31. Lost Fragrance — Pat of Silver Bush by Lucy Montgomery
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When Bets had been dead for a week it seemed to Pat she had been dead for years, so long is pain. The days passed like ghosts. Pat went for long walks over hills and fields in the evenings . . . trying to face her sorrow . . . seeing the loveliness of the crescent spring around her. She only saw it . . . she could not feel it. Where was Bets who had walked with her last spring?
Everything had ended. And everything had to begin anew. That was the worst of it. How was one to begin anew when the heart had gone out of life?
"I wish I could forget her, Judy . . . I wish I could forget her. It hurts to remember," she cried wildly once. "If I could drink some cup of forgetfulness like that in your old story, Judy . . ."
"But wud ye be after doing it if ye could, darlint? Ye'd forget all the gladness along with the pain . . . all the fun and happiness ye had wid yer liddle chum. Wud ye be wanting that?"
No, she would not want that. She hugged her sweet memories to her heart. But how to go on living . . .
"Ye don't be remimbering one day whin ye was a liddle dot av four, Patsy? Ye wint to the door and all the sky was clouded over thick and dark. Ye was frightened to death. Ye did be running to yer mother, crying, 'Oh, mother, where is the blue sky gone to . . . oh, mother!' Ye wudn't be belaving us whin we tould ye it wud come back. But the nixt morning there it was smiling at ye."
Pat still couldn't believe that her blue sky would ever come back . . . couldn't believe that there would come a time when she would be happy again. Why, it would be terrible to be happy without Bets, even if it were possible . . . disloyal to Bets . . . disloyal to love. She despised herself when she had to admit that she felt hungry once more!
Silver Bush was all her comfort now. Her love for it seemed the only solid thing under her feet. Insensibly she drew comfort and strength from its old, patient, familiar acres. Spring passed. The daffodils and spirea and bleeding-heart and columbines bloomed. Bets had loved the columbines so, she should be here to see them. The pansies they had planted together, because, for some mysterious reason, pansies would not grow up on the hill, bloomed at Silver Bush, but no slim girl figure ever came down the hill to pick them in a sunset garden. The big apple tree at the Long House bloomed as it had bloomed for two generations but she and Bets could not sit on the long bough and read poetry. Pat couldn't bear to open the books she had read with Bets . . . to see the lines and paragraphs they had marked. Bets seemed to die afresh every time there was something Pat wanted to share with her and could not.
Summer came. The honeysuckle was thick over the graveyard paling. To think that the scent of honeysuckles meant nothing to Bets now . . . or the soft stars of evening . . . or the moon on white roses. The little path up the hill field grew over with grass. Nobody ever walked on it now. The Wilcoxes had sold the Long House farm and moved to town . . . Stranger lights were in it but Bets' room was always dark. Sundays were terrible. She and Bets had always spent the afternoon and evening together. Sid wouldn't talk of Bets . . . Sid in his secret boyish way had been hard hit by her death . . . but Hilary would.
"I could never have lived through this summer if it hadn't been for Hilary," Pat thought.
Yet, undeniably life began to beckon once more. The immortal spirit of beauty again held aloft its torch for her. Pat hated herself because she could enjoy anything with no Bets in the world.
"Judy, I feel as if I oughtn't to be even a little bit happy. And yet, to-day, back in the Secret Field I was happy. I forgot Bets for a little while . . . and then . . . oh, Judy . . . I remembered. It seemed sad to think I could forget her. And the Secret Field was changed somehow . . . more beautiful than ever but still . . . not just the same, Judy."
Judy recalled an old line in a poem she had learned in far-away school days . . . a poem by a forgotten, outmoded author who yet had the secret of touching the heart. "Ye have looked on death since ye saw me last," she whispered to herself. But aloud . . .
"Ye naden't be worrying over being happy, darlint. Bets would be glad av it."
"You know, Judy, at first it hurt me to think of Bets . . . I couldn't bear it. But now . . . it's a comfort. I can think of her in all our old haunts. To-night, when the moon came up I thought, 'She is standing in it under the Watching Pine, waiting for me.' And it was sweet . . . for a little while . . . just to pretend it. But I'll never have another chum, Judy . . . and I wouldn't if I could. It hurts too much to lose them."
"Ye're young to have larned that, darlint, but we all have to sooner or later. And as for another . . . oh, oh, oh, that's all as it's ordered. I've talked to ye as wise as inny av thim, Patsy, about choosing frinds but ye don't be choosing frinds after all. They come to ye . . . or they don't. Just that. Ye get the ones meant for you, be they minny or few, in the time app'inted for their coming."
Summer passed. The old days were once more lovely in remembrance. The root of white perennial phlox Bets had given her bloomed for the first time. The gold and bronze dahlias flamed against the green spruce hedge. The pageant of autumn woods began. Bets had gone "rose-crowned into the darkness" . . . Joe had forsaken them . . . but the Hill of the Mist was still amethyst and mysterious on September mornings . . . the Secret Field held all its old allure . . . Silver Bush, dear Silver Bush . . . was still her own, beautiful and beloved. Pat's laughter once more echoed in Judy's kitchen . . . once more she bandied jokes with Uncle Tom . . . once more she spent long hours in Happiness with Hilary, talking over college plans. The world was sweet again.
"Yet in the purple shadow
And in the warm grey rain
What hints of ancient sorrow
And unremembered pain!"
No, not "unremembered." She would always remember it. She had had Bets for nine wonderful years and nothing could take them from her. Judy had been right as she always was. One would not drink of the cup of forgetfulness if one could.