Mistress Pat (20 page)

Pat looked out of the Little Parlor window a bit wistfully one evening in late November. Another summer was ended. How quickly summers passed now! There was a hard gray 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 quarreled 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 savor 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 overbright 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 Parlor 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 realize 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 anyone know we've quarreled.”

“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 quarreled…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 color, 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 gray 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 grayness. 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 ivery thing will be just the same only more so.”