Mistress Pat (26 page)

“I'll have nothing to do with anything today 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. Housecleaning with May was rather a heart-breaking 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 Parlor. 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 favorite 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 everyone 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's 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 pretense 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 anyone 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 today. 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-colored 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 honors 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 humor 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 tid-bits 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 humor or in “the sulks.” When she was sulky she banged and slammed but her tongue was still; when she was in good humor 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 color 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 honor graduate of McGill and was spending his summer doing research work at the Silverbridge harbor. 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.”

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 lifelong 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 realize 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 someone 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 Macaulay 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 gray hair!