Lucy Montgomery - Mistress Pat

During the autumn and winter after the shadow of a new bride at Swallowfield had vanished from Pat's sky life went on at Silver Bush delightfully. It was a very cold winter ... so cold that there was not only frost but feathers on the windows most of the time ... and there was much snow and wild wind in birch and spruce. And never a thaw, not even in January, although Tillytuck was loath to give up hope of one.

"I've never seen a January without a thaw yet and I've seen hundreds of them," he asserted ... and wondered grumpily why everybody laughed. But he saw one that year. The cold continued unbroken. The stones around Judy's flower beds always wore white snow caps and looked like humpy little gnomes. Pat was glad the garden was covered up. It always hurt her to see her beautiful garden in winters when there was little snow ... so forsaken looking, with mournful bare flower stalks sticking up out of the hard frozen earth and bare, writhing shrubs that you never could believe could be mounds of rosy blossoms in June. It was nice to think of it sleeping under a spotless coverlet, dreaming of the time when the first daffodil would usher in spring's age of gold.

And there was beauty, too, everywhere. Sometimes Pat thought the winter woods with their white reserve and fearlessly displayed nakedness seemed the rarest and finest of all. You never knew how beautiful a tree really was until you saw it leafless against a pearl-grey winter sky. And was there ever anything quite so perfect as the birch grove in a pale-rose twilight after a fine calm fall of snow?

In the stormy evenings Silver Bush, snug and sheltered, holding love, laughed defiance through its lighted windows at the grey night full of driving snow. They all crowded into Judy's kitchen and ate apples and candy, while happy cats purred and a wheezy little dog who, alas, was growing old and a bit deaf, snored at Pat's feet. Wild and weird or gay and thrilling were the tales told by Judy and Tillytuck in a rivalry that sometimes convulsed the Silver Bush folks. Judy had taken to locating most of her yarns in Ireland and when she told a gruesome tale of the man who had made a bargain with the Bad Man Below and broke it Tillytuck could not possibly claim to have known or been the man.

"What was the bargain, Judy?"

"Oh, oh, it was for his wife's life. She was to live as long as he niver prayed to God. But if he prayed to God she wud die and HE was to belong to Ould Satan foriver. Sure and she lived for minny a year. And thin me fine man got a bit forgetful-like and one day whin the pig bruk its leg he sez, sez he, in a tragic tone, 'Oh God!' sez he. And his wife did be dying that very night."

"But that wasn't a prayer, Judy."

"Oh, oh, but it was. Whin ye cry on God like that in inny trouble it do be a prayer. The Bad Man Below knew it well."

"What became of the husband, Judy?"

"Oh, oh, he was TAKEN AWAY," said Judy, contriving to convey a suggestion of indescribable eeriness that sent a shiver down everybody's back. Satisfied with the effect she remarked deprecatingly,

"But listen to me prating av ould days. I'd be better imployed setting me bread."

And while Judy set the bread Tillytuck would spin a yarn of being chased by wolves one moonlit night while skating and told it so well that every one shuddered pleasantly. But Judy said coldly,

"I did be rading that very story, Tillytuck, in Long Alec's ould Royal Rader in me blue chist."

"I daresay you read something like it," retorted Tillytuck unabashed. "I never claimed to be the only man chased by wolves."

Then they all had "a liddle bite" and went to bed, snuggled warm and cosy while the winds ravened outside.

Dwight Madison took to haunting Silver Bush that winter and it was quite plain that he had, as Sid said, "a terrible ailment called serious intentions." Pat tried to snub him. Dwight wouldn't BE snubbed. It never occurred to Dwight that any girl would want to snub him. Aunt Hazel was hot in his favour but Judy, for a wonder, was not. He was a too deadly serious, solemn, in-earnest young man for Judy.

"De ye be calling THAT a beau?" she demanded after his first visit in a tone that implied she would rather call it something the cats had brought in. Pat said she thought he snored and Cuddles remarked that he looked like spinach. After that, there was no more to be said and Long Alec, who rather favoured Dwight because he had prospects from a bachelor uncle, concluded that modern girls were hard to please. Aunt Hazel was quite cool to Pat for a time.

Bold-and-Bad had pneumonia in March but got over it, thanks, it was believed, to Tillytuck's ministrations. Tillytuck sat up with him two whole nights in the granary chamber, keeping him covered with a blanket in a box by the open window. Twice during each night Judy ploughed out to him through the snow to carry him a hot cup of tea and "a liddle bite." Gentleman Tom did not have pneumonia but he had a narrow escape of his own, which Judy related with gusto.

"Girls dear, niver did I be hearing av such a thing. Ye'll be remimbering that whin we had the rolled roast for dinner Sunday I did be taking out the string afore I tuk it to the table and throwing it into the wood-box? Oh, oh, and this afternoon whin I come in didn't Gentleman Tom be sitting there be the stove, wid something hanging from his mouth like a rat's tail. Whin I looked closer I saw it was a bit av string and I tuk hould av it and pulled it. I did be pulling out over a yard av it. The baste had swallied it till he was full av it and cudn't quite manage the last two inches and it did be that saved his life for niver cud he have digested it. But, girls dear, if ye cud have seen the look on his face whin I was pulling at the string! And from this out it's burning ivery roast string at once I'll be doing for we don't want inny more av our cats committing suicide in that fashion."

"Another joke for you to write to Hilary, Pat," said Cuddles slyly.

But at last they were throwing open the windows to let in the spring and Pat learned all over again how lovely young cherry trees were, waving whitely in green twilights, and the scent of apple blossoms in moonlight, and the colonies of blue grape-hyacinths under the dining-room windows. But there were some clouds on her horizon, no bigger than a man's hand yet fraught with worrisome possibilities. She could not settle down in perfect peace, even after housecleaning was, as Tillytuck said, "all done though not quite finished." There was a lick of paint to be administered here and there, some curtains to be mended, the early carrots to be thinned out and dozens of delightful little things like that to be attended to. But ever and anon what Hawthorne calls "a dreary presentiment of impending change" crept across her happiness like a hint of September coolness stealing athwart the languor of an August afternoon. For one thing, trees were dying everywhere as a result of the bitter winter or because of some disease. The cross little spruce tree at the garden gate, which had grown up into a cross big tree, died, and although Pat had liked it the least of all the trees she grieved over its death. It was heartrending to walk through the woods at the back and see a friend here and there turning brown or failing to leaf out. Even the huge spruce in Happiness was dying and one of Hilary's "twin spires."

For another thing, Judy was by now quite keen on going to Ireland for a visit in the fall. Pat hated the very thought but she knew she must not be selfish and horrid. Judy had served Silver Bush long and faithfully and deserved a holiday if any one ever did. Pat choked down her dismay and talked encouragingly. Of course Judy must go. There was nothing in the world to prevent her. Cuddles was going to try the Entrance in July and if she passed would likely be away at Queen's next year, but somebody could be got in to help Pat during Judy's absence. Judy would stay all winter of course. It would not be worth going for less and a winter crossing of the Atlantic was not advisable. The Atlantic! When Pat thought of the Atlantic rolling between her and Judy she felt absolutely sick. But Cuddles was "thrilled" about it all.