Mistress Pat (15 page)

When Suzanne wakened half an hour later she sat up and gazed around her in amazement. A most delectable odor came from a sizzling frying pan on the stove in which crisp bacon slices could be discerned. On the hearth was a plateful of golden-brown triangles of toast and Pat was putting a spoonful of tea in a battered old granite teapot.

The table was set with dishes and in the center was a bouquet of ferns and meadow-queen in an old pickle jar.

“Pat, what magic is this? Are you a witch?”

“Not a bit of it. When I woke up I saw a pile of firewood behind the stove and a frying pan on a nail. I found plates and cups and knives and forks in the pantry. Evidently this house is occupied by times. The owner probably lives on some other farm and camps here for haying and harvest and things like that. I lit the fire and went out to the car. Took a chance with the dog…there
is
a dog…but he paid no attention to me. I had a package of bacon in the car and a couple of loaves of bread. Mother likes baker's toast, you know. I found some tea in the pantry…and so breakfast is served, madam.”

“You're a born home-maker, Pat. This awful place actually looks quite homey and pleasant. I never thought a pickle jar bouquet could be so charming. And I'm hungry…I'm positively starving. Let's eat. Our first meal together…our first breaking of bread. I like that phrase…breaking bread together…don't you? Who is it speaks of ‘bread of friendship'?”

“Carman,” said Pat, dishing up her bacon.

“What a lovely
clean
morning it is!” said Suzanne, scrambling up. “Look, Pat, there's a big pine down by that pond. I love pines so much it hurts me. And I love crisp bacon and crisper toast. Thank heaven there is plenty of it. I never was so hungry in my life.”

They were half through their breakfast when a queer strangled noise behind them startled them. They turned around…and stiffened with horror. In the hall doorway a man was standing…a tall, gaunt, unshaven creature in a motley collection of garments, with an extraordinarily long gray mustache, which didn't seem to belong to his lean, lantern-jawed face at all, hanging down on either side of his chin. This apparition was staring at them, apparently as much taken aback as they were.

“I thought I was over it,” he said mournfully, shaking a grizzled head. “I mostly sleeps it off.”

Pat rose and stammered out an explanation. The gentleman waved a hand at her.

“It's all right. Sorry you had to sleep on the floor. If I'd been awake I'd have give you my bed.”

“We knocked…and called…”

“Just so. Old Gabe's trump couldn't have roused me last night. I was a bit lit up, to state facts. You did right to make yourselves at home. But it's a wonder the dog didn't tear you to pieces. He's a savage brute.”

“He wasn't here when we came…and he seemed quite quiet this morning.”

“'Zat a fact? Then I've been fooled. Bought him on the grounds that he was a tartar. I keep him here for tramps. My name is Nathaniel Butterbloom and I'm just sorter camping here while I take off the harvest. I live down at Three Corners.”

“Won't you sit down and share our breakfast?” said Pat lamely.

“Don't care if I do,” said Mr. Butterbloom and sat down without more ado. “Sorry there ain't no table-cloth. I had one but the rats et it.”

Pat, exchanging a grin with Suzanne, poured him a cup of tea and helped him liberally to bacon and toast.

“This
is
a pleasant surprise and that's a fact. I've been scraping up my own meals. When I run out of provisions I fry a kitten,” he added mournfully. “That barn out there is overrun with cats. I started out with three cats two years ago but there must be hundreds now.”

“It's a wonder they don't keep the rats down,” said Suzanne mischievously. “And your roof leaks very badly, Mr. Butterbloom.”

“Well,” said Mr. Butterbloom placidly, “when it rains I can't get up on the roof to work, can I? And when it's fine it doesn't leak.”

“I'm sorry there is no milk for your tea,” said Pat.

“There's some in the pantry if the spiders haven't got into it.”

“They have,” said Pat briefly.

Mr. Butterbloom drank his cup of tea and champed his bacon in silence. Suzanne had just whispered solemnly to Pat, “A strong silent man,” when he wiped his mustache with the back of his hand and spoke again.

“What mought your names be?”

“This is Miss Kirk…and I'm one of the Gardiner girls from North Glen.”

“Pleased to meet you both. And so you ain't married women?”

“No…no.” Suzanne shook her head in demure sadness.

“Neither am I. I've a widder woman keeping house for me at Three Corners. She isn't much of a cook but she rubs my back for me. I have to have my back rubbed for half an hour every night before I can sleep…unless I'm lit up. I've heard of the Gardiners. Very genteel. I've never been in North Glen but I courted an old maid in South Glen for a while. I was younger then. She kept me dangling for a year and then up and married a widower. Since then I've sorter lost my enthusiasm for marriage.”

He relapsed into silence while he polished off another helping. When the platter was empty he sighed deeply.

“Miss, that
was
a breakfast. After all, I may have made a mistake in not getting married.” He fixed a fishy, speculative eye on Suzanne. “I haven't much book-larning but I've a couple of farms, nearly paid for.”

Suzanne did not rise to this but she and Pat offered to wash the dishes before leaving.

“Never mind,” said Mr. Butterbloom gloomily. “I don't wash dishes. The dog licks em clean. If you must be going, I'll get out the hosses and haul your buzz-wagon out of the ditch.”

He refused an offer of payment sadly.

“Didn't you cook my breakfast? But could you do with a kitten? There's several around just the right age.”

Pat explained politely that they had all the cats needful at Silver Bush.

“It's of no consequence. I s'pose”…with a sigh…“it'll come in handy sometime when the cupboard is bare.”

When they got out of sight of the house Pat stopped the car so that they might have a laugh. When two people have laughed…really laughed…together they are friends for life.

“Two unchaperoned females spending the night in a house with a drunken man,” gasped Suzanne. “Let's pray the writer of ‘North Glen Notes' never finds it out.”

Nobody but Judy ever knew the whole story. Judy, of course, knew all about Nathaniel Butterbloom.

“A bit av a divil in his day,” she said, “but he's too old now to cut up much. Innyhow, ye can be thankful he didn't ask ye to rub his back for him.”

Pat had gone to her Secret Field, seeking the refreshment of soul she always found there. It was as beautiful and remote and mystic as ever, full of the sunshine of uncounted summers. The trees about it welcomed her and Pat flung herself down among the feathery bent grasses and listened to the silence until she felt at one with it and certain problems that had rather worried her of late dropped into proper focus as they always did in that sweet place, where the fairies still surely lingered if they lingered in the world at all. Under the ancient spell of the Secret Field Pat became a child again and could believe anything.

She went from it to Happiness by a narrow wood lane where ferns grew waist-high on either side. Pat knew all the little lanes in the woods and was known of them. They had their moods and their whims. One always seemed full of hidden laughter and furtive feet. One never seemed to know just where it wanted to go. In this one it always seemed as if you were in a temple. Overhead in the young, resinous fir boughs a wind was crooning a processional. The aroma drifting under the arches from old sunny hollows and lurking nooks was as the incense of worship, the exquisite shadows that filled the woods were acolytes, and the thoughts that came to her were like prayers.

“If one could only feel always like this,” Pat had said once to Judy. “All the little worries swallowed up…all the petty spites and fears and disappointments forgotten…just love and peace and beauty.”

“Oh, oh, but what wud there be lift for heaven, girl dear?” asked Judy.

The lane finally led out to the back fields of the other place and Pat found her way to Happiness and sat down near the Haunted Spring in a little hollow among the ferny cradle-hills. Far down before her, beyond the still, golden pastures, was the sapphire of the gulf. Over the westering hill of spruce a sunset of crimson and warm gold was fading out into apple green. And all this beauty was hers just for the looking. In these silent and remembered places she could think of old, beloved things…of sunsets she and Hilary had watched there together…Hilary, who at this very moment would be somewhere on the ocean on his way back from his summer in Europe. He had written her most delightful letters but she was glad he would soon be back in Canada. It would be pleasant to think that the Atlantic no longer rolled between them. She wondered a little wistfully why he couldn't have planned to stop off for a few days on the Island on his way to Toronto. She had asked him to. And he had never even referred to the invitation, although he had wound up his letter by saying “my love to Silver Bush.” She could see from where she sat her name and his cut on a maple tree and overgrown with lichen. Pat sighed sentimentally. She wished she could be a child again with no worries. To be sure she had thought she had worries then…father going west and thinking you were ugly and Joe running away to sea and things like that. But there had been no men then…no question of beaus and people who persisted in turning into lovers when all you wanted of them was to be friends. Jim Mallory was in love with her now. She had met him at a dance in Silverbridge and, as Rae told Hilary in her next letter to him, he fell for her with a crash that could be heard for miles. He was a really fine fellow…“oh, oh, that's something like now,” Judy said, the first evening he came to Silver Bush. Pat liked him terribly…almost as much as she liked Hilary and David. Rae told Judy she believed Pat was really in love but Judy had grown pessimistic under repeated disappointments.

“I've no great faith in it lasting,” she said.

Pat, when she left home that night, hardly knew herself whether she wasn't a little bit in love or not. Certainly…the look in his eyes…the touch of his fingers when he lingered to say good-night under enchanted moons…she hadn't felt like that since the days of Lester Conway. But her hour in the Secret Field and Happiness cleared the matter up for her. No, liking wasn't enough…little thrills and raptures weren't enough. There must be something more before she could dream of leaving Silver Bush. Poor Jim Mallory never had a chance after that and in a week or two Long Alec was to ask his wife in a mildly exasperated tone what the dickens the girl wanted anyways. Was nobody good enough for her?

“No,” said mother softly, “just as nobody was good enough for me till you came, Alec.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Long Alec. But he said it gently. After all, he was in no hurry to lose Pat.

Rae was another of Pat's little problems. She had passed her Entrance and wanted to go to Queen's. But just where was the money to come from? The crop was only fair: there had been some heavy losses in cattle: it was just barely possible to pay the interest on the mortgage this year. Dad wanted Rae to wait for another year and Rae was taking it hard. But in Happiness Pat decided that Rae must go. They would borrow the money from Uncle Tom who would be quite willing to lend it. Long Alec had a horror of borrowing. It had robbed him of many a night's sleep when he mortgaged Silver Bush to buy the Adams place. But Pat thought she could bring him round. Rae could pay back the loan in a year of teaching if she were lucky enough to get the home school. If not, in two. Everything seemed feasible in Happiness.

If only Judy were not going to Ireland! But Judy was so set on it now that nothing could turn her from it, even if anybody could have been selfish enough to try. She meant to sail in November and was already talking of passports and a new trunk.

“Sure and I cudn't be taking my old blue chist. It's a bit ould-fashioned. I tuk it to Australy wid me and thin to Canady but the times have changed since thin and a body must kape up wid thim. And I'll have to be getting a negleege, too, it's like. There do be a pink silk one wid white cherry blossoms all over it, marked down at Brennan's. Do ye be thinking I'm too old for it, girls dear?”

The idea of Judy, in a pink, cherry-blossomed “negleege” was something nobody at Silver Bush could contemplate with equanimity. But not a word was said to dissuade her. Pat assured her there was no longer any age in fashions.

Yes, Judy was going. The fact must be faced. But it no longer blocked up the future. The winter would pass…the spring would come…and Judy would come with it. Meanwhile, she was not taking Silver Bush to Ireland in her pocket. It would stay where it was, under its sheltering trees, with its fields lying cool and quiet around it. Pat, on her way home, stopped as ever at the top of the hill to gloat over it—this house where her dear ones were lying asleep.

For she had lingered long in Happiness and Silver Bush had gone to bed. There was still a light in Judy's kitchen chamber. Judy was probably hunting through her book of useful knowledge for remedies for seasickness. Though Uncle Tom had slyly suggested that her black bottle was as good an old reliable as any.

Pat was happy. In spite of everything the autumn world was beautiful. Some of its days might bring purple gifts…some might bring peace…all would bring loveliness.

“Darling Silver Bush!” said Pat. “How could anybody ever think of leaving you if she could help it?”

She remembered how sorry she had been in childhood for the Jamesons of Silverbridge…a family who were always moving round. To be sure, they seemed to like it…but the very thought of such an existence made Pat shiver.

Long Alec was horrified at first when Pat broached the idea of borrowing the money for Rae's year at Queen's. But she talked him round. It was beginning to be suspected at Silver Bush that Pat could twist dad around her little finger. Rae averred she did it by flattering him but Pat indignantly denied it.

“It would be of no use to try to flatter dad. You know as well as I do, Rae, that dad is impervious to flattery.”

“Oh, oh, there do be no such man,” muttered Judy with a grin.

Flattery or not, Long Alec yielded and everything was soon arranged. Rae was wild with delight.

“If I'd had to wait till next year I'd have gone straight to the end of the world and jumped off. Emmy's going this year and Dot Robinson and you know we've always been such pals. And I'm going to study, Pat…oh, am I going to study? I know everybody says the Silver Bush girls are lookers and popular with the boys but have no brains. I mean to show them. Aunt Barbara says a girl doesn't need brains if she's pretty but that's an idea left over from the Victorians. Nowadays you've got to have brains to capitalize your good looks.”

“Did ye be thinking that out for yersilf, darlint?” asked Judy.

“No,” said Rae, one of whose charms was honesty. “I saw it in a magazine. Oh, but I'm happy! Pat darling, the world is only sixteen years old today. And can't we have a party before I go?”

“Of course. I've got that all planned out.”

Pat loved to give parties and welcomed any excuse for one. And this one, being a sort of send-off for Rae, must be a special one.

“We'll have it a week from Friday night. We'll have a platform built in the silver bush for dancing and Chinese lanterns hung on the trees.”

“Pat, how lovely! It will be like fairyland. Will there be a moon?”

“There will. I'll see to that,” promised Pat.

“Don't make too many fine plans,” said Sid warningly. “Remember when you do some of them always go agley.”

Pat tossed a defiant brown head.

“What matter? I love making plans. I'll be making plans when I'm eighty. Let's get right to work, Rae, planning out the eats. We'll have some of those new ribbon sandwiches Norma had at her tea last week. They're so pretty.”

Brown and golden heads bent together over recipe books. Delicious excitement began to pervade everything. Pat and Rae talked so much about the affair that Long Alec, who was taking a jaundiced view of things just then, growled to Judy that the fools of the world weren't all dead yet.

“Oh, oh, and don't ye think it'll be a rale dull place whin they are?” demanded Judy. “Do ye be thinking…” in a soothing whisper…“ye'd like a bacon-and-pittatie pie for supper?”

Long Alec brightened. After all, crops might be poor and you might be beginning to suspect that you had paid too much for the old Adams place but Judy's bacon-and-potato pies were something to live for. And girls were only young once.