Lucy Montgomery - Pat of Silver Bush

Pat leaned out of the window to drink in the cold, delicious air. The wind sounded eerie in the bushes. A dog was barking over at Swallowfield. Pat had rather thought that when she found herself alone she would cast herself on the bed in an abandonment of anguish. But there was still moonlight in the world ... still owls in the silver bush. The old loyalties of home were still potent ... it WOULD be nice to have a room of one's very own.

A house always looks very pathetic and unfriended on a dawn after a festivity. Pat found happiness and comfort in restoring it all from cellar to garret. The presents were packed and sent to the Bay Shore. It WAS fun to read the account of the wedding in the papers.

"The bride before her marriage was Winifred Alma, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Alec Gardiner." That hurt Pat. Wasn't Winnie STILL their daughter? "The bridesmaids wore dresses of pink Georgette crêpe with pink mohair hats and bouquets of sweet peas. Little Emmy Madison made a charming flower girl in a smocked frock of pink voile." Fancy little Emmy having her name and dress in the papers! Miss Patricia Gardiner, sister of the bride, was charming in marigold voile. And oh, oh ... "Miss Judy Plum wore blue silk with corsage of roses." It must have been that rogue of a Jen Russell who had put that in. Judy was tremendously pleased. Her name right there with all the quality, bracketed with the groom's aunt, the haughty Mrs. Ronald Russell in her black satin with mauve orchids! Though Judy was a bit dubious about "corsage." It sounded ... well ... a liddle quare.

Then there were visits to the Bay Shore to help Winnie get settled in her big white house with its background of sapphire water, where there was a coloured, fir-scented garden, full of wind music and bee song, that dipped in terraces to the harbour shore and was always filled with the sound of "perilous seas forlorn." Pat would have been quite happy if she could have forgotten that Hilary was going away.

Pat was feeling older than she would probably feel at fifty. Life had all at once grown bare and chilly. Hilary was going to Toronto to take the five-year course in architecture.

His mother had arranged it, he told Pat briefly. Since that bitter day, when Doreen Garrison had finally turned her back on her Jingle-baby Hilary had never spoken of his mother. Pat knew he never heard from her except for some brief note containing a check for his college expenses.

Pat was glad for Hilary's sake. He was on the way to realise all his dreams and ambitions. But on her own account she was very bleak. Nobody to prowl with ... nobody to tell things to ... it was always so easy to tell things to Hilary. Nobody to joke with.

"We've always laughed at the same things, Judy."

"Oh, oh, and that's why ye do be such good frinds, Patsy. It's the rale test. It's sorry I am mesilf that Jingle is going. A fine gintleman he's got to be, that tall and straight standing. And ye tell me he's to be an arkytict. Oh, oh, I'm hoping he won't be like the one I heard of in ould Ireland. He did be buying the plan av a fine house from the Bad Man Below. And the price he had to be paying was his swateheart's soul. 'Twas a grand house I'm telling ye but there was few iver wanted to live in it."

"I don't think Hilary will spend souls buying plans from the devil," said Pat, with a forlorn smile. "He can design plenty himself. But, Judy, it seems to me I just can't bear it. Bets dead ... Winnie gone ... and now Hilary."

"It's mesilf that's noticed how things do be going in threes like that, Patsy. It do be likely nothing but good'll happen to ye for a long time now."

"But life will be so ... so empty, Judy."

"He'll be coming back some fine day."

Pat shook her head. Talk of Hilary's return was empty and meaningless. She knew he would never come back, unless for a vacation month or two. Their days of happy comradeship were over ... their hours in Happiness ... their rambles by field and shore. Childhood was gone. The "first fine rapture" of youth was gone.

"What's to become av McGinty? Oh, oh, there'll be one poor broken- hearted liddle dog."

"Hilary is giving McGinty to me. I know he WILL be broken-hearted. But if love can help him ..."

Pat choked. She was seeing McGinty's eyes when the morrow brought no Hilary.

"Oh, oh, but I'm glad to hear that. I'm not liking a dogless house. Cats do be int'resting craturs, as Cuddles says, but there's SOMETHING about a dog, now. Sure and there'll be some fun saving bones again."

Pat knew Hilary was waiting for her in Happiness. They had agreed to have their parting tryst there, before Hilary left to catch the night train. Slowly she went to keep it. The air was full of colour; there was just the faintest hint of frost in its sweet mildness; the evening sunshine was exceedingly mellow on grey old barns; as she went over Jordan she noticed the two dark, remote, pointed firs among the golden maples in the corner of the field. Hilary loved those firs. He said they were the twin spires of some mystic cathedral of sunset.

Hilary was waiting in Happiness, sitting on an old mossy stone by the spring that the years had never touched. Beside him sat a gay little dog with a hint of wistfulness behind his gaiety. McGinty felt something coming to him ... something formless and chill. But as long as he was with his dear master what did it matter?

Hilary drew a quick breath: his eyes lit up slowly from within as was their way. She was coming to him over the field ... a slip of a girl in a gold and orange sweater, the autumnal sunshine burnishing her dark-brown hair and glinting in her amber eyes; her face glowing with warm, ripe, KISSABLE tints, her body like a young sapling never to be broken, however it might bend.

"Trusty, dusky, vivid, true, With eyes of gold and bramble dew."

Why couldn't he have said that instead of Stevenson? It was truer of Pat than it could be of anybody else. Why couldn't he say to her all the burning and eloquent things he thought of in the night but could never utter the next day?

Pat sat down on the stone beside Hilary. They talked only a little and that in rather jerky sentences.

"I'll never come to Happiness again," said Pat.

"Why not? I'd like to think of you sitting here sometimes ... with McGinty."

"Poor little dorglums!" Pat absently caressed McGinty's willing head with one of her slender brown hands ... her DEAR hands, thought Hilary. "No, I couldn't bear to come here without you, Hilary. We've been here so often ... we've been chums for so many years."

"Can't we ... can't we ... sometime ... be more than chums, Pat?" blurted Hilary desperately.

Pat instantly became just a little aloof, although her face had flushed to a sudden warm rose. Hilary was such a nice friend ... chum ... brother ... but never a lover. Pat was very positive on that point.

"We've always been wonderful friends, Hilary. Don't spoil it now. Why, we've been chums ever since that night you saved me from heaven knows what on the Line road. Ten years."

"They've been very good years." Hilary seemed to have taken his repulse more philosophically than she had feared. "What will the years to come be, I wonder?"

"They'll be marvellous years for you, Hilary. You'll succeed ... you'll reach the top. And then all your old friends here ... 'specially little old maid Pat of Silver Bush, will brag about having once known you."

"I WILL succeed," Hilary set his teeth together. "With your ... friendship ... I can do anything. I want to tell you ... if I can ... what your friendship and the life I've shared with you at Silver Bush have meant to me. It's kept me from growing up hateful and cynical. You've all been so sure that life is good that I've never been able to disbelieve it ... never will be able to. You'll write me often, won't you, Pat? It will be ... lonely ... at first. I don't know a soul in Toronto."