24. Ashes to Ashes — Pat of Silver Bush by Lucy Montgomery
1
Jingle was lying face downwards among the ferns in Happiness when Pat got there. A little dog with a big heart was sitting beside him, apparently mounting guard over a brown paper parcel on the grass.
Pat squatted down beside him, saying nothing. She was beginning to learn how full of silent little tragedies life is. She wished wildly that she could help Jingle in some way. Judy was fond of telling a story of long long ago when Pat had been four years old and was being trained to say "please." One day she could not remember it. "What is the word that makes things happen, Judy?" she had asked. Oh, for such a magic word now . . . some word which would make everything right for Jingle.
It was very lovely in Happiness that evening. There was a clear, pale, silvery-blue sky, feathered with tiny, blossom-like clouds, over them. The scent of clover was in the air. A corner of Happiness lay in the shadow of the woods, the rest of it was flooded with wine-red sunset. There was the elfin laugh of the hidden brook and there was the beauty of pale star-flowers along its banks. The only thing in sight that was not beautiful was the huge gash in the woods on the hill where Larry Gordon had got out his winter fuel. It was terrible to see the empty places where the trees had been cut. Trees had to be cut . . . people had to have firewood . . . but Pat could never see the resultant ugliness without a heartache. Of course time would beautify it again. Great clumps of ferns would grow by the hacked stumps . . . the crooks of the bracken would unfold along its desecrated paths . . . slender birches and poplars would spring up as years went by. Perhaps the wounds and scars in human lives would be like that, too.
"I wish," said Jingle suddenly, twisting himself around until his head lay in Pat's lap, "I wish my dream hadn't come true, Pat. It was so much more beautiful when it wasn't true."
"I know," said Pat softly. She patted the rough head with brown hands that were tender and gentle and wise. Their touch unloosed the floods of Jingle's bitterness.
"She . . . she gave me ten dollars, Pat. It burned my fingers when I took it. And I'm to go to college. But she wasn't interested in my plans. I showed her the house I'd drawn for her . . . she only laughed."
"Jingle, I think your mother was so . . . so surprised to find you so big that she felt . . . she didn't feel . . . she felt you were a stranger. Next time she comes it may be very different."
"Whose fault is it if I am like a stranger to her? And there will never be a next time . . . I knew that when she went away. She doesn't love me . . . she never has loved me. I know that now. I might have known it always if I hadn't been a fool."
Pat couldn't endure the desolation in his tone. She patted his head again.
"I love you anyhow, Jingle . . . almost . . . just as well as I love Sid."
Jingle caught the caressing hand and held it tight against his tear wet cheek.
"Thank you, Pat. And . . . Pat, will you do me a favour? Will you call me 'Hilary' after this? I . . . I . . . somehow, Jingle is such a silly nickname for a big boy."
Pat knew his mother had spoiled the name for him. It had been her pet name for him once. Surely she must have loved him then.
"I'll try . . . only you mustn't mind if I call you Jingle sometimes before I get the new habit."
In her heart she was saying, "I'll call him Hilary to his face but I'll always think of him as Jingle."
"I told you there was something I wanted you to do for me, Pat," Jingle went on, still with that strange, new bitterness. "I . . . I didn't give her those letters. I'll light a fire over there on that rock . . . and will you burn them for me?"
Pat assented. She knew there was nothing else to be done with those letters now. Jingle built the fire and Pat opened the parcel and fed them to the hungry little flames . . . a burnt offering of a boy's wasted love and faith and hope. Pat hated to burn them. It seemed a terrible thing to do. The tiny scraps of letters written when he was a little boy and paper was hard to come by . . . on a flyleaf torn from an old school-book or the back of a discarded circular . . . sometimes even on a carefully cut and folded piece of wrapping paper. A mother should have treasured them as jewels. But Doreen Garrison would never read them. The pity of it! Now and then a white line came out for a moment on the quivering black ash . . . Pat couldn't help seeing them . . . "My own darling mother" . . . "perhaps you will come to see me soon, dearest" . . . "I was head of my class all the week, mother dearest. Aren't you glad?" . . . Pat ground her little white teeth in a futile rage against fate.
After the last letter was burned Pat gathered up the little pile of ashes and scattered them in the brook.
"There, that's done." Hilary stood up; he looked older: there was a stern set to his jaw, a new ring in his voice, as of one who had put away childish things. "And now . . . well, I'm going to college . . . and I'm going to be an architect . . . and I'm going to succeed."
They walked back in silence along the ferny windings of Jordan. The moon was rising and the bats were out. An owl was calling eerily from the spruce hill beyond Happiness. A great golden star hung over Silver Bush. They parted on the bridge. Pat lifted her eyes to his.
"Good-night, Jingle dear . . . I mean Hilary."
"Good-night, Pat. You've been a brick. Pat . . . your eyes are lovely . . . lovely."
"Oh, that's just the moonlight," said Pat.
2
Pat helped Judy wash the milk pails and get all the fluffy little golden chicks into their coops while she told her about Doreen Garrison.
"Oh, Judy, she was . . . she was . . ."
"Sort of supercilious like," suggested Judy.
"No, no, not that . . . she was as polite to us as if we were strangers . . . but . . . just as if she didn't believe we were there at all. I couldn't have believed there was a mother like that in the world, Judy."
"Oh, oh, ye do be liddle knowing what some mothers are like, more shame to them. And you can't be putting into thim the things the Good Man Above left out, so why be worrying over it? Just be saying a prayer for all poor orphans and be thankful ye've got a mother that has roots."
"Roots?"
"Sure and that's what's the matter wid yer Doreen Garrison. She hasn't a root to her. Nothing to anchor her down and hold aginst the winds. Sure and she may be one av thim things they do be calling a modern mother, I've been hearing av thim."
"I just felt, Judy, as if she had remembered him against her will and would forget him again as soon as he was out of her sight."
"I'm telling ye. Maria Gordon did be saying once that Jim's widdy was the best hand at forgetting things she didn't want to remimber she was iver knowing. I'm rale sorry for yer Jingle. Ye'd better ask him over to dinner tomorrow and give him a liddle bite av blackberry roly-poly. Sure and I'll be making it on purpose for him."
"He wants to be called Hilary after this, Judy. And . . . it's a funny coincidence . . . last week Bets and I decided that after this we would call each other Elizabeth and Patricia. But of course," added Pat hastily, "we don't expect other people to call us that."
"Oh, oh, and that same is just as well, me jewel, because ye're Pat to me and niver innything but Pat ye'll be."
"Pat of Silver Bush," said Pat happily. It was beautiful to have home and love and family ties. Bold-and-Bad, the kitten of the summer, came flying across the yard to her. Pat picked him up and squeezed some purrs out of him. No matter what dreadful things happened at least there were still cats in the world.
In the moonlight she went along the Whispering Lane and down the field path and up the hill. She made a tryst with Bets to tell her about Jingle's mother . . . at least as much as Jingle would wish told. Bets must know the state of things so that she would not hurt Jingle's feelings.
Pat reached the Watching Pine first and stood under it, her face against its rough old trunk as she waited. At first the moon was veiled in a misty cloud and Pat thrilled to a dim sense of magic and wonder that came with the glimpse of that cloudy moon through the pine. It was a wonderful night . . . a night when she might see the Little People perhaps. She had believed in them long ago and this was one of the moments she still believed in them. Wasn't that some tiny moonshine creature in a peaked cap with little bells on it sitting on a fence panel? No, only a vibrating strip of dried bark. The soft sweet air blew to her from the secret meadows at the back of the farms. Then the moon came out from her cloud and the little fir trees scattered along the fences were splashes of ink-black shadows in mystic shapes. Below were houses sleeping in moonlit gardens. Far out there was a trail of moonlight on the sea like a lady's silken dress. Pat felt herself a sister to all the loveliness of the world. If only everybody could feel this secret, satisfying rapture! Poor Jingle would be curled up in the hay-loft with McGinty, trying to forget his broken heart. It seemed cruel to be happy when he was miserable but it was no use trying not to be, when the night was full of wonder and Silver Bush with its love was below you, and you could hear Joe's delightful whistle and Snicklefritz's bark even at this distance. And when you were waiting for the dearest friend any girl ever had to join you. There, lilting along the path came Bets, part of the beauty of the night.
"We must love him all the more to make it up to him," said Bets when she had heard the tale . . . all except the burned letters which Pat knew must be a secret always between herself and . . . Hilary.