It was Sunday and everybody went to church. Pat remembered as she went out of the door that when she was a child she had always been so sorry for Silver Bush when everybody went to church. It must feel lonely. She had always been glad when she was left home because she would be company for it.
Something made her turn her head as the car went down the lane. Silver Bush looked beautiful, even on that dour November day, against its sheltering trees. She felt her heart go out to it as they turned the corner and it was hidden from her sight.
The minister had just announced his text ... it was always remarked as a curious coincidence that it was, "Thy house shall become a desolation" ... when young Corey Robinson entered the church, hurried up the aisle and whispered a word to Long Alec. Pat heard it ... every one in the church heard it in a few moments.
Silver Bush was burning!
Pat seemed to die a thousand deaths on that ride home. Yet when she got there she was curiously numb ... terror seemed to have washed her being clean of everything. Even when she saw that terrible fire blazing against the grey November hillside she gave no sign ... made no sound.
It seemed as if everybody in both the Glens and Silverbridge and Bay Shore were there ... but nothing could be done ... nothing but stand helplessly and see a home that had been a home for generations wiped out. That night Silver Bush, with all its memories, all its possessions, was in ashes!
2
They all went to Swallowfield until things could be settled. Pat took no part in the settling. Life had suddenly become for her like a landscape on the moon. She had the odd feeling of not belonging to this or any world that she had felt once or twice after a bad attack of flu. Only ... this feeling would never pass. Mother, who bore up wonderfully, watched her anxiously.
It turned out that May had left the oil stove in the porch burning when she went to church. It was supposed to have exploded. Pat was not in the least interested in HOW it had happened. She was not interested in anything ... not even in the finding of Judy's "cream cow" quite unharmed amid the ashes in the cellar and the old front door with its knocker, lying on the lawn. Somebody had wrenched it off in a first vain attempt to enter the blazing house. She did not care when it was discovered that all the hooked rugs Judy had stored in the garret for her were safe, Aunt Barbara having borrowed them to copy the patterns the day before the fire. When you are horribly, hopelessly tired you can't care about anything.
The only thing that seemed to be the least bit of comfort to her was that the white kittens had not been burned. She had packed the picture up after Judy's death and sent it to Hilary. He had never even acknowledged it ... that hurt her ... but as she had sent it to his office she felt quite sure he must have received it. Yes, she was faintly glad Judy's kittens had not been burned.
At first Long Alec talked of rebuilding Silver Bush. It was insured. Everybody seemed very pleased about the insurance ... but no insurance could restore the old heirlooms ... the old associations. And then, four days after the fire, Great-Aunt Frances at the Bay Shore died and it was found that she had left the Bay Shore farm to mother.
"It's strange how things work out," said Aunt Barbara.
"Very strange," agreed Pat bitterly.
The kaleidoscope shifted again. Long Alec and mother and Pat would go to live at the Bay Shore. And the new house for Sid and May ... a house without memories ... would be built on the old foundation of Silver Bush. It would not be like the old Silver Bush. That was gone and the place thereof would know it no more.
May was openly triumphant. A new house, with all the bay windows she wanted and a colour-scheme kitchen like Olive's! Lovely!
Mother was really pleased at the thought of going back to her old home to live.
"Mother is younger than I am," thought Pat drearily.
She felt horribly old. Her love for Silver Bush had kept her young ... and now it was gone. Nothing was left ... there was only a dreadful, unbearable emptiness.
"Life has beaten me," she told herself. She had had enough grief in her life to know that in time even the bitterest fades out into a not unpleasing dearness and sweetness of recollection. But this heart-break could never fade. Everything had fallen into ruins around her. She could never fit into the life at the Bay Shore. She had a terrible feeling that she did not belong anywhere ... or to anybody ... in this new sad lonely world.
"I think ... if I could ever be glad of anything again ... I'd be glad that Judy died before this happened," she thought. She did not say these things to anybody. Nobody but mother would have understood and she was not going to make things harder for mother. But her heart was like an unlighted room and nothing, she thought she knew, could ever illumine it again.
3
One evening two weeks later Pat slipped away in the twilight and went along the Whispering Lane like a ghost, to where home had been. She had never dared to go before. But something drew her now.
Where Silver Bush had been was only a yawning cellar full of ashes and charred beams. Pat leaned on the old yard gate ... which had not burned because the wind had blown the flames back against the bush ... and looked long and quietly about her. She wore her long blue coat and the little dress of crinkled red crepe she had worn to church ... the only clothes she owned just now. Her head was bare and her face was very pale.
The evening was soft and gentle and almost windless. No living thing stirred near her except a lean adventurous barn cat that picked its way gingerly through the yard. Bold-and-Bad and Popka had been transferred to Swallowfield and Winnie had taken Squedunk.
It hurt Pat worse than anything else to see the dead stark trees of the birch grove. She shuddered as she recalled standing there that fatal Sunday and seeing the flames ravage them. It had seemed to hurt her even more than seeing her home burn ... those trees she had always loved ... trees that had been akin to her. More than half the bush was killed. The old aspen by the kitchen door was only a charred stump and the maple over the well was an indecency. The hood of the well was burned. May would have a pump put in now. But that didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
All the flower clumps near the house had been burned ... Judy's bleeding-heart ... the southernwood ... the white lilac. The lawn itself looked like an old yellow blanket. Beyond stretched a russet land of shadows and lonely furrows and woods that stirred faintly in their dreams. Far away, in the direction of Silverbridge, Angus Macaulay must have been working in his forge for she could hear the ring of his anvil, faintly clear, as if some goblin forger were at work among the hills.
"I suppose I can teach," thought Pat. "I have my old licence. They won't need me at the Bay Shore ... they've had Anna Palmer there for years to help and she'll stay on. But I can't build up a new life ... I'm too tired. I'll just go on existing ... withering into unimportance ... drifting from one place to another ... rootless ... living in houses I hate ... oh, can it be I standing here looking at the place where Silver Bush was? ... that old Bible verse ... 'it shall be a heap forever ... it shall not be built again' ... I wish that were true ... I wish no house could ever be built here again ... it will be a desecration. Oh, if I could only wake up and find it all a dream!"