10. A Maiden All Forlorn — Pat of Silver Bush by Lucy Montgomery
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At dusk there was the question of how Pat was to get home. Aunt Frances, who was the horsewoman of Bay Shore, was to have driven her. But Aunt Frances was still enduring God's will in her bedroom and Aunt Honor hadn't driven a horse for years. As for Cousin Dan, he couldn't be trusted away from home with a team. Aunt Honor finally telephoned to the nearest neighbour.
"Morton MacLeod is going to town. I thought he would, since it is Saturday night. He says he'll take you and drop you off at Silver Bush. You don't mind going as far as the MacLeod place alone, do you? You will be there before dark."
Pat didn't mind anything except the prospect of staying at the Bay Shore overnight. And she was never in the least afraid of the dark. She had often been alone in it. The other children at her age had been afraid of the dark and ran in when it came. But Pat never did. They said at Silver Bush that she was "her father's child" for that. Long Alec always liked to wander around alone at night . . . "enjoying the beauty of the darkness," he said. There was a family legend that Pat at the age of four had slept out in the caraway in the orchard all one night, nobody missing her until Judy, who had been sitting up with a sick neighbour, came home at sunrise and raised a riot. Pat dimly remembered the family rapture when she was found and joy washing like a rosy wave over mother's pale, distracted face.
She said her good-byes politely and made her way up to the MacLeod place where bad news met her. Morton's car was "acting up" and he had given up the idea of going to town.
"So you'll have to run back to the Bay Shore," his mother told her kindly.
Pat went slowly down the lane and when she was screened from sight of the house by a spruce grove she stopped to think. She did not want to go back to the Bay Shore. The very thought of spending the night in the big spare room, with its bed that looked far too grand to be slept in, was unbearable. No, she would just walk home. It was only three miles . . . she walked that every day going to school and back.
Pat started off briskly and gaily, feeling very independent and daring and grown-up. How Judy would stare when she sauntered into the kitchen and announced carelessly that she had walked home from the Bay Shore all alone in the dark. "Oh, oh, and ain't ye the bould one?" Judy would say admiringly.
And then . . . the dark chilly night seemed suddenly to be coming to meet her . . . and when the road forked she wasn't sure which fork to take . . . the left one? . . . oh, it must be the left one . . . Pat ran along it with sheer panic creeping into her heart.
It was dark now . . . quite dark. And Pat suddenly discovered that to be alone on a strange road two miles from home in a very dark darkness was an entirely different thing from prowling in the orchard or running along the Whispering Lane or wandering about the Field of the Pool with the homelights of Silver Bush always in sight.
The woods and groves around her, that had seemed so friendly on the golden September day were strangers now. The far, dark spruce hills seemed to draw nearer threateningly. Was this the right road? There were no homelights anywhere. Had she taken the wrong turn and was this the "line" road that ran along the backs of the farms between the two townships? Would she ever get home? Would she ever see Sid again . . . hear Winnie's laugh and Cuddles' dear little squeals of welcome? Last Sunday in church the choir had sung, "The night is dark and I am far from home." She knew what that meant now as she broke into a desperate little run. The white birches along the roadside seemed to be trying to catch her with ghostly hands. The wind wailed through the spruces. At Silver Bush you never quite knew how the wind would come at you . . . from behind the church barn like a cat pouncing . . . down from the Hill of the Mist like a soft bird flying . . . through the orchard like a playmate . . . but it always came as a friend. This wind was no friend. Was that it crying in the spruces? Or was it the Green Harper of Judy's tale who harped people away to Fairyland whether they would or no? All Judy's stories, enjoyed and disbelieved at home, became fearfully true here. Those strange little shadows, dark amid the darkness, under the ferns . . . suppose they were fairies. Judy said if you met a fairy you were never the same again. No threat could have been more terrible to Pat. To be changed . . . to be not yourself!
That wild, far-away note . . . was it the Peter Branaghan of another of Judy's tales, out on the hills piping to his ghostly sheep? And still no light . . . she must be on the wrong road.
All at once she was wild with terror of the chill night and the eerie wind and the huge, dark pathless world around her. She stopped short and uttered a bitter little cry of desolation.
"Can I help you?" said a voice.
Some one had just come around the turn of the road. A boy . . . not much taller than herself . . . with something queer about his eyes . . . with a little blot of shadow behind him that looked like a dog. That was all Pat could see. But suddenly she felt safe . . . protected. He had such a nice voice.
"I . . . think I'm lost," she gasped. "I'm Pat Gardiner . . . and I took the wrong road."
"You're on the line road," said the boy. "But it turns and goes down past Silver Bush. Only it's a little longer. I'll take you home. I'm Hilary Gordon . . . but everybody calls me Jingle."
Pat knew at once who he was and felt well acquainted. She had heard Judy talk about the Gordons who had bought the little old Adams farm that marched with Silver Bush. They had no family of their own but an orphan nephew was living with them and Judy said it was likely he had poor pickings of it. He did not go to the North Glen school for the old Adams place was in the South Glen school district, but they were really next-door neighbours.
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They walked on. They did not talk much but Pat felt happy now as she trotted along. The moon rose and in its light she looked at him curiously. He had dark-coloured, horn-rimmed glasses . . . that was what was the matter with his eyes. And he wore trousers of which one leg came to the knee and the other half way between knee and ankle, which Pat thought rather dreadful.
"I belong to Silver Bush, you know," she said.
"I don't belong anywhere," said Jingle forlornly.
Pat wanted to comfort him for something she did not understand. She slipped her little hand into his . . . he had a warm pleasant hand. They walked home together so. The wind . . . the night . . . were friendly again. The dark boughs of the trees, tossing against the silver moonlit sky, were beautiful . . . the spicy, woodsy smells along the road delightful.
"Where does that road go?" asked Pat once as they passed an inviting path barred by moonlight and shadow.
"I don't know but we'll go and see some day," said Jingle.
They were just like old, old friends.
And then the dear light of Silver Bush shining across the fields . . . the dear house overflowing with welcoming light. Pat could have cried with joy to see it again. Even if nobody would be very glad to see her back the house would.
"Thank you so much for coming home with me," she said shyly at the gate of the kitchen yard. "I was so frightened."
Then she added boldly . . . because she had heard Judy say a girl ought always to give a dacent feller a bite whin he had seen her home and Pat, for the credit of Silver Bush, wanted to do the proper thing . . .
"I wish you'd come and have dinner with us Monday. We're going to have chickens because it's Labour Day. Judy says she labours that day just the same as any day but she always celebrates it with a chicken dinner. Please come."
"I'd like to," said Jingle. "And I'm glad McGinty and I happened along when you were scared."
"Is McGinty the name of your dog?" asked Pat, looking at it a little timidly. Snicklefritz and Uncle Tom's old Bruno were all the dogs she was acquainted with.
"Yes. He's the only friend I've got in the world," said Jingle.
"Except me," said Pat.
Jingle suddenly smiled. Even in the moonlight she saw that he had a nice smile.
"Except you," he agreed.
Judy appeared at the open kitchen door, peering out.
"I must run," said Pat hastily. "Monday then. Don't forget. And bring McGinty, too. There'll be some bones."
"Now who was ye colloguing wid out there?" asked Judy curiously. "Sure and ye might av brought yer beau in and let's give him the once-over. Not but that ye're beginning a trifle young."
"That wasn't a beau, Judy," cried Pat, scandalised at the bare idea. "That was just Jingle."
"Hear at her. And who may Jingle be, if it's not asking too much?"
"Hilary Gordon . . . and I was coming home alone . . . and I got lost . . . I was a little frightened, Judy . . . and he's coming to dinner on Monday."
"Oh, oh, it's the fast worker ye are," chuckled Judy, delighted that she had got something to tease Pat about . . . Pat who had never thought there was any boy in the world but Sidney.
But Pat was too happy to mind. She was home, in the bright kitchen of Silver Bush. The horror of that lonely road had ceased to be . . . had never been. It was really beautiful to come home at night . . . to step out of darkness into the light and warmth of home.
"Did ye save a piece of pie for me, Judy?"
"Oh, oh, that I did. Don't I know the skimp males of the Bay Shore? Sure and it's niver cut and come agin there. It's more than a bit av pie I have for ye. What wud ye say now to a sausage and a baked pittaty?"
Over the supper Pat told Judy all about the day and her walk home.
"Think av the pluck av her, starting out alone like that on Shank's mare," said Judy, just as Pat had expected. That was the beauty of Judy. "Though I'm not saying it isn't a good thing that Jingle-lad happened along whin he did. Mind ye ask the cratur over for a liddle bite now and agin. I knew ould Larry Gordon whin he lived on the Taylor farm beyant the store. He's a skim milk man, that he is."
Judy had several classifications of people who were not lavish. You were "saving" . . . which was commendable. You were "close" . . . which was on the border line. You were "near" . . . which was over it. You were "skim milk" . . . which was beyond the pale. But Judy could not resist giving Pat a sly dig.
"I s'pose me poor kitchen is very tame after the splendours av the Bay Shore farm?"
"Silver Bush kitchen is better than the Bay Shore parlour," declared Pat: but she declared it drowsily. It had been a pretty full and strenuous day for eight years.
"Niver rub yer eyes wid innything but yer elbows, me jewel," cautioned Judy, as she convoyed Pat upstairs.
Mother, who had been singing Cuddles to sleep, slipped in to ask Pat if she had had a good time.
"The Bay Shore farm is such a lovely place," said Pat truthfully. It was a lovely place. And Pat wouldn't hurt mother's feelings for the world by confessing that her visit to mother's old home had not been altogether pleasant. Mother loved Bay Shore almost as well as she, Pat, loved Silver Bush. Dear Silver Bush! Pat felt as if its arms were around her protectingly as she drifted into dreamland.