Mistress Pat (22 page)

David and Suzanne went to England for a trip that spring and the Long House was closed for the summer. Pat missed them terribly but Judy and Rae were consolable.

“That Suzanne has been trying iver since she come to make a match betwane her brother and Patsy,” Judy told Cuddles. “I've been fearing lately she'd manage it. And him as'll soon be using hair tonics! Patsy hasn't inny other beau after her just now. The min do be getting discouraged. Somehow the word do be going round she thinks nobody good enough for her.”

“And there really isn't a man in the Glens she couldn't have by just crooking her finger,” said Rae thoughtfully. “I think it's just that way she has of saying ‘I know' sympathetically. And she doesn't mean a thing by it.”

“Do ye be thinking, Cuddles, that there is inny chance av Jingle coming home this summer now?”

Rae shook her head.

“I'm afraid not, Judy. He's got a big contract for building a mountain inn in B.C.…a splendid chance for a young architect. Besides…I think he has grown away from us now. He and Pat will never be anything but good friends. You can't make him jealous…I know for I've tried…so I'm sure he doesn't care for her except just as she cares for him. Do you know, Judy, I think it would be better if the uncles and aunts…and perhaps all of us…would stop teasing Pat about beaus or their absence. She thinks the whole clan is bent on marrying her off…and it rouses the Gardiner obstinacy. There's a streak of it in us all. If you all hadn't been so contemptuous of poor Larry Wheeler I don't believe I'd ever have given him a second thought.”

“Girls do be like that, I'm knowing. But I'd like to see both you and Patsy snug and safe, wid someone to care for ye, afore I die, Cuddles darlint.”

Rae laughed.

“Judy, I'm only seventeen. Hardly on the shelf yet. And don't you talk of dying…you'll live to see our grandchildren.”

Judy shook her head.

“I can't be polishing off a day's work like I used to, Cuddles dear. Oh, oh, we all have to grow old and ye haven't larned yet how quick time do be passing.”

“As for Pat,” resumed Rae, “I think perhaps she'll never marry. She loves Silver Bush too much to leave it for any man. The best chance David has is that the Long House is so near Silver Bush that she could still keep an eye on it. Do you know that Norma is to be married this summer?”

“I've been hearing it. Mrs. Brian will be rale aisy in her mind now wid both of her girls well settled. Norma'll niver have to lift a hand. Not that I do be thinking her beau is inny great shakes av a man wid all his money though he comes of a rale aristocratic family. His mother now…she was av the Summerside MacMillans and niver did she be letting her husband forget it. She kipt up all the MacMillan traditions…niver wore the same pair av silk stockings twice and her maid had to be saying, ‘Dinner is served, madam,' just like that, afore she cud ate a bite, wid service plates and all the flat silver matching. And in sason and out av sason she did be reminding her husband she was a MacMillan along wid iverybody av inny importance on the Island. It was lucky he had a bit av humor in him or it might have been after being a trifle monotonous. Will I iver be forgetting the story I heard him tell on the madam one cillebration at the Bay Shore? It was whin his b'ys Jim and Davy, were two liddle chaps and Jim did be coming home from church one day rale earnest and sez he to Davy, ‘The minister did be talking av Jesus all the time but he didn't be saying who Jesus was.' ‘Why, Jesus MacMillan av coorse,' sez Norma's beau, in just the tone av his mother. Mr. MacMillan did be roaring at it, but yer Aunt Honor thought it was tarrible irriverint. Innyway, a Gardiner is as good as a MacMillan inny day. And now I must be making a few cookies. Liddle Mary will be coming over for a wake. She do be so like Patsy whin she was small. Sometimes I'm wondering if the clock has turned back. She do be always saying good-night to the wind like Patsy did…and the quistions av her! ‘Have I
got
to be good, Judy? Can't I be a liddle bad sometimes whin I'm alone wid you?' And, ‘What's the use av washing me face after dark, Judy?' Sure and it's a bit av sunshine whin she comes an I'm thinking the very smallest flower in the garden do be glad, niver to mintion the cats.”

Pat was really far more interested in Rae's matrimonial prospects than her own. For Rae seemed to be “swithering,” as Judy put it, between two very nice young men. Bruce Madison of South Glen and Peter Alward of Charlottetown were both camping on the doorstep, and were frightfully and romantically jealous of each other, turning, so it was said, quite pale when they met. Life, as Tillytuck said, was dramatic because of it.

Pat had nothing against either of them…except that they meant change…and sometimes it was thought that Rae favored one and then the other. She discussed them as flippantly as usual with Pat and Judy but both Pat and Judy were agreed that it was highly probable she would eventually decide on one of them. Pat hated the thought, of course. But if Rae had to marry someday…of course it wouldn't be for years yet…it
must
be somebody living near. Pat inclined to like Peter best but Judy favored Bruce.

“We
would
make an awfully good-looking couple,” agreed Rae. “I really like Bruce best in summer but I have a rankling suspicion that Peter would be the best for winter. And he always makes me
feel
beautiful…that's a knack some men never have, you may have noticed. But then…his nose! Have you noticed his nose, Pat? It's not so bad now but in a few years it will be very bony and aristocratic. I can't exactly see myself eating breakfast every morning of my life with it opposite me. And it's terrible to think that my daughters might inherit it. It wouldn't matter so much about the boys…a boy can get away with any kind of a nose because few girls are as sensitive to noses as I am. But the poor girls!”

Judy was horrified but she had no great liking for Peter's nose herself. So Silver Bush had its own fun out of the haunting suitors and the Golden Age seemed to have returned and nobody took anything very seriously until Pat went to a dance at the Bay Shore Hotel and Donald Holmes, as Rae announced at the breakfast table next morning, fell for her with a crash that could be heard for miles. What was more, Pat blushed, actually blushed, when Rae said this. Everybody drew the same conclusion from that blush. Pat had met her fate.

At once everybody in the Gardiner clan sat up and took notice. For the rest of the summer Donald Holmes was a constant visitor at Silver Bush. Rae and her two jealous suitors no longer held the center of the stage. Everybody approved. The Holmes family had the proper social and political traditions, and Donald himself was the junior partner in a prosperous firm of chartered accountants.

“Oh, oh, that do be something like now,” Judy told Tillytuck delightedly. “There's brading there. And he'll wear well. Patsy was in the right be waiting.”

“Methinks I smell the fragrance of orange blossoms, symbolically speaking,” Tillytuck remarked to Uncle Tom.

“Well, it's about time,” said Uncle Tom, who was not given to symbols.

“It's really better luck than she deserves after all her flirtations,” said Aunt Edith rather sourly.

Pat herself believed she was in love…really in love. There were weeks of pretty speeches and prettier silences and enchanted moons and stars and kittens…though in her secret soul she suspected him of not caring overmuch about cats. But at least he pretended to like the kittens. One couldn't have everything. He was well-born, well-bred, good-looking, and charming, and for the first time since the days of Lester Conroy Pat felt thrills and queer sensations generally.

“I thought I'd left all that behind with seventeen,” she told Rae, “but it really seems to have come back.”

Rae, who was expecting “one of the men she's engaged to…”
à
la
May Binnie…carefully perfumed her throat.

“A plain answer to a plain question, Pat. Do you mean to marry him?”

“I'm not Betty Baxter,” said Pat with a twinkle.

“Don't be exasperating. Everyone knows he means to ask you. Candidly, Pat, I'd like him very much for a brother-in-law.”

Pat looked sober. In imagination she saw the paragraph in the Charlottetown papers announcing her engagement.

“I blush when I hear his step at the door,” she said meditatively.

“I've noticed that myself,” grinned Rae.

“And I suffer agonies of jealousy if he says a word of admiration for any other girl. On the whole…I haven't quite made up my mind…not quite…but I
think
, Rae, when
he
says, ‘Will you please?'
I
'll say, ‘Yes, thank you.'”

Rae got up and hugged Pat chokily.

“I'm glad…I'm glad. And yet I'm on the point of howling.”

“Confidence for confidence, Rae. Which, if either, of your young men do you intend to marry?”

Rae pulled an ear of Squedunk, who was sitting on his haunches on her bed, gazing at the girls with his usual limpid, round-eyed look. Gentleman Tom looked as if all the wisdom of the ages was his, Bold-and-Bad looked as if life was one amusing adventure, but Squedunk always looked as if he could be a kitten forever if he wanted to.

“Pat, I wish I knew. I've been horribly flippant about it but that was just to cover up. I really don't know. I do like them both so much…Pat, is it ever possible to be in love with two men? It isn't in books, I know…but in life? Because I
do
love them both. They're both darlings. But, Pat, honestly, the minute I decide I like Bruce best I find I have a mind to Peter. And
vice
versa
. That's all I can say yet. Well, Norma's wedding comes off next week. Judy is furious because they are going to rehearse the whole ceremony in the church the night before. ‘Nixt thing they'll be rehearsing the funerals,' she says. Judy will be simply mad with delight if you marry Donald. And yet she'll die of sorrow when you go.
When
you
go
…that turns me cold. Oh, Pat, wouldn't life be nice and simple if people never fell in love? I wish I
could
make up my mind between Bruce and Peter. But I just can't. If I could only marry them both.”

The shrieks of an anguished car resounded from the yard and Rae ran down to welcome Bruce…or it may have been Peter.

The next afternoon Pat, as she expressed it, “put off Martha and put on Mary,” and hied herself to her Secret Field, although there was apply jelly to make and cucumbers to pickle. She went through the mysterious emerald light of the maple woods, where it seemed as if there must have been silence for a hundred years, and sat down on an old log covered with a mat of green moss in the corner of her field. It had changed so little in all the years. It was still her own and it still held secret understanding with her. But today something came between her soul and it. In spite of everything something touched her with unrest…the certainty of coming change, perhaps.

She looked up at a splash of crimson in the maple above her head. Another summer almost gone. There was a hint of autumn and decay and change in the air, even the air of Secret Field, with the purples of its bent grasses. Yes, she would marry Donald Holmes. She was quite sure she loved him. Pat stood up and waved a kiss to the Secret Field. When she next saw it she would belong to Donald Holmes.

She had intended to call at Happiness on her way home…she had not been there all summer…but she did not. Happiness belonged to things that were…things that had passed…things that could never return.

She was in the birch grove when Donald came to her the next evening. Donald Holmes was really a fine chap and deeply in love with Pat. To him she looked like love incarnate. She had a kitten on her shoulder and her dress was a young leaf green with a scarlet girdle. There was something about her face that made him think of pine woods and upland meadows and gulf breezes. He had come to ask her a certain question and he asked it, simply and confidently, as he had a right to ask it…for if any girl had ever encouraged a man Pat had encouraged Donald Holmes that summer.

Pat turned a little away from his flushed, eager face. Through a gap in the trees she saw the dark purple of the woods on Robinson's hill…the blue sheen of the gulf…the green of the clover aftermath in the Field of the Pool…the misty opal sky…and Silver Bush!

She turned to Donald and opened her lips to say, “yes.” She found herself trembling.

“I'm…I'm terribly sorry,” was what she said. “I can't marry you. I thought I could but I can't.”

“I rather think I hope there'll be an earthquake before to-morrow morning,” thought Pat when she went to bed that night. The whole world had gone very stale and life seemed grayer than ashes. In a way she was actually disappointed. She would miss Donald horribly. But leave Silver Bush for him? Impossible!

She knew she was in for a terrible time with her clan and she was not mistaken. By the time they got through with her she felt, as she confided to the not overly sympathetic Rae, “like a bargain counter of soiled rayon.” Even mother was a little disappointed.

“
Couldn't
you have cared for him, darling?”

“I thought I could…I thought I did…mother, I just can't explain. I'm dreadfully sorry…I'm so ashamed of myself…I deserve everything that is being said of me…but I couldn't.”

Everybody was saying plenty. All her relatives took turns heckling her about it. Long Alec gave her a piece of his mind.

“But I didn't love him, father…I really didn't,” said poor Pat miserably.

“It's a pity you didn't find that out a little sooner,” said Long Alec sourly. “I don't like hearing my daughter called a jilt. No, don't smile at me like that, miss. Let me tell you you trade too much on that smile.
This
is past being a joke.”

“You'll go through the woods and pick up a crooked stick yet,” warned Aunt Edith darkly.

“There's really been too much of this, Aunt Edith,” protested Pat, feeling that any self-respecting worm had to turn some time. “I'm not going to marry anybody just to please the clan.”

“What
can
she be wanting in the way of a husband?” moaned Aunt Barbara.

“Heaven knows,” said Aunt Edith…but in a tone that sounded very dubious of heaven's knowledge. “She'll never have such a chance again.”

“You know you aren't getting any younger, Pat,” Uncle Tom objected mildly. “Why couldn't you have cottoned to him?”

Pat was flippant to hide her feelings.

“My English and Scotch blood liked him, Uncle Tom, but the French didn't and I was none too sure about the Irish.”

Uncle Tom shook his head.

“If you don't watch out all the men will be grabbed,” he said gloomily. “Beaus aren't found hanging on bushes, you know.'

“If they were it would be all right,” said Pat, more flippantly than ever. “One needn't pick them then. Just let them hang.”

Uncle Tom gave it up. What could you do with a she like that?

Aunt Jessie said that the Selbys were always changeable and Uncle Brian said he could always have told her that Pat was only making a fool of young Holmes for her own amusement and Aunt Helen said Pat had always been different from anybody else.

“A girl who would rather ramble in the woods than go to a dance. Don't tell me she's normal.”

Most odious of all was the sympathetic Mrs. Binnie who said when she met her,

“You seem to have bad luck with your beaus, Pat dearie. But never be cast down even if he has slipped through your fingers. There's as good fish in the sea as ever come out of it. And you know, dearie, even if you can't git a husband there's lots of careers open to gals nowadays.”

It was hard to take that from a Binnie. As if Donald Holmes had jilted her! And harder still to hear that Donald Holmes' mother was saying that that Gardiner girl had deliberately led her son on…kept him dangling all summer and then threw him over.

“But I deserve it, I suppose,” thought poor Pat bitterly.

The only person who was not reported as saying anything was Donald Holmes himself, who preserved an unbroken silence and behaved, as Aunt Edith averred, in the most gentlemanly fashion about everything connected with the whole pitiable affair.

Judy was upset at first but soon came round when everyone else was blaming her darling and recollected that Donald Holmes had had a very quare sort of great-uncle.

“A bit av a miser and always wint about as shabby as a singed cat. Aven the dogs stopped to look at him, him being that peculiar. And I'm minding there did be a cousin somewhere on the mother's side dressed up in weeds and wint to the church widding av a man who had jilted her. Oh, oh, and it's liable to crop out inny time and that I will declare and maintain.”

Sid, too, to Pat's surprise, stood up for her.

“Let her alone. If she doesn't want to marry Donald Holmes she doesn't have to.”

Pat lingered late in the garden one night. There was a mirth of windy trees all about Silver Bush and a misty, cloud-blown new moon hanging over it. First the twilight was golden-green, then emerald. Afar off the evening hills were drawing purple hoods about them. In spite of everything Pat felt at peace with her own soul as she had not done for a long time.

“If it's foolish to love Silver Bush better than any man I'll always be a fool,” she said to herself. “Why, I
belong
here. What an unbelievable thing that I was just on the point of saying something to Donald that would have cut me off from it forever.”

As she turned to leave the garden she said passionately and quite sincerely,

“I hope nobody will ever ask me to marry him again.” And then a thought darted quite unbidden into her mind.

“I'm glad I don't have to tell Hilary I'm engaged.”