Mistress Pat

His old grin robbed the question of insult. Joe knew there would be something in the pantry. Judy had a whole turkey stowed away, as well as the pot of soup. By the time mother had come down and hugged Joe and hurried anxiously back upstairs Judy had another table spread and they all sat down to it, even forgiven Tillytuck, whom Cuddles haled in from the granary.

  “Ah, this is worth coming home for,” said Joe. “Cuddles, you’re almost grown up. Any beau yet, Pat?”

  “Oh, oh, ye’d better be asking her that,” said Judy. “Don’t ye think it’s time we had another widding at Silver Bush? She snubbed Elmer Moody last wake so bad he wint off vowing he’d niver set foot in Silver Bush agin.”

  “He breathes through his mouth,” said Pat airily.

  “Listen at her. Some fault to find wid ivery one av the poor b’ys. And what about yersilf, Joe? Do ye be coming home to find a wife?”

  Joe blushed surprisingly. Pat only half liked it. She had heard rumors of several girls Captain Joe had been writing to occasionally. None of them were quite good enough for Joe. But it was the old story…change…change. Pat hated change so. And little, cool, unexpected breaths of it were always blowing across everything, even the jolliest of times, bringing a chill of foreboding.

  “And you’re not tattooed after all, Joe,” said Cuddles, half disappointedly.

  “Only my hands,” said Joe, displaying a blue anchor on one and his own initials on the other.

  “Will you tattoo mine on mine?” asked Cuddles eagerly.

  Before Joe could answer an indignant old man suddenly erupted into the kitchen, wrapped in a dressing gown. It was Cousin Nicholas and Cousin Nicholas was distinctly in a temper.

  “Cats!” he snarled. “Cats! I had just fallen into a refreshing slumber when a huge cat jumped on my stomach…on my stomach, mark you. I detest cats.”

  “It…must have been Bold-and-Bad,” gasped Pat. “He does so love to get into the spare room bed. I’m so sorry, Cousin Nicholas…”

  “Sorry, miss! I never can get to sleep again after I am once wakened up. Will your sorrow cure that? I came down to ask you to find that cat and secure him. I don’t know where the beast is…probably under the bed, plotting more devilment.”

  “Peevish…very peevish,” muttered Tillytuck quite audibly. Cuddles meowed and Cousin Nicholas glared at her.

  “The manners of Silver Bush are not what they were in my day,” he said crushingly. “I had a very hard time to get to sleep at all. There was too much going and coming upstairs. Is anybody sick?”

  “Yes…but it don’t be catching,” said Judy reassuringly.

  Pat, trying not to laugh, hurried upstairs and discovered Bold-and-Bad crouching in the corner of the hall, evidently trying to figure out how many lives he had left. For once in his life Bold-and-Bad was cowed. Pat carried him down and shut him up in the back porch, not without a pat or two…for she was not overly attracted to Cousin Nicholas.

  That irate gentleman was finally persuaded to go back to bed. Evidently some idea of what was going on had filtered through his aged brain, for, as Pat assisted his somewhat shaky steps up the stairs, he whispered,

  “Mebbe I shouldn’t mention it to a young girl like you…but is it a baby?”

  Pat nodded.

  “Ah, then,” said Cousin Nicholas, peering suspiciously about him, “you’d better watch that cat. Cats suck babies’ breaths.”

  “What an opinion our Cousin Nicholas will have of Silver Bush,” said Pat, half mournfully, half laughingly, when she returned to the kitchen. “Even our cats and dogs can’t behave. And you, Cuddles…I’m ashamed of you. Whatever made you meow at him?”

  “I wasn’t meowing at him,” said Cuddles gravely. “I was just meowing.”

  “Oh, oh, ye naden’t be worrying over what ould Nicholas Gardiner thinks av our animals,” sniffed Judy. “I wasn’t saying innything before for he’s your cousin and whin all is said and done blood do be thicker than water. But did ye iver hear how me fine Nicholas got his start in life? Whin his liddle baby brother died ould Nicholas…only he was jist eliven thin…earned fifty cents be letting all the neighborhood children in to see the wee dead body in the casket for a cint apace. That did be the foundation av his fortunes. He turned that fifty cints over and over, it growing wid ivery turn, and niver a bad spec did he make.”

  “Judy, is that really true? I mean…haven’t you mixed up Cousin Nicholas with someone else?”

  “Niver a bit av it. The Gardiners don’t all be angels, me jewel. Sure and that story was laughed over in the clan for years. Aven his mother laughed wid the bist av thim. She was a Bowman and he got his quare ways from her. So he’s more to be pitied than laughed at.”

  “Yes, indeed,” agreed Pat. “Think of never knowing the delight of loving a nice, prowly, velvety cat.”

  “He’s awfully rich though, isn’t he?” said Cuddles.

  “Oh, oh, wid one kind av riches, Cuddles darlint. But it’s better to be poor and fale rich than to be rich and fale poor. Hark!”

  Judy suddenly held up her hand.

  “What’s that?”

  “Sounds like a cat on the porch roof,” said Sid.

  Pat dashed upstairs, returning in a few minutes flushed with excitement.

  “Come here, Aunt Cuddles,” she laughed.

  CHAPTER 8

  Joe and Sid and dad went to bed. Tillytuck, mildly remarking that he had had enough passionate scenes for one day, betook himself to the granary. But Pat and Cuddles and Judy decided to make a night of it. It was three now. They sat around the fire and lived over that fateful Christmas Day. They roared with laughter over the look of Cousin Nicholas.

  “Sure and he naden’t have been making such a fuss over a poor cat,” said Judy. “Well do I remimber what happened to a man in Silverbridge years ago. He jumped into his bid one night and found a dead man atwane the shates.”

  “Judy!”

  “I’m telling ye. It was his own brither but if Tillytuck was here he’d be saying he was the dead man. And now let’s be having another liddle bite. I’m faling as if I hadn’t had a dacent male for wakes, what wid dog-fights and ould cousins and people flying like birds. It’s thankful I am that I frogmarched me Tillytuck out wid that Jerusalem cherry afore Joe did be starting from Halyfax.”

  “To think that mother is a grandmother and we’re aunts,” said Cuddles. “It makes me feel awfully old. I’m glad it’s a girl. You can dress them so cute. They’re going to name it Mary Laura Patricia after its two grandmothers and call it Mary. Frank put the Patricia in for you, Pat, because he said if it hadn’t been for you that child would never have been born. What did he mean?”

  “Just some of his nonsense. He persists in thinking I gave up a career so that Winnie could get married. I’m glad they’re calling it mother’s name. But I always think a second name seems woeful and reproachful because it is never mentioned often enough to give it personality. As for a third name, it’s nothing but a ghost.”

  “Tillytuck was really quite excited over it, wasn’t he?”

  “Can you imagine Tillytuck ever being a baby?” said Pat dreamily.

  “Oh, oh, he was, and mebbe somebody’s pride and joy,” sighed Judy sentimentally. “It do be tarrible what we come to wid the years. Sure and another Christmas is over and we can’t be denying it was merry in spots.”

  And then it was morning. The rain was over; the whole world was soaked and sodden but in the east was a primrose brightening and soon the Hill of the Mist was like a bare, brown breast in the pale early sunshine. The house, after all the revel and excitement, had a disheveled, cynical, ashamed look. Pat longed to fall upon it and restore it to serenity and self-respect.

  Winnie, white and sweet, was asking them with her pretty laugh what they thought of her little surprise party. Sid was declaring to indignant Cuddles that the baby had a face like a monkey. Mother
was played out and condemned to a day in bed. And Judy stole out to see if the pigs had survived the Jerusalem cherry.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Oh, oh, I do be tasting spring today,” said Judy one early May morning. It had been a long cold winter, though a pleasant one socially, with dances and doings galore. They had two dances at Silver Bush for Joe…one the week after he came home and one on the night before he went away again. Tillytuck had been the fiddler on both occasions and Cuddles had danced several sets and thought she was nearly grown up. It was a family joke that Cuddles had cut Pat out in the good graces of Ned Avery and had been asked to go with him to a dance at South Glen. But mother would not allow this. Cuddles, she said, was far too young. Cuddles was peeved.

  “It seems to me you’re always too young or too old to do anything you like in this world,” she said scornfully. “And you won’t let Joe tattoo my initials on my arm. It would be such a distinction. Nobody in school is tattooed anywhere. Trix Binnie would just be wild with envy.”

  “Oh, oh, since whin have the Gardiners taken to caring what a Binnie thought av innything?” sniffed Judy. Spring was late in coming that year. Judy had a saying that “it wudn’t be spring till the snow on the Hill av the Mist melted and the snow on the Hill av the Mist wudn’t melt till spring.” There were fitful promises of it…sudden lovely days followed by bitter east winds and gray ghost mists, or icy north-west winds and frosts. But on this particular day it did seem as if it had really come to stay. It was a warm day of entrancing gleams and glooms. Once a silver shower drifted low over the Hill of the Mist…over the Long House…over the Field of the Pool—over the silver bush…and away down to the gulf. Then the day made up its mind to be sunny. The distances were hung with pale blue hazes and there was an emerald mist on the trees everywhere. The world was sweet and the Pool was a great sapphire. Cuddles found some white and purple violets down by the singing waters of Jordan and young ferns were uncoiling along the edge of the birch grove. Pat discovered that the little clump of poet’s narcissus on the lawn was peeping above ground. It gave her a pang to remember that she had got it from Bets…Bets who had loved the springs so but no longer answered to their call. Pat looked wistfully up the hill to the Long House…the Long Lonely House once more, for the people who had moved into it when the Wilcoxes went away had gone again and the house was untenanted, as it had been when Pat was a child and used to wish its windows could be lighted up at night like other houses. Now she no longer felt that way about it, though she still felt a thrill of pleasure when the sunset flame kindled its western windows into a fleeting semblance of life and color, and still shivered when it looked cold and desolate on moonlit winter nights. She resented the thought of anyone living there when Bets, sweet, beloved Bets, had gone, never to return. When it was empty she could pretend Bets was still there and would come running down the hill, as in the old fair and unforgotten days, on some of these spring evenings that seemed able to call anything out of the grave.

  When Judy “tasted” spring it was time to begin housecleaning and as Tillytuck was away for the day on “the other farm” as the “old Adams place” was now called, Judy and Pat took the opportunity to clean the granary chamber…a task which Judy performed rather viciously, for Tillytuck was temporarily out of favor with her, partly because Just Dog had killed three of her chickens the day before and chewed up one leg of Siddy’s khaki pants, and partly because…

  “He did be coming home drunk agin last night and slipt in the stable.”

  Judy’s “agin” seemed to imply that Tillytuck came home drunk frequently. As a matter of fact this was only his second offence and Tillytuck was such an excellent worker that Long Alec winked at his very occasional weakness.

  “Not that he’d be giving in he was tight…Oh, no. He wud only say the moon seemed a bit unsteady-like. And he was after warning me not to be getting inny notion av marrying into me head aven if he did be liking to talk to me. Me! But wud it be inny use getting mad wid the likes av him? It ann’ys him more to be laughing at him. He did be trying to get up the granary stips…me watching him through the liddle round windy and having me own fun…but he cudn’t trust his legs, so he paraded to the stable, walking very stiff and pompous. Oh, oh, the dear knows what we’ll be finding in his din…a goat’s nest, I wudn’t be wondering.”

  “Tillytuck says he’s going to get a radio,” said Cuddles, who was not in school, as it was Saturday.

  “Oh, oh, a radio, is it? I’m relaved to hear it. Mebbe if he gets one he won’t be rading such trash as this.” Judy indignantly held up a book she had discovered on Tillytuck’s table. “Do ye be seeing it…The Mistakes av Moses. It do be a rank infidel book he borryed off ould Roger Madison av Silverbridge and whin I rated him for rading it he sez, ‘I like to see both sides av a question,’ sez he. Him and his curiosity!”

  Judy tossed the offending volume out of the window into the pig-pen and ostentatiously washed her hands.

  “You can’t stick Tillytuck on the catechism though,” said Pat. “And he really is a great hand to read his Bible.”

  “But he has his doubts about the story of Jonah and the whale,” said Cuddles. “He told me so.”

  “Does he be talking to children av such things?” Judy was horrified. “It’s telling him me opinion av that I’ll be. Don’t ye be hading him, Cuddles. We’ve niver hild wid infidelity at Silver Bush and if Moses did be making a mistake or two it’s me considered opinion that he knew more about things in gineral than Josiah Tillytuck and ould Roger Madison put together.”

  “You’re just a bit peeved with Tillytuck because he tried to cap your stories,” suggested Cuddles slyly. For there had been quite a scene in the kitchen two evenings previously when Judy had told a tale of some lady on the south side who put rat poison by mistake for baking powder in the family pancakes and Tillytuck had said he had eaten one of them.

  “It isn’t a chanct I do be having wid Tillytuck,” said Judy passionately. “I stick to the truth but he do be making things up as he goes along.”

  “But you made candy for him afterwards, Judy.”

  “Oh, oh, so I did,” admitted Judy with a deprecating grin. “He gets round a body somehow wid his palaver. There do be times whin he cud wheedle the legs off an iron pot. Niver be laughing at an ould woman, Cuddles dear. Tillytuck and I do be understanding each other rale well, for all av our tiffs. If he likes to think I’m dying about him he’s welcome to it. He hasn’t minny pleasures. And now we’ve finished the chamber so we’ll…”

  “The pigs are in the graveyard, Judy,” cried Cuddles.

  “I’ll pig thim,” ejaculated Judy viciously as she whirled down the granary stairs in horror. But after all cud ye be blaming the poor pigs? They had niver been thimsilves since they et the Jerusalem cherry.

  In the afternoon they tackled the garret. Pat always loved cleaning in general and the garret in particular. It was delightful to make Silver Bush as clean and sweet as the spring…a new curtain here…a new wallpaper there…a spot of paint where it would do most good. Little changes that didn’t hurt…much. Though Pat was always sorry for the old wallpapers and missed them.

  When you came to the garret you always found so many things you had almost forgotten and all the family ghosts got a good rummaging.

  “Sure, houseclaning and diggin’ a well do be the only two things I know av that ye begin at the top and work down wid,” said Judy. “Well, the garret do be done and that do be making the fortieth time I’ve been at the claning av it. Forty-one years this very May, Patsy dear, since I tuk up wid Silver Bush, hoping to put the summer in if Long Alec’s mother was suited wid me…and here I do be still.”

  “And will be for forty more years I hope,” said Pat with a hug. “But we haven’t quite finished, Judy. I want to see what’s in that old black chest in the corner. It hasn’t been turned out properly for years.”

  “Oh, oh, there’s nothin
g much there but the relics av ould dacency,” said Judy.

  “We really should examine it. The moths may have got into it.”

  “Sure and it’s always aisy to find an excuse for what ye want to do,” said Judy slyly. “But we’ll ransack it if ye wait till I get supper. We’ll come up here in the dim and see what’s in it.”

  Accordingly, after supper Pat betook herself to the garret, which was growing shadowy, although the outside world was still in the glow of sunset. It was a spring sunset…pale golds and soft pinks and ethereal apple greens shading up to silvery blue over the birches. Pat ached with the loveliness of it, being one of those

  “who feel the thrill

  Of beauty like a pang.”

  Violet mists were veiling the distant hills. The little green-skirted maples over at Swallowfield were dancing girls with the dark spruces behind them, like grim, old-maid duennas. Sid had ploughed the Mince Pie field that day and it lay in beautiful, red, even furrows. From the Field of the Pool there sounded the dreamy trill of a few frogs through the brooding spring evening and there was some indefinable glamour over everything. Things were a little “queer” as they had sometimes seemed in childhood on certain evenings.

  “This makes me think of the night you told me Cuddles was coming,” she said to Judy, who came up the stairs, panting a little. “Oh, Judy dear, just look at that sunset.”

  “Innything spacial about it?” asked Judy a little shortly…because she didn’t like the idea of being out of breath after only two flights of stairs.

  “There’s something special about every sunset, Judy. I never saw a cloud just that color and shape before…see…the one over the tall fir-tree.”

  “I’m not denying it’s handsome. Sure and I wudn’t be like ould Rob Pennock at the South Glen. His wife was rale ashamed av his insinsibility. ‘He doesn’t know there’s such a thing as a sunset,’—she sez to me once, impatient-like.”

  “How terrible it must be not to see and feel beauty,” said Pat softly. “I’m so glad I can find happiness in all lovely little things…like that cloud. It seems to me that every time I look out of a window the world gives me a gift. Look at those old dark firs around the pool. Judy, does it ever seem to you that the Pool is drying up? It seems to me that it isn’t as deep as it used to be.”