The Blythes Are Quoted (32 page)

“Well, we’ll all start from scratch,” said Uncle John, with his great hearty guffaw that always startled Patrick. It was not a laugh ... just a guffaw. He thumped Patrick’s thin little back with his large, fat hand.

Patrick didn’t like fat hands.

“Which one of us are you going to pick for first go, my boy?”

Patrick wasn’t doing any picking. He looked from one to the other of them with the gaze of a trapped animal in his big grey eyes under their level brows. Aunt Lilian wondered if he were really half-witted. Some people said that Walter Blythe was ... but there was no relationship except a very distant cousinship and she remembered the time she had hinted such a thing to Susan Baker ...

“What’s to be done?” asked Uncle Frederick feebly.

“We’d better draw lots,” said Aunt Melanie briskly. “That will be the fairest way ... in fact the only way ... if anything about this whole business is fair. Lawyer Atkins, I am surprised you didn’t advise Stephen ...”

“Mr. Brewster was not a man who was fond of taking advice,” said Lawyer Atkins dryly. They all knew that as well as he did.

“I’m sure somebody put the idea into his head. Dr. Blythe ...”

“Dr. Blythe happened to call that day and I asked him to be a witness. That is all
he
had to do with it.”

“Well, luckily we all live close together, so there’ll be no trouble about changing his school every three months.”

So he would be going to school! Patrick rather liked this idea. Anything would be better than Miss Sperry. And the
Ingleside boys went to school and thought it lots of fun. At least, he knew Jem did. He was not quite so sure about Walter.

“Poor lamb!” said Aunt Lilian sentimentally.

That finished Patrick. He got himself out of the room. Let them draw their lots! He didn’t care who got him first or last or in between.

And yet a sudden memory came to him of the time he had cut his finger at Ingleside and Susan Baker had said, “Poor lamb!”

He had liked it. Oh, things were very puzzling in this queer world.

“A problem child decidedly,” said Aunt Elizabeth. “But it is our duty ...”

“Oh, no,
I
wouldn’t call him a problem child,” said Aunt Fanny, who made it a rule never to agree with Elizabeth. “A little odd ... unchildlike, you might say. Is it any wonder ... living with Stephen? And his mother ... no family ... no background ... But Patrick would soon become quite normal if he lived with other children ... and get over that nonsense of his about the other world.”

“What other world? I’m sure Stephen ...”

“Oh,
I
don’t know. Just one of his silly fancies. Miss Sperry found out about it somehow. She’s a gimlet, that woman.
I
think she overheard Patrick and Walter Blythe talking about it. I never did approve of Stephen’s intimacy with that family. But he would never listen to me, of course. Miss Sperry was worried about it. I told her not to mind ... he would outgrow it. So few people understand the child mind. You’d think to hear Mrs. Dr. Galbraith ...”

“Oh, we all know she is a little off when it comes to bringing up children ... though I will say that since her marriage ...”

“Come, come, we’re not getting anywhere,” boomed Uncle John.

“That was just what Stephen wanted,” said Aunt Fanny. “He thought he’d set us all fighting.
I
know his mind. Well, since we have to go through this absurd performance ...”

“How else could we settle it?” asked Aunt Lilian.

“I am not going to quarrel with you, Lilian. We are each to have him three months ... so much is perfectly clear. After that, it is up to him to make his choice ... he will have to make it, whether he likes it or not. There will be no drawing of lots then.”

Patrick fell to Aunt Elizabeth for September, October, and November. He was called in ... came reluctantly ... and Aunt Elizabeth kissed him when she told him the result. He didn’t like her kiss because he didn’t like her. Yet he had always liked Mrs. Blythe’s kisses.

When he was taken to Aunt Elizabeth’s house ... leaving Oaklands with no sense of regret whatever ... his Cousin Amy kissed him, too. Amy was a very grown-up young lady, with blood-red fingernails. He remembered how Dr. Blythe laughed at painted fingernails.

Patrick didn’t like Amy either. What was the matter with him when he didn’t like his relations? The Ingleside children seemed to be so fond of all theirs. But he did not see much of Amy nor of his Cousin Oscar either, who never said anything to him except, “Hello, kid!” when they happened to meet, and always seemed sulky about something.

Neither, to his relief, did he see a great deal of Aunt Elizabeth. She was always so busy, arranging club bridges, giving and attending all sorts of social functions. Mealtimes were almost the only times he saw her, when her long face spoiled what little appetite he had and her never-forgotten kiss took away the rest. If only she wouldn’t kiss him!

But they were all exceedingly kind to him. He felt that they worked very hard being kind to him. Every wish would have been gratified if he had ever expressed any wishes. He did only once.

On a Saturday afternoon in October he timidly asked Aunt Elizabeth if he might go for a ride on the bus. Just a short teeny-weeny ride.

Aunt Elizabeth was so horrified that her long face grew longer than ever ... something Patrick had not believed possible.

“Darling, you wouldn’t like it at all. Any time you want a drive Amy or Oscar or I will take you in the car anywhere you want to go ... anywhere.”

But it appeared that Patrick didn’t want to go anywhere ... unless it was to Glen St. Mary and he knew very well he would not be allowed to go there. Aunt Elizabeth did not like the Blythes.

Patrick never spoke about the bus again. They showered gifts on him, very few of which he wanted. Uncle John boomed at him and thumped him and gave him candy every day. Uncle John really thought this must be a pleasant change for a boy after living for years with that sardonic nut, Stephen.
He
, John Brewster, knew how to handle boys. He didn’t know that Patrick didn’t care much for candy and gave most of it away to the laundress for her children.

Uncle John drove him to school in the mornings, joking him about something all the way. Most of the jokes Patrick couldn’t understand at all. Amy or Aunt Elizabeth called for him at night. He did not make many friends at school. Aunt Fanny’s boys went to the same school and they told everybody he was a sissy. The other boys took to calling him Missy. But he preferred the school to Miss Sperry.

At home ... that is, in Aunt Elizabeth’s house ... Patrick never thought of it as home somehow ... he spent much of his time curled up on a window seat on the stair landing. Through a gap in the houses he could see a distant hill with violet-grey woods about it.

There was a house on it ... a house that seemed lifted above everything. Patrick often wondered who lived there. He knew it could not be the Ingleside people; he knew Glen St. Mary must be much further away than that. But there was something about it that vaguely reminded him of Ingleside, he could not tell just what.

When late November came and the cold kiss of the snowflakes was on the window he looked across the wintry roofs in the early dusk to that house, from which a star now shone through the wild, white weather and thought that perhaps it was in his other world.

Perhaps the little girl in the scarlet dress lived there. As long as he could see the light shining to him across the far distance he did not feel so lonely ... so unwanted.

Because none of them really wanted him. It was only the money they wanted. Patrick could not have told you how he knew that but know it he did.

“I’m afraid I’ll never be able to understand him,” sighed Aunt Elizabeth to Uncle John ... who was quite sure he understood Patrick perfectly. He had been a boy himself once and all boys were alike ... except that queer Walter Blythe at Glen St. Mary and Uncle John did not think he was “all there.” A boy who wrote poetry! He sympathized heartily with Susan Baker, who had once told him of her anxiety about Walter. But the doctor and his wife did not seem to be worried. And Dr. Galbraith only laughed. But then
his
wife was nuts, too. Elizabeth might have her faults but at
least she did not pester him with theories on the bringing up of children.

“I’m afraid I’ll never be able to understand him,” went on Elizabeth.

“I’ll bet he’ll like us better than Fan’s boys,” said Uncle John, who never had the least doubt that they would be the chosen ones in the end.

“We’ve done
everything
but we can’t thaw him.”

“Oh, well, some boys are like that ... naturally quiet.”

“But he just seems to draw into a shell. Amy says he makes her nervous.”

“It doesn’t take much to do that,” said Uncle John. “Now, if she were like Mrs. Dr. Blythe ...”

“I don’t want to hear anything about Mrs. Blythe,” said Aunt Elizabeth haughtily. “I have long been aware that she is the only perfect woman in the world in your eyes.”

“Now, Elizabeth ...”

“I am not going to quarrel with you. I simply refuse to quarrel with you. I thought we were talking about Patrick.”

“Well, what about Patrick? He seems quite happy and contented, I’m sure. You women are always making mountains out of molehills. You’ll see he’ll pick us in the end.”

“His eyes aren’t normal. Even you, John Brewster, must see that.”

“I’ve never noticed anything wrong with his eyes. Why don’t you take him to an oculist?”

“They seem to be looking through you ... looking for something he can’t find,” said Aunt Elizabeth, with one of her rare flashes of insight. “Do you really suppose he’ll choose us when the time comes, John?”

“Not a doubt of it. Those boys of Fanny’s will torment him to death ... and Melanie and Lilian have no earthly idea how
to handle a boy. Don’t worry. He’ll be mighty glad to come back to us for keeps when the time comes, or I miss my guess.”

Aunt Elizabeth was by no means so sure. She wished she dared ask Patrick to promise to come back to them. But somehow she dared not. There was
something
about the child ... John might be as sure as he liked but he really knew nothing about children. Why, she had had all the care of Amy and Oscar when they were little.

“Darling, if you find your cousins at Aunt Fanny’s a little ... trying ... you can always come over here for a bit of peace and quiet,” was as far as she dared go.

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll mind them,” was all that Patrick said.

They would have to be pretty bad, he thought, to drive him back to Aunt Elizabeth’s. If only he could go to Glen St. Mary for a visit first!

But everybody vetoed that, although Mrs. Blythe had sent a most cordial invitation. Nobody in the Brewster clan, it seemed, approved of the Blythes. Patrick often wondered why but he never dared ask any questions about it.

Aunt Fanny’s boys
were
pretty bad. They teased the life out of him ... on the sly, when Aunt Fanny and Uncle Frederick were not about. Yet they pretended to be very polite to him ... “because you have to be polite to girls,” said Joe.

When Bill broke Aunt Fanny’s Chinese teacup ... the five-clawed dragon one that had been part of the loot of the Summer Palace, so she claimed ... Bill told his mother coolly that Patrick had broken it. Patrick got off with a very mild rebuke whereas if Aunt Fanny had known the truth some terrible punishment would have been meted out to Bill.

“We’re always going to blame things on you because you won’t be punished,” Joe said. “Mother wants to make sure of
you choosing us for keeps when the time comes. Don’t do it. She’s got the temper of the devil.”

They knew Patrick wouldn’t tell. He was not that sort, and they despised him for it. Just like those sissy boys out at Glen St.Mary. Though
they
got well scolded at times. Even Mrs. Blythe could scold, while old Susan Baker had a tongue like a file.

Patrick could do anything and there would be never a word of scolding. How they hated him for that! And they would never have believed that Patrick hated it, too. He knew if he had done those things he should be scolded for them. And he knew that Joe and Bill resented his immunity even when they took advantage of it.

He couldn’t see the house on the hill from any window in Aunt Fanny’s house and he missed it. But at least Aunt Fanny didn’t kiss him and he rather liked Uncle Frederick. Though Uncle Frederick didn’t count for much in Aunt Fanny’s house. It was a very well-run house, so people said. So well-run that it was depressing. A book out of place, a rug crooked, a sweater left lying around, were unforgivable crimes in anyone except Patrick. Patrick was not very tidy and Aunt Fanny had to put great restraint on herself. She never dreamed that Patrick saw through it, but when the time came for him to go to Aunt Lilian’s Aunt Fanny felt anything but sure that he would ever come back.

“He has had a real home here,” she told Uncle Frederick, “and I don’t believe he appreciates it at all. Such care as I have taken with his balanced meals! Even Mrs. Dr. Galbraith herself couldn’t have been more particular. Dear knows what Lilian will give him to eat! She knows nothing whatever about bringing up children.”

“He is a cheated child,” said Uncle Frederick. “He has been cheated all his life.”

Aunt Fanny paid no attention to him. And never noticed much what Frederick said. Cheated? What absurdity! The trouble was Patrick had been too much indulged all his life. Every wish fulfilled. She wished she could do for her boys what had been done for Patrick.

March and April and May were Aunt Lilian’s. Aunt Lilian “my lambed” him and fussed over his clothes until Patrick thought he would go crazy. He had to go to bed at night up a gloomy stair and along a gloomy hall. There never was any light in the hall. Aunt Lilian nearly had a fit if anyone left an unnecessary bulb burning. She said she had to keep down her bills ... she was not as rich as his Uncle Stephen had been ... and she held that the light in the lower hall lighted the upper one sufficiently. Patrick was always forgetting to turn the lights off.

As for Miss Adams, she generally looked at him as if he were some kind of obnoxious black beetle and her skinny Persian cat would have nothing to do with him. Patrick tried to make friends with it because he was so hungry for any kind of a pet, but it was no use. Miss Adams had no particular motive for winning his affections. She knew quite well she would be no better off if Lilian did get him finally and she hated children.