Mistress Pat (14 page)

“It's nice of you to say that. No, she won't mind, because we love them. You never mind letting people have things when you know they love them. And she won't mind our making an iris glade in the spruce bush. That is another thing I've always dreamed of…hundreds of iris with spruce trees around them…all around them, so the glade will never be seen save by those you want to see it. And we can go there when we want to be alone. One needs a little solitude in life.”

They sat and talked for what might have been an hour or a century. The talk had color…Pat recognized that fact instantly. Everything they talked of was interesting the moment they touched it. Occasionally there was a flavor of mockery in David Kirk's laughter and a somewhat mordant edge to his wit. Pat thought he was a little bitter but there was something stimulating and pungent about his bitterness and she found herself liking that lean, dark face of his, with its quick smiles. He had a way of saying things that gave them poignancy and Pat loved the fashion in which he and Suzanne could toss a ball of conversation back and forth, always keeping it in the air.

“The moon is going behind a cloud…a silvery white cloud,” said Suzanne. “I love a cloud like that.”

“There are so many things of that sort to give pleasure,” said Pat dreamily. “Such
little
things…and yet so much pleasure.”

“I know…like the heart of an unblown rose,” murmured Suzanne.

“Or the tang of a fir wood,” said David.

“Let's each give a list of loveliest things,” said Suzanne. “The things that please us most, just as they come into our heads, no matter what they are.
I
love the strange deep shadows that come just before sunset…June bugs thudding against the windows…a bite of home-made bread…a hot water bottle on a cold winter night…wet mossy stones in a book…the song of wind in the top of an old pine. Now, Pat?”

“The way a cat folds its paws under its breast…blue smoke rising in the air on a frosty winter morning…the way my little niece Mary laughs, crinkling up her eyes…old fields dreaming in moonlight…the scrunch of dry leaves under your feet in the silver bush in November…a baby's toes…the smell of clean clothes as you take them off the line.”

“David?”

“The cold of ice,” said David slowly. “Alphonso's eyes…the smell of rain after burning drouth…water at night…a leaping flame…the strange dark whiteness of a winter night…brook-brown eyes in a girl.”

It never occurred to Pat that David Kirk was trying to pay her a compliment. She thought her eyes were yellow…“cat's eyes,” May Binnie had said. She wondered if David Kirk's dead young wife had had brook-brown eyes.

The Kirks walked down the hill with her and she made them go into the kitchen and have some of Judy's orange biscuits with a glass of milk. There was no place else to take them for Rae had callers in the Big Parlor and mother had an old friend in the Little Parlor and Long Alec was colloguing with the minister in the dining-room. But the Kirks were people you'd just as soon take into the kitchen as not. Judy was excessively polite, in spite of Suzanne's shirt and knickerbockers…too polite, really. Judy didn't know what to make of this sudden intimacy.

“I want to see lots of you…I'm sure we are going to be good friends.”

Sid, coming in, spoke to them on the doorstep.

“Do you know them?” asked Pat in surprise.

“Met them in the Silverbridge store this afternoon. The girl asked me if I knew who lived in the queer old-fashioned place at the foot of the hill.”

Pat, who had been feeling very rich, suddenly felt poor…horribly poor. She went out into the garden and looked at Silver Bush…friendly Silver Bush with its lights welcoming all the world. Blossoms cool with night were around her but they meant nothing to her. Squedunk slithered through the delphiniums to rub against her leg and she never even noticed him. The color had gone out of everything.

“She dared to laugh at you…she dared to call you old-fashioned,” she whispered to the house. She shook her brown fist at the darkness. She had never been able to hear Silver Bush disparaged in any way. She had hated Uncle Brian last week because he had said that Silver Bush was settling on its foundations and getting a slant to its floors. And now she hated Suzanne Kirk. Suzanne, indeed! No more of Suzanne for her. To think she had been ready to accept her as a friend…to put her in Bets' place! To think she had hobnobbed with her around the applewood fire and told her sacred things! But never again.

“I…I feel just like a caterpillar somebody had stepped on,” said Pat chokily.

In the kitchen the genius of prophecy had descended upon Tillytuck.

“That'll be a match someday, mark my words, Judy Plum.”

“Ye wud better go out and look at the moon,” scoffed Judy. “Beaus don't be so scarce at Silver Bush that Patsy nades to take up wid
that
. He do be old enough to be her father. We'll have to be rale civil to him though, for they tell me he do be writing a book and if we offind him he might be putting us into it.”

Up at the Long House David Kirk was saying to Suzanne,

“She makes me think of a woodland brook.”

Pat snubbed Suzanne when the latter telephoned down to ask her and Sid to their house-warming. She could not go because she had another engagement for the evening…which was quite true, for, knowing that the house-warming was coming off, she had promised to go to a dance in South Glen. And when Suzanne and David came down the hill path one evening on their way to a moonlit concert which the boarders at the Bay Shore hotel were giving on the North Glen sandshore, and asked Pat to go with them she was entirely gracious and aloof and very sorry she couldn't possibly go…with no more excuse than that. Though in her heart she wanted to go. But something in her had been hurt too deeply. She could never forgive a jibe at Silver Bush, as unlucky Lester Conway had discovered years ago, and she took a bitter delight in refusing very sweetly…“oh, oh, tarrible polite she was,” Judy reported to Tillytuck. Judy was just as well pleased that this threatened friendship with the Long House people seemed unlikely to materialize. “Widowers do be sly…tarrible sly,” she reflected.

Suzanne was not one of those who could not take a hint and Pat was troubled with no more invitations. The lights gleamed in the Long House at evening but Pat resolutely turned her eyes away from them. Music drifted down the hill when Suzanne played on her violin in the garden under the stars but Pat shut her ears to it.

And yet she felt by times a strange hint of loneliness. Just now and then came a queer, hitherto unknown feeling, expressed by the deadly word “drab”…as if life were made of gray flannel. Then she felt guilty. Life at Silver Bush could never be
that
. She wanted nothing but Silver Bush and her own family…nothing!

Rae contributed a bit to the comedy of living that summer by having a frightful attack of schoolgirl veal love, the object of which was a young evangelist who was holding revival meetings in Mr. Jonas Monkman's big barn. He did not approve of “organized churches” and these services were in the nature of a free-for-all and, being very lively of their kind, attracted crowds, some of whom came to scoff and remained to pray. For it could not be denied that the young preacher had a very marked power for stirring the emotions of his hearers to concert pitch. He had an exceedingly handsome, marble-white face with rather too large, too soft, too satiny brown eyes and long, crinkly, mahogany-hued hair, sweeping back in a mane from what Rae once incautiously said was “a noble brow,” and a remarkably caressing, wooing voice, expressive of everything. The teenagers went down like ninepins before him. A choir was collected, consisting of everybody in the two Glens who could be persuaded to function. Rae, who sang sweetly, was leading soprano, looking like the very rose of song as she caroled with her eyes turned heavenward…or at least towards the banners of cobwebs hanging from the roof of the barn. She went every night, gave up teasing to be allowed to wear knickerbockers around home, and discarded costume earrings because the evangelist referred to jewelry as “gauds…all gauds.” She was tormented terribly because of her “case” on the preacher, but she gave as good as she got and nobody except Pat thought it was anything but a passing crush. For that matter, all the girls were more or less in love with him and it was difficult to tell where love left off and religion began, as Elder Robinson remarked sarcastically. But Elder Robinson did not approve of the revivals conducted by itinerant evangelists…“go-preachers” he called them. And Rae and her ilk considered Elder Robinson a hide-bound old fossil. Even when Jedidiah Madison of Silverbridge, who hadn't been inside of a church for years, wandered into the barn one night and was saved in three minutes Elder Robinson was still incredulous of any good thing. “Let us see if it lasts,” he was reported to have said…and added that he had just been reading of a very successful evangelist who had turned out to be a bank bandit. Pat had no fear that Mr. Wheeler was a bandit but she detested him and was as puzzled as alarmed over Rae's infatuation.

Tillytuck was likewise hard-boiled and said that the meetings were merely a form of religious dissipation. Judy went one night out of curiosity but could never be prevailed on to go again. Mr. Wheeler played a violin solo that night and she was horrified. No matter if the meeting was held in a barn. It was, or purported to be, Divine Service and fiddles had no place in such. Neither had she any exalted opinion of the sermon. “Oh, oh, not much av a pracher that! Sure and I cud understand ivery word he said.” So Pat and Rae were the only ones who went regularly…Pat going because Rae was so set on it…and very soon it was bruited abroad in the Glens that the Gardiner girls meant to leave the Presbyterian church and join the go-preachers. It blistered Pat's pride to hear it and she was less than civil to Mr. Wheeler when he walked home with them after the meeting. To be sure it was on the way to his boarding house and he always walked by Pat and not by Rae, but Pat was the suspicious older guardian sister to the backbone. It was all very well to laugh at calf love but Rae must be protected. It was a real relief to Pat's mind when, after six hectic weeks, Mr. Wheeler departed for pastures new and Mr. Monkman's barn reverted to rats and silence. Rae continued to blush furiously for several weeks when Sid teased her about her boyfriend…Mr. Wheeler had said that he was glad to find there were still girls in the world who
could
blush…but nothing more came of it and Pat's alarm subsided. Rae was asked to sing in the South Glen choir…began to experiment with the effect of her eye-lashes on the tenor and wear “gauds” again…and everything blew over, save for a little knot of faithful disciples who continued to hold services of their own in their homes and would have nothing further to do with churches of any description.

Pat was in a store in town one evening when Suzanne Kirk came up to her and, in spite of Pat's frigid bow, said smilingly,

“May I have a chance home with you, Miss Gardiner? David was to have run in for me but something must have gone wrong with our Lizzie.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Pat graciously.

“You are sure it won't crowd you?”

“Not in the least,” said Pat more graciously still. Inwardly she was furious. She had promised herself a pleasant leisurely drive home through the golden August evening, over a certain little back road where nobody ever went and where there were such delicious things to see. Pat knew all the roads home from town and liked each for some peculiar charm. But now everything was spoiled. Well, she would go by the regular road and get home as soon as she could. She made the car screech violently as she rounded the first corner. It seemed to express her feelings.

“Don't let's go home by this road,” said Suzanne softly. “There's so much traffic…and it's so straight. A straight road is an abomination, don't you think? I like lovely turns around curves of ferns and spruce…and little dips into brooky hollows…and the things the car lights pick up as you turn corners, starting out at you in the undergrowth like fairy folk taken by surprise.”

“A thunderstorm is coming up,” said Pat, more graciously every time she spoke.

“Oh, well out-race it. Let us take the road out from that street. David and I went by that last week…it's a dear, lost, bewitching road.”

Oh, didn't she know it! Pat turned the car so abruptly in the direction of the back road that she narrowly avoided a collision. How dare Suzanne Kirk, who had called Silver Bush queer, like that road? It was an insult. She hated to have Suzanne Kirk like anything she liked. Well, the road was rough and rutty…and the thunderstorm was an excuse for driving fast. Suzanne Kirk should have a good bumpy drive that would cure her of her liking for back roads.

Pat did not talk or try to talk. Neither, after a few futile attempts, did Suzanne. They were about halfway home when the latter said, with a tinge of alarm in her voice,

“The storm is coming up rather quickly, isn't it?”

Pat had been grimly aware of that for some time. It was growing dark. Huge menacing black masses were piling up in the northwest in the teeth of a rapidly rising wind. This was a frightful road to be on in a rain…narrow and twisting, with reedy ditches on either side. Curves and dips and startled fairy folk were all very well in fine weather, but in wind and rain and darkness…and all three seemed to envelop them at once…a wall of black…an ocean of driving rain…a howl of tempest…a blue-white flare of lightning…a deafening crash of thunder...and then disaster. The car had swerved on the suddenly greasy road and the next moment they were in the ditch.

Well, it might have been worse. The car was right-side up and the ditch was not deep. But it was full of soft mud under its bracken and Pat knew she could never get the car back to the road.

“There's nothing to do but stay here till the storm is over and someone comes along,” she said. “I'm…I'm sorry I've ditched you, Miss Kirk.”

“Never be sorry. This is an adventure. What a storm! It's been brewing all day but I really didn't expect it so soon. What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty. The trouble is this is
such
a back road. Very few people travel on it at any time. And houses are few and far between. But I think that last glare of lightning showed one off to the right. As soon as the rain stops I'll go to it and see if I can get somebody to haul us out…or at least phone for help.”

It was an hour before the storm passed. It was pitch dark by now and the ditch in which they sat so snugly was a rushing river.

“I'm going to try to make that house,” said Pat resolutely.

“I'll go with you,” said Suzanne. “I won't stay here alone. And I've got a flashlight in my bag.”

They managed to get out of the car and out of the ditch. There was no use in hunting for the gate, if there was a gate, but when Suzanne's flashlight showed a place where it was possible to scramble over the fence they scrambled over it and through a wilderness of raspberry canes. Beyond this a barn loomed up and they had to circumnavigate it in mud. Finally they reached the house.

“No lights,” said Pat as they mounted the crazy steps to a dilapidated veranda. “I'm afraid nobody lives here. There are several old uninhabited houses along this road and it's just our luck to strike one.”

“What a queer, old-fashioned place!” said Suzanne, playing her flashlight over it. She couldn't have said anything more unfortunate. Pat, who had thawed out a trifle, froze up again.

She knocked on the door…knocked again…took up a board lying near and pounded vigorously…called aloud…finally yelled. There was no response.

“Let us see if it is locked,” said Suzanne, trying the latch. It wasn't. They stepped in. The flashlight revealed a kitchen that did not seem to have been lived in for many a day. There was an old rusty stove, a trestle table, several dilapidated chairs, and a still more dilapidated couch.

“Any port in a storm,” said Suzanne cheerfully. “I suggest, Miss Gardiner, that we camp here for the night. It's beginning to rain again…listen…and we may be miles from an inhabited house. We can bring in the rugs. You take the couch and I'll pick out the softest spot on the floor. We'll be dry at least and in the morning we can more easily get assistance.”

Pat agreed that it was the only thing to do. They would probably not worry at Silver Bush. It had not been certain that she would return home that night…an old Queen's classmate had asked her to visit her. They went back to the car, got the rugs and locked it up. Pat insisted that Suzanne should take the couch and Suzanne was determined Pat should have it. They solved it by flipping a coin.

Pat wrapped a rug around her and curled up on the couch. Suzanne lay down on the floor with a cushion under her head. Neither expected to sleep. Who could sleep with a sploshy thud of rain falling regularly near one and rats scurrying overhead. After what seemed hours Suzanne called softly across the room,

“Are you asleep, Miss Gardiner?”

“No…I feel as if I could never sleep again.”

Suzanne sat up.

“Then for heaven's sake let's talk. This is ghastly. I've a mortal horror of rats. There seem to be simply swarms of them in this house. Talk…talk. You needn't pretend to like me if you don't. And for the matter of that, as one woman to another, why don't you like me, Pat Gardiner? Why
won't
you like me? I thought you did that night by the fire. And we liked you…we thought there was something simply dear about you. And then when we called on our way to the concert…why, we seemed to be looking at you through glass! We couldn't get near you at all. David was hurt but I was furious…simply furious. I'm sure my blood boiled. I could hear it bubbling in my veins. Oh, how I hoped your husband would beat you! And yet, every night since, I've been watching your kitchen light and wondering what was going on in it and wishing we could drop in and fraternize. I can't imagine you and I not being friends…
real
friends. We were made for it. Isn't it Kipling who says, ‘There is no gift like friendship?'”

“Yes…Parnesius in
Puck
,” said Pat.

“Oh, you know
Puck
, too? Now, why can't we give that gift to each other?”

“Did you think,” said Pat in a choked voice, “that I could be friends with anyone who…who laughed at Silver Bush?”

“Laugh at Silver Bush! Pat Gardiner, I never did. How could I? I've loved it from the first moment David and I looked down on it.”

Pat sat up on the creaking couch.

“You…you asked in the Silverbridge store who lived in that
queer
old-fashioned place. Sid heard you.”

“Pat! Let me think. Why, I remember…I
didn't
say ‘queer.' I said, ‘Who lives in that dear, quaint, old-fashioned house at the foot of the hill?' Sid forgot one of the adjectives and was mistaken in one of the others. Pat, I couldn't call Silver Bush ‘queer.' You don't know how much I admire it. And I admire it all the more because it
is
old-fashioned. That is why I loved the Long House at first sight.”

Pat felt the ice round her heart thawing rapidly. “Quaint” was complimentary rather than not and she didn't mind the “old-fashioned.” And she did want to be friends with Suzanne. Perhaps Suzanne was prose where Bets had been poetry. But such prose!

“I'm sorry I froze up,” she said frankly. “But I'm such a thin-skinned creature where Silver Bush is concerned. I couldn't bear to hear it called queer.”

“I don't blame you. And now everything is going to be all right. We just
belong,
somehow. Don't you feel it? You're all so nice. I love Judy…the wit and sympathy and blarney of her. And that wonderful old, wise, humorous face of hers. She's really a museum piece…there's nothing like her anywhere else in the world. You'll like us, too. I'm decent in spots and David is nice…sometimes he's very nice. One day he is a philosopher…the next day he is a child.”

“Aren't all men?” said Pat, tremendously wise.

“David more than most, I think. He's had a rotten life, Pat. He was years getting over his shell-shock. It simply blotted out his career. He was so ambitious once. When he got better it was too late. He has been sub-editor of a Halifax paper for years…and hating it. His bit of a wife died, too, just a few months after their marriage. And I taught school…and hated it. Then old Uncle Murray died out west and left us some money…not a fortune but enough to live on. And so we became free. Free! Oh, Pat, you've never known what slavery meant so you don't know what freedom is. I
love
keeping house…it's really a lovely phrase, isn't it?
Keeping
it…holding it fast against the world…against all the forces trying to tear it open. And David has time to write his war book at last…he's always longed to. We are so happy…and we'll be happier still to have you as a friend. I don't believe you've any idea how nice you are, Pat. And now let's just talk all night.”

They talked for a good part of it. And then Suzanne fell suddenly silent. Pat rather envied her the floor. It was level, at least…not all bumps and hollows, like the couch. Would it ever stop raining? How the windows rattled! Great heavens, what was that? Oh, only a brick blowing off the chimney and thumping down over the roof. Those rats! Oh for an hour of Gentleman Tom! It was…so nice…to be friends…with Suzanne…she hoped…a great wave of sleep rolled over Pat and engulfed her.

When she wakened the rain had ceased and the outside world was lying in the strange timeless light of early dawn. Pat raised herself on her elbow and looked out. Some squirrels were scolding and chattering in an old apple tree. A little pond at the foot of the slope was softly clear and pellucid, with spruce trees dark and soft beyond it. An old crone of a hemlock was shaking her head rebukingly at some giddy young saplings on the hill. Gossamer clouds were floating in a clear silvery eastern sky that looked as if it had not known a thunderstorm in a hundred years. And a huge black dog was sitting on the doorstep. This was like a place Judy used to tell of in Ireland that was haunted by the ghost of a black dog who bayed at the door before a death. However, this dog didn't look exactly like a ghost!

Suzanne was still asleep. Pat looked around and saw something that gave her an idea. She got to her feet cautiously.