Judy teased Rae sometimes about him.
“Sure and he’d be easy to cook for, Cuddles darlint. They’re telling me he niver ates innything but nuts and bran biscuits. No wonder he’s not nading a salary. But how about kaping a wife?”
“You do say such ridiculous things,” said Rae rather snappishly. “What is it to me whether he can keep a wife or not?”
Tillytuck was not quite easy in his mind about it. He considered Mr. Wheeler a dangerous creature and wondered why Long Alec tolerated his presence at all. As he entirely disapproved of the Holy Christians he decided he would take up with church-going again as a token of his disapproval. He took several weeks to accumulate enough courage to go, being afraid, as he told Judy, of making too much of a sensation. But when he finally did go and nobody took any particular notice of it he was secretly furious.
“There wasn’t a good-looking woman in church,” he grumbled, “and no great shakes of a minister. He runs to words and I don’t believe his views on the devil are sound. Sort of flabby. I like a devil with some backbone.”
“Suppose you do be going to the Holy Christians,” said Judy disdainfully, as she sliced up her red cabbage for pickling. “I’m hearing they have wrestling matches wid That Person quite frequent.”
“The people of this place are having too much truck with Holy Christians as it is,” said Tillytuck sourly, “and the time will come when they’ll see it.”
“There’ll be no harm come to Silver Bush from that poor lad,” said Judy. “And ye’ll all be getting a rale surprise some day.”
“You’ve got wheels in your head,” scoffed Tillytuck.
Pat, at that moment, was working in the garden, at peace with herself and all the world. Somehow, she always felt safe from change in that garden. Just now it seemed to be taking pleasure in itself. Its flowers were guests not prisoners…its blue delphiniums, its frail fleeting loveliness of poppies, its Canterbury bells, delicious mauve flecked with purple, its roses of gold and snow, its lilies of milk and wine. Westward the sun was sinking low over a far land of shining hills. The air was sweet with a certain blended fragrance that only the Silver Bush garden knew. The whole lovesome place was full of soft amethyst shadows.
What fairy things the seeds of immortelles were! What a lovely name “bee balm” was! It was on evenings like this long ago she had listened for Joe’s whistle as he came home from work. There was never any whistle now…Sid never whistled. Poor Sid! Would he never get over fretting for that hateful Dorothy? He was running around, here, there and everywhere, with all kinds of girls, rumor said. They saw very little of him at Silver Bush. At work all day…and off in the evenings till late. Mother’s eyes were very sad sometimes. Judy advised patience…he would come back to himself yet. Pat found it hard to be patient. At times she felt like shaking Sid. Why should he shut her out of his life as he did? That was always one of the little shadows in the background.
There was a hint of September coolness blowing across August’s languor…another summer almost gone. The years were certainly beginning to spin past rather quickly. Well, to grow old with Silver Bush would not be hard, Pat reflected, with the philosophy of one who is as yet very far from age.
Suddenly Pat scowled. There was that wretched Mr. Wheeler coming up the lane. Thank goodness, Rae had gone to Winnie’s. Now for another evening of boredom. When would he take the hint that his attentions to Rae weren’t welcome to her or anybody else? Her lovely garden evening would be quite spoiled. And he had been here only last night. Really, he was becoming an intolerable nuisance. Would it be violating Silver Bush traditions too flagrantly to give him a hint of it?
Pat’s greeting was a trifle distant and she went on coolly snipping off delphinium seeds. Bold-and-Bad, who had been prowling among the shrubs, made a few spiteful remarks. You couldn’t hoodwink Bold-and-Bad.
Mr. Wheeler stood looking down at her. Pat had an old sunburned felt hat of Sid’s on her head which she would not have thought…if she had thought about it at all…likely to attract masculine admiration. And she wore an ancient brown crepe dress which burrs and stick-tights could no longer injure. She did not know how its warm hues brought out the creaminess of her skin…the gloss of her hair…the fire of her amber eyes. She was really looking her best and when, after a rather overlong silence, she raised her eyes to her caller’s she found his dark, soulful orbs…the adjectives were Aunt Polly’s daughter’s…gazing down at her with a strange expression in their depths. An incredible idea came to Pat…and was instantly dismissed. Nonsense! She wished he wouldn’t stand so close to her. She knew at once what he had had for supper. How overfull his red lips were! And when had his finger-nails been cleaned last? Why didn’t somebody come along? People were always somewhere else when you wanted them and when you didn’t you simply fell over them.
“You are smiling…you have such a fascinating smile. What are you thinking of, Patricia,” he said in a low, caressing tone.
Merciful goodness, suppose she told him what she was thinking! Pat had hard work to avert a grin. And then the bolt fell, straight out of the blue.
Mr. Wheeler helped himself to one of her hands and looked at it.
“Little white hand,” he murmured. “Little white hand that holds my heart.”
Pat’s hands were brown and not particularly little. She tried to pull it away. But he held on and put his arm around her. Worse and more of it, as Tillytuck would say. Suppose Judy were looking out of the kitchen window!
“Please, don’t be so…foolish,” said Pat coldly.
“I’m not foolish. I am wise…very wise…wise with the wisdom of countless ages.” His voice was getting lower and tenderer with every word. “I’ve been wanting this opportunity for weeks. It has been so hard to find you alone. Dearest, sweetest of angels, have you any idea how much I love you…have loved you for a thousand lives?”
“I never thought of such a thing…I always thought it was Rae,” was all poor Pat could gasp.
Mr. Wheeler smiled patronizingly.
“You couldn’t have thought that, my darling. Miss Rachel is a charming child. But it is you, my sweet…and always has been since the first moment I drowned my soul in your beautiful eyes. I think I must have dreamed you all my life…and now my dream has come true.” He tried to draw her closer. “You belong to me…you know you do. We will have such a wonderful life together, my queen.”
Pat recovered herself. She wrested her hand from his clasp, feeling quite furious over her ridiculous position.
“You must forget all this nonsense, Mr. Wheeler,” she said decisively. “I hadn’t the slightest idea you felt that way about me. And…” Pat was growing angry, “just how did you come to imagine that I would marry you?”
Mr. Wheeler dropped her hand and looked down at her, with something rather unpleasant in his eyes.
“You have encouraged me to think so.” His voice had lost a good deal of its smooth oiliness. “I cannot believe you do not care for me.”
“Please try,” said Pat in a dangerous tone. It flicked on the raw. A dark flush spread over Mr. Wheeler’s face. He seemed all at once to be quite a different person.
“You have shown me very plainly that you liked my society, Miss Gardiner…almost too plainly. I consider that I had every right to suppose that my proposal would be welcome…very welcome. You have flirted with me shamelessly…you have lured me on, for your own amusement I must now suppose. I should have known it…I was well warned…I was told what you were.”
Pat, looking into his angry eyes, felt as she had felt one day when she had turned over an old, beautiful mossy stone in the Whispering Lane and seen what was underneath.
“I think you had better go, Mr. Wheeler,” she said icily.
“Oh, I’m going…I’m going…and rest assured I shall never darken the doors of this place again.”
Mr. Wheeler stalked off, his conc
eit considerably slimmed down, and Pat, still in a swither of various emotions, rushed into the kitchen, displaced a chairful of indignant cats, and gave tongue.
“Oh, oh, and what were you and His Riverince colloguing in the garden about that sint him down the lane at the rate av no man’s business?” demanded Judy.
“Judy, I’m feeling so many different things I don’t know which I’m feeling most. That horrible creature actually asked me…me, Pat Gardiner…to marry him! And he’d been eating onions, Judy!”
“Sure and weren’t ye by way av knowing he was a vegetarian,” said Judy coolly. “I’ve been ixpicting this for some time.”
“Judy! What made you expect it?”
“The way he had av looking at ye, whin ye weren’t looking at him.”
“Oh, Judy…the worst of it is…he thinks I encouraged him! I feel I’m disgraced. And when he found I wouldn’t marry him…he was horrid. He hasn’t any manners, not even bad ones.”
“The higher a monkey climbs the more he shows his tail,” quoted Judy. “Niver be taking it to heart, Patsy. Ye’re rid av him now for good.”
“I really think so, Judy. I’ve an idea he meant it when he said he would never darken our doors again.”
“Sure now and that will be our loss,” said Judy sarcastically. “He’s kipt out considerable av the sunshine this summer. And…I’m not sticking up for him, Patsy…I did always be thinking he was no rale gintleman under the skin…but you did be always sticking round…”
“I did it to keep him away from Rae. I…I…thought he’d take the hint. I never dreamed he’d think I was in love with him…him! Judy, it’s really a ridiculous and tiresome world by spells. I’m going up to the Long House…I’ve got to have something to take the taste of the Reverend Wheeler out of my soul and to talk nice scandal with David and Suzanne may do it.”
“I’m wondering how Cuddles will be taking this,” muttered Judy after Pat had gone out. “I’m thinking iverybody but ould Judy Plum is blind as a bat round here. Well, we’re rid av the go-pracher, glory be. But I’m not knowing if I like that Kirk man much better. He’s got his eye on her. He’s not hurrying…whin it’s yer second you do be more careful-like. But I do be knowing the signs. Oh, oh, it’s a wonder me bit av corned ham wasn’t being biled too much whin I was listening to Patsy’s troubles. But it’s done to the quane’s taste and I’m setting it in the ice-house to cool. Beaus may come and beaus may go but we must be having our liddle comforts.”
Pat, up at the Long House, soon forgot her anger and humiliation in the company of David and Suzanne. They talked and laughed together around the fireplace the Kirks had built in Bets’ crescent of trees while Ichabod sat close to David and Alphonso shared his favors between the girls and the evening star looked over cloudy purple ramparts in the west. It seemed to Pat that every evening she spent there she grew wiser and maturer in some mysterious way. Their talk was so different…so rich…so stimulating…so brimming over with ideas. The ghosts of the past were laid. She had begun to think of the Long House as the home of Suzanne and David rather than as the home of Bets.
“She is growing older and I’m growing younger. Perhaps we’ll meet,” David was thinking.
“Their souls are the same age.” Suzanne was thinking.
But nobody knew what Alphonso-of-the-emerald-eyes or Ichabod thought.
THE FOURTH YEAR
CHAPTER 27
Pat looked out of the Little Parlor window a bit wistfully one evening in late November. Another summer was ended. How quickly summers passed now! There was a hard gray twilight after a little snow and there was a threat of still more snow in the dour air. The shadows…chilly, hostile shadows…seemed to be raining out of the silver bush. A biting wind was lashing everything as if determined to take its ill-temper out on the world. A few forlorn yellow leaves blew crazily over the lawn. An empty nest swung lonesomely in the wind from a bough of the big apple tree on which the pale yellow-green apples always stayed so long after the leaves were gone. The apples were no good and were never picked but the tree always looked so exquisite in its spring blossom that Pat wouldn’t have it cut down. It had been what Pat called a peevish day and even the loveliness of a tall, dark spruce tree near the dyke, powdered with feathers of snow, did not give her the shiver of delight such things usually did. She thought it was the kind of a day that would make people quarrel if people ever quarreled at Silver Bush. But November had been a vexing month all through…one day glorious…the next day savage. You never knew just where you were with it. And Pat did not like this evening…she felt as if some long finger of change which was always reaching out to her was at last just on the point of touching her.
She was restless. She would have liked to go up to the Long House but the Kirks were away. She wished Rae would come home…Rae must have called somewhere after school. Though Rae hadn’t been exactly the same for the past two months. Pat couldn’t lay her finger just on the point of difference but she felt it in her sensitive soul. Rae sometimes snapped now…she who had always been so sunshiny. And sometimes Pat thought that when she looked meaningly at Rae in the presence of others, to share the savor of some subtle joke, Rae averted her eyes without any answering twinkle. And at times it almost seemed as if she had taken up a pose of being misunderstood. What was wrong? Weren’t things going well in school? From all Pat could find out they were but she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that Rae had some secret trouble…for the first time an unshared trouble. Nothing was really changed…and yet Pat had moments of feeling that everything was changed. Once she asked Rae if anything was worrying her and Rae snapped out so savage a “Nonsense!” that Pat held her peace. Surely it couldn’t be the fact that Mr. Wheeler had suddenly stopped coming to Silver Bush and was reputed to have a wild case on a visiting girl from New Brunswick that accounted for the mournful mauve smudges under Rae’s blue eyes some mornings.
Pat reassured herself by reflecting that this would pass. And meanwhile Silver Bush made everything bearable. Pat loved it more with every passing year and all the little household rites that meant so much to her. Always when she came home to Silver Bush its peace and dignity and beauty seemed to envelop her like a charm. Nothing very terrible could happen there.
Judy’s cheery philosophy never failed, but Pat could not mention even to Judy the vague chill of change between herself and Rae. In the evenings when they foregathered in the kitchen and Tillytuck played on his fiddle she sometimes felt that she must only have imagined it. Rae was the gayest of them all then…“a bit too gay,” Judy thought, though she never said so. Things did be often arranging themselves if you just let them alone. Judy was more worried over a reckless look she sometimes caught in Sid’s brown eyes and over certain bits of gossip that came her way occasionally.
Pat lighted the lamp as Sid and Rae came in. Rae flung her school-books on a chair and said nothing. But Sid had a chuckle and a bit of news.
“Your go-preacher has gone, Pat. The Holy C’s are blaming you for it. They say you flirted with him and made a fool of him and he can’t stand the place now. Aunt Polly is especially down on you. She adores that shepherd.”
Sid spoke banteringly and Pat had some laughing rejoinder ready when a smothered sound, between a gasp and a cry, made them look at Rae.
“Great Scott, sis, you’ll singe your eyelashes if you let your eyes blaze like that,” said Sid.
Rae took no notice of him. She was looking at Pat.
“So this is your doing…you have driven him away,” she said in a low, tense tone…such a tone as Pat had never heard Rae use before…seventeen-year-old Rae whom Pat still thought of as a child. Pat almost laughed…but laughter suddenly fell dead on her lips. Why, the poor darling was in earnest! And how pretty she looked in her golden-brown dress with her flushed cheeks and overbright eyes! Her head positively shone like a lamp in the dark corner. She was so sweet…and absurd…and deadly serious.
This last realization should have warned Pat but didn’t.
“Rae, dearest, don’t be foolish,” she said gently.
“Oh, don’t be foolish,” mocked Rae furiously. “That’s your attitude I know…has been right along. I am a mere baby of course…I have no rights…no feelings…no feelings at all…no claim to be considered a human being. ‘Don’t be foolish,’ says the wise Patricia. That really is a clever idea!”
Rae’s voice trembled with passion. She rushed out of the Little Parlor and up the stairs like a golden whirlwind. There were three doors on the way to her room and she banged them all.
“Whew!” whistled Sid. “I always knew she had a bad case on Wheeler but I didn’t think it went that deep.”
“Sid…you don’t think she cared really!”
“Oh, calf love no doubt. We all survive it. But it hurts at the time.” Sid laughed a bit bitterly.
Pat went up to her room. Rae was pacing up and down it like a caged animal. She turned a stormy young face on her sister.
“Leave me alone, can’t you? You’ve done me enough harm, haven’t you? You took him from me…deliberately. I saw you trying to attract him. What chance had I? Well, I forgave you. But now he’s gone…he’s gone…and I’ll never see him again…and I can’t stand it. I hate you…I hate you…I hate everything.”