Pat of Silver Bush (24 page)

There was a family council at Silver Bush when school opened in September. It was decreed that Pat must join the entrance class and prepare herself for the Queen's Academy examinations the next year. Pat protested…but father was inexorable. He had let Winnie off, realizing that Winnie's golden curls thatched a brain that could never be brought to distinguish between a participle and an infinitive: but Pat's record in school, although never brilliant, had been above the average: so to Queen's she must go and study for a teacher's license.

“You'll get the North Glen school and board at home,” said dad…which was the only gleam of hope Pat saw in the whole dismal prospect. She flew to the kitchen and poured out her discontent and rebellion to Judy.

“Oh, oh, and don't ye want to be eddicated, Patsy darling?”

To be educated was all right…but to go away from home was all wrong.

“I don't seem to be like other girls, Judy. They all want to go to college and have a career. I don't…I just want to stay at Silver Bush and help you and mother. There's work for me here, Judy…you know there is. Mother isn't strong. As for being educated…I
shall
be well educated…love educates, Judy.”

“Oh, oh, and ye're not so far out there, girleen. But there's minny a thing to be considered besides. Money doesn't be growing on bushes, darlint.”

“What fun if it did!” For a moment Pat was side-tracked by a vision of little gold dollars hanging from the ends of branches like golden blossoms.

“Yer dad isn't rich…and a fam'ly like this is ixpinsive whin they're growing up and nading the pretty clothes. You'll have to get ready to help him out a bit until some av ye are married or gone away.”

“I don't want any of us to get married or go away.”

“Ye're clane unrasonable, darlint.”

Pat was beginning to suspect that she was unreasonable…that these things would have to be faced some time. For instance, Winnie had a beau. Not “beaus”…she had had beaus for over a year and Pat had grown used to their coming and going and Winnie's resultant chatter about “dates”…but “a” beau. Frank Russell of the Bay Shore Russells seemed to have scattered all the others and Winnie was beginning to blush painfully when Judy teased her about him. Pat hated Frank so bitterly that she could hardly be civil to him. Judy got quite out of patience with her.

“Ye ought to be having a liddle bit av sinse, Pat. Young Frank is be way av being a rale good match. The Russells do be all knowing how to make one hand wash the other. An only son and his mother dead and all the Bay Shore girls trying to nab him. Winnie'd just be stepping into that grand ould Russell place at the Bay Shore and be quane, wid niver a mother-in-law to look black at her if she moved a sofy. And that near home and all.”

“Winnie's too young to
think
of being married,” protested Pat.

“Sure and the darlint is eighteen. There's no question av being married yet awhile…she must have her courting time as is proper. But a Russell always means business and young Frank has the glint in his eye. I'm telling ye. He knows where to be coming for a good wife.”

“He isn't very intelligent,” snapped Pat.

“Will ye listen at her? He ain't much for rading poetry or building fancy houses, like yer Jingle, I'm supposing, but he's got a rale grip on politics, as Long Alec was quick to see, and I'm clane missing me guess if he don't be in Parliamint be the time he's a bit bald. Ye're not nading inny great intilligence for that. Winnie's no rale scholard hersilf, the darlint, but there isn't the like av her for the light biscuit on the Island. She'll be the grand housekeeper for that fine house. I'm telling ye.”

Pat didn't want telling. The thought of Winnie ever leaving home, no matter how long the courting days were, remained intolerable. She continued to hate Frank but she resigned herself to the entrance class and even took up the work with a certain grim determination to do well for the sake of Silver Bush. She knew people thought the Silver Bush family was lacking in ambition. Joe had stubbornly refused to go to school after he was fifteen, Winnie had always been “dumb” when it came to lessons; Sid was determined to know farming and nothing else. So it was up to her to re-establish the Gardiner credit in the halls of learning.

“I'm so thankful Bets is in the entrance class, too, Judy. I was afraid for a long while she couldn't be…her father thought she wasn't strong enough. But Bets coaxed so hard he has given in. If Bets is with me when I go to Queen's it won't be so bad…supposing I ever get there.”

“Supposing, is it? Sure and there isn't much doubt but ye'll get there, cliver and all as ye are whin ye give yer mind to it. Whin I watch ye working out them queer al
geb
ra things it makes me have wheels in me head. As for yer jawmetry stuff, Gintleman Tom himsilf cudn't be seeing through it.”

“Geometry is my favorite class, Judy. Bets doesn't like it…but she loves everything else that I love. We have planned to study together each night about all through the winter. We'll study hard for two hours and then we'll talk.”

“I belave ye. The liddle tongues av ye do be always clacking.”

“Yes, but, Judy, there are times when we don't talk at all. We just sit and think. Sometimes we don't even think…we just
sit.
It's enough just to be together. And oh, Judy, Bets and I…”

“I did be hearing ye was calling each other Elizabeth and Patricia.”

Pat laughed.

“We did try to. But it didn't work. Elizabeth and Patricia sounded like strangers…we didn't know ourselves. As I was saying…Bets and I have begun to read the Bible right through. We've not going to skip a single chapter, not even those awful names in Chronicles. You've no idea how interesting the Bible is, Judy, when you read it just as a story.”

“Oh, oh, haven't I now? Sure and wasn't I rading me Bible afore ye were born or thought av? But I
did
be skipping the names. There was too minny jaw-breakers among thim for me. I do be wondering if there niver was inny nicknames in thim days. D'ye think now, Patsy dear, that ivery time Jehosaphat's mother called him to his liddle dinner she said the whole name?”

• • •

The autumn drifted by: maple fires were kindled around the Secret Field: bracken and lady fern turned brown in Happiness: Jordan ran to the sea between borders of purple asters: golden harvest moons looked down over the Hill of the Mist. A gracious September and a mellow October were succeeded by a soft and sad November, when long silken lines of rain slanted across the sere hillsides.

And then one day, without any warning, came the first break in the family at Silver Bush.

They had all, except Joe, been spending Saturday afternoon and evening at the Bay Shore farm…where nothing had changed in Pat's remembrance. It was “a world where all things always seemed the same.” She was beginning to love the Bay Shore for that very changelessness…it seemed the one place you could depend on in a changing world. Aunt Frances and Aunt Honor were just as “stately” as ever, though they had given up asking her to say Bible verses and tapping her on the head when they disapproved of her. They still disapproved of her in many things but Pat liked even the disapproval because anything else would have been change. Cousin Danny still wore his elvish grin. The Great-great was still alive…at ninety-eight…and not a day older apparently, nor any more complimentary. Every time she saw Pat she said “Nae beauty,” in the same peevish tone, as if Pat were entirely to blame for it. The vase that had made the face at Sarah Jenkins still stood on the same bracket and the polished door-knobs still brightly reflected your face. The white ivory elephants had never finished marching across the mantel and the red and yellow china hen had evidently never succeeded in hatching out her eggs.

Bets was with them and this added to the pleasure of the day. It was such fun to show Bets everything. The aunts liked her…but who could help liking Bets? Even the Great-great peered at her with admiration in her bright old eyes and for once forgot to tell Pat she was no beauty.

When they came back to Silver Bush Pat must walk up the hill with Bets: it had turned colder and the first snow-fall was whitening down over the twilight world when Pat came into the kitchen. At once she saw that something must be wrong…terribly wrong. Mother was looking as white as if she had been struck…Winnie was crying…and Judy, of all people, had been crying. Sid looked as if he were trying not to cry. Father stood by the table holding a letter in his hand. Snicklefritz sat by him, looking up with mute, imploring eyes. Gentleman Tom had an air of not liking things. Even Bold-and-Bad, whom ordinarily nothing could subdue, crouched with an apologetic air under the stove.

Pat looked around. Everybody was there…except…except…

“Where's Joe?” she cried.

For a moment nobody spoke. Then Winnie sobbed, “He's gone.”

“Gone! Where?”

“To sea. He went to the harbor tonight and sailed in Pierce Morgan's vessel for the West Indies.”

“And me niver suspicting it, the gomeril I am,” wailed Judy. “Not aven whin he come in, all queer like, and said he wud be taking a run to Silverbridge. Sure and if I'd known what was in his head I'd have hung on to him till after the tide set…”

“That wouldn't have done any good,” said Long Alec, rousing himself from his abstraction. “He was bound to go sooner or later. I've known that for some time. But he was so young…and to go off like this without a word to one of us…it was cruel of him. There, there, Mary.”

For mother had turned and buried her face on his shoulder with a little, broken cry. Father led her out of the kitchen. Winnie and Cuddles followed. Sid went out and Pat was weeping wildly in Judy's arms.

“Judy, I can't bear it…I can't bear it! Joe to go…and like that.”

“Sure and it do be cruel, as Long Alec said. The young fry do be cruel be times…they don't know…they don't know. Now, don't be breaking yer liddle heart, darlint. Remimber it's harder for yer mother than for inny av the rest av ye. Joe'll be back some time…”

“But never to
stay,
Judy…never to stay. Oh, I'll always hate this day…always.”

“Oh, oh, don't be cynical now,” said Judy, who picked up words as the children studied their lessons but not always the exact meaning. “Where's the sinse av hating the poor day? Ye must just be looking this in the face. It's Wild Dick and yer Uncle Horace over again…sure and Joe had always been more like Horace than his own dad. He knew if he tried to say good-bye Long Alec wud be trying to put him off. Now kape up yer pecker, Patsy, for the sake av yer mother. Siddy's here to carry on and it's the smart lad he is. His heart's in the farm as Joe's niver was, and he can aven drive the autymobile which the Good Man Above niver intinded innybody to do. Joe's gone but he hasn't taken Silver Bush wid him. Did ye be after seeing the liddle note he lift on Long Alec's desk…no? There was a missage for ye in it…‘tell Pat to be good to Snicklefritz'…and there was one for me, too, be way av a joke. Joe always had a joke, the darlint. ‘Tell Judy to see that those blamed kittens in her picture are grown up be the time I come back.' Sure and wasn't he always laughing at thim same kittens.”

But Pat could not laugh again for a long time. She was the last one at Silver Bush to resign herself to the inevitable. Eventually she found herself doing it, with a sense of shame that it could be so. But the raw rainy winter was half over before she ceased to have sleepless nights when it stormed and began looking forward with pleasure to Joe's letters, with bewitching foreign stamps on them which Cuddles proudly collected. They were full of the glamor of strange ports and distant lands, of the lure of adventure and white-winged ships, to which Pat thrilled in spite of herself. Somehow, although she hadn't believed it possible, Silver Bush got on without him. Sid had stepped manfully into his place…in truth Sid was glad of an excuse to leave school…mother began to smile again, Frank Russell consoled Winnie, everybody ceased to listen for the gay whistle that had echoed so often through the twilights around the old barns. Even Snicklefritz stopped wearing a sorrowful cast of countenance and listening mournfully to every footstep on the stone walk.

Change…and worse than change, forgetfulness! It seemed dreadful to Pat that things could be forgotten. Why, they were just as bad as the family at Silverbridge that had one son in California and one in Australia, one in India and one in Petrograd and didn't seem to mind it at all.

“Oh, oh, how cud we be living if we didn't forget, me jewel?” said Judy.

“But Christmas was so terrible,” sighed Pat. “The first time we weren't all here. I couldn't help thinking of something I heard you say once…that once one of a family was away for Christmas it was likely they would never be all together again. I just couldn't eat…and I didn't see how anyone else could.”

“But do ye be remimbering how ye slipped into the kitchen at bedtime and we had a faste on the bones?” said Judy slyly.

• • •

Everything passes. Winter was spring before they knew it. Everybody was looking forward with delight to Joe's homecoming. March brought a saddening letter from him. He was not coming home in Pierce Morgan's vessel. He had shipped for a voyage to China. Well, that was a disappointment…but meanwhile March was April, with sap astir and frogs tuning up the field of the Pool, and all the apple boughs that had fallen in winter storms to be gathered up and burned. Sid and Pat did that and they and Bets and Hilary had a glorious bonfire at night: and after it was over Pat couldn't walk home with Bets because Sid did. Pat didn't mind…she was too happy because Sid seemed to be having quite a crush on Bets this spring.