Читать книгу Mistress Pat - L. M. Montgomery - Страница 5

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“All the months are friends of mine but apple month is the dearest,” chanted Pat.

It was October at Silver Bush and she and Cuddles and Judy picked apples in the New Part of the orchard every afternoon ... which wasn’t so very new now, since it was all of twenty years old. But the Old Part was very much older and the apples in it were mostly sweet and fed to the pigs. Sometimes Long Alec Gardiner thought it would be far better to cut it down and get some real good out of the land but Pat couldn’t be made to hear reason about it. She loved the Old Part far better than the New. It had been planted by Great-grandfather Gardiner and was shadowy and mysterious, with as many old spruce trees as apple trees in it, and one special corner where generations of beloved cats and kittens had been buried. Besides, as Pat pointed out, if you cleared away the Old Part it would leave the graveyard open to all the world, since the Old Part surrounded it on three sides. This argument had weight with Long Alec. He was proud, in his way, of the old family burial plot, where nobody was ever buried now but where so many greats and grands of every degree slept ... for the Gardiners of Silver Bush came of old P. E. Island pioneer stock. So the Old Part was spared and in spring it was as beautiful as the New Part, when the gnarled trees were young and bridal again for a brief space in the sweet spring days and the cool spring nights.

It was such a mellow and dreamy afternoon and Silver Bush seemed mellow and dreamy, too. Pat thought the old farm had a mood for every day in the year and every hour in the day. Now it would be gay ... now melancholy ... now friendly ... now austere ... now grey ... now golden. To-day it was golden. The Hill of the Mist had wrapped a scarf of blue haze about its brown shoulders and was mysteriously lovely still, in spite of the missing Lombardy. Behind it a great castle of white cloud, with mauve shadows, towered up. There had been a delicate, ghostly rain the night before and the scent of the little hollow in the graveyard, full of frosted ferns, was distilled on the air. How green the pastures were for autumn! The kitchen yard was full of the pale gold of aspens and the turkey house was almost lost in a blaze of crimson sumacs. The white birches which some forgotten bride had planted along the Whispering Lane, that led from Silver Bush to Swallowfield, were amber, and the huge maple over the well was a flame. When Pat paused every few minutes just to look at it she whispered,

“ ‘The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry

Of bugles going by.’ ”

“What might ye be whispering to yersilf, Patsy? Sure and ye might be telling us if it’s inny joke. It seems to be delighting ye.”

Pat lifted eyebrows like little slender wings.

“It was just a bit of poetry, Judy, and you don’t care much for poetry.”

“Oh, oh, po’try do be all right in its place but it won’t be kaping the apples if there’s a hard frost some av these nights. We’re a bit behind wid the picking as it is. And more work than iver to look forward to, now that yer dad has bought the ould Adams place for pasture and going into the live stock business.”

“But he’s going to have a hired man to help him, Judy.”

“Oh, oh, and who will be looking after the hired man I’m asking ye. He’ll be nading a bite to ate, I’m thinking, and mebbe a bit av washing and minding done. Not that I’m complaining av the work, mind ye. But ye can niver tell about an outsider. It’s been minny a long day since we had inny av the brade at Silver Bush and it’ll be a bit av a change, as ye say yersilf.”

“I don’t mind changes that mean things coming as much as changes that mean things going,” said Pat, pausing to aim a wormy apple at two kittens who were chasing each other up the tree trunks. “And I’m so glad dad has bought the old Adams place. The little stone bridge Hilary and I built over Jordan and the Haunted Spring will belong to us now ... and Happiness.”

“Oh, oh, to think av buying happiness now!” chuckled Judy. “I wasn’t after thinking it cud be done, Patsy.”

“Judy, don’t you remember that Hilary and I called the little hill by the Haunted Spring Happiness? We used to have such lovely times there.”

“Oh, I’m minding. It was just me liddle joke, Patsy dear. Sure and it tickled me ribs to think av inny one being able to buy happiness. Oh, oh, there do be a few things God kapes to Himsilf and that do be one av thim. Though I did be knowing a man in ould Ireland that tried to buy off Death.”

“He couldn’t do that, Judy,” sighed Pat, recalling with a shiver the dark day when Bets, the lovely and beloved friend of her childhood, had died and left a blank in her life that had never been filled.

“But he did. And thin, whin he wanted death and prayed for him Death wudn’t come. ‘No, no,’ sez Death, ‘a bargain is a bargain.’ But this hired man now ... where is he going to slape? That’s been bothering me a bit. Wud yer dad be wanting me to give up me snug kitchen chamber for him and moving somewhere up the front stairs?”

Judy couldn’t keep the anxiety out of her voice. Pat shook her slim brown hands, that talked quite as eloquently as her lips, at Judy reassuringly.

“No, indeed, Judy. Dad knows that kitchen chamber is your kingdom. He’s going to fit up that nice little loft over the granary for him. Put a stove and a bed and a bit of furniture in it and it will be very comfortable. He can spend his evenings there when he’s home, don’t you think? What’s been worrying me, Judy, was that he might want to hang around the kitchen and spoil our jolly evenings.”

“Oh, oh, we’ll manage.” Judy was suddenly in good cheer. She would have surrendered her kitchen chamber without a word of protest had Long Alec so decreed but the thought had lain heavy on her heart. She had slept so cosily in that chamber for over forty years. “All I’m hoping is that yer dad won’t be hiring Sim Ledbury. He’s been after the place I hear.”

“Oh, surely dad wouldn’t want a Ledbury round,” said Cuddles.

“Ye can’t pick and choose, Cuddles dear. That do be the trouble. Hired hilp is be way av being scarce and yer dad must be having a man that understands cows. Sim do be thinking he does. But a Ledbury wid the freedom av me kitchen will be a hard pill to swallow and him wid a face like a tombstone and born hating cats. Gintleman Tom took just the one look at him the day he was here and thin made himsilf scarce. If we can be getting a man who’ll be good company for the cats ye’ll niver hear a word av complaint from me about him, as long as he’s willing to do a bit av work for his wages. Yer dad has got his name up for niver being put out at innything so he cud be imposed upon something shameful. But we’ll all be seeing what we’ll see and now we’ve finished wid this tree I’m going in to bake me damsons.”

“I’m going to stay out till the sunshine fails me. I think, Judy, when I grow very old I’ll just sit and bask in the sunshine all the time ... I love it so. Cuddles, what about a run back to the Secret Field before sunset?”

Cuddles shook a golden-brown head.

“I’d love to go but you know I twisted my foot this morning and it hurts me yet. I’m going over to sit on Weeping Willy’s slab in the graveyard for a while and just dream. I feel shimmery to-day ... as if I was made of sunbeams.”

When Cuddles said things like that Pat had a vague feeling that Cuddles was clever and ought to be educated if it could be managed. But it had to be admitted that so far Cuddles seemed to share the family indifference to education. She went in unashamedly for “a good time” and pounced on life like a cat on a mouse.

Pat slipped away for one of her dear pilgrimages to the Secret Field ... that little tree-encircled spot at the very back of the farm, which she and Sid had discovered so long ago and which she, at least, had loved ever since. Almost every Sunday evening, when they walked over the farm, talking and planning ... for Sid was developing into an enthusiastic farmer ... they ended up with the Secret Field, which was always in grass and always bore a wonderful crop of wild strawberries. Sid had promised her he would never plough it up. It was really too small to be worthwhile cultivating anyhow. And if it were ploughed up there might never be any more of Judy’s famous wild strawberry shortcakes or those still more delicious things Pat made and which she called strawberry cream pies.

It was nice to go there with Sid but it was even nicer to go alone. There was nothing then to come between her and the silent, rapt communion she seemed to hold with it. It was the loneliest and loveliest spot on the farm. Its very silence was friendly and seemed to come out of the woods around it like a real presence. No wind ever blew there and rain and snow fell lightly. In summer it was a pool of sunlight, in winter a pool of frost ... now in autumn a pool of colour. Musky, spicy shadows seemed to hover around its grey old fences. Pat always felt that the field knew it was beautiful and was happy in its knowledge. She lingered in it until the sun set and then went slowly back home, savouring every moment of the gathering dusk. What a lovely phrase “gathering dusk” was ... almost as lovely as Judy’s “dim”, though the latter had a certain eerie quality that always gave Pat a rapture.

At the top of the hill field she paused, as always, to gloat over Silver Bush. The light shone out from the door and windows of the kitchen where Judy would be preparing supper, with the cats watching for a “liddle bite” and McGinty cocking a pointed ear for Pat’s footstep. Would it be as nice when that unknown creature, the all-too-necessary hired man, would be hanging round, waiting for his supper? Of course it wouldn’t. He would be a stranger and an alien. Pat fiercely resented the thought of him.

They would have supper by lamplight now. For a while she always hated to have to light the lamp for supper ... it meant that the wind had blown the summer away and that winter nights were closing in. Then she liked it ... it was so cosy and companionable and Silver Bushish, with Judy’s “dim” looking in through the crimson vines around the window.

The colour of home on an autumn dusk was an exquisite thing. The trees all around it seemed to love it. The house belonged to them and to the garden and the green hill and the orchard and they to it. You couldn’t separate them, Pat felt. She always wondered how any one could live in a house where there were no trees. It seemed an indecency, like a too naked body. Trees ... to veil and caress and beshadow ... trees to warn you back and beckon you on. Lombardies for stateliness ... birches for maiden grace ... maples for friendliness ... spruce and fir for mystery ... poplars to whisper secrets. Only they never really did. You thought you understood as long as you listened ... but when you left them you realized they had just been laughing at you ... thin, rustling, silky laughter. All the trees kept some secret. Who knew but that all those white birches, which stood so primly all day, when night and moonlight came, might step daintily out of the earth and pirouette over the meadows, while the young spruces around the Mince Pie field danced a saraband? Laughing at her fancy, Pat ran into the light and good cheer of Judy’s white-washed kitchen with life singing in her heart.