The Eleventh Year — Mistress Pat by Lucy Montgomery
1
There were many times in the year following Judy's death when cold waves of pain went over Pat. At first it seemed literally impossible to carry on without Judy. Life seemed very savourless now that Judy's tales were all told. But Pat found, as others have done, that "we forget because we must." Life began to be livable again and then sweet. Silver Bush seemed to cry to her, "Make me home-like again . . . keep my rooms lighted . . . my heart warmed. Bring young laughter here to keep me from growing old."
Almost every one she had loved was changed or gone . . . the old voices of gladness sounded no more . . . but Silver Bush was still the same.
That first Christmas without Judy was bitter. Winnie wanted them all to go to the Bay Shore for the day but Pat wouldn't hear of it. Leave Silver Bush alone for Christmas? Not she! Every tradition was scrupulously carried out. It was easier because mother could share in things now, and they had a good Christmas Day after all. Uncle Tom and Aunt Barbara and Winnie and Frank and their children came. May went home for the day, so there was no jarring presence. A letter came from Rae with the good news that in two years' time she and Brook would be coming "home" to take charge of the Vancouver branch. Compared to China Vancouver seemed next door. As Judy used to say, there was always something to take the edge off. Nevertheless Pat was glad when the day was over. The first Christmas above a grave can never be a wholly joyous thing. She and mother talked it over in the kitchen afterwards and laughed a little over certain things. The cats purred around them and Uncle Tom and dad played checkers. But once or twice Pat caught herself listening for Judy's step on the back stairs.
By spring hope was her friend again and her delight in Silver Bush was keen and vivid once more. Her love for it kept her young. To be sure, often now came little needle-like reminders of the passing years. Now and again there was another grey hair and she knew the quirk at the corner of her mouth was getting a little more pronounced. "We're all growing old," she thought with a pang. But she really didn't mind it so much for herself. It was the change in others she hated to see. Winnie was getting matronly and Frank . . . who had just been elected to membership in the Provincial House . . . was grey above the ears. If other people would only stay young, Pat thought, she wouldn't mind growing old herself. Though it was rather horrid to be told you "looked young," as Uncle Brian once did. She knew the Binnies regarded her as definitely "on the shelf" and that they were calling her among themselves "the single perennial." Even Little Mary once gravely asked her, "Aunt Pat, did you ever have any beaus?" It sometimes amused her to reflect that she was really quite a different person to different people. To the Binnies she was a disappointed spinster who had been "crossed in love" . . . to the Great-aunts at the Bay Shore she was an inexperienced child . . . to Lester Conway she was a divine, alluring, unobtainable creature. For Lester, who was now a young widower, had tried vainly to warm up the cold soup. Pat would none of him. The time when she had been so wildly in love with him in her Queen's days seemed as far away and unreal as the days of immemorial antiquity. To be sure, he had been slim and romantic and dashing then, whereas he was stout and plump-faced now. And he had once laughed at Silver Bush. Pat had never forgiven him for that . . . never would forgive him.
In the spring Long Alec again announced that the next year the new house would be built. It had been postponed twice but the mortgage was paid at last and there would be no more postponements. Pat lived on this through the summer. Nevertheless, when the autumn came again it was not just a wholesome time for Pat. Sometimes mother watched her a little anxiously. Pat seemed to have an attack of nerves now and then. She developed a taste for taking lonely walks by herself among the twilight shadows. They seemed to be better company than she found in the sunlight. She came back from them looking as if she were of the band of grey shadows herself. Mother didn't like it. It seemed to her that the child, on those lone rambles, was trying to warm herself by some fire that had died out years ago. She had that look on her face when she came in. Mother wanted Pat to go away for a visit somewhere but Pat only laughed.
"There is nowhere I could go where I would be half as happy as I am at Silver Bush. You know I've died several times of homesickness when I was away. Don't worry over me, sweetheart. I'm fine and dandy . . . and next year Silver Bush will be ours again . . . and I've a hundred plans for it."
A night came when Pat found herself alone at Silver Bush . . . absolutely alone for the first time, in that old house where there had been always so many. Mother and father were over at the Bay Shore and would not be back till late. It was wonderful that mother could gad about like that again. Pat thought she wouldn't mind being alone . . . could she be alone with dear Silver Bush? . . . but some restlessness drove her outside. There was a moan of the autumn wind in the leafless birches and a wonderful display of northern lights. Pat recalled that Judy had always been superstitious about northern lights. They were a "sign." How Judy seemed to come back on a night like this! Dead and gone years seemed to be whispering to themselves all about her. The crisp leaves rustled under her feet as she went along the path to the orchard. She recalled old autumns when she and Sid had raced through the fallen leaves. There were voices in the wind, calling to her out of the past. Many things came back to her . . . bitter, beautiful, sad, joyous things . . . crises that had seemed to wreck life and were only dim memories now. She was haunted. This would not do. She must shake this off. She would go in and light up the house. It did not like to be dark and silent. Yet she paused for a moment on the door-step, the prey of a sudden fancy. That shut door was a door of dreams through which she might slip into the Silver Bush of long ago. For a fleeting space she had a curious feeling that Judy and Tillytuck and Hilary and Rae and Winnie and Joe were all in there and if she could only go in quickly and silently enough she would find them. A world utterly passed away might be her universe once more.
"This is nonsense," said Pat, giving herself a shake. "This won't do. These moods are coming too often now."
She flung open the door and went in . . . lighted a lamp. There was nobody there except Bold-and-Bad. But Pat could have sworn that Judy had been there a moment before.
She did not sleep for a long time that night. She felt vaguely apprehensive, although she could assign no reason for it. As she said afterwards her soul knew something she did not. Late in the night she fell into a troubled slumber. Thus was passed her last night in that beloved old room where she had dreamed her dreams of girlhood and suffered the heartaches of womanhood, where she had endured her defeats and exulted over her victories. Never again was she to lay her head on its pillow . . . never again waken to see the morning sunshine gleaming in at her vine-hung window. She had looked from that window on spring blossom and summer greenness, on autumn fields and winter snows. She had seen star-shine and sunrise from it. She had knelt there in keen happiness and bitter sorrow. And now that was all finished. The Angel of the Years turned the page whereon it was writ while she lay in that uneasy slumber . . . and she knew it not.
It was Sunday and everybody went to church. Pat remembered as she went out of the door that when she was a child she had always been so sorry for Silver Bush when everybody went to church. It must feel lonely. She had always been glad when she was left home because she would be company for it.
Something made her turn her head as the car went down the lane. Silver Bush looked beautiful, even on that dour November day, against its sheltering trees. She felt her heart go out to it as they turned the corner and it was hidden from her sight.
The minister had just announced his text . . . it was always remarked as a curious coincidence that it was, "Thy house shall become a desolation" . . . when young Corey Robinson entered the church, hurried up the aisle and whispered a word to Long Alec. Pat heard it . . . every one in the church heard it in a few moments.
Silver Bush was burning!
Pat seemed to die a thousand deaths on that ride home. Yet when she got there she was curiously numb . . . terror seemed to have washed her being clean of everything. Even when she saw that terrible fire blazing against the grey November hillside she gave no sign . . . made no sound.
It seemed as if everybody in both the Glens and Silverbridge and Bay Shore were there . . . but nothing could be done . . . nothing but stand helplessly and see a home that had been a home for generations wiped out. That night Silver Bush, with all its memories, all its possessions, was in ashes!
2
They all went to Swallowfield until things could be settled. Pat took no part in the settling. Life had suddenly become for her like a landscape on the moon. She had the odd feeling of not belonging to this or any world that she had felt once or twice after a bad attack of flu. Only . . . this feeling would never pass. Mother, who bore up wonderfully, watched her anxiously.
It turned out that May had left the oil stove in the porch burning when she went to church. It was supposed to have exploded. Pat was not in the least interested in how it had happened. She was not interested in anything . . . not even in the finding of Judy's "cream cow" quite unharmed amid the ashes in the cellar and the old front door with its knocker, lying on the lawn. Somebody had wrenched it off in a first vain attempt to enter the blazing house. She did not care when it was discovered that all the hooked rugs Judy had stored in the garret for her were safe, Aunt Barbara having borrowed them to copy the patterns the day before the fire. When you are horribly, hopelessly tired you can't care about anything.
The only thing that seemed to be the least bit of comfort to her was that the white kittens had not been burned. She had packed the picture up after Judy's death and sent it to Hilary. He had never even acknowledged it . . . that hurt her . . . but as she had sent it to his office she felt quite sure he must have received it. Yes, she was faintly glad Judy's kittens had not been burned.
At first Long Alec talked of rebuilding Silver Bush. It was insured. Everybody seemed very pleased about the insurance . . . but no insurance could restore the old heirlooms . . . the old associations. And then, four days after the fire, Great-Aunt Frances at the Bay Shore died and it was found that she had left the Bay Shore farm to mother.
"It's strange how things work out," said Aunt Barbara.
"Very strange," agreed Pat bitterly.
The kaleidoscope shifted again. Long Alec and mother and Pat would go to live at the Bay Shore. And the new house for Sid and May . . . a house without memories . . . would be built on the old foundation of Silver Bush. It would not be like the old Silver Bush. That was gone and the place thereof would know it no more.
May was openly triumphant. A new house, with all the bay windows she wanted and a colour-scheme kitchen like Olive's! Lovely!
Mother was really pleased at the thought of going back to her old home to live.
"Mother is younger than I am," thought Pat drearily.
She felt horribly old. Her love for Silver Bush had kept her young . . . and now it was gone. Nothing was left . . . there was only a dreadful, unbearable emptiness.
"Life has beaten me," she told herself. She had had enough grief in her life to know that in time even the bitterest fades out into a not unpleasing dearness and sweetness of recollection. But this heart-break could never fade. Everything had fallen into ruins around her. She could never fit into the life at the Bay Shore. She had a terrible feeling that she did not belong anywhere . . . or to anybody . . . in this new sad lonely world.
"I think . . . if I could ever be glad of anything again . . . I'd be glad that Judy died before this happened," she thought. She did not say these things to anybody. Nobody but mother would have understood and she was not going to make things harder for mother. But her heart was like an unlighted room and nothing, she thought she knew, could ever illumine it again.
3
One evening two weeks later Pat slipped away in the twilight and went along the Whispering Lane like a ghost, to where home had been. She had never dared to go before. But something drew her now.
Where Silver Bush had been was only a yawning cellar full of ashes and charred beams. Pat leaned on the old yard gate . . . which had not burned because the wind had blown the flames back against the bush . . . and looked long and quietly about her. She wore her long blue coat and the little dress of crinkled red crepe she had worn to church . . . the only clothes she owned just now. Her head was bare and her face was very pale.
The evening was soft and gentle and almost windless. No living thing stirred near her except a lean adventurous barn cat that picked its way gingerly through the yard. Bold-and-Bad and Popka had been transferred to Swallowfield and Winnie had taken Squedunk.
It hurt Pat worse than anything else to see the dead stark trees of the birch grove. She shuddered as she recalled standing there that fatal Sunday and seeing the flames ravage them. It had seemed to hurt her even more than seeing her home burn . . . those trees she had always loved . . . trees that had been akin to her. More than half the bush was killed. The old aspen by the kitchen door was only a charred stump and the maple over the well was an indecency. The hood of the well was burned. May would have a pump put in now. But that didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
All the flower clumps near the house had been burned . . . Judy's bleeding-heart . . . the southernwood . . . the white lilac. The lawn itself looked like an old yellow blanket. Beyond stretched a russet land of shadows and lonely furrows and woods that stirred faintly in their dreams. Far away, in the direction of Silverbridge, Angus Macaulay must have been working in his forge for she could hear the ring of his anvil, faintly clear, as if some goblin forger were at work among the hills.
"I suppose I can teach," thought Pat. "I have my old licence. They won't need me at the Bay Shore . . . they've had Anna Palmer there for years to help and she'll stay on. But I can't build up a new life . . . I'm too tired. I'll just go on existing . . . withering into unimportance . . . drifting from one place to another . . . rootless . . . living in houses I hate . . . oh, can it be I standing here looking at the place where Silver Bush was? . . . that old Bible verse . . . 'it shall be a heap forever . . . it shall not be built again' . . . I wish that were true . . . I wish no house could ever be built here again . . . it will be a desecration. Oh, if I could only wake up and find it all a dream!"
"Pat, darling," said a voice from the shadows around her.
She turned . . . incredulous . . . amazed . . .
"Jingle!"
The old name sprang to her lips. The autumn dusk was no longer cold and loveless over the remote hills. Something seemed to have come with him . . . courage . . . hope . . . inspiration . . . that same dear sense of protection and understanding that had come to her that evening of long ago when he had found her lost in the dark on the Base Line road. She held out both her hands but he caught her in his arms . . . his lips were seeking hers . . . a tremor half fear, half delight, shook her. And then that old, old unacknowledged ache of loneliness she had tried to stifle with Silver Bush vanished forever. His lips were on hers . . . and she knew. It was like a tide turning home.
"I've made you mine forever with that kiss," he said triumphantly. "You can never belong to anyone else. And I've waited long enough for it," he added with his old laugh.
Pat stood quivering with his arms about her. Life was not over after all . . . it was only beginning.
"I . . . I don't deserve you, Hilary," she whispered humbly. "It seems . . . it seems . . . oh, are you really here? I'm not dreaming it, am I?"
"I'm real, sweetheart . . . joy . . . delight . . . wonder! I started as soon as I saw the account of the fire in an Island paper. But I was coming anyway . . . I had only been waiting to finish our house. I know what this tragedy of Silver Bush must have meant to you . . . but I've a home for you by another sea, Pat. And in it we'll build up a new life and the old will become just a treasury of dear and sacred memories . . . of things time cannot destroy. Will you come to it with me?"
"I'll go to the end of the world and back with you, Hilary. I can't understand my not knowing all these years that it was you I loved. Those other men . . . some of them were so nice . . . I thought I couldn't marry them because I couldn't leave Silver Bush . . . but I know now it was because they weren't you . . ."
"Are you really my girl . . . my girl at last, Pat? You remember how furiously you used to deny it? And your eyes are as brown as ever, Pat. I can't see in the dimness but I'm sure they are. And I know you look just as much as ever like a creamy rose with gold in its heart. Do you know, Pat, I never got your letter or Judy's kittens till two months ago? I've been in Japan for over a year, studying Japanese architecture. Letters were forwarded but parcels weren't. And you broke the postal laws shamelessly by tucking your letter inside the parcel. Dearest, let's go into the old graveyard and sit on a slab. I want to have you wholly to myself for an hour before we go back to Swallowfield. There's going to be a moonrise to-night . . . how long is it since we watched a moonrise together?"
"A moonrise tonight." That was always a magical phrase. Pat was in a maze of happiness as they walked to the old graveyard and sat on Weeping Willy's flat tombstone. She hadn't felt like this for years . . . had believed she could never feel like this again . . . as if some supernal musician had swept her very soul with his fingers and evolved some ethereal harmony. Was it possible life could always be so rich . . . so poignant . . . so significant as this?
"I want to tell you all about the home I have ready for you," said Hilary. "When I came back from Japan and found the picture and your letter I wanted to come east at once. But that very day when I was prowling on the heights above the city I found a spot . . . a spot I recognized, although I had never seen it before . . . a spot that wanted me. There was a spring in the corner with a little brook trickling out . . . four darling little apple trees in another corner . . . and a hill of pines behind it, with a river and a mountain within neighborly distance . . . a faint blue mountain. I don't know its name but we'll call it the Hill of the Mist. That spot was just crying for a house to be built on it. So . . . I built one. It's waiting for you. It's a dear house, Pat . . . fat red chimneys . . . sharp little gables on the side of the roof . . . a door that says 'come in' and another one that says, 'stay out.' It's painted white and has bottlegreen shutters like Silver Bush."
"It sounds heavenly, Hilary . . . but I'd live in an igloo in Greenland if you were there."
"There's a lovely jam closet," said Hilary slyly. "I thought you'd want one."
Pat's eyes flickered.
"Of course I want one. While I live and move and have my being I'll want a jam closet," she said decidedly. "And we'll have Judy's rugs on the floor and the old Silver Bush knocker on the door that says 'come in'."
"The dining-room has a wide, low window opening into the pine wood at the back. We can eat with the sound of the pines in our ears. And from the other window we can see the sunset while we eat our supper. I've built the house, Pat . . . I've provided the body but you must provide the soul. There's a lovely big fireplace that can hold real logs . . . I left it all laid ready for lighting . . . you will light the fire and make the room live."
"Like the old kitchen at Silver Bush. It will be homelike."
"You could make any place home-like, Pat. We'll sit there caring only when we want to care for what is outside . . . wind or rain, mist or moonshine. We'll have a dog that wags his tail when he sees us . . . more than one. Lots of jolly little dogs and furry kittens. And a Silver Bush cat. I suppose Bold-and-Bad is too old to endure emigration to a far land."
"Yes, he must end his days at Swallowfield. Aunt Barbara loves him. But I'm sure it will be possible to send a kitten by express--it has been done. Hilary, why did you give up writing to me?"
"I thought it wasn't any use. I thought the only decent thing to do was to leave you in peace. Besides, you were taking me too much for granted, Pat. You were blinded by our years of friendship. When can we be married, Pat?"
"As soon as you like," said Pat shamelessly. "At least . . . when I've had time to get a few clothes. I haven't a rag but what I'm wearing."
"We'll spend our honeymoon in a chalet in the Austrian Tyrol, Pat. I picked it out years ago. Then we'll go home . . . home. Listen to me rolling the word under my tongue. I've never had a home, you know. Oh, how tired I am of living in other people's houses! Pat, there is water in the house, of course, but I've made a little well out of the spring in the corner and stoned it up . . . a delightful little well where we can dip up water under the ferns. And we'll put a saucer of milk there every night for the fairies. Judy's white kittens are already hanging on the wall of our living room and that old china dog with the blue eyes you gave me years ago is squatting on the mantelpiece."
"Hilary, you don't mean to say you've got that yet?"
"Haven't I! It has gone everywhere with me . . . it's been my mascot. We'll make it a family heirloom. And I have a few things picked up in my wanderings you'll love, Pat."
"Is there a good place for a garden?"
"The best. We'll have a garden, my very own dear . . . with columbine for the fairies and poppies for dancing shadows and marigolds for laughter. And we'll have the walks picked off with whitewashed stones. Slugs and spiders and blight and mildew will never infest it, I feel sure. You've always been a sort of half-cousin to the fairies and you ought to be able to keep such plagues away."
Delightful nonsense! Was it she, Pat, who was laughing at it . . . she, who had been in such despair an hour ago? Miracles did happen. And it was so easy to laugh when Hilary was about. That new, far, unseen home would be as full of laughter as Silver Bush had been.
"And Rae will be somewhere near after two years," thought Pat.
They sat in a trance of happiness, savouring "the unspent joy of all the unborn years" in the moonlight and waving shadows of the ancient graveyard where so many kind old hearts rested. They had been dust for many years but their love lived on. Judy had been right. Love did not . . . could not die.
The moon had risen. The sky was like a great silver bowl pouring down light over the world. A little wind raised and swayed the long hair-like grass growing around the slab on Judy's grave, giving the curious suggestion of something prisoned under it trying to draw a long breath and float upward.
"I wish Judy could have known of this," said Pat softly. "Dear old Judy . . . she always wanted it."
"Judy knew it would come to pass. She sent me this. I got it in Japan after months of delay. I would have started for Silver Bush at the moment if I could have, but it was impossible to arrange. And anyway . . . I thought I might have a better chance if I waited a decent interval."
Hilary had taken a cheap crumpled envelope from his pocket book and extracted a sheet of bluelined paper.
"Dear Jingle," Judy had printed on it in faint, straggling letters, "She has give David Kirk the air. I'm thinking youd have a good chance if youd come back.
Judy Plum."
"Dear, dear old Judy," said Pat. "She must have written that on her dying bed . . . look how feeble some of the letters are . . . and got somebody to smuggle it out to the mail-box for her."
"Judy knew that would bring me back from the dead," said Hilary with pardonable exaggeration. "She died knowing it. And, Pat," he added quickly, sensing that she was too near tears for a betrothal hour, "will you make soup for me like Judy's when we're married?"
Just as they had admitted they must really return to Swallowfield a grey shadow leaped over the paling, poised for a moment on Judy's slab and then skimmed away.
"Oh, there's Bold-and-Bad," cried Pat. "I must catch him and take him back. He's too old to be left out o'nights."
"This evening belongs to me," said Hilary firmly. "I won't let you go chasing cats . . . not even Bold-and-Bad. He'll follow us back without any chasing. I've found something I once thought I'd lost forever and I won't be cheated out of a single moment."
The old graveyard heard the most charming sound in the world . . . the low yielding laugh of a girl held prisoner by her lover.
The End