Lucy Montgomery - Pat of Silver Bush

Again mother smiled.

"I don't ask you to promise that, dear. I'd like to think you'll marry some day. I want you to be a happy wife and a joyful mother of children. Like I've been. I've been so happy here, Patsy. I was only twenty when I came here. A spoiled child, too ... and as for housekeeping, I didn't know the difference between simmering and boiling. Judy taught me ... wonderful old Judy. Be good to her, Pat ... if I don't come back. But I needn't tell you that. Judy was so good to me. She was even quite fierce about my working ... she hated to see my hands spoiled. I HAD pretty hands, Pat. But I didn't mind spoiling them for Silver Bush. I've loved it as you do. Every room in it has always been a friend of mine ... had a life of its own for me. How I loved to wake up in the night and feel that my husband and my children were well and safe and warm, sleeping peacefully. Life hasn't anything better to offer a woman than that, Patsy."

Mother didn't say this all at one. There were long pauses when she lay very still ... little gasps for breath. Sometimes terrible lances of fear pierced Pat's new armour of hope. When father came in to take her place as watcher Pat went down and out to the dark garden. Every one else was in bed, even Judy. She could not go to bed ... she could not sleep. The night was warm and kind. It put its arms around her like a mother. The white iris seemed to shine hopefully in the dark. Bold-and-Bad came padding along the walk and curled up in her lap. There were times when even Bold- and-Bad could behave like a Christian. He knew that Pat needed comfort and he did his best to give it.

Pat sat on the garden bench until dawn came over the Hill of the Mist and Bold-and-Bad ran away for a glorious mouse hunt in the grave-yard. The day had begun in a pale windless morning ... the day on which mother was to go. Would she ever return?

That old hynm she had hated ... "change and decay in all around I see."

Change was what she had always dreaded.

"Oh, Thou who changest not abide with me."

It was not a hateful hymn after all ... it was a hymn to be loved. How wonderful to feel that there WAS something that never changed ... a Power under and above and around on which you could depend. Peace seemed to flow into her.

"Child dear, whativer got ye up so early?"

"I wasn't in bed at all. I've been in the garden, Judy ... just praying."

"Oh, oh, it's all inny av us can be doing now," said Judy despairingly.

Cuddles had not been allowed to know the worst but she heard it in school that day and Pat had hard work to comfort her that evening.

"And what do you think Trix Binnie said?" she sobbed. "She said she ENVIED me ... it was so exciting to have a death in the house."

"You go down on yer liddle marrow bones this night and thank the Good Man Above he didn't be making ye a Binnie," said Judy solemnly.

Even that day was lived through. At night dad telephoned from town that the operation was successfully over and that mother was coming out of the anesthetic nicely. The Silver Bush folk slept that night; but there was still a long week of suspense to be lived through before they dared really hope. Then dad came home, with a light in his tired eyes that had not shone there for many a day. Mother would live: never very strong perhaps ... never just the woman she had been. But she would live.

"Oh, oh, and didn't I be always telling ye so?" said Judy triumphantly, forgetting all her gloomy dreads of "cutting up." "There niver was no sign. Gintleman Tom did be knowing it. That cat niver worried himsilf at all, at all."

Mother could not come home for six weeks, and during those weeks Pat and Judy ran Silver Bush, for both the aunts at the Bay Shore were ill and Winnie had to go the rescue. Pat was in the seventh heaven. She loved everything about the house more than ever. The fine hemstitched tablecloths ... Judy's hooked rugs ... the monogrammed sheets ... the cedar chest full of blankets ... the embroidered centerpieces ... the lace doilies ... the dear old blue willow-ware plates ... Grandmother Selby's silver tea service, the old mirrors that had stolen a bit of loveliness from every fair face that had ever looked into them. All had a new meaning for her. Every window was loved for some special bit of beauty to be seen from it. She loved her own because she could see the Hill of the Mist ... she loved the Poet's window because there was a far-away glimpse of the bay ... she loved the round window because it looked right into the silver bush ... she loved the front hall window because it looked squarely on the garden. As for its attic windows, one saw everything in the world worth seeing from them and sometimes Pat would go up the attic for no earthly reason except to look out of them.

She and Judy didn't make slaves of themselves. Every once in so long Pat would say,

"Now, let's stop thinking housework, Judy, and think wild strawberries," ... or ferns ... or June-bells as the case might be, and off they would go for a ramble. And in the "dims" they would sit on the back-door steps as of old and Judy would tell funny tales and Pat would laugh until she took kinks.

"Oh, oh, ye do be knowing how to work, Patsy darlint ... stopping for a bit av a laugh once in so long. There's few people do be knowing the sacret. Yer aunts at the Bay Shore ... they niver do be laughing and it's the rason they do be taking sick spells so often."

"Uncle Brian and Aunt Jessie are coming for the weekend, Judy. I must cut some iris for the Poet's room. I do love fixing up that room for a guest. And we must have an apple tart with whipped cream. That's Uncle Brian's favourite dessert."

Pat always remembered what a guest liked to eat. And she was, as Judy declared, "a cook be the grace av God." She loved to cook, feeling delightedly that in this one thing at least she was akin to the women of all lands and all ages. Almost all her letters to mother and Hilary and college correspondents began, "I've just put something in the oven." The pantry was never without its box of spicy cookies and the fluffy perfection of her cakes left Judy speechless. As for the fruit cake she proudly concocted and baked one day all on her own, take Judy's word for it, there never had been a fruit cake to match it at Silver Bush.

"I was niver no great hand at fruit cake, darlint," she said sadly. "Yer Aunt Edith always do be saying it takes a born lady to make a rale fruit cake and maybe she is right. But I might av been larning the trick if it hadn't been for a bit av discouragement I was having just after I came to Silver Bush. I thought one day I'd be making a fruit cake and at it I wint, wid more zale than jidgement. Yer Uncle Horace was home thin ... and a young imp he was ... hanging round to see what he could see and mebbe get a licking av the bowl. 'What do ye be putting in a fruit cake, Judy Plum,' he sez, curious like. 'A liddle bit av iverything,' sez I short like. And whin I turns me back to line the pan what did the young divil do but impty the ink-bottle on the clock shelf into me cake ... and me niver knowing it. Sure and yer Aunt Edith do be saying a good fruit cake shud be black. Mine was black enough to plaze her, Patsy darlint."

Pat exulted in finding a new recipe and serving it before anybody else when the Ladies' Aid met at Silver Bush. She loved to pore over the advertisement pictures in the magazines ... the lovely cookies and fruits and vegetables ... dear little white and red radishes ... curly lettuce ... crimson beets ... golden asparagus with little green tips. She loved going to town to shop. There were certain things in the stores there, HERS, though she had not yet bought them. She liked to browbeat the butcher and bulldoze the grocer delicately ... to resist temptation and yield to it ... to save and spend. She loved to think of weary and lonely people coming to Silver Bush for rest and food and love.