Pat could not realize that Cuddles was by way of getting to be a big girl. It was only yesterday she had been an adorable baby, with dimpled arms and cheeks, whose very look said “come and love me.” And now she was eleven…with one teasing, unruly curl hanging down the middle of her forehead and a nose that even at eleven was not the smudge of other elevens. And her eyes! No wonder Cuddles was spoiled. When she looked up sorrowfully and appealingly, she was never punished severely. You couldn’t punish a young saint gone astray. Cuddles’ eyes were always asking for something and always getting it. Unlike Pat, Cuddles reveled in chums and Silver Bush was over-run with them…“chattering like crows,” said Judy indulgently. Judy was proud of Cuddles’ popularity. As for the opposite sex…well, if tributes of sticky candies and moist apples, and stickier and moister dabs of kisses meant anything Cuddles certainly had “It.”
“When was eleven,” said Pat with the tone of eighty, “I wasn’t thinking of such things, Miss Rachel.”
“Oh, but I’m a modern child,” said Cuddles serenely. “And Trix Binnie says you’ve got to have It or the boys won’t look at you.”
Judy shook her gray head solemnly, as if to remark, “If they say these things in the green tree what will they say in the dry?” But Cuddles persisted.
“You might tell me what it is, Pat, and if you think I’ve got It. After all”…Cuddles was very serious…“I’d rather get information from my own family than from the Binnies.”
“The sinse av her now!” said Judy.
Pat took Cuddles off into the graveyard and, sitting on Wild Dick’s tombstone, tried to give her some “information.” She felt that she must fill mother’s place with darling Cuddles now. Mother must not be bothered.
• • •
And then the shadow, which had been creeping nearer and nearer, pounced.
Mother was ill…mother was very, very ill.
Mother was dying.
Nobody said it but everybody knew it. Except Judy who stubbornly refused to believe it. Judy wouldn’t give up hope. She hadn’t got “the sign.”
“And I’ll not be belaving it till I do,” she said.
Pat wouldn’t believe it either.
“Mother can’t die,” she said desperately, “not our mother.”
They had always taken mother so for granted. She had always been there…she always would be there. How was it possible to picture anything else?
Pat had not even Hilary to help her through those weeks. Hilary was up west, helping another uncle build a house. The task delighted Hilary. It had an ideal quality for him. Besides, before he could design houses he wanted to know all about building them, from the ground up.
“Bets last year…and now mother,” thought Pat.
Then came a torturing hope. The specialist who was called in advised an operation. With it, he conceded, there was a chance. Without it, none.
Judy, when she heard there was to be an operation, gave up hope at once, sign or no sign.
“Oh, oh, it’s mesilf shud be dying instid av her,” she muttered. “I don’t be knowing what the Good Man Above means, so I don’t.”
Gentleman Tom winked inscrutably.
“Ye can’t be doing innything, cat dear. Ye wudn’t let what was after Patsy that time get her. But ye can’t be guarding Mrs. Long Alec…not if they take her to that hospital to be cut up. And her a Selby av the Bay Shore!”
Pat was up in mother’s room. A new Pat…older…graver. But more hopeful. As long as one had a little hope!
Mother had asked to be propped up in bed, so that she might see the green fields she loved. Her hands lay on the counterpane. It was strange to see mother’s hands so white and idle.
She was to be taken to the hospital the next day. Mother was very fine and simple and brave about it. But when had mother ever been anything else? Mother had never been excitable like the Gardiners. Her spirit was always at rest, so that anyone who came into her presence was always conscious of a great calm. Her eyes were still the asking eyes of a girl and yet there was something maternal about her bosom that made you want to lay your head on it if you were tired or troubled.
“The apple blossoms are out. I’m glad I’ve seen them once more. I was a girl under them once, Pat, like you…and your father…” Mother’s voice trailed off into some hinterland of happy remembrance.
“You’ll see the apple blossoms for many more springs, mother darling. You’ll come back from the hospital cured and well…and I’ve ordered a lovely day for you to go on.”
Mother smiled.
“I hope so. I’ve never given myself up yet, Pat. But I’d like to talk to you a little about some things…supposing I don’t come back. We must look that in the face, dearest. Winnie will be marrying Frank…and you will have to take my place, you know.”
“I…I know,” choked Pat. “And I’ll never, never marry, mother, I promise that. I’ll stay here and keep a home for dad and Sid and Cuddles. Sid won’t want to marry ever, when he has me.”
Again mother smiled.
“I don’t ask you to promise that, dear. I’d like to think you’ll marry some day. I want you to be a happy wife and a joyful mother of children. Like I’ve been. I’ve been so happy here, Patsy. I was only twenty when I came here. A spoiled child, too…and as for housekeeping, I didn’t know the difference between simmering and boiling. Judy taught me…wonderful old Judy. Be good to her, Pat…if I don’t come back. But I needn’t tell you that. Judy was so good to me. She was even quite fierce about my working…she hated to see my hands spoiled. I had pretty hands, Pat. But I didn’t mind spoiling them for Silver Bash. I’ve loved it as you do. Every room in it has always been a friend of mine…had a life of its own for me. How I loved to wake up in the night and feel that my husband and my children were well and safe and warm, sleeping peacefully. Life hasn’t anything better to offer a woman than that, Patsy.”
Mother didn’t say this all at once. There were long pauses when she lay very still…little gasps for breath. Sometimes terrible lances of fear pierced Pat’s new armor of hope. When father came in to take her place as watcher Pat went down and out to the dark garden. Everyone else was in bed, even Judy. She could not go to bed…she could not sleep. The night was warm and kind. It put its arms around her like a mother. The white iris seemed to shine hopefully in the dark. Bold-and-Bad came padding along the walk and curled up in her lap. There were times when even Bold-and-Bad could behave like a Christian. He knew that Pat needed comfort and he did his best to give it.
Pat sat on the garden bench until dawn came over the Hill of the Mist and Bold-and-Bad ran away for a glorious mouse hunt in the graveyard. The day had begun in a pale windless morning…the day on which mother was to go. Would she ever return?
That old hymn she had hated…“change and decay in all around I see.”
Change was what she had always dreaded.
“Oh, Thou who changest not abide with me.”
It was not a hateful hymn after all…it was a hymn to be loved. How wonderful to feel that there was something that never changed…a Power under and above and around on which you could depend. Peace seemed to flow into her.
“Child dear, whativer got ye up so early?”
“I wasn’t in bed at all. I’ve been in the garden, Judy…just praying.”
“Oh, oh, it’s all inny av us can be doing now,” said Judy despairingly.
Cuddles had not been allowed to know the worst but she heard it in school that day and Pat had hard work to comfort her that evening.
“And what do you think Trix Binnie said?” she sobbed. “She said she envied me…it was so exciting to have a death in the house.”
“You go down on yer liddle marrow bones this night and thank the Good Man Above he didn’t be making ye a Binnie,” said Judy solemnly.
Even that day was lived through. At night dad tele
phoned from town that the operation was successfully over and that mother was coming out of the anesthetic nicely. The Silver Bush folk slept that night; but there was still a long week of suspense to be lived through before they dared really hope. Then dad came home, with a light in his tired eyes that had not shone there for many a day. Mother would live: never very strong perhaps…never just the woman she had been. But she would live.
“Oh, oh, and didn’t I be always telling ye so?” said Judy triumphantly, forgetting all her gloomy dreads of “cutting up.” “There niver was no sign. Gintleman Tom did be knowing it. That cat niver worried himsilf at all, at all.”
• • •
Mother could not come home for six weeks, and during those weeks Pat and Judy ran Silver Bush, for both the aunts at the Bay Shore were ill and Winnie had to go to the rescue. Pat was in the seventh heaven. She loved everything about the house more than ever. The fine hemstitched tablecloths…Judy’s hooked rugs…the monogrammed sheets…the cedar chest full of blankets…the embroidered centerpieces…the lace doilies…the dear old blue willow-ware plates…Grandmother Selby’s silver tea service, the old mirrors that had stolen a bit of loveliness from every fair face that had ever looked into them. All had a new meaning for her. Every window was loved for some special bit of beauty to be seen from it. She loved her own because she could see the Hill of the Mist…she loved the Poet’s window because there was a far-away glimpse of the bay…she loved the round window because it looked right into the silver bush…she loved the front hall window because it looked squarely on the garden. As for its attic windows, one saw everything in the world worth seeing from them and sometimes Pat would go up the attic for no earthly reason except to look out of them.
She and Judy didn’t make slaves of themselves. Every once in so long Pat would say,
“Now, let’s stop thinking housework, Judy, and think wild strawberries,”…or ferns…or June-bells as the case might be, and off they would go for a ramble. And in the “dims” they would sit on the back-door steps as of old and Judy would tell funny tales and Pat would laugh until she took kinks.
“Oh, oh, ye do be knowing how to work, Patsy darlint…stopping for a bit av a laugh once in so long. There’s few people do be knowing the sacret. Yer aunts at the Bay Shore…they niver do be laughing and it’s the rason they do be taking sick spells so often.”
“Uncle Brian and Aunt Jessie are coming for the weekend, Judy. I must cut some iris for the Poet’s room. I do love fixing up that room for a guest. And we must have an apple tart with whipped cream. That’s Uncle Brian’s favorite dessert.”
Pat always remembered what a guest liked to eat. And she was, as Judy declared, “a cook be the grace av God.” She loved to cook, feeling delightedly that in this one thing at least she was akin to the women of all lands and all ages. Almost all her letters to mother and Hilary and college correspondents began, “I’ve just put something in the oven.” The pantry was never without its box of spicy cookies and the fluffy perfection of her cakes left Judy speechless. As for the fruit cake she proudly concocted and baked one day all on her own, take Judy’s word for it, there never had been a fruit cake to match it at Silver Bush.
“I was niver no great hand at fruit cake, darlint,” she said sadly. “Yer Aunt Edith always do be saying it takes a born lady to make a rale fruit cake and maybe she is right. But I might av been larning the trick if it hadn’t been for a bit av discouragement I was having just after I came to Silver Bush. I thought one day I’d be making a fruit cake and at it I wint, wid more zale than jidgement. Yer Uncle Horace was home thin…and a young imp he was…hanging round to see what he could see and mebbe get a licking av the bowl. ‘What do ye be putting in a fruit cake, Judy Plum,’ he sez, curious like. ‘A liddle bit av iverything,’ sez I short like. And whin I turns me back to line the pan what did the young divil do but impty the ink-bottle on the clock shelf into me cake…and me niver knowing it. Sure and yer Aunt Edith do be saying a good fruit cake shud be black. Mine was black enough to plaze her, Patsy darlint.”
Pat exulted in finding a new recipe and serving it before anybody else when the Ladies’ Aid met at Silver Bush. She loved to pore over the advertisement pictures in the magazines…the lovely cookies and fruits and vegetables…dear little white and red radishes…curly lettuce…crimson beets…golden asparagus with little green tips. She loved going to town to shop. There were certain things in the stores there, hers, though she had not yet bought them. She liked to browbeat the butcher and bulldoze the grocer delicately…to resist temptation and yield to it…to save and spend. She loved to think of weary and lonely people coming to Silver Bush for rest and food and love.
And under everything a sense of deep satisfaction in doing the thing she was meant to do. She tasted it to the full in the beautiful silences which occasionally fell over Silver Bush when everyone was quietly busy and the cats basked on the window sills.
And then to prepare for mother’s homecoming!
CHAPTER 36
Balm in Gilead
“Father walks slow to what he used to do,” said Winnie with a sigh, as she and Pat shelled peas on the kitchen steps in the sultry August afternoon, with Bold-and-Bad sitting between them. An occasional breeze set the leaves of the young aspen by the door shaking wildly. Pat loved that aspen. It had grown up unregarded in a few summers…Judy always threatening to cut it down…and then overnight it had turned from a shrub into a tree. And then dad had declared it must come down but Pat had interceded successfully.
“In a year or two it will shade the steps so nicely. Think of the moonlight falling through it on summer nights, dad.”
Dad shrugged and let her have her way. Everybody knew Pat couldn’t bear to have a tree cut down. No use having the child cry her golden-brown eyes out.
Over in the field of the Pool Sid was building an oat-stack. Sid, it was said, could build the best oat-stack in P. E. Island.
Pat looked after dad wistfully as he crossed the yard and went over to the field of the Pool. He did walk slower; he was more stooped. Yet how she hated to admit it.
“Is it any wonder? After those dreadful weeks when we didn’t know whether mother would live or die. And I don’t think he ever really got over Joe’s going.” Winnie sighed again. Pat looked keenly at her. Winnie had been very remote and dreamy for some days past. Pat suddenly remembered that she had not heard Winnie laughing…since when? Since the last night Frank Russell had been over. And he had not been over for a week.
It had been a suspected thing all through the year that Winnie and Frank would be married in the fall. All through the winter Judy had hooked rugs “like mad.” Pat did not warm to the thought but it had to be faced and accepted.
“Winnie, what is the trouble, darling?”
“There’s no trouble,” said Winnie impatiently. “Don’t be silly, Pat.”
“I’m not silly. You’ve been…funny…for a week. Have you quarreled with your Frank?”
“No,” said Winnie slowly. Then her face went white and her eyes filled with tears. She must tell somebody and mother mustn’t be bothered now. Pat wasn’t old enough to understand, of course…Winnie still persisted in thinking of Pat as a mere child…but she was better than nobody at all.
“It’s only…he was a little angry when I told him we couldn’t be married this fall after all…perhaps not for years.”
“But…Winnie…why? I thought it was all settled.”
“So it was. Before mother took ill. But you know perfectly well, Pat, that everything is changed now. We simply have to look facts in the face. Mother may be spared to us for many years but she’ll always be an invalid. You will be teaching and Judy isn’t as young as she once was. She can’t do all the work that has to be done here, even with your help after school. And it would break her heart to get any one in to help her, even if dad could afford it, which he can’t. So I must just give up all thoughts of
being married just now. Of course Frank doesn’t like it, but he’ll just have to reconcile himself to it. If he doesn’t…well, there are plenty of other girls ready to keep house for him.”
In spite of herself Winnie’s voice faltered. The thought of all those willing girls was very bitter. And Frank had been very…difficult. The Russells did not like to be kept waiting. She knew he wouldn’t wait for years. And if he did…they would be old and tired and all the first blossom of life would be withered and scentless. Just like poor Sophie Wright. She and Gordon Dodds had waited for fifteen years until her paralyzed father died; and Sophie had never seemed like a bride. Just a faded little woman who no longer cared greatly whether she was married or not. Yet Winnie did not falter in her decision. There was good stuff in the Silver Bush girls. They put duty first always, even in a world which was clamoring that the word was outmoded and the thing to do was to grab what you wanted when you wanted it and let everything else go hang.
For just a moment a wild thrill of joy swept over Pat. Winnie wouldn’t marry Frank after all. There wouldn’t be any more changes at Silver Bush. She and Winnie and Sid would just go on living there, taking care of father and mother, loving Silver Bush and each other, recking nothing of the changing world outside. It would be heavenly.
But Winnie’s eyes! They looked like blue violets that somebody had stepped on and bruised horribly.
Pat had never been able to understand how Winnie could love Frank as she did. Frank…if you didn’t hate him because he was stealing your sister…was a nice enough fellow, with a wholesome pink face and steady gray-blue eyes. But nothing romantic about him…no smart compliments, no Lara-like glooms…nothing to induce such a riot of feeling as Winnie evidently experienced whenever she heard his step at the door.
What did Winnie see in him? Pat gave it up.
All the lawless joy died out of Pat when she saw Winnie’s eyes. It was simply ridiculous to think of Winnie’s eyes looking so…just ridiculous, that was all. And quite unnecessary. Because she, Pat, had everything nicely planned out already.