The Fourth Year — Mistress Pat by Lucy Montgomery
1
Pat looked out of the Little Parlour window a bit wistfully one evening in late November. Another summer was ended. How quickly summers passed now! There was a hard grey twilight after a little snow and there was a threat of still more snow in the dour air. The shadows . . . chilly, hostile shadows . . . seemed to be raining out of the silver bush. A biting wind was lashing everything as if determined to take its ill-temper out on the world. A few forlorn yellow leaves blew crazily over the lawn. An empty nest swung lonesomely in the wind from a bough of the big apple tree on which the pale yellow-green apples always stayed so long after the leaves were gone. The apples were no good and were never picked but the tree always looked so exquisite in its spring blossom that Pat wouldn't have it cut down. It had been what Pat called a peevish day and even the loveliness of a tall, dark spruce tree near the dyke, powdered with feathers of snow, did not give her the shiver of delight such things usually did. She thought it was the kind of a day that would make people quarrel if people ever quarrelled at Silver Bush. But November had been a vexing month all through . . . one day glorious . . . the next day savage. You never knew just where you were with it. And Pat did not like this evening . . . she felt as if some long finger of change which was always reaching out to her was at last just on the point of touching her.
She was restless. She would have liked to go up to the Long House but the Kirks were away. She wished Rae would come home . . . Rae must have called somewhere after school. Though Rae hadn't been exactly the same for the past two months. Pat couldn't lay her finger just on the point of difference but she felt it in her sensitive soul. Rae sometimes snapped now . . . she who had always been so sunshiny. And sometimes Pat thought that when she looked meaningly at Rae in the presence of others, to share the savour of some subtle joke, Rae averted her eyes without any answering twinkle. And at times it almost seemed as if she had taken up a pose of being misunderstood. What was wrong? Weren't things going well in school? From all Pat could find out they were but she couldn't rid herself of the feeling that Rae had some secret trouble . . . for the first time an unshared trouble. Nothing was really changed . . . and yet Pat had moments of feeling that everything was changed. Once she asked Rae if anything was worrying her and Rae snapped out so savage a "Nonsense!" that Pat held her peace. Surely it couldn't be the fact that Mr. Wheeler had suddenly stopped coming to Silver Bush and was reputed to have a wild case on a visiting girl from New Brunswick that accounted for the mournful mauve smudges under Rae's blue eyes some mornings.
Pat reassured herself by reflecting that this would pass. And meanwhile Silver Bush made everything bearable. Pat loved it more with every passing year and all the little household rites that meant so much to her. Always when she came home to Silver Bush its peace and dignity and beauty seemed to envelop her like a charm. Nothing very terrible could happen there.
Judy's cheery philosophy never failed, but Pat could not mention even to Judy the vague chill of change between herself and Rae. In the evenings when they foregathered in the kitchen and Tillytuck played on his fiddle she sometimes felt that she must only have imagined it. Rae was the gayest of them all then . . . "a bit too gay," Judy thought, though she never said so. Things did be often arranging themselves if you just let them alone. Judy was more worried over a reckless look she sometimes caught in Sid's brown eyes and over certain bits of gossip that came her way occasionally.
Pat lighted the lamp as Sid and Rae came in. Rae flung her school-books on a chair and said nothing. But Sid had a chuckle and a bit of news.
"Your go-preacher has gone, Pat. The Holy C's are blaming you for it. They say you flirted with him and made a fool of him and he can't stand the place now. Aunt Polly is especially down on you. She adores that shepherd."
Sid spoke banteringly and Pat had some laughing rejoinder ready when a smothered sound, between a gasp and a cry, made them look at Rae.
"Great Scott, sis, you'll singe your eyelashes if you let your eyes blaze like that," said Sid.
Rae took no notice of him. She was looking at Pat.
"So this is your doing . . . you have driven him away," she said in a low, tense tone . . . such a tone as Pat had never heard Rae use before . . . seventeen-year-old Rae whom Pat still thought of as a child. Pat almost laughed . . . but laughter suddenly fell dead on her lips. Why, the poor darling was in earnest! And how pretty she looked in her golden-brown dress with her flushed cheeks and over-bright eyes! Her head positively shone like a lamp in the dark corner. She was so sweet . . . and absurd . . . and deadly serious. This last realization should have warned Pat but didn't.
"Rae, dearest, don't be foolish," she said gently.
"Oh, don't be foolish," mocked Rae furiously. "That's your attitude I know . . . has been right along. I am a mere baby of course . . . I have no rights . . . no feelings . . . no feelings at all . . . no claim to be considered a human being. 'Don't be foolish,' says the wise Patricia. That really is a clever idea!"
Rae's voice trembled with passion. She rushed out of the Little Parlour and up the stairs like a golden whirlwind. There were three doors on the way to her room and she banged them all.
"Whew!" whistled Sid. "I always knew she had a bad case on Wheeler but I didn't think it went that deep."
"Sid . . . you don't think she cared really!"
"Oh, calf love no doubt. We all survive it. But it hurts at the time." Sid laughed a bit bitterly.
Pat went up to her room. Rae was pacing up and down it like a caged animal. She turned a stormy young face on her sister.
"Leave me alone, can't you? You've done me enough harm, haven't you? You took him from me . . . deliberately. I saw you trying to attract him. What chance had I? Well, I forgave you. But now he's gone . . . he's gone . . . and I'll never see him again . . . and I can't stand it. I hate you . . . I hate you . . . I hate everything."
"Please don't let's quarrel," said Pat helplessly. In a desperate effort to be calm she picked up her best pair of silk stockings and began to polish the mirror with them, not in the least knowing what she held in her hand. It was the last straw for Rae.
"Who is quarrelling? Don't try to put the blame on me."
"Oh, Rae, Rae . . . don't twist everything I say to mean something else."
"Oh, don't try to twist things, she says. Who twisted things this summer . . . all summer . . . to make him think me a child? It's such an interesting thing to watch the man you love making love to another woman and that woman your own sister who is deliberately trying to attract him, just for her own amusement!"
"Rae . . . never . . . never! I did try to save you from . . . from . . ."
"Save me! From what? You may well hesitate. You know you made him think I cared for Jerry Arnold. Jerry Arnold! A pipsqueak like that! It was Lawrence Wheeler I loved all the time and you knew it. He loved me, too, till you came between us. Yes, he did. The first time we met we felt . . . we knew . . . we had loved each other in a thousand former lives."
For the life of her Pat couldn't help smiling. She recognized the phrase. Hadn't Lawrence Wheeler of the soulful eyes said it to her?
"Suppose we talk . . . or try to . . . as if we were grown up," she suggested kindly.
"Oh, but I'm not grown up . . . I'm only a child." Rae was pacing feverishly up and down the room. "A child can't see . . . can't love . . . can't suffer. Can't suffer! Oh, what I've gone through these past two months! And nobody saw . . . nobody understood . . . nobody has ever tried to understand me. You didn't. You care for nothing but Silver Bush. You acted as you did just because you're so crazy to keep Silver Bush always the same. My own sister to use me like that!"
Pat lost her patience and her temper, too. The idea of a scene like this over a creature like Larry Wheeler!
"This has gone far enough," she said frostily.
"I agree with you," Rae was frost instantly also.
"When you come to your senses," said Pat, "you'll realise perhaps just what a goose you've made of yourself over a go-preacher with cow's eyes."
"Don't you think you're really being a little vulgar, my dear Patricia?" said Rae, with eyes of blue ice. "I am of no consequence of course . . . but there is such a thing as good taste. You seem to have forgotten that, along with several other things. Never mention Lawrence Wheeler's name to me again."
Pat clamped her teeth together to keep from saying things she would have been terribly sorry for afterwards. The urge to say them passed.
"We've both lost our tempers, Rae, and said foolish things. We'll feel differently in the morning."
"Oh, will we? I'll never feel differently . . . and I'll never forgive you, Pat Gardiner . . . never. You and that old widower of yours!"
"Who is being vulgar now?" Pat was furious again. "At least Mr. Kirk is a gentleman!"
"And Lawrence Wheeler isn't, I suppose?"
"You can suppose what you like. You've dragged his name up again. He was simply too sloppy for anything. I never dreamed that you . . . Rae Gardiner of Silver Bush . . . could take him seriously. And he'd been eating onions before he proposed to me."
"Oh, so he proposed to you. I didn't know you had lured him on that far. I thought even you had enough self-respect to stop short of that."
"We have had enough of this," said Pat, her voice trembling.
"I think so, too. But let me tell you this, Pat Gardiner. Since you are so bent on 'saving' people you'd better look after Sid a bit. He's dangling around May Binnie again. I've known it for weeks but I didn't say anything about it because I knew it would worry you. I had a little consideration for you. But you've been so intent on running my life that it has ceased to matter to you what Sid does, I suppose."
"Rae dearest . . . we're both upset . . . we're both saying things we shouldn't . . . let's forget this. We mustn't let any one know we've quarrelled . . ."
"I don't care if all the world knows it." Rae marched out of the room. She did not come back. That night she slept in the Poet's room . . . if she slept at all. Pat didn't. It was the first time since the night before mother's operation that she had lain awake all night. Surely she and Rae couldn't have quarrelled . . . after all their years of comradeship and love . . . all their secrets kept and shared together. It must be a horrid dream. The Binnie girls were always quarrelling . . . one expected nothing better of them. But such things simply couldn't happen at Silver Bush. Was there any truth in what Rae had said about Sid and May? There couldn't be. It was nothing but idle gossip. She knew Sid better than that. Of course May Binnie was pretty, with the obvious, indisputable prettiness of rich black hair, vivid colour, laughing, brilliant, bold eyes. But Sid could never care for her after Bets . . . or even after sweet foolish mistaken Dorothy. Pat brushed the teasing thought away. It was so easy to start gossip in the Glens. Nothing mattered just now but the quarrel with Rae.
Then it was dawn. Very early dawn is a dreary thing. Nothing is quite human. The world is "fey." And there was no Rae in the little bed beside hers. Pat had always loved to watch Rae waking up . . . she had such a pretty way of doing it. And the morning sunshine always poured in on her head, making it like a warm pool of gold on the pillow. But there was no Rae this morning . . . no sunshine. Pat sat up and looked out of the window. The different farmsteads were beginning to take form in the pale grey light on the thin snow. The little row of sheep tracks leading from the church barn across the Mince Pie field might have been made by Pan. A chilly foolish little wind of dawn was sighing around the eaves. A flock of tiny snowbirds settled on the roof of the granary. The haystacks in the Field of Farewell Summers looked gnome-like in the pale greyness. Pat gazed drearily at the blown clouds and the wide white fields and the lonely star of morning.
Everything seemed so much the same . . . and everything was so horribly changed.
Pat looked like the ghost of herself at breakfast but Rae came down, cool, gay, smiling, her face apparently as blithe as the day. She tossed an airy word to Pat, bantered Sid, complimented Judy on her muffins and went off to school with a parting pat for Bold-and-Bad.
Pat tried to feel relieved. It had blown over. Rae was ashamed of her outburst and wanted to ignore it. She was just going to act as if nothing had happened.
"I won't remember it either," vowed Pat. But there was a sore spot in her heart, even after she had talked it all over with Judy . . . Judy who had suspected all along that Rae was nursing some secret sorrow that loomed large in the eyes of seventeen.
"Judy, it was dreadful. We both lost our tempers and said blistering things . . . things that can never be forgotten."
"Oh, oh, it do be amazing how much we can be forgetting in life," said Judy.
"But it was so . . . so ugly, Judy. There has never been a quarrel at Silver Bush before."
"Oh, oh, hasn't there been now, darlint? Sure there was lashings av thim whin yer dad and his gang were growing up. The rafters would ring wid their shouting at each other . . . and Edith giving her opinion av iverybody ivery once in so long. This will be passing away just as they did. Did ye iver be hearing the rason ould Angus MacLeod av the South Glin didn't hang himsilf? He made up his mind to, all bekase life did be getting too tejus. And thin he had a fight wid his wife . . . the first one they'd iver had. It livened him up so he wint out and used the rope to tie up a calf and niver was timpted agin. As for poor liddle Cuddles, that sore and hurt and thinking it do be going to hurt foriver . . . just ye be taking no notice, Patsy . . . be yersilf and iverything will be just the same only more so."
"Mother must know nothing of it . . . I won't have mother hurt," said Pat firmly.
"If she can be kaping it from her she do be cliverer than I'm thinking," Judy told Gentleman Tom when Pat had gone out. "And I'm fearing this quarrel do be a bit more sarious than I've been pretinding. Whin two people don't be caring overmuch for aich other a quarrel niver amounts to much betwane thim. It's soon made up. But whin they love aich other like Patsy and Cuddles it do be going so dape it's rale hard to be forgetting it. I'm wishing Long Alec had chased that go-pracher off Silver Bush wid a shotgun the first time he iver showed his cow-eyes here. Whativer cud inny girl be seeing in him? Didn't he nearly sit down on Gintleman Tom the first time he called!"
2
December was a hard month for Pat. Life seemed to drag itself along like a wounded animal. Winter set in early. It snowed continuously for three weeks. Little storm demons danced in the yard and whirled along the lanes. Everywhere were huge banks of snow, white in the sun, pale blue in the shadows. There were quaint caps of it on the unused chimneys. It was piled deep in the Secret Field when Pat went to it on snowshoes. One felt that spring could never come again, either to Silver Bush or one's heart. On a rare fine day the world seemed made of diamond dust, cold, dazzling, splendid, heartless. There was the beauty of winter moonlight on frosted panes and chill harpings of wind beneath cold, unfriendly stars. At least, Pat felt they were unfriendly. Things were not the same. Always between her and Rae was the coldness and shadow of a thing that must not be spoken of . . . that must be forgotten. Rae chattered continuously of surface things but in regard to everything else she preserved a silence more dreadful than anger. There was always that false gaiety, good-humoured and polite! To Pat that politeness of Rae's was a terrible thing. They might have been strangers . . . they were strangers. Rae seemed to have locked her heart against her sister forever.
Just before Christmas Rae announced carelessly that she had been awarded a scholarship . . . a three months' course in nature study at the O.A.C. in Guelph and meant to take advantage of it. The trustees had granted her leave of absence and Molly MacLeod of South Glen was to take the school for the three months.
"That is splendid," said Pat, who knew Rae must have been aware of the possibility of this for weeks and had never said a word about it.
"Isn't it?" Rae was brightly enthusiastic. She was very busy during the following days preparing for her going and talking casually of plans. She was all radiance and sparkle and teased mercilessly because Judy was afraid she would learn to smoke cigarettes at Guelph. But she never consulted Pat about anything and when Pat, at Christmas, gave her a crimson kimono with darker crimson 'mums embroidered on it, remarking that she thought it would be nice for Guelph, Rae merely said, "How ripping of you! It's perfectly gorgeous." But she never told Pat that Uncle Horace had sent a check for a new coat and when she bought a stunning one of natural leopard with cuffs and collar of seal, she showed it to Judy and mother and the aunts but not to Pat . . . merely left it lying on her bed where Pat could see it if she chose. Pat was too hurt to mention it.
When Rae went away, looking very smart and grownup in her leopard coat and a little green hat tipped provocatively over one eye, she kissed Pat good-bye as she did the others but her lips merely brushed Pat's cheek and most of the kiss was expended on air. Pat watched her out of sight with a breaking heart and cried herself to sleep that night. The loneliness was hideous. She couldn't bear to look at the bed where Rae had slept or the little old bronze slippers Rae had danced in so often but thought too worn to take to Guelph. One of them was lying forlornly under the bureau, the other under the bed. Pat got up and put them together. They did not look quite so forlorn and discarded then.
True, there had been no real comradeship between her and Rae for weeks, though they had shared the same room and sat at the same table. But now that Rae was gone it seemed as if hope had gone with her. Pat was too proud and hurt even to talk it over with Judy. It was the first time she had not been able to talk a thing over with Judy.
That cold, indifferent good-bye kiss of Rae's! Little Cuddles who used to put her chubby arms about her neck and love her "so hard!" Pat couldn't bear to think of it. She looked at her new calendar hanging on the wall . . . a very elaborate affair which Tillytuck had given her. She had always thought a new calendar a fascinating thing, yet with something a little terrible about it. It was rather fun to flip over the leaves and wonder just what would be happening on this or that day. Now she hated to see it. There were three months to be lived through before Rae would come back. And when she did come would things be any better?
Bold-and-Bad padded into the room and jumped on the bed. Pat gathered him into her arms. Dear old cat, he was still left to her anyhow. And Silver Bush! Whatever came and went, whoever loved or did not love her, there was still Silver Bush.
Nevertheless Pat looked so haggard and woe-begone at breakfast that Judy wished things not lawful to be uttered concerning go-preachers.
During that dreary winter Pat's only real pleasures were her evenings at the Long House--Suzanne and David were so kind and understanding . . . especially David. "I always feel so comfortable with him," thought Pat . . . and her letters from Hilary. One of his stimulating epistles always heartened her up. She saved them up to read in the little violet-blue hour before night came . . . the hour she and Rae had been used to spend in their room, talking and joking. She always slept better after a letter from Hilary. And very poorly after a letter from Rae. For Rae wrote Pat in regular turn . . . flippant little notes, each seeming just like another turn of the screw. They were full of college news and jokes, such as she might have written to any one. But never a word about Silver Bush affairs . . . no reference to home jokes. Rae kept all that for her letters to mother and Judy. "When I see the evening star over the trees on the campus I always think of Silver Bush," Rae wrote Judy. If Rae had only written that to her, thought Pat.
Pat sent Rae a box of goodies and Rae was quite effusive.
"No doubt it's a youthful taste to be thinking of things to eat," she wrote back, "but how the girls did appreciate your box. It was really awfully kind of you to think of sending it," . . . "as if I were some outsider who couldn't be expected to send her a box," thought Pat . . . "I hear that Uncle Tom has had the mumps and that Tillytuck is still howling hymns to the moon in the granary. Also that Sid is still dancing attendance on May Binnie. She'll get him yet. The Binnies never let go. Do you suppose North Glen will faint if I appear out in a bright yellow rain coat when I come home? Or one of those long slinky sophisticated evening dresses? Silver Bush must really wake up to the fact that fashions change. I had a letter from Hilary last night. It's odd to think this is his last year in college. He has won another architectural scholarship and is going to locate in British Columbia when he is through. He thinks he will be able to get out here to see me before I leave."
Hilary had not told Pat about any of his plans.
The announcement of Mr. Wheeler's marriage was in the paper that day. Judy viciously poked the sheet that bore it into the fire and held it down with the poker.
Two weeks later it was the end of March and Judy was getting her dye-pot ready. And Rae was coming home. Pat found herself dreading it . . . and broken-hearted because she was dreading it.
"What is the matter with Pat this spring?" Long Alec asked Judy. "She hasn't seemed like herself all winter . . . and now she's positively moping. Is she in love with anybody?"
Judy snorted.
"Well then, does she need a tonic? I remember you used to dose us all with sulphur and molasses every spring, Judy. Perhaps it might do her good."
Judy did not think sulphur and molasses would help Pat much.
3
It was a mild day when Rae came home . . . a day full of the soft languor of early spring when nature is still tired after her wrestle with winter. There had been a light, misty snowfall in the night and Pat went for a walk to the Secret Field in the afternoon to see if she could win from it a little courage to face Rae's return. It was very lovely in those silent woods with their white-mossed trees. Every step she took revealed some new enchantment as if some ambitious elfin artificer were striving to show just how much could be done with nothing but the white mystery of snow in hands that knew how to make use of it. Such a snowfall, thought Pat, was the finest test of beauty. Whenever there was any ugliness or distortion it showed it mercilessly: but beauty and grace were added unto beauty and grace even as unto him that hath shall be given more abundantly. She wished she had some one to enjoy the loveliness with her . . . Hilary . . . Suzanne . . . David . . . Rae. Rae! But Rae would be coming home in a few hours' time, artificially cordial, looking at her with bright, indifferent eyes.
"I just can't bear it," thought Pat miserably.
When Pat heard the jingle of sleigh-bells coming up the lane in the "dim" she fled to her room. Every one else was in the kitchen waiting for Rae . . . mother and Sid and Judy and Tillytuck and the cats. Pat felt she had no part or lot among them.
It had turned colder. There was a thin green sky behind the snowy trees and the silver gladness of an evening star over the birches. Pat heard the noise of laughter and greeting in the kitchen. Well, she supposed she must go down.
There was a sound of flying feet on the stairs. Suddenly it seemed to Pat that there was no air in the room. Rae burst in . . . a rosy, radiant Rae, her eyes as blue as ever, her mouth like a kissed flower. She engulfed Pat in a fierce leopard-skin hug.
"Patsy darling . . . why weren't you down? Oh, but it's good to see you again!"
This was the old Rae. Pat was afraid she was going to howl. All at once life was beautiful again. It was as if she had wakened up from a horrible dream and seen a starlit sky. "Pat, haven't you a word to say to me? You aren't sore at me still, are you? Oh, I wouldn't blame you if you were. I was the world's prize idiot. I realised that very soon after we quarrelled but I was too proud to admit it. And you wrote me such icy, stiff letters while I was away."
"Oh!" Pat began to laugh and cry at once. They got their arms around each other. Everything was all right . . . beautifully all right again.
It was a wonderful evening. Every one enjoyed Judy's superlative supper, with Rae feeding the cats tid-bits and Tillytuck and Judy outdoing themselves telling stories. Again and again Rae's eyes met Pat's over the table in the old camaraderie. Even King William looked as if sometime he might really get across the Boyne. But the best of all came at bedtime when they settled down for the old delight of talking things over with Bold-and-Bad tensing and flexing his claws on Pat's bed and Popka blinking goldenly on Rae's.
"Isn't it jolly to be good sisters again?" exclaimed Rae. "I feel like that verse in the Bible where all the morning stars sang together. It's just been horrid . . . horrid. How could I have been such a little fool? I just wallowed in self-pity all the fall and then it seemed as if that outburst had to come. And all over that . . . that creature! I'm so ashamed of ever dreaming I cared for him. I can't understand how I could have been so . . . so fantastic. And yet I really did have a terrible case. Of course I knew perfectly well in my heart it could never come to anything. At the very worst of my infatuation . . . when I was trying to pretend to every one I didn't care a speck . . . I knew no Silver Bush girl could ever marry a go-preacher. But that didn't prevent me from being crazy about him. It seemed so romantic . . . a hopeless love, you know. Two found souls forever sundered by family pride and all that, you know. I just revelled in it . . . I can see that now. The way he used to look at me across that barn! And once, when he read his text . . . 'Behold thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair. Thou hast dove's eyes' . . . he looked right at me and I nearly died of rapture. He really was in love with me then. You never saw the poem he wrote me, Pat. He was jealous of everything, it seemed . . . of 'the wind that whispered in my ear' . . . of 'the sunshine that played on my hair' . . . of 'the moonbeam that lay on my pillow.' The lines didn't scan very well and the rhymes limped but I thought it was a masterpiece. Can you wonder I was furious when you just stepped in and lifted him under my very nose? By the way, he's married, did you know, Pat?"
"Yes. I saw it in the paper."
"Oh, he sent me an announcement," giggled Rae. "You should have seen it. With scrolls of forget-me-nots around the border! If I hadn't been cured before that would have cured me. Pat, why is it written in the stars that girls have to make fools of themselves."
"We were both geese," said Pat.
"Let's blame it all on the moon," said Rae.
They felt very near to each other. And then Judy came in with cups of delicious hot cocoa for them and a "liddle bite" of Bishop's bread and a handful of raisins as if they were children again.
"Just think," said Pat, "to other people this day has been only Wednesday. To me it's the day you came home . . . home to me . . . back into my life. It may be March still by the calendar but it's April in my heart . . . April full of spring song."
"Here's to my having more sense in all the years to come," said Rae, waving her cup of cocoa.
"To our having more sense," corrected Pat.
"It's lovely to be home again," sighed Rae. "I had a splendid time at Guelph . . . and I really did learn lots . . . much more than just nature study. The social side was all right, too. There were some nice boys. We had a gorgeous trip to Niagara. But I am half inclined to agree with you that there is no place like Silver Bush. It must do something to people who live in it. Those darling cats! I really haven't seen a decent cat since I left the Island, Pat . . . no cat who looked as if he really enjoyed being a cat, you know. I wish we could do some crazy thing to celebrate. Sleep out in the moonlight or something like that. But it's too Marchy. So we must just have a good pi-jaw. Tell me everything that has happened since I went away. Your letters were so . . . so charitable. There was no kick in them. Let me tell you once for all, Pat, that a person who always speaks well of every one is a most uninteresting correspondent. I'm sure you must be boiling over with gossip. Have there been any nice juicy scandals? Who has been born . . . married . . . engaged? Not you, I hope. Pat, don't go and get married to David. He's far too old for you, darling . . . he really is."
"Don't be silly, sweetheart. I just want David as a friend."
"The darlints," said Judy happily, as she went downstairs. "I was knowing the good ould Gardiner sinse wud come out on top."
It was wonderful to be too happy to sleep. The very sky through the window looked glad. And when Pat wakened a verse she had heard David read a few days before . . . a verse which had hurt her at the time but now seemed like a friend . . . came to her mind.
"Whoever wakens on a day,
Happy to know and be,
To enjoy the air, to love his kind,
To labour and be free,
Already his enraptured soul
Lives in Eternity."
She repeated the lines to herself as she stood by her window. Rae slipped out of bed and joined her. Judy was crossing the yard, carrying something for the comfort of her hens.
"Pat," said Rae a bit soberly, "does it ever strike you that Judy is growing old?"
"Don't!" Pat winced. "I don't want to think of anything to spoil this happy morning."
But she did know that Judy was growing old, shut her eyes to it as she might. And hadn't Judy said to her rather solemnly one day,
"Patsy darlint, there do be a nightdress wid a croshay yoke all riddy in the top right hand till av me blue chist if I iver tuk ill suddent-like."
"Judy . . . don't you feel well?" Pat had cried in alarm.
"Oh, oh, niver be worrying, darlint. I'm fit as a fiddle. Only I did be rading in the dead list av the paper this morning that ould Maggie Patterson had died in Charlottetown. We were cronies whin I did be coming to the Island at first and she do be only a year older than mesilf. So I just thought I'd mintion the nightdress to ye. The ould lady in Castle McDermott had one av lace and sating she always put on whin she had the doctor."
"I'm so glad you and Rae are as you used to be, Pat," said mother when Pat took her breakfast into her. Pat looked at mother.
"I didn't think you knew we weren't," she said slowly.
Mother smiled.
"You can't hide such things from mothers, darling. We always know. And I think a little wise forgetfulness is indicated."
Pat stooped and kissed her.
"Mr precious dear, wasn't it lucky father fell in love with you," she breathed.
Rae was in kinks in the hall when Pat went out.
"Oh, Pat, Pat, life is worth living. I've just seen Judy making Tillytuck take a dose of castor oil. You'll never know what you've missed."
Yes, life was worth living again. And now Pat felt that she could throw herself into housecleaning plans and spring renovating with a heart at leisure from itself. The days that had seemed so endless wouldn't be half long enough now for all she wanted to crowd into them.
4
David and Suzanne went to England for a trip that spring and the Long House was closed for the summer. Pat missed them terribly but Judy and Rae were consolable.
"That Suzanne has been trying iver since she come to make a match betwane her brother and Patsy," Judy told Cuddles. "I've been fearing lately she'd manage it. And him as'll soon be using hair tonics! Patsy hasn't inny other beau after her just now. The min do be getting discouraged. Somehow the word do be going round she thinks nobody good enough for her."
"And there really isn't a man in the Glens she couldn't have by just crooking her finger," said Rae thoughtfully. "I think it's just that way she has of saying 'I know' sympathetically. And she doesn't mean a thing by it."
"Do ye be thinking, Cuddles, that there is inny chance av Jingle coming home this summer now?"
Rae shook her head.
"I'm afraid not, Judy. He's got a big contract for building a mountain inn in B.C. . . . a splendid chance for a young architect. Besides . . . I think he has grown away from us now. He and Pat will never be anything but good friends. You can't make him jealous . . . I know for I've tried . . . so I'm sure he doesn't care for her except just as she cares for him. Do you know, Judy, I think it would be better if the uncles and aunts . . . and perhaps all of us . . . would stop teasing Pat about beaus or their absence. She thinks the whole clan is bent on marrying her off . . . and it rouses the Gardiner obstinacy. There's a streak of it in us all. If you all hadn't been so contemptuous of poor Larry Wheeler I don't believe I'd ever have given him a second thought."
"Girls do be like that, I'm knowing. But I'd like to see both you and Patsy snug and safe, wid some one to care for ye, afore I die, Cuddles darlint."
Rae laughed.
"Judy, I'm only seventeen. Hardly on the shelf yet. And don't you talk of dying . . . you'll live to see our grandchildren."
Judy shook her head.
"I can't be polishing off a day's work like I used to, Cuddles dear. Oh, oh, we all have to grow old and ye haven't larned yet how quick time do be passing."
"As for Pat," resumed Rae, "I think perhaps she'll never marry. She loves Silver Bush too much to leave it for any man. The best chance David has is that the Long House is so near Silver Bush that she could still keep an eye on it. Do you know that Norma is to be married this summer?"
"I've been hearing it. Mrs. Brian will be rale aisy in her mind now wid both of her girls well settled. Norma'll niver have to lift a hand. Not that I do be thinking her beau is inny great shakes av a man wid all his money though he comes of a rale aristocratic family. His mother now . . . she was one av the Summerside MacMillans and niver did she be letting her husband forget it. She kipt up all the MacMillan traditions . . . niver wore the same pair av silk stockings twice and her maid had to be saying, 'Dinner is served, madam,' just like that, afore she cud ate a bite, wid service plates and all the flat silver matching. And in sason and out av sason she did be reminding her husband she was a MacMillan along wid iverybody av inny importance on the Island. It was lucky he had a bit av humour in him or it might have been after being a trifle monotonous. Will I iver be forgetting the story I heard him tell on the madam one cillebration at the Bay Shore? It was whin his b'ys, Jim and Davy, were two liddle chaps and Jim did be coming home from church one day rale earnest and sez he to Davy, 'The minister did be talking av Jesus all the time but he didn't be saying who Jesus was.' 'Why, Jesus MacMillan av coorse,' sez Norma's beau, in just the tone av his mother. Mr. MacMillan did be roaring at it, but yer Aunt Honor thought it was tarrible irriverint. Innyway, a Gardiner is as good as a MacMillan inny day. And now I must be making a few cookies, Liddle Mary will be coming over for a wake. She do be so like Patsy whin she was small. Sometimes I'm wondering if the clock has turned back. She do be always saying good-night to the wind like Patsy did . . . and the quistions av her! 'Have I got to be good, Judy? Can't I be a liddle bad sometimes whin I'm alone wid you?' And, 'What's the use av washing me face after dark, Judy?' Sure and it's a bit av sunshine whin she comes and I'm thinking the very smallest flower in the garden do be glad, niver to mintion the cats."
Pat was really far more interested in Rae's matrimonial prospects than her own. For Rae seemed to be "swithering," as Judy put it, between two very nice young men. Bruce Madison of South Glen and Peter Alward of Charlottetown were both camping on the doorstep, and were frightfully and romantically jealous of each other, turning, so it was said, quite pale when they met. Life, as Tillytuck said, was dramatic because of it.
Pat had nothing against either of them . . . except that they meant change . . . and sometimes it was thought that Rae favoured one and then the other. She discussed them as flippantly as usual with Pat and Judy but both Pat and Judy were agreed that it was highly probable she would eventually decide on one of them. Pat hated the thought, of course. But if Rae had to marry some day . . . of course it wouldn't be for years yet . . . it must be somebody living near. Pat inclined to like Peter best but Judy favoured Bruce.
"We would make an awfully good-looking couple," agreed Rae. "I really like Bruce best in summer but I have a rankling suspicion that Peter would be the best for winter. And he always makes me feel beautiful . . . that's a knack some men never have, you may have noticed. But then . . . his nose! Have you noticed his nose, Pat? It's not so bad now but in a few years it will be very bony and aristocratic. I can't exactly see myself eating breakfast every morning of my life with it opposite me. And it's terrible to think that my daughters might inherit it. It wouldn't matter so much about the boys . . . a boy can get away with any kind of a nose because few girls are as sensitive to noses as I am. But the poor girls!"
Judy was horrified but she had no great liking for Peter's nose herself. So Silver Bush had its own fun out of the haunting suitors and the Golden Age seemed to have returned and nobody took anything very seriously until Pat went to a dance at the Bay Shore Hotel and Donald Holmes, as Rae announced at the breakfast table next morning, fell for her with a crash that could be heard for miles. What was more, Pat blushed, actually blushed, when Rae said this. Everybody drew the same conclusion from that blush. Pat had met her fate.
At once everybody in the Gardiner clan sat up and took notice. For the rest of the summer Donald Holmes was a constant visitor at Silver Bush. Rae and her two jealous suitors no longer held the centre of the stage. Everybody approved. The Holmes family had the proper social and political traditions, and Donald himself was the junior partner in a prosperous firm of chartered accountants.
"Oh, oh, that do be something like now," Judy told Tillytuck delightedly. "There's brading there. And he'll wear well. Patsy was in the right be waiting."
"Methinks I smell the fragrance of orange blossoms, symbolically speaking," Tillytuck remarked to Uncle Tom.
"Well, it's about time," said Uncle Tom, who was not given to symbols.
"It's really better luck than she deserves after all her flirtations," said Aunt Edith rather sourly.
Pat herself believed she was in love . . . really in love. There were weeks of pretty speeches and prettier silences and enchanted moons and stars and kittens . . . though in her secret soul she suspected him of not caring overmuch about cats. But at least he pretended to like the kittens. One couldn't have everything. He was well-born, well-bred, good-looking and charming, and for the first time since the days of Lester Conway Pat felt thrills and queer sensations generally.
"I thought I'd left all that behind with seventeen," she told Rae, "but it really seems to have come back."
Rae, who was expecting "one of the men she's engaged to . . ." à la May Binnie . . . carefully perfumed her throat.
"A plain answer to a plain question, Pat. Do you mean to marry him?"
"I'm not Betty Baxter," said Pat with a twinkle.
"Don't be exasperating. Every one knows he means to ask you. Candidly, Pat, I'd like him very much for a brother-in-law."
Pat looked sober. In imagination she saw the paragraph in the Charlottetown papers announcing her engagement.
"I blush when I hear his step at the door," she said meditatively.
"I've noticed that myself," grinned Rae.
"And I suffer agonies of jealousy if he says a word of admiration for any other girl. On the whole . . . I haven't quite made up my mind . . . not quite . . . but I think, Rae, when he says, 'Will you please?' I'll say, 'Yes, thank you.'"
Rae got up and hugged Pat chokily.
"I'm glad . . . I'm glad. And yet I'm on the point of howling."
"Confidence for confidence, Rae. Which, if either, of your young men do you intend to marry?"
Rae pulled an ear of Squedunk, who was sitting on his haunches on her bed, gazing at the girls with his usual limpid, round-eyed look. Gentleman Tom looked as if all the wisdom of the ages was his, Bold-and-Bad looked as if life was one amusing adventure, but Squedunk always looked as if he could be a kitten forever if he wanted to.
"Pat, I wish I knew. I've been horribly flippant about it but that was just to cover up. I really don't know. I do like them both so much . . . Pat, is it ever possible to be in love with two men? It isn't in books, I know . . . but in life? Because I do love them both. They're both darlings. But, Pat, honestly, the minute I decide I like Bruce best I find I have a mind to Peter. And vice versa. That's all I can say yet. Well, Norma's wedding comes off next week. Judy is furious because they are going to rehearse the whole ceremony in the church the night before. 'Nixt thing they'll be rehearsing the funerals,' she says. Judy will be simply mad with delight if you marry Donald. And yet she'll die of sorrow when you go. When you go . . . that turns me cold. Oh, Pat, wouldn't life be nice and simple if people never fell in love? I wish I could make up my mind between Bruce and Peter. But I just can't. If I could only marry them both."
The shrieks of an anguished car resounded from the yard and Rae ran down to welcome Bruce . . . or it may have been Peter.
The next afternoon Pat, as she expressed it, "put off Martha and put on Mary," and hied herself to her Secret Field, although there was apple jelly to make and cucumbers to pickle. She went through the mysterious emerald light of the maple woods, where it seemed as if there must have been silence for a hundred years, and sat down on an old log covered with a mat of green moss in the corner of her field. It had changed so little in all the years. It was still her own and it still held secret understanding with her. But to-day something came between her soul and it. In spite of everything something touched her with unrest . . . the certainty of coming change, perhaps.
She looked up at a splash of crimson in the maple above her head. Another summer almost gone. There was a hint of autumn and decay and change in the air, even the air of the Secret Field, with the purples of its bent grasses. Yes, she would marry Donald Holmes. She was quite sure she loved him. Pat stood up and waved a kiss to the Secret Field. When she next saw it she would belong to Donald Holmes.
She had intended to call at Happiness on her way home . . . she had not been there all summer . . . but she did not. Happiness belonged to things that were . . . things that had passed . . . things that could never return.
She was in the birch grove when Donald came to her the next evening. Donald Holmes was really a fine chap and deeply in love with Pat. To him she looked like love incarnate. She had a kitten on her shoulder and her dress was a young leaf green with a scarlet girdle. There was something about her face that made him think of pine woods and upland meadows and gulf breezes. He had come to ask her a certain question and he asked it, simply and confidently, as he had a right to ask it . . . for if any girl had ever encouraged a man Pat had encouraged Donald Holmes that summer.
Pat turned a little away from his flushed, eager face. Through a gap in the trees she saw the dark purple of the woods on Robinson's hill . . . the blue sheen of the gulf . . . the green of the clover aftermath in the Field of the Pool . . . the misty opal sky . . . and Silver Bush!
She turned to Donald and opened her lips to say, "yes." She found herself trembling.
"I'm . . . I'm terribly sorry," was what she said. "I can't marry you. I thought I could but I can't."
5
"I rather think I hope there'll be an earthquake before to-morrow morning," thought Pat when she went to bed that night. The whole world had gone very stale and life seemed greyer than ashes. In a way she was actually disappointed. She would miss Donald horribly. But leave Silver Bush for him? Impossible!
She knew she was in for a terrible time with her clan and she was not mistaken. By the time they got through with her she felt, as she confided to the not overly sympathetic Rae, "like a bargain counter of soiled rayon." Even mother was a little disappointed.
"Couldn't you have cared for him, darling?"
"I thought I could . . . I thought I did . . . mother, I just can't explain. I'm dreadfully sorry . . . I'm so ashamed of myself . . . I deserve everything that is being said of me . . . but I couldn't."
Everybody was saying plenty. All her relatives took turns heckling her about it. Long Alec gave her a piece of his mind.
"But I didn't love him, father . . . I really didn't," said poor Pat miserably.
"It's a pity you didn't find that out a little sooner," said Long Alec sourly. "I don't like hearing my daughter called a jilt. No, don't smile at me like that, miss. Let me tell you you trade too much on that smile. This is past being a joke."
"You'll go through the woods and pick up a crooked stick yet," warned Aunt Edith darkly.
"There's really been too much of this, Aunt Edith," protested Pat, feeling that any self-respecting worm had to turn sometime. "I'm not going to marry anybody just to please the clan."
"What can she be wanting in the way of a husband?" moaned Aunt Barbara.
"Heaven knows," said Aunt Edith . . . but in a tone that sounded very dubious of heaven's knowledge. "She'll never have such a chance again."
"You know you aren't getting any younger, Pat," Uncle Tom objected mildly. "Why couldn't you have cottoned to him?"
Pat was flippant to hide her feelings.
"My English and Scotch blood liked him, Uncle Tom, but the French didn't and I was none too sure about the Irish."
Uncle Tom shook his head.
"If you don't watch out all the men will be grabbed," he said gloomily. "Beaus aren't found hanging on bushes, you know."
"If they were it would be all right," said Pat, more flippantly than ever. "One needn't pick them then. Just let them hang."
Uncle Tom gave it up. What could you do with a she like that?
Aunt Jessie said that the Selbys were always changeable and Uncle Brian said he could always have told her that Pat was only making a fool of young Holmes for her own amusement and Aunt Helen said Pat had always been different from anybody else.
"A girl who would rather ramble in the woods than go to a dance. Don't tell me she's normal."
Most odious of all was the sympathetic Mrs. Binnie who said when she met her,
"You seem to have bad luck with your beaus, Pat dearie. But never be cast down even if he has slipped through your fingers. There's as good fish in the sea as ever come out of it. And you know, dearie, even if you can't git a husband there's lots of careers open to gals nowadays."
It was hard to take that from a Binnie. As if Donald Holmes had jilted her! And harder still to hear that Donald Holmes' mother was saying that that Gardiner girl had deliberately led her son on . . . kept him dangling all summer and then threw him over.
"But I deserve it, I suppose," thought poor Pat bitterly.
The only person who was not reported as saying anything was Donald Holmes himself, who preserved an unbroken silence and behaved, as Aunt Edith averred, in the most gentlemanly fashion about everything connected with the whole pitiable affair.
Judy was upset at first but soon came round when every one else was blaming her darling and recollected that Donald Holmes had had a very quare sort of great-uncle.
"A bit av a miser and always wint about as shabby as a singed cat. Aven the dogs stopped to look at him, him being that peculiar. And I'm minding there did be a cousin somewhere on the mother's side dressed up in weeds and wint to the church widding av a man who had jilted her. Oh, oh, and it's liable to crop out inny time and that I will declare and maintain."
Sid, too, to Pat's surprise, stood up for her.
"Let her alone. If she doesn't want to marry Donald Holmes she doesn't have to."
Pat lingered late in the garden one night. There was a mirth of windy trees all about Silver Bush and a misty, cloud-blown new moon hanging over it. First the twilight was golden-green, then emerald. Afar off the evening hills were drawing purple hoods about them. In spite of everything Pat felt at peace with her own soul as she had not done for a long time.
"If it's foolish to love Silver Bush better than any man I'll always be a fool," she said to herself. "Why, I belong here. What an unbelievable thing that I was just on the point of saying something to Donald that would have cut me off from it forever."
As she turned to leave the garden she said passionately and quite sincerely,
"I hope nobody will ever ask me to marry him again." And then a thought darted quite unbidden into her mind.
"I'm glad I don't have to tell Hilary I'm engaged."
6
There came a grim day in November with nothing at first to distinguish it from other days. But in mid-afternoon Gentleman Tom gravely got down from the cushion of Great Grandfather Nehemiah's chair and looked all about him. Judy and Pat watched him as they made the cranberry pies and turkey dressing for Thanksgiving. He gave one long look at Judy, as she recalled afterwards, then walked out of the house, across the yard and along the Whispering Lane, with his thin black tail held gallantly in air. They watched him out of sight but did not attach much importance to his going. He often went on such expeditions, returning at nightfall. But the dim changed into darkness on this particular night and Gentleman Tom had not returned. Gentleman Tom never did return. It seemed a positive calamity to the folks at Silver Bush. Many beloved cats of old days had long been hunting mice in the Elysian fields but their places had soon been filled by other small tigerlings. None, it was felt, could fill Gentleman Tom's place. He had been there so long he seemed like one of the family. They really felt that he must go on living forever.
No light was ever thrown on his fate. All enquiries were vain. Apparently no mortal eye had seen Gentleman Tom after he had gone from Silver Bush. Pat and Rae were mournfully certain that some dire fate had overtaken him but Judy would not have it.
"Gintleman Tom has got the sign and gone to his own place," she said mysteriously. "Don't be asking me where it might be . . . Gintleman Tom did be always one to kape his own counsel. Do ye be minding the night we all thought ye were dying, Patsy dear? I'm not denying I'll miss him. A discrate, well-behaved baste he was. All he iver wanted was his own cushion and a bit av mate or a sup av milk betwane times. Gintleman Tom was niver one to cry over spilt milk, was he now?"
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."