The Seventh Year — Mistress Pat by Lucy Montgomery
1
Pat and Rae felt, in the months of that following winter, that they needed every ounce of philosophy and "diplomacy" that they possessed. The first weeks were very hard. At times adjustment seemed almost impossible. May's quick temper increased the difficulty. Some of the scenes she made always remained in Pat's memory like degrading, vulgar things. Yet her spasms of rage were not so bad, the girls thought, as her little smiles and innuendoes about everything. "I think I have some rights surely," she would say to Sid, with a toss of her sleek head. "It's hard to do anything with somebody watching and criticising all the time, isn't it now, honey-boy?" And Sid would look at Pat with defiant and yet appealing eyes that nearly broke her heart.
When May could not get her way she sulked and went round for a day or two "wid a puss on her mouth," according to Judy. Then, finding that nobody paid any attention to her sulks, she would become amiable again. Pat set her teeth and kept her head.
"I won't have quarrels at Silver Bush," she said. "Whatever she does or says I won't quarrel with her." And even when May cried passionately, "You've always tried to make trouble between me and Sid," Pat would smile and say, "Come, May, be reasonable. We're not children now, you know." Then go up to her room and writhe in secret over the torment and ugliness of it all.
In the long run May succumbed to the inevitable, compromises were made on both sides, and life settled once more into outward calmness at Silver Bush. One thing nobody could deny was that May was a worker; and fortunately she liked outside work better than inside. She took over the care of milk and poultry, Judy making a virtue out of necessity in yielding it to her and never denying that the separator was thoroughly cleaned. "May," Mrs. Binnie said superfluously, "is not a soulless sassiety woman. I brought all my gals up to work."
To be sure, May made a frightful racket in everything she did and at Silver Bush, where household ritual had always been performed without noise, this was something of a domestic crime. Pat, suffering too much to be just, told Rae that May made more fuss in ten minutes than any one else could make in a year.
Judy and May had one battle royal as to who was to scrub the kitchen. Judy won. May never attempted to usurp Judy's kitchen privileges again.
Pat found she could get used to being unhappy . . . and then that she could even be happy again, between the spasms of unhappiness. Of course there were changes everywhere . . . little irritating changes which were perhaps harder to bear than some greater dislocation. For one thing, May's friends gave her a "shower," after which Silver Bush was cluttered up with gim-cracks. Pat's especial hatred was a dreadful onyx-topped table. May put it in the hall under the heirloom mirror. It was a desecration. And May's new gay cushions, which made everything else seem faded, were scattered everywhere. But May did not get her own way when it came to moving furniture about.
She learned that things were to be left as they were and that a large engraving of Landseer's stag, framed in crimson plush and gilt a foot wide, was not going to be hung in the dining room. May, after a scene, carried it off to her own room, where nobody interfered with her arrangements.
"I suppose your ladyship doesn't object to that," she remarked to Pat.
"Of course you can do as you like in your own room," said Pat wearily.
Would this petty bickering go on forever? And that very afternoon May had broken the old Bristol-ware vase by stuffing a huge bouquet of 'mums into it. Of course it was cracked . . . always had been cracked. May said she didn't hold with having cracked things around. She had her own room re-papered . . . blue roses on a bright pink ground. "So cheerful," Mrs. Binnie said admiringly. "That grey paper in what they call the Pote's room gives me the willies, May dearie."
May brought her dog with her, an animal known by the time-tested name of Rover. He killed the chickens, dug up Pat's bulbs, chewed the clothes on the line . . . Tillytuck had a pitched battle with May because his best shirt was mangled . . . and chased the cats in his spare time. Eventually Just Dog gave him a drubbing which chastened him and Rae, in May's absences, used to spank him so soundly with a stiff folded newspaper that he learned manners after a sort. There were even times when Pat was afraid she was learning to like him. It was hard for Pat not to like a dog if he had any decency at all.
As Pat had foreseen Silver Bush was overrun with the Binnie tribe. May's brothers flicked cigarette ashes all over the house. Her sisters and cousins came in what Judy called "droves," filled the house with shrieks, and listened behind doors. Judy caught them at it. And they were always more or less offended no matter how they were treated. If you were nice to them you were patronising them; if you left them alone you were snubbing them. Olive would bring her whole family. Olive did not believe in punishing children. "They're going to enjoy their childhood," she said. Perhaps they enjoyed it but nobody else did. They were what Judy called "holy terrors." Judy found a dirty grey velvet elephant in her soup pot one day. Olive's six-year-old had slipped it in "for fun."
Mrs. Binnie came over frequently and spent the afternoon in Judy's kitchen, proclaiming to the world that as far as she was concerned all was peace and good-will. She rocked fiercely on the golden-oak rocker May had introduced into the kitchen . . . rather fortunately, Judy thought, for certainly no Silver Bush chair could be counted on to bear up under the strain of Mrs. Binnie's two hundred and thirty-three pounds.
"No, no, two hundred and thirty-six, ma," May would argue.
"I guess I know my own weight, child," Mrs. Binnie would retort breezily. "And I ain't ashamed of it. 'Why don't you diet?' my sister Josephine keeps telling me. 'Not for mine,' I tell her, 'I'm contented to be as God made me!'"
"Oh, oh, I do be thinking God had precious little to do wid it," said Judy to Tillytuck.
Mrs. Binnie had a little button nose and yellowish-white hair screwed up in a tight knot on the crown of her head. Gossip was her mother-tongue and grammar was her servant, not her master. Also, her "infernal organs" gave her a good deal of trouble. Pat used to wonder how Sid could bear to look at her and think that May would be like her when she was sixty.
"I'd like to give that hair of hers a bluing rinse," Rae would whisper maliciously to Pat, when Mrs. Binnie was laying down the law about something and nodding her head until a hairpin invariably slipped out.
Mrs. Binnie, unlike May, "couldn't abide" cats. They gave her asthma and, as May said, she started gasping if a cat was parked within a mile of her. So when Mrs. Binnie came out went the cats. Even Bold-and-Bad was no exception. Bold-and-Bad, however, did not hold with self-pity and made himself at home in Tillytuck's granary.
"But I'd like to have seen ye try it on Gintleman Tom," Judy used to think malevolently.
Generally one or more of "thim rampageous Binnie girls" came with her and they and May talked and argued without cessation. The Binnies were a family with no idea of reticence. Everybody told everything to everybody else . . . "talking it over," they called it. None of them could ever understand why everything that was thought about couldn't be talked about. They had no comprehension whatever of people who did not think at the tops of their voices and empty out their feelings to the dregs. There were times when the unceasing clack of their tongues drove Tillytuck to the granary even on the coldest winter afternoons for escape and Pat longed despairingly for the beautiful old silences.
There was at least one consolation for Pat and Rae . . . they still had their evenings undisturbed. May thought it quite awful to sit in the kitchen, "with the servants." Generally she carried Sid off to a dance or show and when they were home they had company of their own in the Little Parlour . . . which had been tacitly handed over to May and which she called the "living room," much to Judy's amusement.
"Oh, oh, we've only the one living room at Silver Bush and that's me kitchen," she would remark to Tillytuck with a wink. "There do be more living done here than in all the other rooms put together."
"You've said a mouthful," said Tillytuck, just as he had said it to Lady Medchester.
So Pat and Rae and Judy and Tillytuck foregathered as of old in the kitchen of evenings and forgot for a few hours the shadow that was over Silver Bush. They always had some special little jamboree to take the taste of some particularly hard day out of their mouths . . . as, for instance, the one on which Pat found May prying into her bureau drawers . . . or the one when May, who had a trick of acting hostess, assured a fastidious visiting clergyman who had declined a second helping that there was plenty more in the kitchen.
They could even laugh over Mrs. Binnie's malapropisms. It was so delicious when she asked Rae gravely whether "phobias" were annuals or perennials. To be sure, neither Judy not Tillytuck was very sure just where the point of the joke was but it was heartening to see the girls laughing again as of old. Those evenings were almost the only time it was safe to laugh. If May heard laughter she took it into her head that they were laughing at her and sulked. Once in a while, when May had gone for one of her frequent visits home, Sid would creep in, too, for a bit of the old-time fun and one of Judy's liddle bites. Sid and Pat had had their hour of reconciliation long ere this: Pat couldn't endure to be "out" with Sid. But there were no more rambles and talks and plans together. May resented any such thing. She went with him now on his walks about the farm and expounded her ideas as to what changes should be made. She also aired her views to the whole family. A lot of trees should be cut down . . . there were entirely too many . . . it was "messy," especially that aspen poplar by the steps. And the Old Part of the orchard ought to be cleaned out entirely; it was a sheer waste of good ground. She did not go so far as to suggest ploughing up the graveyard though she said it was horrid having a place like that so near the house and having to pass it every time you went to the barn or the hen-house. When she went to either of these places after dark she averred it made her flesh creep.
"If I were you," she would remark airily to Pat, "I'd make a few changes round here. A front porch is so out of date. And there really should be a wall or two knocked out. The Poet's room and our room together would just make one real nice-sized room. You don't need two spare rooms any more'n a frog needs trousers."
"Silver Bush suits us as it is," said Pat stiffly.
"Don't get so excited, child," said May provokingly . . . and how provoking May could be! "I was only making a suggestion. Surely you needn't throw a fit over that."
"She would do nothing but patch and change and tear up if she could have her way here," Pat told Rae viciously.
"Oh, oh, just like her ould grandad," said Judy. "He did be having a mania for tearing down and rebuilding. Innything for a change was his motto."
"Judy, last night as I passed the Little Parlour I heard May say to Sid, 'Anyway you'll have Silver Bush when your father dies.' Judy, she did! When your father dies."
Judy chuckled.
"It do be ill waiting for dead men's shoes. Yer dad is good for twinty years yet at the laste. But it's like a Binnie to be saying that same."
2
Sometimes Pat would escape from it all to her fields and woods, at peace in their white loveliness. It carried her through many hard hours to remember that in ten minutes she could, if she must, be in that meadow solitude of her Secret Field, far from babble and confusion. There were yet wonderful ethereal dawns which she and Rae shared together . . . there were yet full moons rising behind snowy hills . . . rose tints over sunset dells . . . slender birches and shadowy nooks . . . winds calling to each other at night . . . apple-green "dims" . . . starry quietudes that soothed your pain . . . April buds in happiness . . . "Thank God, April still comes to the world" . . . and Silver Bush to be loved and protected and cherished.
And with the spring Joe came home, to be married at last; after every one had concluded, so Mrs. Binnie said, that poor Enid Sutton was never going to get him.
"Many's the time I've said to her, 'Don't be too sure of him. A sailor has a sweetheart in every port. It isn't as if you was still a girl. You never can depend on them sailors. Take Mrs. Rory MacPherson at the Bridge . . . a disappointed woman if ever there was one. Her husband was a sailor and she thought he was dead and was going to get married again when he turned up alive and well.'"
There was a big gay wedding at the Suttons and every one thought bronzed Joe remarkably handsome. Pat thought so, too, and was proud of him; but he seemed a stranger now . . . Joe, whose going had once been such a tragedy. She was even a little glad when all the fuss was over and Joe and his bride were gone on a wonderful bridal trip around the world in Joe's new vessel. She could settle down to housecleaning and gardening now . . . at least, after Mrs. Binnie had had her say about the event.
"A grand wedding. Some people don't see how old Charlie Sutton could afford it but I always say most folks is only married once and why not make a splurge. I always did like a wedding. Wasn't May the naughty thing to run off the way she did, so sly-like? I'll bet you folks here wasn't a bit more flabbergasted than I was when I heard it. And maybe I didn't feel upset about her coming in here with you all. But I always believed it would work out in time and it has. People said May could never live in peace here, Pat was such a crank. But I said, 'No, Pat isn't a crank. It's just that you have to understand her.' And I was right, wasn't I, dearie? May made up her mind when she come here that she'd get along with you. 'It takes two to make a quarrel, ma, you know,' she said. And I said, 'That's the right spirit, dearie. Behave like a lady whatever you do. You're a Gardiner now and must live up to their traditions. And you must make allowances.' That's what I said to her. 'You must make allowances. And don't be scared. I hope my daughter isn't a coward,' I said. It's a real joy to me to see how well you've got on together, though I don't deny that Judy Plum has been a hard nut to crack. May has felt certain things . . . May always did feel things so deeply. But she just made allowances as I advised her. 'Judy Plum has been spoiled as every one knows,' I told her, 'but she's old and breaking up fast and you can afford to humour her a bit, dearie.' 'Oh, I'm not going to stoop to argue with a servant,' May says. 'I'm above that.' May always was so sensible. Well, I'm glad poor Enid Sutton has got married at last . . . she's gone off terrible these past three years waiting for Joe and not knowing if he'd ever come. And what about you, Pat dearie? I can't imagine what the men are thinking of. Isn't your widower a bit slow?" . . . with a smirk that had the same effect on Pat as a dig in the ribs . . . "Folks think he's trying to back out of it but I tell them, 'no, that'll be a match yet.' Just you encourage him a little more, dearie . . . that's all he needs. To be sure, May said to me the other day, I wouldn't take another woman's leavings, ma.' But you're not getting any younger, Pat, if you'll excuse my saying so. I was married when I was eighteen and I could have been married when I was seventeen. My dress was of red velvet and my hat was of black velvet with a green plume. Every one thought it elegant but I was disappointed. I'd always wanted to be wedded in a sky-blue gown, the hue of God's own heaven."
"Once of her poetical flights," whispered Tillytuck to Judy. But Pat and Rae both heard him and almost choked trying not to laugh. Mrs. Binnie, who never dreamed any one could be laughing at her, kept on.
"Is it true the Kirks are putting up a sun-dial in the Long House garden?"
"Yes," said Pat shortly.
"Well now, I never did hold with them modern inventions," said Mrs. Binnie complacently. "An old-fashioned clock is good enough for me."
"Never mind," said Rae, when Mrs. Binnie had finally waddled off to the "living room," "it will soon be lilac time."
"With white apple boughs framing a moon," said Pat.
"And violets in the silver bush," said Rae.
"And a new row of lilies to be planted along the dyke," said Pat.
"And great crimson clovers in the Mince Pie Field."
"And blue-eyed grass around the Pool . . ."
"And pussy-willows in Happiness . . ."
"And a dance of daisies along Jordan."
"Oh, we've heaps of precious things left yet, Pat--things nobody, not even a Binnie can spoil." Were the days when she could wash her being in the sunrise and feel as blithe as a bird gone forever? Perhaps they would come back when the new house would be built and Silver Bush was all their own again. But that was as yet far in the future. There was Judy coming across the yard, bringing in some drenched little chickens May had forgotten to put in. Was Judy getting bent? Pat shivered.
But still life seemed sadly out of tune, struggle as bravely as one might.
3
"I'll have nothing to do with anything to-day but spring," said Pat . . . even gaily. For May had gone home that morning and they had a whole day to be alone . . . three delightful meals to eat alone when they could sit around the table and talk as long as they liked in the old way. Sometimes Pat and Judy thought those frequent visits of May home were all that saved their reason. Everything seemed different. Judy vowed that the very washing machine ran easier when she was away. Even the house seemed to draw a breath of relief. It had never got used to May.
It had not been an easy spring at Silver Bush despite its beauty. House-cleaning with May was rather a heartbreaking business. She was so full of suggestions.
"Why not do away with that messy old front garden, Pat and make a real lawn?" . . . or, "I'd have a window cut there, Pat. This hall is really awfully dark in the afternoons." . . . or, "The orchard is really trying to get into the house, Pat. Why not have that tree cut down?"
May simply could not or would not get it into her head that Pat was not having trees cut down. In regard to this particular tree, May was not, perhaps, so far wrong as in some of her suggestions. It really was too close to the house . . . a young apple tree that had started up of itself and grew so slyly that it was a tree before any one took much notice of it. Now it was pushing its boughs into the very window of the Big Parlour. When May spoke it was a thing of beauty, all starred with tiny red buds just on the point of bursting.
"I think it's lovely having the orchard coming right into the house like this," said Pat.
"You would," said May. It was a favourite retort with her and she always contrived to put a vast amount of contempt into it.
None of her suggestions were adopted and May tearfully told her mother, in Judy's hearing, that she "simply couldn't do a thing in her husband's house." She was determined to have a "herbaceous border" and nagged at Sid until he interceded with Pat and it was decided that it might be made across the bottom of the little lawn, where hitherto nothing but lilies of the valley had grown wildly and thickly. There were plenty of other lilies of the valley about but Pat hated to see those ploughed up and May's iris and delphiniums and what Mrs. Binnie called "concubines," set in their place. Because May really did not care a bit for flowers. She wanted her herbaceous border because Olive had told her they were all the fashion now and every one in town was making one.
"Do you know that May badgered Sid at last into taking her back and showing her the Secret Field?" asked Rae.
Yes, Pat knew it. May had laughed on her return.
"I've seen your famous field, Pat . . . nothing but a little hole in the woods. And you've been making such a fuss over it all these years."
To Pat it was the ultimate treason that Sid should have showed May the Secret Field . . . their Secret Field. But she could not blame him. He had to do it for peace' sake.
"You love your sister better than your wife," May told him passionately, whenever he refused to do anything Pat didn't want done. He and May had begun to quarrel violently and life at Silver Bush was made bitter all that summer by it. Meal times were the worst. The bickering between them was almost incessant.
"Oh, do let us have one meal without a fight," Long Alec remarked in exasperation one day. Pat, who had been listening in silence to May's sarcasm and Sid's sulky replies, rose and went to her room.
"I can't bear it any longer . . . I can't," she said wildly. She twitched the shade to pull it down and shut out the insulting sunlight. It escaped her and whizzed wildly to the top, thereby nearly scaring to death Bold-and-Bad, asleep on Rae's bed.
"You don't deserve a cat," said Bold-and-Bad, or words to that effect.
Pat glared at him.
"To think that it has come to this at Silver Bush!"
Rae, coming in a little later with the mail and an armful of blossom, turned the key in the door. That was necessary now. There was no longer the old-time privacy at Silver Bush. May might bounce in on them at any time without the pretence of knocking. She merely laughed at the idea of knocking and called it "Silver Bush airs."
"Pat, darling, don't take it so to heart. I admit there's a time every day when May makes me yearn for the good old days when you could pull peoples' wigs off. But when I feel that way I just reflect what Brook's eyes would make of her . . . can't you see the twinkle in them? . . . and she shrinks to her proper perspective. It isn't going to last forever."
"It is . . . it is," cried Pat wildly. "Rae, May doesn't want to have a house built on the other place . . . she wants to have Silver Bush. I've heard her talking to Sid . . . I couldn't help hearing . . . you know what her voice is like when she's angry. 'I'll never go to live on the Adams' place . . . it would be so far out of the world . . . you can't move all them barns. You told me when you persuaded me to marry you that we would live at Silver Bush. And I'm going to . . . and it won't be under the thumb of your old-maid sister either. She's nothing but a parasite . . . living off your father when there's nothing now to prevent her from going away and earning her own living when I'm here to run things.' She's doing her best to set Sid against us all . . . you know she is. And she attributes some petty motive to everything we do or say . . . or don't say. Remember the scene she made last week because I hadn't taken any notice of her new dress . . . that awful concoction of cheap radium lace over that sleazy bright blue silk. I thought the kindest thing I could do was not to take notice of it. I was ashamed to think any one at Silver Bush could wear such a thing. And she tells Sid we're always laughing at her."
"Well, you did laugh last night when she said that thing about the moon," grinned Rae.
"Who could help it? I forgot myself in the delight of seeing that new moon over the crest of that fir in the silver bush and I pointed it out to May. 'How cute!' remarks my sister-in-law. And that creature is . . . by law . . . a Gardiner of Silver Bush!"
"Still, the new moon over the fir tree is just as exquisite as it ever was," said Rae softly.
But Pat would listen just then to no comforting.
"Think of dinner. At the best now we never have any real conversation at our meals . . . and at the worst it is like it was to-day. Rae, at times it simply seems to me that everything sane and sweet and happy has vanished from Silver Bush and only returns for a little while when she is away. Why, she listens on the 'phone . . . fancy any one at Silver Bush listening on the 'phone! . . . and gossips over what she hears. I feel dragged in the dust when I hear her. Do you know that she took that gang of her Summerside cousins into our room yesterday . . . our room! . . . and showed it to them?"
"Well, she wouldn't find it littered with hair-pins and face powder as hers is," said Rae, looking fondly around at their little immaculate room, engoldened by the light of the new corn-coloured curtains she and Pat had selected that spring. Here, at least, were yet stillness and peace and refreshment whatever might be the state of things elsewhere. "And as for her setting Sid against us, she can't do that, Pat. Sid knows what she is now. And dad will remain master of Silver Bush. Let's just sit tight and wait. Here's a letter from Hilary I've just brought in from the box. It will cheer you up."
But it hardly did, though Pat wistfully read it over three times in the hope of finding that elusive something Hilary's letters used to possess. It was nice, like all Hilary's letters. But it was the first for quite a long time . . . and it was a little remote, somehow . . . as if he were thinking of something else all the time he was writing it. He was going to Italy and then to the east . . . Egypt . . . India . . . to study architecture. He would be away for a year.
"I want to see the whole world," he wrote. Pat shivered. The "whole world" had a cold, huge sound to her. Yet for the first time the idea came into her head that it might be rather nice to see the world with Hilary or some such congenial companion. Philae against a desert sunset . . . the storied Alhambra . . . the pearl-white wonder of the Taj Mahal by moonlight . . . Petra, that "rose-red city half as old as Time," as Hilary had quoted. It would be wonderful to see them. But it would be more wonderful still to look at Silver Bush and know it for her own again . . . as she was afraid it never would be. Perhaps May was there to stay. She wanted to and she always got what she wanted. She had wanted Sid and she had got him. She would get Silver Bush by hook or crook. Already at times she assumed sly airs of mistress-ship and did the honours of the garden on the strength of her "herbaceous border," explaining ungraciously that the stones around the beds were a whim of old Judy Plum's. "We humour her."
And the place was over-run by her family. Judy used to tell Tillytuck that Silver Bush was crawling wid thim. Sure and wasn't all the Binnie clan that prolific!
That hateful young brother of May's with the weasel eyes was there more than half his time, "helping" Sid and making fun of Judy who revenged herself by hiding tidbits he coveted away in the pantry and blandly knowing nothing about them.
"Poor old Judy is failing fast," said May. "She puts things away and forgets where she puts them."
May was much in the kitchen now, cooking up what Judy called "messes" for her own friends and leaving all the greasy or doughy pots and pans for Judy to wash. Judy couldn't have told you whether she disliked May more in good humour or in "the sulks." When she was sulky she banged and slammed but her tongue was still; when she was in good humour she never stopped talking. There were few quiet moments at Silver Bush now. Judy in despair took to sitting and knitting on Wild Dick's tombstone. Tillytuck sat there, too, on Weeping Willy's, smoking his pipe. "I like company but not too much," was all he would say. It was all great fun for May. She persisted in assuming that Tillytuck and Judy were "courting" in the graveyard.
"Will I be caring what she says?" said Judy bitterly to Pat. "Oh, oh, she can't run me kitchen. She was be way av hanging up a calendar on me wall yesterday right below King William and Quane Victoria . . . a picture av a big fat girl wid no clothes at all on. I did be taking it down and throwing it in the fire. 'Sure,' sez I to her, 'that hussy is no fit company for ather a king or a quane,' sez I. And nather was that cousin av hers she had here yesterday in a bathing suit. She come in as bould as brass wid her great bare fat legs and did be setting on yer Great-grandfather Nehemiah's chair, wid thim crossed. And thim not aven a dacent white . . . sun-tan she did be calling it . . . more like the colour av skim milk cheese. Tillytuck just took one look and flid to the granary. I cudn't be trating her as I did the calendar but I sez, 'People that fond av showing their legs ought to be dieting a bit,' sez I. 'You quaint thing!' sez she. Oh, oh, it's thanking the Good Man Above I am she didn't call me priceless. It do be her fav'rite ajective. But whin May did be saying that one-pace bathing suits were all the fashion now and did I ixpict people to go bathing in long dresses and crinolines, I sez, 'Oh, oh, far be it from me to be like yer Aunt Ellice, May,' sez I. 'Whin her nace sint her a statue av the Venus av Mily for a Christmas prisent she did be putting a dress on it, rale tasty, afore she showed it to her frinds. I'm not objicting to legs as legs,' sez I, 'spacially at the shore where they do be plinty av background for thim, but whin they're as big and fat as yer lady cousin's,' sez I, 'they do be a bit overpowering in me kitchen.' 'Ivery one thinks that Emma looks stunning in her suit,' sez May. 'Stunning do be the right word,' sez I. 'Ye saw the iffict she had on Tillytuck and he's not a man asily upset,' sez I. 'As for the fashion,' sez I, 'av coorse what one monkey does all the other monkeys will be doing,' sez I. Me fine May sez that I'd insulted her frind and hadn't a word to throw to a dog all day but I'm liking her far better whin she's sulky than whin she's frindly. She did be trying to pump me about Cleaver this morning but I wasn't knowing innything. Do there be innything to know, Patsy dear?"
"Not a thing," said Pat with a smile.
"Oh, oh, I wasn't ixpicting it," said Judy with no smile. She did not know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. She did not quite like Cleaver, who was an honour graduate of McGill and was spending his summer doing research work at the Silverbridge harbour. Pat had got acquainted with him at the Long House and he had dangled a bit round Silver Bush. He was enormously clever and his researches into various elusive bacilli had already put him in the limelight. But poor Cleaver looked rather like a magnified bacillus himself and Judy, try as she would, could not see him as a husband for Pat.
"It'll be the widower yet, I'm fearing," she told Tillytuck in the graveyard. "Spacially if this news we're hearing about Jingle is true. I've always had me own ideas . . . but I do be only an ould fool and getting no younger, as Mrs. Binnie do be saying ivery once in so long."
"Old Matilda Binnie has a new set of teeth and a new fur coat," said Tillytuck. "Now, if she could get a new set of brains she might do very well for a while." He took a few whiffs at his pipe and then added gravely, "Symbolically speaking."
4
Aunt Edith died very suddenly in August. They all felt the shock of it. None of them had ever loved Aunt Edith very much . . . she was not a lovable person. But she was part of the established order of things and her passing meant another change. Oddly enough, Judy, who had had a life-long vendetta with her, seemed to mourn and miss her most. Judy thought life would be almost stodgy when there was no Aunt Edith to horrify and exchange polite, barbed jabs with.
"Whin I think I'll niver see her in me kitchen agin, insulting me, I do be having a very quare faling, Patsy dear."
It was of course May who told Pat, with much relish, that Hilary Gordon was engaged. Some Binnie had had a letter from another Binnie who lived in Vancouver and knew the girl. She and Hilary were to be married when he returned from his year abroad and he was to be taken into the noted firm of architects in which her father was the senior partner.
"He was a beau of yours long ago, wasn't he, when you were a young girl?" asked May in a malicious drawl.
"I think it's true," Rae told Pat that night. "I heard it some time ago. Dot has friends in Vancouver and they wrote it to her. I . . . I didn't know whether to tell you or not."
"Why on earth shouldn't you tell me?" said Pat very coldly.
"Well . . ." Rae hesitated . . . "you and Hilary were always such friends . . ."
"Exactly!" Pat bit the word off and her brook-brown eyes were full of a rather dangerous fire. "We have always been good friends and so I would naturally be interested in hearing any good news about him. All that . . . that hurts me is that he should have left me to hear it from others. Rae Gardiner, what are you looking at me like that for?"
"I've always thought," said Rae, taking her life in her hands, "that you . . . that you cared much more for Hilary than you ever suspected yourself, Pat."
Pat laughed a little unsteadily.
"Rae, don't be a goose. You and Judy have always been a little delirious on the subject of Hilary. I've always loved Hilary and always will. He's just like a dear brother to me. Do you realise how many years it is since I've seen him? Of course we've drifted apart even as friends. It was inevitable. Even our correspondence is dying a natural death. I haven't had a letter from him since he went abroad."
"I was only a child when he went away but I remember how I liked him," said Rae. "I used to think he was the nicest boy in the world."
"So he was," said Pat. "And I hope he's going to marry some one who is nice enough for him."
"He really was in love with you, wasn't he, Pat?"
"He thought he was. I knew he would get over that."
"Well . . ." Rae had been irradiated all day with some secret happiness and now it came out . . . "Brook is coming over for a week before college opens. I do hope Miss Macauly will have my blue georgette done by that time. And I think I'll have a little jacket of that lovely transparent blue velvet we saw in town to go with it. I feel sure Brook will love me in that dress."
"I thought he loved you in any dress," teased Pat.
"Oh, he does. But there are degrees, Pat."
"And no one," thought Pat a little drearily, "cares how I'm dressed."
She looked out of the window and saw a rising moon . . . and remembered old moonrises she had watched with Hilary . . . "when she was a girl." That phrase of May's rankled. And Mrs. Binnie had been rather odious the other day, assuring her again there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it . . . apropos of the announcement of the engagement of a South Glen girl to Donald Holmes.
"You're young enough yet," said Mrs. Binnie soothingly. "And when people say you're beginning to look a bit old-maidish I always tell them, 'Is it any wonder? Think of the responsibility Pat has had for years, with her mother ill and so much on her shoulders. No wonder she's getting old-looking afore her time.'"
Pat had got pretty well into the habit of ignoring Mrs. Binnie but that phrase "young yet" haunted her. She went to the mirror and looked dispassionately at herself. She really did not think she looked old. Her dark brown hair was as glossy as ever . . . her amber eyes as bright . . . her cheeks as smooth and rounded. Perhaps there were a few tiny lines in the corners of her eyes and . . . what was that? Pat leaned nearer, her eyes dilating a little. Was it . . . could it be . . . yes, it was! A grey hair!
5
Pat went up to the Long House that night. She walked blithely and springily. She was not going to worry over that grey hair. She would not even pull it out. The Selbys all turned grey young. What did it matter? She would not grow old in heart, no matter what she did in head. She would always keep her banner of youth flying gallantly. Wrinkles might come on her face but there should never be any on her soul. And yet there had been a moment that day when Pat had felt as if she didn't want to be young any longer. Things hurt you too much when you were young. Surely they wouldn't hurt so much when you got old. You wouldn't care so much then . . . things would be settled . . . there wouldn't be so many changes. People you knew wouldn't always be running off to far lands . . . or getting married. Your hair would be all grey and it wouldn't matter. You wouldn't be eating your heart out longing for a lost paradise.
Altogether it had not been a pleasant day. May had had a fit of the sulks and had taken it out slamming doors . . . Rover had eaten a plateful of fudge Pat had set outside to cool . . . Judy had seemed down-hearted about something . . . perhaps the news about Hilary though she never referred to it but only muttered occasionally to herself about "strange going-ons." Pat decided that she felt a trifle stodgy and needed something to pep her up a bit. She would find it at the Long House . . . she always did. Whenever life seemed a bit grey . . . whenever she felt a passing pang of loneliness over the changes that had been and . . . worse still . . . would be, she went up the hill to David and Suzanne. Whenever the door of the Long House clanged behind her it seemed to shut out the world, with its corroding discontents and vexations. Once, Pat thought with a stab of pain, she had felt that way when she went into Silver Bush. That she couldn't feel so any longer was a very bitter thing . . . a thing she couldn't get used to. But to-night as she and David and Suzanne sat around the fire--it was a cool September night and any excuse served when they wanted to light that fire . . . and cracked nuts and talked . . . or didn't talk . . . the bitterness faded out of Pat's heart as it always did in their company. Suzanne was rather quiet, sitting with Alphonso curled up in her lap: but Pat and David never found themselves lacking for something to say. Pat looked at the motto that ran in quaint, irregular letters around the fireplace.
"There be three gentle and goodlie things,
To be here,
To be together,
And to think well of one another."
That was true: and while it remained true one could bear anything else, no matter what sort of a hole it left in your life. What a dear Suzanne was! And what nice eyes David had . . . very whimsical when they were not tender and very tender when they were not whimsical. And his voice . . . what did his voice always remind her of? She could never tell but she knew it was something that always tugged at her heart. And she knew he liked her very much. It was nice to be liked . . . nice to have such friends to come to whenever you wanted to.
David walked home with her as he always did. Pat had never until to-night stopped to think how very pleasant those walks home were. To-night the hills were dreamy under a harvest moon. They went through the close-set spruce grove that always seemed to be guarding so many secrets . . . down the field path under the Watching Pine that still watched . . . for what? . . . over the brook and along the Whispering Lane. At the gate where they always parted they stood in silence for a little while, lost in the beauty of the night. Faint music came to them. It was only Tillytuck playing in his lair but, muted by the distance, it sounded like some fairy melody under a haunted moon. Beyond the trees were great quietudes of sky where burned the stars that never changed . . . the only things that never changed.
David was thinking that silence with Pat was more eloquent than talk with any other woman. He was also wondering what Pat would do or say if he suddenly did what he had always wanted to do . . . put his arm about her and said, "darling." What he did say was almost as shattering to Pat's new-found mood of contentment.
"Has Suzanne told you her little secret yet?"
Suzanne? A secret? There was only one kind of a secret people spoke about in that tone. Pat involuntarily put up her hand as if warding off a blow.
"No . . . o . . . o," she said faintly.
"She probably would have if you had been alone with her to-night. She's very happy. She has made up a quarrel she had before we came here with an old lover . . . and they are engaged."
It was too much . . . it really was. So Suzanne was to be lost to her, too! And she had to be polite and say something nice.
"I . . . I . . . hope she will always be very happy," she gasped.
"I think she will," said David quietly. "She has loved him for years . . . I never knew just what the trouble was. We're a secretive lot, we Kirks. Of course they won't be married till he has finished college. He has had to work his way through. And then . . . what am I to do, Pat?"
"You . . . you'll miss her," said Pat. She knew she was being incredibly stupid.
"You'll have to tell me what to do, Pat," David said, bending a little nearer, his voice taking on a very significant tone.
Was David by any chance proposing to her? And if he were what on earth could she say? She wasn't going to say anything! She had had enough shocks for one day . . . Hilary engaged . . . grey hair . . . Suzanne engaged! Oh, why must life be such an uncertain thing? You never knew where you were . . . you never had security . . . you never knew when there might not be some dreadful bolt from the blue. She would just pretend she hadn't heard David's question and go in. Which she did.
But that night she sat in the moonlight in her room for a long while and looked at the two paths she might take in life. Rae was away and the house was silent . . . and, so it seemed to Pat, lonely. Silver Bush always seemed when night fell to be mourning for its ravished peace. The sky outside was cloudless but a brisk wind was blowing past. "What is the wind in such a hurry for, Aunt Pat?" Little Mary had asked wistfully not long ago. Everything seemed in a hurry . . . life was in a hurry . . . it couldn't let you be . . . it swept you on with it as if you were a leaf in the wind.
Which path should she take? David was going to ask her to marry him . . . she had known for a long time in the back of her mind that he would ask her if she ever let him. She was terribly fond of David. Life with him would be a very pleasant pilgrimage. Even a grey day was full of colour when David was around. She was always contented in his company. And his eyes were sometimes so sad. She wanted to make them happy. Was that reason enough for marrying a man, even one as nice as David? If she didn't marry him she would lose him out of her life. He would never stay at the Long House after Suzanne had gone. And she couldn't lose any more friends . . . she just couldn't.
Suppose she didn't take that path? Suppose she just went on living here at Silver Bush . . . growing into being "Aunt Pat" . . . helping plan the clan weddings and funerals . . . her brown hair turning pepper-and-salt. That grey hair popped into her mind. It seemed as if age had just tapped her on the shoulder. But it would be all right if only Silver Bush might be hers to love and plan for and live for, free from all outsiders and intruders. She wouldn't hesitate a second then. But would it be? Would it ever be hers again? She knew what May's designs were. And she knew Sid didn't want to leave Silver Bush for the other place. Would dad stand out against them . . . could he? No, it would end in May being mistress of Silver Bush some day. That was the secret dread that always haunted Pat. And if it ever came about . . .
A few weeks later David said quietly to her in the garden of the Long House . . . the garden where Bet's ghost sometimes walked even yet for Pat . . .
"Do you think you could marry me, Pat?"
Pat looked afar for a moment of silence to the firry rim of an eastern hill. Then she said just as quietly, "I think I could."
6
Mother was told first. Mother's face was always serene but it changed a little when Pat told her.
"Darling, do you really love him?"
Pat looked out of the window. There had been a frost the night before and the garden had a blighted look. She had been hoping mother wouldn't ask that question.
"I do really, mother, but perhaps not in just the way you mean."
"There's only the one way," said mother softly.
"Then I'm one of the kind of people who can't love that way. I've tried . . . and I can't."
"It doesn't come by trying either," said mother.
"Mother dear, I'm terribly fond of David. We suit each other . . . our minds click. He loves the same things I do. I'm always happy with him . . . we'll always be good chums."
Mother said no more. She picked up something she was making for Rae's hope chest and went on putting tiny invisible stitches in it. After all perhaps it would work out. It was not what she had wanted for Pat but the child must make her own choices. David Kirk was a nice fellow . . . mother had always liked him. And Pat would not be far from her.
Judy came next and, for one who had always been anxious to see Pat "settled", betrayed no great delight. But she wished Pat well and was careful to say that Mr. Kirk had rale brading. Since the engagement was an accomplished fact Judy was not going to say anything against a future member of the family.
"The poor darlint, she don't be as happy as she thinks hersilf," Judy told Bold-and-Bad, regarding him as the only safe confidant. Only she felt that Bold-and-Bad never understood her quite so well as Gentleman Tom had done. "And after all the min she might have had! But I'm hoping the Good Man Above knows what's bist for us all."
To Rae Pat talked more frankly than to any one.
"Pat dear, if you love him . . ."
"Not as you love Brook, Rae. I'm just not capable of that sort of loving . . . or it doesn't last. David needs me . . . or will need me when Suzanne goes. We're not going to be married until she is . . . for two years at the least. I wouldn't marry him, Rae . . . I wouldn't marry anybody . . . if I knew I could go on living at Silver Bush. But if May stays here . . . and she means to . . . I can't, especially when you are gone to China. I've always loved the Long House next to Silver Bush. I'll be near Silver Bush . . . I can always look down on it and watch over it."
"I believe that's the real reason you're going to marry David Kirk," thought Rae. She looked at the shadow of the vine leaves on the bedroom floor. It looked like a dancing faun. Rae blinked to hide sudden foolish tears. Pat was going to miss something. But aloud she said only,
"I hope you'll be happy, Pat. You deserve to be. You've always been a darling."
Father took it philosophically. He would have liked some one a bit younger. But Kirk was a nice chap and seemed to have enough money to live on. There was something distinguished about him. His war book had been acclaimed by the critics and he was working on a "History of the Maritimes" of which, Long Alec had been told, great things were expected. Pat had always liked those brainy fellows. She had a right to please herself.
The rest of the clan were surprised and amused. Pat sensed that none of them quite approved. Winnie and the Bay Shore aunts said absolutely nothing, but silence can say a great deal sometimes. Only Aunt Barbara said deprecatingly,
"But, Pat, he's grey."
"So am I," said Pat, flaunting her one grey hair.
"Let's hope it lasts this time," said Uncle Tom. Pat thought he might have been nicer after the way she had stood by him in the affair of Mrs. Merridew.
May was frankly delighted, though her delight faded a little when she learned that there was no prospect of an immediate marriage. Mrs. Binnie, rocking fiercely, had her say-so as well.
"So you've hooked the widower at last, Pat? What did I tell you . . . never give up. I've never understood how a gal could bring herself to marry a widower . . . but then any port in a storm. Of course, as I said to Olive, he's a bit on the old side . . ."
"I don't like boys," said Pat coolly. "I get on better with men. And you must admit, Mrs. Binnie, that his ears don't stick out."
"I call that flippant, Pat. Marriage is a very serious thing. As I was saying, when I said that to Olive she sez, 'I s'pose it's better to be an old man's darling than a young man's slave. Pat isn't so young as she used to be herself, ma. She'll make a very good wife for David Kirk.' Olive always kind of liked you, Pat. She always said you meant well."
"That was very kind of her."
Pat's amused, remote smile offended Mrs. Binnie. That was the worst of Pat. Always laughing at you in her sleeve. Mebbe she'd find out marrying an old widower was no laughing matter.
Suzanne was wild with delight.
"I've been hoping for it from the first, Pat. You're made for each other. David worries a bit because he's so much older. I tell him he's growing younger every day and you're growing older so you'll soon meet. He's a darling if he is my brother. He never dared to hope . . . till lately. He always said he had two rivals."
"Two?"
"Silver Bush . . . and Hilary Gordon."
Pat smiled.
"Silver Bush was his rival, I'll admit. But Hilary . . . he might as well call Sid a rival."
Yet her face had changed subtly. Some of the laughter went out of it. She was wondering why there was such a distinct relief in the thought that, since her correspondence with Hilary seemed to have died a natural death, she would not have to write him that she was going to marry David Kirk.