Lucy Montgomery - Pat of Silver Bush

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?

Some one 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 some one 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 backed. 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 some one ... 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 harbour 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 some one 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 some one 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 grave-yard. 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 to-night, 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?"