32. Exile — Pat of Silver Bush by Lucy Montgomery
1
When the pass lists came out in August Hilary led and Pat had a very respectable showing. So it was Queen's in September for both and Pat thought she might like it if she could survive an absence from Silver Bush for two-thirds of the year. She had always had a sneaking sympathy for Lot's wife. Was she really to be blamed so much for lingering to look back at her home? Pat's only comfort was that Hilary would be at Queen's too, and they would be coming home every week-end.
"You wouldn't think a house could be so nice as Silver Bush is in so many different ways, Judy. And the pieces of furniture in it don't seem like furniture. They're persons, Judy. That old chair that was Great-grandfather Nehemiah's . . . when I sit in it it just puts its arms around me, Judy. I feel it. And all the chairs just want to be sat in."
"Sure and iverything in the house has been loved and took care av and used be so minny human beings, Patsy. It stands to rason they do be more than just furniture."
"I guess I'm hopelessly Victorian, Judy. Norma says I am. I really don't want to do anything in the world but stay on here at Silver Bush and love it and take care of the things in it and plan for it. If I do really get through the licence exams next year and get a school I'm going to shingle the roof with my first quarter's salary. Those new red and green shingles, Judy. Think how lovely they'd look against the silver birches in winter. And we must have a new rug for the Little Parlour. And oh, Judy, don't forget to see that the delphiniums are divided in October, will you? They must be this year . . . and I'm afraid nobody will remember it when I'm not here."
There was some excitement in getting her outfit ready . . . and secret sorrow, remembering how much fun it would have been to talk things over with Bets. Pat couldn't have a great deal . . . crops had been poor that year. But the necessary things were managed and Uncle Tom gave her a beautiful coat with a huge fluffy fur collar and Aunt Barbara gave her a smart little hat of brown velvet, tipped over one eye, and the aunts at the Bay Shore gave her an evening dress. Judy knit her two lovely pullovers and Aunt Edith would have given her silk undies if it had not been for the pyjama question. Silver Bush was rocked to its foundation over that. Aunt Edith, who thought even coloured silk nighties immoral, declared pyjamas were immodest and brazen faced. Pat was set on pyjamas. Even Judy favoured them simply because Aunt Edith hated them.
"How," said Aunt Edith solemnly, "would you like to die in your sleep and go before your Maker in pyjamas, Patricia?"
Mother gave the casting vote . . . as she had a trick of doing--and Pat got her pyjamas.
When the last day came Pat went to the Secret Field to say good-bye and on her return lingered long at the top of the hill field. Autumn was here . . . the air was full of its muted music. The old farm lay before her in the golden light of the mellow September evening. She knew every kink and curve of it. Every field was an intimate friend. The Pool glimmered mysteriously. The round window winked at her. The trees she had grown up with waved to her. The garden was afoam with starry white cosmos backed by the stately phalanx of the Prince's Feather. Dear Silver Bush! Never had she felt so close to it . . . so one with it.
Since the Silver Bush treasury was so very lean Pat had to put up with a rather cheap boarding house that always seemed full of stale cooking smells. It was a square, bare house on a treeless lot, on a street that was quiet only for a little while at night . . . a street where the wind could only creep in a narrow space like a cringing, fettered thing, instead of sweeping grandly over wide fields and great salt wastes of sea. But at least it was not exactly like the other houses on the street. Pat felt that she couldn't have borne to live on a street where the houses were all exactly alike. And it had a little park next to it, with a few trees.
When Pat stood alone in her room that night, with its mustard coloured ingrain carpet and its dreadful maroon walls and the arrogance of its pert alarm clock, loneliness rolled over her like a wave. Judy had sent her off that morning with "gobs av good luck to ye," but at this moment Pat was sure there was no good luck in the world for her away from Silver Bush.
She ran to the window. Below the street the western train was puffing and chugging. If she could only step on it and go home! Far beyond was cold moonlight on alien hills.
She shut her eyes and imagined she could see Silver Bush. The moon would be shining down on the Secret Field now. The little rabbits would be sitting on the paths among the birches. She heard the gulf wind sighing in the old firs and the maples whispering on the hills of home. She saw the silvery poplar leaves drifting down through the blue "dim." She thought of the old doorstep listening for her footfall . . . of her room missing her. She saw Judy in the kitchen knitting, with Gentleman Tom beside her and Bold-and-Bad in her lap . . . Cuddles perched thoughtfully somewhere about as was her dear habit . . . as she, Pat, had perched long years ago.
She was overcome with homesickness . . . submerged in it. She cast herself on her hard little bed and wept.
2
Pat lived through the pangs of homesickness. She was finding out how many things can be lived through. Eventually she was homesick only on rainy evenings when she could imagine the rain splashing on the back doorstones and running down the windows of a kitchen crowded with cats defiant of the weather.
She liked Queen's fairly well. She liked all the professors except the one who always seemed looking with amused tolerance at every one and everything. She imagined him looking just so at Silver Bush. As for studies she contrived to get along with a good average. The only marked talent she had was for loving things very greatly and that did not help you much with Greek verbs and dates. It helped you a bit socially, though. Pat was popular at Queen's, in spite of the fact that the other students always felt she was a little detached and aloof . . . among them but not of them. She was early elected to membership in the Saturday Satellites and by New Year's she was a star in the Dramatic Club. She was voted "not exactly pretty but charming." A bit proud . . . you knew her a street off by the way she carried her head. A bit reserved . . . she had no chums among the girls. A bit odd . . . she would rather sit in that shabby little park by her boarding house in the evenings than go to a movie.
Pat liked to sit there in the twilight and watch the lights spring up in the houses along the street and in the valley and over on the other hill. Commonplace-looking houses, most of them, but who knew what might be going on inside of them? Sometimes Hilary sat there with her. Hilary was the only boy in the world with whom she could be at the same time taciturn and comfortable. They knew how to be silent together.
Pat took Hilary for granted and did not think about his looks at all, other than to see that he did not wear weird neck-ties. But quite a number of Queen's girls thought Hilary a charming fellow, although everybody knew that he had eyes only for Pat Gardiner who did not care a hoot about him. Hilary was first and foremost a student and cared little for social doings although he had outgrown all his old awkwardness and shyness. The week-end trip home with Pat was all the diversion he sought or desired.
Those week-ends were always delightful. They went on the train to Silverbridge and then walked home. First along the road. Up one long, spruce-walled hill . . . down into a green valley . . . another hill . . . another valley . . . twists and turns . . .
"I hate a straight road or a flat one," said Pat. "This is a road I love . . . all curves and dips. It's my road. Oh, it may belong nominally to the township but it's mine. I love it all, even that dark little glen Judy calls Suicide Hollow. She used to tell me the loveliest creepy story about it years ago."
Then they left the road and went straight home over country . . . past the eerie misty marsh and across the Secret Field and through the woods by little paths that had never been made but just happened. Perhaps there would be northern lights and a hazy new moon; or perhaps just a soft blue darkness. Cool running waters . . . aeolian harps in the spruces. The very stars were neighbours.
If only Bets could have been with them! Pat never took that walk home without thinking of Bets . . . Bets whose grave on the hillside was covered with a loose drift of autumn leaves.
And then Silver Bush! It came on you so suddenly and beautifully as you stepped over the crest of the hill field. It welcomed you like a friend with all its windows astar . . . Judy saw to that. Though once they caught her napping when she was late getting in from the barn and mother had gone to bed with a headache. There wasn't a light in Silver Bush and Pat thought she almost loved it best in the dark . . . so brooding and motherly.
The same dear old creak to the gate . . . and the happiest dog in the world throwing himself at Hilary. McGinty always came as far as Silver Bush to meet Hilary. Never a Friday night did he miss. Then Judy's kitchen and welcome. Hilary always stayed to supper and Judy invariably had hot pea soup to begin with, just to warm them up a liddle mite after their cold walk. And a juicy bone for McGinty.
The wind snoring round the house . . . all the news to hear . . . all the mad, bad, sad deeds Bold-and-Bad had done . . . three balls of velvet fluff with tiny whiskered faces tumbling about on the floor. Silver Bush was, as Aunt Edith scornfully said, always infested with kittens. As for Bold-and-Bad, he was ceasing to be a cat and was on the way to becoming a family habit.
Judy always gave them a box of eats to take back Monday morning.
"As long as one can get a liddle bite one can kape up," she would say.
Pat wondered how Queen's students who got home only once in a blue moon, survived. But then their homes were not Silver Bush!