“My nose is all right,” said Pat. “Feel it.”
“Av course her nose is all right. Don’t ye be after putting inny such notions in her head, Long Alec Gardiner,” said Judy, who had bossed little Long Alec about when he was a child and continued to do so now that he was big Long Alec with a family of his own. “And ye naden’t have been thinking that child wud be jealous . . . she hasn’t a jealous bone in her body, the darlint. Jealous, indade!” Judy’s grey-green eyes flashed quite fiercely. Nobody need be thinking the new baby was more important than Pat or that more was going to be made of it.
4
It was well on in the forenoon when they were allowed upstairs. Judy marshalled them up, very imposing in her blue silk dress, of a day when it was a recommendation for silk that it could stand alone. She had had it for fifteen years, having got it in honour of the bride young Long Alec was bringing to Silver Bush, and she put it on only for very special occasions. It had been donned for every new baby and the last time it had been worn was six years ago at Grandmother Gardiner’s funeral. Fashions had changed considerably but what cared Judy? A silk dress was a silk dress. She was so splendid in it that the children were half in awe of her. They liked her much better in her old drugget but Judy tasted her day of state.
A nurse in white cap and apron was queening it in mother’s room. Mother was lying on her pillows, white and spent after that dreadful headache, with her dark wings of hair around her face and her sweet, dreamy, golden-brown eyes shining with happiness. Aunt Barbara was rocking a quaint old black cradle, brought down from the garret . . . a cradle a hundred years old which Great-great-Grandfather Nehemiah had made with his own hands. Every Silver Bush baby had been rocked in it. The nurse did not approve of either cradles or rocking but she was powerless against Aunt Barbara and Judy combined.
“Not have a cradle for it, do ye be saying?” the scandalised Judy ejaculated. “Ye’ll not be intinding to put the swate wee cratur in a basket? Oh, oh, did inny one iver be hearing the like av it? It’s niver a baby at Silver Bush that’ll be brought up in your baskets, as if it was no better than a kitten, and that I’m telling ye. Here’s the cradle that I’ve polished wid me own hands and into that same cradle she’ll be going.”
Pat, after a rapturous kiss for mother, tip-toed over to the cradle, trembling with excitement. Judy lifted the baby out and held it so that the children could see it.
“Oh, Judy, isn’t she sweet?” whispered Pat in ecstasy. “Can’t I hold her for just the tiniest moment?”
“That ye can, darlint,” . . . and Judy put the baby into Pat’s arms before either nurse or Aunt Barbara could prevent her. Oh, oh, that was one in the eye for the nurse!
Pat stood holding the fragrant thing as knackily as if she had been doing it all her life. What tiny, darling legs it had! What dear, wee, crumpled paddies! What little pink nails like perfect shells!
“What colour are its eyes, Judy?”
“Blue,” said Judy, “big and blue like violets wid dew on them, just like Winnie’s. And it’s certain I am that she do be having dimples in her chakes. Sure a woman wid a baby like that naden’t call the quane her cousin.”
“‘The child that is born on the Sabbath day
Will be bonny and blithe and good and gay,’”
said Aunt Barbara.
“Of course she will,” said Pat. “She would, no matter what day she was born on. Isn’t she our baby?”
“Oh, oh, there’s the right spirit for ye,” said Judy.
“The baby must really be put back in the cradle now,” said the nurse by way of reasserting her authority.
Pat relinquished it reluctantly. Only a few minutes ago she had been thinking of the baby as an interloper, only to be tolerated for mother’s sake. But now it was one of the family and it seemed as if it had always been at Silver Bush. No matter how it had come, from stork or black bag or parsley bed, it was there and it was theirs.
Chapter 5
“What’s in a Name?”
1
The new baby at Silver Bush did not get its name until three weeks later when mother was able to come down stairs and the nurse had gone home, much to Judy’s satisfaction. She approved of Miss Martin as little as Miss Martin approved of her.
“Oh, oh, legs and lipstick!” she would say contemptuously, when Miss Martin doffed her regalia and went out to take the air. Which was unjust to Miss Martin, who had no more legs than other women of the fashion and used her lipstick very discreetly. Judy watched her down the lane with a malevolent eye.
“Oh, oh, but I’d like to be putting a tin ear on that one. Wanting to call the wee treasure Greta! Oh, oh, Greta! And her with a grandfather that died and come back to life, that he did!”
“Did he really, Judy Plum?”
“He did that. Old Jimmy Martin was dead as a dorenail for two days. The doctors said it. Thin he come back to life . . . just to spite his family I’m telling ye. But, as ye might ixpect, he was niver the same agin. His relations were rale ashamed av him. Miss Martin naden’t be holding that rid head av hers so high.”
“But why, Judy?” asked Sid. “Why were they ashamed of him?”
“Oh, oh, whin ye’re dead it’s only dacent to stay dead,” retorted Judy. “Ye’d think she’d remimber that whin she was trying to boss folks who looked after babies afore she was born or thought av, the plum-faced thing! But she’s gone now, good riddance, and we won’t have her stravaging about the house with a puss on her mouth inny more. Too minny bushels for a small canoe . . . it do be that that’s the trouble wid her.”
“She can’t help her grandfather, Judy,” said Pat.
“Oh, oh, I’m not saying she could, me jewel. We none of us can hilp our ancistors. Wasn’t me own grandmother something av a witch? But it’s sure we’ve all got some and it ought to kape us humble.”
Pat was glad Miss Martin was gone, not because she didn’t like her but because she knew she would be able to hold the baby oftener now. Pat adored the baby. How in the world had Silver Bush ever got on without her? Silver Bush without the baby was quite unthinkable to Pat now. When Uncle Tom asked her gravely if they had decided yet whether to keep or drown the baby she was horrified and alarmed.
“Sure, me jewel, he was only tazing ye,” comforted Judy, with her great, broad, jolly laugh. “’Tis just an ould bachelor’s idea av a joke.”
They had put off naming the baby until Miss Martin had gone, because nobody really wanted to call the baby Greta but didn’t want to hurt her feelings. The very afternoon she left they attended to the matter . . . or tried to.
But it was no easy thing to pick a name. Mother wanted to call it Doris after her own mother and father wanted Rachel after his mother. Winnie, who was romantic, wanted Elaine, and Joe thought Dulcie would be nice. Pat had secretly called it Miranda for a week and Sidney thought such a blue-eyed baby ought to be named Violet. Aunt Hazel thought Kathleen just the name for it, and Judy, who must have her say with the rest, thought Emmerillus was a rale classy name. The Silver Bush people thought Judy must mean Amaryllis but were never sure of it.
In the end father suggested that each of them plant a named seed in the garden and see whose came up first. That person should have the privilege of naming the baby.
“If we find more than one up at once the winners must plant over again,” he said.
This was a sporting chance and the children were excited. The seeds were planted and tagged and watched every day: but it was Pat who thought of getting up early in the mornings to keep tabs on the bed. Judy said things came up in the night. There was nothing at dark . . . and in the morning there you were. And there Pat was on the eighth morning, just as the sun was rising, up before any one but Judy. You would have to get up before you went to bed if you meant to get ahead of Judy.
And Pat’s seed was up! For just one moment she exulted. Then she grew sober and her long-lashed amber eyes filled with troubled wonder. Of course Miranda was a lovely name for a baby. But fat
her wanted Rachel. Mother had named her and Sidney, Uncle Tom had named Joe, Hazel had named Winnie, surely it was father’s turn. He hadn’t said much . . . father never said much . . . but Pat knew somehow that he wanted very badly to name the baby Rachel. In her secret heart Pat had hoped that father’s seed would be first.
She looked around her. No living creature in sight except Gentleman Tom, sitting darkly on the cheese stone. The next moment her seed was yanked out and flung into the burdock patch behind the hen-house. Dad had a chance yet.
But luck seemed against poor dad. Next morning Win’s and mother’s seeds were up. Pat ruthlessly uprooted them, too. Win didn’t count and mother had named two children already. That was plenty for her. Joe’s met the same fate next morning. Then up popped Sid’s and Judy’s. Pat was quite hardened in rascality now and they went. Anyhow, no child ought ever to be called Emmerillus.
The next day there was none up and Pat began to be worried. Every one was wondering why none of the seeds were up yet. Judy darkly insinuated that they had been planted the wrong time of the moon. And perhaps father’s wouldn’t come up at all. Pat prayed very desperately that night that it might be up the next morning.
It was.
Pat looked about her in triumph, quite untroubled as yet by her duplicity. She had won the victory for father. Oh, how lovely everything was! Gossamer clouds of pale gold floated over the Hill of the Mist. The wind had fallen asleep among the silver birches. The tall firs among them quivered with some kind of dark laughter. The fields were all around her like great gracious arms. The popples, as Judy called them, were whispering around the granary. The world was just a big, smiling greenness, with a vast, alluring blueness seawards. There was a clear, pale, silvery sky over her and everything in the garden seemed to have burst into bloom overnight. Judy’s big clump of bleeding-heart by the kitchen door was hung with ruby jewels. The country was sprinkled with white houses in the sunrise. A stealthy kitten crept through the orchard. Thursday was licking his sleek little chops on the window sill of his beloved granary. A red squirrel chattered at him from a bough of the maple tree over the well. Judy came out to draw a bucket of water.
“Oh, Judy, father’s seed is up,” cried Pat. She wouldn’t say up first because that wasn’t true.
“Oh, oh!” Judy accepted the “sign” with good grace. “Well, it do be yer dad’s turn for a fact, and Rachel is a better name than Greta inny day. Greta! The impidence av it!”
2
Rachel it was in fact and Rachel it became in law one Sunday six weeks later when the baby was baptised at church in a wondrous heirloom christening robe of eyelet embroidery that Grandmother Gardiner had made for her first baby. All the Silver Bush children had been christened in it. Long robes for babies had gone out of fashion but Judy Plum would not have thought the christening lawful if the baby had not been at least five feet long. They tacked Doris on to the name, too, by way of letting mother down easy, but it was dad’s day of triumph.
Pat was not sorry for what she had done but her conscience had begun to trouble her a bit and that night when Judy Plum came in to leave her nightly blessing, Pat, who was wide-awake, sat up in bed and flung her arms around Judy’s neck.
“Oh, Judy . . . I did something . . . I s’spose it was bad. I . . . I wanted father to name the baby . . . and I pulled up the seeds as fast as they came up in the mornings. Was it very bad, Judy?”
“Oh, oh, shocking,” said Judy, with a contradictory twinkle in her eyes. “If Joe knew he’d put a tin ear on ye. But I’ll not be telling. More be token as I wanted yer dad to have his way. He do be put upon be the women in this house and that’s a fact.”
“His seed was the last one to come up,” said Pat, “and Aunt Hazel’s never came up at all.”
“Oh, oh, didn’t it now?” giggled Judy. “It was up the morning afore yer dad’s and I pulled it out meself.”
Chapter 6
What Price Weddings?
1
Late in August of that summer Pat began to go to school. The first day was very dreadful . . . almost as dreadful as that day the year before when she had watched Sidney start to school without her. They had never been separated before. She had stood despairingly at the garden gate and watched him out of sight down the lane until she could see him no longer for tears.
“He’ll be back in the evening, me jewel. Think av the fun av watching for him to come home,” comforted Judy.
“The evening is so far away,” sobbed Pat. It seemed to her the day would never end: but half past four came and Pat went flying down the lane to greet Sid. Really, it was so splendid to have him back that it almost atoned for seeing him go.
Pat didn’t want to go to school. To be away from Silver Bush for eight hours five days out of every week was a tragedy to her. Judy put her up a delicious lunch, filled her satchel with her favourite little red apples and kissed her good-bye encouragingly.
“Now, darlint, remimber it’s goin’ to get an eddication ye are. Oh, oh, and eddication is a great thing and it’s meself do be after knowing it because I never had one.”
“Why, Judy, you know more than anybody else in the world,” said Pat wonderingly.
“Oh, oh, to be sure I do, but an eddication isn’t just knowing things,” said Judy wisely. “Don’t ye be worrying a bit. Ye’ll get on fine. Ye know yer primer so ye’ve got a good start. Now run along, girleen, and mind ye’re rale mannerly to yer tacher. It’s the credit av Silver Bush ye must be kaping up, ye know.”
It was this thought that braced Pat sufficiently to enable her to get through the day. It kept the tears back as she turned, at the end of the lane, clinging to Sid’s hand, to wave back to Judy who was waving encouragingly from the garden gate. It bore her up under the scrutiny of dozens of strange eyes and her interview with the teacher. It gave her back-bone through the long day as she sat alone at her little desk and made pot-hooks . . . or looked through the window down into the school bush which she liked much better. It was an ever-present help in recesses and dinner hour, when Winnie was off with the big girls and Sid and Joe with the boys and she was alone with the first and second primers.
When school came out at last Pat reviewed the day and proudly concluded that she had not disgraced Silver Bush.
And then the glorious home-coming! Judy and mother to welcome her back as if she had been away for a year . . . the baby smiling and cooing at her . . . Thursday running to meet her . . . all the flowers in the garden nodding a greeting.
“I know everything’s glad to see me back,” she cried.
Really, it was enough to make one willing to go away just to have the delight of coming back. And then the fun of telling Judy all that had happened in school!
“I liked all the girls except May Binnie. She said there wasn’t any moss in the cracks of her garden walk. I said I liked moss in the cracks of a garden walk. And she said our house was old-fashioned and needed painting. And she said the wall-paper in our spare-room was stained.”
“Oh, oh, and well you know it is,” said Judy. “There’s that lake be the chimney that Long Alec has niver been able to fix, try as he will. But if ye start out be listening to what a Binnie says ye’ll have an earful. What did ye say to me fine Miss May Binnie, darlint?”
“I said Silver Bush didn’t need to be painted as often as other people’s houses because it wasn’t ugly.”
Judy chuckled.
“Oh, oh, that was one in the eye for me fine May. The Binnie house is one av the ugliest I’ve iver seen for all av its yaller paint. And what did she say to that.”
“Oh, Judy, she said the pink curtains in the Big Parlour were faded and shabby. And that crushed me. Because they are . . . and everybody else in North Glen has such nice lace curtains in their parlours.”
2
But this was all three weeks ago and already going to school was a commonplace and Pat had even begun to like it. And then one afternoon Judy casually remarked, out of a clear sky so to speak,
“I s’pose ye know that yer Aunt Hazel is going to be married the last wake in September?”
At first Pat wouldn’t believe it . . . simply couldn’t. Aunt Hazel couldn’t be married and go away from Silver Bush. When she had to believe it she cried night after night for a week. Not even Judy could console her . . . not even the memory of Weeping Willy shame her.
“Sure and it’s time yer Aunt Hazel was married if she don’t be intinding to be an ould maid.”
“Aunt Barbara and Aunt Edith are old maids and they’re happy,” sobbed Pat.
“Oh, oh, two ould maids is enough for one family. And yer Aunt Hazel is right to be married. Sure and it’s a kind av hard world for women at the bist. I’m not saying but what we’ll miss her. She’s always had a liddle knack av making people happy. But it’s time she made her ch’ice. She’s niver been man-crazy . . . oh, oh, her worst inimy couldn’t say that av her. But she’s been a bit av a flirt in her day and there’s been a time or two I was afraid she was going to take up wid a crooked stick. ‘Judy,’ she wud a’way be saying to me, ‘I want to try just a few more beaus afore I settle down.’ It’s a bit av good luck that she’s made up her mind for Robert Madison. He’s a rale steady feller. Ye’ll like yer new uncle, darlint.”
“I won’t,” said Pat obstinately, determined to hate him forever. “Do you like him, Judy?”
“To be sure I do. He’s got more in his head than the comb’ll iver take out I warrrant ye. And a store-kaper he is, which is a bit asier than farming for the wife.”
“Do you think he’s good-looking enough for Aunt Hazel, Judy?”
“Oh, oh, I’ve seen worse. Maybe there’s a bit too much av him turned up for fate and there’s no denying he has flying jibs like all that family. They tuk it from the Callenders. Niver did inny one see such ears as old Hinry Callender had. If ye hadn’t been seeing innything but his head ye cudn’t have told whether he was a man or a bat. Oh, oh, but it’s the lucky thing they’ve got pared down a bit be the Madison mixture! Robert’s got a rale nice face and I’m after telling ye we’re all well satisfied wid yer Aunt Hazel’s match. We’ve had our worries I can be telling ye now. There was Gordon Rhodes back a bit . . . but I niver belaved she’d take a scut like him. Too crooked to lie straight in bed like all the Rhodeses. And Will Owen . . . to be sure Long Alec liked him but the man had no more to say for himself than a bump on a log. If the Good Man Above had struck him dumb we’d niver av known it. For me own part I like thim a bit more flippant. At one time we did be thinking she’d take Siddy Taylor. But whin she tould him one night that she cudn’t abide his taste in neck-ties he went off mad and niver come back. Small blame to him for that. If ye do be wanting a man iver, Pat, don’t be after criticising his neck-ties until ye’ve landed him afore the minister. And yer mother kind av liked Cal Gibson. Sure and he was the ladylike cratur. But he was one av the Summerside Gibsons and I was afraid he’d always look down on yer Aunt Hazel’s people. Barring the fact that he was as quare-looking as a cross-eyed cat . . . But this Robert Madison, he kept a-coming and a-coming, always bobbing up whiniver one of the other lads got the mitten on the wrong hand. Whin the Madisons do be wanting a thing they have the habit av getting it in the long run. Rob’s Uncle Jim now . . . didn’t I iver tell ye the story av how he pickled his brother in rum and brought him home to be buried?”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 307