Did it last for a moment or a century? They could never have told. A light flashing out in the kitchen of Silver Bush recalled Pat to reality.
“I must go. Sid is going to run me over to the Bay Shore when the chores are done.”
“Tell them hello for me,” said Bets lightly.
“I wish you were going with me. Nothing has the same flavor without you, Bets.” Pat leaned over the gate and dropped a kiss on Bets’ cool cheek. Life had as yet touched them both so lightly that parting was still “sweet sorrow.”
Pat ran lightly down the path, turning her back, although she knew it not, on her years of unshadowed happiness.
A flock of geese flying over in the April night…a gray cat pouncing out from the ferns in the Whispering Lane…lantern shadows in the barn-yard…a girl half-drunk with the sweet, heady wine of spring.
“Oh, Judy, life is so beautiful…and spring is so beautiful. Judy, how can you help dancing?”
“Dancing, is it?” Judy sat down with a grunt. She was tired and she did not like it because it meant that she was growing old. Judy had just one dread in life…that she might grow too old to be of use to Silver Bush. “Whin ye come to my years, Patsy darlint, dancing don’t be coming so aisy. But dance while ye can…oh, oh, dance while ye can. And rap a bit av wood.”
CHAPTER 30
One Shall Be Taken
Pat was to have stayed two weeks at the Bay Shore farm. She did not mind…much. She had learned how to get along with the aunts and they thought her “much improved.” A good bit of Selby in her after all. The Great-great had “passed away” a year ago but nothing else had changed at the Bay Shore. Pat liked this…it gave her a nice sensation of having cheated Time.
But at the end of a week Long Alec came for her one evening. And his face…
“Dad, is anything wrong? Mother…”
No, not mother. Bets. Bets had flu pneumonia.
Pat felt an icy finger touch…just touch…her heart.
“Why wasn’t I sent for before?” she said very quietly.
“They didn’t think she was in danger until this evening. She asked for you. I think we’ll be in time.”
Bets “in danger”…“in time,”…the phrases made a meaningless jumble in Pat’s head. The drive home was like a nightmare. Nothing was real. It couldn’t be real. Things like this simply didn’t happen. God wouldn’t let them. Of course she would waken soon. Meanwhile…one must keep very quiet. If one said a word too much…one might have to go on dreaming. She had such a queer feeling that her heart was a stone…sinking, sinking, sinking…ever since that finger had touched it.
They drove up to Silver Bush. Pat would go up the hill path. It was quicker so because the lane of the Long House ran to the Silverbridge road. Judy caught Pat in her arms as she stumbled from the car.
“Judy…Bets…” but no, one must be quiet. One mustn’t ask questions. One dared not.
“I’ll walk up the hill with you, Pat.”
It was Hilary…a pale, set-lipped Hilary. Judy…wise Judy…whispered to him,
“No, let her be going alone, Jingle. It’ll be…kinder.”
“Don’t you think there’s a little hope, Judy?” asked Hilary huskily.
Judy shook her head.
“I do be getting the sign, Jingle. It’s a bit hard to understand. Ivery one loved her so. Sure and hiven must be nading some laughter.”
Pat didn’t know whether she was alone or not. She ran breathlessly along the Whispering Lane and down the field and up the hill. The Watching Pine watched…what was it watching for? A grim red sun with a black bar of cloud across it was setting behind a dark hill as she reached the green gate. She turned for a moment…just a moment before one had to…know. As long as one didn’t know one could live. The black sea of a cold gray April twilight was far below her. That far-away bell was still ringing. It was only a week since she and Bets had listened to it and made their plans for the summer. A thing like this couldn’t come in a week…it would need years and years. How foolish she was to be…afraid. One must waken soon.
May Binnie was in the Long House kitchen when Pat went in…always pushing herself in where she wasn’t wanted, Pat reflected detachedly. Then the room where she and Bets had slept and whispered and laughed…and Bets lying on the bed, pale and sweet…always sweet…breathing too quickly. There were others there…Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox…the nurse…but Pat saw only Bets.
“Dearest Pat…I’m so glad you’ve come,” Bets whispered.
“Darling…how are you?”
“Better, Pat…much better…only a little tired.”
Of course she was better. One had known she must be.
Why, then, didn’t one waken?
Someone put a chair by the bed for Pat and she sat down. Bets put out a cold hand…how very thin it had grown…and Pat took it. The nurse came up with a hypodermic. Bets opened her eyes.
“Let Pat do that for me, please. Let Pat do everything for me now.”
The nurse hesitated. Then someone else…Dr. Bentley…came up.
“There is no use in giving any more hypodermics,” he said. “She has ceased to react to them. Let her…rest.”
Pat heard Mrs. Wilcox break into dreadful sobbing and Mr. Wilcox led her from the room. The doctor went, too. The nurse adjusted the shade of the light. Pat sat movelessly. She would not speak…no word must disturb Bets’ rest. Bets must be better if she were resting. Now and then she felt Bets’ fingers give a gentle little pressure against her own. Very gently Pat squeezed back. In a few days she and Bets would be laughing over this…next summer when they would be sleeping in their tent in the moonlit Secret Field it would be such a joke to recall…
“My breath…is getting…very short,” said Bets.
She did not speak again. At sunrise a little change came over her face…such a little terrible change.
“Bets,” cried Pat imploringly. Bets had always answered when she called before. Now she did not even lift the heavy white lids of her beautiful eyes. But she was smiling.
“It’s…over,” said the nurse softly.
Pat heard someone…Bets’ mother…give a piteous moan. She went over to the window and looked out. The sky in the east was splendid. Below in the valley the silver birches seemed afloat in morning mists. Far-off the harbor lighthouse stood up, golden-white against the sunrise. Smoke was curling up from the roofs of Swallowfield and Silver Bush.
Pat wished sickly that she could get back into last year. There were no nightmares there.
The room was so dreadfully still after all the agony. Pat wished someone would make a noise. Why was the nurse tiptoeing about like that? Nothing could disturb Bets now…Bets who was lying there with the dawn of some eternal day on her face.
Pat went over and looked at her quite calmly. Bets looked like someone with a lovely secret. Bets had always looked like that…only now one knew she would never tell it. Pat dimly recalled some text she had heard ages ago…last Sunday in the Bay Shore church. I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. If one could only wake!
“I think if I could cry my throat wouldn’t ache so much,” she thought dully.
• • •
Home…mother’s silent hand-clasp of sympathy…Winnie’s kind blue eyes…Judy’s anxious, “Patsy darlint, ye’ve had no breakfast. Can’t ye be ating a liddle bite? Ye must be kaping up yer strength. Don’t grieve, me jewel. Sure and they tell me she died smiling…she’s gone on a glad journey.”
Pat was not grieving. Death was still incredible. Her family wondered at her calm.
“There’s something in her isn’t belaving it yet,” said Judy shrewdly.
The days were still a dream. There was the funeral. Pat walked calmly up to the Long House by the hill path. She would not have been surprised to see Bets coming dancing through the green gate to meet her
. She glanced up at the window that used to frame Bets’ laughing face…surely she must be there.
The Long House was full of people. May Binnie was there…May Binnie was crying…May Binnie who had always hated Bets. And her mother was trying to comfort her!
That was funny. If only Bets could share in her amusement over it!
But Bets only lay smiling with that white, sweet peace on her waxen face and Hilary’s cluster of pussywillows from the tree in Happiness between her fingers. There were flowers everywhere. The Sunday School had sent a cross with the motto, Gone Home, on it. Pat would have laughed at that, only she knew she was never going to laugh again. Home! This was Bets’ home…the Long House and the garden she had loved and planned for. Bets was not gone home…she had only gone on an uncompanioned journey from which she must presently return.
May Binnie almost had hysterics when the casket was closed. Many people thought Pat Gardiner was very unfeeling. Only a discerning few thought that fierce, rebellious young face more piteous than many tears.
If only she could get away by herself! Somewhere where people could not look at her. But, if one persisted in dreaming, one must go to the graveyard. She went with Uncle Tom, because Sid and Hilary, who were pall-bearers, had taken the car. Spring still refused to come and it was a bleak, dull day. A few snowflakes were falling on the gray fields. The sea was black and grim. The cold road was hard as iron. And so they came to the little burying-ground on a western hill that had been flooded with many hundreds of sunsets, where there was a heap of red clay and an empty grave. The boys Bets had played around with carried her to it over a path heaped with the sodden leaves of a vanished year; and Pat listened unflinchingly to the most dreadful sound in the world…the sound of the clods falling on the coffin of the beloved.
“She is in a Better Place, my dear,” Mrs. Binnie was saying to the sobbing May behind her. Pat turned.
“Do you think there is a better place than Silver Bush and the Long House farm?” she said. “I don’t…and I don’t think Bets did either!”
“That awful girl,” Mrs. Binnie always said when she told of it. “She talked like a perfect heathen.”
Pat wakened from her dream that evening. The sun set. Then came darkness…and the hills and trees drawing nearer…no light in Bets’ window.
Pat had never really believed that any one she loved could die. Now she had learned the bitter lesson that it is possible…that it does happen.
“Let me be alone tonight, Winnie,” she said; and Winnie sympathetically went away to the Poet’s room.
Pat undressed and crept into bed, shivering. The wind at the window was no longer a friend…it was a malignant thing. She was so lonely…it was impossible to endure such loneliness. If she could only sleep…sleep! But then there would be such a dreadful awakening and remembering.
Bets was…dead. She, who loved everything beautiful, was now lying in that cold, damp grave on the hill with the long grasses and withered leaves blowing drearily around it. Pat buried her face in her pillow and the long-denied tears came in a flood.
“Darlint…darlint…don’t be mourning like this.”
Judy had crept in…dear, tender old Judy. She was kneeling by the bed and her arms were about the tortured creature.
“Oh, Judy, I didn’t know life could ever hurt like this. I can’t bear it, Judy.”
“Dear heart, we do all be thinking that at first.”
“I can never forgive God for taking her from me,” gasped Pat between her racking sobs.
“Child dear, whoiver heard av not forgiving God,” said the horrified Judy who did not know her Omar. “But He won’t be holding it aginst ye.”
“Life has all gone to pieces, Judy. And yet I have to go on living. How can I?”
“Sure and ye’ve only got to live one day at a time, darlint. One can always be living just one more day.”
“She was such a dear, Judy…we had so many plans…I can’t go to Queen’s without her. Oh, Judy, our friendship was so beautiful. Why didn’t God let it go on? Doesn’t He like beautiful things?”
“Sure and we can’t be telling what He has in mind but we can be belaving it’s nothing but good. Maybe He was wanting to kape your friendship beautiful, Patsy darlint.”
CHAPTER 31
Lost Fragrance
When Bets had been dead for a week it seemed to Pat she had been dead for years, so long is pain. The days passed like ghosts. Pat went for long walks over hills and fields in the evenings…trying to face her sorrow…seeing the loveliness of the crescent spring around her. She only saw it…she could not feel it. Where was Bets who had walked with her last spring?
Everything had ended. And everything had to begin anew. That was the worst of it. How was one to begin anew when the heart had gone out of life?
“I wish I could forget her, Judy…I wish I could forget her. It hurts so to remember,” she cried wildly once. “If I could drink some cup of forgetfulness like that in your old story, Judy…”
“But wud ye be after doing it if ye could, darlint? Ye’d forget all the gladness along with the pain…all the fun and happiness ye had wid yer liddle chum. Wud ye be wanting that?”
No, she would not want that. She hugged her sweet memories to her heart. But how to go on living…
“Ye don’t be remimbering one day whin ye was a liddle dot av four, Patsy? Ye wint to the door and all the sky was clouded over thick and dark. Ye was frightened to death. Ye did be running to yer mother, crying, ‘Oh, mother, where is the blue sky gone to…oh, mother!’ Ye wudn’t be belaving us whin we tould ye it wud come back. But the nixt morning there it was smiling at ye.”
Pat still couldn’t believe that her blue sky would ever come back…couldn’t believe that there would come a time when she would be happy again. Why, it would be terrible to be happy without Bets, even if it were possible…disloyal to Bets…disloyal to love. She despised herself when she had to admit that she felt hungry once more!
Silver Bush was all her comfort now. Her love for it seemed the only solid thing under her feet. Insensibly she drew comfort and strength from its old, patient, familiar acres. Spring passed. The daffodils and spirea and bleeding-heart and columbines bloomed. Bets had loved the columbines so, she should be here to see them. The pansies they had planted together, because, for some mysterious reason, pansies would not grow up on the hill, bloomed at Silver Bush, but no slim girl figure ever came down the hill to pick them in a sunset garden. The big apple tree at the Long House bloomed as it had bloomed for two generations but she and Bets could not sit on the long bough and read poetry. Pat couldn’t bear to open the books she had read with Bets…to see the lines and paragraphs they had marked. Bets seemed to die afresh every time there was something Pat wanted to share with her and could not.
Summer came. The honeysuckle was thick over the graveyard paling. To think that the scent of honeysuckles meant nothing to Bets now…or the soft stars of evening…or the moon on white roses. The little path up the hill field grew over with grass. Nobody ever walked on it now. The Wilcoxes had sold the Long House farm and moved to town…Stranger lights were in it but Bets’ room was always dark. Sundays were terrible. She and Bets had always spent the afternoon and evening together. Sid wouldn’t talk of Bets…Sid in his secret boyish way had been hard hit by her death…but Hilary would.
“I could never have lived through this summer if it hadn’t been for Hilary,” Pat thought.
Yet, undeniably life began to beckon once more. The immortal spirit of beauty again held aloft its torch for her. Pat hated herself because she could enjoy anything with no Bets in the world.
“Judy, I feel as if I oughtn’t to be even a little bit happy. And yet, today, back in the Secret Field I was happy. I forgot Bets for a little while…and then…oh, Judy…I remembered. It seemed sad to think I could forget her. And the Secret Field was changed somehow…more
beautiful than ever but still…not just the same, Judy.”
Judy recalled an old line in a poem she had learned in far-away school days…a poem by a forgotten, outmoded author who yet had the secret of touching the heart.
“Ye have looked on death since ye saw me last,” she whispered to herself. But aloud…
“Ye naden’t be worrying over being happy, darlint. Bets would be glad av it.”
“You know, Judy, at first it hurt me to think of Bets…I couldn’t bear it. But now…it’s a comfort. I can think of her in all our old haunts. Tonight, when the moon came up I thought, ‘She is standing in it under the Watching Pine, waiting for me.’ And it was sweet…for a little while…just to pretend it. But I’ll never have another chum, Judy…and I wouldn’t if I could. It hurts too much to lose them.”
“Ye’re young to have larned that, darlint, but we all have to sooner or later. And as for another…oh, oh, oh, that’s all as it’s ordered. I’ve talked to ye as wise as inny av thim, Patsy, about choosing frinds but ye don’t be choosing frinds after all. They come to ye…or they don’t. Just that. Ye get the ones meant for you, be they minny or few, in the time app’inted for their coming.”
Summer passed. The old days were once more lovely in remembrance. The root of white perennial phlox Bets had given her bloomed for the first time. The gold and bronze dahlias flamed against the green spruce hedge. The pageant of autumn woods began. Bets had gone “rose-crowned into the darkness”…Joe had forsaken them…but the Hill of the Mist was still amethyst and mysterious on September mornings…the Secret Field held all its old allure…Silver Bush, dear Silver Bush…was still her own, beautiful and beloved. Pat’s laughter once more echoed in Judy’s kitchen…once more she bandied jokes with Uncle Tom…once more she spent long hours in Happiness with Hilary, talking over college plans. The world was sweet again.
“Yet in the purple shadow
And in the warm gray rain