Pat of Silver Bush (28 page)

When Bets had been dead for a week it seemed to Pat she had been dead for years, so long is pain. The days passed like ghosts. Pat went for long walks over hills and fields in the evenings…trying to face her sorrow…seeing the loveliness of the crescent spring around her. She only
saw
it…she could not
feel
it.
Where
was
Bets
who
had
walked
with
her
last
spring?

Everything had ended. And everything had to begin anew. That was the worst of it. How was one to begin anew when the heart had gone out of life?

“I wish I could forget her, Judy…I wish I could forget her. It hurts so to remember,” she cried wildly once. “If I could drink some cup of forgetfulness like that in your old story, Judy…”

“But wud ye be after doing it if ye could, darlint? Ye'd forget all the gladness along with the pain…all the fun and happiness ye had wid yer liddle chum. Wud ye be wanting
that
?”

No, she would not want that. She hugged her sweet memories to her heart. But how to go on living…

“Ye don't be remimbering one day whin ye was a liddle dot av four, Patsy? Ye wint to the door and all the sky was clouded over thick and dark. Ye was frightened to death. Ye did be running to yer mother, crying, ‘Oh, mother, where is the blue sky gone to…oh, mother!' Ye wudn't be belaving us whin we tould ye it wud come back. But the nixt morning there it was smiling at ye.”

Pat still couldn't believe that her blue sky would ever come back…couldn't believe that there would come a time when she would be happy again. Why, it would be terrible to be happy without Bets, even if it were possible…disloyal to Bets…disloyal to love. She despised herself when she had to admit that she felt hungry once more!

Silver Bush was all her comfort now. Her love for it seemed the only solid thing under her feet. Insensibly she drew comfort and strength from its old, patient, familiar acres. Spring passed. The daffodils and spirea and bleeding-heart and columbines bloomed. Bets had loved the columbines so, she should be here to see them. The pansies they had planted together, because, for some mysterious reason, pansies would not grow up on the hill, bloomed at Silver Bush, but no slim girl figure ever came down the hill to pick them in a sunset garden. The big apple tree at the Long House bloomed as it had bloomed for two generations but she and Bets could not sit on the long bough and read poetry. Pat couldn't bear to open the books she had read with Bets…to see the lines and paragraphs they had marked. Bets seemed to die afresh every time there was something Pat wanted to share with her and could not.

Summer came. The honeysuckle was thick over the graveyard paling. To think that the scent of honeysuckles meant nothing to Bets now…or the soft stars of evening…or the moon on white roses. The little path up the hill field grew over with grass. Nobody ever walked on it now. The Wilcoxes had sold the Long House farm and moved to town…Stranger lights were in it but Bets' room was always dark. Sundays were terrible. She and Bets had always spent the afternoon and evening together. Sid wouldn't talk of Bets…Sid in his secret boyish way had been hard hit by her death…but Hilary would.

“I could never have lived through this summer if it hadn't been for Hilary,” Pat thought.

Yet, undeniably life began to beckon once more. The immortal spirit of beauty again held aloft its torch for her. Pat hated herself because she could enjoy anything with no Bets in the world.

“Judy, I feel as if I oughtn't to be even a little bit happy. And yet, today, back in the Secret Field I
was
happy. I forgot Bets for a little while…and then…oh, Judy…I
remembered.
It seemed sad to think I
could
forget her. And the Secret Field was changed somehow…more beautiful than ever but still…not just the same, Judy.”

Judy recalled an old line in a poem she had learned in far-away school days…a poem by a forgotten, outmoded author who yet had the secret of touching the heart.

“
Ye
have
looked
on
death
since
ye
saw
me
last
,” she whispered to herself. But aloud…

“Ye naden't be worrying over being happy, darlint. Bets would be glad av it.”

“You know, Judy, at first it hurt me to think of Bets…I couldn't bear it. But now…it's a comfort. I can think of her in all our old haunts. Tonight, when the moon came up I thought, ‘She is standing in it under the Watching Pine, waiting for me.' And it was sweet…for a little while…just to pretend it. But I'll never have another chum, Judy…and I wouldn't if I could. It hurts too much to lose them.”

“Ye're young to have larned that, darlint, but we all have to sooner or later. And as for another…oh, oh, oh, that's all as it's ordered. I've talked to ye as wise as inny av thim, Patsy, about choosing frinds but ye don't be choosing frinds after all. They
come
to ye…or they don't. Just that. Ye get the ones meant for you, be they minny or few, in the time app'inted for their coming.”

Summer passed. The old days were once more lovely in remembrance. The root of white perennial phlox Bets had given her bloomed for the first time. The gold and bronze dahlias flamed against the green spruce hedge. The pageant of autumn woods began. Bets had gone “rose-crowned into the darkness”…Joe had forsaken them…but the Hill of the Mist was still amethyst and mysterious on September mornings…the Secret Field held all its old allure…Silver Bush, dear Silver Bush…was still her own, beautiful and beloved. Pat's laughter once more echoed in Judy's kitchen…once more she bandied jokes with Uncle Tom…once more she spent long hours in Happiness with Hilary, talking over college plans. The world
was
sweet again.

“Yet in the purple shadow

And in the warm gray rain

What hints of ancient sorrow

And unremembered pain!”

No, not “unremembered.” She would always remember it. She had had Bets for nine wonderful years and nothing could take them from her. Judy had been right as she always was. One would not drink of the cup of forgetfulness if one could.

When the pass lists came out in August Hilary led and Pat had a very respectable showing. So it was Queen's in September for both and Pat thought she might like it if she could survive an absence from Silver Bush for two-thirds of the year. She had always had a sneaking sympathy for Lot's wife. Was she really to be blamed so much for lingering to look back at her home? Pat's only comfort was that Hilary would be at Queen's too, and they would be coming home every weekend.

“You wouldn't think a house could be so nice as Silver Bush
is
in so many different ways, Judy. And the pieces of furniture in it don't seem like furniture. They're
persons,
Judy. That old chair that was Great-grandfather Nehemiah's…when I sit in it it just puts its arms around me, Judy. I feel it. And all the chairs just
want
to be sat in.”

“Sure and iverything in the house has been loved and took care av and used be so minny human beings, Patsy. It stands to rason they do be more than just furniture.”

“I guess I'm hopelessly Victorian, Judy. Norma says I am. I really don't want to do anything in the world but stay on here at Silver Bush and love it and take care of the things in it and plan for it. If I do really get through the license exams next year and get a school I'm going to shingle the roof with my first quarter's salary. Those new red and green shingles, Judy. Think how lovely they'd look against the silver birches in winter. And we must have a new rug for the Little Parlor. And oh, Judy, don't forget to see that the delphiniums are divided in October, will you? They must be this year…and I'm afraid nobody will remember it when I'm not here.”

There was some excitement in getting her outfit ready…and secret sorrow, remembering how much fun it would have been to talk things over with Bets. Pat couldn't have a great deal…crops had been poor that year. But the necessary things were managed and Uncle Tom gave her a beautiful coat with a huge fluffy fur collar and Aunt Barbara gave her a smart little hat of brown velvet, tipped over one eye, and the aunts at the Bay Shore gave her an evening dress. Judy knit her two lovely pullovers and Aunt Edith would have given her silk undies if it had not been for the pajama question. Silver Bush was rocked to its foundation over that. Aunt Edith, who thought even colored silk nighties immoral, declared pajamas were immodest and brazen faced. Pat was set on pajamas. Even Judy favored them simply because Aunt Edith hated them.

“How,” said Aunt Edith solemnly, “would you like to die in your sleep and go before your Maker in pajamas, Patricia?”

Mother gave the casting vote…as she had a trick of doing—and Pat got her pajamas.

When the last day came Pat went to the Secret Field to say good-bye and on her return lingered long at the top of the hill field. Autumn was here…the air was full of its muted music. The old farm lay before her in the golden light of the mellow September evening. She knew every kink and curve of it. Every field was an intimate friend. The Pool glimmered mysteriously. The round window winked at her. The trees she had grown up with waved to her. The garden was afoam with starry white cosmos backed by the stately phalanx of the Prince's Feather. Dear Silver Bush! Never had she felt so close to it…so one with it.

Since the Silver Bush treasury was so very lean Pat had to put up with a rather cheap boarding house that always seemed full of stale cooking smells. It was a square, bare house on a treeless lot, on a street that was quiet only for a little while at night…a street where the wind could only creep in a narrow space like a cringing, fettered thing, instead of sweeping grandly over wide fields and great salt wastes of sea. But at least it was not exactly like the other houses on the street. Pat felt that she couldn't have borne to live on a street where the houses were all exactly alike. And it had a little park next to it, with a few trees.

When Pat stood alone in her room that night, with its mustard colored ingrain carpet and its dreadful maroon walls and the arrogance of its pert alarm clock, loneliness rolled over her like a wave. Judy had sent her off that morning with “gobs av good luck to ye,” but at this moment Pat was sure there was no good luck in the world for her away from Silver Bush.

She ran to the window. Below the street the western train was puffing and chugging. If she could only step on it and go home! Far beyond was cold moonlight on alien hills.

She shut her eyes and imagined she could see Silver Bush. The moon would be shining down on the Secret Field now. The little rabbits would be sitting on the paths among the birches. She heard the gulf wind sighing in the old firs and the maples whispering on the hills of home. She saw the silvery poplar leaves drifting down through the blue “dim.” She thought of the old doorstep listening for her footfall…of her room missing her. She saw Judy in the kitchen knitting, with Gentleman Tom beside her and Bold-and-Bad in her lap…Cuddles perched thoughtfully somewhere about as was her dear habit…as
she,
Pat, had perched long years ago.

She was overcome with homesickness…submerged in it. She cast herself on her hard little bed and wept.

• • •

Pat lived through the pangs of homesickness. She was finding out how many things can be lived through. Eventually she was homesick only on rainy evenings when she could imagine the rain splashing on the back doorstones and running down the windows of a kitchen crowded with cats defiant of the weather.

She liked Queen's fairly well. She liked all the professors except the one who always seemed looking with amused tolerance at everyone and everything. She imagined him looking just so at Silver Bush. As for studies she contrived to get along with a good average. The only marked talent she had was for loving things very greatly and that did not help you much with Greek verbs and dates. It helped you a bit socially, though. Pat was popular at Queen's, in spite of the fact that the other students always felt she was a little detached and aloof…among them but not of them. She was early elected to membership in the Saturday Satellites and by New Year's she was a star in the Dramatic Club. She was voted “not exactly pretty but charming.” A bit proud…you knew her a street off by the way she carried her head. A bit reserved…she had no chums among the girls. A bit odd…she would rather sit in that shabby little park by her boarding house in the evenings than go to a movie.

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 neighbors.

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!