“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 patronisingly.
“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 conceit 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 Bet’s crescent of trees while Ichabod sat close to David and Alphonso shared his favours 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
1
Pat looked out of the Little Parlour window a bit wistfully one evening in late November. Another summer was ended. How quickly summers passed now! There was a hard grey 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 quarrelled 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 savour 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 over-bright 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 Parlour 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.”
“Please don’t let’s quarrel,” said Pat helplessly. In a desperate effort to be calm she picked up her best pair of silk stockings and began to polish the mirror with them, not in the least knowing what she held in her hand. It was the last straw for Rae.
“Who is quarrelling? Don’t try to put the blame on me.”
“Oh, Rae, Rae . . . don’t twist everything I say to mean something else.”
“Oh, don’t try to twist things, she says. Who twisted things this summer . . . all summer . . . to make him think me a child? It’s such an interesting thing to watch the man you love making love to another woman and that woman your own sister who is deliberately trying to attract him, just for her own amusement!”
“Rae . . . never . . . never! I did try to save you from . . . from . . .”
“Save me! From what? You may well hesitate. You know you made him think I cared for Jerry Arnold. Jerry Arnold! A pipsqueak like that! It was Lawrence Wheeler I loved all the time and you knew it. He loved me, too, till you came between us. Yes, he did. The first time we met we felt . . . we knew . . . we had loved each other in a thousand former lives.”
For the life of her Pat couldn’t help smiling. She recognized the phrase. Hadn’t Lawrence Wheeler of the soulful eyes said it to her?
“Suppose we talk . . . or try to . . . as if we were grown up,” she suggested kindly.
“Oh, but I’m not grown up . . . I’m only a child.” Rae was pacing feverishly up and down the room. “A child can’t see . . . can’t love . . . can’t suffer. Can’t suffer! Oh, what I’ve gone through these past two months! And nobody saw . . . nobody understood . . . nobody has ever tried to understand me. You didn’t. You care for nothing but Silver Bush. You acted as you did just because you’re so crazy to keep Silver Bush always the same. My own sister to use me like that!”
Pat lost her patience and her temper, too. The idea of a scene like this over a creature like Larry Wheeler!
“This has gone far enough,” she said frostily.
“I agree with you,” Rae was frost instantly also.
“When you come to your senses,” said Pat, “you’ll realise perhaps just what a goose you’ve made of yourself over a go-preacher with cow’s eyes.”
“Don’t you think you’re really being a little vulgar, my dear Patricia?” said Rae, with eyes of blue ice. “I am of no consequence of course . . . but there is such a thing as good taste. You seem to have forgotten that, along with several other things. Never mention Lawrence Wheeler’s name to me again.”
Pat clamped her teeth together to keep from saying things she would have been terribly sorry for afterwards. The urge to say them passed.
“We’ve both lost our tempers, Rae, and said foolish things. We’ll feel differently in the morning.”
“Oh, will we? I’ll never feel differently . . . and I’ll never forgive you, Pat Gardiner . . . never. You and that old widower of yours!”
“Who is being vulgar now?” Pat was furious again. “At least Mr. Kirk is a gentleman!”
“And Lawrence Wheeler isn’t, I suppose?”
“You can suppose what you like. You’ve dragged his name up again. He was simply too sloppy for anything. I never dreamed that you . . . Rae Gardiner of Silver Bush . . . could take him seriously. And he’d been eating onions before he proposed to me.”
“Oh, so he proposed to you. I didn’t know you had lured him on that far. I thought even you had enough self-respect to stop short of that.”
“We have had enough of this,” said Pat, her voice trembling.
“I think so, too. But let me tell you this, Pat Gardiner. Since you are so bent on ‘saving’ people you’d better look after Sid a bit. He’s dangling around May Binnie again. I’ve known it for weeks but I didn’t say anything abo
ut it because I knew it would worry you. I had a little consideration for you. But you’ve been so intent on running my life that it has ceased to matter to you what Sid does, I suppose.”
“Rae dearest . . . we’re both upset . . . we’re both saying things we shouldn’t . . . let’s forget this. We mustn’t let any one know we’ve quarrelled . . .”
“I don’t care if all the world knows it.” Rae marched out of the room. She did not come back. That night she slept in the Poet’s room . . . if she slept at all. Pat didn’t. It was the first time since the night before mother’s operation that she had lain awake all night. Surely she and Rae couldn’t have quarrelled . . . after all their years of comradeship and love . . . all their secrets kept and shared together. It must be a horrid dream. The Binnie girls were always quarrelling . . . one expected nothing better of them. But such things simply couldn’t happen at Silver Bush. Was there any truth in what Rae had said about Sid and May? There couldn’t be. It was nothing but idle gossip. She knew Sid better than that. Of course May Binnie was pretty, with the obvious, indisputable prettiness of rich black hair, vivid colour, laughing, brilliant, bold eyes. But Sid could never care for her after Bets . . . or even after sweet foolish mistaken Dorothy. Pat brushed the teasing thought away. It was so easy to start gossip in the Glens. Nothing mattered just now but the quarrel with Rae.
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.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 355