. Oh, oh, we’ve all had our bits av drames that niver come true. If I cud just have a run over to the Ould Country now and see if Castle McDermott is as grand as it used to be. But it’ll niver come to pass.”

“‘Each mortal has his Carcassonne,’” quoted Pat dreamily, recalling a poem Hilary Gordon had marked for her once.

But Cuddles, always the more practical, said coolly, “And why can’t it, Judy? You could take a couple of months off any summer, now that I’m old enough to help Pat. The fare second class wouldn’t be too much and you could see all your relatives there and have a gorgeous time.”

Judy blinked as if somebody had struck her. “Oh, oh, Cuddles darlint, it sounds rale reasonable whin ye put it that way. It’s a wonder I niver thought av it. But I’m not so young as I once was … I do be getting a bit ould for gallivanting round.”

“You’re not too old, Judy. Just you go next summer. All you have to do is to make up your mind.”

“Oh, oh, make up yer mind, sez she. That takes a bit av doing, Cuddles dear … as well as a bit av thinking av.”

“Don’t think about it … just go,” said Cuddles, rolling over on her stomach and pulling McGinty’s ears. “If you think too much about it you’ll never do it.”

“Oh, oh, whin I was thirteen I was be way av being nearly as wise as you are. I’ve larned foolishness since,” said Judy sarcastically. “It’s not running off to Ireland I’ll be as if it was a jaunt to Silverbridge. And me frinds there have grown ould … I doubt if they’d know me, grey as an owl that I am. There do be a new McDermott at the castle, I’m ixpicting, talking rale English. The ould lord had a brogue so thick ye cud stir it.”

“It’s perfectly thrilling to think you ever lived in a castle, Judy … and waited on a lord. It’s even more exciting than remembering that mother’s fourth cousin married into the English nobility. I wonder if we’ll ever see her. Pat, let’s you and I go over some day and call on our titled friend.”

“I’m afraid she’s not even aware of our existence,” grinned Pat. “A fourth cousin is pretty far removed and she went to England to live with her aunt when she was a little girl. Mother saw her once, though.”

“Oh, oh, that she did,” said Judy. “She visited at the Bay Shore whin she was tin and they all come over here one day to play wid the young fry here. They had a day av it. She’s a barrownite’s wife now … Sir Charles Gresham … and his aunt do be married to an earl.”

“Is he a belted earl?” demanded Cuddles. “A belted earl sounds so much more earlish than an unbelted one.”

“Oh, oh, he’s iverything an earl shud be. I do be forgetting what he was earl of but it was a rale aristocratic name. It was all in the papers whin yer cousin was married. Lady Gresham wasn’t young but she made a good market be waiting. Oh, oh, niver shall I be forgetting the aunts at the Bay Shore whin the news come. They cudn’t be inny prouder than they always were, so they got rale humble. ‘It’s nothing to us av coorse,’ sez yer Great-aunt Frances. ‘She’s a great leddy now and she wudn’t be acknowledging inny kin to common people like us.’ Oh, oh, to be hearing Frances Selby calling herself common people!”

“Trix Binnie says she doesn’t believe that Lady Gresham is any relation at all to us,” said Cuddles, picking up a yellow kitten, with a face like a golden pansy, that came skittering through the ferns, and tucking it under her chin.

“She wudn’t! But yer fourth cousin she is and it was her uncle the Bishop they did be blaming for staling the silver at the Bay Shore the night he slipt there.”

“Stealing the silver, Judy?” Pat had never heard of this though Judy had been recounting her family legends to her all her life.

“I’m telling ye. Ye know that illigant silver hair-brush and comb in the spare room at the Bay Shore, to say nothing av the liddle looking glass and the two scent bottles. That proud av it they was. They niver did be putting it out for common people but a Bishop was a Bishop and whin he wint up to bed there it was all spread out gorgeous-like on the bury top. Oh, oh, but it wasn’t there the nixt morning, though. Yer Great-great-Aunt Hannah was on the hoof thin … it was long afore she got bed-rid … and she was just about wild. She just set down and wrote and asked the Bishop what he’d done wid it. Back he wrote, ‘I am poor but honest. The silver is in the box av blankets. It was too luxurious for a humble praste like mesilf to use and I was afraid some av me medicine might fall on it.’ Oh, oh, the silver was on top av the blankets all right enough and yer poor Great-great-Aunt was niver the same agin, after as much as accusing the Bishop av staling it. Patsy darlint, spaking av letters, was there inny news in the one ye got from Jingle this morning if a body may ask?”

“A very special bit of news,” said Pat. “I saved it to tell you this afternoon when we’d be out here. Hilary sent in the design for a window to some big competition … and it won the prize. Against a hundred and sixty competitors.”

“It’s the cliver lad Jingle is … and it’ll be the lucky girl that do be getting him.”

Pat ignored this. She didn’t want Hilary Gordon for anything but a friend but she did not exactly warm to the idea of that “lucky girl” whoever she was.

“Hilary always had a liking for windows. Whenever he saw one that stood out from the ordinary run he went into raptures over it. That little dormer one in old Mary McClenahan’s house … Judy, do you remember the time you sent us to her to witch McGinty back?”

“And she did, didn’t she now?”

“She knew where he was to be found anyhow,” Pat sighed. “Judy, life was really more fun when I believed she was a witch.”

“I’m telling ye.” Judy nodded her clipped grey head mysteriously. “The less ye do be belaving the colder life do be. This bush now … it was nicer whin it was packed full av fairies, wasn’t it?”

“Yes … in a way. But their magic still hangs round it, though the fairies are gone.”

“Oh, oh, ye belaved in thim once, that’s why. If ye don’t belave in fairies they can’t exist. That do be why grown folks can niver be seeing thim,” said Judy sagely. “It’s pitying the children I am that niver have the chanct to belave in fairies. They’ll be the poorer all their lives bekase av it.”

“I remember one story you told me … of the little girl who was playing in a bush like this and was lured away to fairyland by exquisite music. I used to tiptoe through here in the ‘dim’ and listen for it. But I don’t think I really wanted to hear it … I was afraid that if I went to fairyland I’d never come back. And no fairy country could ever satisfy me after Silver Bush.”

The look came into Pat’s brook-brown eyes which always made people feel she was remembering something very lovely. Pat was not the beauty of the Gardiner family but there was magic in her face when that look came. She rose and folded up her sewing and went down to the house, followed by McGinty. The robins were beginning to whistle and the clouds over the bush were turning to a faint rose. The ferns and long grasses of the path were gold in the light of the westering sun. Away to the right long shadows were creeping over the hill pasture. And down beyond the low fields was the blue mist that was an August sea.

Sid was in the yard trying to make an obstinate calf drink. Cuddles’ two pet white ducks were lying by the well. They were to be offered up for Thanksgiving dinner but Judy had not dared to hint this to Cuddles as yet. Father was mowing the early oats. Mother, her nap over, was down in the garden among the velvety Sweet Williams. A squirrel was running saucily over the kitchen roof. It was going to be a dear quiet evening, such as she loved best, with every one and everything at Silver Bush happy. Pat loved to see things and people happy; and she herself had the gift, than which there is none more enviable, of finding great pleasure in little things. The bats would be coming out at the rising of the moon and the great, green spaciousness of the farm would be all around the house that always seemed to her more a person than a house.

“Pat’s just as crazy as ever about Silver Bush, isn’t she?” said Cuddles. “I think she’d die if she had to leave it. I don’t believe she’ll ever get married, Judy, just because of that. I love Silver Bush, too, but I don’t want to live here ALL my life. I want to go away … and have adventures … and see the world.”

“Sure and it wudn’t do if iverybody wanted to stay at home,” agreed Judy. “But Patsy has always had Silver Bush in her heart … right at the very core av it. Whin she was no more than five she was asking yer mother one fine day where God was. And yer mother sez gentle-like, ‘He is iverywhere, Patsy.’ ‘Iverywhere?’ sez Pat, her eyes that pitiful. ‘Hasn’t He got inny home? Oh, mother, I’m so sorry for Him.’ Did ye iver hear av such a thing as being sorry for God! Well, that was me liddle Pat. Cuddles dear” … Judy lowered her voice like a conspirator, although Pat was well out of sight and hearing … “Jem Robinson has been hanging round a bit, hasn’t he now? He’s a rale nice lad and only one year more to go at college. Do ye be thinking Pat has inny notion av him?”

“I’m sure she hasn’t, Judy. Though she says the only thing she has against him is that his face needs side-whiskers and he was born a generation too late. I heard her say that to Sid. What did she mean, Judy?”

“The Good Man Above do alone be knowing,” groaned Judy. “Sure, Cuddles darling, it’s all right to be a bit particular-like. The Silver Bush girls have niver been like the Binnies. ‘Olive has a beau for ivery night in the wake,’ sez Mrs. Binnie to me onct, boastful-like. ‘So she do be for going in for quantity afore quality,’ sez I. But what if ye’re too particular? I’m asking ye.”

“I’m not old enough to have beaus yet,” said Cuddles, “but just you wait till I am. It must be thrilling, Judy, to have some one tell you he loves you.”

“Ould Tom Drinkwine did be telling me that onct upon a time but niver a thrill did I be faling,” said Judy reflectively.

“All the months are friends of mine but apple month is the dearest,” chanted Pat.

It was October at Silver Bush and she and Cuddles and Judy picked apples in the New Part of the orchard every afternoon … which wasn’t so very new now, since it was all of twenty years old. But the Old Part was very much older and the apples in it were mostly sweet and fed to the pigs. Sometimes Long Alec Gardiner thought it would be far better to cut it down and get some real good out of the land but Pat couldn’t be made to hear reason about it. She loved the Old Part far better than the New. It had been planted by Great-grandfather Gardiner and was shadowy and mysterious, with as many old spruce trees as apple trees in it, and one special corner where generations of beloved cats and kittens had been buried. Besides, as Pat pointed out, if you cleared away the Old Part it would leave the graveyard open to all the world, since the Old Part surrounded it on three sides. This argument had weight with Long Alec. He was proud, in his way, of the old family burial plot, where nobody was ever buried now but where so many greats and grands of every degree slept … for the Gardiners of Silver Bush came of old P.E. Island pioneer stock. So the Old Part was spared and in spring it was as beautiful as the New Part, when the gnarled trees were young and bridal again for a brief space in the sweet spring days and the cool spring nights.

It was such a mellow and dreamy afternoon and Silver Bush seemed mellow and dreamy, too. Pat thought the old farm had a mood for every day in the year and every hour in the day. Now it would be gay … now melancholy … now friendly … now austere … now grey … now golden. To-day it was golden. The Hill of the Mist had wrapped a scarf of blue haze about its brown shoulders and was mysteriously lovely still, in spite of the missing Lombardy. Behind it a great castle of white cloud, with mauve shadows, towered up. There had been a delicate, ghostly rain the night before and the scent of the little hollow in the graveyard, full of frosted ferns, was distilled on the air. How green the pastures were for autumn! The kitchen yard was full of the pale gold of aspens and the turkey house was almost lost in a blaze of crimson sumacs. The white birches which some forgotten bride had planted along the Whispering Lane, that led from Silver Bush to Swallowfield, were amber, and the huge maple over the well was a flame. When Pat paused every few minutes just to look at it she whispered,