“So your Aunt Helen is going to adopt Winnie.”
Pat stared at her.
“She isn’t.”
May giggled.
“Fancy your not knowing. Of course she is. It’s a great thing for Winnie, ma says. And it might have been you if you hadn’t slapped Norma’s face.”
Pat stood staring at May. Something had fallen over her spirit like the cold grey light that swept over the world before a snow squall in November. She was too chilled to resent the fact that Sid must have told May about her slapping Norma. There was no room for any but the one terrible thought. It was only afternoon recess but Pat rushed to the porch, snatched her hat and coat, and started home, stumbling wildly along the deep-rutted, drifted road. Oh, to get home to mother . . . mother now, not Judy. Judy did for little griefs but for this, only mother . . . to tell her this ghastly thing was not true . . . that nobody had ever thought of such a thing as Winnie going to live with Aunt Helen.
“Oh, oh, and what’s bringing ye home so early?” cried Judy, as Pat stumbled, half-frozen, into the kitchen. “Ye’ve niver walked all that way in thim roads . . . and yer Uncle Tom was going for ye all in his fine new pung.”
“Where’s mother?” gasped Pat.
“Mother, is it? Sure yer dad and her is gone over to the Bay Shore. They phoned over that yer Aunt Frances was down with pewmony. Whativer is it that’s the matter wid the child?”
But for the first time Pat had nothing to say to Judy. The question she had to ask could not be asked of Judy. Judy, rather huffed, let her alone, and Pat ranged the deserted house like a restless ghost. Oh, how empty it was! Nobody there . . . neither mother nor father nor Cuddles. Nor Winnie! And perhaps Winnie would never be back. Suppose her laugh would never be heard again at Silver Bush!
“Something’s been happening in school,” reflected Judy uneasily. “I’m hoping she didn’t get into a ruckus wid her lady tacher. I niver cud be knowing what the trustees mint be hiring ould Arthur Saint’s girl for a tacher, wid her hair the colour av a rid brick.”
Pat could eat no supper. Bed-time came and still father and mother were not back. Pat cried herself to sleep. But she awoke in the night . . . sat up . . . remembered sickeningly. Everything was quiet. The wind had gone down and Silver Bush was cracking in the frost. Through her window she could see the faint light of stars over the dark fir trees that grew along the dyke between the Silver Bush and Swallowfield pastures. Pat found just then that things always seem worse in the dark. She felt she could not live another minute without knowing the truth.
Resolutely she got out of bed and lighted her candle. Resolutely the small white figure marched down the silent hall, past Joe’s room and the Poet’s room to father’s and mother’s room. Yes, they were home, sound asleep. A fragrant adorable Cuddles was curled up in her little crib but for the first time Pat did not gloat over her.
Long Alec and his tired wife, just fallen soundly asleep after a cold drive over vile roads, were wakened to see a desperate little face bending over them.
“Child, what’s the matter? Are you sick?”
“Oh, dad, Aunt Helen isn’t going to adopt Winnie? She isn’t, is she, dad?”
“Look here, Pat.” Dad was stern. “Have you come here and wakened your mother and me just to ask that?”
“Oh, dad, I had to know.”
Mother understandingly put a slender hand on Pat’s shaking arm.
“Darling, she’s not going to adopt her . . . but she may keep her for awhile and send her to school. It would really be a great thing for Winnie.”
“Do you mean . . . Winnie wouldn’t come back here?”
“It isn’t settled yet. Aunt Helen only threw out a hint. Of course Winnie’ll be home often. . . .”
2
The following week of dark, tortured days was the hardest Pat had ever known in her life. She could not eat and the sight of Winnie’s vacant place at meals reduced her to tears. Her family found it rather hard to make excuses for what they thought was her unreasonable behaviour.
“Just humour her a liddle,” pleaded Judy. “She’s that worked up and miserable she doesn’t know which ind of her is up. A bird cudn’t be living on what she ates.”
“You spoil her, Judy,” said Long Alec severely. He was out of patience with Pat’s moping.
“Iverybody do be the better for a bit av sp’iling now and thin,” said Judy loyally. But she tried to bring Pat into a more reasonable frame of mind.
“Don’t ye want Winnie to get an eddication?”
“She could get an education at home,” sobbed Pat.
“Not much av a one. Oh, oh, I’d have ye know the Gardiners don’t be like the Binnies. ‘We’re not going to eddicate Suzanne,’ sez me Madam Binnie. ‘Soon as she’d get through Quane’s she’d marry and the money’d be wasted.’ No, no, me jewel, the Gardiners are a differunt brade av cats. Winnie’s thirteen. Sure and she’ll soon be wanting to study for her intrance and who’s ould Arthur Saint’s daughter for that I’m asking ye? Ye’ll niver convince me she knows a word av the Lating and French.”
“English is good enough for anybody,” protested Pat.
“Ye’ll find it isn’t good enough for Quane’s,” retorted Judy. “Winnie’d be able to go to the Summerside schools and yer Aunt Helen cud do more for her than yer dad iver can, wid his one small farm and the five av ye ating it up. Now, stop fretting, me jewel, and come and cut rags for me while I do a bit av hooking.”
Then came the letter from Aunt Helen for dad. Pat, her hands locked behind her so that no one should see them trembling, stood mutely by while Long Alec deliberately tried on two pairs of spectacles, scrutinised the stamp, remarked that Helen had always been a pretty writer, hunted up a knife to slit the envelope . . . took out the letter. Outside in the yard somebody was laughing. How dared anybody laugh at such a moment?
“Helen says Brian is bringing Winnie home Saturday,” he announced casually. “So I guess she’s given up the notion of keeping her. I always thought she would. So that’s that.”
“Oh, I must be flying,” thought Pat as she ran to tell Judy. Judy admitted satisfaction.
“It do be just as well I’m thinking. Helen was always a bit of a crank. And I’m not thinking it’s a wise-like thing to break up a family inny sooner than nade be.”
“Isn’t a family one of the loveliest things in the world, Judy?” cried Pat. “And oh, look at Gentleman Tom. Isn’t he sitting cute?”
“Oh, oh, it’s the different looking girl ye are from the morning. Iverything plazes ye to-night, aven the way a poor cat arranges his hams,” chuckled Judy, who was overjoyed to see her darling happy again.
Pat ran out in the twilight to tell the good news to the silver bush and the leafless maples. She looked with eyes of love at the old, snow-roofed house drawing its cloak of trees around it in the still mild winter evening. Even in winter Silver Bush was lovely because of what it sheltered and hoped for.
Then she ran back in and up to the garret to set a light for Jingle. Jingle had been her only comfort during the past dreadful week. Even Sid hadn’t seemed to worry much whether Winnie came home or not. He hoped she would, of course, but he didn’t lose sleep over it. Jingle had always assured Pat she would. Who, he thought, wouldn’t come back to Silver Bush if she could? So now he came to share in Pat’s joy. The two of them waded back along Jordan to Happiness; it was buried in snow but the Haunted Spring was still running freshly, hung about with jewels. How lovely the silvery world was . . . how lovely the white hills of snow! They did not get home till nearly eight and Judy scolded.
“I’m not having ye roaming off wid any Jingle if ye can’t be home and to bed at the proper time.”
“What is the proper time for going to bed, Judy?” laughed Pat. Every word was a laugh with Pat to-night. And oh, how good supper tasted!
“Sure now and ye’re asking a question that’s niver been answered,” chuckled Judy.
Saturday came with more March wind and
snow. Oh, it shouldn’t storm the day Winnie was coming home. Perhaps Uncle Brian wouldn’t bring her if it stormed. But in the late afternoon the sun came out below the storm cloud and made a dazzling fair world. The rooms of Silver Bush were all filled with a golden light from the clearing western sky. All the gardens and yards and orchards were pranked out with the exquisite shadows of leafless trees.
And then they came, right out of the heart of the wild winter sunset. Winnie was very glad Aunt Helen had decided not to keep her.
“She said I laughed too much and it got on her nerves,” Winnie told Pat. “Besides, I put pepper in the potatoes instead of salt the day her maid was away . . . oh, by mistake of course. That settled it. She said I had the makings of a sloppy housekeeper.”
“Silver Bush is glad to hear you laugh,” whispered Pat, hugging her savagely.
The storm came up again in the night. Pat woke up and heard it . . . remembered that everything was all right and sank happily to sleep again. What difference now how much it stormed? All her dear ones were near her, safe under the same kindly roof. Dad and mother and little Cuddles . . . Joe and Sidney . . . Judy in her own eyrie, with her black Gentleman Tom curled up at her feet . . . Thursday and Snicklefritz behind the kitchen stove. And Winnie was home . . . home to stay!
Chapter 15
Elizabeth Happens
1
“I smell spring!” Pat cried rapturously, sniffing the air one day . . . the day she discovered the first tiny feathery green sprays of caraway along the borders of the Whispering Lane. That same night the frogs had begun to sing in the Field of the Pool. She and Jingle heard them when they were coming home in the “dim” from Happiness.
“I love frogs,” said Pat.
Jingle wasn’t sure he liked frogs. Their music was so sad and silver and far away it always made him think of his mother.
Never, Pat reflected, looking back over her long life of almost nine years, had there been such a lovely spring. Never had the long, rolling fields around Silver Bush been so green: never had the gay trills of song in the maple by the well been so sweet: never had there been such wonderful evenings full of the scent of lilacs: and never had there been anything so beautiful as the young wild cherry tree in Happiness or the little wild plum that hung over the fence in the Secret Field. She and Sid went back to pay a call on their field one Sunday afternoon, to see how it had got through the winter. It was always spring there before it was spring anywhere else. Their spruces tossed them an airy welcome and the wild plum was another lovely secret to be shared.
Everything was so clean in spring, Pat thought. No weeds . . . no long grass . . . no fallen leaves. And all over the house the wholesome smell of newly-cleaned rooms. For Judy and mother had been papering and scrubbing and washing and ironing and polishing for weeks. Pat and Winnie helped them in the evenings after school. It was lovely to make Silver Bush as beautiful as it could be made.
“Sure and I do be getting spring fever in me bones,” said Judy one night. The next day she was down with flu; it ran through the whole family . . . lightly, with one exception. Pat had it hard . . . “as she do be having iverything, the poor darlint,” thought Judy . . . and did not pick up rapidly. Aunt Helen came down unexpectedly one day and decreed that Pat needed a change. In the twinkling of an eye it was decided that Pat was to go to Elmwood for three weeks.
Pat didn’t want to go. She had never been away from Silver Bush overnight and three weeks of nights seemed an eternity. But nobody paid any heed to her protestations and the dread morning came when father was to take her to Summerside. Jingle was over and they ate breakfast together, sitting on the sandstone steps, with the sun rising redly over the Hill of the Mist and the cherry trees along the dyke throwing sprays of pearly blossoms against the blue sky. . . .
Pat was more resigned, having begun to thrill a little to the excitement about her. After all, it was nice to be quite important. Sid was blue . . . or envious . . . and Jingle was undoubtedly blue. Cuddles was crying because she had got it into her small golden head that something was going to happen to Pat. And Judy was warning her not to forget to write. Forget! Was it likely?
“And you must write me, Judy,” said Pat anxiously.
“Oh, oh, I don’t be much av a hand at writing letters,” said Judy dubiously. The truth being that Judy hadn’t written any kind of a letter for over twenty years. “I’m thinking ye’ll have to depind on the rest av the folks for letters but sind me a scrape av the pin now and agin for all that.”
Pat had put her three favourite dolls to bed in her doll house and got Judy to put it away for her in the blue chest. She had bid tearful farewells to every room in the house and every tree within calling distance and to her own face in the water of the well. Snicklefritz and McGinty and Thursday had been hugged and wept over. Then came the awful ordeal of saying good-bye to everybody. Judy’s last glimpse of Pat was a rather tragic little face peering out of the back window of the car.
“Sure and this is going to be the lonesome place till she comes back,” sighed Judy.
2
Pat had no sooner arrived at Elmwood than she wrote mother a pitiful letter entreating to be taken home. That first night at Elmwood was a rather dreadful one. The big, old-fashioned bed, with its tent canopy hung with yellowed net, was so huge she felt lost in it. And at home mother or Judy would be standing at the kitchen door calling everybody in out of the dark. “O . . . w!” Pat gave a smothered yelp of anguish at the thought. But . . .
“This is just a visit. I’ll soon be home again . . . in just twenty-one days,” she reminded herself bravely.
Her next letter to Judy was more cheerful. Pat had discovered that there were some pleasant things about visiting. Uncle Brian’s house was quite near and Aunt Helen was surprisingly kind and nice in her own home. It was quite exciting to be taken down town every day and see all the entrancing things in the store windows. Sometimes Norma and Amy took her down Saturday evenings when the windows were lighted up and looked like fairyland, especially the druggist’s, where there were such beautiful coloured bottles of blue and ruby and purple.
“Aunt Helen’s house is very fine,” wrote Pat, beginning also to discover that she liked writing letters. “It is much more splendid than the Bay Shore house. And Uncle Brian’s is finer still. But I wouldn’t let on to Norma that I thought it fine because she has always bragged so about it. She said to me, ‘Isn’t it handsomer than Silver Bush?’ and I said, ‘Yes, much handsomer but not half so lovely.’
“I like Uncle Brian better now. He shook hands with me just as if I was grown up. Norma is as stuck-up as ever but Amy is nice. Aunt Helen has a plaster Paris dog on the dining-room mantel that looks just like Sam Binnie. Aunt Helen says all Amasa Taylor’s apple trees were nawed to death by mice last winter. Oh, Judy, I hope our apple trees will never be nawed by mice. Please tell father not to name the new red calf till I come home. It won’t be long now . . . only fourteen more days. Don’t forget to give Thursday his milk every night, Judy, and please put a little cream in it. Are the columbines and the bleeding-heart out yet? I hope Cuddles won’t grow too much before I get back.
“Aunt Helen gave me a new dress. She says it is a sensible dress. I don’t like sensible dresses much. And there are no Sunday raisins here.
“Aunt Helen is a perfect housekeeper. The neighbours say you could eat your porridge off her floor but she never puts enough salt in her porridge so I don’t like to eat it anywhere.
“Uncle Brian says Jim Hartley will come to a bad end. Jim lives next door and it is exciting to look at him and wonder what the end will be. Do you think he may be hung, Judy?
“Aunt Helen lets me drink tea. She says it is all nonsense the way they bring up children nowadays not to drink tea.
“Old cousin George Gardiner told me I didn’t look much like my mother. He said mother had been a beauty in her day. It made me feel he was disappointed in me. He praised Norma and Amy for their good looks. I don’t mind how
much he praises their looks but I can’t bear to hear their house praised. I think bay windows are horrid.
“Oh, Judy, I do hope everything will stay just the same at Silver Bush till I get back.”
It was wildly exciting to get letters from home . . . “Miss Patricia Gardiner, Elmwood, Summerside.” Jingle wrote the nicest letters because he told her things no one else thought of telling her . . . how the Silver Bush folks were pestered with squirrels in the garret and Judy was clean wild . . . how the sheep laurel was out in Happiness . . . what apple trees had the most bloom . . . how Joe had cut off Gentleman Tom’s whiskers but Judy said they would grow in all right again . . . how the barn cat had kittens . . . and, most wonderful of all, how the farm with the Long Lonely House had been sold to some strange man who was coming there to live. Pat was thrilled over this: but it was terrible to think of these things happening and she not there to see them.
“Only ten days more,” said Pat, looking at the calendar. “Only ten days more and I’ll be home.”
Judy did not write but she sent messages in everybody’s letters. “Tell her the house do be that lonely for her,” was the one Pat liked best, and “that skinny beau of yours do be looking as if he was sent for and couldn’t go,” was the one she liked least.
Pat found Aunt Jessie’s afternoon tea, which she was giving for a visiting friend, very tiresome. Norma and Amy were too much taken up with their own doings to bother with her, her head ached with the crowd and the lights and the chatter . . . “they sound just like Uncle Tom’s geese when they all start chattering at once,” thought Pat unkindly. She slipped away upstairs to seek a quiet spot where she could sit and dream of Silver Bush and found it in Uncle Brian’s snuggery at the end of the hall. But when she pulled aside the curtain to creep into the window seat it was already occupied. A little girl of about her own age was curled up in the corner . . . a girl who had been crying but who now looked up at Pat with half appealing, half defiant eyes . . . beautiful eyes . . . large, dreamy, grey eyes . . . the loveliest eyes Pat had ever seen, with long lashes quilling darkly around them. And there was something besides beauty in the eyes . . . Pat could not have told what it was . . . only it gave her a queer feeling that she had known this girl always. Perhaps the stranger felt something of the same when she looked into Pat’s eyes. Or perhaps it was Pat’s smile . . . already “little Pat Gardiner’s smile” was, unknown to Pat, becoming a clan tradition. At all events she suddenly shook back her thick brown curls, drew her feet under her, and pointed to the opposite corner of the seat with a welcoming smile on her small, flower-like face. They were good friends before they spoke a word to each other.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 315