Mistress Pat (26 page)

Then it was dawn. Very early dawn is a dreary thing. Nothing is quite human. The world is “fey.” And there was no Rae in the little bed beside hers. Pat had always loved to watch Rae waking up … she had such a pretty way of doing it. And the morning sunshine always poured in on her head, making it like a warm pool of gold on the pillow. But there was no Rae this morning … no sunshine. Pat sat up and looked out of the window. The different farmsteads were beginning to take form in the pale grey light on the thin snow. The little row of sheep tracks leading from the church barn across the Mince Pie field might have been made by Pan. A chilly foolish little wind of dawn was sighing around the eaves. A flock of tiny snowbirds settled on the roof of the granary. The haystacks in the Field of Farewell Summers looked gnome-like in the pale greyness. Pat gazed drearily at the blown clouds and the wide white fields and the lonely star of morning.

Everything seemed so much the same … and everything was so horribly changed.

Pat looked like the ghost of herself at breakfast but Rae came down, cool, gay, smiling, her face apparently as blithe as the day. She tossed an airy word to Pat, bantered Sid, complimented Judy on her muffins and went off to school with a parting pat for Bold-and- Bad.

Pat tried to feel relieved. It had blown over. Rae was ashamed of her outburst and wanted to ignore it. She was just going to act as if nothing had happened.

“I won’t remember it either,” vowed Pat. But there was a sore spot in her heart, even after she had talked it all over with Judy … Judy who had suspected all along that Rae was nursing some secret sorrow that loomed large in the eyes of seventeen.

“Judy, it was dreadful. We both lost our tempers and said blistering things … things that can never be forgotten.”

“Oh, oh, it do be amazing how much we can be forgetting in life,” said Judy.

“But it was so … so ugly, Judy. There has never been a quarrel at Silver Bush before.”

“Oh, oh, hasn’t there been now, darlint? Sure there was lashings av thim whin yer dad and his gang were growing up. The rafters would ring wid their shouting at each other … and Edith giving her opinion av iverybody ivery once in so long. This will be passing away just as they did. Did ye iver be hearing the rason ould Angus MacLeod av the South Glin didn’t hang himsilf? He made up his mind to, all bekase life did be getting too tejus. And thin he had a fight wid his wife … the first one they’d iver had. It livened him up so he wint out and used the rope to tie up a calf and niver was timpted agin. As for poor liddle Cuddles, that sore and hurt and thinking it do be going to hurt foriver … just ye be taking no notice, Patsy … be yersilf and iverything will be just the same only more so.”

“Mother must know nothing of it … I won’t have mother hurt,” said Pat firmly.

“If she can be kaping it from her she do be cliverer than I’m thinking,” Judy told Gentleman Tom when Pat had gone out. “And I’m fearing this quarrel do be a bit more sarious than I’ve been pretinding. Whin two people don’t be caring overmuch for aich other a quarrel niver amounts to much betwane thim. It’s soon made up. But whin they love aich other like Patsy and Cuddles it do be going so dape it’s rale hard to be forgetting it. I’m wishing Long Alec had chased that go-pracher off Silver Bush wid a shotgun the first time he iver showed his cow-eyes here. Whativer cud inny girl be seeing in him? Didn’t he nearly sit down on Gintleman Tom the first time he called!”

December was a hard month for Pat. Life seemed to drag itself along like a wounded animal. Winter set in early. It snowed continuously for three weeks. Little storm demons danced in the yard and whirled along the lanes. Everywhere were huge banks of snow, white in the sun, pale blue in the shadows. There were quaint caps of it on the unused chimneys. It was piled deep in the Secret Field when Pat went to it on snowshoes. One felt that spring could never come again, either to Silver Bush or one’s heart. On a rare fine day the world seemed made of diamond dust, cold, dazzling, splendid, heartless. There was the beauty of winter moonlight on frosted panes and chill harpings of wind beneath cold, unfriendly stars. At least, Pat felt they were unfriendly. Things were NOT the same. Always between her and Rae was the coldness and shadow of a thing that must not be spoken of … that must be forgotten. Rae chattered continuously of surface things but in regard to everything else she preserved a silence more dreadful than anger. There was always that false gaiety, good-humoured and polite! To Pat that politeness of Rae’s was a terrible thing. They might have been strangers … they WERE strangers. Rae seemed to have locked her heart against her sister forever.

Just before Christmas Rae announced carelessly that she had been awarded a scholarship … a three months’ course in nature study at the O.A.C. in Guelph and meant to take advantage of it. The trustees had granted her leave of absence and Molly MacLeod of South Glen was to take the school for the three months.

“That is splendid,” said Pat, who knew Rae must have been aware of the possibility of this for weeks and had never said a word about it.

“Isn’t it?” Rae was brightly enthusiastic. She was very busy during the following days preparing for her going and talking casually of plans. She was all radiance and sparkle and teased mercilessly because Judy was afraid she would learn to smoke cigarettes at Guelph. But she never consulted Pat about anything and when Pat, at Christmas, gave her a crimson kimono with darker crimson ‘mums embroidered on it, remarking that she thought it would be nice for Guelph, Rae merely said, “How ripping of you! It’s perfectly gorgeous.” But she never told Pat that Uncle Horace had sent a check for a new coat and when she bought a stunning one of natural leopard with cuffs and collar of seal, she showed it to Judy and mother and the aunts but not to Pat … merely left it lying on her bed where Pat could see it if she chose. Pat was too hurt to mention it.

When Rae went away, looking very smart and grownup in her leopard coat and a little green hat tipped provocatively over one eye, she kissed Pat good-bye as she did the others but her lips merely brushed Pat’s cheek and most of the kiss was expended on air. Pat watched her out of sight with a breaking heart and cried herself to sleep that night. The loneliness was hideous. She couldn’t bear to look at the bed where Rae had slept or the little old bronze slippers Rae had danced in so often but thought too worn to take to Guelph. One of them was lying forlornly under the bureau, the other under the bed. Pat got up and put them together. They did not look quite so forlorn and discarded then.

True, there had been no real comradeship between her and Rae for weeks, though they had shared the same room and sat at the same table. But now that Rae was gone it seemed as if hope had gone with her. Pat was too proud and hurt even to talk it over with Judy. It was the first time she had not been able to talk a thing over with Judy.

That cold, indifferent good-bye kiss of Rae’s! Little Cuddles who used to put her chubby arms about her neck and love her “so hard!” Pat couldn’t bear to think of it. She looked at her new calendar hanging on the wall … a very elaborate affair which Tillytuck had given her. She had always thought a new calendar a fascinating thing, yet with something a little terrible about it. It was rather fun to flip over the leaves and wonder just what would be happening on this or that day. Now she hated to see it. There were three months to be lived through before Rae would come back. And when she did come would things be any better?

Bold-and-Bad padded into the room and jumped on the bed. Pat gathered him into her arms. Dear old cat, he was still left to her anyhow. And Silver Bush! Whatever came and went, whoever loved or did not love her, there was still Silver Bush.

Nevertheless Pat looked so haggard and woe-begone at breakfast that Judy wished things not lawful to be uttered concerning go-preachers.

During that dreary winter Pat’s only real pleasures were her evenings at the Long House—Suzanne and David were so kind and understanding … especially David. “I always feel so comfortable with him,” thought Pat … and her letters from Hilary. One of his stimulating epistles always heartened her up. She saved them up to read in the little violet-blue hour before night came … the hour she and Rae had been used to spend in their room, talking and joking. She always slept better after a letter from Hilary. And very poorly after a letter from Rae. For Rae wrote Pat in regular turn … flippant little notes, each seeming just like another turn of the screw. They were full of college news and jokes, such as she might have written to any one. But never a word about Silver Bush affairs … no reference to home jokes. Rae kept all that for her letters to mother and Judy. “When I see the evening star over the trees on the campus I always think of Silver Bush,” Rae wrote Judy. If Rae had only written that to her, thought Pat.

Pat sent Rae a box of goodies and Rae was quite effusive.

“No doubt it’s a youthful taste to be thinking of things to eat,” she wrote back, “but how the girls did appreciate your box. It was really awfully kind of you to think of sending it,” … “as if I were some outsider who couldn’t be expected to send her a box,” thought Pat … “I hear that Uncle Tom has had the mumps and that Tillytuck is still howling hymns to the moon in the granary. Also that Sid is still dancing attendance on May Binnie. She’ll get him yet. The Binnies never let go. Do you suppose North Glen will faint if I appear out in a bright yellow rain coat when I come home? Or one of those long slinky sophisticated evening dresses? Silver Bush must really wake up to the fact that fashions change. I had a letter from Hilary last night. It’s odd to think this is his last year in college. He has won another architectural scholarship and is going to locate in British Columbia when he is through. He thinks he will be able to get out here to see me before I leave.”

Hilary had not told Pat about any of his plans.

The announcement of Mr. Wheeler’s marriage was in the paper that day. Judy viciously poked the sheet that bore it into the fire and held it down with the poker.

Two weeks later it was the end of March and Judy was getting her dye-pot ready. And Rae was coming home. Pat found herself dreading it … and broken-hearted because she was dreading it.

“What is the matter with Pat this spring?” Long Alec asked Judy. “She hasn’t seemed like herself all winter … and now she’s positively moping. Is she in love with anybody?”

Judy snorted.

“Well then, does she need a tonic? I remember you used to dose us all with sulphur and molasses every spring, Judy. Perhaps it might do her good.”

Judy did not think sulphur and molasses would help Pat much.

It was a mild day when Rae came home … a day full of the soft languor of early spring when nature is still tired after her wrestle with winter. There had been a light, misty snowfall in the night and Pat went for a walk to the Secret Field in the afternoon to see if she could win from it a little courage to face Rae’s return. It was very lovely in those silent woods with their white-mossed trees. Every step she took revealed some new enchantment as if some ambitious elfin artificer were striving to show just how much could be done with nothing but the white mystery of snow in hands that knew how to make use of it. Such a snowfall, thought Pat, was the finest test of beauty. Whenever there was any ugliness or distortion it showed it mercilessly: but beauty and grace were added unto beauty and grace even as unto him that hath shall be given more abundantly. She wished she had some one to enjoy the loveliness with her … Hilary … Suzanne … David … Rae. Rae! But Rae would be coming home in a few hours’ time, artificially cordial, looking at her with bright, indifferent eyes.

“I just can’t bear it,” thought Pat miserably.

When Pat heard the jingle of sleigh-bells coming up the lane in the “dim” she fled to her room. Every one else was in the kitchen waiting for Rae … mother and Sid and Judy and Tillytuck and the cats. Pat felt she had no part or lot among them.

It had turned colder. There was a thin green sky behind the snowy trees and the silver gladness of an evening star over the birches. Pat heard the noise of laughter and greeting in the kitchen. Well, she supposed she must go down.

There was a sound of flying feet on the stairs. Suddenly it seemed to Pat that there was no air in the room. Rae burst in … a rosy, radiant Rae, her eyes as blue as ever, her mouth like a kissed flower. She engulfed Pat in a fierce leopard-skin hug.

“Patsy darling … why weren’t you down? Oh, but it’s good to see you again!”

THIS WAS THE OLD RAE. Pat was afraid she was going to howl. All at once life was beautiful again. It was as if she had wakened up from a horrible dream and seen a starlit sky. “Pat, haven’t you a word to say to me? You aren’t sore at me still, are you? Oh, I wouldn’t blame you if you were. I was the world’s prize idiot. I realised that very soon after we quarrelled but I was too proud to admit it. And you wrote me such icy, stiff letters while I was away.”

“Oh!” Pat began to laugh and cry at once. They got their arms around each other. Everything was all right … beautifully all right again.

It was a wonderful evening. Every one enjoyed Judy’s superlative supper, with Rae feeding the cats tidbits and Tillytuck and Judy outdoing themselves telling stories. Again and again Rae’s eyes met Pat’s over the table in the old camaraderie. Even King William looked as if sometime he might really get across the Boyne. But the best of all came at bedtime when they settled down for the old delight of talking things over with Bold-and-Bad tensing and flexing his claws on Pat’s bed and Popka blinking goldenly on Rae’s.

“Isn’t it jolly to be good sisters again?” exclaimed Rae. “I feel like that verse in the Bible where all the morning stars sang together. It’s just been horrid … horrid. How could I have been such a little fool? I just wallowed in self-pity all the fall and then it seemed as if that outburst had to come. And all over that … that creature! I’m so ashamed of ever dreaming I cared for him. I can’t understand how I could have been so … so fantastic. And yet I really did have a terrible case. Of course I knew perfectly well in my heart it could never come to anything. At the very worst of my infatuation … when I was trying to pretend to every one I didn’t care a speck … I knew no Silver Bush girl could ever marry a go-preacher. But that didn’t prevent me from being crazy about him. It seemed so romantic … a hopeless love, you know. Two found souls forever sundered by family pride and all that, you know. I just revelled in it … I can see that now. The way he used to look at me across that barn! And once, when he read his text … ‘Behold thou art fair, my love, behold thou art fair. Thou hast dove’s eyes’ … he looked right at me and I nearly died of rapture. He really was in love with me then. You never saw the poem he wrote me, Pat. He was jealous of everything, it seemed … of ‘the wind that whispered in my ear’ … of ‘the sunshine that played on my hair’ … of ‘the moonbeam that lay on my pillow.’ The lines didn’t scan very well and the rhymes limped but I thought it was a masterpiece. Can you wonder I was furious when you just stepped in and lifted him under my very nose? By the way, he’s married, did you know, Pat?”