Mistress Pat (29 page)

“I haven't been here for years,” said Pat under her breath. “I couldn't bear to come…alone…somehow. It's as lovely as ever, isn't it?”

“Do you remember,” said Hilary slowly, “the day…my mother came…and you burned my letters?”

Pat nodded. She felt like slipping her hand into Hilary's and giving him the old sympathetic squeeze. Something in his tone told her that the pain and disillusionment of that memory was still keen.

“She is dead,” said Hilary. “She died last year. She left me…some money. At first I didn't think I could take it. Then…I thought…perhaps it would be a slap in her dead face if I didn't. So I took it…and had my year in the East. After all…I think she loved me once…when I was her little Jingle-baby. Afterwards…she forgot.
He
made her forget. I mean to try to think of her without bitterness, Pat.”

“It doesn't do to hold bitterness,” said Pat slowly. “Judy always says that. It…it poisons life. I know. I'm trying to put a certain bitterness out of my own life. Oh, Hilary…I know it is babyish to long as I do for the old happy days…they can never come back, although, now that you are here, they seem to be just around the corner.”

In the evening they went through the woods to the Secret Field. Hilary had always understood her love of that field. The woods had a beautiful mood on that evening…a friendly mood. They didn't always have it. Sometimes they were aloof…wrapped up in their own concerns. Sometimes they even frowned. But she and Hilary were two children again and the woods took them to their heart. They were full of little pockets of sunshine and ferny paths and whispers and clumps of birches that the winds loved…wild growths and colors and scents in sweet procession…a sunset seen through fir tops…great rosy clouds over the Secret Field…all the old magic and witchery had come back.

“If this could last,” thought Pat.

It was raining moonlight through the poplars when they got back. They went into the old garden, lying fragrant and velvety under the moon. White roses glimmered mysteriously here and there. A little wind brought them the spice of the ferns along the Whispering Lane. Pat was silent. Talk was a commonplace which did not belong to this enchanted hour. It was one of the moments when beauty seemed to flow through her like a river. She surrendered herself utterly to the charm of the time and place. There was no past—no future—nothing but this exquisite present.

Hilary looked at the moonlit brilliance of her eyes and bent a little nearer…his lips opened to speak. But a car came whirling into the yard and May got out of it, amid a chorus of howls without words from its other occupants. Pat shivered. May was back. The day of enchantment was over.

May saw them in the garden and came to them. Scent of honeysuckle…fragrance of fern…breath of tea-roses, were all drowned in the wave of cheap perfume that preceded her. She greeted Hilary very gushingly and looked vicious over his cool courtesy. Hilary had never liked May and he was not going to pretend pleasure over meeting her again. May gave one of her nasty little laughs.

“I suppose I'm a crowd,” she remarked. “Isn't it…lucky…David isn't home, Pat?”

“I don't know what you mean,” said Pat icily…knowing perfectly.

“Of course Pat has told you of her engagement to David Kirk,” May said maliciously, turning to Hilary. “He's really quite a nice old chap, you know. Such a pity you couldn't have met him.”

Nobody spoke. May, having gratified her spite, went into the house. Pat shivered again. Everything was spoiled. Suddenly Hilary seemed very remote…as remote as those dark firs spiring above the silver birches.

“Is this true, Pat?” he asked in a low tone.

Pat nodded. She could not speak.

Hilary took her hand.

“As an old friend there is no happiness I don't wish you, dear. You know that, don't you?”

“Of course. “ Pat tried to speak lightly…airily. “And I return your good wishes, Hilary. We…we heard of your engagement last year.”

She thought miserably, “I'm simply not going to let him off with it. I would have told him about David…if he had told me….”

“My engagement?” Hilary laughed slightly. “I'm not engaged. Oh, I know there was some silly gossip about me and Anna Loveday. Her brother is a great friend of mine and I'm going into his firm when I go back. Anna's a sweet thing and has her own ‘beau' as Judy would say. There's only one girl in my life…and you know who she is, Pat. I didn't think there was any hope for me but I felt I must come and see.”

“You'll find…someone yet.”

“No…you've spoiled me for loving anyone else. There's only one
you
.”

Pat said nothing more…there did not seem anything she could say.

They went into the kitchen for a parting hour before Hilary must leave for the boat train. They were all there…Judy, Rae, Sid, and Long Alec. Even mother had stayed up late to say good-bye. It should have been a merry evening. Judy was in great fettle and told some of her inimitable tales. Hilary laughed with the others but there was no mirth in his laughter. Pat had one of her dismal moments of feeling that she would never laugh again.

She and Judy stood together at the door and watched Hilary go across the yard to his waiting car.

“Oh, oh, it's a sorryful thing to watch inny one going away by moonlight,” said Judy. “I'm thinking, Patsy, I'll never be seeing Jingle again, the dear lad.”

“I don't think he will ever come again to Silver Bush,” said Pat. Her voice was quiet but her very words seemed tears. “Judy, why must there be so much bitterness in everything…even in what should be a beautiful friendship?”

“I'm not knowing,” admitted Judy.

“The scissors are lost
again
,” May told them as they re-entered the kitchen, her tone implying that everyone at Silver Bush was responsible for their disappearance.

“Oh, oh, if that was all that did be lost!” Judy sighed dismally, as she climbed to her kitchen chamber. Judy was quite unacquainted with Tennyson but she would wholeheartedly have agreed with him that there was something in the world amiss…oh, oh, very much amiss. And she was far from being sure…now…that it would ever be unriddled.

Hilary wrote just once to Pat after he went away…one of his old delightful letters, full of beautiful little pencil sketches of the houses he was going to design. Just at the last he wrote:

“Don't feel badly, Pat, dear, because I love you and you can't love me. I've always loved you. I can't help it and I wouldn't if I could. If the choice had been mine I would still have chosen to love you. There are people who try to forget a hopeless love. I'm not one of them, Pat. To me the greatest misfortune life could bring would be that I should forget you. I want to remember and love you always. That will be unspeakably better than any happiness that could come through forgetting. My love for you is the best thing…always has been the best thing…in my life. It hasn't made me poorer. On the contrary it has enriched my whole existence and given me the gift of clear vision for the things that matter; it has been a lamp held before my feet whereby I have avoided many pitfalls of baser passions and unworthy dreams. It will always be so. Therefore don't pity me and don't feel unhappy about me.”

But Pat did feel unhappy and the feeling persisted more or less under all the outward happiness of the autumn and winter. For it did seem to be a happy time. Long Alec had definitely stated that in a year from the next spring he hoped to build on the other farm for Sid and May. Everyone knew this was final and May, with much pouting and sulking, had to reconcile herself to the fact that she would never be mistress of Silver Bush.

Mother, too, was stronger and better than she had been for years. She said with a laugh that she was having a second youth. She was able to join in the family life again and go about seeing her friends. It seemed like a miracle for they had all accepted the fact for years that mother would always be an invalid, with a “good day” once in a while. Now the good days were the rule rather than the exception. So in spite of May that year was the pleasantest Pat had known for a long time…except for that odd persistent little ache of indefinable longing under everything. It never exactly ceased…though she forgot about it often…when she was gardening…sewing…planning…when Little Mary came to Silver Bush and wanted some of Judy's “malicious toast”…when Bold-and-Bad trounced some upstart kitten for its own good…when she and Suzanne and David sat by the Long House fire…when she and Rae took sweet counsel together over plans and problems…when she wakened early to revel in Silver Bush lying in its misty morning silence…
her
home…her dear, beloved, all-sufficing home…when Winnie came to Silver Bush, purring over her golden babies. For Winnie had twins…Winnie and Rachel…babies that looked as if they had been lifted bodily out of a magazine advertisement. When Pat looked at the two absurd, darling, round-faced, blue-eyed mites on the same pillow she always swallowed a little choke of longing.

Rae expected to be married in another year. Her hope chest was full to overflowing and she and Pat were already planning the details of the wedding…a regular clan wedding, of course.

“The last big wedding at Silver Bush,” said Pat.

“What about your own?” asked Rae.

“Oh, mine.
It
won't be a smart event. David and I will just slip away some day and be married. There isn't going to be any fuss,” said Pat hurriedly…and turned the conversation to something else. She was very, very fond of David but things were nice just as they were. She did not want to think of marrying at all. The thought of leaving Silver Bush was not bearable.

Rae looked at her curiously but said nothing. Rae was very wise in her generation.

“It doesn't do to meddle,” she reflected sagely. “I sometimes wish I'd never written Hilary about Pat's various beaus. Perhaps it did more harm than good…if he had come sooner…”

Well, life was full of “ifs.” For instance
if
she had not gone to the dance where she met Brook? She had been within an inch of
not
going. Rae shuddered.

“When Rae is married,” Pat told Judy, “I want her to have the loveliest wedding we've ever had at Silver Bush.”

“Oh, oh, it ought to be wid a whole year to get riddy in,” agreed Judy.

But nothing ever happens just as you imagine it will, as Pat had many times discovered. A week later came the bolt from the blue. Brook wrote that the manager of the Chinese branch had suddenly died. It had become absolutely necessary for him to start for China at once instead of next year. Would Rae go with him?

Of course Rae would go with him. It meant a marriage at three days' notice, but what of that?

“You…can't,” gasped Pat.

They were sitting in the hay-mow of the church barn, having discovered that it was about the only place where they were safe from May or some prowling Binnie coming down on them. The fragrance of dried clover was around them and an arrogant orange-gold barn cat sat on a rafter and looked at them out of mysterious jewel-like eyes.

“I can and will,” said Rae resolutely. “Lily Robinson will take the school and be thankful to get it. We won't bother with a wedding cake.”

“Rae, do you want Judy to drop dead! Of course we'll have a wedding cake. It won't have time to ripen as good wedding cake should but in all else it shall be the weddingest cake ever seen. But what about your dress?”

“Will it be possible to have a white dress, Pat…a white satin dress? I'm old-fashioned…I'm Victorian…I want to be married in a white satin dress. I love satin.”

“We'll make it possible,” said Pat. Forthwith she and Rae and Judy and mother went into committee on the subject. Pat and Rae hustled off to town for the dress…Inez Macaulay came to make it and sewed for dear life. Mother, who hadn't done such a thing for years, declared she would make the cake.

“Oh, oh, and she do be the lady as can do it,” said Judy. “All the Bay Shore girls cud make fruit-cake to the quane's taste.”

Judy pleaded for “just a liddle wedding.” They could have the aunts and uncles and cousins surely. But nobody agreed with her.

“We can't have all the two clans, and since we can't have all we must have none. No, Judy, Brook and I are just going to be married here with you home folks looking on.”

Judy had to reconcile herself. But she shook her grizzled head. Times indeed were changed at Silver Bush when one of its daughters could be married off like this.

“Sure and I fale ould and done,” said Judy…looking cautiously about, however, to make sure nobody heard her.

“You've taken your own time about telling me,” said May with a toss of her head when Pat informed her that Rae was to be married.

“We've only known it for twenty-four hours ourselves,” said Pat. May, however, was determined to be sulky. Nevertheless, there were times when Judy surprised a smug look on her face.

“She do be thinking there'll be one more out av her way,” reflected Judy scornfully.

“I'm glad to hear you're getting another of your gals married off,” Mrs. Binnie told mother patronizingly. “You'll soon be like myself…only one left.” A sentimental sigh. “What about you, Pat? Isn't it time you were thinking of leaping the ditch? The men don't seem to be what they were in
my
young days.”

Pat fled to her room where Rae had piled all her belongings on the bed.

“Forget Mother Binnie, Pat, and help me pack. I never was any good at packing. Tell me what to take or leave.”

The yawning trunk gave Pat a stab. Rae was really going away…going to China! Why couldn't it have been Rae's fortune to settle down near home like Winnie? Yet she remembered that she had thought Winnie's going a tragedy. How life grew around changes until they became a part of it and were changes no more! Winnie coming home with her babies…Winnie's home to visit…why, it was all delightful. But China! And yet Rae was serenely happy over it all. A line of some old-fashioned song Aunt Hazel used to sing long ago came back to Pat, as she folded and packed. “
The
one
who
goes
is
happier
far
than
the
one
that's left behind
.”

Perhaps it was true. She almost envied Rae her happiness. And yet she felt sorry for her…for Rae, who was leaving Silver Bush. How
could
anyone be happy, leaving Silver Bush?

“This time tomorrow I'll be an old married woman,” said Rae, scrutinizing herself in the mirror. “I believe it's high time I was married, Pat. It seems to me that I'm getting a certain school-teacherish look already. Do you know Brook is having the wedding ring specially made. No hand-me-downs for him, he says. I hope I'll get through the ceremony respectably. Mother Binnie will be there, watching me.”

“She isn't coming, Rae!”

“She is. May asked me if her mother couldn't come to see me married? I really couldn't say no. So I want everything to go nicely. I'm
not
going to look up at Brook when I'm uttering the final vow. That has got so common…Mrs. Binnie said Olive did it and everyone thought it ‘so touching.' Anyway, I'd be sure to laugh. Listen to that bluebird out in the orchard, Pat. I suppose they don't have bluebirds in China…or do they? But there'll be cats…surely there'll be cats in China…cats guarding mysterious secrets…cats furry and contented. Only…will they mew in Chinese? If they do! And then, of course, after a while there'll be my children. I want ten.”

“Ten? Why stop short of the dozen?” giggled Pat.

“Oh, I'm not greedy. One must leave a few for other people.”

“If Aunt Barbara heard you!” said Pat, as she tucked a bag of dried lavender into Rae's trunk…lavender from the Silver Bush garden to sweeten sheets in China.

“But she doesn't. I don't say these things to anybody but you. We've been such chums, haven't we, Pat? We've laughed and cried together…we're
friends
as well as sisters…only for those horrid weeks we never really spoke to each other. That's the memory I'm ashamed of. But I've so many beautiful memories…of home and you and mother and Judy. They'll always light life like a lamp. Can you quote that verse we found the other night and thought so lovely?”

“‘What Love anticipates may die in flower,

What Love possesses may be thine an hour,

But redly gleams in Life's unlit Decembers

What Love remembers!”

“It's true, isn't it, dear? We'll always have our lovely memories even in our ‘late Decembers.' Oh, I'm going to miss you all. I'll often be hungry for Silver Bush. Don't think I don't feel leaving it and you all, Pat. I do. But…but…”

“There's Brook Hamilton,” smiled Pat.

“Yes.” Rae was very thoughtful. “But the old life I'm leaving will always be very dear to me. And you've been the dearest sister.”

“Just don't,” said Pat. “You'll have me breaking down and howling. I've made up my mind I won't spoil your wedding with tears.”

“And please, darling, don't cry after I'm gone. I can't bear to think of you here, in tears, after I'm gone.”

“I'll likely have a little weep,” said Pat frankly. “I don't think I can escape that. But I never give way to despair as I used to long ago. Rae, I've learned to accept change even though I can never help dreading it…never can understand people who actually seem to like it. There's Lily calling you for your last fitting.”

The day before the wedding there was hope at Silver Bush that Mrs. Binnie wouldn't be able to come after all. Her first cousin, old Samuel Cobbledick, had died and the funeral was to be an hour before the time fixed for the ceremony.

“It's a real apostrophe to have him dying at this particular time,” Mrs. Binnie grumbled to May. “He's been suffering from general ability for years but he needn't of died till after the wedding. He was always a very tiresome man. It was an infernal hemmeridge finished him off. I'm awful disappointed. I'd set my heart on seeing darling Rae married.”

“Oh, oh, I do be hoping the funeral will go off more harmonious than his brother John's did,” said Judy. “John did be wanting to make all the arrangements for the funeral himself before he died…wanting things done rale stylish and having no confidence in his wife, her being av the second skimmings brand. They did be fighting all their lives but the biggest row they iver had was over his funeral. She didn't be spaking to him agin while he was alive and she wudn't sit among the mourners at all, at all, nor have innything to do wid the doings. It did be kind av spiling the occasion.”

“All fam'lies have their little differences,” said Mrs. Binnie stiffly. “Poor Sam's widow is feeling blue enough. I've been there all the afternoon condoning with her.”

“Ye'll be maning ‘condole,'” said Judy innocently. It was not often she bothered correcting Madam Binnie but there were times and seasons.

“I meant what I said,” returned Mrs. Binnie, “and I'll thank you, Miss Plum, not to be putting words in my mouth.”

Pat and Rae found it hard to win sleep that last night together. Half a dozen times one of them would say, “Well, let's turn over and go to sleep.” They would turn over but they wouldn't go to sleep. Soon they would be talking again.

“I hope it will be fine tomorrow,” said Rae. “I want to leave Silver Bush with my last sight of it bathed in sunshine.”

“Tomorrow?” said Pat. “
Today!
The clock in the Little Parlor has just struck twelve. It's your wedding day, Cuddles.”

“Time I was taking the bridal jitters,” laughed Rae. “I don't believe I'll have them at all. It all seems so—so
natural
to be marrying Brook, you know.”

They must have slept a little for presently Pat was surprised to find herself sitting up in bed looking through the window at a world that lay in a clear, pale, thin dawnlight. It was Rae's wedding day and hereafter when she wakened she must waken alone.