“Winnie, do you know you’re just talking nonsense? Of course you’re going to marry Frank. I am not going to take the school. I decided that as soon as mother came home. I’ll be here to help Judy.”
“Pat, you can’t do that. It wouldn’t be fair to ask you to give up your school after you studied so hard at Queen’s to get your license…you ought to have your chance…”
Pat laughed.
“My chance! That’s just it. I’ve got my chance…the chance I’ve been aching for. The chance to stay at Silver Bush and care for it. I’ve hated the thought of teaching school. Who knows even if I’d get on well in the home school? I might have to go away another year…and that…but we needn’t go into that. Of course I’d rather have mother well and strong than anything else even if I had to go to the ends of the earth. But since she can’t be…well, I have the consolation of knowing I can stay home anyhow.”
“What will dad say?”
“Dad knows. Why, Win, he was relieved. He never thought but that you’d be getting married and he didn’t know just how things could be managed here. Because he didn’t want me disappointed either in having to give up my school. Disappointed!” Pat howled again. “Win, parents aren’t the selfish creatures so many horrid stories make them out. They don’t want their children to sacrifice and give up for them. They want them to be happy.”
“All but the cranks,” said Judy, who had brought her little spinning wheel out to the platform and thought herself at liberty to butt into any conversation. “There do always be a few cranks aven among parents. Oh, oh, but not among the Gardiners.”
“I think,” said Winnie in a rather unsteady tone, “if you don’t mind finishing the peas, Pat…I’ll go upstairs for a little while.”
Pat grinned. Winnie would go upstairs and write to Frank.
“Likely Winnie will be marrying Frank this fall, Judy,” Pat said with a gulp. It seemed to make a thing so irrevocable to say it.
“Oh, oh, and why not, the darlint? She can cook and she can sew. She can get along widout things. She do be knowing whin to laugh and whin not to. Oh, oh, she’s fit to be married. It do be eliven years since we had a wedding at Silver Bush. Sure and that’s a liddle bit too much like heaven, wid nather marrying nor giving in marriage.”
“George Nicholson is going to be married to Mary Baker,” announced Cuddles, who had wandered along with a little spotted barn cat she affected in her arms. “I wish he would wait till I grow up. I believe he would like me better than Mary because there is no fun in her. There’s a good deal in me when my conscience doesn’t bother me. O…h, look at Bold-and-Bad.”
Bold-and-Bad had met his match since Cuddles had been bringing the barn cat to the house. The barn cat was scrawny and ugly but she was taking impudence from nobody. Bold-and-Bad was ludicrously afraid of her. It was a sight of fun to see that whiffet of a cat attack and put to flight an animal who should have been able to demolish her with a blow of his paw. Bold-and-Bad fled over the yard and through the graveyard and across the Mince Pie field with yowls of terror.
“Look at Gintleman Tom enjoying av it,” chuckled Judy.
“We have nice cats at Silver Bush,” said Cuddles complacently. “Interesting cats. And they have an air. They walk so proud and hold their tails up. Other cats slink. Trix Binnie laughed when I said that and said, ‘You’re getting just as crazy as Pat over your old Silver Bush, thinking there’s nothing like it.’ ‘Well, there isn’t,’ I told her. And I was right, wasn’t I, Pat?”
“You were,” said Pat fervently. “But there comes your barn cat back and you’d best take her to the barn before dad sees her. You know he doesn’t want the barn cats encouraged to the house. He says he puts up with Gentleman Tom and Bold-and-Bad because they’re old established customs.”
“How old is Gentleman Tom, Judy?”
“Oh, oh, old, is it? The Good Man Above do be knowing that. All do be knowing is that he come here twelve years ago, looking as old as he does this blessed minute. Maybe there isn’t inny age about him,” concluded Judy mysteriously. “Ye can’t iver be thinking av him as a kitten, can ye now?”
“I’m sure he could tell some queer tales, Judy. It’s a pity cats can’t talk.”
“Talk is it? Whoiver told ye they cudn’t talk, Cuddles darlint? The grandfather of me heard two cats talking onct but he niver cud be got to tell what they said…No, no, he didn’t want to be getting in wrong wid the tribe. As I was telling Siddy last Sunday whin he was raving mad because Bold-and-Bad had gone to slape on his Sunday pants and they was kivered wid cat hairs, ‘Think whativer ye like av a cat, Siddy darlint,’ sez I to him, ‘but don’t be saying innything. If the King av the cats heard ye now!”
“And what would have happened if the King of the cats had heard him, Judy?”
“Oh, oh, let’s lave that tale for a rale wild stormy winter night, Cuddles, whin yere slaping wid old Judy snug and cozy. Thin I’ll be telling ye what happened to a man in ould Ireland that did be saying things av cats a liddle too loud and careless like. It’s no tale for a summer afternoon wid a widding looming up.”
• • •
Winnie was to be married in late September and Silver Bush settled down to six weeks of steady preparation. Judy had a new swing shelf put up in the cellar to fill with rows on rows of ruby jam-pots for Winnie. The wood-work in the Poet’s room was to be painted all over in robin’s egg blue and then there was the excitement of choosing paper to harmonize with it. Though Pat hated to tear the old paper off. It had been on so long. And she resented having the chairs in the Big Parlor recovered. There was a sort of harmony about the old room as it was. New things jarred. But Silver Bush must look its best, for Winnie was to have a big wedding.
“The clan do be liking a bit av a show,” said Judy delightedly.
“It means a great deal of work,” said Aunt Edith rather disapprovingly.
“Work, is it? Ye do be right. It’s busy as a hin wid one chick we all are. I do be kaping just one jump ahead. But I’m not liking yer sneaking widdings as if they was ashamed av it. We’ll be having one to be proud av, wid ivery relative on both sides and lots av prisents and two bridesmaids and a flower girl….Oh, oh, and Winnie’s trosso now! The like av it has niver been seen at Silver Bush. All her liddle undies made be hand. ‘An inch av hand-work do be worth a machine mile,’ sez I to Mrs. Binnie whin she do be saying her cousin’s daughter had two dozen av ivery kind. It do be a comfort to me whin I climb up to me loft at night, faling as if I’d been pulled through a kay-hole.”
“Oh, Judy, you and I are getting to be old women,” sighed Aunt Barbara.
Judy looked scandalized.
“Yes, yes, but whisht…don’t be spaking av it, woman dear,” she whispered apprehensively.
Winnie had a dream of a wedding dress…the sort of dress every girl would like to have. Everybody loved it except Aunt Edith, who was horrified at its brevity. Dresses were at their shortest when Winnie was married. Aunt Edith had been praying for years that women’s skirts might be longer but apparently in vain.
“It’s a condition that can’t be affected by prayer,” Uncle Tom told her gravely.
Winnie moved through all the bustle of preparation with a glory in her eyes, smiling dreamily over thoughts of her own. Frank haunted Silver Bush to such an extent that Judy was a trifle peeved at him.
“He do be all right in his place but I’m not liking him spread over everything,” she grumbled.
“Frank is devoted to Winnie,” said Pat rather distantly. “I think it is beautiful.” She had finally accepted Frank as one of the family and he had straightway become a person to be defended, even from Judy.
“I wonder how Frank proposed to Winnie,” remarked Cuddles, as she helped Pat adorn a cake with pale green slivers of angelica and crimson cherries. “I suppose he would be very romantic. Do you think he went on his knees?”
/> Sid, in for a drink of water, roared.
“We don’t do that nowadays, Cuds. Frank just said to Winnie, ‘How about it, kid?’ I heard him,” Sid salved his conscience by winking at Judy behind Cuddles’ back.
“When I grow up and anybody proposes to me he’ll have to be a good deal more flowery and eloquent than that, I can tell you, if he wants me to listen to him,” she said.
“The frog went a-courting,” remarked Judy cryptically.
CHAPTER 37
Winnie’s Wedding
The engagement was announced in the papers…a newfangled notion which met with Judy’s disapproval.
“Oh, oh, there do be minny a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip,’ she muttered. “Sure and we’d be in the pretty scrape if innything but good happened Frank in the nixt three wakes. There was Maggie Nicholson now…her beau did be going clane out av his head a wake before the day itsilf and it’s in the asylum he’s been iver since. Wudn’t thim Binnies have the laugh on us if the widding didn’t come off after all.”
Only three weeks to the wedding day…Winnie’s wedding day when she would leave Silver Bush forever. There were moments when Pat felt she couldn’t endure it. When Vernon Gardiner said jokingly to Winnie, “Next time we meet I’ll have to call you Mrs. Russell,” Pat went upstairs and cried. To think of Winnie being Mrs. Russell. It sounded so terribly changed and different and far away. Her Winnie!
Tears didn’t stop the days from flying by. The wedding was to be in the church. Pat wanted Winnie to be married at home under the copper beech on the lawn. Mother couldn’t go to the church. But Frank wanted the church. The Russells were Anglicans and had always been married in church. Frank got his way…“of course,” as Pat scornfully remarked to the air.
Pat and Judy were up to their eyes in baking and favorite recipes were hunted up…recipes that had not been used for years because they took so many eggs. The traditional Silver Bush bride-cake alone required three dozen.
The Bay Shore aunts and the Swallowfield aunts sent over baskets of delicious confections. Aunt Barbara’s basket was full of different kinds of cookies…orange cookies and date cookies and vanilla crisps and walnut bars and the Good Man Above knew how many more.
“Oh, oh, it won’t be much like Lorna Binnie’s wedding table,” exulted Judy. “Sure and poor Mrs. Binnie thought if she did be cutting her cookies in a dozen different shapes it wud be giving thim a different flavor. Now, Patsy darlint, just ye be kaping an eye on thim chickens while I do be getting me yard posts whitewashed.”
At first dawn Bold-and-Bad was shouting all over Silver Bush that he had found a mouse and Judy’s footsteps sounded on the kitchen stairs. The morning hush was already broken by the stir of last-minute preparations. It had rained in the night but now it was fine and a new, lovely world with its face washed was blinking its innocent eyes at the sun.
“Sure and the day was ordered,” said Judy as she raked the lawn where robins were pulling out long fat worms.
Pat couldn’t eat a mouthful of breakfast. It was a shock to see Winnie eating so heartily. Pat was sure that if she were going to be married she couldn’t eat for a week beforehand. Of course she wouldn’t want Winnie to be like that silly Lena Taylor, who, it was said, cried for a month before she was married. But when you were going away from Silver Bush that day how could you have an appetite?
The forenoon was like a whirlwind. The table had to be set…oh, why did families have to be broken up like this? Among salads, jellies and cakes Pat moved as to the manor born. This time tomorrow Winnie would belong to another family. Everybody’s place was settled; Pat had a knack of dovetailing people rather cleverly…only herself and Siddy and Cuddles left at Silver Bush. The rooms bloomed under her hands. The little alcove Uncle Tom called Cuddle Corner was a nest of round golden pillows like small suns…It was dreadful to find pleasure in these things when Winnie was going away.
Flowers must be cut. As a rule Pat didn’t like to cut the flowers. She always felt such a vivid crimson delight in her splendid blossoms…a feeling that made the thought of cutting them hurt her. But now she slashed at them savagely.
The table looked beautiful. It would be such a shame to spoil it…turn it into an after-dinner mess. But, as Judy said, that was life.
“Anyhow, Silver Bush looks perfectly lovely,” thought Pat in a momentary rapture.
In a way it was all like an echo of Aunt Hazel’s long-ago wedding day. The same confusion when everybody was dressing. Gentleman Tom was the only calm creature in the house. Judy was distracted because Bold-and-Bad had been seen dashing through the hall with a very large, very dead mouse and the Good Man Above only knew what he had done with it. That vain Cuddles, who had been trying all the mirrors in the house to see which was the most becoming, was in trouble over the hang of her flowered chiffon dress. It had been a bitter pill to Cuddles that she was too old to be Winnie’s flower girl. Aunt Hazel’s six-year-old Emmy was cast for that part and Cuddles was secretly determined to look prettier than she did.
“What does my nose look like, Pat? Do you think it is too big?”
Cuddles’ nose had always worried her. How would it turn out?
“If it is I don’t see how you can remedy it,” laughed Pat. “Never mind your nose, Cuddles darling. You look very sweet.”
“Can’t I put a dab of powder on it, Pat? Please. I’m eleven.”
“That would only draw attention to it,” warned Pat.
Cuddles saw this. She cast a satisfied look at herself in the glass.
“I have decided,” she remarked in a matter-of-fact tone, “that I will get married when I am twenty and have three children. Pat, do I have to kiss Frank?”
“I ’m not going to,” said Pat savagely.
Judy, who was set on “witnessing the nuptials,” as she expressed it, had again laid aside her drugget dress and her Irish brogue. Out came the dress-up dress and the English pronunciation as good as ever. Only the former was a bit tight. Pat had a terrible time getting Judy hooked into it.
“Sure and I had a waist whin this was made,” mourned Judy. “Do you be thinking it’s a trifle old-fashioned like, Pat?”
Pat got some lace and did wonders with it. Judy felt real “chick.”
Mother was dressed, sitting in state in the Big Parlor with her gray hair and her soft blue eyes. Pat realized with a swift pang that mother had got very gray in the year. But she looked like a picture in her pretty dress of silver-gray and rose, with the necklace dad had given her when she came out of the hospital…an amber string like drops of golden dew. Father was not going to the church after all. At the last moment he had decided that he simply could not leave mother alone. Uncle Tom must give the bride away. Winnie was not very well pleased over this. That fierce, immense black beard of his was so old-fashioned. But Winnie was too happy to mind anything much. In her bridal array she was an exquisite, shimmering young thing with face and eyes that were love and rapture incarnate. Pat’s throat swelled as she looked at her. Frank Russell suddenly became the man who could make Winnie look like this. She forgave him the offence of becoming her brother-in-law.
The kitchen clock was ten to, the parlor clock was five past, the dining-room clock was striking the hour. Which meant that it was a quarter past and time to go.
• • •
Sitting in the crowded church, with its decorations of tawny tiger lilies and lemon-hued gladioli…the C. G. I. T. girls had done it for Winnie…Pat thought busily to keep herself from crying. Winnie had warned her solemnly…“Pat, don’t you dare cry when I’m getting married.” She had been so near crying at Aunt Hazel’s wedding long ago but this was tenfold worse.
It was odd to see the groom so pale…he was always so pink and chubby. But he looked well. She was glad he was nice-looking. If Silver Bush had to have in-laws it should have handsome ones. Uncle Tom’s magnificent beard looked purple in
the light that fell on it through the stained glass window…like some old Assyrian king’s. Winnie had said, “I do.” How solemn! Just a word uttered or unuttered and a whole life was changed…perhaps even the course of history. If Napoleon’s mother had said “No,” in place of “Yes?” Why, it was over…it was over…Winnie was Mrs. Frank Russell…the bridal party was going into the vestry…Uncle Brian’s Norma was singing the bridal anthem…Pat recalled that long-ago day when she had slapped Norma’s face.
What was that dreadful old Cousin Sam Gardiner whispering to her over the top of the pew? “I wunner how many husbands and wives in this church would like a change.” How many, indeed? Perhaps old Malcolm Madison, who was said to have laughed only three times in his life. Perhaps Gerald Black, whose wife had such a passion for swatting flies that she had bent forward in church one day and swatted one on Jackson Russell’s bald head. Or Mrs. Henry Green, whose husband, Pat reflected wildly, looked like his own tombstone. She wondered if the story Judy told of him was true…that he had been whipped in school one day because the master caught him writing a love-letter on his slate to Lura Perry who was half gypsy. It couldn’t be…not with that Scotch-Presbyterian-elder mouth. Old Uncle John Gardiner was improving the wait by snatching a nap. Wasn’t there a story about his wooden leg catching fire one day when he dozed by the fire? There was Mrs. James Morgan who had never forgiven her daughter for marrying Carl Porter and had never entered her house. How could families act like that?
Mrs. Albert Cody…Sarah Malone that was. Judy had a story about her. “Oh, oh, she had one of thim aisy-going fellers…wint around wid her for years and years and niver got no forrader. Sarah wint away for a visit to her Aunt in Halifax and writ back great yarns av her beaus and fine times. That scared him and he writ for her to come home and be married. Sure and there hadn’t been a word av truth in what Sarah had tould him. Her aunt was that sick and cranky she niver wint out av the house.”