“Judy, last night as I passed the Little Parlour I heard May say to Sid, ‘Anyway you’ll have Silver Bush when your father dies.’ Judy, she did! When your father dies.”
Judy chuckled.
“It do be ill waiting for dead men’s shoes. Yer dad is good for twinty years yet at the laste. But it’s like a Binnie to be saying that same.”
2
Sometimes Pat would escape from it all to her fields and woods, at peace in their white loveliness. It carried her through many hard hours to remember that in ten minutes she could, if she must, be in that meadow solitude of her Secret Field, far from babble and confusion. There were yet wonderful ethereal dawns which she and Rae shared together . . . there were yet full moons rising behind snowy hills . . . rose tints over sunset dells . . . slender birches and shadowy nooks . . . winds calling to each other at night . . . apple-green “dims” . . . starry quietudes that soothed your pain . . . April buds in happiness . . . “Thank God, April still comes to the world” . . . and Silver Bush to be loved and protected and cherished.
And with the spring Joe came home, to be married at last; after every one had concluded, so Mrs. Binnie said, that poor Enid Sutton was never going to get him.
“Many’s the time I’ve said to her, ‘Don’t be too sure of him. A sailor has a sweetheart in every port. It isn’t as if you was still a girl. You never can depend on them sailors. Take Mrs. Rory MacPherson at the Bridge . . . a disappointed woman if ever there was one. Her husband was a sailor and she thought he was dead and was going to get married again when he turned up alive and well.’”
There was a big gay wedding at the Suttons and every one thought bronzed Joe remarkably handsome. Pat thought so, too, and was proud of him; but he seemed a stranger now . . . Joe, whose going had once been such a tragedy. She was even a little glad when all the fuss was over and Joe and his bride were gone on a wonderful bridal trip around the world in Joe’s new vessel. She could settle down to housecleaning and gardening now . . . at least, after Mrs. Binnie had had her say about the event.
“A grand wedding. Some people don’t see how old Charlie Sutton could afford it but I always say most folks is only married once and why not make a splurge. I always did like a wedding. Wasn’t May the naughty thing to run off the way she did, so sly-like? I’ll bet you folks here wasn’t a bit more flabbergasted than I was when I heard it. And maybe I didn’t feel upset about her coming in here with you all. But I always believed it would work out in time and it has. People said May could never live in peace here, Pat was such a crank. But I said, ‘No, Pat isn’t a crank. It’s just that you have to understand her.’ And I was right, wasn’t I, dearie? May made up her mind when she come here that she’d get along with you. ‘It takes two to make a quarrel, ma, you know,’ she said. And I said, ‘That’s the right spirit, dearie. Behave like a lady whatever you do. You’re a Gardiner now and must live up to their traditions. And you must make allowances.’ That’s what I said to her. ‘You must make allowances. And don’t be scared. I hope my daughter isn’t a coward,’ I said. It’s a real joy to me to see how well you’ve got on together, though I don’t deny that Judy Plum has been a hard nut to crack. May has felt certain things . . . May always did feel things so deeply. But she just made allowances as I advised her. ‘Judy Plum has been spoiled as every one knows,’ I told her, ‘but she’s old and breaking up fast and you can afford to humour her a bit, dearie.’ ‘Oh, I’m not going to stoop to argue with a servant,’ May says. ‘I’m above that.’ May always was so sensible. Well, I’m glad poor Enid Sutton has got married at last . . . she’s gone off terrible these past three years waiting for Joe and not knowing if he’d ever come. And what about you, Pat dearie? I can’t imagine what the men are thinking of. Isn’t your widower a bit slow?” . . . with a smirk that had the same effect on Pat as a dig in the ribs . . . “Folks think he’s trying to back out of it but I tell them, ‘no, that’ll be a match yet.’ Just you encourage him a little more, dearie . . . that’s all he needs. To be sure, May said to me the other day, I wouldn’t take another woman’s leavings, ma.’ But you’re not getting any younger, Pat, if you’ll excuse my saying so. I was married when I was eighteen and I could have been married when I was seventeen. My dress was of red velvet and my hat was of black velvet with a green plume. Every one thought it elegant but I was disappointed. I’d always wanted to be wedded in a sky-blue gown, the hue of God’s own heaven.”
“Once of her poetical flights,” whispered Tillytuck to Judy. But Pat and Rae both heard him and almost choked trying not to laugh. Mrs. Binnie, who never dreamed any one could be laughing at her, kept on.
“Is it true the Kirks are putting up a sun-dial in the Long House garden?”
“Yes,” said Pat shortly.
“Well now, I never did hold with them modern inventions,” said Mrs. Binnie complacently. “An old-fashioned clock is good enough for me.”
“Never mind,” said Rae, when Mrs. Binnie had finally waddled off to the “living room,” “it will soon be lilac time.”
“With white apple boughs framing a moon,” said Pat.
“And violets in the silver bush,” said Rae.
“And a new row of lilies to be planted along the dyke,” said Pat.
“And great crimson clovers in the Mince Pie Field.”
“And blue-eyed grass around the Pool . . .”
“And pussy-willows in Happiness . . .”
“And a dance of daisies along Jordan.”
“Oh, we’ve heaps of precious things left yet, Pat — things nobody, not even a Binnie can spoil.” Were the days when she could wash her being in the sunrise and feel as blithe as a bird gone forever? Perhaps they would come back when the new house would be built and Silver Bush was all their own again. But that was as yet far in the future. There was Judy coming across the yard, bringing in some drenched little chickens May had forgotten to put in. Was Judy getting bent? Pat shivered.
But still life seemed sadly out of tune, struggle as bravely as one might.
3
“I’ll have nothing to do with anything to-day but spring,” said Pat . . . even gaily. For May had gone home that morning and they had a whole day to be alone . . . three delightful meals to eat alone when they could sit around the table and talk as long as they liked in the old way. Sometimes Pat and Judy thought those frequent visits of May home were all that saved their reason. Everything seemed different. Judy vowed that the very washing machine ran easier when she was away. Even the house seemed to draw a breath of relief. It had never got used to May.
It had not been an easy spring at Silver Bush despite its beauty. House-cleaning with May was rather a heartbreaking business. She was so full of suggestions.
“Why not do away with that messy old front garden, Pat and make a real lawn?” . . . or, “I’d have a window cut there, Pat. This hall is really awfully dark in the afternoons.” . . . or, “The orchard is really trying to get into the house, Pat. Why not have that tree cut down?”
May simply could not or would not get it into her head that Pat was not having trees cut down. In regard to this particular tree, May was not, perhaps, so far wrong as in some of her suggestions. It really was too close to the house . . . a young apple tree that had started up of itself and grew so slyly that it was a tree before any one took much notice of it. Now it was pushing its boughs into the very window of the Big Parlour. When May spoke it was a thing of beauty, all starred with tiny red buds just on the point of bursting.
“I think it’s lovely having the orchard coming right into the house like this,” said Pat.
“You would,” said May. It was a favourite retort with her and she always contrived to put a vast amount of contempt into it.
None of her suggestions were adopted and May tearfully told her mother, in Judy’s hearing, that she “simply couldn’t do a thing in her husband’s house.” She was determined to have a “herbaceous border” and nagged at Sid until he interceded with Pat and it was decid
ed that it might be made across the bottom of the little lawn, where hitherto nothing but lilies of the valley had grown wildly and thickly. There were plenty of other lilies of the valley about but Pat hated to see those ploughed up and May’s iris and delphiniums and what Mrs. Binnie called “concubines,” set in their place. Because May really did not care a bit for flowers. She wanted her herbaceous border because Olive had told her they were all the fashion now and every one in town was making one.
“Do you know that May badgered Sid at last into taking her back and showing her the Secret Field?” asked Rae.
Yes, Pat knew it. May had laughed on her return.
“I’ve seen your famous field, Pat . . . nothing but a little hole in the woods. And you’ve been making such a fuss over it all these years.”
To Pat it was the ultimate treason that Sid should have showed May the Secret Field . . . their Secret Field. But she could not blame him. He had to do it for peace’ sake.
“You love your sister better than your wife,” May told him passionately, whenever he refused to do anything Pat didn’t want done. He and May had begun to quarrel violently and life at Silver Bush was made bitter all that summer by it. Meal times were the worst. The bickering between them was almost incessant.
“Oh, do let us have one meal without a fight,” Long Alec remarked in exasperation one day. Pat, who had been listening in silence to May’s sarcasm and Sid’s sulky replies, rose and went to her room.
“I can’t bear it any longer . . . I can’t,” she said wildly. She twitched the shade to pull it down and shut out the insulting sunlight. It escaped her and whizzed wildly to the top, thereby nearly scaring to death Bold-and-Bad, asleep on Rae’s bed.
“You don’t deserve a cat,” said Bold-and-Bad, or words to that effect.
Pat glared at him.
“To think that it has come to this at Silver Bush!”
Rae, coming in a little later with the mail and an armful of blossom, turned the key in the door. That was necessary now. There was no longer the old-time privacy at Silver Bush. May might bounce in on them at any time without the pretence of knocking. She merely laughed at the idea of knocking and called it “Silver Bush airs.”
“Pat, darling, don’t take it so to heart. I admit there’s a time every day when May makes me yearn for the good old days when you could pull peoples’ wigs off. But when I feel that way I just reflect what Brook’s eyes would make of her . . . can’t you see the twinkle in them? . . . and she shrinks to her proper perspective. It isn’t going to last forever.”
“It is . . . it is,” cried Pat wildly. “Rae, May doesn’t want to have a house built on the other place . . . she wants to have Silver Bush. I’ve heard her talking to Sid . . . I couldn’t help hearing . . . you know what her voice is like when she’s angry. ‘I’ll never go to live on the Adams’ place . . . it would be so far out of the world . . . you can’t move all them barns. You told me when you persuaded me to marry you that we would live at Silver Bush. And I’m going to . . . and it won’t be under the thumb of your old-maid sister either. She’s nothing but a parasite . . . living off your father when there’s nothing now to prevent her from going away and earning her own living when I’m here to run things.’ She’s doing her best to set Sid against us all . . . you know she is. And she attributes some petty motive to everything we do or say . . . or don’t say. Remember the scene she made last week because I hadn’t taken any notice of her new dress . . . that awful concoction of cheap radium lace over that sleazy bright blue silk. I thought the kindest thing I could do was not to take notice of it. I was ashamed to think any one at Silver Bush could wear such a thing. And she tells Sid we’re always laughing at her.”
“Well, you did laugh last night when she said that thing about the moon,” grinned Rae.
“Who could help it? I forgot myself in the delight of seeing that new moon over the crest of that fir in the silver bush and I pointed it out to May. ‘How cute!’ remarks my sister-in-law. And that creature is . . . by law . . . a Gardiner of Silver Bush!”
“Still, the new moon over the fir tree is just as exquisite as it ever was,” said Rae softly.
But Pat would listen just then to no comforting.
“Think of dinner. At the best now we never have any real conversation at our meals . . . and at the worst it is like it was to-day. Rae, at times it simply seems to me that everything sane and sweet and happy has vanished from Silver Bush and only returns for a little while when she is away. Why, she listens on the ‘phone . . . fancy any one at Silver Bush listening on the ‘phone! . . . and gossips over what she hears. I feel dragged in the dust when I hear her. Do you know that she took that gang of her Summerside cousins into our room yesterday . . . our room! . . . and showed it to them?”
“Well, she wouldn’t find it littered with hair-pins and face powder as hers is,” said Rae, looking fondly around at their little immaculate room, engoldened by the light of the new corn-coloured curtains she and Pat had selected that spring. Here, at least, were yet stillness and peace and refreshment whatever might be the state of things elsewhere. “And as for her setting Sid against us, she can’t do that, Pat. Sid knows what she is now. And dad will remain master of Silver Bush. Let’s just sit tight and wait. Here’s a letter from Hilary I’ve just brought in from the box. It will cheer you up.”
But it hardly did, though Pat wistfully read it over three times in the hope of finding that elusive something Hilary’s letters used to possess. It was nice, like all Hilary’s letters. But it was the first for quite a long time . . . and it was a little remote, somehow . . . as if he were thinking of something else all the time he was writing it. He was going to Italy and then to the east . . . Egypt . . . India . . . to study architecture. He would be away for a year.
“I want to see the whole world,” he wrote. Pat shivered. The “whole world” had a cold, huge sound to her. Yet for the first time the idea came into her head that it might be rather nice to see the world with Hilary or some such congenial companion. Philae against a desert sunset . . . the storied Alhambra . . . the pearl-white wonder of the Taj Mahal by moonlight . . . Petra, that “rose-red city half as old as Time,” as Hilary had quoted. It would be wonderful to see them. But it would be more wonderful still to look at Silver Bush and know it for her own again . . . as she was afraid it never would be. Perhaps May was there to stay. She wanted to and she always got what she wanted. She had wanted Sid and she had got him. She would get Silver Bush by hook or crook. Already at times she assumed sly airs of mistress-ship and did the honours of the garden on the strength of her “herbaceous border,” explaining ungraciously that the stones around the beds were a whim of old Judy Plum’s. “We humour her.”
And the place was over-run by her family. Judy used to tell Tillytuck that Silver Bush was crawling wid thim. Sure and wasn’t all the Binnie clan that prolific!
That hateful young brother of May’s with the weasel eyes was there more than half his time, “helping” Sid and making fun of Judy who revenged herself by hiding tidbits he coveted away in the pantry and blandly knowing nothing about them.
“Poor old Judy is failing fast,” said May. “She puts things away and forgets where she puts them.”
May was much in the kitchen now, cooking up what Judy called “messes” for her own friends and leaving all the greasy or doughy pots and pans for Judy to wash. Judy couldn’t have told you whether she disliked May more in good humour or in “the sulks.” When she was sulky she banged and slammed but her tongue was still; when she was in good humour she never stopped talking. There were few quiet moments at Silver Bush now. Judy in despair took to sitting and knitting on Wild Dick’s tombstone. Tillytuck sat there, too, on Weeping Willy’s, smoking his pipe. “I like company but not too much,” was all he would say. It was all great fun for May. She persisted in assuming that Tillytuck and Judy were “courting” in the graveyard.
“Will I be caring what she says?” said Judy bitterly to Pat. “Oh, oh,
she can’t run me kitchen. She was be way av hanging up a calendar on me wall yesterday right below King William and Quane Victoria . . . a picture av a big fat girl wid no clothes at all on. I did be taking it down and throwing it in the fire. ‘Sure,’ sez I to her, ‘that hussy is no fit company for ather a king or a quane,’ sez I. And nather was that cousin av hers she had here yesterday in a bathing suit. She come in as bould as brass wid her great bare fat legs and did be setting on yer Great-grandfather Nehemiah’s chair, wid thim crossed. And thim not aven a dacent white . . . sun-tan she did be calling it . . . more like the colour av skim milk cheese. Tillytuck just took one look and flid to the granary. I cudn’t be trating her as I did the calendar but I sez, ‘People that fond av showing their legs ought to be dieting a bit,’ sez I. ‘You quaint thing!’ sez she. Oh, oh, it’s thanking the Good Man Above I am she didn’t call me priceless. It do be her fav’rite ajective. But whin May did be saying that one-pace bathing suits were all the fashion now and did I ixpict people to go bathing in long dresses and crinolines, I sez, ‘Oh, oh, far be it from me to be like yer Aunt Ellice, May,’ sez I. ‘Whin her nace sint her a statue av the Venus av Mily for a Christmas prisent she did be putting a dress on it, rale tasty, afore she showed it to her frinds. I’m not objicting to legs as legs,’ sez I, ‘spacially at the shore where they do be plinty av background for thim, but whin they’re as big and fat as yer lady cousin’s,’ sez I, ‘they do be a bit overpowering in me kitchen.’ ‘Ivery one thinks that Emma looks stunning in her suit,’ sez May. ‘Stunning do be the right word,’ sez I. ‘Ye saw the iffict she had on Tillytuck and he’s not a man asily upset,’ sez I. ‘As for the fashion,’ sez I, ‘av coorse what one monkey does all the other monkeys will be doing,’ sez I. Me fine May sez that I’d insulted her frind and hadn’t a word to throw to a dog all day but I’m liking her far better whin she’s sulky than whin she’s frindly. She did be trying to pump me about Cleaver this morning but I wasn’t knowing innything. Do there be innything to know, Patsy dear?”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 361