“Judy, what is it?”
“Ye may well ask,” said Judy. “Will ye be looking at the crest? And the post-mark?”
Pat took the letter.
“I feel a thrill . . . several thrills,” whispered Cuddles.
“Thrills, is it? Sure and ye’ll be having thrills wid a vengeance if that do be what I’m thinking it is.”
“It’s for mother,” said Pat slowly. Mother was away for a visit at Glenwood. “I suppose we’d better open it. It may be something requiring prompt attention.”
Judy handed Pat the paring knife. She had a presentiment that the letter should not be torn open like an ordinary epistle. Pat slit the envelope, took out the letter . . . likewise crested . . . and glanced over it. She turned red . . . she turned pale . . . she stared at the others in silence.
“What is it?” whispered Cuddles. “Quick . . . I’ve got such a queer prickly feeling in my spine.”
“It’s from the Countess of Medchester,” said Pat in a hollow voice. “She says she promised Lady Gresham she would see her cousins before she returned to England . . . she’s coming to Charlottetown to visit friends and she wants to come out here . . . here . . . next Saturday. Saturday!”
Poor Pat repeated the word as if Saturday meant the end of the world.
For a moment nobody spoke . . . could speak. Even Tillytuck seemed to have passed into a state of coma. In the silence Gentleman Tom reached over and dug a claw into his leg but Tillytuck did not even wince.
Cuddles was the first to recover.
“Have the Countess of Medchester here,” she gasped. “We can’t.”
But Judy had got her second wind. She was an expert in dealing with situations without precedent.
“Oh, oh, mebbe we can’t . . . but we will. What’s a countess whin all is said and done? Sure, she’ll ate and drink and wash behind her ears like inny common person. What time av day will she be here, Patsy?”
“The forenoon . . . she’s leaving on the night boat. That means she’ll be here for dinner, Judy!”
“She will be in a good place for the same thin, I’m telling ye. It will be a proud day for Silver Bush and no countess was iver ating a better male than we can be putting up. But ‘twill take some planning, so kape up yer pecker, Patsy, and let’s be getting down to brass tacks. We’ve no time for blithering. Sure and yer countesses can’t be ating lilac blossoms.”
Pat came up gasping. She felt ashamed of herself. It was positively Binnie-like to be flabbergasted like this.
“You’re right, of course, Judy. Let me see . . . this is Tuesday. The floors in the dining room and the Big Parlour must be done over . . . they’re simply terrible. I’ll paint them to-day and stain them to-morrow. I wish I could do something to the front door. The paint is all peeling off. But I daren’t meddle with it. We must just leave it open and trust she won’t notice it. Then, Cuddles, we have to go to Winnie’s one day this week to help her get her sewing done. We should have gone last week but I wanted to wait till this week to see their big crab-apple tree in bloom. We’ll go Thursday. That will give us Friday to prepare. We must take her to the Poet’s room because the ceiling isn’t cracked there as it is in the spare room and we must put the spread mother embroidered on the bed. Sid can go for mother Friday evening. It is a shame to have her visit cut short when it’s her first for years . . . but of course she’d like to be here.”
“Oh, oh, and there’ll be two great ladies together thin,” said Judy. “I’ll match yer mother agin inny countess in the world. Sure and a Bay Shore Selby cud hould up her hid wid inny av the quality.”
Pat was herself again. Tillytuck was lost in admiration of her. From that moment Silver Bush was a place of excited but careful planning and overhauling and cleaning and decorating and discussing. Even Tillytuck had his say.
“The dinner’s the thing,” he told them. “A good meal is never to be sneezed at, speaking symbolically.”
Every one agreed with this. The dinner must be such as even the wife of a belted earl could not turn up her nose at. Pat did endless research work among all her recipe books. Cuddles cut school to help. What was Latin and the chance of tattooing compared to this?
It was decided to have fried chicken for dinner . . . Judy’s fried chicken was something to dream about.
“Wid sparrow grass. Sure and sparrow grass is a sort av lordly vegetable. Ye’ll be making the sauce ye larned at the Short Coorse, Patsy dear. And will ye be having time to hemstitch the new napkins?”
“Cuddles and I are going to sit up all night to do them. I think we’ll have iced melon balls and ice-cream for dessert and a lemon cocoanut cake. We mustn’t attempt too much.”
“Not to be ostentatious,” agreed Judy who dearly loved a big word now and then.
“And, after all, she may be on a diet,” grinned Cuddles. Cuddles had regained all her insouciance. Trix Binnie would be sunk when she heard of it all, positively sunk.
“I hope she’ll think Silver Bush nice,” breathed Pat. That was all she really cared about.
“She cudn’t be hilping it,” said Judy. “Let’s be hoping it will be fine on Saturday. If it rains . . .”
Judy left it to the imagination what it would be like to entertain a countess in a rainstorm.
“It must be fine,” was Pat’s ultimatum.
“Do you think it wouldn’t be a good thing to . . . to pray for fine weather?” suggested Cuddles, who felt that no chances should be taken. Judy shook her head solemnly.
“Girls dear, I wudn’t. Ye can niver be telling what comes av such praying. Well do I rimimber the day in South Glen church whin the minister, ould Mr. McCary, did be praying for rain wid all his might and main. Whin the people were going home from church down comes a thunderstorm and drinches iverybody to the skin. Ould James Martin and ould Thomas Urquhart were together and Thomas sez, sez he, ‘I do be wishing he hadn’t prayed till we got home. Thim McCarys niver cud be moderate,’ sez he. So ye’d better be laving it to nature, girls dear. And thank the Good Man Above there’ll be no Jerusalem cherries around. Whin she comes, Patsy dear, av coorse I’ll kape in the background but don’t ye be thinking I’d better have me dress-up dress on, in case she might catch a glimpse av me coming or going?”
“Of course, Judy. And oh, Judy, do you think you could coax Tillytuck to leave off that terrible old fur cap of his for one day? If she saw him going through the yard!”
“Niver be worrying over Tillytuck. He’ll be away to town that day wid the calves yer dad sold. And none too well plazed about it. Him thinking he wanted a glimpse av a countess! And trying to be sarcastic. He sez to me, sez he, ‘Kape a stiff upper lip, Judy. After all, yer grandmother was a witch and that’s sort of aristocracy, symbolically spaking.’ ‘I’m not nading to stiffen me upper lip,’ sez I. ‘I do be knowing me place and kaping it, spaking the plain truth and no symbols.’ Tillytuck do be getting a bit out av hand. He was after smoking his pipe in the graveyard today, setting on Waping Willy’s tombstone as bould as brass.”
“Aunt Edith and Aunt Barbara are terribly excited,” said Pat. “I wanted them to come over for dinner but they wouldn’t. Aunt Edith vetoed it. However, she very kindly offered to lend us her silver soup spoons. She said a countess could tell at a glance if the spoons were solid or only plated. I’m so glad our teaspoons are solid . . . only they’re so old and thin.”
“Oh, oh, they do be all the more aristocratic for that,” comforted Judy. “The countess will be saying to hersilf, ‘There’s fam’ly behind thim. Nothing av the mushroom in thim,’ she’ll be saying. And spaking av the Swallowfield folks, have ye noticed innything odd about yer Uncle Tom’s beard?”
“Yes . . . it has almost disappeared,” sighed Pat. “It’s nothing more than an imperial now.”
“Whin it disappears altogether we’ll be hearing some news,” said Judy with a mysterious nod.
But Pat had no time just then to be worrying over Uncle Tom’s vanishing whiskers. By Wednesday night S
ilver Bush was ready for the countess . . . or for royalty itself. On Thursday Sid took Pat and Cuddles over to the Bay Shore to help Winnie with her spring sewing. They really sewed all the forenoon. In the afternoon Winnie said, “Never mind any more for a while. Come out in the wind and sun. We don’t often have such an afternoon to spend together.”
They prowled about the garden, picking flowers, drinking in the crab-apple blossoms, watching the harbour and making nonsense rhymes. In the midst of their fun they heard the telephone ring in the house.
12
Pat went in to answer it, as Winnie had her Christmas baby in her arms. When Pat heard Judy’s voice she knew that something tremendous had occurred for Judy never used the telephone if she could help it.
“Patsy dear, is it yersilf? I do be having a word for you. She’s here.”
“Judy! Who? Not the countess?”
“I’m telling ye. But I can’t be ixplaining over the phone. Only come as quick as ye can, darlint. Siddy and yer dad have gone to town.”
“We’ll be right over,” gasped Pat.
But how to get right over? Frank was away with the car. There was nothing for it but the old buggy and the old grey mare. It would take them an hour to get to Silver Bush. And Uncle Brian must be ‘phoned to and asked to bring mother right home. Between them Pat and Cuddles got the mare harnessed and after several hundred years . . . or what seemed like it . . . they found themselves alighting in the yard of Silver Bush . . . which looked as quiet and peaceful as usual with Just Dog sleeping on the door-stone and three kittens curled up in a ball on the well platform.
“I suppose the countess is in the Big Parlour,” said Pat. “Let’s slip into the kitchen and find out everything from Judy first.”
“How do you talk to countesses?” gasped Cuddles. “Pat, I think I’ll go and hide in the barn loft.”
“Indeed you won’t! You’re not a Binnie! We’ll see Judy and then we’ll slip upstairs and get some decent clothes on before we beard the lion in her den.”
Pat had on her blue linen afternoon dress . . . which, incidentally, was the most becoming thing she owned. Cuddles wore her pretty green sweater with its little white embroidered linen collar, above which her wind-tossed hair gleamed, the colour of sunlight on October beeches. Both girls ran, giggling with nervousness, up the herringbone brick walk to the kitchen door and rushed in unceremoniously. Then they both stopped in their tracks. Cuddles’ eyes wirelessed to Pat, “Do you really live through things like this or do you just die?”
Judy Plum and the Countess of Medchester were sitting by the table, whereon were the remnants of a platterful of baked sausages and potatoes. At the very moment of the girls’ entry Judy was pouring cream from her “cream cow” into her ladyship’s cup and the latter was helping herself to a piece of the delightful thing Judy called “Bishop’s bread.” Gentleman Tom was attending meticulously to his toilet in the centre of the floor and Bold-and-Bad was coiled on the countess’ lap, while McGinty was squatted by the legs of her chair. Tillytuck was sitting in his corner . . . fortunately minus the fur cap, which, however, hung on his chair back. Judy was in her striped drugget but with a beautiful white apron starched stiff as a board. She was as completely at her ease as if the countess had been a scrubwoman. As for Lady Medchester, Pat, amid all her dumfounderment, instantly got the impression that she was enjoying herself hugely.
“And here,” said Judy, with incredible nonchalance, “are the girls I’ve been telling ye av . . . Mrs. Long Alec’s daughters. Patricia and Rachel.”
The countess instantly got up and shook hands with Patricia and Rachel. She had mouse-coloured hair and a square, reddish face, but the smile on her wide mouth was charming.
“I’m so glad you’ve come before I have to go,” she said. “It would have been dreadful to go back home and have to tell Clara that I hadn’t seen any of her cousins at all. She has always had such a dear recollection of some wonderful days she spent on Prince Edward Island when a child. It was too bad to come down on you like this. But I got a cable from England last night which made it imperative I should leave to-night, so I had to come this afternoon. Your Judy . . .” she flashed a smile at Judy . . . “made me delightfully welcome and showed me around your lovely home . . . and, last but not least, has given me a most delicious meal. I was so hungry.”
Somehow they found themselves all sitting around the table. Pat realized thankfully that Judy had had sense enough to put the best tablecloth on it and the silver spoons. But why on earth hadn’t she got supper in the dining room? And what was the silver teapot doing on the dresser while the old brown crockery one graced the table?
And there was Tillytuck sitting in his shirt sleeves! Was there really anything to do but die? What was one to say? Pat wildly thought of an article in a recent magazine on “How to Start a Conversation With People You Have Just Met,” but none of the gambits seemed to fit in here exactly. However, they were not necessary. The countess kept on talking in a frank, friendly, charming way that somehow included everybody, even Tillytuck. Pat, with a reckless feeling that nothing mattered now anyhow, flung conventionality to the winds. Cuddles was never long rattled by anything and in a surprisingly short time they were all chatting gaily and merrily. The countess insisted on their having some tea and Bishop’s Bread with her . . . she was on her third cup herself, she said. Judy trotted to the pantry and brought back some forgotten orange biscuits. Lady Medchester wanted to hear all about mother and was only sorry she couldn’t see her way clear to taking a Silver Bush kitten back with her to England.
“You see one of your cats has already quite made up his mind to like me,” she laughed, looking down at the placidly heaving, furry flanks of Bold-and-Bad.
“And that cat don’t condescend to every one, speaking symbolically, ma’am,” said Tillytuck.
Pat had a confused impression that it was quite proper to say “ma’am” to a queen but hardly the way to address a countess. A countess! Was this stout, comfortable lady, in the plain, rather sloppy tweed suit, really a countess? Why . . . why . . . she seemed just like anybody else. She had the oddest resemblance to Mrs. Snuffy Madison of South Glen! Only Mrs. Snuffy was the better looking!
And there was no mistaking it . . . she was enjoying the bread and biscuits.
“Cats don’t,” said Lady Medchester, smiling at Tillytuck out of her hazel eyes and giving the wistful McGinty a nip of sausage. “That is why their approval, when they do bestow it, is really so much more of a compliment than a dog’s. Dogs are so much easier pleased, don’t you think?”
“You’ve said a mouthful, ma’am,” said Tillytuck admiringly.
Cuddles, who, up to now, had contrived to keep a perfectly demure face, narrowly escaped choking to death over a gulp of tea. Pat, glancing wildly around, suddenly encountered Lady Medchester’s eyes. Something passed between them . . . understanding . . . comradeship . . . a delicious enjoyment of the situation. After that Pat didn’t care what anybody did or said . . . which was rather fortunate, for a few minutes later, when Lady Medchester happened to remark that she had had friends on the Titanic, Tillytuck said sympathetically, “Ah, so had I, ma’am . . . so had I.”
“The ould liar!” said Judy under her breath. But everybody heard her. This time it was Lady Medchester who narrowly escaped disaster over a bit of biscuit. And again her twinkling eyes sought Pat’s.
“Couldn’t you stay till mother comes?” asked Pat, as the countess rose, gently and regretfully displacing her lapful of silken cat.
“I’m so sorry I can’t. I’ve really stayed too long as it is. I have to catch that boat train. But it has been delightful. And I can tell Clara that at least I’ve seen Mary’s dear girls. You’ll be coming to England some day I’m sure, and when you do you must look me up. I’m so sorry to put this beautiful cat down.”
“You’ve got hairs all over your stomach, ma’am,” said Tillytuck. “Dogs ain’t like that now.”
If looks could have slain Jud
y would have been a murderess. But the countess put her hands on Pat’s shoulders, kissed her check and bowed her head, shaking with laughter.
“He’s priceless,” she whispered. “Priceless. And so is your Judy. Darlings, I only wish I could have stayed longer.”
The countess picked up a little squashy hat with a gold and brown feather on it that looked like a hand-me-down from the Silverbridge store, adjusted a silver fox stole which Pat knew must have cost a small fortune, kissed Cuddles, made a mysterious visit into the pantry with Judy, donned a pair of antiquated gauntlets and went out to her car. Before she got in she looked around her. Silver Bush had cast over her the spell it cast over all.
“A quiet, beautiful place where there is time to live,” she said, as if speaking to herself. Then she waved her hand to Judy . . . “We had such a pleasant little chat, hadn’t we?” . . . and was gone.
“Oh, oh, but Silver Bush has been honoured this day,” said Judy as they went back in.
“Judy, tell us everything . . . I’m simply bursting. And how did you come to have supper in the kitchen?”
“Oh, oh, don’t be blaming me,” entreated Judy. “It do be a long story that’ll take some telling. Niver did I live through such an afternoon in me life. Tillytuck, do ye be wanting a liddle bite? Not that ye desarve it . . . but there’s some av the pittaties and sausages lift if ye care for them.”
“What’s good enough for a countess is good enough for me,” said Tillytuck, sitting down to the table with avidity. “She’s a fine figure of a woman that, though maybe a bit broader in the beam than you’d expect of a countess, symbolically speaking. I found something alluring about her.”
“Come out to the graveyard,” whispered Judy to the girls. “We won’t be disturbed there and I can be telling ye the tale. Sure and ‘twill be one for the annals of Silver Bush.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 344