Pat lingered a little while that evening on the back-stair landing looking out of the round window. There was a promise of gathering storm. A peevish wind was tormenting the boughs of the aspen poplar. Scudding clouds seemed to sweep the tips of the silver birches. Soon the rain would be falling on the dark autumn fields. But even a wild wet night like this would have been delightful at Silver Bush if her heart had been lighter. Judy would be gone by this time tomorrow night and Mrs. Puddleduck would be reigning in her stead. No Judy to come home to…no Judy to give you “liddle bites”…no Judy to stir pea soup…no Judy to slip in on cold nights with the eiderdown puff off the Poet’s bed.
“And what,” said Gentleman Tom on the step above, “is a poor cat to do?”
Long Alec took Judy to the station next morning through a drizzling rain. She was going to Summerside to spend the night at Uncle Brian’s and take the boat train with the Pattersons the next day. Everybody stood at the gate and waved her off, smiling gallantly till the car was out of sight. Pat turned back to the kitchen where Mrs. Puddleduck was already making a cake and looking quite at home.
“I hate her,” thought Pat, wildly and unjustly.
Dinner…the first meal without Judy…was a sorry affair. The soup of Mrs. Puddleduck was not the soup of Judy Plum.
“She doesn’t know how to stir the brew,” Tillytuck whispered to Pat.
Rae came home that night but supper was a gloomy affair. Mrs. Puddleduck’s cake, in spite of her domestic short course, rather looked as if somebody had sat down on it: Long Alec was very silent: Tillytuck went straight to his granary roost as soon as the meal was over. Nothing pleased him and he did not pretend to be pleased.
“I feel old, Pat…as old as Methuselah,” said Rae drearily, as they peeped into the kitchen before going to bed.
“I feel middle-aged, which is far worse,” moaned Pat.
Mrs. Puddleduck was sitting there, knitting complacently at a sweater. No cat was in sight, not even Gentleman Tom.
“I wish I could be a cat for a little while, just to bite you,” whispered Rae to the fat back of the unconscious Mrs. Puddleduck, who really was quite undeserving of all this hatred and, in fact, thought quite highly of herself for “helping the Gardiners out” while Judy Plum was gallivanting off to Ireland.
Saturday was dark and dour but a pleasant letter from Hilary helped Pat through the forenoon. Dear Hilary! What letters he could write! Hilary as a friend, even in faraway Toronto, was worth all the beaus in the Maritimes.
In mid-afternoon it began to rain again, battering everything down in the desolate garden. Tillytuck and Mrs. Puddleduck were already at loggerheads because when she complained that Just Dog had barked all night he had indulged in one of his silent fits of laughter and said blandly, “If you’d told me he’d purred I’d have been more surprised.”
Sid took the girls over to the Bay Shore to help Winnie paper a room. The air was as full of flying leaves as of rain, and floods ran muddily down the gutters of the road. It was just as bad when they returned at night.
“I suppose Judy is on board ship now. They were to sail from Halifax at five o’clock,” sighed Rae. “There’s Tillytuck playing his fiddle. How can he have the heart? But I suppose he’s trying to get on the good side of Mrs. Puddleduck. That man has no soul above snacks.”
“I don’t know how we’ll ever get through the winter,” said Pat.
They ran up the wet walk and opened the kitchen door…then stood on the threshold literally paralyzed with amazement. Tillytuck’s fiddle was purring under his hands. Mother was mending by the table whereon was a huge platterful of fat doughnuts. Long Alec lay on the sofa, snoozing blissfully with Squedunk on his chest and Bold-and-Bad and Popka curled up at his feet. Gentleman Tom, with the air of a cat making up his mind to forgive somebody, was sitting on the rug, with his tail stretched out uncompromisingly behind him.
And Judy…Judy…in her old drugget dress was sitting beside the stove stirring the contents of a savory pot! Her knitting was on her lap and she looked like anything but a heart-broken woman.
For a moment the girls stared at her unbelievingly. Then with a shriek of “Judy!!!” they hurled themselves upon her. Wet as they were she hugged them with a fierce tenderness.
“Judy…Judy…darling…but why…why…?”
“I just cudn’t be going, that do be all, me jewels. I was knowing it in me heart as soon as I lift. Poor Alec hadn’t a word to throw to a dog. Ye cud have been scraping the blue mold off av him be the time we got to the station. But thinks I to mesilf, ‘I’d look like a nice fool backing out now, after all thim prisents,’ thinks I. So I did be sticking it out till I got into me bed at yer Uncle Brian’s that night…the second bist spare room it was…oh, oh, they trated me fine, I’ll be saying that for thim. But niver the wink wud I be slaping. I kipt thinking av me kitchen here, wid Mrs. Puddleduck reigning in me stid…and of all the things that might be happening to me, roaming abroad. Running inty an iceberg maybe…or maybe dying over there. Not that I’d be minding the dying so much but being buried among strangers. And thin if innything but good shud be happening to some av ye here! Thinks I, ‘Perhaps they’ll be larning to like Mrs. Puddleduck better’n me and her as smooth as crame.’ I cud see ye all, snug and cozy, wid the beaus slipping along in the dim. Thinks I, There do be all the turkeys to be fattened for Christmas and the winter hooking to be done and mebbe Joe coming home to be married…and I cudn’t be standing it. So at breakfast I up and told Brian I’d been after changing me mind and I’d just be going back to Silver Bush instead av to Ireland wid the Pattersons.”
“Judy, you said the other day it would break your heart if anything prevented you from going…”
“Oh, oh, yisterday and today do be two different things,” said Judy complacently. “Whin ye thought I was all ixcited over me trip I was just talking to kape me spirits up. It’s the happy woman I am to think I’ll slape in me own snug bed tonight wid Gintleman Tom curled up at me fate. Brian brought me home this afternoon and whin I stepped over the threshold of me kitchen I wudn’t have called the quane me cousin. Oh, oh, ye shud have been seeing Madam Puddleduck’s face! ‘I thought this was how it wud be,’ sez she, as spiteful as a fairy that had just got a spanking.”
“Judy, where is Mrs. Puddleduck?”
“Safe back at the Bridge where she belongs. Sure and she wasn’t for staying long whin she saw me back. Oh, oh, she’ll be saying plinty besides her prayers tonight. I wint inty me pantry thinking I’d see fine things in the way av Sunday baking, what wid her domestic short course and all. But all I did be seeing was a cake looking like nothing on earth and a pie wid a lot of hen tracks on it. Tillytuck tells me he did be ating a pace av it and niver will his stomach be the same agin. Oh, oh, domestic science, sez I! I did be putting it in the pig’s pail and frying up a big batch av doughnuts.”
“Praise the sea but keep on land is a good proverb, symbolically speaking,” said Tillytuck. After which he ate nine doughnuts.
Everybody was shamelessly glad and showed it, much to Judy’s secret delight and relief. They shut out the rain and the cold wind. Never had the old kitchen held a more contented, more congenial bunch of people. Grief and loneliness had gone where old moons go and even King William looked jubilant in his never-ending passage of the Boyne. Outside it might be a dank and streaming November night but here was the eternal summer of the heart.
“Isn’t it nice to look out into a storm?” said Rae. “Listen to that wind roaring. I love it. Judy, I’m glad you’re not on the Atlantic.”
“I do be just where I want to be, Cuddles darlint, and faling rale high and hilarious. Sure and I do be good frinds wid Silver Bush agin. It’s been looking at me reproachful-like for a long time. I’m knowing now I cud niver be laving it. It’s got into the marrow av me. So here I am, wid enough fine clothes to do me for the rist av me life and all the fun av getting
ready. Oh, oh, ’twill be a stirring tale…the story av how Judy Plum wint to Ireland and got back so quick she met hersilf going. And now we’ll begin planning a bit for Christmas.”
Judy crept in that night to see if the girls were warm…the darling, thoughtful old thing.
“You’re such a dependable old sport, Judy,” said a drowsy Pat, sitting up and hugging her. “It seems unbelievably lovely that you’re here…here…and not far away on the billow.”
Judy was not acquainted with Wilson Macdonald’s couplet,
“For this is wealth to know my foot’s returning
Is always music to a friend of mine,”
but she felt that she was a very rich woman with only one small cloud on her perfect joy.
“Patsy darlint, do ye think I ought to be giving thim back…the prisents, I mane?”
“Certainly not, Judy. They were given to you and they are yours.”
Judy gave a sigh of relief.
“It’s rale glad I am to hear ye say so, Patsy. It wud have been bitter hard to give up that illigant t’ilet set. But I’m thinking I’ll give yer Aunt Edith’s hug-me-tight back to her. Niver will I let her be saying I come be it under false pretenses.”
Just as a great wave of sleep was breaking over Pat a sad premonitory thought drifted across her mind.
“And yet…for all she didn’t go…I feel as if things were going to change.”
CHAPTER 25
When Rae came home from Queen’s in the spring, the happy possessor of a teacher’s license, she got the home school and settled down for a summer of good fun before school should open. “Fun” to Rae at this stage meant beaus and, as Judy said, they were standing in line. Pat couldn’t quite get used to the idea of “little Cuddles” being really old enough to have beaus but Rae herself had no doubts on that point. And she admitted quite candidly that she liked having them. Not that she ever flirted, in spite of the Binnies. “College has improved Rae Gardiner some,” Mrs. Binnie was reported to have said, “but it ain’t cured her of being boy-crazy.”
Rae just looked. “Come,” said that look. “I know a secret you would like to know and no one can tell it to you but me.”
She was not really as pretty as Winnie or as witty as Pat but there was magic in her…what Tillytuck called “glamour, symbolically speaking.” “The little monkey has a way with her,” said Uncle Tom. And the youth of both Glens knew it. It did not matter how much or how severely she snubbed them, this creature of cruelty and loveliness held them in thrall. Long Alec complained that Silver Bush was literally overrun and that they never had a quiet Sunday any more. But Judy would listen to no such growling. “Wud ye be wanting yer girls to be like John B. Madison’s,” she inquired sarcastically. “Six av thim there and niver a beau to divide between thim.”
“There’s reason in all things,” protested Long Alec, who liked to have an undisturbed Sunday afternoon nap.
“Not in beaus,” said Judy shrewdly. “And I’m minding that the yard at the Bay Shore used to be full of rigs on Sunday afternoons, young Alec Gardiner’s among them. Don’t be forgetting you were once young, Long Alec. We’ll all have a bit av quiet fun be times watching the antics. Were ye hearing what happened to Just Dog last Sunday afternoon whin one av the young Shortreed sprouts…Lloyd I’m thinking his name was…was sitting on the front porch steps, looking kind av holy and solemn, for all the world like his ould Grandfather Shortreed at prayer mating. Sure and the poor baste…not maning Lloyd…met up wid a rat in the stone dyke behind the church barn and cornered it. But me Mr. Rat put up a fight and clamped his teeth in Just Dog’s jaw. Such howling ye niver did be hearing as he tore across the yard and through me kitchen and the hall and out past the young fry on the steps and through me bed av petunias. Roaring down the lane he wint, the rat still houlding on tight. The girls wint into kinks and Tillytuck come bucketing out, rale indignant, and saying, the divil himsilf must have got inty the modern rats. ‘Oh, oh,’ sez I, ‘don’t be spaking so flippant av the divil, Mr. Tillytuck. He’s an ancient ould lad and shud be rispicted,’ sez I. Lloyd Shortreed looked rale shocked.”
“And no wonder. I don’t hold with such goings-on in my house on Sunday.”
“Sure and who cud be hilping it?” protested Judy. “It was Just Dog’s doings intirely, going rat-hunting on Sunday. Before that the young fry were all quiet and sober-like. As for Tillytuck and his langwidge, iverybody do be knowing him. It’s well known he didn’t larn it at Silver Bush. Just Dog did be coming back later on wid no rat attached, rale meek and chastened-like. Lloyd hasn’t been back since and good riddance. The Shortreeds do be having no sinse av humor.”
“Lloyd’s a very decent fellow,” said Long Alec shortly.
“And that cliver wid his needle,” added Judy slyly. “He did be piecing a whole quilt whin he was but four years ould and he’s niver been able to live it down. His mother brings it out and shows it round whiniver company comes.”
Long Alec got up and went out. He knew he was no match for Judy.
They celebrated Rae’s homecoming by another party to which all Rae’s college friends came. Rae loved dancing. Her very slippers, if left to themselves, would have danced the whole night through. But Pat’s feet were not as light as they had been at the last party. Sid was not there. Sid was a very remote and unhappy boy. There had been a social sensation in North Glen early in the winter. Dorothy Milton, who had been engaged to Sid for two years, ran away with and married her cousin from Halifax, a dissipated, fascinating youth who “traveled” for a Halifax firm. Sid would have nothing of sympathy from his family. He would not talk of the matter at all. But he had been hard and bitter and defiant ever since and Pat felt hopelessly cut off from him. He worked feverishly but he came and went among his own like a stranger.
“Patience,” said mother. “It will wear away in time. Poor Dorothy! I’m sorrier for her than for Sid.”
“I’m not,” sobbed Pat fiercely. “I hate her…for breaking Sid’s heart.”
“Oh, oh, iverybody’s heart gets a bit av a crack at one time or another,” said Judy. “Siddy isn’t the first b’y to be jilted and he won’t be the last, as long as the poor girls haven’t got the sinse God gave geese.”
But Judy didn’t like to look at Sid’s eyes herself.
When the party was over Pat and Rae went by a mossy, velvety path to their tent in the bush, amid a growth of young white, wild cherry trees. They had achieved their long-cherished dream of sleeping out in the silver bush and the reality was more beautiful than the dream, even when the wind blew the tent down on them one night and Little Mary was half smothered before they could find her. There was another new baby at the Bay Shore and Little Mary had been committed to the care of Aunt Pat until her mother should be about. They all loved Little Mary but Aunt Pat adored and spoiled her. To see Little Mary running about the garden on her dear chubby legs, pausing now and then to lift a flower to her small nose, or following Judy out to feed the chickens, or chasing kittens in the old barns, where generations of furry things had frisked their little lives and ceased to be, gave Pat never-ending thrills. And the questions she would ask…“Aunt Pat, why weren’t ears made plain?”…“Aunt Pat, have f’owers little souls?”…“Where do the days go, Aunt Pat. Dey mus’ go somewhere”…“Does God live in Judy’s blue chest, Aunt Pat?” Once or twice the thought came to Pat that to marry and have a dimpled question mark like this of your very own might even make up for the loss of Silver Bush.
Judy came through the scented darkness to see if they were all right and gossip a little about various things. Judy had been to a funeral that day…a very unusual dissipation for her. But old William Madison at the Bridge had died and Judy had worked a few months for his mother before coming to Silver Bush.
“Sure and iverything wint off very well. It was the grand funeral he had and he’d have been rale well plazed if he cud have seen it. He
had great fun arranging it all, I’m told. Oh, oh, and he died very politely, asking thim all to ixcuse him for the bother he was putting thim to. His ould Aunt Polly was rale vexed because she didn’t be getting the sate at the funeral she thought she shud have but nobody else had inny fault to find wid the program. It do be hard to plaze ivery one. Polly Madison is one av the Holy Christians…holier than inny av thim, I’m hearing.”
For the “go-preacher’s” disciples had formed themselves into a “Holy Christian church” and were cruelly referred to in the Glens as the Holy Christians.
“I hear they’re going to build a church,” said Pat.
“That they are…but they’re not calling it a church. It do be ‘a place av meeting.’ The same Aunt Polly do be giving the land for it. And Mr. Wheeler is coming back to be their minister…or their shepherd as they do be saying, not approving av ministers or av paying thim salaries ather. He’ll be living on air no doubt. Aunt Polly says he is very spiritual but I’m thinking it’s only the way he has av lifting his eyes and taffying her up. Innyway her husband don’t be houlding wid new-fangled religions. ‘Are ye prepared to die?’ the go-preacher asked him rale solemn-like, I’m tould. But ould Jim Polly was always a hard nut to crack. ‘Better be asking if I’m prepared to live,’ sez he. ‘Living comes first,’ sez he.”
Pat had detected a sudden movement of Rae’s when Judy mentioned Mr. Wheeler’s name, and felt her worry increase. Suppose he made up to Rae again!
CHAPTER 26
Mr. Wheeler did return and did “make up to” Rae. That is, he fairly haunted Silver Bush and made himself quite agreeable socially…or tried to. The Gardiners no longer went to any of his services and the Holy Christians thought he might find more spiritual ways of spending his time than playing violin duets with Rae Gardiner and mooning about the garden with Pat until the very cats were bored. For Pat decidedly put herself forward to entertain him when he came and contrived to be present during most of the duets. To be sure, Rae laughed at and made constant fun of him. But she never seemed her usual saucy, indifferent self in his presence. She was quiet and subdued, with never a coquettish look, and Pat was not exactly easy. The creature was handsome in his way, with his dark eyes and crinkly sweep of hair, and his voice in which there were echoes of everything. Aunt Polly’s daughter, who taught in South Glen, was reputed to have said that he had a certain Byronic charm. Byronic charm or not Pat wasn’t going to have any nonsense and she played gooseberry with amiable persistence whenever he appeared. He looked a great deal at Rae and dropped his voice tenderly when he spoke to her: but he showed no aversion to talking with Pat…“currying favor,” Tillytuck said.