“A very special bit of news,” said Pat. “I saved it to tell you this afternoon when we’d be out here. Hilary sent in the design for a window to some big competition . . . and it won the prize. Against a hundred and sixty competitors.”
“It’s the cliver lad Jingle is . . . and it’ll be the lucky girl that do be getting him.”
Pat ignored this. She didn’t want Hilary Gordon for anything but a friend but she did not exactly warm to the idea of that “lucky girl” whoever she was.
“Hilary always had a liking for windows. Whenever he saw one that stood out from the ordinary run he went into raptures over it. That little dormer one in old Mary McClenahan’s house . . . Judy, do you remember the time you sent us to her to witch McGinty back?”
“And she did, didn’t she now?”
“She knew where he was to be found anyhow,” Pat sighed. “Judy, life was really more fun when I believed she was a witch.”
“I’m telling ye.” Judy nodded her clipped grey head mysteriously. “The less ye do be belaving the colder life do be. This bush now . . . it was nicer whin it was packed full av fairies, wasn’t it?”
“Yes . . . in a way. But their magic still hangs round it, though the fairies are gone.”
“Oh, oh, ye belaved in thim once, that’s why. If ye don’t belave in fairies they can’t exist. That do be why grown folks can niver be seeing thim,” said Judy sagely. “It’s pitying the children I am that niver have the chanct to belave in fairies. They’ll be the poorer all their lives bekase av it.”
“I remember one story you told me . . . of the little girl who was playing in a bush like this and was lured away to fairyland by exquisite music. I used to tiptoe through here in the ‘dim’ and listen for it. But I don’t think I really wanted to hear it . . . I was afraid that if I went to fairyland I’d never come back. And no fairy country could ever satisfy me after Silver Bush.”
The look came into Pat’s brook-brown eyes which always made people feel she was remembering something very lovely. Pat was not the beauty of the Gardiner family but there was magic in her face when that look came. She rose and folded up her sewing and went down to the house, followed by McGinty. The robins were beginning to whistle and the clouds over the bush were turning to a faint rose. The ferns and long grasses of the path were gold in the light of the westering sun. Away to the right long shadows were creeping over the hill pasture. And down beyond the low fields was the blue mist that was an August sea.
Sid was in the yard trying to make an obstinate calf drink. Cuddles’ two pet white ducks were lying by the well. They were to be offered up for Thanksgiving dinner but Judy had not dared to hint this to Cuddles as yet. Father was mowing the early oats. Mother, her nap over, was down in the garden among the velvety Sweet Williams. A squirrel was running saucily over the kitchen roof. It was going to be a dear quiet evening, such as she loved best, with every one and everything at Silver Bush happy. Pat loved to see things and people happy; and she herself had the gift, than which there is none more enviable, of finding great pleasure in little things. The bats would be coming out at the rising of the moon and the great, green spaciousness of the farm would be all around the house that always seemed to her more a person than a house.
“Pat’s just as crazy as ever about Silver Bush, isn’t she?” said Cuddles. “I think she’d die if she had to leave it. I don’t believe she’ll ever get married, Judy, just because of that. I love Silver Bush, too, but I don’t want to live here all my life. I want to go away . . . and have adventures . . . and see the world.”
“Sure and it wudn’t do if iverybody wanted to stay at home,” agreed Judy. “But Patsy has always had Silver Bush in her heart . . . right at the very core av it. Whin she was no more than five she was asking yer mother one fine day where God was. And yer mother sez gentle-like, ‘He is iverywhere, Patsy.’ ‘Iverywhere?’ sez Pat, her eyes that pitiful. ‘Hasn’t He got inny home? Oh, mother, I’m so sorry for Him.’ Did ye iver hear av such a thing as being sorry for God! Well, that was me liddle Pat. Cuddles dear” . . . Judy lowered her voice like a conspirator, although Pat was well out of sight and hearing . . . “Jem Robinson has been hanging round a bit, hasn’t he now? He’s a rale nice lad and only one year more to go at college. Do ye be thinking Pat has inny notion av him?”
“I’m sure she hasn’t, Judy. Though she says the only thing she has against him is that his face needs side-whiskers and he was born a generation too late. I heard her say that to Sid. What did she mean, Judy?”
“The Good Man Above do alone be knowing,” groaned Judy. “Sure, Cuddles darling, it’s all right to be a bit particular-like. The Silver Bush girls have niver been like the Binnies. ‘Olive has a beau for ivery night in the wake,’ sez Mrs. Binnie to me onct, boastful-like. ‘So she do be for going in for quantity afore quality,’ sez I. But what if ye’re too particular? I’m asking ye.”
“I’m not old enough to have beaus yet,” said Cuddles, “but just you wait till I am. It must be thrilling, Judy, to have some one tell you he loves you.”
“Ould Tom Drinkwine did be telling me that onct upon a time but niver a thrill did I be faling,” said Judy reflectively.
2
“All the months are friends of mine but apple month is the dearest,” chanted Pat.
It was October at Silver Bush and she and Cuddles and Judy picked apples in the New Part of the orchard every afternoon . . . which wasn’t so very new now, since it was all of twenty years old. But the Old Part was very much older and the apples in it were mostly sweet and fed to the pigs. Sometimes Long Alec Gardiner thought it would be far better to cut it down and get some real good out of the land but Pat couldn’t be made to hear reason about it. She loved the Old Part far better than the New. It had been planted by Great-grandfather Gardiner and was shadowy and mysterious, with as many old spruce trees as apple trees in it, and one special corner where generations of beloved cats and kittens had been buried. Besides, as Pat pointed out, if you cleared away the Old Part it would leave the graveyard open to all the world, since the Old Part surrounded it on three sides. This argument had weight with Long Alec. He was proud, in his way, of the old family burial plot, where nobody was ever buried now but where so many greats and grands of every degree slept . . . for the Gardiners of Silver Bush came of old P.E. Island pioneer stock. So the Old Part was spared and in spring it was as beautiful as the New Part, when the gnarled trees were young and bridal again for a brief space in the sweet spring days and the cool spring nights.
It was such a mellow and dreamy afternoon and Silver Bush seemed mellow and dreamy, too. Pat thought the old farm had a mood for every day in the year and every hour in the day. Now it would be gay . . . now melancholy . . . now friendly . . . now austere . . . now grey . . . now golden. To-day it was golden. The Hill of the Mist had wrapped a scarf of blue haze about its brown shoulders and was mysteriously lovely still, in spite of the missing Lombardy. Behind it a great castle of white cloud, with mauve shadows, towered up. There had been a delicate, ghostly rain the night before and the scent of the little hollow in the graveyard, full of frosted ferns, was distilled on the air. How green the pastures were for autumn! The kitchen yard was full of the pale gold of aspens and the turkey house was almost lost in a blaze of crimson sumacs. The white birches which some forgotten bride had planted along the Whispering Lane, that led from Silver Bush to Swallowfield, were amber, and the huge maple over the well was a flame. When Pat paused every few minutes just to look at it she whispered,
“‘The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.’”
“What might ye be whispering to yersilf, Patsy? Sure and ye might be telling us if it’s inny joke. It seems to be delighting ye.”
Pat lifted eyebrows like little slender wings.
“It was just a bit of poetry, Judy, and you don’t care much for poetry.”
“Oh, oh, po’try do be all right in its place but it won’t be kaping the
apples if there’s a hard frost some av these nights. We’re a bit behind wid the picking as it is. And more work than iver to look forward to, now that yer dad has bought the ould Adams place for pasture and going into the live stock business.”
“But he’s going to have a hired man to help him, Judy.”
“Oh, oh, and who will be looking after the hired man I’m asking ye. He’ll be nading a bite to ate, I’m thinking, and mebbe a bit av washing and minding done. Not that I’m complaining av the work, mind ye. But ye can niver tell about an outsider. It’s been minny a long day since we had inny av the brade at Silver Bush and it’ll be a bit av a change, as ye say yersilf.”
“I don’t mind changes that mean things coming as much as changes that means things going,” said Pat, pausing to aim a wormy apple at two kittens who were chasing each other up the tree trunks. “And I’m so glad dad has bought the old Adams place. The little stone bridge Hilary and I built over Jordan and the Haunted Spring will belong to us now . . . and Happiness.”
“Oh, oh, to think av buying happiness now!” chuckled Judy. “I wasn’t after thinking it cud be done, Patsy.”
“Judy, don’t you remember that Hilary and I called the little hill by the Haunted Spring Happiness? We used to have such lovely times there.”
“Oh, I’m minding. It was just me liddle joke, Patsy dear. Sure and it tickled me ribs to think av inny one being able to buy happiness. Oh, oh, there do be a few things God kapes to Himsilf and that do be one av thim. Though I did be knowing a man in ould Ireland that tried to buy off Death.”
“He couldn’t do that, Judy,” sighed Pat, recalling with a shiver the dark day when Bets, the lovely and beloved friend of her childhood, had died and left a blank in her life that had never been filled.
“But he did. And thin, whin he wanted death and prayed for him Death wudn’t come. ‘No, no,’ sez Death, ‘a bargain is a bargain.’ But this hired man now . . . where is he going to slape? That’s been bothering me a bit. Wud yer dad be wanting me to give up me snug kitchen chamber for him and moving somewhere up the front stairs?”
Judy couldn’t keep the anxiety out of her voice. Pat shook her slim brown hands, that talked quite as eloquently as her lips, at Judy reassuringly.
“No, indeed, Judy. Dad knows that kitchen chamber is your kingdom. He’s going to fit up that nice little loft over the granary for him. Put a stove and a bed and a bit of furniture in it and it will be very comfortable. He can spend his evenings there when he’s home, don’t you think? What’s been worrying me, Judy, was that he might want to hang around the kitchen and spoil our jolly evenings.”
“Oh, oh, we’ll manage.” Judy was suddenly in good cheer. She would have surrendered her kitchen chamber without a word of protest had Long Alec so decreed but the thought had lain heavy on her heart. She had slept so cosily in that chamber for over forty years. “All I’m hoping is that yer dad won’t be hiring Sim Ledbury. He’s been after the place I hear.”
“Oh, surely dad wouldn’t want a Ledbury round,” said Cuddles.
“Ye can’t pick and choose, Cuddles dear. That do be the trouble. Hired hilp is be way av being scarce and yer dad must be having a man that understands cows. Sim do be thinking he does. But a Ledbury wid the freedom av me kitchen will be a hard pill to swallow and him wid a face like a tombstone and born hating cats. Gintleman Tom took just the one look at him the day he was here and thin made himsilf scarce. If we can be getting a man who’ll be good company for the cats ye’ll niver hear a word av complaint from me about him, as long as he’s willing to do a bit av work for his wages. Yer dad has got his name up for niver being put out at innything so he cud be imposed upon something shameful. But we’ll all be seeing what we’ll see and now we’ve finished wid this tree I’m going in to bake me damsons.”
“I’m going to stay out till the sunshine fails me. I think, Judy, when I grow very old I’ll just sit and bask in the sunshine all the time . . . I love it so. Cuddles, what about a run back to the Secret Field before sunset?”
Cuddles shook a golden-brown head.
“I’d love to go but you know I twisted my foot this morning and it hurts me yet. I’m going over to sit on Weeping Willy’s slab in the graveyard for a while and just dream. I feel shimmery to-day . . . as if I was made of sunbeams.”
When Cuddles said things like that Pat had a vague feeling that Cuddles was clever and ought to be educated if it could be managed. But it had to be admitted that so far Cuddles seemed to share the family indifference to education. She went in unashamedly for “a good time” and pounced on life like a cat on a mouse.
Pat slipped away for one of her dear pilgrimages to the Secret Field . . . that little tree-encircled spot at the very back of the farm, which she and Sid had discovered so long ago and which she, at least, had loved ever since. Almost every Sunday evening, when they walked over the farm, talking and planning . . . for Sid was developing into an enthusiastic farmer . . . they ended up with the Secret Field, which was always in grass and always bore a wonderful crop of wild strawberries. Sid had promised her he would never plough it up. It was really too small to be worthwhile cultivating anyhow. And if it were ploughed up there might never be any more of Judy’s famous wild strawberry shortcakes or those still more delicious things Pat made and which she called strawberry cream pies.
It was nice to go there with Sid but it was even nicer to go alone. There was nothing then to come between her and the silent, rapt communion she seemed to hold with it. It was the loneliest and loveliest spot on the farm. Its very silence was friendly and seemed to come out of the woods around it like a real presence. No wind ever blew there and rain and snow fell lightly. In summer it was a pool of sunlight, in winter a pool of frost . . . now in autumn a pool of colour. Musky, spicy shadows seemed to hover around its grey old fences. Pat always felt that the field knew it was beautiful and was happy in its knowledge. She lingered in it until the sun set and then went slowly back home, savouring every moment of the gathering dusk. What a lovely phrase “gathering dusk” was . . . almost as lovely as Judy’s “dim”, though the latter had a certain eerie quality that always gave Pat a rapture.
At the top of the hill field she paused, as always, to gloat over Silver Bush. The light shone out from the door and windows of the kitchen where Judy would be preparing supper, with the cats watching for a “liddle bite” and McGinty cocking a pointed ear for Pat’s footstep. Would it be as nice when that unknown creature, the all-too-necessary hired man, would be hanging round, waiting for his supper? Of course it wouldn’t. He would be a stranger and an alien. Pat fiercely resented the thought of him.
They would have supper by lamplight now. For a while she always hated to have to light the lamp for supper . . . it meant that the wind had blown the summer away and that winter nights were closing in. Then she liked it . . . it was so cosy and companionable and Silver Bushish, with Judy’s “dim” looking in through the crimson vines around the window.
The colour of home on an autumn dusk was an exquisite thing. The trees all around it seemed to love it. The house belonged to them and to the garden and the green hill and the orchard and they to it. You couldn’t separate them, Pat felt. She always wondered how any one could live in a house where there were no trees. It seemed an indecency, like a too naked body. Trees . . . to veil and caress and beshadow . . . trees to warn you back and beckon you on. Lombardies for statelines . . . birches for maiden grace . . . maples for friendliness . . . spruce and fir for mystery . . . poplars to whisper secrets. Only they never really did. You thought you understood as long as you listened . . . but when you left them you realized they had just been laughing at you . . . thin, rustling, silky laughter. All the trees kept some secret. Who knew but that all those white birches, which stood so primly all day, when night and moonlight came, might step daintily out of the earth and pirouette over the meadows, while the young spruces around the Mince Pie field danced a saraband? Laughing at her fancy, Pat ran into the light and g
ood cheer of Judy’s white-washed kitchen with life singing in her heart.
3
“Tillytuck! Did ye iver be hearing the like av that for a name?” said Judy, quite flabbergasted for once. “Niver have I heard such a name on the Island before.”
“He’s been working on the south shore for years but he really belongs to Nova Scotia, dad says,” said Cuddles.
“Oh, oh, that ixplains it. Minny a quare name I’ve known coming out av Novy Scoshy. And what will we be after calling him? If he’s a young chap we can be calling him be his given name if he do be having one but if he’s a bit oldish it’ll have to be Mr. Tillytuck, since hired hilp is getting so uppish these days, and it’ll be the death av me if I do have to be saying ‘Mr. Tillytuck’ ivery time I open me mouth. Mister Tillytuck!”
Judy savoured the absurdity of it.
“He’s quite old, dad says. Over fifty,” remarked Cuddles.
“And dad says, too, that he’s a bit peculiar.”
“Peculiar, is it, thin? Oh, oh, people do be saying that I’m a bit that way mesilf, so there’ll be a pair av us. Is he peculiar in being worth his salt in the way av work? That do be the question.”
“He comes well recommended and dad was almost in despair of getting any one half suitable.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 337