Mistress Pat (29 page)

If life could just go on forever like this … at least for years, “safe from corroding change.” In childhood you thought it would but now you knew it couldn’t. Something was always coming up … something you never expected. Only that day she had overheard Judy saying to Tillytuck, “Oh, oh, things do be going too well. We do be going to have an awful wallop before long.” Tillytuck had told Judy she needed a liver pill but Pat was afraid there was something in it.

At Silver Bush Rae’s love affairs had usurped the place that Pat’s used to hold. Rae discussed her two suitors very frankly with Pat and Judy in the talks around the kitchen fire o’nights, often to the unromantic accompaniment of butter-fried eggs or turkey bones. Rae was never of the same heart two nights in succession.

“Don’t change your mind so often,” Pat said once in exasperation.

“Oh, but it’s glorious,” laughed Rae. “Think how deadly monotonous it would be to be in love with the same man week in and week out. Of course I mean to make up my mind permanently some day. I feel sure I’ll marry one of those boys. They are both good matches.”

“Rae! That sounds hatefully mercenary.”

“Sister dear, I finished with romance when Larry Wheeler sent me a flower-wreathed announcement of his bridals. That cured me forever. And I’m not mercenary … I’m only through with being a sentimentalist. It’s just that I find it hard to decide between two equally nice boys.”

“It’s hardly fair to them,” protested Pat. “And people are talking. They say you’re more or less engaged to both of them.”

“Well, you know I’m not. Neither of them is by way of being a bit deceived. And, in spite of their jealousy, they’re such good sports over it all, too. They are so fearfully polite to each other outwardly. No fear of a duel there even if it wasn’t out of date.”

“You wouldn’t want a man to risk his life for you, would you?” demanded Pat.

“No … no.” For a moment Rae looked serious. “But I think I’d like to have him WILLING to risk it. I wonder if either Bruce or Peter would be that. However, they are getting no end of thrills out of it. It’s a kind of race, you know, and men enjoy that ever so much more than a tame courtship. Sometimes I think I’ll decide it by lot … I really do. They seem so evenly balanced. If Peter’s nose is not all I would fondly dream neither are Bruce’s ears. And their names are nice. That’s SOMETHING. How awful it would be to marry a man who had one of those terrible names in Dickens! Judy, do you think Bruce will be fat by the time he is forty? I’m afraid I wouldn’t love him then. There is no danger of that with Peter. He’ll always be thin as a snipe. But he has rosy cheeks. I don’t like rosy cheeks in men. I prefer them pale and interesting. And will his mother like me?”

“It wudn’t be inny great odds if she didn’t, Cuddles dear,” said Judy, who was enjoying Rae’s “nonsense” immensely. “The woman has no great gumption. I used to be hearing she was one to give her fam’ly b’iling hot soup on a dog-day. Peter do be getting his sinse from his father’s side.”

“Last night I ALMOST told him I’d marry him. But I had sense enough to know it was just the moon. I could be in love with anybody when the moon is just right. Pat, don’t look so disapproving. You’ve no right to. YOU’VE been known to change your mind. I wish I could make up my mind … I really do. It’s so wearing. I never thought I could be in such a predicament.”

“I don’t believe you care a pin for either of them,” said Pat impatiently.

“Pat, I do … I really do. That is the exasperating part of it … the part that doesn’t square with books.”

“Why not send them both packing and go on with your college course? You used to want to be a doctor.”

Rae sighed.

“It costs too much. And besides … my ambition seems to have petered out … no, that isn’t a pun, really it isn’t. We’re like that at Silver Bush, it seems, Pat. We’re just domestic girls after all and want a home to potter over, with a nice husband and a few nice babies.”

“Oh, oh, that’s the only sinsible word ye’ve said tonight, Cuddles darlint,” grinned Judy. She knew her Cuddles and did not take her dilemma very seriously. It was all the darlint’s fun and added to the gaiety of life at Silver Bush. Some fine day Cuddles would find out which of those nice lads she liked best and there would be a fine wedding and Cuddles would settle down not far from home, as Winnie had done. So Judy hoped in her inveterate match-making old heart. It was only Pat who worried over it. Somehow she could not picture Rae either as Mrs. Bruce Madison or Mrs. Peter Alward. But she asked herself honestly was it because she thought Rae did not care enough for either of them or was it because she hated the change another marriage would bring to Silver Bush?

“Just be letting it alone, Patsy dear,” advised Judy. “The Good Man Above do be having things in hand, I’m belaving.”

It was spring … it was summer … it was September … it was almost another autumn. Pat had come home from a three weeks’ visit in Summerside, where Aunt Jessie had been ill and Pat had been keeping house for Uncle Brian. Now she was home again and oh, it was good! Was the sunshine amber or was it gold? How gallant the late hollyhocks looked along the dyke! How alive the air was! What a delightful smell the apple orchard had in September! How adorable were two fat pussy cats rolling in the sun! And the garden welcomed her … WANTED her.

“Any news, Judy? Tell me everything that’s happened while I’ve been away. Letters never tell half enough … and Rae’s have really been sketchy.”

“Oh, oh, Rae!” Judy looked rather as if the world were on its last legs, but Pat was too absorbed in Silver Bush generally to notice it. Tillytuck coughed significantly behind his hand and remarked that Cupid had as usual been busy at Silver Bush.

“Oh, Peter and Bruce, I suppose,” laughed Pat. “Is Rae going to keep those poor wretches dangling forever? It’s really getting past a joke. Where is she by the way?”

“She did be climbing the haystack in the Mince Pie Field half an hour ago, just after she did be getting home from school,” said Judy, frowning at Tillytuck.

Pat betook herself to the Mince Pie Field where a splotch of colour on a half-used haystack betrayed Rae’s whereabouts. Pat scrambled up the ladder and Rae grabbed her.

“Darling, I’m so glad you’re back. It seems like a hundred years since you went to Summerside. I’ve just been lying here, letting my thoughts ripen and grow mellow. I think there’s a caterpillar on my neck, but it doesn’t matter. Even caterpillars have rights.”

Pat slipped down beside Rae with a sigh of enjoyment. How blue the sky was, with those great banks of golden cloud in the south! Pat didn’t like a cloudless sky … it always seemed to her hard and remote. A few clouds made it friendly … humanised it. How cool and delicious was the gulf breeze blowing round them, bringing with it all kinds of elusive whiffs from all the little dells and slopes of the old farm. The Buttercup Field was a pasture this year. Pat remembered how she and Sid used to play in that field when the buttercup glory came up to their heads.

“Isn’t it heavenly just to lie quiet like this and soak yourself in the beauty of the world?” she said dreamily.

Rae did not answer. Pat turned her head and looked at her sister lying in her lithe young slimness on the hay. How very soft and radiant Rae’s eyes were! There was something about her …

“Pat darling,” said Rae, “I’m engaged.”

Pat felt as if a thunderbolt had hit her.

“Rae … let me see your tongue.”

“No, I’m not feverish, beloved … really, I’m not.”

“Are you serious, Rae?”

“Absolutely. Oh, Pat, I’m just weak and trembly with happiness. I never knew any one could be so happy. It’s only three weeks since you went away but everything has changed. Pat, life has just seemed like a story-book these three weeks, and every day an exciting chapter.”

Pat had got her second wind but she, too, felt weak and trembly with something that was not exactly happiness.

“Which is it … Bruce or Peter?” she asked a bit drily.

Rae gave a young, delightful laugh.

“Oh, Pat, it’s neither of them. It’s Brook Hamilton.”

Pat felt stunned.

“WHO is Brook Hamilton?”

Rae laughed again.

“Fancy any one not knowing who Brook Hamilton is. I can’t believe I didn’t know him myself three weeks ago. I met him the first night you went away at Dot’s dance …”

“Rae Gardiner, you don’t mean to tell me you’re engaged to a man you’ve known only three weeks!”

“Don’t go off the deep end, darling. We’re not to be married till he’s through college so we’ll have lots of time to get acquainted. And he’s my man … there’s no mistake about that. At nine o’clock that evening I had never seen him. At ten I loved him. Judy says it happens like that once in a thousand years. I never believed in love at first sight before … but now I know it’s the only kind.”

“Rae … Rae …
I
thought that once, too … I was sure I was madly in love with Lester Conway … and it was nothing but the moon …”

“There wasn’t any moon the night of Dot’s party, so you can’t blame this on the moon.”

“I suppose,” said Pat sarcastically, “he’s extremely handsome and you’ve fallen for …”

“But he isn’t. I think he’s ugly really, when I think of his face at all. But it’s such a delightful ugliness. And he has such steady blue eyes and such dependable broad shoulders, and such thick black hair … though it always looks as if he’d combed it with a rake. But I like that, too. He wouldn’t be Brook if he had sleek hair. Dearest, it’s all right … it really is. Mother and Dad like him and even Judy approves of him. We’re to be married when he’s through college and go to China.”

“China!”

“Yes. He’s going to take charge of the Chinese branch of his father’s business there … I forgot to tell you he’s one of the Halifax Hamiltons and Dot’s cousin.”

“But … China!”

“It DOES sound like a long hop. But, really, darling, nothing matters … Indian plains or Lapland snows … so long as I’m with him. I don’t talk like this to the others, Pat … but with you I’ve just got to let myself go.”

“And what about Bruce and Peter?” asked Pat, with a faint smile.

“Pat, it was really comical. Oh, there’s so much to tell you. You see, they didn’t know anything about Brook, but they told me two weeks ago that I had to make up my mind between them. And I just told them I was engaged to Brook. You should have seen their faces. Then they just faded out of the picture. I don’t think they ever really existed.”

“And were you engaged THEN … a week after you’d met him?”

“Darling, we were engaged three days after we met. I couldn’t help it. What would YOU do if Sir Launcelot just rode into your back yard and told you you had to marry him? Because Brook didn’t ASK me, you know … he just told me I had to. There wasn’t the least use objecting even if I’d wanted to. And … oh, Pat, I … I CRIED. That’s the shameful truth. I haven’t the least idea why I did, but I simply howled. It was such a relief … I’d been thinking I was just one of the crowd to him … and Dot was trying to hint he was after Lenore Madison … that freckled, snub-nosed thing. You may be sure I didn’t ask for any time to consider. Pat, you’re not going to cry!”

“No … no … but this is really a little unexpected, Rae.”

For one awful moment Pat had felt as if Rae … this Rae … were a stranger to her. She had been away from Silver Bush for only three weeks and THIS had happened.

“I know.” Rae squeezed Pat’s hand. “And I know it must all seem like indecent haste to you. But if you count time by heart-throbs as somebody says you should, it’s been a century since I met him. He ISN’T a stranger. He’s one of our kind … like Hilary … knows all our quacks, really he does. You’ll understand when you meet him, Pat.”

Pat did understand. She couldn’t find a single fault with Brook Hamilton. As a brother-in-law he was everything that could be desired. Tall, lean, with intensely blue eyes and straight black brows. Certainly he and Rae made a wonderful-looking young pair in spite of his “rather ugly” face. She couldn’t hate him as she had hated Frank, even if he were going to take her sister away. But, mercifully, not for a long time yet. And there was no doubt that Rae loved him.

“I wish I could love somebody like that,” said Pat, with a little pang of envy. She sat alone for a long time in her room that evening while the robins whistled outside and the purple night sky looked down on her. So, in the years to come, she would always have to sit alone. For the first time in her life Pat felt OLD … for the first time a little chill of fear for her own future touched her. She almost hated Bold-and-Bad for purring so loudly on the bed. It was outrageous that a cat should be so blatantly happy. Really Bold-and-Bad had no tact.

“I suppose,” thought Pat dolefully, “the time will come when I’ll have nothing left but a cat.” Then she brightened up. “And Silver Bush. That will be enough,” she added softly.

At bedtime she knelt by Rae’s bed and put her arm across Rae’s shoulders.

“Cuddles dear,” she said, slipping back to the old nickname, “Brook is a dear … and I think you’re both lucky … and I love you … love you … love you.”

“Pat, you’re the dearest thing in the world. And why didn’t you cast the Reverend Wheeler of happy memory up to me and remind me of the time I thought I was in love with him? I really expected you to do it … I don’t know how any human being could have resisted doing it.”

Judy was only moderately pleased over the engagement because of the prospect of China.

“Oh, oh, I’ve great opinions of haythens, Patsy dear. They do be all right to sind missionaries to, but not to be living among. And her wid thim looks av hers to go to Chiny! Sure and some ugly girl wud have done for him I’m thinking, since he can’t be continted in a civilised country. But I’m not denying he’s a fine lad and he can’t be hilping his uncle.”

“Now, Judy, what about his uncle?”

“Oh, oh, it’s an ould tale and better not raked up maybe. Well, if ye will be having it. The Hamiltons may be av Halifax now but the grandfather av thim lived in Charlottetown whin his lads were small. And Brook’s uncle was the black shape … if it don’t be insulting shape to call him so. Crooked he was as a dog’s hind leg. He wint out wist after quarrelling wid his dad and what did he do but write a long account av his being killed whin a train struck his horse and buggy at a crossing and got it published in a liddle newspaper there, one av his wild cronies being editor av it, and sint a marked copy home to the ould folks. It just about broke his poor mother’s heart … I’m not saying his dad tuk it so hard and small blame to him … and they had a lot av worry tilligraphing to have the body sint home. And whin they wint to the station wid the hearse and undertaker and all to mate the corpse didn’t me fine Dicky Hamilton stip off the train laughing at the joke he’d played on thim!”