Some houses thrilled them, some charmed them, some annoyed them. Some were attractive, some repellent . . . “I’d like to smash a few of your windows,” was Pat’s reaction to one. Even the doors were fascinating. What went on behind them? Did they let you out . . . or in?
Then they had to settle which house they would accept as a gift, supposing they were simply compelled to take one.
“I think I’d take that gentle house on the corner,” said Pat. “It has an attic . . . I must have an attic. And it looks as if it had been loved for years. I knew that the first time I ever saw it. It would like me, too. And that funny little window away off by itself has a joke it wants to tell me.”
“I’m choosing one of the new houses this time,” said Hilary. “I like a new house better than an old one when all is said and done. I would feel that I owned a new house. An old house would own me.”
Pat had kept a keen look-out for Hilary’s house. She had thought several of the new ones might be it. But when she saw it she knew it. A little house nestled in a hollow half way up a little hill. Its upper windows looked right out on the top of the hill. Its very chimneys smacked of romance. A tremendous maple tree bent over it. The tree was so enormous and the house so small. It looked like a toy house the big tree had picked up to play with and got fond of it. It had a little garden by its side, with violets in a corner and in the centre a pool with a border of flat stones, edged with daffodils.
“Oh!” Pat drew a long breath. “I’m so glad I didn’t miss that. Yes, if they give you that house, Hilary, take it. It’s so . . . so right, isn’t it?”
“That tree in the front should be cut down though,” said Hilary thoughtfully. “It breaks the line . . . and spoils the view.”
“It doesn’t . . . it simply guards it as a treasure. You wouldn’t cut that lovely birch down, Hilary.”
“I’d cut any tree down if it wasn’t in the right place,” persisted Hilary stubbornly.
“A tree is always in the right place,” said Pat just as stubbornly.
“Well, I won’t cut it down yet awhile,” conceded Hilary. “But I’ll tell you what I am going to do some dark night, Pat. I’m going to sneak up here and carry off that cast-iron deer next door and sink it in the bay fathoms deep.”
“Would it be worth while? The whole place is so awful. You couldn’t carry off that enormous portico. The house looks like a sanitarium. Did you ever suppose any place could be so hideous?”
“The house next to it isn’t hideous . . . exactly. But it has a cruel, secretive look. I don’t like it. A house shouldn’t be so sly and reserved. And there’s a house I’d like to buy and groom it up. It’s so out at elbows. The shingles are curling up and the verandah roof is sagging.”
“But at least it isn’t self-satisfied. The next one is . . . positively smug. And that one . . . they say it cost a fortune and it’s as gloomy as a tomb.”
“Shutters on those stark windows would make an amazing difference,” said Hilary reflectively. “It’s really wonderful, Pat, how much a little thing can do to make or mar a house. But I don’t think there’s any place for dreaming in that house . . . or for ghosts. There must be a place for dreams and ghosts in every house I’ll design.”
“There’s that unfinished house, Hilary . . . it always makes my heart ache. Why don’t they finish it?”
“I’ve found out why. A man began to build that house just to please his wife and she died when it was only half done. He hadn’t the heart to finish it. That white place is a house for the witch of the snow. It’s positively dazzling.”
“What is the matter with that house in the middle of the block, Hilary? It’s very splendid but . . .”
“It hasn’t enough restraint. It bulges like . . . like . . .”
“Like a fat woman without corsets,” laughed Pat. “Like Mary Ann McClenahan. Poor Mary Ann died last week. Do you remember how we thought she was a witch, Hilary?”
One house was as yet only a hole in the ground, with men setting pipes and running wires in it. Who was waiting for that house? Perhaps a bride-to-be. Or perhaps some tired old body who never in her life had a house to her liking and meant to have one before she died. There was a house that wanted to be wakened up. And there was one with Dr. Ames coming away from it. He looked grave. Perhaps some one was dying in that house. He wouldn’t be looking like that if a baby had come.
“I would like to see all the houses in the world . . . all the beautiful ones at least,” said Hilary. “And I’ve got a new idea for your house to-day.”
He was always getting new ideas for it but nowadays he never told her what they were. Everything was to be a surprise.
They walked back in silence. Hilary was dreaming. All men dream. His dream was of building beautiful homes for love to dwell in . . . houses to keep people from the biting wind and the fierce sun and the loneliness of dark night. It must be a fascinating thing to build a house . . . to create beauty that would last for generations and be shelter and protection and friendliness as well as beauty. And some day he would build a house for Pat . . . and she must live in it.
Pat was thinking again how nice it was to walk with Hilary. With Harris and Lester she had felt that she must be always bright and witty and sparkling lest they might think her “dumb.” Hilary was restful. And he never said embarrassing things. To be sure his looks sometimes said many things his tongue never did. But who could quarrel with looks?
Chapter 35
Shadow and Sunshine
1
Care sat visibly on Patricia’s brow.
“My vision cannot pierce beyond the darkness of next week, Judy. It is completely bounded by the gloomy shade of licence exams. Judy, what if I don’t pass?”
“Oh, oh, but ye will, darlint. Haven’t ye been studying all the term like a Trojan? Excipt maybe thim few wakes whin me bould Lester was ordering ye about. So don’t be worrying yer head about it. Just take a bit av a walk through the birches and fale thankful that spring do never be forgetting to come. And thin, maybe, ye’ll be making Siddy’s fav’rite pancakes for supper. It’s mesilf can’t give thim the turn at the right moment like ye can.”
“Judy, you old flatterer! You know nobody can make pancakes like yours.”
“Oh, oh, but the pastry now, Patsy, I niver had the light hand wid it that ye do be having. Sure that pie ye was after making last wake-ind . . . it did be looking as if it had just stipped out av the pages av that magazine Winnie takes.”
“Sure and that’ll divart her a bit,” thought Judy. But it didn’t.
“I can’t help worrying, Judy. It will be dreadful if I don’t pass . . . it will hurt mother so. And she mustn’t be hurt.”
For everybody at Silver Bush had become very careful of mother without saying much about it. Nobody ever heard her complain but all winter she had been taking little bitter strychnine tablets for the heart and a “rest” in the afternoons. The shadow had crept towards Silver Bush so stealthily that even yet they hardly realised its grim presence. Father was looking grey and worried. Although none of the children knew it the doctor was advising an operation and Judy and Aunt Edith were, for the first, last, and only time in their lives of the same opinion about it.
“They’ll just cut her up for an experiment,” said Aunt Edith wrathfully. “I know them.”
“Indade and I wudn’t put it by thim,” agreed Judy bitterly.
Mother herself would not hear of an operation. She felt that it couldn’t be afforded: but she didn’t tell Long Alec that. She merely said that she was frightened of it. Long Alec rather marvelled at this. He had never associated fear of any kind with his wife. But then neither had he ever associated that strange languor and willingness to lie quietly and let other people do the work. Mother had never hurried through life; she had walked leisurely . . . Judy was wont to say she had never known any one who made so little noise moving round a house . . . but she got a surprising amount of work done.
Pat got through the exams e
ventually and even dared to hope she had done fairly well. She left Queen’s with a good deal of regret and grimy Linden Avenue with none at all. Home again to dear Silver Bush, never more to leave it . . . for the home school was promised her and Pat had already in imagination spent a year’s salary on Silver Bush. Several years’, in fact . . . there were so many things she wanted to do for it. How she loved it! The house and everything about it were linked inextricably with her life and thought. There was one verse in the Bible she could never understand. Forget also thine own people and thy father’s house. It always made her shiver. How could anybody do that?
She fell in love with life all over again on those spring evenings when she walked over the hill or by Jordan or in the secret paths of her enchanted birches. Winds . . . delicate dawns . . . starry nights . . . shore fields blurred by a silvery fog . . . the cool wet greenness of the spring rains . . . all had a message for her and all made her think of Bets . . . even yet Pat’s voice quivered when she pronounced that name.
Where was Bets?
“In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams”
did her footsteps wind?
“I wonder if Bets isn’t homesick in heaven for this?” Pat pointed to the white lilac over the garden fence. “And she must miss the sunsets. This is just such a night as she loved, Judy. Oh, Judy, last spring she was here. All winter at Queen’s, where she had never been, it wasn’t so hard. But here . . . everything seems to speak of her. To-night, when I smell that white lilac it seems to me that she must be near. She doesn’t seem dead any more. She just seems around the corner somewhere, still dear and loving. But oh, I want her so!”
“Pat,” came Cuddles’ voice, clear and insistent at her elbow, “do you think I have It?”
“We’ll be having our hands full wid that same young Cuddles,” Judy had confided to Pat that very day. “In a few years that is, whin she grows into her eyes. Yer Uncle Tom sees it. Wasn’t it only yisterday he sez to me, sez he, ‘Ye’ll be finding her a handful.’ Oh, oh, she’ll dance through life, that one.”
Pat could not realize that Cuddles was by way of getting to be a big girl. It was only yesterday she had been an adorable baby, with dimpled arms and cheeks, whose very look said “come and love me.” And now she was eleven . . . with one teasing, unruly curl hanging down the middle of her forehead and a nose that even at eleven was not the smudge of other elevens. And her eyes! No wonder Cuddles was spoiled. When she looked up sorrowfully and appealingly, she was never punished severely. You couldn’t punish a young saint gone astray. Cuddles’ eyes were always asking for something and always getting it. Unlike Pat, Cuddles revelled in chums and Silver Bush was over-run with them . . . “chattering like crows,” said Judy indulgently. Judy was proud of Cuddles’ popularity. As for the opposite sex . . . well, if tributes of sticky candies and moist apples, and stickier and moister dabs of kisses meant anything Cuddles certainly had “It.”
“When I was eleven,” said Pat with the tone of eighty, “I wasn’t thinking of such things, Miss Rachel.”
“Oh, but I’m a modern child,” said Cuddles serenely. “And Trix Binnie says you’ve got to have It or the boys won’t look at you.”
Judy shook her grey head solemnly, as if to remark, “If they say these things in the green tree what will they say in the dry?” But Cuddles persisted.
“You might tell me what it is, Pat, and if you think I’ve got It. After all” . . . Cuddles was very serious . . . . “I’d rather get information from my own family than from the Binnies.”
“The sinse av her now!” said Judy.
Pat took Cuddles off into the grave-yard and, sitting on Wild Dick’s tombstone, tried to give her some “information.” She felt that she must fill mother’s place with darling Cuddles now. Mother must not be bothered.
2
And then the shadow, which had been creeping nearer and nearer, pounced.
Mother was ill . . . mother was very, very ill.
Mother was dying.
Nobody said it but everybody knew it. Except Judy who stubbornly refused to believe it. Judy wouldn’t give up hope. She hadn’t got “the sign.”
“And I’ll not be belaving it till I do,” she said.
Pat wouldn’t believe it either.
“Mother can’t die,” she said desperately, “not our mother.”
They had always taken mother so for granted. She had always been there . . . she always would be there. How was it possible to picture anything else?
Pat had not even Hilary to help her through those weeks. Hilary was up west, helping another uncle build a house. The task delighted Hilary. It had an ideal quality for him. Besides, before he could design houses he wanted to know all about building them, from the ground up.
“Bets last year . . . and now mother,” thought Pat.
Then came a torturing hope. The specialist who was called in advised an operation. With it, he conceded, there was a chance. Without it, none.
Judy, when she heard there was to be an operation, gave up hope at once, sign or no sign.
“Oh, oh, it’s mesilf shud be dying instid av her,” she muttered. “I don’t be knowing what the Good Man Above means, so I don’t.”
Gentleman Tom winked inscrutably.
“Ye can’t be doing innything, cat dear. Ye wudn’t let what was after Patsy that time get her. But ye can’t be guarding Mrs. Long Alec . . . not if they take her to that hospital to be cut up. And her a Selby av the Bay Shore!”
Pat was up in mother’s room. A new Pat . . . older . . . graver. But more hopeful. As long as one had a little hope!
Mother had asked to be propped up in bed, so that she might see the green fields she loved. Her hands lay on the counterpane. It was strange to see mother’s hands so white and idle.
She was to be taken to the hospital the next day. Mother was very fine and simple and brave about it. But when had mother ever been anything else? Mother had never been excitable like the Gardiners. Her spirit was always at rest, so that any one who came into her presence was always conscious of a great calm. Her eyes were still the asking eyes of a girl and yet there was something maternal about her bosom that made you want to lay your head on it if you were tired or troubled.
“The apple blossoms are out. I’m glad I’ve seen them once more. I was a girl under them once, Pat, like you . . . and your father . . .”
Mother’s voice trailed off into some hinterland of happy remembrance.
“You’ll see the apple blossoms for many more springs, mother darling. You’ll come back from the hospital cured and well . . . and I’ve ordered a lovely day for you to go on.”
Mother smiled.
“I hope so. I’ve never given myself up yet, Pat. But I’d like to talk to you a little about some things . . . supposing I don’t come back. We must look that in the face, dearest. Winnie will be marrying Frank . . . and you will have to take my place, you know.”
“I . . . I know,” choked Pat. “And I’ll never, never marry, mother, I promise that. I’ll stay here and keep a home for dad and Sid and Cuddles. Sid won’t want to marry ever, when he has me.”
Again mother smiled.
“I don’t ask you to promise that, dear. I’d like to think you’ll marry some day. I want you to be a happy wife and a joyful mother of children. Like I’ve been. I’ve been so happy here, Patsy. I was only twenty when I came here. A spoiled child, too . . . and as for housekeeping, I didn’t know the difference between simmering and boiling. Judy taught me . . . wonderful old Judy. Be good to her, Pat . . . if I don’t come back. But I needn’t tell you that. Judy was so good to me. She was even quite fierce about my working . . . she hated to see my hands spoiled. I had pretty hands, Pat. But I didn’t mind spoiling them for Silver Bush. I’ve loved it as you do. Every room in it has always been a friend of mine . . . had a life of its own for me. How I loved to wake up in the night and feel that my husband and my children were well and safe and warm, sleeping peacefull
y. Life hasn’t anything better to offer a woman than that, Patsy.”
Mother didn’t say this all at one. There were long pauses when she lay very still . . . little gasps for breath. Sometimes terrible lances of fear pierced Pat’s new armour of hope. When father came in to take her place as watcher Pat went down and out to the dark garden. Every one else was in bed, even Judy. She could not go to bed . . . she could not sleep. The night was warm and kind. It put its arms around her like a mother. The white iris seemed to shine hopefully in the dark. Bold-and-Bad came padding along the walk and curled up in her lap. There were times when even Bold-and-Bad could behave like a Christian. He knew that Pat needed comfort and he did his best to give it.
Pat sat on the garden bench until dawn came over the Hill of the Mist and Bold-and-Bad ran away for a glorious mouse hunt in the grave-yard. The day had begun in a pale windless morning . . . the day on which mother was to go. Would she ever return?
That old hynm she had hated . . . “change and decay in all around I see.”
Change was what she had always dreaded.
“Oh, Thou who changest not abide with me.”
It was not a hateful hymn after all . . . it was a hymn to be loved. How wonderful to feel that there was something that never changed . . . a Power under and above and around on which you could depend. Peace seemed to flow into her.
“Child dear, whativer got ye up so early?”
“I wasn’t in bed at all. I’ve been in the garden, Judy . . . just praying.”
“Oh, oh, it’s all inny av us can be doing now,” said Judy despairingly.
Cuddles had not been allowed to know the worst but she heard it in school that day and Pat had hard work to comfort her that evening.
“And what do you think Trix Binnie said?” she sobbed. “She said she envied me . . . it was so exciting to have a death in the house.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 332