The Ninth Year — Mistress Pat by Lucy Montgomery
1
Hilary wrote just once to Pat after he went away . . . one of his old delightful letters, full of beautiful little pencil sketches of the houses he was going to design. Just at the last he wrote:
"Don't feel badly, Pat, dear, because I love you and you can't love me. I've always loved you. I can't help it and I wouldn't if I could. If the choice had been mine I would still have chosen to love you. There are people who try to forget a hopeless love. I'm not one of them, Pat. To me the greatest misfortune life could bring would be that I should forget you. I want to remember and love you always. That will be unspeakably better than any happiness that could come through forgetting. My love for you is the best thing . . . always has been the best thing . . . in my life. It hasn't made me poorer. On the contrary it has enriched my whole existence and given me the gift of clear vision for the things that matter; it has been a lamp held before my feet whereby I have avoided many pitfalls of baser passions and unworthy dreams. It will always be so. Therefore don't pity me and don't feel unhappy about me."
But Pat did feel unhappy and the feeling persisted more or less under all the outward happiness of the autumn and winter. For it did seem to be a happy time. Long Alec had definitely stated that in a year from the next spring he hoped to build on the other farm for Sid and May. Every one knew this was final and May, with much pouting and sulking, had to reconcile herself to the fact that she would never be mistress of Silver Bush.
Mother, too, was stronger and better than she had been for years. She said with a laugh that she was having a second youth. She was able to join in the family life again and go about seeing her friends. It seemed like a miracle for they had all accepted the fact for years that mother would always be an invalid, with a "good day" once in a while. Now the good days were the rule rather than the exception. So in spite of May that year was the pleasantest Pat had known for a long time . . . except for that odd persistent little ache of indefinable longing under everything. It never exactly ceased . . . though she forgot about it often . . . when she was gardening . . . sewing . . . planning . . . when Little Mary came to Silver Bush and wanted some of Judy's "malicious toast" . . . when Bold-and-Bad trounced some upstart kitten for its own good . . . when she and Suzanne and David sat by the Long House fire . . . when she and Rae took sweet counsel together over plans and problems . . . when she wakened early to revel in Silver Bush lying in its misty morning silence . . . her home . . . her dear, beloved, all-sufficing home . . . when Winnie came to Silver Bush, purring over her golden babies. For Winnie had twins . . . Winnie and Rachel . . . babies that looked as if they had been lifted bodily out of a magazine advertisement. When Pat looked at the two absurd, darling, round-faced, blue-eyed mites on the same pillow she always swallowed a little choke of longing.
Rae expected to be married in another year. Her hope chest was full to overflowing and she and Pat were already planning the details of the wedding . . . a regular clan wedding, of course.
"The last big wedding at Silver Bush," said Pat.
"What about your own?" asked Rae.
"Oh, mine. It won't be a smart event. David and I will just slip away some day and be married. There isn't going to be any fuss," said Pat hurriedly . . . and turned the conversation to something else. She was very, very fond of David but things were nice just as they were. She did not want to think of marrying at all. The thought of leaving Silver Bush was not bearable.
Rae looked at her curiously but said nothing. Rae was very wise in her generation.
"It doesn't do to meddle," she reflected sagely. "I sometimes wish I'd never written Hilary about Pat's various beaus. Perhaps it did more harm than good . . . if he had come sooner . . ."
Well, life was full of "ifs." For instance if she had not gone to the dance where she met Brook? She had been within an inch of not going. Rae shuddered.
"When Rae is married," Pat told Judy, "I want her to have the loveliest wedding we've ever had at Silver Bush."
"Oh, oh, it ought to be wid a whole year to get riddy in," agreed Judy.
But nothing ever happens just as you imagine it will, as Pat had many times discovered. A week later came the bolt from the blue. Brook wrote that the manager of the Chinese branch had suddenly died. It had become absolutely necessary for him to start for China at once instead of next year. Would Rae go with him?
Of course Rae would go with him. It meant a marriage at three day's notice, but what of that?
"You . . . can't," gasped Pat.
They were sitting in the hay-mow of the church barn, having discovered that it was about the only place where they were safe from May or some prowling Binnie coming down on them. The fragrance of dried clover was around them and an arrogant orange-gold barn cat sat on a rafter and looked at them out of mysterious jewel-like eyes.
"I can and will," said Rae resolutely. "Lily Robinson will take the school and be thankful to get it. We won't bother with a wedding cake . . ."
"Rae, do you want Judy to drop dead! Of course we'll have a wedding cake. It won't have time to ripen as good wedding cake should but in all else it shall be the weddingest cake ever seen. But what about your dress?"
"Will it be possible to have a white dress, Pat . . . a white satin dress? I'm old-fashioned . . . I'm Victorian . . . I want to be married in a white satin dress. I love satin."
"We'll make it possible," said Pat. Forthwith she and Rae and Judy and mother went into committee on the subject. Pat and Rae hustled off to town for the dress . . . Inez Macaulay came to make it and sewed for dear life. Mother, who hadn't done such a thing for years, declared she would make the cake.
"Oh, oh, and she do be the lady as can do it," said Judy. "All the Bay Shore girls cud make fruit-cake to the quane's taste."
Judy pleaded for "just a liddle wedding." They could have the aunts and uncles and cousins surely. But nobody agreed with her.
"We can't have all the two clans, and since we can't have all we must have none. No, Judy, Brook and I are just going to be married here with you home folks looking on."
Judy had to reconcile herself. But she shook her grizzled head. Times indeed were changed at Silver Bush when one of its daughters could be married off like this.
"Sure and I fale ould and done," said Judy . . . looking cautiously about, however, to make sure nobody heard her.
"You've taken your own time about telling me," said May with a toss of her head when Pat informed her that Rae was to be married.
"We've only known it for twenty-four hours ourselves," said Pat. May, however, was determined to be sulky. Nevertheless, there were times when Judy surprised a smug look on her face.
"She do be thinking there'll be one more out av her way," reflected Judy scornfully.
"I'm glad to hear you're getting another of your gals married off," Mrs. Binnie told mother patronisingly. "You'll soon be like myself . . . only one left." A sentimental sigh. "What about you, Pat? Isn't it time you were thinking of leaping the ditch? The men don't seem to be what they were in my young days."
Pat fled to her room where Rae had piled all her belongings on the bed.
"Forget Mother Binnie, Pat, and help me pack. I never was any good at packing. Tell me what to take or leave."
The yawning trunk gave Pat a stab. Rae was really going away . . . going to China! Why couldn't it have been Rae's fortune to settle down near home like Winnie? Yet she remembered that she had thought Winnie's going a tragedy. How life grew around changes until they became a part of it and were changes no more! Winnie coming home with her babies . . . Winnie's home to visit . . . why, it was all delightful. But China! And yet Rae was serenely happy over it all. A line of some old-fashioned song Aunt Hazel used to sing long ago came back to Pat, as she folded and packed. "The one who goes is happier far than the one that's left behind."
Perhaps it was true. She almost envied Rae her happiness. And yet she felt sorry for her . . . for Rae, who was leaving Silver Bush. How could any one be happy, leaving Silver Bush?
"This time to-morrow I'll be an old married woman," said Rae, scrutinising herself in the mirror. "I believe it's high time I was married, Pat. It seems to me that I'm getting a certain school-teacherish look already. Do you know Brook is having the wedding ring specially made. No hand-me-downs for him, he says. I hope I'll get through the ceremony respectably. Mother Binnie will be there, watching me."
"She isn't coming, Rae!"
"She is. May asked me if her mother couldn't come to see me married? I really couldn't say no. So I want everything to go nicely. I'm not going to look up at Brook when I'm uttering the final vow. That has got so common . . . Mrs. Binnie said Olive did it and every one thought it 'so touching.' Anyway, I'd be sure to laugh. Listen to that bluebird out in the orchard, Pat. I suppose they don't have bluebirds in China . . . or do they? But there'll be cats . . . surely there'll be cats in China . . . cats guarding mysterious secrets . . . cats furry and contented. Only . . . will they mew in Chinese? If they do! And then, of course, after a while there'll be my children. I want ten."
"Ten? Why stop short of the dozen?" giggled Pat.
"Oh, I'm not greedy. One must leave a few for other people."
"If Aunt Barbara heard you!" said Pat, as she tucked a bag of dried lavender into Rae's trunk . . . lavender from the Silver Bush garden to sweeten sheets in China.
"But she doesn't. I don't say these things to anybody but you. We've been such chums, haven't we, Pat? We've laughed and cried together . . . we're friends as well as sisters . . . only for those horrid weeks we never really spoke to each other. That's the memory I'm ashamed of. But I've so many beautiful memories . . . of home and you and mother and Judy. They'll always light life like a lamp. Can you quote that verse we found the other night and thought so lovely?"
"'What Love anticipates may die in flower,
What Love possesses may be thine an hour,
But redly gleams in Life's unlit Decembers
What Love remembers.'"
"It's true, isn't it, dear? We'll always have our lovely memories even in our 'late Decembers.' Oh, I'm going to miss you all. I'll often be hungry for Silver Bush. Don't think I don't feel leaving it and you all, Pat. I do. But . . . but . . ."
"There's Brook Hamilton," smiled Pat.
"Yes." Rae was very thoughtful. "But the old life I'm leaving will always be very dear to me. And you've been the dearest sister."
"Just don't," said Pat. "You'll have me breaking down and howling. I've made up my mind I won't spoil your wedding with tears."
"And please, darling, don't cry after I'm gone. I can't bear to think of you here, in tears, after I'm gone."
"I'll likely have a little weep," said Pat frankly. "I don't think I can escape that. But I never give way to despair as I used to long ago. Rae, I've learned to accept change even though I can never help dreading it . . . never can understand people who actually seem to like it. There's Lily calling you for your last fitting."
The day before the wedding there was hope at Silver Bush that Mrs. Binnie wouldn't be able to come after all. Her first cousin, old Samuel Cobbledick, had died and the funeral was to be an hour before the time fixed for the ceremony.
"It's a real apostrophe to have him dying at this particular time," Mrs. Binnie grumbled to May. "He's been suffering from general ability for years but he needn't of died till after the wedding. He was always a very tiresome man. It was an infernal hemmeridge finished him off. I'm awful disappointed. I'd set my heart on seeing darling Rae married."
"Oh, oh, I do be hoping the funeral will go off more harmonious than his brother John's did," said Judy. "John did be wanting to make all the arrangements for the funeral himself before he died . . . wanting things done rale stylish and having no confidence in his wife, her being av the second skimmings brand. They did be fighting all their lives but the biggest row they iver had was over his funeral. She didn't be spaking to him agin while he was alive and she wudn't sit among the mourners at all, nor have innything to do wid the doings. It did be kind av spiling the occasion."
"All fam'lies have their little differences," said Mrs. Binnie stiffly. "Poor Sam's widow is feeling blue enough. I've been there all the afternoon condoning with her."
"Ye'll be maning 'condole,'" said Judy innocently. It was not often she bothered correcting Madam Binnie but there were times and seasons.
"I meant what I said," returned Mrs. Binnie, "and I'll thank you, Miss Plum, not to be putting words in my mouth."
Pat and Rae found it hard to win sleep that last night together. Half a dozen times one of them would say, "Well, let's turn over and go to sleep." They would turn over but they wouldn't go to sleep. Soon they would be talking again.
"I hope it will be fine to-morrow," said Rae. "I want to leave Silver Bush with my last sight of it bathed in sunshine."
"To-morrow?" said Pat. "Today! The clock in the Little Parlour has just struck twelve. It's your wedding day, Cuddles."
"Time I was taking the bridal jitters," laughed Rae. "I don't believe I'll have them at all. It all seems so--so natural to be marrying Brook, you know."
They must have slept a little for presently Pat was surprised to find herself sitting up in bed looking through the window at a world that lay in a clear, pale, thin dawnlight. It was Rae's wedding day and hereafter when she wakened she must waken alone.
A beautiful sunshiny day as Rae had desired, with mad, happy crickets singing everywhere and sinuous winds making golden shivers in the wheat-fields.
"Really," said Rae, "the weather at Silver Bush isn't like the weather anywhere else, even over at Swallowfield. I've teased you so often, Pat, for thinking things here were different from anywhere else . . . but in my heart I've always known it, too."
"Isn't it a wonderful day!" gushed May when they went down.
May rather spoiled the weather for Pat. But then with May everything was always either "wonderful" or "priceless." Those were her pet adjectives. Pat felt that she didn't want May to have anything to do with Rae's wedding day, even to the extent of approving it.
It was a busy morning. Brook arrived at noon. Pat laid and decorated the wedding table. May, too, by way of asserting her rights, set a huge hodge-podge from her herbaceous border in the centre of it after Pat had gone up to dress. Judy carried it ostentatiously out to the kitchen.
"Always taking a bit too much on hersilf," she muttered.
May got square by saying, when Judy appeared in her wine-coloured dress-up dress,
"How well that dress has kept its looks, Judy. It doesn't really look very old-fashioned at all."
2
Upstairs a bride was being dressed.
"Here's a blue garter for luck," whispered Pat.
Rae stood, looking rather wraith-like in her shimmer of satin and tulle. She wore mother's old veil . . . a bit creamy and a bit old-fashioned . . . high on the head instead of the modern mob-cap . . . but Rae's young beauty shone radiantly among its folds. She was so full of happiness that it seemed to spill over and make everything lovely.
"Doesn't she look cute?" said May, who had pushed herself in.
Pat and Rae's eyes met in the last of their many amused, secret exchanges of looks. Pat knew it would be the last . . . at least for many years.
"I won't . . . I won't cry," she said grimly to herself. "At least not now."
As Rae gathered up her dress to go downstairs Bold-and-Bad saw his opportunity. He had been sitting at the head of the stairs, very sulky and offended because he had been shut out of Pat's room. He pounced and bit . . . bit Rae right in the fleshy part of her slender leg. Rae gave a little squeal . . . Bold-and-Bad fled . . . and Pat examined the damage.
"He hasn't broken the skin . . . but, darling, the beast has started a run in your stocking. What on earth got into him?"
"It can't be helped now," said Rae, stifling a laugh. "Thank heaven skirts are long. I deserve it . . . it was I who shut the door in his face. I was afraid he'd get tangled up in my veil. It was no way to treat an old family cat. He did perfectly right to bite me."
The rest all seemed rather dream-like to Pat. The ceremony went off beautifully . . . though Rae afterwards said she could think of nothing but that run in her stocking the whole time. It would be so awful if Mrs. Binnie caught a glimpse of it somehow in spite of long skirts . . . for Mrs. Binnie was there after all, having rushed madly away as soon as dear Samuel's funeral was over. She reached Silver Bush just as the bride came down the stairs.
Mother was pale and sweet and composed and dad, dreaming of youth and his own bridal day, looked very tenderly at this baby of his who had so swiftly and unaccountably grown up and was being married before he had realised that she was out of her cradle.
Just as Brook took his bride in his arms to kiss her Bold-and-Bad stalked in . . . a repentant Bold-and-Bad, carrying a large and juicy rat in his mouth which he laid down at Rae's feet, with an air of atonement. A moment before everybody had been on the point of tears . . . but the tension dissolved in a burst of laughter and Rae's wedding feast was as jolly as she had wanted it to be.
Nevertheless she found it hard to keep back her own tears when she turned at the door of her room for a farewell look. She recalled all the times she had left home before . . . but always to come back. Now she was going, never to come back . . . at least as Rae Gardiner. She would go out and shut the door and never open it again. She had finished with it and the happy, laughter-filled past that was linked with it. She clung to Pat.
"Darling, you'll write me every week, won't you? And I'm sure we'll be home for a visit in three years at the latest."
They were gone.
"I never saw Rae look so sweet and lovely," sobbed Mrs. Binnie, her fat figure shaking. May was trying to squeeze out a few tears but Pat did not feel in the least like crying, though she thought her face would crack if she went on smiling any longer. She and Judy cleared up the rooms and washed the dishes and put things away. When Pat crept into the kitchen at dusk she found Judy sitting by a fire she had kindled.
"Oh, oh, I thought a bit av a fire wudn't be amiss a could avening like this. The cats do be liking it. Ye know, Patsy, I've just been wishing poor ould Tillytuck was here, there in his corner, smoking his pipe. It . . . it wudn't same so lonesome-like."
It was odd to hear Judy talking of being lonesome. Pat sat down beside her on the floor, resting her head in Judy's lap and pulling Judy's arm around her. They sat so in silence for a long time, listening to the pleasant snap of the starting fire and the vociferous purring of the kitten Judy had snuggled at her side. Judy had always known how to make little creatures happy.
"Judy, this is the third time we've kept vigil in this old kitchen after we've seen a bride drive away. Do you remember Aunt Hazel's . . . and Winnie's? . . . how we sat here and you told me stories to cheer me up? I don't want stories to-night, Judy. I just want to be quiet . . . and have you baby me a bit. I'm . . . tired."
When Pat had risen and gone to the porch door to let in a pleading Popka Judy signed and whispered to herself.
"Oh, oh, I'm thinking all me stories do be told. Sure and I'm nothing but a guttering candle now." But she did not let Pat hear her. And before long, when she had been thinking of Mrs. Binnie tearing in red-faced from the funeral, she began to chuckle.
"What is it, Judy?"
"Oh, oh, I didn't mane to be laughing, Patsy, but it did be just coming inty me head what they did be telling once av ould Sam Cobbledick. He was fond av a drop whin he was younger but what wid his wife watching him he niver got much ava chanct to one. He was rale sick wid the flu one time and the doctor lift a liddle whiskey in a bottle for him. Mrs. Cobbledick thought it was only midicine and wint out to church. Thin in drops a neighbour man, ould Lem Morrison, and he brings a liddle drop in a bottle, too, sly-like. But ould Sam looks at it in dape disappointment. 'There isn't enough to make us both drunk,' sez he. 'Let's put it together and make one av us drunk,' sez he. 'And let's draw lots to see which'll it be,' sez he. So the lot fell to ould Sam. But ye did be saying ye weren't wanting inny stories to-night."
"I want to hear this one. What happened to old Sam, Judy?"
"Oh, oh, whin Sarah Coddledick came home her sick man was dancing and singing in the middle av the floor and niver a bit av flu left in him. She didn't be guessing inny av the truth but she tould the doctor his midicines were entirely too strong for a sick man, aven if it cured him that quick. And now, Pasty, darlint, we'll be having a liddle bite. I was noticing ye didn't be ating much supper."
Pat found the night bitter. There seemed such an unearthly stillness over the whole house. She sat at her window for a long time in the darkness. Below in the garden the white phlox glimmered . . . one of the many flowers Bets had given her . . . that sweet-lipped friend of long ago. The pain of Bets' passing had faded out with time as gently as an old, old moon fades out into the sunrise, but it always came back at moments like this. She remembered how she used to lie awake, especially on stormy nights, after Winnie and Joe had gone. She could not bear to look at Rae's little white bed.
But there was a wonderful sunrise the next morning . . . crimson and warm gold flushing up into the blue. A bird was singing somewhere in the orchard and the borders of the hill field were aflame with golden rod. Dawn still came beautifully . . . and she still had Silver Bush. Little Mary would often come to occupy Rae's bed. Her spun-gold hair would gleam on that lonely pillow.
And, of course, there was always David . . . dear old dependable David. She must not forget him.