Mistress Pat (25 page)

Pat and Rae felt, in the months of that following winter, that they needed every ounce of philosophy and “diplomacy” that they possessed. The first weeks were very hard. At times adjustment seemed almost impossible. May's quick temper increased the difficulty. Some of the scenes she made always remained in Pat's memory like degrading, vulgar things. Yet her spasms of rage were not so bad, the girls thought, as her little smiles and innuendos about everything. “I think I have
some
rights surely,” she would say to Sid, with a toss of her sleek head. “It's hard to do anything with somebody watching and criticizing all the time, isn't it now, honey-boy?” And Sid would look at Pat with defiant and yet appealing eyes that nearly broke her heart.

When May could not get her way she sulked and went round for a day or two “wid a puss on her mouth,” according to Judy. Then, finding that nobody paid any attention to her sulks, she would become amiable again. Pat set her teeth and kept her head.

“I
won't
have quarrels at Silver Bush,” she said. “Whatever she does or says I won't quarrel with her.” And even when May cried passionately, “You've
always
tried to make trouble between me and Sid,” Pat would smile and say, “Come, May, be reasonable. We're not children now, you know.” Then go up to her room and writhe in secret over the torment and ugliness of it all.

In the long run May succumbed to the inevitable, compromises were made on both sides, and life settled once more into outward calmness at Silver Bush. One thing nobody could deny was that May was a worker; and fortunately she liked outside work better than inside. She took over the care of milk and poultry, Judy making a virtue out of necessity in yielding it to her and never denying that the separator was thoroughly cleaned. “May,” Mrs. Binnie said superfluously, “is not a soulless sassiety woman. I brought all
my
gals up to work.”

To be sure, May made a frightful racket in everything she did and at Silver Bush, where household ritual had always been performed without noise, this was something of a domestic crime. Pat, suffering too much to be just, told Rae that May made more fuss in ten minutes than anyone else could make in a year.

Judy and May had one battle royal as to who was to scrub the kitchen. Judy won. May never attempted to usurp Judy's kitchen privileges again.

Pat found she could get used to being unhappy…and then that she could even be happy again, between the spasms of unhappiness. Of course there were changes everywhere…little irritating changes which were perhaps harder to bear than some greater dislocation. For one thing, May's friends gave her a “shower,” after which Silver Bush was cluttered up with gimcracks. Pat's especial hatred was a dreadful onyx-topped table. May put it in the hall under the heirloom mirror. It was a desecration. And May's new gay cushions, which made everything else seem faded, were scattered everywhere. But May did not get her own way when it came to moving furniture about. She learned that things were to be left as they were and that a large engraving of Landseer's stag, framed in crimson plush and gilt a foot wide, was
not
going to be hung in the dining room. May, after a scene, carried it off to her own room, where nobody interfered with her arrangements.

“I suppose your ladyship doesn't object to
that
,” she remarked to Pat.

“Of course you can do as you like in your own room,” said Pat wearily.

Would this petty bickering go on forever? And that very afternoon May had broken the old Bristol-ware vase by stuffing a huge bouquet of 'mums into it. Of course it was cracked…always had been cracked. May said she didn't hold with having cracked things around. She had her own room re-papered…blue roses on a bright pink ground. “So cheerful,” Mrs. Binnie said admiringly. “That gray paper in what they call the Pote's room gives me the willies, May dearie.”

May brought her dog with her, an animal known by the time-tested name of Rover. He killed the chickens, dug up Pat's bulbs, chewed the clothes on the line…Tillytuck had a pitched battle with May because his best shirt was mangled…and chased the cats in his spare time. Eventually Just Dog gave him a drubbing which chastened him and Rae, in May's absences, used to spank him so soundly with a stiff, folded newspaper that he learned manners after a sort. There were even times when Pat was afraid she was learning to like him. It was hard for Pat not to like a dog if he had any decency at all.

As Pat had foreseen Silver Bush was overrun with the Binnie tribe. May's brothers flicked cigarette ashes all over the house. Her sisters and cousins came in what Judy called “droves,” filled the house with shrieks, and listened behind doors. Judy caught them at it. And they were always more or less offended no matter how they were treated. If you were nice to them you were patronizing them; if you left them alone you were snubbing them. Olive would bring her whole family.

Olive did not believe in punishing children. “They're going to enjoy their childhood,” she said. Perhaps they enjoyed it but nobody else did. They were what Judy called “holy terrors.” Judy found a dirty gray velvet elephant in her soup pot one day. Olive's six-year-old had slipped it in “for fun.”

Mrs. Binnie came over frequently and spent the afternoon in Judy's kitchen, proclaiming to the world that as far as she was concerned all was peace and good-will. She rocked fiercely on the golden-oak rocker May had introduced into the kitchen…rather fortunately, Judy thought, for certainly no Silver Bush chair could be counted on to bear up under the strain of Mrs. Binnie's two hundred and thirty-three pounds.

“No, no, two hundred and thirty-six, ma,” May would argue.

“I guess I know my own weight, child,” Mrs. Binnie would retort breezily. “And I ain't ashamed of it. ‘Why don't you diet?' my sister Josephine keeps telling me. ‘Not for mine,' I tell her, ‘I'm contented to be as God made me!'”

“Oh, oh, I do be thinking God had precious little to do wid it,” said Judy to Tillytuck.

Mrs. Binnie had a little button nose and yellowish-white hair screwed up in a tight knot on the crown of her head. Gossip was her mother-tongue and grammar was her servant, not her master. Also, her “infernal organs” gave her a good deal of trouble. Pat used to wonder how Sid could bear to look at her and think that May would be like her when she was sixty.

“I'd like to give that hair of hers a bluing rinse,” Rae would whisper maliciously to Pat, when Mrs. Binnie was laying down the law about something and nodding her head until a hairpin invariably slipped out.

Mrs. Binnie, unlike May, “couldn't abide” cats. They gave her asthma and, as May said, she started gasping if a cat was parked within a mile of her. So when Mrs. Binnie came out went the cats. Even Bold-and-Bad was no exception. Bold-and-Bad, however, did not hold with self-pity and made himself at home in Tillytuck's granary.

“But I'd like to have seen ye try it on Gintleman Tom,” Judy used to think malevolently.

Generally one or more of “thim rampageous Binnie girls” came with her and they and May talked and argued without cessation. The Binnies were a family with no idea of reticence. Everybody told everything to everybody else…“talking it over,” they called it. None of them could ever understand why everything that was thought about couldn't be talked about. They had no comprehension whatever of people who did not think at the tops of their voices and empty out their feelings to the dregs. There were times when the unceasing clack of their tongues drove Tillytuck to the granary even on the coldest winter afternoons for escape and Pat longed despairingly for the beautiful old silences.

There was at least one consolation for Pat and Rae…they still had their evenings undisturbed. May thought it quite awful to sit in the kitchen, “with the servants.” Generally she carried Sid off to a dance or show and when they were home they had company of their own in the Little Parlor…which had been tacitly handed over to May and which she called the “living room,” much to Judy's amusement.

“Oh, oh, we've only the one living room at Silver Bush and that's me kitchen,” she would remark to Tillytuck with a wink. “There do be more living done here than in all the other rooms put together.”

“You've said a mouthful,” said Tillytuck, just as he had said it to Lady Medchester.

So Pat and Rae and Judy and Tillytuck foregathered as of old in the kitchen of evenings and forgot for a few hours the shadow that was over Silver Bush. They always had some special little jamboree to take the taste of some particularly hard day out of their mouths…as, for instance, the one on which Pat found May prying into her bureau drawers…or the one when May, who had a trick of acting hostess, assured a fastidious visiting clergyman who had declined a second helping that there was plenty more in the kitchen.

They could even laugh over Mrs. Binnie's malapropisms. It was so delicious when she asked Rae gravely whether “phobias” were annuals or perennials. To be sure, neither Judy nor Tillytuck was very sure just where the point of the joke was but it was heartening to see the girls laughing again as of old. Those evenings were almost the only time it was safe to laugh. If May heard laughter she took it into her head that they were laughing at her and sulked. Once in a while, when May had gone for one of her frequent visits home, Sid would creep in, too, for a bit of the old-time fun and one of Judy's liddle bites. Sid and Pat had had their hour of reconciliation long ere this: Pat couldn't endure to be “out” with Sid. But there were no more rambles and talks and plans together. May resented any such thing. She went with him now on his walks about the farm and expounded her ideas as to what changes should be made. She also aired her views to the whole family. A lot of trees should be cut down…there were entirely too many…it was “messy,” especially that aspen poplar by the steps. And the Old Part of the orchard ought to be cleaned out entirely; it was a sheer waste of good ground. She did not go so far as to suggest plowing up the graveyard though she said it was horrid having a place like that so near the house and having to pass it every time you went to the barn or the hen-house. When she went to either of these places after dark she averred it made her flesh creep.

“If I were you,” she would remark airily to Pat, “I'd make a few changes round here. A front porch is so out of date. And there really should be a wall or two knocked out. The Poet's room and our room together would just make one real nice-sized room. You don't need two spare rooms any more'n a frog needs trousers.”

“Silver Bush suits
us
as it is,” said Pat stiffly.

“Don't get so excited, child,” said May provokingly…and how provoking May could be! “I was only making a suggestion. Surely you needn't throw a fit over that.”

“She would do nothing but patch and change and tear up if she could have her way here,” Pat told Rae viciously.

“Oh, oh, just like her ould grandad,” said Judy. “He did be having a mania for tearing down and rebuilding. Innything for a change was
his
motto.”

“Judy, last night as I passed the Little Parlor I heard May say to Sid, ‘Anyway you'll have Silver Bush when your father dies.' Judy, she did!
When
your
father
dies
.”

Judy chuckled.

“It do be ill waiting for dead men's shoes. Yer dad is good for twinty years yet at the laste. But it's like a Binnie to be saying that same.”

Sometimes Pat would escape from it all to her fields and woods, at peace in their white loveliness. It carried her through many hard hours to remember that in ten minutes she could, if she must, be in that meadow solitude of her Secret Field, far from babble and confusion. There were yet wonderful ethereal dawns which she and Rae shared together…there were yet full moons rising behind snowy hills…rose tints over sunset dells…slender birches and shadowy nooks…winds calling to each other at night…apple-green “dims”…starry quietudes that soothed your pain…April buds in happiness…“Thank God, April still comes to the world”…and Silver Bush to be loved and protected and cherished.

And with the spring Joe came home, to be married at last; after every one had concluded, so Mrs. Binnie said, that poor Enid Sutton was never going to get him.

“Many's the time I've said to her, ‘Don't be too sure of him. A sailor has a sweetheart in every port. It isn't as if you was still a girl. You never can depend on them sailors. Take Mrs. Rory MacPherson at the Bridge…a disappointed woman if ever there was one.
Her
husband was a sailor and she thought he was dead and was going to get married again when he turned up alive and well.'”

There was a big gay wedding at the Suttons and everyone thought bronzed Joe remarkably handsome. Pat thought so, too, and was proud of him; but he seemed a stranger now…Joe, whose going had once been such a tragedy. She was even a little glad when all the fuss was over and Joe and his bride were gone on a wonderful bridal trip around the world in Joe's new vessel. She could settle down to housecleaning and gardening now…at least, after Mrs. Binnie had had her say about the event.

“A grand wedding. Some people don't see how old Charlie Sutton could afford it but I always say most folks is only married once and why not make a splurge. I always did like a wedding. Wasn't May the naughty thing to run off the way she did, so sly-like? I'll bet you folks here wasn't a bit more flabbergasted than I was when I heard it. And maybe I didn't feel upset about her coming in here with you all. But I always believed it would work out in time and it has. People said May could never live in peace here, Pat was such a crank. But I said, ‘No, Pat isn't a crank. It's just that you have to understand her.' And I was right, wasn't I, dearie? May made up her mind when she come here that she'd get along with you. ‘It takes two to make a quarrel, ma, you know,' she said. And I said, ‘That's the right spirit, dearie. Behave like a lady whatever you do. You're a Gardiner now and must live up to their traditions. And you must make allowances.' That's what I said to her. ‘You must make allowances. And don't be scared. I hope
my
daughter isn't a coward,' I said. It's a real joy to me to see how well you've got on together, though I don't deny that Judy Plum has been a hard nut to crack. May has felt certain things…May always did feel things so deeply. But she just made allowances as I advised her. ‘Judy Plum has been spoiled as everyone knows,' I told her, ‘but she's old and breaking up fast and you can afford to humor her a bit, dearie.' ‘Oh, I'm not going to stoop to argue with a servant,' May says. I'm above that.' May always was so sensible. Well, I'm glad poor Enid Sutton has got married at last…she's gone off terrible these past three years waiting for Joe and not knowing if he'd ever come. And what about you, Pat dearie? I can't imagine what the men are thinking of. Isn't your widower a bit slow?”…with a smirk that had the same effect on Pat as a dig in the ribs…“Folks think he's trying to back out of it but I tell them, ‘no, that'll be a match yet.' Just you encourage him a little more, dearie…that's all he needs. To be sure, May said to me the other day, ‘
I
wouldn't take another woman's leavings, ma.' But you're not getting any younger, Pat, if you'll excuse my saying so.
I
was married when I was eighteen and I could have been married when I was seventeen. My dress was of red velvet and my hat was of black velvet with a green plume. Everyone thought it elegant but I was disappointed. I'd always wanted to be wedded in a sky-blue gown, the hue of God's own heaven.”

“One of her poetical flights,” whispered Tillytuck to Judy. But Pat and Rae both heard him and almost choked trying not to laugh. Mrs. Binnie, who never dreamed anyone could be laughing at her, kept on.

“Is it true the Kirks are putting up a sundial in the Long House garden?”

“Yes,” said Pat shortly.

“Well now, I never did hold with them modern inventions,” said Mrs. Binnie complacently. “An old-fashioned clock is good enough for
me
.”

“Never mind,” said Rae, when Mrs. Binnie had finally waddled off to the “living room,” “it will soon be lilac time.”

“With white apple boughs framing a moon,” said Pat.

“And violets in the silver bush,” said Rae.

“And a new row of lilies to be planted along the dyke,” said Pat.

“And great crimson clovers in the Mince Pie Field.”

“And blue-eyed grass around the Pool…”

“And pussy-willows in Happiness…”

“And a dance of daisies along Jordan.”

“Oh, we've heaps of precious things left yet, Pat—things nobody, not even a Binnie can spoil.” Were the days when she could wash her being in the sunrise and feel as blithe as a bird gone forever? Perhaps they would come back when the new house would be built and Silver Bush was all their own again. But that was as yet far in the future. There was Judy coming across the yard, bringing in some drenched little chickens May had forgotten to put in. Was Judy getting bent? Pat shivered.

But still life seemed sadly out of tune, struggle as bravely as one might.