“I’ve no great faith in it lasting,” she said.
Pat, when she left home that night, hardly knew herself whether she wasn’t a little bit in love or not. Certainly…the look in his eyes…the touch of his fingers when he lingered to say good-night under enchanted moons…she hadn’t felt like that since the days of Lester Conway. But her hour in the Secret Field and Happiness cleared the matter up for her. No, liking wasn’t enough…little thrills and raptures weren’t enough. There must be something more before she could dream of leaving Silver Bush. Poor Jim Mallory never had a chance after that and in a week or two Long Alec was to ask his wife in a mildly exasperated tone what the dickens the girl wanted anyways. Was nobody good enough for her?
“No,” said mother softly, “just as nobody was good enough for me till you came, Alec.”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Long Alec. But he said it gently. After all, he was in no hurry to lose Pat.
Rae was another of Pat’s little problems. She had passed her Entrance and wanted to go to Queen’s. But just where was the money to come from? The crop was only fair: there had been some heavy losses in cattle: it was just barely possible to pay the interest on the mortgage this year. Dad wanted Rae to wait for another year and Rae was taking it hard. But in Happiness Pat decided that Rae must go. They would borrow the money from Uncle Tom who would be quite willing to lend it. Long Alec had a horror of borrowing. It had robbed him of many a night’s sleep when he mortgaged Silver Bush to buy the Adams place. But Pat thought she could bring him round. Rae could pay back the loan in a year of teaching if she were lucky enough to get the home school. If not, in two. Everything seemed feasible in Happiness.
If only Judy were not going to Ireland! But Judy was so set on it now that nothing could turn her from it, even if anybody could have been selfish enough to try. She meant to sail in November and was already talking of passports and a new trunk.
“Sure and I cudn’t be taking my old blue chist. It’s a bit ould-fashioned. I tuk it to Australy wid me and thin to Canady but the times have changed since thin and a body must kape up wid thim. And I’ll have to be getting a negleege, too, it’s like. There do be a pink silk one wid white cherry blossoms all over it, marked down at Brennan’s. Do ye be thinking I’m too old for it, girls dear?”
The idea of Judy, in a pink, cherry-blossomed “negleege” was something nobody at Silver Bush could contemplate with equanimity. But not a word was said to dissuade her. Pat assured her there was no longer any age in fashions.
Yes, Judy was going. The fact must be faced. But it no longer blocked up the future. The winter would pass…the spring would come…and Judy would come with it. Meanwhile, she was not taking Silver Bush to Ireland in her pocket. It would stay where it was, under its sheltering trees, with its fields lying cool and quiet around it. Pat, on her way home, stopped as ever at the top of the hill to gloat over it—this house where her dear ones were lying asleep.
For she had lingered long in Happiness and Silver Bush had gone to bed. There was still a light in Judy’s kitchen chamber. Judy was probably hunting through her book of useful knowledge for remedies for seasickness. Though Uncle Tom had slyly suggested that her black bottle was as good an old reliable as any.
Pat was happy. In spite of everything the autumn world was beautiful. Some of its days might bring purple gifts…some might bring peace…all would bring loveliness.
“Darling Silver Bush!” said Pat. “How could anybody ever think of leaving you if she could help it?”
She remembered how sorry she had been in childhood for the Jamesons of Silverbridge…a family who were always moving round. To be sure, they seemed to like it…but the very thought of such an existence made Pat shiver.
Long Alec was horrified at first when Pat broached the idea of borrowing the money for Rae’s year at Queen’s. But she talked him round. It was beginning to be suspected at Silver Bush that Pat could twist dad around her little finger. Rae averred she did it by flattering him but Pat indignantly denied it.
“It would be of no use to try to flatter dad. You know as well as I do, Rae, that dad is impervious to flattery.”
“Oh, oh, there do be no such man,” muttered Judy with a grin.
Flattery or not, Long Alec yielded and everything was soon arranged. Rae was wild with delight.
“If I’d had to wait till next year I’d have gone straight to the end of the world and jumped off. Emmy’s going this year and Dot Robinson and you know we’ve always been such pals. And I’m going to study, Pat…oh, am I going to study? I know everybody says the Silver Bush girls are lookers and popular with the boys but have no brains. I mean to show them. Aunt Barbara says a girl doesn’t need brains if she’s pretty but that’s an idea left over from the Victorians. Nowadays you’ve got to have brains to capitalize your good looks.”
“Did ye be thinking that out for yersilf, darlint?” asked Judy.
“No,” said Rae, one of whose charms was honesty. “I saw it in a magazine. Oh, but I’m happy! Pat darling, the world is only sixteen years old today. And can’t we have a party before I go?”
“Of course. I’ve got that all planned out.”
Pat loved to give parties and welcomed any excuse for one. And this one, being a sort of send-off for Rae, must be a special one.
“We’ll have it a week from Friday night. We’ll have a platform built in the silver bush for dancing and Chinese lanterns hung on the trees.”
“Pat, how lovely! It will be like fairyland. Will there be a moon?”
“There will. I’ll see to that,” promised Pat.
“Don’t make too many fine plans,” said Sid warningly. “Remember when you do some of them always go agley.”
Pat tossed a defiant brown head.
“What matter? I love making plans. I’ll be making plans when I’m eighty. Let’s get right to work, Rae, planning out the eats. We’ll have some of those new ribbon sandwiches Norma had at her tea last week. They’re so pretty.”
Brown and golden heads bent together over recipe books. Delicious excitement began to pervade everything. Pat and Rae talked so much about the affair that Long Alec, who was taking a jaundiced view of things just then, growled to Judy that the fools of the world weren’t all dead yet.
“Oh, oh, and don’t ye think it’ll be a rale dull place whin they are?” demanded Judy. “Do ye be thinking…” in a soothing whisper…“ye’d like a bacon-and-pittatie pie for supper?”
Long Alec brightened. After all, crops might be poor and you might be beginning to suspect that you had paid too much for the old Adams place but Judy’s bacon-and-potato pies were something to live for. And girls were only young once.
CHAPTER 21
Uncle Horace’s letter added to the pleasant excitement. Uncle Horace, who had been living as a retired sea-captain in Vancouver, was coming home for a visit for the first time in twenty years. The older folk were naturally the more deeply stirred by this. Judy for a little while was neither to hold nor bind. But Pat and Rae were intrigued, too, at the thought of this mysterious, romantic uncle they had never seen, about whom Judy had told so many yarns…the Horace of the black-ink fruitcake and the monkey and the mutiny off Bombay. The man who, so Judy had said, kept the winds in jars. They had believed that once and the charm of it still hung around their thoughts of him.
He had mentioned Wednesday as the probable day of his arrival and on Tuesday Pat subjected Silver Bush to such a furbishing up that Sid asked sarcastically if Uncle Horace were coming to see them or their furniture.
“It’s what we are to do wid thim blessed cats do be puzzling me,” worried Judy. “Yer Uncle Horace hates cats as bad as ould Cousin Nicholas himsilf cud do.”
“Oh, do you remember Cousin Nicholas coming downstairs that rainy Christmas night little Mary was born?” giggled Rae.
“Rimimber, is it? Oh, oh, cud I iver be forgetting him,
standing there looking like the wrath av God. And now we do be having three to kape out av Horace’s way. To be sure, Gintleman Tom won’t be bothering him much but Bold-and-Bad and that Squedunk are so frindly. We’ll just have to see that the dure av the Poet’s room is kipt tight shut and trust the rist to the Good Man Above. It’s the lucky thing we’ve got rid av Popka.”
Pat did not know if it were so lucky. It had half-broken her heart to give Popka away to the distant cousin down at East Point. He was such a beautiful cat with his fluffy Maltese coat and white paws, and so affectionate. Why, he used to go over the house at night, visit all the bedrooms and kiss all the sleepers. And the purrs of him! He could outpurr Bold-and-Bad and Squedunk together. It was a shame to give him away. But Long Alec was adamant. Three cats were enough…more than enough…for any house. He would really like to be sure of an unoccupied chair once in a while. Popka must go…and Popka went. Pat and Rae both cried when his new owner bore him away, shrieking piteously in a basket.
Uncle Horace did not come Wednesday, nor on Thursday or Friday. Long Alec shrugged disappointedly. Likely he had changed his mind at the last minute and wouldn’t come at all. That was Horace all over.
“But if he does come I want all you folks to mind your p’s and q’s,” said Long Alec warningly. “Horace is a bit peculiar in some ways. He was a regular martinet on board ship I understand. Everything had to be just so, running smooth as oil. And he was just the same about a house. That’s why he never married, he told us the last time he was home. Couldn’t find a wife neat enough. It’s all very well to listen to Judy’s yarns of his pranks. He used to be a rip for them, I admit, but nobody else was to play them and accidents had no place in his scheme of things. I don’t know what he’ll think of your dance. The last time he was home he was badly down on dancing.”
“And him the liveliest dancer on the Island forty years ago,” marveled Judy.
“He’s reformed since then…and the reformed ones are generally the stiffest. Anyhow, all of you do your best to keep things moving smoothly. I don’t want Horace to go away thinking things not lawful to be uttered of my household.”
Pat and Rae promised, and then forgot all about him in the excitement of the party preparations. Hundreds of last minute things to do. Cream to be whipped…floors and furniture to be polished…at the very last an extra cake to be made because Pat was afraid they mightn’t have enough. Judy declared that the queen’s pantry couldn’t be better stocked but gave in when Pat insisted.
“Oh, oh, ye do be the mistress here,” she said with a touch of grandeur. Pat made an old-fashioned jelly roll that would cut into golden coils with ruby jelly between them. A pretty cake…just as pretty as any new-fangled thing. Where on earth was Rae? Prinking in her room of course…fussing over her hair. And so much yet to be seen to! Pat had always been conscious of a sneaking sympathy with Martha. But she was very happy. Silver Bush looked beautiful. She loved the shining surfaces…the flowers in bowls all over the house…the glitter of glass and silver in the dining-room…everything in the best Gardiner tradition. Sid had strung Chinese lanterns on the trees all around the platform and Tillytuck was to be fiddler, with old Matt Corcoran from the Bridge to spell him. The day of gold would be followed by a night of silver, for the weather was behaving perfectly. And at dusk, pretty girls and girls not so pretty were gazing into mirrors all over the two Glens and Silverbridge and Bay Shore. Judy, with groans that could not be uttered, was donning her wine-hued dress and Tillytuck was struggling into a white collar in the granary loft. Even the cats were giving their flanks a few extra licks. For the party at Silver Bush was easily the event of the season.
Pat, hurrying into a frock of daffodil chiffon, fluffed out her dark-brown cloud of hair and looked in her mirror with pleasure. She was feeling a trifle tired but her reflection heartened her up wonderfully. She had forgotten that she was really rather pretty. “Nae beauty” of course…Pat had never forgotten Great-great-Aunt Hannah’s dictum…but quite pleasant to look upon.
And Rae, in her dress of delphinium blue, was a dream.
“Blue is really the loveliest color in the world,” thought Pat. “I’m sorry I can never wear it.”
The dress suited Rae. But for that matter any dress did. Rae’s clothes always seemed to belong to her. You could never imagine anyone else wearing them. Once she slipped a dress over that rippling gold-brown head you thought she must have been born in it. Pat reflected with a thrill of pride that she had never seen this darling sister looking so lovely. Her eyes had such starry lights in them behind her long lashes…eyes that were as full of charm as wood violets. To be sure, Rae wouldn’t have wanted her eyes compared to wood violets…or forget-me-nots either. That was Victorian. Cornflower blue, now…that sounded so much more up to date. Don Robinson had told her at the last club dance that her eyes were cornflower blue.
The Binnies were the first to come…“spying out the land,” Judy vowed. They heard May’s laughter far down the lane. “Ye always hear her afore ye see her, that one,” sniffed Judy. May was very gorgeous in a gown of cheap, mail-order radium lace that broke in billows around her feet and afforded a wonderful view of most of the bones in her spine. She tapped Pat condescendingly on the shoulder and said,
“You look dragged to death, darling. If I were you I’d stay in bed all day tomorrow. Ma always makes me do that after a spree.”
Pat shrugged away from that hateful, fat, dimpled hand with its nails stained coral. What an intolerable phrase…“if I were you”! As if a Binnie ever could be a Gardiner! She was thankful that the arrival of the Russells and Uncle Brian’s girls saved her from the necessity of replying. Winnie was looking like a girl again tonight, in spite of her two children. For there was a new baby at the Bay Shore and Judy was going to take care of it during the evening, as she loved to do.
Pat did not dance till late. There were too many things to see to. And even when she was free she liked better to stand a little in the background, where a clump of stately white foxglove spikes glimmered against the edge of the birches, and gloat over the whole scene. Everything was going beautifully. The dreamy August night seemed like a cup of fragrance that had spilled over. The gay lilt of Tillytuck’s fiddle rippled through the moonlight to die away magically, through green, enchanted boughs, into the beautiful silences of the silver bush and the misty, glimmering fields beyond. It was really a wonder that Wild Dick didn’t rise up out of his grave to dance to it.
The platform, full of flower-like faces and flower-like dresses, looked so pretty. Everybody seemed happy. How sweet darling mother looked, sitting among the young folks like a fine white queen, her gold-brown eyes shining with pleasure. Uncle Tom was as young as anybody, dancing as blithely as if he had never heard of Mrs. Merridew. His beard had grown out in all its old magnificence and the streaks of gray in it did not show in that mellow light. What a lovely dress Suzanne was wearing…green crepe and green lace swirling about her feet. Suzanne was not really pretty…she said herself that she had a mouth like a gargoyle…but she was distinguished looking…a friend to be proud of. May Binnie, with all her flashing, full-blown beauty, looked almost comical beside her. Poor Rex Miller was not there. At home, sulking, Pat thought with a regretful shrug. She had not exactly refused him two evenings before…Pat did not often actually have to refuse her lovers…she was, as Judy would have said, too diplomatic-like…but she had the knack of delicately making them understand a certain thing and thus avoiding for herself and them the awkwardness of a blunt “no.”
Where was Sid’s Dorothy, with her sweet dark face? She had not come either. Pat wondered why. She hated herself for half hoping Sid and Dorothy had quarreled. But if that were the reason Sid was dancing so often with May Binnie Pat felt she was already punished for her selfish hope. Of course May was a good dancer…of her kind. At any rate, the boys all liked to dance with her. May was never in any danger of being a wallflower.
&nb
sp; Amy’s new ring flashed on the shoulder of her partner as she drifted by. Amy was engaged. Another change. What a pity people had to grow up…and get married…and go away. She had always liked Amy much better than Norma. She recalled with considerable relish the time she had slapped Norma’s face for making fun of Silver Bush. Norma never dared to do it again.
What an exquisite profile Rae had as she lifted her face to her partner…a tall Silverbridge boy. Rae had no lack of partners either. And the way she had of looking at them! Really, the child was getting to be quite a handful. Was there actually anybody standing back in the shadows behind Tillytuck? Pat had fancied several times there was but could never be quite sure. Probably Uncle Tom’s hired man.
David hunted her out and insisted on her dancing…and sitting out in the silver bush with him afterwards…just far enough away from the dancers to make Tillytuck’s fiddling sound like fairy music. Pat liked both. David was a capital dancer and she loved to talk with him. He had such a charming voice. Sometimes he was a little bitter but there was such a stimulating pungency about his bitterness. Like choke cherries. They puckered your mouth horribly but still you hankered after them. She would far rather sit here and talk to David than dance with boys who held you closer than you liked and paid you silly compliments, most of which they had picked up from the talkies.
Then a run into the house to see the baby. It was so heavenly to watch a baby asleep, with Judy crooning over it like an old weather-beaten Madonna. Judy was a bit upset on several counts.