Philosophically as Judy tried to take it she was very lonely when she climbed into her bed at nights, with no black guardian at its foot.
"Changes do be coming," she whispered sadly. "Gintleman Tom KNEW. That do be why he wint. He niver liked to be upset. And I'm fearing the luck av Silver Bush do be gone wid him."
The Fifth Year
1
Pat, coming home from the Long House, where she and David and Suzanne had been reading poetry before the fire all the evening, paused for a moment to gloat over Silver Bush before going in. She always did that when coming home from anywhere. And to-night it seemed especially beautiful, making an incredibly delicate picture with its dark background of silver birches and dim, dreaming winter fields. There were the white, sparkling snows of a recent storm on its roof. Two lace-like powdered firs, that had grown tall in the last few years, were reaching up to the west of it. To the south were two leafless birches and directly between them the round pearl of the moon. A warm golden light was gleaming out of the kitchen window ... the light of home. It was fascinating to look at the door and realise that by just opening it one could step into beauty and light and love.
The world seemed all moonlight and silver bush, faintly broken by the music of a wind so uncertain that you hardly knew whether there really was a wind or not. The trees along the Whispering Lane looked as if they had been woven on fairy looms and a beloved pussy cat was stepping daintily through the snow to her.
Pat was very happy. It had been a beautiful winter ... one of the happiest winters of her life. None of the changes Judy had foreboded upon the departure of Gentleman Tom had so far come to pass. Winnie and her twinkling children came over often and Little Mary stayed for weeks at a time, though her mother complained that Pat spoiled her so outrageously that there was no doing anything with her when she went home. Mary had once said,
"I wish I was an orphan and then I could come and live with Aunt Pat. She lets me do EVERYSING I want to."
The only time Mary ever found Aunt Pat cross with her was the day she had taken Tillytuck's hatchet and cut down a little poplar that was just beginning life behind the turkey house. Aunt Pat's eyes did flash then. Mary was packed off home in disgrace and made to feel that if Aunt Pat ever forgave her it would be more than she deserved. Mary really couldn't understand it. It had been such a LITTLE tree. Aunt Pat hadn't been half so cross when she, Little Mary, had spilled a whole can of molasses on the Little Parlour rug or upset the jug of water on the floor in the Poet's room.
But everybody at Silver Bush spoiled Little Mary because they loved her. She had such a delightful little face. Everything about it laughed ... her eyes ... her mouth ... the corners of her nose ... the dimples in her cheeks ... the little curl in front of her ears. Judy vowed she was "the spit and image" of Pat in childhood but she was far prettier than Pat had ever been. Yet she lacked the elfin charm that had been Pat's and sometimes Judy thought it was just as well. Perhaps it was not a good thing to have that strange little spark of difference that set you off by yourself and made a barrier, however slight and airy it might be, between you and your kind. It is quite likely that this lurking idea of Judy's was born of the fact that Pat's beaus no longer came to Silver Bush. Ever since the affair of Donald Holmes the youth of the Glens had left Pat severely alone. To be sure, when Tillytuck commented on this, Judy scornfully remarked that Pat had had them all tied up by the ears at one time or another and no more men were left. But in secret it worried her. It made Judy quite wild to think of Pat ever being an old maid. Even David Kirk didn't seem to be getting anywhere with what the clan persisted in thinking his wooing. When Judy heard that Mrs. Binnie had said that Pat Gardiner was pretty well on the shelf she trembled with wrath.
"Oh, oh, there do be just this difference betwane Madam Binnie and a rattlesnake, Tillytuck ... the snake can't be talking."
Pat was not worrying over the absence of the men.
"I fall in love but it doesn't last," she told Judy philosophically. "It never has lasted ... you know that, Judy. I'm constitutionally fickle and that being the case I'm never going to trust my emotions again. It wouldn't matter if it hurt only me ... but it hurts other people. There's only one real love in my life, Judy ... Silver Bush. I'll always be true to IT. It satisfies me. Nothing else does. Even when I was craziest about Harris Hynes and Lester Conway and ... and Donald Holmes, I always felt there was something wanting. I couldn't tell what but I knew it. So don't worry over me, Judy."
Judy's only comfort was that Hilary's letters still came regularly.
Pat had had a book from him that day ... a lovely book in a dull green leather binding with a golden spider-web over it ... a book that BELONGED to Pat. Hilary's gifts were like that ... something that must have made him say, whenever his eyes lighted on it, "That is Pat's. It couldn't be anybody else's."
If life could just go on forever like this ... at least for years, "safe from corroding change." In childhood you thought it would but now you knew it couldn't. Something was always coming up ... something you never expected. Only that day she had overheard Judy saying to Tillytuck, "Oh, oh, things do be going too well. We do be going to have an awful wallop before long." Tillytuck had told Judy she needed a liver pill but Pat was afraid there was something in it.
At Silver Bush Rae's love affairs had usurped the place that Pat's used to hold. Rae discussed her two suitors very frankly with Pat and Judy in the talks around the kitchen fire o'nights, often to the unromantic accompaniment of butter-fried eggs or turkey bones. Rae was never of the same heart two nights in succession.
"Don't change your mind so often," Pat said once in exasperation.
"Oh, but it's glorious," laughed Rae. "Think how deadly monotonous it would be to be in love with the same man week in and week out. Of course I mean to make up my mind permanently some day. I feel sure I'll marry one of those boys. They are both good matches."
"Rae! That sounds hatefully mercenary."
"Sister dear, I finished with romance when Larry Wheeler sent me a flower-wreathed announcement of his bridals. That cured me forever. And I'm not mercenary ... I'm only through with being a sentimentalist. It's just that I find it hard to decide between two equally nice boys."
"It's hardly fair to them," protested Pat. "And people are talking. They say you're more or less engaged to both of them."
"Well, you know I'm not. Neither of them is by way of being a bit deceived. And, in spite of their jealousy, they're such good sports over it all, too. They are so fearfully polite to each other outwardly. No fear of a duel there even if it wasn't out of date."
"You wouldn't want a man to risk his life for you, would you?" demanded Pat.
"No ... no." For a moment Rae looked serious. "But I think I'd like to have him WILLING to risk it. I wonder if either Bruce or Peter would be that. However, they are getting no end of thrills out of it. It's a kind of race, you know, and men enjoy that ever so much more than a tame courtship. Sometimes I think I'll decide it by lot ... I really do. They seem so evenly balanced. If Peter's nose is not all I would fondly dream neither are Bruce's ears. And their names are nice. That's SOMETHING. How awful it would be to marry a man who had one of those terrible names in Dickens! Judy, do you think Bruce will be fat by the time he is forty? I'm afraid I wouldn't love him then. There is no danger of that with Peter. He'll always be thin as a snipe. But he has rosy cheeks. I don't like rosy cheeks in men. I prefer them pale and interesting. And will his mother like me?"