Mistress Pat (27 page)

Pat went up to the Long House that night. She walked blithely and springily. She was not going to worry over that gray hair. She would not even pull it out. The Selbys all turned gray young. What did it matter? She would not grow old in heart, no matter what she did in head. She would always keep her banner of youth flying gallantly. Wrinkles might come on her face but there should never be any on her soul. And yet there had been a moment that day when Pat had felt as if she didn't want to be young any longer. Things hurt you too much when you were young. Surely they wouldn't hurt so much when you got old. You wouldn't care so much then…things would be settled…there wouldn't be so many changes. People you knew wouldn't always be running off to far lands…or getting married. Your hair would be
all
gray and it wouldn't matter. You wouldn't be eating your heart out longing for a lost paradise.

Altogether it had not been a pleasant day. May had had a fit of the sulks and had taken it out slamming doors….Rover had eaten a plateful of fudge Pat had set outside to cool…. Judy had seemed down-hearted about something…perhaps the news about Hilary though she never referred to it but only muttered occasionally to herself about “strange going-ons.” Pat decided that she felt a trifle stodgy and needed something to pep her up a bit. She would find it at the Long House…she always did. Whenever life seemed a bit gray…whenever she felt a passing pang of loneliness over the changes that had been and…worse still…would be, she went up the hill to David and Suzanne. Whenever the door of the Long House clanged behind her it seemed to shut out the world, with its corroding discontents and vexations. Once, Pat thought with a stab of pain, she had felt that way when she went into Silver Bush. That she couldn't feel so any longer was a very bitter thing…a thing she couldn't get used to. But tonight as she and David and Suzanne sat around the fire—it was a cool September night and any excuse served when they wanted to light that fire…and cracked nuts and talked…or didn't talk…the bitterness faded out of Pat's heart as it always did in their company. Suzanne was rather quiet, sitting with Alphonso curled up in her lap: but Pat and David never found themselves lacking for something to say. Pat looked at the motto that ran in quaint, irregular letters around the fireplace.

“There be three gentle and goodlie things,

To be here,

To be together,

And to think well of one another.”

That was true: and while it remained true one could bear anything else, no matter what sort of a hole it left in your life. What a dear Suzanne was! And what nice eyes David had…very whimsical when they were not tender and very tender when they were not whimsical. And his voice…what did his voice always remind her of? She could never tell but she knew it was something that always tugged at her heart. And she knew he liked her very much. It was nice to be liked…nice to have such friends to come to whenever you wanted to.

David walked home with her as he always did. Pat had never until tonight stopped to think how very pleasant those walks home were. Tonight the hills were dreamy under a harvest moon. They went through the close-set spruce grove that always seemed to be guarding so many secrets…down the field path under the Watching Pine that still watched…for what?…over the brook and along the Whispering Lane. At the gate where they always parted they stood in silence for a little while, lost in the beauty of the night. Faint music came to them. It was only Tillytuck playing in his lair but, muted by the distance, it sounded like some fairy melody under a haunted moon. Beyond the trees were great quietudes of sky where burned the stars that never changed…the only things that never changed.

David was thinking that silence with Pat was more eloquent than talk with any other woman. He was also wondering what Pat would do or say if he suddenly did what he had always wanted to do…put his arm about her and said, “darling.” What he did say was almost as shattering to Pat's new-found mood of contentment.

“Has Suzanne told you her little secret yet?”

Suzanne? A secret? There was only one kind of a secret people spoke about in that tone. Pat involuntarily put up her hand as if warding off a blow.

“No…o…o,” she said faintly.

“She probably would have if you had been alone with her to-night. She's very happy. She has made up a quarrel she had before we came here with an old lover…and they are engaged.”

It was too much…it really was. So Suzanne was to be lost to her, too! And she had to be polite and say something nice.

“I…I…hope she will always be very happy,” she gasped.

“I think she will,” said David quietly. “She has loved him for years…I never knew just what the trouble was. We're a secretive lot, we Kirks. Of course they won't be married till he has finished college. He has had to work his way through. And then…what am I to do, Pat?”

“You…you'll miss her,” said Pat. She knew she was being incredibly stupid.

“You'll have to tell me what to do, Pat,” David said, bending a little nearer, his voice taking on a very significant tone.

Was David by any chance proposing to her? And if he were what on earth could she say? She wasn't going to say anything! She had had enough shocks for one day…Hilary engaged…gray hair…Suzanne engaged! Oh, why must life be such an uncertain thing? You never knew where you were…you never had security…you never knew when there might not be some dreadful bolt from the blue. She would just pretend she hadn't heard David's question and go in. Which she did.

But that night she sat in the moonlight in her room for a long while and looked at the two paths she might take in life. Rae was away and the house was silent…and, so it seemed to Pat, lonely. Silver Bush always seemed when night fell to be mourning for its ravished peace. The sky outside was cloudless but a brisk wind was blowing past. “What is the wind in such a hurry for, Aunt Pat?” Little Mary had asked wistfully not long ago. Everything seemed in a hurry…life was in a hurry…it couldn't let you be…it swept you on with it as if you were a leaf in the wind.

Which path should she take? David was going to ask her to marry him…she had known for a long time in the back of her mind that he would ask her if she ever let him. She was terribly fond of David. Life with him would be a very pleasant pilgrimage. Even a gray day was full of color when David was around. She was always contented in his company. And his eyes were sometimes so sad. She wanted to make them happy. Was that reason enough for marrying a man, even one as nice as David? If she didn't marry him she would lose him out of her life. He would never stay at the Long House after Suzanne had gone. And she couldn't lose any more friends…she just couldn't.

Suppose she didn't take that path? Suppose she just went on living here at Silver Bush…growing into being “Aunt Pat”…helping plan the clan weddings and funerals…her brown hair turning pepper-and-salt. That gray hair popped into her mind. It seemed as if age had just tapped her on the shoulder. But it would be all right if only Silver Bush might be hers to love and plan for and live for, free from all outsiders and intruders. She wouldn't hesitate a second then. But would it be? Would it ever be hers again? She knew what May's designs were. And she knew Sid didn't want to leave Silver Bush for the other place. Would dad stand out against them…could he? No, it would end in May being mistress of Silver Bush someday. That was the secret dread that always haunted Pat. And if it ever came about…

A few weeks later David said quietly to her in the garden of the Long House…the garden where Bets' ghost sometimes walked even yet for Pat…

“Do you think you could marry me, Pat?”

Pat looked afar for a moment of silence to the firry rim of an eastern hill. Then she said just as quietly,

“I think I could.”

Mother was told first. Mother's face was always serene but it changed a little when Pat told her.

“Darling, do you really love him?”

Pat looked out of the window. There had been a frost the night before and the garden had a blighted look. She had been hoping mother wouldn't ask that question.

“I do really, mother, but perhaps not in just the way you mean.”

“There's only the one way,” said mother softly.

“Then I'm one of the kind of people who can't love that way. I've tried…and I can't.”

“It doesn't come by trying either,” said mother.

“Mother dear, I'm terribly fond of David. We suit each other…our minds click. He loves the same things I do. I'm always happy with him…we'll always be good chums.”

Mother said no more. She picked up something she was making for Rae's hope chest and went on putting tiny invisible stitches in it. After all perhaps it would work out. It was not what she had wanted for Pat but the child must make her own choices. David Kirk was a nice fellow…mother had always liked him. And Pat would not be far from her.

Judy came next and, for one who had always been anxious to see Pat “settled” betrayed no great delight. But she wished Pat well and was careful to say that
Mr
. Kirk had rale brading. Since the engagement was an accomplished fact Judy was not going to say anything against a future member of the family.

“The poor darlint, she don't be as happy as she thinks hersilf,” Judy told Bold-and-Bad, regarding him as the only safe confidant. Only she felt that Bold-and-Bad never understood her quite so well as Gentleman Tom had done. “And after all the min she might have had! But I'm hoping the Good Man Above knows what's bist for us all.”

To Rae Pat talked more frankly than to any one.

“Pat dear, if you love him…”

“Not as you love Brook, Rae. I'm just not capable of that sort of loving…or it doesn't last. David
needs
me…or will need me when Suzanne goes. We're not going to be married until she is…for two years at the least. I wouldn't marry him, Rae…I wouldn't marry anybody…if I knew I could go on living at Silver Bush. But if May stays here…and she means to…I can't, especially when you are gone to China. I've always loved the Long House next to Silver Bush. I'll be
near
Silver Bush…I can always look down on it and watch over it.”

“I believe that's the real reason you're going to marry David Kirk,” thought Rae. She looked at the shadow of the vine leaves on the bedroom floor. It looked like a dancing faun. Rae blinked to hide sudden foolish tears. Pat was going to miss something. But aloud she said only,

“I hope you'll be happy, Pat. You deserve to be. You've always been a darling.”

Father took it philosophically. He would have liked someone a bit younger. But Kirk was a nice chap and seemed to have enough money to live on. There was something distinguished about him. His war book had been acclaimed by the critics and he was working on a “History of the Maritimes” of which, Long Alec had been told, great things were expected. Pat had always liked those brainy fellows. She had a right to please herself.

The rest of the clan were surprised and amused. Pat sensed that none of them quite approved. Winnie and the Bay Shore aunts said absolutely nothing, but silence can say a great deal sometimes. Only Aunt Barbara said deprecatingly,

“But, Pat, he's
gray
.”

“So am I,” said Pat, flaunting her one gray hair.

“Let's hope it lasts this time,” said Uncle Tom. Pat thought he might have been nicer after the way she had stood by him in the affair of Mrs. Merridew.

May was frankly delighted, though her delight faded a little when she learned that there was no prospect of an immediate marriage. Mrs. Binnie, rocking fiercely, had her say-so as well.

“So you've hooked the widower at last, Pat? What did I tell you…never give up. I've never understood how a gal could bring herself to marry a widower…but then any port in a storm. Of course, as I said to Olive, he's a bit on the old side…”

“I don't like boys,” said Pat coolly. “I get on better with men. And you must admit, Mrs. Binnie, that his ears don't stick out.”

“I call that flippant, Pat. Marriage
is
a very serious thing. As I was saying, when I said that to Olive she sez, ‘I s'pose it's better to be an old man's darling than a young man's slave. Pat isn't so young as she used to be herself, ma. She'll make a very good wife for David Kirk.' Olive always kind of liked you, Pat. She always said you meant well.”

“That was very kind of her.”

Pat's amused, remote smile offended Mrs. Binnie. That was the worst of Pat. Always laughing at you in her sleeve. Mebbe she'd find out marrying an old widower was no laughing matter.

Suzanne was wild with delight.

“I've been hoping for it from the first, Pat. You're made for each other. David worries a bit because he's so much older. I tell him he's growing younger every day and you're growing older so you'll soon meet. He's a darling if he
is
my brother. He never dared to hope…till lately. He always said he had two rivals.”

“Two?”

“Silver Bush…and Hilary Gordon.”

Pat smiled.

“Silver Bush
was
his rival, I'll admit. But Hilary…he might as well call Sid a rival.”

Yet her face had changed subtly. Some of the laughter went out of it. She was wondering why there was such a distinct relief in the thought that, since her correspondence with Hilary seemed to have died a natural death, she would not have to write him that she was going to marry David Kirk.

It rained Thursday and Friday and then for a change, as Tillytuck said, it rained Saturday. Not the romping, rollicking, laughter-filled rain of spring but the sad, hopeless rain of autumn that seemed like the tears of old sorrows on the window-panes of Silver Bush.

“I love some kinds of rain,” said Rae, “but not this kind. Doesn't the garden look forlorn? Nothing but the ghosts of flowers left in it…and such unkempt ghosts at that. And we had such good times all summer working in that garden, hadn't we, Pat? I wonder if it will be the same next summer? I've a nasty, going-to-happeny feeling this morning that I don't like.”

Judy, too, had had some kind of a “sign” in the night and was pessimistic. But nobody at first sight connected these forewarnings with the tall, thin lady who drove up the lane late in the afternoon and tied a spiritless gray nag to the paling of the graveyard.

“One more av thim agents,” said Judy, watching her from the kitchen window, as she stalked up the wet walk, a suitcase dangling from the end of one of her long arms. “Sure and I've been pestered wid half a dozen of thim this wake. She don't be looking as if business was inny too prosperous.”

“She looks like an angleworm on end,” giggled Rae.

“I wouldn't let her in if I was you,” said Mrs. Binnie, who seldom let a Saturday afternoon pass without a call at Silver Bush.

Judy had had some such idea herself but that speech of Mrs. Binnie's banished it.

“Oh, oh, we do be more mannerly than that at Silver Bush,” she said loftily, and invited the stranger in cordially, offering her a chair near the fire. No Binnie was going to tell Judy who was to be let in or out of
her
kitchen!

“It's a wet day,” sighed the caller, as she sank into the chair and let the suitcase drop on the floor with an air of relief. She was remarkably tall and very slight, dressed in shabby black, and with enormous pale blue eyes. They positively drowned out her face and gave you the uncanny impression that she hadn't any features but eyes. Otherwise you might have noticed that her cheek-bones were a shade too high and her thin mouth rather long and new-moonish. She gave Squedunk such a look of disapproval that that astute cat remarked that he would go out and have a look at the weather and stood not upon the order of his going.

“It's a wet day for traveling but I've allowed myself just ten days to do the Island and time is getting on.”

“You don't belong to the Island?” said Rae…quite superfluously, Judy thought. Sure and cudn't ye be telling
that
niver belonged to the Island!

“No.” Another long sigh. “My home is in Novy Scoshy. I've seen better days. But when you haven't a husband to support you you've got to make a living somehow. I was an agent before I was married and so I just took to the road again. Every little helps.”

“Sure and it do be hard lines to be a widdy in this could world,” said Judy, instantly sympathetic, and hauling forward her pot of soup.

“Oh, I ain't a widdy woman, worse luck.” Another sigh. “My husband left me years ago.”

“Oh, oh!” Judy pushed the pot back again. If your husband left you there was something wrong somewhere. “And what might ye be selling?”

“All kinds of pills and liniments, tonics and perfumes, face creams and powders,” said the caller, opening her suitcase and preparing to display her wares. But at this juncture the porch door opened and Tillytuck appeared in the doorway. He got no further, being apparently frozen in his tracks. As for the lady of the eyes, she clasped her hands and opened and shut her mouth twice. The third time she managed to ejaculate,

“Josiah!”

Tillytuck said something like “Good gosh!” He gazed helplessly around him. “I'm sober…I'm sober…I can't hope I'm drunk now.”

“Oh, oh, so this lady is no stranger to you I'm thinking?” said Judy.

“Stranger!” The lady in question rolled her eyes rapidly, making Rae think of the dogs in the old fairy tale. “He is…he was…he is my husband.”

Judy looked at Tillytuck.

“Is it the truth she do be spaking,
Mr
. Tillytuck?”

Tillytuck tried to brazen it out. He nodded and grinned.

“Oh, oh,” said Judy sarcastically, “and isn't the truth refreshing after all the lies we've been hearing!”

“I've always felt,” said Tillytuck mournfully, “that you never really believed anything I said. But if this…person has been telling you I left her she's been speaking symbolically. I was druv to it. She told me to go.”

“Because he didn't…and wouldn't…believe in predestination,” said Mrs. Tillytuck. “He was no better than a modernist. I couldn't live with a man who didn't believe in predestination. Could you?”

“Sure and I've niver tried,” said Judy, to whom Mrs. Tillytuck had seemed to appeal. Mrs. Binnie asked what predestination was but nobody answered her.

“She told me to go,” repeated Tillytuck, “and I took her at her word. ‘There's really been too much of this,' I said…and it was all I did say. I appeal to you, Jane Maria, wasn't it all I did say?”

Tears filled Mrs. Tillytuck's eyes. You really felt afraid of drowning in them.

“You're welcome back any time, Josiah,” she sobbed. “Any time you believe in predestination you can come home.”

Tillytuck said nothing. He turned and went out. Mrs. Tillytuck wiped her eyes while Judy regarded her rather stonily and Pat and Rae tried to keep their faces straight.

“This…this has upset me a little,” said Mrs. Tillytuck apologetically. “I hope you'll excuse me. I hadn't laid eyes on Josiah for fifteen years. He hasn't changed a particle. Has he been here all that time?”

“No,” said Judy shortly. “Only seven years.”

“Then you know him pretty well I daresay. Always telling wonderful stories of his adventures I suppose? The yarns I've listened to! And every last one of them crazier than the others.”

“Was his grandfather really a pirate?” asked Rae. She had always been curious on that point.

“Listen to her now. His grandfather a pirate! Why, he was only a minister. But isn't that like Josiah? Him and his romances and ‘traggedies'! He always had a wild desire for notoriety…always had a craze to be mixed up with any scandal or catastrophe he heard of. Why, that man didn't like funerals because he couldn't pretend to be the corpse. But it wasn't that I minded. After all, his lies were interesting and I like a little frivolous conversation once in a while. He was easy enough to live with, I'll say that for him. And I didn't mind his sly orgies so much though I warned him what happened to my Uncle Asa. Uncle Asa threw himself into a full bath-tub when
he
was full, mistaking it for his bed. He broke his neck first and then he drowned. No, it was Josiah's theology. At first I thought it was just indigestion but when I realized he meant it my conscience wouldn't stand for it. He said there never was an Adam or Eve and he said the doctrine of predestination was blasphemous and abominable. So I told him he had to choose between me and modernism. But I suffered. I loved that man with all his faults. It has preyed on my mind all these years. What is going to become of his immortal soul?”

Nobody, not even Mrs. Binnie, tried to answer this question.

“Well,” resumed Mrs. Tillytuck more briskly, “this isn't business. I dunno as I feel very businesslike just now. My heart don't feel just right. This has been a shock to it. I suffer greatly from a tired heart.”

Nobody knew whether this was a physical or an emotional ailment. Mrs. Binnie understood it to be the former and asked quite sympathetically, “Did you ever try a mustard plaster at the pit of your stomach, Mrs. Tillytuck?”

“I fear that wouldn't benefit a weary heart,” said Mrs. Tillytuck pathetically. “Possibly, madam, you have never suffered as I have from a weary wounded heart?”

“No, thank goodness my heart is all right,” said Mrs. Binnie. “My only trouble is rheumatism in the knee j'ints.”

“I have the very thing for that here,” said Mrs. Tillytuck briskly. “You try this liniment.”

Mrs. Binnie bought the liniment and Mrs. Tillytuck looked appealingly at the others. But Judy said darkly they didn't be wanting inny beautifying messes.

“We do all be handsome enough here widout thim.”

“I've never seen anybody so handsome she couldn't be handsomer,” said Mrs. Tillytuck with another sigh as she closed her bag. At the door she turned.

“I s'pose you don't happen to know if Josiah has saved up any money these fifteen years?”

Nobody happened to know.

“Ah well, it isn't likely. A rolling stone gathers no moss. Though he wasn't lazy…I'll say that for him. And you can tell him my parting word was…believe in predestination, Josiah, and you'll be welcome home at any time.”

Mrs. Tillytuck was gone. The echo of her steps died away down the walk. Pat and Rae went into their long repressed spasm. Mrs. Binnie said there was always something about Tillytuck that made her think he was married.

Judy was very silent, her only remark being, as she watched Mrs. Tillytuck driving out of the yard,

“A bean-pole like that!”